Hawkins Article

The Hawkins article we read for this week discusses the Universal Grammar approach in relation to L1 vs. L2 acquisition. There is nothing to say that, “SLA research should not assume that L2 grammars are the product of the innate language faculty (353, Hawkins).” Many studies suggest that, “L2 learners’ mental representations are UG-derived (353).” This must lead to other questions though since there is not a solution to this debate.
I think that one of the biggest problems I find when reading various articles about SLA is it gets lumped in with L1 acquisition and as we can tell from this author there are distinct and obvious differences between L1 and L2. What it comes down to, in my opinion, is we need to look beyond the theories of L1 acquisition and start new research on SLA. Researchers seem to get sucked back into L1 research when researching SLA.