How to overcome inhibition?

Inhibition is a dangerous concept. To be inhibited is to be limited and limited is never a way to live or lead. Here are some steps that may help to deal with this concept :)

Assess the situation. Think deeply about your last social interaction. Were you the life of the party or were you the wimp at the bar? 

Face the situation. Pay attention to your social behavior. Realize that you are in control of your life, and you can fight through your inhibitions and come out a better and happier person.

Realize the importance of assessing the situation. Your timidity might bring about personal insecurities which will further stop you from communicating openly to your friends, family members and so on making you feel frustrated and unhappy.

Stay true to who you are. Don't be ashamed of who you are, you should accept and respect yourself. Behave naturally, react to circumstances in any way you want to, do not change your actions or opinions because of others. Stay strong and free willed!

Lose control. Always have a genuine smile on your face. People around you are a mirror to the person you are. Mingle with the people around you, don't think about who started the conversation, think of yourself as the bigger person and start the conversation first.

Volunteer and participate. Participate in group activities as much as possible, the more you mingle, the more fear you overcome. The less fear you have, the fewer inhibitions you will have.

Don't go overboard. Losing your inhibitions doesn't mean shrugging off responsibility. Learn to have proper boundaries so that you don't become a menace to the others when you are having such a good time.

“I'm not telling you it's going to be easy...

I'm telling you it's going to be worth it.”

#Tuesday #motivation

Here we go again...

Winter recess is over and final exams are left behind (for the time being...)It's time to focus on the second  half of the year and put all the energy in achieving all our goals! 

Such is life!

Such is life: is used to refer to an event that has happened and that you must accept, because you know that this is the way life is: So here we are. Oh well, such is life.

Time flies!

General concepts of language acquisition

After reading chapter 3 by Cook (General concepts of language acquisition), I found out that it is a very interesting chapter which involves relevant information to learn about language acquisition.  I have focused on what are, from my point of view, some of the most interesting sections on this chapter.

One section in the chapter that I believe is important is the one that describes the States of the language faculty, because it explains language acquisition in the different states of the mind; from the new-born baby with no language (Initial state) to the adult native speaker who has already developed static competence (Steady state).

Apart from that, the information about the Language Acquisition Device that this chapter provides the reader with is very well explained and it is also relevant when learning about Language Acquisition. I fully agree with Chomsky’s black box metaphor, since it is expressed in a very simple way. If input is what goes in and knowledge is what goes out, we can deduce what is going on inside that black box by carefully examining both parts.

What is more, I also agree with the poverty-of-the-stimulus argument, which I believe is a very interesting section. If we take the fact that the input that goes in is very poor and the output that goes out is very rich this leads us to think that the black box not only process input but contributes things to get the final product. I fully agree with the importance of analyzing the internal knowledge.

General Concepts of Language Acquisition: Chomsky’s Nativist Position

Reflect Express your opinion of the theory developed in Chapter III ¨General Concepts of Language Acquisition¨ we have discussed in class. Consider the following questions: Do you agree? Do you disagree? What points are the most interesting? What questions are not answered? Does it convince you? Discuss its weaknesses. Write a couple of paragraphs.

It is not known if Chomsky’s Nativist Position has provided the final answer of the question about what is going on inside our minds when we produce language. However, I consider Chomsky’s theory very interesting for several reasons. I strongly agree with the poverty-of-the-stimulus argument which explains that if what we say does not come from the outside, it must be inside the mind. This concept made me reflect about the meaning of the verb produce, in consequence and after I looked it up in the dictionary I have chosen to highlight the following definition: -to produce: to bring into existence by the mind or by creative ability. Chomskyan notion of creativity states that people regularly understand and produce sentences that they have never heard before. Children hear the ¨primary linguistic data ¨, they process this data within their black box, called the Language Acquisition Device (later Universal Grammar), and they acquire linguistic competence in the language, a ¨generative grammar¨. Nevertheless, I must say that I also agree with Cook when he points out that even though linguists can formulate quite reasonable and strong empirical hypothesis regarding this internal structure, it is not possible to open the child’s mind to confirm their deductions.

Chomsky’s metaphor of ¨The Black Box¨ to represent our mind is extraordinarily simple, but also complex at the same time, because it implies that we are born with the Universal Grammar in our mind. Acquiring language means processing from not having any language, zero state, to having full competence, steady state. I definitively believe that his theory of Universal Grammar went beyond expectations because it is a collection of principles and parameters that account for similarities and differences for any languages, which shows their outstanding adaptability. Regarding the goals of linguistics in terms of levels of adequacy, the Universal Grammar theory integrates acquisition with the description of grammar by making explanatory adequacy central; the description of the grammar goes hand in hand with the explanation of how it is learnt. Chomsky wanted to know what happens inside the mind, he was concerned with the internal language, the language of the mind. He was interested in the linguistic competence (the knowledge of language), not in pragmatic concepts (how we behave socially). I agree with his point of view because I also believe that what is important to analyse is the knowledge we have at the end of the process inside our minds, the internal language not the external.