17. Why both behaviorist and innatist perspectives on SLA have limitations?

Well, they are basically mutually exclusive. They go to two extremes. Although Lightbown and Spada (2013), for example, conceded that progress could be made through immersion without direct instruction, there is also evidence that progress can be hindered without some level of guided input. From an SLA perspective, innatism, like behaviourism, has its limitations.

Skinner’s behaviourist operant conditioning influenced early twentieth-century thinking about how languages are learned. Chomsky’s innatist theorizing motivated fundamental rethinking in this regard. Thus began a “cognitive revolution” (Atkinson, 2011, p. 6) as “a direct response to American behaviorism” (p. 8). In summary, behaviourism and innatism represent two very contrasting approaches that inform teaching and learning – with the behaviourist approach being top-down, teacher-led and expository (teach students everything they

need to know) and the innatist approach being bottom-up, learner-centred and experiential (let students work it all out for themselves). In other words, behaviourism represents a theory of learning dependent solely on nurture, or the influence of the environment, and innatism represents a theory of learning dependent solely on nature, or a child’s or student’s innate abilities. Both approaches may be critiqued on the basis of only partially explaining the complex phenomenon of human learning (and therefore of language learning, whether L1 or L2).

References: 

Atkinson, D. (2011). Cognitivism and second language acquisition. In D. Atkinson (Ed.), Alternative approaches to second language acquisition (pp. 1–23). Routledge.

East, M. (2021). Foundational principles of task-based language teaching (p. 214). Taylor & Francis.

Lightbown, P., & Spada, N. (2013). How languages are learned (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.