Re: Native speakers do engage in a kind of grammatical computation.

〉Hi. Thanks for coming to our bulletin board with such
〉an interesting point! You do hit the nail right on the
〉head there. ~Ccongratulations!! You must be doing
〉extraordinarily well for a university student!!!

Thank you very much for offering such a wonderful opportunity to discuss English teaching as this.
Well, let me introduce myself very briefly.
I’m a senior. I’m graduating from a university.
I am an economics major, not a linguistics major.

〉Seeing that you have read the bulletin board written
〉entirely in Japanese, I cannot help wondering what an
〉amazing liguisit you are!!!! Let me congratulate you
〉yet again!!!!!

Thanks a lot for your compliment. However, I’m just on the level university students are supposed to be. I have long wondered why many Japanese students of English are poor at writing in English, in spite of their reading abilities, vocabulary, and grammatical knowledge. In short, Japanese students are poor at linguistic productions.
SEG teachers, in this respect, what do you think is a good way to improve students’ writing abilities?
Well, I think exposure is an important part, as grammar is. In this point, I partly agree with you.

〉〉Whereas some linguists proclaim that humans have innate abilities to acquire language which other animals don’t have, and that language acquisition is the process of switching one’s brain into the target language, others say that language learning is done only through imitations. Which claim do you agree with?

〉Very good point. That is precisely where this site
〉is all about, isn't it? And the answer is...
〉No, actually I believe the answer should be self-evident,
〉since you can read Japanese so well obviously.

I haven’t read all the comments in this board because I’m busy.
So, could you be more specific in this regard?

〉〉Note the former insist that the differences, as shown in the following, are difficult to distinguish and acquire only through imitations and memorizations and by general reasoning abilities.

〉May I, before going on to my comment, suggest that
〉'acquire' in the second line should read 'the ability to
〉differentiate can be acquired'?

Could I ask you what you mean by 'the ability to
Differentiate’ ?

〉〉For example, in the process of the transformation from (5) to (1), John is replaced with who, and it is moved to the head of the sentence. That native speakers can intuitively know the (4) is incorrect partly could show that they engage in a kind of grammatical computations unconsciously and instantaneously.

〉Sorry, after reading your last paragraph a second time,
〉I still fail to get what you want me to comment on.
〉Please write again and give me a question.

Since you are a university professor, I thought you must know some of the linguistic theories, including transformational grammar, which I know some of the other school of linguists and cognitive scientists criticize. If you knew theories within the framework of generative grammar, it would be quite easy for you to understand what I’m getting at., right?

〉Let just add that my position is that there has not
〉yet been proposed a 'complete theory of grammar' for
〉any language, and that the lack leaves us no other way
〉to acquire a language, mother tongue or otherwise, except
〉through imitation.

I did NOT mean at all that imitations aren’t important.
Without imitations, how could one memorize vocabulary?
What I meant here is that for SLA to be efficient , teaching grammar, as simple as it can be, is needed to promote the learners’ understanding of the native speaker’s unconscious engagement in a kind of grammatical computation, rule formations, and things like that.

〉One final warning. Ito Kazuo-san and their ilk are
〉bigots and I wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot
〉barge pole.

I do not have to get your warnig in this point.
I haven’t met Mr. Kazuo Ito and I have never read his books.
I have nothing to do with him. My relationship with Sunadai cram school is that I joned
Mr. Yoshiaki Takahashi’s class and I truly surprised and stimulated by his wonderful ability.