R-A Chpt 1 From Grammatical to Communicative Approaches

This chapter discussed several different methodologies(which until recently have been dominated by grammar based methods) used over time for language teaching and devotes a section to the contributions of Chomsky to the field of language acquisition. His major theory was that some aspects of language are innate, and that everyone has a Langauge Acquisition Device which he likened to a sort of computer, and that computer would set itself to the appropriate language setting in which a child is born.
I find the idea of Universal Grammar to be very interesting, especially when they talk about how the brain is able to reset parameters in order to accomodate a second language.