MENTAL BIOLOGY IN 2ND-LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

This paper examines the question of whether or not L2 learners have ac cess to principles of universal grammar from the perspective of a some what extreme learning situation. A group of German high school student s who were exposed to English exclusively through classroom teaching w ere tested for their ability to pass correct judgments on a set of Eng lish structures significantly different from those of their native lan guage. The results indicate that as a group these students fared consi derably worse than what has been reported for other types of L2 learne rs in the literature. This suggests that under the specific learning c onditions of classroom teaching the students did not have access to UG principles. However, at the individual level significant differences between students were found. It is argued that access to universal gra mmar is controlled both by specific aspects of the learning situation and by an individual's mental biology.