【正文】 y acquire language, all children seem to pass through a series of more or less fixed stages, namely, crying (since birth), cooing (normally beginning at 6 weeks), babbling (normally beginning at 6 months), intonation patterns (normally beginning at 8 months), oneword utterances (from 1 yearold), twoword utterances (from 18 months), word inflections (from 2 yearold), rare or plex constructions (from 5 yearold), and mature speech (from 10 yearold). Even though the age at which different children reach each stage varies greatly, the relative order remains the same without much alteration. (Aitchison, 2000: 7585) This uniformity of language acquisition process of all children all over the world suggests that some universal genetic program for language acquisition may exist in human brain.The third remarkable finding in several observations is that direct teaching is of little help for children in the process of language acquisition. To the contrary of the activities like playing tennis in which sheer painstaking practice and good coaching may lead to success even for those who are not natural talents, the outes of language acquisition cannot be significantly improved, say, greatly shortening the total period of mastering a language, by repeated correction or intense practice. This is true in the case in which Braine, a psychologist, spent several weeks in vain attempting to persuade his daughter to say the pattern OTHER + NOUN instead of OTHER ONE + NOUN (Braine, 1971: 161). Similar cases can be easily found in such observations by scholars, and in some cases the repeated corrections may even hinder the process of language acquisition by undermining children’s selfconfidence. In contrast, mere exposure to the linguistic environment may be equally efficient for children to acquire language (Nelson, 1973). Numerous such examples provide evidence that conscious learning is not a necessary element in language acquisition which may lead to the conclusion that something is genetically preprinted in human brain for the use of language.The fourth noteworthy fact about children’s language acquisition is that language develops long before children need to municate in order to survive. Without some type of inborn mechanism, children would not learn language before they are required to do so, just like learning puters. What’s more, children from different cultures might acquire language at different period of time with significantly different levels of language skills. Nevertheless, the reality is far different from this. As is mentioned above, almost all children from different countries and regions begin to acquire language as early as 6 months years old when they are still fed, tended and protected by their parents, long before language is necessary for them. This fact suggests that children’s language acquisition is somewhat innately guided. (Aitchison, 2000: 67)The last fact that more than one cases of children incapable of speaking because of impoverished linguistic environment may seem to be strong counterproof for the innateness of language. Several cases in which the children are socially isolated were repeatedly mentioned as the efficacious weapon to attack the view of innateness of language. These children were isolated from normal linguistic environments and thus couldn’t talk when first discovered, with some of them never being able to acquire language in their later life. Therefore, Lenneberg proposed the notion of critical period of language acquisition, suggesting there exists a critical point after which language acquisition bees rather difficult, if not impossible (Lenneberg, 1967). On the basis of these facts, the conclusion that language is due to learning rather than nature may be drawn with little doubt. However, some scholars also pointed out that i