The generative approach to second language (L2) acquisition (SLA) is a cognitive based theory of SLA that applies theoretical insights developed from within generative linguistics to investigate how second languages and dialects are acquired and lost by individuals learning naturalistically or with formal instruction in foreign, second language and lingua franca settings.
Central to generative linguistics is the concept of Universal Grammar (UG), a part of an innate, biologically endowed language faculty which refers to knowledge alleged to be common to all human languages.
UG includes both invariant principles as well as parameters that allow for variation which place limitations on the form and operations of grammar.
Subsequently, research within the Generative Second-Language Acquisition (GenSLA) tradition describes and explains SLA by probing the interplay between Universal Grammar, knowledge of one's native language and input from the target language.
Research is conducted in syntax, phonology, morphology, phonetics, semantics, and has some relevant applications to pragmatics.
Second-language acquisition classroom research is an area of research in second-language acquisition concerned with how people learn languages in educational settings.
There is a significant overlap between classroom research and language education.
Classroom research is empirical, basing its findings on data and statistics wherever possible.
It is also more concerned with what the learners do in the classroom than with what the teacher does.
Where language teaching methods may only concentrate on the activities the teacher plans for the class, classroom research concentrates on the effect the things the teacher does has on the students.