HUMAN LEARNING Humans are incredible for learning anything, specially a second language.

The information that I read about human learning, gives many interesting points of view about how humans learn, or how is the process of learning for humans, and it explains a lot of important topics that are involved in human learning. This main topic is focused generally on cognitive process of humans and how different is each person, especially when they are learning a second language. We already know that it is easier for some people to learn a new language than for others, and it is just because of the cognitive capacity of each human being. Learning and training are included in the given information and it explains an example about how you can train a dog. What I have understood about this is that in order to train a dog the trainer needs to know what are the previous knowledge that his pet has, and the abilities that he possesses, which is called entry behavior, then the trainer needs methods of training, and at the end he will need to make an evaluation procedure. This example refers to how to train a dog, but think of how to train a person, I think that in order to train a person or to make that a person learns teachers need to follow the same training program. Follow those steps is very important because, if the teacher does not know what the previous knowledge of the students are, or what abilities they have, and also if the teacher does not know what are the right methods that has to use, or how is the evaluation procedure that has to implement, the teacher wont reach the objectives that have been setting to train students or to make that they learn in the correct way. Pavlovs theory says that some people learn by the reaction of stimulus, also all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. Conditioning occurs through interaction with the environment. I understand Pavlovs theory as the stimulusresponse process of human beings, and also their response to environmental stimuli that shapes their behaviors. In the other hand, something similar is Skinners operant conditioning which is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior.

Rhina Arely Bentez Daz

Then we have Ausubels meaningful learning theory, and I understand this as the individual learning that relate new knowledge to relevant concepts they already know. Old knowledge relates things to the new knowledge but in some cases learners have to use the cognitive pruning process which consists in replacing certain information for another one. Also we have Rogerss humanistic psychology and after read his theory I can say that every person has their own unique way of learning, perceiving and understand the things around, and also a he focuses on a person who is open to experience, able to live existentially, is trusting in his or herself, expresses feelings freely, acts independently, is creative and lives a richer life, the good life is a process not the persons state of being. Another necessary thing is to know that it is most important learn how to learn not what to learn, and the teachers are the responsible for giving instructions to the students about how to learn, also they as teachers have to be real and genuine, humble, communicative in order to be effective teachers, and being motivators for students in their process of learning. These theories are applied to the second language learning process, and teachers decide which one is the most useful, it depends on the kind of students that they are working with. We already know that human beings have different ways to learn, even though the process is the same for almost all of them. Eight types of learning are identified and I can say those have the same process as the theories that we have been studying. One of the types of learning that catch my attention is Problems Solving because with this one, students have to think about a significant solution, which solves any problems that they are facing, it does not matter the field. Then, we have something called transfer, and if we analyze it carefully we can say that if we make the positive transfer everything is going to be right but if we make negative transfer we are going to find something called interference which it has to do with the possible problems that we find in the second language learning process when we confuse our mother tongue with the target language, for example when we translate sentences in a literal way, from our language to the one we are learning. Also there is overgeneralization, this means that we make some errors in English like to add ed to the past form of irregular verbs, for example walked and
Rhina Arely Bentez Daz

goed. This kind of errors occur the most in children when they start learning in school because they thing that all words are structured in the same way that they have learn. Human learning has something else called inductive and deductive reasoning, think about how this approaches can help you to understand things, one from general information to specific points of view (deductive) and the other one from a specific thing to general information (inductive). And I understand this as the path that teachers have to follow in order to have effective learning through the analysis of problems or situation in the second language learning process, but it also depends on some things like the objectives and the context of the situation. Finally, there is something really important that has to be taken into account which is the aptitude and the intelligence. We already know that some people learn a second language easier and faster than others, but why? Some people develop their competences and language skills in a higher level than others; everyone has different aptitudes; some are good for certain things and others for different ones, and I think that here is involved the intelligence. Intelligence is one of the most important characteristics in the learning process, which is considered to affect the acquisition of formal structure of a second language when taught in a formal setting. However, it is thought to not affect the development of communicative competence of the language. People just use a little part of the capacity of the brain but that little part is enough to get knowledge about a second language and develop the necessary skills. It is very important to take all these things into account in order to know how human beings learn and the different teaching and learning systems that we already know, and how these theories of learning work in the current life and how effective are the teaching methods that teachers use to make the students learn a second language successfully, and make them to put into practice the things of the different ways of learning in a significant sense.

Rhina Arely Bentez Daz