THEORIES OF LEARNING

BEHAVIOURISM

MENTALIST/INNATIST NATIVIST APPROACH (theory of lang acqusition)

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING (pavlov) 1900 *Learning: formation of asociations // stimuli and reflexive responses
LEARNING A LANGUAGE: Means to make use of our innate ability to discover, by urselves, the underlying rules of the lang syst. *Chomsky:Children re biologicaly programmed for lang and that lang develops in the child in just the same way that other biological functions develop. Chilldren are born w/a special ability to discover for themselves the underlying rules of a lang syst *Comsky (1965) LAD: innate properties of lang to explain a child's mastery of his native lang This "little black box" is thought to contain all and only the principles which are universal to all human lang. For the LAD to work, the child needs access only to samples of a natural language, which serve as trigger to activate the device. Once it is activated, the child is able to discover the structure of the lang to be learned by matching the innate knowledge of basic grammatical relationships to the structures of the particular lang in the environment * UG: all human beings are genetically equiped with lang-specific abilities, universall linguistic rules.

BEHAVIOURISM (coined by watson-1913) *Learning: the result of building up series or chain responses, from the simpler ones to the more complex

BOEHAIOUR OF ORGANISM skinner-1938) attempts to account for most human learning and behavuoiur *Operant conditioning *Learning: recurrence of a response due to the consequences (stimuli that follo the response). Reinforcers that follow a response tend to strengthen a behaviour.

SKINNER'S VERBAL BEHAVIOUR (1957) *described language as a system of verbal operants (heavy reliance in the classroom on the controlled practice of verbal operants under carefullly designed schedules of reinforcement, eg: audio lingual method)

SLA from the UG perspective: *competence: knowledge *performance: use Researchers are interested in wether the competence which underlies the lang performance of L2 learners resembles the competence which underlies the lang performance of native speakers

Evidence to support Chomsky's innatist position:

LEARNING A LANGUAGE *Learning a language is simply a matter of imitation and habit formation *There is no difference between the way one learns a language or learns to do something else *Learning is controlled by the conditions under which it takes place: individuals subject to the same conditions will learn the same things *Responses are learned when they are repeated *Meaning is the ability to produce an appropriate response to a stimulus 1. All children successfully learn their native lang at a time in life when they would not be expected to learn anything else so complicated. 2. Children successfully master the basic structure of their native lang or dialect in a variety of conditions 3. The lang children are exposed to does not contain exaples of all the linguistic rules and patterns which they eventually know. 4. Children seem to accomplish the complex task of language acquisition w/out having someone consistently point out to them which of the sentences are correct or ungrammatical

COGNITIVISM

It's concerned with the way in which the human mind thinks and learns. Interested in the mental processes that are involved in learning. *Learner: active participant in the learning process, using various strategies to sort out the syst of the lang to be learned

CONSTRUCTIVIST MOVEMENT *Focus: learner, process of learning rather than what is learned *Constructive nature of learning rather than seeing it as the accumulation of facts or development of skills. *Individuals are involved right from birth in constructing personal meaning. Everyone makes their own sense of the world and the experiences that surround them PIAGET *We "come to know" things as a direct result of our personal experiences, but we make sense of those experiemces at different stages of our life *Piaget's th is based on learners passing through a series of stages: -Sensory mototr stage -Intuitive/ Pre-operational stage -Concrete operational stage -Formal operation thinking *Cognitive development is essentially a process of maturation, w/in which genetics and experience interact: -Equilibration: The developing mind is constantly seeking equiulibration, which is the balance // what is known and what is currently being experienced. Accomplished by the complementary process of assimilation and accomodation -Assimilation and Accommodation contribute to the process of cognitive Adaptation -Accommodation: modifying what we already know to take into account new info. -Assimilation: incoming info is changed or modified in our minds so that we can fit it in
what we already know.

INFORMATION THEORY /INFORMATION PROCESSING * Analogy of the brain as a highly complex computer, seek to explain its workings in terms of rules and models of how different aspects of learning take place. *Mainly concerned with the way in which people take in info, process it and act upon it There is no difference // acquisition and learning *Focus on: Attention, Perception and Memory (short-term or working memory, long-term memory) ATKINSON AND SHIFFRIN MODEL OF MEMORY: *This model describes the memory process in term os sensory register where stimuli are intitially recorded for a brief amount of time before being passed into short-term (or working) memory. *Working memory refers to whatever one has in mind at any particular time, which tends to be of a short duration (no + than 30'') * It is necessary to find ways of breaking down complex material into related chunks before consigning these to the long-term memory store. (by rehearsal)

AUSUBEL ADVANCE ORGANISERS: it's a helpful strategy for teachers to aid their learners' memorization of info. * By this he means some kind of topical introduction to a lesson that orientates learners to the subject matter and relates new learning to what the learners already know. *The principal funcion of advance organisers is to act as a bridge // what learners already know and what they need to know
MEANINGFUL LEARNING TH: *Learning: it is not a response but a conscious experience. It takes place in the human organism through a meaningful process of relating new events to already existing cognitive concepts. *Rote learning: Mental storage of items, having little or no association with existing cognitive str. *VS Meaningful learning: process of relating and anchoring new material to relevant established entities in cognitive str

JEROME BRUNER * For Bruner the process of education is as important as its product. The development of conceptual understanding and of cognitive skills and strategies is a central aim of education, rather than the acquisition of factual info.. *He tried to relate his ideas of cognitive development to what takes plce in the classroom: - Spiral Curriculum: techers shoul first introduce the basic ideas that give life and form to any topic or subject area, and then revisit and build upon these repeatedly -3 different modes of thinking needed to be taken into account by educators: 1- Enactive level:Learning takes place by means of direct manipulation of objects and materials. (Teachers shoul see the importance of drama, plays, TPR act, and handling of real obj) 2-Iconic level:Objects are represented by visual images one step removed from the real thing.(use of pictures or words in colour) 3-Symbolic level: Symbols can be manipulated in place of obj or mental images. Lang comes to play an important part as a means of representing the world.(sts use the target lang, including the paralang, to express ideas in context)

VIGOTSKY Socio cultural th of human mental processing: *All cognitive development arises as a result of social intereactions // individuals * Zone of proximal development: level of performance which a learner is capable of when there's support from interaction with a more advanced interlocutor (eg. more advance speakers create supporting conditions for the L2 learner to comprehend and produce lang through repetition, simplification, modeling)

CREATIVE CONSTRUCTION THEORY

Stephen Krashen *Learning: Conscious process in which learners attend to form and figure out rules and which results in knowing about the language. *Acquisition: Subcoscious and intuitive process wich results in knowing the language *5 Hypotheses: 1- Acquisition and learning distinction -we aquire as we're exposed to samples os the L2 which we understand (the same way children pick up their L1). Only acquired lang is readily available for natural, fluent communication -We learn via a coscious process of study and attention to form and rule learning. Learning cannot turn into acquisition 2- Monitor hyp -The acquired syst acts to initiate the speaker's utterances and is reponsible for fluency and intuitive judgements about correctness. -The learned syst acts only as an editor or monitor, making minor changes and polishicg what the acquired syst has produced. Learners use the monitor only when they're focused more on being correct thatn on what they have to say The focus of language theaching should be on creating conditions for acquisition rather than learning 3-Natural order hyp - Like L1 lang learners, L2 learners seem to acquire the features of the target lang in predictable sequences 4-Input (i+1) hyp -One acquires lang in only one way: by exposure to comprehensible input. If the input contains forms and structures just beyond the learner's current level of competence in the lang, the both comprehension and acquisition will occur (i+1) 5- Affective filter hyp -The filter will be "up" when the learner is stressted, self-coscious, or unmotivated. It will be "down" when the learner is relaxed and motivated

BEHAVIOURISM

MENTALISM

CREATIVE CONSTRUCTION THEORY

Psychological Theory of learning

Theory of language learning

Theory of language learning

Offers reasonable explanations for how we learn some of the regular and routine aspects of language.

May explain the acquisition of complex grammar.

Accounts for the understanding of how we relate form to meaning, interact in conversations and use language appropriately.