Principles and Theories of Language Acquisition and Learning
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The document discusses the behaviorist theory of language acquisition. It explains that according to behaviorism, children learn language through imitation, reinforcement, and practice. When children imitate sounds and words they hear, they are praised or given affection as positive reinforcement, which conditions them to repeat those sounds and words. However, the behaviorist theory has been criticized for not accounting for factors like learning abstract words or novel language not modeled by caregivers. The document also outlines four main stages of language acquisition according to behaviorism: the babbling stage, one-word stage, two-word stage, and telegraphic stage.
Principles and Theories of Language Acquisition and Learning
- 1. Lesson 2 Principles and Theories of Language Acquisition and Learning Approaches
- 2. What we learn 1.To determine the theory of behaviorism 2.To understand the behaviorism theory in language acquisition and Learning. 3.To analyze the theory of behaviorist theory.
- 3. The Principle of Behaviorist Theory Behaviorism is a learning theory that studies observable and measurable behavioral changes, which result from stimulus-response associations made by the learner.
- 4. The Principle of Behaviorist Theory This theory stems from the work of Pavlov who studied animal behavior, and was able to condition a dog to associate the ringing of a bell with food. Pavlovian conditioning is known as classical conditioning.
- 5. The Principle of Behaviorist Theory Pavlov's premise was later developed by Thorndike, Watson and Skinner. Skinner introduced the theory of operant conditioning (i.e., a behavior followed by a reinforcer results in an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future; a behavior followed by a punishment is weakened or suppressed in the future).
- 7. Behaviorism in the Classroom Behaviorist techniques have long been applied in educational practices, especially in classroom and behavior management.
- 8. Behaviorism in the Classroom The learning process, according to Behaviorism, places the teacher in a primary role wherein he or she adjusts the learner's behavior and directs learning through drill and practice, through habit-breaking, and punishment/reward.
- 9. Behaviorism in the Classroom
- 10. Behaviorism in the Classroom Conversely, the learner's activity, be it thinking or doing, is confined to the framework of "behavior", and is governed by the stimulus- response-reinforcement process.
- 11. Behaviorism in the Classroom Examples: In Behaviorism 1. Follow the instructions. 2. Take the test. 3. Get the reward. 4. Learn.
- 12. Behaviorist Theory on Language Learning & Acquisition
- 13. There are some basic theories advanced to describe how language is acquired, learnt and taught. The behaviorist theory, Mentalist theory (Innatism), Rationalist theory (otherwise called Cognitive theory), and Interactionism are some of these theories. Of these, behaviorist theory and mentalist theory are mainly applicable to the acquisition of native languages while the rest can account for foreign language acquisition. Yet, these four fundamental theories of language acquisition cannot be totally divorced from each other, for "the objectives of second language learning are not necessarily entirely determined by native language competence inevitably serves as a foil against which to set second language learning." (H.H. Stem, .1983; 30). Mother Tongue and Foreign Language Learning
- 14. These five basic theories are, furthermore, very much complementary to each other, serving different types of learners or representing various cases of language learning. They must not automatically make us presume that first and second language learning are identical or alike processes, though second language learning is strongly tied up with first language acquisition. Obviously, native language growth must pave the way for foreign language growth. Then these five basic language learning theories are fundamental pillars of language learning whose relevance to education is undeniable.
- 15. The Principle of the Behaviorist Theory The behaviorist theory believes that “infants learn oral language from other human role models through a process involving imitation, rewards, and practice. Human role models in an infant’s environment provide the stimuli and rewards,” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004). When a child attempt oral language or imitates the sounds or speech patterns they are usually praised and given affection for their efforts. Thus, praise and affection becomes the rewards.
- 16. The Principle of the Behaviorist Theory However, the behaviorist theory is scrutinized for a variety of reasons. If rewards play such a vital component in language development, what about the parent who is inattentive or not present when the child attempts speech? If a baby’s language learning is motivated strictly by rewards would the speech attempts stop merely for lack of rewards (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004)? Other cases against this theory include “learning the use and meaning of abstract words, evidence of novel forms of language not modeled by others, and uniformity of language acquisition in humans”(Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).
- 17. The Background of the Behaviorist Theory The behaviorist theory believes that “infants learn oral language from other human role models through a process involving imitation, rewards, and practice. Human role models in an infant’s environment provide the stimuli and rewards,” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).
- 18. The Background of the Behaviorist Theory When a child attempts oral language or imitates the sounds or speech patterns they are usually praised and given affection for their efforts. Thus, praise and affection becomes the rewards. However, the behaviorist theory is scrutinized for a variety of reasons. If rewards play such a vital component in language development, what about the parent who is inattentive or not present when the child attempts speech? If a baby’s language learning is motivated strictly by rewards would the speech attempts stop merely for lack of rewards (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004)?
- 19. The Background of the Behaviorist Theory Other cases against this theory include “learning the use and meaning of abstract words, evidence of novel forms of language not modeled by others, and uniformity of language acquisition in humans”(Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).Behaviorist theory, which is basically a psychological theory in its essence, founded by J.B.Watson, is actually a theory of native language learning, advanced in part as a reaction to traditional grammar. The supporters of this theory are Leonard Bloomfield, O.N. Mowrer, B.F.Skinner, and A.W. Staats.
- 20. The Background of the Behaviorist Theory Behaviorism was advanced in America as a new approach to psychology in the early decades of the 20th-century by making a particular emphasis on the importance of verbal behavior, and received a considerable trust from the educational world of 1950s.The major principle of the behaviorist theory rests on the analyses of human behavior in observable stimulus-response interaction and the association between them. E.L.T. Thorndike was the first behaviorist to explore the area that learning is the establishment of associations on particular process of behavior and consequences of that behavior.
- 21. The Background of the Behaviorist Theory Basically, "the behaviorist theory of stimulus-response learning, particularly as developed in the operant conditioning model of Skinner, considers all learning to be the establishment of habits as a result of reinforcement and reward" (Wilga Rivers, 1968, 73). This is very reminiscent of Pavlov's experiment which indicates that stimulus and response work together. According to this category, the babies obtain native language habits via varied babblings which resemble the appropriate words repeated by a person or object near him. Since for his babblings and mutterings he is rewarded, this very reward reinforces further articulations of the same sort into grouping of syllables and words in a similar situation.
- 22. The Background of the Behaviorist Theory In this way, he goes on emitting sounds,groups of sounds, and as he grows up he combines the sentences via generalizations and analogy (as in*goed for went, *doed,for did,so on), which in some complicated cases,condition him to commit errors by articulating in permissible structures in speech. By the age offive or six, or babblings and mutterings grow into socialized speech but little by little they are internalized as implicit speech, and thus many of their utterances become indistinguishable from the adults.
- 23. The Background of the Behaviorist Theory This, then, obviously, means that behaviorist theory is a theory of stimulus-response psychology."Through a trial- anderror process, in which acceptable utterances are reinforced by comprehension and approval, and un acceptable utterances are inhibited by the lack of reward,he gradually learns to make finer and finer discriminations until his utterances approximate more and more closely the speech of the community in which he is growing up (Wilga M. Rivers,1968; 73).
- 24. The Background of the Behaviorist Theory To put it in other words, children develop a natural affinity to learn the language of their social surroundings whose importance both over language learning and teaching must never be underestimated. In this respect behaviorist theory stresses the fact that "human and animal learning is a process of habit formation. A highly complex learning task, according to this theory may be learned by being broken' down into smaIl habits. These are formed correct or incorrect responses, are rewarded or, punished, respectively'. (Hubbard Jones and ThorntonWheeler, 1983; 326). Thus it is clear that the acquisition of learning in infancy is governed the acquisition of other habits.
- 26. Stage of Language Acquisition There are four main stages of normal language acquisition: The babbling stage, the Holophrastic or one-word stage, the two-word stage and the Telegraphic stage. These stages can be broken down even more into these smaller stages: pre- production, early production, speech emergent, beginning fluency intermediate fluency and advanced fluency. On this page I will be providing a summary of the four major stage of language acquisition.
- 27. Stage of Language Acquisition Within a few weeks of being born the baby begins to recognize it’s mothers’ voice. There are two sub-stages within this period. The first occurs between birth – 8 months. Most of this stage involves the baby relating to its surroundings and only during 5/6 – 8 month period does the baby begin using it’s vocals. As has been previously discussed babies learn by imitation and the babbling stage is just that. During these months the baby hears sounds around them and tries to reproduce them, albeit with limited success. BABBLING
- 28. Stage of Language Acquisition The babies attempts at creating and experimenting with sounds is what we call babbling. When the baby has been babbling for a few months it begins to relate the words or sounds it is making to objects or things. This is the second sub-stage.From 8 months to 12 months the baby gains more and more control over not only it’s vocal communication but physical communication as well, for example body language and gesturing. Eventually when the baby uses both verbal and non-verbal means to communicate, only then does it move on to the next stage of language acquisition. BABBLING
- 29. Stage of Language Acquisition The second stage of language acquisition is the holophrastic or one word stage. This stage is characterized by one word sentences. In this stage nouns make up around 50% of the infants vocabulary while verbs and modifiers make up around 30% and questions and negatives make up the rest. This one-word stage contains single word utterances such as “play” for “I want to play now”. Infants use these sentence primarily to obtain things they want or need, but sometimes they aren’t that obvious. For example a baby may cry or say “mama” when it purely wants attention. The infant is ready to advance to the next stage when it can speak in successive one word sentences. Holophrastic / One-word stage
- 30. Stage of Language Acquisition The two word stage (as you may have guessed) is made of up primarily two word sentences. These sentences contain 1 word for the predicate and 1 word for the subject. For example “Doggie walk” for the sentence “The dog is being walked.”During this stage we see the appearance of single modifiers e.g. “That dog”, two word questions e.g. “Mummy eat?” and the addition of the suffix –ing onto words to describe something that is currently happening e.g. “Baby Sleeping.” Two-Word Stage
- 31. Stage of Language Acquisition The final stage of language acquisition is the telegraphic stage. This stage is named as it is because it is similar to what is seen in a telegram; containing just enough information for the sentence to make sense. This stage contains many three and four word sentences. Sometime during this stage the child begins to see the links between words and objects and therefore over generalization comes in. Some examples of sentences in the telegraphic stage are “Mummy eat carrot”, “What her name?” and “He is playing ball.” During this stage a child’s vocabulary expands from 50 words to up to 13,000 words. At the end of this stage the child starts to incorporate plurals, joining words and attempts to get a grip on tenses. Telegraphic Stage
- 32. Stage of Language Acquisition As a child’s grasp on language grows it may seem to us as though they just learn each part in a random order, but this is not the case. There is a definite order of speech sounds. Children first start speaking vowels, starting with the rounded mouthed sounds like “oo” and “aa”. After the vowels come the consonants, p, b, m, t, d, n, k and g. The consonants are first because they are easier to pronounce then some of the others, for example ‘s’ and ‘z’ require specific tongue place which children cannot do at that age.
- 33. Stage of Language Acquisition As all human beings do, children will improvise something they cannot yet do. For example when children come across a sound they cannot produce they replace it with a sound they can e.g. ‘Thoap” for “Soap” and “Wun” for “Run.” These are just a few example of resourceful children are, even if in our eyes it is just cute.
- 34. Stage of Language Acquisition How do children learn to speak? Behavioural theory assumes that children imitate what they hear, and thanks to continuous, positive reinforcement, children learn language through conditioning and habit formation. Behaviourist theorists such as Skinner also claim that all errors during first language acquisition are due to ‘bad habit formation,’ which, in due course, children correct as they hear and imitate accurate speech. In contrast to behaviourists, ‘nativists,’ like Chomsky, believe that human beings are born with an innate capacity for language development.
- 35. Stage of Language Acquisition How do children learn to speak? Behavioural theory assumes that children imitate what they hear, and thanks to continuous, positive reinforcement, children learn language through conditioning and habit formation. Behaviourist theorists such as Skinner also claim that all errors during first language acquisition are due to ‘bad habit formation,’ which, in due course, children correct as they hear and imitate accurate speech. In contrast to behaviourists, ‘nativists,’ like Chomsky, believe that human beings are born with an innate capacity for language development.
- 36. Language Acquisition as a Result of Nurture Behaviourists propose that a child’s environment is the most important factor in first language acquisition, and if a child is exposed to ‘rich language,’ then ‘good habit formation,’ and proper language development will occur. It is possible that first language acquisition includes speech imitation, but:
- 37. Language Acquisition as a Result of Nurture Children do not imitate everything they hear; they appear to be very selective and only reproduce unassimilated language chunks. Therefore, their replications seem to be controlled by an internal language-monitoring process.
- 38. Language Acquisition as a Result of Nurture Children learn the basic rules of language at around the age of five; the behaviourist theory cannot account for the speed that first language is acquired.
- 39. Language Acquisition as a Result of Nurture Children say things that are not adult imitations; in particular they use inflectional over generalizations such as ‘goed,’ ‘putted,’ ‘mouses,’ and ‘sheeps.’
- 40. Language Acquisition as a Result of Nurture Children produce language structures that do not exist; you often hear, “Where I am?” instead of “Where am I?”
- 41. Language Acquisition as a Result of Nurture Children that acquire language from habit formation seem to memorize certain structures prematurely. These phrases become lodged in their minds as unassimilated chunks of information that they cannot incorporate into their own verbal expressions.
- 42. Language Acquisition as a Result of Nurture Children produce many more sound- combinations than they hear, and understand many more than they can produce.
- 43. Language Acquisition as a Result of Nurture Children are exposed to language performance and not to language competence. Often they are exposed to “debilitated” language, yet, they manage to extract the language rules from these utterances and speak correctly.
- 44. “When we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the ‘human essence,’ the distinctive qualities of mind that are, so far as we know, unique to man.” (Noam Chomsky) Unlike the behaviourist approach that does not take into consideration the child’s own cognitive processes, the ‘Innateness Hypothesis’ proposed by linguist Noam Chomsky supports the idea that language acquisition has a biological foundation. Facts that support this theory include the following: We are Wired to Acquire Language
- 45. Children acquire language sounds in a certain sequence, and the first sounds that children learn are those that are common to all world languages: a stop consonant followed by an open vowel: thus a child’s first utterances are usually those found in words for ‘mother’ and ‘father,’ sounds such as ‘pa,’ ‘ma,’ ‘ba’ or ‘ta,’ as seen in French: maman, papa; Greek: mama, baba; Hebrew: eema, aba. · Children tend to learn language in the same sequence, suggesting that universality of language exists and the environment alone cannot be responsible for language acquisition. We are Wired to Acquire Language
- 46. Children acquire function words such as ‘or’ and ‘on’ and the less salient sounds connected to possessives, pluralisation and third person singular in a certain order. Interestingly, the plural ‘s’ and other forms of ‘s’ are not all developed in unison. We are Wired to Acquire Language
- 47. Language Development: An Innate Neurological Process For language development to occur, interaction has to take place; language cannot be acquired passively. Although imitation and habit forming do have a role in language acquisition, children seem predisposed to acquire speech and competency in language by being able to map language, possibly onto what Noam Chomsky calls a ‘language acquisition device.’
- 48. Answer L2 A1 Thank You! See you next time!