Lesson 2: Principles and Theories of Language Acquisition and Learning

Approache
s

Learning Objectives.

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.

Discussion.

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.
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.
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).

Behaviorism in the classroom

Behaviorist techniques have long been applied in educational practices, especially in

classroom and behavior management.
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.
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.

Examples: In Behaviorism

1. Follow the instructions.

2. Take the test.
3. Get the reward.
4. Learn.

BEHAVIORIST THEORY ON LANGUAGE LEARNING AND ACQUISITION

Introduction

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
 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.

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. 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).

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). 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)?

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 totraditional grammar. The supporters of this
theory are Leonard Bloomfield, O.N. Mowrer, B.F.Skinner, and A.W. Staats. 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. 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 ofthe same sort into grouping of syllables and words in a similar situation. 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. This, then, obviously, means that behaviorist theory is a theory
of stimulus-response psychology."Through a trial-and- error 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). 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 Thornton Wheeler, 1983; 326). Thus it is clear that the acquisition of learning
in infancy is governed the acquisition of other habits.

Stages of Language Acquisition

Stages 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.

Babbling

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. 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.

Holophrastic / One-word stage

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.

Two-Word Stage

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.”

Telegraphic Stage

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.

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.

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.
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.

Deliberations continue between linguists regarding the importance of ‘nature’ over

‘nurture’
in acquisition of language.

Language Acquisition as a Result of Nurture

Behaviorists 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: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.
·
Children learn the basic rules of language at around the age of five; the behaviorist theory
cannot account for the speed that first language is acquired.
Children say things that are not adult imitations; in particular they use inflectional over
generalizations such as ‘goed,’ ‘putted,’ ‘mouses,’ and ‘sheeps.’Children produce language
structures that do not exist; you often hear, “Where I am?” instead of “Where am I?”
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.

·Children produce many more sound-combinations than they hear, and understand many
more than they can produce.

·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.

We are Wired to Acquire Language

“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:

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
exists and the environment alone cannot be responsible for language acquisition.
·
Children acquire function words such as ‘or’ and ‘on’ and the less salient sounds
connected to possessives, pluralization and third person singular in a certain order. Interestingly,
the plural ‘s’ and other forms of ‘s’ are not all developed in unison.

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.’