ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE

BEHAVIORIST LEARNING THEORY

This view states that the language behavior of the individual is conditioned
by sequences of differential rewards in his/her environment. It regards
language learning behavior like other forms of human behavior, not a mental
phenomenon, learned by a process of habit formation. Since language is
viewed as mechanistic and as a human activity, it is believed that learning a
language is achieved by building up habits on the basis of stimulus-response
chains. Behaviorism emphasizes the consequences of the response and
argues that is the behavior that follow a response which reinforces it and
thus helps to strengthen the association.

According to Littlewood (1884), the process of habit formation includes the

following:

a. The child imitates the sounds and patterns which s/he hears around
her/him.

b. People recognize the child’s attempts as being similar to the adult

models and reinforce (reward) the sounds by approval or some other
desirable reaction.

c. In order to obtain more of these rewards, the child repeats the sounds
and patterns so that these become habits.

d. In this way the child’s verbal behavior is conditioned (“shaped”) until

the habits coincide with the adult models

The behaviorist claim that the three crucial elements of learning are:
a stimulus, which serves to elicit behavior; a response triggered by the
stimulus and reinforcement, which serves to mark the response as being
appropriate (or inappropriate) and encourages the repetition (or
suppression) of the response
COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORY

Chomsky argues that language is not acquired by children by sheer imitation

and through a form of conditioning on reinforcement and reward. He
believes that all normal human beings have inborn biological internal
mechanism.

They maintain that the language acquisition device (LAD) is what the child
brings to the task of language acquisition, giving him/her an active role in
language learning.

Krashen’s Monitor Model (1981) This view is considered the most

comprehensive. If not the most ambitious, consisting of five central
hypotheses:

Acquisition - the subconscious process that results from informal, natural

communication between people where language is a means, not a focus not
an end, in itself

Learning – the concscious process of knowing about language and being

able to talk about it, that occurs in a more formal situation where the
properties or rules of a language are taugh.

Acquisition parallels first language development in children while learning

approximates the formal teaching of grammar in classrooms.