ELT LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 203

Education, Learning, Language and Teaching, Learning Theories

What I learnt was schools of thought in SLA, which are Behaviorism,

Cognitive Psychology and Constructivism. According to behaviorists, overtly
observable behavior can be examined. They ignore the mind. They think that
to examine conscious is impossible. However, Rationalism and Cognitive
Psychology focus on mind, conscious. To them, language cannot be
examined simply in terms of stimuli and response. Ferdinand de Saussure
expresses that there is difference between parole and langue. Parole is
speech, but langue is what is in our minds. Noam Chomsky calls them as
competence and performance (Parole = Performance, Langue = Competence ).
While Behaviorism is empirical approach, Cognitive Psychology is rational
approach. Constructivism also focuses on consciousness. Social interaction
is the most important thing for cognitive development.

I also learnt that what is learning to us affects our philosophy of

education. And whenever someone asks “what is learning?”, the first thing
which comes to my mind is fun.

What I had difficulty in understanding was that constructivism

emerged in 1980s, Rationalism & Cognitive Psychology emerged in 1960s, so
people learnt the difference between competence and performance and as we
are social beings, performance(communication) is more important than
competence. Why do most of our teachers still give importance grammar
rather than speaking?

I suppose I need to focus more on activities which improve speaking

skills and pronunciation as I believe using language is more important than
knowing structure.