ALLAMA IQBAL OPEN UNIVERSITY, ISLAMABAD

Course: Psycholinguistics and Language Teaching Methodology (5655)

Name: Ata Ullah Farooqi Roll No. BX509836
Level: Dip TEFL Semester: Spring, 2019

ASSIGNMENT No. 1

Q.1 What do you understand by behaviorism and mentalism? How would

you differentiate between the two theories with some relevant
examples?
Answer
Behaviorism:
Drawing largely on the works of the US psychologists John B. Watson (1878-1958)
and S. F. Skinner (1904-90)
The origins of behavioral psychology start with John B. Watson in 1913
Later on, B. F. Skinner developed this theory and showed evidence in favor of it
B. F. Skinner essentially proposed that positive consequences to prior actions would
lead to an individual carrying out more of those actions, while negative
consequences would lead to an individual completing those actions less.
He famously stated “Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything”
Behaviorism historically consists of two central components: operant and
classical conditioning.
Operant conditioning – upon which most modern behaviorism is based – is defined
as the shaping of future acts based on past rewards or punishments, and is largely
the context that behavioral psychology places behavior in.
While a fairly simple concept, there is more to this than meets the eye. For example,
positive punishment refers to the addition of negative consequences to behavior
(e.g. a child has to clean up their room for making it messy), while negative
punishment refers to the removal of consequences in response to behavior (e.g. the
child doesn’t get any pocket money for making their room messy).
There is also negative reinforcement, and positive reinforcement. The latter, positive
reinforcement, is what we would traditionally think of as a reward – something
positive is gained from an action. Negative reinforcement refers to the aversion of
something negative through actions (e.g. putting on sunscreen to avoid getting
burnt).
Negative reinforcement can be split further into escape, and active avoidance.
Escape refers to actions that get away from a negative stimulus, while active
avoidance is preventative of encountering such a stimulus.

1
He theorized that all of human behavior was shaped by our environment, that we
could be made to act in certain ways depending on the prior consequences of
previous actions.
 Behaviorism is the theory that human or animal psychology can be objectively
studied through observable actions (behaviors), rather than thoughts and feelings
that cannot be observed.
 Behaviorism’s influential figures include the psychologists John B. Watson and
B.F. Skinner, who are associated with classical conditioning and operant
conditioning, respectively.
 In classical conditioning, an animal or human learns to associate two stimuli with
each other. This type of conditioning involves involuntary responses, such as
biological responses or emotional ones.
 In operant conditioning, an animal or human learns a behavior by associating it
with consequences. This can be done through positive or negative reinforcement, or
punishment.
 Operant conditioning is still seen in classrooms today, though behaviorism
is no longer the dominant way of thinking in psychology.
Behaviorism refers to a psychological approach which emphasizes scientific and
objective methods of investigation. The approach is only concerned with observable
stimulus-response behaviors, and states all behaviors are learned through
interaction with the environment.
Behaviorism emphasizes the role of environmental factors in influencing behavior, to
the near exclusion of innate or inherited factors. This amounts essentially to a focus
on learning.
Any person, regardless of his or her background, can be trained to act in a particular
manner given the right conditioning.
Behaviorism is a worldview that assumes a learner is essentially passive, responding
to environmental stimuli. The learner starts off as a clean slate (i.e. tabula rasa) and
behavior is shaped through positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement [2]. Both
positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement increase the probability that the
antecedent behavior will happen again. In contrast, punishment (both positive and
negative) decreases the likelihood that the antecedent behavior will happen again.
Positive indicates the application of a stimulus; Negative indicates the withholding of
a stimulus. Learning is therefore defined as a change in behavior in the learner. Lots
of (early) behaviorist work was done with animals (e.g. Pavlov’s dogs) and
generalized to humans[3].
Behaviorism (or behaviourism) is a systematic approach to understanding the
behavior of humans and other animals.[1] It assumes that all behaviors are either

2
 reflexes produced by a response to certain stimuli in the environment, or a
consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and
punishment, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling
stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in
determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental factors.

Mentalism

Q.2 Can you think of some examples of positive and negative reinforcement
in learning? Which one do you think has proved more effective in
learning new concepts? Justify you opinion. Do not copy the examples
from the textbook and write down some new examples out of your own
experiences. (15)

Q.3 Discuss in detail the role of the following salient features in the foreign language
learning: (20)
 Motivation
 Personality
 Learning strategies
 Language aptitude
Q.4 What is the importance of reading skills in an EFL classroom? Plan a lesson based
on reading skills for secondary school students learning English. Also, devise at
least three activities for each stage (presentation, practice, and production) in your
lesson plan to exploit at elementary level. (20)
Q.5 Write an imaginary dialogue of approximately 10 sentences on any topic of your
own choice. The dialogue should reflect the features peculiar to spoken form of
language e.g. repetition, hesitation, contracted forms, incorrect grammar, and
unfinished sentences etc. (10)
Q.6 Imagine that students are in three different classes learning English by three
different methods i.e. grammar-translation, audio-lingual and direct method. What
strengths and weaknesses would you expect each student to display in his/her
competence in understanding listening, speaking, reading and writing? (10)
Q.7 Do you think first language acquisition and second language learning
involve similar strategies? Discuss some of the differences and
similarities between the two processes with relevant examples. (10)