BEHAVIOURISM

“Behaviorism is a psycholinguistic approach to language acquisition, dominating the language

acquisition scene in the 50s and 60s of the 20th century, viewing it as any other type of learning,
i.e. as the formation of habits” (Bloomfield, 1993; Skinner, 1957) From a Behaviorist standpoint,
involves a process of learning a set of habits as humans respond to any stimuli in their atmosphere.
It is also established on the behaviorist belief that “Practice makes perfect”. In other words, it is
believed that the more a person repeats a part of language, it is likely that this part of language will
be mastered. Thus, in accord to this theory, when a child produces a language expression, and this
expression is correct, it will get reinforced. Behaviorism is based on the idea that all our behavior
is developing through conditioning. What is emphasized in behaviorism is that learning takes place
by conditioning, which may take two forms: Classical conditioning and operant conditioning.

In the late 19th century Russia where scientist Ivan Pavlov was with his dogs, every time Pavlov
would take the dogs their food, they would slobber. Someday he walked into the room without
food and was stunned to see that the dogs were still drooling in hope. What Pavlov had
unintentionally discovered was the notion of classical conditioning he didn't have to do anything
to make those dogs drool when they saw food but Pavlov speculated if he did something to make
the dogs think they were receiving food then he could make them drool whenever he wanted to
and that's just what he did. Pavlov first identified this stimulus the thing that caused the dog's
response or behavior in this case the stimulus was the food because it caused the dogs to salivate
then he matched the stimulus with a separate occurrence the sound of a bell whenever Pavlov
brought the dogs food he rang a bell once the dogs got used to the sound of the Bell at feeding time
Pavlov tried ringing the bell without giving the dogs food and the dog started drooling again.
Pavlov had effectively focused the dogs to react to the new stimulus, the ringing of the Bell the
same way that they reacted to food. “Classical conditioning theory by Pavlov (1927) focused on
creating associations and learnt responses. His famous experiment with the salivary reaction in
dogs and conditioned stimuli were referred to as Pavlov's dog” (McLeod, 2007).

B.F Skinner focused on external association rather than on internal association of language.
Operant Conditioning focused on reinforcement and punishment. It is not concerned with internal
thoughts. Our environment and surroundings determine our behavior. He put a rat on a box, the
rat in time learned that whenever he knocked against a lever, he would get food. This is a kind of
learning through consequences. When we engage in voluntary behavior, it leads to some
consequence, and this consequence can either reinforced which increases desired behavior or
punished which decreases desired behavior. An example of this is when you’ve done good job in
your school and your parents increased your allowance.

STRUCTURALISM

The idea of structuralism, states that things are what they are because of the greater structure that
they are part of. The sign, the signifier, and the signified are concepts of the school of thought
known as structuralism. In Saussure's view, ‘the fundamental elements of a language and all human
mental products and cultural treatments are signs’ (Howarth, 2000). The vital principle of
structuralism is that the phenomena of human life, whether language or media, are not clear except
through their network of relationships, making the sign and the system (or structure) in which the
sign is embedded primary concepts. It claims that several elements of a language (sounds, words,
meanings) depict themselves as a system and can be acknowledged through clarifying their
relationships to other elements of the similar language.

The difference between the French words, langue (language or tongue) and parole (speech), joins
the vocabulary of Structuralism. The study of langue would be fixated instead on ‘generally
applicable conditions of possibility’. Langue characterizes the “work of a collective intelligence,”
which is both centre to each individual and collective, in so far as it is beyond the drive of any
individual to change. It is likely to speak a langue in a grammatically correct manner lacking of
any knowledge of the principles in linguistics, or even the application of rules to that certain
language. Parole, on the other hand, describes separate acts, accounts and utterances, events of
language use displaying each time a speaker’s short-lived individual will over his arrangement of
concepts and his “phonation”—the formal aspects of the utterance. The study of parole would be
completely focused on individual utterances, using all the accessible resources of proper and
experimental study to analyze actual statements, usually within a certain language. When a native
speaker speaks a specific language, he or she “enacts” the parole but is not essentially aware of the
structure of that language.
AUDIO-LINGUAL APPROACH

This approach started in United States, during World War II. They needed a lot of soldiers to be
able to speak many languages, so they invested in language classes. It focuses on speaking, in
accord to history, speaking came before writing in language production. This approach was
theoretically supported by structuralist approach, a movement in linguistics that focused on the
systems underlying the grammar of a given language. Structural approach which looks at language
as elements that follow rules in certain structured way. As such, It is believed that in order to learn
a language, we must engage ourselves in mastering the building blocks of the language and
learning the rules which these basic elements are combined. The audio-lingual approach is also
based on behaviorist theory, it supposed that human can be trained using a scheme of
reinforcement. Conditioning is a factor in learning language. Correct behaviour receives positive
response, whereas errors receive negative feedback. The value was not on the understanding of
words, but rather on the acquisition of structures and patterns in every day conversation. ‘The
Audio-lingual method is also an oral approach. However, it is very different in that rather than
emphasizing vocabulary acquisition through exposure to its use in situations, the Audio-lingual
method drills students in the use of grammatical sentence patterns’ (Larsen-Freeman, 2000).

Larsen-Freeman postulates expanded classes of some familiar or typical methods closely related
with the Audiolingual Method. Dialogs memorization: Students memorize a dialogue using
mimicry and applied role playing. Expansion Drill: Teacher breaks a line into numerous parts;
students repeat each part starting at the end of the sentence and “escalating” backwards through
the sentence, adding each part in sequence. Repetition drill: Pupils repeat teacher’s model as
rapidly and precisely as possible. Chain drill: Students ask and answer each other one by one in a
cycle method around the classroom. Substitution drill: Teacher utters a line from the dialogue,
and then uses a word or phrase as a “cue” that students, when repeating the line, must exchange
into the sentence in the correct place.