Schools of Thought of First Language Acquisition

Behaviorism Key Ideas


Presented by: Lina Roncallo



Behaviorism
Key Ideas


1. The behaviorist theory believes that children learn oral language from other
human beings through a process involving imitation, rewards and practice.
2. This theory suggests that children learn through a trial and error process in
which acceptable mistakes are reinforced by comprehension and approval,
and the unacceptable ones are discouraged by the lack of rewards.
3. According to behaviorism, children develop a natural interest to learn the
language of their social surroundings.
4. Spoken language must have a priority in language teaching for the
behaviorist theory.
5. The behaviorist theory is the habit formation theory of language teaching and
learning.
6. The behaviorist learning theory emphasizes conditioning and building from
the simplest conditioned responses to more complex behaviors.
7. All learning according to this theory is the establishment of habits as the
result of reinforcement and reward.
8. In this theory positive reinforcement is reward, while negative reinforcement
is punishment.
9. For behaviorists, when responses to stimuli are coherently reinforced, then
habit formation is established.
10. Due to its socially conditioned nature, behaviorists state that each person
can learn equally if the conditions in which the learning takes place are the
same for each person.