Psycolinguistics – Eje I Eliana Alfonso

Psychology for Language Teachers. – Williams& Burden

CH 1: An introduction to educational psychology: behaviorism and cognitive psychology

Educational psychology:

Kaplan describes it as the “application of psychology to education by focusing on the

development, evaluation and application of theories and principles of learning and instructions
and can enhance lifelong learning. However, what this definition lacks is recognition that there is a
fundamental difference btw learning and education. Learning is certainly part of the process of
education, but to be truly educative it must give a broader value and meaning to the learner’s life.
It must be concerned with educating the whole person.

Approaches to educational psychology:

1. The positivist school:

Basically, this approach begins with the promises that knowledge and facts exists within the real
world and can be discovered by setting up experiments in which conditions are carefully controlled
and where hypotheses are set up and tested.

Behaviorism: Is an approach to psychology that has its roots within positivism and had arisen out
of the ideas of the early learning theorists who attempted to explain all learning in terms of some
form of conditioning. The most well-known example is that of Pavlov.

It was postulated that all human behavior could be explained in terms of the way in which simple
S-R connections were built up. The problem of the behaviorist theories was that they
concentrated almost exclusively upon the nature of the incoming stimuli and the way that these
could be altered to provoke different kinds of enormous range of human action.

Skinner: He was the founder of modern behaviorism, who constructed a system of principles to
account for human behavior in strictly observable terms. He also began with the premise that
learning was the result of environmental rather than genetic factors. He introduced the notion of
operant : the range of behaviors that organism performed or were capable of performing. He also
emphasized the importance of reinforcement.

Behaviorist theory thus came to explain learning in terms of operant-conditioning: an individual

responds to a stimulus by behaving in a particular way. Whatever happens subsequently will affect
the likelihood of that behavior recurring. If the behavior is reinforced,(rewarded or punished) then
the likelihood of that behavior occurring on a subsequent occasion will be increased or decreased.

 Behaviorist views were a powerful influence on the development of the audiolingual

approach to language teaching.
 Language is seen as behavior to teach: Learners are given language, such as a structural
pattern, is presented as stimulus to which the learner responds by repetition or
Psycolinguistics – Eje I Eliana Alfonso

substitution. This is followed by reinforcement by the teacher, based on 100 per cent
success.
 Learning a language is seen as acquiring a set of appropriate mechanical habits, and
errors are frowned upon as reinforcing “bad habits”.
 The role of the teacher is to develop in learners good language habits which is done
mainly by patterns drills, memorization of dialogues or choral repetition of structural
patterns. Explanation of rules is generally given when the language item has been well
practiced and the appropriate habit acquire

Number of audiolingualism limitations:

1st: the role of the learners is a fairly passive one; they are merely directed to respond correctly to
stimuli. There’s a little engagement in analysing the language, or developing their own strategies
to learn more effectively or initiating discussions or negotiating meanings.
2nd: There’s little concern for what goes on inside the learner’s heads, or the cognitive processes
involved in learning sometimes.
3rd: Audiolingual drills can be carried out with little attention to the meaning that the language
conveys.
4th: there’s no room for the actual process of interaction and negotiation of meanings which is an
important feature of communicating in a language.
5th: the making of mistakes is an important part of learning. However, audiolingualism, with its
emphasis on correct responses, does not allow for learning from mistakes.

Advantages:
 It can be quicker and easier to teach teachers to use the steps involved in an audiolingual
approach: presentation, practice, repetition and drills. Teachers can also follow the steps
provided in their coursebook in a fairly mechanical way.
 It can also be used by teachers whose own knowledge of the target language is limited.
 It can be played by parents and teachers in setting appropriate learning conditions and
ensuring particular kinds of behavioral consequences should not be ignored.

In learning a language, it is clear that learners make use of a wide repertoire of mental
strategies to sort out the system that operates in the langue with which they are presented.

Cognitive Psychology:
Is concerned with the way in which the human mind thinks and learn. Cognitive are
therefore interested in the mental processes that are involved in learning. This includes such
aspects as how people build up and draw upon their memories and the ways in which they
become involved in the process of learning. They construct models or scripts to try to account for
the way in which the human mind works.
They construct models or scripts to try to account for the way in which the human mind works.

Attention
(Best 1986) conceptualises attention as a cognitive resource which can be drawn upon as a means
of concentrating our mental efforts.
Psycolinguistics – Eje I Eliana Alfonso

Memory
This model describes the memory process in terms of a sensory register where the stimuli are
initially recorded for a brief amount of time before being passed into short-term or working
memory if attention is given to them.
- Working memory” is used to refer to whatever one has in mind at any particular time.
Memory is particularly important in learning a language.
- Link word method involves linking words in both the first and second language to
construct a picture in the mind,
- Advance organisers