BEHAVIORISM
Behaviorism is a
psychological thought that places prime importance on the study of human
behavior. B.F. Skinner is considered as the grandfather of behaviorism. For the
behaviorists, learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior as the
result of the individual’s response to the stimuli.
The
behaviorist theories consider learning as a process through which experience
causes permanent change in behavior. They interpret learning in terms of
connection or association between the stimulus and response. Stimulus is an
event that activates behavior. Response is the observable reaction to a
stimulus. According to behaviorist theories, learning is accomplished when
proper response is demonstrated following the presentation of a specific
environmental stimulus.
Class
A behaviorist class has
its own procedure. First, the objectives are stated. Secondly, teacher provides
hints that guide the students to the desired behavior. Then the teacher makes
use of the consequences to reinforce the desired behavior. The end product is
evaluated.
Teacher
The
teacher’s job is to modify the behavior of students by setting up situations to
reinforce students when they exhibit desired responses. The teacher designs the
learning environment. He determines all the skills needed to lead up to the
desired behavior and makes sure that students learn them all in a step-by-step
manner. He presents effectively structured material and assesses students’
proper and complete understanding of it.
Learner
The
students are basically passive just responding to the stimuli. They must know how to execute the proper
response as well as the conditions under which the response is made. The
learner is considered as a black box, what happens inside is not known. The
student’s role are to absorb instructional presentations and materials and use
them to create performances which indicate attainment of correct mental model.
Principles of
Behaviorism
·
Interaction with environment is crucial
in learning language.
·
Principle of reinforcement.
·
Principle of motivation
·
Principle of readiness.
·
Principle of practice.
·
Principle of correct response.
·
Principle of drill.
·
The use of examination to observe
measurable behavior.
·
Teacher occupies the central role in the
class.
·
Teacher determines the environment and
frames the curriculum.
·
Objective based evaluation
·
Evaluation focuses on end product.
·
Reading, review, and analysis are the
prominent activities.
Limitations of
Behaviorism
·
It regards the activities of the mind.
·
It ignores the child.
·
Process of learning is not assessed.
·
It reduces language exposure to the
learners.
·
Formative evaluation is ignored.
·
It fails to see that learning can take
place without reinforcement.
COGNITIVISM
Cognitivism
is an approach in psychology that emphasizes the role of cognitive process in
learning. It is a theoretical perspective that focuses on the realm of human
perception, thought, and memory. Jean Piaget, Jerom. S. Bruner, John Dewey,
David P. Ausubel, Noam Chomsky and Tolman are the forerunners of this thought.
Cognitivism
emerged as a reaction to the Behaviorism. The behaviorists opine that if there
is a stimulus, there should be response. But according to the cognitivists,
something must mediate between the stimulus and response: i.e., cognitive
function.
Stimulus à Cognitive
function à Response
Cognitive theory
assigns central role to mind. When the learner’s mind reacts to the teaching,
learning takes place. Though there is stimulus, the learners think about that
for some time and then give response to that. The cognitivists deal with the
things that happen inside the brain as we learn. They examine the mental
process related to learning. The focus is on hw the learner processes and
stores the information in memory and remembers on demand. The changes in
behavior are observed but only as an indicator to what is going on in the
learners’ head. Learning is a relatively permanent change in mental
associations due to experience. It is also seen as a change in knowledge stored
in memory.
Teacher
Teacher
creates learning environment and assists learners as they explore it. Teacher
is considered as a facilitator and architect of learning. He helps the learner
in organizing and structuring the information accurately so that it can be
easily assimilated. He links the new assimilation with the existing
information. He uses techniques to guide and support learner’s attention,
encoding and retrieval process. Teacher manages the class activities. He is a
co-ordinator, motivator, councellor, guide etc…
Learner
Learners
are active processors of information. Learners occupy the central position in a
cognitivist classroom. Learners explore
the learning environment in concert with others and construct meaning from
experience. They apply meaning in personally meaningful situations.
Features of Cognitivism
·
Learning materials and activities meet
individual differences.
·
It ensures learners involvement in class
activities.
·
Reinforcement is important but not
essential fir learning to occur.
·
Learning materials are divided into
meaningful units.
·
Learning materials are properly
organized and structured.
·
Teaching proceeds from simple to
complex.
·
The goal of instruction is communication
of knowledge.
·
New knowledge is linked with existing knowledge.
·
Learner is the central figure in
teaching- learning process.
·
Teacher is a facilitator and architect
of learning.
·
Learning outcome depends on teacher and
learner.
Limitations of Cognitivism
·
It consumes a lot of time. It gives more
importance to students and their thinking ability. Students are motivated to do
experiment with language.
·
It is not useful in large classes. In
such cases, it is not possible to think about every individual student to do
experiment.
·
It requires creative teachers.
Cognitivism is deal but the problem is with the teachers. It demands more from
them.
v Postulates
of Bruner
According to Bruner, learning is an active, social
process in which students constructs new ideas or concepts based on their
current knowledge. The learners select the information, forms hypothesis and
integrates this new material into their own existing knowledge and mental
construct (cognitive structure). Cognitive structure provides meaning and organization
to experiences and allows the individual to go beyond the information given.
Learning by
discovery: Bruner is the exponent of discovery approach to
learning. The discovery approach considerers’ learners as inquirers of
knowledge who should acquire knowledge in the exact manner in which it is
generated.
According to this
discovery model, learners should be presented a problem situation to which they
would have to be seeking alternative solutions. Learning in a problem, solving
situation has three aspects – activation, maintenance and direction. Activation
means a stimulus which could generate action, maintenance could imply that the
action should be sustained and direction would mean movements which promote
realization of a goal.
In a problem solving
situation, the problem is a stimulus which initiates action. Exploring various
alternatives maintains the activity and the learner would need feedback to
select the movements. Feedback would indicate relevance of tested alternatives
for the achievement of the goal. Such feedback should come exactly at the time
of such problem solving exercise or episode.
Regarding education,
Bruner advocated that, if students were allowed to pursue concepts on their
own, they would gain a better understanding. He urged discovery learning which
involves the teacher providing guidance or scaffolding, organizing the
curriculum in a spiral manner so that the students are continually building
upon what they have already learned. This involves the teacher teaching the
same content in different ways depending on the student’s developmental skills.
Spiral
Curriculum: Another
concept introduced by Bruner was Spiral Curriculum. It is a type of curriculum
where certain themes run through the years of learning, spiral upwards, getting
broader, with more knowledge, skills and appropriate attitudes being
established as the learner develops. In the spiral curriculum, the learner
learns the same content again but in more detail second time, with greater
understanding. Such a curriculum grows in richness and sophistication by
reflecting back on itself and providing opportunities, for the reflective
organization, reconstruction and transformation of experience.
Spiral curriculum suggests that
teachers vary their instructional methods based on the developmental level of
the students. The spiral curriculum will enable the teacher to teach any
content in a meaningful fashion to the learners of any age if the proper
technique focusing on the target student’s developmental level is used. For
this the teacher should revisit the material that has been previously learnt in
order to reinforce it and build upon it even more.
v POSTULATES
OF PIAGET
According to Piaget, knowledge is not merely
transmitted verbally but must be constructed and re constructed by the learner.
Piaget asserted that for a child to know and construct knowledge of the world,
the child must act on objects and it is this action which provides knowledge of
those objects, the mind organize reality and act upon it.
Readiness Approach:
Piaget’s approach to learning is a readiness approach. It emphasizes that
children cannot learn something until maturation gives them certain pre
requisites. The ability to learn any cognitive content is always related to
their sage of intellectual development. Piaget discovered that children think
and reason differently at different periods in their lives. The four stages of
cognitive development identified by Piaget are:
·
Sensori-motor stage (Birth-2yrs)
·
Pre-operational stage (2-7yrs)
·
Concrete Operational stage (7-11 yrs)
·
Formal Operational stage (12-15yrs)
According to Piaget, intellectual
growth involves three fundamental processes: Assimilation, accommodation, and
equilibrium. In assimilation, the learner transforms incoming information so that
it fits within his existing schemes or thought patterns.( incorporation of new
events into preexisting cognitive structures) In accommodation, the leaner
adapts his thought patterns to include incoming information. (Modification of
existing cognitive structures to hold the new information). This dual process,
assimilation-accommodation enables the child to form schema. Equilibrium involves the person striking a balance
between himself and the environment, between assimilation and accommodation.
When a child experience a new event, disequilibrium, sets in until he is able
to assimilate and accommodate the new information and thus attain equilibrium.
For Piaget, equilibrium is the major factor in explaining why some children
advance more quickly in the development of logical intelligence than do others.
v POSTULATES
OF CHOMSKY
Noam Chomsky is considered one of the most important
linguists in the 20th century. His main contribution in the field of
linguistic is the influential “transformational- generative grammar”
which is an attempt to describe the syntactical process common to all human
language. The “Language Acquisition Device” is the hypothetical brain
mechanism that accordingly to Chomsky explained the acquisition of syntactic
structure of language Chomsky argued that the human brain contains a limited
set of rules for organizing language. This implies in turn that all languages
have a common structural basis; the set of
rules what is known as the “Universal Grammar”.
Language
Acquisition Device.
The language Acquisition Device is
a hypothetical module of the human mind posited to account for children’s
innate predisposition of language acquisition. First proposed by Chomsky in the
1960s, the LAD concept is an instinctive mental capacity which enables an
infant to acquire and produce language. Chomsky believed that language is
innate, or in other words, we are born with capacity for language. Language
rules are influenced by experience and learning but the capacity for language
itself exists with or without environmental influences. Chomsky believed that
language is complex, with an unlimited combination of sounds, words, and
phrases that environmental learning is not able to account for language
acquisition alone. It would take a life time to teach someone all the rules of
language but even small children can understand them. Chomsky believed thus
that the human brain comes into the world with a pre-determined set of rules
for how language works. Environmental and learning are involved but the foundation
for language comes with us from womb.
UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Universal Grammar is a theory in
linguistics, credited to Noam Chomsky, proposing that the ability to learn
grammar is hard-wired into the brain. It is sometimes known as “mental grammar”
and as opposed to other “grammars”, eg: prescriptive, descriptive and
pedagogical. The theory suggests that linguistic ability manifest itself
without being taught and there are properties that all natural human languages
share. The theory that explains this ability is known as Universal Grammar
Theory (or UGT) and states that all children are born with an innate aptitude
to acquire, develop and understand language.
TRANSFORMATIONAL GENERATIVE GRAMMAR
TG Grammar is one of
the most influential of the modern linguistic theories, introduced through Noam
Chomsky’s Syntactic Structure (1957). The term “Transformation Generative”
obviously suggests that there are two aspects of this theory, viz,
“transformational” and “generative”, two independent aspects which interact.
TRANSFORMATIONAL:
TG
Grammar shows the essential relationship between sentences such as active-
passive, affirmative- negative etc. It shows how different types of sentences
are derived from basic type of simple sentences through the application of certain
riles called “Transformational Rule” or “T Rules”. Such basic types of
sentences are called kernel sentences. They are simple, affirmative, active and
declarative sentences. The other types of sentences are transforms which
are derived from kernel sentences by the application of T-rules.
E.g.:
Active – Passive Sentences.
o
S1 – NP1 + Aux + V + NP2 = Kernel
sentence (Active)
o
S2 – NP2 + Aux + be + en + V + by + Np1
= Transform (Passive)
o
S1 – Tom was writing a letter. (Tom= NP1
& a letter = NP2)
o
Applying the T rule mentioned above, the
S1 transforms to
o
S2 – A letter was being written by Tom.
Thus the two sentences are related.
One is transformed into the other. The first of these is the kernel and the
second is transform. All the different types of sentences are transforms of
sentences of a simple basic structure, ie kernel sentence.
GENERATIVE: TG Grammar is generative since it must be able
to generate all and only the grammatical sentences of a language. By following
its rules and conventions one could produce all or any of the possible
sentences of that language. To “generate”, thus means to “predict” or “specify”
what could be the possible sentence in the language i.e., the actual sentence
of the language and also the possible ones.
TG Grammar is a theory of
“competence”, i.e., a native speaker’s knowledge of a set of internalized rules
regarding his language. It is not observable; it underlies his use of the
language, his “performance”. The native speaker who is exposed to finite set of
utterances (the input), has internalized “a set of rules” (a finite set of
generalizations) with which he is able to produce infinite set of utterances
(the output) and also to understand them. It is the process of “generation” and
not one of memorization and reproduction.
In short TG Grammar attempts to
describe a speaker’s competence, and the competence of a native speaker can be said to include at
least 5 abilities:
o
To produce and understand an infinite
set of sentences,
o
To understand the internal structure of
these sentences,
o
To detect ambiguity,
o
To detect paraphrases i.e., when to
sentences mean the same, and
o
To tell when and why a sentences is
ungrammatical.
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