Chapter 4 Human Learning

Learning Theories

⚫ Learning theories are an organized set of principles explaining

how individuals acquire, retain, and recall knowledge.

⚫ The principles of the theories can be used as guidelines to help

select instructional tools, techniques and strategies that promote
learning.

⚫ LEARNING THEORIES:

➢ BEHAVIORISM (PAVLOV AND SKINNER) Structuralism

➢ MEANINGFUL LEARNING THEORY (AUSUBEL) Cognitivism
➢ HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY (ROGER) Constructivism
 What is Behaviorism?

Behaviorism in the classroom:

✓ Drilling
✓ Repetitive practice
✓ Verbal Reinforcement (saying “good job”)
✓ Giving weekly quizzes/tests
✓ Using positive/negative reinforcement to encourage and reward students
for good behavior and to punish bad behavior.

Criticism towards Behaviorism:

➢ Behaviorism does not prepare the learner for problem solving or creative
thinking.
➢ Learners do what they are told and do not take the initiative to change or
improve things.
➢ The learner is only prepared for recalling of basic facts, automatic
responses or performing tasks.
What is Ausubel’s meaningful learning theory?

✓ To learn meaningfully, individuals must relate new knowledge to

relevant concepts they already know.
✓ Emphasis is on meaningful learning than rote learning.
 Rote learning involves the mental storage of items having little

or no association with existing cognitive structure like learning

phone numbers.
 On the other hand, meaningful learning, may be described as

a process of relating new material to relevant established entities

in cognitive structure.
What is Ausubel’s meaningful learning theory?

Cognitivism in the classroom:

✓ Planning curriculum based on what students have already known
and what they should learn.
✓ Giving problem-solving scenarios and real-life contexts for
learning.
✓ Creating interesting and motivating lesson that engage students.
✓ Integrating visual, audio, and giving examples in lessons
(Examples: PowerPoint, songs, videos, websites).
 What is Roger’s humanistic psychology?

✓ Roger’s humanistic psychology has affective focus more than

cognitive one, thus it is a perspective of a constructivist learning.
✓ Social and interactive nature of learning.
✓ The focus of constructivism is away from teaching and toward
learning.
✓ Learning how to learn is more important than being taught
something from a teacher who decides what shall be taught.
✓ Students should be allowed to negotiate learning outcomes, to
cooperate with teachers and other learners in a process of
discovery, to engage critical thinking and to relate everything they
do in school to their reality outside the classroom.
 Types of Learning

 The educational psychologist Robert Gagne (1965)

demonstrated the importance of identifying a number of
types of learning that all human beings use.
 Types of learning vary according to:
 the context
 subject matter to be learned
➢ However, a complex task such as language learning
involves every one of Gagne's types of learning (from
simple signal learning to problem solving).
Types of Learning
 Type 1: Signal Learning

Signal learning
The individual learns to make a general response (salivation)
to a signal (food or/ and bell). This is the classical conditioned
response of Pavlov. Known also as classical conditioning.
 Type 1: Signal Learning

 First, a child is shown a stimuli

rabbit.

 Next, as the child reaches

for the rabbit, a sudden +

loud sound is produced
behind the child, which signaling unconditioned
scares the child and makes
him cry.

Response
 Type 1: Signal Learning

 Now, each time the rabbit is brought close to the child, the child shows fear.

Signal Stimulus
Response
or
Conditioned Stimulus
Type 1: Signal Learning - Implication on SLA

 Signal learning in general occurs in the total language process: human

beings make a general response of some kind (emotional, cognitive,

verbal, or nonverbal) to language.
 Type 2: Stimulus-Response Learning

 Also known as operant

or instrumental
learning

like learning to ride a bike!

 Type 2: Stimulus-Response Learning

 First, the child learns how it

feels to ride a bike with

training wheels
 Type 2: Stimulus-Response Learning

 Next, the child gets help from Mom or Dad.

 This parent behavior is referred to as “shaping”

 The child begins to discriminate in regard to balance, and

progressively differentiates between behavior that allows him to

stay upright or behavior that causes him to fall down.

 Staying upright + Falling down (discriminated stimulus)

 Type 2: Stimulus-Response Learning

Finally, the child understands what is “correct” or “incorrect” muscular

behavior and is able to begin riding the bike with ease.
 Type 2: Stimulus-Response Learning – Implication on SLA

 Stimulus-response learning is evident in the acquisition of the sound

system of a foreign language in which, through a process of

conditioning and trial and error, the learner makes closer and closer
approximations to native like pronunciation.

 Simple lexical items are, in one sense, acquired by stimulus-response

connections; in another sense they are related to higher order types of

learning.
 Type 3: Chaining

Chaining
 What is acquired is a chain of two or more stimulus-response
connections.

 The conditions for such learning have also been described by Skinner.

 This is the connection of the individual stimulus and response in a

longer sequence of stimuli and responses.

S-R-S-R-S-R

 Chaining -nonverbal acquisition of sequences

 Type 3: Chaining

Positioning Inserting key Turning key

Key turned
Pushing door
 Type 3: Chaining

 In terms of sustaining the movement of the bicycle and riding it for

a long way, riding a bike could be thought of as chaining.
 Type 3: Chaining – Implication on SLA

 Chaining is evident in the acquisition of syntactic patterns (the

stringing together of several responses).

 Type 4: Verbal Association
64

Verbal association

 Verbal association is the learning of chains that are verbal.

 Basically, the conditions resemble those for other (motor) chains.

 However, the presence of language in the human being makes this a special
type of chaining because internal links may be selected from the individual‟s
previously learned repertoire of language.
 Type 4: Verbal Association
65

Naming - the simplest type of verbal association

Doggy!
Very good, +
son! Mine!

My
Doggy!
 Type 4: Verbal Association - Implication on SLA

 The fourth type of learning involves Gagne's distinction between verbal

and nonverbal chains and is not really therefore a separate type of

language learning.
 Type 5: Multiple Discrimination

Multiple discrimination
 The individual learns to make a number of different identifying responses to
many different stimuli, which may resemble each other in physical appearance
to a greater or lesser degree.

 Although learning of each stimulus-response connection is a simple

occurrence, the connections tend to interfere with one another.
 Type 5: Multiple Discrimination

 The ability to distinguish  Babies learn at an early age to

between the parts of ones’ discriminate between colors,
environment. shapes, and sizes.
 Type 5: Multiple Discrimination

Multiple discrimination learning leads to perceptual difference

 It is often concerned with distinctive features.

 Used early in life distinguishing the letters of the alphabet.

 Later, this moves into multiple-discrimination.

 As mentioned earlier, although learning of each stimulus-response

connection is a simple occurrence, the connections tend to interfere

with one another. For example, a child may confuse a “b” as a “d”
 Type 5: Multiple Discrimination – Implication on SLA

 Multiple discriminations are necessary particularly in second language

learning where, for example:

 A word has to take on several meanings.

 A rule in the native language is reshaped to fit a second language

context.
 Type 6: Concept Learning

Concept learning
 The learner acquires the ability to make a common response to a class

of stimuli even though the individual members of that class may differ
widely from each other.

 The learner is able to make a response that identifies an entire class of

objects or events.
 Type 6: Concept Learning

 Being able to classify and respond to the class as a whole.

 Type 6: Concept Learning

 Some concepts can be learned by definition.

 But concept learning is usually more effective, and is retained

(remembered) longer, if it is done with examples and non-examples.

Type 6: Concept Learning

74
 Type 7: Principle Learning

Principle learning
 In simplest terms, a principle is a chain of two or more concepts.

 It functions to organize behavior and experience.

 Principle learning is an inferred capability that enables the individual

to respond to a class of stimulus situations with a class of performances.

 Type 7: Principle Learning

 Principle/ Rule: (2+3, 3+4, 7+5) = (3+2, 4+3, 5+7)

Principle: Round things roll Principle: Chocolate melts

 Type 7: Principle Learning – Implication on SLA

 Principle learning is the extension of concept learning to the formation

of a linguistic system, in which rules are not isolated in rote memory,

but conjoined and subsumed in a total system.
 Type 8: Problem Solving

Problem solving
 Problem solving is a kind of learning that requires the internal events

usually referred to as "thinking."

 Previously acquired concepts and principles are combined in a

conscious focus on an unresolved or ambiguous set of events.

 It is not just an application of previously learned rules but yields (and

leads to) new learning.

 Type 8: Problem Solving

Steps followed by the learner to solve problems:

1. Presentation of the problem

2. Defines the problem

3. Formulates hypotheses

4. Verification of his hypothesis or successive hypotheses until he

finds the solution
 Type 8: Problem Solving – Implication on SLA

 Finally, problem solving is clearly evident in second language learning as

the learner is continually faced with sets of events that are truly problems
to be solved

 Solutions to the problems involve the creative interaction of all eight

types of learning as the learner sifts and weighs previous information and
knowledge in order to correctly determine:
 the meaning of a word,

 the interpretation of an utterance,

 the rule that governs a common class of linguistic items,

 a conversationally appropriate response.

 Types of Learning

 Since all types of learning are relevant to second language learning, the

implication is that:

 certain lower level aspects of second language learning may be more

adequately treated by behavioristic approaches and methods,

 while certain higher level aspects of second language types of learning

are more effectively taught by methods derived from a cognitive
approach to learning.
 Transfer, Interference, & Overgeneralizations

 Transfer is a general term describing the carryover of previous performance or

knowledge to subsequent learning.

➢ Positive transfer occurs when the prior knowledge benefits the learning

task.
➢ Negative transfer occurs when previous performance disrupts the

performance of a second task.

 Interference is the interfering effects of the native language on the target (the

second) language.
 Overgeneralization is generalizing a particular rule or item in the second

language-irrespective of the native language—beyond legitimate bounds.

Transfer, Interference, & Overgeneralizations
 Language Teaching Methods

 The Audio-lingual method inspired by behavioristic

principles

 Community Language Learning inspired by Carl Rogers‟s

humanistic theories.
 Characteristics of the ALM

1. New material is presented in dialog form.

2. There is dependence on memorization of set phrases, and
overlearning. (Overlearning is a pedagogical concept according to
which newly acquired skills should be practiced well beyond the
point of initial mastery, leading to automaticity.)

3. Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills.

4. There is little or no grammatical explanation.

5. Vocabulary is strictly limited and learned in context.

 Characteristics of the ALM

7. There is much use of tapes, language labs, and visual aids.

8. Great importance is attached to pronunciation.

9. Very little use of the mother tongue by teachers is permitted.

10. Successful responses are immediately reinforced.

11. There is a great effort to get students to produce error-free utterances.
 Criticism of the ALM

 The popularity of the ALM did not last forever.

 Due in part to the exposure of the shortcomings of the ALM, and its

ultimate failure to teach long-term communicative proficiency, its

popularity waned.

Later, we discovered that:

 language was not really acquired through a process of habit formation

and overlearning,

 errors were not necessarily to be avoided at all costs

 structural linguistics did not tell us everything about language that we

needed to know.
 Community Language Learning (CLL)

 In his "Counseling-Learning" model of education, Charles

Curran (1972) was inspired by Carl Rogers’s view of education in
which students and teacher join together to facilitate learning in
a context of valuing and prizing each individual in the group.

 In such a surrounding:

 Each person lowers the defenses that prevent open,

interpersonal communication.
 The anxiety caused by the educational context is lessened by
means of the supportive community.
 Community Language Learning (CLL)

 As the learners gain more and more familiarity with the foreign
language, more and more direct communication can take place,
with the counselor providing less and less direct translation and
information, until after many sessions, even months or years
later, the learner achieves fluency in the spoken language. The
learner has at that point become independent.
 Criticism of CLL

1. The counselor-teacher can become too nondirective. Students usually

need direction, especially in the first stages, and the teacher needs to
have a balance of supportiveness and assertiveness providing direction.

2. While some intense inductive struggle is a necessary component of

second language learning, the initial difficult days and weeks of
struggling in ignorance in CLL could be reduced by more directed,
deductive learning: by being told. Perhaps only later, when the learner
has moved to more independence, is an inductive strategy really
successful.
 Criticism of CLL

3. The success of CLL depends largely on the translation expertise of the

teacher. Translation is a complex process; if some aspects of
language are mistranslated, there could be a less than effective
understanding of the TL.

4. Problems in adapting it to a beginners multilingual class.

5. Problems in adapting it to large classes.

 Advantages of CLL

As teachers, we are reminded:

 to lower learners' anxiety,

 to create as much of a supportive group in our classrooms as possible,

 to allow students to initiate language,

 and to point learners toward autonomous learning in preparation for

the day when they no longer have the teacher to guide them.
Thank you