Foreign Language Acquisition Theories
Foreign Language Acquisition Theories
Foreign Language Acquisition Theories
1. Behaviorism (1940s-1950s)
Tabula Rasa (a blank slate) means there is nothing when a baby is born. Skinner said, "give me a child,
and I will shape him into anything"
Behaviorism is a precursor to cognitive learning.
Language: -is behavior defined as a set of habits. -can be taught/learned as any other behavior
Teaching: -should be done through conditioning. -consequences determine behavior (e.g. reward or
successful communication)
According to the Behaviorist Theory, learning is the result of:
Imitation (word-for-word repetition of someone else’s utterances).
Practice (repetitive manipulation of form).
Feedback on success (positive reinforcement).
Habit formation
Audio-Lingual Method (the teaching of listening and speaking before reading and writing) and
Behaviorism
It was a method for teaching foreign languages popular in 1950s and 1960s.
It is supported by the behaviorist theory of Skinner
It does not use mother tongue to explain vocabulary or grammar.
Students drilled in the use of grammar in the target language.
English is taught through discussion, conversation, and reading in the second language.
Students learned language through a series of drills involving imitation, repetition and practice
Behaviorists view the process of child' language acquisition in the following steps:
Immitation – Repetition – Memorization – Controlled Drilling – Reinforcement
•Reinforcement can either be negative or positive.
•Reinforcement will trigger general stimulus.
1
Noam Chomsky and Audio-Lingual Method
Chomsky rejected the audio - lingual method that is based on the behaviorist theory of language
learning for the following reasons:
It could not function as a model of how humans learn languages.
Learning is not imitated behavior.
Sentences are not learned by imitation and repetition, but "generated" from the learners'
underlying "competence."
Language is creative and generative, not a habit
Chomsky asserted that children were born with a hard-wired language acquisition device.
Chomsky asserted that children were born with the instinct or "innate facility" for acquiring language.
The LAD is a postulated organ in the brain supposed to function as a congenital device for language
acquisition.
LAD encodes the major principles of a language and its grammatical structure into the child's brain.
This theory contradicted B.F. Skinner' theory of behaviorism and operant conditioning.
"Language acquisition does not require extensive use of conscious grammatical rules, and does not
require tedious drill."
"Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in
which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are
conveying and understanding."
2
1. The Acquisition-Learning hypothesis
2. The Monitor hypothesis
3. The Natural Order hypothesis
4. The Input hypothesis
5. The Affective Filter hypothesis