 Founders and proponents: John B.

Watson,
Ivan Pavlov, Skinner, Bandura etc.

 General perception: there is no difference

between the way one learns a language
and the way one learns to do anything
else.

 Skinner
says, “language is a conditioned
behaviour”
 Essentiallyviewed as passive and learn
language step by step, i.e., imitation >
repetition > memorisation > controlled
drilling > reinforcement

 Notconcerned with how and why

knowledge is obtained, but rather if the
correct response is given – learning is
defined as nothing more than the
acquisition of new behaviour.
 Focus on publicly observable responses;
objectively perceived, recorded and
measured.

 Given the correct degree & scheduling

of reinforcement, organisms can be
conditioned to respond in desired ways.
 Teacher-centered

 One-way information transmission.

A lot of drilling (repetition) activities.

 Reward & punishment system.

 Refers to a group of psychological
theories which draw heavily on the work
in linguistics of Noam Chomsky.

 Focuson the mind and attempt to show

how information is received, assimilated,
stored and recalled.
 Active participation is required in
order to learn, and actions are a
consequence of thinking.

 Learning is as a process of relating new

information to previously learned
information – a change in schemata
 Achieving the level of descriptive
adequacy & also arriving at an
explanatory level of adequacy.

 Employed the tools of logic, reason and

inference to derive explanation.
 Makeuse of feedback to guide and
support mental connection.

 Allowthe students to think critically, not

only what, but how.

 Errors
as parts of learning process –
accepted.
 Behaviorism
• teacher-centered
• learners are passive receivers of
environmental conditions
• teacher as a “dictator”
Cognitivism
• student-centered
• Learners actively involved in
learning process and can have
control over their own learning
• teacher as a facilitator

• language is practice based • associate new learning with

previous knowledge
• learning is controlled by the • focus more on the learners as active
conditions under which it takes place participants in the teaching-learning
process
• rewarding students for all learning • not accounting enough for
will cause students to lose interest in individuality/ giving little emphasis
learning for its own sake/ imitation on the effective characteristics of the
does not help the learner in a real- learners
life situation
 mirul ngok ngek