Please check

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Please check
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Todays topic

• Behaviorism, cont.

(including audio lingual and grammar translation)
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Tip of the Day

• When learning something new, it is helpful to
  process the information is a variety of ways. So,
  consider deliberately and consistently using
  several different strategies during your
  out-of-class study time.

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Announcements

• Turn in your brief summary now.
• The first "big" assignment is the rough draft of
  the final assignment (progressive essays). It is
  due March 12, but you should start working on it
  NOW! If you use it as a study guide, it will
  organize all of your work for the semester.
• The second "big" assignment, interview, is due
  the week after Spring Break (March 26).

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Quick questions or quandaries?
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Review of Behaviorism

• Learning, not acquisition
• Operant and classical conditioning
• Reinforcement
• Modeling and imitation
• Shaping

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Review What is learning in the behavioral
perspective?

• According to behaviorists, learning occurs as a
  result of the consequences of behavior.

Alberto Troutman, 2003, p. 18
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Also

• observation imitation
• ?
• operant conditioning

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Imitation ? Behaviorism

• It seems quite beyond question that children
  acquire a good deal of their verbal and nonverbal
  behavior by casual observation and imitation of
  adults and other children emphasis added
  (Chomsky, 1959, p. 42).

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Audio-lingual language teaching

• Based on behavioral theory (modeling, imitation,
  reinforcement).
• Based on a structural view of language.
• Emphasis on correct pronunciation and grammar.
• Used in many foreign language classes.
• Does not reply on translation from students
  native language.

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Grammar-Translation

• Primary focus on written language, not oral (in
  contrast with audio-lingual).
• Use of direct translation of words, phases, and
  sections of text to teach and test students
  language skills.
• Translation can be both oral and written.

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Small Group Jigsaw Activity

• Get into four small groups.
• Each group will receive information about one
  audio-lingual instructional strategy.
• Figure out how to teach your strategy to the rest
  of the class.

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Quick Write

• Why do you think many teachers still use
  audio-lingual strategies in their ESL (English as
  Second Language) or foreign language classrooms?
  Could you identify other audio-lingual or grammar
  translation strategies that are used in popular
  ESL/Foreign programs.

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Criticisms of a behavioral theory of language
development

• Overly simplistic explanation
• Overlooks learner contributions
• Untestable
• Ignores unreinforceable learning and unreinforced
  productions

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Overly simplistic explanation

• One would naturally expect that prediction of
  the behavior of a complex organism would
  require, in addition to information about
  external stimulation, knowledge of the internal
  structure of the organism, the ways in which it
  processes input information and organizes its own
  behavior.

Chomsky, 1959, p. 27)
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Learner contributions

• Chomsky (1959) argued that Skinner repeatedly
  voices his claim to have demonstrated that the
  contribution of the speaker is quite trivial and
  elementary (p. 28).

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Untestable due to definitional problems

• How do we define the stimulus for a particular
  behavior?
• What part of a complex behavior is the
  response?
• Reinforcement? Automatic self-reinforcement? What
  does/doesnt count as reinforcement?

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Untestable because

• Reliance on narrowly defined experimental
  conditions that do not translate well to
  real-life learning conditions.
• Ethical concerns, for more than very limited
  experiments.

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Unreiforceable learning

• Phonological development

Unreiforced productions

• He brunged his lunch.

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Five minute silent re-cap review
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Ways to Contrast Theoretical Approaches to
Language Development
Competence vs. Performance
Nature vs. Nurture
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Nature AND Nurture

• According to Chomsky (1959), the characteristics
  of complex organisms are in general a
  complicated product of inborn structure, the
  genetically determined course of maturation, and
  past experience emphasis added (p. 27).

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It appears to be a fundamental fact about human
beings that our behavior and behavioral
capacities often surpass the limitations of our
individual reinforcement histories. Our history
of reinforcement often is too impoverished to
determine uniquely what we do or how we do it.
Much learning, therefore, seems to require
pre-existing or innate representational
structures or principled constraints within which
learning occurs.
Graham, 2005, http//plato.stanford.edu/entries/be
haviorism/
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Think-pair-share

• What have you learned tonight about behaviorism?
• Anything new?
• Interesting?
• Puzzling?

Take notes!
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Looking ahead

• Trying to define the contribution of nature to
  language development

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• .

Please take a minute for the minute paper.