Human Psychology for Second Language Acquisition

Of all human abilities, language is perhaps the most impressive.  In spoken, written, and gestured forms, language is the primary means of communication among people.  With language, we can refer to events or ideas in the past or future, talk about abstract concepts such as morality, and record the stories of human civilization.

Language is a central topic of study in cognitive psychology because it is closely connected with perception, memory, thinking, problem solving, and other mental processes.  Of particular interest to psychologists is how children acquire language and why they have an easier time mastering a language than adults who try to learn a second language.  Many scientists believe the human brain is uniquely “wired” to learn a language during a critical period in infancy and early childhood.  Supporters of this idea note that children all over the world achieve specific language milestones at roughly the same age.

Studies regarding theories of second language acquisition discovered that cognitive domain of human behavior is of key importance in the acquisition of both a first and a second language.  And the general nature of human learning as to second language acquisition is defined by four different learning theories; the first two views representing behavioristic theories, and the other two views the cognitive side.

Before turning to these four theories of how human beings learn, let us first consider the definition of learning: “the activity or process of gaining knowledge or skill by studying, practicing, being taught, or experiencing something” or “knowledge or skill gained from learning” (Merriam-Webster).  In such definition, it is clear that one can learn in different ways which results to many different theories of learning.  On the other hand, to be able to learn, there are four important things to consider:

Specify the entry behavior: what the learner already “knows”, his/her abilities, drives, needs, motivations, limitations;

Formulate the goals of the task explicitly: you should have a general directive and specific objectives;

Devise some methods of training: having a training program and how would you go about it; and

Have an evaluation procedure: to determine the extent to which the learner learned.

Now, to focus on how psychologists define learning, let us look at these theories through the eyes of four psychologists, representing classical behaviourism, neobehaviorism, cognitive learning theory, and humanistic psychology.

Classical Behaviorism

Ivan Pavlov as the pioneering Russian classical behaviorist contributed the term classical conditioning.  For Pavlov, the learning process consisted of the formation of associations between stimuli and reflexive responses.  In his experiment, he trained a dog to salivate at the sound of a tuning fork.  Before conditioning, an unconditioned stimulus (food in the mouth) automatically produces an unconditioned response (salivation) in the dog.  During conditioning, the experimenter rings a tuning fork and then gives food to the dog. The tuning fork is called the neutral stimulus because it does not initially produce any salivation response in the dog. As the experimenter repeats the tuning fork -food association over and over again, however, the sound of the tuning fork alone eventually causes the dog to salivate. The dog has learned to associate the sound of the tuning fork with the food. The tuning fork has become a conditioned stimulus, and the dog’s salivation to the sound of the tuning fork is called a conditioned response.

From Pavlov’s findings, Watson (1913) coined the term behaviorism which states that human behavior should be studied objectively, rejecting mentalistic notions of innateness and instinct.  He adopted classical conditioning theory as the explanation for all learning.

As to second language acquisition, a language learner continues to build an array of stimulus-response connections.  In here, more complex behaviors are learned by building up such series or chains of responses.

Neobehaviorism

B.F. Skinner as one of the pioneering behaviorists called Pavlovian conditioning respondent conditioning due to its concern to respondent’s behavior that is elicited by a preceding stimulus.  Hence, Skinner devised operant conditioning which involves increasing a behavior by following it with a reward, or decreasing a behavior by following it with punishment.  For example, if a mother starts giving a boy his favorite snack every day that he cleans up his room, before long the boy may spend some time each day cleaning his room in anticipation of the snack.  In this example, the boy’s room-cleaning behavior increases because it is followed by a reward or reinforce.

Unlike classical conditioning, in which the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli are presented regardless of what the learner does, operant conditioning requires action on the part of the learner.  The boy in the above example will not get his snack unless he first cleans up his room.  The term operant conditioning refers to the fact that the learner must operate, or perform a certain behavior, before receiving a reward or punishment.

Following Skinner’s model, one is led to believe that any subject matter can be taught effectively and successfully by a carefully designed program of step-by-step reinforcement.  Programmed instruction has had its impact on foreign language teaching, but language is a complex behavior, penetrating the cognitive and affective domains of a learner, causes this programmed instruction in languages limited to very specialized subsets of language.  However, a Skinnerian view of both language and language learning dominated foreign language teaching methodology for several decades, leading to a heavy reliance in the classroom on the controlled practice of verbal operant under carefully designed schedules of reinforcement.

Cognitive Learning Theory

David Ausebel states that learning takes place in the human organism through a meaningful process of relating new events or items to already existing cognitive concepts or propositions.  And the cognitive theory of learning as put forth by Ausebel is best understood by contrasting rote and meaningful learning.  Rote learning involves the mental storage of items having little or no association with existing cognitive structure.  Meaningful learning, however, is the process of relating and anchoring new material to relevant established entities in cognitive structure.  The very fact that the material is subsumable – that is, relatable to stable elements in cognitive structure – accounts for its meaningfulness.

Any learning situation can be meaningful if (a) the learner has a meaningful learning set; and (b) the learning task itself is potentially meaningful to the learner.  On the other hand, Frank Smith (1975) coined “manufacturing meaningfulness” which make things meaningful if necessary and if we are strongly motivated to do so.  By associating items either in groups or with some external stimuli, retention is enhanced.  Also, Ausebel also provided a plausible explanation to the universal nature of forgetting.  Since rotely learned material do not interact with cognitive structure, they are learned in conformity with the laws of association and their retention is influenced by interfering effects of similar rote materials learned immediately before or after the earning task.

Ausebel’s theory of learning has important implications for second language acquisition and teaching.  Subsumption theory provides a strong theoretical basis for the rejection of conditioning models of practice and repetition in language teaching.  The notion of forgetting as systematic, on the other hand, has important implications for language acquisition and teaching.  The certain devices used in the early stages of language learning are often used to facilitate subsumption.  But in the process of making language automatic, the devices served as temporary entities and are systematically pruned out at later stages of language acquisition.  Language teachers might consider urging earners to “forget” these temporary, mechanical items as they make progress in a language, and instead focus only on the communicative use (comprehension or production) of language.

Humanistic Psychology

Carl Rogers and his colleagues had a substantial impact on our present understanding of learning, most particularly on learning in an educational pedagogical context.  Rogers’ humanistic psychology focuses more on affective than cognitive dimension.  Roger coined the term Client-Centered Theraphy (1951) where he cautiously analysed human behavior in general, including the learning process, by means of the presentation of nineteen formal principles of human behavior.  He studied the “whole person as a physical and cognitive, but primarily emotional, being.  He found out that a “fully functioning person” is living at peace with all his feelings and reactions; and is fully open this experiences without defensiveness, and creates himself anew at each moment in every action taken and in every decision made.

As implied to education, Rogers introduced the learner-centered classroom where the focus is away from “teaching” and toward “learning”.  Learning how to learn is of importance than learning from a “superior”.  He also reiterated the need or real facilitators of learning, someone who can establish interpersonal relationship with the learner.  As I always say during my interviews as a teacher applicant, when asked on how I can teach my students, I always say that aside from imparting them knowledge, I will also touch their affective part through establishing interpersonal relationship with them so that I would know my students well and on how to teach them effectively.  On the other hand, classroom activities and materials in language learning should utilize meaningful contexts of genuine communication with persons engaged in the process of becoming persons.

Two views were presented with quite different points from one another but both focus on different facets of human learning.  There are aspects of language learning which may call upon a conditioning process and other aspects may require a meaningful cognitive process and nevertheless others depend upon the security of supportive fellow learners interacting freely and willingly with one another.  This only shows that in teaching a language learner, one needs to have a strong foundation and knowledge on cognitive and behaviorist theories of learning.  Because a learner learns cognitively but needs to be treated as an affective person to learn more effectively.  Considering a learner as an affective person, establishing a relationship wherein gaining his trust and letting him learn on his own pace will help a lot in teaching him a language.  This only shows that both cognitive and behavioristic domain of a learner, though sometimes contrasting, plays an important role on second language acquisition.