Krisztina Kurucz

The Age Factor in SLA

ANN-362.80
03.27.2009

Comparison of Theories:
Behaviorism

The behaviorist theory was introduced by J.B Watson, and among other supporters of
the theory we can mention Leonard Bloomfield or B.F. Skinner. In general, it is supposed that
the behaviorist theory is mainly applied for first language acquisition. It became popular in
the 1940s and 1950s in America, and as the name of the theory shows, this approach deals
with the investigation of human behavior, and how the learning process and the behavior
interact with each other.
The most well-known example for behaviorism is definitely Pavlovs experiment with
the dog, the bell and the food. Each time the scientists rang a bell, they gave the dog food
afterwards. After a number of occasions it became conspicuous that whenever the dog heard
the bell, he started to salivate in advance, already expecting to get the food. He learned that
the food necessarily follows from the sound of the bell, and started to identify the sound with
the food itself. This process itself is called conditioning which happens with the help of a
stimulus-response interaction, where the stimulus are the food and the bell, and the response
for this is salivation. Several other examples could be mentioned from the everyday world that
can be lead back to Pavlovs dog and theory. For example, if you take your little child to the
doctor, who is in a white gown, and each time s/he goes to the doctor s/he has negative
experience (pain, fear, anxiety), then after some time, s/he is going to get anxious and be
afraid even when his/her mom only mentions that soon they are going to the doctor. Or later,
it might happen that even the sight of a butcher or any person in white coat or gown will

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trigger the same effect on him/her. In this case, the stimulus is the white gown, and the
response is the associated negative feelings to the person wearing it.
Apart from the above mentioned terms, other key terms of behaviorism include
imitation, habit formation, and feedback/reinforcement. According to the behaviorist theory,
children acquire language by imitation. Babies are give positive reinforcement for their
babblings that resemble meaningful words, that motivates them to try to imitate more sounds
and syllables, which finally become meaningful words, phrases and finally sentences. Positive
reinforcement has a key role in habit formation, that is, the more a child is praised verbally or
rewarded by treats after producing the wished behavior, the easier and faster s/he is going to
form a habit of this preferred behavior of his/hers, and s/he builds it into his/her personality.
For example, if a baby finally utters the word dog, and it is welcome by his parents with a
big applause and smile each time he uses this new word of his in the appropriate
circumstances, he is going to learn that it is a good thing for him to do so, since he is always
praised afterwards and that provides him with a good feeling. Or if a child can only get
chocolate if he learns to say please first, this is another example of habit formation by
positive reinforcement.
However, behaviorist theory, just as any learning theory, has its limitations as well.
Among others, it is important to mention that this theory can mostly be effective only in the
early childhood when children start to speak, and therefore it is mainly associated with first
language acquisition. Furthermore, in his article Dr. Demirezen argues that habit formation
exercises may not naturally promote intrinsically-oriented language learning. This means
that the child is only instrumentally motivated all the time, by feedback from his/her
environment and acts accordingly, which might push the development of his/her intrinsic

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motivation (learning a language because he himself likes it, or thinks it is useful etc.) to the
background.
As for second language acquisition, behaviorism was used extensively for instance in
the audio-lingual approach, which today might already seem an old-fashioned way of
language teaching to most of the teachers. In this sense, imitation and habit formation are
applied in the form of repetition drills, which means that students have to imitate and repeat
several times the sentences and phrases that they hear from the teacher, or they have to
memorize whole conversations or passages from the book. An example for a drill is that the
teacher says Suzy likes chocolate., and the whole class together has to repeat the whole
sentence together, then the teacher might change one element in the sentence each time:
Suzy hates chocolate., They hate chocolate., They hate ice-cream., They want icecream. etc. This approach lacked creativity both from the side of the teacher and from the
learner and proved to be boring and not sufficient and up-to-date enough.
However, bilingual children are a great example for the efficiency of the behaviorist
approach in the field of second language acquisition, since at an early age, in the appropriate
circumstances they can acquire their second language the same way as their first language,
naturally, by imitation and habit formation, without thinking about grammar rules, which
leads to a more fluent and native-like language use.

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Sources:

Lightbrown, Patsy. M. and Spada, Nina. 2000. How Languages are Learned: 2nd
Edition. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Brewster, Jean. and Ellis, Gail with Girard, Denis. 2002. The Primary Teachers
Guide: New Edition. Penguin English Guides. Penguin English

Demirezen, Mehmet, Dr. 1988. Behaviorist Theory and Language Learning

http://www.egitimdergisi.hacettepe.edu.tr/19883MEHMET%20DEM
%C4%B0REZEN.pdf

Naik, Payal. Behaviorism as a Theory of Personality: A Critical Look, Northwestern

University
http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/naik.html