Correct Answer - Option 3 : Behaviourist
The behaviourist psychologists developed their theories while carrying out a series of experiments on animals. They observed that rats or birds, for example, could be taught to perform various tasks by encouraging habit-forming.
Skinner suggested that a child imitates the language of its parents or carers. Successful attempts are rewarded because an adult who recognises a word spoken by a child will praise the child and/or give it what it is asking for.
- The linguistic input was key and a model for imitation to be either negatively or positively reinforced.
- Successful utterances are therefore reinforced while unsuccessful ones are forgotten.
- Skinner a theory of language learning should be derived from a general behaviourist learning theory.
- Skinner suggest that, in the case of language, behaviourism implies that a speaker's performance or his/her responses can be traced back to specific stimulus-response relationships. Thus, in a simple behaviourist theory, each utterance follows on some sort of verbal or non-verbal stimulus which exists in the environment, and further, it will be reinforced by the behaviour of others.
- According to Skinner, language behaviour could only be studied through observation of the world around the language user, that is, through observation of external factors.
- One important external factor in the language learning process is the frequency with which a certain utterance is used in the child's environment.
Hence, we can conclude that behaviourist theory of language development suggested that children learn the language as a reaction to their parent's reinforcement.
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Innateness Theory: Noam Chomsky published a criticism of the behaviourist theory in 1957. Chomsky suggest that Children are born with an innate capacity for learning human language.
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Constructivism is a language theory to help the students in constructing something based on their own understanding.
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Cognitive theory of learning sees second language acquisition as a conscious and reasoned thinking process, involving the deliberate use of learning strategies.
