Language Learning Theories

Language Learning Theories

JOURNAL 1 : BEHAVIOURISM

How to learn English better?

            Educators often apply variety of theories and rules to ensure the regulations in the classroom will be well organized. One of the popular theories among the educators is behaviorism theory. Behaviourism emphasizes in influencing certain behavior to more preferable and modifies changes in behavior or the way of thinking. This theory can be applied to shape the classroom or to have a better classroom management especially in language teaching. Reinforcement and punishment or rewards are normally used to help in shaping the change of behavior in students.

            In order to help the learners to learn English better and easier, educators need to know the way to attract the learners in teaching and learning process. Since language is really hard to learn and some of learners even take English as a foreign language and not second language, educators need to draw their interest in learning this language. For example, educators can apply behaviorism in the form of reinforcement in the classroom by giving out vocabulary flash cards to the learners who answer the questions correctly. Next, educators also can apply punishment such as do extra exercises on certain topics or re-take the test if the learners failed their test.

            Speaking session is one of the important elements in language learning. Learners are encouraged to learn a language by speaking in order to communicate orally. Educators need to teach the learners about the pronunciation of certain words and how to apply the words into sentences. Thus, educators need to aware of the suitability of the environment surrounding to hold a discussion and encourage their learners to speak or read aloud. To encourage them to speak more and become active participators in the speaking session, educators can provide some CDs as a reward for those who can express their thinking well. Furthermore, educators also can organize some games such as tongue twister, hang man or creating words by the front alphabet to have a fully participation from the learners.

`           In conclusion, every language is hard to learn since those languages are not our mother tongue. However, it is not possible to be an expert in English or foreign language if the learners are learning by practicing frequently and get used to it. As a saying goes by, practice make perfect.

JOURNAL 2 (KRASHEN’S LEARNING THEORIES)
THE ACQUISITION LEARNING HYPOTHESIS

                Krashen discovered that the competence of second language can be developed by language acquisition. Acquisition learning hypothesis consists of two independent systems, the acquired system and the learned system, that highly influence second language learning abilities. Acquired system can be seen when the children learn or acquire their native language naturally in subconscious situation. Acquisition learning theories focus in communication approach to obtain high competency in language learning. Natural communication in daily life and informal situation is a meaningful interaction between the children and the environment surrounding. Thus, children will learn their utterances about words and vocabulary of their knowledge from their surroundings.

            After acquisition process, children will undergo the learned system whereby the children need to involve in formal learning and comprise a conscious process. In this stage, the children begin to use grammatical rules and apply the learned language in formal situation. The children will have instructors to guide them to apply the knowledge in the correct way. In the other words, the children gained their knowledge about language and its grammatical rules are considered as the product of formal learning about that certain language. In learned system, the children begin to identify the grammatical errors and build the correct form of words.

            Through this learning method introduced by Krashen, the ability of learning and developing second language can be more effective. According to this theory, communication or oral speaking is the most optimum way to learn language. Thus, educators are encourage to apply this learning theory into their teaching by giving some oral practices, motivation ,communicate with their students in English and encourage their students to express their thought in English. By this method, children can learn more words and be able to speak fluently as the time goes by. Through this theory, children are acquired the language instead of just learning the language.

            In conclusion, acquisition is a learning process whereby interesting and meaningful interaction in targeted language is required. Every child will undergo this process and slowly integrate to learning process. Then, they will learn about the language more deeper by understanding the grammatical rules in their language.

JOURNAL 3 (Interactionism)

Interactionists claim the importance of interaction role in second language acquisition. Long in 1997 mentioned about the importance of conversational interaction in facilitating language acquisition by connecting the learners’ internal capacities, attention in a productive way. Vygotsky and Krashen can be categorized as the main Interactionist based on their views towards the approaches such as work in group or collaboration and interact with others during second language learning process. ‘Every function in the children’s culture development appears twice: first, on social level and later, on the individual level…inside the child’ (Vygotsky, 1978).

            Vygotsky views the social interaction as the main role in language learning process and propose the Zone of Proximal Development. His view supported by Krashen’s stance by saying that ‘Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language’ (Krashen, 1981). I fully agree that the social interaction can facilitate language learning because conversational learning provided learners with daily and necessary comprehensive linguistic input. In addition, through interaction, the learners can give output through speaking to immerse themselves well in using second language. Therefore, besides reading and writing, the learners of second language need to use their sensory of hearing while give feedback or response to others by stating out their opinion in order to fulfill two ways interaction in second language.

            The theory of the Zone of Proximal Development that elaborates more on interactionism can be applied in language teaching in the class. In my opinion, students need to take part in group work and interact with each other to generate more ideas while communicate in targeted language. Next, the students also facilitate language acquisition by sharing some information or solving crossword puzzles in the form of group. Moreover, I think texting or communicate with native speaker of the second language can boost my understanding to use certain phrases or words correctly. As I asked about certain phrases in Japanese language to a Japanese, he is able to explain well and I can understand the usage of the words easily.

                In conclusion, Interactionists’ views can facilitate language learning effectively as they interact with people around them by using targeted second language. For me, social interaction that consists of giving and receiving information not only generate more ideas but also enrich the vocabulary and fluency of second language. In the other words, language proficiency can be more effective by interaction and communication with the surrounding.

JOURNAL 4 (Motivation)

            Motivation can be identified as source of force or desire to complete certain tasks. From my opinion, motivation is the early stage for learners to do or learning something new. Based on Dornyei model, he claimed motivation to 3 stages which is preactional stage, actional stage and postactional stage. Those three stages involve different types of motivation. From my point of view, the classification of each type of motivation is logical and important before start work on a task.

            Basically, there are two types of motivation which are intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. I think both of the motivations are equally important to create motivated language learners. Extrinsic motivation occurs when the language learners wish to perform a behavior to earn reward and avoid punishment by taking part in competition or study hard to get good grades. Meanwhile, intrinsic motivation can occur when the language learners are interested in learning targeted second language and want to know more for own sake. For the example, language learners will play language games such as puzzle and scrabble to know more vocabularies.

            Moreover, there are many the theories that can illustrate the importance and the function of motivation towards language learners. The level of self-efficacy in second language learners is very important. They need prior experience and social support to increase the level of self-efficacy. When the learners have self-efficacy in learning second language, they can adapt the targeted language better. Self-efficacy is one’s belief or self confidence in accomplishing tasks. However, I think students should have positive outcome expectations and logical idea in performing the tasks because the tasks cannot be accomplish if the learners only have high self-efficacy.

            Furthermore, goal theory is another type of motivation that can lead the second language learners to learn language effectively. Goal theory acts as the outcome expectation so learners need to motivate themselves to reach the goal by variety of efforts and approaches. For the example, when students plan to discover the concept of English rules, subject and verb agreement, they need to pay their effort in reading Grammar book, participate in discussion and doing the exercises given by their teachers.

            In my opinion, self determination theory is a very interesting theory because it can be said as partially intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Self determination can be classified in intrinsic when the students learn to know and or to accomplish tasks. Meanwhile, self determination also can be said as extrinsic motivation when the students learn for competence. The importance of self determination in language learning can be seen when learners know what and why they need to learn. Learners themselves control their learning progress and I think this kind of motivation can guide language learning process become more meaningful even though sometimes the learners need to learn second language under pressure to achieve the goal or the objective targeted.

 JOURNAL 5 (Opinion on poster presentation)

            For Language Learning Theories course, we have been assigned for a poster presentation on motivation as our last assignment. First of all, we discovered certain method to complete the poster presentation which is by improving our skills in searching for the right information while reading and understanding all the articles. We were grouping into 3 person each group. Each of us agreed that we need to read at least three articles from the right sources.

            When my group members and I sit together and discuss about our assignment, we will write the date and the topic that we discussed as an evidence and note that we can refer back later on. For our first meeting, we assigned position for each of us in the group for making the tasks distribution easier. Poster presentation is a form of group work so we all know the important of cooperation between the members to complete our task. Thus, after we found some important point and a bit hard to figure out by ourselves, we will discuss together either by using social media or discuss face to face. Moreover, we also had a great time in completing the poster together after gathering the important points that we want to explain.

Poster presentation learning style enables the cooperation between team members to work on something together. Then, each of us needs to understand the concept that we need to present to the crowd and not just understand our own part. Understanding and information adapting can grow better when we explained about it to others. Through this presentation style, we gained a lot of skills such as skimming and information searching skills. We need to identify the main points for our topics and put them into the poster. Thus, we learned organize skills to organize our information neatly to fit them in the poster. Next, we gained communication skills when we make discussion among our group members and explain our views to others.

For me, when I searched articles that related to motivation, I will easily confuse and mess up with the information because there are too many ways of thinking for the same topic by the critical thinkers. I face difficulty when I need to differentiate the right definition of the theory based on the majority thinkers and draw a conclusion for that certain theory. Next, I will be a bit frustrated when I unable to have discussion with my team members because they have other activities to do. However, I like the way we had our discussion because we were able to give ideas while accepting other’s opinion. In completing the poster, we applied critical and creative thinking well. For critical thinking, we analyze and categorize the information in the simplest way to explain in the poster and we present our poster with creative design and information organization structure.

In conclusion, I found poster presentation learning style is quite interesting and it is a student-centered learning. Students need to find information on their own and deliver it to the crowd. However I think poster presentation has a weakness. Others students which is the audience are hard to focus on the presenters because they unable to see the information well as the size of the poster are small.