Effectiveness of using Behaviorist theory on Five-year-old learner

By

Mica D. Pitpit
Researcher

Abstract
Language is part of our lives. It is very necessary on our daily living. So thus,
communication is the key to success. Hence, language acquisition plays a vital role and its
different theory explains it, behaviorism is one of them. Behaviorism emphasizes the role of
environmental factors in influencing behavior, to the near exclusion of innate or inherited
factors. This amounts essentially to a focus on learning. This study aims to determine the
effectiveness of using Behaviorist theory on a five-year-old learner.

Keywords: language acquisition, behaviorist theory(behaviorism), communicative competence

Introduction
Acquiring new knowledge start in home, thus, parents or guardians play a vital role on
the development of a child. As well as the environment in which the learner is shaped. We often
let the child to learn on her/his own but most of the time, we are guiding them to what they will
do. Development is very important, from physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. And
language is very necessary too, because communication is the key. In terms of language
acquisition, there are some basic theories advanced to describe how language is acquired, learnt
and taught. And one of these is the Behaviorism (Behaviorist theory)
 The behaviorist theory believes that “infants learn oral language from other human role
models through a process involving imitation, rewards, and practice. Human role models in an
infant’s environment provide the stimuli and rewards,” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004). When a child
attempts oral language or imitates the sounds or speech patterns they are usually praised and
given affection for their efforts. Thus, praise and affection becomes the rewards. However, the
behaviorist theory is scrutinized for a variety of reasons. If rewards play such a vital component
in language development, what about the parent who is inattentive or not present when the child
attempts speech? If a baby’s language learning is motivated strictly by rewards would the
speech attempts stop merely for lack of rewards (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004)? Other cases against
this theory include “learning the use and meaning of abstract words, evidence of novel forms of
language not modeled by others, and uniformity of language acquisition in humans” (Cooter &
Reutzel, 2004).
The purpose of this study is to see the effectiveness of behaviorist theory in a daily living
of a five-year-old learner. It also aims to know the effect of this theory on the communicative
competence of the child.
Statement of the Problem
This study determined the effectiveness of using Behaviorist theory on Grade five
learner. Specifically, it answered the following.
1. What is the effect of behaviorism environment on the learner?
2. What are the things that hinders the learner from acquiring?

Theoretical Framework
The theory used in this study is the Behaviorist Theory. Behaviorist theory, which is
basically a psychological theory in its essence, founded by J.B. Watson, is actually a theory of
native language learning, advanced in part as a reaction to traditional grammar. The supporters of
this theory are Leonard Bloomfield, O.N. Mowrer, B.F. Skinner, and A.W. Staats. Behaviorism
was advanced in America as a new approach to psychology in the early decades of the 20th-
century by making a particular emphasis on the importance of verbal behavior, and received a
considerable trust from the educational world of 1950s
The major principle of the behaviorist theory rests on the analyses of human behavior in
observable stimulus-response interaction and the association between them. E.L.T. Thorndike
was the first behaviorist to explore the area that learning is the establishment of associations on
particular process of behavior and consequences of that behavior. Basically, "the behaviorist
theory of stimulus-response learning, particularly as developed in the operant conditioning model
of Skinner, considers all learning to be the establishment of habits as a result of reinforcement
and reward" (Wilga Rivers, 1968, 73). This is very reminiscent of Pavlov's experiment which
indicates that stimulus and response work together. According to this category, the babies obtain
native language habits via varied babblings which resemble the appropriate words repeated by a
person or object near him. Since for his babblings and mutterings he is rewarded, this very
reward reinforces further articulations of the same sort into grouping of syllables and words in a
similar situation. In this way, he goes on emitting sounds, groups of sounds, and as he grows up
he combines the sentences via generalizations and analogy (as in *goed for went, *doed, for did,
so on), which in some complicated cases, condition him to commit errors by articulating in
permissible structures in speech. By the age of five or six, or babblings and mutterings grow into
socialized speech but little by little they are internalized as implicit speech, and thus many of
their utterances become indistinguishable from the adults. This, then, obviously, means that
behaviorist theory is a theory of stimulus-response psychology.
Methodology
This action research utilized the experimental design since its main purpose was to
determine the effectiveness of using Behaviorist theory and its possible effect to communicative
competence of five-year-old learner.
References;

McLeod, S. A. (2017, February 05). Behaviorist approach. Simply Psychology.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/behaviorism.html

https://www.google.com/Behaviorist_theory_on_language_acquisition.pdf