Chapter 4

Human Learning

DR. HAYA ALDAWSARI

 Introduction

In this chapter, we focus specifically on cognitive processes by

examining the general nature of human learning.
We now focus on how psychologists have defined learning, and we
will look at these theories through the eyes of four psychologists,
two representing a behavioral viewpoint ("Pavlov and Skinner), one
representing a cognitive stance (Ausuhef), and one that represents a
constructivist school of thought (Rogers).
The four positions should illustrate not only some of the history of
learning theory, but also the diverse perspectives that form the
foundations of varying language teaching approaches and methods.
 Learning Theories

Learning theories: are an organized set of principles explaining

how individuals acquire, retain, and recall knowledge.
The principles of the theories can be used as guidelines to
help select instructional tools, techniques and strategies that
promote learning.
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Learning Theories:
➢ Behaviorism (Pavlov and Skinner)
➢ Meaningful Learning Theory (Ausubel)
➢ Humanistic Psychology (Roger)
 What Is Behaviorism?
o Behaviors can be measured, trained, and changed.
o Behaviorists believe a person’s environment determines their
behavior, that our responses to environmental stimuli shape
our behaviors.
o Learning is nothing more than the acquisition of a new
behavior based on environmental conditions.

Two Kinds of Conditioning:

1. Pavlov ‘s Classical 2. Skinner ‘s Operant

Conditioning Conditioning
 1. Pavlov ‘s Classical Conditioning
According to Pavlov, the learning process consisted of the formation of
associations between stimuli and reflexive responses. That is, certain stimuli
automatically produce or elicit rather specific responses or reflexes, and we
have also observed that sometimes that reflex occurs in response to stimuli
that appear to be indirectly related to the reflex.
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In one of his experiments, Pavlov trained a dog to salivate to the tone of a
bell through a procedure that has come to be labeled Classical Conditioning.
He used the salivation response to the sight or smell of food (an
unconditioned response). He trained a dog, by repeated occurrences, to
associate the sound of a bell with food until the dog acquired a conditioned
response: salivation at the sound of the bell. A previously neutral stimulus
(the sound of the bell) had acquired the power to elicit a response
(salivation) that was originally elicited by another stimulus (the smell of
meat).
 2. Skinner ‘s Operant Conditioning

o According to Skinner, The Classical Conditioning of Pavlov was a

highly specialized form of learning utilized mainly by animals and
playing little part in human conditioning because it was concerned
with respondent behavior—that is, behavior that is elicited by a
preceding stimulus.
o Skinner’s Operant Conditioning attempted to account for most of
human learning and behavior. Operant behavior is behavior in
which one "operates" on the environment.
o In this model, the importance of stimuli is deemphasized. Instead
of being concerned about the stimulus, we should be concerned
about the consequences — the stimuli or events that follow the
response.
 2. Skinner ‘s Operant Conditioning
o According to Skinner, the events or stimuli—the reinforcers—that
follow a response and that tend to strengthen behavior constitute a
powerful force in the control of human behavior.
o Reinforcers are far stronger aspects of learning than is mere
association of a prior stimulus with a following response, as in the
Classical Conditioning model.
o If we wish to control behavior and to teach someone something, we
should attend carefully to reinforcers.
o The popular Audiolingual Method was a prime example of Skinner's
impact on American language teaching practices.
 What Is Behaviorism?
Behaviorism in the classroom:
• Drilling
• Repetitive practice
• Verbal Reinforcement (saying “good job”)
• Giving weekly quizzes/tests
• Using positive/negative reinforcement to encourage and reward students
for good behavior and to punish bad behavior.
Criticism towards Behaviorism:
➢ Behaviorism does not prepare the learner for problem solving or creative
thinking.
➢ Learners do what they are told and do not take the initiative to change or
improve things.
➢ The learner is only prepared for recalling of basic facts, automatic
responses or performing tasks.
 What Is Ausubel’s Meaningful Learning Theory?
Meaningful Learning: According to David Ausubel, to learn meaningfully, individuals must
relate new knowledge to relevant concepts they already know.
The cognitive theory of learning is best understood by contrasting rote learning and
meaningful learning.
Rote learning: involves the mental storage of items having little or no association with
existing knowledge. As a result, this does not allow for the establishment of [meaningful]
relationships.
Meaningful learning, or subsumption, may be described as a process of relating new
material to relevant established items in cognitive structure.
If we think of cognitive structure as a system of building blocks, then rote learning is the
process of acquiring isolated blocks with no particular function in the building of a structure
and no relationship to other blocks. Meaningful learning is the process whereby blocks
become an integral part of already established categories or systematic clusters of blocks.
Any learning situation can be meaningful if:
learners have a meaningful learning set—that is, have a habit of relating the new
learning task to what they already know—and
the learning task itself is potentially meaningful to the learners—that is, relatable to
the learners' knowledge.
 Why Is It Important to Distinguish between Rote and
Meaningful Learning?

o The importance of the distinction between rote and meaningful

learning becomes clear when we consider the relative efficiency of
the two kinds of learning in terms of retention, or long-term
memory.
o A meaningfully learned, subsumed item has far greater potential for
retention. The more other facts a fact is associated with in the mind,
the more we are likely to remember it.
o The "secret of good memory" is thus the secret of forming diverse
and multiple associations with every fact we care to retain.
 Ausubel’s Meaningful Learning Theory

Cognitivism in the classroom:

• Planning curriculum based on what students have already known and
what they should learn.
• Giving problem-solving scenarios and real-life contexts for learning.
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• Creating interesting and motivating lesson that engage students.
• Integrating visual, audio, and giving examples in lessons (Examples:
PowerPoint, songs, videos, websites).
 What Is Roger’s Humanistic Psychology?
o Rogers’s Humanistic Psychology has more of an affective focus
than a cognitive one, so it falls into the perspective of a
constructivist view of learning.
o Certainly, Rogers and Vygotsky share some views in common in
their highlighting of the social and interactive nature of learning.
o Rogers carefully analyzed human behavior in general, including the
learning process, by means of the presentation of 19 formal
principles of human behavior.
o His formal principles focused on the development of an individual's
self-concept and of his or her personal sense of reality, those
internal forces that cause a person to act.
 What Is Roger’s Humanistic Psychology?
o Rogers's position has important implications for education. His
focus is away from "teaching" and toward "learning.
o Learning how to learn is more important than being taught
something from the "superior" vantage point of a teacher who
decides what shall be taught.
o According to Rogers, what is needed is for teachers to become
facilitators of learning through the establishment of
interpersonal relationships with learners.
o We can see in Rogers’s humanism quite a departure from the
scientific analysis of Skinnerian psychology and even from
Ausubel’s rationalistic theory.
The Differences between Theories
 Types of Learning
o Theories of learning of course do not capture all of the
possible elements of general principles of human learning.
o In addition to the learning theories just considered are various
taxonomies (classifications) of types of human learning and
other mental processes universal to all.
o The educational psychologist Robert Gagne (1965), for
example, demonstrated the importance of identifying a number
of types of learning that all human beings use.
o Types of learning vary according to the context and subject
matter to be learned, but a complex task such as language
learning involves every one of Gagne's types of learning—from
simple signal learning to problem solving.
Types of Learning
 Types of Learning: 1- Signal Learning
1. Signal Learning:
The individual learns to make a general response (salivation) to a signal (food or / and
bell). This is the classical conditioned response of Pavlov.
Example:
• An infant smiles at the sight of his mother.
• First, a child is shown a rabbit. Next, as the child reaches for the rabbit, a sudden
loud sound is produced behind the child, which scares the child and makes him cry.
Now, each time the rabbit is brought close to the child, the child shows fear.
• Implication on SLA: Signal learning in general occurs in the total language process:
human beings make a general response of some kind (emotional, cognitive, verbal, or
nonverbal) to language.

Signal Stimulus or Response

Conditioned Stimulus
Types of Learning: 2- Stimulus-Response Learning
• The learner acquires a precise response (crying) to a discriminated stimulus (getting a
cuddle).
• What is learned is a connection between a stimulus and a response or, in Skinnerian
terms, a discriminated operant or instrumental response (crying). The learner is
learning to make a precise movement of muscle in response to specific stimulus.
Example:
• A child says papa at the sight of his father.
• Another example of this is learning to ride a bike! First, the child learns how it feels to
ride a bike with training wheels. Next, the child gets help from Mom or Dad. This parent
behavior is referred to as “shaping”. The child begins to discriminate in regard to
balance, and progressively differentiates between behavior that allows him to stay
upright or behavior that causes him to fall down. Staying upright + Falling down
(discriminated stimulus). Finally, the child understands what is “correct” or “incorrect”
muscular behavior and is able to begin riding the bike with ease.
Types of Learning: 2- Stimulus-Response Learning

Implications on SLA:
• Stimulus-response learning is evident in the acquisition of the
sound system of a foreign language in which, through a
process of conditioning and trial and error, the learner makes
closer and closer approximations to native like pronunciation.
• Simple lexical items are, in one sense, acquired by stimulus-
response connections; in another sense they are related to
higher order types of learning.
Types of Learning: 3- Chaining
o What is acquired is a chain of two or more
stimulus-response connections. The conditions
for such learning have also been described by
Skinner.
o This is a more advanced form of learning in
which the learner develops the ability to connect
2 or more previously learned stimulus-response
bonds into a linked sequence.
• This is the connection of the individual stimulus
and response in a longer sequence of stimuli and
responses.
• It is the process whereby most complex
psychomotor skills are learned (e.g. riding a
bicycle or playing the piano).
Implications on SLA:
Chaining is evident in the acquisition of
phonological sequences and syntactic patterns
(the stringing together of several responses).
 Types of Learning: 4-Verbal Association

• Verbal association is the learning of chains that are verbal. This is a sub-variety of
chaining that occurs when the stimuli and responses in chain learning consist of
words.
• Basically, the conditions resemble those for other (motor) chains.
• However, the presence of language in the human being makes this a special type
of chaining because internal links may be selected from the individual’s previously
learned repertoire of language.
Example:
o Naming - the simplest type of verbal association.
o A child learns the English equivalent of Arabic words.
Implication on SLA:
The fourth type of learning involves Gagne's distinction between verbal and
nonverbal chains, and is not really therefore a separate type of language learning.
 Types of Learning: 5- Multiple Discrimination

• The individual learns to make a number of different identifying

responses to many different stimuli, which may resemble each
other in physical appearance to a greater or lesser degree.
• Here the learner acquires the ability to distinguish 2 sets of
stimuli or situations so as to make the response appropriate to
each member of the set. For example, the child learns to
distinguish between his mother and his aunt.
• Multiple discrimination learning leads to perceptual difference.
• It is often concerned with distinctive features.
• Used early in life distinguishing the letters of the alphabet.
• Later, this moves into multiple-discrimination.
• Although learning of each stimulus-response connection is a
simple occurrence, the connections tend to interfere with one
another. For example, a child may confuse a “b” as a “d”.
 Types of Learning: 5- Multiple Discrimination

Example:
o The ability to distinguish between the parts of ones’ environment.
o Babies learn at an early age to discriminate between colors,
shapes, and sizes.
Implication on SLA:
• Multiple discriminations are necessary particularly in L2 learning
where, for example:
• A word has to take on several meanings.
• A rule in the native language is reshaped to fit a second language
context.
 Types of Learning: 6- Concept Learning
• The learner acquires the ability to make a common
response to a class of stimuli even though the
individual members of that class may differ widely
from each other.
• The learner acquires the ability to respond to stimuli
that a class of objects or events share in common.
Here generalization within classes and
discrimination between classes are learned by
identifying abstract characteristics like color, shape,
position, etc.
• Some concepts can be learned by definition.
• But concept learning is usually more effective, and is
retained (remembered) longer, if it is done with
examples and non-examples.
Example:
Being able to classify and respond to the class as a
whole. For example, the child learns the concept of
birds, and he distinguishes birds from mammals.
Types of Learning: 6- Concept Learning

Implication on SLA:
• Concept learning includes the notion that:
• language and cognition are inextricably interrelated,
• also that rules themselves—rules of syntax, rules of
conversation—are linguistic concepts that have to be
acquired.
 Types of Learning: 7- Principle Learning

• In simplest terms, a principle is a chain of two or more concepts.

• It functions to organize behavior and experience.
• Principle learning is an inferred capability that enables the individual to
respond to a class of stimulus situations with a class of performances.
• It involves acquiring knowledge and understanding of a relationship between
concepts.
Examples:
Principle / Rule: (2+3, 3+4, 7+5) = (3+2, 4+3, 5+7)
Principle: A child learns the principle that metals expand on heating.
Principle: Round things roll Principle: Chocolate melts
 Types of Learning: 7- Principle Learning

Implication on SLA:
• Principle learning is the extension of concept learning to the
formation of a linguistic system, in which rules are not isolated
in rote memory, but conjoined and subsumed in a total system.
 Types of Learning: 8-Problem Solving

• Problem solving is a kind of learning that requires the internal events

usually referred to as "thinking."
• Previously acquired concepts and principles are combined in a
conscious focus on an unresolved or ambiguous set of events.
• It is not just an application of previously learned rules to achieve some
goal, but it also yields (and leads to) new learning.
• It is the highest stage in the hierarchy of the learning process.

Steps followed by the learner to solve problems:

1. Presentation of the problem
2. Defines the problem
3. Formulates hypotheses
4. Verification of his hypothesis or successive hypotheses until he
finds the solution.
 Types of Learning: 8- Problem Solving
Implication on SLA:
• Finally, problem solving is clearly evident in L2 learning as the
learner is continually faced with sets of events that are truly
problems to be solved.
• Solutions to the problems involve the creative interaction of all
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eight types of learning as the learner sifts and weighs previous
information and knowledge in order to correctly determine:
• the meaning of a word,
• the interpretation of an utterance,
• the rule that governs a common class of linguistic items,
• a conversationally appropriate response.
 Types of Learning

• Since all types of learning are relevant to L2 learning, the implication

is that:
• certain lower level aspects of second language learning may be
more adequately treated by behavioristic approaches and methods,
• while certain higher level aspects of second language types of
learning are more effectively taught by methods derived from a
cognitive approach to learning.
 Gagne (1965) Identified 8 Types of Learning
More to Cognitive &
Problem Solving Constructivist aspects

Principle Learning

More to Behavioral Concept Learning

aspects Incre
Multiple Discrimination
Comp
Verbal Association

Chaining (Psychomotor connection learning)

Stimulus - Response Learning

Signal Learning
Transfer, Interference, & Overgeneralizations
• Transfer: is a general term describing the carryover of previous
performance or knowledge to subsequent learning.
➢ Positive transfer occurs when the prior knowledge benefits
the learning task.
➢ Negative transfer occurs when previous performance
disrupts the performance of a second task.
• Interference: is the interfering effects of the native language on
the target (the second) language.
• Overgeneralization: is generalizing a particular rule or item in
the second language-irrespective of the native language—
beyond legitimate bounds.
Transfer, Interference, & Overgeneralizations
 Language Teaching Methods
• The Audio-lingual method is inspired by behavioristic
principles.
• Community Language Learning is inspired by Carl
Rogers‟s humanistic theories.
Characteristics of the Audio Lingual Method ALM
New material is presented in dialog form.
There is dependence on mimicry, memorization of set phrases, and
overlearning. (Overlearning: is a pedagogical concept according to which newly
acquired skills should be practiced well beyond the point of initial mastery,
leading to automaticity.)
Structures are sequenced by means of contrastive analysis and taught one at a
time.
Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills.
There is little or no grammatical explanation.
Vocabulary is strictly limited and learned in context.
There is much use of tapes, language labs, and visual aids.
Great importance is attached to pronunciation.
Very little use of the mother tongue by teachers is permitted.
Successful responses are immediately reinforced.
There is a great effort to get students to produce error-free utterances.
 Advantages and Criticism of the ALM
Criticism of the ALM
Advantages of the ALM
• The popularity of the ALM did not
• The ALM was firmly rooted in
last forever.
respectable theoretical
• Due to its ultimate failure to teach
perspectives at the time.
long-term communicative
• Materials were carefully
proficiency, its popularity waned.
prepared, tested, and circulated
• Later, we discovered that:
to educational institutions.
• Language was not really acquired
• "Success" could be more
through a process of habit
overtly experienced by
formation and overlearning,
students as they practiced their
• Errors were not necessarily to be
dialogs in off-hours.
avoided at all costs.
 Community Language Learning (CLL)
• In his "Counseling-Learning" model of education, Charles Curran (1972) was
inspired by Carl Rogers’s view of education in which students and teacher
join together to facilitate learning in a context of valuing and prizing each
individual in the group.
• In such a surrounding:
• Each person lowers the defenses that prevent open, interpersonal
communication.
• The anxiety caused by the educational context is lessened by means of the
supportive community.
• As the learners gain more and more familiarity with the foreign language,
more and more direct communication can take place, with the counselor
providing less and less direct translation and information, until after many
sessions, even months or years later, the learner achieves fluency in the
spoken language. The learner has at that point become independent.
 Advantages of CLL
As teachers, we should:
• lower learners' anxiety,
• create as much of a supportive group in our classrooms as
possible,
• allow students to initiate language,
• and to point learners toward autonomous learning in
preparation for the day when they no longer have the teacher
to guide them.
 Criticism of CLL
The counselor-teacher can become too nondirective. Students usually need direction,
especially in the first stages, and the teacher needs to have a balance of supportiveness
and assertiveness providing direction.
While some intense inductive struggle is a necessary component of second language
learning, the initial difficult days and weeks of floundering in ignorance in CLL could be
reduced by more directed, deductive learning: by being told. Perhaps only later, when
the learner has moved to more independence, is an inductive strategy really successful.
The success of CLL depends largely on the translation expertise of the teacher; if
subtle aspects of language are mistranslated, there could be a less than effective
understanding of the target language.
Problems in adapting it to a beginners multilingual class.
Problems in adapting it to large classes.
Many have questioned the counseling model on which CLL is based, arguing that a
language class is fundamentally different from a therapy session, and that language
learners cannot be regarded as clients in need of therapy.
They have also warned against teachers taking on a counseling role when they are not
trained for this highly delicate and sensitive profession.
Thank You