How We Learn Language?

Are we born with the capacity to speak a language? Or do we learn exclusively through imitation? This is a quick guide to three key theories

Behaviourism

Sees language as the product of our interaction with our environment. We learn it  like any other skill through imitation and practice. Important aspects of the theory are: reinforcement (positive and negative), repetition, small sequenced tasks and consistency. 


Many educational policies are based on social interactionism - a more nuanced variant of behaviourist theory. Social interactionism focuses on the relationship between the learner, his/her environment and the context under which learning occurs.


Key Theorist: BF Skinner


Key term: operant conditioning: Put crudely, rewiring the brain to offer reward for successful language acquisition. Skinner saw this as a kind of mechanical process with four elements: motivating operations, discriminative stimuli, response, and reinforcing stimuli.


Strengths: 

  • some language elements -  pronunciation, vocabulary can be acquired/improved by drills for example. 
  • practice and repetition clearly have a role in the mastery of key language skills.

 

Weakness: 

  • Does not explain why without any training most young children will learn a language without problem. Environment will only determine which language will be learned.
  • Behaviourism does underplays variety of outcomes that its methods will produce.

Cognitive Theory

Focuses on the importance of conceptual understanding to language development. A concept has to be understood before a human being can acquire a language form to explain the concept. A child must have an understanding of time time to use the future tense.


Key Theorist: Jean Piaget

Key term: assimilation and accommodation


Strengths: Idea that learning can only be effective in tiered stages central self-evident. Language learning is generally built around the idea of levels

Weakness: Underplays the role of innate ability or potential and genetic inheritance. Later figures like Chomsky point to an 

Nativist Theory

The capacity for language is virtually identical across all humans Noam Chomsky


Chomsky rejected the behaviourist/social interactionist approach. He argued that there was an innate 'language instinct' which facilitates rapid language learning argued called transformational grammar. This maintained that:

  • We have an intuitive understanding of 'universal grammar' that allows us to learn any language. 
  • Structure and syntax can predict the words in a sentence. 
  • The natural ability to learn a language is known as Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Key Theorist: Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker

Key term: Language Acquisition Device (LAD)


Strengths: Explains the universality of language and links to wider scientific ideas about evolution

Weakness: does not identify how the LAD works or it its precise evolutionary history. Some argue that it downplays the importance of environment in learning (the counter argument has been put forward by Steven Pinker - see here




Relational frame theoriesRelational frame theories focus on the psychological point of view of human language and cognition. The theory tries to explain features of cognition and language by specifying a set of related behaviour principles.


Statistical learning and ChunkingSuggests that language acquisition is based on general learning mechanisms.