Page 21 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

The Behaviourist Perspective

ond language and is similar to the way a child learns the first language, and
the conscious learned system, which results from classroom instruction. The
model is based on five hypotheses:

1. The acquisition-learning hypothesis. Acquisition occurs subconsciously,
without formal attention to form and rule learning while learning oc-
curs as the result of conscious study of the formal properties of a lan-
guageandisdirectlyrelatedto classroominstruction.Appliedto teach-
ing practice, this idea suggests that the best way to learn a language
wouldbethrough naturalcommunication wherelearnersareexpected
to fulfil some real purposes, for example, a learner asking the teacher if
she or he may go to the toilet or asking a school friend to lend him or
her a pencil-sharpener. This also means that there are clear benefits in
maximising learners’ exposure to L2.
2. The monitor hypothesis. The learnt system plays the role of the monitor
of the acquired systems, in other words, it edits the acquired knowl-
edge by making changes and refining it according to the rules of the
language learnt. Krashen (1982) suggests three types of learners with
respect to how much they use the monitor system. First are learners
who attempt to monitor all the time, constantly checking the rules in
their mind which may result in too much self-correction and reluctance
to speak freely. Contrary to these learners, ‘under-users’ of the monitor
system rely entirely on the acquired system and are not influenced by
error-correction. Finally, ‘optimal-users’ of the monitor system use the
‘monitor’ in a balanced way so that it does not interfere with commu-
nication.
3. The natural order hypothesis. Learners acquire grammatical structures
in a predictable order, certain structures are acquired early in the learn-
ing process, while others are more difficult to acquire. Lightbown and
Spada (2013) point out that some structures, such as the rule of adding
-s to verbs in third person singular, are easy to state and understand but
difficult to acquire since even advanced learners fail to apply this rule
in free conversation.
4. The input hypothesis. Language acquisition occurs when the input is a
little beyond the learner’s level of competence. However, it is also im-
portant that we provide as much comprehensible input as possible. In
other words, we acquire new language only when we are exposed to
language that is just a little beyond our current level of competence,
but which we nevertheless understand by relying on the context in

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