Behaviorism

Behaviorism is a teaching theory which emphasized mostly on stimulus, response and reinforcement. Behaviorism also focuses on the behaviours or the habit that are assumed to be the results of learning, in which it is considered to be shown after the learning takes place. As this theory operates on the principle of ‘stimulus-responses’, it is likely to takes place when both elements occur at about the same time. Stimulus refers to all the sights, sounds, smells and other influences which are receive from the surrounding or environment, while the responses are consists of all the behaviours that results from the association. Since the stimulus is receive from the surrounding, this implied that the stimulus is given by the teacher during the process of teaching and learning. After the stimulus has been given, the responses which are given by the students will appear naturally as this will shows that learning has taken place. All the behaviours that are shown by the students are associated with the stimulus that they receive from their teachers. According to Alberto &Troutman (1999), there are three types of stimuli, namely, eliciting stimuli, consequences, and antecedents (as cited in Fetsco & McClure, 2005). All these stimuli had been identified based on their effects to the responses of the learner’s and it normally happened during the teaching and learning process where the students possessed different behaviours and responses to their teachers.

There are few theories which are related to behaviourism. One of them is the theory by Skinner, the operant conditioning, which involved the experiment with rat. Human and animals are believed to learn in a similar way. According to Skinner (1938), operant conditioning is th...

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...e, after conducting a lesson, the teacher will directly ask the students to reflect back what they understand from the lesson. Generally, it trained them on how to value or appreciate something from their own sight or opinion. However, we need to know that every student will see things in a different manner.

In a nutshell, all the three learning theories play the most crucial roles in teaching and learning as they were being implied in teaching language. On the other hand, there are few theorists who came up with different understanding towards each theories based on their studies or experiment. However, they have their own reasons and evidences that support their arguments towards certain things. Regardless which theory that we think applicable and suitable, it depends on how we adapt to it and apply it to the teaching and learning method.