The document discusses several theories of learning including: - Rita Smilkstein's 6 stages of learning: motivation, beginning practice, advanced practice, skillfulness, refinement, and mastery. - Classical and operant conditioning, including the different types of stimuli, reinforcement, and schedules of reinforcement. - Meaningful learning as advanced by David Ausubel which emphasizes constructing knowledge rather than transmitting it. - The humanistic approach of Carl Rogers which emphasizes unconditional positive regard and Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

1. Nature of Learning; Language Teaching & Learning;
Theories of Learning

3. Learning:
acquiring of knowledge of a
subject or skill by study,
experience, or instruction
a relatively permanent change
in a behavioral tendency
the result of reinforced
practice

4. Summary of How People Learn:
(Rita Smilkstein)
Stage1: MOTIVATION/
Responding to stimulus in the
environment: watching,
observing, having a need or an
interest in learning a particular
skill or concept, being curious

5. Stage 2: BEGINNING
PRACTICE/Doing it: practicing;
trying & making mistakes;
learning from mistakes; asking
questions; consulting others;
understanding the basics; taking
lessons; achieving some
success

6. Stage 3: ADVANCED
PRACTICE/Increasing in skill
and confidence: gaining some
control; reading; becoming
encouraged; experimenting;
trying new ways; achieving more
success; beginning to share skill
with others

7. Stage4: SKILLFULNESS/
Becoming creative: more
practicing, doing it one's own
way, feeling good about oneself,
receiving positive
reinforcement, sharing
knowledge with other, achieving
more success, increasing in self-
confidence

8. Stage 5: REFINEMENT/Making
further improvement: learning
new methods, skill becoming
second nature, continuing to
develop skill, becoming different
from anyone else, becoming
creative, receiving validation
from others, forming habits,
teaching others

9. Stage 6: MASTERY/Applying
skills in broader ways: taking on
greater challenges, teaching,
continuing to improve or else
dropping the skill, going to
higher levels that feed other
interests, getting better and
better

10. Simple Forms:
1. Habituation
- the tendency to become
familiar with a stimulus after
repeated exposure to it

11. 2. Sensitization
- the increase that occurs in
an organism’s
responsiveness to stimuli
following an especially
intense or irritating stimulus

12. Influential Factors:
1. Age
Age-related illnesses that
involve a deterioration of
mental functioning can
severely reduce a person’s
ability to learn.

13. 2. Motivation
Learning is usually most
efficient and rapid when the
learner is motivated and
attentive.

14. 3. Prior Experience
How well a person learns a
new task may depend
heavily on the person’s
previous experience with
similar tasks.

15. 4. Intelligence
People differ individually in
their level of intelligence,
and thus in their ability to
learn and understand.

16. 5. Learning Disorders
A variety of disorders can
interfere with a person’s
ability to learn new skills
and behaviors.

18. Nature of Language Learning:
Learners are not ‘empty
vessels’ ready to be filled
with the teacher’s
knowledge.

19. Learning is more effective
when the learners are
involved in the process.

20. Nature of Language Teaching:
The teacher’s job is to help
learners to learn effectively,
or to facilitate learning.

21. The best teachers have a
range of techniques
available to them.

22. Teachers make decisions on
what techniques to use
based from the following
questions:
 Who are the learners?
 What are their needs?
 What are their expectations?
 What material and resources
are available?

23. Approaches to Language
Learning & Teaching:
1. Grammar-translation Method
It relies on the teacher having
a fairly expert command of
both the mother tongue of the
students and of the target
language.

24. 2. Audio-lingual Approach
The benefits of repetition are
still intuitively recognised by
many teachers today, and
this element of the approach
continues in many
classrooms.

25. 3. Functional Approach
It refers to the defining of the
communicative functions that
learners are likely to want to
engage in (making requests,
agreeing, disagreeing,
ordering a coffee and so on).

26. 4. Natural Approach
Associated to Stephen
Krashen, it attempts to
recreate as closely as
possible the context in which
infants learn their first
language.

28. Classical Conditioning:
developed by a Russian
physiologist, Ivan Pavlov
(1849-1936)
association is the key
element

29. Types of Stimulus & Response:

30. Three Phenomena in Classical
Conditioning:
1. Generalization – occurs
when similar stimuli to a CS
produce the CR.
2. Discrimination – refers to
the ability to differentiate
between similar stimuli

31. 3. Extinction – process of
unlearning a learned
response because of the
removal of the original
source of learning.

32. For better understanding, watch this:

33. Operant Conditioning:
pioneered by Thorndike
a form of learning in which
the consequences of
behaviour lead to changes
in the probability that the
behaviour will occur

34. Types of Reinforcement &
Punishment:

35. For better understanding, watch this:

36. Schedule of Reinforcement:
1. Fixed-ratio Schedule – a
behavior is reinforced
after a set number of
responses have occurred

37. 2. Variable-ratio Schedule
Fixed – the number of
responses needed to gain
the reinforcement is not
constant

38. 3. Fixed-interval Schedule – a
behavior will be reinforced
after a certain period of
time. No matter how often it
occurs, the behavior will
not be reinforced until the
time is up

39. 4. Variable-internal Schedule
– also based on time
passing but the time period
keeps changing

40. Dangers of Punishment:
 Punishment can be abusive.
 Punishment may create a
new problem, which is
aggression.

41. Meaningful Learning:
advanced by David Ausubel
learned knowledge is fully
under-stood by an individual
and that the individual knows
how that specific fact relates
to other stored facts

42. Ideas about Meaningful
Learning Experience:
occurs when learners
actively interpret their
experience using internal,
cognitive operations
requires that teachers
change their role from sage
to guide

43. the teacher’s role becomes
one of stimulating and
supporting activities that
engage learners in thinking
teachers must also be
comfortable that this
thinking may transcend
their own insights

44. requires knowledge to be
constructed by the learner,
not transmitted from the
teacher to the student
(Jonassen, et al., 1999)

45. Experiencing Meaningful
Learning:

46. Humanistic Approach:
Carl Rogers
- believed that people
needed unconditional
positive regard

47. Abraham Maslow
- people have a variety of
needs that differ in
immediacy and which need
satisfying at different times

48. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

49. Five Basic Objectives of
Humanistic Approach:
1. Promote positive self-
direction and independence
(development of the
regulatory system);

50. 2. Develop the ability to take
responsibility for what is
learned (regulatory and
affective systems);

51. 3. Develop creativity
(divergent thinking aspect
of cognition);
4. Curiosity (exploratory
behavior, a function of
imbalance or dissonance in
any of the systems); and

52. 5. An interest in the arts
(primarily to develop the
affective/emotional
system).