Top 5 Language theories and their Educational implications

Learning refers to the permanent changes, modifications, and adaptations of organisms to their environment. Different factors play a role in education, for example, biological changes, growth, maturation, development, etc.  Teaching and learning activities are based on principles or theories. There are many theories of learning a language experimented on by many scholars who worked in education. For example, behaviorism, mentalism, empiricism, rationalism, etc. They are discussed below:-

Empricim and Rationalism 

3. BEHAVIORISM:- 

This theory is based on human behavior, which is the study of human behavior. It believes that human behavior is learned through continuous process stimuli. It associates with the famous scholar Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner, who made significant contributions to learning. The Russian Psychologist Ivan Pavlov conducted a series of experiments to know how the human or animal learn. He did his experiment upon a dog. He trained the dog to salivate to the bell sound. This stimulus-response (S-R) psychology theory is known as the ‘Classical Conditioning theory’ in teaching and learning. 

Again another American psychologist Edward Thorndike did his experiments on a hungry cat. He rushed a cat into the box and kept a latch or button inside it, and fish outside the box visually. Whenever the cat runs and presses the controller, the box door opens, and the cat eats the fish. Cat made several trials and errors. Finally, it learned to push the latch and come out and have food. He established the ‘selecting and connecting’ trial and error behavior of the cat. It knows as trial and error theory. This theory believes that learning can be done through trial and error. 
John B Watson introduced the behaviorist school of psychology in his article on ‘Psychology as the behaviorist views which establishes behaviorism. So, it is said that Watson founded this school of psychology.  
Another American psychologist B.F Skinner followed the work of Pavlov, Thorndike, and Watson and developed the theory of behaviorism in learning. 

4. MENTALISM THEORY:-

Mentalism is developed against the behaviorism theory. It believes that learning is an inborn process. A prominent linguist Noam Chomsky claims that inherent properties in the child’s mind are called LAD (Language Acquisition Devise. He believes that a child’s mind is not the tabula rasa. He said that LAD is the facility of mind which allows acquiring language. Therefore, mentalism is the process of language learning that beliefs that learning language, creativity, and innovative mind play a vital role. It believes that analysis intuition, application, and perception play an essential role in language learning.

5. STRUCTURALISM THEORY:-

Structuralism was introduced by the famous Swiss Linguist Ferdinand De Saussure, the father of modern linguistics. It is associated with behaviorism theory. It states that language is a collection of habits but not rule-governed. It also believes that child’s mind is tabula rasa at birth, and it is imprinted with the linguistic items from the environment. It assumes that language is primarily speech and written is secondary. So it focuses on speaking and listening rather than reading and writing skills. The objective of structuralism is to develop the competence of the learners. 

6. GENERATIVISM THEORY:-

  It is associated with the mentalism theory of learning. It believes that human beings can generate infinite numbers of sentences through a finite number of grammatical competence. This linguistic school is based on Chomsky’s point of view. It emerges as a reaction to structuralism. According to Chomsky, the grammatical rules should be explicit, and grammar should reflect the creativity of language. So it believes that our language facility is innate and species-specific. 

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