Behaviorist approach

Behaviorist approach

Ana and me, as future teachers, think that in order our pupils make a complete immersion in the English language they have to talk in English as much as possible. So, the teacher, as the main responsible of the class, has to encourage it. Following Skinner´s theory, teacher could make their pupils learn through positive and negative reinforcement. For instance, in case that a child wants to ask for something, that pupil will have to do it by using English instead of his/her mother tongue. Otherwise, the teacher will pretend not to understand him/her. Once he/she has asked for it in English that pupil will have achieved his/her aim.

As an example, if a child ask if he/she can go to the toilet in his/her mother tongue, the teacher will say “Sorry, I do not understand”, which is a negative reinforcement. But if on the contrary, he /she says “Can I go to the toilet?”, the teacher will say “Yes, you can”. As we can see in this example, when the teacher lets the child going to the toilet this is a kind of positive reinforcement because the child has behaved as he/she was expected to do it. By this way, the pupil will understand that unless he/she talks in English, he /she will not get his/her objective.