School Based Observation English Language

According to the interview that I had carried out during my School-Based Experience, Madam Annette mentioned three important points which can be linked to the English Language Teaching Methodology, which are language acquisition learning, behaviourism and total physical response method. Language acquisition is one of the most impressive and fascinating aspects of human development (Lightbrown &Spada, 2013). Every child has the capacity to acquire language. Even though young children are not formally taught language, language acquisition is part of the children’s development in term of physical, social and cognitive. The process of language acquisition occur systematically through the exposure to the language and meaningful communication in

TPR is defined as a method of teaching language by using physical movement to react to verbal input in order to reduce student inhibitions and lower their affective filter ( Asher, 2000). It allows students to react to language without thinking too much. This method can facilitate long term retention of students, and reduces students’ anxiety and stress. TPR emphasizes the importance of having the students to enjoy their experience of learning and to communicate in another language. Students are allowed to speak when they are ready because it is believed that forcing them to speak before then will only create anxiety. In TPR, teacher is the director of all the student’s behaviour while the students act as imitators of her nonverbal model. Students can learn through observing actions as well as by performing the actions themselves. Teacher will know immediately whether the students understand the lesson by observing their actions. Asher believes it is very important that the students feel successful (Larsen-freeman & Anderson, 2011). So, teacher should not introduce the new commands too fast. It is recommended that a teacher presents three commands at a time. After the students feel successful with the first three commands, three more can be taught. Feeling of success and low anxiety will facilitate learning. By using TPR, teacher can train students to be alerted to the language. This is because

The behaviourist theory of learning has its origin in the early twentieth century. Psychologists like Pavlov, Watson and Thorndike believe that it is possible to predict the way people learn by studying the behaviour of animals (Chitravelu, Sithamparam, & Teh Soon Choon, 2005). They also believe human beings are shaped entirely by their external environment. If you alter a person's environment, you will alter his or her thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. Behaviorists also believe that it is possible to train an animal to behave in any desired manner by using a learning method which consists of a stimulus, a response and reinforcement (Chitravelu, Sithamparam, & Teh Soon Choon, 2005). Skinner, a famous psychologist applied the stimulus-response reinforcement theory to the way human acquire language. Classical and operant conditioning are two important concepts central to behavioural psychology. In Skinner’s operant conditioning model, human being like other living organisms will pursue a goal because they perceived a reward for doing so (Brown, 2007). Students are more likely to do things which they will be rewarded for than punished for (Grossman, 2004). So, as teachers, we need to reward students for behaviour that we think deserve to be rewarded. For example, place a gold star on papers that were completed correctly and neatly, while stickers are withheld from sloppy papers and those with