The parts of learning theory that I find essential in understanding how I acquire skills entail knowledge retention and replication. In particular, obtaining new concepts must involve the attainment, preservation, and application of new information. Moreover, an accompanying award for the stored notions motivates my enthusiasm to advance studying. For example, a good grade, from my perspective, reflects an award for erudition. In other words, I will be motivated to study more if I perform better in a series of tests, rather than if I scored poor grades. The behavioral and experiential learning theories are more relevant to my knowledge gaining approach.
The former is selected because I learn best through experience, and in the latter, I can retain knowledge if it generates a reward. The social learning theory is also useful for observation and interaction with people. Acquiring a language is not an exception as it also occurs through communication, which encompasses experiential, social, and behavioral aspects. Learning through experience facilitates retention and application of new information in different contexts, the social setting provides an interactive environment for knowledge exchange, and behavioral interaction integrates rewards that sustain continued learning.
John Watson and Burrhus Frederic Skinner are learning theorists who proposed the behavioral scholarship model. Behaviorism mainly covers observable and measurable constructs of a person’s conduct. The theorists define behavior by emphasizing changes caused by stimulus-response interactions. According to Watson, human deeds are influenced by stimuli that produce particular responses. His perspective is based on Pavlov’s experiment in learning processes through classical conditioning, which entails associating a neutral incentive with a natural stimulus that produces behavior. Skinner augmented the theory through his thoughts that punishments or awards regulate spontaneous actions.
The behavioral knowledge acquisition theory helps me learn by linking stimuli and using rewards or retribution to sustain or diminish specific behavior. Regarding language learning, the main aspects that facilitate erudition is an association of objects to words or phrases. An example would be linking French terms such as “manger” with the action of eating so that every time a French learner eats, they remember this word “manger.” In a linguistic scholarship or the teaching process, I would integrate the theories by correlating words with observable things and introducing rewards and punishments for specific performances.
Albert Bandura is another learning theorist who suggested the social cognitive knowledge theory. The model emphasizes that people acquire skills in a communal setting through observation. In other words, the environment provides a suitable behavior exchange context. People attain knowledge by seeing a model accomplishing an action and the outcomes, retaining the actions’ sequence, and applying them in their future activities. The concept helps me to learn through observing and implementing learned content in my actions. For instance, I would watch a chef cooking a cake on social media and record the steps to make my own cake.
Scholarship through experience is vital because the experts, in most instances, are professionals in a targeted area of proficiency; hence, they can offer the needed skills. In applying dialectal facts and teaching, an apprentice can witness specialists communicating in the chosen language and later execute the learnt concepts, including intonation and pronunciation. I can integrate the social cognitive learning model in a class by allowing students to interact with or watch experts interacting in the language of interest to apply the lessons in their practice.
David Kolb is also a knowledge theorist who proposed the experiential education philosophy, which mainly focuses on scholarship through replication. Kolb primarily deconstructed instruction into four levels, including the substantial experience where a person acquires new information; reflective observation where an individual evaluates practice and understanding. The third level is abstract conceptualization, which involves reflecting on absorbing the new idea or modifying existing concepts; and lastly, active experimentation where a person applies the acquired skill in the external world. The levels describe the attaining of abstract notions that can be implemented in various situations.
The theory helps me learn through involvement, retaining information and applying it in future situations. The framework relates to language acquisition through personal contact with a professional. A beginner can apply the taught conception in such a setting to communicate with the expert and later apply the experience in upcoming scenarios. I can integrate the experiential erudition theory in linguistic lessons by allowing my learners to interact with experts, engage in conversations with them, and then implement the understanding in their forthcoming interactions.
I consider learning valuable when I can use the gained skills in a future event. Behavioral theorists include Skinner and John Watson, and they argue that people achieve knowledge through observing and associating stimuli with rewards and punishments. Behaviorism facilitates idea attainment by connecting the desired facts with incentives to create a habit. Social cognitive theorists such as Albert Bandura believe that people obtain skills by observing others in a social context. Social intellectual learning allows people to acquire desired behaviors from experts. Experiential philosophers such as David Kolb emphasize erudition through experience. Overall, behavioral, social cognitive, and experiential theories facilitate learning through observation, association, and experience.