Name of School:
ROUTINE INFORMATION University of Natal
Student Surname and Name:
Maphumulo Mthokozisi
Student Number:
207503878
Phase of Study
FET
Subject:
Cross Cultural Studies
Topic:
Skinner points out that language is acquired through interaction while Chomsky claims that language is a biological phenomenon. Write an
Content /Concept Area:
essay in support of either of the two theories. Behaviour, Innate , environment and learning
CAPS page number:
14
Duration of Lesson:
Second semester
Skinner situates to date language acquisition as something that is evident after a post-natal period , which means a baby accentuate to learn how to speak , understand and apply language after s/he has been born. In his common sense babies are not born to speak specific language for say their mother tongue. As a matter of fact language is not biological property of our mother tongue nor is it innate property except that we accentuate language speaking through how we reveal our verbal behaviour onto our environment. Skinner did not watch behaviour of organism, mainly human being where he made an assumption that great deal of what a speaker has to say depends on depends on his behaviour. For that reason we call this a verbal behaviour because it reveals that language is acquired through how our physical expressions attaches to what we are thinking and thereafter speaking. His simple expose that speaking verbally is a ripple effect which constitute of responses or reaction of what you have been thinking in relation to environment and the ones you are speaking to. This simple means that if two people are engaged in a dialogue, they may experience delay of time ‌.given the verbal behaviour requirements are informed by what the exchange of meanings are getting synthesised in relation to environment. This simple means that language has magnitude, it differ from person to person, and elders have larger vocabulary compared to the young people
… more specifically children. Children have had little exposure to the environment compared to elders; consequently, they tend to have less vocabulary. Brief Summary of two types of behaviour: Involuntary--reflexes, physiological states (e.g. heart rate, often associated with emotions). – Classical conditioning – Stimuli from environment paired with reflex or physiological state to form conditioned
physical or emotional responses.
Voluntary-purposeful activity behaviour to get something – Operant conditioning – Behaviour changes that are in response to consequences – Skinner’s ABC’s. Social Scientist like Vygotsky and Piaget happen to reflect on constructivist theory of language acquisition and knowledge construction in more or less similar to how Skinner understands language acquisition. Vygotsky in particular ruled that learners exhibit their active participation during their language and knowledge construction because they are found interacting to their activities where they share ideas, construct their knowledge and device solutions to problems. However, problems are linked to environment, so are evidences that learners still pursue verbal behaviour when they list, recall, identify and discuss topics from classrooms. Indeed this is true with rise of use for interactive charts, maps, video tapes and instruments as model of reality. Teachers are expected to lay their facilitative role on which they ill relay on Blooms taxonomy system for questioning learners for and proceed to carry their activities ahead (ZPD). Look at the tabular information and see how we may contrast Skinner (Chomsky) vs Chomsky (Skinner).
Defining Characteristics
Piaget Vygotsky Stages , Development drives Social Interaction, Zone of learning , learner centred
Proximal-Development, (ZPD)
Learning
Development.
Drives
Mechanism of Change
Innate Development, Stages, Scaffolding,Social Interaction, Assimilation,
Readiness
Assimilation, Cultural-Development,
Equilibration. Internalization. Genetic Development ZPD has to
contain
the
Growth, Biological Stages, capabilities that are being Has To Be Developmentally taught, scaffolding. Role of Student
Appropriate. Actively manipulates objects Interact with instructor, peers , / ideas continually invents and socio-cultural to solve reinvents knowledge through problems
Role of Teacher
interaction with the world. Provide environment that Engage learners in socially – encourages
students
to organised activities, provide
interact and ask probing scaffolding for learner Endpoints
questions. Hypothetically everyone can Learning how to think. reach the end point
In contrast to Skinner’s view, there is Chomsky’s inmate view of language development and accentuation. He situates the ability of child to speak in his mind, which simple means that he relates it to a child’s biological factor. He began by question a question around why a child would acquire a language instead of learning it. He is trying to challenge an idea of the fact that every individual child has ability to learn speak his or her mother tongue with or without school background. His argument seem to surround itself with a question concerning the child’s ability to speak with or without ability to write words. In this respect, one could question where we are situating the function of language grammar such as spelling, writing of words and punctual roles including verbs, prefix, conjunctions and question marks, etc. From their earliest stage of maturity, children may develop grammatical knowledge and that is where he lay down an argument that language development of an offspring organises itself, meaning it is automatically for child to learn her mother tongue. (Skinner, 1948) According to Chomsky, linguistic knowledge is deterministic, meaning, meaning a child speaks from certain genetic stimulus. (Chomsky et.al: 2016) This implies that one language development is derived through one genetic grammatical knowledge. In this respect, Chomsky is holding a view that one language acquisition is
guided by the principle of Universal Grammar, transmitted grammatically. In this case, he situates language development as an automatic machine such as a computer. A comuter has set syntax operators to which one could run a query and wait for an outcome to match responses that are matching the level of knowledge required. This sound very funny, it sound rhetorical how a young child being adopted from a different nation may learn a new language, which is completely different from her mother tongue. This does not seem to reflect necessity for any genetic transmission. However, language clicks may be required for pronunciation of clicks but understanding is same as how different race other than the adopted child race background. (Chomsky, 2016) A young offspring has no ability whatsoever to return and learn her mother tongue after having spent many years with a different racial group provided s/he was never got introduced from his or her family background. In this regard, one could imagine if it was possible for an orphan whose mother was a captives who came to serve Europe as forced labour to speak her African language, independent of contact with her mother or social ethnic group who share similar cultural background as a child. Indeed, it is not possible, so language is a practice and people who construct their meaning use environment ‌. Shared meanings for how human behaviour attaches to environment. There is mutual- parasitic relationship between man and his environment if expressed verbally but environment itself cannot help defining relationship that man has to itself. Indeed Skinner happen to cite theorist like Dimitri Mendeleev with periodic table of elements. All these scientific discovery are a true reflection that men’s verbal behavioural can produce wide shared meaning about how he understand it. In these regard we are not aware that through learning and recording a shared meaning attached to how we explain our understanding of nature verbally (hence: verbal behavioural). (Skinner, 1948) If you proceed with Chomsky transcript, you will get him sound very much speaking things, which correlate to Skinners ideas of language acquisition or language development. For example Chomsky differ from Skinner when he argues that grammatical knowledge stems from specialised learning mechanism , different from general learning mechanism. In this regard Chomsky is no doubt reject the idea that the environment and verbal behaviour. So in this regard, he sees gene of offspring as a carrier function, which can grow if, not connect to a child’s body to enable him to speak language. However, one should ask, how can one even of transmission of something genetically if there is no reference of any of human brain mechanism for reference relating to scientific knowledge of message transmission if there is
no biological organ relating to complexity of human body such as nervous system, brain and visual aids. (Skinner, 1948) Chomsky proceed also to add that grammar is triggered environment rather than being learned. In this regard, he sound correlate to Skinner even though he still distance himself from an idea that the offspring may develop language acquisition through how they produce their verbal behaviour. You can tell why Chomsky still reject the fact that people learn through how they interact with environment to construct their meaningful ideas , since Chomsky is an more innate as he feels it is more genetic ( of biological factors ) how may language develop other than verbal behaviour. Bit one may question whether it is possible that nature can act as an agent for language acquisition independent of verbal behaviour , if so that would simple means that environment is language itself . If so then where are other forms of language that one could learn from environment independent of human interaction to it? In this essay, I have found Skinners ideas of language acquisition appropriate and much more practical in real world of people on which a young child has time for being raised within a universal environment on which s/he has to interact with environment, himself and the others including children and parents. It sound very much ridiculous if a young offspring may learn any language from environment independent of participation of the others including himself or herself. I reject an idea that language can be a biological factor; however, language can be learned through how an individual is getting oriented by her parents, the surrounding environment and the others. It is possible that cultural identity and diversity could present language variations but those differences stem from verbal behaviour which are said to have been established by groups of people which might be divided racially , culturally and where possible spiritually. (Skinner, 1948) There are relevant aspect of language acquisition one could accept from Chomsky, even though most of his ideas sound ridiculous in real world of people who are sharing their social environment. I truly accept the idea that language grammar can be learned. Indeed the invention of symbols could assist one to learn a language that is different from her mother tongue. However, even native language speakers do not know how to read, write and search using their mother tongue if they are not trained how about symbols used for development of their own mother tongue language. However, this knowledge can be contrasted slightly with
the invention of proverbs and idioms on which traditional on which its meanings are attached to traditional knowledge such as Zulu proverbs. A Zulu Idiom: ‘The lion is a beautiful animal when seen at a distance. Meaning: Things aren't always as they seem at first glance, so be careful what you wish for; it may not be what is best for you.’ The idioms, proverbs and nouns are created by people who observer things from environment, hence the environment shape their thinking and they produce their meaning attached to how they interacted with environment. The relationship revealed is subject to verbal interpretation through how one view the nature’s behaviour and maintain a record of over what stimulus it creates from human behaviour rather not through how the nature describe man’s behaviour. Therefore my conclusion is totally against the idea that there are language instinct, language is not innate thing but language is acquired though our verbal behaviour. In this regard, I side with Skinners view concerning the fact that language acquisition is a role verbal behavioural function on which environment is used to construct meanings, where new knowledge is developed and get used for language development whether written or spoken. We are conscious about universal potential disasters, we grow knowledge to prevent potential disasters which simple exposes human being as more that curious pieces who has ability to explore or date nature capacity to uphold living. Therefore a universe is not a language itself, instead language acquisition is more verbal behavioural other than innate thing. (Skinner, 1948) Now that we truly know that, it is impossible to communicate among ourselves, having not undergone through verbal behavioural introduction to language used for shared meaning prior to consumption of language as a medium of instruction: - one may conclude that school is important for learning each other’s language. Most importantly, it is important to develop main language of instruction of communication and sharing of information. In this regard, language grammar such as symbols, spelling and pronunciations becomes relevant aspect of language acquisition. This is to emphasise that language can be learned; however this is not to say we reject mechanisms for language acquisition such as environment and behaviour. This seem to date ideas of social scientist such as Vygotsky, Piaget and Blooms. Vygotsky in particular raised a point that schooling is good because it provides a space for children to learn where they reflect critically. (Skinner, 1948)The presence of teacher is essential for her
facilitative teachers role in which he must guide and direct learning. In this regard, a process of acquisition of language and knowledge through learning and interaction among children still proceeds, slight difference exist when learners accentuate language at school because s/he has to learn language grammar such as spelling, pronunciation and other symbols. The education is now learner –centred meaning learners have sufficient time to exchange their knowledge, ideas and opinions about social meanings attached from words used. Hence, most schools are experiencing inclusive education, which situate learners across different diversities who share different cultures and bare language differences from home. The multicultural schools truly expose what I call ripple effect of language acquisition in line with verbal behaviour for each child’s ability to express his or her opinion according to how s/he was socialised from her social background. Indeed the environment proceed to be at centre of learning as people proceed to express their opinions through how they perceive understanding of things in their traditional knowledge whose meaning was constructed from how they were shaped by environment and vice versa. Vygotsky is likely to be associated with Skinner, while Chomsky is likely to be associated with Piaget. (Francis Wade , 1981) .Thiongo is a mature African language writers, who seem to acknowledge that language is accentuate through how people interact from their environment but also add that culture hep them to construct their meanings.
References:
Skinner, B. F. (1948) ‘Verbal Behaviour’, William James Lectures Harvard University (publisher). pp (1- 84).
Chomsky et.al (2016) ‘Why only Us , Language and Evolution’, The MIT Press: Cambridge Massachusetts- London, London. pp (1-109) Charles Catania A. (2003) ‘B. F. Skinner’s Science and Human Behaviour: Its Antecedent’s and its Consequences ’, University of Maryland, Baltimore Country (editor), pp (313–320)
Francis Wade (1981) ‘Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and the Tyranny of Language: The Language of African Literacy’. Susana López Ornat and Pilar Gallo (2004) Acquisition, Learning, or Development of Language? Skinner’s “Verbal Behaviour” Revisited Copyright 2004 by The Spanish Journal of Psychology Vol. 7, No. 2, pp( 161-170) and pp( 1138-7416)
Skinner, B. F. ‘The Evolution OF Behaviour Journal of The Experimental Analysis of behaviour ’, Harvard University. pp (217-221). Vargas, E. A. (2017) ‘ B. F. Skinner’s theory of behaviour’, European Journal of Behaviour Analysis,
Important pages: 23 on top of 29-grid pattern. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0010027789900164 https://books.google.co.za/books?id=hwgHVRZtK8kC&lpg=PR7&ots=c6jEtEM6ut&dq=Chomsky %20%3D%20language%20biological&lr&pg=PR7#v=onepage&q=Chomsky%20=%20language %20biological&f=true https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=hwgHVRZtK8kC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Chomsky+ %3D+language+biological&ots=c6jEtEM6ut&sig=lM8BmkVuwr6JCXA3CgCNPppeak#v=onepage&q=Chomsky%20%3D%20language%20biological&f=true