The document discusses mentalism and cognitivism as theories of how language is acquired and learned. It argues that the human mind has innate abilities and 'blueprints' that allow children to learn language by processing input and deriving rules, rather than just imitating, and that learning involves actively thinking and problem-solving to understand new information.
The document discusses mentalism and cognitivism as theories of how language is acquired and learned. It argues that the human mind has innate abilities and 'blueprints' that allow children to learn language by processing input and deriving rules, rather than just imitating, and that learning involves actively thinking and problem-solving to understand new information.
The document discusses mentalism and cognitivism as theories of how language is acquired and learned. It argues that the human mind has innate abilities and 'blueprints' that allow children to learn language by processing input and deriving rules, rather than just imitating, and that learning involves actively thinking and problem-solving to understand new information.
The document discusses mentalism and cognitivism as theories of how language is acquired and learned. It argues that the human mind has innate abilities and 'blueprints' that allow children to learn language by processing input and deriving rules, rather than just imitating, and that learning involves actively thinking and problem-solving to understand new information.
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MENTALISM & COGNITIVISM
1. Behaviourist view could not explain how from a finite range of
experience, the human mind was able to cope with an infinite range of poss. situations. Set of rules & Vocabulary = finite Individual utterances = infinite
There are a finite number of grammatical rules in the system and with knowledge of these rules an infinite of sentences can be produced.
2. A language learner acquires language competence, which enables him to
produce language. 3. A language learner can acquire language competence because he has mental ability to process what he hears. 4. Children’s minds are not blank slates to be filled in by imitating the language they hear from the environment. 5. Chomsky theorised that all children are born with some kind of language processor - a black box or language acquisition device (LAD) - which allowed them to formulate rules of language based on the input they received. 6. The mind contains blueprints for grammatical rules. 7. Learning is acquiring rules, i.e individual experiences are used by the mind to find the underlying pattern or system. 8. In classroom, teachers can help students learn more easily by showing them rules and let them have a go on their own. Making up their own sentences is the objective. 9. This cognitivistic view emphasized the active mental processing on the part of the learner. The cognitive view takes the learner to be an active processor of information. Learners are NOT mere repeaters, the almost- robots, that Behaviourist principles would seem to describe. 10. The basic teaching technique associated with a cognitive theory of language learning is the problem-solving task. 11. Learning & using a rule require learners to think, that is, to apply their mental power in order to distil a workable rule from the mass of data presented, and then to analyse the situations where the application of the rule would be useful or appropriate. 12. Learning is a process in which the learner actively tries to make sense of data. 13. When students are presented with new information they will come up with the rules by themselves, which are either correct or incorrect. 14. Learning can be said to have taken place when the learner has managed to impose some sort of meaningful interpretation or pattern on the data. 15. Learning new information is made possible by connecting it to existing information and then storing it so it can be retrieved later. (*)