Study Of Integration Of Behaviorism And Cognitivism In Light Of English Teaching

Learning is the common thing in animals and human beings. Learning methodology, which is one of the branches of psychology, illustrates learning principles and conditions and focuses itself on the features of behavior of animals and human beings. It also deals with the nature of learning activities. In western world, there are two different schools of learning methodology: behaviorism and cognitivism. In behaviorism, all learning systems are associated by setting upon the minimum unit of stimulus-response. Cognitivism theory emphasizes the inner structures of mind, from the arising of psychology of structuralism to the immergence of informational processing theory. The differences and the connections between the two schools lead to the possibility of the integration of the two in teaching methodology. The article discusses the psycho-mechanism of language acquisition and foreign language learning. It also discusses the correlated theories such as the assimilation processes in mother language knowledge learning and foreign language learning as well as language learning skills. It finally puts forward some practical suggestions on teaching principles and teaching designs.Chapter One is the introduction of this article, which presents the significance and purpose of the study.Chapter Two is the revision of developmental relationship between behaviorism and cognitivism in the fields of psychology and foreign language learning and teaching.Chapter Three makes a comparison of behaviorism learning theory and cognitive learning theory. It describes the similarities and differences between the two learning theories from different perspectives in order to identify which learning situations they are best suited for and helps teachers to find out the strategies and tactics for effective learning, to be aware of which one to use, figure out how to integrate them into the learning environment and predict what the result will be. Chapter Four probes the application of behaviorism and cognitivism approaches in language teaching and both their advantages and disadvantages respectively. Then a conclusion is reached that the exclusive adoption of teaching method guided by either of them is not effective enough. Teachers should well handle the relationship between behaviorism and cognitivism and distribute their proportions at a proper ration in teaching.Chapter Five is the key chapter of the whole thesis. It explores the possibilities of integration of behaviorism and cognitivism from philosophical and theoretical perspectives. It also illustrates connections between the two schools, misconception of behaviorism, and the process of human learning. And from the perspective of cognition and the understanding of cognition and language, this chapter explores the psychological mechanism on human beings' language acquisition and learning as well.Chapter Six explores the necessity of integration from perspectives of language learning and acquisition process, factors influencing language learning, and Chinese environment of learning so as to illustrate that the integration of behaviorism and cognitivism theory is fully necessary.Chapter Seven is the suggested teaching principles and teaching model guided by the integration of behaviorism and cognitivism. The theoretical framework of these principles can help to better understand the practice used in classroom.Chapter Eight reaches to the conclusion of the whole thesis. It includes both theoretical and practical implications. The theoretical implication relating to the usefulness and limitation of the theories has been put forward and summarized. The results will demonstrate that scholars' summarization of theories benefit language teaching to a large extent, but it does not meet all the needs of the real situation learning.