INSTITUT PENDIDIKAN GURU KAMPUS

KOTA BHARU KELANTAN

LEARNING AND THE LEARNER
(EDU3033)
NAME

: FATEN HANANI BT FAUZI

I.C NUMBER

: 930803 03 5372

GROUP

: 6 PISMP TESL 4

COURSE CODE

: TSL3113

TITLE OF COURSEWORK : TASK 1 Reflective Essay

NAME OF LECTURER

: MADAM HANISAH BT. ZAKARIAH

DATE OF SUBMISSION

: 22TH AUGUST 2015

Task 1: Reflective Essay

Based on your observation and experiences during the Practicum Phase 1 in

school, discuss how students learning problems can be overcome by using
Behaviorism Theory and Social Learning Theory
______________________________________________________________________
Teaching English as a second language to a non English country is a challenging
career for the teacher, teacher must learn to constantly adapt to their students needs.
Many times, this means dealing with a variety of problems in the classroom, many of
which are all too common occurrences. A good ESL teacher must be able to recognize
these common problems, and work to find solutions. Even a small change in the
instructional methods can help to create a more productive and casual environment for
teacher and students. Teacher can solve classroom problems by referring to
Behaviorism Theory and Social Learning Theory that can be linked together.
Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable and measurable aspects of
human behavior. In defining behavior, behaviorist-learning theories emphasize changes
in behavior that result from stimulus-response associations made by the learner.
Behavior is directed by stimuli. An individual selects one response instead of another
because of prior conditioning and psychological drives existing at the moment of the
action (Parkay & Hass, 2000).
On the other hand, Social learning theory focuses on the learning that occurs within
a social context. It considers that people learn from one another, including such
concepts as observational learning, imitation, and modeling. Albert Bandura and Lev
Vygotsky are the main contributors to this theory.
The first problem that I detected was students who are already good in learning
English always finished the activities and exercises earlier from other peers, then they
will automatically disturbed others and made the other students not finish their works by
joining them. This will make the weak students
A behavioral reminder can just solve this learning problem. A behavioral reminder is
a brief and neutral prompt to help the students to remember and follow classroom
behavioral expectations (Simonsen, Feirbanks, Briesch, Myers, & Sugai, 2008). This
strategy is used when the students appears to be distracted or otherwise requires a
simple reminder. Since he is a good student, a simple reminder from the teacher

hopefully will make the students behave. For example, the teacher can make eye
contact with the student who is misbehaving and points to a classroom rules chart.
Furthermore, in the classroom as teachers, I will be faced with this great variety of
students with a great variety of students learning level. To balance this levels of
students, in Social learning theory in particular has endless possibilities in the ways that
teacher can utilize group work within the classroom. There are two main types of groups
that teachers can use when using social learning in their classroom. The first
is heterogeneous grouping. This is when students of different ability levels or learning
styles are combined. The definition of heterogeneous grouping could also be expanded
to include grouping together students of different levels and races. This approach can be
especially useful at the beginning of the school year so students get to know each other.
On the other hand is homogenous grouping. This means grouping together students
that are similar. The similarities may refer to their ability, race, or even gender. As a
teacher, I already be able to identify my students of similar ability levels by referring to
their past assessment scores from the classroom teacher. The groups will likely change
according to the lesson. This approach can be useful to group students together that
may need extra help so the teacher can work more closely with them, while the students
who need no extra help can be grouped together and work on something different.
Examples of activities that can maximize their attention are role-playing and group test.
Role-playing is a technique that works well with others, whether its one on one or with a
group of people. For example, have the good students be assigned as group leader,
lead others then have each groups to present or act in front of the classroom.
The second problem that I faced was, there was a student named Farid, who did
not do his homework all the time and not bringing the books. Even when I asked him to
do it, he just half-finished and started to throw tantrums. He also refused to follow the
classroom rules set. He surely hard to handle
In Behaviorism Theory, there are two main categories of responses to this kind of
behaviour. A teacher can solve this behavioral problem of a student through rewards and
punishments. In this situation, the teacher should punish first before giving
reinforcement. Punishment is meant to decrease bad behavior. For example, if Farid
does not do his homework, calling her parents might be a punishment that the teacher
can do to discourage skipping homework in the future. Is it because, I already warned

him few times and the last resort probably by calling her parents. But, punishments can
be either positive or negative. A positive punishment is one that involves giving the
student something that he does not want. For example, the teacher can give Farid
detention for failing to follow the classroom rules. The teacher is giving him something
he does not want that is the detention to punish her bad behavior but detention is
positive, as it will make sure Farid finish his work.
On the other hand, Reinforcement is meant to increase a good behavior; it's like a
reward. So if Farid comes in and sits down quietly at his desk and the teacher can gives
him a candy, the candy is reinforcement for the behavior of sitting quietly. It's meant to
encourage Farid to do that more often. While, Positive reinforcement involves giving
the student something that he or she wants. Regarding the situation, if Farid does his
homework, even if the answers are wrong, his effort to finish the work can make the
teacher give him extra marks for effort. This is to reinforce the good behaviour by giving
what he wants that is extra marks because he finished his homework.
Besides, in social learning theory Albert Bandura (1977) states that behaviour is
learned from the environment through observations. To solve this problem, the teacher
can ask Farid to be the group leader of the group for one week. Even he misbehave,
teacher can let him to be the leader once. Farid will pay attention to other group leaders
and how they performed and transfer their behaviour. Later, he may imitate the
behaviour the leader leads the group and he will try to leads his group too. If a child
imitates a models behavior and the consequences for his behaviour are rewarding, then
the student is likely to continue performing the behavior. The teacher also can console
the boy by saying What a good leader you are, Farid, this is rewarding for the boy and
makes it more likely that he will repeat the behavior
The third problem that I, as the teacher detected was student they were too shy to
speak and interact with their peers. To be exact, there were three students who always
stay silent and did not involve much during the teaching and learning activities. They
were passive and obviously did not show understanding on my teaching even they were
not disturb others.
In our classroom teacher can use the social learning theory as a way of
understanding the current behaviour of some of the students, especially in the cases of
troublesome children. Teachers can use the influences and people that these children

observe as a point of research to begin to understand why children act out. Moreover the
social learning theory can be used as a method of modelling good behaviour to children.
Observing a teacher behaving in a particular way and their responses in different
situations can help to encourage children to behave in the same way. The cause of a
problem or success may be accounted to a childs exposure to another person and their
behaviours. All teachers are role models and it is their responsibility to ensure that they
behave in a way that meets the expectations of a role model. By doing so teachers can
help develop and shape children in a way that is beneficial to their learning and
development.
Lastly, to solve this problem related to behaviorism theory, motivation would
probably be high on most teachers lists (Williams & Burden, 2000). Motivation is
commonly thought of as an inner drive, impulse, emotion, or desire that moves one to a
particular action (Brown, 2001). Students with high motivation will be willing to put more
energy into learning English, while students with low motivation will not be ready to show
great interests in learning. Teacher needs to put a creative and meaningful way of
teaching to attract those passive students. The teacher gives much more praising and
complimentary words after those students has answered teachers question, such
praising words are exactly what mobilize students motivation.
Teachers should be aware that sometimes what English teachers say would also
discourage their students. For example, teachers will become so angry that they tend to
use such direct expressions as Why are you always making such mistakes? when
encountered with wrong answers from their students in the classroom. This kind of
negative feedback is what greatly decreases students motivation and the students
became so
(1600 words)

References
5

Boyd, Natalie. 'Behaviorism: Overview & Practical Teaching Examples - Video & Lesson
Transcript | Study.Com'. Study.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 10 Aug. 2015.
Classroom-assessment-theory-into-practice.wikispaces.com,. 'Classroom-AssessmentTheory-Into-Practice - Interpersonal - Social Learning'. N.p., 2011. Web. 10 Aug.
2015.
McLeod, Saul. 'Albert Bandura | Social Learning Theory | Simply
Psychology'. Simplypsychology.org. N.p., 2015. Web. 10 Aug. 2015.
Powell, Russell A, P. Lynne Honey, and Diane G Symbaluk. Introduction To Learning
And Behavior. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013. Print.
Zeng, Mingzhi. 'Influence Of English Teachers Classroom English On Students
Learning Enthusiasm In Junior High School'. N.p., 2015. Web. 10 Aug. 2015.

APPENDICES