Kelly Anne Stahl
Behaviorism in the Foreign Language Classroom
Behaviorism can play a major role in the foreign language classroom. Most students do
not begin to study a language until they are in late middle or early high school. Because of this,
they come into the Spanish classroom already having anxiety about tests and quizzes, knowing
that not doing their homework leads to various punishments, and maybe even being aversive to
certain subjects because they have had bad experiences. On the other hand, a foreign language is
a completely new subject that they will most likely have had little to no experience with. This
means that behavior issues to the subject matter itself will be rare. However, their experience
during that first year of language can very quickly lead to generalizations about the language in
general, because it is so new. That is where my job comes in, creating a comfortable and safe
learning environment where my students are not afraid to try something very new and different
every day.
Test anxiety is a big issue for many students. Tests in another language are that much
more difficult, because despite the fact that you may know the answer in English, that does not
always help you figure out what the answer is in Spanish. On an entirely new level, many
students, especially in the early years, have not reached a level where their brain knows to “turn
on” the Spanish way of thinking that helps form correct responses. In high school, I had a
Spanish teacher who told us that Spearmint mints before a test help you perform better on your
assessments. Before every test or quiz, she would pass around a basket of spearmint mints in
order to boost our brain power. I received an A in that Spanish class and to this day, before I take
a test, when I am working on a paper, or even when I get stressed out in general, I crave
spearmint. Spearmint tea is a staple in my kitchen, because it lowers my anxiety level almost
immediately. Somewhere during that year, Senora Helms classically conditioned me so that
unconsciously, I believe that spearmint mints lead to achievement and I have generalized
spearmint to being synonymous with success in my head. I think that would be an interesting
thing to add to my classroom, because it stuck so well with me. However, I also recognize that
part of the reason that spearmint makes me feel successful is because I did well in the class.
Spearmint probably could have had the exact opposite effect on me if I had not done well, in
which case, I probably would have avoided spearmint all together, unless I was counterconditioned to believe that spearmint was no longer associated with failure.
Spearmint candy, or just candy in general, might be more successful in my classroom in
regards to participation in the target language. Speaking in the target language is one of the most
difficult things for students in the early years of language study, in large part because they rarely
have the opportunity to use that language in their every day lives. Often, because students are in
a classroom full of their peers, students will feel anxious about speaking in the Spanish
classroom because they are not comfortable enough with the language, making them even more
uncomfortable speaking out loud than they would in a regular classroom. In order to curb this
issue, I could introduce candy as a reinforcement to encourage behavior. If, for every time
students spoke aloud, they received a piece of candy, I feel that they would be much more likely
to speak up in the classroom. Eventually, I would change the candy reinforcement to apply only
to correct answers and after that, only to more complex, well thought out answers. Or, instead of
reinforcing the speaking on a continuous (or semi-continuous) reinforcement schedule, I would
put it on an intermittent reinforcement schedule by rewarding students for every X number of
responses, using a variable ratio schedule that encouraged active participation because the
students never know when they were going to be rewarded. Ideally, the class would eventually
become so comfortable speaking in the target language that candy would no longer be necessary
and they would always speak in Spanish, because of their own intrinsic motivators.
One of the primary goals of learning a foreign language is learning to communicate in the
foreign language. Unfortunately, that requires learning grammar, which is not fun. It is not fun in
English and it is definitely not fun in Spanish. Not only do you have to apply grammar rules that
are simply not taught to students anymore, Spanish has entirely different grammar rules that are
difficult to understand, especially if you do not have a firm grasp on how grammar works in your
native language. The majority of learning grammar is simply memorization, because those skills
are needed constantly in order to communicate in the target language. Despite the fact that I
would like to have very little straight lecture lessons about grammar in my classroom, there are
some concepts that will probably need to be outlined that way. Here, I feel the Premack Principle
will be useful. If I tell the students beforehand that we are having a short, drier lecture, but after,
we are playing a game they already know and enjoy, which I have applied to the new grammar
concept, I feel that they will be much more motivated to sit through that lecture and really
attempt to learn the material, knowing that they will need to use it in order to play the game.
The most interesting part about teaching a foreign language from an educational
psychology standpoint is the fact that my students are learning something entirely new. It
presents me with a particularly important responsibility to establish behaviors that will carry
them through the language, hopefully forever. Maybe then, students that entered my classroom
with aversions to other aspects of their academic lives, will be able to generalize my helpful
methods to their other subjects and more importantly, to their daily lives.