POST #1: Inheritance from Behaviorism.

It has been more than ten years since I began to learn English. I look back and try to recall from my memory how I began learning English, how my teachers oriented me, how I went through the ups and downs in my journey of learning and how I feel today, at this stage. 

It was back in primary school, at the age of nine, when I was introduced to English, i.e. words, and some simple sentences such as "Hello-Goodbye"; "My name is..", etc and we were encouraged to copy whatever the teacher dictated. The books we used contained mostly some stories, pictures and songs. My teacher spoke each sentence and she translated the sentence into Spanish also. We wouldn't ask questions or try to understand the material. All we did was write and memorize words.   

Even years later, in secondary school, our class teacher wrote some words with their pronunciation and meaning on the blackboard and we were asked to parrot them. Parroting vocabulary was almost regular. I hardly tried to understand things then. It was all so robotically-structured that it didn't even feel that English was a means of communication.
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For the reasons mentioned before, I think that even though some view behaviorism as being outdated, I reckon it is still present in almost all of today’s classrooms in some way.

It is important to remember that behaviorism stands on the foundation that all changes in behavior and learning come from a stimulus-response which is driven by reinforcement. For better understanding, this chain can be demonstrated in the following illustration:-
For example, if we see a student who is acting inappropriately and that student is given a negative response such as not being able to go to recess, they will most likely act better the next time. Likewise, if a student is showing a positive attitude, little rewards like stickers are given to them. This will probably prove beneficial in the long run because the students will want to work for this positive reward.  

Coming back a little to my experience as a student, I had higher expectations for English than any other subjects, that is why I decided to formally study English in an institute. It wasn't until then, at the age of fourteen, that I got familiar with the paradigm shift and learned to learn, to use my memory, to think, to organize my ideas, to reason, to use perception. It wasn't until then that I could understand English as a language.

I would finally like to point out that I'm not saying cognitive skills aren't tested through formal education, just that some teachers do tend to prepare students just to "pass exams". I wish I had opened my eyes in those early stages of my life but that is just exactly how it was, we studied to pass exams.