Learning and teaching

In similar fashion, we can ask questions about constructs like learning and teaching. Consider again some traditional definitions. A search in contem¬porary dictionaries reveals that learning is "acquiring or getting of knowl¬edge of a subject or a skill by study, experience, or instruction." A more specialized definition might read as follows: "Learning is a relatively perma¬nent change in a behavioral tendency and is the result of reinforced prac¬tice" (Kimble & Garmezy 1963:133). Similarly, teaching, which is implied in the first definition of learning, may be defined as "showing or helping someone to learn how to do something, giving instructions, guiding in the study of something, providing with knowledge, causing to know or under¬stand." How awkward these definitions are! Isn't it curious that professional lexicographers cannot devise more precise scientific definitions? More than perhaps anything else, such definitions reflect the difficulty of defining com¬plex concepts like learning and teaching.
Breaking down the components of the definition of learning, we can extract, as we did with language, domains of research and inquiry.
1. Learning is acquisition or "getting."
2. Learning is retention of information or skill.
3. Retention implies storage systems, memory, cognitive organization.
4. Learning involves active, conscious focus on and acting upon events outside or inside the organism.
5. Learning is relatively permanent but subject to forgetting.
6. Learning involves some form of practice, perhaps reinforced practice.
7. Learning is a change in behavior.
These concepts can also give way to a number of subfields within the dis¬cipline of psychology: acquisition processes, perception, memory (storage) systems, recall, conscious and subconscious learning styles and strategies, theories of forgetting, reinforcement, the role of practice. Very quickly the concept of learning becomes every bit as complex as the concept of lan¬guage. Yet the second language learner brings all these (and more) variables into play in the learning of a second language.
Teaching cannot be defined apart from learning. Teaching is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the condi¬tions for learning. Your understanding of how the learner learns will deter¬mine your philosophy of education, your teaching style, your approach, methods, and classroom techniques. If, like B.F. Skinner, you look at learning as a process of operant conditioning through a carefully paced program of reinforcement, you will teach accordingly. If you view second language learning as a deductive rather than an inductive process, you will probably