Positive Reinforcer
Something you will work to get Positive Reinforcement
Effect: increase or strengthen behavior which produces reinforcer; acceleration of behavior.
Example Behavior: child begins assigned seatwork.
Consequence : teacher smiles at child and remarks, “good, I see you‟ve started” if the
child‟s initial effort at doing his assigned work is consistently given immediate attention and praise by the teacher, the promptness with which he begins his work
will likely increase.
Negative Reinforcer
Something you will work to avoid Punishment
Effect: Decrease or weaken behavior which produces reinforcer; deceleration of behavior.
Example Behavior: Child destroys paper other children.
Consequence : Teacher points at child and shouts “NO”
If the teacher is generally positive, controlled, and soft-spoken in his interaction with the child, but consist
ently points child and shout “no” when he begins to destroy another child‟s paper, child‟s destruction of paper will likely decrease.
2. Schedule of Reinforcement Effective control of behavior is largely a result of the arrangement of
consequences. In any behavior- management situations there are rules, either explicitly stated or implicit in the sequence of event, which determine the
arrangement of rewards and punishment. These rules which arrange the relationship
between the occurrence of behavior and its consequences are called contingencies or
schedule of reinforcement. A contingency states the conditions under which
reinforcement will occur. For example, the child may be required to do a certain number of specified behaviors to obtain reinforcement, or he may be expected to
complete a task during a certain time interval to get a reward.
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There are two classes of reinforcement schedule: continuous, in which every response is reinforced, and intermittent
, in which not all of the child‟s appropriate responses are reinforced.
I. Continuous Reinforcement
Every time the behavior occurs, it is reinforced. For example, each time the child completes an arithmetic problem correctly he is
given a point for his progress chart
II. Intermittent Reinforcement
Intermittent reinforcement is given only part of the times that gives the desired response. It is often used instead of continuous reinforcement once the desired
response is conditioned by continuous reinforcement and the reinforcer wishes to cut down or eliminate the number of reinforcements necessary to encourage the intended
response. The number of times a student performs the target behavior will determine
when she will receive the reinforcer. Example: A student will be reinforced after turning in four homework assignments.
3. Reinforcing Vocabulary through Scrabble Game
Once students have mastered the fundamental grammatical pattern of a language, his next task is to master or remember its vocabulary or at least that part of
its vocabulary that he needs. Nobody ever learns all the words in any language to learn new words as long as we live.
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Gerald Wallace and James M. Kauffman, Teaching Children with Learning Problems second edition, United State: Charles Merill Publishing Company, 1987, p. 30
Before the writer discusses how to reinforce vocabulary through scrabble game, the most important one is we must know the meaning of reinforcing. The
writer found it refers to wikipedia, reinforcing is defined as describing something used to reinforce while other defines reinforcing as something reinforces.
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Kufaishi states that a large number of vocabulary items are necessary to success in social, professional and intellectual life; that vocabulary is a vehicle for
thought, self-expression, interpretation, and communication.
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It means reinforcing vocabulary should not be delayed. Scrabble cane be used to get rid of the students‟
boredom and can serve a lot of fun. Scrabble has a great tendency to attract attention of students. It also introduces an atmosphere of gaiety, fun and informality in the
classroom. In class situation, way of reinforcing vocabulary is mostly monotonous so,
students will get bored easily. Teacher drills the words to the students and ask them to do some exercises, i.e. completing sentences using the suitable word given. Other
example is students are asked to match words on column A with the suitable definition on column B. those kind of exercise will not
attract students‟ attention. This can cause the influence on the teaching- learning process in the classroom.
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http:en. Wikipedia. Orgwikipediareinforce
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Adil Al- Kufaishi, A Vocabulary Building Program is Necessary not a Luxury, English: 1989p. 87
