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Both motivation – driving force which involve expending effort, expressing desire, and feeling enjoyment – and classroom interaction are needed to grasp
meaning of language learning. What the scholars see in learning English is limited to the empirical objectives.
They are to improve how the learner understands the target language, how the learner read texts, how the learner becomes better English user, et cetera. This
study tries to find out the meaning of language learning, here as the phenomenon, and how the learner becomes more reflective after having gone through the
language learning process.
b. Theories of learning
To learn is defined as “to gain knowledge, comprehension, or mastery through experience or study” in The American Heritage Dictionary of English
Language 1996. Hergenhahn 2009 modifies the definition of learning as a relatively permanent change in behavioral potentiality that results from experience
and cannot be attributed to temporary body states such as those induced by illness, fatigue, or drugs. An experience as an aspect in learning is considered as a
significant point to be discussed further in this study. However, the psychologist, Olson 2009, revises Gregory A. Kimble’s definition of learning as a relatively
permanent change in behavioral potentiality that results from experience and cannot be attributed to temporary body states such as those induced by illness,
fatigue, or drug.
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John Dewey as quoted by Bradley in 2005, states that an ounce of experience is better than a ton of theory simply because it is in experience that any theory has
vital and verifiable significance. In this study I focus on learning second language, out of the debate between those who believe that education is a matter
of making meaning for the learner on the one hand, those who believe that the function of education is to facilitate the process whereby learners make their own
meaning, on the other Nunan, 1999. There are three most famous schools of thought in second language acquisition. First, behaviorism considered effective
language behavior to be the production of correct responses to stimuli. If a particular response is reinforced, it then becomes habitual, or conditioned.
Second, cognitive psychology sought to discover underlying motivations and deeper structures of human behavior. Third, constructivism argued that all human
beings construct their own version of reality, and therefore multiple contrasting ways of knowing and describing are equally legitimate.
Borger 1982, p. 74 states that learning is presented as adaptive behavioral change to current circumstances, with the implication that a careful analysis of the
learner’s environment should account for the changes involved. There is a process and adaptation in learning. So that there would be a need to take a look at it in a
way to know what happens in the learner. Furthermore, he emphasizes that making sense of the whole and of parts would be very much a mutually supportive
process. In addition, Ellis defines learning as the internalization of rules and formulas
which are then used to communicate in the L2. However, Krashen in Ellis 2008
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uses the term to refer to the process of developing conscious or metalingual knowledge through formal study.
3. Meaning
