12. What’s Lightbown and Spada (2013)’s argument against a behaviourist view of language teaching?

Lightbown and Spada (2013) noted that behaviourism appears to present a reasonable explanation for how children acquire aspects of their L1, particularly the more frequent or pedestrian aspects, and at the earliest stages of acquisition. However, they asserted that behaviourism cannot offer a satisfactory explanation of how children acquire and demonstrate command of more complex grammatical features.

Reference: 

East, M. (2021). Foundational principles of task-based language teaching (p. 214). Taylor & Francis.

Lightbown, P., & Spada, N. (2013). How languages are learned (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.