Teaching by

Principles

Cognitive
Principles

Automaticity
Automatic processing with peripheral
attention to language forms.
Subconscious acquisition.
Inductive process of exposure to input.
Efficient 2nd language learning involves
automatic processing of a relatively
unlimited number of language forms.
Overanalyses and thinking of rules tend to
impede this automaticity.
What classroom practices or techniques can
help automaticity?

Meaningful Learning
Meaningful learning will lead toward better
long-term retention than rote learning.
Associating create stronger retention.
Meaningful learning subsumes new
information into existing structures and
memory systems.
New topics or concepts are anchored into
students existing knowledge.
How can we foster meaningful learning?

Anticipation of Reward
Human beings are inspired and driven to act
or behave by the anticipation of some
reward.
Importance of verbal praise and
encouragement for correct responses or
success (gold stars, stickers, privileges for
good work).

Intrinsic Motivation
Behaviour stems from needs, wants, or

desires within oneself, the behaviour itself

is self-rewarding.
Classroom techniques have a much greater
chance for success if they are selfrewarding for the learner. Learners perform
the task because it is fun, interesting,
useful, or challenging, not because they
anticipate some cognitive or affective
rewards from the teacher.

Strategic Investment
Successful mastery of the second language will be

due to a large extent to a learners own personal

investment of time, effort, and attention to the
second language.
Importance of dealing with different language
styles and strategies. (visual vs. auditory
preference; individual vs. Group work preference)
Need for attention to each separate individual in
the classroom.
How can we help learners be conscious of this
principle?

Affective
Principles

Language Ego
As human beings learn to use a second

language, they also develop a new mode of

thinking, feeling, and acting- a second identity.
The new language ego can easily create within
the learner a sense of fragility, a defensiveness,
and a raising of inhibitions. (they sometimes
feel silly, if not humiliated, at the lack of words
or structures).
What can we do to avoid these negative feelings
in the learners?

Self- Confidence
Learners believe that they can are fully

capable of accomplishing a task is at least a

partial factor in their eventual success in
attaining the task.
I can do it! principle, or the self-esteem

principle.
How can we help our learners be more self-

confident?

Risk-Taking
Importance of getting learners to take

calculated risks in attempting to use

language_ both productively and receptively.
Successful language learners, in their realistic
appraisal of themselves as vulnerable beings
yet capable of accomplishing tasks, must be
willing to attempt to produce and to interpret
language that is a bit beyond their absolute
certainty.
What kind of classroom atmosphere might
encourage learners to take risks?

The language- culture connection

Language and Culture are intertwined,

interconnected. When you learn a language,

you will also learn something of the culture of
the speakers of that language.
Regarding our situation with Folk lands,

suppose you have a group of very nationalistic

students, who defend our culture and reject
British culture. What would you do/ say? How
would you react?

Linguistic
Principles

The Native Language

Effect
The native language of learners exerts a strong

influence on the acquisition of the target language

system. While that native system will exercise both
facilitating and interfering effects on the production
and comprehension of the new language, the
interfering effects are likely to be more salient.
Errors are in fact windows to a learners internalized
understanding of the second language, and therefore
they give teachers something observable t react to.
What does this principle tell us on how we should
treat mistakes in the classroom?

Interlanguage
Second language learners tend to go through

a systematic or quasi-systematic
developmental process as they progress to full
competence in the target language.
Successful interlanguage development is
partially a result of utilizing feedback from
others.
Mistakes are good indicators that innate
language acquisition abilities are alive and
well.
Mistakes are often indicators of aspects of the
new language that are still developing.

Communicative
Competence
Given that communicative competence is the goal of

a language classroom, instruction needs to point

toward all its components: organizational, pragmatic,
strategic, and psychomotor. Communicative goal are
best achieved by giving due attention to language use
and not just usage, to fluency and not just accuracy,
to authentic language and contexts, and to students
eventual need to apply classroom learning to
previously unrehearsed contexts in the real world.
What does this principle suggest or imply for our
practices in the classroom?

Thanks for your attention

and participation