PRINCIPLES
ACCORDING TO H. DOUGLAS BROWN
In order to develop a broadly based theoretical
approach, in here we show it by giving a questions “why and how learners
successfully acquire second languages? ”Am I a learner-centered interactive or
task-based teacher or what?” To answer it, it is important to cinsider elements
that are at the core of language pedagogy; Foundational principles that can
form the building blocks for your own theoretical rationale.
According to Brown (2007) in “Principles of Language
Learning and Teaching (PLLT), that a great many of a teacher’s choices are
grounded in established principles of language learning and teaching. By
perceiving and internalizing connections between practice (choices you make in
the classroom) and theory (principles derived from research), you are more
likely to engage in “enlightened” teaching. You will be better able to see why
you have chosen to use a particular classroom technique (or set of techniques),
to carry it out with confidence and to evaluate its utility after the fact.
There are 12 principles of second language learning
which form the core of an approach to language teaching. All of the principles
spill across somewhat arbitrary, cognitive, affective and linguistic
boundaries.
1. COGNITIVE PRINCIPLES
The first set of principles “cognitive” which relate
to mental and intellectual function.
Principle 1 :Automaticity
Children
acquire language subconsciously that is, without overly analyzing the forms of
language themselves. Through an inductive process of exposure to language input
and opportunity to experiment with output, they appear to learn languages
without “thinking
about them. This subconscious processing
is called automatic processing with peripheral attention to language forms.
The principle of Automaticity highlights the
importance of :
·
Subconscious absorption of language through meaningful use
·
Efficient and rapid movement away from a focus on the forms
of language to the purposes to which language is put
·
Efficient and rapid movement away from a capacity-limited
control of a few bits and pieces to a relatively unlimited automatic mode of
processing language forms (fluency)
·
Resistance to the temptation to analyze language forms
The Principle of Automaticity may be
stated as follows:
Efficient second language learning
involves a timely movement of the control of a few language forms into the
automatic, fluent processing of a relatively unlimited number of language
forms. Overanalyzing language, thinking too much about its forms, and
consciously lingering on rules of language all tend to impede this graduation
to automaticity.
Principle 2 : Meaningful learning
Meaningful learning “subsumes new information into
existing structures and memory systems, and
the resulting associative links create stronger retention. Children are good
meaningful acquires of language because they associate sounds, words,
structures and discourse elements with that which is relevant and important in
their daily quest for knowledge and survival.
The principle of meaningful learning
is stated:
The process of making meaningful associations between
existing knowledge/experience and new material will lead toward better
long-term retention than rote learning of material in isolated pieces.
Some classroom implications of the Principle of Meaningful Learning
include :
1. Capitalize on the power of
meaningful learning
2. Attempt to anchor a new topic
in students’ existing knowledge and background
3. Avoid the pitfalls of rote
learning such as:
·
Too much grammar explanation
·
Too many abstract principles and theories
·
Too much drilling and /or memorization
·
Unclear activities
·
Activities are not accomplished the goals
·
Techniques are so mechanical
Principle 3 : The Anticipation of Reward
According to B.F Skinner, the anticipation of reward
is the most powerful factor in directing one’s behavior.
The principle behind Skinner’s operant conditioning paradigm can be
stated :
Human beings are universally driven to act, or “behave.” By
the anticipation of some sort of reward-tangible or intangible, short-term or
long-term that will ensue as a result of the behavior.
You can perceive the importance of the immediate
administration of such rewards for correct responses (very good), appropriate
grades or scores to indicate success. At the end, it behooves you to help
students to see why they are doing something and its relevance to their
long-term goals in learning English.
On the other hand, it has shortcomings such as
a. It can lead learners to
become dependent on short-term rewards,
b. Coax them into a habit of
looking to teachers and others for their only reward
c. Forestall the development of
their own internally administered, intrinsic system of rewards
Considering all sides of the reward principle, the following
constructive classroom implications may be drawn:
1. Provide an optimal degree of
immediate verbal praise and encouragement to students as a form of short-term
reward
2. Encourage them with
compliments and supportive action
3. Short-term reminders of progress
may help students (in low motivation) to perceive their development.
4. Display enthusiasm and
excitement yourself in the classroom
5. Try to get learners to see
the long-term rewards in learning English by pointing out what they can do with
English where they live and around the world.
Principle 4 : Intrinsic Motivation
The intrinsic motivation principle is:
The most powerful rewards are those that are intrinsically
motivated within the learner. Because the behavior stems from needs, wants, or
desires within oneself, the behavior itself is self-rewarding; therefore, no
externally administered reward is necessary.
If all
learners were intrinsically motivated to perform all classroom tasks, we design
classroom task that feed into those intrinsic drives. Classroom techniques have
a much greater chance for success if they are self-rewarding in the perception
of the learner. The learners perform the task because it is fun, interesting,
useful or challenging and not because they anticipate some cognitive or affective
rewards from the teacher.
Principle 5: Strategic investment
The language-teaching profession in a few decades ago
is contrasted with recent year. The “methods” that the learner employs to
internalize and to perform in the language are as important as the teacher’s
methods, is called the principle of strategic investment.
Successful mastery of the second language will be due to a
large extent to a learner’s own personal “investment” of time, effort, and
attention to the second language in the form of an individualized battery of
strategies for comprehending and producing the language.
The variation among learners poses a thorny
pedagogical dilemma. Learning styles alone signal numerous learner preference
that a teacher needs to attend to. For example, visual versus auditory
preference and individual versus group work preference are highly significant
factors in a classroom. A variety of techniques in your lessons will at least
partially ensure that you will “reach” a maximum number of students. A
teacher’s greatest dilemma is how to attend to each individual student in a
class while still reaching the class as a whole group.
Principle 6 : Autonomy
According to
(Benson 2001, 2003, Schmenk, 2005; Wenden, 2002) defined as “the capacity to
control one’s own learning. Autonomy is now almost universally manifested in
the classroom in the form of allowing learners to do things like initiate oral
production, solve problems in small groups and practice language with peers.
The principle of autonomy states :
Successful mastery of a foreign language will depend to a
great extent on learners’ autonomous ability both to take initiative in the
classroom and to continue their journey to success beyond the classroom and the
teacher.
A number of classroom implications of this principle;
1. Learners at the beginning
stages of a language will of course be somewhat dependent on the teacher, which
is natural and normal. But teachers can help even beginners to develop a sense
of autonomy through guided practice and by allowing some creative innovation
within limited forms.
2. As learners gain confidence
and begin to be able to experiment with language, implement activities in the
classroom that allow creativity but are not completely beyond the capacity of
students.
3. Don’t forget that pair and
group work and other interactive activities in your classroom provide
opportunities for students to do language on their own.
4. In oral and written
production in the classroom, encourage creativity and praise students for
trying language that’s a little beyond their present capacity.
5. Remember, you’re a
facilitator and coach, so while your students are in your ‘care’, provide
feedback on their speech-just enough to be helpful, but not so much that you
stifle their creativity.
6. Suggest opportunities for
students to use their language (gauged for their proficiency level) outside of
class.
2. SOCIOAFFFECTIVE PRINCIPLE
Here we look at feelings about self, about communicating with others in a
community of learners, and about the ties between language and one’s culture,
worldview and way of life.
Principle 7 : 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",
intertwined with the second language, can easily create within the learner a
sense of fragility, a defensiveness, and a raising of inhibitions. the language
ego principle might also be affectionately called the "warm and
fuzzy" principle : all second language learners need to be treated with
affective tender loving care.
How
can you bring some relief to this situation and provide effective support ?
Here are some possibilities :
1.
Overtly
display a supportive attitude to your students.
2.
On
a more mechanical, lesson - planning level, your choice of techniques and
sequences of techniques needs to be cognitively challenging but not
overwhelming at an affective level
3.
Considering
learners' language ego states will probably help you to determine :
-
who
to call on
-
who
to ask to volunteer information
-
when
to correct a student’s speech error
-
how
much to explain something
-
how
structured and planned an activity should be
-
who
to place in which small groups or pairs
-
how
“tough” you can be with a student
4. If your students are learning english as a second
language (in the cultural milieu of an english speaking country), they are
likely to experience a moderate identity crisis as they develop a "second
self". Help such students to understand that the confusion of developing
that second self in the second culture is normal and natural process. patience
and understanding on your part will also ease the process.
Principle 8 :
Willingness To Communicate
Closely
allied to the language ego principle is a construct that is a relatively recent
newcomer to second language acquisition research : willingness to communicate
(WTC). it has already been briefly noted that WTC combines concepts of
self-confidence and risk taking, as they are both interwoven in our human
psyche.
Successful
language learners generally believe in themselves and in their capacity to
accomplish communicative tasks, and are therefore willing risk takers in their
attempts to produce and to interpret language that is a bit beyond their
absolute certainty. Their willingness to communicate results in the generation
of both output (from the learner) and input (to the learner).
Most
educational research shows the opposite to be more conducive to long term
retention and intrinsic. how can your classrooms reflect the principle of WTC ?
1.
Give
ample verb and non verbal assurance to students
2.
Sequence
techniques from easier to more difficult
3.
Create
an atmosphere in the classroom that encourages students to try out language, to
venture a response, and not to wait for someone else to volunteer language
4.
Provide
reasonable challenges in your techniques - make them neither too easy nor too
hard
5.
Help
your students to understand what calculates risk taking is, lest some feel that
they must blurt out any old response.
6.
Respond
to students' attempts to communicate with positive affirmation, praising them
for trying while at the same time warmly but firmly attending to their language
Principle 9 : The
Language Culture Connection
Language
and culture are intricately intertwined. whenever you teach a language, you
also teach a complex system of cultural customs, values, and ways of thinking,
feeling and acting :
1.
Discuss
cross cultural differences with your students, emphasizing that no culture is
"better" than another, but that cross cultural understanding is an
important facet of learning a language
2.
Include
among your techniques certain activities and materials that illustrate the
connection between language and culture
3.
Teach
your students the cultural connotations, especially the sociolinguistic aspects
of language
4.
Screen
your techniques for material that may be culturally offensive
5.
Make
explicit to your students what you may take for granted in your culture
A
second aspect of the language culture connection to which the students will
themselves be affected by the process of accuration, which will vary with the
context and the goals of learning. in many second language learning contexts,
such as ESL in the United States, students are faced with the full blown
realities of adapting to life in a foreign country, complete with various
emotions accompanying stages of acculturation. in such cases, acculturation,
social distance, and psychological adjustment are factors to be dealt with.
This
aspect of the principle may be summed up in this way :
Especially in
second ( as opposed to foreign) language-learning contexts, the success with
wich learners adapt to a new cultural
milieu will affect their language acquisition success, and vice versa, in some
possibly significant ways.
In the classroom, we can
do the following :
1.
Help
students to be aware of acculturation and its stages
2.
Stress
the importance of the second language as a powerful tool to adjustment in the
new culture
3.
Be
especially sensitive to any students who appear to be discouragesd, then do
what we can to assist them
3. LINGUISTIC
PRINCIPLES
Principle 10 : The Native Language Effect
The principle of the native language
effect stresses the important of that native system in the linguistic attempt
of the second language learner :
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 the most salient.
Some classroom
suggestion stemming from the native language effect :
1. Regard learners errors as important windows on their underlying
system and provide appropriate feedback on them
2.
Ideally
every successful learner will hold on to the facilitating effects of the native
language and discard the interference
3.
Thinking
directly in the target language usually helps to minimize interference errors.
try to coax students into thinking in the second language instead of resorting to
translation as they comprehend and produce language
Principle 11: Interlanguage
Manifest
a systematic progression of acquisition of sounds and words and structure and
discourse features. The
interlanguage principle tells us :
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.
The
collective experience of language teachers and a respectable stockpile of
second language research indicates that classroom instruction makes a
significant difference in the speed and success with which learners proceed
through interlanguage stages of development.
This highlights the importance of the feedback that we give to learners in
the classroom. In many settings (especially in EFL contexts where few
opportunities arise outside the classroom to use the language communicatively),
we are the only person the students have real live contact with who speaks
english.
Much has been
written about the role of feedback in second language acquisition. in Vigil and
Oller's (1976) seminal study, teachers were reminded of an important
distinction between affective and cognitive feedback. The former is the extent
to which we value or encourage a student's attempt to communicate ; the latter
is the extent to which we indicate an understanding of the "message"
it self. teachers are engaged in a never-ending process of making sure that we
provide sufficient positive affective feedback to students and at the same time
give appropriate feedback to students about whether or not their actual
language is clear and unambiguous.
Principle 12 : Communicative Competence
While communicative competence (CC) has come to
capture a multiplicity of meanings depending on who you ask, it is nevertheless
a useful phrase. some combination of the following components of CC, which stem
from Bachman (1990) and the seminal Canale and Swain (1980) :
1.
Organizational
competence (grammatical and discourse)
2.
Pragmatic
competence
3.
Strategic
competence
4.
Psychomotor
skil
Given that communicative competence is the goal of a
language classroom, instruction needs to point toward all its competence :
organizational, pragmatic, strategic, and psychomotor. Communicative goals 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.
It
is important to note that the CC principle still has a bit of a reaction most
flavor : reacting to other paradigms that emphasized attention to grammatical
forms, to "correct" language above all ; to artificial, contrived
language and techniques in the classroom ; and to a finite repertoire of
language forms and functions that might not have lent themselves to application
in the world outside the classroom.
Source : H.
Douglas Brown, Teaching by Principles, San Francisco University, Third Edition.
