Category of principles of language learning and teaching

Students usually make the transition faster than children, who tend to linger in analytical, controlled modes, on the bits and pieces of language, resisting putting those bits and pieces into the “hard drive” of our minds. We will the first principle of language learning and teaching the principle of automaticity and include under this rubric the importance of:

• •    Subconscious absorption of language through meaningful use;

• •    Efficient and rapid movement away from a focus on the forms of language to a focus on the purposes to which language is put;

• •    Efficient and rapid movement away from a capacity-limitedcontrol of a few bits and pieces to a relatively unlimited automatic mode of processing language forms;

• •    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 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 that this graduation to automaticity.

Notice that this principle does not say that conscious processing is necessarily, or always, harmful. In fact, adults especially can benefit greatly from certain conscious applications. What we principle does say is that adults can take a lesson from children here by speedily overcoming our propensity to pay too much conscious attention to the bits and pieces of language and to move on to the actual use of language for meaningful purposes.

Affective principles. We now turn our attention to principles that are more central to the emotional processing of human beings. Here, we look at feeling s about self, about relationships in a community of learners, and about the emotionalities between language and culture.

Language ago. This principle can be summarized in a well- recognized claim: 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 ago” intertwined with second language, can easily create within the learner a sense of fragility, a defensiveness, and a rising of inhabitions.

The language ago principle might also be affectionately called the “warm fuzzy” principle: all second language learners need to be treated within affective tender loving care. Language-based egos, which are normally well developed attack, are suddenly in the perception of the learner-obsolete. Now they must fend for their emotional selves with a paltry linguistic battery that leaves them with a feeling of total defenselessness.

Linguistic principles. The last category of principles of language learning and teaching center on language itself and on how learners deal with this complex linguistic system. It almost goes without saying that the native language of every learner is an extremely significant factor in the acquisition of a new language. Most of the time, we think of the native language as exercising an interfering effect on the target language, and indeed the most salient, observable effect does appear to be one of interference. The majority of a learner’s errors in produsing the second language, especially in the beginning levels, stem from the learner’s assumption that the target language operates like the native language.

The principle of the native language effect stresses importance of that native system in the linguistic attempts of the second language learner:

The native language of learners will be a highly significant system. While that native system will exercise both facilitating and interfering effects on the production and comprehension of the new language; the interfering effects in the classroom, interference are likely to be the most salient. In dealing with the native language effect in the classroom, interference will most often be the focus of your feedback in the classroom. That’s perfectly sound pedagogy. Learner’s errors stand out like the tips of icebergs giving us salient signals of an underlying system at work. Errors are, in fact, windows to a learner’s internalized understanding of the second language, and therefore they give us teachers something observable to react to. Their non-errors- the facilitating effects-certainly do not need to be treated. Don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken.

In principles of language learning and teaching, which perhaps you have read or are reading, that these are “the best of times and the worst time of times” in the language teaching profession. Best, because we have learnt a great deal about language acquisition in the last two or three decades. But worst, our information is still so slippery that just as we are about to pin down a generalization about second language acquisition, the phenomenon often eludes our grasp. By now you have perhaps already come to an appreciation of the complexity and mystery of this field.