Brown's Principles in Teaching

                                                  

The 12 Principles of Teaching

Summarized by Sitti Fatimah Saleng

1 – Automaticity

• Efficient 2nd 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.
• Do not overwhelmed student with grammar
• Exercise students to achieve fluency

2 – Meaningful Learning

• Meaningful learning will lead toward better long-term retention than rote learning.
• Appeals to student interests
• Connects new info to old info (good schemata building)

Meaningful Learning – Don’ts:

• Too much grammar explanation
• Abstract principles and theories
• Too many drills and memories
• Activities with unclear purposes
• Extraneous activities
• Distractions that take the focus off of meaning

3 – The Anticipation of Reward

• 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.
• Encourage for confidence, not an Oscar
• Encourage students to encourage students
• Be excited and enthusiastic!!
• Try  to get students long-term rewards in learning English – the benefits of knowing English, jobs that require English, etc.

4 – Intrinsic Motivation

• The most powerful rewards are those that are intrinsically motivated within the learner.
• Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic
• Intrinsic brings feeling of competence and self-determination
• Extrinsic is all about gaining an award or avoiding punishment

5 – Strategic Investment

• Successful mastery of the 2nd language will be due to a large extent to a learner’s own personal “investment” of time, effort, and attention to the 2nd language.
• Strategic Investment
• Multiplicity of learning styles and strategies = multiplicity of techniques
• Group and individual; oral, written, maps, graphics, etc
• Not everyone has to comfortable at every single moment of every lesson, so push people!

7 – Autonomy

• Successful mastery  of a foreign language will depend to a great extent on learner’ autonomous ability- take initiative in the classroom and continue their jouney to success beyond the classroom and the teacher
• Learners will be dependent on the teacher, but teacher can help them to develop a sense of autonomy.
• Implement activies in the classroom that allow creativity
• Pair and group work-provide students do language on their own
• Encourage creativity and praise students for trying language
• Provide feedback on students’ speech
• Suggest students to use their languange outside of class.

6 – Language Ego

• As human beings learn to use a 2^nd language, they also develop a new mode of thinking, feeling, and acting – a 2^nd identity.
• Be supportive because adult learners often feel stupid!
• Be challenging but kind of activities
• Determine who to call on, correct,  ask to volunteer information, how to pair or group etc.
• Help students understand the normal of confusion 2^nd self in 2^nd culture.

8 – Willingness to Communicate

• Successful language learners generally believe themselves and their capacity to accomplish communicative task. They must be willing to take risk to produce and interpret language.
• Create an atmosphere in the classroom that encourages students to try out language, venture a response.
• Provide reasonable challenges.
• Return students’ risky attempts with positive affirmation.

9 -- The Language-Culture Connection

• Whenever you teach a language, you also teach a complex system of cultural customs, values, and ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.
• Discuss cultural differences without being judgmental
• Connect culture and language – sociolinguistics
• Don’t be culturally offensive in the class – that’s so easy!
• Be ready to discuss your cultural blind spots and assumptions.
• Pay attention to possible culture shock.

10 – The Native Language Effect

• The native language of learners exerts a strong influence on the acquisition of the target language system.
• Errors as important windows to learners underlying system and provide appropriate feedback on Language.
• Help students to understand not everything about their native language system will cause error.
• Stop translation in its tracks or based on students comprehension in translating their language! Think in the target language!

11 -- Interlanguage

• 2nd language learners tend to go through a systematic or quasi-systematic developmental process as they progress to full competence in the target language.
• Distinguish between interlanguage errors and all others
• Tolerate interlanguage forms that make sense and show learning
• Don’t make students feel stupid
• Let students know the importance of making mistakes
• Encourage students to do self-correction
• Don’t let your corrections make students afraid of speaking

12 -- Communicative Competence

·         Make students understand that communicative competence is the goal of language classroom. Instruction is needed to point toward all of its components: organizational, pragmatic, and psychomotor.

o    Communicative goals are best achieved by giving due attention to:

Ø  language use and not just usage

Ø  Fluency and not just accuracy

Ø  Authentic language and contexts

Ø  Students’ eventual need to apply classroom learning to unrehearsed contexts in the real world

o    Communicative Competence is a combo plate of:

Ø  Organizational competence = grammatical and discourse

Ø  Pragmatic competence = functional and sociolinguistic

Ø  Psychomotor skills = pronunciation and intonation

• Grammar is just one part of a lesson
• Functional & sociolinguistic aspects of language are fun, but don’t forget the psychomotor skills
• Allow students to become fluent.
• Be real – in materials
• Help students become independent learners and users of language out there.

In my point of view, there are three more important principles among them.

They are as follows;

1.      Intrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation is really important, because it is an inner drive of student.  If the student intrinsically motivated to perform all classrom tasks, the government do not require teachers anymore (Brown, 2007). Student will do one by one task for itself, without any reward offered or treated with any kinds of punishment in order to do something. Student do it because of love. For instance, student study hard eventhough at the time student will not get an exam or forced by someone else. Without motivation, student is not going to read, study and go to school, and absolutely student can not reach success in learning. In this case, teachers have to find out techniques and strategies in order to create and develop a high motivation to their students, especially intrinsic motivation.

2.      Willingness to Communicate

This principle is also important to make student active communicate in the classroom, because Communicative competence is really required in Language learning. But in the reality, sometimes students have no initiation to communicate and feel awkward and shy in speaking. As MacIntyre et al. (1998) cited in Elwyn Lloyd (2012) stated that student’s willingness to communicate in Foreign Language determined by some factors, they are;

·         Students’ Personality (tendency towards extroversion or introversion);

·         Student’s level of self-confidence;

·         Motivation to speak and attitude towards the foreign language community;

·         The environment or situation in which the communication take place.

In this case, teacher should emphasize classroom activity. When conditions are good, the students will feel comfortable or "ready" to communicate and will speak more frequently in Foreign Language.

3.      Communicative Competence

This principle is very important in learning English because it is the goal of language classroom . Communicative competence is the ability to use the language correctly and appropriately. The ability to communicate competently is the purpose of language learning, not the ability to use the language exactly as a native speaker does. Having three competences in communication indicate that students already mastered on English language use.

References:

Brown, H. D. 2007. Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. Third Edition. New York: Pearson-Longman

Lloyd, Elwyn. 2012. Language Learners' "Willingness to Communicate" through Livemocha.com

http://alsic.revues.org/2437?lang=en (accessed on September 13, 2012)