- DIDACTICS II -

The EFL teachers’s informed/principled

approch:
“A look at twelve overaching principles of
second
language learning that interact with
sound practice and on which teaching
practice can be based”.
(Douglas Brown ,2007)
• COGNITIVE PRINCIPLES

• AFFECTIVE PRINCIPLES

• LINGUISTIC PRINCIPLES

1.” 1
 COGNITIVE PRINCIPLES

1. Automaticity
Automatic processing with peripheral attention to
form (focal/peripheral- controlled/automatic)

 Using language in authentic contexts for

meaningful purposes
 Focus on use of the language rather than usage
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 COGNITIVE PRINCIPLES
2. Meaningful Learning

 Subsuming information into existing structures and

memory systems – create associative links
 Appealing to students’ interests, academic goals…
 Anchoring new topics or concepts into existing
knowledge and background
 Avoiding focusing students on mechanical
techniques
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 COGNITIVE PRINCIPLES

3. Anticipated 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
• Feedback to keep students confident
• Short-term reminders or progress to percieve
development
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 COGNITIVE PRINCIPLES
4. Intrinsic Motivation
Behaviour stems from
• Needs
• Wants
• Desires within oneself

Behaviour itself can be self rewarding

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 COGNITIVE PRINCIPLES
5. Strategic Investment

• Learner’s personal investment of time, effort

and attention
• Strategies for comprehending and producing
language
• Cognitve styles
• Multiple intelligences
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 AFFECTIVE PRINCIPLES
6. Language Ego

Developing a new mode of thinking, feeling and

acting – a second indentity
Experiencing a moderate indentity crisis as
students develop a “second-self”
Feel silly, humilated, sense of defenselessness
Fragile language egos have a way of
misintepreting intended input 7
 AFFECTIVE PRINCIPLES
7. Self Confidence
Feeling capable of accomplishing a task

8. Risk taking
Difficult when what is encoraged is correctness,
right answers
Willing to become “gamblers”
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 AFFECTIVE PRINCIPLES
9. The language-culture connection
 L complex system of cultural customs, values and ways of
thinking, feeling and acting
 Cross-culture learning and differences
 Cultural connotations
 Cultural stereotypes
 Positive, neutral or negative attitudes
 Intercultural relations: individualism/collectivism - power distance
/inequality acceptance – strong/weak uncertainty avoidance -
masculinity-femininity
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 LINGUISTIC PRINCIPLES
10. The native language effect

positive or negative interference

11. Interlanguage
 systematic or quasi-systematic developmental
progress to full competence in the target language
 error analysis
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 LINGUISTIC PRINCIPLES
12. Communicative competence
Communicative goals are best achieved by giving attention
 to language use and not usage,
 to fluency and contexts
 to students’s eventual needs to apply classroom learning in the real world

“ Communicative competence is that aspect of our competence that enables

us to convey and interpret messages and to negotiate meanings
interpersonally with specific context” (Brown, 2001)

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 PRINCIPLED
APPROACH
Three stages...
1. DIAGNOSIS study students’ needs
SITUATIONAL NEEDS + CONTEXT OF TEACHING (socioeconomic
and educational background, students’ needs (culture, science, industry)
institution

2. TREATMENT make principled choices

create intrinsic motivation in students, a sense of strategic investment,
authentic materials, compare L1 and L2.

3. ASSESSMENT student’s accomplishment

of curricula objectives, assess students’ ongoing performance, attention to
commmunicative properties of tests

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