Principles which help teachers to become effective in the Second Language Teaching

According to Douglas Brown there are 12 principles to be followed by teaching second language:

1) Automaticity: efficient second language involves a timely movement of the control of a few language forms into the automatic processing of a relatively unlimited number of language forms. Overgeneralizing, thinking too much about its forms, and consciously lingering on rules of language all tend to impede this graduation of automaticity.

2) Meaningful learning: meaningful learning will lead to better long term retention than rote learning. A good example can be found in several content-centered approaches to language teaching.

3) The anticipation of reward: although long-term success in language learning requires a more intrinsic motive than extrinsic, the power of immediate rewards in a language class is undeniable. One of the tasks of the teacher is to create opportunities for these moment by moment rewards that can keep classrooms interesting.

4) Intrinsic motivation: when behavior stems from needs, wants, or desires within oneself, the behavior itself has the potential to be rewarding.

5) Strategic investment: successful learning of the second language will be, to a large extent, the result of the learner’s investment of time, effort, and attention to the second language learning process.

6) Language ego: a second identity is developed by the new modes of thinking, feeling and acting when human beings learn to use a second language.

7) Self-confidence: the eventual success that learners attain in a task is partially a factor of their self-belief that they indeed are fully capable of accomplishing the task.

8) Risk-taking: successful language learners must be willing to play the game of language learning (produce, engage, and interpret) that is beyond their absolute certainty.

9) The language-culture connection: teaching a second language implies teaching a complex system of cultural customs, values, and ways of thinking, feeling and acting.

10) The Native Language Effect: The learner’s L1(native language) is a very significant system on which they will rely to make predictions in the process of learning the TL (target language).

11) Interlanguage: the systematic or quasi-systematic developmental process that learners go through as they advance to attain full competence in the TL is partially driven or fed by the feedback received from others and utilized by the learners.

12) Communicative competence: the ultimate goal of language classroom. It is best achieved by the combination of use and usage of language, fluency and accuracy, authentic language and context, followed by the application of classroom learning in real-life situations.