ENG 345: Week 5

             In Brown chapter 4, he talks about teaching by principles. He talks about the three different types: cognitive, socioaffective, and linguistic. With there being so many different approaches he combined and shortened the list into twelve approaches, each one fitting into the three different types. He then talks about each approach within the three different types. For cognitive principles he discusses automaticity, meaningful learning, the anticipation of reward, intrinsic motivation, strategic investment, and autonomy. All of these approaches relate mainly to mental and intellectual functions and they focus on the meaning of learning language. For socioaffective principles he discusses language ego, willingness to communicate, and the language-culture connection. These three approaches involve more of an emotional feel with oneself and with others. It also focuses on communicating with others in a community and relating the language to self, others, and world. The last category he talks about is linguistic principles, which are the native language effect, interlanguage, and communicative competence. The focus on these three is the language itself and the learning of complex linguistic systems. This list of approaches seems like it is too short and that there are methods that are missing from the list. However, it also seems like there are too many methods and that some of them could be combined.

            In Brown chapter 16, he talks about strategies-based instruction (SBI). He defines SBI as “how your language classroom techniques can encourage, build, and sustain effective language-learning strategies in your students”. He also talks about how it is important to know the different styles of learning of your students in order to provide different strategies that work best for them. One of the major points of the chapter is the “ten commandments” for good language learning: lower inhibitions, encourage risk taking, build self-confidence, develop intrinsic motivation, engage in cooperative learning, use right-brain processes, promote ambiguity tolerance, practice intuition, process error feedback, and set personal goals. A teachers’ role is very important is SBI and it is extremely important to get students strategically invested in their language-learning process. Brown also talks about the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), which can be used for developing awareness of strategies.

            The two chapters in Brown talked about the different strategies and approaches to language learning. Both chapters talked about the importance of autonomy and getting the students to invest in their learning of a second language. The role of the teacher is to know the style of learning of their students and to encourage, motivate, and provide feedback in almost all of the approaches. This makes the teacher as a guide and a coach rather than the all-knowing facilitator.