Language Learning Principles: Affective and Linguistic Factors
Language Learning Principles
Affective Principles
Affective principles: involve emotions, feelings about self, relationships in a learning community, and emotional ties between language and culture.
6. Language Ego
As humans learn a second language, they develop a new way of thinking, feeling, and acting—a second identity. This new language ego, intertwined with the second language, can create fragility, defensiveness, and inhibitions in the learner.
7. Self-Confidence
Learners’ belief in their ability to accomplish a task is a factor in their eventual success.
8. Risk Taking
Learners should be ready to try out their new language, use it meaningfully, ask questions, assert themselves, and produce and interpret language.
- Create a classroom atmosphere that encourages students to try out language and not wait for others to volunteer.
- Provide reasonable challenges in your techniques (neither too easy nor too hard).
9. Language-Culture Connection
Language and culture are intertwined. Learning a language also means learning about the culture of its speakers.
- Teaching a language also means teaching cultural customs, values, and ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.
- Use materials that illustrate the connection between language and culture.
- Teach the connotations, especially the sociolinguistic aspects, of language.
Students will be affected by acculturation, which varies with the context and learning goals.
Linguistic Principles
These principles center on language itself and how learners deal with complex linguistic systems.
10. The Native Language Effect
The native language strongly influences the acquisition of the target language. While the native system can facilitate and interfere with the new language, the interfering effects are often most noticeable. (e.g., use of cognates: Embarazada = embarrassed)
Thinking directly in the target language helps minimize interference errors. Encourage students to think in the second language instead of translating.
11. Interlanguage
Second language learners go through a systematic developmental process as they progress to full competence. Successful interlanguage development results from feedback (sounds, words, structures, discourse features).
- Feedback should convey that mistakes are not bad but indicators of active language acquisition.
- Encourage students to self-correct.
12. Communicative Competence
Given that communicative competence is the goal, instruction should address all its components: organizational, pragmatic, strategic, and psychomotor. Communicative goals are best achieved by focusing on language use, not just usage; fluency, not just accuracy; authentic language and contexts; and students’ need to apply classroom learning in real-world situations.
- Grammatical explanations, drills, or exercises are only part of a lesson or curriculum.
- Ensure you are preparing students to use the language in real-world contexts.