Principles of Language Learning: Cognitive, Affective, and Linguistic Factors
**Teaching by Principles**
**Cognitive Principles: How Our Brain Processes and Assimilates Language**
Automaticity
This refers to the ability to use language automatically and subconsciously. Language is not useful unless it is used for communication. Learners acquire language subconsciously without analyzing its forms. They appear to learn languages without thinking about them.
Meaningful Learning
This is about making associations rather than just memorizing. It involves finding out what students are interested in and linking it with the topics of the class. Avoid focusing solely on grammar.
The Anticipation of Reward
Demonstrate the strength of reward as a powerful factor in directing one’s behavior. Find positive aspects in everyone and reward them.
The Intrinsic Motivation Principle
The most motivated actions are those that have an inherent reward. Create motivation in students. Reinforce behavior through motivation.
Strategic Investment
Teaching methods should focus on the learner’s role in the process. Frequency is important in memorizing. Learning strategies: students are responsible for their learning and should apply it outside the classroom. The time spent in class is not enough; additional effort is needed outside.
**Affective Principles: Emotions in Language Learning**
Language Ego
When starting to learn a new language, individuals may feel a loss of confidence. As human beings use a second language, they also develop a new mode of thinking and feeling.
Self-Confidence
When students start to learn a second language, they need to feel confident. A person must believe in their ability to accomplish the task.
Risk-Taking
This highlights the importance of getting learners to take calculated risks when attempting to use the language. Learners need to be aware of the risks they are exposed to when using the new language.
The Language-Culture Connection
This involves teaching cultural customs, values, and ways of feeling, thinking, or acting. Whenever you teach a language, you also teach a complex system of cultural customs, values, and ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.
**Linguistic Principles: Dealing with Complex Linguistic Systems**
The Native Language Effect
The native language is very significant in the acquisition of a new language. Learners will predict the target language system. The native system will have both facilitating and interfering effects on the production and comprehension of the new language. Sometimes, learners make mistakes because they are confused by their native language.
Interlanguage
This is the process of acquiring a second language in which we develop the second language. It is in the middle between the native and the second language. Second language learners tend to go through a systematic developmental process as they progress to full competence in the target language. Successful interlanguage development is partially a result of utilizing feedback from others.
Feedback
Feedback is the response we get from linguistic behavior. To move through interlanguage, we need output and input. Input is any information you give your students about their linguistic behavior. It could be verbal or body language. It is the response you find in others; the other person shows you the effect it has on them. For example, when you talk to a person, and they respond.
Communicative Competence
These are the elements necessary for communication. It consists of some combination of the following components: organizational competence (grammatical and discourse), pragmatic competence (functional and sociolinguistic), strategic competence, and psychomotor skills. Communicative goals are best achieved by giving due attention to language use and not just usage, to fluency and not just accuracy, to authentic language and context, and to students’ eventual need to apply classroom learning to previously unrehearsed contexts in the real world. We learn through the consequences of our behaviors. When we are learning, the reward is in the behavior.
Difference Between Cognitive and Affective Feedback
- Affective Feedback: The emotional response from a positive point of view. It should always be positive in class but can be negative.
- Cognitive Feedback: The content of the feedback or the response. You are correcting the person. It is usually negative but can be positive.