Understanding Cognitive Principles in Language Learning
Cognitive Principles: they relate to mental and intellectual functions.
1. Automaticity
Automaticity: is the ability to do things without occupying the mind, allowing it to become an automatic response pattern or habit. It is usually the result of learning, repetition, and practice.
*Overcoming our propensity to pay too much focal attention to the bits and pieces of language and to move language forms quickly to the periphery by using language in authentic contexts for meaningful purposes.* Grammatical explanations or exercises dealing with what is sometimes called usage have a place in the adult classroom, but you could overwhelm your students with grammar. *If they become too heavily centered on the formal aspects of language, such processes can block pathways to fluency.* Make sure that a large proportion of your lessons are focused on the use of language for purposes that are as genuine as a classroom context will permit. *Students will gain more language competence in the long run if the functional purposes of language are the focal point.* You need to exercise patience with students as you slowly help them to achieve fluency.
2. Meaningful Learning
Meaningful Learning: is opposed to rote learning (repetition) and refers to a learning way where the new knowledge to acquire is related to previous knowledge.
*Children are good meaningful acquirers of language because they associate sounds, words, structures, and discourse elements with that which is relevant and important for their daily quest for knowledge and survival.* Some oral drilling is appropriate, selected phonological elements like phonemes, rhythm, stress, and intonation. *Capitalize on the power of meaningful learning by appealing to students’ interests, academic goals, and career goals.* Whenever a new topic or concept is introduced, attempt to anchor it in students’ existing knowledge and background so that it becomes associated with something already known. *Avoid the pitfalls of rote learning: grammar explanation, principles and theories, drilling or memorization, activities whose purposes aren’t clear, activities that do not accomplish the goals of the lesson, unit, or course, techniques that are so mechanical or tricky that students focus on the mechanics instead of on the language or meanings.*
3. The Anticipation of Reward
The Anticipation of Reward: human beings are universally driven to act, or “behave,” by the anticipation of some sort of reward that will ensue as a result of the behavior.
Shortcomings: lead learners to become dependent on short-term rewards, coax them into a habit of looking to teachers and others for their only rewards, and forestall the development of their own internally administered, intrinsic system of rewards.
*Encourage students to reward each other with compliments and supportive actions.* In class, very long motivation can help. *Display enthusiasm and excitement yourself in the classroom.* Notice the importance of English to the students.
4. Intrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic Motivation: the most powerful rewards are those that are intrinsically motivated within the learner. Because the behavior stems from needs, wants, or desires within oneself, the behavior itself is self-rewarding; therefore, no externally administered reward is necessary. *The learners perform the task because it is fun, interesting, useful, or challenging, and not because they anticipate some cognitive or affective rewards from the teacher.*
5. Strategic Investment
Strategic Investment: the methods that the learner employs to internalize and to perform the language in different areas.
Successful mastery of the second language will be due to a large extent to a learner’s own personal “investment” of time, effort, and attention to the second language in the form of an individualized battery of strategies for comprehending and producing the language.
*The importance of recognizing and dealing with the wide variety of styles and strategies that learners successfully bring to the learning process.* The need for attention to each separate individual in the classroom. *Learners employ a multiplicity of strategies for sending and receiving language.*