The Essentials of Language Teaching is a resource website for teachers in foreign language and second/additional language learning contexts. It provides a concise overview of the guiding principles and evidence-based practices currently used by experienced language teaching professionals.

The Essentials starts with the basic idea that the language learner’s goal is the ability to communicate, that is, to use the language for specific purposes. For this reason, the Essentials promotes a learner-centered approach to teaching that uses meaningful tasks, authentic materials, and guided discovery activities to develop communicative competence.

Site Content

  • Guiding Principles: Fundamental tenets of theory and method in teaching for communicative competence. Experienced language teachers base what they do in the classroom on coherent, evidence-based information about effective ways of teaching and learning languages. This material builds teachers’ understanding and encourages them to consider it in relation to their own approach.
  • Teaching Practice: Specific ways of turning language learning theory into classroom teaching practice. A focus on learner-centered teaching for communicative competence requires the use of activities that engage learners in authentic communication. The material in this section outlines relevant teaching methods, strategies, and learning activities.
  • Professional Learning: Strategies and techniques for ongoing growth as a language teaching professional. Sections address reflective practice, development of a professional portfolio, and participation in professional communities of practice.
  • Insights: A series of blog posts with observations on key aspects of language teaching and language learning.

Images

The images used on this website depict folded paper (origami) boats floating on a stream. These images represent central aspects of teacher professional development — what it is and how it works.

The water symbolizes the ongoing learning journey that defines the professional lives of dedicated teachers. Sometimes the water is calm and the boats drift peacefully. At other times the stream flows more quickly and the boats may tip precariously or even risk capsizing — but it’s those times that bring the greatest progress.

The boats themselves represent each teacher’s construction of the professional development process. A basic origami boat is not difficult to make; the internet is full of diagrams and instructions and how-to videos. However, to actually make an origami boat, you must get the paper and do the folding yourself. In the same way, you as a teacher can read the material on this website, and think about it, and talk about it with your colleagues, but it will not become real for you until you try it out in your own classroom.

We are grateful to Leyla Torres of Origami Spirit for permission to use her beautiful photos.

History

The Essentials of Language Teaching was originally developed for the National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC) in Washington, DC to introduce college and university instructors and teaching assistants to the language teaching methods that are typically used in U.S. higher education. The site was designed for teachers of languages that are designated as “foreign” in the United States, but teachers in second-language contexts, particularly teachers of English as an additional language, also reported finding it useful.

The site was created over several years (2003-2008) by Catharine Keatley and Deborah Kennedy under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, CFDA #84.015A. The content was based on the material in Modules for the Professional Preparation of Teaching Assistants in Foreign Languages (Grace Stovall Burkart, Ed.; Center for Applied Linguistics, 1998). This was a printed set of “ten instructional modules for graduate teaching assistants in college-level second language instruction.” The full text of the 1998 publication is available from the ERIC database (ED433716; pdf) at https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED433716.

Original modules:

  • Burkart, Grace S. Spoken language: What it is and how to teach it.
  • Byrd, Patricia. Grammar in the foreign language classroom: Making principled choices.
  • Byrnes, Heidi. Reading in the beginning and intermediate college foreign language class.
  • Chamot, Anna Uhl. Teaching learning strategies to language students.
  • Kinginger, Celeste. Beyond TA training: Developing a reflective approach to a career in language education.
  • Lange, Dale. The teaching of culture in foreign language classes.
  • Musumeci, Diane. Writing in the foreign language classroom: Soup and firecrackers.
  • Sheppard, Ken. Research and language learning: A tour of the horizon.
  • Schwartz, Ana Maria. Listening in a foreign language.
  • Tedick, Diane J., and Carol A. Klee. Alternative assessment in the language classroom.

The Essentials site is now maintained by Deborah Kennedy, senior consultant at Key Words. The original content and organization have been updated with information on recent teaching insights and practices, as well as technology tools that have been developed since the site was originally created.

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