What are the fundamental principles that inform effective language teaching and language learning? This section connects language learning theory and research with approaches to classroom teaching, techniques for encouraging learners, and ways of understanding and assessing the learning process. This material will help you base what you do in the classroom on a coherent, evidence-based understanding of how and why people learn second or additional languages.
- Focusing on communicative competence
- Recognizing models of language teaching and learning
- Using learner-centered instruction
- Adopting an asset-based approach
- Motivating learners
- Understanding the language learning process
- Assessing learning
We hope that the material presented in this section will help you become a better language teacher. We believe you will find that the contemporary language teaching model, with its focus on language in use and the active, joint engagement of learners and teacher, produces a dynamic classroom environment in which teaching and learning become rewarding and enjoyable for all.
Sources
Some material in this section is drawn from the modules “Research and language learning: A tour of the horizon” by Ken Sheppard, and “Spoken language: What it is and how to teach it” by Grace Stovall Burkart in Modules for the Professional Preparation of Teaching Assistants in Foreign Languages (Grace Stovall Burkart, Ed.; Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1998).
The Essentials of Language Teaching 