Principles and Practice of Contemporary EFL Teaching

Position Paper #1

Caldern

Angela Patricia Velasquez Hoyos

August 23rd, 2015.

Inspiring learners to become better language users through the integration

of cognitive, socio-affective and linguistic principles

Currently, teaching is considered as one of the most important professions, and

also as one of the most challenging ones since teaching helps the other

professions to consolidate their academic and pedagogical knowledge. According

to Ward (1997) cited by Harmer (2009), a teacher is not the person who transmits

knowledge; a teacher is the person who inspires students to discover and change

the world. Taking into account Wards words, it is necessary to provide students

with different tools in order to allow them to learn. I consider that teachers need to

integrate the three different types of principles in the class cognitive, socio-

affective and linguistic because the cognitive principles facilitate the development

of students critical thinking, the socio-affective principles enhance learners

capacity to understand the language, and the linguistic principles help learners to

raise awareness on language features.

First of all, the implementation of cognitive principles in the language class

helps learners to become more critical and develop higher thinking skills. Brown

(2001) states that there are six principles which deals with the development of

students cognition; these are automaticity, meaningful learning, intrinsic

motivation, strategic investment, and autonomy. All of these principles allow

students to internalize the process of learning a new language; students tend to

analyze and associate appropriate information to elaborate their own repertoire as

well as strategies to become successful language users. I consider that these

cognitive principles can help learners to develop higher thinking skills such as

creating, inferring, analyzing, applying due to in the language class teachers are

optimizing time to provide learners with meaningful input that provokes them a

hunger to learn. In other words, students are tempted to continue practicing the

language outside the class and that develops autonomy. This hunger to learn can

activate students intrinsic motivation because they are looking for more ways to be

successful learners. Since they are more autonomous and motivated, leaners

invest more time in learning the language; they try to find more information that

leads to a more automatic process. To sum up, the cognitive principles propose by

Brown permit that learners accomplish a more automatic learning process provided

by the implementation of meaningful learning experiences that deals with the

activation of other principles such as autonomy, strategic investment, and intrinsic

motivation.

Second of all, teachers need to connect the learning process with students

socio-affective background since this can lead to a better understanding of the

language. Meaningful learning provides learners the opportunity to become more

interested in learning and at the same time students are gaining confidence to

produce language given the fact that they are experiencing their learning process

with content that motivates them. Brown (2001) points out that in the socio-

affective principles there is an emotional involvement; therefore, I strongly believe

that teachers need to associate cognitive processes with affective factors since

when a student is emotional involved, he/she will have more chances to go beyond

the class and develop a new way of thinking. To conclude, teachers need to

provide students with meaningful learning where they can be emotional involved

because this involvement will help learners to practice the language in other

scenarios.

Finally, another important type of principles that teachers need to consider in

class are the linguistic principles because these help learners to raise awareness

on different language features. It is paramount to mention these linguistic principles

empower learners to be better at producing the language thus input plays an

important role on the grounds of the fact that students will have important language

foundations before they produce; they can have more possibilities to analyze the

usage of the language and be aware of how the language works. As Brown (2001)

mentions, all learners are different that is why teachers have to provide students

with a variety of alternatives where they see language in context rather than in

isolation because students need to reflect upon the use of the language and

develop language awareness which is given by the input received in class and

internalized through students output.

In conclusion, the integration of cognitive, socio-affective, and linguistic

principles allow learners to become better language users since these principles

help them to develop critical thinking skills as well as they raise awareness on

different aspects of the language. Therefore, teachers should plan their classes

based on meaningful input where it is evidenced the implementation of all the

principles given the fact that these lead to an emotional involvement that develops

not only cognitive but also better language processes.

References

BROWN, H. Douglas (2001) Teaching by principles, Addisson Welsey Longman,

Inc.

HARMER. J (2009). How to teach English, Longman, Inc