Principles of instructed SLA

Principles: a set of insights derived from theoretical and applied linguistics, cognitive psychology, information sciences and other allied disciplines. The term includes those theoretical assumptions that also govern syllabus design, materials production and evaluation measures.

• Procedures: a set of teaching strategies adopted by the teacher in order to accomplish goals of language learning and teaching in the classroom.

• Principles of instructed language learning

– Principles ≠ prescriptions (How-to-dos) (Ellis 2004)

• From “the easy reproduction of any ready-made package” to emphasis on “greater judgement from teachers in each context” (Crabbe, 2003: 16).

– Acknowledging and responding to diversity in classrooms

• From global directives to local assessments of students’ strategies and skills

• CLT as approach for foreign language classroom

– many of the features of a CLT classroom can be traced in principles (e.g. see Principle 7)

– Teachers are responsible for input which they need to adapt according to the context (COLT)

• Principles guide teachers in their lesson planning

– toolbox approach

• the noticing/triggering function

– recognize and attend to linguistic problems

– Direct attention to relevant input

• Hypothesis testing function

– more modifications of output when pushed to produce

• Metalinguistic function of output

– using language to reflect on language produced by others or oneself is beneficial to learning

– Collaborative writing tasks lead to dialoguing about how to best realize intended meanings

• Production of language pushes learners to process language more deeply

• In preparation for speaking and writing learners must pay more attention to how meaning is expressed through language

• Engaging learners in verbal production is an essential element in helping them develop their interlanguage

• generate better input if the partner‘s

feedback is put into practice

• force syntactic processing

• test hypotheses

• automatize existing knowledge

• develop discourse skills

• develop a personal voice

• provide learners with auto-input (monitoring)

• Conversational interaction is an essential

condition for SLA

• Interactional modification helps learners to

understand information and participate in

conversation

– Comprehension checks

– Clarification requests

– Self-repetition

– Corrective feedback (Long 1996)

• Awareness of the learners‘ own approaches to learning

• Offering alternative approaches

• Increasing learning strategies

• An analytical and experiential approach

• Metalinguistic judgement

• Selected response

• Constrained constructed response

• Free constructed response

• A zero grammar approach

• Staying close to the learners‘ developmental stage

• Teaching explicitly