Chapter Report 2: The Principles of Language Teaching and Learning

There are some foundation principles which have to be considered when we are teaching language; cognitive principles, affective principles, and linguistic principles. Those principles should be applied by teachers in order to make their teaching and learning activity more meaningful.

In terms of cognitive principles, teachers should make their activity stimulating for the learners. Basically, the term ‘cognitive’ relates to the mental and intellectual function (Brown, 2001: 55). There are some important aspects which can motivate learners to involve in their activity, such as; automaticity, meaningful learning, reward, motivation, and strategic investment. 

Meanwhile, in terms of the affective principles, teachers should recognize that their learners have different characteristics. Therefore, they have to consider to language ego, self-confidence, risk-taking, and the language-culture connection. 

In terms of linguistic principles, teacher should pay more attention to the native language effect, interlanguage, and communicative competence since we are teaching the learners which have different culture and language structure from the Target Language (TL).

Generally, when we are teaching the foreign language learners, as a teacher, we should make the class situation as interesting as possible. So that learners will get motivated with the activity. To make it more meaningful, teachers should focus their activity on the objectives or goals of the course, since if we miss it students will get nothing from our lessons. Trying to make the activity focusing on language use rather than language structure is better because we know that learners, probably, get the TL exposure only in the classroom. 

The application of considering students’ needs and objectives of the course is probably best suit for Vocational High School students. They have their own needs depending on what majors they take. They need foreign language exposure to support them to communicate in future working situations. So, the activity that teachers provide should, at least, represent their future working situations.

Besides, teachers also have to know that their native language will greatly affect on the TL acquisition (Brown, 2001: 65). Based on that reason, when teachers found some mistakes on their students language use, teachers should not judge it wrong or inappropriate since there is a different structure between TL and L1. To avoid this, teacher’s feedback will be beneficial for them. For example, through teachers’ feedback, learner will recognize their weaknesses. Besides, learners also can revise their mistakes sooner or later. In addition to that, to gain communicative competence at the end of the course, teachers should provide the activity as authentic as possible since language is used in real-life situations.

The appearance (physical appearance) of teachers plays an important part in their teaching success. The appearance or physical presence it is not only the way they dressed up, but also their movement, the way they stand, gestures, their contact with students, etc. (Harmer, 2007: 15). Based on the statement above, teacher can use their physical characteristics to control the activity in classroom. For example, teacher movement during the activity will give some benefits; give the equal attention to every student, control the students during the activity, etc. In fact, many students will get easily bored if their teachers do not make any movement during the teaching and learning activity – sitting on their chair all the time. Most of successful teachers move around the classroom to some extent. It is used to attract students’ interest in their teaching and learning activity (Harmer, 2007: 16).

Besides, the teachers’ voice is also important to be considered. Teachers should manage their voice well in classroom so that every student, even for those who are sitting at the back or corner, could hear their explanation clearly. It doesn’t mean that teachers need to shout, but they should adjust their voice volume since we know that shouting in the classroom will bring a negative impact on learners’ feeling. Besides, teacher can also use their voice (intonation) to emphasize to some important things. Through this emphasize, students will easily recognize what the main point of the lesson is. 

A good teacher can provide many integrated activity to their students. Besides, they will also be responsible to time. In this case, teacher should arrange the classroom activity from the easiest one to the most challenging one. It is important because through staging the activity we can see students’ progress. We cannot provide the most challenging activity first, since students need to be stimulated to reach that stage. During the activity, teacher should also tell to the students about the objectives of the lesson; what we are going to learn, how many activities in the lesson, etc. it will help students to make a clear awareness of the end of something and the beginning of what is coming next (Harmer, 2007: 17).

For many teachers, seating arrangement is one of important factors to be considered in classroom. The way teachers arrange their students’ seating position will bring (dis)advantages on their teaching and learning activity. There are some well-known seating arrangement, such as; orderly rows, circle, separate table, and horsehoe (Harmer, 2007: 18). In fact, there are no best seating arrangements to be applied in the classroom. Each of them has its own (dis)advantages so that teacher can choose seating arrangement depending on their preference and condition. The seating arrangement will also help teachers to grouping their students on the particular learning activity. When, for example, teachers want their students to have a small discussion teacher can arrange the seating arrangement into separate table which each of the table will be consist of five students (group work). It gives benefit to learners since they can be controlled easily. In addition, teachers can also interact and give a close attention when learners are doing group work.

Actually, there are some ways to grouping the students. Teachers can ask them to work in pair, work in group of five people, solowork, and even a whole class. The grouping itself depends to a large extent on teacher style and students preferences (Harmer, 2007: 21). Teacher will get some benefits form grouping their students. For example, teachers can save their energy to control their students if they are asked to work in group, teachers will easily give feedback to some students who need extra explanation, and through grouping students will have the equal opportunity to speak and share their ideas on particular topics. 

There are some principles should be paid attention carefully by the teachers in conducting teaching and learning activity; Engage, Study, and Activate (ESA) (Harmer, 2007: 25). Engage means that in planning the activity, teacher should, as interesting as possible, make an activity which attracts and stimulates students’ motivation in learning. In this case, teacher could use games, picture, music, video, and other media to avoid students’ boredom. Meanwhile, study refers to the activities dealing with the language features (grammar, lexical, structure, etc.). In this case, teacher should ask their students to analyze language features from sound to discourse. Activity refers to whole activities or tasks which are designed to get students using language as freely and communicatively as possible (Harmer, 2007: 26). In this case, students are provided with the exercises which represent the use of language in real life situation.