Teaching by Principles by Douglas Brown

Reflection #4:

All things flow; nothing abides
One cannot step twice into the
Same river; Into the same rivers
We step and do not step; We are
and we are not.


Education as a social institution is seen from the pragmatic point of view, as the source of social transformations, and the catalytic agent of these changes is the school. Consequently, education is a process of growth and development. The learner is possessed with the necessary capacity to develop the habits useful in social adjustment. Thus, teaching is guiding and facilitating learning enabling the learner to learn, setting the conditions of learning

Below is the paradigm of the over-all concept of teaching.














Furthermore, teaching as reflected in the schema refers to something that takes place only when learning does. No matter what the teacher is doing in his classes, if his students are not learning something significant, he is not teaching. When the student fails, the teacher fails more.

It is along the above-context that the teaching principles pioneered by Brown would definitely serve as true basis in language teaching. As noted, there are three basic teaching principles, namely: Cognitive, Affective, and Linguistic.

As regards cognitive aspect, language teachers are expected not be hooked to teaching of the target language, English in a structural way. Although, grammatical competence is but part of the communicative dimensions, but one should consider that mastering forms alone is a futile exercise without meaning. Thus, Canale and Swain valuably substantiate the intermarriage between form/structure and meaning in the teaching of language. Once properly established, students would employ language in an automatic way without mental reservations. Thus, the students would basically experience a life-long and meaningful learning

In addition, once such level of linguistic competence is fully satisfied, students would be driven to do things more in consonance with their knowledge and skills of the English language. Since they have now built “self-confidence” as well as intrinsically motivated in using it, the students would not be afraid in doing future works/transactions done in English for they would be expecting(anticipating) better results in the future. Hence, they could easily manage to dwell on whatever language activities they would meet in the future.

Affective principles(warm and fuzzy principle), on the other pole, would also boost the morale/ego of the students in using the target language, English. Assisting the students properly kindled with matching sense of emotions would basically stimulate their inner drives to learn the language incessantly though with errors. However, errors are part of learning. Once, the students would be able to cross the bridge(new mode of thinking, feeling, and acting—second identity), they would be incessantly crafting their inner self-confidence necessary in combating future language difficulties. Once self-confidence is honed in them, students would become risk-takers in producing and interpreting language that is a bit beyond their language capacity. Thus, exposing students to any communicative situations would challenge them to engage in manifesting their knowledge and skills in the employment of the English language. At one hand, in the process of teaching the English language, it could not be reneged that every language teacher is expected to inject cultural values, practices, and norms associated with the language—for language is culture. Consequently, if students understand the culture of the target language, English, they would be eager to learn more about how to use it in transacting future endeavors without fear.

In terms of linguistic principles, individual learner is assumed to acquire language in an unconscious manner since he/she is endowed with the innate capacity to learn the language(Chomsky as cited in Brown, 2000). Such capacity is contained in a black box known as the Language Acquisition Device(LAD), the universal linguistic theory. As divulged, students’ native language has a strong influence on the acquisition of the English language system. Though the native language will have facilitating and interfering effects on the production and comprehension of the new language, the students would then acknowledge that such interfering effects would pave them to assess and identify that the structure of the native language is entirely different from that of the English language. As a result, they would start thinking directly on the target language, which is a salient feature in learning it. Such practice would actually aid students to avoid the first language “crutch” syndrome. Although in the process of learning a new language, students tend to nativize the target language(interlanguage effect= L1 and L2) which lead them to commit errors classified as local or global. For instance, a certain student who says “Does Eric can write?” may sound to be correct since it follows an internalized systematic rule which requires a pre-posed do auxiliary for English question formation. Teachers on this context should never interfere in correcting such local error but rather provide other similar samples for students to internalize the “correctness” of their statements. Hence, the principle of automaticity works here. However, if meaning suffers because of construction(global error), language teachers should come in and provide constructive feedbacks(verbal and non-verbal forms) so students would have an open arm to accept suggestions for possible growth and development in the process of learning and acquiring a new language, English.

Synthesizing the preceding contexts, one can infer that if students are honed to possess all those experiences, their communicative competence would be at par.
Communicative competence, according to Dell Hymes(cited in Brown, 1994, 2000), refers to the aspect of a person’s competence that enables him to convey and interpret messages in order to negotiate meanings interpersonally within specific contexts. There are four components or subcategories that make up the construct of communicative competence (Canale and Swain as cited in Brown, 1994, 2000). These are: (1) Linguistic or Grammatical Competence which encompasses “knowledge of lexical items and of rules of morphology, syntax, sentence-grammar semantics, and phonology. Thus, it is the competence that one associates with mastering the linguistic code of a language—focusing on sentence-level grammar; (2) Discourse Competence(the complement of linguistic competence in many ways) which refers to one’s ability to connect sentences in stretches of discourse and to form a meaningful whole out of a series of utterances. In short, discourse competence is concerned with intersentential relationships; (3) Sociolinguistic Competence which refers to the knowledge of the socio-cultural rules of language and of discourse. As such, this competence basically requires an understanding of the social context in which language is used: the role of the participants, the information they share, and the function of the interaction; and (4) Strategic Competence which pertains to the “verbal and non-verbal communication strategies that may be called into action to compensate for breakdowns in communication due to performance variables or due to insufficient competence.”

As glossed, the various teaching principles of Brown have paved us language teachers an avenue to really develop the language competency of our students. We need to approach language problems(local or global) of our students in a holistic point of view so as not to jeopardize their innate capacity to learn the target language, English.