Top 10 Principles for Effective Language Learning

This blog post is in fulfillment of Module 26 Unit 1

What’s the key to great language learning? How do we as teachers try to set our students up for success? What are the top ten takeaway principles for creating the best language learning environment? We’ll answer these questions and give rise to new ones in this article. This blog post is aimed to inspire thought about how we as teachers can create the best language learning environment for our students.

So what are my top ten principles for effective Language Learning?

1. Environment

o Students can ask questions

Teachers should focus on creating an environment that is open-minded and open to inquiry. These habits and practices should be established at the beginning of the year and continuously practiced throughout the year (Kaplan, 2019). The teacher should give time to asking questions and give shy students opportunities to ask questions, maybe in the form of exit tickets or one on one meetings with the teacher.

o Students feel comfortable to grow

This is largely on the teacher to create a cohesive and supportive community in the classroom. When a class feels supported by each other and free to ask questions and grow, the whole class benefits from not only the teacher but also from each other. This community should also incorporate each students’ identity and culture (Anonymous, 2017). By allowing students to express their culture and take pride in it and in their languages, it creates a globalized and understanding diverse community where students can build on each other and their strengths while acknowledging each others’ cultures and past knowledge.

o Students can peer correct and give constructive feedback

Teaching students from the beginning on how to give constructive feedback and support to their peers is a huge component when creating a powerful classroom community . Students participating in peer correction are also more likely to retain their learning and this helps to address teacher talking time and encourages student participation (Miller, 2020).

2. Create high levels and high expectations

o Differentiated learning

Differentiated learning means more than just theoretically planning differentiated activities in your lesson plans. Some things to consider when planning and executing differentiated instruction include, what skills are being worked on, the academic level of each activity, the language required for the activity as well as movement. A way to create good differentiation is by having different levels of similar activities and partnering up students with different abilities to teach and support each other (Kaplan, 2019). Another important consideration for differentiation in the classroom is including choice. When designing differentiated activities, the students should be able to have some choice in the type of activity they complete in each unit or topic. This choice can help to support students with different strengths and improve overall quality of work, interest in content, and continued interest and positivity about their language class.

o Learning styles

Learning styles is also an important consideration when designing language activities. Classroom activities should all be engaging and understandable for the basic visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners. This can include images (visual) and text in giving instructions (auditory) accompanied by modelling and demonstrating student examples (kinesthetic) (Malvik, 2020). However, a challenge that I think the teachers of tomorrow should be thinking about as well is how to give opportunities for accommodating multiple intelligences. A psychologist, Howard Gardner published his theory on multiple intelligences in 1983, though I think that in today’s educational world it is very much still relevant. The intelligences Gardner outlines include visual-spatial, linguistic-verbal, interpersonal, intrapersonal, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic and naturalistic (Cherry, 2021). I believe these also deserve thought when designing activities. Understandably not every lesson can accommodate every learner type, but each intelligence type of learner type should be able to have some option to showcase their intelligence throughout the year/ course.

o Use knowledge they know in L1 and build in learned language

Something that is important to consider when teaching any language learner is to consider the students’ prior knowledge. Whether you’re teaching a kindergartner or adult, they will already have a language base in their L1 so instead of always teaching concepts, potentially you could just be teaching them translations of what they already know (Kaplan, 2019). In this case, is it then effective to continuously try to explain a concept in the learned language which may take a considerable amount of time or is it easier to quickly translate a word into the students’ L1 and move on to how to use it? Probably translating it right? In my own classroom, I do this a lot. I currently teach kindergarten and it is a lot easier to just say a word in Chinese rather than trying to explain a word in English for 10 minutes.

3. Quality Education and Resources

o Students have all the materials they need to achieve excellence

One thing I think sets students up for success is having all the materials they need to succeed. In the most basic way, this includes school supplies, a teacher, and access to resources. In a perfect world, I believe schools should be able to provide students with school supplies at no personal cost to the teacher. This then ensures every student has equal access and is on a level playing field with their peers (Alrubail, 2016). This is a small but significant step in creating educational equality.

o Teachers are well educated and well trained

As teachers, we are teaching the leaders of tomorrow. So how do we ensure we are doing the best we can for our students? Through education of course! That’s what we preach to our students and we should take that advice onboard ourselves. If your school can support your growth and training, great. If not, what can you do to make sure you’re educated and trained? Reading is a great way to think of new ideas and strategies in education. Even if you don’t agree with everything you read, reading educational blogs and materials is frequently free and is a great way for you to grow and facilitate growth of your students.

o Teachers are given continued education and trainings to consistently improve

Again, if your school or company can help with training and education, great! Get a degree or attend a conference or other kind of professional development. If that’s not possible, there are loads of online resources and courses that are free. YouTube has tons of educational videos for educators and usually reference articles in the video descriptions. Some sources I like are TedTalks, TED Ed, National Geographic learning and tons of others. Even a simple search of any instructional training topic will give results to free resources with links to articles and workshops.

4. Thoughtful Curriculum

o Consider the student population

This is where we can consider educational frameworks. You can read about my preferred educational framework C6 Biliteracy here if you haven’t read it already. When picking a curriculum or objectives, it’s important to consider students’ cultures and prior linguistic knowledge (Huynh & Medina, 2021). Also included in this sub point is creating realistic expectations for the age and abilities of students. Kindergarteners can’t be expected to do the same work as 12 year olds, etc. (Shaaban, 2007). Also a consideration here is how the curriculum and instruction is presented. Will students need additional materials to follow a specific curriculum? Will they be provided? And how can we ensure equity to every student in our class?

o Structured

The curriculum should be structured in a way that is consistent and measurable. I think a good way to think about content being structured is by thinking about learner objectives and SMART goals that students should be expected to complete. Structure here can also refer to following your school or district’s standards. Within those standards though, structure can go beyond and include things like classroom routines and expectations as well as culturally and linguistically relevant curriculum points (Kaplan, 2019).

o Culturally Relevant

Curriculum and lessons should take into account the cultures and lived experiences of students. The curriculum should also reflect cultural values and allow for self-expression of the students to include, share and take pride in their own as well as their classmates’ identities (Huynh & Medina, 2021).

5. Integrate home languages in class

o Use translators

In today’s world, we have access to technologies that can facilitate translation and language instruction. I think that teachers shouldn’t shy away from these technologies either. If a student is able to translate to help support the class, this should be encouraged and used as the first strategy. If a student is unable to translate, the teacher can translate if they are proficient in the language of the students and if all else fails, the teacher can use an online translation tool such as google translate, Pleco, or other translation softwares (Breiseth, 2020).

o Create materials in home languages to engage families and home communities

By creating materials that incorporate the L1s of school’s families, this can help create educational support systems for students when they leave the classroom (Alrubail, 2016). In my school district where I went to school, all of the school memos were sent out in English and Spanish. Usually, these were translated by a teacher given no additional compensation, just their own good will. Frequently, this was my mother. So quick thank you to my mom for translating so many resources for so many families throughout the years. This can also be extended to include translators at events like open houses or parent teacher conferences. In my school, we had several bilingual liaisons who could help translate for families and facilitate school events and communication. However, I think it’s important to note here that the students themselves frequently serve as translators for their families in these situations. We as educators can help support families by providing some materials and resources for non-English speaking families.

o Allow students to work in L1 and present/ share in learned language

In class, some material is only given in the learned language however when students are given the opportunity to do their own research or write notes, they should be able to do this work in their preferred language then as the class requires, they can present or share their findings in the learned language. This then continues to support the students overall learning and their language growth. Finally, another approach to presenting or sharing findings is by grouping students together to create and present bilingually. This then gets rid of language prioritization and equalizes and validates both L1s and learned languages.

6. Use both Integrated and Discrete Skill focuses

o What skills are ok

Teachers should assess what skills each class does well in. These can be used to help support students and maybe structure their work in a way that plays to their strengths if the content is difficult. These skills can then be less of a worry for the teacher, still continue to build them but no need for stress on the student or teacher sides. Use an integrated approach to use their strength skills to support some weaker skills (StateAmericanEnglish, 2013).

o What skills need work

In the assessment of skills, determine where students struggle. Think about ways you can support students to build this skill and if you don’t know, look it up! Use technology to support you too. You can also Use other students who are stronger in that skill to support students who need help. This is also a great opportunity for student collaboration and support that is a positive experience. Use a discrete skill method to work on specific skills individually (Kehe, 2020).

o How do you target one specific skill

First, get specific. Which language domain is your class struggling with? Reading, writing, speaking or listening? Once you’ve determined what skill needs work, you can start to design and integrate activities that focus on this area into your class (Kehe, 2020). For example, if my kindergarten class is struggling with writing, we can include activities in class like holding crayons, tracing in the air, tracing on sandpaper, drawing, and tracing letters on paper.

Finally, remember to keep up on the research and get inspired by new ideas. A quick Google search or Pinterest dive can help give you ideas on discrete, skill-specific activities you can incorporate in your classroom. Also, be sure to reflect on what activities worked well and why, how you could modify activities to work better and what activities students actively enjoyed.

7. Create a student- driven classroom environment

o Student interaction, collaboration

Creating student interaction and collaboration opportunities ultimately means students get more active practice and you get to observe and take in what your students are giving. Even if you think creating student interaction experiences is impossible for your students, practice a little everyday to help build in positive routines that students know the expectations for (August & Hakuta, 1997).

o Focus on specific class’ needs and interests

Focus on the specific needs and interests of the students in your class. Not every class can be taught exactly the same and content should be adapted to engage each specific group of students (Himmel, 2021). For example, in my classroom my kindergarteners ask each other a question of the day. We do this everyday with a new question. We brianstorm responses and start talking. This gives students an opportunity to speak in class, connect with their classmates and learn from each other.

o No textbook method

An interesting approach I read about is called “You are the coursebook ''. Basically, instead of using a book to structure your teaching, you as the teacher assess the students’ individual needs and structure the class to address the needs of a specific class (Purland, 2014). The structure comes from creating routines but there is room for students to drive the class content and pace of the class (Purland, 2014). This method allows teachers to focus on their students rather than outside influences. This would be a great opportunity to incorporate language, culture and teaching objectives set by the students as well. Maybe not possible for every classroom but very interesting nonetheless. I will link a book about this method here.

8. Fair Assessments

o Age Appropriate Assessments

Assessments serve as a hugely valuable tool to determine our students abilities and weaknesses. When discussing what makes a fair assessment with my masters’ classmates, we came up with a staggering list of factors that make a fair assessment. Something I thought about a lot was how to make an assessment age appropriate. Because I work with young students, I really wanted to design my assessment with their age and abilities in mind. For young students learning a new language, they need to understand what is being assessed and what is expected on their part. There are a lot of ways young students can be assessed including physical responses, pointing, as well and basic speaking (Shaaban, 2007). For my class, I chose to assess their knowledge on the alphabet. I graded my language, was assessing something that I had directly taught them and I leveled my assessment by age. You can read more about my own assessment design process in a blog post coming soon.

o Culturally Appropriate Assessments

This point is trying to keep assessment fair between everyone. Keeping your students in mind when designing your assessments is critical ​​(August & Hakuta, 1997). At this point most educators have heard of testing inequity and it’s everywhere from the ACT to simple tests in class . In every language classroom, think about how students are actually demonstrating their language. Does it have to take the form of an actual exam all the time? I argue no. What kinds of assessments include no actual written tests? A presentation, a play, a poem? I think so. To add to this, how can we as teachers design assessments that give every student equal opportunity and access? And how do we eliminate teacher bias? Big questions to think about with no perfect answer but that’s why we’re here to learn and grow together.

9. Scaffolding and Understanding Support Systems

o Leveled progression activities

In my first teaching job, I taught students 3-18. Needless to say, these populations all need differentiated strategies in class. In every level, scaffolding is something that was taught and repeatedly trained in teachers. So what is scaffolding? I think scaffolding is easily thought of as baby steps. When teaching, you as the teacher need to teach and support students from the beginning (Witt, 2020). An example of scaffolding from my own class looks like this. If my end goal is having my students give a self introduction, I can set criteria for the self introduction first. For example, our self introductions need to have 5 parts: name, age, favorite color, favorite animal, family members and dream job. I would show a powerpoint for each point with pictures of our flashcards to help students to recall past taught vocabulary for each section. I can include color coding and have students work as a class to say example sentences using the powerpoint as an aid. Then I can model a self introduction with all parts while the class uses their fingers to ensure I address all five parts. Then students can practice in groups or pairs ensuring their group members address all five components and finally, students can present their self-introductions by themselves in front of the class.

o Group to Individual

Another important part of scaffolding, I feel, is scaffolding student interactions. For example, first, the teacher should demonstrate with the whole class. Then, the whole class can participate and produce together. Next, break up the class into big groups, then smaller groups moving down to pairs and finally one on one or individual presentation or participation.

10. Create Opportunities for Creativity and Inspiration

o Project-Based Language

The big question, how do we keep students engaged? When I was in school, I had a couple teachers who gave us surveys asking how we wanted to learn and I alway wrote I liked to do projects and hands-on activities and I only remember a handful of projects I actually got to do. I specifically remember my 9th grade English class when we read Romeo and Juliet we created our own project to retell the story in our own way. I think using project based learning is a great way to keep students engaged and give them the opportunity to apply what they have learned in class to the real world in a project of their own design. These projects can incorporate their own cultures and experiences as well as play to their strengths and work with their multiple intelligences. This is a good way to include choice into your class too.

o Student freedom

I think giving students a certain degree of freedom in their work is very valuable in that it can start to encourage them and potentially build their interest into forming a genuine and natural self-driven interest that pushes them to do well and seek more opportunities to improve and grow on their own. As teachers, we need to encourage the creativity and interests of our students so they can feel supported and grow beyond our classroom expectations.

References

Alrubail, R. (2016, July 7). Equity for English-Language Learners. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/equity-for-english-language-learners-rusul-alrubail.

Anonymous. (2017, August 11). 6 principles for effective language teaching & learning. ASD WORLD LANGUAGES. http://asdworldlanguages.weebly.com/best-practices/6-principles-for-effective-language-teaching-learning

Anonymous. (n.d.). STARTALK principles for effective teaching & learning. STARTALK. https://startalk.umd.edu/public/principles

August, D., & Hakuta, K. (1997). Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children. Improving schooling for language-minority children. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/bilingtl/islmc.html

Breiseth, L. (2020, November 13). How to Expand ELLs' Access to Technology for Distance Learning. Colorín Colorado. https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/distance-learning-ell-technology

Cherry, K. (2021, July 28). Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences-2795161

George, A. (2020, October 26). Sociocultural competence in action. Language Magazine. https://www.languagemagazine.com/2020/10/15/sociocultural-competence-in-action/

Himmel, J. (2021, May 11). Language objectives: The key to effective content area instruction for english learners. Colorín Colorado. https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/language-objectives-key-effective-content-area-instruction-english-learners#video

Huynh, T., & Medina, J. (2021, July 17). 114. how to write language & culture objectives. Serving students I will never meet. https://www.empoweringells.com/culture-objectives/

Kaplan, E. (2019, April 12). 6 Essential Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/6-essential-strategies-teaching-english-language-learners.

Kehe, D. (2020, March 17). Integrated vs discrete skills esl courses: Advantages of discrete skills. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quBofiRPP_A.

Malvik, C. (2020, August 17). 4 types of learning Styles: How to accommodate a diverse group of students. Rasmussen University. https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/education/blog/types-of-learning-styles/

Miller, S. (2020, April 27). A Strategy for Giving Corrective Feedback to ELLs. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/strategy-giving-corrective-feedback-ells.

Purland, M. (2014). You Are The Course Book. englishbanana.com. https://www.englishbanana.com/18-yatcb-lesson-plans-complete-book-FINAL.pdf

Shaaban, K. (2007). Assessment of Young Learners. English Teaching Forum. http://sakaienglishteachers.pbworks.com/f/Assessment+of+young+learners.pdf.

StateAmericanEnglish. (2013, December 12). Module 03: INTEGRATING SKILLS. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2krk_a1OzA.

Witt, D. (2020, July 13). 5 Effective Modeling Strategies for English Learners. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/5-effective-modeling-strategies-english-learners