[LTM] Brown’s Twelve Principles in Classroom

cr: www.brown.edu

From my last school experience I found few of twelve principles in classroom activities. From the classroom interaction, I notice that not all of twelve principles can be found during teaching and learning activities. I found it from observation and also from interview. The twelve principles that I’ve found are automaticity, the application of reward, strategic investment, the native language effect, and communicative competence.

            I found the automaticity principle from the interview result of my master teacher. I asked him about students who have fluency or can answer faster then the others in class. My master teacher answered that only few of the students who more expert or master in English subject. For example student which name is W***. Whenever he asked her (the student), she will answer it immediately. She is different from other students which usually must have longer time to think the answer first. She speaks fluently even though some of the pronunciations were wrong. From this case, I realized that she is good in changing her language from her own native language to the second language. She has automaticity to controls the process in changing the language. That was why she can immediately answer the teacher before the other students answer the teacher.

            I asked the student whom my master teacher talk about. I asked about the possibility that might make her really good in English. Then, she answered me that she had a private lesson since age four. Since she was a kid, she practiced to speak in English with her private teacher and her parents too in home. Even her parents can not speak English, but she still kept to repeat her result of private lesson by practice it at home. I start to think that the frequency of using second language in daily life also influence someone’s fluency. Even from this student case which has communication with her parents by using second language seems like a one way communication, it proves that this way had make her better in controlling the changes of her language from her native language to her second language. She even made a conversation every evening with her foreigner near her house from United States. From this, I realized that she also did the communicative competence of Brown’s principle. Her practiced to talk in foreigner neighbor also influence her fluency in mastering her second language which is English. She found that, to have communication in real native speaker and in the real world made her ‘strategic investment’ useful and not wasted.

Still about the same student, from her story I know that she already did the strategic investment principle. She has private teacher and extra time to study at home. All her own personal ‘investment’ for the second language will be her strategy for occur how long she will master her English as her second language.

            In class, I found the anticipation of reward and the native language effect principles. When the teacher order the students to have group presentation, the teacher promise to give an extra point to the students who prepare the properties of their drama perform and have good grammar in the dialogues. Hear that information, the students became so excited. In the next meeting, they were really prepared everything for the drama. There is anticipation from the students to get extra points. The extra point from the teacher is a reward for the students. They became excited because they want to get it. The reward both in long term and short term form the students’ behavior in learning second language. The students maybe uninterested to learn if there’s no reward and interested if there is a reward. When they performed the drama, I still found some of them change from English to their native language. They didn’t realize it, they mixed the language accidentally. This mix language is influenced by the effects of native language. So, from that case I also found the native language effect principle in classroom interaction. The native language will influenced the second language, so sometimes it might be mix accidentally without we realize it.

Know more about Language Teaching Methodology, and download the pdf file here.
Get the Browns 12 Principles Theory in pdf here.
Enjoy :) !
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