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Principle of Language Acquisition 1 A pre-requisite for language acquisition is that the learners are exposed to a rich, meaningful, and comprehensible input of language in use (Krashen, 1999; Long, 1985)
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Principle of Language Acquisition 2 In order for the learners to maximise their exposure to language in use they need to be engaged both affectively and cognitively in the language experience (Arnold, 1999; Tomlinson, 1998a, 1998c, forthcoming 2010, forthcoming 2011a)
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Principle of Language Acquisition 3 Language learners who achieve positive affect are much more likely to achieve communicative competence than those who do not (Arnold, 1999; Tomlinson, 1998c)
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Principle of Language Acquisition 4 Language learners can benefit from noticing salient features of the input.
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Principle of Language Acquisition 5 Learners need opportunities to use language to try to achieve communicative purposes.
Provide extensive reading, extensive listening, and extensive viewing materials which provide experience of language being used in a variety of text types and genres in relation to topics, themes, events, locations, and so on, likely to be meaningful to the target learners.
One way of doing this is to timetable teachers to provide live ‘performances’ of stories, jokes, extracts from novels and plays, anecdotes, newspaper articles etc in a closed off area of a self-access centre. Copies of the texts could be made available for interested learners to take away and file in their Anthology of Interesting English.
Encourage the learners to experience the extensive materials holistically and enjoyably, but also provide opportunities to revisit the materials to discover more about how the language is used.
Make sure that the language the learners are exposed to in all their self-access materials is authentic in the sense that it represents how the language is typically used.
Prioritise the potential for engagement by, for example, basing a unit of selfaccess materials on a text or a task which is likely to achieve affective and cognitive engagement rather than on a teaching point selected from a syllabus.
One way of doing this is to make use of controversial texts which are likely to provoke a reaction. Another way is to encourage learners who have read, listened to or viewed the same text to get together and discuss it.
Problem solving tasks are particularly useful for stimulating engagement, especially if you get the learners to record their thinking process as well as their solution.
Make use of activities which get learners to think and feel before, during, and after using the target language for communication. One way of getting learners to do this is to get them to record their views on a topic before, whilst, and after viewing a video clip which focuses on different attitudes towards this topic (e.g. the giving of aid to African countries).
Develop materials in which the learners select or find their own text to use with a set of generic activities and materials which provide a choice of routes and activities for the learners to select from (Maley, 2003, forthcoming 2011; Tomlinson, 2003b).
“Make sure the texts and tasks are as interesting, relevant, and enjoyable as possible so as to exert a positive influence on the learners’ attitudes to the language and to the process of learning it” (Tomlinson, 2010a, p. 90).
Set achievable challenges which help to raise the learners’ self-esteem when success is accomplished. Then provide the learners with a means of recording their success (e.g. encourage the learners to put together spoken and written compilations of “performances” they are happy with in the self-access centre).
Develop self-access materials which make use of a text-driven approach (Tomlinson, 2003b) in which the learners are first of all provided with an experience which engages them holistically (e.g. listening to a song), then encouraged to articulate personal responses to the experience, and are finally invited to return to the experience in order to focus on a specific linguistic or pragmatic feature of it (Tomlinson, 1994).
Develop experiential and analytic activities which focus on problematic features of the language (e.g. the English article system). Learner access to these materials should be from their selection of a problematic feature.
Provide starter materials and a guide for research projects which involve the learners in a search for extra authentic materials to help them make discoveries about a specific feature of language use (Tomlinson, 2010b).
Provide many opportunities for the learners to produce language in order to achieve intended outcomes rather than to just practise specified features of the language.
Make sure that the output activities are fully contextualised in that the learners are responding to an authentic stimulus (e.g. a text, a need, a viewpoint, an event), that they have specific addressees, and that they have a clear intended outcome in mind (e.g. to persuade somebody to change their mind or to suggest improvements to the self-access centre).
Provide as many opportunities as possible for real communication with real people (e.g. letters to the press, phone calls to companies, or discussion groups in the self-access centre).
Try to ensure that opportunities for feedback are built into output activities and that as much of this feedback as possible is real (e.g. answers to letters and phone calls or responses to requests).
