Product Description

Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, Fifth Edition, by H. Douglas Brown, is the classic second language acquisition text used by teacher education programs worldwide. Principles introduces key concepts through definitions of terms, thought-provoking questions, charts, and spiraling. New "Classroom Connections" encourage students to consider the implications of research for classroom pedagogy. An up-to-date bibliography and new glossary provide quick access to important works and key terminology in the field. The fifth edition takes a comprehensive look at foundations of language teaching through discussions of the latest research in the field, including: *Vygotsky's and Bakhtin's theories *Thorndike's law of effect *error treatment, noticing, recasts *intercultural communication *language policy and politics *corpus linguistics *"hot topics" in SLA *connectionism and emergentism *flow theory, willingness to communicate *strategies-based instruction *contrastive rhetoric *attribution theory, self-efficacy *output hypothesis Also by H.Douglas Brown: Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices Strategies for Success: A Practical Guide to Learning English

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #192631 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 410 pages

From the Back Cover

Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, Fifth Edition, by H. Douglas Brown, is the classic second language acquisition text used by teacher education programs worldwide. Principles introduces key concepts through definitions of terms, thought-provoking questions, charts, and spiraling. New "Classroom Connections" encourage students to consider the implications of research for classroom pedagogy. An up-to-date bibliography and new glossary provide quick access to important works and key terminology in the field.

The fifth edition takes a comprehensive look at foundations of language teaching through discussions of the latest research in the field, including:

• Vygotsky's and Bakhtin's theories
• Thorndike's law of effect
• error treatment, noticing, recasts
• intercultural communication
• language policy and politics
• corpus linguistics
• "hot topics" in SLA
• connectionism and emergentism
• flow theory, willingness to communicate
• strategies-based instruction
• contrastive rhetoric
• attribution theory, self-efficacy
• output hypothesis

Also by H. Douglas Brown:

About the Author
Dr. H. Douglas Brown, a professor in the MA-TESOL program at San Francisco State University, has written many articles, teacher training books, and textbooks on language pedagogy. A past president of TESOL and recipient of the James E. Alatis Award for Distinguished Service, Dr. Brown has lectured to English language teaching audiences around the world.

Customer Reviews

The next step for experienced language teachers
I'm a teacher of English as a foreign language of six years. I was not a linguist in my former life and, up to now, all the books I've read on teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) have been pretty classroom-based: do this, say that, watch out for this. So, not being an academic type, it is with some trepidation that I have commenced an MA in TEFL. "Principles" was on the pre-reading list and one of the set books for my first term.

This book is my first committed venture into applied linguistics, and thus a more theoretical discussion of second language acquisition (SLA). Beyond the introduction, which talks about high-level approaches to learning and teaching, each chapter considers different aspects of effective learning and their teaching implications: the learner's age, learning styles and strategies, the role of affect (i.e. emotional factors that influence learning), learner motivation, L1 interference, and so on. There are also chapters that discuss communicative competence (what makes someone `good' at a foreign language?), error analysis and correction, fossilisation, and a gamut of other issues that are of interest to language teachers. Rather than giving specific classroom solutions, the book seeks to answer questions such as "are children really better language learners than adults?", "which learning strategies are most effective?", and "should a teacher expose learners to non-linguistic aspects of communication, such as body language, personal space, even the BO tolerance of the target culture?" Phew.

There are a few things that set this book apart from beginner teacher training manuals. First of all, there is much more theory. The focus is on "why", not "how", for example, why communicative language teaching is seen to be more effective than its forerunners, rather than how to implement it in the classroom. Another reason why this book differs from those aimed at novices is that throughout the book the author presents a wide range of approaches, theories and philosophies, and avoids advocating one single way of teaching. He constantly refers to the research of a wide variety of SLA gurus, both recent and historical (the bibliography alone is about a quarter of the page count), and presents everything in such a way that the reader is left to draw her own conclusions. The exercises at the end of each chapter are a thought-provoking touch and quite useful if you don't have a miracle memory that absorbs everything in one sitting.

The book took me quite a long time to read, not because of the difficulty of the language, which I found surprisingly manageable and quite a good introduction to language teaching psychobabble, but because after almost every paragraph I had to take a pause to think "wow, that's so true" or "what on earth were they thinking?" One attraction in particular is that it is not exclusively a TEFL book - the ideas discussed apply to learning and teaching any language and many of the examples are taken from non-English classrooms and situations.

On the whole, I can think of better books for beginning teachers - my all time favourite is Scrivener's "Learning Teaching". If I had read "Principles" as a rookie, I'm sure I would have got lost in the maze of high-brow theories and been disappointed at the lack of practical advice. This book is not a "how to" guide. On the other hand, if you're an experience teacher looking for a road map to the mounds of articles and research on SLA, you can do worse than start here. Whether you're embarking on a post-grad course, you're an experienced teacher looking for something different to the usual classroom recipe books, or you're just a language teaching geek, this book is for you.

Principles of language Learning and Teaching
I found it very interesting book, especially in individual differences such as personality factor , learning strategies factor, anxiety and motivation. I really recommend it to students who are interested in teaching second language(TSOL). I also looking forward to receiving it from Amazon as soon as possible.