1 Design Principles for Language Education Short cut to theory Gert Rijlaarsdam & Anne Toorenaar University of Amsterdam,

2 Theory: Starting point: Four Instructional Design Principles tried out in our research with teachers Learning is meaningful Learning requires thinking Learning aims at transferable outcomes students write for a real audience and authentic purpose (students internalize audience’s perspective) students’ reflection is stimulated by pretesting their communicative products Learning requires sharing students write collaborative products in collaboration with peers students apply competences and use written products in functional and authentic contexts

3 Conclusion from our design studies All four design parameters are necessary to create effective learning units

4 Reconsidering the four design parameters

5 Social learning theory Language learners acquire language naturally by interaction with other language users Language learning is a social-cognitive process Input Perception / Noticing / Analysis / Abstraction / Generalization Output / Production Feedback

6 Classrooms: Natural environments for language learning Teacher’s role: Set up environments for goal directed language learning = communities of learners Producing language Study the productions: Rule formation and specification

7 Classrooms as Communities of learners: three design principles Reconsidering the four design parameters

8 Link school with real worlds & language users Learning the language, culture of language use as used in ‘real’ worlds of communication: becoming a member of the communicative Design Principle 1

9 Guided discovery: Teacher creates the set up for discovery (knowledge building, knowlegde creation) That implies, creating communicative situations 1. that are meaningful to do 2. that generates data for learning Design Principle 2

10 Shared discourse Design Principle 3 Teacher creates the set up for data-analysis That implies, creating a task that stimulates a 1. Learning dialogue, abstracting and generalizing from experience 2. Using language in a natural way to communicate productively

11 Reconsidering the three design principles for language lessons Role theory

12 Role theory: A learner is a writer-reader-learner Reader WriterObserver

13 In a classroom as a community of language learners, these three roles must be active/activated

14 Complete Communication Participation Learning Model Communicative role/pairs:  Writing has a purpose and an audience  Writer has access to reader’s process. Instructive role/pairs:  Reader informs writers about perceived quality of text. Inquiry/Observing/Analyzing role:  Learners study the writing, reading or writing-reading process. Participant Writer Participant Reader Researcher Observer

15 This requires two Design Principles

16 Design Task 1 Creating a Communicative Task: Purpose and Audience Task: Language Processing Task: ‘Doing’ language Communicative role/pairs:  Writing has a purpose and an audience  Writer has access to reader’s process (reader ‘shows’ (mis)understanding). Instructive role/pairs:  Reader informs writers about perceived quality of text.  Reader acts as advisor, reader ‘teaches’ Participant Writer Participant Reader

17 Design task 2: Creating Language Learning Tasks: Doing meta cognitive/linguistic work Reader WriterObserver Reader WriterObserver Learning dialogue Sharing to think, analyse, abstact and generalize