The Main Components of Language Teaching

1.1 Main components of a language course in today’s education
This essay involves a discussion on the main components of language learning and teaching within the sheltered approach of language acquisition which involves the incorporation of content and language while dealing with the learners of English language. The essay can therefore act as a guide to both the English Learners as well as their instructors. It contains the various teaching and learning approaches as well as the linguists behind the approaches of language acquisition.
The components of language learning and teaching can be grouped in terms of; cognitive, affective, and linguistic principles. There are various components of language learning which include; meaningful learning, automaticity, the anticipation of reward, strategic investment, self-confidence, intrinsic motivation, language ego, risk-taking, native language effect, inter-language, Language-culture connection and communicative competence.
On the other hand, there are several main components of a language classroom: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, reading fluency and reading comprehension strategies. This is the essential setup of a sheltered instruction approach.
Automacity
This method of sheltered language learning involves appropriate movement of some language aspects into the involuntary processing of language features. It entails analyzing language and reflecting on its form while consciously evaluating its rules. This component helps the learner to acquire the language automatically (Brown 2007).
Meaningful learning
This involves the learner- based form of learning where the learner’s interests, goals and objectives are put into consideration. Meaningful learning leads to a better content retention as it focuses on a content based approach of language acquisition. It enables the absorption of new information into the existing information. This is quite different from rote learning which involves the exposure of new knowledge that is not related to the knowledge existing in a learner’s mind, making it less likely to stick.
As a matter of fact, in language development, children acquire meaningful language because they are able to relate words, phonemes and discourse features to the relevant existing knowledge. Meaningful learning involves the aural- oral method of teaching where the learners of a language are encouraged to listen to numerous English materials and participate in guided reading (Brown 2007).