Principles of an English Language Program

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The mission, vision, and values of an English language program need to be stated clearly for the benefit of administrators, faculty, support services, and students. Richards (2001) formulated statements of principles to delineate the teaching philosophy of an English program. These statements were prepared after discussing curriculum management with teacher trainers, language teachers, curriculum planners, and have become a reference for language practitioners. As Richards states:

Articulating a teaching philosophy in this way can help clarify decisions relating to choice of classroom activities, materials, and teacher evaluation. (Richards, 2001: p.216)

Richards's statement of principles are as follows:


  • There is a consistent focus throughout on learning English in order to develop practical and functional skills, rather than as an end in itself.
  • Students are engaged in practical tasks that relate to real-world uses of English.
  • Realistic and communicative uses of language are given priority.
  • Maximum use is made of pair and group activities in which students complete tasks collaboratively.
  • There is an appropriate balance between accuracy-focused and fluency-focused activities.
  • Teachers serve as facilitators of learning rather than as presenters of information.
  • Assessment procedures reflect and support a communicative and skill-based orientation to teaching and learning.
  • Students develop an awareness of the learning process and their own learning styles, strengths, and weaknesses.
  • Students develop the ability to monitor their own learning progress and ways of setting personal goals for language improvement. 
                                                                                                (Richards, 2001, p.216)


These statements are the foundational principles of an English language program that is designed for English Language Learners (ELL) to make conscious links between what transpires in the classroom and what happens in the world encompassing the classroom, to contribute their particular set of interests and talents to the work of the group, to use the required texts to provide the framework within which to develop the goals of each class, to complete tasks and activities related to the designated texts (and appropriate ancillary materials) to achieve the goals of content-based instruction, and to emphasize effective communication, de-emphasizing editorial error correction. 

Richards, J. C. 2001. Curriculum Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge, Cambridge 
                University Press.



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