Principles
The NLA rests on five principles, also referred to as fundamental characteristics, that have a significant impact on second language pedagogy:
- Acquisition of internal grammar (i.e., an implicit competence, such as that which children acquire in their dominant language).
AIM is also an inductive approach – based on implicit L2 instruction. Recent research from the Netherlands has demonstrated the high degree of effectiveness of the AIM for the teaching of French. Not only from the perspective of authentic coral and written communication - AIM;s inductive approach to grammar allows students to come to deeply understand language patterns and 'what sounds right', just as first language learners do.
- Teaching according to a literacy-based perspective (where literacy is understood as the ability to use a language to communicate, whether it be through words, symbols, illustrations, or other types of representation).
AIM is an arts- and literacy-based approach that allows students to learn skills beyond that of the language alone. Students learn to communicate naturally through the work with story (extending to theatre and drama). They learn dramatic arts skills, choreography and how rhythm and rhyme play an important role on the expression and acquisition of language.
- Teaching according to a project-based approach (to favour the learner’s cognitive involvement).
AIM favours students’ cognitive development by ensuring a deeply scaffolded, context-embedded environment through stories/songs that are both cognitively- and age-appropriate. The selection of a high frequency vocabulary that is repeated extensively in different contexts ensures the rapid acquisition of a foundation of language proficiency upon which further fluency may be built.
- Authenticity (process based on student experiences).
AIM is an in-process approach to language teaching/learning. The teacher draws upon the use of gestures to provide comprehensible input and takes the story as a starting point to help students talk about themselves. Students develop strong literacy skills through the understanding of the writing and editing process and eventually write stories for publishing. AIM Language Learning publishes some of these student-written stories so that students experience the full writing cycle and have the potential to become published authors.
- Interactive teaching strategies (to motivate students by providing authentic scenarios for communicating; one learns by doing, and one becomes a speaker by using a language).
AIM contains various highly interactive and proven-successful strategies. These include the Gesture Approach, cooperative learning in all partner/groups activities, shared reading, guided reading, shared writing, guided writing and dramatization. Students are involved in an authentic immersion-style classroom where daily interactions centre around the development of dramatic arts and literacy skills, ensuring plenty of meaningful opportunities for communication. In an AIM classroom, students learn so much more than the language alone!
