A language classroom isn’t just about helping learners to improve their language. It’s also about trying to create a rich, supportive, memorable and life- enhancing learning experience. The following suggestions will help you to think about, and respond to, the needs of your students as social and learning human beings.

Promote self-esteem. Everyone is motivated by praise and encouragement. The more specific this can be, the better. For example, you could mention particular areas of improvement when giving feedback to individual learners. Personalized, detailed praise is likely to be most meaningful, since it is clearly the product of some thought. There is thus more of a chance that it will impact on learners’ self-esteem.

Provide cognitive challenge. Well-chosen topics can help learners to learn far more than just language. Likewise, the tasks we ask them to do can engage more cognitive abilities than strictly language learning ones. For example, learners engaged in trying to work out a grammar ‘rule’ on the basis of examples are developing inferential skills as well as improving their language awareness.

Provide a feeling of security. Challenges are important, but they involve the risk of being wrong; and sometimes it’s hard for learners to take this risk in public. Learners’ requests for reliable rules may be one manifestation of this anxiety. Certain activities—controlled practice, ‘rehearsals’ in pairs or small groups—may help learners to feel safer. The use of interim rules, intended to evolve as learners’ language develops, may also be reassuring.

Allow personal expression. Talking about ourselves seems to be a universal human need, and the language classroom is a very good place to do it. The satisfaction of finding a code which expresses the learners’ own meanings can make a piece of learning particularly memorable.

Use your learners’ areas of interest. Interest is a good criterion for selecting topics and texts to study in class. If students are learning for a specific purpose, this is a vital part of making the class feel relevant for them; if they do not have identified future purposes in mind, then involving their different interests is still an opportunity for personalizing the class.

Help them to develop links with native English speakers. This could be via mail, e-mail, etc, as well as in person. Many learners would like to develop such links, but are unsure how to do it on their own. There is no better vindication of development as a language learner than to communicate successfully with native speakers!

Bear in mind your learners’ other educational experiences. Adults may well have tried many approaches to language learning during their lives. Schoolchildren will be learning many subjects, no doubt also using varied approaches. All these experiences influence how they will feel about the approaches that you yourself want to take to language learning. Particularly if you are teaching outside your own country, you will need to think about how your ideas on language learning methodology fit with the local educational culture. You may have to strike a delicate balance, between respecting your learners’ expectations and preferences, and introducing ideas that you think will work well.

Share the rationale for what you are doing. For example, if you use a lot of dictionary exercises because you think dictionary skills are an important part of becoming a good reader, say so. Revealing your own motivation is a way of asking your learners to cooperate with you and showing them that you trust them.

Discuss learning strategies explicitly. Explanations like the one referred to above are also important because they encourage learners to think about what sort of activities best help them to learn. Such awareness will help them in many situations, inside and outside the classroom.

Involve learners in decision making where you can. If learners can have input into the direction of a course or a lesson, they are likely to engage in it more deeply Perhaps the ultimate goal here is to create an atmosphere where learners’ suggestions can be heard, but where they still know that you, their teacher, are taking the long-term view and holding the course together.