4. Focus on meaning: meaning is viewed as the driving force of learning. Content-based teaching reflects this view and seeks to make the exploration of meaning through content the core of language learning activities (see chapter 5)
5. Diversity: learners learn in different ways and have different strengths. Teaching needs to take these differences into account rather than try to force students into a single mould. In language teaching this has led to en emphasis on developing students' use and awareness of learning strategies.
6. Thinking skills: language should serve as a means of developing higher- order thinking skills, also known as critical and creative thinking. In language teaching this means that students do not learn language for its own sake but in order to develop and apply their thinking skills in situations that go beyond the language classroom.