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GEAR, spec and Class
Battlegrounds are the most flexible kind of formal WoW encounter. BGs are different from duels or arena fights ... and very different from dungeon raids.
But in a battleground, the sides may not be even. And the roles can switch around ... you will find yourself leading the charge at one point, and playing a support role at another. One fight may be three-on-one; the next one may be one-on-three. Sometimes you need to fight to the death against impossible odds; sometimes the best move is to run for it. It all depends on the situation.
Because BGs are so different from dungeon raids, it is not surprising that the gear and player skills are different, too. The primary differences have to do with mitigation ... which every PvP player needs, and burst damage.
Resillience
Resillience is the primary defensive statistic for PvP. One percent of resilience has the following effects:
At level eighty, roughly 94 points of resillience rating will give you 1% of resillience. So, 1000 points of resillience rating will give you approximately:
In other words, if you are wearing epic PvE gear and you are facing an opponent with the equivalent PvP gear: one-fifth of your damage will simply bounce off, and you will have fewer, and when your hits do crit, they will do less damage. Meanwhile, your opponent will be hitting you for full damage.
This means that if you are serious about battlegrounds, you will need to acquire some PvP gear. While requirements differ by class, 800-900 resilience seems to be a minimum with around 1200 a good upper target.
Burst Damage/Healing
Dungeons have very long fight in which sustained damage or healing is key to success. Battleground fights are much shorter. Consequently, you need to be concerned about putting out large amounts of damage or healing for fairly short periods of time. "Burst" means that you pump out as much as you can until you run out of mana, energy, rage or whatever you use for your special skills ... then you drop out of the fight and resupply.
Most of the time you will either win or lose quickly enough that running out is not a problem. Either you will die ... and resupply when you rez, or will win and have time to eat, drink or whatever. Longer fights usually involve bigger battles and either you will be able to fall back out of combat and resupply, or you will have to fight on with limited weapons.
Death
Death and resurrection is a normal part of BG. If the graveyard is nearby, then you will focus on dps and not worry if you die. If the gy is far away, then you will try to stay alive. There may be times when you die on purpose ... to replenish your mana, for example, or to get quick transportation to the other side of the battleground.
Who Is Best
In BG the best players are the ones who win the most games. It doesn't matter who is on the top of the damage chart. Or the kill chart. Or who has the best gear. If the enemy wins, you lose. Losing is bad. The best players win.
Gear
Much of PvE raiding is concerned with gear. "Drops" and looting rules play a big part of any dungeon raid. In PvP the act of getting the 
gear is not so important. PvP gear can be purchased for honor points from the vendors in Stormwind, Orgrimmar and Dalaran. In most cases this is the best gear you can get for BG. It comes with resillience and extra stamina, both of which are essential to PvP fighting. Anyone who does BG for awhile will be able to get the gear, and most of the good players will be more or less evenly geared.
The consensus seems to be that heavy armor classes need less resilience and light armor wearers need the most, but the key is mitigation. If you are a melee player who gets hit a lot, then you need more resilience. If you are a hunter who moves a lot and seldom gets hit, then you need less. Your goal is to find a happy medium between resilience, stamina and damage or healing.
In terms of burst damage/healing, you may want to go with less supply in favor of more effect. A mage, for example, may go for less intelligence and more spell power. Just keep in mind that your total power is less important than the amount of power you can expend in a short period of time, and choose your gear accordingly.
Specs
BG encounters require a flexible spec ... one that allows you to use a variety of your class skills and apply them to the particular situation. Most of the time, you will want a hybrid spec that gives solid damage mitigation with emphasis on the role you want to play (healing, range, melee). This list gives a few key considerations for each role, but your own style and needs are paramount.
DPS
If you have super high dps and no mitigation, then you will spend much of your time dead ... which will make your dps useless. Damage is important, but you have to balance it against survival.
Generally, if you have low mitigation and high dps, you will need to keep moving. Enemy players will identity the high damage that you do and target you first ... so you will not get much opportunity to "stand and fight". In this case, you will want to have a good complement of cc and escape abilities on hand.
If you have high mitigation and low dps, you will be able to stand and focus your damage on specific enemy players. They will likely have time to run, however, so you will need ways of holding them in place, or you will need to be able to chase them down.
Melee
In most fights your first target is the healers. There is little sense wasting your time fighting someone who is being constantly healed ... so go after the healer first.
After the healers are dead, you will probably want to go after the players you can kill the fastest. There are any number of websites and forums that discuss class-on-class action, but you probably know by now which classes you kill easily, and which ones tend to give you trouble. Melee in bg is not a lot different than melee anywhere else ... you just get hit a lot more often.
Ranged
Since the enemy will be shooting at you, you will have a hard time standing still for long. The basic approach is to target off of your melee players. This should be the enemy healers at first, and then others once the healers are gone.
The goal is to kill the enemy as quickly as possible, and you won't have time to get off more than a shot or two before you have to move, so try to pick targets that are near death. It is more important to get kills than to do damage.
Protect your healers. Your melee are in the middle of a crowd ... you are back a ways and have the best view of the battle. Watch your healers and help them out if they need it.
If you have crowd control, use it on enemy melee. If you have time, use your AOE ... but don't be surprised if you draw a counter-attack.
Healing
Enemy fighters try to target healers first. One way to deal with this is to be "fast and quick" … to use instant or short time cast spells and to keep moving. Another approach is to be "heavy" … to have good defense and to use mitigation and self-healing to stay alive while you cast your spells. On the one hand you spend less time healing your own team, on the other hand, while you are healing yourself you are keeping enemy players busy while your team kills them.
All BG healers benefit from talents that reduce or eliminate pushback on their healing spells. And, they benefit from crowd control techniques. Mana is not normally a problem since you will not be putting out the volume of heals that you would in a dungeon.
BG fights are often very close, so a heal or two can go a long way. If you are a healing class, you should expect to heal from time to time ... even if you are set up to do dps.
Tanking
There is no "aggro" in PvP, so except for one or two boss encounters, there is no need for dungeon style tanking. But that doesn't mean that tanking goes away. A well-protected fighter who can do damage, especially to multiple targets, makes for a good lead fighter in many BG encounters.
It works like this. If melee can close on ranged, then ranged will die ... so ranged has to keep moving: shoot … run … shoot, shoot … run … shoot … etc. If you can grab a couple enemy melee and hold them for a bit, ranged will kill them. You should not expect a whole lot of healing (the healers are running for their lives), so your spec should give you a mixture of mitigation, dps and cc that fits your fighting style.
links to SOME EXAMPLE CLASS SPECS
These incomplete sets are here to give you a basic idea of how to set up a spec for bg. I pulled them from various forums and "how to" sites. You should add and delete talents to fit your style and needs. Assume that these specs are used with epic BG gear. Normally this gear provides resillience along with additional stamina and armor.
Healing Priest: Plan to cast and run. This spec is heavy on dicipline for mitigation, but your choices depend a lot on your bg team. If you often have one or two dps protecting you, for example, then more holy and less discipline will work. At the top end, Penance is worth more than Guardian spirit ... because it gives you some added dps as well as healing. You may have to do occasional DPS, so don't arbitrarily avoid those talents.
Healing Pally: Because Paladin heals take time to cast, this spec goes for considerable mitigation. Casting Blessing of Wisdom on yourself will provide good mana regeneration. There is considerable discussion on the forums as to Avenger's Shield versus Holy Shock. Either will give you some DPS, which is something you occasionally will need.
DPS Pally: Compare this with the healing Pally and you will see a similar core of Protection talents. The ret Pally's usual problem is mobility, but in BG it is not usually hard to close with an opponent. Art of War is extremely useful for a quick self-heal. There is a debate over "Toughness" versus "Divinity", so I put 2 in each.
Warlock: This is an example of a BG build that uses an entire tree. As a warlock, you will never stand still for longer than the time it takes to cast a spell. Your plan is to cast curses and corruption on different targets while running, pausing only to cast Haunt, Unstable Affliction or an occasional Drain Life. The Voidwalker takes some of your damage (Fel Synergy), gives you a damage shield (Sacrifice) and increases stealth detection (Consume Shadows).
These level 80 complete sets are here to show a few popular specs. Again, you should adjust them to fit your style.
Frost Mage: This is popular because of its defense. Ice Barrier, Prismatic Cloak, and Improved Blink all help the mage survive. Water Elemental is always a good distraction. Improved Counterspell gives you a silencing spell, and Presence of Mind gives you an instant kill spell. Still ... this is a fairly low damage spec and you will have to do a lot of CC work to make up for that.
Arcane Mage: This gives you Arcane Barrage, Missile Barrage, and Presence of Mind + Pyroblast ... a considerable amount of fast damage. And Impact adds a stun to Fire Blast. On the other hand, if you are not really quick, you may die a lot.
Healing Priest: Draws on the Discipline tree for improved shielding and damage reduction. Mass dispell is especially useful.