Second Language Acquisition in Action: Principles from Practice

ISBN-13: 9781474274876 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 240 str.

Andrea Nava; Luciana Pedrazzini

Opis

Despite the key role played by second language acquisition (SLA) courses in linguistics, teacher education and language teaching degrees, student participants often struggle to bridge the big gap between SLA theories and their many applications in the classroom. This book raises awareness of key findings of SLA research. It is aimed at those on applied linguistics MA courses, TESOL/EFL trainees and is of use to in-service teachers. In order to overcome the 'transfer' problem from theory to practice, an approach to presenting SLA research has been devised so readers experience SLA principles through the actions, words and audiovisual recordings of teachers and learners. The book then encourages them to relate this to their own experience.The book identifies six SLA principles: research-based SLA tenets which are of relevance to those teaching and researching EFL. The process of discovery of the principles is informed by the three stages of Kolb's experiential learning approach: experience and reflection, conceptualisation and restructuring and planning. Throughout the three stages the 'doing' and the contextual component of the experience of teaching is provided by the readers' previous experience of learning and/or teaching foreign languages as well as by extracts from teacher and learner narratives, teachers' methodology books and video-recorded lessons. Here, the principles are operationalised in the teaching of specific English lexicogrammatical areas and language skills. The video extracts are provided on a website which accompanies the book. Discussion questions and tasks represent the core of the book and not only help readers in the process of 'experiencing' SLA research, but also provide them with opportunities to try their hands at different areas of a language teacher's professional expertise (e.g. task planning, materials evaluation and design).