Instructors
James Hall and Takashi Miura
Our Goal
The overall goal of this class is to develop foundational knowledge of second language acquisition (SLA) to give teachers a new perspective on issues in English education as well as possibilities for innovative practice. Although many findings of SLA are not directly applicable to English teaching, knowledge of SLA can help teachers understand why a particular English lesson is effective for language learning and why it is not. SLA can also help teachers develop instructional principles that represent valid ways to encourage student language learning.
Course Objectives
- Be able to summarize various theories of language learning.
- Be able to describe ways of describing learner characteristics and their relationship with language learning.
- Be able to articulate typical patterns of language acquisition.
- Be able to describe the characteristics of a proficient speaker.
- Be able to evaluate school English education through the perspective of SLA.
Materials
All materials can be found here.
Schedule
(1) 10/8 Orientation and the Principled Communicative Approach
(2) 10/15 Language, Learning, and Teaching
(3) 10/22 Direction of English education based on the Course of Study (Miura)
(4) 10/29 The current state and challenges of English education in Iwate (Miura)
(5) 11/5 First language acquisition
(6) 11/12 Age and Acquisition
(7) 11/26 Human learning
(8) 12/3 Individual differences
(9) 12/10 Affective factors
(10) 12/17 Language, culture, and identity
(11) 1/7 Key points for improving “reading” skills (Miura)
(12) 1/14 Communicative competence
(13) 1/21 Interlanguage
(14) 1/28 Initiating interaction in the classroom