239701 Language Learner Language and Language Learning Processes (S) (SoSe 2013)

This course assumes that students have already taken the course "(Introduction to) Second Language Acquisition". It will build on this and look in more detail at some of the topics touched on there. For this reason students should look back at the course book (Lightbown and Spada 2006) for the (Introduction to) Second Language Acquisition course and re-familiarise themselves with it before starting this course. In particular, they should remind themselves of The Contrastive Hypothesis, Interlanguage Theory and the Input Hypothesis.

We will start off the course by examining the idea of learner language, which grew out of work on contrastive analysis, error analysis and interlanguage theory, all of which should be familiar to students from the introductory SLA course. We will then spend one session on practical error analysis.

The rest of the course will focus on further aspects of learner language and language learning. Each week students will be given the chance to present in pairs on the following topics: Automatisation and Restructuring, Fossilisation, Language Learning Styles and Strategies, Communication Strategies,The Interaction Hypothesis for Language Learning, The Output Hypothesis for Language Learning, The Good Language Learner, Autonomous Language Learning.

The presentations will each be based on a text from the Reader for this course (see "Literaturangaben", below). Presentations should aim at some audience involvement or interaction and should lead into a discussion of the implications for language teachers. For these reasons all course members must make themselves familiar with the text in advance of the presentation.

Presenters are invited and expected to consult me in my office hour in advance of their presentation.

Bibliography

A collection of texts in bound form will be available and students are required to purchase this (Reader).

Please see my homepage for additional reading. All books are on a reserved reading shelf in the library.