Second Language Acquisition Myths

Author: Steven Brown
Publisher: University of Michigan Press ELT
ISBN: 0472034987
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
This volume was conceived as a first book in SLA for advanced undergraduate or introductory master’s courses that include education majors, foreign language education majors, and English majors. It’s also an excellent resource for practicing teachers. Both the research and pedagogy in this book are based on the newest research in the field of second language acquisition. It is not the goal of this book to address every SLA theory or teach research methodology. It does however address the myths and questions that non-specialist teacher candidates have about language learning. Steven Brown is the co-author of the introductory applied linguistics textbook Understanding Language Structure, Interaction, and Variation textbook (and workbook). The myths challenged in this book are: § Children learn languages quickly and easily while adults are ineffective in comparison. § A true bilingual is someone who speaks two languages perfectly. § You can acquire a language simply through listening or reading. § Practice makes perfect. § Language students learn (and retain) what they are taught. § Language learners always benefit from correction. § Individual differences are a major, perhaps the major, factor in SLA. § Language acquisition is the individual acquisition of grammar.

Pronunciation Myths

Author: Linda Grant
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472035169
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
This volume was conceived as a "best practices" resource for pronunciation and speaking teachers in the way that Vocabulary Myths by Keith S. Folse is one for reading and vocabulary teachers. Like others in the Myths series, this book combines research with good pedagogical practices. The book opens with a Prologue by Linda Grant (author of the Well Said textbook series), which reviews the last four decades of pronunciation teaching, the differences between accent and intelligibility, the rudiments of the English sound system, and other factors related to the ways that pronunciation is learned and taught. The myths challenged in this book are: § Once you’ve been speaking a second language for years, it’s too late to change your pronunciation. (Derwing and Munro) § Pronunciation instruction is not appropriate for beginning-level learners. (Zielinski and Yates) § Pronunciation teaching has to establish in the minds of language learners a set of distinct consonant and vowel sounds. (Field) § Intonation is hard to teach. (Gilbert) § Students would make better progress if they just practiced more. (Grant) § Accent reduction and pronunciation instruction are the same thing. (Thomson) § Teacher training programs provide adequate preparation in how to teach pronunciation (Murphy). The book concludes with an Epilogue by Donna M. Brinton, who synthesizes some of the best practices explored in the volume.

Listening Myths

Author: Steven Brown
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472034596
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
This volume was conceived as a "best practices" resource for teachers of ESL listening courses. It was written to help ensure that teachers of listening are not perpetuating the myths of teaching listening.

Writing Myths

Author: Joy M. Reid
Publisher: University of Michigan Press ELT
ISBN: 9780472032570
Category : Composition (Language arts)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This volume was conceived as a "best practices" resource for writing teachers in the way that Vocabulary Myths by Keith S. Folse is one for reading and vocabulary teachers. It was written to help ensure that writing teachers are not perpetuating the myths of teaching writing. Each author is a practicing teacher who selected his or her "myth" based on classroom experience and expertise. Both the research and pedagogy in this book are based on the newest research in, for example, teacher preparation, EAP and ESP, and corpus linguistics. The myths discussed in this book are: § Teaching vocabulary is not the writing teacher's job. (Keith S. Folse) § Teaching citation is someone else's job. (Cynthia M. Schuemann) § Where grammar is concerned, one size fits all. (Pat Byrd and John Bunting) § Academic writing should be assertive and certain. (Ken Hyland) § Students must learn to correct all their writing errors. (Dana Ferris) § Corpus-based research is too complicated to be useful for writing teachers. (Susan Conrad) § Academic writing courses should focus on paragraph and essay development. (Sharon Cavausgil) § International and U.S. resident ESL writers cannot be taught in the same class. (Paul Kei Matsuda) The book concludes with a discussion of students' myths about academic writing and teaching written by Joy Reid.

Vocabulary Myths

Author: Keith S. Folse
Publisher: University of Michigan Press ELT
ISBN: 9780472030293
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In Vocabulary Myths, Keith S. Folse breaks down the teaching of second language vocabulary into eight commonly held myths. In debunking each myth, he introduces the myth with a story based on his 25 years of teaching experience (in the United States and abroad), continues with a presentation of what empirical research has shown on the topic, and finishes with a list of what teachers can do in their classrooms to facilitate true vocabulary acquisition. The goal of Vocabulary Myths is to foster a paradigm shift that correctly views vocabulary as fundamental in any second language learning process and demonstrates that research supports this goal-that in fact there is a wealth of empirical evidence to support these views. In addition, an important theme is that teachers have overestimated how much vocabulary students really understand, and as a result, the so-called "comprehensible input" is neither comprehensible nor input. The second language vocabulary acquisition myths reexamined in this book are: *In learning another language, vocabulary is not as important as grammar or other areas. *Using word lists to learn L2 vocabulary is unproductive. *Presenting new vocabulary in semantic sets facilitates learning. *The use of translations to learn new vocabulary should be discouraged. *Guessing words from context is an excellent strategy for learning L2 vocabulary. *The best vocabulary learners make use of one or two really specific vocabulary learning strategies. *The best dictionary for L2 learners is a monolingual dictionary. *Teachers, textbooks, and curricula cover L2 vocabulary adequately.

Becoming Fluent

Author: Richard Roberts
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262529807
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Book Description
Forget everything you’ve heard about adult language learning: evidence from cognitive science and psychology prove we can learn foreign languages just as easily as children. An eye-opening study on how adult learners can master a foreign lanugage by drawing on skills and knowledge honed over a lifetime. Adults who want to learn a foreign language are often discouraged because they believe they cannot acquire a language as easily as children. Once they begin to learn a language, adults may be further discouraged when they find the methods used to teach children don't seem to work for them. What is an adult language learner to do? In this book, Richard Roberts and Roger Kreuz draw on insights from psychology and cognitive science to show that adults can master a foreign language if they bring to bear the skills and knowledge they have honed over a lifetime. Adults shouldn't try to learn as children do; they should learn like adults. Roberts and Kreuz report evidence that adults can learn new languages even more easily than children. Children appear to have only two advantages over adults in learning a language: they acquire a native accent more easily, and they do not suffer from self-defeating anxiety about learning a language. Adults, on the other hand, have the greater advantages—gained from experience—of an understanding of their own mental processes and knowing how to use language to do things. Adults have an especially advantageous grasp of pragmatics, the social use of language, and Roberts and Kreuz show how to leverage this metalinguistic ability in learning a new language. Learning a language takes effort. But if adult learners apply the tools acquired over a lifetime, it can be enjoyable and rewarding.

Culture Myths

Author: Andrea DeCapua
Publisher: University of Michigan Press ELT
ISBN: 9780472037230
Category : Second language acquisition
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Culture Myths is intended for all educators who work with culturally and linguistically diverse students. The book is designed to help readers observe, evaluate, and appreciate cultural differences in values, beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and worldviews by focusing on the underlying and mostly invisible reasons for these differences. Developing an awareness of one's own cultural assumptions deepens understanding and empathy and contributes to the breaking down of the cultural barriers that can affect communication. A goal of this book is to help readers strike a balance between minimizing cultural differences and assuming similarities across cultures on one hand, and exoticizing other cultures or accentuating surface differences on the other. The myths about culture in the classroom explored in this book are: We are all human beings, so how different can we really be? The goal of education is to develop each individual's potential, Focusing on conversational skills in the classroom is overrated, Not looking at the teacher shows disrespect, How something is said is not as important as what is said, Everyone knows what a good instructional environment is, By the time students get to middle or high school, they know how to be a student. Book jacket.

Self and Identity in Adolescent Foreign Language Learning

Author: Florentina Taylor
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
ISBN: 1783090014
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
This book explores the role of identity in adolescent foreign language learning to provide evidence that an identity-focused approach can make a difference to achievement in education. It uses both in-depth exploratory interviews with language learners and a cross-sectional survey to provide a unique glimpse into the identity dynamics that learners need to manage in their interaction with contradictory relational contexts (e.g. teacher vs. classmates; parents vs. friends), and that appear to impair their perceived competence and declared achievement in language learning. Furthermore, this work presents a new model of identity which incorporates several educational psychology theories (e.g. self-discrepancy, self-presentation, impression management), developmental theories of adolescence and principles of foreign language teaching and learning. This book gives rise to potentially policy-changing insights and will be of importance to those interested in the relationship between self, identity and language teaching and learning.

Languaging Myths and Realities

Author: Qianqian Zhang-Wu
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
ISBN: 1788926919
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
Higher education institutions in Anglophone countries often rely on standardized English language proficiency exams to assess the linguistic capabilities of their multilingual international students. However, there is often a mismatch between these scores and the initial experiences of international students in both academic and social contexts. Drawing on a digital ethnography of Chinese international students’ first semester languaging practices, this book examines their challenges, needs and successes on their initial languaging journeys in higher education. It analyzes how they use their rich multilingual and multi-modal communicative repertories to facilitate languaging across contexts, in order to suggest how university support systems might better serve the needs of multilingual international students.

Introducing Second Language Acquisition

Author: Kirsten M. Hummel
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118588029
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Book Description
Introducing Second Language Acquisition: Perspectives and Practices represents a clear and concise introduction to the main concepts, issues, and debates in second language acquisition studies aimed specifically at undergraduates encountering the topic for the first time. Follows six fictitious language learners throughout the text whose stories serve to introduce various concepts and issues Contains specific chapters on first language acquisition and bilingualism, as well as explicit references to the most recent and important research Covers key topics including acquisition contexts, theoretical perspectives, language teaching methods, second language development, and individual differences (such as age, aptitude, and motivation) Grabs student attention with lighthearted cartoons that illustrate and reinforce key ideas Features a full range of pedagogical tools to aid student learning, including “language learning in practice” textboxes; bolded new terms defined in the margins; an end-of-book glossary; self-assessment and classroom discussion questions; exercise and project ideas; and further online viewing sections