Event

Pedagogical Approaches to L2 Grammar

Saturday, February 15th, 2025, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Speaker: Frank Boers (Western University, Canada)

This seminar will be conducted by 3-hour online Zoom sessions for four days: Saturday, February 15, Sunday, February 16, Saturday, February 22, and Sunday, February 23 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (JST). Students taking this seminar for credit must attend all four days. Students can add/drop this seminar course by 13:00 on Saturday, February 15. The pre sign-up (or course registration for those who are taking this seminar for credit) is required for anybody attending the public session on Saturday, February 15 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. The sign-up process must be completed through "Distinguished Lecturer Series Seminar Sign-Up Form" that is available on TUJ Grad Ed website. The sign-up deadline is Friday, February 14, at 12:00 p.m. The public session Zoom link will be provided to those people who completed the online sign-up (or course registration) process by 18:00 on Friday, February 14.

Mastering the grammar of a second or foreign language (L2) is challenging, especially if the grammar patterns are very different from those of one's mother tongue. This seminar examines diverse approaches to helping language learners tackle this challenge. The seminar first looks at approaches where learning is expected to happen as a by-product of activities where students are engaged mostly with communicative content (what is said) rather than the language code (how it is said). Such approaches include the modification of texts so that certain grammar patterns become more noticeable, and the use of interactive activities intended to raise students' awareness of the relevance of grammar for meaning making. In the second part, the seminar turns to instructional approaches which put grammar center stage. These approaches include guided discovery learning, processing instruction (where students need to interpret sentences based on their grammatical features), and a re-appraisal of PPP (present-practice-produce). It will also examine how grammar is tackled in mainstream (EFL) textbooks and whether such materials are properly informed by the available research in applied linguistics and in cognitive psychology. At the end of the seminar, it is hoped that participants will have a solid understanding of what makes an approach to L2 grammar truly pedagogical. Throughout the seminar, each of the approaches will be evaluated with reference to published intervention studies. Rather than taking them at face value, these publications will be reviewed critically, for example by asking whether the tried interventions would be realistic in actual language courses.

Organization: Temple University Japan

Cost: free

Venue: https://www.tuj.ac.jp/grad-ed/seminars

Location: Online, Online Events, Online Event

Contact Temple University Japan

Temple University Japan

Work phone: 03-5441-9800