English Linguistics: Second Language Acquisition

Teacher(s)

Language

Anglais

Prerequisites

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Main themes

Familiarize students with SLA theories and more specifically English as a Foreign Language (EFL).

The course will address two main issues: theories in SLA and learner language analysis.

Aims

By the end of the course, students will be familiar with the main theories and issues in second and foreign language acquisition. The students will be able to read scientific articles in the domain critically and to apply some of the research methods to carry out a small scale personal research project.

The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.

Evaluation methods

Oral exam. The active participation in class will also be taken into account in the attribution of the final mark.

Teaching methods

Reading of scientific articles, classroom discussions, practical applications, writing of research papers.

Content

Main themes :
- description of learner language.
- data analysis in SLA (e.g. elicitation tests vs learner corpus data).
- internal and external factors in SLA.
- language transfer.
- cognitive accounts of SLA.
- linguistic universals and SLA.
- individual learner differences and strategies.
- classroom SLA (e.g. explicit instruction vs implicit learning).

Bibliography

Ortega, L. (2009) Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Hodder Arnold Publication
(complemented with a few recent research articles)
 

Other information

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Faculty or entity<

> LMOD