Dr. Rod Ellis (Curtin University, Australia)

Oral Corrective Feedback in Language Pedagogy and SLA

The purpose of this seminar is to explore the extent to which the approach to correcting learners oral errors evident in popular teacher guides is compatible with research that has investigated the effect of oral corrective feedback on second language acquisition. The approach adopted will be to first undertake a critical review of standard pedagogic positions regarding the provision of oral corrective feedback and then examine what second language acquisition researchers have discovered about the effect it has on acquisition. In this way, SLA theory and research serves as a basis for reflecting critically on established pedagogical practices.

Topics

1. Introduction - what is 'oral corrective feedback'?
2. Pedagogical positions relating to:
   • Whether to correct
   • What to correct
   • When to correct
   • How to correct
   • Who does the correction
3. Theoretical perspectives on oral corrective feedback in SLA
4. Types of oral corrective feedback
5. Research investigating oral corrective feedback
6. Evaluating the pedagogical positions

Methodology

The seminar will be taught by means of lectures followed up by questions and tasks which seminar participants will perform to apply the content covered in the lectures. Participants will be invited to formulate their own policy for carrying out oral corrective feedback in classrooms.

Dr. Dilin Liu (University of Alabama, U.S.A.)

Cognitive and Corpus Linguistics-Inspired Approaches to Lexico-Grammar Instruction

Grammar and vocabulary are arguably two of the most important, albeit most difficult, aspects in second language learning. How to effectively teach these important aspects of language has long been a challenge. In the past few decades, contemporary linguistic approaches, such as systemic functional, cognitive, and corpus linguistics, have brought about new understandings about language, including the theory that language is a usage-based system motivated by our embodied conceptualization and the perspective that that grammar and vocabulary are two ends of one continuum rather than being two rigid separate entities. These understandings have inspired the development of more engaging and effective practices for lexico-grammar instruction. This seminar explores such cognitive and corpus linguistics-inspired approaches to lexico-grammar instruction.

Through lectures and discussions, we will first examine the main new theories and understandings about language and language acquisition espoused by the contemporary linguistics approaches and their implications for the teaching of lexico-grammar. Then, using concrete examples, we learn first-hand how such approaches can be used to help teach more engagingly and effectively various challenging aspects of lexico-grammar, including articles, parts of speech, prepositions, tense/aspect, synonyms, and word collocations. These examples will not only provide participants with ready-to-use activities but also help them reflect and innovate with new lexico-grammar teaching practices of their own.

Recommended Textbook:

• Liu, D. (2014). Describing and Explaining Grammar and Vocabulary in ELT: Key Theories and Effective Practices. Oxon, UK: Routledge. (Buy on Amazon.co.jp)
• Liu, D. & Lei, L. (2017). Using Corpora for Language Learning and Teaching. Alexandria, VA: TESOL Press. (Buy on Amazon.com)

Dr. George Engelhard (The University of Georgia, U.S.A.)

Invariant Measurement with Rasch Models for Rater-Mediated Assessments

Measurement issues play a critical role in discussions of second language acquisition. This seminar examines key psychometric issues related to invariant measurement based on Rasch models for rater-mediated assessments. The basic goal of invariant measurement is to develop useful scales to measure the latent variables that have high levels of stability and consistency. In other words, we seek to develop scales that will "stay put when our backs our turned". The assessment of competency in a second language frequently includes the use of rating scales to collect human judgments. This seminar focuses on guiding principles that can be used for the creation, evaluation and maintenance of invariant assessment systems based on human judgments.

Selected chapters from my new book with Professor Stefanie Wind will be shared with participants in the seminar. Participants in the seminar are encouraged to bring rater-mediated data sets for analyses with the Facets computer program (Rasch model).

Recommended Textbook:

• Engelhard, G., Jr. (2013). Invariant Measurement: Using Rasch Models in the Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences. New York, NY: Routledge. (Buy on Amazon.co.jp)
• Engelhard, G., Jr., & Wind, S.A. (in press). Invariant Measurement with Raters and Rating Scales: Rasch Models for Rater-mediated Assessments. New York, NY: Routledge.

Dr. Pavel Trofimovich (Concordia University,Canada)

Second Language Pronunciation for Successful Communication: Research Evidence and Practical Implications

A common belief in the field of second language speech learning is that successful communication (generally measured through mutual understanding achieved by interlocutors) should be prioritized over matters of linguistic accuracy or nativelikeness, especially if learners’ goal is to communicate successfully in academic and workplace settings. In this seminar, we will critically examine second language intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness as constructs central to this argument, with reference to current research and pedagogical practices.

Although intelligible and comprehensible second language speech appears to be a straightforward target attainable by most learners, these are complex phenomena linked to cognitive, social, and experiential factors, both for the speaker and the listener. Through discussions of published empirical research and hands-on analyses of learner language, we will explore the challenges of achieving intelligible and comprehensible second language speech from meta-cognitive, linguistic, social, affective, and assessment perspectives and will discuss implications of research on intelligibility and comprehensibility for the teaching and learning of second language pronunciation.

Required Textbook:

• Isaacs, T., & Trofimovich, P. (Eds.). (2017). Second Language Pronunciation Assessment: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. ( Buy on Amazon.co.jp)

Open Access for above book will be available in early 2017 through Multilingual Matters.

Dr. Averil Coxhead (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)

English for Academic Purposes: Looking Closely at the ‘E’ and the ‘A’ in EAP

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is a major area of research, teaching, and materials design internationally, under the umbrella of English for Specific Purposes. This course is entitled English for Academic Purposes: Looking Closely at the ‘E’ and the ‘A’ in EAP because its key concern is the nature of academic English. This course draws on theory and research on a variety of aspects of language and English for Academic Purposes and links them to classroom practice. The first session focuses on five key issues in the ‘E’ and the ‘A’ in EAP across EAP in several contexts, from secondary school through to university studies and beyond. Sessions Two and Three concentrate on academic vocabulary, from single words to multi-word units. Session Four moves to academic discourse, and Sessions Five and Six focus on written and spoken academic language. Session Seven is concerned with materials in EAP, particularly in light of the findings of research presented in the earlier sessions. The final session looks at assessment and ends with overall considerations for the future of theory and practice in the ‘E’ and the ‘A’ of EAP.

Dr. Gabriele Kasper (University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, U.S.A.)

Emotion in SLA and in Multilingual Talk

Emotion or affect have been research concerns in SLA since its inception. Current studies on the topic fall into two broad strands: emotion as a complex of individual difference variables that help or hinder second language learning, and emotion as forms of meaning that multilingual speakers understand and produce in talk, text, and multisemiotic spaces. Under the second perspective, being able to understand and convey emotion is an integral part of communicative and interactional competence. The seminar will introduce students to the major theoretical and methodological approaches to emotion in these traditions. Focus will be given to the discursive practices through which L2 speakers and their interlocutors manage emotion in different activities and settings.

The seminar will include lectures, discussions, and data analyses in groups and plenary, and offer students initial training in conducting research on emotion in multilingual language use and development.

Required Textbook:

A reading package (PDFs) will be made available to students who take the course for credit. These students are asked to read Ch. 1 in Emotion in Multilingual Interaction before class.

Recommended Textbook:

• Prior, M. T., & Kasper, G. (Eds.) (2016). Emotion in Multilingual Interaction. Amsterdam, NLD: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ( Buy on Amazon.co.jp)

Dr. Carsten Roever (The University of Melbourne, Australia)

Second Language Pragmatics: Learning, Teaching and Testing

This seminar will provide an overview of research on development of second language (L2) pragmatics, and more in-depth coverage of teaching and testing of L2 pragmatics.

Second language pragmatic development has been investigated from a variety of theoretical and content perspective, describing learning of speech acts, implicature, routine formulae, extended discourse, and other areas such as humor, address terms, or specific interactional practices. Some developmental trajectories have been identified, and the influence of individual difference factors has been investigated. Participants will acquire a broad understanding of research findings, approaches and issues in L2 pragmatic development research.

Less research has occurred on teaching of L2 pragmatics, most of which has focused on effects-of-instruction studies comparing implicit and explicit approaches to L2 pragmatics teaching. While more explicit teaching approaches tend to show stronger effect than implicit ones, the latter are not ineffectual and under certain conditions can be superior. Systematic teaching of L2 pragmatics as part of a coherent curriculum is still in its infancy but the possibility of such curricular integration will be explored in this seminar together with a range of teaching approaches.

Testing of learners’ L2 pragmatic ability has developed strongly in the last two decades and a variety of testing instruments exist for assessing learners’ ability. Providing adequate coverage of a complex construct like L2 pragmatics has been challenging, however, and the context sensitivity of pragmatic performance has led to tension between the need for broad construct coverage and practicality. Assessment instruments for L2 pragmatics will be critically examined in the seminar.

Students taking this seminar for credit should read Chapter 5 and 8 of Second Language Pragmatics before the seminar. A PDF copy of the reading will be provided to those registered credit students from the Office before the seminar.

Required Reading:

• Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (in press). Second Language Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dr. Yukio Tono (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan)

Learner Corpus Research

The primary purpose of this seminar is to explore how corpus linguistics as a methodology can contribute to SLA research and foreign language learning/teaching. The seminar will begin with a brief introduction to fundamental concepts in corpus linguistics, types of available corpora, and how corpora are used in different fields of applied linguistics. The lecture is then focused on learner corpus research and a discussion of various approaches, such as contrastive interlanguage analysis, that are used to explore learner corpora in SLA and ELT research.

The second day of the seminar will be dedicated to hands-on data processing using concordancers such as AntConc (for PC/Mac), CasualConc (for Mac), and KH-Coder (for PC). Participants will learn word analysis techniques in corpus linguistics, such as wordlists, keywords, collocations, n-grams, and P-frames. Participants will also explore the results of corpus search using multivariate analyses for data summarization and data modeling and discuss the merits and demerits of using corpora as a methodology to answer research questions. No previous familiarity with concordancers is necessary, but some prior knowledge of statistics is helpful.

Recommended Textbook:

• McEnery, T., Xiao, R., & Tono, Y. (2006). Corpus-Based Language Studies: An Advanced Resource Book. London, UK: Routledge. ( Buy on Amazon.co.jp)
• Granger, S., Gilquin, G., & Meunier, F. (Eds.) (2015). The Cambridge Handbook of Learner Corpus Research. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ( Buy on Amazon.co.jp)

Dr. Noël Houck (California State Polytechnic University, U.S.A.)

English Education Discourse Analysis in the Language Classroom

Most teachers have some idea about what happens in different types of language classrooms. However, a closer look may reveal that something entirely different is occurring. In this course students will gain a deeper understanding of what goes on in EFL classrooms, with the result that they are able to ultimately make more informed, intelligent choices about their own classes.

In this course we will look at language classrooms with an eye to describing (rather than evaluating) what is happening in them. Using methods developed to identify activity types and analyze teacher and learner interactional practices in the language classroom, students will dissect stretches of classroom discourse and assess their implications for language pedagogy, comparing their findings with claims made in research on second language acquisition and language pedagogy.

By the end of the course students will be able to use different approaches to discourse analysis to

1. Identify the function of a stretch of classroom discourse
2. Identify the effect of certain teacher on classroom interaction
3. Identify often-unrecognized student practices and their implications for language acquisition
4. Assess second language acquisition research claims on the effect of certain classroom practices on language acquisition.