Search results for "FOREIGN LANGUAGE"

"Tässä ryhmässä olen aika hyvä" : ekologinen näkökulma kielenoppijaidentiteetteihin peruskoulun viidennen ja kuudennen luokan englannin opetuksessa

2012

Multimodale Analyse von Interaktion im fremdsprachlichen Klassenzimmer. Multimodal analysis of interaction in a foreign language class.

2016

The article offers a contribution to the interaction research in the foreign language teaching and learning. It starts with an overview of various research approaches to the foreign language teaching and learning, from the 60s to the present days. A multimodal analysis of an excerpt of videorecorded classroom interaction is then provided. The analysis is focused on several aspects of classroom participation and teaching sequences. Some implications of the present research for teachers' training are finally provided.

Good Servants but Poor Masters: On the Important Role of Textbooks in Teaching English Pronunciation

2014

Textbooks are the most commonly used teaching materials among European EFL teachers (Henderson et al., 2012), and it is undeniable that they have a central role in foreign language teaching overall. Scholars across time have claimed that the role of textbooks cannot be overestimated: textbooks determine a major part of classroom teaching (see Sobkowiak, 2012). This paper discusses the influence of textbooks in English pronunciation teaching in an EFL environment. It presents a study in which the occurrence of four typical pronunciation teaching task types and four pronunciation teaching topics were analysed in three data sources: textbooks, classroom observations, and learner interviews. Th…

Introduzione a Sektion A1 IDT Sammelband 2013 Kognition, Sprache, Musik

2015

New media and perennial problems in foreign language learning and teaching

2015

The book concerns the ways in which the new media shape communication along with educational expectations and practices in foreign language classrooms. Although foreign language learners have cheap and easy access to information and ways of communication, they also wrestle with problems that have always accompanied language learning. The focus of the book is two-fold. On the one hand, the authors demonstrate how using social networks, videoconferencing, mobile phones, wikis, and computer-mediated interaction contributes to the development of language skills, negotiated interaction, autonomy, and intercultural competence. On the other, they discuss “old” issues pertaining to the role of voca…

The National Bilingual Programme in Colombia: Imposition or Opportunity?

2011

The National Bilingual Programme, created by the Colombian Ministry of Education in 2004, offers all students in the county the possibility of becoming bilingual in English and Spanish as part of a vision of increased productivity in a globalised world. However, the language and education policies promoted within this framework tend to foreground the development of English at the expense of bilingual competence in Spanish and English. This bilingual policy has been strongly criticised by several Colombian academics with regard to what they consider as the imposition in the Colombian context of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, the disregard of local knowledge and exp…

The ecosystem of the foreign language learner : selected issues

2015

This volume examines selected aspects of the foreign language learning process from an ecological perspective, adopting a holistic view on complex interrelations among and within organisms (L2 language learners) and their milieus (family, school and society). First of all, the personal ecosystem of the learner is taken into consideration, whereby two powerful influences are intertwined: cognitive and affective aspects. The learning space formed by the individual is largely shaped by their affective states coexisting in conjunction with their cognitive processes. Moreover, this specific space is also modified by a wider array of other personal ecosystems or those of cultures. Hence, the ecos…

Hand Gestures Alert Auditory Cortices

2017

When acquiring a foreign language, the first challenge is to break into the speech stream to identify basic linguistic units. The present study tested the hypothesis that hand gestures facilitate this process by alerting auditory cortices to attend to and identify meaningful phonemic information. During fMRI data acquisition, participants watched videos of an actor speaking in Russian under three conditions. Sentences were produced with just speech alone or were accompanied by two types of hand gestures: 1) metaphoric gesture and 2) free gesture. The main finding was that there was increased auditory cortex activation when both types of gestures accompanied speech compared to speech alone, …

Blending Literature and Foreign Language Learning: Current Approaches

2013

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the place of literature in foreign language learning and teaching contexts, and to show reasons of using literary texts for the development of communicative competence, intercultural communicative competence, and for individual as well as social human growth. Although literature and language teaching had been following separate paths, currently a strong tendency emerges of integrating language and literature teaching across proficiency levels. This tendency results from the recognition of the roles that literacy, multiliteracies and multimodality play in the life of humans in the 21st century. Respected bodies such as the Council of Europe or Modern Lan…

Effective Teacher Training: Teacher Lectures in Comparison with Student Power Point Presentations

2013

National (dispositions of the Ministry of Education in Poland 2004, 2006) and international (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages 2001) documents provide many guidelines and suggestions about the competencies that foreign language teachers of today should develop to meet the desired standards and obtain the necessary qualifications. These qualifications comprise knowledge and a wide range of skills. The focus of this chapter is on knowledge since it is the foundation for the development of teaching skills and of a reflective approach to one’s teaching practices. In Polish tertiary education institutions the so-called “theoretical knowledge” has been imparted by means of lect…