M8 Applied Linguistics: Second-Language Development/Teaching
Course contents & aims
In the first part of the course, we will look at some insights from theories of language acquisition and language learning that are relevant to the classroom context. We will also go through some major differences between German and English that pose problems to German learners of English.
In the second part of the course, we will look at means of teaching vocabulary and grammar that are informed by recent cognitive-linguistic approaches to foreign-language teaching. So far, only very few elements of these approaches have found their way into the German EFL classroom, yet they promise to be of much benefit to students and teachers. Topics include the language of emotions (e.g. full of joy, love-sick, bursting with anger), modal auxiliaries (e.g. may, can, must), motion verbs (e.g. come, go, run, crawl), various syntactic construction (ditransitive construction, prepositional dative), the Tense-Aspect system of English.
The second part of the course will be based on group work. Each group will prepare one of the topics and develop sequences and exercises that can be used in the classroom. The groups will then present their topic and the output of their work to the course.
After successfully completing this course, students should
- be familiar with basic theories of language acquisition/learning
- be familiar with basic cognitive principles guiding language learning
- be able to (critically) assess schoolbook materials from this perspective
- be able to develop classroom activities supportive of the learning of specific linguistic phenomena (e.g. supportive multimodal approaches, supportive physical activities)
Class format
- In-person.
Assessment
term paper (M8) |
eG