I am proud to announce the arrival of a healthy baby book weighing in at just under 200 pages. Nice gift to receive on the doormat on arriving back from holidays! More info here.
Posts Tagged ‘sla’
new book out! Key Concepts in Second Language Acquisition
Monday, July 18th, 2011Second dialect acquisition
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010I just came across this book - looks very interesting!
What is involved in acquiring a new dialect - for example, when Canadian English speakers move to England or African American English-speaking children go to school? How is such learning different from second language acquisition (SLA), and why is it in some ways more difficult? These are some of the questions Jeff Siegel examines in this book, the first to focus specifically on second dialect acquisition (SDA). Siegel surveys a wide range of studies that throw light on SDA. These concern dialects of English as well as those of other languages, including Dutch, German, Greek, Norwegian, Portuguese and Spanish. He also describes the individual and linguistic factors that affect SDA, such as age, social identity and language complexity. The book discusses problems faced by students who have to acquire the standard dialect without any special teaching, and presents some educational approaches that have been successful in promoting SDA in the classroom”– Provided by publisher.
New book out! The effects of task types and instructions on L2 Acquisition
Monday, May 24th, 2010Just received copies of my book! What a nice present to receive in the mail :-)
Reinders, H. 2010 The Effects of Task Type and Instructions on Second Language Acquisition. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. For more information see here.
Recent years have seen a growing interest in the role of tasks in second language acquisition and a substantial body of research now exists to show their potential contribution to language learning and teaching. However, not much is known about the effects of different task types, nor about their accompanying instructions. Which tasks are more successful under what circumstances? What type of instructions should be included?
This book attempts to answer the questions above by first examining previous studies on the use of tasks, the roles of input, output and interaction, and by placing these in a broader cognitive framework. It argues that in order to understand the effects of different task types, it is important not only to look at learning outcomes (acquisition), but also at the effects on immediate task performance (intake), and by doing so, to arrive at a more complete picture of the learning process.
The book presents the results of a study on the effects of 1) implicit and explicit inductive instructions and 2) three task types on both intake and acquisition of two English grammatical structures. The study used various measures to determine intake as well as the development of both implicit and explicit knowledge. The results of the study support the claims made for the benefits of Focus-on-Form, but do not support the claims made for the benefits of more explicit types of instruction. Further, the results show that there is no direct relationship between intake and acquisition and that different task types can have a differential effect on immediate task performance on the one hand and learning on the other. The book discusses these findings in light of previous research and considers their implications both at the theoretical level, as well as for language teaching practice.
Public lecture at Oxford University - presentation online now
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009I gave a talk today at Oxford University. You can find the abstract below as well as the presentation. Try using ‘full screen’ mode to best view the presentation.
The effects of Enhanced input on intake and acquisition of implicit and explicit knowledge
The importance of ample input for second language acquisition is uncontroversial. At the same time, evidence exists (for example from studies in immersion settings) to show that even with massive exposure certain aspects of the language develop slowly or not at all. This appears to apply especially to formal features that are semantically redundant and/or that are difficult to notice. It appears that such aspects require some form of instructional intervention, although it remains unclear what type of intervention is most effective. One instructional possibility is ‘input enhancement’. This presentation reports a study that investigated the effect of two different types of input enhancement (input enrichment and input enrichment + noticing instruction) on both the intake and acquisition of a difficult grammatical structure (negative adverbs). The effect of the instruction was measured in terms of both implicit and explicit L2 knowledge. The study showed that enhanced input in the form of enriched input resulted in intake and assisted the acquisition of implicit knowledge. It showed that asking students to pay attention to the target structure conferred no additional advantage for either intake or acquisition.
Mini encyclopaedia of Second Language Acquisition
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008Good news! Together with Shawn Loewen from Michigan State University we have just been given a contract to publish Key Concepts in Second Language Acquisition, a kind of handbook-encyclopaedia, which will be published by Palgrave Macmillan. We hope this book will be a useful guide for students and practising teachers taking courses in Second Language Acquisition. More information will be posted on the ‘Second Language Acquisition’ page as the writing progresses.
PhD thesis on tasks now available as book
Thursday, November 6th, 2008I decided to publish my PhD thesis through Lulu. You can still download it for free from my website (click on ’second language acquisition’) but if you don’t fancy reading 420 pages from a computer screen, you can now order it as a book as well. More information here.
This study investigated the effects of 1) implicit and explicit inductive instructions and 2) various task types on both intake and acquisition of two English grammatical structures. Fifty adult ESL learners enrolled in private language schools in New Zealand were pretested with the help of a timed and an untimed grammaticality judgement test for prior knowledge of negative adverbs and adverb placement and were randomly assigned to either a dictation, an individual reconstruction, or a collaborative reconstruction treatment. Treatments were accompanied by either implicit instructions (containing only practical instructions on how to perform the task) or explicit instructions (drawing participants’ attention to the target structures and giving an example of them). Performance on the treatments was taken as a measure of intake, and talk-aloud reports were obtained to gauge participants’ awareness during task completion.
