Frank Boers – författare

Providing a much-needed critical synthesis of research on teaching vocabulary and grammar to students of a second or foreign language, this book puts the research into perspective in order to distil recommendations for language teaching. Boers evaluates a comprehensive range of both well-established and lesser-known research strands and classroom practices to draw out the most effective instructional approaches to teaching words, multiword expressions and grammar patterns. Chapters discuss learning as a by-product of communicative activities, language-focused instruction, diverse types of exercises, mnemonic techniques and more, with a view to building bridges between the available research on such instructional approaches and how they are commonly implemented in actual language courses and textbooks.

This book helps teachers make research-informed decisions regarding their instructional approaches to words, phrases and patterns, and direct researchers to specific areas in need of further inquiry. Boers not only demonstrates how research findings can inform effective teaching, but also calls for a deeper appreciation on the part of researchers of the realities of the teaching profession, making this a worthwhile text for preservice teachers, teacher educators, graduate students and scholars.

Providing a much-needed critical synthesis of research on teaching vocabulary and grammar to students of a second or foreign language, this book puts the research into perspective in order to distil recommendations for language teaching. Boers evaluates a comprehensive range of both well-established and lesser-known research strands and classroom practices to draw out the most effective instructional approaches to teaching words, multiword expressions and grammar patterns. Chapters discuss learning as a by-product of communicative activities, language-focused instruction, diverse types of exercises, mnemonic techniques and more, with a view to building bridges between the available research on such instructional approaches and how they are commonly implemented in actual language courses and textbooks.

This book helps teachers make research-informed decisions regarding their instructional approaches to words, phrases and patterns, and direct researchers to specific areas in need of further inquiry. Boers not only demonstrates how research findings can inform effective teaching, but also calls for a deeper appreciation on the part of researchers of the realities of the teaching profession, making this a worthwhile text for preservice teachers, teacher educators, graduate students and scholars.

Accessible to experts and non-experts alike, this text is a comprehensive entry to teaching and learning vocabulary in ESL and EFL contexts. Firmly grounded in research, it presents frameworks and methods for teaching vocabulary to English L2 speakers. Overviewing key topics as well as providing in-depth research analyses and critiques, Zwier and Boers address all major areas of vocabulary pedagogy and instruction.

Organized in four parts, chapters cover the nature of vocabulary and strands of vocabulary research; curricular approaches; and techniques and activities. Readers are introduced to key topics, including teaching multiword expressions, assessment, discourse, and instruction at different levels. Each chapter includes questions, prompts, and activities to foster discussion. A foundational textbook for courses on L2 instruction and teacher-training courses, it is an essential text for students and scholars in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, and provides the pedagogical grounding future English L2 teachers need to effectively teach vocabulary.

Accessible to experts and non-experts alike, this text is a comprehensive entry to teaching and learning vocabulary in ESL and EFL contexts. Firmly grounded in research, it presents frameworks and methods for teaching vocabulary to English L2 speakers. Overviewing key topics as well as providing in-depth research analyses and critiques, Zwier and Boers address all major areas of vocabulary pedagogy and instruction.

Organized in four parts, chapters cover the nature of vocabulary and strands of vocabulary research; curricular approaches; and techniques and activities. Readers are introduced to key topics, including teaching multiword expressions, assessment, discourse, and instruction at different levels. Each chapter includes questions, prompts, and activities to foster discussion. A foundational textbook for courses on L2 instruction and teacher-training courses, it is an essential text for students and scholars in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, and provides the pedagogical grounding future English L2 teachers need to effectively teach vocabulary.

Mastering the vocabulary of a foreign language is one of the most daunting tasks that language learners face. The immensity of the task is underscored by the realisation that it is not only single words but also numerous standardised phrases (idioms, collocations, etc.) that need to be acquired. There is thus a clear need for instructional methods that help learners tackle this task, and yet few proposals for vocabulary instruction have so far gone beyond techniques for rote-learning and familiar means of promoting of noticing. The reason for this is that vocabulary and phraseology have long been assumed arbitrary.

The volume offers a long-overdue alternative by exploring and exploiting the presence of linguistic ''motivation'' - or, systematic non-arbitrariness - in the lexicon. The first half of the volume reports ample empirical evidence of the pedagogical effectiveness of presenting vocabulary to learners as non-arbitrary. The data reported indicate that the proposed instructional methods can benefit when both the nature of the target lexis and the basic cognitive orientations of particular learners are taken into account. The first half of the book mostly targets lexis that has already attracted a fair amount of attention from Cognitive Linguists in the past (e.g. phrasal verbs and figurative idioms). The second half broadens the scope considerably by revealing the non-arbitrariness of diverse other lexical patterns, including collocations and word partnerships generally. This is achieved by recognising some long-neglected dimensions of linguistic motivation - etymological and phonological motivation, in particular. Concrete suggestions are made for putting the non-arbitrary nature of words and phrases to good use in instructed language learning.

The volume is therefore of interest not only to applied linguists and researchers in Second Language Acquisition/Foreign Language Teaching, but also to second and foreign language teaching professionals.

In contexts of instructed second language acquisition there is a need for teaching methods that are optimally efficient, i.e. teaching interventions that generate a maximal return on learners'' and teachers'' investment of time and effort. In the past couple of decades, many researchers have argued that insights from Cognitive Linguistics (CL) - when suitably translated for pedagogical purposes - can make a major contribution to fostering such language teaching efficiency. This collective volume assesses and supplements those CL proposals.

The first part of the book positions CL-inspired language pedagogy vis-à-vis recent trends in mainstream applied linguistics and illustrates through several case studies that language-focused instruction (including CL-inspired instruction) is a useful - if not indispensable - complement to learner-autonomous, incidental acquisition. The second part demonstrates how CL research can help pedagogues identify hitherto neglected language elements that merit explicit targeting in second language instruction. The third part consists of contributions that put the pedagogical efficiency of several CL-inspired interventions to the test in classroom experiments. Additions to the currently available armoury of teaching methods are proposed. The kinds of target language items under examination in the book range from single words over multiword units to grammar patterns. Throughout, the volume illustrates how much pedagogy-oriented Cognitive Linguistics has matured in recent years.