Foreign Language Teaching in Europe – serie

This book focuses on teaching English as a FL to young learners in the Primary school. Set within a Vygotskian framework, it describes a longitudinal classroom-based research project carried out in Spain with children aged between 8 and 10. After reviewing related literature from the fields of SLA and educational psychology, the teacher-student interaction is analysed on two different levels: Firstly, an Activity Classification System designed by the authors is used to trace the development of the classroom activity within topic-based units and secondly, a more finely-grained analysis of the discourse reveals the different types of strategies through which the teacher mediates and guides the children’s learning. This book is of interest to EFL teachers, teacher trainers and student teachers at the primary level, since it offers both theoretical reflection and methodological insights for all those involved in teaching English to children.

Can learner autonomy as a pedagogical approach improve the quality of foreign language learning? How can this approach be constructed so that it empowers foreign language learners to increase their learning independence and create the conditions for continuing progress? This book seeks to contribute to a longstanding and yet ongoing debate around questions such as these. It has been written by teacher trainers from several different European countries for foreign language teacher trainers and for teachers in training. The authors are committed to building a theoretical framework for the development of learner autonomy as well as working out its practical implications for foreign language teaching. The first three chapters of the book aim to help trainers and teachers understand the theory which is relevant to learner autonomy and the principles which support it. The last three chapters present practical ways of fostering learner autonomy in order to facilitate intercultural competence as well as develop listening, reading, speaking and writing skills in a foreign language.

The study investigates interactions between 29 tandem partners from a German and a North American university, who met twice a week in a text-based online environment that allowed them to communicate with each other in real time via a computer keyboard. The analysis focuses on learners’ codeswitching, negotiation of meaning, error correction, and the use of specific spellings and punctuation.The data suggest that most partners complied with the principle of reciprocity and that the non-threatening atmosphere of the MOO encouraged them to test their hypotheses about their L2. Moreover, the analysis revealed a noticeable increase in learners’ awareness of the target language. All students frequently engaged in negotiation of meaning, but there was a conspicuous absence of corrective feedback.

Languages curricula across the world are increasingly requiring teachers to acknowledge that all foreign language classes consist of individuals, and that all individuals bring with them their own ways of learning, their own strengths and weaknesses, their own previous experiences, and their own attitudes and expectations. In order to improve standards of language learning, the challenge for the language teacher is to manage these individual differences in the classroom, and to enable every individual to achieve his or her full potential and to succeed as a language learner. This book brings together a number of authors from Spain and the UK in order to offer support to those teachers, teacher trainers, students and advisors who are committed to ensuring that all language learners have the opportunity to learn in ways which are appropriate to them as individuals. It explores the nature of individual differences and the implications for developing language skills, and then offers ideas for managing learning in the classroom. A strong theme of the book is the need to encourage learners to take responsibility for their own learning, and to enable them to develop the skills to be able to do this effectively.

This book aims to offer insights into cognitive, sociocultural and pedagogical aspects of foreign language learning and teaching. It focuses on different competences, such as communicative competence, intercultural competence and the autonomy of the language learner. A significant feature of this volume is that it bears the fruit of collaboration between researchers and practitioners on both sides of the Atlantic and, therefore, offers a variety of perspectives. The book is divided into four parts, focusing on the following four areas of research: sociocultural theory, communicative language teaching, intercultural competence and learner autonomy. The first chapter of each part covers theoretical issues by outlining the origins and development of a theory and explaining its core concepts. In the second chapter, theoretical, empirical and applied research is reviewed, and the implications for foreign language learning and teaching are discussed. The third chapter of each part is devoted to the application of the theories in focus. It presents either an example of a research project or an application of the theory in terms of developing materials and/or giving suggestions for good practice in the foreign language classroom.

This book seeks to foster the successful incorporation of digital competence in Bologna-adapted language degrees. To this end, it pools the insights of a set of international practitioners and investigators who report on classroom- and research-based experiences which have integrated ICT (information and communication technology) for specific and generic competence development within the Higher Education language context. Their research has evinced that digital competence can act as a catalyst for the development of other linguistic and generic competencies of crucial relevance in Higher Education language degrees, as well as the multiple literacies involved not only in digital and linguistic skills, but also cooperative learning, critical thinking and literary aspects. Thus, the contributions included in this volume seem to make a compelling case for the incorporation of ICT into the new language learning scenario provided by the implementation of the European Credit Transfer System.

The past two decades have created quantitatively higher and qualitatively different demands for foreign language skills. Learners’ needs, expectations and contexts of language use have undergone radical and far-reaching transformations. This collection of essays by experienced educators, teacher trainers and researchers from diverse linguistic, cultural and professional settings offers a fresh perspective on the aspects and ways of teaching skills which are crucial to contemporary language instruction, especially at the more advanced stages, but which have oftentimes been unjustly neglected in the classroom. The book discusses issues ranging from approaches to teaching, contexts of instruction, testing and assessment to curriculum development and technology in the classroom.

This volume seeks to foster the development of teacher and learner autonomy in language learning in higher education. It pools the insights and experiences of a group of international researchers who present their reflections and research on different aspects of autonomy and related issues. Although autonomy is acknowledged as one of the main goals of education, in higher education the need for accountability and standardisation of learning outcomes may constitute external limitations to its development. In order to overcome teaching traditions and mainstream academic culture, teachers may need to reorient themselves and face the challenge of a substantial change involving their own and their learners’ beliefs, their practice and their role in the institution.

This book proposes a comprehensible, context-sensitive and flexible framework for the development of pedagogy for autonomy in language education. The «framework» metaphor highlights the effort to identify structuring elements in the authors’ stance towards pedagogy for autonomy, which fall into three domains -the context, the learner, and the teacher. In each domain, the authors raise ethical, conceptual and practical issues that are crucial to their perspective and offer a basis for reflection on learner and teacher development towards learner and teacher autonomy. The book proposes a common definition for learner and teacher autonomy within a vision of education as transformation and empowerment. Pedagogy for autonomy is operationalized through a set of ten general principles.

This book is about foreign language learning in non-formal Online Tandems. The collected papers by contributors who have expertise in the field of Language Pedagogy and Foreign Language Acquisition gather information on online interactions, such as the initiation of tandems, the mentoring of online activities and learners’ interaction, as well as the assessment of the processes at hand. The handbook targets stakeholders, institutions of higher education, language teachers and tandem trainers at educational institutions that want to set up Online Tandems especially designed for third language learners. The book is the result of the three-year project L3TASK carried out at five universities in Austria (Wien), Germany (Jena) and Spain (Alicante, Barcelona, Madrid) and associated partner institutions in China. It was funded by the European Commission in the frame of the Life Long Learning Programme.

Insights into Language Education Policies is of particular interest to academic researchers, policymakers, and teaching professionals interested in language education. It aims to provide the reader with critical insights into language education policies in diverse countries around the world. The chapters examine from different perspectives (for instance, migration and minority languages, indigenous languages, and content and language integrated learning [CLIL] instruction) the measures adopted in these settings to foster (modern) language learning, underlining their strengths and weaknesses and suggesting future avenues and courses of action to enhance plurilingual education in these particular contexts and beyond.

This volume reports on the main results of the research project Inclusive epistemologies and practices of out-of-school English learning. The study reacts to low attainment levels in English as a foreign language among socioeconomically disadvantaged youth. The contributors to this volume research teenagers’ existing practices of using and learning English out of school time and implement new, inclusive, nonformal English language educational initiatives. They evaluate the impact of the nonformal English language educational initiatives implemented and support their sustainability and transferability. The project embeds collaborative and arts-based methods into its methodology, fostering inclusive and creative educational practices and ways of knowing.