Posted: Feb 16, 2022 7:35 am
1. Cognitive Discourse Analysis: An introduction - Thora Tenbrink
2. Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender And Identity- And Why This Harms Everybody – Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay
3. A History of the World in 12 Maps – Jerry Brotton
4. Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language – Patricia T. O’Connor & Stewart Kellerman
5. Peer Interaction and Second Language Learning - Jenefer Philip, Rebecca Adams & Noriko Iwashita
231. pp
An interesting dicussion on the theme of how learners learn from each other, not just the teacher. The authors detail the research that deals with how classroom practices are organized so as to give learners the opportunity to actually use the language they are studying.... it is something that is sorely missing in many language classes here in Japan. Students become habituated to speaking only on demand, in response to a teacher or textbook question and the answer is understood to be primarily subject to evaluation of the lexical/grammatical components. (Based on the standards of the written form of the language). Even so-called communicative' classrooms often pay lip service to the notion of enabling students to have something to say in the target language and are basically chalk and talk sessions...
>>>Rant concluded
Anyways, this book looked at all of the issues surrounding peer interactions in language learning classrooms - age differences, prior educational experiences, goal (as stated or understood) of the speaking activity and so on. I was in agreement with a lot of the author's points about the importance and usefulness of peer interaction. I had some quibbles with the - to my mind- somewhat superficial definitions of fluency, and the rather brief treatment given to the notion of interactional competence, but these are mainly academic hairsplitting and boundary disputes between hardly distinguishable sub-fields of applied linguistics.
2. Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender And Identity- And Why This Harms Everybody – Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay
3. A History of the World in 12 Maps – Jerry Brotton
4. Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language – Patricia T. O’Connor & Stewart Kellerman
5. Peer Interaction and Second Language Learning - Jenefer Philip, Rebecca Adams & Noriko Iwashita
231. pp
An interesting dicussion on the theme of how learners learn from each other, not just the teacher. The authors detail the research that deals with how classroom practices are organized so as to give learners the opportunity to actually use the language they are studying.... it is something that is sorely missing in many language classes here in Japan. Students become habituated to speaking only on demand, in response to a teacher or textbook question and the answer is understood to be primarily subject to evaluation of the lexical/grammatical components. (Based on the standards of the written form of the language). Even so-called communicative' classrooms often pay lip service to the notion of enabling students to have something to say in the target language and are basically chalk and talk sessions...
>>>Rant concluded
Anyways, this book looked at all of the issues surrounding peer interactions in language learning classrooms - age differences, prior educational experiences, goal (as stated or understood) of the speaking activity and so on. I was in agreement with a lot of the author's points about the importance and usefulness of peer interaction. I had some quibbles with the - to my mind- somewhat superficial definitions of fluency, and the rather brief treatment given to the notion of interactional competence, but these are mainly academic hairsplitting and boundary disputes between hardly distinguishable sub-fields of applied linguistics.