Course title

Second Language Acquisition

Instructor

Guowei

Instructor’s profile

Associate Professor Guowei obtained her certificate for Master’s degree from Harbin Institute of Technology. Her research interests are second language acquisition and language instruction.

Course goals

This course aims to familiarize students with the research history, basic tasks, current problems and research methodology in the SLA research field and to equip them with the basic ability to conduct independent studies.

Topics

Topics to be covered in this course include:

Basic tasks, early development and current issues and problems in SLA;

SLA study methods and data analysis methods;

Descriptive studies such as contrastive analysis, error analysis, performance analysis, interlanguage study

Major schools of thoughts in explaining the nature of language acquisition :behaviorism, nativism,

cognitivism, environmentalism

Various affecting factors such as transfer, put, individual factors and social factors

Assessment

Term paper 70%

Class presentation 30%

Reference books

1) Ellis, R. 1985. Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2) Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (2001). Second language acquisition: An introductory course London: Lawrence Erlbaum.

3) Cohen, A. D. 2000. Strategies in Learning and Using a Second Language, Beijing Foreign language education and research press. Ellis, R. 1997. Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

4) Ellis, Rod. 1994. The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford University Press.

5) Gass, S.M. and Selinker, L. 1994. Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory

Course. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

6) Krashen, S. 1981. Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning Oxford:Oxford University Press.

7) Larsen-Freeman, An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition, 1991, Longman Group UK Ltd.

8) Lightbown, P.M. and Spada, N. 1999. How Languages are Learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Working language

English

Notes