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Foreign-language learning: new techniques revealed

October 06, 2004

One of the world’s leading authorities on second-language learning will present two public lectures and a workshop at the University of New England next week.

Professor Andrew Cohen is the Director of the Centre for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition at the University of Minnesota in the United States. His presentations at UNE will describe and demonstrate some of the Centre’s latest practical advances in helping learners of a second language.

UNE’s School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics and the Language and Cognition Research Cluster will host Professor Cohen’s visit to the University on October 14-16. All three presentations will be in Lecture Theatre A2 in the Arts Building.

In his first talk, Professor Cohen will discuss the effects of training language learners to be more strategic in their learning of complex speech functions such as requests, refusals, compliments, thanks and apologies. Titled “A Web-based approach to strategic learning of speech acts”, it will be on Thursday 14 October at 5 pm. The talk will focus on a project that trained students to learn and use pragmatic information more successfully in speaking Japanese. The project has generated a Web site for learners of Japanese at:
www.iles.umn.edu/IntroToSpeechActs/

The second talk, titled “Enhancing students’ language and culture learning in study abroad”, will be about a new guidebook that takes a strategies-based approach to language and culture learning in a foreign country. Eighty-six university students studying abroad in Spanish and French-speaking countries have participated in a study of the guidebook’s effectiveness, half of them working with the guidebook and half without. This talk will be on Friday 15 October at 9.30 am.

The hour-long workshop, also on Friday 15 October, will begin at 11 am. It will deal with issues including individual style preferences in language learning, the choice of language-learning strategies, and maintaining the motivation of both learners and teachers. The second part of the workshop will involve participants in a way that will illustrate how style preferences, strategy choices and motivation might intersect for a learner in dealing with a given language task. This session is intended for both teachers and learners of second and foreign languages, and will also be of interest to anyone who teaches writing.

All members of the University and wider communities will be welcome at these three events. For more information, contact Dr Karen Woodman on (02) 6773 3381 (after Monday 11 October) or Dr Andrea Schalley on (02) 6773 3655.


Media contact: Dr Karen Woodman, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, UNE 6773 3381 (after Monday 11 October) or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at October 6, 2004 04:55 PM