Cornell University Language Resource Center Speaker Series

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stephen Krashen put forward a model of language learning distinguishing between language acquisition (acquiring a language by listening or reading and understanding) and language learning (conscious, effortful study and practice of language). Today, many people look at Krashen’s monitor model as just a “method from the past.” However, most of these ideas are still very much present in contemporary research — just under different names, such as implicit vs. explicit language teaching and learning. This talk will share three of my studies using the acquisition/learning, or implicit/explicit, framework: one on elementary students learning Spanish, ...

Second language (L2) classrooms have undergone radical changes during the past 50 years, moving away from formal linguistic structures to drills and habit formation, then to comprehensible input, focus on form, cultural integration, sociocultural perspectives, and social networking. Throughout all of these shifts there has been surprisingly little emphasis on one aspect of L2 learning that all teachers and all students acknowledge as a critical factor in L2 communicative proficiency and literacy: Vocabulary. As someone once quipped: “If you don’t know any grammar, you can’t say much; if you don’t know any vocabulary, you can’t say anything.” This applies to ...

Unlike commonly taught languages, most Indigenous ones share a particular characteristic: The lack of material for language instruction and the challenge of identifying abundant sources of input for their classes. In many cases, it is necessary to adapt existing materials from other languages to achieve language learning goals, but in doing so, we usually find materials lacking the cultural knowledge of Indigenous people. In addition, many major languages have established proficiency standards (e.g., CEFR and ACTFL). Are these standards applicable to Indigenous languages? While Indigenous language courses may be similarly designed to those of major languages in their application of ...

This presentation describes the development of an e-textbook for first-year Portuguese classes. This pedagogical initiative strives to provide an inclusionary and open textbook for Portuguese, including the collaboration and feedback from Portuguese speakers of several economic and cultural backgrounds. In this context, “openness” means listening to the language of a given community and the commitment to reproduce it in a textbook format. Inclusion of minority groups in the textbook is perceived not as “curiosities,” but as an integral part of the cultures being represented so that a wider range of communities and language registers (from formal to informal) is portrayed. ...

We have all heard about revolutions in language teaching – big leaps in thinking that offer insights and new methods for the classroom (e.g., The Direct Method, ALM, Communicative Language Teaching). Yet, such revolutions wither quickly and never really take root. It seems that innovation in language teaching is difficult if not impossible. Why is this? In this talk, I will first differentiate between what I call “real innovation” and “pseudo-innovation,” suggesting that the vast majority of what people call innovation in language teaching is actually pseudo-innovation. I will then outline five interrelated barriers to real innovation: knowledge, personnel, institutionalized education, power, ...