Teaching English as a Foreign Language

The course aims to introduce the main principles related to the acquisition of a second/foreign language and analyze the possible implications of these principles for second language teaching. The examples provided will focus on the processes involved in the acquisition and use of English as an L2, and on the teaching options that research has identified as effective for acquisition.

By the end of the course, students will demonstrate a clear understanding of: - constructs related to second language acquisition principles (input, output, interaction, implicit and explicit knowledge, feedback, etc.); - factors that influence second language acquisition (interlinguistic influence, attention, type of learning context, etc.); - teaching techniques aimed at enhancing the acquisition of specific features of a second language (processing instruction, focus on form, input and output based techniques, task-based options, etc.); By the end of the course, students will be able to analyze (with the support of questions): - samples of learner interlanguage; - transcripts of teacher-learner interaction in instructed contexts; - short video recordings of teaching sequences; - teaching options implemented in teaching materials.