EXPLORING THE ROLE OF FORM-FOCUSED INSTRUCTION: TOWARDS A MORE ROBUST RESEARCH AGENDA​

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese, together with the FLL, would like to invite you to a talk titled “Exploring the role of Form-focused instruction: Towards a more robust research agenda” by Prof. Hossein Nassaji from the Department of Linguistics at the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.  His teaching and research interests include second language acquisition, corrective feedback, form-focused instruction, task-based teaching, classroom discourse, and the application of sociocultural theories to second language research and pedagogy. He also maintains active research interests in L2 reading processes, lexical inferencing, and the acquisition of L2 vocabulary. His current research focuses on the role of interactional feedback and focuses on form in classroom and laboratory settings, involving both experimental/quantitative and descriptive/qualitative research.  His abstract is below:

Ample theory and research in second language acquisition (SLA) have advocated the necessity of attention to linguistic forms in L2 learning and instruction. However, the question has still remained as to what particular role form-focused instruction plays in L2 acquisition and what factors mediate its effectiveness. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the major issues that researchers have been investigating and how these issues have evolved over time. I will show that despite major theoretical and empirical advances made in this area, a satisfactory answer to many of the questions has yet to be achieved. I will argue that researchers need to broaden both their theoretical and methodological perspectives in order to be able to address the full range of questions in this domain. How this can be accomplished will be discussed. I will conclude with what we have learned so far and what continues to challenge our understanding of the role of form-focused instruction in SLA.

Friday, April 22, 2016 at 3:30pm to 5:00pm

Reiss Science Building, 262, 37th and O St., N.W., Washington