Conference
Online conference Language Learning Resource Centre
- Date
- Friday 4 June 2021
- Time
- Address
-
Reuvens
Reuvensplaats 3-4
2311 BE Leiden
Theme: Language teaching: the interplay between practice, theory, and research
The Language Learning Resource Centre (Leiden University) is organizing a conference on-line (June 4th, 2021, 09.00 – 13.00) on the interplay between second language learning practice, theory, and research. The object of the conference is to share current findings and best practices on the topic of language learning and language teaching in conjunction with theories and research related to second language acquisition. We are proud to announce that the keynote speaker will be Prof Jan Hulstijn (University of Amsterdam), whose main research interests include second language learning theories and language proficiency.
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Abstract keynote speaker Prof. Jan Hulstijn - Might second-language instruction benefit from the view of Language as a Complex Adaptive System?
Over the past 100 years, foreign/second-language instruction has been informed, to lesser or larger degree, by three main schools in linguistics (structuralism; generative linguistics; usage based linguistics) and psychology (behaviorism; first-wave cognitive psychology; second-wave neural-network psychology). Currently, there is an increasing awareness in linguistics that theories of language, language acquisition, language use, and language change must be in line with Darwinian thinking and Complex Adaptive Systems. In this presentation I will consider to what extent the view of Language as a Complex Adaptive System (LCAS) might be fruitful for L2 instruction, L2 learning and multilingualism. Having been a second-language instructor myself for many years (until 1997), and having witnessed the coming and going of several fashions in L2 instruction, I will critically ask myself: What would I have done differently in my teaching then, had I been familiar with the view of LCAS? Or is LCAS likely to disappear soon, as so many other fashionable trends did before?