Second Language Teaching and Learning

Listening. Speaking. Reading. Writing. The four primary skills of language acquisition. It seems simple, but for those who have experience with second language learning, you know how easy it is for these skills to become significantly unbalanced, and how that lack of balance makes overall progress more difficult.  Of course, it's important to practice each of these "passive" (listening and reading) and "active" (writing and speaking) skills on their own, but I think it's perhaps more important to practice the points of connections between these skills in order to maintain balance. Some of the activities occur relatively naturally, and some activities are more challenging to engage in. I've listed some possible activities below: Listening to speaking/speaking to listening: a conversation Listening to writing: listening to a podcast and writing a response Writing to listening: a chat where the learner writes and listens to a facilitator's spoken respon...

Daily—or, let's be realistic— near daily writing is incredibly important when learning a new language. It's an efficient way to organize your thoughts, reflect on what you’ve read (or listened to), look up new words, double check your grammar, and so much more. Daily writing should be practical! At least, I firmly believe it should have a strong practical component, otherwise, it’s too easy to never get around to it.  As a ESL teacher I’ve helped guide my students in their writing practice in a number of ways. For elementary-level learners, I’ve encouraged journaling about daily activities, usually using simple tense verbs. And I like to reassure elementary-level learners that daily writing doesn't need to be hundreds and hundreds of words. A couple sentences every day will help establish a routine. And as you probably know, consistency is everything when learning a new language.  For intermediate learners, I encourage to students to continue writing about their daily ac...

    Don't disregard the intermediate level plateau—you'll get stuck if you do.  In my opinion, this is the most difficult skill level to be a learner, and it's the most difficult level to teach.  When you’re a beginning/elementary level learner, novelty and excitement are abundant. Everything is new and advancement to the next level occurs relatively quickly. It's encouraging to start understanding basic things. Optimism abounds. And advanced learners are largely functional in their second language. They know enough to enjoy a lot of the benefits of knowing a second language, and often, have more than enough skills to navigate most aspects of the language that they don’t understand. They know how to ask clarifying questions, seek help, and apologize for misunderstanding. Advanced learners often have a decent level of cultural competence, though they may struggle to understand thick regional accents or challenging writing. Increasing stamina in the target language is ...

Let me first say that I love accents. I love dialects, I love slang, and I love regional accents—not just accents from speaking a second language, but also accents in a first language. Accents and dialects communicate much more than the words being spoken. They communicate cultural context such as values and information about one’s relationship to a particular place and time. I firmly reject the push toward language homogenization and the popular narrative that there is but one way to speak “correctly” and having a strong accent equates to lack of intelligence.  However, I understand the importance of the ability to moderate one’s accent for a particular audience. I naturally have a strong regional accent, and very early in my life, I realized that it affected how people viewed me, often for the negative. I began to practice speaking Standard American English and quickly realized that I was viewed much more positively. Unfortunately changing my natural accent also meant that I lost...