Richard Towell

Language curriculum development research at university level

This article provides an account of an example of curriculum development over a 10-year period. Motivated by a belief in the value of comprehensible input, the purposeful teaching of language in a context and the need for a variety of text types linked to the development of interpersonal skills, the authors have devised a model for task-based curriculum design and, together with many of their colleagues, have implemented and evaluated it on two occasions. The use of diaries and questionnaires on the first occasion enabled a number of lessons to be learned and these helped considerably in creating a second application where the testimony of the student population through a detailed questionnaire shows the success of the operation.

Second language acquisition research and the second language acquisition of French

Prior to the late 1960s second language acquisition was thought to be a relatively uninteresting phenomenon; it involved transferring grammatical properties already activated in the first language (L 1) onto second language (L 2) vocabulary. Successful L 2 learners were those who could capitalise on the similarities between the L 1 and the L 2, and eradicate the differences; and successful language teaching involved training learners to overcome the L 1-L 2 differences. Today, perceptions of second language acquisition are more sophisticated and nuanced. Second language acquisition researchers are interested in questions bearing not only on the influence of the L 1, but also on the degree of systematicity in L 2 development, the role that L 1, but also on the degree of systematicity in L 2 development, the role that conscious knowledge plays, the sources of variability in second language speaker performance, the ultimate levels of success achieved by L 2 learners of different ages, and individual differences between learners. The purpose of this article is to present what the authors believe to be some of the key issues which characterise current second language acquisition research, and to consider those issues within the specific context of the acquisition of French as second language.

Experimenting with an Integrated Syllabus Design in Modern Languages.

Abstract The paper describes an experimental French programme for undergraduates introduced at the University of Salford in 1989. Its objective was to integrate the learning of a foreign language more fully with the learning of interpersonal skills (e.g. working in groups) and the learning of non‐linguistic content (e.g. learning about French politics). The programme was based on current models of second language acquisition. In Sterns (1990) terms it was to be experiential rather than analytic, and it tried to exploit the advantages of communicative language teaching. The syllabus was strictly task‐based. Students had to devise an election campaign for a French election. The paper describes the design and implementation of the programme, and presents an evaluation based on diaries, questionnaires and examination results. The programme was successful in integrating non‐linguistic skills and content knowledge with language learning. But some language skills appeared to suffer, especially those needed for ...

Innovation and feedback in a self-access learning project in modern languages

Over a two-year period a similar course was taught to successive years of second-year undergraduate students of French at the University of Salford. The course was aimed at language development in the context of learning methods of self presentation, learning about the Francophone world, learning to do technical translation and learning about French politics. During the second year, changes were introduced into the teaching/learning framework in order to place more emphasis on task based self-access learning. The effect of the changes was monitored by means of diaries, questionnaires and examinations. This article sets out to examine the relative contribution of each of these methods in providing the feedback required to guide future developments.

Special Issue on: The acquisition of French as a second language

Our aim is to offer a broad introduction to the field of French Second Language Acquisition (SLA), by providing both overview articles introducing the field (Myles) and assessing its achievements (Towell), and by providing in depth articles adopting specific theoretical approaches in order to study French SLA. We are not aiming to be comprehensive in our choice of theoretical approaches. Rather, we have chosen to include those which have been most significant in furthering our understanding of French SLA. Some influential approaches, such as e.g. Connectionism, Processability Theory, or Input Processing, have not been applied to the study of French to any great extent and are therefore not represented in this volume. Similarly, the field has tended to concentrate primarily on the acquisition of syntax and morphology, and this imbalance is reflected here too.