Informed Language Teacher

What does research have to say about how learners acquire a new language? How might teaching methods and approaches be informed by research? Below you'll find some links to useful readings and videos on this theme.

The communicative approach is based on the idea that learning language successfully comes through having to communicate real meaning. When learners are involved in real communication, their natural strategies for language acquisition will be used, and this will allow them to learn to use the language. One influential branch of CLT is Task-Based Language Teaching. What do researchers tell us about the widely used communicative approach?

Researchers are reluctant to suggest with any precision what teachers should do in the classroom. But what general advice can be found from scholars working in the field of what's called Instructed Second Language Acquisition? On this page we look at principles, motivation, curriculum planning, classroom techniques and issues such as corrective feedback

Knowing vocabulary (words and phrases) is the most important aspect of language proficiency. Students need words more than they need grammar. We need vocabulary to decode messages and produce utterances. How much vocabulary? How is it acquired? Is it best picked up incidentally or through explicit teaching and practice?

Grammar is about how words and parts of words are combined to let us comprehend and make utterances. Lexicogrammar is concerned with the overlap between grammar and vocabulary (lexis). What does research tell us about how learners acquire grammar? How can this help us in day-to-day teaching?