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Are you interested in language education?
Vocabulary plays a significant role in language teaching and learning: The Language Centre will host an online event on this topic on Friday 29th January 2021.
The Language Centre will host an online event on Friday 29th January 2021 from 14:00-16:00 on teaching and learning vocabulary in the language classroom. Professor Fitzpatrick (Swansea University, Wales, UK) will present on “obstacles and enablers in language education: lessons from a new national curriculum.” She will speak about the key findings from a report commissioned by the Welsh Government in 2017 to assess the relative effectiveness of second language teaching approaches. The presentation will explore the psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, educational, and affective factors that were found to be more influential than any teaching methods or approaches. The talk will then consider the practical implications of these findings for teachers, learners and assessors using vocabulary instruction as a focus.
Professor Tess Fitzpatrick is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Swansea University where she is Head of the Department of Applied Linguistics and Director of the Language Research Centre. Tess was Chair of the British Association for Applied Linguistics 2015-2018. In 2017, she was awarded Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences for her work in lexical studies and in widening understanding of cognitive processes in language learning and education.
The talk will be followed by an interactive workshop on “how word frequency (WF) might inform vocabulary teaching and learning.” The workshop will be led by Andrew Wimhurst (MA TESOL) who is the Scientific and Didactic Collaborator for English at the Language Centre, unibz and a part-time PhD student in Applied Linguistics (Lexical Studies) at Swansea University and was the Coordinator of TESOL Italy-Val d’ Adige-Etschtal Local Group from 2018-2020.
The workshop will introduce participants to online WF lists which can inform the decision-making process when choosing online texts for teaching and assessment. The workshop will conclude with an overview as to how recent WF research is reshaping how vocabulary is counted and the implications this may have for English language teaching.
To participate in the event, please sign up here: registration link no later the 22nd January. You will then receive further information as to how to participate.
foto credits: Tess Fitzpatrick