All levels Extensive reading, grammar, and the language teacher more

Sat, Aug 6, 10:00-10:45 Asia/Tokyo

Much has been said and written about the benefits of ER for language learning, and vocabulary gains through ER have often been investigated. Vocabulary knowledge is obviously important; it is, for example, regarded as the single greatest predictor of comprehension. Vocabulary is also essential for communication for, as was said fifty years ago: “while without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. Yet, while vocabulary gains have received much attention, learning grammar through ER has been largely overlooked. In this talk, I want to focus on the problems that unfamiliar grammatical constructions can cause in ER, and the grammar learning that is possible from ER. I will be doing this with examples from my own experience as a French language learner (not that you will need to know French to understand the examples!). After considering the extent to which grammar learning is possible, I will then discuss how the language teacher and other forms of instruction can facilitate this learning. The talk will suggest gaps in our current knowledge and so will conclude with some thoughts about future research directions.