Pedagogical Linguistics workshop: Language Analysis to inform Language Teaching 

You are warmly invited to a Pedagogical Linguistics workshop on Language Analysis to inform Language Teaching on Friday 5th of July 2019.

The aim is to bring together linguists and language teachers  (i) to demonstrate the pedagogical benefits of language analysis (in the context of language teaching), (ii) to provide guidance for language teachers on how to "up their game" in language analysis, and (iii) to explore how a linguistically-informed understanding of fluency and complexity can enhance teaching and assessment.

Call for posters:  "Fluency and complexity in language teaching and assessment"

Submissions are invited for poster presentations on the themes of fluency or linguistic complexity.

Fluency, accuracy and complexity are key aspect of language proficiency.  The focus of this workshop will be fluency and complexity, as their definition and operationalisation remain challenging. Fluency, or the "smoothness and ease of expression", depends on both cognition and performance, and its measurement can involve a number of dimensions (e.g. articulation speed, pauses, repairs, length of run). Complexity, or "how elaborate/advanced the learner's language is", depends on structural factors (e.g. range of grammatical structures, subordination ratio, clause length) and lexical factors (e.g. lexical diversity, lexical density, lexical sophistication).

The invited speakers are Prof Alex Housen (on complexity), Dr Clare Wright (on fluency), Dr Dora Alexopoulou (on using learner corpora to inform language pedagogy), Dr Michelle Sheehan (on the role of language analysis in language teaching) and Prof Bas Aarts (introducing Englicious.org).

We would like to invite submissions in relation to the above with practical implications to inform language teaching.  Questions to address could include the following:

·         How can the demands of a task be estimated in relation to the learners' proficiency (in terms of fluency and complexity)?

·         To what extent is it possible to dissociate
- task complexity from linguistic complexity?
- fluency and complexity?
- What are the pedagogical implications?

·         What factors facilitate fluency (e.g. planning time, prior knowledge)?

·         What are the key aspects of complexity and fluency that teacher assessment should/can realistically take into account?

·         What aspects of language analysis do teachers need to master in order to optimally assess complexity and fluency?

Guidelines: Abstracts should fit one A4-page with 11pt font minimum and 2.5 cm margin. The deadline for submissions is the 30th of May 23:00 BST. Notification of acceptance: 3rd of June.

Please see the workshop website for the full programme and the call for posters.

This workshop is being organised by the Centre for Excellence in Language Teaching, the Pedagogical Linguistics research satellite, and the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence.