Language Teaching And The Older Adult

The aging of the population and the increasing number of older adults pursuing foreign language courses call for a greater understanding of the ways in which these individuals learn foreign languages. This book offers a pioneering contribution to the literature on foreign language education for older adults (aged 60 and over), termed foreign language geragogy. It details an empirical, multidisciplinary study on Japanese older learners of Spanish and focuses on the influence of learning experiences on vocabulary learning strategy use. It discusses the constraints that preconceptions impose on learners, researchers, instructors and administrators, and it offers a set of practical recommendations for foreign language activities for elderly individuals. It also introduces the notion of ‘learner re-training’, an instructional mechanism that contributes to older learners' self-acknowledgment and autonomy development in foreign language learning. The book is directed at teachers and trainee teachers of foreign languages to older adults, and also at education professionals and researchers in the field of foreign language learning in general.

​This unique account of English language acquisition by Latino elders shines intimate light on the increasingly complex concerns of aging immigrant minority populations. Rich qualitative findings detail sociocultural barriers to and social and emotive factors that promote second language acquisition in older age. The book’s case study highlights diverse cognitive and social processes as elders establish a sense of self as learners and as part of a learning community, and a sense of place as newcomers navigating a challenging environment. And first-person comments from the group members deftly illustrate the intricacies of being an immigrant in a rapidly changing America as well as the myriad intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, culture, and country that shape immigrant life. Included in the coverage: Minority aging in an immigrant context. Late-life second language acquisition: cognitive and psycholinguistic changes, challenges, and opportunities. Building emotions for self-identity and learning. Practicing safe language socialization in private and public spaces. Language resocialization and gender allies. Aging, second language acquisition, and health. Aging in a Second Language gives clinical social workers, gerontologists, health and cross-cultural psychologists, sociologists, educators and other professionals deep insights into the lives of an emerging active elder population. It also pinpoints challenges and opportunities in research, literacy program design, pedagogy, clinical outreach, education policy, and service delivery to immigrant elders.

This book examines the unique characteristics of teaching foreign languages to senior learners. It discusses the potential age-related barriers and learning difficulties which may be encountered in senior foreign language education as well as solutions to overcome these challenges. The author describes the processes of human aging from different perspectives and introduces the concept of lifelong learning. The book proposes classroom practices, activities and materials that may be adopted when working with senior learners which will prove useful to teachers and teacher trainers, as well as to educational policymakers and planners. Furthermore, it describes potential modifications to educational programmes that may be introduced in order to eliminate affective barriers, making the learning material relevant and motivating, and encouraging the use of adult learning strategies.

This book broaches the question of the social impact of age on language learners from a social constructionist perspective, thus filling a gap currently existing in the literature on age and second language acquisition.

Maleeka suffers every day from the taunts of the other kids in her class. If they're not getting at her about her homemade clothes or her good grades, it's about her dark, black skin. When a new teacher, whose face is blotched with a startling white patch, starts at their school, Maleeka can see there is bound to be trouble for her too. But the new teacher's attitude surprises Maleeka. Miss Saunders loves the skin she's in. Can Maleeka learn to do the same?

Language teaching approaches, methods and procedures are constantly undergoing reassessment. New ideas keep emerging as the growing complexity of the means of communication and the opportunities created by technology put language skills to new uses. In addition, the political, social and economic impact of globalisation, the new demands of the labour market that result from it, the pursuit of competitiveness, the challenges of intercultural communication and the diversification of culture have opened new perspectives on the central role that foreign languages have come to play in the development of contemporary societies. This book provides an insight into the latest developments in the field and discusses the new trends in foreign language teaching in four major areas, namely methods and approaches, teacher training, innovation in the classroom, and evaluation and assessment.

This book presents and discusses theoretical and practical perspectives on English pronunciation theory, research and practice in order to establish evidence-based pronunciation teaching models, teaching and research priorities, and recommendations for best practices in teaching English pronunciation. The chapters provide a balanced view of theory and practice based on the authors’ empirical findings and their extensive professional experiences in English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) and lingua franca contexts. The book identifies pronunciation teaching priorities that take into account individual learner variables, disseminates knowledge about theoretical frameworks, explores teachers’ and learners’ beliefs and practices regarding pronunciation instruction, and shares empirical findings regarding teacher education and teaching interventions in diverse contexts with English learners of different ages and language backgrounds. Overall, the chapters highlight the need to focus on intelligibility models that consider individual learner differences, and teacher and contextual variables.