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Second Language Acquisition at Georgetown

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is the field of study that investigates the processes by which foreign and second languages are learned.

At Georgetown University, a number of departments collaborate to provide students with a comprehensive selection of courses and advising in SLA. Faculty within these departments have a strong commitment to the advancement of the field and to working closely with students who study and carry out research in SLA.

 

Announcements:

Visiting Faculty in SLA in the Department of Linguistics: Professor Rod Ellis, from the University of Auckland will teach LING-494 Individual Differences in Second Language Learning in Fall 2008, and Dr. Patrick Rebuschat will be a visiting assistant professor for the 08-09 academic year, and will teach five SLA-related classes.

Professor Heidi Byrnes (German) will be President of AAAL in 2010-11 and professor Jeff Connor-Linton (Linguistics) is the AAAL 2009 conference chair and will be President in 2009-10.

Professor Cristina Sanz wins Mildenberger prize for edited book on second language learning with contributions from Georgetown colleagues.

Professors Kendall King and Alison Mackey publish popular interest book on child second language learning with HarperCollins.

 

Areas of study for SLA at Georgetown University include:

  • Applied cognitive linguistics
  • Approaches and methodologies of second language teaching
  • Bilingualism
  • Brain imaging and the neurobiology of SLA
  • Cognitive variables in SLA
  • Curriculum construction
  • Discourse analysis, pragmatics and language teaching
  • Environmental variation in SLA, including social factors
  • Generative approaches to SLA
  • Individual differences in SLA
  • Input, interaction and SLA
  • Instructed SLA
  • Models of interlanguage systems
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Reading, writing and SLA
  • Research methodologies in SLA
  • Second language assessment practices
  • Second language classroom contexts
  • SLA and the advanced learner
  • Task-based language learning and teaching
  • Theoretical issues in SLA

A number of different programs at Georgetown University offer opportunities to take classes and carry out research in SLA as part of a range of degrees. Graduate certificates, Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, Master of Science, Master of Arts in Teaching, and Doctorate in Philosophy degree programs are all offered through different departments. Georgetown University also has a wide variety of research programs, established annual conferences, and interest groups.

Contributing to the opportunities for interdisciplinary research collaborations and coursework are the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience, the Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science and the Center for the Brain Basis of Cognition (CBBC).

Students who study at Georgetown University have access to a diverse range of SLA research opportunities, including the many private and governmental research institutions in languages and linguistics in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. For example, many Georgetown SLA students work on a range of different projects during semesters and breaks at the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) in Washington, DC.

Georgetown University is also a member of the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area, and students may take classes at any of the other eleven institutions in the consortium and have the credits count towards their Georgetown degrees.

If you have questions about the SLA at Georgetown Web site, please email the SLA Webmaster. If you have questions about specific programs, please email the departments.

Last updated Friday, 30 May, 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patrick will finalize his PhD this summer at the Research Centre for English & Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. His doctoral research investigated the implicit learning of syntactic rules, i.e. how humans come to acquire syntactic knowledge incidentally and without awareness of the rules they have acquired. In addition to his interest in implicit learning processes, Patrick has also been conducting research on the cognitive basis of language and music. He collaborates with colleagues from the Centre for Music & Science at Cambridge, comparing the learning of linguistic and musical structures. In 2006-07, he co-organized an international conference on "Language and Music as Cognitive Systems", which focused on the cognitive, neural and evolutionary aspects of language and music, and he is currently editing a selection of the talks for publication by Oxford University Press. His other research interests include modularity in learning, Artificial Grammar Learning, the role of grammatical complexity in learning, and connectionist modelling of language acquisition. Patrick completed an MPhil degree in English & Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge in 2005. Before moving to the UK, Patrick was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and a Visiting Academic at the University of Auckland. He also pursued graduate studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Kassel, where he was awarded an MA in Applied Linguistics. As an undergraduate, Patrick read Modern Languages & Literatures at the University of Lisbon and the University of Göttingen. His prior teaching experience includes classes at Harvard University, UC Santa Barbara and at the University of Göttingen.

 
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