Initiators and Co-Conveners:
Dr. Corinna Kahnke & Steffen Kaupp
Purpose and Format:
The purpose of this reading group is to have a sustained dialogue about current research in different areas of scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) pertaining to language teaching, like for example Second Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics, Foreign Language Pedagogy, and Methodology. Furthermore, the group also shall be a space to share best practices from our own teaching.
Over the course of the academic year, we will engage with a diverse set of challenges that we all face in our teaching, and we will look at that them from an evidence-based, research point of view. To that end, we will choose one overarching, broadly applicable topic (for example: input processing, student motivation, forms of feedback, to name but a few) per meeting, and select one or two short articles that engage with the problem. Every month, a different person chooses an article, and this person will present a one-page executive summary at the beginning of the monthly meeting to start the discussion—these summaries will also be archived for future reference. During the second half of every meeting, we will talk about how in our day to day teaching, we solve or approach the problems discussed in the article(s), and also how the chosen research studies could (or do) contribute to our teaching.
Meeting Times and Location:
Once every month on a Saturday morning/early afternoon at varying Durham or Chapel Hill Coffee Shops.
Suggested Resources for Discussion Topics:
Please note that these are only suggestions. The list is by no means exhaustive, so please feel free to consult other resources.
1. S. Gass & A. Mackey (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition
2. B. VanPatten & J. Williams (Eds.). (2007). Theories in Second Language Acquisition: An Introduction
3. S. A. Ambrose and M. W. Bridges (Eds.), How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching
4. Journal: Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.
5. Journal: Language Learning
6. Journal: Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German
7. Journal: The Modern Language Journal
8. Journal: Language Teaching
Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies