Explaining learner language: the scientific dimension of teaching

This seminar focuses on learner language and explores how linguistics, as the scientific study of language, provides explanatory tools that benefit language learners. It introduces key concepts in second language acquisition, such as interlanguage, transfer, and overgeneralization, and presents a range of linguistic phenomena at the levels of pronunciation, syntax (e.g. word order in questions, negation), and pragmatics (e.g. reference assignment) that are often challenging for learners of English as second-language. These phenomena will be examined through authentic learner productions, often from pupils in the Geneva area. Students will analyze different types of errors in these productions and discover how scientifically informed knowledge about English can provide coherent and accessible explanations.