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Error Correction in Foreign Language Classrooms: Journey to Ithaca

Professor Lourdes Ortega, Georgetown University
Friday, April 7, 2017
12:00-2:00 PM
Kuenzel Room Michigan Union Map
Correcting grammar errors in speaking or writing is thought to be part of every language teacher’s job, a professional duty that many teachers excel in and that most language students expect. There are however many complexities that teachers wonder about, encompassing affective concerns (will it demotivate some of my students?), time management (how can it become less time consuming?), doubts about effectiveness (how do I know that it is making a difference in my students’ accuracy?), proficiency differences (should I correct errors in the same ways regardless of my students’ language level?), and educational goals and philosophies of teaching (how should I reconcile correcting for accuracy with teaching for communication? how do I manage language accuracy efforts like error correction in the context of teaching other important dimensions of a foreign language, like culture, literature, or writing?). Professor Ortega will examine these complexities and propose tentative best practices regarding why, whether, how, when, and what to correct in foreign language students’ errors. Her goal is to do so through insights gleaned from a balanced examination of research findings and the realities of foreign language education in practice. In the end, she will argue that much is to be gained if language teachers rethink their error correction as the kind of journey to Ithaca Greek-Alexandrian poet Kavafis proposed: An opportunity for lasting engagement in professional self-discovery, rather than a point of final destination.

Lourdes Ortega is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. Her main area of research is in second language acquisition, particularly sociocognitive and educational dimensions in adult classroom settings. Before moving to the USA in 1993, she was a teacher of Spanish as a foreign language at the Cervantes Institute in Athens and she has also taught English as a second language in Hawaii and Georgia. Lourdes was co-recipient of the Pimsleur and the TESOL Research awards (2001) and has been a doctoral Mellon fellow (1999), a postdoctoral Spencer/National Academy of Education fellow (2003), and a senior research fellow at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (2010). She was Journal Editor of Language Learning (2010-2015) and is a member of the Board of Directors of the University of Michigan’s Language Learning Research Club (2016-2020). She has published widely in journals such as Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Journal of Second Language Writing, Language Learning, Modern Language Journal, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, and System. Her books include Understanding Second Language Acquisition (2009, translated into Mandarin in 2016), and co-edited collections on Technology-mediated TBLT (with Marta González-Lloret, John Benjamins, 2014) and The Usage-based Study of Language Learning and Multilingualism (with Ande Tyler and colleagues, Georgetown University Press, 2016). She is currently busy co-editing (with Annick De Houwer) The Handbook of Bilingualism for Cambridge University Press.
Building: Michigan Union
Event Type: Lecture / Discussion
Tags: Education, Language, Lecture
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Language Resource Center, Asian Languages and Cultures, Department of Linguistics, Germanic Languages & Literatures, English Language Institute, Slavic Languages & Literatures

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