Grammar Instruction for Second Language Development by Toth, Paul D.;

Short description:

Grammar Instruction for Second Language Development offers a theoretical and practical framework for understanding how classroom instruction shapes second language development, with a particular focus on the cognitive and social factors that influence grammar teaching.

Long description:

Grammar Instruction for Second Language Development offers a theoretical and practical framework for understanding how classroom instruction shapes second language development, with a particular focus on the cognitive and social factors that influence successful outcomes.

Across 11 comprehensive chapters, Toth equips readers with a holistic understanding of effective classroom practices, first tracing the twentieth-century theories that informed now outmoded grammar-centered instruction, then reviewing current cognitive and social thinking on language and linguistic development. He moves beyond a purely theoretical approach by illustrating the main featured theories—generative, construction-based, and systemic-functional theories of language; and skill acquisition, usage-based, processability, conversation-analytic, sociocultural, socialization, and identity theories of language learning—through examples of real-life exchanges between teachers and learners. In this way, this book aligns with complex dynamic systems theory, demonstrating that what teachers say and do with language, both explicitly and implicitly, is of vital importance to their learners’ linguistic development.

With a clear and accessible narrative style, this book serves as a reliable resource for second language scholars and especially for teachers and professionals, actively addressing the research-to-practice gap in second language instruction.

"Paul Toth's monograph adopts a complex dynamic systems perspective that balances the social and the cognitive in L2 development, integrating them to inform concrete applications for task design in grammar instruction. A most useful tool for teachers and teacher educators."

Cristina Sanz, Professor of Spanish and Applied Linguistics, Georgetown University

Table of Contents:

Preface.  Introduction  Chapter 1. A Sociocognitive Proposal to Account for the Reality of Grammar Instruction  Chapter 2. Our Shared History: From Grammar-Centered Teaching to Communicative Competence  Chapter 3. Our Shared History: Where Does Grammar Belong in Communicative Language Teaching?  Chapter 4. Chomsky’s Cognitive Theory of Language  Chapter 5. Halliday’s Social Theory of Language  Chapter 6. Consciousness and Cognition in Language Learning  Chapter 7. Implicit Linguistic Development  Chapter 8. Social Interaction and Language Learning  Chapter 9. Language Learning from a Sociocultural Perspective  Chapter 10. Language Learners in Classroom Communities  Chapter 11. Planning and Implementing Sociocognitively Relevant Grammar Instruction