The last twenty-five years have seen considerable developments in the learning and teaching of English, as a first, second or additional language. Since the arrival of the internet learners and teachers have sought a balance between digital and online resources on the one hand, and conventional print and classroom activities on the other. The first phase of this development was to see how digital and online resources could support conventional teaching. The second phase established e-learning as an alternative to traditional classroom teaching. The third phase has addressed how social media might be used in language learning, both to enhance and possibly replace conventional approaches. The lecture looks back at these developments as well as considering what might take place over the next twenty-five years.
Although the writing-across-the-curriculum movement, or WAC, has proven to be one of the most enduring educational reforms in history, its ability to promote sustained pedagogic change across academic disciplines has proven disappointing. In this address, I'll argue that unchallenged, tacit-level assumptions about writing and writing instruction, held by both faculty members and students in diverse majors, may be the culprits. As an alternative approach, I'll present the Writing-Enriched Curriculum, or WEC, a model that uses faculty members' conceptualizations of writing and their resistance to including writing instruction in the courses they teach as its starting point. Using data collected on multiple sites, I'll consider ways in which the WEC model has triggered and sustained changes in the ways that writing and writing instruction are conducted and the degree to which student writing meets differential faculty expectations.
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages defines plurilingualism as "a communicative competence to which all knowledge and experience of language contributes and in which languages interrelate and interact". Despite the best intentions of education systems and their curricula, plurilingualism in this sense is all too rarely achieved. In my talk I shall argue that language learners are most likely to develop an integrated plurilingual repertoire if they are taught according to the three interdependent principles that constitute my understanding of language learner autonomy: dialogic target language use, learner involvement, and learner reflection. I shall explain the theoretical foundations on which this understanding rests, with reference to dialogic theories of language, mind and learning; I shall also explain how each principle can be operationalized with learners of different ages and at different stages of proficiency development; and I shall illustrate my arguments with examples from the classroom.