The acquisition of morphology and syntax (i.e., morpho-syntax) has been at the heart of the field of second language acquisition since its modern inception in the 1970s. The reason for this focus is simple: Acquiring these aspects of a foreign language is extremely difficult for most adult foreign language learners given the complexity and abstractness of many morpho-syntactic forms. This course has three main goals. The first goal is to become more familiar with basic aspects of English morpho-syntax (e.g., the syntax of declarative statements, question formation, negation, and embedding) in order to better understand some of the key morpho-syntactic mechanisms used in the English language. The second goal is to become conversant with a wide variety of empirical research into the acquisition of English morpho-syntax. This body of research includes theoretical investigations of the cognitive mechanisms held responsible for the acquisition of morpho-syntax as well as classroom applications of various pedagogical approaches used to teach particular aspects of English grammar. The third goal is to give course participants an opportunity to conduct a hands-on teaching project in which they use a pedagogical approach that is new to them for teaching one aspect of English morpho-syntax. In this way, the participants can expand the pedagogical techniques available to them. Other course assignments include weekly readings, sentence-diagramming tasks, leading and participating in small group discussions, and a final examination. Participants should read Chapters 1-5 in The Grammar Book before the first class meeting.

Required Textbook:

• Larsen-Freeman, D., & Celce-Murcia, M. (2016). The grammar book: Form, meaning, and use for English language teachers. (3rd ed.). Heinle Cengage Learning. (Buy on Amazon.co.jp New Tab / Buy on Amazon.com New Tab)
• American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American psychological association. (7th ed.). Author. (Buy on Amazon.co.jp New Tab / Buy on Amazon.com New Tab)

While virtually all people comprehend and speak a language, this is not the case with the reading and writing. In this course, we will examine issues related to literacy skills, barriers to literacy, and the impact of illiteracy and semi-literacy in our technological societies.

First, we will consider the fundamental questions of "what:" What are reading and writing? What are the component parts of these skills, and how does our understanding of those component parts influence our teaching of the skills? A critical aspect of this will be to consider how first-language (L1) literacy differs from second language (L2) literacy. Then, we will turn to the question of "which:" Which types of reading and writing tasks and activities are available? Which are appropriate for out learners? We will examine a wide variety of tasks that developed for teaching literacy skills and their probable effectiveness in the light of our understanding of reading and writing processes. Finally, we will consider “how:” How can we synthesize our knowledge of reading and writing with the available tasks to create an effective and coherent reading or writing courses? How will generative AI use might impact learners’ literacy development. The overall course goal is to consider how to design reading/writing courses, modify existing materials, and create classroom tasks which encourage literacy development for L1, L2, and multilingual learners.

Students will participate in and lead discussions, reflect on the readings, review existing materials, take a midterm, and complete a course project.

Students are consulted the course Canvas site to obtain the syllabus and prepare for Session 1. The syllabus and readings for each of the class sessions will be available from Monday, September 4.

Since the first class meeting for this course is on Thursday, September 14, after the fall 2023 Add/Drop Period ends, the office will only accept drop requests for this course until 10:00 a.m. on Friday, September 15., after the first class meeting.  Students who wish to drop this course after attending the first class meeting must inform the office of your intention to drop this course by emailing tujtesol@tuj.temple.edu by 10:00 on Friday, September 15.

Required Textbook:

• Grabe, W., & Stoller, F. L. (2020). Teaching and researching reading. (3rd ed.). Routledge. (Buy on Amazon.co.jp New Tab / Buy on Amazon.com New Tab)
• Hyland, K. (2022). Teaching and researching writing. (4th ed.). Routledge. (Buy on Amazon.co.jp New Tab / Buy on Amazon.com New Tab)

Recommended Textbook:

• American Psychological Association. (2020). Concise guide to APA style. (7th ed.). Author. (Buy on Amazon.co.jp New Tab / Buy on Amazon.com New Tab)

(A reading packet will be provided. This will be available on the Canvas.)

The purpose of this course is to enable participants to develop an awareness of second language theory and classroom practice. Issues to be investigated include: an account of the central processes of learning and the conditions believed to promote language acquisition; the elements of a language learning curriculum and their relation to the processes by which learners acquire language; current approaches to language teaching; and various types of materials and activities believed to foster acquisition. Participants will be encouraged to consider how these issues relate to their own classroom contexts and develop a personal set of teaching principles. Sessions will cover topics such as the roles of input, output, form-focused instruction, fluency development, motivation, and task-based language teaching.

In addition to required reading, participants will take a mid-term and a final examination, make written responses to important issues discussed in the course, lead a number of small group discussions, write a course paper focused on a topic related to the course, and make a short, oral presentation.

Students will also be required to attend Dr. Burch’s weekend seminar on Saturday, October 21 from 10:00 to 13:00 in lieu of the class on Friday, November 3rd.

Required Textbook:

• Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Motivational strategies in the language classroom. Cambridge University Press. (Buy on Amazon.co.jp New Tab / Buy on Amazon.com New Tab)
• Brown, H. D., & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. (4th ed.). Pearson Education. (Buy on Amazon.co.jp New Tab / Buy on Amazon.com New Tab)

Recommended Textbook:

• American Psychological Association. (2020). Concise guide to APA style. (7th ed.). Author. (Buy on Amazon.co.jp New Tab / Buy on Amazon.com New Tab)

(Additional readings will be provided in a course reading packet.)

The pedagogical effectiveness and career satisfaction of language teachers can be enhanced by a deeper awareness of their students’ and their own psychological processes. Psychology in Foreign Language Learning is an introductory course that provides an overview of relevant current theory and research toward such enhancement, by helping participants to: 1) become familiar with psychological constructs that are relevant to language learning and teaching; 2) deepen their insights into themselves as language learners and teachers, and 3) fine-tune and expand their teaching practices based on ideas and information explored in the course.

The constructs to be covered include identity, personality, affect, learning strategies and styles, group dynamics, motivation, and autonomy, with a particular emphasis on motivation and identity.

Course requirements include a language learning/teaching autobiography, a presentation/discussion leadership of a supplementary reading, and participation in weekly discussions, both online (written) and in-class, relating the content of the assigned readings to participants’ learning and teaching experiences, The final project can be either a review of research in a psychological sub-field, or a revision of the language learning/teaching autobiography, deepened by relating actual experiences to the psychological concepts that shaped them.

Required Textbook:

• Williams, M., Mercer, S., & Ryan, S. (2016). Exploring psychology in language learning and teaching. Oxford University Press. (Buy on Amazon.co.jp New Tab / Buy on Amazon.com New Tab)

Recommended Textbook:

• Dörnyei, Z., & Ryan, S. (2015). The psychology of the language learner revisited. Routledge. (Buy on Amazon.co.jp New Tab / Buy on Amazon.com New Tab)

(A set of supplementary readings will be available on Canvas.) 

PhD students are required to take two 3-credit Research Apprenticeship courses.   

If you wish to take an apprenticeship course, you first need to write a 300-400-word abstract of your proposed project (unless you are assisting a professor with one of his or her studies). This abstract should include basic information such as (a) the gaps in the literature you are addressing, (b) the purpose(s) of the study, (c) specific research questions, and (d) your methodology, including information about the participants, instruments, procedures, and the analyses you will perform. You will then need to send the abstract to the advisor you wish to work with (Consult the list of Apprenticeship advisors on the registration form to see who is available), and if the advisor approves your plan, you can then register for the course with that advisor.

This course is for those PhD students who have passed the Preliminary Examination and working on their dissertation proposal. 

The PhD students are required to take Culminating Courses (6 semester hours overall, minimum 2 semester hours of EDUC 9999). Culminating Courses: Preliminary Preparation Course (EDUC 9994), Dissertation Proposal Design Course (EDUC 9998) and Doctor of Education Dissertation Course (EDUC 9999).   

Minimum 2 credit hours of EDUC 9999 are required for the PhD students. 

Students wishing to register for this course should obtain permission from the professor and complete the registration process during the registration period. 

Utilizing an Argument-Based Test Validation Framework for Developing and Using Assessments in the L2 Classroom, by Dr. Yasuyo Sawaki, Waseda University, Japan, will be conducted by 3-hour online Zoom sessions for four days: Saturday, October 7, Sunday, October 8, Saturday, October 14 and Sunday, October 15 from 10:00 to 13:00 (JST).  Students taking this seminar for credit must attend all four days. Students can add/drop this seminar course by 14:00 on Saturday, October 7.

The pre sign-up (or course registration for those who are taking this seminar for credit) is required for anybody attending the public session on Saturday, October 7 from 10:00 to 13:00. The sign-up process must be completed through "Distinguished Lecturer Series Seminar Sign-Up Form" that is available on TUJ Grad Ed website. The sign-up deadline is Friday, October 6 at 12:00. The public session Zoom link will be provided to those people who completed the online sign-up (or course registration) process by 18:00 on Friday, October 6. 

In the field of language assessment, various frameworks have been in use for investigations into the validity of language assessments. While many applications of such frameworks have dealt with large-scale high-stakes assessment contexts, conscious attempts have been made by language assessment researchers over the last few decades to make them also applicable to classroom-based language assessment. Using such frameworks would allow practitioners to systematically evaluate the extent to which the use of language assessments is functioning as an aid to promote learning in the L2 classroom.

The aim of this seminar is to familiarize participants with a major framework of language assessment validation currently in use, the Assessment Use Argument (AUA) proposed by Bachman and Palmer (2010) and Bachman and Damböck (2018). In the first part of this seminar, participants will learn about the historical development of assessment validation frameworks and classroom-based assessment principles, with a particular focus on important developments in this area of L2 assessment research over the last two decades. In the second part, they will be introduced to key principles of AUA. An application of AUA to formative assessment of summary writing skills in a university-level academic writing course in Japan will be used as a running example. Finally, in the third part, participants will apply the AUA framework to developing assessment specifications and sample assessment tasks for classroom use as the final project.

Activity Orientation in Interaction by Dr. Alfred Rue Burch, Nanzan University, Japan, will be conducted by 3-hour online Zoom sessions for four days: Saturday, October 21, Sunday, October 22, Saturday, October 28 and Sunday, October 29 from 10:00 to 13:00 (JST).  Students taking this seminar for credit must attend all four days. Students can add/drop this seminar course by 14:00 on Saturday, October 21.

The pre sign-up (or course registration for those who are taking this seminar for credit) is required for anybody attending the public session on Saturday, October 21 from 10:00 to 13:00. The sign-up process must be completed through "Distinguished Lecturer Series Seminar Sign-Up Form" that is available on TUJ Grad Ed website. The sign-up deadline is Friday, October 20 at 12:00. The public session Zoom link will be provided to those people who completed the online sign-up (or course registration) process by 18:00 on Friday, October 20. 

This seminar will ask participants to set aside what they know (both from research and our received notions) about concepts such as motivation (Dörnyei, Henry, & Muir, 2016; Dörnyei, MacIntyre, & Henry, 2015), engagement (Hiver, Al-Hoorie, & Mercer, 2021; Philp & Duchesne, 2016) and task planning and performance (Ellis, 2005; Long, 2015), and consider the ways in which these may be less “inside the skull” (Kasper, 2009) and more (or at least as consequentially) a matter of socio-interactional factors and distributed cognition (cf. Goodwin, 2018; Hutchins, 1995). The seminar will focus on Multimodal Conversation Analysis (Goodwin, 2018; Mondada, 2016) as the primary framework and methodology through which to consider what learners and users of additional languages attend to in interactions and activities, how they do so, and what the practical consequences are for the interactants themselves and for the understanding, teaching, and assessment of additional languages.

The seminar will examine a range of multilingual contexts, including language course task interaction, language partner interaction, paired speaking assessments, and other pedagogical and non-pedagogical interactions, with an aim to center on what the learners/users treat as consequentially relevant in the context of the ongoing activity, and how this may (and often does) differ from the goals and interests of researchers and educators alike. Each day will include at least one data session in which participants will work with interactional data. For credits students, the culminating assignment will give participants a choice between 1) a research proposal with relevant literature, or 2) developing a classroom or assessment task with rationales based upon the content of the course.