Vol. 4 Issue 44 – Video: Empowering the Language Learner

ELTWeekly Vol. 4 Issue#44 | October 29, 2012 | ISSN 0975-3036

The New School for Public Engagement is a division of The New School, a university in New York City offering distinguished degree, certificate, and continuing education programs in art and design, liberal arts, management and policy, and the performing arts. | http://www.newschool.edu/public-engagement

Using a combination of lecture and experiential exercises, ESL education specialist Diane Larsen-Freeman traces the evolution of language teaching methods over the past 60 years, discussing how each evolutionary phase has contributed to a more “whole-person” view of language learners. Larsen-Freeman suggests that when educators treat language as a closed, static system, they create a critical barrier to student empowerment. When language is instead seen as the complex, dynamic system, teachers are able to help their students transform their linguistic world, not merely conform to it. Larsen-Freeman illustrates how this shift in understanding has implications for what and how teachers teach.

Dr. Diane Larsen-Freeman is a professor of education and director of the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She is also Distinguished Senior Faculty Fellow at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont. She has spoken and published widely on the topics of teacher education, second language acquisition, English grammar, and language teaching methodology. In 1997, Dr. Larsen-Freeman was inducted into the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1999, she was named an ESL pioneers by ESL Magazine. In 2000, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Heinle & Heinle Publishers.

This event is co-sponsored by the English Language Studies Department at The New School for General Studies and Oxford University Press.