Processing Instruction and Discourse

Description

Processing Instruction is an approach to grammar instruction for second language learning, contrasting with traditional grammar instruction in its focus on structured input rather than learners' output. This book compares student assessment after traditional grammar instruction and after Processing Instruction to assess the positive benefits of this method of second language teaching. Rather than examining sentence-level tasks, the study looks at the relative effectiveness of Processing Instruction on discourse-level linguistic ability. Case studies using empirical data from second language learners of Japanese, Italian and English are used to highlight the benefits to the learner of this method of enhanced input. This monograph will be of interest to postgraduates and academics researching second language acquisition and applied linguistics.

Alessandro G. Benati is Professor in Second Language Acquisition and Director of Research and Enterprise at the University of Greenwich, UK. James F. Lee is Head of the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

"All readers -SLA researchers, language program administrators and teachers- will find in this volume a broad-ranging treatment of Processing Instruction and VanPatten's model of Input Processing that motivates it. Processing Instruction and Discourse summarizes in a most efficient way previous research on PI and reports on a number of new, fascinating empirical studies. This timely volume extends what we know about the effectiveness of PI to an impressive number of variables, including new structures, new languages, and to discourse. Importantly, it moves PI to a new context: from college language programs to primary, middle and high-school classrooms." - Associate Professor, Cristina Sanz, Georgetown University, USA 'The present volume addresses one aspect of processing instruction that merited further research, namely, the interplay between this type of instruction and discourse. It presents original research examining the impact of processing instruction on discourse-level interpretation and production tasks, as well the effects of presenting input to learners as connected discourse. This book is indispensable for researchers and students interested in processing instruction, but it is also an immensely useful collection of sources for those who are more broadly concerned with instructed second language acquisition.' - Professor Teresa Cadierno, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark