Second Language Literacy Practices and Language Learning Outside the Classroom (Second Language Acquisition, 127)

by Miho Inaba

This book presents a comprehensive and detailed study of literacy practices and language use outside of the classroom by university students of Japanese. It investigates both tasks related to classes (e.g. homework and preparation for classes) and voluntary activities in the target language (e.g. watching TV and writing emails) and discusses how values, motivations and types of activities differ between the two contexts. It employs sociocultural perspectives to observe reading and writing activities within and under the influence of individual and social contexts, such as learner motives, peer networks and the language classroom, and contributes to the related research areas in the field of second language acquisition, such as motivation, autonomous language learning and language learning strategies. Crucially, the book not only documents out-of-class literacy activities, but also examines which teaching practices facilitate and promote such out-of-class language learning and use. It considers which literacy activities in the target language students undertake out-of-class, which factors encourage or discourage such out-of-class activity and how and with which tools they undertake these activities. As such the book provides guidance for classroom teaching and suggests that slight changes to teaching practices in the classroom may enhance autonomous learning outside the classroom.

200 pages, Hardcover

Published November 21, 2018

Reviews

[Abi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting read! If you have an interest in second language acquisition and language learning outside the classroom, Miho Inaba's book is a great starting point for this more nascent aspect of SLA research. I'm not in linguistics/SLA myself, but I do some leisure reading of SLA studies, especially related to reading practices, Japanese language learners, and (thanks to this book) the combination of in-class and out-of-class literacy practices. If you can read and understand academic studies at the college or professional level, this should be comprehensible. Recommended. 4 stars.