Daily Excerpt: Working with Advanced Foreign Language Students (Shekhtman) - Some Characteristics of Advanced Language Students (Student-Language Relations)
Today's book excerpt comes from Working with Advanced Foreign Language Students by Boris Shekhtman . Some Characteristics of Advanced Language Learners SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF ADVANCED STUDENTS Student-Language Relations So, what does having an advanced student mean to a teacher? It means, of course, that the student already speaks the foreign language with finesse, that the student already knows the host country pretty well, along with its history and culture, that he or she has seen quite a few foreign language teachers before now. (Typically, the advanced student has studied, if not mastered, several foreign languages [Belcher and Connor, 2001; Leaver and Atwell, 2002] and has already developed his or her own ideas about how to learn a foreign language [Ehrman, 2002; Leaver and Shekhtman, 2002].) Language Learning Motivation and Goals The advanced student is extremely motivated; rarely do such students study a language simply, so t...