Fossilization: Is It Terminal, Doctor , The New School

The School of Languages at The New School presents, Fossilization: Is it Terminal, Doctor a lecture by Scott Thornbury discussing the methodology of moving language learners beyond the plateau of understanding to a higher plane of language comprehension. It s a truism, perhaps, that many learners reach a plateau, beyond which no amount of instruction or use seems able to budge them. Are there any (psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic) grounds for believing that this socalled fossilization is terminal What does it take to move a learner beyond the plateau Based on his own experience of attempting to kickstart his fossilized Spanish, the speaker will look at the role of such factors as classroom instruction, extensive reading, vocabulary memorization and real language use as possible antidotes to arrested development in a second language. Scott Thornbury (MATEFL, with distinction, University of Reading, UK, a native of New Zealand who now l