Dr. Marina Y. Sokolova (the University of Southampton, UK; Northwestern University, USA) conducted a series of online lectures on the psycholinguistic component of language learning and teaching. These lectures were part of the course “Methods of Teaching and Education: Audio and Visual Means of Learning” by Dr. Galina Kruchinina, PhD (Associate Professor, Department of Theory and Practice of Foreign Languages and Language Didactics).
The students had an opportunity to learn about the formation of mental lexicon of the non-native language. They traced pshycolinguistic mechanisms of co-influence between the native and the non-native language in the development of a new mental grammar. The students got to know that code-switching is a legitimate form of language use and should not be interpreted as a sign of linguistic impairment
Mazneva Valery (PIN-14-2):
The series of online lectures by Dr. Sokolova was very useful for us as future teachers. We learnt about possible sources of linguistic errors we will hear in class. Besides, we will be working with children and parents who moved to Russia from the neighboring countries and they will be bilingual. The lectures made us prepared for possible questions about learning a new language these people may ask. We have also learnt that for some of the pupils a foreign language at school will be their language № 2, meanwhile, for others it might be language №3. In this case we might have two very different types of learners in the same classroom at the same time.