The Centre was established in January, 2007, as one of a number of academic centres at Kellogg College. Integral to the college"s mission is an interest in mature learners. Kellogg also has a critical inter-disciplinary mass in applied linguistics and second language acquisition, with three Fellows, Katie Gray, Vicki Murphy and Robert Vanderplank, each of whom belongs to a different University department, as well as a large number of students taking courses or doing doctoral research in applied linguistics and related subjects.
The aims of the Centre are:
- to foster scholarship and research in an area of language learning and teaching which has been left largely to practitioners.
- to marry academic and research interests in mature and younger language learners from a variety of perspectives.
- to strengthen links between the college and university departments with which it already has well-established links in teaching and research.
- to identify means of improving and supporting lifelong language learning, particularly for those who may not be natural or gifted language learners or who may not have had advantages such as foreign travel, contact with foreign cultures or appropriate educational support earlier in life.
- to promote research into developing our understanding of lifelong language learning supported by both older technologies (e.g. television/radio) and newer technologies (e.g. broadband/digital media).
Activities
- The Centre provides a focus for activities connected with research into and studies of lifelong language learning. Since summer, 2008, the Centre (together with the University Language Centre) has maintained the LARA (Language Attrition Research Archive) database of research in first and second language attrition, language re-learning and language shift and death (www.lara.ox.ac.uk).
- The Centre"s programme of seminars and lectures began with a lecture by Professor David Crystal on Thursday, May, 7, 2009. The lecture can be heard in full on this page. As Professor Crystal says in his lecture, Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man” adapts well to a language learning context. The infant illustrates language acquisition; the schoolboy, language(s) in education; the lover, language in literature; the soldier, pragmatic skills; the justice, specialized varieties; the pantaloon, language disorders; oblivion, language death. But, thanks to the internet, there is an eighth age which Shakespeare could never have anticipated.
- A journal focussing on lifelong language learning is planned with the working title "Jacques".
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Associate fellows
The Centre wishes to create a pool of associate fellows among academics teaching and researching topics linked to lifelong language learning inside and outside Oxford who would contribute to its work and benefit from links with like-minded researchers. It welcomes contributions and participation from members of departments and other colleges who have an interest in related areas of research.
Contact
All enquires about the Centre should be addressed in the first instance to Dr Robert Vanderplank, e-mail robert.vanderplank@lang.ox.ac.uk