’ Wim Gombert is currently a lecturer of L2 Dutch and French proficiency and linguistics at the University of Groningen (Department of European Languages and Cultures). His main research interests focus on the acquisition of French as a foreign language taking a Dynamic Usage-Based perspective. His interest in effective second language acquisition originated when he taught French and English at a secondary school and he realized that the coursebooks he used in his teaching practice were not effective in developing speaking skills as they focused mainly on an explicit mastery of grammar and reading and writing skills. A search for an approach that was more effective in developing speaking skills led him to the AIM method (www.aimlanguagelearning.com) which was developed in Canada for core French classes to do just that. He introduced this method in the lower classes of a secondary school and developed an extended version of this method for the upper classes. Thanks to a Dudoc-Alfa grant he was able to empirically test the efficacy of the new program. The dissertation reports and discusses the results of a study into the effectiveness of two 6-year teaching programs for French on reading, writing, listening and speaking. The first program was structure-based taught with commonly used course-books and the second one was dynamic usage-based (with AIM and AIM extended) in which exposure and oral practice was key. The results clearly show that the programs are equally effective in developing reading and writing skills, but a dynamic usage-based program is more effective than a structure-based program in developing speaking and listening skills. For several years now, Wim Gombert has been active in giving workshops to foreign language teachers interested in implementing a dynamic usage-based teaching program (which can also be implemented for other languages than French), and has created a website (www.projectfrans.nl) with Audrey Rousse-Malpat to give information on the program. This website includes a short video showing classroom activities as well as interviews with teachers and students who actually use this newly developed foreign language teaching program. ‘ ISBN 978-94-6458-702-9
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw