Instituto Cervantes Manchester and Leeds presents a new lecture series: “Acquiring a Second Language: Why do we find it so difficult?”, coordinated by Idoia Elola (Texas Tech University) and Ana Oskoz (University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), a forum aimed at teachers, language students, parents and the general public, which will consider how we learn a second, or a heritage language.

Presenters will discuss various elements and difficulties that come with second-language acquisition including: myths and realities surrounding language acquisition and age, the effect of explicit knowledge and how it can affect learning, the use of language according to the context in which it is spoken, and the effect of education on our ability to learn a second language.

Second talk: “Pragmatic Competence: How to communicate in diverse contexts”, by Marta González Lloret (University of Hawaii).
Although pragmatics is an essential component of communicative competence (Hymes, 1972) across cultures, neither textbooks nor most curricula for teaching Spanish as a foreign language (ELE) systematically include it.

This talk will discuss the components of pragmatics and the importance of pragmatics for the development of competent L2 speakers, focusing mainly on ELE learners. It will also look at how pragmatics can be integrated into the classroom through a technology-mediated task-based language teaching methodology (Technology-mediated task-based language teaching; González-Lloret & Ortega 2014).

Marta González-Lloret is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Her research focuses mainly on technology-mediated language learning, task-based language teaching and foreign language pragmatics. He has published in journals such as Foreign Language Annals, LL&T, CALICO Journal, Language Teaching Research, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, and TASK. One of her recent publications is Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Technology, a volume co-edited with Nicole Ziegler and published by Routledge in 2022. She is currently co-editor of the John Benjamins series Task-based Language Teaching: Issues, Research and Practice and editor of the Pragmatics & Language Learning (NFLRC) series.