Fostering advanced L2 literacy: A genre-based, cognitive approach

Abstract

The paper argues for the need and opportunity to consider advanced second language abilities as part of the curricular and pedagogical vision of collegiate foreign language departments. It builds the context for such an expanded goal by focusing on the notion of literacy which, together with a genre-oriented and task-based approach that explicitly incorporates the cognitive abilities of literate adult learners, can support the required programmatic decision-making. It exemplifies such an approach within an integrated undergraduate FL curriculum, first, by showing how early advanced L2 learners can learn to make rich narrative choices in the area of place and time within story telling and, second, by demonstrating how even more advanced learners can acquire the ability to make choices in two major forms of meaning-making, congruent and synoptic forms of semiosis, by working with the micro-genre public political speech. It concludes with a model for continua of developing multiple literacies in collegiate FL programs.