Inaugural lecture - Professor Christian Jones: What is spoken language and how on earth do we teach it?

Professor Christian Jones gives his inaugural lecture at the School of the Arts Library on Thursday 3 December, from 5.30pm to 7.30pm. It's organised by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the whole thing is billed as an inaugural lecture — the kind of session where a professor sets out their research programme and what it means for their future work. Jones is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of English at the University of Liverpool.

The talk is titled What is spoken language and how on earth do we teach it?, and it gets straight to the heart of what he does. He draws on research using both native speaker conversation data and speaking test data to describe spoken language in terms of its forms and functions. From there, he looks at the challenges of teaching spoken language to learners of English as a second language, and shares findings that have implications for language learning and for further research. It's a look at how we actually talk, and why that's so hard to put into a classroom.

If you're interested in how we learn to speak a new language, or just in the mechanics of how we talk without thinking about it, this is right up your street. It's a chance to hear a researcher lay out their work and where they're taking it next. There are light refreshments served after the talk, so you can stick around and chat with other people who've turned up.

It's at the School of the Arts Library, University of Liverpool, 19 Abercromby Square, L69 7ZG, on Thursday 3 December from 5.30pm to 7.30pm. Attendance is by RSVP via Eventbrite, so you'll need to book your place in advance.