Human Language Series on Second Language Acquisition

You are enrolled in a California State University course on documentary video production in their Communications Department, hoping to improve your videography skills to use on special projects with your students. The class project is to produce a documentary video, and one of the models introduced by the professor is an award-winning documentary series, The Human Language, produced by Gene Searchinger of Equinox Films. (You have parts 1 and 2 on your course CD, by permission of Mr. Searchinger). The film weaves interviews of top linguists (those who study the formal structure of language) and developmental psycholinguists (who study children and how they acquire language) with vivid examples of language use and language development. As the first step in production, the class assignment is to develop a short prospectus for a sequel documentary on some other aspect of human development. Because of your interest in second language acquisition, you decide to develop a prospectus on this topic. You further have in hand an influential paper by Stephen Krashen on second language acquisition that should serve as your primary guide. In your prospectus, you should address the following questions:

1. What are the key themes from linguistics and child language acquisition research that can be extended into our understanding of second language acquisition? i.e., what are some commonalities between first and second language acquisition?
2. What are some differences between first and second language acquisition that should be highlighted in the documentary?
3. What concepts from Krashen's paper would you highlight in the documentary?
4. If you were to interview Krashen for the documentary, what sorts of questions would you ask him to elicit pertinent commentary?
5. If you were to set up six hours of a video shoot of second language learners in various settings, how would you allocate the time and what kinds of learners and activities would you shoot? Be creative!

The prospectus should be no longer than 3 double-spaced pages; you may present the ideas in bullet form.