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Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Second Language Teaching
Pedagogical Content knowledge is understood as the “blending of content and pedagogy” that guides the organization, representation and adaptation of the material for all learners through instruction. This concept goes beyond the consideration of the content knowledge as isolated from the pedagogical knowledge teachers must possess to effectively cater to the needs of their students. In order to illustrate how pedagogical content knowledge operates in reference to a specific knowledge domain, we can turn to the field of second language teaching. In this field, pedagogical content knowledge can be considered a “developmental construct” initiated in pre-service teacher education programs and continued through in-service classroom experiences or “knowledge in action”. From this perspective, it is useful to look at the various components. Pedagogical knowledge refers to the different instructional approaches and techniques used to teach languages as well as the consideration of how the linguistic knowledge progresses and grows in complexity along the continuum of a curriculum (i.e., Schulman’s lateral curricular knowledge). This pedagogical knowledge also involves a growing understanding of content choice and pedagogy that views language learning as communication, performance in tasks, student-centered instruction, attention to accuracy and message. On the other hand, if we were to characterize the content knowledge in language teaching, we would be talking about the target language. What it entails for the second language teacher is not only the mastery of the target language but also “discipline-derived understandings from applied linguistics, SLA, psychology and curriculum development, among other areas, in a deeper examination of [the} subject matter -language- as it becomes classroom content”. However, if we are to enhance the definition of the pedagogical content knowledge in second language teaching, we need to include aspects related to language knowledge for teaching by following Schulman’s dimension of “subject matter knowledge for teaching” .These aspects include language teachers’ use of effective ways to represent the various types of knowledge involved in learning a language that include but are not limited to syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and phonology. Besides it will require teachers to have a wide understanding of their language learners’ characteristics to be able to identify and explore the conceptions and misconceptions and, more importantly, “potential misunderstandings of [the] subject area” these learners bring and/or develop in the learning situation. It also includes ways to help learners overcome these difficulties. For instance, Spanish speakers tend to omit subjects while learning a language with weak nominal features such as English, due to the fact that Spanish is predominantly a null subject language. Therefore, this may turn into a source of overgeneralization while these learners learn the target language. The two main aspects of pedagogical content knowledge presented here correspond to the two domains defined by Ball, Thames and Phelps as knowledge of content and teaching as well as knowledge of content and students respectively. The consideration of all these components constitutes the pedagogical content knowledge language teachers need to possess to become effective practitioners.

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