Reaching out to the other side: Formal-linguistics-based SLA and Socio-SLA

Generative linguistics has long been concerned with the linguistic competence of the “ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly” (Chomsky 1965: 3). Research in formal-linguistics-based second language acquisition takes as its starting point the second language (L2) speaker's underlying mental representation. Here the factors of interest are influence of the learner's native language and, in generative SLA, the operation of innate linguistic mechanisms (Universal Grammar). Similar to methodology in formal syntax, lxSLA adopts techniques such as grammaticality judgment, comprehension and perception tasks supplementing spontaneously produced oral data. While there may be individual differences in oral production, tasks that tap learners' mental representations reveal commonalities across learners from a given native language background with the same amount/ type of exposure and age of initial L2 exposure. When it comes to phonology, age has long been a central factor with numerous comparative studies showing younger learners far outperforming older learners (see Piske et al. 2001). This paper discusses a case of possible non-acquisition by L2 children who had had considerable exposure to the L2. Children's non-acquisition is only apparent, and this allows us to consider the value of lxSLA methodology on the one hand, and and raises issues about what might be lacking in the current socio-SLA paradigm, on the other. We argue that only when we return to the cooperation that marked its birth in the 1960s will we have a comprehensive picture of SLA

Eyetracking methodology in SCMC: a tool for empowering learning and teaching

Computer-assisted language learning, or CALL, is an interdisciplinary area of research, positioned in tension between science and social science, computing and education, linguistics and applied linguistics. This paper argues that by appropriating methods originating in some areas of CALL-related research, for example, HCI or psycho-linguistics, the agenda of 'attention-focus' research can be shifted from a cognitive perspective to a learner-centred approach, understanding online language learning and teaching spaces as mediated by technology, second/foreign language, and online teaching culture. Taking a method that has traditionally been used within a positivist paradigm, the authors exemplify the potential of eyetracking to progress online language learning research - extending it in ways compatible with a sociocultural paradigm. This is evidenced by two pioneering studies in which an innovative combination of methods allows participants, whose gaze focus during synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) has been recorded, to reflect back on their involvement. Eyetracking is combined with stimulated recall interviews that trigger deep reflection on learner and teacher strategies by directing participants’ recollections on their attention focus. The rich, multifaceted results shown by this original and innovative use of eyetracking methods in a sociocultural framework direct a way forward in researching online learning by integrating insider and outside views coherently and systematically

PRAXIS AND CLASSROOM L2 DEVELOPMENT

AbstractAlthough most L2 research informed by sociocultural theory (henceforth, SCT) asserts that the fundamental concepts of Vygotsky’s theory are that human mental activity is mediated by socially and culturally created artifacts (see Lantolf & Appel, 1994 and Lantolf, 2000; among others), I believe that the real key to the theory is to be found in the notion of praxis—a notion that Vygotsky appropriated from Marx and which, of course, has its origins in ancient Greek philosophy. For the Greeks, praxis had the general meaning of action as an end itself, whereas for Hegel and Marx it refers to “action which generates an object external to the subject or his [sic] acts” (Sanchez Velazquez, 1977: 1).1 The crucial feature of praxis in its contemporary understanding is the dialectic unity of consciousness (knowledge/theory) and action that results in the creation of an object. In Hegel’s philosophy the object is Ideal, while for Marx, and for Vygotsky, the object is Material. The present article emerges from an on-going project that explores the implications of praxis in Vygotsky’s theory for instructed second language development. In making the case for the importance of praxis and language education, I will first discuss the place of praxis in SCT and will then present some evidence from recently completed large-scale studies of instructed L2 learning by Negueruela (2003) and Yáñez Prieto (2008) that are informed by Vygotsky’s theory. Along the way, I will also briefly consider some other, less robust, though interesting, studies inspired by Vygotsky’s theory of educational praxis.ResumenAunque la mayoría de las investigaciones sobre la Teoría sociocultural señalan como eje central de la teoría de Vygotsky el hecho de que la actividad mental humana se encuentra mediatizada por artefactos social y culturalmente creados (véase Lantolf & Appel, 1994 y Lantolf, 2000, entre otros), considero que la clave fundamental de esta teoría se encuentra en la noción de praxis –una noción que Vygotsky tomó de Marx y que sin duda tiene su origen en la filosofía clásica griega. Para los griegos, la praxis tenía el significado general de “acción como un fin en sí misma”, mientras que para Hegel y Marx se refiere a “la acción que genera un objeto ajeno al sujeto o sus actos” (Sanchez Velásquez, 1977: 1). La característica fundamental del concepto de praxis en la actualidad es la unidad dialéctica entre la conciencia (conocimiento/teoría) y la acción que resulta de la creación de un objeto. En la filosofía de Hegel el objeto es “ideal” mientras que para Marx y Vygotsky el objeto es “material”. Este artículo surge de una investigación actualmente en curso que explora las implicaciones de la praxis en la teoría de Vygotsky para el desarrollo de la enseñanza de la segunda lengua. Con objeto de resaltar la importancia de la praxis en la enseñanza/aprendizaje de una lengua, me centraré en primer lugar en clarificar el lugar que ocupa la praxis en la Teoría sociocultural y seguidamente presentaré algunos datos tomados de estudios a gran escala llevados a cabo recientemente por Negueruela (2003), Yánez Prieto (2008), y Serrano-Lopez y Poehner (2008) sobre el aprendizaje de una L2, y enmarcados en la teoría de Vygotsky. Del mismo modo me referiré a otros estudios –menos sólidos aunque igualmente interesantes- inspirados en la teoría de Vygotsky

Contexts that favor the evolution of teachers’ beliefs about plurilingual and intercultural education

[EN] This article examines which contexts make possible to become aware and to favor the transformation of teacher beliefs system through formative processes. Different reflective strategies have been used to demonstrate the (re) conceptualization of thought and action in relation to plurilingual and intercultural education. The use of different qualitative methods to generate data, such as life stories, linguistic self-portraits and cartographies, semi-structured interviews or discussion groups shows that formative processes are a useful strategy to help teachers to change their belief system. These processes of self-confrontation make possible to emerge tensions and contradictions as a way to favor beliefs’ change and transformation.[ES] En aquest article s’examinen contextos que fan possible la presa de consciència i la transformació del sistema de creences del professorat en processos de formació. A través de l’ús de diferents estratègies d’investigació reflexives es fa evident la (re)conceptualització de formes de pensament i d’actuació en relació amb l’educació plurilingüe i intercultural. L’ús de diferents mètodes qualitatius per generar dades, com poden ser relats de vida, autoretrats i cartografies lingüístiques, entrevistes semiestructurades o grups de discussió, demostra que els processos d’intervenció formativa són una estratègia idònia per ajudar el professorat a modificar les seves creences. Aquests processos d’(auto)confrontació fan emergir tensions i contradiccions com a pas previ al canvi i a la transformació.Tresserras, E.; Cabré, M. (2019). Contextos que afavoreixen l’evolució de les creences del professorat sobre l’educació plurilingüe i intercultural. Lenguaje y Textos. (49):19-28. https://doi.org/10.4995/lyt.2019.11456SWORD192849Aguilar Ródenas, C. (2017). La DLL en la universidad pública: una aproximación al estado de la cuestión en la formación inicial de maestros y maestras. Parte II.. Lenguaje y Textos, 0(45), 29-42. https://doi.org/10.4995/lyt.2017.6735Cabré, M. (en premsa). The development of the plurilingual education through multimodal reflection in Teacher Education: A case study of a pre-service teacher's beliefs about language education. Canadian Modern Language Review.Cabré, M. (2018). La competència plurilingüe en la formació inicial de mestres. Estudi longitudinal de casos sobre l'evolució de les creences relacionades amb l'educació plurilingüe. Tesi Doctoral. Universitat de Barcelona.Cabré, M., i Palou, J. (2018). La competencia plurilingüe en la formación inicial de maestros: estudio de las trayectorias de aprendizaje de lenguas de dos maestros en formación inicial. Revista Docencia e investigación, 28, 6-26.Cabré, M., i Tresserras E. (2017). La resistencia como oportunidad de cambio. Investigar para innovar (Tema del mes) en Cuadernos de Pedagogía 481, 65-68.Carrasco, E. (2013). Los (futuros) docentes frente a la competència plurilingüe (Grenoble/Barcelona). Lenguaje y textos, 37, 91-100.Civera, I., i Codina, R. (2017). El enfoque multimodal para el estudio de las creencias. Investigar para innovar (Tema del mes) en Cuadernos de Pedagogía, 481, 60-64.Consell d'Europa. (2018). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Companion volume with new descriptors. Language Policy Division. Estrasburg: Consell d'Europa.Engeström, Y. (2012). Whatever happened to process theories of learning? Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 1, 45-56.Esteve, O. (2013). Entre la práctica y la teoría. Comprender para actuar. Ikastaria(19), 13-36.Esteve, O.,Fernández, F.,Martin Peris, E. and Atienza, E. (2017). The Integrated Plurilingual Approach: A didactic model providing guidance to Spanish schools for reconceptualizing the teaching of additional languages. Language and Sociocultural Theory, 4 (1), pp. 1-24.Kalaja, P., Alanen, R., i Dufva, H. (2008). Self-portraits of EFL learners: Finnish students draw and tell. Dins de P. Kalaja, V. Menezes, i A. Mª. F. Barcelos (Eds.), Narratives of learning and teaching EFL (pp. 186-198). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Korthagen, F. A. (2001). Linking Practice and Theory. The Pedagogy of Realistic Teacher Education. London: LEA.Johnson, K. E. i Golombek, P. R. (2016). Mindful L2 teacher education. New York, NY: Routledge.Lantolf, J. i Esteve, O. (en premsa). Concept-Based Instruction for Concept-Based Instruction: A Model for Language Teacher Education. In M. Sato, and Sh. Loewen, eds. Evidence-based second language pedagogy: A collection of Instructed Second Language Acquisition studies. New York: Routledge.Lantolf, J. P. i Poehner, M. E. (2014). Sociocultural Theory and the Pedagogical Imperative in L2 Education: Vygotskian Praxis and the Research/Practice Divide. New York, NY and London, UK: Routledge.Melo-Pfeifer, S. (2015). Multilingual awareness and heritage language education: Children's multimodal representations of their multilingualism. Language Awareness, 24 (3), 197-215. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2015.1072208Negueruela-Azarola, E. (2011). Beliefs as conceptualizing activity: A dialectical approach for the second language classroom. System 39: 359−369.Palou. J, i Cabré, M. (2017). Beliefs regarding plurilingual competence: the perspective in Catalonia through a case study of a pre-service teacher. Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM), 7 (8), 63-75.Pérez-Peitx, M., Civera, I., i Palou, J. (2018). Awareness of Plurilingual Competence in Teacher Education. Dins de P. Kalaja, i S. Melo-Pfeifer (Eds.), More than words: The lives and worlds of multilinguals (Cap.13). 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“I think it fits in”: Using Process Drama to Promote Agentic Writing with Primary School Children

Set against the backdrop of children being “alienated” from their writing (Lambirth 2016), this paper is taken from a UKLA sponsored project where primary school teachers were trained to use process drama in order to give children more agency in their writing across the curriculum. Here we use discourse analysis (Gee 2010) to think about the children’s historical creative writing in relation to the drama lessons which are differently framed (Bernstein 2000) by the teachers. Building upon a theoretical model of drama as “blended space” (Duffy 2014) and writing as problem-solving (Bereiter and Scardamalia 1986), a case is made that process drama can lead to what we term ‘agentic writing’. Agentic writing, we demonstrate, involves children actively translating their embodied experience of the blended space into writing by making a range of intertextual borrowings. These borrowing serve both to capture and transform their embodied experience as the children gain agency by “standing outside language” to achieve “double voicedness” (Bakthin 1986). Seeing the relationship between process drama and writing in this light, we argue, provides a means of reconnecting children to the act of writing

L’acquisition scolaire d’une langue étrangère vue dans la perspective de la théorie de l’activité : une étude de cas

Dans cet article, nous présentons une étude de cas sur la transformation de la motivation dans l’apprentissage d’une L2 en suivant le parcours d’une étudiante pendant les neuf semaines d’un cours intensif de chinois dans une université américaine. Nous nous intéressons à la motivation comme processus dynamique inscrit dans une situation. L’analyse s’inspire de la Théorie de l’Activité dont les racines remontent à L.S. Vygotsky (1978, 1987) et à A.N. Leontiev (1978, 1981) et qui a fait l’objet d’une élaboration plus récente dans les travaux de Y. Engeström (1987, 1999).An activity theoretic perspective on foreign language learning in the classroom setting : a case study. In the present article, we will report on a case study of one individual as she attempted to learn Chinese as a foreign language during a nine-week intensive summer course at a major North American university. Our interest is in exploring motivation as a situated and dynamic process and our analysis is informed by Activity Theory as developed in the work of L. S. Vygotsky (1987, 1978) and A. N. Leontiev (1978, 1981) and recently expanded upon in the writings of Y. Engeström (1987, 1999)

Connecting research and practice in TESOL: a community of practice perspective

In line with a growing interest in teacher research engagement in second language education, this article is an attempt to shed light on teachers’ views on the relationship between teaching and practice. The data comprise semi-structured interviews with 20 teachers in England, examining their views about the divide between research and practice in their field, the reasons for the persistence of the divide between the two and their suggestions on how to bridge it. Wenger’s (1998) Community of Practice (CoP) is used as a conceptual framework to analyse and interpret the data. The analysis indicates that teacher experience, learning and ownership of knowledge emerging from participation in their CoP are key players in teachers’ professional practice and in the development of teacher identity. The participants construe the divide in the light of the differences they perceive between teaching and research as two different CoPs, and attribute the divide to the limited mutual engagement, absence of a joint enterprise and lack of a shared repertoire between them. Boundary encounters, institutionalised brokering and a more research-oriented teacher education provision are some of the suggestions for bringing the two communities together

Fluctuations in Learners’ Willingness to Communicate During Communicative Task Performance: Conditions and Tendencies

A person’s willingness to communicate (WTC), believed to stem from a combination of proximal and distal variables comprising psychological, linguistic, educational and communicative dimensions of language, appears to be a significant predictor of success in language learning. The ability to communicate is both a means and end of language education, since, on the one hand, being able to express the intended meanings in the target language is generally perceived as the main purpose of any language course and, on the other, linguistic development proceeds in the course of language use. However, MacIntyre (2007, p. 564) observes that some learners, despite extensive study, may never become successful L2 speakers. The inability or unwillingness to sustain contacts with more competent language users may influence the way learners are evaluated in various social contexts. Establishing social networks as a result of frequent communication with target language users is believed to foster linguistic development. WTC, initially considered a stable personality trait and then a result of context-dependent influences, has recently been viewed as a dynamic phenomenon changing its intensity within one communicative event (MacIntyre and Legatto, 2011; MacIntyre et al., 2011). The study whose results are reported here attempts to tap into factors that shape one’s willingness to speak during a communicative task. The measures employed to collect the data - selfratings and surveys - allow looking at the issue from a number of perspectives

Teacher mediation in L2 classroom task-based interaction

Guided by the holistic view of the sociocultural theory towards learning and focusing on teacher assistance to learners' process of working through tasks, the current study investigated teacher task-related assistance and language mediation, and how language mediation is adjusted according to learner's responsivity in classroom interaction. Sixteen Chinese learners of English residing in Canada carried out meaning-focused tasks in an intact classroom, taught by an experienced teacher over a four-week period. Approximately 12 h of audio-recorded classroom interactions were transcribed and analysed qualitatively using microanalysis method to examine characteristics of teacher task-related and language mediation. The results indicate that the teacher provided both task-related assistance, which addressed different task issues (e.g., task clarification, modeling, eliciting, and direction), and language mediation that featured diverse characteristics and varying degree of collaboration, which led us to identify two levels of mediation: low and highly collaborative. These results are discussed in terms of the role of teacher task-related assistance and language mediation on assisting and mediating learner's appropriation of language form and process of working through tasks