SLATE LECTURE SERIES

SLATE Colloquium Series*
2002-2003

Upcoming Lectures: Coming in Spring Semester 2003: Lectures by Patsy Duff, David Birdsong, and a joint lecture by Makato Hayashi and Junko Mori. Watch this space for details.

Coming on April 17th at 7:30 PM in FLB G-27: Lecture by Makato Hayashi and Junko Mori. Click the highlighted text for the abstract and details.

Previous Lectures:

February 20th, 2003

Current Issues in Second Language Classroom Research: Language Socialization, Participation, and Identity

Patricia A. Duff, University of British Columbia

Abstract

This presentation gives an overview of emerging sociocultural and narrative approaches to second-language (L2) classroom research influenced by current work in anthropology, sociology, and education. In contrast with earlier models of teaching/learning and earlier approaches to L2 classroom research, learning is viewed as (academic) enculturation, socialization, or apprenticeship into new discourse communities. Active participation in new practices is considered crucial to students' success, but the dynamics, complexity, and ecology of social/linguistic interaction in these classroom communities must also be factored in. Issues of student agency, access, and identity help explain variable levels of participation as well as variable outcomes in students' linguistic socialization. Examples from recent research in classroom contexts in Canada and the United States will illustrate these points. Finally, some implications of this line of research for models of L2 socialization are discussed.

 

Discourse Community, Genre and Expert Speaker: Studying Interlanguage Pragmatics within an ESP Framework

November 14, 2002 at 7:30 PM

Elaine Tarone, University of Minnesota

Abstract

Professor Tarone advocated the study of interlanguage pragmatics using key constructs associated with English for Special Purposes research: the constructs of discourse community, genre, and expert vs. novice speaker. She argued that the study of interlanguage discourse will be greatly improved if we utilize methods of genre analysis in an ESP tradition. Genre analysis documents the systematic interplay between language function and linguistic form in discourse genres whose characteristics are agreed upon by discourse community members, and must be learned by novice members. Novice and expert members of the discourse community may be native or non-native speakers of English, and appeal to the intuitions of expert members of the discourse community may usefully supplement the analysis of conversational data. Examples of IL pragmatics research using these ESP constructs include: a study demonstrating the nature of pragmatic failure in telephone requests by non-native hotel maids (Gibbs, 2001); a study tracing pragmatic failure in the social service intake interview to non-native speakers' lack of familiarity with appropriate script (Kuehn and Tarone, 2000); a study of the politeness strategies used by native and non-native writers in a business context (Maier, 1992), and several other studies documenting the development of pragmatic competence.

Age at Immigration and Second Language Proficiency Among Foreign-born Adults: Insights from U.S. Census Data

Gillian Stevens
Departments of Sociology and Advertising
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

October 10, 2002

Abstract
Sociologists typically assume that acquisition of English language skills follows opportunities and motivations to become proficient in English while many linguists argue that language acquisition may be governed by maturational constraints, possibly biologically based, that are tied to age at onset of language learning.  In this paper, I use U.S. census data to investigate the relationship between age at onset of second language learning and levels of English language proficiency among foreign-born adults in the United States. The overarching conclusion is that proficiency in a second language among adults is strongly related to age at immigration. Part of that relationship is attributable to social and demographic considerations tied to age at entry into a new country, and part of that relationship may be attributable to maturational constraints.

Researching the input, interaction and L2 development relationship: Modified output and working memory

Professor Alison Mackey
Department of Linguistics
Georgetown University
April 25, 2002

Abstract
A great deal of current SLA research on the role of input and interaction in the L2 learning process is investigating how interaction positively impacts L2 learning. This presentation will describe an empirical study of the relationship between working memory and modified output in order to illustrate how consideration of internal learner capacities may advance current research on L2 interaction.

A number of empirical studies have suggested that working memory may play a role in second language learning (N. Ellis, 1996; Ellis & Schmidt, 1997; Ellis & Sinclair, 1996; Harrington & Sawyer, 1992; Miyake & Friedman, 1998; Papagno, Valentine & Baddeley, 1991; Sawyer & Ranta, 2001; Service, 1992; Williams, 1999). Swain (1985, 1995) has argued that producing output may facilitate L2 learning in a number of ways, including encouraging syntactic processing, promoting automaticity and pushing learners to move to the "cutting edge" of their interlanguage abilities. Empirical second language acquisition research exploring the effects of interaction on learning has indicated a relationship between modifications that learners make to their output after receiving feedback during interaction and their L2 learning outcomes (Gass, Mackey & Pica, 1998). This study described in this presentation explores the relationship between L2 learners' working memory capacities and the sorts of modifications they make to their output following feedback during conversational interaction.

Psychometric tests of working memory capacity in the L1 and the L2 were administered to college level native English speaking learners of Spanish as a foreign language. The learners received interactional feedback from native Spanish speakers during 45-minute sessions of dyadic task-based interaction. The quantity, quality and linguistic objects of feedback were carefully controlled. Analyses investigated the amount and types of modifications that learners made to their output during interaction in the context of their scores on the working memory tests. The results show that learners with high working memory capacities were the ones who most often modified their original non-TL utterances following feedback, suggesting that an interesting relationship exists between learners' working memory capacities and their production of modified output during interaction.

The results are discussed in relation to findings from two other studies, which emphasize the importance of context in the interaction-feedback-L2 learning relationship. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of how consideration of both cognitive and contextual variables may collectively fuel future empirical explorations of the question of how interaction works.

Conversation Analysis as an approach to Second Language Acquisition: Old wine in new bottles?
Professor Gabi Kasper
Department of Second Language Sudies
University of Hawaii at Manoa
March 13, 2002

Abstract
Since its inception, second language acquisition (SLA) has been informed by sociolinguistics. Various forms of discourse analysis have been influential in SLA for the past 20 years. More recently, SLA has seen an upsurge of qualitative approaches originating in various social sciences, one of them being Conversation Analysis (CA). In order to choose judiciously from the increasing variety of sociolinguistic and discourse approaches, it is crucial for SLA researchers to understand the potential and limitations of such approaches for SLA. In this talk, I will discuss some of the specific contributions that CA can make to SLA and some of the problems involved in doing CA on L2 learner data.

Performance Consistency in Second Language Acquisition and Language Testing Research: A Conceptual Gap
Professor Dan Douglas
Department of English
Iowa State University
October 25, 2001

Abstract: Arguing from the premise that a language test is a special case of a second language acquisition device, I suggest that SLA and language testing share much common ground in terms of research methods, which have similar properties in that they are both used to make systematic observations of language performances from which inferences can be made about the state of a learner‚s interlanguage ability underlying the performance. However, I also argue that whereas the concept of demonstrating validity and reliability has been integrated into how language testing research is conducted, SLA researchers have generally failed to recognize the need to demonstrate these qualities. I compare examples of SLA and language testing research articles in terms of their treatment of validity and reliability and argue that it is important for SLA researchers to provide evidence that the methods they employ to elicit data are appropriate for the purposes intended, that the procedures provide stable and consistent data, and consequently that the interpretations they make of the results are justified.

Motivational aspects of studying foreign languages: Results of a national survey
Professor Zoltán Dörnyei
School of English Studies
University of Nottingham
January 16, 2002

Abstract
This talk presents the results of one of the biggest-ever attitudinal/motivational surveys conducted in the L2 field (N=8,593). In order to investigate how a rather turbulent period in Hungary that involved significant sociocultural changes (related to the fall of Communism) affected school children's language-related attitudes and language learning motivation during the 1990's, two consecutive surveys were conducted among 13/14-year-old pupils (in 1993 and at the very end of 1999). A novel element of the investigation was that it focused on five different target languages, English, German, French, Italian and Russian, which allowed cross-language comparisons. Furthermore, the repeated measure design made it possible to explore the changes that characterized the learners' motivation between the two phases of the survey. Data were collected from every part of the country, including tourist attractions, big cities and remote villages; thus, we are now in the unique position that we can provide a rounded description of the attitudinal/motivational setup of a whole speech community within a dynamic perspective.

The results shed light on a number of important issues: (a) the composition of L2 motivation and differences according to different target languages; (b) how motivation affects actual language choice (i.e. selecting an L2 for future studies) and expended effort; (c) gender differences; and (d) geopolitical factors affecting L2 motivation. With respect to the observed attitudinal/motivational changes, an unexpected but potentially very important finding was that during the examined period the learners' general language learning commitment showed a significant decline, with only English maintaining its position. This can be seen as a reflection of a more general 'language globalization' process, whereby the study of the world language (i.e. English) and that of other foreign languages show an increasingly deviating pattern. A related, but similarly surprising finding was that increased contact with foreigners and foreign cultural products (brought about by the liberalization of Hungarian politics and economy in the 1990's) did not result in the improvement of language attitudes but actually reduced the perceived quality of interethnic contact. The presentation will be concluded by discussing the practical implications of the results.

*outside speakers only

See Spring 2001 SLATE Lectures
See Fall 2000 SLATE Lectures
See Spring 2000 SLATE Lectures
See Fall 1999 SLATE Lectures