-SLRF 2000 PLENARIES-
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6:15-7:30 pm Thursday September 7
Ellen Bialystok, York University "Against Isolationism: Cognitive Perspectives on Second-Language Research" e-mail: ellenb@yorku.ca Research in second-language acquisition has traditionally been dichotomized by disciplinary perspectives. Notably, research emanating from linguistic theories has examined the structural properties of speech as learners acquire competence in a new language while research emanating from psychological theories has examined the processing features of representation and memory that are implicated in language learning. This bifurcated approach produces research that is difficult to relate across the perspectives. Consequently, a more complete understanding of how people learn and use a second language and the implications of that language for their cognitive abilities is impossible to achieve. I will review several issues in second-language acquisition research and bilingualism that can be more fruitfully addressed by incorporating cognitive theories of processing into linguistic descriptions of language competence. These issues include a discussion of the nature of language proficiency, the role of age and aging in the acquisition of a second language, and the impact of bilingualism on the cognitive development of young children. In all cases, principles of cognitive functioning will provide a framework for understanding specific linguistic outcomes. |
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5:45-7:00 pm Friday September 8
Claire Kramsch, University of California-Berkeley "What Can Foreign Language Learning Contribute to Second Language Research?" e-mail: ckramsch@socrates.berkeley.edu The canonical second language (SL) learner has been implicitly imagined to be an immigrant or someone from a Third World country learning a more prestigious language than his/her own for economic or professional gain, often on the basis of a relatively low level of literacy in his/her L1. The prototypical communicative situation has been the face-to-face exchange of information. By contrast, the canonical foreign language (FL) learner is well-educated, generally eager to go abroad, but with no desire to emigrate. The L1 is often perceived to be more or at least no less prestigious than the L2. Motivation in foreign language acquisition (FLA) varies from learner to learner, but foreign languages, when they are studied, are often viewed as part of a good liberal education. The prototypical language learning situation is the encounter with written texts. In the last 20 years, FL research has been heavily influenced by SL research, e.g., in its emphasis on the acquisition of spoken communication skills, information-processing strategies, discourse management techniques. However, several aspects of FLA are now being explored that owe more to its own specific nature. By highlighting national standards of grammatical and lexical appropriateness based on the formal, written use of L2, by associating the L2 with an historical national culture (C2) and its unique forms of symbolic capital, foreign language research has foregrounded aspects of language acquisition that have not been viewed as primary in SLA. For example: the acquisition of L2 literacy independent of any "special purpose" or even of the ability to speak the language (e.g., Kern, Bernhardt, Swaffar), the acquisition of (inter)cultural competence (e.g., Clyne, Byrnes, Byram, Bredella), the role of mediated activity and of technological media in FLA (e.g., Lantolf, Donato, Chun, Kern, Warschauer). Because FLA often takes place in departments of foreign language and literature, FLA research has also focussed on the metaphorical, symbolic, even ritualistic aspects of language use (e.g., Rampton, Cook), and on the relation of text and context in the creation of alternate realities (e.g., Kramsch). This paper will give a sense of the history, the current state and future perspectives of FLA research, and of what SL research can gain from viewing SLA from an FLA perspective. |
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5:45-7:00 pm Saturday September 9
Lynn Eubank, University of North Texas "Generative Research in L2 Acquisition: Some Whats, Where-Beens, and Whithers " e-mail: eubank@unt.edu In addition to research, I also do a fair amount of reviewing and teaching and just talking to students and colleagues. In doing so, I've run across a good number of well-meaning folks who hold views about generative grammar that are foreign to those who are involved in this kind of research. Though there are several common threads to these views, the ones I've run across most often are that "UG" is just a "belief," and that this "belief" can be rejected if (or because) it is not sensitive to learner variables like attitude, motivation, metalinguistic awareness, and the like. And so when the SLRF organizers asked if I'd do a plenary, I asked if it would be Ok for me to prepare not the usual kind of address, but rather to do some plain, old-fashioned teaching. My plan, then, is to try to explain some very fundamental matters concerning "UG" and generative research in L2 acquisition -- and, in doing so, to try to provide some answers to questions like the following:
My hope is to stimulate some thought and a good number of questions about these matters … and maybe a beer-and-pretzels session afterwards!
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10:45-12:00 pm Sunday September 10
Bonny Norton, University of British Columbia "Non-Participation, Imagined Communities, and the Language Classroom" e-mail: bonny.norton@ubc.ca A practice that has begun to receive some attention in the language education literature is that of resistance and non-participation in second and foreign language classrooms (Canagarajah, 1993, Giltrow and Calhoun, 1992, Lin, 1997; Rampton, 1995; Sharkey and Layzer, in press). In this paper, I draw on the work of Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998), in particular, to understand why two immigrant language learners, on two separate occasions, withdrew entirely from participation in their ESL classrooms. I argue that the learners' non-participation is best explained with reference to their investment in what I call their 'imagined communities'. I conceive of an imagined community as one to which a given language learner would most like to be affiliated - a community that may well be a reconstruction of past relationships. I demonstrate that a language learner's non-participation in a second language class may result from a disjuncture between the learner's imagined community and the teacher's curriculum goals. I link the discussion to learners' changing expectations of ESL courses, their shifting identities, and their unique desires for the future. I conclude that if we do not acknowledge the imagined communities of the learners in our classrooms, we may exacerbate their non-participation. At the same time, however, I argue that it may be problematic to celebrate this imagined community unconditionally. If learners' investments in an imagined community compromise their engagement with the wider target language community, in general, and second language classrooms, in particular, they raise important questions for teachers, learners, and researchers alike. |
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Last updated February 14, 2000.
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