Allen, Heather & Negueruela, Eduardo

 Austin, Theresa & Fariño, Yvonne

 Grabois, Howard

 Iddings, Ana Christina DaSilva, Rose, Brian, &  Teague, Brad

 Johnson, Neil H.

 Lantolf, James

 Lee, Jina

 Meizoso, Francisco

 Poehner, Matthew E.

 Peltier, Ilaria N.

 Rosborough, Alessandro  & McCafferty, Steve

   

 White, Benjamin

 Zhao, Jun Waugh, Lin, Specker, Beth, & Zhao, Jun

Promoting Pedagogical Expertise in Graduate Students:

Dynamic Assessment and Teacher Training

Heather Allen (hallen@miami.edu) & Eduardo Negueruela (enegueruela@miami.edu)

University of Miami

Department of Modern Languages & Literatures

     Research on cognition and classroom practices among foreign language teachers has established the significant influences of teachers’ prior experiences as FL learners, professional coursework, and classroom teaching practice yet has not articulated the connections among these influences. Watzke (2007) claims there is a limited understanding of the process of becoming a FL teacher, and, in particular, during the first years when practices and beliefs about the classroom context are initially solidified. In practical terms, FL departments traditionally rely on an approach for training graduate students including a one-semester methodology course on FL teaching taken either prior to or simultaneously with the first semester of teaching often representing the only substantial opportunity for development of pedagogical expertise. Pfeiffer (2002) contested this arrangement’s validity and explained it may shortchange graduate students who need to develop a pedagogical stance that draws on substantive pedagogy and language education and not just experiential knowledge.

     Based on the Sociocultural Theory of Mind (Vygotsky 2004) this qualitative study explores the development of novice TAs’ cognition in relation to FL teaching and applies dynamic assessment procedures (Sternberg and Grigorenko 2002, Lantolf and Poehner 2004) to the concrete practices of teacher education and supervision. The following questions frame the study: 1) Do novice TAs apply pedagogical knowledge from coursework on FL teaching to their own classroom practices and, if so, how?  and 2)  How can teacher supervision and specifically the use of dynamic assessment assist in the development of principled practice based on pedagogical content knowledge and not mere experiential knowledge? Data collected during Spring 2007 and Fall 2007 will be presented to illustrate how DA principles and procedures can be utilized to foster development of pedagogical expertise in a university FL context.

References

Lantolf, J. P. and Poehner, M. E. (2004) Dynamic Assessment of L2 development: Bringing the Past into the future.           Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1, 1: 49-72

Pfeiffer, P. C. (2002) Preparing graduate students to teach literature and language in a foreign language department.          ADFL Bulletin 34: 11-14.

Sternberg, R. J. and Grigorenko, E. L. (2002) Dynamic Testing. The Nature and Measurement of Learning Potential.          Cambridge: Cambridge UP

Vygotsky, L. S. (2004) Thought and word. In Robert W. Rieber and David K. Robinson (eds.) The Essential Vygotsky. New York: Kluwer Academic and Plenum Press Publishers.

Watzke, J. L. (2007) Foreign Language pedagogical knowledge: toward a developmental theory of beginning teacher practices. Modern Language Journal 91, i, 63-82

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Learning the Language of Other to Mediate Social Relations and Worlds-

Examination of  Teachers' Language Learning

Theresa Austin, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Yvonne Fariño, Springfield School District

     Vygotsky's legacy guides research theorizing connections between social, cognitive and linguistic realities that shape an individual (mind) in society and contributes to models of second language learning, particularly in appropriation of grammar that requires new metacognitions. Hence we wondered how teachers' language learning can shift conceptual orientations to affect social change in multilingual /multicultural classrooms, particularly in contexts of oppressive power relations. When privileged users of one code learn codes of the Other, what social cognitions and language practices are constructed? Pedagogically, how can Vygotskian theory be useful to guide instruction towards more emancipatory agenda for subjugated knowledges? We draw on critical, postcolonial, and sociocultural constructs of Other and Vygotskian "mediation" and "appropriation" to inform an analysis of teachers' learning of a subjugated language through interactions with the Other.

     We collected ethnographic data in roles as co-instructors and participant- observers with teachers over five years. Class notes, interviews, lesson transcripts, and portfolios of learning provide us with rich interaction data. From these data, we tentatively code and categorize types of learners to analyze how each type appropriates the Other's language, under what conditions of mediation, to what extent, and with what consequences.

     Using classroom activity as a unit, video data analysis indicates a range of learner appropriation that includes resistance. As mediators, we include analysis of our language use together with teachers' language use. Portfolios of teacher learning across time are linguistically marked; analysis overtime of these markers show their potential to lead to or hinder building more communicative coherence and alternative competing subjectivities. Through portfolios' content analysis, different outcomes are visible and indicative of learners' relations to the Other's cultural resources and worlds. Our project identified strong subjectivities formed within these intensive sessions and the range of linguistic appropriations provide a window for understanding insights gained from  teachers-as-learners.

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Student beliefs in relation to theories of mind and learning

Howard Grabois

East Carolina University

Applied linguistics has historically seen a number of theories of learning/acquisition in relation to very diverse conceptions of and beliefs about mind and cognition. Often these have been used to inform and even determine language pedagogies, at times in ways that have imposed narrow and even exclusive interpretations of cognition on the learning process. Methodologies are then directed towards and at times imposed on students, who in turn have their own belief systems (generated in relation to their personal experience, as well as in relation to their historical and institutional situations.) In this study student reflections on a variety of open-ended questions designed to allow access to their beliefs about language learning will be analyzed. These will then be discussed in relation to different theoretical orientations, including SCT, not as a means of determining the validity (or lack thereof) of specific theories, but rather as a way of acknowledging the centrality of student agency in the language learning process. Topics range from practical issues such as the usefulness of pair/group work or the importance of studying grammar, to more abstract issues such as the relationship between language and culture, or how learner autonomy influences the learning process. Perhaps of greatest importance will be an enhanced understanding of student orientations in relation to activity systems where they are often afforded minimal voice regarding objectives, goals or the concrete construction of learning environments. 

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A Design Approach to Research on Teacher Development in Two ESL Settings

Ana Christina DaSilva Iddings, Brian Rose, & Brad Teague

For this study we drew on the application of sociocultural theory to second language learning and teaching (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), and particularly on Vygotsky’s (1978) conceptualizations of internalization and the Zone of Proximal Development, to examine the impact of a teacher development program on the language and literacy learning for recent-immigrant L2 students (less than 2 years in the U.S.).  We followed the Design Research Methodology (Brown, 1992; Collins, 1999) which closely aligns with Vygotsky’s articulations of theory as method, and is  “simultaneously prerequisite and product, or the tool and the result of the study" (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 65). As such, the Design Research Methodology aims to derive theoretical suppositions relating to the process of learning as well as the means by which this process is supported (Cobb, et. al. 2003). This is accomplished by addressing research questions as related to the enactment of interventions. Then, through detailed description and analysis of these interventions, researchers, in collaboration with practitioners in the field, can expand the base of usable knowledge (Lagemann, 2002) educators draw upon in their classrooms.

Following this approach, we were particularly interested in examining a series of interventions (e.g., teacher/researcher study groups) in relationship to thethe (a) shifts in teacher thinking about language and literacy learning for L2 students, (b) the design and innovations of pedagogical practices, and (c) the ways by which these shifts in thinking and innovations in practice brought about new forms of language and literacy learning.

A similar study was subsequently conducted to examine the professional development of novice teachers who volunteered for a community-based adult ESL program that served local immigrant and refugee populations. Our presentation will provide an overview of both studies and compare findings.

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Genre as Concept in the ESL Writing Classroom: A Case Study

Neil H. Johnson

Assistant Professor

University of Aizu, Japan

     In this paper, I will present part of the findings from a semester long action-research project in which an ESL writing syllabus was implemented according to pedagogical principles suggested by Activity Theory, specifically in the work of educational psychologists Gal’perin (1998, 2002) and Davydov (1984, 1990).

     The background to the study is an ongoing debate in the second language writing field regarding the role of explicit language instruction in writing pedagogy.  The process approach is widely adopted in the American context, yet the perception exists that this approach may be detrimental to ESL and minority students (Martin, 1998).

     A sociocultural perspective offers a clear way forward for this debate and points to the importance of correctly organized and fully explicit instruction.  Indeed, both Gal’perin and Davydov’s approaches were essentially concerned with learning as the gradual internalization of material actions in the context of the meaningful goal-oriented activities of teaching and learning. Their research and pedagogy call attention to the importance of cultural tools and social interaction in cognitive development.

     This well-structured classroom approach, then, assumes that the scientific concept is the appropriate unit for pedagogical intervention and emphasizes three central tenets of a concept-based approach to instruction: abstract to the concrete, materialization, and verbalization.

     In the reported research, Coe’s (1994) description of ‘genre as ecology’ was the central concept presented to the students, and various activities and exercises were designed in keeping with the principles guiding this investigation.  The presentation will offer a detailed description of the student writers’ collaborative interactions and a developmental analysis, both qualitative and quantitative, of the written texts produced.  The results of this study provide further insight into the potential for concept-based approach to enhance collaboration and instruction in the L2 writing classroom.

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Dialectics and SLA: Putting Things Back Together

Jim Lantolf

The Pennsylvania State University

L2 researchers have increasingly recognized the relevance of social factors in the learning process. However, not everyone agrees on precisely how to bring “the social” into the picture in a theoretically coherent way. Those with a strong “cognitivist” orientation acknowledge that learning takes place in social interaction, but they argue that interaction itself does not and indeed cannot explain the learning process. Mackey (2006: 375) suggests, for example, that interaction researchers might be able to gain greater insight into the acquisition process “if they began to take up the design challenges involved in incorporating the insights and questions of those who focus on social context.” As Gass (1998) explains, however, there remains a fundamental distinction between language learning and language use and so at the end of the day, the “object of inquiry is in large part an internal, mental process” (Long 1997: 319). Researchers with a more sociolinguistic slant, such as Tarone (2000) and Preston (1996) nevertheless continue to “wrestle” with social context and are strongly committed to finding a way to integrate it into the learning process. Firth and Wagner (1997), for their part, argue that the language use/language learning dualism makes no sense and propose, following Vygotsky, that social factors indeed play a role in psychological processes. I believe that this position has some merit and has the best chance of “putting social and psychological processes (back) together.”  In the present paper, I want to explore the implications of a dialectical approach to L2 learning—an approach that assumes an organic unity of social and psychological processes. One immediate consequence of this perspective is that mental processes are not necessarily carried out inside of the head nor are social processes necessarily carried out outside of the head. This is because inside-outside is an orientation toward that processes that emerges from the MIND IS CONTAINER metaphor rooted in Cartesian dualism. And it further assumes that the individual is the point of departure for all of the interesting processes related to learning. It then tries to find ways of integrating the individual into the social milieu (e.g., sociolinguistics, pragmatics, speech act theory, etc.). A dialectic approach takes the collective as its point of departure and understands that the individual is already woven into the collective fabric from the outset and never leaves it. A metaphor that captures the dialectical orientation is the WORLD IS A TAPESTRY.  In proposing an alternative approach, I am not claiming that previous research is wrong. I am claiming, however, that dialectics gives us a different way of looking at the processes that we are interested in and as such allows us to see things that other perspectives do not see. In the presentation I will outline the principles of dialectics in general; I will then discuss the implications of these for how we can reconceptualize language and the learning process. In this regard I will explore the relevance of the integrationist (Harris 2003) perspective on language and communication. I will consider data that demonstrates that the head is not the unique site of L2 learning and that the processes encompasses bodies and others that simultaneously have social and psychological status.

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Language alternation in L2 speakers’ private speech

Jina Lee

Sangmyung University

Seoul, Korea

In Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, this data set shows how language alternation is used by L2 speakers as a mediational tool in their solitary exam preparation activity. In order to investigate the functions of language alternation in private speech, both oral and written forms of private speech in their L1 (Korean) and L2 (English) are closely examined.

Seven Korean-English bilingual students at a North American university participated in this study. The participants were engaged in the activities of self studies to prepare for their midterm exams in biology. During the activities, participants were internalizing both subject matters (i.e., biology) and English language by using language alternation between Korean and English. During the participants’ solitary exam preparation activity two types of private speech have been identified in the data. One is oral form of private speech (PS, henceforth, and please note that ‘private speech’ is a cover term that includes both PS and PW in this presentation), and the other is written form of private speech (PW, henceforth) accompanied PS. The main function of private speech was self-regulation. Language alternation in the PS data was mixing two languages within a sentence or a clause in a form of oral translation, which was inserting English biological terms within a Korean clausal structure. This type of language alternation supports Myers-Scotton’s ‘matrix language frame model.’ This use of language alternation shows the locality in its characteristics depending on the participant’s cognitive process, noticing the ways in which L1 and L2 occurs in interpersonal interaction as mediational tools in the cognitive process. Interestingly however, English was mainly used rather than Korean in the PW data including drawings. Therefore, I attempt to correlate this interesting tendency of language alternation in PS and PW, and to explain the individual Korean-English bilingual participants’ thought process in learning.

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Thought and Language: From Gesture to Sign

Francisco Meizoso

University of Massachusetts Amherst

fran@spanport.umass.edu

Sign languages do not have writing systems of their own. When deaf people write they create meaning in a second language. Taking Slobin’s (1996) Thinking-for-Speaking framework and Sociocultural Theory (see Lantolf and Thorne, 2006), which understands language as a tool for cognition which implies that changing a language may change cognition too, this work-in-progres studies the relationship between thought and language in the narratives of hearing and deaf people in oral and sign languages.

More specifically, the purpose of this study is to analyze the description of motion events (see Talmy, 2000) in Spanish and Spanish Sign Language aiming to explore any differences in the way movement is perceived, seen, and expressed through language. These possible differences are important not only for Second Language researchers but also for those concerned with the education of deaf people.

Data presented comes from oral, verbal and writing samples of the narratives of two groups of participants: hearing individuals born to deaf parents who learned Spanish Sign Language growing up, and deaf individuals who learned to write in Spanish through schooling. Finally, performances are also compared to those of Spanish monolinguals.

References

Lantolf, J.P. and Thorne, S. L. (2006) Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development.           Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Slobin, D. (1996). From thought and Language to thinking for speaking. In Gumperz, S.and S. Levinson (eds.)           Rethinking Linguistics Relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Talmy, L., (2000) Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol. II: Typology and processes in concept structuring. Cambridge,           MA: MIT Press.

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Dynamic Assessment and the Problem of Validity

Matthew E. Poehner

The Pennsylvania State University

Conventional approaches to psychoeducational assessment advocate observation of individuals’ performance in isolation from others and usually from various cultural artefacts (e.g., calculators, dictionaries, grammar references, computers) that might impact their success or failure. The tradition of privileging solo performance as an appropriate and sufficient indicator of individuals’ abilities can be traced to psychology’s adoption of methodologies devised in the natural sciences, and ultimately to a dualistic conceptualization of the relation between humans as autonomous agents and the world they inhabit (Hornstein 1988).  Thus, assessors regard solo performance as necessary to obtaining an uncontaminated representation of individuals’ cognitive abilities – interaction obscures the view of abilities and knowledge and introduces test methods effects (Bachman 1990).  Psychometric constructs, including reliability, validity, and generalizability, are predicated upon this model of obtaining pure samples of abilities as they exist in the heads of individuals.  However, assessment professionals are increasingly concerned with the social contexts and uses of assessment (see McNamara & Roever 2006).  Discussions of validity, in particular, now emphasize ethical interpreations of assessment performance and consideration of the social consequences of assessment (Messick 1989).  This presentation reconsiders validity from a Vygotskian perspective.  Vygotsky’s approach to assessment, known as Dynamic Assessment (DA), emerges from a radically different ontology that understands the social world not as a backdrop to performance but as the source of development of abilities, including language.  In DA, the assessor, or mediator, collaborates with learners and offers hints, prompts, and leading questions to support them as they engage in tasks they cannot successfully complete independently.  Understanding abilities through DA does not involve measuring solo performance but actively helping individuals to stretch beyond their current level of functioning.  In this way, DA compels us to shift from a view of assessment-as-measurement (for classifying, labelling, accepting, rejecting, rewarding, and punishing individuals) to one of assessment-as-activism, where the goal is to support learners’ maturing abilities and to foster learner agency.  Framed within Messick’s unified model of validity, DA underscores the inadequacy of treating interpretations and consequences as separate from the assessment procedure itself because in DA both are integral to the dynamics of moment-by-moment mediator-learner interactions.  Moreover, the outcome of a DA procedure necessarily addresses learner development above all else.

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Mimesis: A Study of Post-Secondary Instructors of Italian as a Foreign Language

and Their Students' Perceptions

Ilaria N. Peltier

peltieri@unlv.nevada.edu

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

The purpose of this study is to examine the use of mimesis as it relates to identity by teachers of foreign languages. Specifically, data from Italian instructors of Italian as a foreign language at a community college was analyzed. This study is primarily intended to consider the nature of identity-related mimesis used by these instructors. Student usage of mimesis is also considered. Our hope, through this study, is to be able to gain a better understanding of what mimesis is in relation to identity and discuss the methods used to analyze mimesis in the classroom. In addition the study demonstrates the patterns of identity-related mimesis observed, some implications we can draw on, especially in the context of classrooms and pedagogy, and what research is still needed to further our understanding of mimesis as it relates to identity in the second-language classroom.

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Foreigner Talk Gesture

Alessandro Rosborough

rosboro@unlv.nevada.edu

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Steve McCafferty

mccaffes@unlv.nevada.edu

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Foreigner Talk (FT) is a well-known feature of native speaker interaction with non-native speakers, the purpose of which is thought to initiate from a desire to enhance comprehension and facilitate discourse in face-to-face contexts. Although L2 gesture researchers have recognized that gesture and other nonverbal features of interaction align with this function and with FT production, no one as yet, as least that we are aware of, has examined the interface of gesture and FT with an eye to SCT concerns. In this paper, we hope to make a start towards this end. This will entail, first of all, a change in focus from FT as a form of input to its role in the social construction of meaning. Also, to be considered will be the interface of speech and gesture. It seems possible, for example, that FT is misnamed, that is, that this form of communication may have more to do with mimetic, nonverbal representation than the modification of speech.

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Dialectic-Dialogic: A Discussion

Leo vanLier & Steve Thorne

     For this session, Leo and Steve will act as facilitators of an open discussion on dialectics and dialogics in relation to theory and practice.

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Reconceptualizing Instruction of the English Article System

Benjamin White

     English language learners, especially those whose first languages do not possess articles, often struggle with the English articles a, an, and the.  A glance at most ESL grammar books would likely reveal a list of seemingly arbitrary rules regarding articles.  Is the article system in English simply too complex to be mastered by adult language learners?  Or does the problem lie elsewhere – in how this grammar point is treated in the classroom and in instructional materials?

     Rather than a laundry list of rules (to which exceptions are regularly found), what is needed is a systematic framework for conceptualizing article use.  Drawing on Sociocultural Theory and accepting Lantolf and Thorne’s (2006) call for “concept-based pedagogical instruction” (p.308), I offer an alternative to standard article instruction.  Like Negueruela’s (2003) work with aspect in Spanish, I seek to provide learners with a means to adjust – in Gal’perin’s terms – their orienting basis of an action (Haenen, 1996).  To present a conceptual framework, one that schematizes potential interpretations of articles in use, is to offer learners a tool to cut through the cluttered landscape of exceptions. 

     Consider telling students to use the when talking about a river (e.g., the Potomac) and no article when talking about a lake (e.g., Lake Michigan).  As a rule of thumb this works relatively well.  But what happens when the Great Salt Lake is encountered?  Unlike the existing mess of multiple rules and multiple exceptions, which learners are asked to memorize, a unified conceptual framework 1) facilitates exploration of the semantics and pragmatics of individual noun phrases and 2) evokes systematicity in conceptualization.  By mapping noun phrases onto an underlying schema for article use, learners can identify both consistency and subtlety in meaning.

     In this praxis session, I will propose a conceptual framework for article use and discuss pedagogical applications

.

References

Haenen, J. (1996). Piotr Gal’perin: Psychology in Vygotsky’s Footsteps. New York: Nova Science Publishers.

Lantolf, J. P. & Thorne, S. L. (2006). Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development.           Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Negueruela, E. (2003). A sociocultural approach to the teaching and learning of second languages:           systematic-theoretical instruction and L2 development. PhD dissertation.  Pennsylvania State University,           University Park, PA.

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Metaphor and Metonymy in Spontaneous, Co-Speech Gestures

Lin Waugh, Beth Specker, & Jun Zhao

As a powerful cognitive tool, metaphor is used in the educational setting to simplify abstract knowledge for learners and to aid in the co-construction of meaning in conversations (Corts and Pollio, 1999; Ungerer and Schmidt, 1996; Wee, 2005). Gesture, the material carrier of thought, can represent abstract concepts in a visual mode (Enfield, 2005; Nunez and Sweetser, 2006; McNeill, 2005; Mittelberg, 2003). Since speakers tend to draw on multimodal resources (Mittelberg and Waugh, in press), metaphors (verbal resource) and gestures (manual resource) could be important mediational tools in the conceptual development process (Lantolf and Throne, 2006).

The first study (by Linda Waugh) reports on co-speech gestures used by (applied) linguists when lecturing about abstract grammatical concepts.  The gestures are highly complex since they use metonymy to convey more concrete metaphors associated with the grammatical concepts.  This means that in the case of symbolic mediation, we have to recognize a complex interpretive chain by the viewer: first metonymy, then metaphor.

In a separate study (by Elizabeth Specker) in which the metonymy-metaphor co-speech gesture is found in an L2 context, participants in a study used abstract and concrete gestures to co-construct meaning in retell protocols.  L2 speakers of English used metonymical gestures to mediate meaning with the interlocutor as well as metaphorical gestures showing possible internalization and reproduction of lexical items.

The third study (by Jun Zhao) reports on metaphors and gestures (naturally occurring data) of four writing instructors and 24 ESL students regarding EAP (English for academic purposes) writing conventions in composition classes at an American university, to pinpoint the importance of analyzing gestures and metaphors in totality to concretize abstract mental representations. Linearity, hierarchy, link, building, container and journey metaphors are commonly represented in the instruction to highlight EAP writing conventions. Although students do not produce equivalent metaphors verbally, their gestures reveal similar patterns regarding EAP writing as those demonstrated in the instruction. This correspondence provides proof that the students have acquired the rhetorical patterns of EAP writing, possibly via the metaphors and gestures they are exposed to. In the final interview, ESL students created different metaphors for academic writing in English and in their first language, such as pyramid and book metaphors. Those different metaphors could indicate they have reconceptualized writing patterns in their L2.  This study corroborates the finding that metaphors are important pedagogical tools when the teaching content is about abstract concepts and knowledge. Compared with metaphors, the usefulness of gestures does not seem to be well perceived by students, even though gestures might take a more prominent role in instructional, expository discourse than in other types.

References

Lantolf & Thorne

McNeill

Mittelberg & Waugh

Zhao (dissertation)

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