Researchers and Instructors Need to Talk to One Another!

This month we are publishing L2 Grammatical Representation and Processing edited by Deborah Arteaga. In this post the editor explains what motivated her to put the book together.

Too often, there is a divide between second-language (L2) researchers and L2 instructors. With a few exceptions, L2 research is typically highly theoretical and has no clear practical application for the L2 classroom. Yet this is unfortunate, because ideally, cutting-edge L2 research should inform pedagogy, and L2 instructors’ experience in the classroom should be incorporated into research studies. In other words, the world of researchers and that of instructors should intersect instead of being separate from one another. Too often, researchers are not concerned with pedagogy, and instructors are often frustrated when there seems to be a disconnect between L2 studies written only for specialists and real-world issues in the classroom.

My motivation in writing this book was to bridge that gap, in that all of the chapters are grounded in theory, but are accessible to specialists and non-specialists alike. The highly theoretical chapters (Achimova & Déprez, Chapter 1; Dekydtspotter & Gilbert, Chapter 4)  have pedagogical implications, which I summarize in the Conclusion chapter. Some chapters frame the results of their studies in terms of pedagogy (Ayoun, Chapter 3; Sagarra, Chapter 5; Vainikka & Young-Scholten, Chapter 6). Other chapters directly link their studies to the classroom (Arteaga & Herschensohn, Chapter 2; Yaden, Chapter 7). All chapters will be of interest to researchers and instructors alike.

It is my hope that this book will serve as a model for future volumes, so that researchers take into account classroom experience, and that instructors will glean pedagogical tips from theoretical research, even if they are not spelled out explicitly. In other words, researchers and instructors need to talk to one another!

 

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Mind Matters in SLA edited by Clare Wright, Thorsten Piske and Martha Young-Scholten.

A Manifesto for Decolonising Multilingualism

Dear Colleagues, Readers and Accomplices in the work of Decolonising Multilingualism,

This blog post makes available the Manifesto for Decolonising Multilingualism, which is taken from my book of that title. It’s available as a download/e-pamphlet but like any decolonising task, and any academic work, this was neither the work of one individual nor is it complete. As Francis Nyamanjoh says in his recent article (2019), ‘Decolonising the University in Africa’[1] the work ahead, as with its decolonising antecedents, requires

a convivial scholarship that dwells less on zero-sum games of absolute winners and losers, encourages a disposition of incompleteness and humility through the reality of the ubiquity of debt and indebtedness, and finds strength in themes of interconnections, interdependences, compositeness, and incompleteness […].

In this spirit we would like you to add to the manifesto as an activity for the commons, engaging in dialogue, disputing and creating additional ideas, stories and reflections which may benefit the hard common task of decolonising multilingualism, not least in our teaching and learning in universities.

Alison Phipps

You can freely access and download A Short Manifesto for Decolonising Multilingualism here. Please do feel free to use the comments section of this blog post to continue the conversation.

 

For more information about Decolonising Multilingualism please see our website.

 

 

 

[1] Nyamanjoh, Francis ‘Decolonising the University in Africa’ in OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, Oxford University Press, 2019.

Using Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis in Research on Teaching

Next month we are publishing The Embodied Work of Teaching edited by Joan Kelly Hall and Stephen Daniel Looney. In this post the editors tell us more about the methodology used in the research for this book.

The Embodied Work of Teaching is based on the premise that language teaching is sophisticated, professional work. Such work has typically been represented in the literature as propositional knowledge about teaching. Numerous essays and books exist that tell teachers how they should teach, e.g. ‘connect to students’ experiences’, ‘maintain everyone’s attention’, ‘promote student participation, and ‘be prepared for contingencies.’ Missing from this abundant literature, however, are studies on how teaching is actually accomplished. This volume addresses this gap by showcasing studies that document in rich empirical detail the complex, embodied achievement of language teaching in a variety of instructional settings.

The studies draw on the theoretical foundations and methodological tools of ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA). A dominant approach to the study of social action, EMCA considers the nature and source of human sociality to be fundamentally cooperative, locally accomplished, and grounded in real-world activity. The purpose of EMCA research on teaching is to describe the natural features of classroom life as they are actually produced by teachers and students without reducing them to collections of discrete, insignificant acts. Data-driven and analytically inductive, EMCA relies on a set of robust transcription conventions to identify and describe the fine-grained details of the specialized actions of teaching, the learner actions they engender and the larger pedagogical projects they accomplish.

As demonstrated in the studies in this volume, in addition to instructing or directing others, language teaching involves the ongoing management of alignment, affiliation and multiple participant frameworks through the simultaneous and sequential coordination of numerous embodied resources in addition to language, including body positions, facial expressions, gaze, gesture, and objects in the environment. The studies are not offered as exemplars of best practices; that is, they do not claim to showcase how teaching should be accomplished. Rather, they demonstrate how it is accomplished in particular settings, by particular teachers with particular pedagogical goals and with particular students. As instructive descriptions of the interactional, embodied achievement of teaching, the studies offer to scholars of teaching, teacher educators, teachers and other stakeholders the opportunity to see and understand the sophisticated practices of teaching in new and potentially transformative ways.

 

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting you might also like Objects, Bodies and Work Practice edited by Dennis Day and Johannes Wagner.

How Can We Represent Social Life in Ethnographic Writing?

This month we published Voices of a City Market: An Ethnography by Adrian Blackledge and Angela Creese. In this post the authors explain how they put the book together.

Which differences are salient to people when they interact in contexts of social and linguistic diversity? How are these differences made resourceful in communication as people draw on their biographies, histories, education, language backgrounds, and economic capital? We examined these questions by conducting ethnographic observations in the Bull Ring market in Birmingham, as part of a four-year AHRC-funded research project, ‘Translation and Translanguaging. Investigating linguistic and cultural transformations in superdiverse wards in four UK cities’.

In the market we observed interactions between butchers and their customers as they haggled, bartered, argued, and joked. We wrote field notes, audio-recorded service interactions, interviewed market traders, took photographs, video-recorded, and collected messages on WeChat and WhatsApp. Communication in the market was characterized by translanguaging, an orientation to difference in which people were willing to make use of whatever resources were available to make themselves understood. Not that everything in the market hall was convivial – everyday sexism and casual racism also raised their heads.

The material we collected was carefully analysed. Transcripts and translations were pored over and annotated, audio-recordings listened to, video-recordings repeatedly watched, online and digital messages scrutinized, photographs examined, discussions held. Reports were authored, academic articles published. However, content is only half of the story. We were concerned that conventional academic writing may not adequately represent the complexity and richness of the discourse of the superdiverse market. So we stripped away analysis, explanation, and exegesis, leaving the voices of traders, shoppers, and researchers to speak for themselves. Rather than structure the ethnography around big ideas and grand theories, we represented the world of the market as an assemblage of ethnographic material, a polyphonic collage of everyday voices and social practices.

In the book the life of the market is framed by a discussion in which a cast of nine characters debates the representation of social life. Two butchers, a photographer, a professor, a dramaturg, an entrepreneur, a researcher, a documentary novelist, and a poet rehearse many of the debates that surfaced in our research team over more than four years. Referring to the artistic production of the world of the market, their voices are thoughtful, opinionated, generous, biased, indignant, and collaborative. The same characters return at the end of the book to reflect on the text.

The assemblage of ethnographic material creates a polyphony of beliefs, commitments, and ideologies. The form of the text, at once poetic and scientific, represents the fragmented yet orderly cacophony of the market. Artistic form, argues Bakhtin (1984: 43), does not shape already prepared and found content, “but rather permits content to be found and seen for the first time”. In the terms of photographer Dorothea Lange (1965), calling attention to the mundane, the everyday, the familiar, enables people to see, as if for the first time, what they have passed by a thousand times. We hope to achieve something of this sort in Voices of a City Market: An Ethnography.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (Edited and translated by C. Emerson). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Lange, D. (1965) Under the Trees. KQED for National Educational Television (NET).

 

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Decolonising Multilingualism by Alison Phipps.

“As Diversity Grows, So Must We”: Teaching and Learning in the Multilingual Classroom

This month we published Using Linguistically Appropriate Practice: A Guide for Teaching in Multilingual Classrooms by Roma Chumak-Horbatsch. In this post the author tells us what to expect from the book.

“You can banish the mother tongue from the classroom – but you cannot banish it from students’ heads.” [1] 

Schools, early learning centres and educational programs worldwide are becoming increasingly language-rich. This means that learners in these contexts come from a variety of language backgrounds. It also means that many have little (or no) proficiency in the language of program or curriculum delivery. In response to this linguistic diversity, teachers are reviewing and rethinking their tried-and-true teaching strategies and asking the following questions:

• What is the best way to teach learners from different language backgrounds?
• I am not a language teacher. What do I do?
• How do I communicate with silent newcomers?
• How can I integrate them into the life of the classroom?
• How can I help them learn the school language and participate in the curriculum?

This book directly addresses these questions and provides teachers with direction and concrete guidance. It builds on and extends the original Linguistically Appropriate Practice, or LAP[2], a multilingual teaching approach that upsets and challenges the traditional separation of languages, restores home languages to their rightful place as important language learning “allies”[3] and uses learners’ prior knowledge as a starting point in learning.

Here are the highlights of Using Linguistically Appropriate Practice: A Guide for Teaching in Multilingual Classroom.

• Explains multilingual pedagogy, provides LAP basics and characterizes the LAP teacher
• Helps readers better understand the theory-practice connection: a tree image (LAP Tree) is used to explain the link between multilingual practice and the language and learning theories that support this inclusive and open teaching approach.
• Includes voices from the field: the numerous testimonials, journeys and classroom experiences of over 50 professionals (teachers-in-training, classroom teachers, special program teachers, school principals and a language consultant), working in language-rich schools and specialized programs in seven countries (Canada, Finland, Germany, India, Luxembourg, Iceland and Sweden) showcase how multilingual teaching plays out in real learning contexts
• Invites teachers working in language-rich classrooms to rethink and review their current practice, shift their teaching from the local to the global and adopt Linguistically Appropriate Practice
• Facilitates the adoption of multilingual pedagogy: the LAP guide is intended to help teachers identify, position and plan their multilingual work. Each of the six blocks of the guide includes “how to” suggestions and tips. Beginning with practice review and reflection, the LAP map guides teachers to retool their teaching, move away from monolingual practice and take the multilingual turn
• Provides invaluable discussion about the following issues and challenges identified and raised by multilingual teachers: the “silent period”, a largely misunderstood and never-before explained behaviour of newcomer learners; engaging all children in the multilingual agenda; children’s unwillingness to use their home language in the classroom; understanding speakers of “little known” languages and partnering with families
• Contains a treasure trove of resources: the book’s lists, websites, suggestions and ideas found in the Resources chapter and also in the Appendix will enrich and extend teachers’ multilingual agendas

This is an exciting time to be a teacher! The language richness found in schools is changing the way teaching and learning happen. It is a call for action, inviting teachers to review their current practice, discover the language richness of their learners, change their teaching direction, open their hearts and their doors to languages and transform their classrooms into multilingual hubs where the languages of all learners are seen, heard and included in the curriculum. Using Linguistically Appropriate Practice: A Guide for Teaching in Multilingual Classrooms is a teaching tool that will help teachers in this multilingual teaching adventure.

Share your multilingual journey with the author:

Roma Chumak-Horbatsch – rchumak@ryerson.ca

[1] Butzkamm, W. (2003). We only learn language once. The role of the mother tongue in FL classrooms: death of a dogma. Language Learning Journal, 28, 29-39.

[2] Chumak-Horbatsch. R. (2012). Linguistically Appropriate Practice: Working with Young Immigrant Children.  Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

[3] Butzkamm, W. (2003). We only learn language once. The role of the mother tongue in FL classrooms: death of a dogma. Language Learning Journal, 28, 29-39.

 

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism by Colin Baker.

Second Language Learners in a Study Abroad Context

This month we published Study Abroad, Second Language Acquisition and Interculturality edited by Martin Howard. In this post the editor tells us what we can expect from the book.

As its title indicates, this volume focuses on second language learners in a study abroad context, an ever-growing student cohort in our education institutions. Students who embark on study abroad, be it over a couple of weeks or a much longer period, do so with the folk-belief that study abroad is highly beneficial in various respects, such as for language learning, educational and academic development, social and personal development, and intercultural development. However, research has shown that the experience on the ground during the students’ stay abroad is often complex and challenging. In the context of international education, there is growing awareness of the necessity to address the needs of study abroad learners, as well as to better inform all involved in the study abroad enterprise of the challenges of a study abroad experience, and in so doing, contribute to enhancing the student’s experience abroad.

Against this background, this book adds to the existing literature in the field which has grown from an initial primary focus on language development during study abroad, to subsequent research efforts to capture the wide-ranging factors underlying the student’s experience abroad. Such more recent work highlights the individual nature of the student’s experience abroad, with multiple individual personal and social factors shaping the experience. This book presents a mix of both empirical studies and discussion chapters which showcase recent work in the field with a focus on innovative issues and themes across students from a range of language backgrounds. The focus includes, for example, social network development and integration during study abroad, study abroad in a lingua franca context, identity development, and language engagement in relation to input and interaction issues in a study abroad context. Other innovative areas of focus include students on an international work placement and cultural migrants, while intercultural issues are also considered.

Taken together, the chapters highlight the interface between study abroad research and the fields of second language acquisition and interculturality, where there are mutual insights to be gained. These include not only better informing study abroad practitioners and participants, but also offering insights into theoretical and applied questions across the fields, such as in relation to the more global impact of learning context on language acquisition and intercultural development, as well as factors at play like language input and interaction issues and the role of individual and social factors.

In a world where foreign language and intercultural skills assume increasing importance in our globalised world, the book reflects work by members of and participants in the SAREP Project (Study Abroad Research in European Perspective), funded in 2016-20 by the European COST agency (Cooperation in Science and Technology). This pan-European project is a think-tank for study abroad research in a European context where the flagship Erasmus+ programme celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2017, and has seen well over three million participants. Along with the large number of study abroad participants around the world, they highlight the need for ongoing research in the area. In this regard, the book includes a chapter which identifies a number of areas for future research. The enterprise continues…

Martin Howard, University College Cork

m.howard@ucc.ie

 

For more information about this book please see our website. If you found this interesting, you might also like International Students’ Challenges, Strategies and Future Vision by Anas Hajar. 

Shedding Empirical Light on Complex Dynamic System Theory

We recently published Profiling Learner Language as a Dynamic System edited by ZhaoHong Han. In this post the editor explains why the book is important.

Profiling Learner Language as a Dynamic System was born out of an intense interest in contributing to the empirical basis in SLA of the new theoretical paradigm now known as Complex Dynamic System Theory (CDST) (de Bot, 2017; Larsen-Freeman, 2017; Lourdes & Han, 2017). Much of the work so far on CDST has remained rhetorical, and while a concerted effort has been made to push for empirical understandings, methodological insights are as yet incipient, though broad pointers are on the horizon. For example, the study needs to be longitudinal, and should focus on individual learners.

Many of the extant empirical studies have, however, tended to narrowly focus on one or a small number of linguistic elements, taking, a priori, each as part of a (sub)system, producing findings that are limited in scope and do not convincingly demonstrate, in one breath, the ‘complex,’ ‘dynamic,’ and ‘systemic’ nature of learner language.

This book seeks to help fill some of these gaps, by subjecting individuals’ systems to multiple lenses. Recognizing that revealing these properties necessitates a much larger undertaking than an individual study, the book has its five main chapters each target a particular aspect of interlanguage, traversing the domains of morpho-syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse. The uniqueness of this approach lies also in employing the same longitudinal corpus involving two dyads interacting over a shared course requirement. The data analyses tracked both within-dyad and between-dyad similarities and differences, yielding both general patterns and idiosyncrasies. Together, the five sets of data analyses shed light on, and even go beyond, core claims of CDST.

For more information about this book please see our website.

 

If you found this interesting, you might also like Motivational Dynamics in Language Learning edited by Zoltán Dörnyei, Peter D. MacIntyre and Alastair Henry.

What Role do Objects Play in Human Interaction?

We recently published Objects, Bodies and Work Practice edited by Dennis Day and Johannes Wagner. In this post Dennis discusses how the book came about.

That things matter in our interactive dealings with others is a premise of our book which we hope you will enjoy! A wide range of circumstances and objects are explored in the book, from receipts in shoe shops to moving forklifts in a warehouse. The subtext of the book is that talk, while central, is not the only thing going on in human interaction. For us, meaning in interaction is not only verbally but also bodily and materially constructed.

The book originates in a research project – Social Objects for Learning and Innovation (SOIL), run at the Department of Design and Communication at the University of Southern Denmark. The principle investigators in the project were myself, Johannes Wagner and Maurice Neville. In the beginning of the project, Maurice, along with other colleagues, was busy editing the book’s forerunner Interacting with Objects: Language, materiality, and social activity (John Benjamins).

Johannes and I had earlier been working with industrial designers, particularly their use of objects as proxies in design workshops, so naturally we wanted to be part of Maurice’s book and to recruit him into a project on objects and interaction as well. Johannes and I were holding a workshop for designers on Ethnomethodology and as a class exercise, we had groups of student explore ‘inscrutable objects’. The idea was for them to select based on how one goes about determining what something ‘is’. By chance we filmed one of the groups and ‘Eureka!’, there was our chapter for Maurice’s book.

The next step in our process was to arrange a conference panel with presumptive contributors to the book. This we did at the Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice Conference in Milan in 2015. We were very fortunate to have Ken Liberman visiting us in Denmark as guest professor at the time. Ken was a great help, not only with his great knowledge of Ethnomethodology and Phenomenology, but also with his recommendations for members of our panel.

Another important milestone for the book was our hosting of the 2015 International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. Many of the book’s chapters were further refined in conference presentations there, and we had the great privilege to discuss the book with Eric Laurier and Aug Nishizaka who were keynote speakers. Aug has further helped us by writing a postscript for the book.

As may be obvious from the variety of objects and circumstances covered in the book, we have been very open-minded. And why not? Everything we explore in studies of interaction happens in a context of material circumstances from within which objects can be made relevant. Sometimes they are mentioned verbally and sometimes they merely create the space we must navigate between us.

 

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Making Signs, Translanguaging Ethnographies edited by Ari Sherris and Elisabetta Adami.

What is the Action-oriented Approach to Language Education?

We recently published The Action-oriented Approach by Enrica Piccardo and Brian North. In this post the authors explain what is meant by the action-oriented approach.

Many people seem to be convinced that language methodologies have not progressed beyond the communicative turn, and that all more recent developments are just a refinement or extension of the communicative approach. In particular many who are familiar with the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) think that it simply promotes the communicative approach and provides a set of levels to define competence in the four skills. In fact, by seeing the user/learner as a social agent engaging in different types of language activities, the CEFR introduced rich concepts like the action-oriented approach, mediation and plurilingualism, which called for further development.

Our book The Action-oriented Approach explains the distinct characteristics of the approach and shows the way in which, over the past thirty years, different complementary theories and bottom-up experimentation have enabled the development of an innovative, holistic form of language education.

The action-oriented approach is growing significantly on the ground as a means to provide motivating, realistic, project-based language teaching linked to the promotion of interculturality and Competences for Democratic Culture (CDC).

 Whilst it is difficult to summarise the action-oriented approach in a few lines, and not all aspects listed below are present in all examples, the main tenets of the overall approach are:

• Backwards design of teaching modules (3-10 lessons) working towards ‘can-do’ aims (learning outcomes)
• Acceptance rather than avoidance of complexity, with scaffolding as necessary
• Authenticity/credibility of the scenario for the task/project in the module, with a focus also on the authenticity of materials, and autonomy to research different source materials
• A unifying task at the end of the module, which probably contains several phases including: reception, interaction, mediation, and the (co-)production of an artefact, plus a reflection phase at the end
• A pluri-/ inter-cultural focus at some point in the module
• Agency to decide how to go about accomplishing the task/project; collaboration: and co-construction of meaning through the mediation of concepts and/or communication
• Increasing language awareness
• Integration of additional languages, in terms of openness to learners’ linguistic (and cultural) resources and support to plurilanguaging within and beyond the language classroom
• Feedforward and feedback in a iterative approach adopted to build self-efficacy
• (Self-)assessment of the outcomes, informally, both at the level of the individual user/learner and as regards the scenario/module itself

The recently published CEFR Companion Volume with new descriptors has further supported the definition of the Action-oriented approach with its focus on mediation, strategic learning and plurilingualism.

Further information can be found on the following Council of Europe websites:

Language Policy

CEFR

Enrica Piccardo: enrica.piccardo@utoronto.ca

Brian North: bjnorth@eurocentres.com

 

For more information about this book please see our website. If you found this interesting, you might also like From Principles to Practice in Education for Intercultural Citizenship edited by Michael Byram, Irina Golubeva, Han Hui, Manuela Wagner.

Early Language Learning in School Contexts Series – Looking Back, Looking Forward

It’s two years since the first book in our Early Language Learning in School Contexts series was published. In this post the series editor, Janet Enever, reflects on how the series began and what the future holds.

The inspiration for this book series began a long time ago – working as a language teacher educator in eastern Europe in the mid-1990s I found it very difficult to identify any research collections which focused on the 3-12 years age group, despite the needs of my students. Bringing the series to fruition however, has spread over a long period of gestation – teaching MA students in London, leading the ELLiE research project in Europe, then taking up a professorial position in Sweden where it became possible to work with colleagues to launch a conference event focusing on Early Language Learning: Theory and Practice in 2014. The event proved seminal, precipitating my proposal to AILA for the launch of a global research network in early language learning (ELL-ReN) and my proposal to Multilingual Matters for the launch of the Early Language Learning in School Contexts series (launched in 2015).

I’m thrilled now to be able to say that the Multilingual Matters book series Early Language Learning in School Contexts has really taken off, with three titles already published, at least one more expected in 2019 and a further four being written as we speak!

The aim of the series from the start has been to take a very global look at how early foreign, second and additional language learning is developing in many parts of the world. We have really fulfilled this promise with publications on:

Mixed methods research: Early Language Learning: Complexity and Mixed Methods (Eds. Janet Enever & Eva Lindgren, 2017);

Pre-school language learning: Early Instructed Second Language Acquisition: Pathways to Competence (Eds. Joanna Rokita-Jaśkow & Melanie Ellis, 2019);

Teacher education: Early Language Learning and Teacher Education (Eds. Subhan Zein & Sue Garton, 2019);

Coming in August 2019: Integrating Assessment into Early Language Learning and Teaching (Eds. Danijela Prošić-Santovac & Shelagh Rixon, 2019).

Other themes in the pipeline include: assessment for learning, issues in researching young language learners in school contexts, and policy – no promises as to when these will be published yet though!

Looking back and looking forward:

Reflecting on the three years since the series was launched, I can remember initial questions about whether such a series was needed. Some suggested that a separate strand of publications focusing only on language learners from 3-12 years was unnecessary. However, for teachers, teacher educators and researchers working in this field it has been difficult to know where to look for research which really focuses entirely on young children’s foreign/ second and additional language learning experiences. With the ELLSC series we have at last established a ‘home’ for this specialist area.

The series has proved timely, as more and more young children begin their journey of learning additional languages in schools and kindergartens around the world, so teachers and teacher educators are seeking research-based evidence to guide them in implementing age- and context-appropriate approaches to teaching and learning. With every new volume published in the series we are aiming to provide this support.

However, we still need much more! There are still many gaps in the collection! So, if you have an idea that you would like to discuss – either formally or informally, do get in touch with the Multilingual Matters editor, Laura Longworth at: laura@multilingual-matters.com. Alternatively, contact me directly at: j.h.enever@reading.ac.uk.

 

For more information about this series please see our website.