Language as a Dynamic System
Language as a Dynamic System
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"Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things."
– Flora Lewis
My personal experiences have motivated me from a young age to examine language learning and teaching with a very curious lens. Throughout my educational and teaching experiences at the University of Oregon, I became more aware of how a language teacher can open doors to various worlds where language instruction is more than just having students memorize lists of vocabulary and grammar, and that language heavily intersects with identity and culture. The artifacts exhibited below demonstrate the complexity of language and the importance of integrating effective instruction techniques to best meet the communicative needs of language learners. These artifacts also highlight the importance of language teachers guiding their learners to attain sociolinguistic competence by having them be aware of how language interacts in the real world across various social contexts.
Communicative competence is a crucial aspect of language teaching and learning yet is frequently neglected as teachers often might feel compelled to rely on techniques of the Grammar Translation Method. This methodology of language teaching has long been characterized by its teacher-centeredness, where students are subjected to the tedious ordeal of memorizing vocabulary and mastering grammatical structures with little to no emphasis on communicative functions of language (Prator & Celce-Murcia, 1979; Richards & Rodgers, 2014). Like many other language learners, I share the anecdote of enduring this practice of language teaching, where for instance during my primary education French class often consisted of constant repetition and memorization of the grammaticalization of genders in nouns and the conjugation of sentences. While I really loved and enjoyed the language, I often found myself frustrated with how despite my efforts to master it for many years I was not able to hold any meaningful conversations. The course LING 444 (Second Language Acquisition) provided me with the opportunity to critically examine the various theoretical approaches to second language acquisition. In the case study artifact “Language Communication Competence: Is Learning a Language through Grammar and Vocabulary Enough?” I outline a workshop that would provide educators with the methods as to how they can effectively utilize second language acquisition theories and practices to aid students in their language learning process. This case study artifact addresses that the attainment of language competence transcends organizational language forms (Bachman, 1990), and advocates for integrating pragmatic and sociocultural elements throughout language instruction. This workshop also raises attention to various characteristics of the communicative language teaching approach (Canale & Swain, 1980) where students play an autonomous role in their own learning process and are made aware of how language interplays across various social contexts (Brown & Lee, 2014). Furthermore, this proposed workshop addresses variations in learners’ cognition and zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1979), where teachers should scaffold the form of assistance and input, and guide learners into acquiring sociolinguistic knowledge.
LING 444 Case Study Artifact.pdfLING 444: Case Study
The communicative language teaching approach allows learners to focus on real-world contexts, and through effective scaffolding by a teacher, students are able to construct their own community of practice as they engage in interpersonal communication with their peers through collaboration and negotiation (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Brown & Lee, 2014). In the class LT 436 (Design for Language Learning Systems), I had the opportunity to write an observation analysis report of an Arabic language class that is taught at Granda Hills Charter High School. Through my observational analysis, I was able to identify and highlight practices that allow students to be active participants in their learning, and lead them to make personalizable connections with the vocabulary they were learning. For instance, students were asked to demonstrate their mastery of the language forms by describing their own dream home and were tasked with working with their peers in exchanging information in the target language.
LT 436 Observation Report Artifact.pdfLT 436: Observation Analysis Report
It is also important for one to acknowledge that understanding the semantic or grammatical aspect of an expression or vocabulary alone does not equate to attaining communicative competence, where pragmatic breakdowns are likely to occur due to mismatches between the literal meaning and underlying sociocultural constructed meanings (Jung 2019; Morkus, 2021; Wierzbicka, 2009). Pragmatic analyses of speech acts (Austin, 1975) would be useful by having learners attend to the locution, illocution, and perlocution of utterances. For our pragmatics portfolio in LT 407 (Teaching and Learning Pragmatics), colleague Benjamin Loy and I compiled resources of three pragmatically significant phrases in Arabic: “إن شاء الله "(InshaAllah) "ماشاء الله" (MashaAllah), and "الحمدلله" (AlHamudallah). Through the curation of scholarly-based sources, we highlighted examples of Arabic’s intralingual variation and how pragmatic difference can be associated with attributes of speakers’ regional dialect, gender, age, and aspects of social identity (Barron, 2019; Félix-Brasdefe, 2012). Furthermore, our research and observational analyses of authentic materials allowed us to illustrate the pragmatic shifts in these three religious-based phrases. For instance, through examining the illocutionary forces of the phrase “InshaAllah,” we were able to underline its usage under a variety of speech acts and contexts (Farghal, 1995), embodying the ever-changing complexity of language.
LT 407 Pragmatic Portfolio Artifact.pdfLT 407: Arabic Pragmatics Portfolio
The navigation of sociocultural and pragmatic variations results in an extra layer of dynamism in language acquisition, where it is important for learners to attain intercultural competence by mediating across not only linguistic, but also cultural boundaries (Wilkinson, 2012). However, students’ multicultural subjectivity and agency could lead to cases of pragmatic resistance where on occasion they uphold their own identities, beliefs, and values, and choose to not engage in certain practices of the target language (Ishihara 2019; Ishihara & Tarone, 2009). Thus, it is important for teachers to incorporate culturally responsive practices as imposing the target language’s norms on learners can be viewed as an exertion of power and assimilation (Kasper & Rose, 2002). To address this issue my activity creation lesson artifact from LT 407 was constructed with the aim of teaching the Japanese honorific system (敬語 keigo) through a situational approach, where learners are able to contextualize the honorific forms of the Japanese language by raising their attention to the patterned grammaticality (Xing, 2021). This contextualization also allows the learner to examine the relationship between the speaker and interlocutor with regards to social factors, such as power, distance, and rank of imposition (Brown & Levinson, 1987). In this activity, learners are presented with a story-based scenario that integrates Japanese cultural customs of home visitations and are tasked to observe a role-play done through puppets. As students observe and listen they are asked to highlight the Japanese honorific forms through a transcript mark-up. This initial form of inductive instruction not only allows learners to self-discover the pragmatic norms, but also leads them to implicitly discern the relationship between the humble and honorific forms based on the provided social and contextual factors (Kasper, 2001; Nguyen et al., 2012). After the role-play, the teacher facilitates a classroom discussion, where metapragmatic awareness of the language forms is explicitly raised, and students are allowed to share their thoughts on what they have observed. This is where the intercultural, pragmatic, and interactional competence (IPIC) framework (Sykes et al., 2020) is operationalized through an emphasis on acquiring the knowledge of the grammaticalized honorific forms and then determining the appropriate phrase through the analysis of power and social dynamics. Students are then given the opportunity to role-play using puppets, where their agency is not at stake as they practice the hierarchical-based language. As learners participate in this activity, the teacher will also provide feedback in situations where communication could potentially break down, raising awareness and allowing learners to demonstrate their subjectivity by having them describe why they chose specific language forms and strategies.
LT 407 Activity Creation Japanese Lesson Artifact.pdfLT 407: Activity Creation Japanese Pragmatics
References
References
Austin, J. L. (1975). How to do things with words. Harvard University Press.
Bachman, L. F. (1990). Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford University Press.
Barron, A. (2019). Norms and variation in L2 pragmatics. In The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and pragmatics (pp. 447-461). Routledge.
Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied linguistics, 1(1), 1-47.
Félix-Brasdefer, J. C., & Koike, D. A. (Eds.). (2012). Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues (Vol. 31). John Benjamins Publishing.
Ishihara, N. (2019). Identity and Agency in L2 Pragmatics 1. In The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and pragmatics (pp. 161-175). Routledge.
Ishihara, N., & Tarone, E. (2009). Subjectivity and pragmatic choice in L2 Japanese: Emulating and resisting pragmatic norms. Pragmatic competence, 5, 101.
Kasper, G. (2001). Classroom research on interlanguage pragmatics. In K. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 33–62). Cambridge University Press.
Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (2002). Pragmatic development in a second language. Language learning.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.
Nguyen, T. T. M., Pham, T. H., & Pham, M. T. (2012). The relative effects of explicit and implicit form-focused instruction on the development of L2 pragmatic competence. Journal of pragmatics, 44(4), 416-434.
Prator, C., & Celce-Murcia, M. (1979). An outline of language teaching approaches. In M. Celce-Murcia & L. McIntosh (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (pp. 3–5). New York, NY: Newbury House
Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (2014). Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge University Press.
Sykes, J., Malone, M., Forrest, L., Sağdıç, A., & Kang, O. (2020). Affordances of digital simulations to measure communicative success. Transdisciplinary innovations for communicative success. In M. Peters M., & R. Heraud (Eds.). Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation. Springer. doi, 10, 978-981.
Xing, J. (2021). Teaching Japanese Honorifics Based on Situational Approach. Journal of Contemporary Educational Research, 5(5), 29-32. Doi: 10.26689/jcer.v5i5.2162
Wilkinson, J. (2012). The intercultural speaker and the acquisition of intercultural/global competence. In The Routledge handbook of language and intercultural communication (pp. 306-319). Routledge.
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