New Trends in SLA Research: Theories,

Methods, Ethics

Lourdes OrtegaUniversity of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

National Tsing Hua UniversityTaiwan, June 8, 2011

Please cite as:

Ortega, L. (2011). New trends in SLA research: Theories, methods, ethics. Invited lecture at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, June 8.

Copyright © Lourdes Ortega, 2011

Background:

Since the mid 1990s, intense disciplinary crisis

& reflection in SLA

Wagner & Firth (1997) andLafford’s (2007) Special 10-year

anniversary of Firth & Wagner (1997) in Modern Language

Journal.

Writing reflective overviews:

Ortega (2007) and (2011)

in VanPatten & Williams (Eds.) (2007)& in Atkinson (Ed.) (2011)

Writing an SLA textbook and anthologizing the

field:Ortega (2009) and (2010b)

Guiding Question:

What will it take in the future so we can improve our explanations about second language learning?

epistemological diversity

interdisciplinarity:

Cognitive ScienceSocial Theories

Study of Bilingualism

Values:

Challenge 1:

addressing the explicit-implicit knowledge

interface

Theoretical explosion

in SLA:

VanPatten & Williams (Eds.) (2007)Atkinson (Ed.) (2011)

Main theories in SLA(VanPatten & Williams, Eds., 2007):

Functionalist-linguistic SLA(e.g., Barvodi-Harlig, Ch. 4; Pienemann, Ch. 8)

Formal-linguistic SLA(e.g., White, Ch. 3; Carroll, Ch. 9)

Connectionist-emergentist(e.g., N. Ellis, Ch. 5)

[LINGUISTIC roots]

[PSYCHOLOGICAL

roots]

Cognitive-interactionist(e.g., Gass & Mackey, Ch. 10; VanPatten, Ch. 7;

TBLT: Robinson, Skehan, etc...)

Vygostkian SLA(e.g., Lantolf & Thorne, Ch. 11)

Skills acquisition(e.g., DeKeyser, Ch. 6)

[ECLECTIVE linguistic &

psychological,

& social psychological roots]

[SOCIOCULTURAL roots]

Alternative theories in SLA(Atkinson, Ed., 2011):

Identity Theory(e.g., Norton & McKinney, Ch. 3)

Language SocializationTheory

(e.g., Duff & Talmy, Ch. 4)

Complexity theory(e.g., Larsen-Freeman, Ch. 2)

[LINGUISTIC ANTHR. roots]

[NATURAL SCIENCE

roots]

CA-for-SLA(e.g., Kasper & Wagner, Ch. 5)

Vygostkian SLA(e.g., Lantolf, Ch. 1)

Sociocognitive Approach(e.g., Atkinson, Ch. 6)

[SOCIOLOGICAL roots]

[SOCIOCULTURAL roots]

[POST-STRUCTURALIST roots]

[ECOLOGY+ DISCOURSE

roots]

Current positions/foci on“L2 knowledge”General cognitive

SocialCognitive-

interactionist theories

Vygotskian; Identity

Skills acquisition theory

Generativist theory; Functionalist approaches Emergentist,

Complexity, and

Dynamic Systems theoriesImplicit mostly

Explicit>Implicit

Explicit+Implicit

Linguistic

Explicit+ImplicitImplicit only

Language Socializati

on

Explicit mostly

CA-for-SLA;

Sociocognitive

Implicit

Importance is recognized in L2 instruction research:

+ Grammar explanation;

+ Metalanguage;

+ Instructions to attend to specific form;

etc

Most explicit

+ Exposure to input made salient by engineering:

• Phonological or typographical salience

• Frequency• Order of

presentationetc

Most implicit

e.g., NTHU’s Hung-Tzu Huang: meta-analysis of input enhancement in

SSLA (Lee & Huang, 2008)

Relative recent interest at the psycholinguistic level:

DeKeyser (2003) HSLA “explicit > implicit”

R. Ellis (2004) LL “Definition & measurement…”

N. Ellis (2005) SSLA “At the interface…” Sharwood Smith & Truscott (2005) AL

the processing origins of L2 knowledge

But still disengagement or underdetermination are the norm:

Illustrative case in point: RECAST debate (Lyster, 2004; Long, 2006)

Where do we look for benefits brought about by recasts?

Evidence of “learning”?1. immediate responses

Incorporation

(=successful uptake)

S: Some people have racism.

T: Some people ARE racist.S: are racist.

Loewen & Philp (2006, p. 541) McDonough (2006, p. 186)

Structural priming

A: Where where where you break it?

B: Where did you break it? Mae Sot+

A: Mae Sot in Tak?B: Yeah+A: Why why why did you

go there?

Evidence of “learning”?2.retrospection

Nabei & Swain (2002, p. 55)

I said ‘freedom of thinking’. I was not certain if it should be ‘thinking’ or ‘thought’. I didn’t come up with ‘thought’ then, so I said ‘freedom of thinking’, then I felt it might be wrong. Then the teacher said ‘freedom of thought’. So I thought, ‘Oh, oh. I was wrong – just as I thought.’

Evidence of “learning”?3. pre-post test

changes

Mackey & Goo

(2007): Meta-analysis of interaction & feedback, 10 studies of recasts yielded d=0.96

Benefits for learning: explicit or implicit knowledge?

Recasts

Negative evidence & cognitivecomparison

(L1: Farrar, Nelson....)

Noticing(Schmidt)

Testing hypothesis,pushed output

(Lyster)

Positive evidence& enhanced input

(L2: Leeman, McDonough, Doughty)

Repeated processingheld in memory

Memory trace,frequency tallying

explicit??

implicit??

Incorporation &Introspection

Structural priming &Pre-post-test gains

Undeniable:

explicit, top down,and conscious processing

implicit, bottom up, and subconscious processing

What to do?

At this stage of SLA’s disciplinary knowledge…

…it is problematic for any theory to discard a priori one or the other type of knowledge as irrelevant for explaining L2 acquisition;

…and also problematic is to neglect to clarify whether claims about learning are made with regard to explicit or implicit cognition

Challenge 1: Methodological solutions

required

Tall order:

SLA researchers will need to draw from cognitive science in this area in order to make explorations neurobiologically plausible

(e.g., the work by Georgetown alumni who trained in

Michael Ullman’s lab: Kara Morgan-Short, Harriet Wood Bowden)

Tall order:

Ideally, SLA researchers will also combine training and methodologies to produce yoked behavioral and neurological evidence

(e.g., NTHU faculty trained in the psycholinguistics of

processing and in neurolinguistics: Chun-Chieh Natalie Hsu, Fan-Pei Gloria Yang)

Challenge 2:

theorizing experience

Differential experience is connected to one of the most salient facts to be explained by any SLA theory: variability and heterogeneity in L2 learning processes and outcomes

Yet, traditional SLA theories are ill-equipped to deal with variability and, as a consequence, they trivialize learner experience as anecdotal, divesting it from any theoretical status

The importance of diverse social contexts for L2 learning resides less in externally documented experience or fixed environmental encounters and more in experience that is lived, made sense of, negotiated, contested, and claimed by learners in their physical, interpersonal, social, cultural, and historical context.

What to do?

1. Look for theories that offer social respecifications of phenomena:

L2 communication:Conversation Analysis

L2 grammar:Systemic-Functional

Linguistics

L2 cognition:Vygotskian theory

L2 learning:Language socialization

L2 sense of self:Identity theory

Good example: NTHU’s Yu-Jung Chang’s study

of the non-deficit oriented, agentive

identities of 4 doctoral graduate students in the US who were so-

called non-native speakers (Chang &

Kanno, 2010)

2. Investigate diverse contexts & populations:

Second, foreign, heritagelanguage contexts

Disparate social milieuswith varying L2 use needs

L1 semiliterate/L1 oralpopulations of L2 learners

Varying ages

Challenge 2: Theoretical solutions already

underway

But… better done 1 than 2 so far:

SLA researchers have begun to look for theories that offer social respecifications of phenomena (“the social turn in SLA”)

But SLA as a field continues to investigate very limited contexts & population

Yet, crucial:

We do not know what new theoretical models will need to be advanced, or how the present ones will need to be modified, once SLA researchers begin to investigate populations that are currently seriously understudied

(e.g., Bigelow, 2010; Valdés, 2005;Verhoeven, 1994)

Challenge 3:

re-evaluating SLA theories through the prism of bilingualism

Native speaker as golden benchmark and reference:

To judge what ultimate attainmentshould look like and whether it is

possible (in L2)

To explain what we can expect inL2 development data and what we see

To evaluate educational goals & outcomes, i.e.,communicative competence = “like a NS”

(linguistic knowledge, pragmatics,collocations, rhetoric, gestures…)

Canagarajah (2004) Firth & Wagner (1997) García (2009) Hall et al. (2006) Holliday (1994); Holliday & Aboshiha

(2009) Jenkins (2006) Leung (2005) Norton & Toohey (2001) Rampton (1990) Seidlhofer (2001) Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas (1986) Shohamy (2006) Sridhar (1994)

Extensive critique against “nativespeakerism” from social and critical perspectives:

………..and so many more ... ... ... ...!

But in SLA, to present day:

L2 acquisition = developing

native competence

But… what do we mean by

“native”?

a language user…+ by birth+ born to one language only+ no detectable traces of other languages

“native”:

“monolingual native”

“native” =

“non-native speaker” =

“native speaker” =

By birth

One langua

ge

Multiple

languages

Not by birth

L2 competence in SLA:

two monolingual speakers housed in a single head?

monolingual-like competence the goal?

monolingual and monocultural acts of a special (secondary) nature?

language competencies static and fixed in the L1, and dynamic and in flux only in the L2?

L2 acquisition = “efforts by monolingual adults to add on a monolingual-like command

of an additional language”(Ortega, 2009, p. 5)

+in an imagined world where what’s

given/owned by birth can never be matched or altered by experience/history (Ortega, 2010a)

Monolingual Bias in SLA

Accepted tenets in the study of bilingualism:

Bilinguals cannot be reduced to the sum of two monolinguals in one.

(Grosjean, 1989)

Accepted tenets in the study of bilingualism:

Context-free, fixed, and dichotomous NS/NNS categories have questionable validity.

(Li Wei, 2000)

Accepted tenets in the study of bilingualism:

The development of multiple language competencies is a process mediated by amount of use/degree of activation across languages.

(e.g., Sebastián-Gallés et al., 2005)

Accepted tenets in the study of bilingualism:

The development of additional language competence interacts with, destabilizes, and most likely transforms the nature of linguistic competence across the languages of the individual (languages interact).

(e.g., Cenoz et al., 2001)

Good example: NTHU’s I-Ru Su’s study of bi-directional transfer in Taiwanese learners

of EFL doing requests and being

conventionally indirect (Su, 2010)

What to do?

1. Pursue new constructs:

“multi-competence is not just the imperfect cloning of mono-competence, but a different state”

(Vivian Cook, 2002, pp. 7-8)

people who speak more than one language posses varying expertise, inheritance, and affilitation across their languages

(Rampton, 1990)

2. Pursue new empirical baselines:

Compare incipient and emerging bilinguals to fully developed bilinguals; bi/multilinguals cannot be directly compared to monolinguals; the sole benchmark for comparison cannot be monolinguals.

(Birdsong, 2005; Harley & Wang, 1997; Singleton, 2003)

3. Pursue new designs:

Investigate a learner’s multiple languages simultaneously within the same study.

(Ortega & Carson, 2010)

4. Craft new discourse of bilingualism as potentiality, not deficit:

…proponents of this view offer an explanation for adults’ relative failure to reach nativelikeness that is based on neurological changes that occur at a certain age (e.g., puberty) and that lead to a sudden or gradual deterioration or distortion of the implicit language learning mechanism…

…proponents of this view offer an explanation for adults’ relative failure to reach nativelikeness that is based on neurological changes that occur at a certain age (e.g., puberty) and that lead to a sudden or gradual deterioration or distortion of the implicit language learning mechanism…

… a number of studies show that L2 learners’ employment of formulaic sequences is often problematic. Although learners can produce a considerable number of native-like sequences…, there is evidence that learners’ restricted formulaic repertoires lead them to overuse those sequences they know well … Still, overall, nonnative use of formulaic sequences is less pervasive and less diverse than native norms … It is not surprising, therefore, that L2 learners’ failure to use native-like formulaic sequences is one factor in making their writing feel nonnative…

… a number of studies show that L2 learners’ employment of formulaic sequences is often problematic. Although learners can produce a considerable number of native-like sequences…, there is evidence that learners’ restricted formulaic repertoires lead them to overuse those sequences they know well … Still, overall, nonnative use of formulaic sequences is less pervasive and less diverse than native norms … It is not surprising, therefore, that L2 learners’ failure to use native-like formulaic sequences is one factor in making their writing feel nonnative…

discourses of deficit are persuasive!!

“many bilinguals … have a tendency to evaluate their language competencies as inadequate. Some criticize their mastery of language skills, others strive their hardest to reach monolingual norms, others still hide their knowledge of their “weaker” language, and most simply do not perceive themselves as being bilingual even though they use two (or more) languages regularly”

Grosjean (2008, p. 224)

Challenge 3: Theoretical-methodological-ethical

solutions badly needed!!!

Badly needed:a bilingual turn in SLA!!

Reorientating towards studying what L1+L2 (multicompetent/bilingual) users can do, as opposed to only understanding what they cannot or wish not to do in their L2

SLA, a field

“learningto be

bilingual”

“pathwaysto

multicompetence”

in pursuit of knowledge about:

supportive of:

In conclusion…

Theories + Methods + Ethics

Theories

1.… clarifying explicit-implicit

knowledge2.… properly investigating

learners’ experience

New Trends in SLA

Research…

Methods

3.…conceptualizing

SLA as bilingualism, fighting the

monolingual bias

Looking forward, looking ahead

To more empirical work on the nature of explicit and implicit language knowledge and their respective contributions to L2 learning To more theorizing into ways to

study how the lived experiences afforded by different social contexts shape L2 learning; more empirical work across diverse experiences (=diverse social contexts)To a bilingual turn in

SLA!!

Thank Youlortega@hawaii.edu

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