Transforming Teaching and Learning: The Dynamic Quality of Language

(and Changing Tides) CATESOL Northern Regional Conference 2010

Monterey Institute of International Studies

Diane Larsen-FreemanUniversity of Michigan

IntroductionQuite naturally, teachers teach as they conceive their

subject matter.So, one of the ways that teaching and learning can be

transformed is if we learn to think differently about what it is that we teach.

I will begin by briefly discussing a dominant conception of language.

Then, I will introduce a new way (for me, at least) of conceiving of language.

Finally, this new way of thinking about language will lead me to a short discussion of teaching before I conclude.

Structuralism in LinguisticsFerdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)Swiss Linguistb. Geneva

In the interest of making linguistics a science• Removed the dimension of time (atemporalization) • Removed speech (parole) as an object of investigation, encouraging

instead the study of language (langue). Langue describes the social, impersonal phenomenon of language as a system of signs.

Chomsky (continuing in the structural tradition)

NN

•To get at the systematic nature of language, confined his study to that of competence—the individual idealized native language speaker’s knowledge of his/her language.

•Sought to explain the ‘I-language’ or internal mental system of language, which deals with the abstract knowledge of decontextualized linguistic properties.

•Selective of what data it accounted for. For instance, the morphosyntactic subsystem of language was segregated and elevated from the phonological, the semantic, and the pragmatic subsystems.

Noam Chomskyb. 1928American Linguist

Atemporalizing, idealizing, decontextualizing, and segregating—are all common enough in science, and some would say necessary, in order to cope with the complexity of what is being investigated and to fulfill the goal of accounting for the underlying system.

Yet, the sum total of the moves means that we are left with a compromised view of language with which to apply to learning and teaching language.

A Dominant View: Language Teaching and Learning: Legacy from Structuralism

Language has been viewed atomistically and its learning as an aggregation of its elements—structures…and even functions.

In other words, language is something one has—a commodity (Sfard 1998).

For example, teachers and researchers say a particular learner “has the present tense.”

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Besides the problem of reifying and commodifying language, we teachers must also move beyond ‘I-language’ to ‘E-language’—or externalized language—contextualized language behavior actualized in the social process

Thus, it may be time for us to consider a new way of thinking about language. While thinking of language as a static system of fixed rules has yielded descriptive adequacy, this conception provides no vocabulary for a discussion of dynamic processes.

To this end, a new dynamic theme is emerging—the zeitgeist is right.

ZeitgeistThe 1990s and 2000s have been decades of tremendous

change:• Technology sped up global communications• National economies became interdependent• People began leading transnational lives

Transnational flows of language and people meant that we could no longer assume language learners to be native speakers of a single homogeneous national language, interacting with native speakers of another homogeneous national language, and moving inexorably in a line from L1 to L2. Language use is much more diverse.

We can feel this dynamism and constant change in our own lives. These can be difficult to deal with.

To cope:• We develop routines.• We turn our life experiences into stories.• And our continually changing selves into sets of

more or less fixed attributes, attitudes, and identities.

• We downplay the continual change by turning the living dynamic world into named objects.

• The 1990s and 2000s have also witnessed:• a concern with the organic: The 21st century has

been declared the century of biology • Recognition of our interdependence: the urgency

of climate change, environmental concerns• Neurological advances—the brain is more plastic

than assumed• Computational power, and with it, access to large

corpora, in which language patterns are visible• The genesis of a theory that emanates from the

physical sciences—chaos/complexity theory—called “the new science”

Seeks to explain the functioning of complex, dynamic, adaptive, open, and nonlinear systems (Larsen-Freeman 1997)

Complexity /Dynamic Systems Theory

Chaos/ComplexityTheoryComplex : Through the interaction of the

components, a new level of complexity emerges. The new level is the result of self-organization.

Dynamic: Process, not state; becoming, not being.Adaptive: An adaptive system changes in

response to its environment. It maintains order by adapting.

Open: It is never finished—Energy from outside the system keeps it constantly evolving.

Nonlinear: The effect is not proportionate to the cause.

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For the purpose of my talk today, I will focus on one of these—dynamism.

There are three ways that language use is dynamic.

1. Language use is dynamic in the moment—real-time dynamism—As I am speaking and you are listening, time is passing.

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2. Language is dynamic over time--Language forms are continually being transformed by use (Bybee 2006).

e.g., be going to as a marker first of direction, then intention and then of future in English

I am going to leave now.I am going to the park now.

[aimənə]

[aimənə] leave now.*[aimənə]the park now.

But there is a third kind of dynamism—one that we know about—but one that we often ignore.

3. Organic dynamism—at the nexus of real-time dynamism and over-time dynamism

Complexity Theory/Dynamic Systems Theory: “The act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules.” (Gleick 1987, p.24)

• In other words, complexity theory offers us a way to unite three dynamic processes:

• Real-time language processing, evolutionary change in language, and developmental change in learner language are all reflections of the same dynamic process of language usage, albeit at different timescales.

(Larsen-Freeman 2003; Bybee 2006)

By adopting a different view of language, we

• avoid decontextualizing, idealizing, segregating, and atemporalizing language

• see language as a variable, dynamic set of patterns emerging from use

• understand that the language system is always in flux

Changing Tides

Here is what I have learned about tides:

• As you no doubt know, tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon. The pull causes water to bulge toward the moon on the side of the earth facing it (giving us high tides) and to recede on the opposite side (giving us low tides).

• Tides vary from day to day. As the earth, moon,

and sun orbit, their positions constantly shift, causing slightly different gravitational effects. This causes the tides to occur at slightly different times. You know this if you have looked at tide tables, which list the high and low tides on a daily basis.

Now, here comes the good part:• Interestingly, tides also vary from place to place.

Geographical position determines the level of tide. Here, in Northern California, there are two unequal tides each day. In the Gulf of Mexico there is only one high tide and one low tide each day.

• According to the NOAA, there are “tidal

inequalities”—variations in the range of the tides. • A number of factors can combine to create a

considerable variety in the observed range and phase sequence of the tides—as variations in the times of their arrival at any location.

Corrine Vionnet http://www.corinnevionnet.com/photo_opportunities/index.htm

Emergence of patterns from many exemplars

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Get me on the wayLet me at the ball• Put it on the table• Put it on the table• Put it on the table• Put it on the desk• Put it in the bag• Put it on the bed• Put it in the trash• Put it in the fridge• Set it on the table• Run it at the road• Get me on the way• Let me at the ball

Put it on the tablePut it on the deskPut it in the bagPut it on the bedPut it in the trashPut it in the fridgeSet it on the tableRun it at the road

Put it on the table

Put it LV it L

V O L

verbobject

preposition

What if learning is not accomplished by input being converted to output? What if, instead,

Humans soft-assemble patterns and adapt them to meet their specific present goals (Smith & Thelen 1993)? This is a dynamic process.

InputMind as Black Box Output

Constructions are “softly assembled,” i.e., the product of dynamic adaptation to a specific context. They are “created and dissolved as tasks and environments change” (Thelen and Bates 2003). Some patterns are preferred and stabilize ; others are more ephemeral.

Preferred patterns are made more available to the learners through a social process of co-adaptation, an iterative process, with each interlocutor adjusting to the other over and over again.

(Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008)

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Goldberg (2004) L1• 27 children (20-28 months) & 15 mothers from the Bates Corpus in CHILDES

(MacWhinney, 1995)

Form/Example Meaning Construction Label 1. Subj V Obl path/loc e.g. The fly buzzed into the room

X moves Y path/loc

Intransitive Motion (VL)

2. Subj V Obj Obl path/loc e.g., Pat sneezed the foam off the cappuccino

X causes Y to move Z path/loc

Caused-Motion (VOL)

3. Subj V Obj Obj2 e.g. She faxed him a letter

X causes Y to receive Z

Double Object (VOO)

Table 1

Examples of correlation between form and meaning (Goldberg et al, 2004, p.4)

Construction Children (percentage of tokens)

Mothers (percentage of tokens)

1. Subj V Obl path/loc (VL)

54% go (121/224)

39% go (136/353)

2. Subj V Obj Obl path/loc (VOL)

31% put (16/51)

38% put (99/259)

3. Subj V Obj Obj2 (VOO)

Adam - 53% give (59/112) Eve - 36% give (4/11) Sarah - 43% give (29/67) Ross - 43% give (69/160) Mark - 32% tell (11/34) 29% give (10/34)

20% give (11/54)

• Through soft assembly and co-adaptation, patterns emerge (self-organize)

“Self-organization refers to any set of processes in which order emerges from the interaction of the components of system without direction from external factors and without a plan of the order embedded in an individual component.”

(Mitchell 2003)

• Patterns are transformed with further usage

An example of a preferred pattern: Verb-argument constructions

Caused-motion constructionTim Lincecum threw the ball over the plate.Edgar Renteria hit the ball over the wall.X causes Y to move Z (Z=path or location)

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Adapting patterns sometimes means appropriating chunks or constructions (Goldberg 2005; Tomasello 2000).

Sally set the plates on the table.

At other times, it means innovating by analogy or recombination.

Sally sneezed the napkins across the table.

“This dynamic process is responsible for the patterns and orderly arrangement both in the natural world and in the realms of mind, society and culture.” (Heylighen 2008)

Indeed, patterns are everywhere.Not only in verb-argument constructions such as we have just seen, but they are also conventionalized in functions or speech acts:

Will you marry me?I want to marry you.I wish to be wedded to you.I desire you to become married to me.Your marrying me is desired by me.My becoming your spouse is what I want.

And for those of you doing content-based instruction with ELLs, you know that there are patterns in texts.

7th grade science text exampleOne of the places where groundwater is heated is in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Yellowstone has hot springs and geysers. A geyser, like the one in Figure 12-17A, is a hot spring that erupts periodically, shooting water and steam into the air. Groundwater is heated to high temperatures, causing it to expand underground. This expansion forces some of the water out of the ground, taking the pressure off of the remaining water. The remaining water boils quickly, with much of it turning into steam. The steam shoots out of the opening like steam out of a teakettle, forcing the remaining water out with it. Yellowstone’s famous geyser, Old Faithful, pictured in Figure 12-17B, shoots between 14000 and 32000 L of water and steam into the air on average once every 80 minutes. (from Science Voyages, p. 352)

Theme – Rheme Pattern

THEME RHEME1. One of the places where groundwater is heated

is in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

2. Yellowstone has hot springs and geysers.

3. A geyser, like the one in Figure 12-17A,

is a hot spring that erupts periodically, shooting water and steam into the air.

4. Groundwater is heated to high temperatures, causing it to expand underground.

5. This expansion forces some of the water out of the ground, taking the pressure off of the remaining water.

6. The remaining water boils quickly, with much of it turning into steam.

7. The steam shoots out of the opening like steam out of a teakettle, forcing the remaining water out with it.

8. Yellowstone’s famous geyser, Old Faithful, pictured in Figure 12-17B,

shoots between 14000 and 32000 L of water and steam into the air on average once every 80 minutes.

“Order is not sufficient. What is required is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty; so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition; and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system.”

(Alfred North Whitehead)

There is no homogeneity. We create linguistic forms when we want to make new meanings—we go beyond the input.

(Larsen-Freeman 1997).

“There is no end, and there is no state.” (Larsen-Freeman 2006, p. 189)

Thus, linguistic signs are not “autonomous objects of any kind, either social or psychological,” but are “contextualized products of the integration of various activities by individuals in particular communicative situations. It logically follows that they are continually created to meet new needs and circumstances…”

(Toolan in Leather and van Dam 2003)

Remember that they are adaptations to a specific context—and all contexts have unique affordances.

Affordances are all “latent actions possible in an environment” (Gibson 1977).

In other words, an affordance is an opportunity for use or interaction presented by some object or situation.

For example, to a human being, a chair affords sitting, but to a woodpecker it may afford something quite different.

Summing up to this point,

“…learners soft assemble their language resources interacting with a changing environment. As they do so, their language resources change. Learning is not the taking in of linguistic forms by learners, but the constant (co-)adaptation and enactment of language-using patterns in the service of meaning-making in response to the affordances that emerge in a dynamic communicative situation.”

(Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008)

In other words, learning is not a two-step process. It is not that we learn a mental grammar through exposure to comprehensible input and then we convert it to output through practice.

The act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules (not only in the language, but also in the individual learner).

“Knowing how to negotiate our way through a world that is not fixed and pregiven, but that is continually shaped by the types of actions in which we engage,” is a challenge of being human.(Varela, Thompson, & Rosch 1991)

Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. (Traveler, there is no road; you make your path by walking.)Antonio Machado (1917)

Of course, what I have been mainly speaking of is implicit SLA. It is also important in language teaching that this implicit process be accompanied by explicit guidance especially where the L1 operates differently from the L2.

What about transforming teaching and learning?

First of all, we need to understand that teaching a language does not involve the transmission of a closed system of knowledge.

Second, we need to think of affordances rather than input. (van Lier 2000)

Who lives here?

• First of all, teaching a language does not involve the transmission of a closed system of knowledge.

Learning to use a language is not about conformity to uniformity.

• Nevertheless, there are conventions of the code (preferred patterns) that need to be learned in order for learners to make meaning.

Third, promote awareness through explicit guidance in noticing the form, meaning, and use of linguistic constructions.

e.g., There is/there are

Innsbruck

In the center of Innsbruck, there is a medieval section of the city, called the Alstadt. There are many old buildings and alleyways there. There’s an old tower, which you can climb to get a good view. From this vantage point, there are stunning mountain vistas in all directions.

Running next to the Alstadt and through the center of the city is a river—the river Inn. Down river is the university. A little beyond that is the apartment building that I lived in.

Noticing In the center of Innsbruck, there is a medieval section of the city, called the Alstadt. There are many old buildings and alleyways there. There’s an old tower, which you can climb to get a good view. From this vantage point, there are stunning mountain vistas in all directions.

Running next to the Alstadt and through the center of the city is a river—the river Inn. Down river is the university. A little beyond that is the apartment building that I lived in.

Fourth, practice is also needed, but a specific kind of practice:

Practice with psychologically authentic activities, where the conditions of learning and the conditions of use are aligned.

Psychological authenticity: The activity should be designed to allow learners to experience some of the normal psychological pressures felt by people engaged in real communication (Gatbonton and Segalowitz, 1988: 486)

My dryer needs fixing. Can you help?

Gatbonton and Segalowitz’s “creative automaticity”

Fifth, give your students opportunities to return to the same use of language over and over again, e.g., Arevart and Nation (1991).

“…learning is construed as the development of increasing effective ways of dealing with the world and its meanings.” (Van Lier 2000)

Conclusion

1. Language is not fixed, but is rather a dynamic system. Language evolves and changes in the dynamics of language use between and among individuals.

Patterns in SLA are variegated and “softly assembled,” i.e., the product of dynamic adaptation to a specific context.

2. Although progress in SLA may be viewed as the degree to which a language learner’s interlanguage aligns with the target language, there will never be complete convergence between the two systems.

“There is no end, and there is no state.” (Larsen-Freeman 2006, p.

189)

3. There are no discrete stages in which learners’ performance is invariant, although there are periods where certain forms are dominant.

Patterns emerge independently when learners are given opportunities (or make them themselves—affordances) to use language to make meaning in psychologically authentic and socially interactive situations.

“The act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules.” (Gleick 1987, p. 24)

Computational mind metaphor

Input OutputMind as Black Box

What is wrong with this picture?

“In attempting to make the human sciencesobjective, the human became turned into an object.” (Horn 2008)

Lessons from Complexity Theory

It is time to transform our teaching • to give our learners choices• to allow them to be creative with the language• to guide, but not control, what they do• to have faith in their natural abilities as

learners, and• to put their learning ahead of our teaching.

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING !