Interviews.
November 2006.
James P. Lantolf
1)
Bio
Interview for Asian EFL Journal: James P. Lantolf
BIO:
I am the Greer Professor in Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics in the Department of Applied Linguistics and Director of the Center for Language Acquisition at The Pennsylvania State University. I am also Co-Director of Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research [CALPER] at Penn State. I served as president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (2005) and was North American editor of Applied Linguistics (1995-2000). My research focuses on sociocultural theory and L2 learning. I recently co-authored with my colleague Steve Thorne, Sociocultural theory and the genesis of second language development, Oxford University Press, 2006 and I am in the process of organizing a co-edited volume with Matt Poehner entitled Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Teaching to be published by Equinox Press.
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What positive developments have you seen over the recent past in SLA teachings and theory?
SLA and L2 pedagogy are fields that seem to be dominated by dichotomies. For example, SLA research has for some time been concerned with the question of whether explicit knowledge and teaching is better or worse than implicit knowledge and implicit learning and whether explicit knowledge can become implicit. Related to this has been concern about whether explicit feedback is more or less effective than implicit feedback. Another especially interesting dichotomy is language teaching – language testing. Researchers have recently begun to call for bringing teaching and testing into a closer nexus, as for example is evidenced in the work on test “washback” . Rather than dichotomies some researchers, especially those working in sociocultural theory and chaos and dynamic systems theory, have been exploring the implications of synthesizing the dichotomies into a dialectical unity. Thus, both implicit and explicit knowledge would not only both be necessary for optimal development of language proficiency but they would interact with each other in mutually beneficial ways.
My colleagues and I have focused much of our current research on this interesting topic within the framework of sociocultural theory with particular focus on the classroom setting (see Negueruela & Lantolf 2007, Lantolf 2006). Similarly, I have explored along with Matt Poehner the effect on learning of what is called Dynamic Assessment, which brings the poles of the teaching – testing dichotomy into a unified organic activity. Assessment creates opportunities for learner development and instruction or mediation takes advantage of these opportunities as they emerge (see Lantolf & Poehner, 2004; Poehner & Lantolf, 2005; Lantolf & Poehner, 2006).
Yet another and long-standing dichotomy stems from the segregation of language and culture, which has its origins in the writings of the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure tried to build linguistics into a scientific discipline. To achieve this he had to take culture, and with it speakers and with them meaning out of the picture. Researchers, such as anthropologist Michael Agar and cognitive linguists, such as George Lakoff and Ronald Langacker, have reunited language and culture in very interesting ways that have far-reaching consequences for what it means to learn and teach languages (see Lantolf, in press). For example, linguistic form as it has been understood within theories of language such as proposed by Chomsky is moved off center stage in favor of meaning, in particular the kind of meaning that people create in the activity of communicating as they manipulate language to fulfill their goals. More often than not this gives rise to figurative language and very exciting new area of L2 research (see Littlemore & Low, 2006).
A final dichotomy that I would like to touch on is language learning and language use, which has stimulated a good deal of controversy within SLA since the publication of Firth and Wagner’s (1997) article that makes a case for integrating the social into SLA research. The authors argue that learning and use are inexorably intertwined as components of the same process. We don’t first learn language and then use language; rather, we learn language through using language to accomplish specific ends. Theories of language and language acquisition are known as usage-based theories. Included among these theories is cognitive-functional linguistics, which is reflected in the writings of Langacker (1987) and Tomasello (2003).
The central proposal of these theories is that “the essence of language is its symbolic dimension, with grammar being derivative” (Tomasello, 2003, 5) and therefore structure is not a precondition for language use but instead emerges from use. Because structure depends on use, the formal properties of language are flexible and open to renovation as speakers shape their language to fulfill their communicative intentions. Hopper (1997) reminds us of the interesting question that J. R. Firth asked about the following utterance: “She kept on popping in and out of the office all afternoon.” He asked, where’s the verb? kept? popping ? kept popping ? kept on popping ? kept on popping in and kept on popping out ? The concept of verb that comes to us from the tradition of linguistic analysis is quite different from the concept that emerges from language in use. Hopper argues that in sentences invented by linguists and philosophers the single-word canonical verb of theory “John left his book on the table” has a distal and de-personalized quality about it compared to something like “We made a fast turn to get out of the flak” produced by an former pilot recounting a bombing raid during WWII. Hopper (p. 96) whether or not the complement of made should be part of the verbal expression or not ? It seems that for the speaker the entire action is captured by the expression made a fast turn to get out of the flak.
In a popular US TV cooking show in explaining procedure for preparing, combining and cooking various recipes, the chef frequently uses expressions such as : “Begin to start heating the oil” “I’m gonna begin to start blending the mixture…” “You kinda begin to chop the vegetables”. How is the verb to be analyzed in these expressions ?
Thinking dialectically rather than dichotomously about language-culture, learning- use, assessment-instruction has powerful implications for language teaching and learning that we are only beginning to explore. It promises to be an exciting adventure.
References
Hopper, P. (1997). Discourse and the category ‘verb’ in English. Language & Communication, 17, 93-102.
Lantolf, J. P. (2006). Conceptual knowledge and instructed second language learning: A sociocultural perspective. In. S. Fotos & H. Nassaji (eds.). Form Focused Instruction and Teacher Education: Studies in Honour of Rod Ellis. Pp. 35-54. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lantolf, J. P. (in press). Re(de)fining language proficiency in light of the concept “Languaculture.” In H. Byrnes (ed.). Advanced Language Learning. The Contributions of Halliday and Vygotsky. London: Continuum.
Littlemore, J. & Low, G. (2006). Figurative Thinking and Foreign Language Learning. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave.
Langacker, R. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar, vol. 1. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Lantolf, J. P. & M. E. Poehner. (2004). Dynamic Assessment: Bringing the Past into the Future. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1, 49-74.
Negueruela, E. & J. P. Lantolf. (in press). A concept-based approach to teaching Spanish grammar. In R. Salaberry & B. Lafford (eds.), Spanish second language acquisition: State of the art. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
Poehner, M. E. & J. P. Lantolf (2005). Dynamic Assessment in the language classroom. Language Teaching Research, 9, 233-265.
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing language. A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
