Language Learner Autonomy: Theory, Practice and Research (Second Language Acquisition, 117) (Volume 117) - Softcover

Little, Prof. David; Dam, Leni; Legenhausen, Lienhard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783098589 ISBN 13: 9781783098583

Publisher: Multilingual Matters, 2017

Synopsis

This is the first book on language learner autonomy to combine comprehensive accounts of classroom practice with empirical and case-study research and a wide-ranging engagement with applied linguistic and pedagogical theory. It provides a detailed description of an autonomy classroom in action, focusing on Danish mixed-ability learners of English at lower secondary level, and reports the findings of a longitudinal research project that explored the learning achievement over four years of one class in the same Danish school. It also presents two learner case studies to show that the autonomy classroom responds to the challenges of differentiation and inclusion, and two institutional case studies that illustrate the power of autonomous learning to support the social inclusion of adult refugees and the educational inclusion of immigrant children. The concluding chapter offers some reflections on teacher education for language learner autonomy. Each chapter ends with discussion points and suggestions for further reading.

About this title

About the Authors

David Little is Associate Professor Emeritus and Fellow Emeritus at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He has been a regular contributor to the Council of Europe’s language education projects since the 1980s. In 2010, the National University of Ireland awarded him an honorary doctorate in recognition of his contribution to language education in Ireland and further afield.

Leni Dam works as a freelance pedagogical advisor for pre- and in-service language teachers. She is a committee member of the Learner Autonomy Special Interest Group within IATEFL. In 2004, she received an honorary doctorate in pedagogy from Karlstad University, Sweden in recognition of her innovative work in language teaching.

Lienhard Legenhausen is Professor Emeritus, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany and Visiting Professor, National Bohdan Khmelnytsky University of Cherkasy, Ukraine. He is a committee member of IATEFL’s Learner Autonomy Special Interest Group.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Language Learner Autonomy

Theory, Practice and Research

By David Little, Leni Dam, Lienhard Legenhausen

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2017 David Little, Leni Dam and Lienhard Legenhausen
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78309-858-3

Contents

Preface ix, 
Introduction The Autonomy Classroom: Procedures and Principles, 1, 
Part 1: The Autonomy Classroom in Practice: An Example from Lower Secondary Education, 
1 Using the Target Language: Spontaneity, Identity, Authenticity, 21, 
2 Interaction and Collaboration: The Dialogic Construction of Knowledge, 44, 
3 Letting Go and Taking Hold: Giving Control to the Learners, 71, 
4 Evaluation: The Hinge on which Learner Autonomy Turns, 95, 
Part 2: Language Learner Autonomy: Evidence of Success, 
5 Exploring Learning Outcomes: Some Research Findings, 121, 
6 Language Learner Autonomy and Inclusion: Two Case Studies, 158, 
Part 3: Language Learner Autonomy: Meeting Future Challenges, 
7 The Linguistic, Social and Educational Inclusion of Immigrants: Introduction, 185, 
8 Teacher Education for Language Learner Autonomy: Some Reflections and Proposals, 217, 
Conclusion, 245, 
References, 248, 
Index, 260, 

CHAPTER 1

Using the Target Language: Spontaneity, Identity, Authenticity

Introduction

We have already emphasized that use of the target language (TL) plays a central role in our version of the autonomy classroom. We have also explained that in our view autonomy is not a new capacity we must develop in our learners. They may not be used to acting autonomously in the classroom; indeed, their previous experience of schooling may well have been wholly teacher-directed (cf. Figure 0.1, p. 16). But if they are novices in relation to the learning they are expected to accomplish at school, they already know a great deal about life outside school, in which they have been by no means passive participants. Phillida Salmon puts the matter thus:

By the time they start school, all children possess rich resources of human understanding. [...] [They] have learned much about the way people live, the way people relate to each other, the way matters are organized. What kinds of thing happen in buses, shops, post office, clinic – what transactions are done, how people behave, what is possible and not possible – all this is familiar territory. [...] Many children have, by this age, acquired a specialized knowledge of their own. The experiences of play school, nursery groups or being 'minded', bring their own insider's understandings [...]. [C]hildren of five have not acquired all these kinds of understanding by being merely spectators on life; in one way or another, they are already active participants in living. (Salmon, 1985: 24–25)

Salmon is describing the acquisition of what Barnes (1976) calls 'action knowledge'. Pupils' capacity for autonomous behaviour based on action knowledge can be observed in the playground, where even very young learners participate in the organization of a society to which most adults have no access (see, for example, Opie, 1993). If learners' sense of identity derives from their 'action knowledge', our task as teachers is to engage that 'action knowledge' in the business of language learning, to ensure that what goes on in our classrooms is as much 'real life' as what goes on outside. This means that TL communication in the classroom must be authentic in the sense that it arises from and speaks to the learners' identities, and spontaneous in its response to the constantly evolving needs of classroom activity. In Chapter 2 we shall discuss the role of collaborative oral interaction in language learning; here we are concerned with TL use from the perspective of the individual learner. We focus especially on the early stages of learning because they appear to present teachers with their greatest challenge: 'If I speak the TL will my learners understand?' But before we do that we must say a little more about why we think TL use is so important and, in doing so, explain more fully what we mean by the term.

The Importance of Target Language Use

We learn to speak only by speaking

There are three reasons for insisting on TL use in the L2 classroom.

First, fluent linguistic communication – listening, speaking, reading and writing – depends on a complex of procedural skills that we mostly deploy automatically. There are many things we can do to support the development of those skills without actually using them. For example, we can learn the words that we need in order to talk or write about topics of particular interest to us; we can practise pronouncing those words, and the phrases in which they are likely to occur, and thus increase our chances of being understood by other speakers of our TL; and we can pay attention to the formal features of the TL, gradually developing our sense of grammatical correctness. But in themselves none of these activities will make us more fluent communicators. To achieve that goal we must internalize our knowledge of the TL, not as a collection of separate building blocks but as a gradually expanding, fully integrated repertoire that we can deploy automatically, and the growth of automaticity depends on using the TL for purposes of communication and constantly pushing against the limits of what we can already do with it (cf. Swain's 'output hypothesis'; Swain, 1985, 2005).

Target language use promotes incidental learning

The second reason for insisting on TL use in the L2 classroom is related to the first and has to do with the distinction between incidental and intentional learning. Incidental learning takes place as a by-product of our involvement in activity of one kind or another; it is usually involuntary and may entail the development of knowledge to which we do not have introspective access. Much 'situated learning' (cf. Introduction, p. 13) falls into this category. Intentional learning, on the other hand, follows an explicit plan or agenda and involves conscious effort. One way of describing L1 development is to say that in the early years the spoken language is acquired for the most part incidentally, as a result of the child's involvement in many different kinds of interaction, whereas learning to read and write is the result of intentional learning. L2 learning at school is inevitably an intentional process: it is guided by a curriculum that specifies particular outcomes. Yet it is impossible to teach explicitly and learn consciously everything we need to know in order to become fluent in our TL. Intentional learning must be supplemented by incidental learning. That is why, for example, reading widely in the TL has always been recognized as an essential means of increasing our vocabulary. To begin with, we may find it necessary to reach for the dictionary more often than we would like, but the more we read, the more we are likely to develop strategies for coping with new words. In due course we deploy those strategies automatically and unconsciously and our vocabulary grows incidentally, without our really noticing it. Spontaneous and authentic TL use – listening, speaking, reading and writing – is essential because it promotes incidental learning within a framework that is always intentional.

Doubts about the efficacy of explicit grammar teaching

The third reason for insisting on TL use in the L2 classroom emerges from the findings of research into the efficacy of explicit grammar instruction. Most mainstream language teaching methods assume that learners will develop the capacity to produce accurate TL utterances only if they are taught grammar and practise grammatical structures. This view is often justified by pointing to some of the obvious differences between L1 and L2 acquisition. For example, the time available for L2 learning in formal educational contexts is only a tiny fraction of the time that small children spend acquiring their L1, and grammar instruction helps to bridge the gap. And because L2 learners at school are at a more advanced stage of cognitive development than small children, it seems reasonable to suppose that they can benefit from teaching approaches informed by grammatical analysis. Against this view, however, proponents of 'direct' or 'natural' teaching methods have always argued that the underlying learning processes are essentially the same for L2 as for L1, and that the learning of grammatical rules does not speed up the process of L2 acquisition. If instead of teaching grammar we engage our learners in spontaneous TL use, in due course TL grammar will emerge. This is especially the case when learners collaborate in the production of written texts because this process encourages a focus on formal aspects of the TL and leads to awareness raising.

'Interface' and 'non-interface' positions and the argument against teachability

The essential question for research to answer is this: Can explicit (declarative) knowledge of grammatical rules be converted into the implicit (internalized, unconsciously deployed) knowledge on which spontaneous communication depends? Those who believe that it can are said to occupy an 'interface' position; that is, they believe there is an interface between these two kinds of knowledge. Those who believe that declarative knowledge cannot be converted into procedural knowledge (e.g. Krashen, 1981; more recently, Sharwood Smith & Truscott, 2014; Truscott, 2014) occupy a 'non-interface' position. This latter belief is supported by the teachability hypothesis advanced by Pienemann (1984, 1987, 1989, 1998, 2006), who showed in a series of experimental studies that teaching and practising grammatical structures has no significant effect on learners' ability to use the structures accurately in spontaneous communication. Building on Roger Brown's (1973) pioneering study of L1 acquisition, research in the 1980s had yielded evidence that L2 grammatical features are acquired in a 'natural order'; Pienemann showed that teaching cannot change this 'natural order', and that it can accelerate the learning process only when it focuses on forms that learners are 'ready' to acquire. Our knowledge of 'natural orders' of acquisition remains quite limited, however, and at any given moment each learner in a class is likely to be at a slightly different developmental stage from all the others. Thus, no textbook can possibly present the grammar of the TL in a way that matches the linguistic needs of all learners simultaneously.

What does empirical research tell us about the usefulness of grammar teaching?

Empirical studies that have set out to explore these issues have focused either on the relation between explicit rule knowledge and the performance of formal tasks (e.g. Green & Hecht, 1992; Legenhausen, 1995; Seliger, 1979) or on the correlation between being taught and practising grammatical structures on the one hand and being able to use them accurately in spontaneous communication on the other (e.g. Ellis, 1984; Terrell, 1991). Although the correlations in both cases vary between 'none', 'low' and (more rarely) 'positive', the overall tendency is to confirm a rather weak or non-existent relation between formal grammar instruction and correct use of grammatical forms in communicative situations. Much of this research might seem to imply that we should dispense with grammar teaching and controlled formal practice, yet this is not what most researchers suggest. Some argue that the effects of formal instruction may be indirect and delayed rather than immediate, in which case grammar teaching will raise the learners' level of linguistic awareness and enable them to 'notice' structural aspects that do not yet form part of their interlanguage competence. This noticing is seen as a prerequisite for learning (Schmidt, 1990, 1994; see, however, Truscott's [2014] critique of the noticing hypothesis from a non-interface perspective). Others propose that traditional grammar instruction should be replaced by forms of discovery learning that lead to 'awareness-raising' (Sharwood Smith, 1981): form-focused practice is inefficient, whereas meaning-focused tasks may facilitate and promote acquisition. In both cases it is clear that something must replace grammatical instruction at the centre of L2 pedagogy, and as the research we have briefly referred to indicates, that something should be TL use.

Target language use in mainstream approaches to second language teaching

Despite these considerations, authentic and spontaneous TL use plays only a limited role in most L2 pedagogical traditions. And although many curricula recommend use of the TL in L2 teaching, the European Commission's (2012) First European Survey on Language Competences confirms that this happens less often than learners would like it to. As its name suggests, the grammar/translation method focuses on the explicit teaching and learning of TL grammar (and vocabulary), using translation to explore equivalences and contrasts between the TL and the learner's L1. This leaves no room for TL use of the kind we are concerned with here. The audio-lingual method was devised as a way of excluding the learners' L1 from the classroom altogether: everything is presented and practised in the TL. But drill and practice likewise leave no room for TL use that is authentic and spontaneous. Concerned with language learning for rather than through communication, most communicative approaches are little better. Typically, they recommend that learners should engage in part-task practice before they attempt whole-task performance, and they certainly do not encourage learners to outperform their competence by constructing their own social realities in the classroom. In our version of language learner autonomy, by contrast, everything is embedded in TL communication, and distinctions between language practice and language use are difficult to maintain; so too are distinctions between the 'four skills'.

The nature of target language use in the autonomy classroom

Here we must return to a point we made in the Introduction and emphasize that we are not recommending a version of the direct method, which is based on the belief that L2 learning should imitate the processes of early L1 acquisition. In other words, we are not proposing that if the teacher addresses her learners in the TL, using gesture, mime and other forms of visual support to help them understand, they will sooner or later begin to speak the language themselves. We recognize the importance of incidental learning, but we do not believe that it can be left to do all the work. In our version of the autonomy classroom the teacher always has a clear working agenda that takes account of the three interacting roles in which her learners are cast – as communicators, experimenters with language, and intentional learners. Because everything that happens is framed by the teacher's use of the TL, incidental learning of the language can take place from the beginning. But everything that happens is intentional, shaped by the obligatory goal of L2 classrooms (to learn the TL as specified in the curriculum) and by a learning agenda that grows out of an interaction between the curriculum and the interests the learners bring with them, their ongoing experience of learning, regular evaluation of the learning process and its outcomes, and emerging needs. Some of the activities learners engage in are designed to support the learning of parts of the TL – words and phrases, for example, while other activities involve the creation of TL texts that are themselves acts of communication. But in the performance of both kinds of activity the analytical procedures of intentional learning and the spontaneous processes of authentic communication tend to merge. This is something we shall return to in Chapter 2 in our discussion of the collaborative production of written texts.

The role of writing in the autonomy classroom

When communicative approaches to L2 teaching first became popular, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, 'communication' was widely assumed to mean 'talking'. This is not surprising. After all, these new approaches were designed to ensure that language learning resulted in the ability to use the TL for purposes of authentic communication in the world outside the classroom, and that meant above all developing learners' oral proficiency. But listening, reading and writing are also modes of communication, and in contexts of formal learning it seems misguided not to include writing from the very beginning, because writing has always provided crucial support for intentional learning. We use it, for example, to keep a record of the things we want to remember, organize information and sort out our thoughts. In our version of the autonomy classroom, writing is as important as speaking, and reading is as important as listening. Our learners use writing to express themselves, but also to support speaking, and they speak partly in order to generate written texts. The traditional distinction between the four skills is not very useful in describing and understanding the communicative dynamic we are concerned with here. Halliday's (1993) notion of 'meaning making' is more helpful because it simultaneously involves understanding and doing, reception and production.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1783098589
• ISBN 13: 9781783098583
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280