SLATE LECTURE SERIES

Upcoming lectures: Carol A. Chapelle, Iowa State University, Michael T. Ullman, Georgetown University

SLATE is pleased to announce the speakers for this semester. All times are 7:30-8:30 with reception following. Stay tuned for more information.


Thursday, March 29, 2001

Carol A. Chapelle, Iowa State University

Title: Evaluating CALL: Questions for the 21st Century
Place: Lucy Ellis Lounge (Foreign Languages Building)
Time: Thursday, March 29, 2001, 7:30 pm

In an era when many language learners and teachers assume that technology should be one vehicle for second language learning, most researchers agree that investigations of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) are too limited if they seek only to compare learning outcomes of CALL users with those of learners in traditional classrooms. Despite the definitive move away from such comparisons as a sole research strategy, the intuitive appeal in demonstrating superior effects from technology has kept this research tradition alive. Moreover, it would be difficult to argue that the results of such research are uninteresting. What is the problem with the control-treatment study for investigating CALL? What alternative approaches have been attempted, and how can the various research approaches be seen as complimentary sources of information? This paper will explain an approach to identifying important questions about CALL and applying relevant research methods to address these questions. It will suggest that the issue for the 21st century is how best to integrate multiple sources of research results to evaluate CALL.


Thursday, April 5, 2001

Michael T. Ullman (Departments of Neuroscience and Linguistics, Georgetown University)

Title: The Declarative/Procedural Model of Language: Extensions to Sex Differences and Second Language
Place: Lucy Ellis Lounge (Foreign Languages Building)
Time: Thursday, April 5, 2001, 7:30 pm

Our use of language depends upon two capacities: a mental lexicon of memorized words, and a mental grammar of rules that underlie the productive sequential and hierarchical composition of lexical forms into complex linguistic representations--i.e., complex words, phrases and sentences. The Declarative/Procedural model posits that the learning and use of lexical knowledge depends upon a well-studied bilateral temporal-lobe "declarative memory" system implicated in the learning and use of conceptual/semantic knowledge (i.e., knowledge about the world), while grammatical computations that underlie the real-time combination of lexical forms into complex representations rely on left frontal/basal-ganglia "procedural" circuits implicated in the acquisition and expression of motor and cognitive skills (e.g., riding a bicycle).

The Declarative/Procedural model predicts double dissociations between lexicon and grammar, with associations among lexical memory, memorized facts, and temporal-lobe structures, and among grammar, motor skills, and frontal/basal-ganglia structures. The model is supported by studies investigating morphology and syntax; using a range of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic approaches, including behavioral testing of patients with aphasia, neurodegenerative disease or developmental disorders, and neuroimaging investigations of healthy subjects (using fMRI, MEG, and EEG/ERP); with children and adults; examining several languages (English, German, Japanese, and Italian).

Two extensions of the model are discussed. First, sex differences in the neurocognition of lexicon and grammar are examined. Robust evidence indicates that females are better than males at remembering words. This suggests the novel hypothesis that females may tend to memorize previously-encountered complex forms (e.g., played), while males generally compute these forms compositionally (e.g., play + -ed). Both sexes should compute new complex forms compositionally (e.g., proy + -ed). These predictions are confirmed with converging evidence from psycholinguistic, neuropsychological, and neuro-electrophysiological studies examining the processing of complex words and sentences.

Second, neurocognitive differences between first and second language are examined. Evidence suggests a critical (sensitive) period in the acquisition and use of grammar: Older learners have greater difficulty than younger learners. This leads to the hypothesis that older second language learners, being unable to depend upon the procedural/grammatical system, are forced to rely on the declarative/lexical system for the computation of complex linguistic representations. These representations may be either memorized, or constructed by explicit rules learned in declarative memory. This shift to declarative/lexical memory is expected to increase with increasing age of exposure to the language, and with less experience (practice) with the language, which is predicted to improve the procedural/grammatical learning of grammatical rules. Evidence is presented in support of these predictions.

Age at Immigration and Second Language Proficiency Among Foreign-born Adults: Insights from U.S. Census Data

Gillian Stevens
Departments of Sociology and Advertising
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

October 10, 2002

Abstract
Sociologists typically assume that acquisition of English language skills follows opportunities and motivations to become proficient in English while many linguists argue that language acquisition may be governed by maturational constraints, possibly biologically based, that are tied to age at onset of language learning.  In this paper, I use U.S. census data to investigate the relationship between age at onset of second language learning and levels of English language proficiency among foreign-born adults in the United States. The overarching conclusion is that proficiency in a second language among adults is strongly related to age at immigration. Part of that relationship is attributable to social and demographic considerations tied to age at entry into a new country, and part of that relationship may be attributable to maturational constraints.

Researching the input, interaction and L2 development relationship: Modified output and working memory

Professor Alison Mackey
Department of Linguistics
Georgetown University
April 25, 2002

Abstract
A great deal of current SLA research on the role of input and interaction in the L2 learning process is investigating how interaction positively impacts L2 learning. This presentation will describe an empirical study of the relationship between working memory and modified output in order to illustrate how consideration of internal learner capacities may advance current research on L2 interaction.

A number of empirical studies have suggested that working memory may play a role in second language learning (N. Ellis, 1996; Ellis & Schmidt, 1997; Ellis & Sinclair, 1996; Harrington & Sawyer, 1992; Miyake & Friedman, 1998; Papagno, Valentine & Baddeley, 1991; Sawyer & Ranta, 2001; Service, 1992; Williams, 1999). Swain (1985, 1995) has argued that producing output may facilitate L2 learning in a number of ways, including encouraging syntactic processing, promoting automaticity and pushing learners to move to the "cutting edge" of their interlanguage abilities. Empirical second language acquisition research exploring the effects of interaction on learning has indicated a relationship between modifications that learners make to their output after receiving feedback during interaction and their L2 learning outcomes (Gass, Mackey & Pica, 1998). This study described in this presentation explores the relationship between L2 learners' working memory capacities and the sorts of modifications they make to their output following feedback during conversational interaction.

Psychometric tests of working memory capacity in the L1 and the L2 were administered to college level native English speaking learners of Spanish as a foreign language. The learners received interactional feedback from native Spanish speakers during 45-minute sessions of dyadic task-based interaction. The quantity, quality and linguistic objects of feedback were carefully controlled. Analyses investigated the amount and types of modifications that learners made to their output during interaction in the context of their scores on the working memory tests. The results show that learners with high working memory capacities were the ones who most often modified their original non-TL utterances following feedback, suggesting that an interesting relationship exists between learners' working memory capacities and their production of modified output during interaction.

The results are discussed in relation to findings from two other studies, which emphasize the importance of context in the interaction-feedback-L2 learning relationship. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of how consideration of both cognitive and contextual variables may collectively fuel future empirical explorations of the question of how interaction works.

Conversation Analysis as an approach to Second Language Acquisition: Old wine in new bottles?
Professor Gabi Kasper
Department of Second Language Sudies
University of Hawaii at Manoa
March 13, 2002

Abstract
Since its inception, second language acquisition (SLA) has been informed by sociolinguistics. Various forms of discourse analysis have been influential in SLA for the past 20 years. More recently, SLA has seen an upsurge of qualitative approaches originating in various social sciences, one of them being Conversation Analysis (CA). In order to choose judiciously from the increasing variety of sociolinguistic and discourse approaches, it is crucial for SLA researchers to understand the potential and limitations of such approaches for SLA. In this talk, I will discuss some of the specific contributions that CA can make to SLA and some of the problems involved in doing CA on L2 learner data.

Performance Consistency in Second Language Acquisition and Language Testing Research: A Conceptual Gap
Professor Dan Douglas
Department of English
Iowa State University
October 25, 2001

Abstract: Arguing from the premise that a language test is a special case of a second language acquisition device, I suggest that SLA and language testing share much common ground in terms of research methods, which have similar properties in that they are both used to make systematic observations of language performances from which inferences can be made about the state of a learner‚s interlanguage ability underlying the performance. However, I also argue that whereas the concept of demonstrating validity and reliability has been integrated into how language testing research is conducted, SLA researchers have generally failed to recognize the need to demonstrate these qualities. I compare examples of SLA and language testing research articles in terms of their treatment of validity and reliability and argue that it is important for SLA researchers to provide evidence that the methods they employ to elicit data are appropriate for the purposes intended, that the procedures provide stable and consistent data, and consequently that the interpretations they make of the results are justified.

Motivational aspects of studying foreign languages: Results of a national survey
Professor Zoltán Dörnyei
School of English Studies
University of Nottingham
January 16, 2002

Abstract
This talk presents the results of one of the biggest-ever attitudinal/motivational surveys conducted in the L2 field (N=8,593). In order to investigate how a rather turbulent period in Hungary that involved significant sociocultural changes (related to the fall of Communism) affected school children's language-related attitudes and language learning motivation during the 1990's, two consecutive surveys were conducted among 13/14-year-old pupils (in 1993 and at the very end of 1999). A novel element of the investigation was that it focused on five different target languages, English, German, French, Italian and Russian, which allowed cross-language comparisons. Furthermore, the repeated measure design made it possible to explore the changes that characterized the learners' motivation between the two phases of the survey. Data were collected from every part of the country, including tourist attractions, big cities and remote villages; thus, we are now in the unique position that we can provide a rounded description of the attitudinal/motivational setup of a whole speech community within a dynamic perspective.

The results shed light on a number of important issues: (a) the composition of L2 motivation and differences according to different target languages; (b) how motivation affects actual language choice (i.e. selecting an L2 for future studies) and expended effort; (c) gender differences; and (d) geopolitical factors affecting L2 motivation. With respect to the observed attitudinal/motivational changes, an unexpected but potentially very important finding was that during the examined period the learners' general language learning commitment showed a significant decline, with only English maintaining its position. This can be seen as a reflection of a more general 'language globalization' process, whereby the study of the world language (i.e. English) and that of other foreign languages show an increasingly deviating pattern. A related, but similarly surprising finding was that increased contact with foreigners and foreign cultural products (brought about by the liberalization of Hungarian politics and economy in the 1990's) did not result in the improvement of language attitudes but actually reduced the perceived quality of interethnic contact. The presentation will be concluded by discussing the practical implications of the results.

See Fall 2000 SLATE Lectures
See Spring 2000 SLATE Lectures
See Fall 1999 SLATE Lectures