September 21, 2004
Professor Catherine Doughty (University of Maryland)
Talk Title: Designing psycholinguistically valid classroom instruction
Abstract: Psycholinguistically valid second language instruction must be grounded in SLA theory, delivered true to theoretical constructs, and successful at engaging the intended L2 processing. In this presentation, I provide a detailed analysis of the theoretical (“SLA”), operational (“teaching”), and processing (“learning”) components of validity, with illustrations from a range of types of L2 classroom studies. The overall aim is to show how classroom investigators can improve the quality of their research protocols, and ultimately to shed light on still unanswered research questions such as which type of L2 instruction is better, implicit or explicit, and which specific psycholinguistic processes are involved in instructed SLA. (Power Point Presentation)

September 29, 2004
Professor ILONA LEKI (University of Tennessee)
Talk Title: From handmaiden to the only game in town: How free-standing L2 writing classes fail to serve
Abstract: L2 writing has experienced a dramatic shift in status over the last 40 years, going from being the last language skill to be attended in language teaching, particularly English language teaching, from the 1940s and 1950s up until about the 1980s to now being the only language skill commanding credit bearing status at most institutions of higher education in the form of freshman composition. Unfortunately, much of what we have learned about language teaching in terms of contextualizing and providing authentic occasions for L2 language use has been buried under the disciplinary traditions of freshman composition, making those courses less effective then they should be.

In this talk, I draw on conclusions from a long term research project with a small group of English learners over the course of their undergraduate careers and try to determine some of the conditions that led each of them to become a more confident and expert writer in their L2, English. Although their need for writing skills in their courses across the curriculum varied widely, the commonalities among these circumstances stand out as disturbingly distinct from the structural features of the L2 writing courses they were required to take as freshman. I conclude by arguing that some of the conditions typical of free-standing writing courses like freshman composition seem less conducive to promoting language and literacy growth than they might be and by suggesting some changes in the way we conceptualize L2 writing courses that might make them more useful to L2 college students.

October 15th, 2004
Professor Cristina Poyatos Matas (Griffith University, Australia)
Talk Title: An Australian Experience with Grammar Learning in Advanced Language classrooms: A current model of practice emerging from the class
Abstract: This seminar presents the outcomes of an action research project that took place between 1996 and 2002 at a university in Australia. It narrates the history of a teacher exploring new pedagogical models in an advanced Spanish class to make grammar learning interactive and communicative. A total of 10 groups of advanced Spanish students participated in this study in which the different elements that contribute to student-centered grammar learning were identified.

The main outcome of this longitudinal study was a new active learning approach to grammar learning that uses Problem Based Learning (PBL), Peer Assisted Learning (PAL), Reflective Learning and the use of the Grammar Learning Portfolio.

The study found that the use of this grammar learning approach had a positive impact on learners. On the one hand, this approach encouraged the students to identify, research, study and reflect on their own grammar problems with the support of formative feedback from other students and the teacher. On the other hand, it helped them to learn “how to learn grammar” and to become independent learners.

February 9th, 2005
Professor Margie Berns (Purdue University)
Talk Title: Van Gogh, Feng shui, and Salsa: The role of context in ease of language learning
Abstract: Some contexts in which English is learned seem to have more than their fair share of linguistic success, and the proficiency of their learners is admired. Other contexts are associated with low levels of achievement in overall learning of English and with learner failure. Understanding the nature and sources of this discrepancy across contexts is a necessary first step if there are to be more successful language learners. This talk will consider the presence of English in a variety of socio-cultural settings of the expanding circle and explore the differences between more and less successful learning contexts.

March 16th, 2005
Professor Silvina Montrul (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Talk Title: Heritage Speakers and L2 learners: Exploring some Differences and Similarities (Powerpoint)
Abtract: In this talk I will compares the linguistic knowledge of adult L2 learners, who learned the L2 after puberty, with the potentially “eroded” L1 grammars of adult early bilinguals who were exposed to the target language since birth and learned the other language simultaneously, or early in childhood (before age 5). I make two main claims: 1) that the L1 grammar of bilinguals at a given stabilized state (probably endstate) resembles the incomplete (either developing or stabilized) grammars typical of intermediate and advanced stages in L2 acquisition, and 2) that despite similar patterns of performance, when language proficiency is factored in, early bilinguals are better than the L2 learners, probably due to exposure to primary linguistic input early in childhood. I offer empirical evidence from two experimental study testing knowledge of the syntax and semantics of unaccusativity in Spanish, conducted with English-speaking L2 learners and English-dominant Spanish heritage speakers living in the US. I consider recent treatments of unaccusativity and language attrition within the generative framework (Sorace, 1999, 2000a,b), that offer a unifying account of the formal parallels observed between these two populations. I further discuss how input, use, and age may explain differences and similarities in the linguistic attainment of the two groups.

April 8th, 2005
Professor Judith Kroll (Pennsylvania State University)
Talk Title: When Two Languages Compete: Evidence for Cross-language Activation in Bilingual Production

Until recently, cognitive science virtually ignored the fact that most people of the world are bilingual. In the past decade this situation has changed markedly. There is now an appreciation that learning and using more than one language is a natural circumstance of cognition. Not only does research on second language (L2) learning and bilingualism provide crucial evidence regarding the universality of cognitive principles, but it also provides a sensitive tool for revealing constraints within the cognitive architecture. Recent studies investigating adult second language performance have shown that even among the most proficient bilinguals, there is parallel activity of both languages when only a single language is required. The observed activity of both languages and the interactions between them, even once bilinguals achieve a high level of skill in the L2, suggests that successful acquisition is not a matter of developing an encapsulated representation for the L2 that becomes functionally automatic and independent of the first language (L1). Instead, there appears to be a restructuring that renders the bilingual distinct in some respects from his or her monolingual counterparts. Under ordinary circumstances, bilinguals do not suffer from the consequences of cross-language competition, suggesting that they have in their possession an elegant mechanism of cognitive control that allows them to effectively select the language they intend to use. The focus of much of the current psycholinguistic research on adult bilinguals and L2 learners is to understand how bilinguals negotiate the parallel activity and interactions of their two languages, the cognitive consequences that result in response to the need to resolve potential competition across the grammar and lexicon of the two languages, and the constraints that remain as a function of the context in which the L2 was acquired, the context in which it is used, and the properties of the specific language pairings. In this talk I present a series of studies on bilingual language production that will serve to illustrate the models and methods that cognitive psychologists adopt to examine these issues. (PowerPoint Presentation)