Explicit Learning in the L2 Classroom offers a unique five-prong (theoretical, empirical, methodological, pedagogical, and model-building) approach to the issue of explicit learning in the L2 classroom from a student-centered perspective. To achieve this five-prong objective, the book reports the theoretical underpin-nings, empirical studies, and research designs employed in current research to investigate the constructs of attention and awareness in SLA, with the objectives of (1) proposing a model of the L2 learning process in Instructed SLA that accounts for the cognitive processes employed during this process and (2) providing peda-gogical and curricular implications for the L2 classroom. The book also pro-vides a comprehensive treatise of research methodology that is aimed at not only underscoring the major features of conducting robust research designs with high levels of internal validity but also preparing teachers to become critical readers of published empirical research.
Ronald P. Leow is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Director of Spanish Language Instruction in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at George-town University, USA. His areas of expertise include language curriculum develop-ment, teacher education, SLA, psycholinguistics, cognitive processes in language learning, research methodology, and CALL.
EXPLICIT LEARNING IN THE
L2 CLASSROOM
Monographs on Theoretical Issues:
Schachter/Gass Second Language Classroom Research: Issues and Opportunities (1996)
Birdsong Second Language Acquisition and the Critical Period Hypotheses (1999) Ohta Second Language Acquisition Processes in the Classroom: Learning Japanese (2001)
Major Foreign Accent: Ontogeny and Phylogeny of Second Language Phonology (2001)
VanPatten Processing Instruction: Theory, Research, and Commentary (2003) VanPatten/Williams/Rott/Overstreet Form-Meaning Connections in Second Language Acquisition (2004)
Bardovi-Harlig/Hartford Interlanguage Pragmatics: Exploring Institutional Talk (2005)
Dörnyei The Psychology of the Language Learner: Individual Differences in Second Language Acquisition (2005)
Long Problems in SLA (2007)
VanPatten/Williams Theories in Second Language Acquisition (2007) Ortega/Byrnes The Longitudinal Study of Advanced L2 Capacities (2008) Liceras/Zobl/Goodluck The Role of Formal Features in Second Language Acquisition (2008)
Philp/Adams/Iwashita Peer Interaction and Second Language Learning (2013) VanPatten/Williams Theories in Second Language Acquisition, Second Edition (2014)
Leow Explicit Learning in the L2 Classroom (2015)
Theoretical and Methodological Issues
Tarone/Gass/Cohen Research Methodology in Second Language Acquisition (1994)
Yule Referential Communication Tasks (1997)
Gass/Mackey Stimulated Recall Methodology in Second Language Research (2000)
Markee Conversation Analysis (2000)
Gass/Mackey Data Elicitation for Second and Foreign Language Research (2007)
Duff Case Study Research in Applied Linguistics (2007)
McDonough/Trof imovich Using Priming Methods in Second Language Research (2008)
Larson-Hall A Guide to Doing Statistics in Second Language Research Using SPSS (2009)
Dörnyei/Taguchi Questionnaires in Second Language Research: Construction, Administration, and Processing, 2nd Edition (2009)
Bowles The Think-Aloud Controversy in Second Language Research (2010) Jiang Conducting Reaction Time Research for Second Language Studies (2011) Barkhuizen/Benson/Chik Narrative Inquiry in Language Teaching and Learning Research (2013)
Jegerski/VanPatten Research Methods in Second Language Psycholinguistics (2013)
Of Related Interest:
Gass Input, Interaction, and the Second Language Learner (1997)
Gass/Sorace/Selinker Second Language Learning Data Analysis, Second Edition (1998)
Mackey/Gass Second Language Research: Methodology and Design (2005) Gass/Selinker Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course, Third Edition (2008)
PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK
“This book brilliantly explains how attention and awareness mediate adult sec-ond language learning. Synthesizing theory and research from multiple fields, Leow proposes a cogent model for language processing. Engaging, enlightening, and humorous, Explicit Learning in the L2 Classroom provides an essential under-standing of how language learning works.”
Melissa Baralt, Florida International University, USA “Ron Leow takes us on a clever and entertaining journey that looks at the inter-nal processes involved in the development of a second language. He starts with a comprehensive account of existing theory, and continues with the presentation of his model of the L2 learning process, showcasing recent empirical studies that support it. This work has important theoretical and methodological contribu-tions to the field and will inform SLA researchers and teaching practitioners alike.”
Nina Moreno, University of South Carolina, USA “Clearly written by a remarkable scholar with decades of experience both in the classroom and in empirical classroom research, this outstanding volume approaches a critical issue for those of us in the field of teacher education: do L2 teachers know how students learn in the L2 classroom? This book is a long overdue contribu-tion to the L2 teacher educacontribu-tion field and the best case for explicit learning in the L2 classroom.”
María J. de la Fuente, Associate Professor of Spanish and Director of the Spanish Language Program, The George Washington University, USA
EXPLICIT LEARNING IN
THE L2 CLASSROOM
A Student-Centered Approach
Ronald P. Leow
by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data Leow, Ronald P. (Ronald Philip), 1954–
Explicit learning in the L2 classroom : a student-centered approach / Ronald P. Leow, Georgetown University.
pages cm. — (Second language acquisition research series) Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Language and languages—Study and teaching. 2. Second language acquisition. I. Title. P51.L4968 2015 418.0071—dc23 2014036365 ISBN: 978-0-415-70705-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-70706-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-88707-4 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Preface xi Acknowledgments xviii
1 Introduction, or Strolling Down Memory Lane: Raising
Your Awareness 1
SECTION 1
Theoretical Foundations 13
2 A Preliminary Theoretical Framework for the L2
Learning Process in SLA 15 3 Theoretical Foundations for the Role of Attention in
Learning from Non-SLA Fields 23 4 Theoretical Foundations for the Role of Awareness in
Learning from Non-SLA Fields 48 5 Theoretical Foundations for the Roles of Attention and
Awareness in L2 Learning in SLA 68
SECTION 2
Research Methodology 107
6 Methodological Issues in Research on the Relationships
between Attention, Awareness, and L2 Learning in SLA 109
7 Deconstructing the Construct of Learning 123 8 Location, Location, Location: Probing Inside the Box 136
SECTION 3
Empirical Research Investigating the Role of Attention/ Noticing in L2 Development 157
9 Your Attention, Please 159 10 Learning Explicitly or Implicitly: That Is the Question 184 11 Depth of Processing in L2 Processing 203
SECTION 4
Model Building 237
12 Toward a Model of the L2 Learning Process in Instructed SLA 239
SECTION 5
Pedagogy 251
13 Toward the Development of Psycholinguistics-Based
E-Tutors 253 14 Conclusion: The Changing L2 Classroom, and Where Do
We Go From Here? 270
To begin at the beginning: Let us begin with two agreements, one professional, one theoretical. Professionally, no one will disagree with the statement that teaching is one of the most rewarding and, at the same time, potentially one of the most frustrating professions to undertake (yes, I am going to wear two hats in this book: Teacher’s, based on four decades of teaching experience, and researcher’s, based on my research in the second language acquisition (SLA) field over the last two decades). It is rewarding when our students perform according to our objectives and “master/mistress” plans, and frustrating when, despite our efforts to facilitate their learning by providing them with an “ appropriate ” environment, and adequate exposure to and practice with the second or foreign (L2) language (accompanied by much love), they apparently fail to grasp even the “ simplest ” (that is, from our perspective) grammatical rule we teach them or to which we expose them. What can explain this apparent contradiction? To answer this question, let us discuss some important processes in language learning. First, did you pay attention to or notice the quotation marks around the descriptors “appropriate” and “simplest”? I even bolded them to draw your attention to them, with the hope of making you process them at a deeper level (this, incidentally, is the argument behind any effort to make specific aspects of the written L2 (and even oral L2 via pauses, intonation, funny facial expressions, etc.) more salient to L2 learners, and falls in the research strand of input/textual enhancement, which I will discuss later). Were you aware (pun intended) that there are deeper connotations embedded in these words? You could have paid more attention to these words but perhaps did not process them further—but that is getting into your heads, an internal process. “Simplest” refers to a teacher-centered perspective of what constitutes a simple rule for the teacher and not necessarily from a student-centered perspective. “Appropriate” is based on our
perception of language learning and teaching. Take a pause and contemplate this simple but challenging question: What is your perception of language learning and teaching ? In other words, how do we think an L2 is learned (or acquired), and how should it be taught or presented? This is what drives all of us in the “classroom” setting (OK, these quotation marks around “classroom” refer to the fact that nowadays we have the hybrid curriculum in which the classroom can be physical or virtual/electronic or both).
There are many responses to this simple but challenging question, some based on personal experience or attendance at teacher education courses, some based on the SLA and/or non-SLA (e.g., cognitive psychology or cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, etc.) literatures, some based on a combination of two or more, and so on. However, regardless from where our perception may be derived, the fact remains that we, however hard we try, cannot learn for our students. In other words, learning is an internal process that may or may not be manipulated by external factors and, as we know, learning may be explicit, that is, with awareness, or implicit, that is, without awareness.
What, then, is awareness? Are you aware that the literature in both SLA and non-SLA fields is literally littered with the role of awareness being explicitly or implicitly subsumed within a remarkable number of variables? We have type of learning (e.g., subliminal, incidental, implicit, explicit), type of learning con-dition (e.g., implicit, explicit), type of instructional concon-dition (e.g., implicit, explicit, inductive, deductive), type of awareness (e.g., language, metacognitive, phenomenal, situational, self, conscious, unconscious) and so on. We also have constructs such as noticing (attention with awareness), detection (attention, cog-nitive registration without awareness), perception (with or without awareness), consciousness (even conscious awareness! So we can assume there is unconscious awareness?), and the list goes on. There are quite a large number of definitions, but here are two: “[T]he function of the interpretation of the nature of the encoding and retrieval processes required by the task” (Robinson, 1995: 301), and “a particular state of mind in which an individual has undergone a specific subjective experience of some cognitive content or external stimulus” (Tomlin & Villa, 1994: 193). For now, simply note that the construct of awareness as defined refers to something taking place in our brain as we process language.
Now we can go to the theoretical agreement: We are still not sure which type of learning (explicit, that is, with awareness, or implicit, that is, without aware-ness) works better for our students in the L2 classroom. In other words, the role awareness plays in the learning process is a theoretically valid question and it plays out every day in our classrooms (with or without our own awareness).
Yet from a practitioner’s perspective, we “know” (as in “intuition” that comes from vast experience) that raising our students’ awareness of grammatical rules, learning strategies, etc., is the way to go. Many if not all of us even do it today in our classrooms, since it feels so natural and instinctive! Take a look at every sin-gle foreign language textbook. Did you find one WITHOUT any grammatical
rules? It is not going to sell because we teachers (and students) expect such gram-matical explanations, at least in some form, be it traditional—for example, com-plete verbal paradigms—or a little more progressive, as in partial paradigms that only address the persons involved (e.g., you and I , tú y yo , je et tu , etc.). For those teachers who have been in the profession as long as I have been, I am sure you will fondly remember the good old days of the Grammar Translation Method, when we taught the grammatical rules and then told our students to apply the rules clearly (from our perspective), with a high level of grammatical awareness, in translations. For our slightly younger teachers, you have likely been exposed to myriad methods and theoretical perceptions that view language learning from either a formal or traditional perspective (grammar comes first), an informal perspective (grammar is embedded in the L2 input, so you are wasting your time teaching it), or a combination of the two. Any way we look at all these perspec-tives with regard to grammar instruction or exposure, and their relationships with the role of awareness of these grammar rules, the focus has clearly shifted from a teacher-centered perspective to a more learner-centered one (at least for most of us), albeit with one caveat: Does “learner-centeredness” mean that (1) we make our students more active by participating in more activities, etc., but we still provide the essential grammatical information based on our individual per-ception of how the learning process operates, or (2) we make our students more responsible for the learning process obviously premised on a better understand-ing of the internal processes involved in language learnunderstand-ing? The irony of the current status of language learning and teaching, however, may lie in the absence of a clear treatise on the roles of many important variables postulated to promote language learning that not only are theoretically and empirically supported but also offer solid pedagogical implications for the L2 classroom.
Explicit Learning in the L2 Classroom: A Student-Centered Approach , then, is a book that provides a theoretically grounded and empirically supported approach to the promotion of explicit learning, that is, learning with awareness, in L2 development with a direct connection to learning in the classroom setting. Put another way, it is not a book on justifying the teaching of grammatical rules in the second/foreign language (L2) classroom. It is also not a book on the acquisition of an L2 in an L2 setting since the author believes that this kind of formal setting does not lend itself to the natural acquisition process that is usually associated with a process similar to that of a child acquiring his/her first language (e.g., L2 classroom contexts are often characterized by impoverished input or L2, an inad-equate amount of exposure and interaction, and practice and homework focused on grammar, be it by the teacher or the textbook, etc.). It is a book on learning , a process that involves quite a lot of processing and potential learner awareness while interacting with the L2 inside and outside the classroom setting. I shall elab-orate on, or, more specifically, deconstruct this construct of learning in Chapter 7 .
Now that I have gotten your attention (I am assuming that since you have read this far you must have been paying some attention to the message and, in some
cases, processing and interacting with the content from a personal viewpoint), the main purpose of this book is to raise your awareness (pun intended) of many important variables that contribute to language learning and, ultimately, to lan-guage teaching. We are going to take a closer and critical look at internal cog-nitive processes and, more specifically, constructs such as attention, awareness, and working memory, together with activation of prior knowledge and depth of processing postulated to play important roles in language learning, from both a theoretical and empirical perspective, in order to better inform ourselves as we teach in the L2 “classroom” (think hybrid).
For those readers who were processing the above information with some level of awareness and making inferences with respect to the title of this book, it will come as no surprise that the overwhelming number of studies that have empirically and directly or indirectly investigated the construct of awareness or lack thereof in L2 development (e.g., de la Fuente, 2015; Bowles, 2003; Faretta-Stutenberg & Morgan-Short, 2011; Hama & Leow, 2010; Hsieh, Moreno, & Leow, 2015; Leow, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2015; Leung & Williams, 2011, 2012; Martínez-Fernández, 2008; Medina, 2015; Robinson, 1996; Rosa & Leow, 2004; Rosa & O’Neill, 1999; Sachs & Suh, 2007; Williams, 2005) have reported sub-stantial and robust support for its role in the learning process, that is, explicit learn-ing in the classroom setting viewed from an internal perspective rocks ! However, please do not take my word since, as a human being, I may be biased, given that the bulk of my published research lies in the attentional and awareness strands of research. There is absolutely no need on my part to mention that the classroom setting is far more conducive to explicit learning than implicit learning, for obvious reasons. So what I propose to offer in this book is simply a presentation of the facts—from an unbiased perspective—and you, my dear readers, will be the judge of the substance and purpose of the book: Promoting explicit learning, that is, learning with learner awareness in the L2 classroom.
To this end, I shall present the relevant data from a five-prong approach (theo-retical, empirical, methodological, model-building, and pedagogical). Section 1 is all theoretical. Without theory, everything is explained in an ad hoc way, which is not very scholarly—plus I sound smart. Chapter 1 takes a stroll down memory lane to situate the construct of awareness in the SLA literature. To situate the the-oretical foundations for explicit learning in both SLA and non-SLA, Chapter 2 presents, from a psycholinguistic perspective, a coarse-grained theoretical frame-work of the L2 learning process in SLA, to which we shall refer several times throughout the book. Chapters 3 and 4 then present relatively broad overviews of several major theoretical underpinnings postulated for the roles of attention and awareness in learning in non-SLA fields that have inf luenced those in SLA. Chapter 5 provides a more in-depth discussion of the theoretical underpinnings postulated for the roles of attention and awareness in language learning , together with a summary of their major tenets postulated to account for the learning process in SLA.
Before we discuss the empirical research, we need to have a relatively good idea of what constitutes a robust research design that produces findings upon which we can place a high level of confidence. Let’s get critical! To this end, Section 2 (Research Methodology) provides an in-depth report of the heart of any empirical study, namely the research design, and its corresponding level of internal validity. Chapter 6 focuses on the methodological issues surrounding the investigation of the relationship between the roles of attention and awareness, or lack thereof, and learning in the SLA field. Chapter 7 presents a tri-dimensional perspective of the construct of learning to address the potential terminological confusion as to what comprises “learning” in SLA. Chapter 8 addresses three major concurrent data elicitation procedures (reaction time, eye-tracking, and think aloud) employed to gather data on learner processes while they are interacting with L2 data, and their benefits to further research on learner processes. Related methodological issues such as reactivity and veridicality are also discussed.
Section 3 (Empirical Research) then provides synopses of the empirical research conducted in SLA on the roles of attention/noticing ( Chapter 9 ) and awareness or lack thereof ( Chapter 10 ) in L2 development. As I mentioned above, Section 2 will assist you in being critical of published work. Chapter 11 discusses the concept of depth of processing in the L2 learning process and suggests that we centralize the process of learning not on the construct of attention, which clearly plays a crucial role in L2 learning, but on the notion of how L2 learners process the L2 data. Theoretical, methodological, empirical, and pedagogical benefits are discussed.
Section 4 (Model Building) presents in Chapter 12 a proposed model of the L2 learning process in Instructed SLA that draws from previous theoretical underpinnings in both the SLA and non-SLA fields, and attempts to capture the important roles several cognitive processes play along the L2 learning process from input to output. Learning will be represented in this model as being both a process and a product (knowledge), and special emphasis will be placed on the potential roles attention, depth of processing, (levels of) awareness, and activa-tion of prior knowledge play along several stages in the learning process.
Section 5 (Pedagogy) is based exclusively on the previous chapters. Chapter 13 provides suggestions for the development of psycholinguistics-based tasks and e-tutors designed to enhance robust learning, especially of problematic gram-matical points in the L2. Specific examples are provided. Finally, Chapter 14 discusses some conclusions and questions gleaned from the previous chapters, reports on the inroads technology is currently making at both the curricular and instructional level leading to the changing dynamics of the L2 classroom, and provides one feasible curricular suggestion, namely, a partial hybrid curriculum, to embrace the changing format of the traditional L2 classroom, the role of tech-nology, and Instructed SLA research.
It is hoped that after reading this book, readers’ awareness of several impor-tant variables postulated to contribute to language learning (and teaching) will be raised, together with more creative ways to enhance and stimulate students’
explicit learning, that is, learning with awareness, in the L2 classroom. While Baars (1997) wrote, “Paying attention—becoming conscious of some material— seems to be the sovereign remedy for learning anything applicable to many very different kinds of information. It is the universal solvent of the mind” (sec. 5, p. 304), I personally like to think that the depth of processing, with its potential of raising the level of awareness, is an important step to potential change in the learning process.
References
Baars, B. J. (1997). In the theater of consciousness: The workspace of the mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bowles, M. A. (2003). The effects of textual input enhancement on language learning: An online/off line study of fourth-semester Spanish students. In P. Kempchinsky & C. E. Piñeros (Eds.), Theory, practice, and acquisition: Papers from the 6th Hispanic
Lin-guistics Symposium and the 5th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese (pp. 395–411). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
De la Fuente, M. (2015). Explicit corrective feedback and computer-based, form-focused instruction: The role of L1 in promoting awareness of L2 forms. In R. P. Leow, L. Cerezo, & M. Baralt (Eds.), A psycholinguistic approach to technology and language
learning. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Faretta-Stutenberg, M., & Morgan-Short, K. (2011). Learning without awareness recon-sidered: A replication of Williams (2005). In Granena, G., Koeth, J., Lee-Ellis, S., Lukyanchenko, A., Prieto Botana, G., & Rhoades, E. (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2010 Second Language Research Forum: Reconsidering SLA research, dimensions, and
direc-tions (pp. 18–28). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Hama, M., & Leow, R. P. (2010). Learning without awareness revisited: Extending Wil-liams (2005). Studies in Second Language Acquisition , 32 , 465–491.
Hsieh, H-C., Moreno, N., & Leow, R. P. (2015). A comparison of level of awareness and depth of processing in two types of instructional media (C-FTF vs. CAI): Revisiting Hsieh (2008). In R. P. Leow, L. Cerezo, & M. Baralt (Eds.), A psycholinguistic approach
to technology and language learning. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
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Learn-ing, 47 , 467–506.
Leow, R. P. (1998). Toward operationalizing the process of attention in second language acquisition: Evidence for Tomlin and Villa’s (1994) fine-grained analysis of attention. Applied Psycholinguistics, 19 , 133–159.
Leow, R. P. (2000). A study of the role of awareness in foreign language behavior: Aware versus unaware learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition , 22 , 557–584. Leow, R. P. (2001). Attention, awareness and foreign language behavior. Language
Learn-ing , 51 , 113–155.
Leung, J. H. C., & Williams, J. N. (2011). The implicit learning of mappings between forms and contextually derived meanings. Studies in Second Language Acquisition , 33 , 33–55.
Leung, J. H. C., & Williams, J. N. (2012). Constraints on implicit learning of grammati-cal form-meaning connections. Language Learning , 62 , 634–662.
Martínez-Fernández, A. (2008). Revisiting the involvement load hypothesis: Awareness, type of task and type of item. In M. Bowles, R. Foote, S. Perpiñán, & R. Bhatt (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2007 Second Language Research Forum (pp. 210–228). Somer-ville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Medina, A. (2015). The variable effects of level of awareness and CALL versus non- CALL textual modification on adult L2 readers’ input comprehension and learning. In R. P. Leow, L. Cerezo, & M. Baralt (Eds.), A psycholinguistic approach to technology
and language learning. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Robinson, P. (1995). Review article: Attention, memory and the ‘noticing’ hypothesis. Language Learning , 45 , 283–331.
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Sachs, R., & Suh, B-R. (2007). Textually enhanced recasts, learner awareness, and L2 out-comes in synchronous computer-mediated interaction. In A. Mackey (Ed.),
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Williams, J. N. (2005). Learning without awareness. Studies in Second Language
I would like to thank all my previous teachers from pre-kindergarten to col-lege (especially James F. Lee, my mentor, and Bill VanPatten); my current and former students/colleagues who have, in so many ways, contributed to the content of this book; and especially the think aloud/awareness/CALL group (Elena Rosa, Miguel Angel Novella, Maite Camblor, Melissa Bowles, Ana-María Nuevo, Ya-Chin Tsai, Takako Egi, Maite Camblor, Almitra Medina, Claudia Guidi, Laura Gurzynski-Weiss, Rebecca Sachs, YunDeok Choi, Maymona Khalil Al Khalil, Marisa Filgueras Gómez, de la Fuente), the research methodological group (Kara Morgan-Short, Bo-Ram Suh, Melissa Baralt, Luis Cerezo, Mika Hama, Ellen Johnson Sarafini, Germán Zárate-Sández, Sarah Grey, Silvia Mari-juan, Colleen Moorman), the more recent depth-of-processing group (Hui-Chen Hsieh, Nina Moreno, Ana Martínez-Fernández, Annie Calderón, Sergio Andrada, Johnathan Mercer), and my two co-creators of the criteria for coding depth of processing (Annie Calderón and Ellen Johnson Sarafini) in Chapter 11. Thanks also to the Initiative on Technology-Enhanced Learning (ITEL) grant (coordinated by Peter Janssens) awarded by Georgetown University’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) that permitted me to cre-ate the Gustar Maze that was designed by Bill Garr and extended by Allison Caras. A special thanks to my graphic designer Steven Mercer for the model of the L2 learning process in Instructed SLA, Johnathan Mercer (yes, they are siblings) for contributing to the visual conceptualization of the model, and Celia Zamora for the indexing. Finally, much appreciation to my two editors (Susan Gass and Alison Mackey) who have been, without their awareness, sources of inspiration to me, and to Renata Corbani and Carmen Baumann for making the publishing process enjoyable.
Before I jump into the nitty-gritty of the book components, I would like first to broadly describe what comprises L2 learning in this book and where this book is situated, and then I would like to take a quick stroll down memory lane regard-ing the many changes pertainregard-ing to our students’ role in L2 learnregard-ing in the SLA field, dating back to the theoretical and pedagogical approaches to learning in the 1960s to the current empirical focus on implicit learning in SLA.
L2 Learning and Setting
L2 learning, for now ( Chapter 7 elaborates on this construct), can be described broadly as a process in which many changes take place in L2 learners’ cogni-tion as they try to create new representacogni-tions for the L2 grammar, internalize such data, and restructure if necessary, all the while developing their ability to comprehend and produce the L2, either orally or written, in real time. It takes place in a setting in which the L2 is either viewed as a foreign language (as in English speakers taking the foreign language requirement in an L1 environment) or a second language (as in Japanese speakers taking English classes in an L2 environment, for example, in the USA). In either setting, L2 learners are exposed to naturally occurring languages and are interacting with the language, be it communicatively or performing a task of some ecological validity. In the typical formal classroom setting, the L2 is taught by an instructor, and students learn the so-called traditional four skills of listening, reading, writing, and speaking. There is a curriculum that provides information on, for example, the grading criteria, attendance policy, percent weight of each section of the curriculum, objectives for all four skills, and a syllabus that provides a guideline for each class session. Homework is usually assigned and students follow a prescribed textbook.
1
INTRODUCTION, OR STROLLING
DOWN MEMORY LANE
The amount of time spent in this formal setting varies, but the minimum is usu-ally around one hour either daily (for intensive classes) or three or four times a week (for non-intensive classes, depending upon the language program). SLA research that seeks to probe into learner cognition, then, needs to focus on the identification and explanation of the cognitive processes employed by L2 learners as they learn the L2 in these two settings.
Memory Lane
Now, let us situate this book’s perspective regarding our students’ role in L2 learning by taking a quick stroll down memory lane over the many selected changes in focus, both theoretical and empirical, toward what Omaggio (1993) calls the “presumed locus of control of the process of language acquisition” (p. 43) over the last several decades.
First, a quick pop quiz: How many of you are aware that the construct of awareness has always been subsumed in the teaching profession? Isn’t it true that we language teachers—well, most of us—have this innate desire to promote our students “knowledge” of what they are learning or their awareness of what they are producing? Be it theoretically, empirically, or pedagogically driven, we, as teachers of L2 languages, do incorporate activities or tasks that require some role of awareness or lack thereof on our students’ part. Now that we are on the same page, let us proceed to some previous theoretical perspectives regarding the L2 learning process.
As many of us will recall, the two dominant theoretical approaches to L2 learning in the 50s and early 60s were the behaviorist/empiricist (e.g., Hilgard, 1962; Skinner, 1957) versus the rationalist/mentalist/nativist (e.g., Chomsky, 1957) perspective of learning. The former postulated that learning was literally teacher-centered, that is, it was the teacher who was responsible for providing the appropriate stimuli or grammatical data. The student was like the little baby (or Pavlovian puppy) conditioned to absorb all this important information without any personal input or cognitive processes involved, but being rewarded when following instructions correctly (which may explain why many teachers do have jars of candy in their offices). Thus, we had our pedagogical repertoire of repeti-tion exercises or rote memory that was relatively divorced from a relarepeti-tionship with meaning or even real communication (cf. the well-known Audio-lingual Methodology in the 60s). The latter theoretical approach viewed the student as a more active participant in the learning process (after all, s/he already possessed innately Chomsky’s famous language acquisition device (LAD), also referred to as “ the black box ”), so teachers shifted more responsibilities to the students for the learning process, and in doing so subtly acknowledged the role of cognitive processes in L2 learning. However, like in real life, the rationalist/mentalist/ nativist approach to L2 learning led to several interpretations of this new learner-centered perspective of the learning process. This resulted in several variations of
teaching practices, depending on one’s personal perception of language learning and teaching within this approach: Witness, for example, the Grammar Transla-tion Method (50s), the Cognitive Code Method that placed a premium on formal instruction of grammar before practice, the humanistic perception as evident in the 70s in The Silent Way, Community Language Learning, and Suggestope-dia, and the focus on communication first as in the Direct Method (60s), the Total Physical Response (70s), the Communicative Approach (70s), the Natural Approach (80s), Task-based Learning (current) and so on. I am proud to say that I have tried, during my four decades of teaching, most of these methods, approaches, techniques, etc., as bandwagons came and rode off into the sunset.
Interestingly, the two major publications, namely Corder (1967) and Selinker (1972), that provided the foundation for current research in SLA were both learner-centered and repudiations against a behaviorist approach to language learning. For language instruction, Corder suggested the need to seriously address what L2 learners bring to the task of learning an L2, which he called their “internal syllabus.” In addition, he coined the term “intake” that sought to differentiate what learners are exposed to, for example, the L2 (the input), and what they take in . Theoretically, it is assumed that not everything that learners pay attention to in the input is automatically “taken in” or processed, most likely due to processing demands and attentional constraints. Selinker suggested that we acknowledge the internal system, which he calls “interlanguage,” that L2 learners possess as they develop their ability to learn the L2. As the term con-notes, interlanguage is a system that is somewhere between the first language (L1) and the L2. Given the status of interlanguage being a system with its own rules, doesn’t it make you wonder whether errors produced by our students are really systematically “correct” according to their own interlanguage system, but are being graded from a native or near-native speaker’s perspective? Put another way, perhaps they are “right” and we are “wrong.”
The 70s witnessed several empirical efforts to address Corder’s and Selinker’s calls for more focus on the learner’s involvement in the learning process. Many of these studies were essentially based on L1 research conducted within an L2 context and provided quite a contrast in their pursuits. On the one hand were the acquisition order studies (do some of you recall the famous morpheme stud-ies by, for example, Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974) that attempted to equate the L1 acquisitional process with that of the L2 based on an apparent natural order of morphemes?), while on the other hand we had the error analysis studies that sought to prove otherwise, that is, that the L1 transfer process may not be entirely similar to the L2 (cf. Corder, 1967; Schachter, 1974).
The 80s, in my opinion, began a fruitful period of research in the L2 learn-ing process both from an empirical and theoretical perspective. Even though the shift from a strict behaviorist perspective of language learning was relatively accepted in the SLA field, early empirical research still began to focus on the external features of the L2 input (cf. studies on simplification such as Blau, 1982;
Davies, 1984; Parker & Chaudron, 1987) and the role of interaction in L2 lan-guage learning, mostly from a descriptive perspective (cf. Hatch, Shapira, & Wagner-Gough, 1978; Henzl, 1979). At the same time, there were some impor-tant theoretical underpinnings that began to focus more closely on learners’ internal processes in relation to the role of awareness. First, the term “conscious-ness-raising” (Sharwood Smith, 1981) came into being with a direct relationship to students’ internal processes. If we can raise our students’ consciousness of the underlying grammatical rules, this will greatly facilitate their learning (by the way, the Grammar Translation Method could be credited for doing this, though learning was defined as the ability to write or translate instead of the ability to speak). However, Sharwood Smith came to realize ( became aware ) that he was dealing with an internal process and, consequently, modified his term to “input enhancement” (Sharwood Smith, 1993), arguing that this term was more appro-priate in depicting exactly what was being proposed, namely enhancing the L2 input via, for example, grammatical rules, additional emphasis, or anything that could potentially draw students’ attention to the enhanced aspect of the L2 input. Needless to say, this strand of research exploded in the 90s, given its relatively broad definition of what comprises input enhancement (cf. Leow, 2009, for a more elaborated and critical discussion of this issue), and is still current today.
In my opinion, there are some milestones along the theoretical and empirical routes to current studies that have gone beyond investigating the role of awareness in L2 learning to addressing whether the absence of awareness also plays a role in L2 learning (cf. Chan & Leung, 2014; Hama & Leow, 2010; Leow, 2000; Leung & Williams, 2011, 2014; Williams, 2005). The first milestone was Krashen’s (1982) Monitor Theory, with its pedagogical sidekick the Natural Approach that ini-tiated and maximally contributed to this theoretical and empirical impetus on internal processes. The Monitor Theory, premised on children’s first language acquisition, was the first theoretical underpinning to raise the issue of the role of the construct of awareness (termed “consciousness” in those days and also today with some researchers) in the L2 learning process and to distinguish between learning (with consciousness), resulting in learned/explicit knowledge, and acquir-ing (without consciousness), resulting in acquired/implicit knowledge. Krashen also argued that there was no interface (connection) between implicit (acquired) and explicit (learned) knowledge, which led to quite a discussion of whether there exists in SLA a weak interface; for example, explicit knowledge can lead to implicit knowledge (e.g., R. Ellis, 2006), or implicit knowledge may be assisted by explicit knowledge (e.g., N. Ellis, 2005). A strong interface (e.g., DeKeyser, 2007) derived from skill acquisition theory in cognitive psychology (cf. Anderson, 1982) postulates that SLA is largely a conscious process, so we begin the learning process with declarative knowledge that can then become procedural knowledge (after much practice), or none at all (Krashen, 1982; Paradis, 2009).
The interesting aspect of this interface debate that rears its head every now and then is that while type of knowledge (a product) is under consideration,
by attaching the dichotomies implicit versus explicit or acquired versus learned or conscious versus subconscious to the term knowledge, we have shifted the product knowledge to include a process of learning, that is, learning with or without awareness. So the theoretical question is not only whether knowledge can be identified as implicit or explicit but also how such knowledge got to be explicit or implicit. In other words, the end result (product) may not ref lect the process of how the knowledge made its way into the internal system, and in order to address adequately the interface issue, concurrent or online data on learners’ processes need to be gathered instead of making extrapolations based on non-concurrent or off line data. See how convoluted the issue can become, and yet it remains charmingly challenging and stimulating to research?
In addition to other postulations, Krashen’s theory equated L2 “acquisition” with L1 acquisition and also postulated that acquisition followed a predictable order. In addition to the obvious critique of the inability to test his theory of L2 learning ( “hmm, comprehensible input , to whom? input comprehensible to you may not be comprehensible to me; hmm, i plus 1, where to locate each student’s i, GPS, any-one? and what is the 1 again?” ), serious questions such as, “Do we treat our adult students like babies following a first language (L1) acquisitional trajectory?” (Krashen: look at the evidence of an apparent unchangeable acquisitional sequence, albeit based on morphemes, those little pieces that make up a word ), or “Do we intervene in an ‘appropriate’ way ( we need to consider the psycholinguistic or sociocultural factors involved in learning ) in their learning process?” ( let us provide feedback at an appropri-ate point during interaction or let us put them into collaborative groups and learning will take place ), still need to be more fully addressed.
As I mentioned above, Krashen’s scholarly contribution to the SLA field via his Monitor Model ranks very high in my estimation. While we do have the phenomenon called “Krashen bashin’” (cf. for example, Gregg, 1984; McLaugh-lin, 1978 and others who took him to task), without his theoretical postulations serious research on learners’ internal processes would most likely have taken place at a later date. When you publish a study or postulate a theory or model and subsequently encourage a whole string of further investigation into the issue(s) you initiated, you have my highest respect, irrespective of any potential bash-ing you may receive, because in a weird sense you have contributed to a better understanding of the learning process by stimulating further and, ideally, more robust research.
Around the late 80s, both teachers and researchers were beginning to con-template the use of two types of instruction: Explicit versus implicit (cf. e.g., Scott, 1989; Shaffer, 1989). Explicit (also referred to as “deductive”) instruction laid the responsibility on the teacher to explain the grammatical rules first, keep-ing their fkeep-ingers crossed that students did understand the explanation, before allowing them to practice the rules. Implicit (also referred to as “inductive”) instruction exposed the students to the L2 with many of the targeted grammatical or lexical items embedded in the input, and teachers also kept their fingers (and
toes) crossed that students would induce these grammatical features all by them-selves (given the impoverished environment of the classroom and the paucity of extensive exposure to and interaction with the L2, tough luck). Interestingly, the two studies cited above (Scott, 1989; Shaffer, 1989) actually defined induc-tive instruction differently. While Scott followed the definition of inducinduc-tive instruction as described above, Shaffer actually oriented her participants to pay attention to the targeted linguistic items in the input, which, in my opinion, may be best described as a partially combined deductive/inductive definition. Two other terms that arose and were employed very loosely in this period were the constructs of explicit learning , that is, learning with awareness, and implicit learning , that is, learning without awareness, although at that time the construct of awareness was not independently operationalized or measured. Both terms are now playing a prominent role in current SLA research, as mentioned above.
With regard to a focus on learners’ internal processes, McLaughlin (1987) posited his Cognitive Theory based on cognitive psychology tenets on the role of attention, limited attentional capacity, and types of processing (controlled versus automatic) assumed to play a role in input processing during the early stages of the learning process. The next year witnessed the first attempt to capture the L2 learning process from input (called ambient speech) > apperceived input > com-prehended input > intake > integration > output (Gass, 1988, which has been refined and updated in Gass, 1997, and Gass & Selinker, 2008).
The 90s began with Schmidt’s (1990) seminal article on his noticing hypoth-esis that brought into the SLA field a theoretical postulation that the roles of focal attention and awareness were isomorphic (two sides of the same coin) and crucial in any L2 development, and more specifically during the early stage of the learning process, namely the input-to-intake stage. This is the second mile-stone along the route to current unawareness or implicit learning studies. The noticing hypothesis immediately became arguably the most inf luential theoreti-cal underpinning of many strands of SLA research that include input enhance-ment, interaction, learning conditions, output hypothesis, and so on. Making the attentional strand of research even more interesting and debatable was Tomlin and Villa’s (1994) model of input processing in SLA derived from a cognitive neuroscience perspective that did not posit any role for awareness in the initial stages of the learning process (intake), soon followed by Robinson’s (1995) model of the relationship between attention and memory that attempted to reconcile these two theoretical perspectives in addition to elaborating on the important role of memory.
Appearing also were theoretical models (e.g., Gass, 1997, an update of Gass, 1988; VanPatten, 1996, updated in 2004 and 2007) of the L2 learning process that went beyond the initial stage of the learning process to include other stages postulated to occur along this process, for example, beyond intake (internal-ization) and output (production) (cf. Gass, 1988), and a modular framework (Truscott & Sharwood Smith, 2004, updated in 2011) that attempts to integrate
language acquisition accounts with proposals of how language, and more spe-cifically phonology and (morpho)syntax, and cognition interact. At this point, methodologically, empirical studies were still gathering data after experimental exposures or treatments. Thus, while theoretically the focus was on the learning process and not on external input or output features, product data were being employed to account for internal processes. Here was (and still is for many cur-rent studies) the classic research design: Pretest (to establish that experimental and control groups were statistically similar in ability to perform some task) > treatment or exposure (to the targeted linguistic item in the input) > immedi-ate posttest (e.g., a recognition and/or production test, etc.). Usually the raw scores of the groups were entered into a statistical program, and if a significant difference in performance or between the means of the groups was revealed (ide-ally, the experimental group outperforming the control group), the researcher would jump up and proclaim to everyone that it was the treatment or type of exposure that contributed to the results, which boils down to the equivalent of assuming that participants did exactly what was expected of them during the experiment and that all variables that could have potentially affected the results were well controlled. In other words, it was inherently assumed that there was high internal validity in the study, that we could safely place our confidence in the findings, and that we could, from a pedagogical perspective, incorporate the findings into our classroom activities, etc.
It was only in the latter part of the 90s that the constructs of attention and awareness began to be addressed both methodologically and empirically in an effort to investigate their effects on L2 development. While some studies employed off line measures, that is, after exposure (e.g., Robinson, 1996, 1997), other studies first methodologically established the constructs of attention and awareness before submitting the data to statistical analyses (e.g., Alanen, 1995; Leow, 1997). Data elicitation procedures such as online verbal reports or think-aloud protocols (in which participants were requested to say think-aloud whatever came into their head as they processed the L2 data, that is, while they interacted with the new grammatical or lexical information in the L2) began to be employed in many studies in an effort to gather online or concurrent insights into stu-dents’ cognitive processes. These cited studies also addressed levels of awareness. Similarly, in the Vygotskyian sociocultural strand of research, a closely related phenomenon to think alouds was called inner speech (e.g., Vocate, 1994), and currently languaging, defined as “the process of making meaning and shap-ing knowledge and experience through language” (Swain 2006: 89), As can be seen, then, the use of concurrent data elicitation procedures in the research methodology signaled a distinct methodological shift in gathering both process (online) and product (off line) data in an effort to gather important informa-tion during and not only after the learning process. The outcome of this new methodological approach to operationalize and measure the constructs of atten-tion and awareness are data that allow us to peek into the internal processes
learners employed while interacting with the L2 input, without having to rely on researchers’ assumptions of what actually took place based on the results of post-exposure assessment tasks. Should I mention that this use of concurrent verbal reports triggered another strand of research that methodologically addressed and is still addressing whether asking participants to think aloud could potentially affect their thought processes? The buzz word is reactivity (thinking aloud poten-tially affecting learner primary processes) for concurrent think-aloud protocols and veridicality (memory decay) for post-exposure, off line stimulated recalls that ask participants to try to recall either what they were thinking at specific points during an interaction, via a video of the interaction or verbal reports that ask participants to provide an underlying rule embedded in the input.
Now, with this background in mind, let us return to the issues of implicit and explicit learning, which are both internal processes. Several studies (e.g., de la Fuente, 2015; Hsieh et al., 2015; Leow, 2000; Martínez-Fernández, 2008; Medina, 2015; Rosa & Leow, 2004; Rosa & O’Neill, 1999; Sachs & Suh, 2007) that began to explore the role of awareness in L2 development initiated the opportunity to investigate both theoretically and empirically the role of explicit learning in the SLA field. The 2000s began with attempts to address the construct of unawareness in L2 development (e.g., Leow, 2000), followed by at least seven other studies pur-porting to do the same (cf. Chan & Leung, 2014; Chen, Guo, Tang, Zhu, Yang, & Dienes, 2011; Faretta-Stutenberg & Morgan-Short, 2011, Hama & Leow, 2010; Leung & Williams, 2011, 2012, 2014). Currently, like life (and politics), the studies are divided in their support or lack thereof regarding the role of implicit learning in L2 development. I will elaborate a bit more on this debate later in Chapter 10 .
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed the stroll down “awareness lane.” We shall leave this chapter with one empirically supported finding: Explicit learning is highly related to L2 development.
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SECTION 1
Theory is usually perceived as abstract and, as we shall see later, even the construct of learning (and even more so the dual phrase of implicit learning ) can be also chal-lenging to pin down adequately. Before I discuss explicit learning or learning with awareness in SLA, it is necessary to situate its role along the stages postulated to occur during the learning process. This chapter, then, presents a finer-grained preliminary framework of the L2 learning process that takes into account the notion of postulated stages through which the learning process passes. It also elaborates on the process of learning as comprising both processes and products. To this end, a brief description of the different stages along the framework is provided, including the input, intake, intake processing, internal system, output/ knowledge processing, and output. This global and theoretical view of the learn-ing process has the followlearn-ing main purpose: It allows us to be visually aware of which stage along the learning process the construct of learning is being discussed and investigated. But first, as an introduction, let us take a look at a coarse-grained theoretical framework for the L2 learning process in SLA.
A Coarse-Grained Theoretical Framework for the L2 Learning Process in SLA
In SLA, most major theoretical perspectives (I will discuss each individually later in Chapter 5 ), whether they propose a partial (e.g., Ellis, 2007; McLaughlin, 1987; Robinson, 2003; Schmidt, 2001; Swain, 2005; Tomlin & Villa, 1994; Van-Patten, 2007) or full (e.g., Gass, 1997) theoretical account of the learning pro-cesses postulated for SLA, agree on the following coarse-grained framework:
INPUT
> Intake > Internal system > Output2
A PRELIMINARY THEORETICAL
FRAMEWORK FOR THE L2
in which
INPUT
is the second or foreign language (L2), which viewed more narrowly contains the linguistic and semantic features learners need to pay atten-tion to, Intake is a subset of input that may be taken in by the learner but not necessarily processed further (it can disappear!) into the Internal system, the place where what is learned, correctly or incorrectly (often referred to as knowl-edge), and stored, and Output is the learner’s production of the L2 and is assumed to represent the L2 knowledge the learner has at that point in time in his/her internal system.Now, let us discuss briefly the issue of your level of awareness involved in pro-cessing this coarse-grained theoretical framework. From a researcher’s perspective, I am positive we can find several levels of awareness: (1) Some of you noticed, that is, paid attention with a low level of awareness, to the fonts of
INPUT
, Intake, and Output. That is it! (2) Some noticed the fonts and thought, “Interesting, hmm, he is being fancy here,” without arriving at any connection to the purpose of the fonts or what they represented, and (3) MANY of you made the full or partial connection of INPUT as being a large amount of the L2 that our students are usu-ally exposed to, noted that only a subset, represented by a smaller font, is actuusu-ally taken in, and that output is clearly only a subset of what is premised to be stored in the developing internal system. As a researcher, I can also surmise that readers with some background knowledge of SLA would have processed this informa-tion at a deeper level and shown a higher level of awareness due to the fact that they made connections to knowledge already stored in their internal system. This process is not learning but activation of prior knowledge, a strengthening of the cognitive bonds between incoming information and existing knowledge. Read-ers with no background do have the potential to learn and would be able to hold this information in working memory, with the potential of the information being discarded or further processed by deeper processing and/or further similar information. Please note that for humanistic purposes, I have not identified the reader(s) who either paid little attention to or minimally processed or showed no awareness of the presence of these different fonts ( they were only skimming or paying peripheral attention ).A Finer-Grained Theoretical Framework for the L2 Learning Process in SLA
The framework presented above is relatively coarse-grained, and I have proposed a more fine-grained version that takes into account not only the notion of stages through which the learning process passes but also the notion of learning to include both processes and products (cf. Leow, 2015):