It was my second AAAL conference. The other one I attended was in
Baltimore a few years ago. Seattle is a big improvement over Baltimore. The
city is beautiful and the weather was relatively warm. The conference was
well attended, although I don't know how many people showed up. It lasted
for three and half days. By the end of the third day I forgot what happened
on the first day after seeing so many presentations in such a short period
of time.
Some presentations were too short: 20 minutes to present and 10
minutes for discussion. The problem with the time format was the inability
of speakers to get to the point within 20 minutes and do it coherently. I
attended several talks with no handouts (or not enough,) OHP displays with
unreadable type, and speakers reading papers rather than talking to the
audience.
I had a chance to see Peter Skehan and Martin Bygate speak. They
were engaging and informative at the same time. Despite my opposing
philosophical orientation, it was useful to hear them discuss some
important issues, e.g.,. "cognitive complexity" and how to define a task.
I attended a "professional networking" meeting on sociocultural
theory headed by James Lantolf who made a very interesting comment about
the AAAL presentations. He said that most presenters working out of a
sociocultural framework feel a need to explain the theory first, then go
into their results and conclusion. The consequence is a lack of time to
present their main ideas. On the other hand, the cognitive psych presenters
assume you already know about the theory behind "consciousness,"
"attention," "cognitive complexity," and a bunch of other mentalist
concepts and just go on to present their findings and analysis.
From a student perspective this is how the
paradigm-powerbrokers-that-be keep their mystique among the grad students.
They don't bother to explain themselves, and then expect grad students, or
in this situation an audience of AAAL members, to already know what they're
talking about. And if you don't know, you're out in the snow. Perhaps there
is something to be said for critical discourse analysis after all.
Leo Van Lier, who is closer to the SCT camp, gave a talk which
seemed to stun the audience. Only one person had a question at the end of
the talk, which was unusual. But looking back on it, I don't think the
audience understood the concepts he was discussing (i.e. semiotic
mediation, human ecology, etc.) I could hardly follow him myself and I work
from a similar paradigm.
More practically, when one writes a paper, the author has to decide
just how much to describe the theory and concepts to be used in the
analysis. For SCT, this requires valuable time and space to explain
yourself enough so that the reader can understand what you're saying. But
for someone working out of a mentalist position, terms like "cognitive
complexity" get cursory explanation and subsequently invite less scrutiny.
I have no doubt now based on the comments heard in various
presentations that those using sociocultural theory will be challenging the
pervasive cognitive psychology paradigm in L2 learning. There will be more
high profile presentations by SCT theorists in the future at conferences
like AAAL. I noticed that two colloquia were held concerning sociocultural
theory. From what I hear AERA (American Educational Research Association)
has an entire army division of SCT adherents now.
Rod Ellis gave a talk about metaphors in L2 learning. I didn't get
a handout due to the large crowd, but he said metaphors are pervasive and
become almost unnoticed by us. Lantolf mentioned a few later on: learner as
patient (e.g., "treatment") and animal (e.g.,"training"). I had to laugh at
these. Some other metaphors that I've seen in L2L: computer, machine,
conduit, ZPD.
Roy Lyster, an ex-OISE student, gave a talk about feedback that I
thought was one of the best presentations I attended. I assume everyone is
familiar with his stuff, so won't go into it.
In all, the more interesting presentations came from people who
were relatively unknown in L2 journals. Grad. students, in particular, had
many worthwhile presentations because their topics were new and/or unique.
In comparison, some of the big names in L2L gave predictable talks. Next
time I go to a conference, I'll search out the grad students first.
An idea I had in Seattle was to stop using the term "second
language acquisition" and replace it with "second language cognition." The
word "acquisition" is individualistic in orientation and implies a
positivist Cartisian paradigm. In SCT, cognition means thought as a social
phenomena. If one sees L2 learning as social in nature, the learners would
not "acquire" a language as if making a transaction like buying a loaf of
bread, but rather engaging the world through a variety of semiotic means.
(This is all just an idea.)
Mike Busch
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
The Great White North
>I know a number of xmca-ers attended the Applied Linguistics
>Conference in Seattle. Any reports on interesting, xmca-relevant
>sessions would be much appreciated by those of us who did not attend.
>
>Thanks -
>Judy
>
>
>Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
>Graduate School of Education
>Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
>10 Seminary Place
>New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183