Theories, Assessment and Pedagogy
E-Book, Englisch, 350 Seiten
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ISBN: 978-1-5015-0045-9
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
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1 SLA and Individual Differences: An Overview
Zhisheng (Edward) Wen Richard L. Sparks Abstract The introductory chapter summarizes the background and rationale for this volume. It illustrates how the current volume expands on previous publications with new and distinctive features. In particular, important individual differences (IDs) of age, intelligence, aptitude, working memory, attention, strategies, meta-cognition, self-regulation, anxiety, reading, and writing as well as L2 learning difficulties are featured as they have not been discussed so systematically. In essence, this volume provides systematically organized (as its subtitle indicates, theories, assessment, research, and pedagogy), comprehensive and in-depth reviews on each of the key IDs believed to play an important role in SLA. Keywords: Individual differences, second language acquisition, Universal Grammar (UG), Usage-based accounts, complex dynamic systems theory (CDST), L2 learning, 1.1 Conceptualizing SLA: From UG to UB Approaches
Research into second language acquisition (SLA) has witnessed rapid growth in both ‘quantity and quality’ in the past few decades, resulting in substantial progress in areas of theory construction, research methodology, empirical investigations, and accumulative evidence as well as pedagogical implications and applications (Long 2016). In terms of theoretical paradigms, for example, a multitude of epistemological approaches to SLA is gradually taking shape and becoming well-established. These approaches range from the more conventional mainstream paradigms such as the universal grammar (UG) based generative accounts (e.g., Rothman and Slabakova 2018; Slabakova et al. 2020), to an increasing interest in the emergentist, connectionist, construction-oriented, usage-based (UB) accounts (Dornyei 2009; Li et al. 2022; Mitchell, Myles and Marsden 2019; MacWhinney et al. 2022; VanPatten and Williams 2014), broadly grouped as alternative accounts (Atkinson 2011). Most of the time, these approaches have co-existed peacefully and blossomed independently, proceeding within their research camps or teams of advocates and followers, pursuing their own research agendas with specific research methodologies, organizing their own conferences, and publishing in journals focusing on their respective domains. However, there are occasional skirmishes when contrasting approaches exchange views face to face. The recent interchanges between the generative SLA approaches (represented by Slabakova et al. 2014, 2015) and the complex, dynamic, systems theory (CDST) approach (represented by de Bot 2015) amply demonstrated the differences and arguments in their epistemological stances regarding three fundamental factors pertaining to language design and acquisition (Chomsky 2005, 2011; Hauser et al. 2002; Slabakova et al. 2020): (1) Genetic endowment (UG), which determines the general course of the development of the language faculty; (2) Experience (comprehensive input), which leads to (narrow) variation; and (3) Principles of data-analysis & computation efficiency. In this respect, the mainstream generative camp tends to treat UG as the primary factor, and thus puts input (experience) and computation as something on the periphery of SLA, while the UB-based accounts (including the CDST approach) embrace the other end of the spectrum, i.e., language experience or input as a priority. There is also a third perspective on epistemological stances, which emphasizes computation efficiency (e.g., Gibson et al. 2019) or the constraints of the ubiquitous memory limitations (Gomez-Rodriguez et al. 2019) as the primary factor that constrains and shapes language evolution, acquisition, and processing (cf. Lu and Wen 2022). These perspectives have included the emergentist accounts (MacWhinney and O’Grady 2015; O’Grady 2012, 2015; MacWhinney et al. 2022) and the processing accounts (Christiansen and Chater 2015, 2016, 2017). Despite these seemingly disparate perspectives, the research paradigms provide complementary insights into the most intriguing ‘mysteries’ of high-level and distributed human cognition, i.e., language (Ellis 2019). Though the jury is still out as to which paradigm will find the “holy grail”, i.e., by solving the logical problem of language acquisition, these multidisciplinary insights are injecting much dynamism into the exciting and thriving field of language sciences in general and SLA in particular. As such, the current volume adopts an open-minded approach towards these diverse epistemological stances in SLA with a view to achieving some balance among them. To put it in Lantolf’s (1996) words, “let all the flowers blossom.” In another line of development, the past two decades in SLA have also witnessed steady growth in both the breadth and depth of research on instructed SLA (ISLA; Loewen and Sato 2017). In his 2016 plenary address to the annual SLRF conference, Michael Long offered two types of reasons for this exponential growth in ISLA, both external and internal (see also Long 2017). Externally, most major geopolitical forces have linguistic consequences, which have helped to raise wider recognition of the importance of designing effective language instruction for specific populations. Internally, advances in instruction have been facilitated by several developments: (1) renewed attention to instruction, language, and acquisition, the ‘I’, ‘L’ and ‘A’ of ISLA; (2) publication of detailed state-of-the-science surveys, including both narrative accounts and particularly the growing body of meta-analyses (e.g., Norris and Ortega 2000; Li 2010); (3) deployment of new technology, e.g., eye-tracking (Godfroid 2019), ERP, and fMRI, etc.; (4) creation and validation of new aptitude measures, e.g., the Hi-LAB (Linck et al. 2014; Doughty 2019; see also Wen et al. 2019; Wen, Skehan and Sparks 2023); (5) establishment of the field’s first collaborative research network (CRN) and a free, publicly accessible digital repository of data-collection instruments, materials and stimuli (IRIS; Paquot et al. 2019); (6) a growing number of process-product studies, including aptitude-treatment-interaction (ATI) studies, that employ both linguistically focused and communicative assessment of outcomes; (7) improvements in the ways studies are conducted, replicated and reported; and (8) increased journal and conference space for the dissemination of findings. These developments demonstrate that ISLA has blossomed in the past two decades (Long 2017; Loewen and Sato 2017). Conceptualizing SLA and IDs: Towards a CDST Approach
The frameworks adopted in some chapters of this book incorporate emerging trends and approaches of SLA in which L2 acquisition or development is no longer reduced to a monolithic and static concept, but rather is increasingly recognized as a multi-dimensional, emergent, complex, dynamic, and adaptive process (e.g., de Bot 2015; Larsen-Freeman 1997, 2019; Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008). SLA is conceived as a process consisting of multiple (sub-level) components and dimensions, comprising of an array of sub-domains and sub-skills that transcend across acquisition/learning, processing/performance, evolution, and development. More specifically, these L2 sub-domains encompass three aspects or facets of L2 acquisition (e.g. VanPatten 2010; Wen 2016). First, there are linguistic knowledge and representation aspects of L2 domains such as phonemes (speech) sounds, vocabulary (lexis), formulaic sequences/chunks, and morpho-syntactic constructions or grammatical structures as conceived in the connectionist account advocated by Ellis (1996a) and Krishnan et al. (2016). Second, there are processing and performance aspects that straddle L2 sub-skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, and (bilingual) translation/interpreting. Finally, there is the sub-domain of L2 proficiency development which implicates aspects of evolution, emergence, and changes. These developmental stages represent conceptualizations of L2 proficiency at the beginning (ab initio or novice), intermediate, and post-intermediate/advanced levels and native-like stages (e.g., Hulstijn 2015). These categories of SLA knowledge, processes, and skills are derived mainly from those of VanPatten’s (2010, 2013) recent argument for a two-facet view of SLA (i.e., representation vs. skills), augmented by a third time-based longitudinal dimension of L2 development (Wen 2016; Christiansen and Chater 2016). In this sense, the first two categories of SLA sub-domains proposed here can be interpreted as equivalent to VanPatten’s conceptions of the ‘mental representation’ and the concept...
