Center for Language Acquisition at the Pennsylvania State University

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The Center for Language Acquisition (CLA) is a research unit in the College of the Liberal Arts at The Pennsylvania State University. 

 

 

 

Symposium:  "Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition"

 

 

Saturday, May 11, 2013

 

8 a.m-8 p.m.

Nittany Lion Inn, Penn State University Park Campus

Boardroom 1

 

Invited Participants:

 

Dwight Atkinson (Purdue), Co-organizer
Heidi Byrnes (Georgetown)
Patsy Duff (British Columbia)
Nick Ellis (Michigan)
Joan Kelly Hall (Penn State)

James Lantolf (Penn State), Co-organizer

Diane Larsen-Freeman (Michigan)

Eduardo Negueruela (Miami)

Bonny Norton (British Columbia)

Lourdes Ortega (Georgetown)

John Schumann (UCLA)

Elaine Tarone (Minnesota)

 

 

The symposium is open to Penn State faculty and graduate students in Applied Linguistics and related fields.  To register, please contact Meredith Doran (meredith@psu.edu).  Registration deadline:  May 3, 2013 (limited seats available).

 

We thank Dr. Xiaofei Lu, Gil Watz Early Career Professor, for his generous co-sponsorship of this event.

 

 

CLA INVITED SPEAKER SERIES

 

Spring 2013


 

April 8, 2013:  Watz Memorial Lecture from Merrill Swain

 

Dr. Merrill Swain,  Professor of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, presented the 2013 Gil Watz Memorial Lecture:

 

"Affective and Cognitive Enhancement Among Older Adults:  The Role of Languaging"

 

Date & Time:  Monday, April 8, 2013 at 2:30 p.m.

 

Location:  Foster Auditorium (Paterno Library)

 

Global rates of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) converge in the 14-18% range for persons aged 70 years and older.  One possible source of MCI among older adults may lie in teh lack of opportunities they have to use language.  If opportunities are limited, then cognitive loss rather than cognitive maintenance or development might occur.  In this talk, I will discuss three exploratory case studies of residents with MCI who were living in a long-term care facility and who raely engaged in conversations with staff, other reisdents or visitors. Each of these residents engaged in "languaging" activities with a researcher during a two-to three-month period.  Languaging is the use of language to mediate higher mental cognitive and affective processes.

 

I will discuss both the theoretical foundations of the study and the results.  The theoretical basis draws on Vygotsky's work which proposed language as one of the most important mediating tools that human beings have at their disposal for the development and use of higher mental processes. Vygotsky also argued that cognition and emotion are inextricably intertwined.  Based on these ideas, our research explored the cognitive/affective consequences of languaging for our three participating residents.

 

Merrill Swain is Professor Emerita of Second Language Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Canada.  Her research focuses on sociocultural approaches to the teaching and learning of second languages in immersion programs and in traditional language learning classroom settings.  She has received numerous  awards for her outstanding contribution to the field of second language acquisition, notably for work on communicative competence, the Output Hypothesis, and innovative approaches to second language classroom research methodologies. 

 

 

April 19, 2013:  Lecture from Professor Diane Larsen-Freeman

 

 

Dr. Diane Larsen-Freeman, Professor of Education and Linguistics at the University of Michigan, delivered  the following lecture:

 

"On the Non-Telic Nature of Language and its Learning"

 

Date and Time:  Friday, April 19 at 2:30 p.m.

 

Location:  104 Keller

 

Traditional views of language are inadequate for explaining well-attested examples of linguistic creativity.  Language users are not mere hosts of language (Kroskrity, 2004).  They extend their linguistic worlds (Thibault, 2011). The same can be said for language learners.  Nevertheless, language learning is often viewed as a teleological phenomenon, with an implicit endpoint.  In this presentation, I will suggest that language is not telic, nor is its learning.  The dilemma then becomes how to reconcile the non-telic nature of language and its learning with the normativity of teaching.

 

 

Diane Larsen-Freeman is Professor of Education and Linguistics at the University of Michigan.  Her primary research areas include second language acquisition, grammar in English language teaching, and chaos/ complexity theory in relation to language learning. Recent works include Language as a Complex Dynamic System (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), and Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics (Oxford University Press, 2008), winner of the 2009 Mildenberger Award from the Modern Language Association.  Dr. Larsen-Freeman has also authored multiple foundational works in second language teacher education, including Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching (Oxford University Press, 2011),Teaching Language: From Grammar to Grammaring (Heinle & Heinle, 2003) and An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research (with M. Long, Longman, 1991).  

 

 

 

Fall 2012 Invited Speakers

 

 

October 22, 2012:  Lecture from Professor David Bakhurst

 

David Bakhurst, Professor of Philosophy at Queen's University, presented an invited lecture:

 

"Learning from Others"

 

Date and Time:  Monday, October 22, 2012 at 4 p.m.

 

Location:  358 Willard Building

 

 

John McDowell begins his essay ‘Knowledge by Hearsay’ (1993) by describing two ways language matters to epistemology.  The first is that, by understanding and accepting someone else’s utterance, a person can acquire knowledge.  This is what philosophers call ‘knowledge by testimony’.  The second is that children acquire knowledge in the course of learning their first language—in acquiring language, a child inherits a conception of the world.  In The Formation of Reason (2011), and my writings on Russian socio-historical philosophy and psychology, I address issues bearing on the second of these topics, questions about the child’s development through initiation into language and other forms of social being.  In this paper, I focus on the first: the epistemology of testimony.  After expounding a view of testimony inspired by McDowell, and supplemented by ideas from Sebastian Rödl, I consider how such an account illuminates two issues in philosophy of education: the extent of an individual’s epistemic dependence upon others and the nature of teaching.  

 

David Bakhurst is Charlton Professor of Philosophy at Queen's University in Canada.  His research focuses on  Russian philosophy, philosophical psychology, and moral philosophy.  He has written extensively on the work of Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov, psychologist Lev Vygotsky, language philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and educational psychologist Jerome Bruner.

 

 


November 5, 2012:  Lecture from Professor John Schumann

 

John Schumann, Professor of Applied Linguistics at UCLA, gave a lecture entitled:


"Evolution and Second Language Acquisition"

 

Date and Time:  Monday, November 5, 2012 at 4 p.m.


 

Location:  358 Willard Building

 

Our species has never had sufficient evolutionary pressure to develop neural systems that would guarantee SLA in older learners (Hagen, 2008). In our environment of evolutionary adaptation, we lived in small groups that were isolated from others. But when groups speaking different languages did come into contact, we found various strategies to deal with communication problems. None of these strategies solved the adult SLA problem; they simply provided workarounds that allowed us to cope with it.

 

  1. Since all brains are different (Edelman, 1992; Schumann, 1997), within any population there would have been certain adults with a neural hypertrophy that would allow them to acquire an L2 and function as interpreters.
  2. If the contact between the two groups was cooperative and long-lasting, there would have been intermarriage, and the children would be brought up bilingually (Ostler, 2010). This would shift the L2 acquisition from adults to children for whom it is easier.
  3. The development of a lingua franca (Ostler, 2010) (e.g., Sabir, Greek, Persian, French, English) would reduce the language learning burden to one L2.
  4. In some cases, the lingua franca would become one of the first languages of the children (e.g., India), again shifting the language acquisition task to children (Ostler, 2010)).
  5. With the acquisition of a language by an immigrant group, the L2 would become simplified and easier to learn (McWhorter, 2007).
  6. In colonies, immigrants speaking many different languages often developed pidgins or creoles which required minimal acquisition effort (McWhorter, 2004).
  7. Sprachbunds developed where languages become similar to each other, easing the L2 burden (McWhorter, 2004).
  8. The development of specialized institutions that select only  talented learners and provide them with special instruction (e.g., US Army Language School).
  9. The provision of immersion education in an L2, shifting the acquisition task to children.
  10. The development of translation technology (Ostler, 2010).

 

John Schumann is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). His primary research interests are language acquisition, language evolution, and the neurobiology of language. Major publications include The Neurobiology of Affect in Language (Blackwell, 1997), The Neurobiology of Learning:  Perspectives from Second Language Acquisition (Routledge, 2004), and The Interactional Instinct:  The Evolution and Acquisition of Language (Oxford University Press, 2009). 

 



CLA Travel Grants

 

Travel grants are available through the Center for graduate students for travel to/from conferences.
Download the Center for Language Acquisition travel grant application

Students may also apply for Department of Applied Linguistics travel grants.
Download the Applied Linguistics travel grant application

Notice: The Center and Applied Linguistics forms used for submitting requests for travel funding have both been updated. Please review the latest form, and verify that you are using this version when submitting a travel request.

 

 

Gil Watz Dissertation Grants

 

The Center for Language Acquisition, in conjunction with the College of the Liberal Arts, provides up to five dissertation research awards per academic year for doctoral students working on a dissertation in applied linguistics. For more information click here.

 

 

Gil Watz Visiting Scholars Program

 

For informatiion about the Watz Visiting Scholars Program, click here or contact Jim Lantolf, Director of the Center for Language Acquisition at JPL7@PSU.EDU.

 









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