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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.
CLA INVITED SPEAKER SERIES 2011-2012
February 27, 2012: Lecture from Professor Stanton Wortham
Stanton Wortham, Berkowitz Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, will give a lecture entitled:
"Hope for the Young, but not for the Adolescent: Divergent Ideologies of Language Use in New Latino Diaspora Elementary and Secondary Schools"
Date and Time: Monday, February 27 at 1 p.m.
(reception to follow)
Location: 107 Business Building
Areas of the U.S. where Latinos have recently settled are undergoing rapid change, leading to divergent evaluations of the immigrant population. This presentation focuses on language ideologies about Spanish and English language use among Mexican youths in a Pennsylvania community, showing how characterizations of these young people are variously constructed, accepted and rejected. Drawing on six years of ethnography, this study traces the varying language ideologies present in a local elementary school and high school, arguing that ideologies of students' language provide a useful window into longstanding residents' conceptions of immigrants as people. These conceptions are complex, and show significant variation; teenage immigrants are lauded by the community as hardworking and respectful, but are criticized for being unsuccessful in school; educators view Mexican immigrant students' language as incomplete and substandard, supporting a deficit characterization of the students themselves; and bilingual elementary students are often celebrated as star students whose first language should be maintained. The implications and potential evolution of these diverse ideologies will be discussed.
Stanton Wortham is Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor and Associate Dean in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. His research bridges the fields of anthropology, education, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy by analyzing patterns of interactional discourse in educational and community settings. Major publications include Learning Identity: The Joint Emergence of Social Identification and Academic Learning (Cambridge, 2006) and Narratives in Action: A Strategy for Research and Analysis (Teacher's College Press, 2001).
October 28, 2011: Lecture from Professor Andrea Tyler
Andrea Tyler, Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University presented a lecture entitled:
“Applying Cognitive Linguistics to Second Language Learning"
Date & Time: Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 4 p.m. (reception to follow in 7 Sparks)
Location: 111 Wartik
Recently a number of L2 researchers have begun investigating Cognitive Linguistics (CL) as a more insightful, descriptively adequate alternative to the traditional models of language, which are assumed by most current L2 teaching materials and grammars. A central challenge for applied CL is to provide accessible, precise explanations of various linguistic phenomena for L2 teachers and researchers. A second challenge is to provide experimental evidence of the efficacy of using a CL approach in L2 teaching. This presentation begins to meet these two challenges by demonstrating the application of the basic tenets of CL to effective teaching materials as well as presenting experimental evidence demonstrating that CL can provide an accessible, effective, more complete basis for L2 teaching of many of the most challenging aspects of language. After presenting a brief overview of CL, I will give the highlights of an effects-of-instruction experiment, which compares the usefulness of materials based on Goldberg’s Construction Grammar analysis versus traditional analysis of the English dative. The subjects receiving the CL-based instruction scored significantly higher on both a grammaticality judgment task and a production task, on both the immediate and delayed posttests.
Andrea Tyler is Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University. Her primary areas of research include Cognitive Linguistic perspectives on conceptual development, cross-cultural pragmatics, language and the law, and usage-based approaches to language and language learning.
October 18, 2011: Lecture from Professor Steven McCafferty
Steven McCafferty, Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, presented a lecture entitled:
"Teachers' Self-disclosure in the Adult L2 Classroom"
Date & Time: Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 4 p.m.
Location: 112 Chambers
Forms of teacher self-discourse (TSD) such as relating personal experiences, feelings, and opinions, have been studied as an aspect of classroom discourse. Typically these efforts, pedagogically, are associated with the clarification of instructional content and a heightening of teacher-student intersubjectivity (e.g., Cayanus & Martin, 2002; Zhang et al., 2007). However, no previous research of a substantial nature has focused on TSD in second/foreign language classrooms, nor has this topic been addressed from a sociocultural theoretical perspective.
This study was conducted in three ESL classrooms, all with American instructors at a U.S. university. Students in all classes were from a variety of international backgrounds and at different levels of English proficiency. All together six class sessions lasting 75 minutes each, two at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester, were video-recorded. A teacher interview addressing teachers’ meta-knowledge of TSD was also conducted.
Data for the study suggest that TSD is a highly embodied performance-oriented form of narrative discourse employed for the teaching of lexis, focal grammar points, discourse structures and pragmatics, which usually included the use of gestures, facial expressions and the enacting of personal experiences. TSD provided students contextualization and illustration of a structure in focus in addition to explanations either in a text or by the instructor. Moreover, many forms of TSD were embedded within the specific cultural contexts of the American experience, the teachers setting up their narratives before hand, grounding both language and culture (a function for TSD that was confirmed in the teacher interview). TSD because it is performative provides sense at an embodied level of experience. One implication is that enactment of language and experience on the part of students (student self-disclosure) might prove to be a positive pedagogical tool as well.
Steven McCafferty is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV). His research centers on the application of Sociocultural Theory (SCT) to second language teaching and learning, with particular emphasis on learners' use of private speech and gesture in the learning process. He has published a wide variety of journal articles, book chapters, and edited volumes, including Gesture: Second Language Acquisition and Classroom Research (Co-edited with Gale Stam; Routledge, 2008) and Cooperative Learning and Second Language Teaching (Co-edited with George M. Jacobs and Ana Christina DaSilva Iddings; Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Title VI Grant Awarded for 2010-2014: New Project Cycle for CALPER
The Center for Language Acquisition has received its third grant for continuation of its National Foreign Language Resource Center (CALPER—Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research) from the U. S. Department of Education Title VI program. This grant of more than $1.2 million extends the activities of CALPER, established in 2002, through August 2014. CALPER is administered by two co-directors--James P. Lantolf, Greer Professor in Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics and Karen E. Johnson, Liberal Arts Research Professor--and by Dr. Gabriela Appel, who serves as Project Coordinator. Like other federally-funded Title VI NFLRCs, CALPER researches and develops pedagogical and assessment materials that promote cutting-edge language instruction in a wide array of languages other than English. Other NFLRCs are located at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Ohio State University, the University of Minnesota, Indiana University, Indiana University, Michigan State University, UCLA, Duke University, Georgetown University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona, San Diego State University, the University of Hawaii, the University of Oregon, and Brigham Young University.
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 Fellow Awards
The Center for Language Acquisition, in conjunction with the College of the Liberal Arts, provides up to five dissertation fellowships 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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Upcoming Events
Feb 27, 2012
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