Achievement!

Here it is! My most recent achievement…my MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham, UK (Distinction), received following two years of study, six arduous months of research, experiment, data collection and sorting, theory connection and hard writing. I’m extremely proud of this, especially since I never really thought I could achieve my BA much less my MA. But, here it is.

And here’s the work which really brought it all together for me, the dissertation I wrote:

Drama in the English as a Foreign Language Classroom: A Multimodal Exploration.

You’ll notice that the foundation for this dissertation is not simply the use and observation of drama within a classroom.  I do not advocate the implementation of drama in this context for the purpose of breaking the ice or merely practicing English.  I similarly do not advocate teachers inexperienced in the art of drama to implement drama within the classroom context as doing so without an understanding of the rationale can undermine learners’ attempts to develop L2 fluency.

Any intervention within an L2 context must be supported by relevant theories of teaching and learning.  Since there is no clear theory in either of these within the L2 context–though much relevant literature within other contexts–it was important to gather the important threads and tie them together into a concrete whole.  This dissertation ties together ideas from drama in education (DIE), Vygotskian theories of mind and learning, constructivism, multimodality, corpus linguistics, metaphor studies, narrative studies, and, by inference, complexity theory in applied linguistics.  Individually, these threads may be tenuous, but together, they provide a theoretical rationale which supports the decision to implement drama within a SLA context–though, with qualification, it must be readily admitted that more study is required. 

Drama proposes a body of tools which allow an actor, as an analogue of the language learner, to make another’s words his or her own.  In the context of the second language learner, this means to make the language more than a cognitive construct within the mind but felt not simply as if it always existed within the body as well, but in fact.  Learners must learn to observe their own bodies, as well as to learn how to observe their peers not simply in interaction but in engagement.

Most studies within this context are qualitative with few quantitative studies, and none which promise quantitative results do so without resorting to qualitative observations unsupported by the study’s own quantitative data.  Studies, to date, which promise quantitative results tend to commit a transitional error in reporting by failing to provide transparency in the data, relying, instead, on self-reported qualification as evidence of the success of drama in SLA–all quantified data lost to the editing process.  A complement of both types of data–qualitative and quantitative–is required to strengthen the position of drama within the SLA paradigm as it may be related to the development of fluency even if the quantifiable data is unsupportive of the efficacy of drama within SLA. 

In my dissertation, it was my foremost priority to maintain data transparency, and to utilize this transparency for the purpose of making my qualifications of drama as a SLA medium.  Drama is useful in assisting learners to develop second language engagement, maintaining and enhancing interpersonal connections and utilizing the body for expression while learning to observe the “other” for similar signs of engagement.  When observation of the other takes place, a feedback loop appears to be completed which gives the speaker confidence and a sense of self within the second language thereby providing a more engaging experience for both. This is the multimodal component of drama within SLA which is typically ignored within language classrooms, yet is imperative for internalizing the culture of the second language and understanding how one may fit within it, transitioning from an outsider to an insider.

I found that drama in this context realized greater engagement between learners in a drama-based class, but did not realize better grammar skill or vocabulary retention or usage.  Drama-based language students utilized their bodies more effectively for communicating their messages, with an significant growth in the use of gestural metaphor to communicate ideas of action, cognition and object.  In speech and writing, drama-based learners also structure their narratives more in conventional approaches, supplying relevant details or asking for these when necessary rather than accepting the limitations of the narration to persist.  There was, furthermore, a greater tendancy for drama-based learners to speak more and to utilize a wider variety of vocabulary.   Traditional, non-drama-based learners (within the communicative-PPP methodology prevalent in South Korea, where this dissertation experiment took place), by contrast, appeared to become more disaffected.  Their bodies became more still as they appeared to make grammatically correct utterances.  Narrations by traditional-based learners employed fewer metaphors, either verbal or gestural, and speaker and listener appeared to accept limitations in narration without issue.   

My dissertation, which garnered distinction (a grade percentage above 70% in the UK grading system–equivalent to a North American “A”) , received this feedback.

Over the next four to six months, I will be editing my dissertation into a publication-ready document and submitting it for peer review in a qualified journal of applied linguistics.

Overall, my goal in the next ten to fifteen years is to explore how drama may be realized within the existing second language acquisition paradigm as complementary to existing methodologies and approaches to facilitate not merely language learning but internalization and complete fluency.

This will procede through via a relevant Ph.D. program of a combination of Applied Linguistics and Applied Theatre–the latter to provide the techniques for language exploration and internalization and the first to provide methodologies for systematicity, development and measurment.

Lit Review III

To Learning a Language or to Acquire One

Theorists posit severally that a key distinction between a first and second language is the degree to which the languages are acquired.  It is readily acknowledged that, except in exceptional cases, first languages are acquired by all individuals (Chomsky, Skehan etc.), yet second languages are primarily learned: the conceptual knowledge, that is, langue in Saussurean language—the syntax and lexis—are taken into the memory systems for access; yet L2 learners tend not to be able to exercise the same degree of natural use, or parole (Chomsky, Saussure, Taylor et cetera.) as their L1 counterparts.  This dilemma seems irreconcilable though confronted by numerous approaches and methods in language pedagogy.  Efforts raised by developing new tasks and activities, modes of interactive language use and implementation of near-immersion learning contexts, as in content-based teaching, again in exceptional cases have generally been met with limited success.   Very few students ever learn a second language to the same ability as their first (Bley-Vroman, in Ellis). 

Theorists, like Chomsky, propose limitations to language learning occurring after a critical period when a language acquisition device (LAD) is available for learning a first language but becomes unavailable by the age of five when the language systems of the child are activated fully.  Others, like Krashen and Dörnyei, suggest that language learning is hampered by such factors as negative affect and motivation.  Still others indicate learners’ difficulties can be traced to general learning difficulties and propose particular remedies to help learners become “good” language learners (Lightbown and Spada).  From anecdotal evidence, it appears as if those students who are immersed in the culture of the target language (i.e., who study the language in a country where it is spoken) attain the best L2 learning results—their lexis seems larger, they appear to have better ability to problem-solve language issues, pronunciation sounds closer to the target language, and they appear to appreciate the language learning process more than their peers who have not had similar experience.  However, some researchers caution that identifying these immersed students’ higher motivation and L2 success with their having been immersed is a correlative as well as cause/effect: since there is greater opportunity for students in the culture of their L2 to meet opportunities to use their L2, they may meet with more L2 success than in their home country; is it better learning which causes more success or more success which causes better learning?

Regardless, what theorists of language appear to suggest is no one individual not born of the target language culture will be able to fully acquire the L2, and primarily because of age-related constraints.  Younger children, it can be observed, take in more of the L2 than their older compatriots.  This is often taken as proof of the existence of an LAD, and the reduced ability of older L2 learners is taken as proof of the inaccessibility of the LAD by older learners.  What is not considered by researchers is the learning context in which L2 learners find themselves.  For instance, young children learn not simply through mediated exercise (as that found in classrooms) like adults and older children do.  They explore their world and appear to be driven to play and to become acculturated members of a play group which establishes a set of play norms with a limited linguistic structure (the fully developed L1 system identified by Chomsky).  These learners are able to pair their language learning with their physical experiential systems to develop a more holistic view of the language and the world in which it operates. 

The Physical Nature of Language

Researchers of the behaviorist school of learning hold to the ideas that setting the experiential conditions for learning causes habit formation through processes of positive and negative reinforcement: repetition of reinforcement leads to desirable cognitive traits.   Of the nativist/ cognitive school, learning occurs as a result of the unfolding of cognitive function.  Cognitive traits are genetically inherent, and there is little or no control over how they are shaped.  Grammar of the first language isn’t taught—it is a genetic endowment.  These schools don’t allow that not all learning is confined to the brain alone.  Older children and adults experience L2 learning while within the confines of a desk, within a classroom: in this mode, they are forced into necessarily exploring everything through a cognitive lens and do not have the same ability to explore the physical experience of language.  However, it may be argued that language does not belong merely to the cognitive realms of the human being: it is innately physical—rooted in the physical senses of the body, the musculature as well as abstract systems such as cognition and emotion (Lakoff and Johnson, Stanislavski).  The old question of the tree falling in the forest is in accord with this experience: if no one is around, does it make a sound?  Of course, there are those who would argue that it does, indeed make sound.  Yet, if it is not experienced, how can it be said to have produced sound, since by its nature, sound is the cognitively processed sampling of compressed airwaves.  Without the cognitive process, there is no sound, so if no human being is around to hear the sound, there must, logically, have not been one produced.  If one tries to speak, but no words come from his mouth, did he really speak?  Without words, is there language? 

Proof of the physical nature of language can be readily identified by means of a simple experiment: blow out all the air in your lungs and try to speak—in fact, without air, the mind soon erupts into panic mode as it tries to quench the burning sensation in the lungs, and all ability to cognitively process language, first or second, ceases.  Language is not something that one has in their mind: it is something done (Halliday), requiring a physical body.  Speech cannot be accomplished without attention to the physical aspects of language, and it may hold that language learning cannot be accomplished successfully without the same attention.  Even the semiotic dimensions of language, gestures, intonation, pausing, and so on, are rooted in the ability to make subtle physical changes in the human body while speaking and can change the meaning of an utterance completely (Kress, Coulthard, Brazil). 

Language Learning or Language Membershipping

This same line of reasoning can be used to identify whether or not a particular learner has acquired a language: if a community of individuals who can be said to speak language R react to speaker S as if she is speaking the language (i.e., having obtained the lexis and syntax, etc.), than she must be a speaker of the language—she must have acquired the language (Taylor).  It may be the case that the young child who learns a second language to near-native levels has found ways to be welcomed into the language community having been membershipped by her peers.  It may become necessary to understand how this can come about.  Researchers and teachers, alike, talk about L2 approaches and methods as ways to teach a second language, as if, by doing so, the students will learn, which, it has been argued, is not necessarily the case.  Thus, it may be more prudent to focus learners on obtaining membership to the target language community by identifying its norms and dissentions and working towards accomplishing them (Taylor, ibid; Holliday, 2005).  Young children learning an L2, in playing with their peers in the target language, intrinsically seek to play the same game (Crystal).  Adults and older children are taught to understand and to reply—an altogether different approach (Willis and Willis, Coulthard).  It cannot easily be argued that an LAD is inaccessible to an adult and older child since the ways in which younger L2 learners approach learning are likely quite different.  Younger learners may not actually be accessing an LAD but they may be utilizing physiological feedback gained from playing with their more numerous target-language peers—play that is unavailable to older children and adults within the language learning process. 

Approaches and Methods in Language Pedagogy

Regardless of whether it is an approach or a method which is utilized for language pedagogy, one thing is consistently true: both an approach and a method concede that effective language teaching requires some kind of principled consideration of students, materials and language acquisition (Richards and Rodgers, 1999).  What separates approaches from methods is the realization that approaches tend to be employed short-term (i.e., within a particular class, grammar structure, group of students, etc.), whereas a method appears to be a complete, encapsulated system of learning.   Some are clearly favored by some researchers, such as task-based learning (Skehan), or communicative language teaching (Wan Yee Sam, ), while some are not, such as the PPP method, or the Present, Practice, Produce method (Willis and Willis), taken in this paper as the traditional L2 classroom teaching method.  The PPP method has become the staple of most language schools world-wide since its tenets are easy to build into a syllabus which gives students, teachers and administrators alike a seeming clear view of progress and accountability on behalf of all involved in the L2 teaching and learning process.  It is argued, however, that the PPP method gives the impression that language learning comes as a result of the teaching, and that learning occurs in the order of the lesson plan.  Yet, research indicates that learners appear neither to learn what teachers teach nor in the order teachers teach in (Lightbown and Spada), although attempts at attaining a natural order of acquisition have borne some fruit. 

Theorizing about Language Teaching and Learning

Generalizing from all approaches and methods to language pedagogy, and following Richards and Rodgers (1999), two factors appear to be critical: a theory of learning, and a theory of language acquisition.  A theory of learning contacts the issues that surround how teachers approach the problem of teaching and understand learning as a set of processes within the student.  A theory of language acquisition posits as its central construct the idea that learning and acquisition are mutually independent, and that some method of valuation must be employed for accurate assessment of language acquisition.  Some approaches and methods concede a behaviorist, others a cognitive, others still a socio-cultural viewpoint of language learning (Brown, 2007; Johnson 2004; see also Chomsky, 1965 and Vygotsky, 1974):  learning occurs as a result of either imposing environmental limitations and rewards or punishments for either their acquiescence or transgression, having natural (i.e., genetic) constraints imposed upon the learner who simply and naturally responds to unfolding inner, genetic processes, or due to one’s operations within a particular community who is charged with not simply constraining the learner, but with providing adequate social support.

Language as Emergent Phenomena of Language Pedagogy

Language as Physically Embodied

Language as Play

More to Language than Words and Structures: Language Play

Narrative and Metaphor use as indicators of language acquisition

Drama Contained in Language Contained in Drama

New Lit Review Plan

How this section is organized

1. Recent approaches to Language training (750)

• behaviorist (125)
• cognitive linguistic (125)
• task-based learning (125)
• Howatt—drama-based approach (125)
• communicative language learning (125)
• research on the good language learner (125)

2. Drama as a social semiotic (750)

• Sign creation (107)
• Metaphor (107)
• multimodality (107)
• narrative (107)
• cultural (107)
• complexity (107)
• emergence (107)

3. Use of Drama in ELT (750)

• skills-based approach (4-skills) (150)
• forms and functions approaches (grammar, vocabulary) (150)
• soft-skills approaches (empathic response, motivation) (150)
• social-cultural theory (SCT)
  • inclusion (imperialism, world-Englishes) (150)

4. Measuring Outcomes with Corpus (750)

• Corpus Linguistics (facts about language) (375)
• Multimodal Corpus (facts about language semiotics) (375)

My previous chapter

Chapter 1 An Introduction to Drama in ELT

The use of drama in ELT (DELT) is not unprecedented, though the applied linguistics literature is scant.  An exhaustive search through prevailing texts by noted authors describing language pedagogy such as Brown, Nunan, Harper, Lightbown and Spada, Gass and others reveals next to nothing concerning its use or potential in language acquisition even though modern language textbooks often present short dialogues in text and audio which teachers may use as teaching material.  “Under-exploited”, to use Almond’s vernacular (Járfás, 2008), in ELT, there is little tangible evidence to support the use of drama as an effective language teaching strategy, methodology or approach beyond introductory situational dialogue presenting new vocabulary and grammar. 

Researchers, teachers and teacher-researchers using drama as a teaching and learning medium report success in its use to engage students effectively in ELT, yet the soft language of the observations may appear unpersuasive to those teachers desiring measurable outcomes from such approaches.  To the question of how drama could contribute to cooperative language learning Járfás responds, “drama bears in its nature some cooperative elements” and lists group performance, relaxed atmosphere and mutual respect as the key dignitaries of cooperative language learning through drama.  Hall’s (1982) drama-based course attempted, ”within the student’s own parameter of competency in [English], to practice those skills which [the student] had acquired in other courses with a view to reinforcing situational structures already learnt in non-dramatic contexts”(146), with a “definite increase in motivation…observed as the semester progressed”(156).  

            Language and culture appear to be inextricably linked, yet the subtleties of non-linguistic cues to express emotion are typically ignored in regular conversation courses (Miccoli, 2003: 123).  Drama as a language-teaching medium allows learners context to explore these concepts.  Miccoli’s own course in a Brazilian university, “English through Drama” underscores these points, establishing character roles and “creating a genuine purpose for communication…a reason to use language” in “meaningful contexts”.  Drama provides a natural context for integrating the “four skills”—reading, writing, listening and speaking (Elgar, 2002), allowing for collaboration, negotiation of meaning and the creation of authentic texts, the results of which are “encouraging”.  

In a pro gradu DELT thesis, Salopelto, focusing on intercultural competence, notes teaching English intercultural communication in the Finnish local curriculum through contrastive analysis will have questionable results (2008, 20), preferring instead a drama-based approach to develop empathic response in the target language, English.  Salopelto further notes that such an approach is time-consuming and may lead to lower proficiency in target language forms (73). This point is picked up by Stinson (in Anderson et al, 2008: 210) whose own study initially focused on “structured activities in which the students needed to use spoken English”, “meaningful talk in the specific dramatic context”, to “improve language outcomes” (ibid, 195; emphasis, author).  The study’s results lacked more concrete measurements on the students’ language outcomes save “significant improvement in oral communication”, noting the “unanimously enthusiastic” response of teachers and students, increased confidence in spoken English communication, greater enjoyment of lessons and improved racial relationships in classes.

            The studies, above, were performed to confront perceived shortages in ELT—namely motivation, intercultural communication, negotiation of meaning and affect.  As such, they are lacking in specific detail towards the nature of language learners’ linguistic improvement.  A teacher assessing whether or not to use a dramatic approach to language learning would appreciate the improved mood of the students, increased motivation, negotiation of meaning and collaboration, but the students would still be measured by test results; the literature on DELT glosses over this crucially persuasive information. This is not to override the results of the above-mentioned studies, but, unfortunately, sentiment doesn’t seem to satisfy educational regulators though application of the above studies’ methods and approaches may produce more cosmopolitan citizens. 

            In the current study, the aforementioned communicative elements of language will be important; linguistic and paralinguistic measurements will be taken through pre- and post-research interviews and texts from a group of thirty university English students split between two English research classes—a drama-based course (D-Class) and a traditionally organized course (T-Class).  Through the study, it is hoped that the following questions (and their inferred hypotheses) will be answered:

• What effect will a drama-based approach to language learning have on the development of student narratives? 
• Will a drama-based approach to language teaching and learning have a positive effect on student-produced narratives?
• Will EFL students in a Korean university context respond better to a drama-based EFL class environment or a more “traditional” teacher-fronted classroom?
• Will a drama-based approach to language teaching and learning correlate positively with more than reduced negative affect and anxiety?
• Will students who participate in a drama-based language class show more improvement in the production of identity narrative post-learning than those who participate in a “standard” teacher-fronted class?
• Will a drama-based language class allow students to develop more physical, gestural and vocal expressiveness than a class which is more “traditional” in nature?
• What will be the nature of the differences between students participating in a drama-based course and those participating in a traditional teacher-fronted class post-experiment?
• To what extent will the effects of drama-based instruction of metaphor in narrative compare with the effects of explicit instruction of metaphor in narrative construction in a traditional teacher-fronted EFL class?

The raw materials will be compiled into a multimodal corpus where the effects of the research classes can be more easily examined.  It is hoped that facts of language, rather than ideas about it (Sinclair, 39) will become evident, both linguistically and paralinguistically.  Furthermore, it is hoped that the D-based class will show similar if not greater improvement in both areas, the nature of which will be shortly discussed in chapter two.

 

Chapter 2 A Review of Linguistics and SLA Literature Underpinning DELT

            In this chapter, we will survey the literature contained within various fields of linguistic and SLA inquiry concerning the development, implementation and general use of a DELT approach to language learning.  We shall begin with a brief mention of research methods, then move into the psychological/ linguistic branches most important in a DELT approach.  Following this, we shall survey the literature surrounding multimodal corpus linguistics, metaphor, and narrative.  A discussion about DELT proper will be held in the chapter following.  The term approach is here used since it is generally recognized that methodologies are frequently developed with the view that language learners are deficient (Richards and Rogers, 2008: 15).  A method is the implementation of decisions made about skills, content, order of presentation and technique to be used (Richards and Rogers, 2001: 19). An approach, conversely, is better considered as flexible and interpretable to a particular learning and teaching situation and may not lead to a particular “method” (ibid, 24; see also Brown, 2007b: 14).  What this means for a particular DELT class is the needs of the student at any particular time should constantly remain in view and materials should be ready to move in any number of directions.  More will be said on this later, particularly in chapters three and four.

2.1 Research Methods in Applied Linguistics

            In the introduction it was noted that the type of research was important to determine the applicability of the results to the ELT field.  Three types of research study important for applied linguistics are those which are qualitative, those which are quantitative and those which are mixed-methods, blending elements of both qualitative and quantitative.  Each type of research comes with its own ideological difference.  Quantitative research tends to produce numerical data from which results are statistically generalizable.  In this form of research, it is suggested that research is researcher-controlled, objective, done for the purpose of the data, and is somehow divorced from the researcher to produce generalizable objective “facts” (Nunan, 2008: 3).  Qualitative research produces non-numerical data analyzed in a non-statistical way (Dörnyei, 2007: 24).  This form of research is relativistic, assumes a subjective stance to the data and allows for non-generalizable results (Nunan, 2009: 3).  A mixed-methods study uses both kinds of data.  Much work must be done to identify which categories and figures are to be collected before the research is started in a quantitative study; for a qualitative study, much of the study is “emergent”—open to change during the study’s progress (Dörnyei, 2007: 33-37).  Mixed methods allow for qualitative and quantitative data to symbiotically support one another (Miles and Huberman, 1994: ibid, 42). 

The majority of DELT papers surveyed above tend towards the qualitative.  The main weaknesses, while being more flexible, making sense of complexity and having an exploratory nature, are the sample sizes are often small, researchers may directly or inadvertently bias the data, and a preference for substance (research topics) over form (methodology) (Seal et al, 2004: ibid, 41).  This study uses a mixed methods approach to formulate conclusions via corpus analysis of student-produced text (verbal—i.e.: linguistic, pitch and intonation; visual—i.e.: gestural, expressiveness; and textual—i.e.: linguistic).   It will take advantage of the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative analysis, attempting to describe the complexity of the environment in which the participants are working as well as the nature of the linguistic differences between pre- and post-research interviews, suggesting reasons for noted differences.

The next section will identify potential mechanisms working for or against the observed responses to the research which have come about, giving some explanatory perspective.

2.2 Behaviorism as a Locus of SLA

            Drama as a medium for language instruction has three primary linguistic coordinates localized around behavioural psychology, cognitive linguistics and social constructivism.   In a behaviorist/ structural linguistic view of SLA, the external environment of the learner is the primary focus, providing the stimuli for responses which, if reinforced, form correct habits—in other words, “learning”, in a behaviorist teacher’s vernacular (Johnson, 2004: 10; Brown, 2007a: 27; see also Lightbown and Spada, 2006: 10).  Behaviorism, attempts to answer the question of how languages are learned with the view that imitation of language produced around a learner (in language acquisition theory, the first language learner), receives positive reinforcement if the learner responds to stimuli correctly and in the correct context.  Positively reinforced responses which are practiced further and which continue to receive positive reinforcement become habits.

The behaviorist theory of language, posited by B.F. Skinner, was critically received since it seems difficult to conceive that any novel statement an individual could make would be the result of positive reinforcement (Brown, 2007a: 27).  Behaviorist research strategies began to fall into disrepute as it was felt subjects were objectified and their own thoughts and feelings about the experiences of the experiment behavior were considered to be irrelevant to scientific inquiry (Johnson, 2004: 10).  This was, some thought, potentially dangerous—a researcher’s intention can manipulate the subject’s behavior and individuality of the subjects is ignored (ibid: 11).  The Audiolingual Method (ALM) and the Total Physical Response method are two examples of teaching in the behaviorist tradition.  Both rely on stimulus and response conditioning for language development (see Brown, 2007a: 111; see also Lightbown and Spada, 2006: 146). 

2.3 Cognitive Linguistics as a Locus of SLA

In cognitive psychology, meaning, understanding and knowing are of the utmost importance, and psychologists rely on tools of logic, reason, extrapolation and inference to explain behavior (Brown, 2007a, 11).  Rather than trying to describe behavior as behaviorists do, cognitive psychology attempts to explain it.  Among the proponents of a cognitive view of linguistics is oft-cited generative-transformational linguist, Noam Chomsky, whose approach, to propose a language acquisition device (LAD) includes a universal grammar (UG) which every child uses to acquire his or her first language (Johnson, 2004, 30-33).  His viewpoint has been criticized on several fronts. The unfolding of the UG through maturation of the child is unknown; furthermore, it is unclear where, if anywhere, the UG exists since Chomsky defined it as a “mental organ … [lacking] a clear demarcation line between physical organs, perceptual and motor systems, and cognitive faculties” (1980; in Johnson, ibid; 33).  Still, as a cognitive theory, the UG eliminates the need for behaviorist environmental factors, which are, from a cognitive linguistic standpoint, considered of less import than cognitive processes aiding the processing of linguistic data (ibid, 34). 

In addition to the UG, Chomsky considers that language use is more than grammatical competence: pragmatic competence is required (ibid).  Competence, according to Brown (2007a; 35) is the knowledge of the underlying rules of a system, event or fact—the ability to do something, though not necessarily the realization of the ability.  This contrasts with performance which is the actual doing of an act.  In language, pragmatic competence—linguistic competence in Bachman’s terminology (1990; in Skehan, 2007; 157-161)—is the knowledge of the rules and systems of grammar (Johnson, ibid; 87).   Based on Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1916) concepts of parole (performance) and langue (competence), Chomsky’s view of language performance reminds us of an ideal language produced by an ideal user in ideal circumstances, since actual performance of language is “fairly degenerate in quality” given the errors inherent in actual situational usage (Chomsky, 1965).

Chomsky’s view about language performance quality, noted above, answer questions about why first language speakers may fail to produce utterances of accuracy in their first language, but it fails to answer why second language learners often fail to acquire their second language. Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis model takes this into consideration.  For Krashen, second language learners have access to the LAD, but access is mediated by an affective filter, “a metal block that prevents acquirers from fully utilizing the comprehensible input they receive for language acquisition” (Krashen, 1985: 3; in Johnson, 2004: 48).  Comprehensible input is defined by Krashen as input which is just above the level of the learner—i + 1 (Brown, 2007a: 295).  A reduced or eliminated affective filter leaves the LAD free to process input and L2 acquisition will, according to Krashen, occur. 

Krashen’s theories are highly contested: the affective filter’s operation, as defined by Krashen, appears to represent the result and not the cause of the block to the LAD: it is the learner who is responsible for the affective filter’s operation (ibid, 49). Second, since it relies on Chomsky’s UG which allows for natural growth of language through an environmental “trigger”—a passive response to language growth— Krashen’s model has difficulty reconciling the active nature of input, which proceeds from cause to effect in language learning: input causes acquisition (ibid, 48).  Third, it is difficult to understand what Krashen means by comprehensible input which is just above the learner’s ability.  Brown notes its approximation with Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal development, but that other linguists have pointed out Krashen’s simple formula makes it appear as if we are able to define “i” and “1” yet we are unable to do so (Brown, ibid: 297; see also Gregg, 1984; White, 1987). 

Other cognitive linguists have modified Krashen’s model.  Swain, for instance, suggests that comprehensible output is important to generate comprehensible input (Johnson, 2004: 51-52; see also Skehan, 2007: 16).  For Swain, it is the noticing the disparity between “what I can say” and “what I want to say” that produces acquisition in an L2.  Swain’s model identifies three main functions: noticing/ triggering or consciousness raising, hypothesis-testing, and reflection and places much of the process in the learner’s sensitivity to the difference between intended and apparent meaning of output based upon the resultant input.  Output which presents input different than that expected results in a modification of the approach to output. Swain’s model is similar to that of Long who ostensibly considered negotiation for meaning as crucial for language acquisition, including the implicit rather than explicit negative feedback possible in communication.

For Long, the primary difference is in the interplay between the learning environment and the learner via negotiation of meaning.  Negotiation for meaning is a combination of environmental, learner selective attention and L2 processing factors leading to language acquisition.  Attention is crucial, implying the learner is able to identify linguistic features for change within his or her purview.  Long, Johnson notes, does not advocate the explicit teaching of grammar, a focus on forms, each item sequentially and additively presented.  Instead, Long and Robinson discuss a focus on form where attentional resources are allocated towards meaning through the use of grammatical forms (ibid, 55).

2.5 Sociocultural Theory as a Locus of SLA

In contrast to both the behavioral and cognitive schools of thought, a constructivist viewpoint sees learning, including language learning, as a socially constructed activity.  Language is not, it may be noted, produced for its own sake.  Language production takes place in a social context where meaning is jointly produced.  Acquisition of language is likewise socially constructed and its meaning is likewise discovered (Brown, 2007a: 12-13).  In the constructivist camp, Lev Vygotsky’s concept the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which has been applied to language teaching, appears to be critical for an effective tool for teaching and learning.  The ZPD functions in a social context, setting up roles for both mentor and learner; it is

the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.

(Vygotsky, 1978: 86)

Development is not an entirely solipsistic activity.  Periods of solitude and of interaction with peers of higher development are both necessary to effect growth.  Interaction in the sense identified by Vygotsky is between a novice and another who has mastered a particular skill or task.  The concept of the ZPD has been formalized into a series of six protocols for scaffolding learners to mastery of a task:

1. recruit interest in the task,
2. simplifying the task,
3. maintaining pursuit of the goal,
4. marking critical features and discrepancies between what has been produced and the ideal solution,
5. controlling frustration during problem solving, and
6. demonstrating an idealized version of the act to be performed.

                                                              (Donato, 1998, 41; emphasis in Johnson, 2004: 130-131)

Each of the stages of scaffolding are the kinds of acts which a more capable peer does to foster learning in an individual.  Donato, however, identified not only that scaffolding of this sort assists the learners, but that learners of the same level as well working individually can take advantage of the same techniques through self-talk (ibid; see also Lightbown and Spada, 2009: 48).  In the use of drama for language learning, students are often given tasks for which they must figure out the best means of expression both individually as well as in peer groups as well as receiving direct scaffolding of the sort identified by Donato in the list of protocols, above.   One exception, however, is the use of the word, idealized, in the final item.  This will be taken up in the discussion about drama in the fourth chapter.

*(More needed)

Chapter 3 The Physical Basis of Language and Narrative Construction

            The previous section dealt with some of the historical principles undergirding our research.  In this chapter, we shall consider some more recent research into language which does not rely upon a purely behavioral or cognitive view of language acquisition.  This chapter will discuss the physical embodiment of language particularly in reference to metaphorical usage.  In addition, we will discuss the narrative construction with an eye towards its use in the formation of identity. 

3.1 The Physical Embodiment of Language: The Neural Theory of Language (NTL)

            That language, and especially metaphor, is considered by many to be embodied physically is not new, yet it is arguable.  Language in Saussurean structuralism is the product of socio-psychological phenomenon (Taylor, 1992: 78)—reminiscent of a Vygotskian perspective rather than a Chomskeyan one.  For Saussure, a speech community shares a common set of signs—the signifier and the signified—or language; membership means internalizing the signs of the community (ibid).  Language is a vehicle of subjective expression and intersubjective understanding (80).  For Chomsky, who agreed with Saussure’s concept of langue and parole, language has a natural genesis; every child born has access to all language grammars, but given time refines his or her language capacities to a single one—the child’s first language.  Langue is outside the control of the will of the individual, imposed by outside members of the speech community: for communication to occur, two people must agree as to the meaning of a sign and its significance; what is taken to be a sign and what its significance are arbitrary, yet decided upon from without (82-84).

It is becoming more difficult to rule language a purely mental set of arbitrary constructs designed to allow communication of abstract concepts.  The physical embodiment of language is so compelling an idea, that effort has been spent to identify a genetic basis for language, the FOXP2 gene, ubiquitous in the human population (Lai, Fisher, Hurst, Vargha-Khadem, and Monaco, 2001).  Subjects having an impaired version of this gene appear to have severe linguistic impairments ranging from articulation to comprehension and grammatical difficulties (Pinker and Jackendoff, 2005; 218).  Others look not to genetics but to a neurological basis for language perception and use.

Lakeoff and Johnson reject a purely philosophical view of language for one established in the neural network of the mind and body, a sort of “hidden hand” which shapes how experience is to be conceptualized (1999: 12-13).  Considering a neurobiological perspective, Liberman and Mattingly (1985) claim in their motor theory of speech perception that objects of speech perception are “intended phonetic gestures of the speaker, represented in the brain as invariant motor commands that call for movements of the articulators through certain linguistically significant configurations” (2), the idea being that the gesture and the word are one and the same and are intimately linked in such a way that a translation from gesture to speech is automatic (ibid, 3)—they are “different sides of the same coin” (ibid, 30). 

Liberman and Mattingly take a pragmatic view of speech and listening structures of cognition, arguing the difficulty existing for how two structures processing the same information could come about (ibid).  Lakeoff and Johnson (1999) take up this position, proposing the efficiency of neural structures to both perceive input of a particular kind and to create motor schema for acting upon that input:

           The visual systems of our brains are used in characterizing spatial-relations concepts.  Our actual motor schemas and motor synergies are involved in what verbs of motor movement mean.  And the general form of motor control gives general form to all our actions and the events we perceive.  The point is this:  In such models, there is no absolute perceptual/ conceptual distinction, that is, the conceptual system makes use of important parts of sensorimotor system that impose crucial conceptual structure.

(ibid, 39)

The physical reality of the body’s perception system actually creates the cognitive systems whereby information is perceived.  In other words, what the eye sees and the ear hears creates the systems which the eye and ear use to further perceive.  This idea is illustrated in the metaphor Knowing is Seeing:  Christopher Johnson (1997, ibid, 86) notes that acquisition of conceptual metaphors goes through two stages—conflation and differentiation—where the verb, see, used as a child might as in “See what I spilled?” does not mean the same as in “See what I mean?”  In the first instance, see indicates a gaining of knowledge—to see and know—whereas the second it is a metaphorical usage meaning know even though no physical seeing has taken place (ibid).  The second usage indicates a refinement upon the first and would not be expected in earlier language developmental stages. 

To deepen our examination of the physical embodiment of language, we find many studies in which an approach or methodology to language learning which is physically involved or one which activates schematic metaphoric knowledge, outperform a more traditional approach or methodology.  Lindstromberg and Boers (2005) showed in experiment that students within an enactment-based (ie: physical action) foreign study program utilizing James Asher’s TPR methodology outperformed control groups in terms of vocabulary recall and retention, particularly with manner-of-movement verbs like sway and hurl.  This seems to confirm Asher’s own studies (1965, 1966 and 1969) that activating the motor system during language learning is an effective means to improve retention and recall.  This may be due to the lateralization of information across brain hemispheres as the right hemisphere uses action for expression, bypassing the analytical left hemisphere (Mangubhai, 1991: 269). In experiments where learners were simply cognizant of the source domains from which metaphors might be categorized, there appear to be benefits from enhanced metaphor awareness (Boers, 2000: 562).  Boers suggests that this may be due to benefits from image processing, employing cognitive effort to identify source domains and making categorizing judgements promoting deep-level cognitive processing; and metaphoric themes as categories may also provide a framework for lexical organization (ibid, 563).         

Boers’ experiments employed categories similar to those identified by Lakeoff and Johnson, (2003), such as ANGER IS HEAT,  BODY IS A CONTAINER FOR EMOTIONS, MORE IS UP; LESS IS DOWN; and so on (Boers, 2000).  These categories are immediately comprehensible in terms of imagery and are both physically and conceptually salient.  When speaking of metaphors, Lakeoff and Johnson intend metaphorical concept (2003, 6); furthermore, concepts become so because of their inferential capacity,

their ability to be bound together in ways that yield inferences.  An embodied concept is a neural structure that is actually part of, or makes use of the sensorimotor system of our brains.  Much of conceptual inference is, therefore, sensorimotor inference.

                                                                                    (emphasis in original; ibid, 20)

A theory of the physical embodiment of language rests upon the neural theory of language (NTL) proposed by cognitive science in which a gestalt position is taken: both motor schemas and functions a thing can perform are related by the part-whole structure.  Mind is not independent of the structure wherein it exists; things with bodies can only perceive and perform within the limits of the body; perception is based upon basic-level categories such as cat, mat, boy, and ball as well as swimming, walking and grasping rather than Tabby, yoga mat, lad, basketball, breast stroke, saunter or handshake.  Moreover, extensions of the body extend our perception of the world at large—microscopes and telescopes, for instance allowed us to think biologically or universally, before which our concepts of the world were spiritual or limited to what we could see with the naked eye (Lakeoff and Johnson, 1999: 28-29; 37). 

Lakeoff and Johnson, in proposing the hypothesis of the embodied mind, are clear to identify the foundation of this theory is based upon existence proof.  They propose no neurophysiological proof such as PET or MRI scans of the structures used in perception and conception.  Instead, they utilize three models of Terry Regier (1996), David Baily (1997) and Srini Narayanan (1997) (ibid: 40-41).  Regier’s model was capable of using visual information to build, recognize and later make linguistic descriptions of a static geometric configurations such as “on” and dynamic configurations such as “onto” using world languages.  Baily’s model identifies and names hand motions in the world’s languages, but also recognizes differences between languages to categorize hand actions.  The model can both perform the correct function given the word, or given the visual stimuli, give the correct verb to describe the observation.  From this, Bailey does not imply that the meaning of  the verb “grasp”, for example, is the same thing as the physical action of the verb “grasp”; instead, the model implies the motor schemas and parameter values of the brain which observe and categorize can operate without physical response (ibid, 580).   From this, it is reasoned, motor schemas that can and do control the body could function in reasoning when not controlling the body. 

Narayanan’s model really describes the full program of a motor schema:

• Getting into the state of readiness
• The initial state
• The starting process
• The main process (either instantaneous or prolonged)
• An option to stop
• An option to resume
• An option to iterate or continue the main process
• A check to see if a goal has been met
• The finishing process
• The final state

(ibid, 41)

Narayanan’s model is capable of characterizing aspect—a crucial aspect of linguistic descriptions of events.  Narayanan’s model shows that the same neural structure capable of performing motor control is likewise capable of controlling logical inferences about the structure of actions.  His model was capable of performing metaphoric projections in an abstract domain—international economics—when given conceptual metaphors from news reports, such as “India loosened its stranglehold on business,” and “France fell into a recession and Germany pulled it out”.  Taking these models as the foundation, Lakeoff and Johnson hypothesize that since brains tend to optimize and only add what is necessary, the sensorimotor system is utilized for both perception on a physical and an abstract (metaphorical) level rather than developing a completely new system (43). 

3.2 Narrative and Identity Construction through Narrative

            Significant to this paper is the use of narrative as a mode of discourse between participants.  The ability to tell a good story as a highly regarded talent (McCarthy, 1991: 137) is taken as the critical teaching point of this study.  In this study, participants create spoken and written narrative texts for analysis.  William Labov presents a general framework for narrative construction.  Narrative is defined as “one method of recapitulating past experience by matching a verbal sequence of clauses to the sequence of events which (it is inferred) actually occurred” (in Jaworski, 2006: 218).  Narratives of personal experience are narratives which have entered into the biography of the speaker (Labov, 1997).  Narrative structure is composed of six parts:

1. Abstract
2. Orientation
3. Complicating action
4. Evaluation
5. Result or resolution
6. Coda

(Jaworski, 219)

The abstract is a summary of the events which will follow—the reason why the listener or reader should pay attention to the text which follows.  The orientation provides the who, what, when, and where of the narrative.  The complicating action answers the question, “Then what happened?” (222), and identifies the chain of actions which constitute the main body of the text.  All sequential clauses, Labov defines (1997), are clauses of complicating action and vice versa.   Once narrated, the actions are evaluated, or validated (see Swan in McCarthy, 1991: 138), in terms of the participants—the “So what?” or the raison d’être of the text.  This is the point of telling the story.  Evaluations of the events happen by making a comparison between what happened and some alternative reality that was not realized; furthermore, with an increase in age, Labov notes evaluative statements occur with greater frequency (see Labov, 1972, in Labov, 1997). 

The result or resolution tells what finally happened (224), after which there are no more complicating actions.  Finally, narratives often have a coda which tells the listener or reader the narrative has come to a conclusion.  Codas are often “free clauses” or generalizations showing effects of the events of the narrative (221); these free clauses refer to conditions which hold true during the entire narrative (Labov, 1997). 

Labov is careful to identify that the above mentioned elements of narrative are “typical”, only the complicating action is necessary for a text to be a narrative (Jaworski, ibid: 221).  With each complicating action clause, Labov notes,  the speaker or writer evaluates the overall effect of the narrative, making choices as to whether the story is in a state of completion or not and providing evaluation when necessary (see figure 1, below).

Figure 1: Narrative Structure (Reproduced from Jawarski, 2006: 225)

Later, however, he defines a minimum narrative as a series of linked clauses containing at least once temporal juncture where (Labov, ibid).   In addition, narratives are sets of bound, restricted and free clauses.  Bound clauses are sequential, independent clauses.  By bound, Labov intends temporal binding, and identifies the use of the simple past, the past progressive, the present tense with the semantic interpretation of a preterit as devices which, at least in English, which are necessary for narratives (ibid).

Stories are not told in a vacuum, but collaboratively (McCarthy, 1991: 139).  Narratives are frequently considered to be composed of a single set of uninterrupted clauses.  Sacks, as Labov points out, disagrees with this view.  Conversations are composed of strings of at least two turns (Sacks, 1967; in Couthard, 1985: 69).  Narrative is not defined by “holding the floor” but by controlling the assignment of the speaker, and this necessitates the interspersion of back channel signals.  These signals are taken as turns of talk (ibid; see also Edwards and Middleton, 1986) and set up transition relevance and expectation (Sacks, 1967).  These signals indicate the evaluation by the addressee as permission to continue speaking.   These are summarized by Labov as follows:

1. Successful completion of the narrative requires automatic re-assignment of speaker role after the following turn if the narrative is not completed in that turn.
2. A narrative of personal experience must contain at least one reportable event.
3. A most reportable event is the event that is less common than any other in the narrative and has the greatest effect upon the needs and desires of the participants in the narrative.
4. The more reportable the most reportable event of a narrative, the greater justification for the automatic reassignment of speaker role to the narrator.

(ibid)

A paradox exists, in Labov’s evaluation: the more reportable the event the less credible is the narration of the event.  Credibility is further related to causality.  When the answer to the question, “How did that happen?” is appropriate to the telling of the story, the question is not and the clause in question is assumed to keep the cause-result structure.  Moreover, while a narrator may keep the floor and tell a credible story, the teller expects agreement on the part of the listener, yet participants may disagree about the significance a particular story holds (Ryave, 1978; in Coulthard, 1985: 84). 

Labov (1997) identifies in his examination of narrative a series of elements which seek to contain narrative within a single matrix of coherence.  Among these are temporal relationships between clauses indicated through verbs in the simple past, past progressive, indicative mood, the use of subordinate conjunctions, and clause types belonging to the categories noted above (abstract, orientation, etc.).  Placement within the narrative determines much of the identity and function of a particular clause as, for example, “evaluation is characteristically concentrated in an evaluation section”; this does not preclude the use of evaluation within any other part of the narrative, but identifies a general maxim for narrative structure.  Sacks (1972; in Coulthard, 1985: 85) identifies ways in which any two clause items may be “heard” as belonging together.  The first is a membership categorization device handling a descriptive category such as gender to which male and female, subordinate to the first category, both belong.  In the clause pair,

The baby cried.  The mommy picked it up.

both baby and mommy are understood to belong to the same device—family.  Some categories will belong to more than one device:  baby, for instance can belong to family as well as to stage of life.  Sacks’ economy rule (ibid, 86) recognizes that utilizing a single category for any device is tantamount to paying adequate reference thus providing coherence; keeping consistency occurs when categories of the same collection of one device are used to categorize further members of a population.  Keeping the consistency and the economy rules in the example,

The first baseman looked round, the third baseman scratched himself.

the basemen are heard as belonging to the same team.  Sacks furthermore shows that activities are appropriate to members of certain devices—they are category-bound activities.  Thus, as Coulthard states, crying is a category-bound activity for the category baby when it is a member of the stage of life device, but not necessarily for another category such as adolescent or adult. 

            Schlegoff (1972) outlines the concept of membershipping in which listeners must be brought into a particular topic by the use of particular information assumed to be known by the listener.  In one sequence, Coulthard quotes Sacks’ (1968) example of an exchange on an airplane:

Passenger: Do you have a cigarette?

Stewardess: No we don’t.  They don’t provide that service anymore.

whereby the stewardess is membershipped as a stewardess and the question is addressed and received in that role.  Counter to this example, the stewardess may have considered to have been membershipped as a stranger and offered one herself.  In avoid situations like,

A: I just came back from Irzuapa.

B: Where’s that?

Coulthard suggests membershipping listeners with a pre-sequence:

A: D’you know where the Triboro Bridge is?

B: Yeah.

A: Well, you make a right there.

Narrative may be understood as organized under a series of principles outlined by Grice (1975).  These are highlighted in the following statement:

make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

(in Coulthard, 31)

Coulthard expands upon this principle by identifying four major areas in which speakers must keep their discourse organized:

	relation	be relevant
	quality	a)       do not say what you believe to be falseb)       do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence
	quantity	a)       make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange)b)       do not make your contribution more informative than is required
	manner	a)       avoid obscurity of expressionb)       avoid ambiguity c)       be brief d)       be orderly

These maxims are not rules set in stone, as Coulthard notes; rather, they are suggestions for constructing discourse.  In terms of narrative, these same rules can be seen to apply since, first, narratives which are not relevant to the discourse topic at hand (ie: no membershipping, coherence, topical consistency or category/ device consistency) will be considered inappropriate to share; second, stories which are judged to be fabrications quickly destroy the credibility of the speaker; third, a speaker whose narrative is overwrought with detail will eventually result in increased negative backchannel signals; and fourth, narratives which fail to be temporally coherent, short or unambiguous will likewise receive negative backchannel signals.  Narratives which fail Grice’s maxims will lack reportability, to use Labov’s term. 

            Identity formation through narrative is about how the teller of the story decides to reveal his or her personal character through topic choice, interaction, description, analogy, referencing, inferencing, mood, grammatical choice or evaluation of the events.  These are reflected in the evaluation of narrative, as outlined in Labov (1997; see also Jaworski, 2006).  Labov notes that it is in the sentence grammar which gives direct clues to evaluation.  For example, the speech of an actor in a narrative animated to speak directly (at the level of the narrative—ie: reported speech of the event) is open to evaluation no matter the topic or evaluation.  Negatives, comparatives, modals or futures can be seen as a form of evaluation.   In the example statements,

I don’t even wanna fool with ya.

and

An’ a guy told me, says, “Don’t move your head.”

the first statement can be compared to a situation in which the speaker would want to fool with the other narrated character; the second can be compared to a situation in which it would be safe for the speaker to move his head.  (More to come…Kiernan Dissertation, part 3; Section 4.1, pg. 157)

A complication for L2 learners is the fact that, for lower-level learners, moment-by-moment lexico-grammatical encoding at the clause level tends to interfere with the discourse-level skills resulting in a skeletal narrative of bare facts with little evaluation (McCarthy, 1991: 140).  In addition, typical published activities tend to favor single instead of joint storytelling. 

3.3 Corpus Linguistic Analysis of Multimodal Discourse

Language has long been known to be composed of rule-governed patterns into which certain words were understood to fit to the exclusion of others.  Typically, these rules are the grammar which organizes language, yet within recent decades, collocation has been recognized as a significant organizing system operating within the grammar.  J.R. Firth is among the first to identify collocation with his statement, “you shall judge a word by the company it keeps” (Partington, 25).  From this humble beginning, corpus linguistics has grown.

John Sinclair identified two properties of language showing that textual coherence does not happen at random—the idiom principle and the open-choice principle are significant to collocation.  Should a word fit within a set phrase, then the idiom principle is at play; conversely, if there is no set phrase, then the open-choice principle is in use (Hunston, 124). For example, the words in the phrase, of course, as an expression of assent, have meaning together; yet when another word is substituted—by course, the phrase loses its meaning.  The open-choice principle is the slot-and-filler model of language description where a large series of complex choices is made to produce coherent text (Sinclair, 108-109), the choice proceeding limiting those following.  These two principles provide the foundation for collocation.

Textual meaning accumulates globally through many local collocations.  Language description by collocation alone would be meaningless without some way to show relevance.  Sinclair identified that a native-language user’s intuitions about language, will be unrevealing in terms of usage (Sinclair, 39).   Having amassed a great amount of language knowledge, most personal evaluations will be “ideas about language rather than facts of it.”  Corpus linguistics combines text with technology to reveal language facts.  The introduction of digital computers and concordancing software from the mid 1970’s onwards provided the muscle with which to do most of the work of finding collocations (Kennedy, 5-7).  Electronic databases held the texts in a machine-readable format. Software could identify collocations as well as provide linguists with statistical data showing which were most relevant. Knowing how basic concordancing software works can provide useful information on the evidence returned from a search (McHardy, 15). Collocations with higher values of frequency, t-score and mutual attraction are more statistically relevant (see Table 2). 

Table 2 Collocation Examples Ordered by Frequency and T-Score

Collocate   Frequency   T-Score his   847   25.051640 her   661   23.187461 at   435   14.081992 under   154   11.160451 she   238   10.843065           (Hunston, 14-16)

A limiting factor in the importance of these measures, however, is the amount of text under examination.  A smaller text will produce higher values, thus inflating the importance of the collocation.  This is particularly important when dealing with texts of different sizes, as a larger text will show a particular feature to me less statistically relevant while a smaller text will show the reverse.

Corpus discoveries, regardless of size, are also limited by the way in which the sorting software is set (McHardy, 15). Setting the software to find a single word—hard, for example, will return collocations for the word hard, but not for other forms such as harder, hardest, or hardly.  Searching for the lemma hard@ will return forms of the same type.  Searching for hard*, however, will provide all the words which have hard as a part as well as all other forms besides.  Searching for a lemma instead of the single word may appear to bear more fruit, yet the time and energy required for sorting is greatly increased. 

Table 3 Lemmas of Hard, Difficult and Challenging

hard difficult challenging   hard difficult challenging   harder   challenges   hardest   challenge       challenged

A lemma is particularly useful for verbs, but at times may include both verb and noun forms, as in contact, which, in both forms, includes contact and contacts.  Collocations alone cannot determine when one or the other form is in use while both may contribute to a word’s frequency, t-score or mi-score.  Concordance lines may highlight such use (see Table 4), as will setting the software to discover noun or verb forms with “/NOUN” or “/VERB” (among others).

Table 4 Concordance Lines for the Lemma Challenging

Authors of a most informative and challenging book. A Nation in Denial; The who is challenging Bush and challenging Bush’s policies.  Instead, we’re differences now coming out and challenging dearly-held values of community The idea of upping the ante and challenging Governor Clinton to more While this is a very difficult and challenging time, the board is confident

Lexical patterning, as indicated by concordance lines is essential for discovering elements of language which are both statistically relevant and which provide teachable systems which are  broad enough for use between registers and genres. The above lines of concordance indicate some patterns which challenging follows (see Table 5).

Table 5 Some Patterns of Challenging

very ADJ and challenging NOUN 2.       most ADJ and challenging NOUN 3.       challenging NOUN NOUN and Challenging NOUN

The items in Table 5 are at the same time communicable, teachable and general enough to cover different registers and genres.  Furthermore, they can be used to check for similarity between other lexical items.  Hunston and Francis (1998) note both that lexical items have patterns and that similar items fall into groups based on shared aspects of meaning.  In the first pattern displayed in Table 5, the word hard could be substituted for difficult in the adjective position, but good could not without changing the meaning of the passage.  Additionally, each of these patterns will collocate in statistically different ways; however in terms of a particular lemma, one form will typically be more common than another (Stubbs, 172).

Corpus study reveals features as synonymy and semantic prosody as important features in language.  Synonymy is useful for language learners since learning which words are similar to others creates meaningful links between vocabulary items, making them easier to acquire (Partington, 39).  In addition, synonyms reduce repetition of words within text as well as allow users to make semantically similar statements across different registers. Synonymy refers to having the same sense, though not the same reference.  Lyons (1981, in Partington, 40) distinguishes between complete synonymy and absolute synonymy.  Items are completely synonymous if they are descriptively, expressively and socially identical in meaning and absolutely synonymous if they have, in addition, the same distribution. Furthermore, lexical items are descriptively synonymous if, when they are interchanged, the message in which they appear is not affected.  Partington notes that “the selection of one rather than the other may change the social or expressive meaning of the utterance, but hold constant its descriptive meaning (if it has descriptive meaning) in which case, we can say that the intersubstitutable lexemes are descriptively synonymous” (40).

Semantic prosody was first described by Sinclair (1991) as meaning extending over more than one unit, shown by Sinclair with the phrase, set in, in which he shows that the phrase, while not inherently negative, collocates with items such as rot, decay, disillusion, and infection and points to a negative state of affairs extending over set in (Stubbs, 173).  As “a subtle element of attitudinal, often pragmatic meaning” (Sinclair 1998: 20), semantic prosody determines the meaning of the whole unit (Mahlberg, 33).  Both synonymy and semantic prosody can provide language users and learners with relevant information about when a language community utilizes which items for purposes which are culturally relevant such as the connotative value of a unit of language.

Observing the lines of concordance, above, we can see that the closest words to challenging are the grammatical words and and the, the nouns time, Bush, Governor Clinton and values, and the adjectives difficult, informative, and dearly–held.  We might conclude from this brief observation that challenging is most often used as a verb with object nouns—in particular political figures and policies. In fact, a wider search reveals many other categories to which challenging belongs.  Even more relevant is the idea that challenging authority is a cultural activity which is valid in certain circumstances.  Whatever may be said of a culture based on its language, knowing when a challenge to authority is vitally important which may allow one to more fully participate in a foreign culture.

While corpus information serves a critical function in language instruction and may show which patterns are most prevalent within a particular genre or register of language (Altenberg, 14), it can show which lexical items collocate within those patterns.  Furthermore, it can show users ways in which cultural ideas are conveyed in language.  Kachru (1994) argues that users of a language exist in three concentric circles, with native users at the center and non-native and learners further out.  These circles coincide not only with language ability but also with social inclusion/ exclusion. Such division, considered offensive by some researchers, is often exacerbated by the fact that language learners are often instructed by non-native speakers (Hinkel, 928), further distancing the learner from the centre. Inclusion closer to the center of a group of language users may be encouraged by cultural information imbibed from corpus inquiries.  Corpus information can assist in making the divisions between native and non-native speakers less distinct, allowing learners greater social and political access to the world of the studied language. 

            Corpus linguistics affords great advantages in the searching of text for patterns of behavior, yet, recognizing that discourse—particularly narrative for the purposes of this study—does not exist in a vacuum, a multimodal corpus can provide a richer consideration of L2 learner language usage and L2 identity formation.  The term multimodal refers to the usage of multiple types of representation in order to convey meaning.  Gunter Kress identifies script, image, and music as some of our oldest modes of communication.  These he calls modalities and adds to them others such as speech, gesture, framing, dance, design, pace, and knowledge production, noting that the use of one over another modality has implications for knowledge and identity (Kress, 2010: 12).  Framing refers to the rhetorical gestures (ie: metaphor) one makes when constructing a communiqué in any particular modality. 

Kress notes that there is never a single mode which works in isolation; in communication, several modes are always used together, “in modal ensembles, designed so that each mode has a specific task and function” (ibid, 28).  These ensembles are designed—that is, resources are arranged and selected—to create a particular meaning using a particular rhetorical analyses—aims and purposes of the rhetor—instantiated through choice.  As noted above, it is the concept of choice which is most salient when considering the evaluative mode of narrative; it is choice which marks the identity of the narrator whether intended or not.    Following a social-semiotic theory of multimodality, laid out by Kress, narratives are compositions of signs,

always newly made in social interactional signs are motivated, not arbitrary relations of meaning and form; the motivated relation of a form and a meaning is based on and arises out of the interest of makers of signs; the forms/ signifiers which are used in the making of signs are made in social interaction and become part of the semiotic resources of a culture.  The relation of form and meaning is one of aptness, of a ‘best fit’, where the form of the signifier suggests itself as ready-shaped to be the expression of the meaning—the signified—which is to be realized.  Aptness means that the form has the requisite features to be the carrier of the meaning.

 ***

Drama can be an effective language learning medium

1.       Drama is active: languages cannot be learned without some connection to active, physical use.

• Behaviorism, and cognitive psychology are reductive; language learners respond to stimuli and form language habits with positive reinforcement or its opposite; language naturally develops through some biological psychological process unknown to the learner (especially of L1)—they are passive receivers of language, or vessels in which language apparently unfolds in some unknown biological way.  Language is considered, by cognitive linguists, to be conceptual, though they acknowledge language is produced by the physical apparatus. 
• language is physically embodied, and not simply a compartmentalized function of the mind
• The so-called optimal age for L2 acquisition theory may depend upon mode of learning (ie: active vs. passive learning); that is, there is a correlation between high success of young learners and active use of the L2 as well as a correlation between low success of learners after middle-school age plus observation of researchers (i.e.: Skehan, Bley-Vroman) failure of most L2 learners middle-school age and over to learn an L2 to fluency.  
• task-based learning requires multiple levels of input, and drama is task-based
• Drama is a strong communicative language learning medium
• Language is emergent and relies on rich input through various sense inputs
• Drama takes into consideration multiple modes of learning and input—visual, auditory, gustatory (?), physical, tactile, spatial and emotional

2.       Drama is social:  people of all skills interact with one another to negotiate meaning, facilitating understanding.

• Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (SCT)
• language is used in a social setting to effect social and non-social goals
• the goal of drama is inclusion: Drama in ELT “memberships” learners into the inner circle of language use
• learners of different levels scaffold one another in language use; Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
• Drama is narrative—social language use

3.       Drama is complex: language use rarely stays static; individuals use language in different ways, words shift in meaning and phrasing comes in and out of fashion

• complexity enriches language input (Stephen Krashen)
• creates effects unforeseen in lesson planning
• encourages improvisation, innovation, creativity and individuality in language use, promoting language as creative act rather than as artifacts to be properly and skillfully used
• engages the individual holistically rather than segmented teaching (i.e.: 4 skills)
• multimodality in language use requires  a plurality of communicative gestures,
• drama helps to understand (multimodal) metaphoric and metonymic structures pervasive in natural/ native language use, as well as the different figurative uses of vocabulary typically avoided in ELT except at the highest levels

4.       Findings of researchers using drama for pedagogical purposes

• ELT training:  verbal structures—phrasal verbs, verb tenses, etc; vocabulary; social norming and
• Limitations: teacher training, shy/ introverted students, materials, space and time, student expectations and understanding of drama, and ELT iconography.
• Educational/ Process Drama

5.       Positive effects of Drama in ELT

• Increases complexity; strengthens linguistic emergence
• Requires active participation; assists in facilitating inclusion within a linguistic community
• Student-Centered—students solve problems using their own understanding of the target language and other modes of communication
• Language is emergent and inclusive rather than enforced and exclusive
• Language is connected multimodally

 

Both groups, teachers of EFL and applied linguists, have sought for the means whereby language, and, in the case of this paper, English, may be best communicated to L2 learners such that their L2 is easily, effortlessly and perfectly acquired and retained.  This, of course, remains an elusive goal, and one towards which we reach yet remain well aware of its intangibility.  We use the term acquisition rather than learning to denote that much of language knowledge is latent yet taken in nonetheless rather than simply explicitly learned through the efforts of a teacher and student (Brown).  Much of language is learned through drills and pure memorization, but it is often reported that students don’t necessarily learn what teachers teach (Hedge); in fact, many teachers make the claim that as long as students are having fun and using their English for what it is, they are learning no matter what the task.  Drama is frequently appreciated as a means of livening up a class with little productive benefit.  Dramatic productions are difficult to assemble, require copious amounts of time to stage, rehearse and perform, and require an operating budget besides. 

However, with benefits of improving students’ ability to memorize, put on pre-determined roles, work cooperatively to produce a play or a skit and engender empathic response to the trials of others, drama, realized as process drama or educational drama (O’Neill; Neelands) comprises a series of highly developed approaches to any particular dramatic situation.  These approaches engender diverse modes of textual perception such that the words and actions of the performer evoke genuine emotional commitment and a version of truth to the situation for the benefit of the audience, but in effect helping the performer to make the words his own (Spolin, Stanislavski).  With a skilled language teacher, the same approaches may be applied for language-learning to enhance the learner’s learning such that learners begin to comprehend language not simply in terms of the four discrete skills—listening, speaking, reading and writing—but in terms of their physical and emotional selves (Jarvas, Almond, et al).  Both dramatic presentation and language learning require participants to produce authentic text—performance in the case of drama and conversation or written discourse in the case of language learners—conversations for all intents and purposes, about “real” situations—which may or may not be authentic (Coulthard).  Performers and learners are asked to perform as if the conversation they have on stage or in the classroom, respectively, is bona fide (Stanislavski), yet simultaneously comprehending that it is not—the actors of Shakespeare’s Richard III are not the real people upon which the bard’s characters are based, and students of language are not native speakers in their native countries, though both groups may attempt to create a version of reality that they are.   There can be little harm for students to use their imagination to enhance their language learning, especially if it affects positive learning outcomes—if language is learned, for example. 

Henceforth, a case will neither be made for a methodology to replace current methods and approaches nor for the dispensation of clearly developed pedagogy or trained professional teachers of EFL.  However, a case will be made for the inclusion of a strong form of drama as a medium for language learning and the professional training of teachers in its use to effect fluency and mastery and membershipping of learners of EFL into their new language community.

Past approaches and methodologies to language learning leaning upon behaviorist psychology saw language learning and teaching as a process of reinforcing behaviors which closely approximate the teacher’s target of instruction.  These include Asher’s Total Physical Response (TPR) method as well as the Audio-lingual Method (Brown).  A reduction of students to passive receivers and focusing on their environment instead of the internal experiences of learners makes these forms of learning problematic.  Students have little to no input into the efficacy of their learning, their experience of the learning situation counts for little and, in case of the latter methodology, learners have been found to be strong in listening skill but poor in language production (Brown).  Cognitive methodologies position the learner differently: language is learned through environmental factors but the learning is largely latent and not of the learners doing.  Cognitive linguists view the learner as possessing a language acquisition device (LAD) which seeks, in the case of first language learners, to make sense of linguistic input by accessing a universal grammar (UG) available to all infants at birth.  That young children learn their L1 to fluency but elder children, teens and adults generally not their L2 causes one to reconsider the veracity of these two concepts.  Cognitive linguistics proposes a host of reasons why L2 fluency is generally not attainable in later years, chief among them is Krashen’s view of an affective filter which prevents access to the LAD through a number of factors ranging from environmental to emotional blocks.  These may be key for describing why some individuals do not effectively learn an L2 (Skehan, Bley-Vroman), but there are likely to be numerous people affectively blocked who do attain a level of L2 fluency. 

More currently, cognitive science has been considering the physical embodiment of language as not only possible but likely (Lakoff), and extrapolating from this proposes reasons why some individuals learn an L2 but not others—to learn a second language effectively, L2 learners may need to do more than attend language classes in their current realization.  Experience teaching in South Korea seems to show that students who show themselves the strongest learners of a second language are frequently those who have lived and studied in the native country of the L2.  In this environment, learners have access to greater sources of enrichment and many seek to not only engage with the environment but also to assimilate to its values and beliefs.  These students, returning to L2 classes in their native countries are sharply contrasted with their peers who have not travelled abroad thought they are of equal level.  First of all, these students appear to be more outgoing and value more highly their native L2 teacher’s opinions and approaches.  In these two respects, those who have not travelled to the native L2 country for any length of time are more reluctant and struggle with the pedagogical views of their teachers—often rejecting them for their own native approach to L2 learning.  Returning to contemporary cognitive science views, those who have travelled to the native L2 country physically and emotionally connect with the L2 in ways which are unavailable in their country of origin. 

One view of L2 learning especially salient is the younger one begins to study language, the better.  This appears to be true when one looks at children who have travelled abroad to study language, but not necessarily so for those who haven’t.  Children travelling abroad likely spend enormous amounts of time interacting, and especially playing, with children whose L1 is their L2, however the reverse is true of children learning L2 in their home country: they play with children whose own L1 is their L1 and there is a comparatively sharp drop in L2 interaction once away from the L2 classroom.  Older children (i.e.: teens) and adults spend less time in play, and clear articulation and expressiveness garners greater currency as one matures—greater risk is attached to reduced fluency. 

Physical embodiment of language explores the linguistic spaces created by cognitive features of language such as metaphor and metonymy, and also suggests why lexical tokens may take on more than one meaning.  These additional meanings are frequently unavailable to L2 learners simply because they muddy the waters where learners are attempting to find clarity (Dahl).  With additional meanings, lexis becomes more complicated and the task of learning an L2 becomes more daunting.  Yet language is not taught as if it is physically embodied—students are provided with artifacts of language such as idiom and vocabulary, grammar structure and countless examples of use to emulate.  L1 language users don’t simply emulate other L1 users; they create and improvise with their native language in ways that L2 learners simply cannot.  Some linguists believe that this is because the L2 input is not rich lending credibility to the fact that L2 learners travelling abroad can acquire their L2 better than those not travelling abroad. 

In response to pedagogical deficiencies reducing the learner’s ability to acquire an L2, task-based learning, content-based learning and communicative language learning have come into vogue.  The first seeks to present a variety of different challenges to language learners in an attempt to improve their motivation and interest in using their L2.  The process requires a series of smaller activities which build up to a larger, more complicated task which may contain one or all of the key skills (noted above).  The entire project is overseen by the teacher and students are given to see the teacher as the particular gatekeeper in a mode of discourse similar to the IRF mode identified by Coulthard et al.  The teacher sets the agenda, initiating the task, and the student responds by doing the activities with cycles of corrective feedback until a result approximating successful target language use is achieved.  This methodology has much in common with the old PPP model (Present, Practice and Produce) with the exception that the language production in task-based learning is generally on a grander scale.  Students use more of their linguistic resources to accomplish their task, yet they remain apart from the L2 rather than gaining a sense that they have merged with the L2 culture.  

Content-based learning seeks to present subject matter in the target language to the L2 learner, approximating the teaching styles of the L2 native community while producing the expectation of learner conformity to L2 learning outcomes—particularly engagement of the material, and frequently willingness to discuss subject matter with other students regardless of whether or not either the material or language elements have been understood.  Communicative language teaching seeks to set the learner in a complete L2 environment, using only the native language and focusing exclusively on students’ ability to verbally communicate their ideas.  What these three current approaches seek to do is to create an environment where language emerges through the cycles of presentation of new materials, practice of new skills and production of projects and topic discourse.  A key limitation with this final approach to language teaching is that students—particularly younger students—often lack the necessary grammatical skill, knowledge or experience to discuss the relevant topics and may appear reluctant to make an effort. 

Task-based and content-based learning and communicative language teaching is apparent in forms of drama such as improvisation and playmaking.  In both language learning and dramatic performance, participants perform numerous smaller tasks to create a larger project—a character, a scene or a show, for instance.   While utilizing a dramatic approach to language learning, the main purpose is likely not the realization of a public performance, though this may, in fact, be the goal of a particular class.  Drama becomes the medium of exploration, as realized by process drama and educational drama (O’Neill). 

Emergence is a property of language, and drama as a medium creates conditions whereby emergence is strongly facilitated.  Drama brings together a mix of participants whose interactions heighten the complexity of exchanges.  As participants work together to create meaning, their inputs change the nature of the interactions they exchange.  Infinite possibilities for exchange are possible by the very nature of the randomness of interaction between participants.  When engaged in a heightened state, participants are challenged to dig deeper into their own resources to match their peers to maintain the engagement.  From this, a sense of playfulness develops and new linguistic possibilities are realized.  No dramatic act can be realized in a vacuum, and as such, drama as a language learning medium is strongly social, conforming to sociocultural theories of learning (Vygotsky). It creates a continuum between participants of varying levels where those at a lower level are continually helped along to greater understanding by those of higher ability (see Vygotsky’s ZPD).  Any gesture, expression, intonation, pitch, body position or use of an object or item of clothing communicates meaning, and participants are asked to widen their awareness to take any and all of these into consideration (Kress).  The combination of all these forms of expression contributes to the emergent nature of language and the value of drama as a medium for language learning.

Multimodal interaction increases the complexity of language exchange and more linguistic possibilities are able to emerge as a result—for example, a particular gesture may evoke a question leading to a repair or suggestion for lexical tokens not acquired by the student.  This is not to suggest that multimodal interaction does not occur in regular classrooms; drama as a medium for language learning heightens the possibilities of greater engagement by virtue of the fact that students are less constrained by the iconography of a classroom—desks, textbooks, and chairs.  L2 learners are free to move about, to gesture as they deem fit, to position themselves in relation to whomever they wish and to create as rich an engagement as they wish.  In this, drama as a language learning medium allows for greater emergence, freedom, flexibility and a greater sense of self-efficacy and inclusion in the target L2 culture. 

There are numerous hallmarks of fluency in a language, and, in English, metaphoric and metonymic understanding and narrative construction rank highly.  Having the ability to expressively tell a good story frequently divides speakers of high linguistic ability from those of lower ability.  Earlier it was mentioned that metaphoric and metonymic understanding are physically embodied, and to truly know a language is to literally have it in you—understanding arises as a result of how the individual’s neural networks have been built through experience in the physical world (Lakoff).  Coupled with this, but not necessarily “hardwired” into one’s neural network, is an understanding of narrative structure (Labov).  Narrative structure in English is the emergence of answers to questions of who, what, when, where, why and how, and with other social forms, requires interaction to fully appreciate.  Narratives are not socially isolated events—continued solipsistic narration frequently leads to psychological observation and medical intervention.  Narrative is an inclusive act designed to effect social and non-social goals.  Narrative may membership or exclude from membership any one or group of others.  Narrative may require a narrator and a listener, more than one narrator, or a narrator helped along by a listener interested in piecing together a series of seemingly disconnected statements.  In this, narrative scaffolds individuals to greater understanding as well as functions as the primary form of drama.   Drama tells a story, and as a medium of language learning provides affordances to learners which may be missing from other learning modes. 

Approaches to language learning through dramatic intervention suggest numerous benefits to students’ L2 development.  First of all, students benefit from a greater understanding over verb tenses and metaphorical understanding.  Secondly, students begin to empathize with peers in ways they hadn’t prior to drama-based language learning.  Taking on a role requires participants to think about why their character acts the way he or she does and challenges him or her to perform the particular role contrary to his or her own personality traits.  Depending upon the plan of the teacher, any language form or function may be subject to scrutiny, explored, improvised and performed until it is understood.  Elements of grammar, such as article use or grammatical aspect may be explored through comparing and contrasting different student-composed scenes.  L2 students benefit from the rigorous reading and discourse skills required from understanding dramatic text—its comprehension and/ or creation (Stanislavski).  Drama, however, is not restricted to text, and performers often devise activities and studies whereby particular aspects of performance are enhanced (Spolin).  Physical activities develop bodily awareness to improve pronunciation, and mime activities allow for the transmission of ideas through physical gesture, improving compensation strategies.  Furthermore, L2 students engaged in language classes utilizing drama as a medium are frequently reported as gaining in motivation and positive mood.  Language classes of this sort appear to be more engaging. 

Some of the limitations of drama as a medium for language learning lay in the perception of drama as contrasted to perception of language learning.  Both sets of training have their own iconography which appears to be incompatible.  Drama tends to suggest production and performance whereas language learning suggests institutional instruction.  It is easy to believe that just about anyone can put on a play, but only a teacher can teach a language.  Drama as a medium for language exploration and instruction need not be production-focused, and language learning need not be class-room centered, yet both require individuals trained in these different approaches to be able to focus L2 students’ perception upon specific aspects of language learning.

Two New Chapters

I’ve been writing my dissertation lately, so I thought to share my paper thus far. It’s not as exciting as I’d like it to be, nor as deeply conceived. I am really a novice at writing research, especially in applied linguistics, and I have a lot to learn about depth. I’ve recently finished my research project for the results aspect, and I’ll be applying analysis shortly. First, I have two and a half chapters to complete: one on drama and one on corpus study. Anyways, here it is, and I hope you find something in it for your own travailles.

Dissertation Chapters 1-2

In a related, though different area, I’ve begun experimenting with Second Life as a medium of language learning and mentoring. I like the term mentoring rather than teaching. So often in my work, I’ve experienced my lack of knowledge in my subject field, and my students frequently help me to fill in the gaps with their own knowledge or to spur me onto the trail for the correct answer. Mentoring seems to suggest a more collaborative approach to the practices of learning/teaching. As an approach, my students are using second life to teach me how it can be used for language teaching, from creating presentations to giving demonstrations of their experiences. It’s quite intriguing. If you haven’t joined Second Life, you can do so for free at http://www.secondlife.com, and come to Isla Idioma, my location (http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/the%20vineyard/229/22/23).

Somehow, together, we can work on ways to mentor students in language. I’m currently discussing ways to enlarge the area we have to work with so more people can come, learn language, produce objects, scripts and so on to sell on the island. While English is my first language, it need not be the language of instruction. Do you speak Urdu, French, German, Korean or any other language? Want a free place to mentor your students’ language? Come on in! Donations and suggestions are welcome to make Isla Idioma a better place for language mentoring.

Cheers!

Today, My Own Thoughts on the Matter

Coming Soon.

An Interesting Distinction Between Drama and Theatre

This text comes from the fifth chapter of the text, Issues in English Teaching (see citation, below) and is written by Jonothan Neelands.

Drama sets you free— or does it?

….

Drama versus theatre

                Drama in schools is often taken to mean the forms of improvisatory and roletaking drama that are characteristic of classroom drama, in which there may be no sense of a ‘performance’ or ‘production’ in the orthodox sense. This form of drama is increasingly referred to as ‘process drama’ and its emphasis is often on the use of drama for personal and social development. Theatre is taken to mean the canon and practices of the bourgeois Western theatre tradition established by Ibsen, Antoine and others in the nineteenth century during the formation of the middle classes. This tradition of theatre is often referred to as the ‘Modern Drama’ (after Styan, 1981 and others). Historically, this opposition between ‘drama’ and ‘theatre’ is centred around the dominance during the 1970s and 1980s of the Drama-in-Education tradition with its emphasis on participatory and content-led forms of classroom drama work at the expense of the formal study of plays, performances and dramatic criticism. The key proponents of this tradition have been Dorothy Heathcote and Gavin Bolton (Bolton, 1992). The most vocal and effective critic of this tradition has been David Hornbrook (Hornbrook, 1989, 1991). The opposition between ‘drama’ and ‘theatre’ in drama education parallels the arguments in English between those who have emphasised the use of English for ‘personal growth’ or ‘self-expression’, and those who argue for a greater emphasis on the formal teaching of grammar and the literary heritage of the English canon.

Subject versus method

                Should drama be used as an efficacious method in other areas of the curriculum— in English and history for instance— or should it be framed as a discrete subject with its own body of knowledge, skills and practices? As drama has become more established in secondary schools— it is the fastest growing subject at GCSE and post— 16— the voice of secondary ‘subject’ teachers has begun to dominate the field. The Drama-in-Education tradition had flourished when the primary phase model of an integrated curriculum based on topic and theme work dominated the educational agenda. The National Curriculum, with its rigid subject framework, produced a crisis for those who believed in the integrating power of drama, and provided an opportunity for those who wished to put the primacy of the ‘subject’, or ‘body of knowledge’ of drama— before the ‘subjects’, the bodies and minds of the students coming into the drama lesson. Personal and social learning versus cultural induction Is the value of drama in school to be placed on its immediate benefits to students in terms of their growth in confidence, understanding and the social skills of communication and interaction? Or, is the purpose of drama to induct young people into the cultural heritage of the Modern Drama? During the 1980s and early 1990s the divisions caused by the allegiance of individuals and groups to one extreme view or the other produced a deeply fragmented and confusing conception of drama in schools. In the absence of any National Curriculum orders for drama or any consensus amongst the profession, there was, undoubtedly, a sense of professional insecurity amongst teachers and student teachers as to what they should teach in drama and how they should teach it. This fragmented field of drama, in which individuals and groups took positions by denying, even trashing, the positions taken by others and by limiting the potential field of drama to their own narrow, sectarian position is best described by reference to the government’s own descriptions of drama in schools.

Davison, Jon; Moss, John. Issues in English Teaching. London, GBR: RoutledgeFalmer, 1999. p 74 – 75. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/bham/Doc?id=10054592&ppg=90

Process Drama

The following excerps come from a paper entitled, Process Drama and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages by Madonna Stinson, From Drama and English Teaching, Anderson, Hughes, Manuel et al, 2008.

Stinson wanted “to teach drama with a particular focus on structured activities in which the students needed to use spoken English, and to measure what impact, if any, the drama classes had on the students’ oral communication examination results.”

• language-focused activities were embedded through out the dramas, with each learning strategy emerging from the previous one and providing the basis for those to coe.
• the dramas were planned to offer diverse and imaginiative opportunities for meaningful talk in the specific drama context.
• process drama and English language learning can work hand in hand to impr0ve language outcomes for ESOL students.

…students and teachers were unanimously enthusiastic about the drama classes, and reported that the students showed evidence of increased confidence on spoken English communicatin, greater enjoyment of lessons and improved racial relationships within the class. 

Shin-Mei Jao and Cecily O’Neill (1998) and Betty Jane Wagner (1998)–drama develops proficiency in the widest range of language functions, and allows students to experiment with vocabulary, register and speech patterns.

For Stinson, drama had to include the following components:

• Every student had to have at least one significant opportunity to talk in every lesson.
• Students were required to react and respond to questions or situations without any prior preparation.
• A variety of language demands was planned to allow for the active engagement of students with the full range of language profisciencies in the class.
• Every drama incorporated group work…
• An “English only” rule was imposed…
• A range of different language registers and purposes was required by the communication contexts within the dramas…opportunity to be pursuasive and evasive; to create their own narratives; to build on the narratives of others; to be angry, happy, sad and scared; to create and solve mysteries; and to have fun and enjoy speaking in English.
• Reflection time was allocated at the end of each of the drama lessons.

Stinson tried to emphasise the collaborative co-creation process rather than putting students “on-show”, where they might feel insecure and in danger of failing to communicate effectively…an external audience is absent but an internal audience is essential (Bowell & Heap, 2001:6).

Language Theory Acquisition

Behaviourist theories support modelling, practice and reinforcement from a language user proficient on the target language (such as a native speaker), and rely on teaching practices based in imitation and habit formation.  Grammar and vocabulary are taught explicitly.  Drama activities used in this approach could include language games, reading aloud, readers’ theatre and scripted role-plays.

Innatist theories, following Chomsky, believe in an innate mental capacity for language learning and a universal grammar (UG).  The UG suggests that a child is born with a blueprint for language and “exposure to, or input from, a particular language sets the specific rules of a child’s language” (Goh & Silver, 2006: 45).  Innatist theories support immersion and similar “natural” approaches to language learning.  Drama activities used in this approach incorporate language games, reading of scripts and sructured improvisations.

Interactionist theoriests are often coupled with communicative language teaching approaches (CLTAs)…language is acquired through social interactions…requires diverse opportunities for language input, negotiation and output as essential process for language acquisition.  CLTAs are learner-centred rather than teacher-centred classes and include the contextualised teaching of vocabulary and grammar, meaningful interactions through pair and group work, and an emphasis on language for communication.  Structured and unstructured improvisations and porcess drama are strategies that support this approach.

Many language acquisition theorists endorse Stephen Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis, which suggests that learners acquire language by “in-taking” and understanding language tha is “a little beyond their current level of competence”…the affective filter hypothesis…suggests that a person’s emotions can either interfere or assist in the learning of a new language–learning language is different from learning other subjects because it requires public practice.  Classroom environments that are engaging and nonthreatening enhance a student’s ability to learn by increasing motivation and encouraging risk-taking. 

Johnothan Neelands (1992) points out the opportunities to work in a range of roles and situations offer infinite possibilities for language use.  Involving students in the negotiation and constructing drama through the medium of role allows them insights into the relationship between context and language, and between the language that they are learning, their own lives and the lives of those around them. 

…People in textbooks do not get all mixed up while they are speaking, forget what they wanted to say, hesitate, make grammatical mistakes, argue erratically or illogically, use words vaguely, get interrupted, talk at the same time, switch speech styles, manipulate the rules of the language to suit themselves, or fail to understand.  In a word, they are not real.  (David Crystal, 1975)

Speaking in another language involves acting in that language (Scharenguivel, 1989), since speaking a language involves paralinguistic vocal cues and features such as gestures, facial expression and nonverbal sounds.  We should ensure that language is contextual and “real” by putting students in drama situations where they must focus on meaning (HUI, 1997). 

Confidence levels increase when students have “something to talk about and, most importantly, when they know how to express their ideas (Kao and O’Neill, 1998)…improvement in confidence to participate and communicate is supported during drama processes because the students are working in the “safe space” of drama.  Here, some of the rules of time and permanence are suspended: if you make a mistake, you can rewind and fix it.  The flexibility of time, roles and relationships within the “as if” of the drama event allow students to construct and reconstruct a communicative text, either oral or written, by crossing out, rephrasing and editing without fear of failure as they enactively shape and reshape the text to communicate intended meaning.

The Final of 6

So, the other day, I finished my final of 6 modules in my MA Applied Linguistics at the University of Birmingham.  The program has been rigorous.  I’m certain my paper will come in just under distinction as I didn’t get too much evaluative language into it.  That will be something I will have to practice here in this blog.  Academia requires not merely a sourcing of ideas from research and experimentation but also an evaluation of the applicability of that research to the question at hand. 

The six papers I’ve written are based on the following applied lingusitcs topics:

• Written Discourse
• Sociolinguistics
• Functional Grammar
• Corpus Linguistics
• Language Teaching Methodology
• Second Language Acquisition

I’ve tried to keep my writing along a theme: that is, pointing towards ideas which will provide me with a solid body of research for my upcoming dissertation and beyond.  My dissertation topic will be about the use of drama in ELT training.  It’s not merely a question of applicability but one of qualitative discovery.  If drama can successfully be used to do such things as reduce uncertainty avoidance, anxiety and encourage risk-taking and motivation, can it’s effects be measured quantitatively via corpus.  My dissertation supervisor has a particular background in the use of narrative in the development of language identity, and I think his ideas may be useful in my own paper.