J.P. Lantolf (2011) The Sociocultural Approach to Second Language Acquisition

[This is one of the articles compiled for a class for my graduate students in the autumn/winter semester in 2011/2012.]


J.P. Lantolf (2011) "The Sociocultural Approach to Second Language Acquisition" in Dwight Atkinson (ed) Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (Routledge) [Paperback, Kindle Edition ] (pp. 24 -47)



p. 24

Overview

Take a look at the explanation of "cultural mediation" in Wikipedia.

Vygotsky investigated child development and how this was guided by the role of culture and interpersonal communication. Vygotsky observed how higher mental functions developed through social interactions with significant people in a child's life, particularly parents, but also other adults. Through these interactions, a child came to learn the habits of mind of her/his culture, including speech patterns, written language, and other symbolic knowledge through which the child derives meaning and affects a child's construction of his or her knowledge. This key premise of Vygotskian psychology is often referred to as "cultural mediation". The specific knowledge gained by a child through these interactions also represented the shared knowledge of a culture. This process is known as internalization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_mediation

Q: Can you explain the meaning of "focus on if and how learners develop the ability to use the new language to mediate (i.e., regulate or control) their mental and communicative activity." (p. 24)



Theoretical Principle(s)

Q: What are the functions of "psychological tools such as language, signs, and symbols" (pp. 24-25)


p. 25

Q: Why is children's early appropriation of language implicit?


Q: What is the effect of schooling?


p. 26

Research Methods

Q: What is the genetic method of Vygotsky?


p. 27

Q: What was the experiment that "suggests that children gradually develop the ability, first, to use external mediation and, later, to internalize it."? (p. 27)


Supporting Findings

Mediation as Self-Regulation

Q: What can you conclude from the observation of the intermediate speakers who often use the progressive aspect and of the other speakers who use the past past tense to create a coherent narrative on the same picture?


p. 28

Q: What is the finding of Centeno-Cortes and Jimenez-Jimenez (2004). Have you experienced a similar phenomenon?


p. 29

Zone of Proximal Development

Q: What is the significance of 'play' for children? Explain in terms of the concept of one of Proximal Development (ZPD).


p. 30

Dynamic Assessment

Q: What is dynamic assessment (DA)? How is it different from the conventioal assessment? Why does it have to be so different?

Read the explanation of DA in Wikipedia.

Vygotsky's term Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) relates to the gap between what the child can learn unaided, and what he or she can learn with the help of an adult or a more capable peer. According to Vygotsky, it is impossible to understand a child's potential intellectual development using a one-way assessment.

Dynamic assessment is an interactive approach to psychological or psychoeducational assessment that embeds intervention within the assessment procedure. Most typically, there is a pretest then an intervention and then a posttest. This allows the assessor to determine the response of the client or student to the intervention. There are a number of different dynamic assessment procedures that have a wide variety of content domains.

One purpose of dynamic assessment is to determine if a student has the potential to learn a new skill.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_assessment

Here is another explanation of dynamic assessment.

Dynamic assessment is an interactive approach to conducting assessments within the domains of psychology, speech/language, or education, that focuses on the ability of the learner to respond to intervention. Dynamic assessment is not a single package or procedure, but is both a model and philosophy of conducting assessments. Although there are variations on several dimensions of the model, the most consistent characteristics are as follows:

・The assessor actively intervenes during the course of the assessment with the learner with the goal of intentionally inducing changes in the learner's current level of independent functioning. ・The assessment focuses on the learner's processes of problem solving, including those that promote as well as obstruct successful learning.

・The most unique information from the assessment is information about the learner's responsiveness to intervention.

・The assessment also provides information about what interventions successfully promote change in the learner (connecting assessment with intervention).

・The assessment is most often administered in a pretest-intervention-posttest format.

・The assessment is most useful when used for individual diagnosis, but can also be used for screening of classroom size groups. The model is viewed as an addition to the current, more traditional, approaches, and is not a substitute for existing procedures. Each procedure provides different information, and assessors need to determine what information they need.The underlying assumption of dynamic assessment is that all learners are capable of some degree of learning (change; modifiability). This contrasts with the underlying assumption of standardized psychometric testing that the learning ability of most individuals is inherently stable. Research with dynamic assessment has demonstrated that determination of the current levels of independent functioning of learners is far from a perfect predictor of their ability to respond to intervention.

http://researchguides.library.vanderbilt.edu/PBDY_DA

p. 32

Concept-based Mediation

Q: Mediation through concept is the second form of mediation central to SCT after mediation as self-regulation. What are the spontaneous (i.e., every day) concepts and scientific concepts? Can you pick up some examples of everyday concepts and scientific concepts concerning language and language education?


p. 33

Thinking for Speaking (TFS)

Q: What are the contentions of McNeill (2005)? Read the description of the book Gesture and Thought available on Amazon as well.

Gesturing is such an integral yet unconscious part of communication that we are mostly oblivious to it. But if you observe anyone in conversation, you are likely to see his or her fingers, hands, and arms in some form of spontaneous motion. Why? David McNeill, a pioneer in the ongoing study of the relationship between gesture and language, set about answering this question over twenty-five years ago. In Gesture and Thought he brings together years of this research, arguing that gesturing, an act which has been popularly understood as an accessory to speech, is actually a dialectical and integral component of language.

Gesture and Thought expands on McNeill’s acclaimed classic Hand and Mind. While that earlier work demonstrated what gestures reveal about thought, here gestures are shown to be active participants in both speaking and thinking. Expanding on an approach introduced by Lev Vygotsky in the 1930s, McNeill posits that gestures are key ingredients in an “imagery-language dialectic” that fuels both speech and thought. Gestures are both the “imagery” and components of “language.” The smallest element of this dialectic is the “growth point,” an “idea unit” of an utterance at its beginning psychological stage. Utilizing several innovative experiments he created and administered with subjects spanning several different age, gender, language, and neurological groups, McNeill shows how growth points organize themselves into utterances and extend to discourse at the moment of speaking.

An ambitious project in the ongoing study of the relationship of human communication and thought, Gesture and Thought is a work of such consequence that it will influence all subsequent theory on the subject.

Amazon page

Michael Corballis, the author of The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization wrote From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language in which he argued that language evolved from a gestrual system to the spoken word.

It is often said that speech is what distinguishes us from other animals. But are we all talk? What if language was bequeathed to us not by word of mouth, but as a hand-me-down?

The notion that language evolved not from animal cries but from manual and facial gestures--that, for most of human history, actions have spoken louder than words--has been around since Condillac. But never before has anyone developed a full-fledged theory of how, why, and with what effects language evolved from a gestural system to the spoken word. Marshaling far-flung evidence from anthropology, animal behavior, neurology, molecular biology, anatomy, linguistics, and evolutionary psychology, Michael Corballis makes the case that language developed, with the emergence of Homo sapiens, from primate gestures to a true signed language, complete with grammar and syntax and at best punctuated with grunts and other vocalizations. While vocal utterance played an increasingly important complementary role, autonomous speech did not appear until about 50,000 years ago--much later than generally believed.

Bringing in significant new evidence to bolster what has been a minority view, Corballis goes beyond earlier supporters of a gestural theory by suggesting why speech eventually (but not completely!) supplanted gesture. He then uses this milestone to account for the artistic explosion and demographic triumph of the particular group of Homo sapiens from whom we are descended. And he asserts that speech, like written language, was a cultural invention and not a biological fait accompli.

Writing with wit and eloquence, Corballis makes nimble reference to literature, mythology, natural history, sports, and contemporary politics as he explains in fascinating detail what we now know about such varied subjects as early hominid evolution, modern signed languages, and the causes of left-handedness. From Hand to Mouth will have scholars and laymen alike talking--and sometimes gesturing--for years to come.

Amazon page

Whether ghe gestural theory is true or not, it is worthwhile to give a serious thought to gestures in language use.


Q: Is Japanese closer to English or Spanish? According to Talmy, English "highlight manner of motion encoded in verbs (e.g., skip, trudge, sidle, scamper, creep), with path of motion marked in a satellite phrase (e.g., though the swamp, up the ladder, down the stairs)(p. 33), while Spanish "highlight path of motion encoded in verbs (e.g., salir "to exit", entrar "to enter," subir "to get into" as with a car), with manner encoded (if at all) in an adverb or participle." (p. 34)


p. 34

Q: What is the observation in McNeill (2005) of English speakers and speakers of Spanish-like languages in terms of gesture?


Q: On what findings did Negueruela et al. (2004) contend that L2 speakers continue to rely on their L1 to mediate TFS activity?


p. 35

Q: What is the point of Vygotsky's quotation?


Q: What is praxis? How is it different from practice as in the phrase 'theory to practice'?


p.36

Scientific versus Everyday Knowledge

Q: What is scientific knowledge? What is its power?



Scientific concepts and spontaneous (everyday) concepts

Scientific concepts are different from everyday concepts in that 1) they are placed in the system of concepts and related to each other; and 2) they develop "downward", not "upward" as everyday concepts do.
See more: http://languageavenue.com/psycholinguistics/language-and-thought/scientific-vs-spontaneous-concepts-vygotskian-perspective/all-pages#ixzz2FMfQWsNf



p. 37

Q: What is the claim of The Universal Acquisition Hypothesis (UAH)?

Q: What does Pradis (2009) say in Declarative and Procedural Determinants of Second Languages? Relate her contentio to Vygotsky's argument.


p. 38

Concept-based Instruction (CBI)

Q: Can you exemplify Piotr Gal'perin's Systemic-Theoretical Instruction: explanation -> materialization (a Schema for the orienting basis of action (SCOBA) -> communication -> verbalization -> internalization? [Personally, I find this process exactly the same as my style of learning by teaching.]


p. 39

Q: What do you think about the comments by students (the first two in particular)?


p. 41

Figure 1.1 is highly intriguing. But because I have no knowledge of Chinese, I have to skip this section.


Future Directions

Q: Which of the four future directions are you the most attracted by, and why?


p. 42

Conclusion

Q: How is SCT-L2 different from VanPattern (2010) who claims that SLA research cannot speak to the day-to-day issues that confront teachers but can help them understand acquisition and thus inform instruction by offering insight into what the learning problems are?


p. 43

Q: What is your opinion about the last paragraph?





By this time, you may be interested in reading Latolf's books.

Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning

Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development
(Review by Peter I. De Costa that appeared in Applied Linguistics)

Dwight Atkinson (2011) Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition

I may have little to say about this book if Rod Ellis and Clarie Kramsch already said as follows on the back cover of the book.

In recent years there has been growing recognition that the acquisition of a second language is very much a social as well as a cognitive affair. This volume brings together a collection of articles documenting the various theories and methodologies for investigating L2 acquisition as a social phenomenon. As such it is an essential purchase for anyone interested in SLA.

Rod Ellis, University of Auckland, New Zealand

This book should be an essential resource for graduate seminars in SLA. It is a unique testimony to the vibrancy of the field and to the astonishing complexity of the SLA experience.

Claire Kramsch, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Or read what its publisher, Routledge, says.

This volume presents six alternative approaches to studying second language acquisition ? 'alternative' in the sense that they contrast with and/or complement the cognitivism pervading the field. All six approaches ? sociocultural, complexity theory, conversation-analytic, identity, language socialization, and sociocognitive ? are described according to the same set of six headings, allowing for direct comparison across approaches.

Each chapter is authored by leading advocates for the approach described: James Lantolf for the sociocultural approach; Diane Larsen-Freeman for the complexity theory approach; Gabriele Kasper and Johannes Wagner for the conversation-analytic approach; Bonny Norton and Carolyn McKinney for the identity approach; Patricia Duff and Steven Talmy for the language socialization approach and Dwight Atkinson for the sociocognitive approach.

Introductory and commentary chapters round out this volume. The editor’s introduction describes the significance of alternative approaches to SLA studies given its strongly cognitivist orientation. Lourdes Ortega’s commentary considers the six approaches from an 'enlightened traditional' perspective on SLA studies ? a viewpoint which is cognitivist in orientation but broad enough to give serious and balanced consideration to alternative approaches.

This volume is essential reading in the field of second language acquisition.

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415549257/

Edited by Dwight Atkinson, this book successfully invites indeed the best contributors in each field of what is here modestly called as "alternative approaches."

On reading the book, I decided to use it as the text book for my graduate seminar in the autumn/winter semester in 2011/2012.

Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition [Paperback]

Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition [Kindle Edition]

Below and in the articles to come, you'll find my supplementary material for reading the book. Along with my graduate students, you're kindly invited to explore the issues explained in this book.

***

Introduction by Dwight Atkinson


p. iv

Q: What are the implications of Nietzsche’s quotation, “One person is always wrong, but with two truth begins”?


p. xi

Q: Is this book an attempt to eliminate cognitivism from SLA? (Cognitivism is to be explained later in Introduction)

Q: Is this book a praise of “letting all the flowers bloom”? If not, what is this book about?


pp. 1-2

Q: Compare the excerpt from Cook & Seidlhofer, 1995 (p. 1), that from Long 1997 and that from Doughty & Long 2003 (both on p. 2).

Here's Steven Pinker's 2 minutes video: The Cognitive Revolution



Q: What is “cognitive science” (Doughty & Long 2003) in the first place? Read the two excerpts below from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and explain the central idea of cognitive science by yourself (and also, if possible, the limit of the idea).

3. Representation and Computation

The central hypothesis of cognitive science is that thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures. While there is much disagreement about the nature of the representations and computations that constitute thinking, the central hypothesis is general enough to encompass the current range of thinking in cognitive science, including connectionist theories which model thinking using artificial neural networks.

Most work in cognitive science assumes that the mind has mental representations analogous to computer data structures, and computational procedures similar to computational algorithms. Cognitive theorists have proposed that the mind contains such mental representations as logical propositions, rules, concepts, images, and analogies, and that it uses mental procedures such as deduction, search, matching, rotating, and retrieval. The dominant mind-computer analogy in cognitive science has taken on a novel twist from the use of another analog, the brain.

Connectionists have proposed novel ideas about representation and computation that use neurons and their connections as inspirations for data structures, and neuron firing and spreading activation as inspirations for algorithms. Cognitive science then works with a complex 3-way analogy among the mind, the brain, and computers. Mind, brain, and computation can each be used to suggest new ideas about the others. There is no single computational model of mind, since different kinds of computers and programming approaches suggest different ways in which the mind might work. The computers that most of us work with today are serial processors, performing one instruction at a time, but the brain and some recently developed computers are parallel processors, capable of doing many operations at once.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/#RepCom

5.2 Critique of Cognitive Science

The claim that human minds work by representation and computation is an empirical conjecture and might be wrong. Although the computational-representational approach to cognitive science has been successful in explaining many aspects of human problem solving, learning, and language use, some philosophical critics such as Hubert Dreyfus (1992) and John Searle (1992) have claimed that this approach is fundamentally mistaken. Critics of cognitive science have offered such challenges as:

The emotion challenge: Cognitive science neglects the important role of emotions in human thinking.
The consciousness challenge: Cognitive science ignores the importance of consciousness in human thinking.
The world challenge: Cognitive science disregards the significant role of physical environments in human thinking.
The body challenge: Cognitive science neglects the contribution of embodiment to human thought and action.
The social challenge: Human thought is inherently social in ways that cognitive science ignores.
The dynamical systems challenge: The mind is a dynamical system, not a computational system.
The mathematics challenge: Mathematical results show that human thinking cannot be computational in the standard sense, so the brain must operate differently, perhaps as a quantum computer.

Thagard (2005) argues that all these challenges can best be met by expanding and supplementing the computational-representational approach, not by abandoning it.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/#CriCogSci

p. 3

Q: What is the brief definition of “cognitive science” provided by the author?


p. 4

Q: Explain or paraphrase the following concepts: 1) Mind as computer; 2) Representationalism; 3) Learning as abstract knowledge acquisition; 4) Centrality of language, and language as code.


p. 5

Q: What is “Scientism”? You may want to read for further information the explanation provide by Prof. Martin Ryder below.

Scientism is a philosophical position that exalts the methods of the natural sciences above all other modes of human inquiry. Scientism embraces only empiricism and reason to explain phenomena of any dimension, whether physical, social, cultural, or psychological. Drawing from the general empiricism of The Enlightenment, scientism is most closely associated with the positivism of August Comte (1798-1857) who held an extreme view of empiricism, insisting that true knowledge of the world arises only from perceptual experience. Comte criticized ungrounded speculations about phenomena that cannot be directly encountered by proper observation, analysis and experiment. Such a doctrinaire stance associated with science leads to an abuse of reason that transforms a rational philosophy of science into an irrational dogma (Hayek, 1952). It is this ideological dimension that we associate with the term scientism. Today the term is used with pejorative intent to dismiss substantive arguments that appeal to scientific authority in contexts where science might not apply. This over commitment to science can be seen in epistemological distortions and abuse of public policy. …

http://carbon.ucdenver.edu/~mryder/scientism_este.html

Cf. You may be interested in Wallerstein’s European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power, where he sees Universal Values Against Barbarism, Essentialist Particularism, and Scientific Universalism (Scientism) in a sequence.

http://www.amazon.com/European-Universalism-Rhetoric-Immanuel-Wallerstein/dp/1595580611

https://sites.google.com/a/syr.edu/reading-ranger/reading-notes/wallersteinimmanueleuropeanuniversalismandtherhetoricofpower


Q: How can “substance dualism” be related to “functionalism”? You may want to read the explanations of “substance,” “dualism,” and “functionalism” below.


“Substance,” according to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has two meanings. The “substance” in the textbook is used with the first meaning below.

There could be said to be two rather different ways of characterizing the philosophical concept of substance. The first is the more generic. The philosophical term ‘substance’ corresponds to the Greek ousia, which means ‘being’, transmitted via the Latin substantia, which means ‘something that stands under or grounds things’. According to the generic sense, therefore, the substances in a given philosophical system are those things which, according to that system, are the foundational or fundamental entities of reality. Thus, for an atomist, atoms are the substances, for they are the basic things from which everything is constructed. In David Hume's system, impressions and ideas are the substances, for the same reason. In a slightly different way, Forms are Plato's substances, for everything derives its existence from Forms. In this sense of ‘substance’ any realist philosophical system acknowledges the existence of substances. Probably the only theories which do not would be those forms of logical positivism or pragmatism which treat ontology as a matter of convention. According to such theories, there are no real facts about what is ontologically basic, and so nothing is objectively substance.

The second use of the concept is more specific. According to this, substances are a particular kind of basic entity, and some philosophical theories acknowledge them and others do not. On this use, Hume's impressions and ideas are not substances, even though they are the building blocks of --what constitutes ‘being’ for-- his world. According to this usage, it is a live issue whether the fundamental entities are substances or something else, such as events, or properties located at space-times. This conception of substance derives from the intuitive notion of individual thing or object, which contrast mainly with properties and events. The issue is how we are to understand the notion of an object, and whether, in the light of the correct understanding, it remains a basic notion, or one that must be characterized in more fundamental terms. Whether, for example, an object can be thought of as nothing more than a bundle of properties, or a series of events.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/

“Dualism”
The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of thought. In general, the idea is that, for some particular domain, there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. In theology, for example a ‘dualist’ is someone who believes that Good and Evil ? or God and the Devil ? are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism contrasts with monism, which is the theory that there is only one fundamental kind, category of thing or principle; and, rather less commonly, with pluralism, which is the view that there are many kinds or categories. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical ? or mind and body or mind and brain ? are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing. Because common sense tells us that there are physical bodies, and because there is intellectual pressure towards producing a unified view of the world, one could say that materialist monism is the ‘default option’. Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/

“Functionalism”
Functionalism in the philosophy of mind is the doctrine that what makes something a mental state of a particular type does not depend on its internal constitution, but rather on the way it functions, or the role it plays, in the system of which it is a part. This doctrine is rooted in Aristotle's conception of the soul, and has antecedents in Hobbes's conception of the mind as a “calculating machine”, but it has become fully articulated (and popularly endorsed) only in the last third of the 20th century.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/functionalism/

Q: What is “subject-object” dualism? (This is not a difficult question!)


Q: What is “methodological solipsism”? Read the two general definitions below and define it by yourself.

Reductionism
1. the theory that every complex phenomenon, especially in biology or psychology, can be explained by analyzing the simplest, most basic physical mechanisms that are in operation during the phenomenon.
2. the practice of simplifying a complex idea, issue, condition, or the like, especially to the point of minimizing, obscuring, or distorting it.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/reductionism

Solipsism
1 [Philosophy] the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist.
2.extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/solipsism

Q: What is the idea suggested by the term “aggregatism”? Explain the idea by using the expression “average human being[s]”.


p. 6

Q: Explain the idea of “decompostionality” by using the episode of Humpty Dumpty.


pp. 6-7

Q: Read the quotation from Descartes (1637 /1960) and explain the unshakable foundation that he thought he found.


Q: Explain Descartes’s dualism that you can identify in the quotation.

Q: Summarize the four implications that the author of this chapter extends from Descartes’s argument.


p. 8

Q: Explain the American behaviorism in the first half of the 20th century.


pp. 8-9

Q: What is the “cognitive revolution”? You may want to read a short review paper: The cognitive revolution: a historical perspective by George A. Miller:

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rit/geo/Miller.pdf


Q: Explain the four contributions Chomsky made.


p. 10

Q: Can the American behaviorism be sustained in the quotation (Brown and Bellugi, 1964 / 1970, p. 91). If not, why?

Q: What is the idea of “learners as active hypothesis-testers”?


p. 11

Q: What did Corder problematize in his 1967 paper?

Q: What is the “built-in syllabus”?


p. 12

Q: What did Dulay and Burt hypothesize about SLA? Do you find any connection between the hypothesis and Chomsky’s claim?


p. 13

Q: In what sense is Krashen a cognitivist?

Q: How did Schmidt come up with his noticing hypothesis?


p. 14

Q: Is Schmidt’s noticing hypothesis Chomskyean?

Q: Explain what the author means when he suggests that Schmidt returned to Descartes.


p. 15

Q: Do Doughty and Long neglect the social aspect of SLA altogether? If not, how do they see it?


p. 16

Q: What do you think about the quotation from Doughty and Long (2003, p. 866)?




[More articles are to follow to cover the rest of the book]

My response to Takashi Matsui concerning the Keio symposium on Pedagogical Grammar

Takashi Matsui, one of the official commentators at the Keio Symposium on Pedagogical Grammar (see the hashtag "#keiopg" on Twitter) repeats his questions to the panelists (including me as the modulator) in the latest article on his blog.


Here is my translation of his questions.

1 When did you, as a learner, feel that you embodied the 'system of English grammar' or 'mechanism of English'?

Was the system/mechanism the whole of what you had learned? Was it condensed, compressed or crystallized? Or did you feel something inexplicable that was larger than the whole?


2 While the notion of 'pedagogical grammar' often connotes a reductive description of the entire 'whole' of English grammar (with different degrees of simplification), the notion of Lexical Approach advocated by Michael Lewis (1993) (“language consists of grammaticalised lexis---not lexicalised grammar.”) suggests a piecemeal approach. I believe the approach is an anti-thesis to our conventional idea of pedagogical grammar in the sense that it regards the conventional pedagogical grammar as a 'useless whole' and claims itself as 'useful accumulation of pieces'. What's your opinion?


3 Relating to the two questions above, what's your opinion about the 'minimal essentials', 'selection of learning materials' or 'sequence of learning/instruction'?

[Please go to http://d.hatena.ne.jp/tmrowing/20110912 to read the original in Japanese.

I believe I have touched upon these issues in my remarks at the symposium or in my blog articles before it, but I didn't answer his questions directly in the way he framed. So, here's my answer.

1' I may not share the assumption of the first question that I felt I have embodied the 'system or mechanism' of English. I certainly felt on various occasion the 'hang' (or 'knack') of using English as a foreign language, but I'm not exactly sure whether it was the systematic whole as you suggest in the second paragraph of the first question. There are two episodes, though, that show the senses of progress that I felt in my language learning: dreaming at night in English and beginning to find a 'voice' in the print, as I wrote in "'Feeling' of language as a sign of autopoiesis".


2' The contrast between the 'systematic whole' of traditional grammar versus the 'ad hoc pieces' of (very flexible) pedagogical grammar is one of the issues that I find the most interesting in the symposium arguments. As an act of communication (cf My summary of Swan, Michael (1994) "Design Criteria for Pedagogic Language Rules"), (meta)linguistic account of pedagogical grammar should be particularized to the needs of a particular learner and hence be ad hoc. However, an inconsistent series of 'convenient fictions' as provisional accounts of pedagogical grammar (Please read my summary of Leech, Geoffrey N. (1994) “Students’ Grammar -- Teachers’ Grammar -- Learners’ Grammar”) would only lead to the confusion of the learner. The systematic approach and the ad hoc approach must complement each other. So I believe the lexical approach is quite effective, but it should be supplemented by some systematic account of English grammar.


3' The third question is indeed related to the second question in particular, and I believe the 'minimal essentials', 'selection of learning materials' or 'sequence of learning/instruction' must be specifically designed and implemented. (After all, it is what teaching is all about.) It should be added, though, that there should be more than one type of essentials, selections, or sequences in English teaching. An ex-bureaucrat of the Ministry of Education, Japan, commented after the symposium that the primary reason of dropping the subject of 'English Grammar' from the high school curriculum was to deregulate grammatical teaching (well, at least, this is what he said.) Pedagogical grammar descriptions should compete with each other to better satisfy the needs of various learners at different stages of language development and with different motivations for language acquisition. I do not have my own version of pedagogical grammar, and all I've been doing so far is writing a comment like this one.

I thank again Matsui-sensei for his direct question style. This is one of the things Japanese linguistic culture needs.