Literatur verstehen und inszenieren: Foreign language literature through drama, a research project

Based on the experience that today's students find it more difficult than students of previous decades to relate to literature and appreciate its high cultural value, this paper argues that too little is known about the actual teaching and learning processes which take place in literature courses and that, in order to ensure the survival of literary studies in German curricula, future research needs to elucidate for students, the wider public and, most importantly, educational policy makers, why the study of literature should continue to have an important place in modern language curricula. Contending that students' willingness to engage with literature will, in the future, depend to a great extent on the use of imaginative methodology on the part of the teacher, we give a detailed account of an action research project carried out at University College Cork from October to December 2002 which set out to explore the potential of a drama in education approach to the teaching and learning of foreign language literature. We give concrete examples of how this approach works in practice, situate our approach within the subject debate surrounding Drama and the Language Arts and evaluate in detail the learning processes which are typical of performance-based literature learning. Based on converging evidence from different data sources and overall very positive feedback from students, we conclude by recommending that modern language departments introduce courses which offer a hands-on experience of literature that is different from that encountered in lectures and teacher-directed seminars.

A corpus-driven error analysis of the oral and written production of Leaving Certificate Spanish learners

The Leaving Certificate (LC) is the national, standardised state examination in Ireland necessary for entry to third level education – this presents a massive, raw corpus of data with the potential to yield invaluable insight into the phenomena of learner interlanguage. With samples of official LC Spanish examination data, this project has compiled a digitised corpus of learner Spanish comprised of the written and oral production of 100 candidates. This corpus was then analysed using a specific investigative corpus technique, Computer-aided Error Analysis (CEA, Dagneaux et al, 1998). CEA is a powerful apparatus in that it greatly facilitates the quantification and analysis of a large learner corpus in digital format. The corpus was both compiled and analysed with the use of UAM Corpus Tool (O’Donnell 2013). This Tool allows for the recording of candidate-specific variables such as grade, examination level, task type and gender, therefore allowing for critical analysis of the corpus as one unit, as separate written and oral sub corpora and also of performance per task, level and gender. This is an interdisciplinary work combining aspects of Applied Linguistics, Learner Corpus Research and Foreign Language (FL) Learning. Beginning with a review of the context of FL learning in Ireland and Europe, I go on to discuss the disciplinary context and theoretical framework for this work and outline the methodology applied. I then perform detailed quantitative and qualitative analyses before going on to combine all research findings outlining principal conclusions. This investigation does not make a priori assumptions about the data set, the LC Spanish examination, the context of FLs or of any aspect of learner competence. It undertakes to provide the linguistic research community and the domain of Spanish language learning and pedagogy in Ireland with an empirical, descriptive profile of real learner performance, characterising learner difficulty.

序破急 Jo-Ha-Kyu: enticement - crux - consolidation. From study to learning: Process drama projects in the Japanese English language university classroom

This dissertation investigates how social issues can be explored through process drama projects in the Japanese university English as a Foreign Language classroom context. The trajectory of this dissertation moves along a traditional Noh three part macro-continuum, called Jo-Ha-Kyu, interpreted as enticement, crux and consolidation. Within these three parts, there are six further divisions. Part I consists of three sections: Section I, the introduction, sets the backdrop for the entire dissertation, that of Japan, and aims to draw the reader into its culturally unique and specific world. This section outlines the rationale for placing the ethnographer at the centre of the research, and presents Japan through the eyes of the writer. Section II outlines relevant Japanese cultural norms, mores and values, the English educational landscape of Japan and an overview of theatre in Japan and its possible influences on the Japanese university student today. Section III provides three literature reviews: second language acquisition, drama in education to process drama, and Content Language Integrated Learning. In Part 2, Sections IV and V respectively consist of the research methodology and the action research at the core of this dissertation. Section IV describes the case of Kwansei Gakuin University, then explains the design of the process drama curricula. Section V details the three-process drama projects based around the three social issues at the centre of this dissertation. There is also a description of an extra project that of the guest lecturer project. The ultimate goals of all four projects were to change motivation through English in a CLIL context, to develop linguistic spontaneity and to deepen emotional engagement with the themes. Part 3 serves to reflect upon the viability of using process drama in the Japanese university curriculum, and to critically self-reflect on the project as a whole.

The impact of learning context on the acquisition of sociopragmatic variation patterns in non-native speaker teachers of English

The study is a cross-linguistic, cross-sectional investigation of the impact of learning contexts on the acquisition of sociopragmatic variation patterns and the subsequent enactment of compound identities. The informants are 20 non-native speaker teachers of English from a range of 10 European countries. They are all primarily mono-contextual foreign language learners/users of English: however, they differ with respect to the length of time accumulated in a target language environment. This allows for three groups to be established – those who have accumulated 60 days or less; those with between 90 days and one year and the final group, all of whom have accumulated in excess of one year. In order to foster the dismantling of the monolith of learning context, both learning contexts under consideration – i.e. the foreign language context and submersion context are broken down into micro-contexts which I refer to as loci of learning. For the purpose of this study, two loci are considered: the institutional and the conversational locus. In order to make a correlation between the impact of learning contexts and loci of learning on the acquisition of sociopragmatic variation patterns, a two-fold study is conducted. The first stage is the completion of a highly detailed language contact profile (LCP) questionnaire. This provides extensive biographical information regarding language learning history and is a powerful tool in illuminating the intensity of contact with the L2 that learners experience in both contexts as well as shedding light on the loci of learning to which learners are exposed in both contexts. Following the completion of the LCP, the informants take part in two role plays which require the enactment of differential identities when engaged in a speech event of asking for advice. The enactment of identities then undergoes a strategic and linguistic analysis in order to investigate if and how differences in the enactment of compound identities are indexed in language. Results indicate that learning context has a considerable impact not only on how identity is indexed in language, but also on the nature of identities enacted. Informants with very low levels of crosscontextuality index identity through strategic means – i.e. levels of directness and conventionality; however greater degrees of cross-contextuality give rise to the indexing of differential identities linguistically by means of speaker/hearer orientation and (non-) solidary moves. When it comes to the nature of identity enacted, it seems that more time spent in intense contact with native speakers in a range of loci of learning allows learners to enact their core identity; whereas low levels of contact with over-exposure to the institutional locus of learning fosters the enactment of generic identities.

Drama Grammatik: Dramapädagogische Ansätze für den Grammatikunterricht Deutsch als Fremdsprache

This dissertation introduces and evaluates dramagrammar, a new concept for the teaching and learning of foreign language grammar. Grammar, traditionally taught in a predominantly cognitive, abstract mode, often fails to capture the minds of foreign language learners, who are then unable to integrate this grammatical knowledge into their use of the foreign language in a meaningful way. The consequences of this approach are manifested at university level in German departments in England and Ireland, where the outcomes are unconvincing at best, abysmal at worst. Language teaching research suggests that interaction plays an important role in foreign language acquisition. Recent studies also stress the significance of grammatical knowledge in the learning process. Dramagrammar combines both interactive negotiation of meaning and explicit grammar instruction in a holistic approach, taking up the concept of drama in foreign language education and applying it to the teaching and learning of grammar. Techniques from dramatic art forms allow grammar to be experienced not only cognitively but also in social, emotional, and bodily-kinaesthetic ways. Dramagrammar lessons confront the learner with fictitious situations in which grammar is experienced 'hands-on'. Learners have to use grammatical structures in a variety of contexts, reflect upon their use, and then enlarge and enrich the dramatic situations with their newly acquired or more finely nuanced knowledge. The initial hypothesis of this dissertation is that the drammagrammar approach is beneficial to the acquisition of foreign language grammar. This hypothesis is corroborated by research findings from language teaching pedagogy and drama in education. It is further confirmed by empirical data gained from specifically designed dramagrammar modules that have been put into practice in German departments at the University of Leicester (England), the University Colleges Cork and Dublin (Ireland), the University of Bologna (Italy), as well as the Goethe-Institute Bratislava (Slovenia). The data suggests that drammagrammar has positive effects on both understanding of and attitudes towards grammar.

Using parent report to assess early lexical production in children exposed to more than one language

Limited expressive vocabulary skills in young children are considered to be the first warning signs of a potential Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (Ellis & Thal, 2008). In bilingual language learning environments, the expressive vocabulary size in each of the child’s developing languages is usually smaller compared to the number of words produced by monolingual peers (e.g. De Houwer, 2009). Nonetheless, evidence shows children’s total productive lexicon size across both languages to be comparable to monolingual peers’ vocabularies (e.g. Pearson et al., 1993; Pearson & Fernandez, 1994). Since there is limited knowledge as to which level of bilingual vocabulary size should be considered as a risk factor for SLI, the effects of bilingualism and language-learning difficulties on early lexical production are often confounded. The compilation of profiles for early vocabulary production in children exposed to more than one language, and their comparison across language pairs, should enable more accurate identification of vocabulary delays that signal a risk for SLI in bilingual populations. These considerations prompted the design of a methodology for assessing early expressive vocabulary in children exposed to more than one language, which is described in the present chapter. The implementation of this methodological framework is then outlined by presenting the design of a study that measured the productive lexicons of children aged 24-36 months who were exposed to different language pairs, namely Maltese and English, Irish and English, Polish and English, French and Portuguese, Turkish and German as well as English and Hebrew. These studies were designed and coordinated in COST Action IS0804 Working Group 3 (WG3) and will be described in detail in a series of subsequent publications. Expressive vocabulary size was measured through parental report, by employing the vocabulary checklist of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (CDI: WS) (Fenson et al., 1993, 2007) and its adaptations to the participants’ languages. Here we describe the novelty of the study’s methodological design, which lies in its attempt to harmonize the use of vocabulary checklist adaptations, together with parental questionnaires addressing language exposure and developmental history, across participant groups characterized by different language exposure variables. This chapter outlines the various methodological considerations that paved the way for meaningful cross-linguistic comparison of the participants’ expressive lexicon sizes. In so doing, it hopes to provide a template for and encourage further research directed at establishing a threshold for SLI risk in children exposed to more than one language.