2016

This paper suggests amending the toolbox of analytical approaches to the study of specialized communication and LSP by a knowledge-oriented meso level analysis. The basic idea behind this type of analysis is to combine studies of actual communicative interaction and of individual contributions to such interactions with studies of specialized meanings at a collective level keeping complexity high in the descriptions. The unit of analysis allowing this is specialized knowledge seen as simultaneously individual and collective. The paper begins with an example demonstrating the complexity to be studied through the suggested type of analysis. I proceed to present Knowledge Communication as theoretical-methodological framework of such analyses, followed by a presentation of the differences between a micro, a macro and a meso level approach to studying specialized communication. In the last part of the paper, I demonstrate the ideas on an analytical example.

Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 2011

This paper considers how ideas about language and culture influence language learning. The methodology for the study is a comparison of the tasks involved in learning introductory Hindi and Japanese. The paper was written after 132 hours of study of Japanese. Through comparing how Japanese and Hindi are taught I demonstrate that integral to the learning of these languages is the need to understand linguistic forms as expressions of distinctive cultural practices. This is prefaced by a discussion of standards being advocated for language teaching in the Common European Framework (CEFR) and in the American Council for the Teaching of foreign languages (ACTFL). I argue that further work needs to be done examining how Asian cultures influence language usage and how standards might be set for understanding the relationship between languages and cultures. The conclusion which I draw from this is that the adoption of neither CEFR nor ACFTL standards will not have beneficial impact on learners without further studies of the relationship between socio-cultural and communicative approaches to language teaching.

International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2008

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Journal of French Language Studies, 1995

French Language Studies circumstances, to offer, as a better explanation, along lines argued in Chomsky (1986), 'homme' and 'faible' as different lexical items filling the specifier slot. Galazzi goes on to consider (pp. 41-43) the constraints on sentence-initial structural position. In doing so, she looks for a structural explanation in the 'disloquee' and this leads to a welcome survey of this unjustly covert structure of prescriptive French. Galazzi's spelling 'des-ordre' (p. 24) is a puzzle. Jullion considers the words belonging to specialist registers; raising (p. 79) the interesting question whether the 'signes' used for LSP (Languages for Special Purposes) are arbitrary. Jullion's paper is a useful reminder of how valuable structuralist linguistics has been when committedly data-oriented. But the weakness is shown here by her failure to define convincingly the 'tronc commun' of LSP because the discussion is surface-oriented, with no ready way to define the abstract relations within 'SP'. Borella distils interrogative structures for practice in class from dialogues which only serve as a reminder of how boring classroom language easily becomes (e.g., p. 99 'De quelle planete venez-vous?', p. 97 'Comment est la maison?'). There is no discussion of what interrogative forms do. What of conducive questions such as Tu attends?'? There is a good survey of negative structures. Schena deals with tense and aspect, but disregards the speaker-hearer's creation of aspect for effect. He introduces the label 'imparfait pittoresque' (p. 18) before explaining this as having to do with the speaker's operation of stretching out an event (p. 19) quasi-cinematically. He has let an opportunity pass (p. 15) of showing the speaker at work in exploiting the aspectual differences of'travailler' and 'reveler'. Pini and Cozzi present a solid paper, self-contained, concerned with the design and evaluation of tests of communicative competence (or performance?). The theoretical papers from the conference were being published separately (Cigada, p. 3). This is unfortunate since data discussed apart can easily come to appear atheoretical. The interplay of (behavioural and utterance) data and theory must be promoted in every way, not least through programmes of publication.

This paper was solely based on bibliographical research and its objective is to shed some light in the field of teaching culture in a second language acquisition context. At the event of language death spread around the world, some needs to maintain a language alive are discussed. Culture and language are two sides of the same coin and reflections about their relation are provided. It is argued that discourse is an important part of the duo language/culture; and the idea that we should teach language related to culture is defended. Keywords: culture and language, language and discourse, foreign language teaching, language maintenance. * Bióloga, mestre e doutora em Zoologia pela USP, atualmente é aluna de graduação do curso de Letras-USP, Habilitação Português-Inglês, trabalha com tradução e preparação de textos em geral.

Zeitschrift für Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht, 1996

One of the well-known characteristics of modern approaches to second langua ge learning is the view that successful second language acquisition (SLA) is accompanied by se cond culture acquisition (SCA) (e.g., Hamers & Blanc,1989; Schumann 1978). It seems clear tha t a learner's acquisition of communicative competence must involve more than t he command of the grammatical structures of the target language and a mastery of its phonology. The learner must also acquire new cultural knowledge and a set of culture-specific cons traints on linguistic behaviour. The claims above make sense. There is little doubt that, in the best case, expansions of linguistic competence should be accompanied by expansions of cultural competence. But there is also a way in which the claims above make too much sense. They suggest a straightforward parallelism between SLA and SCA as well as a parallelism between the successful end-states of bilingualism and biculturalism. In this paper, we suggest that al...

Language is more than just the code: it also involves social practices of interpreting and making meanings • The way we teach language reflects the way we understand language • What is learned in the language classroom, and what students can learn, results from the teacher's understandings of language • There is a fundamental relationship between language and culture • It is important to consider how language as code and language as social practice are balanced in the curriculum kEy iDEAS

The cognitive-conceptual, planningorganizational, affective-social and linguistic-discursive affordances of translanguaging, 2021

The translanguaging turn in language education offers a new perspective on multilingualism by positing that multilingual learners have one linguistic repertoire rather than two or more autonomous language systems (García, O. & L. Wei. 2014. Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. Palgrave MacMillan). When learners engage in translanguaging, they draw on all the features from their repertoire in a flexible and integrated way (Otheguy, R., O. García & W Reid. 2015. Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review 6(3). 281–307. DOI:10.1515/applirev-2015-0014). While much of the current literature on language teaching advocates teachers’ use of pedagogical translanguaging, less research has focused on the pedagogical affordances of student-led translanguaging, especially in contexts with dominant monolingual norms. This paper presents the results of a case study exploring the affordances of translanguaging in two multilingual Grade 5 English language classrooms in Malaysia where English-only policies and practices were enforced by the teachers, but where translanguaging was used agentively by learners during their peer-to-peer interactions. The primary data sources for this six-month-long study included 100 30–90 min-long video recordings of 55 learners working together in small groups on various collaborative language learning activities, and member-checking interviews with the learners. The study was grounded in sociocultural theory and translanguaging, and employed a methodology of sociocultural discourse analysis. The results of the analysis revealed that in both classrooms, learners resisted the English-only policies and practices by using translanguaging widely and strategically throughout their collaborative peer-to-peer interactions. The use of translanguaging fulfilled 100 important cognitive-conceptual, planning-organizational, affective-social and linguistic-discursive functions that supported their individual and collective learning. The results of this study provide us with a view of translanguaging as collaborative and agentive, socioculturally situated and culturally responsive, and a resource for learning as well as a process of learning. The study makes recommendations for a language learning pedagogy that creates opportunities for learners to move language policies from the ground up through their collaborative use of translanguaging.