New Trends in SLA
Research: Theories,
Methods, Ethics
Lourdes Ortega
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
National Tsing Hua University
Taiwan, June 8, 2011
 Please cite as:
Ortega, L. (2011). New trends in SLA research:
Theories, methods, ethics. Invited lecture at
National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, June 8.
Copyright © Lourdes Ortega, 2011
Background:
Since the mid 1990s, intense
disciplinary crisis &
reflection in SLA
Wagner & Firth (1997) and
Lafford’s (2007) Special 10-year
anniversary of Firth & Wagner (1997)
in Modern Language Journal.
Writing reflective overviews:
Ortega (2007) and (2011)
in VanPatten & Williams (Eds.) (2007)
& in Atkinson (Ed.) (2011)
Writing an SLA textbook and
anthologizing the field:
Ortega (2009) and (2010b)
Guiding Question:
What will it take in the future
so we can improve our
explanations about second
language learning?
Values:
interdisciplinarity:
Cognitive Science
Social Theories
Study of Bilingualism
epistemological diversity
Challenge 1:
addressing the explicitimplicit knowledge interface
Theoretical explosion
in SLA:
VanPatten & Williams (Eds.) (2007)
Atkinson (Ed.) (2011)
Main theories in SLA
(VanPatten & Williams, Eds., 2007):
Connectionist-emergentist
(e.g., N. Ellis, Ch. 5)
Formal-linguistic SLA
(e.g., White, Ch. 3; Carroll, Ch. 9)
Skills acquisition
(e.g., DeKeyser, Ch. 6)
Functionalist-linguistic SLA
(e.g., Barvodi-Harlig, Ch. 4; Pienemann, Ch. 8)
Cognitive-interactionist
(e.g., Gass & Mackey, Ch. 10; VanPatten, Ch. 7;
TBLT: Robinson, Skehan, etc...)
Vygostkian SLA
(e.g., Lantolf & Thorne, Ch. 11)
Alternative theories in SLA
(Atkinson, Ed., 2011):
Complexity theory
(e.g., Larsen-Freeman, Ch. 2)
Language Socialization
Theory
(e.g., Duff & Talmy, Ch. 4)
Identity Theory
Sociocognitive Approach
(e.g., Atkinson, Ch. 6)
(e.g., Norton & McKinney, Ch. 3)
CA-for-SLA
(e.g., Kasper & Wagner, Ch. 5)
Vygostkian SLA
(e.g., Lantolf, Ch. 1)
Current positions/foci on
“L2 knowledge”
Linguistic
Generativist
theory;
Functionalist
approaches
Implicit only
General cognitive
Skills
acquisition
theory
Cognitiveinteractionist
theories
Implicit mostly
Vygotskian;
Identity
Explicit mostly
Explicit>Implicit
Emergentist,
Complexity, and
Dynamic
Systems
theories
Social
Explicit+Implicit
Language
Socialization
Explicit+Implicit
CA-for-SLA;
Sociocognitive
Implicit
Importance is recognized in
L2 instruction research:
Most explicit
Most implicit
+ Grammar
explanation;
+ Exposure to input
e.g., NTHU’s Hung-Tzu
made salient by
Huang: meta-analysis
engineering:
+ Metalanguage; of input enhancement
in SSLA (Lee &• Huang,
Phonological or
2008) typographical salience
+ Instructions to
attend to specific
form;
etc
• Frequency
• Order of presentation
etc
Relative recent interest at
the psycholinguistic level:
 DeKeyser (2003) HSLA “explicit > implicit”
 R. Ellis (2004) LL “Definition &
measurement…”
 N. Ellis (2005) SSLA “At the interface…”
 Sharwood Smith & Truscott (2005) AL the
processing origins of L2 knowledge
But still disengagement or
underdetermination are the norm:
 Illustrative case in point: RECAST debate
(Lyster, 2004; Long, 2006)
Where do we look for
benefits brought about by
recasts?
Evidence of “learning”?
1. immediate responses
Incorporation (=successful
uptake)
S: Some people have racism.
T: Some people ARE racist.
S: are racist.
Loewen & Philp (2006, p. 541)
Structural priming
A: Where where where you break
it?
B: Where did you break it?
Mae Sot+
A: Mae Sot in Tak?
B: Yeah+
A: Why why why did you go
there?
McDonough (2006, p. 186)
Evidence of “learning”?
2.retrospection
I said ‘freedom of thinking’. I was
not certain if it should be
‘thinking’ or ‘thought’. I didn’t
come up with ‘thought’ then, so I
said ‘freedom of thinking’, then I
felt it might be wrong. Then the
teacher said ‘freedom of thought’. So
I thought, ‘Oh, oh. I was wrong –
just as I thought.’
Nabei & Swain (2002, p. 55)
Evidence of “learning”?
3. pre-post test changes
Mackey & Goo (2007):
Meta-analysis of
interaction & feedback, 10
studies of recasts yielded
d=0.96
Benefits for learning: explicit
or implicit knowledge?
Negative evidence & cognitive
comparison
(L1: Farrar, Nelson....)
Noticing
Incorporation &
(Schmidt)
Introspection
Testing hypothesis,
pushed output
(Lyster)
explicit??
Positive evidence
& enhanced input
(L2: Leeman, McDonough, Doughty)
Repeated
processing
Structural
priming
&
Recasts
held gains
in memory
Pre-post-test
implicit??
Memory trace,
frequency tallying
Undeniable:
implicit, bottom up,
and subconscious
processing
explicit, top down,
and conscious processing
What to do?
At this stage of SLA’s
disciplinary knowledge…
…it is problematic for any theory to discard a
priori one or the other type of knowledge as
irrelevant for explaining L2 acquisition;
…and also problematic is to neglect to clarify
whether claims about learning are made with
regard to explicit or implicit cognition
Challenge 1: Methodological
solutions required
Tall order:
SLA researchers will need to draw from
cognitive science in this area in order to make
explorations neurobiologically plausible
(e.g., the work by Georgetown alumni who trained in Michael Ullman’s
lab: Kara
Morgan-Short, Harriet Wood Bowden)
Tall order:
Ideally, SLA researchers will also combine
training and methodologies to produce yoked
behavioral and neurological evidence
(e.g., NTHU faculty trained in the psycholinguistics of processing and in
neurolinguistics: Chun-Chieh
Gloria Yang)
Natalie Hsu, Fan-Pei
Challenge 2:
theorizing experience
 Differential experience is connected to
one of the most salient facts to be
explained by any SLA theory: variability
and heterogeneity in L2 learning
processes and outcomes
 Yet, traditional SLA theories are illequipped to deal with variability and, as a
consequence, they trivialize learner
experience as anecdotal, divesting it from
any theoretical status
The importance of diverse social contexts
for L2 learning resides less in externally
documented experience or fixed
environmental encounters and more in
experience that is lived, made sense of,
negotiated, contested, and claimed by
learners in their physical, interpersonal,
social, cultural, and historical context.
What to do?
1. Look for theories that offer social
respecifications of phenomena:
L2 grammar:
Systemic-Functional
Linguistics
L2 communication:
Conversation Analysis
L2 cognition:
Vygotskian theory
L2 learning:
Language socialization
L2 sense of self:
Identity theory
Good example: NTHU’s YuJung Chang’s study of the
non-deficit oriented, agentive
identities of 4 doctoral
graduate students in the US
who were so-called non-native
speakers (Chang & Kanno,
2010)
2. Investigate diverse contexts
& populations:
Second, foreign, heritage
language contexts
Varying ages
L1 semiliterate/L1 oral
populations of L2 learners
Disparate social milieus
with varying L2 use needs
Challenge 2: Theoretical
solutions already underway
But… better done 1 than 2 so far:
SLA researchers have begun to look for theories
that offer social respecifications of phenomena
(“the social turn in SLA”)
But SLA as a field continues to investigate very
limited contexts & population
Yet, crucial:
We do not know what new theoretical models will need
to be advanced, or how the present ones will need to be
modified, once SLA researchers begin to investigate
populations that are currently seriously understudied
(e.g., Bigelow, 2010; Valdés, 2005;Verhoeven, 1994)
Challenge 3:
re-evaluating SLA theories
through the prism of
bilingualism
Native speaker as golden
benchmark and reference:
To explain what we can expect in
L2 development data and what we see
To judge what ultimate attainment
should look like and whether it is
possible (in L2)
To evaluate educational goals & outcomes, i.e.,
communicative competence = “like a NS”
(linguistic knowledge, pragmatics,
collocations, rhetoric, gestures…)
Extensive critique against “nativespeakerism”
from social and critical perspectives:
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Canagarajah (2004)
Firth & Wagner (1997)
García (2009)
Hall et al. (2006)
Holliday (1994); Holliday & Aboshiha (2009)
Jenkins (2006)
Leung (2005)
Norton & Toohey (2001)
Rampton (1990)
Seidlhofer (2001)
Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas (1986)
Shohamy (2006)
Sridhar (1994)
………..and so many more ... ... ... ...!
But in SLA, to present day:
L2 acquisition =
developing native
competence
But… what do we mean
by
“native”?
“native”:
a language user…
+ by birth
+ born to one language only
+ no detectable traces of other
languages
“native” =
“monolingual native”
“native speaker” =
One
language
By birth
“non-native speaker” =
Not by
birth
Multiple
languages
L2 competence in SLA:
 two monolingual speakers housed in a single
head?
 monolingual-like competence the goal?
 monolingual and monocultural acts of a
special (secondary) nature?
 language competencies static and fixed in the
L1, and dynamic and in flux only in the L2?
Monolingual Bias in SLA
L2 acquisition = “efforts by monolingual
adults to add on a monolingual-like command
of an additional language”
(Ortega, 2009, p. 5)
+
in an imagined world where what’s
given/owned by birth can never be matched or
altered by experience/history
(Ortega, 2010a)
Accepted tenets in the study
of bilingualism:
Bilinguals cannot be reduced to the
sum of two monolinguals in one.
(Grosjean, 1989)
Accepted tenets in the study
of bilingualism:
Context-free, fixed, and dichotomous
NS/NNS categories have
questionable validity.
(Li Wei, 2000)
Accepted tenets in the study
of bilingualism:
The development of multiple language
competencies is a process mediated by
amount of use/degree of activation across
languages.
(e.g., Sebastián-Gallés et al., 2005)
Accepted tenets in the study
of bilingualism:
The development of additional language
competence interacts with, destabilizes, and
most likely transforms the nature of
linguistic competence across the languages
of the individual (languages interact).
(e.g., Cenoz et al., 2001)
Good example: NTHU’s I-Ru
Su’s study of bi-directional
transfer in Taiwanese
learners of EFL doing
requests and being
conventionally indirect (Su,
2010)
What to do?
1. Pursue new constructs:
“multi-competence is not just the imperfect
cloning of mono-competence, but a different
state”
(Vivian Cook, 2002, pp. 7-8)
people who speak more than one language
posses varying expertise, inheritance, and
affilitation across their languages
(Rampton, 1990)
2. Pursue new empirical baselines:
Compare incipient and emerging bilinguals
to fully developed bilinguals;
bi/multilinguals cannot be directly
compared to monolinguals; the sole
benchmark for comparison cannot be
monolinguals.
(Birdsong, 2005; Harley & Wang, 1997; Singleton, 2003)
3. Pursue new designs:
Investigate a learner’s multiple
languages simultaneously within the
same study.
(Ortega & Carson, 2010)
4. Craft new discourse of bilingualism
as potentiality, not deficit:
 …proponents of this view offer an explanation for
adults’ relative failure to reach nativelikeness that is
based on neurological changes that occur at a
certain age (e.g., puberty) and that lead to a sudden
or gradual deterioration or distortion of the implicit
language learning mechanism…
 …proponents of this view offer an explanation for
adults’ relative failure to reach nativelikeness that is
based on neurological changes that occur at a
certain age (e.g., puberty) and that lead to a sudden
or gradual deterioration or distortion of the implicit
language learning mechanism…
… a number of studies show that L2 learners’ employment of formulaic
sequences is often problematic. Although learners can produce a
considerable number of native-like sequences…, there is evidence
that learners’ restricted formulaic repertoires lead them to
overuse those sequences they know well … Still, overall, nonnative
use of formulaic sequences is less pervasive and less diverse than
native norms … It is not surprising, therefore, that L2 learners’
failure to use native-like formulaic sequences is one factor in
making their writing feel nonnative…
… a number of studies show that L2 learners’ employment of formulaic
sequences is often problematic. Although learners can produce a
considerable number of native-like sequences…, there is evidence
that learners’ restricted formulaic repertoires lead them to
overuse those sequences they know well … Still, overall, nonnative
use of formulaic sequences is less pervasive and less diverse than
native norms … It is not surprising, therefore, that L2 learners’
failure to use native-like formulaic sequences is one factor in
making their writing feel nonnative…
discourses of deficit are persuasive!!
“many bilinguals … have a tendency to evaluate
their language competencies as inadequate. Some
criticize their mastery of language skills, others
strive their hardest to reach monolingual norms,
others still hide their knowledge of their “weaker”
language, and most simply do not perceive
themselves as being bilingual even though they use
two (or more) languages regularly”
Grosjean (2008, p. 224)
Challenge 3: Theoreticalmethodological-ethical
solutions badly needed!!!
Badly needed:
a bilingual turn in SLA!!
Reorientating towards studying what
L1+L2 (multicompetent/bilingual)
users can do, as opposed to only
understanding what they cannot or wish
not to do in their L2
SLA, a field
in pursuit of knowledge about:
“learning
to be bilingual”
supportive of:
“pathways
to multicompetence”
In conclusion…
New Trends in
SLA Research…
2.… properly investigating
learners’ experience
3.…conceptualizing
SLA as bilingualism,
fighting the
monolingual bias
1.… clarifying
explicit-implicit
knowledge
Methods
Theories
Theories + Methods +
Ethics
Looking forward, looking ahead
To more empirical work on the nature of
explicit and implicit language knowledge
and their respective contributions to L2
learning
To more theorizing into ways to study how
the lived experiences afforded by different
social contexts shape L2 learning; more
empirical work across diverse experiences
(=diverse social contexts)
To a bilingual turn in SLA!!
Thank You
lortega@hawaii.edu
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