Social Learning Theories: Complexity Theory

1. Social Learning Theories: Complexity Theory Week 7

2. Tonight • Warm up • Discussion lead 1 (Dornyei, 2009) • Intro to Complexity Theory (Larsen-Freeman, 2011) • Discussion lead 2 (Port, 2010) • Announcement • Midterm info • HW

3. Warm-up • How does activity theory explain learning as a social phenomenon? What is social about it?

4. Discussion lead 1: Dornyei (2009)

5. Dornyei (2009) • What is his point about individual differences?

6. How does this work?

7. How does that model account for the environment?

8. Dornyei (2009, p. 234) • The question, then, is whether in this light there is any justification for proposing any macrostructuring principles to individual variation in human mental functions (such as “cognitive” or “motivational” functions)? • I believe that there is one perspective according to which the main types of mental functions can be separated: the phenomenological (i.e., experiential) view: People can phenomenally distinguish three areas of mental functioning—cognition, motivation, and affect (or emotions)

9. Funder (2006, p. 22, as cited in Dornyei, 2009) • Nowadays, everybody is an interactionist.

10. 2 broad ways to investigate • Individualistic perspective—best represented by the “social cognition” paradigm—considers the social or cultural context through the individual’s eyes. Accordingly, the complexity of the social environment is only important inasmuch as it is reflected in the individual’s mental processes and the resulting attitudes, beliefs and values; that is, the focus is on how people process social information and make sense of social situations. This perspective, therefore, offers a cognitive representation of the social world. • In contrast, the societal perspective—best represented by “social identity” theory—focuses on broad social processes and macro-contextual factors, such as sociocultural norms, intergroup relations, acculturation/assimilation processes, and cross-cultural or interethnic conflicts. From this perspective, the individual’s behavior is seen to be largely determined by the more powerful forces at large; that is, social identity is often seen to override personal identity as exhibited, for example, by the individual’s submission to normative pressures imposed by specific reference groups of cultural expectation

11. Complexity theory: Larsen-Freeman (2011) • The need for complexity theory: • What are the differences between these: Simplicity, disorganized complexity, organized complexity?

12. Complexity theory • …seeks to explain complex, dynamic, open, adaptive, self-organizing, nonlinear systems. It focuses on the close interplay between the emergence of structure on one hand and process or change on the other. … It sees complex behavior as arising from interactions among many components—a bottom-up process based on the contributions of each, which are subject to change over time. • Larsen-Freeman (2011, p. 52)

13. What is the difference between open and closed systems? • Figure

14. What do open systems mean for SLA?

15. language development, a term I prefer these days to acquisition because open systems are never fully acquired (Larsen-Freeman, 2010).

16. From this perspective, how do we learn language?

17. As with speech communities, interlanguage emerges bottom-up through use. As such, no innate language faculty is posited, though, as indicated earlier, innate domain-general cognitive abilities and social drives may exist. Instead, learners’ language resources are thought to develop from interactions they experience.

18. Co-adaptation and soft-assembly • context contributes significantly to language development by affording possibilities for co-adaptation between interlocutors. As a learner interacts with another individual, their language resources are dynamically altered, as each adapts to the other—a mimetic process.

19. With each visit, learners soft-assemble their language resources. Thelen and Smith (1994) coined the term “soft-assembly” to refer to processes involving articulation of multiple components of a system, where “each action is a response to the variable features of the particular task” (p. 64). In other words, the assembly is said to be “soft” because the elements being assembled, as well as the specific ways they are assembled, can change at any point during the task or from one task to another.

20. From repeated soft-assemblies in co-adapted interactions, stable language-using patterns emerge.

21. From this perspective, what would teaching involve?

22. Corpus linguistics?

23. humans are sensitive to frequency of perceptually salient and semantically transparent linguistic features in the language to which they are exposed. Thus, language development is a probabilistic process, with learners extracting probabilities of particular forms occurring in particular contexts with particular frequencies. • The data learners are exposed to are thus skewed (perhaps intentionally in co-adaptation), making language easier to learn.

24. acquisition is thus optimized by introducing an initial, low-variance sample centered upon prototypical exemplars

25. Frequency of forms, items important. But frequency alone not enough. Why?

26. To assist L2 learners who wish to achieve target proficiency, their consciousness must be recruited and their attention directed through explicit instruction, which needs to be complemented by opportunities for these learners to use their language resources in psychologically authentic activities (Larsen-Freeman, 2003).

27. Critique this hypothesis

28. Larsen-Freeman (2011, p. 48) • Instructional syllabi could be aligned with the built-in syllabus, and second language(L2) instruction could follow natural acquisition processes.

29. Larsen-Freeman (2011, p. 49) • This view of language had implications for understanding SLA. There is no built in syllabus and, while general, innate cognitive processes and social drives may exist, it is more accurate to say that interlanguage systems emerge from use.

30. Below is a statement from Larsen-Freeman. Using your knowledge of theories we already discussed in this class, explain HOW resources change with time, place, etc. • Learners’ language resources are always dynamic ensembles, expanding and contracting with time, place, and circumstance.

31. Research • P. 60 pretest/posttest. What’s the problem? • Importance of qualitative inquiry

32. Discussion lead 2:Port (2010) • In what ways is complexity theory demonstrated?

33. Links to Port (2010) • I came to understand language as a complex adaptive system, which emerges bottom-up from interactions of multiple agents in speech communities (Larsen-Freeman, 1997; Ellis with Larsen-Freeman, 2009), rather than a static system composed of top-down grammatical rules or principles.

34. Over time, those that frequently, saliently, and reliably occur become emergent stabilities in a complex system… sedimented out of discourse, with grammar seen not as the source of understanding and communication, but rather a by-product of communication (Hopper, 1998). • The patterns or routines themselves are variegated in form—not necessarily linguists’ units, which may not have psychological reality for speakers.

35. Announcement • Material for Week 9 will be moved to Week 10 • Week 10 will now include material for Weeks 9 and 10. • Atkinson (2011) Ch 3, An identity approach to second language acquisition • Discussion lead: Block (2007): • Discussion lead: Norton & Toohey (2001):

36. Midterm Guidelines • Option 1. Mini Research Project • Apply a theory from our course to create a plan for intervention. In this option, you describe your intervention, what theory guided it, and how you will measure the effectiveness of it. • The paper should be 6 pages (1.5 spacing) and include the following sections:

37. 1. Introduction (1 page)- Describe what skill/learning goal you will target (e.g., Ss reading, writing, group dynamics) and why it’s important to you (either theoretically important or important for your teaching situation). • 2. The theory and intervention (3 pages)-First, introduce the main ideas of the theory and discuss how it explains learning and why it’s important. Then, review two articles that used the particular theory and describe: who was studied; what the focus of the study was; why the authors used the theory; the data collected; and the results. • Next, use the ideas from the articles and theory to create your own intervention (you can adapt ideas but show clear links to the two articles as to why you adapted). Describe the intervention and be sure to discuss the theoretical reasons for teaching the skill the way you plan. • 3. Measuring progress (2 pages). How do the data collected in the two studies reflect the main theory and how did they measure it? How do your data reflect the main theory (can use same as two articles or adapt)? How will you measure it (interviews, observations, test scores, surveys)? Feel free to use same methods as presented in the two articles or create your own. • 4. References (1 page). Follow APA style. See the Online Writing Lab Purdue page for information. • You will be graded on: the degree to which you addressed each of the points above; writing clarity; and APA/organization.

38. Option 2. Literature Review • The literature review option includes two main components. First, you will draw from a theory or theories in our class to develop a critical analytical lens. Then, you will use this lens to review research and utilize your analytic lens to identify potential weaknesses in the studies and how these weakness challenge the results. • The paper should be 6 pages (1.5 spacing) and include the following sections:

39. 1. Introduction (1 page)- Describe what skill will examine in the literature (e.g., vocabulary, reading, writing, group dynamics) and why it’s important to you (either theoretically important or important for your teaching situation). • 2. The analytical lens (2 pages)- Select one or two theories discussed in our course (can be topics before or after midterm). Then, discuss the main components of each theory. When discussing these components, create questions or main points that you can later use to critique and analyze other studies. For example, if I was drawing from the Interaction Hypothesis, and one of the main components of this theory is communication breakdown, then I would might create a question that asks: Were their opportunities for students to engage in conversation that would lead to communication breakdown? These main points or questions are critical to your paper. So think about what is learning is from your theoretical perspectives and then use these to examine learning situations in other studies. • 3. Review and analyze (3 pages)- For this section, first select 2 studies for a particular skill. Then, describe who was studied, what they did, what the results were. Next, after reviewing each study, apply your analytical lens and critique the study and its results. Did the study account for social aspects? If not, how might this affect the results? Etc. • 4. References (1 page). Follow APA style. See the Online Writing Lab Purdue page for information. • You will be graded on: the degree to which you addressed each of the points above; writing clarity; and APA/organization.

40. Option 3. Building Theoretical Knowledge • This option is comprised of three main parts. First, an introduction is presented that discusses your current knowledge of a particular theory and desire to clarify specific points or gain general knowledge of the theory. Then, in the second section, you will read and review 3 articles related to your theory. In the last part, you discuss what you learned and what remains to be learned. • The paper should be 6 pages (1.5 spacing) and include the following sections:

41. 1. Introduction (1 page)- Discuss what theory you will explore. What you already know about it. Why you need to read/learn about it. • 2. Review (2 pages)- Find three articles that discuss or apply this theory. Then describe the information about theory presented by each author. If the theory was applied, why did they apply it; what was the goal of using this theory; how did they use the theory to analyze data. If the article is purely descriptive, review the main points: what are they, why are they important; what are some examples. • 3. What you learned (3pages)- Restate what you wanted to learn before you read the articles. Tell the things that you learned, or didn’t learn, why they are important for you personally, and why they are important for language learning. Discuss what other things within the theory you wish to know or are confused about and how you will answer these concerns in the future. • 4. References (1 page). Follow APA style. See the Online Writing Lab Purdue page for information. • You will be graded on: the degree to which you addressed each of the points above; writing clarity; and APA/organization.

42. HW • Write and proofread midterm • 10 pages maximum.