Catherine DiFelice Box

Guarded Play: Multi-Tasking in Parent-Child Interactions

This brief analysis utilizes a CA perspective to deepen our understanding of the ways in which participants in interactions are able to handle more than one activity simultaneously. Many of the studies on multi-tasking, as Good (2009) noted, address this from a cognitive science perspective (e.g. Salvucci, 2005; Salvucci, Taatgen, & Kushleyeva, 2006), focusing on the brain’s ability to attend to several tasks at once. According to this work, we humans do a less than stellar job at balancing more than one thing at a time. In fact, with each task we add to the mix, our performance suffers that much more. As a social scientist, I find these conclusions enlightening and worthy of further study. As a mother, I chuckle, because even as I write this, my ear is bent to my daughter doing homework and the dinner that is on the stove, and I have gotten up from my workstation twice to wipe the bedroom wall clean of all traces of marker from my son’s dirty hands. Since at the end of the day, every member of my family is fed, cleaned, and accounted for, I proclaim that I do my job successfully. Thus, I agree wholeheartedly with the argument (Good, 2009) that by looking at the social action of multi-tasking as it happens in real time, as it happens so many nights in the lives of families, we might complicate the notion that it is something that humans simply cannot do well. Given that the family is an inherently social construct, and “the original site for everyday discourse” (Kendall, 2007, p. 3), analyzing the verbal and non-verbal multi-tasking behavior as it manifests in naturally-occurring interactions could demonstrate not only how parents multitask, but also how parents do being a multi-tasker at a given moment, and how other interlocutors orient to such behavior. In order to investigate this doing in the moment-by-moment unfolding of the activity, it is helpful to employ the intricate analysis inherent in the CA framework. By applying the line-by-line close read upon which CA insists, I attempt to explicate exactly how and when a mother parses her verbal and non-verbal resources in order to accomplish the tasks necessary in order to care for her two children who, in this moment, have competing needs. The data were taken from a videotaped corpus collected in my home over the course of several months during the spring, summer, and fall of 2011. The children, 6-year old ‘O’ and 2year old ‘S,’ take their nightly bath together, supervised by myself, ‘C,’ the mother. It might be helpful to note that ‘O’ is in first grade. ‘S’ is cared for at home, and at the time of this recording, was just learning to speak. Often, I am the only one who understands what he says. After viewing the data several times, I was struck by the amount of verbal and non-verbal interactional work I engage in as I simultaneously or sequentially attend to children who require monitoring as they bathe, but also desire a playmate. Thus, I transcribed one such moment. Pertinent non-verbal behavior is described in italics within double parentheses. I then explore indepth the turns at talk, addressing one way in which I constantly shift my body and allocate my verbal and non-verbal resources, in order to fulfill the competing needs of the children.

An Interview with APPLE Lecture Guest Speaker Professor Leo van Lier

On February 10, 2012, the TESOL/AL Web Journal (represented by Catherine Box, Farah Akbar, and Nancy Boblett) had the pleasure of sitting down with Professor Leo van Lier, guest speaker for the 2012 APPLE Lecture Series. He was kind to take the time to answer our questions pertaining to the tremendous breadth and depth of his work: sociocultural theory and ecological approaches to language learning, scaffolding in the classroom, action-based research, and technology-assisted language learning. Leo van Lier is professor of educational linguistics in the Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation, and Language Education at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He is the author of several books, including Scaffolding the academic success of adolescent English language learners (2010, with Aida Walqui); The ecology and semiotics of language learning (2004); Interaction in the language curriculum (1996); Introducing language awareness (1995); and The classroom and the language learner (1988). He has published numerous book chapters and articles in journals such as TESOL Quarterly, Applied Linguistics, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, The English Language Teaching Journal, Language Awareness, Le Francais dans le Monde, Signos, and Applied Language Learning. Professor van Lier is the Editor-in-Chief of The Modern Language Journal and is also on the editorial boards of a number of different journals. He is co-editor of the book series Educational Linguistics for Springer Publishers. We would like to thank Professor van Lier for agreeing to be interviewed during his hectic schedule on the day of the APPLE Lectures. We would also like to thank Adrienne Wai Man Lew, Managing Editor of the Web Journal, and Daniel Mann, Program Secretary, for helping to coordinate this event. We especially appreciate Adrienne’s offer to videotape the interview. Finally, we would like to thank Professor Michael Kieffer for his guidance and support while preparing for this wonderful opportunity to speak with Professor van Lier.

Case Study Research in Applied Linguistics

Case Study Research in Applied Linguistics offers a detailed foray into all aspects of the role of the case study: the text defines terms related to this type of research, provides historical background on the method, and explains the process of performing and reporting case studies. Such a comprehensive introduction addresses a gap in the literature. Many research methods texts provide overviews of different kinds of quantitative and qualitative research often utilized in the field of applied linguistics, including correlational research, introspective research, and in-class observations (e.g., Brown & Rogers, 2002; Dornyei, 2007). Few, however, focus exclusively on case study research, lacking examination of the often painstaking process case studies entail. While the book’s scope is broad, Duff’s purposes are clear and concise from the outset: 1) to delineate the methodological foundations of case study research, 2) to present and examine seminal case studies in the area of second language (L2) development and teaching, and 3) to demystify the process of case study research from conception to publication. As these goals suggest, the book intends to offer the necessary information and sound advice to budding researchers in applied linguistics on both the graduate and undergraduate level.