Frank B. Brooks

Task Engagement: A Turning Point in Foreign Language Development.

In this article we use a sociocultural framework to suggest task engagement as a viable construct in L2 learning research. Clarifying and specifying this construct has important implications for the analysis of conversational data, needed in light of claims for the causal relationship posited for certain kinds of conversational adjustments on L2 acquisition outcomes. Here we examine L2 learner data to identify task engagement as it emerges, unfolds in dialogic activity, and becomes associated with the transformation of task, self, and group. The data to be analyzed come from two pairs of L2 learners involved in jigsaw tasks, one pair using Swahili, the other Spanish; all are native speakers of English. Our concern with task engagement is motivated by methodological and theoretical issues entailed in the study of L2 learning in the interactionist perspective. We argue that a sociocultural approach offers an alternative to that perspective, from the standpoint of method and theory, resting as it does on quite a different set of underlying assumptions, to be described below. The research questions are the following. (1) How might task engagement be defined within a sociocultural framework? (2) What is the effect of task engagement on data analysis and interpretation? (3) What transformative effects, if any, can be found during task engagement? In the first section we juxtapose the two frameworks for thinking about task performance, demonstrating that certain phenomena not even considered data according to one perspective can be interpreted as crucial in selecting, analyzing, and interpreting data in the other. We go on to present and interpret the task data using the proposed analytic framework, then draw conclusions based on the findings.

Communicative competence and the conversation course: A social interaction perspective

Abstract Using a type-case analytic approach, this study investigates the teaching/learning process during an intermediate-level Spanish conversation course (college level) to answer questions relative to the development of communicative competence in the target language. Systematic analysis was conducted on selected small-group speaking opportunities ( n = 12) that ethnographic observations showed to be analogous recurring events, which were constructed of both stable and variable elements within which the academic work of the course took place. In this study, instruction was conceptualized as a conversational process in which academic learning was nested. Specifically, this study demonstrates the constraints and limitations on developing communicative competence in a foreign language within a formal academic setting. The findings suggest the need to reconceptualize theoretical and methodological approaches to exploration of life within foreign language classrooms, especially if the goal of such research is to identify sources of influence on student learning. Recommendations are made for further research.