Embodied L2 Construction Learning

Abstract

This study uses conversation analysis (CA) to investigate the coupling of specific linguistic items with specific gestures in second language (L2) learning over time. In particular, we are interested in how gestures accompany learning of new vocabulary. CA-informed studies of gesture have previously shown the importance of embodiment in L2 use and situated learning, substantiating the idea that gestures are ingrained in the ongoing work to achieve and maintain intersubjectivity. We investigate how the relation between talk and related embodied activities develops over time and indicates learning processes. Specifically, we show how gesture-talk combinations that the co-participants deploy at a certain point in time to display understanding are reused at later occasions. Examples investigated here are the prepositions under and across, and our data indicate that at least these specific linguistic constructions are deeply embodied in ways that change slowly over time around an iconic core, as the linguistic items are being learned, suggesting a strong link between L2 vocabulary learning and gestures.

On the development of motion constructions in four learners of L2 English

“…Also affordances of new constructions in classroom activities played a major role in the development portrayed here, suggesting that the environments in which classroom learners navigate influence their learning. While this is good news for language teachers, the slow learning processes displayed in the extracts in the sections on Carlos and Valerio and as mentioned in the case of Ya's learning of come and its combinatorial possibilities suggest that L2 users take a long time appropriating new items (Eskildsen and Wagner 2015a), which means that new semiotic resources ideally should be presented to L2 learners in a way that takes their present learning purposes seriously. Learning to use L2 semiotic resources on the basis of experiencing the new language seen partly through the lens provided by the L1 TFS patterns is no simple task.…”

“…The final extract from May 2004 indicates that VAL is now completely capable of using go to spontaneously; he has gone from affordance to appropriation (Eskildsen and Wagner 2015a). Prior to the interaction, his partner, Sal, has asked him about his work schedule for the next day, and Valerio explains that he has class and then goes home.…”

Retrospective Orientation to Learning Activities and Achievements as a Resource in Classroom Interaction

“…For example, Hauser () showed how the word ‘near’ was first met and repaired, and subsequently used a number of times by an L1 Japanese learner of English over a 7‐month period in a conversation‐for‐learning setting. Eskildsen and Wagner () demonstrated how an L1 Mexican Spanish learner of English began using the prepositions ‘under’ and ‘across’ with the help of specific gestures, documenting how those gestures were also part of later usages of the two words. Pekarek Doehler and Berger () described how an L1 German‐speaking au‐pair's story‐openings changed over 9 months in a French‐speaking host family.…”

“…Therefore, researchers drawing on either a cognitivist or a social framework (see Ortega, ) face the task of demonstrating change over time as evidence for learning. Within Conversation Analytic literature on L2 learning (CA–SLA), this task has perhaps most systematically been pursued in studies investigating learners’ developing interactional competence (e.g., Pekarek Doehler & Berger, ) and CA studies in the usage‐based framework of language learning (e.g., Eskildsen & Wagner, ). In these contexts, a discussion has also emerged on how—and in what kinds of timescales—language learning manifests itself in social interaction (e.g., Pekarek Doehler & Berger, ; Pekarek Doehler & Lauzon, ).…”

A Transdisciplinary Framework for SLA in a Multilingual World

“…Moreover, “humans use the entire body to participate in socially organized processes of understanding and learning, [a fact] which ultimately challenges a strict Cartesian division between mind and body. Instead, the mind is the body” (Eskildsen & Wagner, , p. 442; cf. also Harris, , and his advocacy of ‘integrationism’).…”