Making our learning environments interactive:

A critique of the concept of interaction in Second

Language Acquisition studies
Ania LIAN
Australian Catholic University, Australia

Postal Address: 86 Jacaranda Dr., Jerrabomberra, NSW 2619, Australia
Email: lian.ania@gmail.com
Making our learning environments interactive:
A critique of the concept of interaction in Second
Language Acquisition studies


Abstract

This chapter addresses the concept of interaction in order to provide research in Second
Language Acquisition and Second Language Teaching with a critical perspective on the
beliefs which support the notions of interactive learning environments. Is interaction
always truly present when we say it is? Who are the interlocutors and how can we tell?
Further, how can we enhance the interactivity component in our experimental studies and
learning environments?

In order to answer these questions, we examine the notion of interaction in examples of
prominent research studies constructed within the cognitive and the sociocultural
frameworks. Our critique of those studies helps us to develop the concept of interaction
as a context where interlocutors contribute to each other by affecting each other's criteria
of judgment. This reciprocity condition allows us to propose a framework for pedagogic
research which helps us to discriminate between interactive (dialogic) and non-interactive
(hierarchical) learning conditions.


Keywords: Second Language Acquisition, I nteractive Learning, Dialogic I nqui ry.


Word count: 6019 words (without bibliography)
6794 (with bibliography)


I ntroduction

In this chapter, we address the question of the features which make our learning
environments interactive. We chose interactivity as our topic, because, irrespective of our
individual pedagogic views, interaction, or communication, is the context in which
learning takes place. In other words, without interaction or communication (we use these
two concepts interchangeably) learning will not happen.
With respect to Second Language Acquisition (SLA), we expect that our focus on
interaction will help us to propose a critical approach to the manner in which these
studies frame their teaching models. This is important because the rationales that inform
those models also inform studies in second language teaching (SLT). Specifically, in this
chapter, we address the question of meaningful learning and argue that progress in this
aspect is held back by a belief in the notion of 'controlled learning as advocated by
prominent SLA and SLT researchers. The idea that research can or should control
students` meaning-making processes can be traced to the pedagogic convictions of the
early twentieth century that 'the essential element in teaching skill is to discover and use
the right method (Cunningham, 1972, pp. 103-4). In the course of this chapter, we will
show that this belief gives rise to research and pedagogic paradigms which, in fact,
prevent meaningful learning exactly because the meaning is hijacked by the researcher,
who is caught in a methodology. whereby one 'take|s| the things oI logic Ior the logic oI
things (Bourdieu, 1995, p. 49).
For example, Widdowson is a major critic of pedagogies of rote-learning which
advocate 'internalization oI units oI meaning so that they are put in store. so to speak.
ready Ior use when required (Widdowson, 1990, p. 119). And yet, he himself develops a
teaching model where he makes a distinction between language learning and language
use: 'The conditions appropriate Ior acquiring communicative resources are diIIerent
Irom the conditions oI their use (Widdowson. op. cit., p. 112). The distinction introduces
an element oI control and artiIiciality in Widdowson`s pedagogy. He calls Ior 'ways oI
presenting comprehension tasks so that the learner`s interest is engaged in spite oI the
artificiality, so that they are induced into co-operating with the contrivance
(Widdowson, op. cit., p. 108). Students` capacity to cope with the 'natural conditions oI
language use is the 'eventual obiective oI teachers/researchers (Widdowson. op. cit., p.
112), not the immediate context and goal.
By separating language learning from language use Widdowson creates a
situation where students` learning obiectives are identiIied by teachers/researchers. not by
the students. Further, he assumes that these learning objectives can be constructed
independently of the demands that students experience in specific contexts of their target
language interactions. This, in turn, implies that the logic which underpins teaching is
sufficiently universal to be able to account for these demands once students are in those
contexts. Consequently, this implies that this teaching is of value to students, because
they are themselves products oI this logic. In other words. in Widdowson`s model. there
is an assumption that the logic underpinning the teaching conditions and those of
language use is not only the same, but it is so natural that its value to the learning student
is self-evident.
However, as Bourdieu reminds us, taking the logic describing practice as the logic
of practice, is to ask of the logic of the logician (here the teacher/researcher) to give more
than it can give (Bourdieu, op. cit., p. 86). The teacher`s/researcher`s control in
Widowson`s model is very apparent. The learning obiectives derive their relevance Irom
the teacher`s/researcher`s sense oI what is right. not Irom students` own communicative
needs informed by practice and constructed in order to directly inform practice.
Consequently. it is not students` meaningIul participation in the world oI target language
practices that teachers/ researchers support, but the arguments supporting their selections
oI students` learning obiectives.
Despite some intellectual differences, prominent scholars like Long and Crooks
(1993) and Ellis (1991) also argue for pedagogically adjusted teaching conditions and
materials. For them, their beliefs regarding second language learning exclude the
possibility for beginning students to use materials or to participate in activities which
have not been pedagogically adjusted to their presumed level of linguistic processing. As
the quotations below illustrate, these views are based more on what appears 'logistically
impossible (Long & Crookes. op. cit., p. 40), rather than on tested experience:

Learners will only rarely work on the target tasks themselves, however, especially
in the early stages. That would often be too difficult, inefficient in terms of class
time, logistically impossible, and irrelevant for some learners in heterogeneous
classes when students` Iuture needs vary.
(Long & Crookes, ibid.)

As anyone who has tried to learn a language knows, acquisition depends on the
ability to identify words and phrases and this is almost impossible in the early
stages iI the only source oI input is authentic` native-speaker speech one reason
why listening to the radio or watching television is of little use in the early stages.
(Ellis, op. cit., p. 40)

Voices which call for a critical re-evaluation of this view remain on the periphery:

An example of authentic communication in the target language communication
by and for native speakers, writers or readers in that language may be seen as
too complex or too rich in many ways for it to be presented to learners without
some preselection and reorganization. However, when we search for, or decide
upon, some principles or criteria on which to base this selection and organisation,
we are confronted by further problems.
(Breen, Candlin & Waters, 1979, p. 1)

On the other hand. the idea oI students` meaningIul involvement in their own learning
takes a different turn in Australian educational policies (e.g. MCYEETYA, 1999). There,
the priority is given to students` ability to identiIy and resolve problems whose meaning
is to be explored against the interest oI the wider community. rather than the teacher`s (or
researcher`s) model oI what counts as a legitimate or relevant learning objective:

In particular. when students leave school. they should |.| have the capacity to
exercise judgment and responsibility in matters of morality, ethics and social
justice, and the capacity to make sense of their world, to think about how things
got to be the way they are, to make rational and informed decisions about their
own lives, and to accept responsibility for their own actions.
MCYEETYA, op.cit., Goals section, 1.3)

Important in the above statement is the fact that success is defined in terms of community
interests. In other words, Australia wants pedagogies which support this idea of success,
not ideas developed to support specific learning theories. In SLT, this translates into
Iorms oI teaching and learning where students` meaningful learning is supported with
students themselves selecting their learning objectives by evaluating the impact that their
selections have on their target language interlocutors. This is a methodology where
teachers/researchers do not facilitate learning as such. The notion of teachers as
facilitators of learning is very ambiguous. Instead, from our perspective, we prefer to
speak of teachers/researchers as facilitating access to feedback paths allowing students to
assess the impact or the significance of their actions by mobilising their own various
schemes of perception and production. This is very different from conventional thinking
which prepares students for acting in the world some day in the future, rather than
supporting students` participation in the world of the here and now. For example, in Lian
(2004). meaningIul learning is conceptualised as derived Irom and supporting students`
immediate and critical participation in the world:

The learning experience needs to be complexified rather than simplified. This
means that natural language in action should not be presented, in the first
instance, stripped from its links with other systems. Learning needs to begin with
authentic language in authentic contexts and then be subjected to a process of
investigation by the learner through the use of appropriate tools and feedback
mechanisms. |.|
(Lian, op. cit. p. 5)

In order to explore the tensions exemplified above in relation to the idea of meaningful
learning, we turn to the concept of interaction to provide us with a framework which, we
believe, should help us elicit aspects of pedagogy enabling communication and hence
learning. To this end, first we illustrate how the cognitive and sociocultural SLA
approaches conceptualise interactive models of learning. We construct a critique of their
concepts of interaction against examples of teaching activities developed within those
respective frameworks. Next, we propose a dialogic model for pedagogic and SLA
research based on the concept of interaction which helps us to break with the 'teacher`s
pretension to mastery (Kostogriz & Doecke. 2007. p. 16) which is present in the
previous examples. We present interaction as contexts of strategic action whose focal
aspect is the capacity of individuals to listen and, as a result, to induce the same process
in their interlocutors. We suggest ways in which the examples of the teaching activities
examined earlier could be modified in order to be congruent with the principles of the
dialogic model of inquiry. We conclude the chapter by summarising its main threads.

Background
In SLA studies and in research in second language teaching, it is largely taken for granted
that (a) students learn by interacting with the second language and (b) SLA research
investigates how students` interactions aIIect their learning process. Thus. the cognitive
and the sociocultural research paradigms, the dominant paradigms in the field, do not
question whether their students interact with the second language, but whether they
interact with the right sort of second language. This is very important, because depending
on the rationale, researchers/teachers will construct teaching strategies targeting different
units of knowledge which they identify as LANGUAGE:

Although we subscribe to Long`s (1983a. 1983b; Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991)
previously published views on the importance of studying interaction as a way of
gaining insight into the acquisition and use of resources, we do not subscribe to
SLA`s generally adopted methodology Ior the analysis of interaction.
(Firth & Wagner, 1998, p. 92)

It Iollows that relevance oI the units oI knowledge to the students` learning and taught by
each approach is validated externally to students, and on their behalf, in reference to a
theory of language, be it language as a theory of grammar (Gregg, 1996) or the expert`s
knowledge of the rules of language use (Lantolf, 2000). However, being locked in its
own frame of reference, research has no way of demonstrating that its teaching strategies
account for perspectives other than its own. This would also include students`
perspectives. Consequently, research has no means available for demonstrating that the
interactional contexts that it creates enable it to listen to the students and, as a result, to
provide them with the right sort of language, so to speak. It is this issue of being able to
listen to the needs of students that we address in this article. This is important if
teachers/researchers are to support students, because without listening, there can be no
interaction and, as a result, no learning.

I nteraction and cognitive SL A research

We begin our investigation of interaction in the cognitive and the sociocultural
approaches by focusing first on their concepts of task and activity as the core contexts
supporting interaction and, therefore, learning.
Doughty and Long (2003) attempt to relate the SLA findings to second language
teaching with the assistance of technology. Their argument for interactionally-negotiated
adjustments (Long 1996) (e.g. repetition; confirmation checks, comprehension checks,
and clarification requests; rearrangement of utterances, paraphrasing) is that they help
students to make a link between linguistic and other information, thus, it is assumed,
reducing their processing load (Doughty & Long, op. cit., p. 51). The nature of this other
information is not specified, but it is somehow to be obtained by students working with
pedagogically adjusted tasks and pedagogically adjusted texts (Doughty & Long, op. cit.,
p. 56-57). This means that decisions regarding the conditions which would be sufficient
to enable students` learning are made by the researcher/teacher. But how is the
researcher/teacher to tell whether his/her signals are suIIicient to orient students`
attention toward the points of breakdown in the links which they make between linguistic
and other information? Identifying the points of breakdown is important, because, as a
study by Herrmann, Friederici, Oertel, Maess, Hahne & Alter (2003) shows, when
students work with insufficient clues, their brain will generate the missing information,
and they will do so by resorting to what they know, i.e. their first language. Thus, while
requests for repair. e.g. 'Huh? (Long 1996. p. 449), may function as signalling some
form of problem, these requests are produced by the teacher/researcher and, as a result,
reflect the mechanisms which regulate his/her expectations of appropriateness, and not
the students`.
A teacher`s correction: 'You have many Iriends is very diIIerent Irom the
student`s original: 'I many Iren. Also. the teacher`s: 'child psychology? you studied
child psychology? is very diIIerent Irom the student`s original: 'I read psychology inIant
inIantile (Pica. Holliday. Lewis & Morgenthaler, 1989, p. 66). Our point is that teachers`
corrections, questions, modifications and requests for repetition, all result in a change
away Irom the student`s original sentence and hence Irom the original conditions in
which the problems arose. It follows that with every new request for correction, students
are no longer dealing with the same task and, hence, with the same set of processes.
Instead, with every new request, their problems keep changing and their initial problem is
not resolved. In other words, the problem which is being solved is a problem which the
teacher believes that students have. There is therefore the potential for significant
dissonance between what the teacher believes the students are experiencing and what
they are actually experiencing. The dissonance arises, because the rationale for
interactionally-negotiated adjustments equips teachers with the same tools both for acting
upon the perceived needs of the learning students and for evaluating the impact of those
actions. That is, teachers do not have the means for looking at their actions outside the
single perspective of those tools. This means they do not have the resources for
considering other points of view, including those of the students. As we argued above,
without such tools, teachers are not listening. In this perspective, interactionally-
negotiated adjustments cannot be said to offer interactional learning conditions. In fact,
they look more like a monologue where teachers react to what they themselves know,
rather than to what their students know.


I nteraction, technology and sociocultural SL A research

The sociocultural approach to SLA studies, despite its strong advocacy of interaction as a
learning context, does not appear to have solved the problem of listening. We have
selected three studies to illustrate this point.

In a writing exercise described by Kramsch (2000), students were asked to summarise in
four to five sentences a particular story which they had been given to read. Through this
activity, Kramsch sought to enable her students to take a more active and more
responsible approach to their own writing (Kramsch, op. cit., p. 149). And yet, the
activity which she set was confusing to students. As Kramsch comments, Jeff, for
example, read the request to summarise the story as yet another activity to please the
teacher. However, why were all the students confused (Kramsch, op. cit., p. 150)?

When evaluating Kramsch`s writing activity. we looked at the context oI that activity
from the perspective of the purposes (stakes) that informed and shaped the students`
participation. Kramsch herselI recognises that 'signs are the result oI non-arbitrary
selections (Kramsch. op. cit., p. 143). This means that a person`s Iorm oI
communicative engagement reflects a multitude of decisions. And yet, at each juncture in
the students` exercise. the communicative parameters were set by Kramsch and Iormed
the Iramework oI the students` activity. This is very diIIerent Irom an authentic
communicative setting where this framework is an object of strategic choices which, in
turn, inform further selections, so as to secure an appropriate communicative impact
(Freadman, 1987, p. 44). From the students` perspective. the kind oI the story that they
read and were to summarise, the very demand for the summary, the choice of a
'summary as an appropriate genre. its length. the medium and their position in relation
to their interlocutors, were all arbitrary decisions made by the teacher. The students were
asked to act Irom within these parameters and to 'accept the situation as given, rather
than being challenged to 'imagine and eIIect active intervention in the situations that
aIIect them (Freadman, 1994, p. 21).
Our issue is not that students were told to write summaries as such. Rather, the
issue is that the form of the activity selected by Kramsch did not challenge students to
consider and evaluate the bigger picture of the activity, including their own place in its
context and the stakes which they wished to pursue. Why read a story, and why this one
and not another? Why summarise it? Thus, with the expert/teacher in control over the
obiects oI the students` learning. the activity. instead oI being an occasion Ior the students
to assert their authority over a discursive situation (Freadman, ibid.), it required students
to be submissive to the law of the expert. Our criticism stands: by limiting the pool of
students` decisions to those allowed by the teacher. the teacher also limited her own
opportunities to learn about, and therefore to listen to, the actual problems which an
activity of writing a summary might have revealed.
In other studies, and using computer-mediated-communication this time, Kramsch
and Thorne (2002) and Furstenberg, Levet, English & Maillet (2001), encounter a similar
problem. The projects involved American students of French in a discussion on the
subject of cultural differences with students from France. The idea was for American and
French students to engage in a discussion about those differences from the perspective of
the expertise of each group. However, as in the writing activity above, the reasons which
were to engage students into the conversation about cultural differences have never been
constructed by the teachers as objects of students` negotiation and, as a result, as an
occasion for learning. Instead, teachers imposed the object of learning (i.e. cultural
differences), thus immediately denying students the capacity to participate in this process.
As a result, students were requested to act on intentions which were not theirs and whose
meaning in relation to their own world and to the world outside the classroom they could
not contest or explore.
The possibility of negotiating the purpose of the activity, thus making it their
own, was removed from the students. And the outcome of this decision was confusion.
As Eric`s (an American student) commentary shows, for the entire duration of the study
neither group quite understood what the interactions were meant to achieve: '|I|t seems
true that they weren`t doing the same thing we were. It seemed like, you know, we had a
task. And they. it seemed like. I didn`t know what they were doing (Thorne, 2003, p.
45). And yet, allowing students to negotiate the purpose of the activity would have
created an opportunity for the students to construct its meaning by actively making
decisions about its Iorm and Iunction against a multitude oI Iactors. From the teachers`
perspective, this would allow them to critically approach the means by which they judged
the relevance of the tools with which they provide students to assist their learning
(evaluation and construction) process. It is already clear that the path which we are
favouring places teachers in the role oI students` interlocutors. rather than in that of an
expert armed with the discourse of science (cf. Kostogriz & Doecke, op. cit., p. 17).
.
Listening in interaction

Our discussion above has helped us to construct the concept of listening as, first and
Ioremost. working with interpretations other than one`s own. We argued that this concept
of listening is missing in teaching models based on the cognitive and sociocultural
Irameworks where students` learning needs are constructed Ior them. rather than by them.
This. in turn. eliminates the need Ior students` voices and their critical participation in the
process of meaning-making. In this section, we propose a model for pedagogic research
which brings to the forefront the notion of listening as a process involving interlocutors in
questioning the assumptions with which they entered their interactive contexts in order to
enhance the strategies for acting upon one another. Thus the interlocutors act in order to
affect the initial conditions which generated ambiguity and, hence, the need for
communication/interaction. Even a simple act of greeting involves a multitude of
decisions, all constructed with the objective of eliminating the potential for ambiguity, for
example, appearing impolite.
The notion of interaction or communication as a process oriented toward eliminating
ambiguity is not new. In the context oI his discussion oI the teaching oI French culture`.
Chambers (1996) explains negotiation as a context where understandings are the product
of a process oI elimination. Thus 'any given local context |.| is understandable as
significant only as a Iactor oI the other possible contextual mediations that it excludes
(Chambers, op. cit., p. 147). The more is rejected, the more informed are our
understandings. We establish significance of the meaning-making structures which we
construct and apply by relating and making choices between the possibilities that are
available to us. Thus we may say that significance is a function of what we identify as
insigniIicant. As a result. individuals` communicative competence emerges as a history of
internally-formed and strategically-informed differences, constructed with a view to
generating increasingly more consistent internal networks of relationships capable of
reducing conflict between them.
To follow Chambers, interlocutors do not interact with each other by merging or
matching structures, as implied by the dominant approaches in SLA research. Instead, in
this framework, interaction, and hence listening, are events engaging individuals in a
continual process of questioning and thereby re-evaluating the strategic power of the
meaning-making structures upon which they act. They do so by constructing conflicting
representations of the object of their negotiation, with the aim of selecting strategies
(meaning-making structures) best capable of generating tension in the logics of their
interlocutors, thus forcing them to reconsider the premises upon which they act. In the
course of this process, each party becomes affected as each of the interlocutors seeks to
reformulate their own perceptions of the object of their interaction in order to generate
the strategically most powerful responses. To summarise, the steps of this process
involve:
(a) constructing conflicting representations of the object of negotiation enabling
interlocutors to question the strategic impact of their own responses;
(b) generating and evaluating new strategies, by
(c) eliminating (or rejecting) the least powerful ones from an array of internally-
formed and strategically-informed conflicting possibilities.

The idea of interaction as a process involving strategic evaluation oI one`s meaning-
making structures also means that language learning is not about acquiring LANGUAGE
defined as fixed sets of form-function relationships located in an expert or a theory of
grammar. Rather, it is about constructing strategies which function as resources for
subsequent contexts of interaction. The learning process is probably never-ending as, for
as long as we communicate, there is a need for re-evaluation (i.e. listening). This
conceptualisation of learning allows us capture the spirit oI Wertsch`s (1992) thoughts on
this issue. He criticises approaches where learning is seen as the development of the kind
of mastery to conform to an existing sociocultural setting (Wertsch op. cit., para. 12). He
opposes this to a concept of learning which enables active use of meaning systems that
will have a transforming effect (Wertsch, ibid.).

Learning as communication: A dialogic model for pedagogic and SL A studies

Since learning takes place in the context of interaction, we take the view that
understanding interaction is critical to approaching the problem of facilitating learning.
It therefore follows that learning theories are secondary to this goal as the primary
objective of a theory must be to induce dialogue (ambiguity), not learning. Learning is an
outcome of dialogue.
So far we have presented dialogue as an internal process, generated to affect
others and, as a result, involving individuals in questioning and evaluating the strategic
power of their own criteria of judgment, thus ultimately affecting those too. While the
perception arises that interlocutors talk to each other, in fact, their interaction is a product
oI. and an occasion Ior. individuals` own internal dialogue. Our capacity to solve
problems, therefore, is largely determined by the dialogic opportunities to which we have
been exposed either by life in general or our educational institutions. The greater these
opportunities, the greater is the pool of resources upon which we can draw. This is a very
important point to which we will return later.

Figure 1 below helps us to illustrate how the idea of learning as an outcome and occasion
for dialogue translates into pedagogic research and the study of the learning process
itself.





Figure 1: The concept of dialogic inquiry in L2-teaching research

















In Figure 1, we show dialogic inquiry as strategically or pragmatically oriented, as its
questions and the explanatory power of its constructs are formed only and specifically to
facilitate students` enhanced participation in the target language contexts. There is no
concept of LANGUAGE or LANGUAGE USE that the inquiry seeks to inform and
which, as a result, would limit its intellectual boundaries. There is no authority discourse
endowed with the power to tell it as it is. This brings us to the next feature of dialogic
inquiry.
Dialogic inquiry is critical, because, in the absence of authority discourses, it can
expand its validation bases and, thereby its intellectual resources, only by questioning the
strategic power of the assumptions which form its evaluation criteria. As in Latour (1999)
and Calhoun (1995, p. 175), dialogic inquiry involves the creation of rich articulations
between conflicting (seemingly incommensurable) representations of the object of
inquiry. all Iorming 'highly contentIul theories which must be subiect to a continual play
oI interpretation (Calhoun. op. cit., p. 91). Thus, like a person, a theory (or a series of
theories) that is created becomes 'interesting. deep. proIound, worthwhile when it
resonates with others, is affected, moved, put into motion by new entities whose
diIIerences are registered in new and unexpected ways (Latour. op. cit., Articulations
and propositions section, para. 8).
The ethical aspect of the proposed model of dialogic inquiry comes from the
recognition that all our attempts to understand are ultimately sourced in, and reflect,
interests which emerge from the history of our earlier interactions. Dialogic inquiry
explores those interests without attributing to any single model the monopoly on truth or
meaning. By the same token, dialogic inquiry does not relativise everything to the
detriment of all values. Instead, it examines the explanatory (strategic) potential of
perspectives which is possible when conflicting points of view are engaged and related.
Consequently, explanations become enriched by the kinds of limitations which this
crisscrossing helps to establish (the more is rejected, the more informed our

Research
Target
language
contexts

Students
understandings become). Next, new models are built as new intellectual spaces are
opened up.
The concept of dialogue as enabling listening by engaging differences so as to
affect these differences echoes the dialogic ethics of Kostogriz and Doecke (2007) where
they see 'dialogical ethics spring[ing] from a recognition of the fact that the Other has a
power to shape my consciousness of self and my worldview (Kostogriz & Doecke, op.
cit., p. 15). However, unlike Kostogriz and Doecke. we do not locate 'the Other in
people as such. Rather, we see it as forms of organisation which are competing for truth
and generating conflict as a result of the collision of the historically-constructed interests
which they inform. In this dialogic context, although 'the Other is constructed in order
to affect, it is also internally constructed. Consequently, it informs internal dialogues.
This is the paradox of communication (Bourdieu 1991, p. 39). While the perception arises
that interlocutors act upon one another, in fact, their experience of conflict is a product of,
and an occasion Ior. individuals` own internal dialogue. The effects of their interactions
are relative to the feedback opportunities with which they engage, thus reflecting the
historical and the social dimensions of this process.
The dialogic model presented in Figure 1 suggests a shift in SLA studies which
relates to their objective, methodology and the relationship which they create with the
learning students.
Obj ective: The strategic or pragmatic aspect of dialogic inquiry challenges SLA
studies to explore what it knows about the conditions aIIecting students` learning by
investigating. not by regulating. students` target language interactions. Figure 1 shows
students interacting with target language contexts and with the constraints which regulate
those contexts. Students` communicative and learning obiectives are not determined by
research (there is no arrow linking target language contexts and research), but by the
students. This sets the dialogic model apart from the currently dominant paradigms of
SLA studies. Here, the role of research is not to teach toward predetermined objectives
(the rules oI language and language use). but to enhance students` evaluation processes
and thereby their capacity to listen to and to generate the same effect in their
interlocutors. The more effective research becomes in this objective, the more critically-
informed is its own capacity to listen to and to generate the same effect in the learning
students. Increasing interactivity of the learning conditions means facilitating this form of
analysis. Researchers do so by constructing feedback paths enabling students to call
upon, and to generate a dialogue between, a multitude of conflicting representations of
the understandings upon which they act. As we said earlier, the greater these
opportunities, the greater the pool of resources upon which students can draw to make
their judgments. This means enabling students to engage different sensory modalities and
memory links to evaluate expectations with which they enter their specific
communicative contexts against those of their interlocutors (e.g. Lian, 2004).
As Bourdieu (1995, p. 74) and Mead (1964, p. 45) argued, redundancy provides
for a whole range of individual differences in sensory modalities, thus allowing people to
use information from different systems to elicit principles for generating new practices.
The support which this form of teaching demands requires a new research paradigm, no
longer caught up in the logic of its own arguments (i.e. a study which is referred to as
learning increasingly more and more about less and less). The alternative that we propose
is that research embraces challenges enabling the discovery of the powers and limitations
hidden in the explanations which it produces. Assisting the practice of second language
learning is a wonderIul context Ior such research. where the quality oI students`
interactions can provide research with questions and solutions to problems located in
practice, not theory.
Research and students: In the dialogic model, research seeks to enable critically
informed self-regulation. To support this self-regulation process, research behaves like a
students` interlocutor. Thus. researchers observe students` target language interactions
and construct strategies which their analysis makes them believe to be able to generate
ambiguity in students` assessment oI the understandings which inIorm their target
language interactions at hand. In turn. Irom the students` perspective. the Iocus is on
reducing ambiguity in the assessment criteria. There is a dialogic relationship between
researchers and students. It is dialogic, because each party is given the opportunity to
critically evaluate the impact of the understandings which inform their actions against the
judgments of the other, without those judgments actually determining the outcomes of
those evaluations. This is because the outcomes are products of separate histories and, as
a result, inform different interests. Thus while researchers` critique Ieeds back into their
theoretical reIlections. in turn. students` critical evaluations arise in the context of their
target language interactions with the objective of informing those. We distinguish this
dialogic structure from hierarchical models of teaching. In the hierarchical models, as we
showed earlier, the learning objectives are imposed upon the students. They are
constructed in reference to theoretical concepts of language and language learning to the
detriment of the concerns for interactive learning.
Dialogue as methodology: As explained earlier, a critical or dialogic inquiry
implies a methodology which proceeds by questioning, rather than asserting, the validity
of the assumptions upon which it constructs its interpretive structures. Exploring one
system`s powers against others is possible because, as explained by Chambers, all
systems are interconnected by virtue of what they include and exclude. This allows for
their potentially infinite reorganisation and change. The methodology of critique, or
dialogue, counteracts approaches which reduce 'the irreducible plurality oI perspectives
on the same reality to a speciIic perspective which then Iunctions as 'a divine point oI
view Irom which the whole reality is visible (Prigogine & Stengers. 1984, p. 225).


Conclusion: Implications for future research

In this chapter we proposed a critique of pedagogic and SLA research studies which has
allowed us to challenge the capacity of those studies, in the teaching structures which
they create, to account Ior students` voices and, as a result, to listen to the needs of their
students. Further, we proposed a dialogic model for those studies believing that this
process of listening can be accommodated, with teachers and researchers approaching the
assessment of the impact of their teaching strategies through a dialogue with rival
explanatory models. Consequently, with no discourse of authority available, this
methodology would necessarily result in researchers/teachers seeking to trigger the same
dialogic process in the learning students. We suggested that the dialogue between
students and research would support each party in their own endeavours, with neither
hijacking the process in the name of a particular theory of language or language learning.
Space does not permit us to go into a greater detail of explaining how the model
would work. However, practical examples are offered in some of our earlier publications
(Lian, 2004; Lian, 2005: 319-334; Lian, 2006). Those readings, together with our
discussion in this chapter allow us to suggest that hierarchical teaching activities, like
those examined in this chapter, can offer opportunities for dialogic learning provided
their focus shifts from microtasks, targeting microskills imposed by teachers, to
macrotasks where students` learning objectives emerge as a result of the dialogic
opportunities created when participating in the life of target language practices and with
the support of the feedback mechanisms created by the teachers/researchers. Examples of
macrotasks facilitating one`s awareness oI cultural diIIerences (and similarities) can be
'Creating a day on French television. 'Creating a radio station Ior regional schools.
'Creating a website containing biographies oI people that we respect. Against the
context of those tasks, for example, the activity of writing a summary would change from
being teacher-driven to being driven by students` negotiations of their own expectations
against those whom they depict as their interlocutors. Decisions as to what students
would summarise, how, when, for whom and why would then involve complex
reflections and would engage students` entire histories. thus ensuring their meaningful
participation in the learning process. Further, from the perspectives of concerns with
students linking linguistic and non-linguistic structures. to Iollow Long and Doughty`s
dichotomy, the opportunities for students to shape the activities which would ensue in the
macrotask would allow students to play an active role in determining the affecting power
(signification) of the meaning-making structures which they select. Lian (2004) illustrates
some examples how this power to choose could be enhanced with feedback support
systems designed to induce dialogic learning. Moreover, macrotasks reflect the goals of
policies mentioned earlier in this paper, which call for pedagogies supporting students`
reflective, engaged and critical participation in the lives of their wider community.
Macrotasks therefore are an occasion for a multitude of microskills to be developed, with
none being taught as a meaningful object in its own right. Their meaning and thus
relevance to students` learning is validated by the students in the contexts of their
participation. Consequently students progress while feeling that they actually are
progressing.

We concur with Kostogriz and Doecke that the future of second language teaching lies in
'investigating the conditions oI possibility oI recognizing the enriching potential of
alterity in meaning-making (Kostogriz & Doecke. op. cit., p. 20).


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