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Q & A with Diane Larsen-Freeman

Daniel Israel

发布日期: 2019年5月28日

This is the latest Q & A in a series of interviews with key figures from the world of language and linguistics. Diane Larsen-Freeman is a linguist best-known for her ground-breaking academic writings regarding grammar and second language acquisition (SLA). This blog begins with questions of a biographical nature, among others, and moves onto her opinions about quotes by key theorists.

?Who is the real Diane-Larsen Freeman?

Q1) What were your own experiences of learning English grammar (i.e. methods, affinity)?

A – I am old enough to have had instruction in traditional grammar. I never diagrammed sentences, but I did learn about sentence construction and parts of speech. I also learned about English grammar by comparing it to the other languages that I studied. I can’t say that I was fond of either a traditional or a comparative approach, although I do recall the satisfaction of seeing the orderliness of the systems and how a change in any one form could result in a different meaning. I later went on to propose a tri-partite model of grammar, which maintains that in order to account for the use of grammar, three dimensions are needed: form, meaning, and use. By “use” I mean the effect of the social context or discourse co-text on the grammatical form chosen for a particular function or meaning. This ternary model provides a way to compile what is known about the accurate, meaningful, and appropriate use of grammar.

Q2) What led you to become fascinated in SLA?

A – For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by human learning. For this reason, I majored in psychology as an undergraduate so that I could study theories of learning. After graduating, I entered the U.S. Peace Corps and was sent to Malaysia for two years to teach English at a government second school in Sabah. It was there that I became fascinated with the learning of language. I reasoned that I could become a better teacher if I understood language learning and taught in harmony with my students’ natural proclivity. The pursuit of understanding learning led me to graduate school at the University of Michigan in 1972. It was an exciting time in linguistics and psychology, and those of us interested in second language acquisition were discovering each other and searching for developmental sequences and acquisition/accuracy orders. In so doing, we collectively participated in launching a new field.

These days, I seek a more holistic and ecological understanding of SLA, which I prefer to call SLD, second language development. I favour Complex Dynamic Systems Theory, for its insights into the variable, nonlinear, and dynamic process of learning a new language.

Q3) Can you tell us about one individual who has inspired you in a professional capacity during the course of your career?

A – Naming one person is difficult. I suppose in the field of SLA, I would have to point to Evelyn Hatch. Evelyn was on the UCLA faculty, which I joined after earning my doctorate in linguistics. Evelyn had mentored a number of graduate students, who conducted case studies of English language learners. These studies, along with others, were published in her book of SLA readings. They were among the first publications in the nascent field. Evelyn was also responsible for articulating the two fundamental questions guiding research in SLA. The first was the question of the nature of the SLA process; the second was the differential success question, i.e., why certain students are more successful than others in learning second languages. These questions have informed many research agendas over the years.

Q4) If you could recommend one grammar reference book for English teachers, which would it be and why?

A – I could readily nominate A University Grammar of English (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973), Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al., 1999), and Cambridge Grammar of English (Carter & McCarthy, 2006), but if you are asking me to recommend just one, I would have to immodestly mention my book with Marianne Celce-Murcia (The Grammar Book: Form, Meaning, and Use for English Language Teachers, 2015, third edition, by Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia). It is a course book, but also a reference grammar because readers of previous editions kept asking us questions that we felt compelled to try to answer. Thus, the book went from 600 pages in the original edition to now almost 1,000 pages in the latest edition. As the title indicates, we use the three-part model of grammar that I mentioned earlier as an organizational framework for every chapter.

Q5) If you were the Minister of Education where you are, which changes to the system would you instigate?

A – I would promote the value of knowing at least one other language. Its value would not only be in enabling communication, but also in helping to bridge divides among people who come from different walks of life. This would necessitate excellent teacher education and teaching materials, reasonable class sizes, and a sustained articulated curriculum. I would also recommend two-way immersion as a model. I would make sure that L1 language and literacy were established in order to make knowledge of a new language additive, not subtractive and not leaving it up to students and the students’ families to maintain their heritage language.

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Quotes by key language & linguistics theorists

Q6) “Language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar” (Michael Lewis, The Lexical Approach, 1993)

A – Certainly statements such as these, with corpus linguistics investigations to support them, have led us to acknowledge the power of lexical patterns in explaining language and its use. However, I prefer Michael Halliday’s term, “lexicogrammatical,” rather than foregrounding one over the other. There is pedagogical value in teaching both, sometimes together, as with lexicalized sentence patterns, sometimes separately, as in helping students understand the contribution of tense-aspect to discourse coherence.

Q7) “Language acquisition proceeds best when the acquirer is “open” to the input, not “on the defensive”; not anxious about performance.” (Stephen D. Krashen, https://l2mastery.com/blog/stephen-krashen/)

A –A distinction in the psychological literature has been made between facilitative and debilitative anxiety, where the former is seen to enhance someone’s performance, although I would agree that students’ feeling defensive is not conducive to their learning. I do object to the use of the term “input,” however. I don’t like thinking of my students as computers. Further, suggesting that teachers should be the provider of comprehensible input denies learner agency. I agree with Leo van Lier in making the case for affordances rather than input. Affordances do not exist as properties in the ambient language, but rather as the way that the student relates to it. This has important implications for teaching.

Q8) “Language changes and moves in a different direction evolving all the time. Where a lot of people see deterioration, I see expressive development” (David Crystal, https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1457440)

A – I agree with this statement. I can easily name two dozen grammar “rules” that have changed over my professional life span. While some prescriptivists might see this as deterioration, in all cases it is clear that the changes render new meanings in place of old forms.

Q9) “Ever since the advent, at least half a century ago, of SLA as an academic discipline in its own right, researchers have been in general agreement that a preselected syllabus of grammatical structures only accidentally reflects the way that languages are learned”. (Scott Thornbury, https://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolalis/issues/2018-03-09/3.html)

A – At the onset of the modern-day study of second language acquisition, researchers were seeking universals, in keeping with the academic Zeitgeist at the time. While evidence for developmental sequences and accuracy/acquisition orders was adduced, it was also clear that there were L1 influences and that learners followed their own developmental paths. Therefore, I mostly agree with this statement, but I would add two more points. First, as I have just written, it is helpful to think of affordances. In other words, rather than expecting learning to follow on from teaching, teachers should work on helping students to relate to the material. Second, sometimes teachers have responsibility for “covering” certain grammatical points. In this case, I think that thinking in terms of a checklist, rather than a syllabus, makes sense. What I mean is that rather than sticking firmly to a sequence, structures should be introduced when students show a readiness to learn.

Q10) - “Where rules provide a description of how an item of grammar can be used in general, exploring reasons encourages learners to focus on the creator, genre and context of a text to see why they are using a specific language feature in that specific instance. This helps the students to not only understand the text but also the role of the grammar feature within it” (Danny Norrington-Davies, https://www.des.org.gr/rules-to-reasons/)

A – A long ago I wrote about teaching reasons (as well as rules) for why grammar structures are the way they are, so I agree with this statement. Grammar is a lot less arbitrary than it may seem. However, I would take it a step further. It is not only respectful of learners’ cognitive powers to teach them or have them discover reasons for themselves, it is also empowering. Reasons are also more empowering because they apply to a variety of disparate structures. For example, understanding the end weight principle explains various syntactic structures, such as particle separation in separable phrasal verbs, indirect-direct object sequence, and the use of existential there.

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