Code Choice in the Language Classroom

Glenn S. Levine

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781847694942
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Enseñanza de las artes lingüísticas

Code Choice in the Language Classroom argues that the foreign language classroom is and should be regarded as a multilingual community of practice rather than as a perpetually deficient imitator of an exclusive second-language environment. From a sociocultural and ecological perspective, Levine guides the reader through a theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical treatment of the important roles of the first language, and of code-switching practices, in the language classroom. Intended for SLA researchers, language teachers, language program directors, and graduate students of foreign languages and literatures, the book develops a framework for thinking about all aspects of code choice in the language classroom and offers concrete proposals for designing and carrying out instruction in a multilingual classroom community of practice.

Part 1
Conceptual Framework

Chapter 1
Monolingual Norms and Multilingual Realities

In our days of frequent border crossings, and of multilingual multicultural foreign language classrooms, it is appropriate to rethink the monolingual native speaker norms as the target of foreign language education. As we revisit the marked and unmarked forms of language usership, I propose that we make the intercultural speaker the unmarked form, the infinite of language use, and the monolingual monocultural speaker a slowly disappearing species or a nationalistic myth.

(Kramsch, 1998:30)

We reach here the very principle of myth: it transforms history into nature.

(Barthes, 1972: 129)

Code Choice in the Classroom, the Classroom in Society

The purpose of this book is to provide language teachers, teachers in training and teacher trainers with a conceptual and curricular framework for rethinking what happens in the classroom in terms of multiple codes. Code choice in classroom communication is admittedly a frequent and central concern for teachers and students. For teachers, it usually has to do with preventing students from using their first language (L1); for students, it is often about how to use the L1 and still function and succeed in the language classroom. In scholarship on second language (L2) learning, code choice has remained, for the most part, a tangential concern. A second purpose of this book is, then, to move the issue of code choice to a more central place in our thinking about L2 theory, curriculum, practice and research.

It is no accident that the title of this book emphasizes code choice rather than code-switching, because much of what I will argue is based on learner choices in classroom interaction and teacher choices in curriculum design and teaching practice. For the typical high school or university student in the USA, whether or not to study an L2 is often not a matter of choice. But most other aspects of the endeavor are: which language to study, when to study, how much energy or effort to invest in it, whether and when to speak the language (except when called on by the teacher), and crucially, whether one should buy into using the L2 in the contexts in which the instructor and the curriculum mandate.¹ Unfortunately, many students are probably not aware of many of these choices as they make them. Our job as curriculum designers and teachers, then, is to find ways of raising learners’ awareness of choice, of facilitating the management of code-switching in classroom conversation, which means raising awareness of which language to use, with whom, when and why. The larger purpose of this endeavor is to provide students with affordances for language learning through multiple code use in the classroom, and ultimately to help them become bilingual users of L1 and L2. It is also to help teachers and learners to recognize and realize the language classroom’s potential, not just for learning a new language and culture, but to make critical intercultural connections about language, discourses and life.

To accomplish these goals, we must develop an approach to treating the language classroom as an authentic social environment in its own right, rather than as an artificial aberration from normal social life, and for promoting learner autonomy by allowing learners a say in the ways code choices are made. For language professionals, whether researchers or classroom teachers, this book seeks to call attention to an area of instructed L2 learning that has received relatively little attention, and actually no attention at all in some of the areas of inquiry in which it would be most needed.

In its current ‘post-methods’ form (Kumaravadivelu, 2003; Richards & Rodgers, 2001: 244), L2 teaching and learning is a varied and sophisticated contrivance, striving to be a virtual second-language and second-culture environment within four walls and against the clock of perpetually inadequate numbers of instructional contact hours. In recent years, numerous scholars have called our attention to many problematic aspects of the ways we understand this ostensibly artificial microcosm (Atkinson, 2002; Breen, 1985; Firth & Wagner, 1997; Kumaravadivelu, 2003, 2005; Lantolf & Appel, 1994; Reagan & Osborn, 2002; Savignon, 2002; Schulz, 2006; Tudor, 2001; van Lier, 1988). One of these aspects is that, by and large, a monolingual set of norms and ideals is assumed and applied to classroom practices (Blyth, 1995; Butzkamm, 2003; V.J. Cook, 2001; Kramsch, 1997, 1998, 2009; Turnbull & Dailey-O’Cain, 2009). We proceed with the assumption that if the instructor teaches in the L2 and students carry out activities in the same code, then the lingua franca of the classroom is the L2. At worst, we stigmatize the use of the L1. At best, we often see little pedagogical value in its use (Macaro, 2001). Considering the limited number of contact hours of most university language courses, this is understandable; most instructors rightly seek to use every available minute for meaningful L2 communication. Yet, as observed and demonstrated empirically by some scholars, the language classroom is a multilingual environment (Antón & DiCamilla, 1999; Belz, 2002, 2003; Blyth, 1995; Chavez, 2003; V.J. Cook, 1999, 2001; Kramsch, 1997, 1998; Levine, 2003, 2005; Liebscher & Dailey-O’Cain, 2004). This means that for each learner, at least two languages are involved in the L2 learning process. For us to deny, in our pedagogy, a role for the cognitively and socially dominant language, is to ignore a large part of the L2 learning process and the individual learner’s personal experience. With an increasing acceptance of eclectic and critical approaches to language teaching and learning and of pedagogical implementation of ecological and sociocultural approaches, the time is ripe for the development of a principled, multilingual approach to language classroom communication.

Code Choice and Language Pedagogy

The multilingual approach I propose proceeds from four working assumptions about code choice and language teaching and learning. First, the curricular proposals presented in this book do not mean that the classroom should seek to re-create the norms of societal multilingual environments (V.J. Cook, 2001).² Just as the assumption of a monolingual norm is naïve and insufficient on its own, so too is the assumption that it is equivalent to a multilingual environment outside the classroom. The contrived nature of communication in most language classrooms is ubiquitous (compared with non-instructional learning environments; see van Lier, 1988, 1996; Wenger, 1998), and any pedagogy considering code choice must balance the fact that it is a multilingual environment with the fact that it is, in many regards, an ‘artificial’ one, at least in terms of the settings and contexts that prevail in people’s daily lives. Edmondson (1985: 162) points out that, ‘we seek in the classroom to teach people how to talk when they are not being taught’. While this is certainly true, it is also crucial to note that this classroom artificiality of communication does not mean it is not also authentic human communication. Indeed, this very feature of classroom communication allows us – and, in fact, requires us – to develop a principled, theoretically motivated approach to the use of both L2 and L1. This book offers such an approach, to explore the ways in which language learners should acquire not only the idealized monolingual norms of communicative competence, but also those of multilingual and intercultural communicative competence (By-ram, 1997; Kramsch, 1993).³

The second working assumption is that some sorts of classroom code choice practices can facilitate L2 use, and thus development, and some sorts can undermine or frustrate it. As yet, I don’t believe anyone has been able to test this claim empirically, it is one of those aspects of teaching and learning that teachers just ‘know’. It is also one of the red threads, whether expressed or not, in much of the literature dealing with code choice in the language classroom. Put another way, the question is: does L1 use foster or hinder L2 use and successful L2 learning? The problem with testing this empirically is that one would seek to control for myriad other factors. Yet, code choice is not the same as a morphosyntactic or phonological feature that can be identified, observed, counted and so forth (at Time 1 the feature X is absent and at Time 2 it is present). Code choice pervades all sorts of encounters between teacher and students and among students, from the first day of introductory instruction through the most advanced levels, and locating cause-effect relationships, or even significant associations, between particular code-switching practices and language gains would always lead back to a focus on other variables. This is perhaps also one reason why many scholars who have sought to account for classroom code choice have adopted constructivist or sociocultural approaches, rather than approaches rooted in psycholinguistics and cognitive science prevalent in much of the literature on second language acquisition (SLA). So, instead of pursuing a linear sort of cause and effect chain, in this book I will attempt to show some of the ways code choice practices constitute a set of discourses all their own, discourses that intersect with and influence certain of the numerous discourses at work in the language classroom.

Following from the second assumption, it is also assumed that maximal or optimal L2 use indeed contributes to successful L2 learning, and that maximal or optimal L2 use in the classroom is a desirable situation toward which to strive.⁴ This may sound like a self-evident truth, but hundreds of classroom visits over the years have convinced me that teachers, even those who would agree with this basic claim, do not often keep the idea in mind as they plan lessons and manage what happens in the classroom. In Chapter 4, I will detail what I believe to be the code choice ‘status quo’ of many typical communicative-approach language classrooms, and here it will be evident that even when most of a class is conducted in the L2, we cannot say that the L2 was used optimally or maximally, in part (but not only) because teachers tend to do most of the talking!

A fourth working assumption in this book is that teaching and learning in the secondary and university-level language classroom takes place most effectively in the framework of a principled, meaning-and task-based approach, one that responds to diverse learning styles and strategies, promotes learner autonomy and acknowledges the classroom as a sociocultural environment in its own right (i.e. not separate from the ‘real world’ though it often mimics or simulates situations in the real world), one that embraces the inherent complexity of L2 teaching and learning rather than continually seeking to reduce that complexity.

Before delving into the sociocultural and ecological approaches in Chapter 2, it should also be made clear to the reader that the admittedly eclectic approach to code choice proposed here does not translate into a free-for-all of pedagogical practices, techniques and methods based on the teacher’s or students’ intuitive judgments (for eclecticism in the popular sense often means just this sort of anything-goes perspective). Rather, as asserted by Kumaravadivelu (2003: 30), we should proceed in a ‘responsibly eclectic’ manner (see also Larsen-Freeman, 2002), that is, tap into a range of methods and approaches, but in a principled way. Geertz (1973: 5) put it well when he wrote that ‘eclecticism is self-defeating not because there is only one direction in which it is useful to move, but because there are so many: it is necessary to choose’. Thus, an appeal to principled pedagogical eclecticism with regard to code choice means that we must ourselves choose a path; to my mind, principled eclecticism means embracing the complexity of the issue based wholly on a rigorously defined theoretical framework. Too much of what language teachers practice – and I am guilty of this in my own courses – derives from often incommensurable theoretical approaches, approaches that many teachers are often unaware of when designing and carrying out lessons. In this book, I seek to make some of these theoretical approaches transparent and useful to the classroom teacher and language program director.

A further conceptual clarification is in order: the pedagogical model proposed in this book is not only about method or curriculum design. In line with the ecological perspective proposed by Kramsch (2002a) and van Lier (2004), methodology is just one aspect of the local, dynamic social environment of the classroom. Hence, I attempt to demonstrate the optimal conditions for a multilingual classroom community of practice, facilitated by a pedagogical or methodological framework, which I will call a ‘curricular architecture’. As will be shown, an ecological perspective necessitates viewing language learning not as the linear acquisition of a set of linguistic features or objects, but rather as a complex, dynamic human activity (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008). Code choice practices are, of course, just one part of the ecology of L2 classroom language, but I offer a framework for ‘designing’ conditions likely to provide affordances for learning through code choice awareness and practices. Multilingual classroom norms thus serve as a starting point and a vehicle for different sorts of communication and learning.

As a combination of theoretical discussion, empirical research report and pedagogical model intended primarily for language teachers and language program directors, this book also represents a rejection of the ubiquitous theory/practice dichotomy, which I believe has been a millstone around the neck of language teachers for decades. Like van Lier (1996: 2–3), I regard theory, research and practice as ‘an essential unity in the process of doing curriculum; theorizing, researching, and practicing are thus inseparable ingredients in the professional conduct of a language educator’. I offer here some new ways to think about a key feature of the language classroom environment that I believe deserves greater attention among language professionals: the way the students and teacher choose and negotiate their use of the L1 and the L2 to ‘do curriculum’ (van Lier, 1996: 2). Thus, the book is also about letting both teachers-in-training and language students in on aspects of language learning and use that have traditionally been the exclusive territory of the applied linguist, the theorist, the philosopher of language and the veteran language teacher (although often this latter group, too, has been excluded from debates about the nature of language, learning and activity). It is about moving away from considering language classroom communication as a bundle of discrete features and toward a view of the classroom as both a reflection of the world outside the classroom as well as a component of it, about exploring ways for learner and instructor reflection about code choice, and also, about politicizing that critical reflection (Gee, 2005), such that L2 learning itself becomes about much more than the acquisition of linguistic features or factual knowledge about culture(s).

There is also one thing that this book is not about. It is actually not about code-switching! Although the focus throughout is on dual or multiple code use among language class members, and Chapter 3 does deal directly with definitions and models of code-switching, no new model of code-switching is presented here. As will be seen in Chapter 3, I draw on those concepts and constructs in the code-switching literature that I regard as most useful and accessible and applicable in the classroom context. If anything new is offered to those who research code-switching, it is that some of the tools and methods of discourse analysis (Gee, 2005) can also be put to good use in understanding what students do with the L1 and L2 in classroom communication. In discussing code-switching, I proceed on two levels simultaneously: one is the level of theory that underpins the development of a multilingual pedagogical approach, and the other is the level to which learners and instructors may or should be exposed. Of course, this extended treatment of classroom code choice will hopefully serve to highlight what I see as a gap in the code-switching literature as it pertains to this interesting site of multiple code use.

Five Myths about First Language Use in the Second Language Classroom

The central position of this book is that the L1 has a productive and important role to play in successful L2 learning, and language teachers and learners can and should be aware of, reflect critically on, and in some ways, explicitly manage the ways in which the L1 and L2 are used in the classroom. This position does not appear to be in harmony with some widely held ideas about target language use in a mainstream communicative language teaching (CLT) framework. In fact, it is not: a multilingual approach can serve as a concrete tool for implementing many of the tenets of ecological and sociocultural theory (SCT) approaches proposed, as discussed by numerous scholars in recent years (Johnson, 2009; Kramsch, 1993; Lantolf, 2000; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; van Lier, 1996, 2004) and perhaps affect a rethinking of CLT itself, to move the approach closer to its conceptual roots in Hymes’s original notion of communicative competence (Breen & Candlin, 1980; Hymes, 1972; Kramsch, 2006). In these terms, some common and fairly robust assumptions about L1 use in L2 learning should be critically examined in order to foreground the imperative for a multilingual approach in ecological and SCT terms.⁵ These include the following:

Myth 1. Monolingual L2 use is an intuitive mode of language classroom communication.

Myth 2. Monolingual native speaker norms represent an appropriate target for the language learner.

Myth 3. A monolingual approach reflects the reality of language classroom communication.

Myth 4. Use of the L1 in the language classroom could bring about fossilized errors or pidginization.

Myth 5. Use of the L1 minimizes time spent using the L2.

The purpose of this section is to lay the conceptual foundation for a multilingual approach to classroom code choice, to establish the parameters of the theoretical and pedagogical imperative for it. To accomplish this, I examine each of these five myths in turn.

Myth 1: Monolingual second language use is the most intuitive mode of communication in the language classroom

In this section, I consider the commonly held belief that monolingual L2 use is the most intuitive mode of communication in the classroom. Primarily, my aim is to show that the monolingual perspective has deep roots in American educational thought and policy, and as such cannot be regarded simply as a given in L2 language teaching.

In the US educational system, there are many things that we often regard as inevitable developments. Tudor (2001: 125) points out that...