View Content #24254

By Christopher Daradics, CASLS Language Technician

Exploring the connection between a concept and the physical environment from which that concept emerged encourages abstract thought, meta-pragmatic awareness, and functional language use. In other words, understanding the systemic relationship between concepts and place helps students understand how meaning emerges from their environment (e.g. the classroom, their homes, and their communities). As a result, students are empowered to better read and navigate the linguistic and cultural aspects of the target language environment. For example, the language needed to shop at an open air market as compared to a grocery store is not only conceptual in terms of structure and words, but also directly tied to the places and spaces in which the language is used. Three focus areas are especially useful for connecting concepts and place, both physically and metaphorically.

Abstract Thought:

When students anchor familiar concepts into their natural physical contexts, they can make increasingly informed associations between the concrete facts of a situation and the abstract language used to talk about this and similar situations (Lantolf and Thorne, 2006). For example, using pre-activity reflection which asks learners to visualize what they already know about a grocery store enables them to situate new terminology for food shopping behavior into a space they already know.

Meta-pragmatic Awareness:

Through studying abstract concepts in physical context learners become better oriented and adapted to their own physical and intellectual habitats (Ortega, 2014). This ability to orient and adapt oneself to the demands of a given situation is a hallmark of meta-pragmatic awareness. It allows learners to make choices about the language behaviors in which they engage. For example, when apologizing, metapragmatic awareness enables the learner to consider the severity of an offense to determine how much explanation is needed as part of the apology.

Functional Language Use:

Making connections between a place and its associated concepts can provide learners with opportunities to engage in personally relevant ways (Lantolf and Thorne, 2006). For instance, conceptually motivated, place-based approaches to language learning have been found to inspire curiosity, willingness to take risks, and teamwork (Holden & Sykes, 2011). Highlighting the language functions required in any given context allows for the isolation of key language patterns especially useful for engaging in curious, daring, and collaborative functional language use. Returning to the grocery store example, this means a focus on greetings, requests for information, and leave takings needed to buy the food one needs.

In order to make the connection between concept and place explicit, learner support via instructor facilitation is fundamental. Prompting learners will help them notice the people, places, sounds, and physical objects within the contexts of their language use. As learners begin to explore the interplay between the environment and the kinds of abstract thought different environments facilitate, they are better able to make the critical connections needed for abstract through, meta-pragmatic awareness, and functional language use. Some potential questions for exploration follow:

People:

• Who are the people involved in and influencing a given situation?
• Why are they involved and what are their interests in sustaining or altering the situation?

Sounds:

• What sounds are present (or absent)?
• How might the situation change if the soundscape changed?

Physical Environment:

• How is meaning being communicated through the organization of the environment?
• In what ways is the physical environment supporting or influencing the situation?

As they reflect on these elements as part of their language learning experience, meaning emerges from the environment itself, and in this realization context awareness can be raised, and functional language can be more consciously and skillfully tuned.

References

Holden, C. L., & Sykes, J. M. (2012). Leveraging mobile games for place-based language learning. Developments in Current Game-Based Learning Design and Deployment, 27.

Lantolf, J. and Thorne, S. (2006) Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Languge Development. Oxford University Press.

Ortega, L. (2014). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.