Language
Advising for New Speakerness: Facilitating Linguistic Shifts
Abstract
Advising in language learning (ALL), a relatively new area of applied
linguistics is the focus of this Colloquium. Our aim is to promote innovations
in advising for language learning and language usage across a range of new
speaker bilingual and multilingual contexts. By introducing professional
insights from the field of ALL around “learning conversations”
(Mozzon-McPherson, 2012), “therapeutic dialogue” (Kelly, 1996), and person
centred-ness, we bring another lens to the growing interest in the experiences,
emotions and trajectories of the new speaker on his/her language learning
journey. Feelings of social empowerment and disempowerment brought on by the
social context in which the language is used (Oxford et al, 2014); the
relationships of new speakers with the target language; and their language
support requirements; are key themes.
Our presentations draw on the person-centred approach promoted by Rogers
(1951) while Mynard’s theoretical framework of language advising, the Dialogue
Tools and Context Model, frames our work (Mynard, 2012).
We will encourage attendees to consider how the role, skills, values and
scope of language advising might be defined in the new speaker context; and
explore what the field of ALL can bring to recent work on conceptualising and
profiling new speakers and the processes of new speakerness (O’Rourke &
Pujolar, 2015).
Each participant will draw on specific instances and stories of language
advising research and professional practice. Firstly, Marina Mozzon-McPherson
will analyse some of the issues relating to learner journeys captured in
publications on new speakerness. She will illustrate what happens in ALL and
promote how a new exchange between communities of academics on this topic might
be mutually beneficial.
In the second paper, Deirdre Ní Loingsigh will focus on ALL in the
workplace context. Her presentation, relating specifically to the Irish
language, will lead to a discussion on how the development of a local framework
for minority language advising should be considered in the context of new
speakerness and language revitalisation initiatives.
Fergal Bradley considers a required university language course as a
potentially key stage in the trajectories of new speakers. Students' language
practices change during this learner-autonomy based course. He will explore the
emotions of (emerging) new speakers at this juncture of the language learning
journey in the third presentation.
The following questions will be common threads throughout the Colloquium:
Q. 1 How can language advisors meet the needs of new speakers?
Q. 2 How might the emerging paradigm of new speakerness demand a
repositioning of the function of language advisor?
Q.3. How might experience of formal language advising and language support
facilitate moments of transformation on the learner trajectories of new
speakers?
Each presenter will engage the audience in an exchange of ideas on these
themes. Marina Mozzon-McPherson, as Discussant, will develop and challenge the
considerations of Colloquium participants and promote questions for future
language advising research and practice.
Presentations of the Symposium
New Speakerness through the Lens of Advising in Language Learning and
Learner Autonomy
Marina
Mozzon-McPherson (The University of Hull)
Advising for
language learning consists of skilled dialogic interactions (Mozzon-McPherson,
2012) and aims to provide a supportive context which enables learners to
achieve their learning goals. The kinds of macro and micro skills purposefully
employed in advising (Kelly, 1996) contribute to equipping the learner with
resourceful, effective and fulfilling ways to engage in the learning
experience. In this dialogic process of self-discovery, the values claimed by
advisors as being core to their learning conversations are: respect,
confidentiality, trust, continuity of concern and empathy (Rogers, 1951). These
guide the advising approach to supporting language learning and ensure the
anchoring of moments of transformative learning. Language learning advisors often
operate in a wide range of educational settings, but usually in semi-formal
contexts (Rubin, 2007). For example, they are traditionally based in
self-access centres and have bridging/mediating roles between the formal
language learning taking place in a classroom-based context and the myriads of
opportunities to explore and practise a new language outside of the classroom
(Mynard and Carson, 2012). In some countries this role in universities is well
established and recognised as another invaluable and skilful professional role;
in others, it exists in embryonic stages of development (Magno e Silva, 2016).
In this presentation I shall examine some identifiable intervention skills
adopted by advisors. Specifically I shall look at the act of active listening
and, through the reflective accounts of advisors and advisees, I shall analyse
how this purposeful set of linguistic interventions impacts on learning
trajectories. The study concludes by identifying areas for future research in
the field of learner and teacher development, with a focus on the role played
by beliefs and emotions in creating transformative learning.
Creating Spaces of Dialogue around New Speakerness in the Workplace Context
Deirdre
Máire Ní Loingsigh (University of Limerick)
Little
attention has been paid to the language support requirements of new speakers of
Irish, a minority language, in the organisational context in Ireland. In this
presentation, I discuss a workplace Advising in Language Learning (ALL)
initiative which took place on a university campus. Here, some members of staff
were formally designated to provide bilingual services, (Irish/English) in
order to meet the legislative requirements of the Official Languages Act, 2003.
Having established a Language Support Network I facilitated group language
advising sessions, and designed a number of educational interventions to
explore: the relationship of the new speakers with Irish; fears around
interactions with native speakers; and issues of language anxiety around statutory
obligations to offer public services through Irish in their professional roles.
The conceptual framework merges the theoretical lens of transformative learning
(Mezirow, 1991) and the Dialogue, Tools and Context Model for ALL (Mynard,
2012). A Participatory Action Research methodology was chosen to bring about
constructive change in learner attitudes and identities. This paper focuses on
the language practices and experiences of the new speakers during one specific
intervention, a short immersion programme in An Ghaeltacht, an Irish-speaking
region. Their reception by native speakers, their reaction to language
exchanges, and native speaker responses to them being labelled “learners” are
discussed. Participants earnestly began to negotiate the complex identities of
themselves as new speakers, as language learners, and as “designated” Irish
speakers at the Institution while off-campus. This was considered a turning
point in the study. I will reflect on the role of the language advisor, in the
minority language and workplace context, as architect of spaces of dialogue. I
will conclude with recommendations for future research on the scope of building
a new language advising infrastructure for new speakers as a strategy for
minority language revitalisation.
Feeling our way through the Muda: Emotions Embodied in Language Counselling
Fergal
Bradley (University of Helsinki)
“…In
Finland, English is not just a foreign language… but a life skill [and] an
integral part of Finnish university students’ bilingual identities” (Karlsson,
2016). For ALMS (Autonomous Language Learning Modules) students at the
University of Helsinki, the course’s three advising, or counselling, sessions
involve the student planning a self-directed English course and reflecting on
and evaluating their learning with their counsellor. The students can be seen
as multilingual subjects (Kramsch, 2009) or (emerging) new speakers, embedded
in the complex linguistic landscape of Finnish higher education. The ALMS
course often represents a transition from being learners to being users of
English, and can thus be seen as a muda (Pujolar & Puigdevall, 2015),
involving an emotional investment, which permeates the counselling sessions.
Emotions are central to counselling, where students evaluate their language
skills, reflect on their language histories, and imagine their future
language-using selves. In this paper, as counsellor/practitioner-researcher, I
explore relationships between language counselling and emotion: how students
talk about emotion and the sticky objects (Ahmed, 2004) emotions adhere to, as
well as emotions as physical presences, embodied in the counselling sessions.
This exploration occurs through free-writing after counselling sessions, where
I collect and analyse data (Richardson, 2000). Then, based on the free-writing,
I write critical commentaries, to incorporate theoretical perspectives on
emotion and language, particularly work by Kramsch (2009) and Benesch (2012).
This method is chosen as a sustainable and pedagogically sensitive method of
practicing a scholarship of counselling (Karlsson, 2015; Vieira, 2013). The
research aims to further my understanding of emotions and how I engage with and
experience them as a counsellor working with students in the process of
deepening and widening their multilingual identities. It offers a situated view
of new speakers’ emotional trajectories and how language advising/counselling
relates to them.