‘We're Learning a Lot of New Words’: Encountering New L2 Vocabulary Outside of Class

Abstract

This article presents empirical evidence that the Interaction Hypothesis (Long, 1996), especially key concepts in Negotiation for Meaning, bears little relevance for language learning outside of class ('in the wild,' cf. Hellermann, Eskildsen, et al., 2018;Wagner, 2015) but seems to be epiphenomenal to experimentally elicited data. Instead, the article shows that the learning, vis à vis negotiation for meaning, that takes place in the wild needs to be viewed as repair practices, as it investigates speakers' displays of (non)understanding and learning as fundamentally social processes that take place as observable phenomena in real-time interaction and ultimately sustain the accountable processes of reaching and maintaining intersubjectivity (Kasper, 2009;Koschmann, 2011Koschmann, , 2013. This moment-to-moment coconstructed interactional work of second language (L2) users and their co-participants is brought to bear on long-term L2 learning in the wild as I explore and document the long-term repercussions of situated word searches through the lens of Conversation Analysis. Finally, the paper will discuss ways to use students' everyday interactions in L2 teaching (Eskildsen & Wagner, 2015b;Piirainen-Marsh & Lilja, 2018).

L2 Teaching in the Wild: A Closer Look at Correction and Explanation Practices in Everyday L2 Interaction

“…The excerpt is an example of a word search initiated by the L2 speaker through turn‐design (pauses and other signs of productional trouble) and the use of another, shared language (Eskildsen, this issue, ; Kurhila, ; Theodórsdóttir & Eskildsen, ; ). In this case, the use of English did not immediately foster other‐repair, which is testament to the widespread occurrence of English in Iceland.…”

“…Instead of focusing primarily on the practice as one of an L1 speaker, or a language expert or teacher, providing feedback to L2 users, the CA stance taken here implies investigating these phenomena as co‐constructed endeavors, crucially dependent on the L2 user's actions in the form of initiation of and reaction to the repair. CA methods, including Membership Categorization Analysis, to be explained in the next section, enable the analysis of those instances in detail for a better understanding of how they are organized and lead to a rethinking in social terms of correction and explanation practices as well as noticing (Schmidt, , ): Corrections and explanations only work when oriented and agreed to as such by the L2 user through her initiations and uptakes, which in turn function as socially visible displays of noticing (Eskildsen, , ; Eskildsen & Markee, ; Greer, ).…”

“…Research on learning in the wild has revealed that L2 speakers massively engage in word searches and publicly notice new items (Brouwer, ; Eskildsen, this issue, , Greer, ; Kurhila, ; Lilja, ; Theodórsdóttir & Eskildsen, ). Mapping out a range of learning behaviors in the wild, Eskildsen () showed how word search practices leave experiential traces in the L2 speakers as they re‐index the recently learned items in subsequent talk, and how word searches can be used by L2 speakers to preempt upcoming trouble as they ask their L1 speaking peers for particular words immediately before going on to use them.…”

Retrospective Orientation to Learning Activities and Achievements as a Resource in Classroom Interaction

“…As Ortega () notes, one line that separates cognitivist and social approaches to SLA is whether language knowledge is conceptualized as abstract, “transferable across bounded minds and contexts” (p. 168), or situated in and contingent on specific contexts. The interactional episodes investigated in this article embody both kinds of conceptualizations, insofar as they show students working to manage classroom activities with the help of prior “sediments” (Eskildsen, , p. 51) in their experience. Yet, in light of the present analysis, knowledge deriving from earlier experiences is not so much ‘transferable’ in itself as it is made to transfer by constructing change or continuity across time in some new context that has a myriad of its own contingencies.…”

“…Cross-sectional studies typically address L2 learning by investigating interactions in which participants observably orient to the ongoing activity as learning (as opposed to some other social activity) by identifying and working on 'learnables' (Majlesi & Broth, 2012). These kinds of situated learning practices have been explored both in pedagogical settings (e.g., Lee, 2010;Majlesi & Broth, 2012;Merke, 2016;van Compernolle, 2010) and in everyday life (Eskildsen, 2018;Lilja, 2014;Sahlström, 2011;Theodórsdóttir, 2018). Recent work within this literature has examined points of convergence and divergence between the classroom and 'the wild,' with a view on how these life arenas may involve distinct interactional practices for doing learning, and how participants may build bridges between settings (see e.g., Eskildsen & Theodórsdóttir, 2017;Lilja & Piirainen-Marsh, 2018).…”