Languages and Cultures as Moving Targets Inside and Beyond the Classroom - Glenn Levine
Channel: UA German Department
Date: 17/08/2012

Multilingualism is the ostensible long-term goal of adult language instruction: Students should learn the vocabulary, grammar, and cultural norms of the new language and culture so they can use language and interact appropriately with other speakers of that language, and interpret cultural artifacts of that culture in terms of their content or significance. From the vantage point of their first language they may become multilingual and multicultural. Yet communicative approach pedagogy as generally manifested in the U.S. and elsewhere understandably aims to simulate a monolingual L2 environment in the classroom (Levine 2011). At the same time, because the classroom is a pedagogical environment (van Lier 1988), the distance of this facsimile from the 'reality' of life is taken for granted by all class members. This contributes to students encountering what Larsen-Freeman (2003) has called the "inert knowledge problem" when they encounter authentic L2 language contexts and find they must undertake a wholly new learning process, in which they confront the realities of their own multilingualism and either attempt to gain deep access to the new language and culture, or as appears to be a common trajectory, operate in multiple, concurrent "cultures of use" (Thorne 2003), both digital and real-world. In this presentation I consider whether multilingualism as such can be simulated in the pedagogical environment of the language classroom, and whether this might help shift that encounter with the learner's own multilingual subjectivity earlier in the process. Drawing upon learner observations about their language/culture learning and language-use experiences abroad—in this case U.S. study-abroad students in Germany—I describe adult-acquired multilingualism as a moving target, a dynamic process rather than a bounded entity (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron 2008), both for the individual learner and for the language teacher charged with designing tasks for learning and language use. A 'simulation' of multilingualism in the classroom from this perspective compels learners to engage critically with their own multilingual subjectivities (Kramsch 2009). I conclude with reasons why a critical, multilingual approach to pedagogical design and practice is urgently needed if U.S. language education is move beyond the trivial undertaking it is considered to be by many university students.