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Part of
Languaging in Language Learning and Teaching: A collection of empirical studies
Edited by Wataru Suzuki and Neomy Storch
[Language Learning & Language Teaching 55] 2020
► pp. 67–90

Chapter 3
Languaging and grammatical terminology

Expressing linguistic concepts while co-constructing understandings

| Temple University
| University of Cincinnati
| Temple University
| Princeton University

This paper documents how U.S. high school learners in a third-year L2 Spanish class (N = 17) formulated explicit understandings of the pronoun se through languaging over 3 lessons. Following Adair-Hauck & Donato (2016), each lesson engaged learners in a guided inductive analysis by first presenting se within a narrative text, and then having them “co-construct” rules in groups of 2–3 from the patterns they found. A teacher-led, whole-class follow-up brought the class to a consensus before they engaged in subsequent L2 communication tasks. Based on recordings of 4 small-group interactions and the whole-class discussion, descriptive statistics and qualitative excerpts document how learners stretched familiar linguistic concepts and informal language to accommodate the unfamiliar features of the target structure.

Keywords: L2 Spanish, guided induction, explicit grammar, instructional conversation, high school
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The role of explicit knowledge in L2 development
  • Sociocultural theory and languaging as concept mediation
  • The present study
  • Methods
    • Participants and instructional context
    • Instructional target and PACE lessons
    • Data gathering
    • Data analysis
    • Coding for form versus meaning
    • Formal and informal linguistic terminology
  • Results
    • References to form and meaning
    • Informal vs. formal language
    • Retention of terminology in posttest articulation of rule
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 14 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.55.03tot
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