27.4163, Review: App Ling; Kearney (2015)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4163. Mon Oct 17 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.4163, Review: App Ling; Kearney (2015)

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Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2016 11:20:20
From: Stephanie Lerat [stephanie.lerat at univ-lorraine.fr]
Subject: Intercultural Learning in Modern Language Education

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-5437.html

AUTHOR: Erin  Kearney
TITLE: Intercultural Learning in Modern Language Education
SUBTITLE: Expanding Meaning-Making Potentials
SERIES TITLE: Languages for Intercultural Communication and Education
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Stephanie J. Lerat, University of Lorraine

Reviews Editor: Robert A. Cote

SUMMARY

The book “Intercultural Learning in Modern Language Education: Expanding
Meaning-Making Potentials” by Stephanie Lerat advocates an approach to Modern
Language (ML) education that focuses on raising learner awareness of the
meaning-making potentials of language. This is achieved by helping learners
understand these potentials, navigate them, and ultimately use them. After
outlining her theoretical standpoint and addressing the current state of ML
education in the United States,  Kearney dedicates the rest of her book to a
case study of a classroom where such intercultural learning takes place. 

The six chapters of this book can be divided into three main parts: the first
two chapters deal with theoretical concerns, the next three chapters are
dedicated to the case study and the last chapter offers some commentary and
future directions.

Chapter 1, “The Challenges of Addressing Culture in Modern Language
Education”, opens with Kearney’s vision of the ML classroom and the role of
intercultural learning. In her opinion, learners must not only acquire the
linguistic resources available in a given language, but more importantly,
develop a deep understanding of the process of meaning making in general. A
survey of the conception of ML Education in the context of the United States
and the shortcomings of the predominate views are considered. Kearney
underlines that even though interesting theoretical models concerning
culture-in-ML-education exist, there is a lack of resources focusing on
concretely applying such models.

The four objectives of this book, outlined on page 4, are: 1) to show that
intercultural learning can and does take place in the classroom, 2) to analyze
the classroom practices which promote intercultural learning, 3) to
demonstrate how classroom activities can have an effect on the development of
meaning-making abilities, and 4) to link the evidence analyzed with the
practical concerns of the classroom.

In Chapter 2, “The Culture Learning Target: Engagement with Meaning
Potentials”, Kearny builds on her criticism of the prevalent conception of ML
education in the US by reviewing two major models in ML education dealing with
the idea of competence: Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) from the
influential work of Byram (1997, 2012) and Symbolic Competence from the work
of Kramsch (1993). She underlines that learners must learn “how to mean for
themselves in new ways” (p. 31), all the while developing an understanding of
culturally accepted ways of meaning. After putting forward four previously
articulated hypotheses (Kearny, 2010: 334) concerning the processes which are
part of intercultural learning (p. 52), she argues for a view, in agreement
with van Lier (2004), which conceives of ML education as ecological and
socially semiotic. Extensive interaction with authentic texts is key in
enabling learners to engage with meaning.

Chapter 3, entitled “Creating and Investigating Intercultural Worlds in a
Modern Language Classroom”, the environment of the classroom studied (Emilie’s
classroom) as well as the global simulation project dealing with “France under
the Occupation and World War II” carried out during a 6-week period as part of
a 5th semester French content-based elective at an elite university are
described. The main writing project was a Memoires project based on
student-developed characters.

Kearney outlines the methods she used to collect and analyze data focusing
both on the instructor as well as the students. In her analysis, she attempts
to describe the classroom interactions which facilitate intercultural
learning. She underlines the essential role of the instructor as the extensive
resources the students were provided were only one factor in the learning
process and could not have sufficed in promoting intercultural learning.

Chapter 4, “Understanding Signification and Interpretive Acts Through
Engagement with Cultural Representations”, delves deeper into the actual
classroom activities that took place in order to examine the role of the
instructor in engaging the learners. For example, the Identifications activity
provided a forum for learner reflection and an opportunity for the instructor
to direct student attention towards specific elements and explore the cultural
meanings associated with them, by encouraging the learners to hypothesize thus
creating interpretations. Learners were also frequently prompted to reposition
themselves as members of the community under discussion as a means to explore
and attempt to understanding meaning through appropriating it and giving them
opportunities to participate in meaning making.

Chapter 5, “Realizing Meaning Potentials Through Narrative Writing”, mostly
drawn from the author’s 2008 unpublished doctoral dissertation, focuses on the
students by first studying two students writing assignments, including samples
of their work, followed by a brief consideration of student interviews
regarding the course. The analysis shows that the students integrated elements
from the various texts seen in class. The students were positive about the
writing assignment, and they all agreed that it forced them to adopt a new
perspective and to consider different points of view. In addition to changing
their understanding of French history, they also felt it assisted them in
developing their writing abilities.

In Chapter 6, “Sense Making in a Web of Meanings: Implications for Theory,
Research and Practice”, Kearney concludes by expanding on the metaphor of a
web to better understanding how meaning is appropriated by language learners.
She outlines the instructor’s role to assist students in 1) perceiving the
web, 2) learning to navigate it, and 3) developing new meanings. She also
suggests some general guidelines for implementing such an approach in the
classroom, emphasizing the importance of the selection of texts, having clear
goals, and the need for teachers to clearly undertake analysis in class.
Kearny addresses several questions she frequently receives when discussing her
work and gives some examples of how the approach could be adapted to learners
of different ages and in different contexts. She concludes by calling for
further research in classroom contexts in order to deepen our understanding of
how meaning making occurs and can be developed.

EVALUATION

This book raises some very important questions concerning the objectives of ML
education in the United States and offers different avenues of exploring the
related issues. Kearney convincingly argues the benefits and relevance of a
semiotic approach to intercultural learning in ML education via a textually
rich classroom and clearly outlines the role of meaning-making potentials. She
provides a compelling and detailed description of Emilie’s approach, with
supporting information from all sides (interviews with Emilie, classroom
observation, analysis of student work, and interviews with students). This
worthwhile study of actual classroom practice, which, as pointed out by the
author, is a rare and a valuable source of insight. Kearney meets her goals of
practically exploring a more semiotic approach in the classroom and
encouraging the reader to reconsider the meaning of intercultural learning,
moving by moving beyond “high culture” and exploring how meaning is mobilized
in different contexts by focusing on one case study.

It is unfortunate, however, that the last chapter is so brief. As a ML
educator, excited by the potential impact of the approach and inspired by the
university classroom described, I was looking forward to a more substantial
section concerning how to concretely implement the described approach, with
numerous illustrative examples. Potential concerns which I shared while
reading the book, such as using the approach in areas other than history, were
briefly addressed, but further development would be a welcome addition.

Another area which merits further insight is the assessment and evaluation of
students. Kearney concludes that “In the case of symbolic competence, if
students carry with them out of our classrooms more developed analytic skills
or enhanced awareness about the nature of symbolic representation, for
example, a social semiotic approach to intercultural learning has been
successful” (p.188). I agree with this broad goal, however, a discussion of
how Emilie concretely evaluated her students would assist ML educators in
implementing the approach.

This book is useful for ML educators as well as pre-service teachers,
graduates students, and researchers. For those less unfamiliar with current
research, the first few chapters may be less accessible. As Kearny clearly
states at the beginning, this book deals with ML education in the United
States, which is important to take into account for readers concerned with
different contexts.

Changing attitudes towards ML education is a complicated and ambitious
endeavor. Intercultural Learning in Modern Language Education is a welcome and
timely contribution to the field.

REFERENCES:

Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative
Competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Byram, M. (2012). Language awareness and (critical) cultural awareness –
relationships, comparisons and contrasts. Language Awareness 21, (1-2), 5-13. 

Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Kearney, E. (2008). Developing worldview(s): An ethnography of culture
learning in a foreign language classroom. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.

Kearney, E. (2010). Cultural immersion in the foreign language classroom: Some
narrative possibilities. Modern Language Journal 94(2), 332-336.

Van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology of language learning: Paper presented at the
UC Language Consortium Conference on Theoretical and Pedagogical Perspectives,
March 26-28, 2004. (http://uccllt.ucdavis.edu/events/ULCCTPP/leo.php)


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Stephanie Lerat holds a PhD in Linguistics from the Université de Nantes and
has extensive experience teaching English to speakers of other languages in
France at the post-secondary level. Her research interests include language
learning and teaching, semantics and discourse analysis.





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