2019 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Designing and experimenting environment-adaptive pedagogical material for tenses in French as a Foreign Language.
| Project/Area Number |
18K12452
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| Research Institution | Okayama University |
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Principal Investigator |
RENOUD LOIC 岡山大学, 社会文化科学研究科, 特任講師 (50807964)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2018-04-01 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | French tenses / language intsruction / materials development / classroom experiments |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
As planned, I completed the 4 data collections by the end of FY2, the third one completed in Bordeaux Montaigne University in September 2019 (with 8 students, instead of 4) and the last in February 2020 in my institution (with 4 students). The data collected in Bordeaux was not satisfactory, due to the materials itself and to material conditions for the experiments. The collection in Okayama University worked well, for reasons detailed in the next column, but the material tested then was different than for the previous collections. I had not planned that so many changes would be needed. As a result, it will be difficult to compare how the material was used in the two different contexts, France and Japan. The last data are rich, fortunately. In parallel with the conception of the material itself and its experimentation, I tried to deepen my understanding of the French verb system and to gradually have an overview in applied linguistics of past and present ideas related to its teaching and learning. This year (FY2), I then carried out theoretical research on bounded aspect in French, focusing on the compound past, taking further ideas I used to design visuals for first versions of the material. I sought to exploit the fact that syntax generates two types of synthesis of ideas: the subject as, respectively, the "owner" (with "avoir") or "experiencer" (with "etre") of the bounded event. I gave a presentation on these ideas, but a paper submitted to a linguistics journal was rejected. From the same thread of research, two language instruction oriented papers were published.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
For conceiving the material tested in 2018 (FY1) and September 2019 (FY2), the direction followed was essentially inspired by Bottineau's enactive linguistics. I tried to represent how words, as tenses are concerned, change the environment as they are uttered, by visually depicting boundedness, resultativeness, ongoingness, etc. Not satisfied with the practicability of these versions, I widened the perspective to integer the relationship between speech and gestures. I took from Calbris (Elements of meaning in gesture, 2011) the idea that gesture often anticipates the semantic content of the utterance, by analogically representing one element around which the utterance is then developed. The last version of the material has stabilized around this idea (gesture as a "pre-verbal sign"). It includes hand gestures represented from an egocentric point of view for moment, frequency and time span, hand gestures pointing to the course / term of the action (unbounded / bounded aspect), etc., as onto the imaginary space between participants (McNeill’s "abstract deixis"). The current material deals with time periods, deja (already) / pas encore (not yet), lexical aspect, foreground / background, venir de + INF / present perfect, aller + INF / simple future , the two construals "j'ai pu" vs. "je pouvais" (I could), etc. I am pursuing analysis of existing materials in endolingual and exolingual contexts. I aim at showing why in the former, grammatical indications have little value (if any), and in the latter, why L2 concepts can not be fully integrated through L1.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
The second part of my project (FY3 and 4) is devoted to analysis, but in parallel the theoretical work will be pursued in three directions. First, the analysis consists in browsing the data, identifying relevant episodes, and precisely describing synchronization between gestures / speech / gaze to elucidate how the resources offered by the material fit into learners' activity. Multimodal analysis is itself applied within a theoretical framework which I need to become more familiar with. The designer translates concepts of general linguistics in her or his material in a class-friendly way. Then, these concepts become valid (or not) for learners engaged in the task (key notions here are "embedded, extended and shared cognition" in works by Goodwin, and for SLA, Atkinson, for instance). I also have to rework the theoretical framework within which I designed the latest version of the material. That gestures often anticipate speech implies to acknowledge the antecedence of a "representation" before speech. From the enactive standpoint however, there is no independent world represented a priori. But these two points of view, I would argue, are two sides of the same coin. I will try to bring them together. A third direction deals with the metalinguistic role of L1. At initial levels grammatical explanations in L1 should be the final result of tasks in L2. It goes against many common places on the presumed function of explanations in L1 in exolingual textbooks.
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| Causes of Carryover |
Following my initial schedule, I plan one or two conferences overseas and one or two conferences in Japan. Since one or two papers are planned in English, some money will be used for a "native check" before submission, as is customary in the case the author is a non-native speaker. However, as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, many conferences have been cancelled or postponed. A proposal for the MATSDA conference in Malaysia was accepted, but it has been postponed to next year. Among other opportunities is a conference in France in September, at the UCO (Western Catholic University), on the condition that by then travel restrictions be lifted. In Japan, the SJDF Conference in June has been postponed. Other opportunities include workshops for the 3rd JPLF (Tokyo) in December and the 35th RPK (Osaka) in March,and a presentation for the 2nd Asian Conference on Language in March (Tokyo). Finally, I am currently writing a paper I will submit to the JLLT (peer-reviewed). Another in preparation will introduce the material, its rationale and use, in a more practical way, for Folio, the review of MATSDA.
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