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A Complexity Approach to Teaching Language

Complexity theorists study complex, nonlinear, dynamic systems. Language is one such system. It only exists in the fluxes of a speech community. It is not a thing, but rather it emerges from usage. Students need opportunities to work with the language-using patterns of the designated speech community because using and learning them are congruent processes. Students in a classroom are immersed in an environment full of potential meanings. These meanings become available gradually as the students act and interact within the environment. They do so by constantly adapting their language resources in the service of meaning-making by attending to the affordances in the context. Teaching can be seen in a complexity approach as managing the dynamics of learning, exploiting the complex adaptive nature of language use in an iterative fashion while also ensuring that co-adaptation between students and teacher and among students works for the benefit of learning. However, teaching does not cause learning; learners make their own paths. In this way, learning another language is not about conformity to uniformity.

In this session we will work through these ideas, examining examples of teaching material that the presenter will provide. Participants will also have an opportunity to think about how to apply the ideas to their own teaching contexts.

Diane Larsen-Freeman is Professor of Education, Professor of Linguistics, Research Scientist at the English Language Institute, and Faculty Associate at the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is also a Distinguished Senior Faculty Fellow at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont. Dr. Larsen-Freeman has been a conference speaker in over 60 countries around the world and has published books and over 100 articles in her areas of interest: second language acquisition, language teacher education, English linguistics, and language teaching methodology. Her book with Lynne Cameron, Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics (Oxford University Press), was awarded the prestigious 2009 Kenneth W. Mildenberger award by the Modern Language Association. Her latest book is the third edition of Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching, co-authored with Marti Anderson and published in 2011 by Oxford University Press. In 2011, Dr. Larsen-Freeman was presented the Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award by the American Association for Applied Linguistics.