First plenary

Francis Bangou, University of Ottawa

Embracing the Wild in Language Teacher Education: A New Materialist Experimentation

(This talk will primarily be offered in English)

May 13, 2022 at 11 am (EST)

The increasing interest in new materialist perspectives in applied linguistics and language education supports the need for wild conceptual, methodological, and pedagogical resources that run against the grain, are future-oriented, and are creative (Bangou & Waterhouse, 2021; Geers & Carsten, 2021; Toohey, 2019). In the same vein, this presentation aims to illustrate what could be produced when new-materialist wild perspectives are put to work in language teacher education. To do so, a map of current new materialist lines of thought will serve as a springboard for illustrating how new materialist unconventional thoughts and concepts contributed to the conception of an online graduate teacher education course in Technology-enhanced Language Education. Moreover, rhizoanalysis will be deployed to map how the intra-workings of multiple material, expressive, and human elements opened and hinder new avenues of potential transformations for language teacher trainees. Then, I will conclude with a discussion of how new materialist thoughts might contribute to an expansion of Language Teacher Education to unexplored territories.

Bio

Francis Bangou is an associate professor in Second Language Education at the Faculty of Education of the University of Ottawa. His research program unfolds in two strands. Drawing from new materialist thoughts and the relational ontology of Deleuze and Guattari, the first strand concentrates on the preparation of pre-service and in-service language teachers to work within ever-changing technologically enhanced language classrooms. The second strand attends to the adaptation of teachers to students’ ethnolinguistic diversity within Ontario’s Francophone schools. Francis Bangou is also the Chair of the research group Education and Languages (EducLang). This team is currently working on a four-year research project financed by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council that aims to explore how specific inclusive practices that integrate digital technologies and students’ home languages are being implemented across both Francophone and Anglophone contexts where Allophones are learning one of Canada’s official languages. Moreover, he recently co-edited the book Deterritorializing Language, Teaching, and Learning: Deleuzo-Guattarian Perspectives on Second Language Education as well as a special issue of the Canadian Modern Language Review on New Materialist Perspectives on Language Education. Lasty, Francis Bangou served on the Executive Council of ACLA as Vice-President (2016-2018) and President (2018-2020).

Second plenary

Daphnée Simard, Université du Québec à Montréal

Characterizations of Oral Productions in Second Languages: An Intersecting Perspective on Linguistic, Cognitive and Affective Variables

(This talk will primarily be offered in French)

May 14, 2022 at 11 am (EST)

No one disputes the challenge that oral production in the second language (L2) can present. Indeed, expressing oneself in real time using a linguistic system that is not necessarily fully mastered is a complex and cognitively demanding task (Segalowitz, 2010). As if that were not enough, this tour de force involves a range of emotions (e.g., Dewaele, 2007; Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014). In my presentation, I propose to explore this tension between linguistic knowledge, cognitive resources, and emotional state in L2 oral production. This intersecting outlook allows a characterization of oral production in a second language that has not yet been explored to any great extent. To do so, I will first address oral production according to Levelt’s model (1983, 1989, 1999) and will deal more specifically with the self-monitoring mechanism he postulates. Such a self-monitoring has the advantage of providing direct information about the cognitive mechanisms and linguistic processes involved in oral production (Kormos, 1999). Using language data, I will then explore how the cognitive and linguistic aspects revealed in self-monitoring interact within the context of non-native speakers’ emotional states during their L2 oral production. I will attempt to explain these interactions using a theoretical perspective, including Fredrickson’s expansion-construction theory (e.g., 2001, 2013), by predicting distinct effects of positive and negative emotions on the deployment of cognitive resources needed to perform tasks such as oral production. I will conclude by presenting possible implications of the relationships between these variables in L2 oral production.

Bio

Daphnée Simard (Ph.D., ULaval, 2001) is a Full Professor of Second Language Acquisition in the Department of Linguistics at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Her research interests are twofold. First, she investigates the role played by individual cognitive variables such as attention and memory spans in second language acquisition. She also works on the relationship between linguistic awareness, whether it be metalinguistic reflection or skills, and language acquisition in different populations (heritage language children, adults learning an L2). She is currently working with her colleague Michael Zuniga (UQAM) on L2 oral production, speakers’ individual cognitive characteristics and their emotional states. Her research is funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC; Insight programme), among other sources. Her work has been published in journals such as Bilingualism, Language and Cognition and Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. She was the director of the Institute of Cognitive Science at UQAM from 2014 to 2017. Additionally, after serving on the board of directors of the Canadian Modern Language Review from 2002 to 2008, she is now its co-editor-in-chief alongside Donna Patrick (UOttawa). Finally, she was also a member of the Executive Council of the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics from 2005 to 2011.

Third plenary

Jan Hare, University of British Columbia

Land, Language, and Learning: Living in Good Relations

(This talk will primarily be offered in English)

May 15, 2022 at 11 am (EST)

Indigenous ways of knowing, including ancestral languages, come from Indigenous people’s relationship to land and are rooted in their long inhabitation of a particular place (Barnhardt and Kawagley 2005). Land is central to any discussions regarding decolonization, reconciliation, and sovereignty as we contemplate contemporary Indigenous-settler relations. It is a starting point from which language educators can draw awareness of dominant discourses that operate in teaching and learning and challenge embedded issues of colonialism. In this presentation, I consider Land education (Tuck, Mckenzie, & McCoy, 2014) as pedagogy, where Indigenous languages converge with the material, spiritual, and relational dimensions of land and place. In doing so, I provide insights in to how Indigenous languages reverberate within and through land/place to reveal: 1) land-centered knowledge that can create educational space to disrupt settler histories and identities, while at the same time building new knowledge so that we may live in good relations with the land and with each other; and 2) pedagogical approaches that draw from knowledges across human and more-than-human relationships to advance Indigenous language resurgence.

Bio

Dr. Jan Hare is an Anishinaabe-kwe scholar and educator from the M’Chigeeng First Nation, located in northern Ontario. She is Professor and Dean pro tem in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. In addition, she holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Indigenous Pedagogy. Her research is concerned with transforming educational institutions from K-12 schooling through to post-secondary education by centering Indigenous knowledges and pedagogies in teaching and learning. This work has led to the development of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education, which has been taken by over 70,000 people worldwide.