Dear Colleagues
We would like to announce the Workshop:
Can motion event construal be taught? Pedagogical and experimental approaches to restructuring event cognition patterns
Organisers: Fraibet Aveledo and Jeanine Treffers-Daller (University of Reading)
Workshop dates: 23-24th April 2020
Link to website: https://research.reading.ac.uk/celm/call-for-papers/
Venue: University of Reading, Whiteknights Campus, Graduate School
Keynote speakers:
Panos Athanasopoulos (University of Lancaster): Thinking in multiple languages: The case of goal-oriented motion events
Teresa Cadierno (University of Southern Denmark): Motion event construal in second language learners: From research findings to pedagogical implications and implementations
Alim Tusun (University of Cambridge): Uyghur-Chinese early successive bilinguals’ acquisition of caused motion expressions
We invite abstracts for a workshop which will bring together researchers who have studied how motion event construal is expressed by second language learners or bilinguals
either in naturalistic or experimental settings. It is well known that there are differences in the ways in which motion is expressed in different languages. In English, as in Germanic languages, manner of motion is often expressed in the main verb (Angela
ran into the shop) whereas in French, and other Romance languages, the main verb generally contains the path of motion and the manner is optionally expressed in a satellite (Angela entre le magasin (en courant) “Angela entered the shop
running”). Restructuring these patterns in the process of acquisition of another language with a different set of patterns is known to be very difficult (Cadierno & Ruiz, 2006; Navarro & Nicoladis, 2005). Further evidence for the complexities involved
in restructuring can be found in the bidirectional crosslinguistic influence in learners’ and bilinguals’ motion event construals, among children as well as adults (Aveledo & Athanasopoulos 2015).
Although the learning difficulties for L2 learners and bilinguals are well attested, there is little research which focuses on how a new way to talk about movement through
space can be taught. Pedagogical strategies to teach motion events are virtually non-existent as this aspect of grammar is generally neglected in the L2 syllabus. Solutions proposed by the research community include Bylund and Athanasopoulos’ (2015) suggestion
that multimodal input (film clips with action scenes) helps to restructure motion, while Laws, Attwood and Treffers-Daller (under review) show that an Input Processing approach (VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993) has a positive effect. We hope that the workshop will
inspire more researchers to develop new studies with innovative pedagogical approaches towards the teachability of motion and that findings from these studies can shed new light on the difficulties involved in restructuring this domain in the process of L2
learning.
Deadline for submission of abstracts: Monday 23 March 2020
Information and submission of abstracts:
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Best wishes
Fraibet Aveledo