INSTRUCTED SLA: ADVANCING THE RESEARCH AGENDA

Organizer: Catherine J. Doughty
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
cdoughty@hawaii.edu

Monday, March 24, 2003, 8:15-11:15 AM invited colloquium
Room: Commonwealth South

Colloquium Summary: Still not remedied is the lack of coherence among studies investigating instructed SLA. Problems abound concerning instructional treatment design; linking learning conditions, difficulty, and SLA processing; and measurement. Presenters address these issues with a view to establishing a common framework for future investigations. The audience is encouraged to participate during question periods and a concluding, 30-minute discussion.

Designing psycholinguistically valid instructional treatments
Catherine J. Doughty (University of Hawai'i at Manoa, cdoughty@hawaii.edu)
Psycholinguistically valid L2 instruction is grounded in SLA theory, delivered true to theoretical constructs, and successful at engaging the intended L2 processing. In this paper, I present the results of a detailed analysis of these three components of L2 instruction validity, with illustrations from a range of treatment designs in current instructed SLA research.

Operationalizing learning difficulty in instructed SLA
Robert DeKeyser (University of Pittsburgh, rdk1+@pitt.edu)
Examples discussed in this paper show that L1-L2 differences, various forms of salience, abstractness of meaning, and surface distance each play an important role in determining the degree of difficulty involved in language learning. Furthermore, I discuss how learning difficulty interacts with instructional design features and individual differences, such as aptitude, memory, and age.

Activities that assist classroom SLA: Development, implementation, and issues
Teresa Pica (University of Pennsylvania, teresap@gse.upenn.edu)
A research project on content-based L2 learning has developed activities that draw students' attention to form-meaning relationships they are developmentally ready to acquire, but unable to notice in content texts. I describe the activities, and discuss issues that arose when data were analyzed for relationships between activity implementation and attentional processes of L2 learning.

Seeking design solutions for measurement problems in instructed SLA research
John M. Norris (Northern Arizona University, John.Norris@NAU.edu)
Lourdes Ortega (Northern Arizona University, Lourdes.Ortega@NAU.edu)
Robert J. Mislevy (Educational Testing Service & University of Maryland, rm257@umail.umd.edu)
We explore solutions to instructed SLA measurement problems by incorporating perspectives on measurement design from beyond the SLA and language testing disciplines. In particular, "evidence-centered design" can enable trustworthy interpretations about learner, setting, instructional, and outcome variables. To illustrate, ECD is applied to measurement problems in competing cognitive interactionist proposals for task-based language learning.