Revisiting
advanced varieties in L2 learning
Aston University, Birmingham (UK), Friday 9th - Saturday 10th June
2006
Supported by the Association for French Language Studies (AFLS), the Institute for
the Study of Language and Society (ISLS) and Aston Staff Development
Invited speakers"
Inge Barning (Stockholm University)
L'apprenant avancé dix ans plus
tard - un état des lieux / The advanced learner ten years later - a state of
the art review
David Birdsong (University of
Texas at Austin)
Age and Ultimate Attainment in
L2A: Behavior, Brain, and Biology
Richard Towell (Salford
University)
Factors governing the development
of fluency in advanced learners of French
In 1997, Bartning collated a series of papers investigating a little
studied type of L2 learners, the apprenants d'un niveau d'instruction élevée.
She provided a list of distinctive characteristics of L2 French based on
studies available at the time. However, much work has been devoted to advanced
learners since, not only in French (e.g. for tense and aspect acquisition of L2
French: Kihlstedt, 1998; Howard, 2002 and Labeau, 2002, 2005) but also in other
languages: Spanish (Salaberry, 2000), Italian (Giacolome-Ramat, 2002) etcŠ Many
different theoretical frameworks other than the descriptive / functionalist
approach used in the above studies have also paid attention to this type of
learner; for example, the Universal Grammar framework has investigated ultimate
attainment in the context of the Critical Age Hypothesis (Birdsong 2005), and
sociolinguistic and pragmatic models have looked at the (non-) acquisition of
sociolinguistic variation in advanced learners (Dewaele, 2004, Regan &
Bailey, 2004).
Therefore, in the light of new corpora and findings, it is now time to revisit
and refine the concept of advanced varieties both in instructed and natural
settings.
The present workshop aims at:
1. Clarifying the concept of 'advanced learner'. What is it? How does it relate
to 'native speaker' or 'near-native speaker' How does advancement translate in
terms of, for e.g., mental representations of formal features, or in terms of
sociolinguistic and pragmatic knowledge?
2, Providing new evidence for the understanding of advanced varieties in areas
such as lexical development, nominal and verbal morphology; mood, tense and
aspect; syntax; discursive, sociolinguistic or pragmatic competence etcŠ on the
basis of the various approaches.
The workshop will focus in the first instance on L2 French but contributions on
other languages are more than welcome, be it the studies of other Romance
Languages, contrastive studies or studies that provide general insight into
advanced varieties.
A selection of peer-reviewed papers from the conference will be published.
Practical Information
Abstract deadline: 15th February 2006
Language:
English or French
Proposal:
Anonymous abstract of max. 400 words
sent as an attachment (word Document) to an email message containing the
author's name and affiliation, and the title.
Submission: Send all proposal
to e.labeau@aston.ac.uk
Organisers:
Prof. Florence Myles, Newcastle University
Dr Emmanuelle Labeau, Aston
University
Scientific Committee: Inge Barning (Stockholm University), David Birdsong
(University of Texas at Austin), Jean-Marc Dewaele (Birckbeck College), Julia
Herschensohn (Washington), Alex Housen (VUB, Brussels), Martin Howard (Cork),
Maria Kihlstedt (Paris 10), Emmanuelle Labeau (Aston University), Florence
Myles (Newcastle), Clive Perdue (Paris 8), Vera Regan (UCD, Dublin), Suzanne
Schlyter (Lund), Richard Towell (Salford University), Daniel Véronique (Aix).