Engagement with language: interrogating a construct

Abstract

In ‘Language awareness and language learning’ (Svalberg, 2007) I concluded that the otherwise diverse and multidisciplinary field of language awareness (LA) is given coherence by its focus on engagement with language. I argued that LA is seen as active and not merely as a state of conscious awareness or sensitivity. This paper goes one step further by developing and testing the construct. It discusses what engagement with language might consist of and contrasts with and how it can be identified. Cognitive, social, and affective aspects of engagement, including notions such as attention, autonomy, and agency, are posited. Having arrived at first at a working definition and then an expanded and refined definition, the construct is applied to some classroom and student interview data. Some tentative conclusions about English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students' engagement with language, what motivates, facilitates, and hinders it, are drawn. The main purpose of the paper is, however, to try and determine the usefulness or otherwise of the construct as such, how it relates to other constructs in the literature, and where it might be taken in future research.

Keywords:

• awareness-raising
• interaction
• learner perceptions
• research methodology

Notes

^a Maintenance may involve not only keeping interaction going but also caring for the quality of interaction.

1. I am indebted to many of my doctoral students who have discussed this with me and helped me get to this stage of analysis. My initial set of features was somewhat modified on the basis of their input.

2. The data, collected for, and discussed in Armstrong and Svalberg (2005) is used here with the kind permission of my co-researcher. The overall research focus was the relationship between the aspirations of the National Adult ESOL Core Curriculum in the United Kingdom in regard to grammar and the actual classroom practice and dynamics.

3. Batstone (2002) conducted a discussion around a similar question but did not interrogate the engagement construct as such.