Engagement with language: interrogating a construct
By A. Svalberg. 2009
348 citations recorded by the source corpus.
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.
Subfields: Language and Linguistics, Literature and Literary Theory
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c9108e5ac52194c0507a88275a13d00b1eaac59c
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Language and Linguistics
- Ali H. Al-Hoorie
- A. Mystkowska‐Wiertelak
- Alastair Henry
- Phil Hiver
- Craig Lambert
- C. Thorsen
- Sachiko Nakamura
- E. Ushioda
In Literature and Literary Theory
- Ali H. Al-Hoorie
- Phil Hiver
- Alastair Henry
- Joseph P. Vitta
- A. Mystkowska‐Wiertelak
- E. Ushioda
- C. Thorsen
- Craig Lambert
Citations in the corpus
- Language learning motivation through a small lens: A research agenda (2016, background): “By sharpening the empirical lens on particular target L2 features and examining associations with motivation, we may potentially gain understanding of how motivation impacts on language learners’ attentional focus and resources and on their cognitive ENGAGEMENT WITH LANGUAGE (Svalberg 2009, 2012).”
- Learner-generated content and engagement in second language task performance (2017, methodology): “Engagement as defined in the recent L2 literature (Philp & Duchesne, 2016; Svalberg, 2009) is helpful here.”
- Acting, thinking, feeling, making, collaborating: The engagement process in foreign language learning (2019, neutral): “…action, researchers from several different paradigms, including self-determination theory, expectancy-value theory, and numerous others, have used this construct to explain learning processes in formal educational settings (Martin, 2010; Reeve, 2012; Svalberg, 2009; Wang & Eccles, 2011; etc.).”
- Engagement in language learning: A systematic review of 20 years of research methods and definitions (2021, background): “Learners are cognitively engaged when they exhibit deliberate, selective, and sustained attention to achieve a given task or learning goals (Reeve, 2012; Svalberg, 2009).”
- Exploring Engagement in Tasks in the Language Classroom (2016, background): “While not included in all models of engagement, we believe that in the context of instructed language learning, the social dimension to interaction should be foregrounded as a dimension of engagement (see also Svalberg, 2009).”
- Disaffection and agentic engagement: ‘Redesigning’ activities to enable authentic self-expression (2018, background): “Both the motivation and investment constructs, however, deal more with the reasons why Engagement does or does not occur than with what Engagement is (Svalberg, 2009, p. 256) In work now beginning to close the circle, Dörnyei has begun to explore engagement.”
- Teachers’ accounts of learners’ engagement and disaffection in the language classroom (2020, background): “The main lines of enquiry concern exploring engagement with language (e.g. Svalberg 2009, 2017), engagement in task-based interaction (e.g. Philp and Duchesne 2016), establishing the engagement component structure (Reeve 2012; Reeve and Tseng 2011), and positioning it within a broader theoretical…”