Dr. Dongping Zheng from University of Hawaii at Manoa was invited to deliver a lecture entitled “An Ecological, Dialogical and Distributed Perspective on Second Language Acquisition: Methods and Contexts” in the National Key Research Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics (CLAL) at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies(GDUFS) on the morning of October 9th, 2015. The lecture was chaired by Professor Xu Hai, the Deputy Director of CLAL, and attracted a large audience from GDUFS and other universities.
Dr. Zheng started off by briefly mentioning some major concepts in the EDD perspective and the EDD beliefs about language and cognition. She then focused her talk on the Eco-dialogical Model (Zheng, 2012) and relevant methodological issues. The model illustrates how perception and action are ongoing in meaning-making and values realizing. This process is languaging, which incorporates both the linguistic and action modes of semiosis as well as the sociocultural engagement of values realizing. Experiences of languaging enable L2 learners to learn to take skilled linguistic action. The theoretical and methodological advancement, pointed out by Dr. Zheng, lies in the rethinking of language, mind and world dialogically, and the units of analysis undertaken within the framework of Communicative Project (CP) Theory and Communicative Activity Type (CAT) Analysis. Dr. Zheng also offered a detailed illustration of the analysis procedure.
The lecture lasted about one and a half hour, ending with Dr. Zheng’s interaction and discussion with the audience. It greatly aroused the audience’s interest and brought to the audience a new perspective on second language acquisition.
