Andrew D. Cohen

International Conference 2019
Plenary Session

Fine-Tuning Word Meanings Through Online and App Technologies: A Close-up Look at Successful and Unsuccessful Strategy Use

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The rapid growth of the Internet and the host of new online resources now available have revolutionized in many ways the learning of language. A question that arises is whether insights into the appropriate uses of language learner strategies (LLS) have kept pace with these technological advances. The talk will report on a case study of a hyperpolyglot attempting to fine-tune word meanings in Mandarin, his 13th language.

The study was undertaken in order to investigate the extent to which new technologies such as Internet programs and phone apps assist learners in arriving at accurate understandings of word meanings in context. The talk will report on the extent to which strategies for fine-tuning vocabulary with the support of selected resources were used alone, in sequence, in pairs, or in clusters, as well as on the relative effectiveness of these strategies aimed at fine-tuning the understanding of word meanings in Mandarin. The implications from this study for fine-tuning the understanding of EFL vocabulary are presented.

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Invited Second Session (Two-part, 105-minute Workshop)

Exploring Ways in Which Being a Native or a Nonnative Teacher May Influence the Teaching of Target-Language Pragmatics

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Part I: The workshop will start by pointing out that the research literature has downplayed the significance of whether target-language (TL) instructors are native or nonnative speakers of the language that they are teaching. The case will be made that with regard to pragmatics instruction, there are advantages to being nonnative and that there are also advantages to being a native speaker. Examples of both will be provided, drawing largely on an international survey of both groups of teachers.

Part II: In the hands-on part of the workshop, participants will discuss first in small groups and then with all workshop participants their responses to a 20-item questionnaire which they will be requested to fill out before the workshop. (There are slight differences between the native- and nonnative versions of the questionnaires.)

The aim of the workshop is to heighten teachers’ (and developing teachers’) awareness as to how they deal with their knowledge of TL pragmatics in the language that they teach or intend to teach.

Note: Before attending this workshop, please take the time to complete the related survey attached as a PDF file at the bottom of this page. Fill out the appropriate survey ㅡ Native Teacher Survey or Non-native Teacher Survey ㅡ and bring it to the workshop session. The survey need not be submitted and the demographic questions need not be answered. The surveys will also be available on the KOTESOL conference app.

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Biographical Sketch

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Andrew D. Cohen is Professor Emeritus from the University of Minnesota. He is currently living in Oakland, VA. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural community development with the Aymara Indians on the High Plains of Bolivia (1965-1967). He was professor of ESL in the English Department at UCLA (1972-1975), professor of Language Education at the Hebrew University (1975-1991) with a year as Fulbright Lecturer and Researcher at the PUC in Sao Paulo, Brazil (1986-1987), and then assumed a position as professor of second language studies at the University of Minnesota in 1991, until he retired in the Spring of 2013. During his Minnesota years, he was a visiting scholar at the University of Hawaii (1996-1997) and at Tel Aviv University (1997), and a visiting lecturer at Auckland University in New Zealand (2004-2005).

Dr. Cohen co-edited Language Learning Strategies with Ernesto Macaro (Oxford University Press, 2007), co-authored Teaching and Learning Pragmatics with Noriko Ishihara (Routledge, 2014, with translations into Japanese and Arabic), authored the second edition of Strategies in Learning and Using a Second Language (Routledge, 2011), and most recently published The Learning of Pragmatics from Native and Nonnative Language Teachers (Multilingual Matters, 2018). He has also published many book chapters and journal articles. Copies of most of his papers are available for download on his website: https://z.umn.edu/adcohen.

In retirement from his last university position, Dr. Cohen remains active professionally, presenting at conferences, doing consulting, and writing. For example, he was consultant on a 3½-year research project (2013-2015) in Doha, Qatar, to improve the reading strategies in EFL and Arabic L1 of middle-school students reading in science. In addition, he wrote a guide for young language learners, with a companion guide for teachers. He piloted the guide with 5th- and 6th-grade Spanish immersion students at a charter school in Forest Lake, MN. For the last nine years, he has been studying his 13th language, Mandarin. As an outgrowth of weekly language sessions with a native Chinese-speaking colleague, he and this colleague have just completed a study of his strategies for dealing with Mandarin vocabulary.

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Andrew Cohen Media Online

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KOTESOL Interview: Andrew D. Cohen (July 15, 2019, for The English Connection)
See PDF attachment at bottom of this page.

Video: Talk on learning and using pragmatics in the target language.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZP_iQyu1xMKAD-jdkGMzJcdzIvjdvIkI/view?t...

Book: The Joys of Being a Professor: My Life in Academia (2018)
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-joys-of-being-a-professor-andrew-d-...

Dr. Cohen's Publications Page
https://z.umn.edu/adcohen
Here is a sampling from some of his publication topics:
ㅡ 2018. Cohen, A. D., & Wang, I. K.-H. Fluctuation in the functions of language learner strategies. System, 74, 169-182.
ㅡ 2018. Cohen, A. D., & Wang, I. K.-H. Corrigendum to “Fluctuation in the functions of language learnerstrategies” [System, 74C (2018), 169-182], System, 78, 256-265.
ㅡ 2017. Reflections on a career in second language studies: Promising pathways for future research. L2 Journal, 10(1), 1-19.
ㅡ 2016. The design and construction of websites to promote L2 pragmatics. In K. Bardovi-Harlig & C. Félix-Brasdefer (Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning, Volume 14 (pp. 341-356). National Foreign Language Resource Center, University of Hawai’i, Manoa.
ㅡ 2016. The teaching of pragmatics by native and nonnative language teachers: What they know and what they report doing. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 6(4), 561-585.
ㅡ 2015. Cohen, A. D. & Griffiths, C. Revisiting LLS research 40 years later. TESOL Quarterly, 49(1).
ㅡ 2015. Cohen, A. D. Achieving academic control in two languages: Drawing on the psychology of language learning in considering the past, the present, and prospects for the future. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 5(2), 327-345.
ㅡ 2014. Cohen, A. D. Strategies for the super-multilinguals in an increasingly global world. In B. Spolsky, O. Inbar-Lourie, & M. Tannenbaum (Eds.), Challenges for language education and policy: Making space for people (pp. 270-280). NY, NY: Routledge.
ㅡ 2014. Towards increased classroom assessment of pragmatic ability. Iranian Journal of Language Testing, 4(1), 5-25.
ㅡ 2013. Using test-wiseness strategy research in task development. In A. J. Kunnan (Ed.), The companion to language assessment – Vol. 2: Approaches and development, Part 7: Assessment development. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons.

Pragmatics Wiki ㅡ to facilitate the gathering of lesson plans and other instructional materials to a teacher’s in actually teaching pragmatics in their classes. It includes some lessons for teaching English pragmatics.
http://wlpragmatics.pbworks.com/w/page/99620139/Second%20and%20Foreign%2...

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