- Email: [email protected]
Poetry as Research. Exploring second language poetry writing
Book reviews / System 38 (2010) 634e650
645
apprentices. If the reader looks for direct and practical applications of SFL, that is, with SFL as the working tool, the two volumes edited by Hasan et al. (2005, 2007) would be better choices. Overall, the two collections under review are valuable and timely contributions to the field of SFL studies. References Fawcett, R., 2000. A Theory of Syntax for Systemic Functional Linguistics. John Benjamins, Amsterdam. Halliday, M.A.K., 2002e2007. In: Webster, J.J. (Ed.), Collected Works, vols.1e10. Continuum, London. Halliday, M.A.K., Matthiessen, C.M.I.M., 2004. An Introduction to Functional Grammar, third (ed.). Arnold, London. Revised by C.M.I.M. Matthiessen. Hasan, R., Matthiessen, C.M.I.M., Webster, J. (Eds.), 2005, 2007. Continuing Discourse on Language: a Functional Perspective. Equinox, London vols. 1 and 2.
Zhiying Xin School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University, 135 Xingang Western Road, Guangzhou 510275, People’s Republic of China E-mail address: [email protected] doi:10.1016/j.system.2010.09.002
Poetry as Research. Exploring second language poetry writing, David Ian Hanauer. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company (2010), 164 pp. In many ways this is an intriguing book, using as its principal research data the poems written by second language learners attending a poetry writing course at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and collected by the course teacher over six years. I enjoyed some sections of it (notably the discussions of poetry and the poems themselves) and found other parts dull (particularly the long and earnest justifications for using poetry as data). When I finished reading it, I thought: ‘Has this made a convincing case for using poems to answer research questions?’ I think it has, although I am less convinced that all of the explorations are equally valuable. Hanauer describes a course he taught from 2003 to 2008, during which he collected 844 poems from 81 different students and decided to use them as data. Instead of concentrating entirely on this data from the start, however, he adds a preliminary research question: ‘What are the characteristics of poetry writing?’ Chapter 2 deals with his research into this (interviews with three female native-speaker students writing poetry for a Master of Fine Arts degree, exploring their poems and the poetry writing process). I found extracts from their interviews interesting, but the results (presented in graphic form as ‘The Activation Stage’, ‘The Discovery Stage’, ‘The Permutation Stage’ and ‘The Finalization Stage’) rather obvious. Yes, poetry writing is a process of self-discovery, triggered by emotions and events, and poets write several drafts, delete more than they add, and the process is partly recursive and not linear, ending up with meaning emerging in the finished poem. His conclusion is that ‘as such, a poem is qualitative data. a valuable tool for qualitative research.’ (p.31) At this point, I wondered what kind of research was going to illuminate this process further, and also whether, in a book entitled Exploring second language poetry writing, it would have been more relevant to ask the second language students to reflect on their processes of writing poetry themselves. In the third chapter, Hanauer discusses various studies in which second language students are exposed to poetry and suggests that once their English is sufficiently advanced for them to understand the words used, they can evaluate aesthetic qualities and can read, write and interpret their own poetry. Again, this seems quite obvious. He then presents a detailed analysis of the textual and literary characteristics of his corpus of second language poetry, using software to show that the average poem in his corpus is relatively short (52.73 words), that first person pronouns figure largely, the
646
Book reviews / System 38 (2010) 634e650
present tense predominates and the corpus is characterised by a direct descriptive style. 84.6% of the vocabulary used in the poems comes from the 2000 most frequent words in the English language. None of this seems remarkable, nor the claim that the poems provide data on ‘the individual perspective on particular events and experiences and.the emotional states of the writer’ as well as providing evidence that ‘writing poetry is well within the capabilities of an advanced second language writer.’ (p. 53). The point of this ‘scientific’ analysis is that it apparently answers the question of whether second language writers can indeed write poetry. Am I missing something here? After teaching the course for six years, he already knew that his students could write poetry. There are poets all over the world who write poetry in a language not their own. After a year of Spanish for beginners I wrote a poem in Spanish using nouns and adjectives (no verbs). I am doubtful whether analysing this poem would give anyone a great insight into my individual perspective and emotional state, except that linguistically I was clearly using a much more limited toolbox than when I write poetry in English. Does a computer analysis of the language used in such poetry provide us with a deeper understanding than a simple reading of the poems? Surely the question of whether a poem is successful in its own terms is more important than its linguistic sophistication? The fourth chapter deals with poetic identity (a reflective, deliberative construction of the autobiographical self in the act of writing a poem) in second language poetry. Using three categories of analysis (the context of writing, the content and a stylistic analysis of literary and linguistic choices), Hanauer presents a case study of ten poems written by a Japanese female student dealing with the divorce of her parents. This poetic sequence is interesting in itself, and the poet’s stance in relation to events in her life is clear, but does labelling the poems ‘qualitative research data’ turn them into something more valuable? In the next chapter, Hanauer reviews the literature on poetry as a research method, mainly in the fields of social work, nursing education and sociology. His review of the literature, both here and throughout the book, is commendably thorough. He argues that ‘poetry writing as a research method integrates the aims of personal discovery with the development of scientific, culturally valuable knowledge’ (p. 84), although he concedes that presenting data in the form of poems rather than academic text makes them difficult to evaluate in terms of accuracy, validity and reliability. Where such data can be used, he suggests, is for ‘understanding individual, subjective, literary and linguistically negotiated, emotionally laden descriptions of experience.’ (p. 94). Chapter 6 answers the research question: ‘How is the study abroad experience characterised through poetic data written by second language study abroad students?’ The poems chosen to illustrate this theme are divided into those which show emotional responses to language, academic classrooms, contact with American students, negotiating American culture and homesickness. Overall, the view of the study abroad experience is negative, but Hanauer is reluctant to generalise from this other than to say that it is an opportunity for us to look at the experiences from the perspective of the students involved. As a research finding, this is weak, to say the least. Poems can perhaps only reflect how the poet was feeling at a particular moment in time, but if they are collected as data from which to draw conclusions about an experience, then conclusions should be drawn. In the final chapter, Hanauer presents his philosophical grounding in support of poetry as research. He concedes that there are problems of true representation (poetry offers a contrived construction of reality and therefore cannot be true knowledge); detachability (poetry unites form and meaning in a linguistic construct that is not detachable from its mode of representation; universality (poetry presents particular, individual instances instead of universal, general truths) and emotionality (scientific knowledge is cognitive and rational, whereas poetry is emotive). However, if personal responses are under investigation, poetry is an additional research method, akin to personal interviews, which can add to overall research data. He argues that multiple methodologies are useful and poems can show us ethical participant understandings of their contexts and processes. The book is not flawless. There are typological errors scattered throughout the text from ‘news ways’ (p. 12) through mistakes in the use of the apostrophe on pages 15 and 38, to missing words on pages 40, 43 and 153 and a singular used for a plural on page 61 as well as a redundant ‘is’ on page 135. To be fair, these are probably not the fault of the author, and he would no doubt be as keen for these to be corrected as I am. I still have reservations about the idea that any kind of data can be used for research and also that any research is, per se, worth doing. Analysing the obvious can result in a ‘so what?’ response. There were times when reading this book that I responded in this way. However, encouraging second language students (or first language students for that matter) to write poetry is a laudable endeavour, and presenting poems to various audiences (students, researchers and the general reader) in order for them to learn what they can from them culturally, emotionally, or sociologically, is certainly worthwhile. Finally, assembling an impressive bibliography to support the case for poetry to be used as an
Book reviews / System 38 (2010) 634e650
647
alternative methodology for research will, I am sure, be useful to all those who are inspired by Hanauer to use poems as data in the future. Deborah Mason Language Centre, University of Oxford, 12 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HT, United Kingdom E-mail address: [email protected] doi:10.1016/j.system.2010.09.002
Strategic Language Learning: The Roles of Agency and Context, Xuesong (Andy) Gao. Bristol: Multilingual Matters (2010), 192 pp. Since the early days of language learning strategy (LLS) research, the dominant underlying theoretical perspective has been a psycholinguistic one. Increasingly, however, sociocultural theory has been advanced as a useful lens through which to consider LLS use, although substantial studies undertaken from this standpoint are still relatively rare. Gao’s study thus offers something new, representing as it does a longitudinal investigation underpinned by sociocultural theory, and which takes the standpoint that ‘language learning takes place not just in individual learners’ minds but also in society’ (p. 18). The study takes a longitudinal, ethnographic approach, exploring the learning experiences of mainland Chinese students in two different settings e first, within the context of university language learning in China, and then, in an English-medium university in Hong Kong, in which they not only face the challenges of further developing English proficiency but also of integrating with Hong Kong students with whom they do not share a first language and whose culture seems at times quite different from their own. The book follows a clear structure over seven chapters. After an overview in Chapter 1, which also offers important insights into the challenges and strengths of ethnographic research, Chapter 2 outlines the theoretical background to the study. Its main purpose is to argue for the merits of adopting a sociocultural perspective on LLSs, and it does so clearly and persuasively, taking into account recent debates about methods of data collection. Gao addresses the issue of definitions of a strategy but I am not sure that he does this totally successfully with regard to whether strategies are ‘mental activity’, constituting very small units of analysis (Macaro, 2006), as they are largely viewed in LLS research from a psycholinguistic perspective, or whether they include overt, motor behaviour. One might argue that many of the strategies described in Gao’s study are of the latter type, for example, attending a language class or socialising with other students. A fuller discussion of these differing views of what a strategy is would have been useful. However, a particularly important point raised is that learning strategies are not necessarily ‘enduring traits’ but are responses to particular ‘contexts’: for those coming from a psycholonguistic perspective, these tend to be considered as the different learning tasks to which different strategies are applied. Gao argues that sociocultural researchers come to the same conclusion regarding the importance of ‘context’, but that for them, ‘context’ is the social context. He also makes much of the notion of ‘choice’, which he posits may the ‘defining characteristic of strategic behaviour’ (citing Cohen, 1998), but again situates it within a sociocultural framework, emphasising the need for research to investigate the extent to which ‘the choice rests with learners or is mediated by the particular social contexts in which the learner is engaged’ (p. 17), and the way in which strategy use changes in response to changes in context (making a longitudinal methodology essential to his research). The investigation of this theme is a central part of the study as a whole. In sum, the chapter offers a clear and concise overview of the key theoretical issues relating to sociocultural theory in relation to LLSs, and sets the background to the study very well. Chapter 3 gives details of the context in which the study is set e first, mainland China, and then Hong Kong, and the challenges each setting poses for learners of English. In China, Gao stresses the importance of education for social mobility and the competitive nature of education, with heavy emphasis on success in examinations, including English. In such a context, many mainland Chinese students (mainly from privileged backgrounds) move to Hong Kong to continue their studies in English-medium universities. The chapter offers fascinating insights into the linguistic and
645
apprentices. If the reader looks for direct and practical applications of SFL, that is, with SFL as the working tool, the two volumes edited by Hasan et al. (2005, 2007) would be better choices. Overall, the two collections under review are valuable and timely contributions to the field of SFL studies. References Fawcett, R., 2000. A Theory of Syntax for Systemic Functional Linguistics. John Benjamins, Amsterdam. Halliday, M.A.K., 2002e2007. In: Webster, J.J. (Ed.), Collected Works, vols.1e10. Continuum, London. Halliday, M.A.K., Matthiessen, C.M.I.M., 2004. An Introduction to Functional Grammar, third (ed.). Arnold, London. Revised by C.M.I.M. Matthiessen. Hasan, R., Matthiessen, C.M.I.M., Webster, J. (Eds.), 2005, 2007. Continuing Discourse on Language: a Functional Perspective. Equinox, London vols. 1 and 2.
Zhiying Xin School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University, 135 Xingang Western Road, Guangzhou 510275, People’s Republic of China E-mail address: [email protected] doi:10.1016/j.system.2010.09.002
Poetry as Research. Exploring second language poetry writing, David Ian Hanauer. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company (2010), 164 pp. In many ways this is an intriguing book, using as its principal research data the poems written by second language learners attending a poetry writing course at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and collected by the course teacher over six years. I enjoyed some sections of it (notably the discussions of poetry and the poems themselves) and found other parts dull (particularly the long and earnest justifications for using poetry as data). When I finished reading it, I thought: ‘Has this made a convincing case for using poems to answer research questions?’ I think it has, although I am less convinced that all of the explorations are equally valuable. Hanauer describes a course he taught from 2003 to 2008, during which he collected 844 poems from 81 different students and decided to use them as data. Instead of concentrating entirely on this data from the start, however, he adds a preliminary research question: ‘What are the characteristics of poetry writing?’ Chapter 2 deals with his research into this (interviews with three female native-speaker students writing poetry for a Master of Fine Arts degree, exploring their poems and the poetry writing process). I found extracts from their interviews interesting, but the results (presented in graphic form as ‘The Activation Stage’, ‘The Discovery Stage’, ‘The Permutation Stage’ and ‘The Finalization Stage’) rather obvious. Yes, poetry writing is a process of self-discovery, triggered by emotions and events, and poets write several drafts, delete more than they add, and the process is partly recursive and not linear, ending up with meaning emerging in the finished poem. His conclusion is that ‘as such, a poem is qualitative data. a valuable tool for qualitative research.’ (p.31) At this point, I wondered what kind of research was going to illuminate this process further, and also whether, in a book entitled Exploring second language poetry writing, it would have been more relevant to ask the second language students to reflect on their processes of writing poetry themselves. In the third chapter, Hanauer discusses various studies in which second language students are exposed to poetry and suggests that once their English is sufficiently advanced for them to understand the words used, they can evaluate aesthetic qualities and can read, write and interpret their own poetry. Again, this seems quite obvious. He then presents a detailed analysis of the textual and literary characteristics of his corpus of second language poetry, using software to show that the average poem in his corpus is relatively short (52.73 words), that first person pronouns figure largely, the
646
Book reviews / System 38 (2010) 634e650
present tense predominates and the corpus is characterised by a direct descriptive style. 84.6% of the vocabulary used in the poems comes from the 2000 most frequent words in the English language. None of this seems remarkable, nor the claim that the poems provide data on ‘the individual perspective on particular events and experiences and.the emotional states of the writer’ as well as providing evidence that ‘writing poetry is well within the capabilities of an advanced second language writer.’ (p. 53). The point of this ‘scientific’ analysis is that it apparently answers the question of whether second language writers can indeed write poetry. Am I missing something here? After teaching the course for six years, he already knew that his students could write poetry. There are poets all over the world who write poetry in a language not their own. After a year of Spanish for beginners I wrote a poem in Spanish using nouns and adjectives (no verbs). I am doubtful whether analysing this poem would give anyone a great insight into my individual perspective and emotional state, except that linguistically I was clearly using a much more limited toolbox than when I write poetry in English. Does a computer analysis of the language used in such poetry provide us with a deeper understanding than a simple reading of the poems? Surely the question of whether a poem is successful in its own terms is more important than its linguistic sophistication? The fourth chapter deals with poetic identity (a reflective, deliberative construction of the autobiographical self in the act of writing a poem) in second language poetry. Using three categories of analysis (the context of writing, the content and a stylistic analysis of literary and linguistic choices), Hanauer presents a case study of ten poems written by a Japanese female student dealing with the divorce of her parents. This poetic sequence is interesting in itself, and the poet’s stance in relation to events in her life is clear, but does labelling the poems ‘qualitative research data’ turn them into something more valuable? In the next chapter, Hanauer reviews the literature on poetry as a research method, mainly in the fields of social work, nursing education and sociology. His review of the literature, both here and throughout the book, is commendably thorough. He argues that ‘poetry writing as a research method integrates the aims of personal discovery with the development of scientific, culturally valuable knowledge’ (p. 84), although he concedes that presenting data in the form of poems rather than academic text makes them difficult to evaluate in terms of accuracy, validity and reliability. Where such data can be used, he suggests, is for ‘understanding individual, subjective, literary and linguistically negotiated, emotionally laden descriptions of experience.’ (p. 94). Chapter 6 answers the research question: ‘How is the study abroad experience characterised through poetic data written by second language study abroad students?’ The poems chosen to illustrate this theme are divided into those which show emotional responses to language, academic classrooms, contact with American students, negotiating American culture and homesickness. Overall, the view of the study abroad experience is negative, but Hanauer is reluctant to generalise from this other than to say that it is an opportunity for us to look at the experiences from the perspective of the students involved. As a research finding, this is weak, to say the least. Poems can perhaps only reflect how the poet was feeling at a particular moment in time, but if they are collected as data from which to draw conclusions about an experience, then conclusions should be drawn. In the final chapter, Hanauer presents his philosophical grounding in support of poetry as research. He concedes that there are problems of true representation (poetry offers a contrived construction of reality and therefore cannot be true knowledge); detachability (poetry unites form and meaning in a linguistic construct that is not detachable from its mode of representation; universality (poetry presents particular, individual instances instead of universal, general truths) and emotionality (scientific knowledge is cognitive and rational, whereas poetry is emotive). However, if personal responses are under investigation, poetry is an additional research method, akin to personal interviews, which can add to overall research data. He argues that multiple methodologies are useful and poems can show us ethical participant understandings of their contexts and processes. The book is not flawless. There are typological errors scattered throughout the text from ‘news ways’ (p. 12) through mistakes in the use of the apostrophe on pages 15 and 38, to missing words on pages 40, 43 and 153 and a singular used for a plural on page 61 as well as a redundant ‘is’ on page 135. To be fair, these are probably not the fault of the author, and he would no doubt be as keen for these to be corrected as I am. I still have reservations about the idea that any kind of data can be used for research and also that any research is, per se, worth doing. Analysing the obvious can result in a ‘so what?’ response. There were times when reading this book that I responded in this way. However, encouraging second language students (or first language students for that matter) to write poetry is a laudable endeavour, and presenting poems to various audiences (students, researchers and the general reader) in order for them to learn what they can from them culturally, emotionally, or sociologically, is certainly worthwhile. Finally, assembling an impressive bibliography to support the case for poetry to be used as an
Book reviews / System 38 (2010) 634e650
647
alternative methodology for research will, I am sure, be useful to all those who are inspired by Hanauer to use poems as data in the future. Deborah Mason Language Centre, University of Oxford, 12 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HT, United Kingdom E-mail address: [email protected] doi:10.1016/j.system.2010.09.002
Strategic Language Learning: The Roles of Agency and Context, Xuesong (Andy) Gao. Bristol: Multilingual Matters (2010), 192 pp. Since the early days of language learning strategy (LLS) research, the dominant underlying theoretical perspective has been a psycholinguistic one. Increasingly, however, sociocultural theory has been advanced as a useful lens through which to consider LLS use, although substantial studies undertaken from this standpoint are still relatively rare. Gao’s study thus offers something new, representing as it does a longitudinal investigation underpinned by sociocultural theory, and which takes the standpoint that ‘language learning takes place not just in individual learners’ minds but also in society’ (p. 18). The study takes a longitudinal, ethnographic approach, exploring the learning experiences of mainland Chinese students in two different settings e first, within the context of university language learning in China, and then, in an English-medium university in Hong Kong, in which they not only face the challenges of further developing English proficiency but also of integrating with Hong Kong students with whom they do not share a first language and whose culture seems at times quite different from their own. The book follows a clear structure over seven chapters. After an overview in Chapter 1, which also offers important insights into the challenges and strengths of ethnographic research, Chapter 2 outlines the theoretical background to the study. Its main purpose is to argue for the merits of adopting a sociocultural perspective on LLSs, and it does so clearly and persuasively, taking into account recent debates about methods of data collection. Gao addresses the issue of definitions of a strategy but I am not sure that he does this totally successfully with regard to whether strategies are ‘mental activity’, constituting very small units of analysis (Macaro, 2006), as they are largely viewed in LLS research from a psycholinguistic perspective, or whether they include overt, motor behaviour. One might argue that many of the strategies described in Gao’s study are of the latter type, for example, attending a language class or socialising with other students. A fuller discussion of these differing views of what a strategy is would have been useful. However, a particularly important point raised is that learning strategies are not necessarily ‘enduring traits’ but are responses to particular ‘contexts’: for those coming from a psycholonguistic perspective, these tend to be considered as the different learning tasks to which different strategies are applied. Gao argues that sociocultural researchers come to the same conclusion regarding the importance of ‘context’, but that for them, ‘context’ is the social context. He also makes much of the notion of ‘choice’, which he posits may the ‘defining characteristic of strategic behaviour’ (citing Cohen, 1998), but again situates it within a sociocultural framework, emphasising the need for research to investigate the extent to which ‘the choice rests with learners or is mediated by the particular social contexts in which the learner is engaged’ (p. 17), and the way in which strategy use changes in response to changes in context (making a longitudinal methodology essential to his research). The investigation of this theme is a central part of the study as a whole. In sum, the chapter offers a clear and concise overview of the key theoretical issues relating to sociocultural theory in relation to LLSs, and sets the background to the study very well. Chapter 3 gives details of the context in which the study is set e first, mainland China, and then Hong Kong, and the challenges each setting poses for learners of English. In China, Gao stresses the importance of education for social mobility and the competitive nature of education, with heavy emphasis on success in examinations, including English. In such a context, many mainland Chinese students (mainly from privileged backgrounds) move to Hong Kong to continue their studies in English-medium universities. The chapter offers fascinating insights into the linguistic and