Hamilton, H. E, & Cohen, A. D. TE creating 2 playworld: Motivating learners to lake chances in a second language-TA J. Frodesen & C. Hotten (Eds.), The power of Context language teaching and leaming (pp. 237-247). Boston: Thomson/Heinie Heidi E. Hamilton Georgetown University Andrew D. Cohen University of Minnesota Creating a Playworld: Motivating Learners to Take Chances in a Second Language’ Creating suitable contexts for interaction... and providing learners with opportunities to process language within a variety of sitvations are ... necessary for developing learning environments where language acquisition and language development can take place within a communicative perspective. (Otshtain & Celce-Murcia, 2001, p. 707) Introduction ‘A young girl looks down at the coins in her out stretched hand. Puzzled, she directs her glance k to the store clerk behind the cash register and slowly opens her mouth: Aber... das ist falsch. Das ist xu viel Geld (‘But .. this is wrong. ‘This is too much money’). Somehow the clerk has confused the first two girls in line and has given one girl's change to the other. The clerk recognizes the problem and gives the girl the correct change. With a quick Danke schén. Tichift (Thanks. Bye’), the girl pockets her money, grabs her cola, and is out the door and down the path to meet up with her friends. A few hundred meters away from the store, a German environmentalist gently guides a high school sophomore along a Sinnespfad (a sensory path) in the woods. Blindfolded and barefoot, the girl steps first onto a raised area of flat, smooth stones. Shifting her weight to her left Jeg, she runs the bottom of her tight foot very carefully over the individual stones, trying to dis- cern which ones are grifer (bigger) than the oth ers. A slight step downward takes her into some soft, cool sand. As she pauses to dig her toes into the sand, the guide notices a smile on her face. van denkst du, wenn du in dem Sand spielst? (‘What are you thinking about when you're play- ing in the sand?") Ick bin am Strand (‘I'm on the beach’), replies the girl. They converse a bit more and move on to the next station on the path: Kies (gravel) After dinner that evening, almost sixty high school students gather in the dining hall to dis- cuss Austria's approach to enlarging the Euro- pean Union. Thirty students sit around a large square conference table, representing the range of political parties and opinions in Austria; the other thirty head upstairs and form smaller .groups representing such candidate countries as Hungary, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. While the “Austrian” diplomats negotiate acces- sion to the E.U. with their neighbors upstairs, the “Austrian” political parties seek to win popu lar favor for their positions downstairs, The preceding conversations took place among American learners and their counselors at Waldsee, the German Language Village of Con- cordia Language Villages in northern Minnesota (USA). These interactions constitute the au- thentic and situated language learning that is ad- vocated by scholars such as CelceMurcia and Olshtain (see CelceMurcia & Olshtain, 2000; 237vided Olshtain & Celce-Murcia, 2001). Among school- based language programs, language immersion seems to offer opportunities for extended con- versation in a second language about a wide range of realife situations and contexts, and has thus become a popular curricular model for sec- ond and foreign language teaching in elemen- tary and secondary schools. Yet despite the contextrich language exposure these programs provide, it has become clear that learners may only infrequently have opportunities for ex- tended conversation in the target language. Fur- thermore, they may be exposed to a limited range of language functions, vocabulary, and so ciolinguistic variation (see Tarone & Swain, 1995), namely, those that are consonant with the academic setting. Frequently lacking in such programs is an exploration and understanding of the broader sociohistorical and cultural con texts of the target language—an understanding that is arguably vital to sustaining students’ in- terest in and motivation to study the language. In an effort to provide a sociohistorical and cultural complement to the classroom, language educators have been promoting enrichment programs such as summer language camps. ‘Twenty years ago Vines (1983) described 49 for- ign language camps in 26 U.S. states that pro- Tanguage immersion and cultural experiences for high school students outside of the classroom. Generally, however, the efféctive- ness of these programs has not been the subject, of systematic or in-depth research (see, for ex- ample, Haukebo, 1969, with regard to elemen- tary and secondary programs; for high school: Baudin, 1978; Davis, 1982; Nyhus & Maiwald, 1980; Tryjillo, 1982; for college: Baughin, 1983; Griswold, 1983). The apparent dearth of re- search on the summer language camp experi- ence prompted the current researchers to undertake a study with the dual goals of (a) dis- covering, understanding, and characterizing the dynamics of a summer language camp experi- ence that can enhance language development; and (b) exploring ways in which these dynamics might be applicable to programs of instruction in more formal learning contexts. The research reported in this chapter was conducted in the summer of 2001 within one 238 © Chapter 21 such program, Concordia Language Villages (CLV). CLV is the oldest and most extensive summer residential program for elementary and secondary students in the United States, offeri summer programs for over 6,000 young people* ages 7-18 in the following 18 languages: Ger man, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Jap nese, Chinese, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, and English as a Second Lan- guage. These camp programs take place in Tetreatstyle communities where counselors/ instructors and learners live everyday life in the target language, typically engaging in a wide va riety of activites including sports, arts and crafts, dancing, cooking, swimming, nature programs, singing, banking, and shopping. Several times a day, leamers meet with a small group of peers (usually six to eight learners) at their language level and an instructor/counselor to focus specifically on language forms and functions that then can be practiced in the ongoing daily activities. Although in-depth investigation was under- taken in three programs, the German Language Village (Waldsee), the Russian Language Village (Lesnoe Ozero), and the French Wilderness Pro- gram (Les Voyageurs), we will focus here on German Language Village. To understand the dynamics of the language learning and use context at Waldsee, we undertook extensive ethnographic participantobservation and video- recording of language use in small language learning and residential groups, conducted fo- cus group and individual interviews, and admin- istered written questionnaires. Methodology Description of the Site and the Subject Waldsee, the German program of the Concordia Language Villages, is the oldest of all of the Con- cordia Language Villages, having been founded in 1961 by a professor in the German Depart ment at Concordia College in Minnesota. As is true of all of the Language Village programs, Waldsee has as its mission “to prepare young peo- ple for responsible citizenship in our global community" and strives to fulfill this mission byproviding varied opportunities for participants to learn and practice the target language as well as to learn about cultural norms and directly ex- perience related cultural practices. These lin- guistic and cultural goals are further enhanced by opportunities for participants to explore is. sues of relevance to the world at large, such as the environment, war/peace, justice, literacy, health, and human rights. In the summer of 2001, the year in which this study was conducted, 716 young people ages 7-18 took part in one of nine sessions at Waldsee. Our study focused on three of these sessions, two 2aveek sessions and one 4week session. During these sessions, a total of 244 children partici- pated, 186 in one of the two-week sessions and 5B in the one 4-week session. Of these 244 chil- dren, 239 took part in our study. (Five children did not receive permission from their parents to participate.) Questionnaires were completed by 216 children. Of these 216, 41% (N = 88) were participating in Waldsee for the first time. Twenty- four percent (N = 51) were returning for their fourth year or more. Regarding their contact with German outside the CLV context, 58% (N = 126) of the children reported taking Ger- man in school, and 54% (N = 117) reported speaking some German at home with family members and/or friends. Design of the Study and Data Collection As indicated above, data collection for this part of the study involved (2) ethnographic participantobservation, (b) videorecording lan- guage use, (c) focus groups, and (d) written questionnaires. The questionnaires were con- structed to tap language use patterns by the vik lagers, the counselors, and the instructors. Specifically, questions were designed to probe how counselors used the target language with villagers, how they used the target language with other counselors in the presence of villagers, the factors determining the extent to which villagers used the target language with the counselors, and the factors determining the extent to which villagers used the target language with each other. Emphasis was given to various situations over the span of the village day and evening, ranging from those led by staff to those involving staff but undirected to those where staff were not present. Co-author Hamilton functioned as the on- site supervisor of the two full-time summer re- search assistants (RAs) in the German village. These RAs acted as participantobservers in small language learning groups and in the cab- ins, taking notes and videotaping interactions with a hand-held camcorder. They also video- taped a series of focus group sessions conducted by Hamilton, In addition, the RAs interviewed selected villagers and staff members and facili tated the collection of end-ofsession villager questionnaires specific to this project. Both RAs had worked at least one year in the program pre- viously and had near-native language skills in German. In her role as on-site research supervi sor, co-author Hamilton lived and had an office at the German Language Village. The summer the research was conducted marked her twenty: seventh summer as a staff member with that pro- gram. Prior to that, she had spent two years as a villager. Co-author Cohen served as an outside researcher with no formal ties to the Concordia program. He helped to conceive and design the study and was active in the design of the data col- lection methods. He visited the site for several days during the data collection process, had an opportunity to meet at length with the two RAs, and also attended a number of village activities. Constructing a Playworld: Creating Opportunities for Language Use ‘The findings from the study have given us a bet- ter understanding of how opportunities are cre- ated for language use in a wide range of contexts within the German village. Key to creating these opportunities is a discourse community that con- tinuously constructs and maintains a “play world,” a world into which participants are drawn through use of space and allocation of time® In Goffiman’s (1959) theatrical terms, virtu- ally all interactions between learners and staff take place within the playworld that unfolds “frontstage”; the only “backstage” discourse community activities occur in spaces (such as the Creating a Playworld: Motivating Learners to Take Chances in a Second Language * 239staff lounge) and times of day (such as after the villagers have gone to sleep) where villagers and staff do not typically come together. These off stage moments allow staff critical time to plan “playworld” activities as well as to reflect on the program. The only times that villagers get to peek “behind the curtains” is when they are “act ing” in the role of counselors or instructors (see, for example, the discussion of “counselor for a day” in the section entitled “Accepting the Invi- tation: Learners Entering into the Playworld” be- low) or when they happen to overhear or eavesdrop on staffonly conversations in public. This playworld is based on both senses of the term play as discussed by Broner and Tarone (2001).* First, following Lantolf (1997), the fanction of language play is “exercise, or the re- hhearsal of target forms” (Broner & Tarone, 2001, p. 366)—in this case, in preparation for a future trip to German-speaking Europe. Second, fol- lowing Cook (1997), the function of language play is enjoyment and relaxation; it is an “exu- berance of the mind” (p. 227). The construction of this playworld where village participants can both rehearse and enjoy using the language cre- atively relies upon interrelationships between key structural components of village life, includ- ing physical space, participants, and time alloca- tion, as well as on the implicit principles that guide the types of activities carried out by these participants in time and space. These compo- nents are described in the following sections. Physical Site Waldsee takes place within a real village that shares an 830-acre tract of land on Turtle River Lake northeast of Bemidji, Minnesota with the French, Norwegian, Finnish, and Spanish Lan- guage Villages. Waldsee is made up of many dif ferent kinds of buildings and spaces: a dining hhall, a train station, activity buildings, immigrant cabins, stores, cafés, a bank, a health center, res- idential buildings, a library, a sauna, a soccer field, a marketplace, a beach on a large lake, a ropes course, a rustic theater hidden away in the ‘woods, a wilderness campground, and several nature trails and campfire circles. Consistent with the playworld concept, additional “spaces” are temporarily constructed to serve particular 240 © Chapter 21 programmatic purposes. Examples of such spaces include a travel agency set up to facilitate a Sunday afternoon recreational program and a Saturday evening restaurant and disco (a tray formation of the dining hall), complete with menus, new décor, and counselors and villagers serving as waitstafl. Participants At any given time at Waldsee, there are approxi- mately 180 learners and 60 counselors/instruc- tors. Just under half of the staff members are native speakers of German; the vast majority of the nonnative speakers on staff have excellent or nearly native command of the target language, acquired by significant experience living abroad, They range in age from 18 through 40, with most in their early to mid 20s. Some are trained as language teachers; others have skills and knowledge that are important in other ways to the community, induding music, art, sports, en- vironmental sciences, and drama. The learners, ‘who range in age from 7-18, come from across the United States as well as from several foreign countries. Approximately half learn German in school. Each summer more than half of the pre- vious year’s participants—staff and learne alike—return to Waldsee. From the moment the learners arrive on the first day, they begin to gather up the compo- nents of a new “identity” that they will be enact. ing in the village playworld. They arrive at the border of the new “country,” show their “pass ports” and go through customs. They choose a new name, find out what new “city” (cabin) they will be living in, open a bank account, and change their U.S. dollars into euros; they are surrounded by German language, music, and signs. Within a few hours of arrival, they will be eating the types of food that German-speaking Europeans eat. Time Allocation Waldsee hosts its learners 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for sessions of one, two, or four weeks. On. 2 typical day, learners wake up around 7:30 am. and go through the day immersed in the lan- guage until they go to bed around 10:00 p.m. As Figure 1 shows, the majority of the day is broken8.00 Morning circle 830 Breakfast 9.15 Large group: language and singing 10.00 Small language group 10.45 Break (bank, stores, cafés open) 11.15 Activity period 3230 Lunch’ 13.15 Rest period in cabin 14.00 Small language group 15.00 Activity period 15.45 Break (bank, stores, café open) 16.15 Small language group 17.15 Activity period, mail, staff meeting 18.15 Cabin time 19.00 Dinner 20.30 Evening program 22.00 Lights out up into 45-60 minute periods, during which time villagers participate in small language learning groups, free choice activities, meal- times, cabin-based activities, and large group song sessions and evening programs. Activities The three components just discussed—physical setting, participants, and allocation of time— come together to create a kaleidoscopic play- world that nourishes a wide range of learning activities. And it is within these activities that learners are offered extensive and varied oppor- tunities to learn and use the target language. Vil lagers interact with a range of different villagers and instructors throughout the day—from wake- up routines in their cabins, breakfast with differ- ent groups of friends, large group singing sessions, small language groups, soccer games, stained glass-making activities, nature hikes, working on the village newspaper, to numerous other activities. ‘While living groups are made up of learners who are of the same sex and approximately the same age, learning groups comprise learners who are more or less at the same language level, Activity groups are mixed in terms of age, lan- guage level, and sex, but homogeneous in terms of areas of interest. It is these different constel- lations of individuals accomplishing different tasks in German at different locations in the vil- lage throughout the day that create opportuni- ties for learners to use a range of language appropriate to various sociolinguistic and cul- ural contexts, ranging from dealing with a prob- Jem in the store to representing a political party's ideas, as illustrated in the opening sce- narios of this chapter. ‘Our empirical investigation of village life, which included observations of and discussions with participants, suggests that these playworld activities are guided by the following six (im- plicit) principles:® 1. activities should take place in linguistically and culturally authentic surroundings; 2. activities should be experiential and hands- on, involving multiple senses and drawing on multiple intelligences; 3. activities should take place out of a real need to interact and communicate; 4. activities should be embedded within ex- tended projects; 5. activities should be carried out in a learner centered way so that learners become in- vested in their own learning; and 6. activities should be carried out in such a ‘way as to give learners courage to partici- pate and use the language. Some readers may have noticed an apparent paradox in this section: as part of the construc- tion of a playworld, we are discussing the impor- tance of authentic objects and surroundings as well as participants’ authentic practices related to reakworld, needs-based communication. This paradox can be resolved if one keeps in mind the following points. The playworld is the domi- nant conceptual frame; in its service, authentic materials are useful to participants as they try out authentic (real-world) communicative prac- tices (and try on new identities, as Bruner 1990 suggests). Preschoolers do this all the time, try: ing on Dad’s hat and Mom's shoes and carrying around older siblings’ school books. These are authentic objects that serve the children’s de- sires to role-play events and situations in the Creating a Playworld: Motivating Learners to Take Chances in a Second Language * 242workplace or in school, for example, that are be- yond their current scope. It is in this sense that the language village relates the authentic world to the playworld. It should also be clear from previous and subsequent descriptions of village activities that the goal is not to recreate everyday life in a German-speaking village. A quick glance at the daily schedule along with the introductory sce- narios should make it clear that each day is lived very intensively and contains a wider range of ac- tivities than most individuals undertake in a “normal” day. Life in the village is more akin to life on a theater stage or in film, where almost no activity is unfocused. This focused life of the playworld allows participants to experience much more than they would during a typical day in the “real world.” Invitation to Play Along: Motivating Learners to Take Advantage of Opportunities For many learners, the very “existence” of a play- world that provides opportunities to learn and speak German throughout the day is enough to spark them into playing along. They jump right jinto their new play “identities” and take advan- tage of the opportunities to learn and to practice their second language. For other villagers, how- ever, the temptation to cling to their “real-life” identities—and to continue speaking English— is strong, Since these learners are not required to take an oath to speak only German while they are within the village (as is the case at the Mid- dlebury adult lariguage programs: see, for exam- ple, Spielmann & Radnofsky, 2001), the motivation has to come from elsewhere. Creat- ing opportunities is irrelevant if learners do not take advantage of them. From viewing videotapes of village life, ana- lyzing the content of villager and staff focus groups, and reviewing the research assistants’ field notes, it became clear that a key to motivat- ing even the most reticent learners into parti pating in the playworld is the practice of keeping learners slightly offguard at all times. Coun- selors and instructors begin by establishing clear 242 © Chapter 21 routines and expectations. Once learners’ ex: pectations about the village routines have be- come established, the counselors playfully behave in ways that fly in the face of expect tions, a technique used in improvisational the- atre or in jazz music (see Erickson, 1986). This surprising “creative tilt” can be used to motivate the learners to participate. (See Bruner, 1986, for a useful discussion of the relationship be- tween surprise and the gaining of attention.) This can perhaps best be grasped by referring to two concrete illustrations from life at Waldseer one relating to dining hall routines, the other to singing. In both cases, learners are enticed to participate by altering the expected, known rou- tine, standing it on its head. Gasthof (‘Dining Hall") Routine Before the morning and evening meals each day, learners gather in a circle around the market square in the center of the village. After singing a song and reciting a poem, the village dean (di- rector) asks those gathered if they are hungry (Habt ihr Hunger?). Upon hearing a loud fa, the dean directs them to go across the square to the dining hall (Dann gehen wir um Gasthof!). The vik lagers learn on the very first evening that th should gather outside the righthand entrance w the Gasthof and wait while the counselors enter through the left-hand entrance. While the coun- selors are finding places at the tables, the villagers sing Wir haben Hunger, Hunge, Hun- ger... (We're hungry, hungry, hungry) and shout together Kénnen wir bitte essen? (‘Can we please eat?') When everything is ready in the Gasthof, the counselors invite them to come in by answering Ja and singing one of several songs, Kommt, das Essen ist bereitet... (‘Come. The food is ready’), as the learners walk to their tables. Routines continue throughout the time in the Gasthof, with meal presentations, announcements regarding upcoming programs and classes, 2 ‘weather show, and a closing song all interspersed within everyday mealtime conversations. ‘One evening, Waldsee’s dean did the unex- pected: He directed the villagers to enter the Gasthof through the left (counselors’) entrance and the counselors to gather in front of the right entrance and wait. A brief moment of confusionensued and then a new energy surged through the entire group. The learners immediately took on the behaviors and associated language of the counselors, which up until this point they had only witnessed and never practiced. They en- tered into the Gasthofand distributed themselves among the tables. Several took on the roles of the counselors who stand in front of the right- hand entrance, directing the villagers’ singing and questions to the staff. For their part, the counselors ran towards the dining hall and be- gan to sing the villagers’ song. When the vik lagers inside decided it was time to allow the counselors in, they began to sing Kommt, das Es- sen ist beretet at the top of their lungs, a song that they had only heard before. The opportunity had presented itself for the learners to use the instructors’ language—and the words (and melody) were all in place! More importantly, any boredom associated with routine had been erased and supplanted by new-found motivation and energy to participate in the program. Lieder (‘Songs’) Singing is pervasive at Waldsee. Villagers learn 20 or more songs by heart each session, including hiking songs, traditional and present-day folk songs, “oldies,” and current top-of the-chart hits Each day villagers learn songs in an hourlong singing session and then practice these songs at circle times, before and afier meals, and at evening campfires. Songs are critical both to lan- guage learning and to community-building within the village. (See also Kind, 1980 and 1983, for discussions of singing as it relates to language learning methodology.) ‘The village songs themselves are often sub- Ject to the “creative tilt,” whereby portions of a familiar song's text are changed. Such parodies are frequently modeled by counselors during meal presentations. For example, one “oldie” entitled Bossanova contains the line Schuld war nur der Bossanova (‘It was all the Bossanova's fault’); a meal presentation about Misti, a breakfast food containing oat flakes, contains the rewritten line: Schuld waren nur die Hofer flocken (‘Tt was all the oat flakes’ fault’). Upon hearing the fractured lines, learners’ ears perk up; they notice the unexpected differences and wonder what is being said. Instead of listening mindlessly to a song they have already memo- rized, surprise propels them into the playworld, and they pay attention to the new portions of the text. This technique is also used with a different twist in a favorite rainy day program. Villagers are asked to take songs they have learned and to reshape and perform them in a different musi- cal style. A rock song might be sung as a Grego- rian chant; a simple good-night song as a rap. The “creative tilt” is a dominant tool in the larger Waldsee discourse community. It teaches that language is a resource to be reshaped and played with and fosters an attitude of flexibility and openness to the new and unexpected. After all, confounded expectations play an important role in intercultural misunderstandings (see Agar, 1994). Such play gives learners practice in responding with emotional comfort and intel- lectual acuity and helps them to remain open- minded in unexpected situations, a critical survival skill for a global citizen. Accepting the Invitation: Learners Entering into the Playworld When the unexpected has happened and the learners’ attention has been caught, they often accept the implicit invitation to enter into the playworld and use the target language readily ‘What do the leamers do as they enter into the playworld? Following the discussion of language play by Broner and Tarone (2001), we describe learners (a) using language play as rehearsal (Lantolf, 1997), (b) using language play as fun (Cook, 1997), and (c) combining the two, re- hearsing in a humorous way. Central to each i+ lustration is Becker's (1995) discussion of jarwa dhosok, the Javanese term for pushing old lan- guage into new contexts. Learners display “real language competence” by remembering old lan- guage and reshaping it to fit new contexts. Play as Rehearsal In “play as rehearsal,” learners take language that they have heard more proficient speakers use in particular contexts in the past, and they use it in 2 productive way for their own purposes. In most Creating a Playworld: Motivating Learners to Take Chances in a Second Language * 243