Loneliness and Linguistic

Development :
What Interventions Might We
Implement?

Methodology of Research and Documentation

Course

Lebanese University, Fifth branch

Faculty of humanities and Letters

Submitted to Professor Lutfi Hamadi

On Monday,29 March,2021
Student Malak Wehbe
Loneliness is cherished in romanticism for it facilitates the romantic poets’
union and connection with nature and its elements; it is clearer in
Wordsworth's Daffodils 1804:

“I wandered lonely as a cloud

that floats on high over vales and hills” .

As for the dark side, it impedes the linguistic formation of students in the
pedagogical field, including when we witness a solitary pupil bullied
mercilessly by the classmates and supported by no one (Gazelle and
Asher,1999). The dark phenomenon spreads even more increasing the rates
of anxiety, personality disorders, self-destructiveness, weak memory function
and language impairment, when there are no interventions implemented
(Gazelle and Asher,1999). It would be better to treat the dark phenomenon
pedagogically, linguistically and socially (Gazelle and Asher,1999; Kärnä et al,
2011; Kendig et al,2016).

The pupils , bullied rejected neglected and abused, are more likely to
experience negative emotions including anxiety, fear, alienation, stress and
guilt than the ones who are respected and admired (Gazelle and Asher,1999 ;
Cleveland-Innes and Campbell ,2012).

An excess of negative emotions impedes positive emotions including joy,

enthusiasm ,excitement, surprise, pride and contentment which are primary
for achievement motivation and educational performance (Cleveland-Innes
and Campbell ,2012). Both negative and positive emotions shape decision-
makings and affect cognitive processes (Cleveland-Innes and
Campbell ,2012).

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To achieve teaching presence, goals are listed to the students exciting their
motivation and autonomy through self-directive language as the structure of
curriculum becomes more obvious, as the execution and monitoring become
more goal-oriented and as the reflection on the obtained results becomes
more transparent for the sake of strategies adjustment (Cleveland-Innes and
Campbell ,2012 ; Vargas et al , 2017).

Overloading the subject's limited memory with too much information hinders
germane cognitive load; in other words, it impairs knowledge building and
learning achievement (Vargas et al ,2017).

Thus, it would be easier to link new information to the stored as the germane
cognitive load is favored when both the intrinsic and extraneous cognitive
loads decrease (Vargas et al ,2017).

To achieve this desired outcome and minimize distraction ,especially for the
students who have limited social skills, metacognitive scaffolding :a
sociocultural theory, which surrounds the student with a supportive
environment based on effective planning of learning objectives , planning and
executing the strategies, monitoring the process of learning, reflection on the
results and adjustment should be implemented in the pedagogical
environment and displayed for the students (Appanna,2008;Vargas et
al ,2017)

The information displayed should be clear so that it can be categorized,

summarized, visualized, extracted and clustered by students and instructors.
If the information is not, it will demand a high level of attention or cause
mental chaos and confusion.

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Unorganized and overloaded information diminishes the ability to focus and
leads to distraction and high rates of dropout due to the superficial
absorption (Loon et al. 2012).Besides, it stimulates uncomfortable freedom to
the students ( Loon et al, 2012).

Metacognitive scaffolding and cognitive load theory improve motivation ,

enhance justice and promote the absorption of the material and learning.
Imposing too much extraneous load hinders the students' comprehension of
the content (Vargas et al, 2017).

Consequently, the cognitive presence of students as well as their social

presence would be strengthened if the individual differences in their
cognitive loads and their mental capacities (Vargas et al ,2017;Winter et
al,2010; Szpunar,2013 ;Cleveland-Innes and Campbell ,2012).

Cognitive presence stands for constructing meaning reflection and critical

inquiry (Cleveland-Innes and Campbell ,2012). Teaching presence stands for
designing, facilitating and directing cognitive and social processes (Cleveland-
Innes and Campbell ,2012). Social presence stands for projecting the self
socially and emotionally (Cleveland-Innes and Campbell ,2012). All these
three factors would be achieved ,if the proper environment is provided
(Cleveland-Innes and Campbell ,2012).

To design the suitable social environment for the pupils , promoting social
competence including the students with school adjustment difficulties would
be a great solution, for it establishes pedagogical programs which enhance
self-efficacy , anti-bullying attitudes and critical social skills for the ones in
need (Gazelle and Asher,1999 ; Kärnä et al, 2011).They “promote acceptance
and friendship and decrease the likelihood of victimization” and reduce the
rewards of the bullies and increase the defending of the bullied(Gazelle and
Asher,1999 ;Kärnä et al, 2011).

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The education would be more liberating and democratic if the rejected
students who received few positive nominations and many negative
nominations and the neglected who received few negative and few positive
nominations are included as equally as the popular and controversial
students in discussions without being dominated by alpha figures and the
teacher but being facilitated through self-directive language and banishing
discriminative and stereotypical comments (Gazelle and Asher,1999 ;
Mooneyham et al,2013; Vargas et al , 2017).

It would encourage cooperation , participation through responsiveness ,

support, and permitting offering constructive suggestions and requests ,
permitting initiating the play , negotiating the rules ,managing conflicts ,
coping with success and failure ,responding to teasing and helping others
(Gazelle and Asher,1999)…All are central aims of effective communication
which are distilled through instruction of the language rules including
pragmatic analysis to be practiced by students depending on context(Tagushi
and Sykes, 2013) .

Comprehension Implicature, coined by Grice, “requires decoding linguistic

and contextual cues” then using them to infer from the given knowledge
uncurtaining the speaker’s hidden intentions (Chapelle,2003).

When achieving mutual benefits, students are able to use their acquired
knowledge and infer the intended meanings using the context of conversation
between two characters (Tagushi and Sykes,2013)

Grice’s maxims are introduced as a base to build on meaning deduced from

different types of implicature: Pope implicature, Relevance implicature and
Irony etc… (Tagushi and Sykes, 2013).

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Acquiring pragmatic competence and analytical skills, the learners are able to
build their declarative knowledge which “refers to linguistic and
sociocultural knowledge necessary for pragmatic development” indicated by
accuracy and procedural knowledge which refers to integration of these two
types of knowledge to communicate their messages and process information
indicated by fluency (Chapelle,2003).

Pope Implicature is the most obvious implicature; for example, the mother
asked her daughter if she is able to take care of herself alone to which the
daughter gave an answer: “Can a duck swim, mother?” indicating the
underlying meaning, through a scientific knowledge about swimming
ducklings, that she can depend on herself even if she is too young ( Tagushi and
Sykes et al,2013).

Relevance implicature, whether bridging or flouting, requires bridges to

render the utterance relevant or it appears irrelevant despite the underlying
meaning is relevant (Chapelle,2003).
“David: Mandy just broke our date for the play. Now I’ve got two tickets for
Saturday and no one to go with.
Mark: Have you met my sister? She’s coming to see me this weekend.”
In this conversation , Mark is suggesting to his friend either to take his sister
to the play or to buy another ticket so that all the three go to the play (Tagushi
and Sykes et al,2013).

Computer-mediated communication, due to social contact, offers

opportunities for producing linguistic output and pragmatic growth
enhancing the cognitive abilities of the learners (Chappelle ,2003). Besides,
computer-mediated communication, as a part of computer-assisted language
learning, is based on synchronous and asynchronous interaction through
which the form of language and meaning are negotiated (Chapelle,2003).

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When the form and the meaning are negotiated, a collection of utterances are
formed and used as a “basis for the descriptive analysis of the learners' and
the instructors' linguistic outputs: corpora, which are studied by corpus
linguists through the use of computer programs to search and count their
grammatical features in particular social contexts (Tagushi and Sykes,2013).
It might be spotting out vocabulary, grammar, adverbials, participials and
complements of verbs (Tagushi and Sykes,2013).

Vocabulary is necessary regarding the issues about bullying ,peer pressure,

abuse and neglect which are raised to stimulate awareness of the pupils
provided with examples, pronunciations and pictures in digital social-
oriented games ; also the games would teach the pupils the techniques to
defend oneself against bullying (Kärnä et al, 2011;Tagushi and Sykes,2013).

In addition to the games ,which focus on linguistic affirmations :I Know ,I can

and I do to spread awareness about anti-bullying and defense approaches ,
meetings would be arranged for the bullies ,the bullied students and
bystanders to establish friendships by role playing about bullying and
defending the self , group discussions regarding the issues and it might be a
small court conversation (Kärnä et al, 2011).

These approaches increase the social engagement of isolated students which

would improve their self-concept , their academic achievement and reduce
dementia strengthening their memory , attention and cognitive abilities even
their linguistic production (Gazelle and Asher,1999; D. Windsor et al, 2016).

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References:

Appanna,S. (2008) .A Review of Benefits and Limitations of Online

Learning in the Context of the Student, the Instructor, and the Tenured
Faculty.International Jl. on E-Learning 7(1), 5-22. Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237143888_A_Review_of_B
enefits_and_Limitations_of_Online_Learning_in_the_Context_of_the_Stud
ent_the_Instructor_and_the_Tenured_Faculty

López-Vargas, O., Ibáñez-Ibáñez, J., & Racines-Prada, O. (2017).

Students’ Metacognition and Cognitive Style and Their Effect on
Cognitive Load and Learning Achievement. Educational Technology &
Society, 20 (3), 145–157. Retrieved from
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26196126.

Van Loon,A., Ros ,A.and Martens,R.(2012, December).Motivated

learning with digital learning tasks: what about autonomy and
structure? Educational Technology Research and Development ,
60(6) ,1015-1032 .Retrieved from
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23356891

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W. Mooneyham,B and W. Schooler,J . (2013).The Costs and Benefits of
Mind-Wandering: A Review. Canadian Journal of Experimental
Psychology / Revue canadienne de psychologie
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10.1037/a0031569

Winter, J., Cottona, D., Gavin,J. and D. Yorke, J. (2010 ,March). Effective e-
learning? Multi-tasking, distractions and boundary management by
graduate students in an online environment .ALT-J, Research in
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http://www.informaworld.com

Chappelle, Carol A. .(2003).English Language Learning and Technology:

Lectures on applied linguistics in the age of information and
communication technology. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Publishing Company. Retrieved from
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/212816911.pdf

Tagushi, N. and Sykes, Julie M. et al. (2013). Technology in

Interlanguage Pragmatics Research and Teaching.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing
Company .Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.36

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Asher, S. R., & Gazelle, H. (1999). Loneliness, peer relations, and language
disorder in childhood. Topics in Language Disorders, 19, 16-33.

Kärnä, A., Voeten, M., D. Little, T., Poskiparta, E., Kaljonen, A. and Salmivalli, C.
(2011). A Large-Scale Evaluation of the KiVa Antibullying Program: Grades 4–
6. Child Development,82(1),311- 330.

Kendig, H. et al. (2013). “Social Engagement in late life” in Ageing and

Australia's Future, 185-204. Retrieved from
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1rqc955.14

Cleveland-Innes, M. and Campbell, P. (2012).Presence, Learning, and the

Online Learning Environment. Research Articles,13(4),269-292.

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