Thornbury and The Learning Body

Scott Thornbury has been talking about “The Learning Body” for a while now. You can see one version on YouTube and you can see another version at the ELTABB website. You can also read a fuller treatment in Thornbury’s chapter in the tribute to Earl Stevick: Meaningful Action   (Just BTW, it’s not a great collection.)  I base this critique on the YouTube talk.

Summary of the Talk

Thornbury starts by asserting that “Descartes got it wrong”. There is no mind/body dualism, rather “Brains are in bodies, bodies are in the world and meaningful action in these worlds is socially constructed and conducted” (Churchill et al, 2010). This devastating rebuttal of Descartes, which Thornbury (ignoring works by Locke, Hume, Derrida and others) reckons was “finally revealed” in 1994, has been ignored by those responsible for the prevailing orthodoxy in SLA, who insist that “language and language learning are a purely cognitive phenomenon.” Thornbury tells us that this orthodoxy claims that we need look no further than cognition for an explanation of SLA – other factors are not important.

Thornbury then goes on to explain that the modern view sees the brain as part of a larger set, involving the body and the world, leading to a new concept of “embodied cognition”. Without bothering with considerations of how “the mind” as a construct relates to the brain as a physical part of the body, Thornbury proceeds to look at the mind as embodied, embedded and extended.

Embodied Mind

The construct of the “embodied mind” is defined as “rooted in physical experience”. Our mind (see how hard it is, even for Thornbury, to stay away from Cartesian dualism) deals with ideas that are all related to our “physicality” as Thornbury puts it, and this applies to language and language learning. Key points here are:

• “Language is rooted in human experience of the physical world”(Lee, 2010)
• We adapt our language to different circumstances and different people.
• Learning is enhanced by physical involvement.
• Larsen-Freeman’s latest work argues that language is a dynamic emergent system.
• Language is noted, applied and adapted in context.
• Mirror neurons and body language are evidence for the embodied mind construct.

Embedded Mind

No definition of this construct is offered. Thornbury only says that language is embedded in context, which should come as a surprise to nobody. Thornbury refers to “ecolinguistics”, likens the learning of language to the learning of soccer by children, and reminds us that we adapt our language to different circumstances and different people.

Extended Mind

The “Extended mind” construct is nowhere even casually defined, but Scott uses the film Memento (a great film which I recommend, but which has little to do with Scott’s description or use of) to make the point that our bodies help us to remember. This is followed by a discussion of gestures, which have a big role in communication.

Alignment

Not much here. Thornbury refers to the importance of our physical relationship to our students and says “Learning is discovering alignment”. This means group work, gesture, eye contact, “acting out”.

Summary

Thornbury gives this summary:

• I think therefore I am: Wrong. Better:
• I move therefore I am.
• I speak therefore I move.
• I move, therefore I learn.

Discussion

Thornbury’s talk is interesting, and very well-delivered: he’s the best stand-up act in the business (sic) and his use of video clips is particularly good. But when you tot it all up, there’s almost nothing of substance, and the argument is hollow. Thornbury makes a straw man argument against research in SLA, and says nothing of much interest as to how all this “embodied” stuff might further our understanding of SLA. As to teaching, there’s absolutely no need to even mention “embodied cognition” in order to agree with all the good things he says about gestures and the rest of it. Earl Stevick was indeed concerned with holistic learning and a teaching methodology which reflected it, but I doubt he’d be impressed by this attempt to use fashionable speculations about cognitive science to back it up.

Specific Points

1. The use of Descartes to promote an argument against current SLA research is simplistic and boringly trite. In the “Discourse on Method” Descartes was concerned with epistemology, with reliable knowledge. His famous conclusion “Cogito ergo sum” has never been falsified – how could it be! – and it’s plain silly to say that “he got it wrong”
2. Thornbury says that SLA orthodoxy sees language learning as a purely cognitive phenomenon taking place in the mind. He’s wrong. The most productive research in SLA concentrates on cognitive aspects of SLA, but those involved in such research are quite aware that they’re focusing on just one aspect of the problem. They do so for the very good reason that scientific research gets the best results. The job of those who look at other aspects, such as those covered by sociolinguistics, is to show how their work has academic respectability, and misrepresenting the work of those who adopt a scientific methodology does nothing to enhance that job.
3. The question of the distinction between the brain and the mind is a fundamental one. Thornbury doesn’t even mention it. .

Conclusions

Thornbury, following the muddled and generally incoherent arguments of Larsen Freeman, wants to say that SLA is best seen as an emerging process where, well, things emerge. And given that it all kind of emerges, ELT should help all these things, well, emerge. This is absolutely hopeless, isn’t it? Any theory of SLA must be sharper than this; any teaching methodology needs a firmer basis. There is, of course, a very interesting strand of SLA research that takes an emergentist approach, but it has little in common with Thornbury’s musings. And there are, of course, teaching methodologies based on helping learners “emerge”, although they don’t put it quite like that. Thornbury has done very little to critique SLA research, or to explain how all his “emerging” bits and pieces might help future research move in a better direction.Furthermore, nothing in his suggestions for teaching practice is new, and none of it depends on his “theoretical basis”.

Finally, let’s just have another look at this:

• I think therefore I am: Wrong. Better:
• I move therefore I am.
• I speak therefore I move.
• I move, therefore I learn.

Not exactly a syllogism, now is it? I speak therefore I move? Really?

And quite apart from being incoherent, how will it affect your understanding of SLA?  Still, at least the last sorry line might inspire you to get off your butt and revisit Asher – he of Total Physical Response.