Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Topic: Interlocutor Individual Differences
Note: Graduate students only.

This graduate seminar critically examines the often-overlooked role of interlocutor individual differences (IDs) in instructed second language acquisition (ISLA), with particular emphasis on emerging insights from positive psychology. While ISLA research has traditionally focused on learner-related factors, this course expands the lens to include the diverse and dynamic characteristics of interlocutors—teachers, host families, peers, conversation partners, broader social networks, AI bots, and learners themselves—whose cognitive, affective, conative, and sociocultural attributes (or their absence) shape learning conditions and co-construct language learning environments.

Students will engage with both foundational and cutting-edge research on interlocutor IDs such as motivation, enjoyment, grit, engagement, and willingness to communicate, examining how these variables interact with learning opportunities. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives—including cognitive-interactionist, variationist, and complex dynamic systems approaches—the seminar explores how different frameworks influence our understanding of ID-related phenomena and reflect broader shifts toward more dynamic, relational, and contextualized conceptions of ISLA.

Course activities include weekly seminar discussions, critical reading facilitation, and collaborative synthesis of emerging themes. Students will contribute to a shared class project (e.g., narrative synthesis, registered research report, pilot study, or similar) to be co-designed by the group. Additionally, each student will pursue an individual research project tailored to their scholarly interests and stage of study, with opportunities for theoretical exploration, methodological design, and alignment with their broader research agendas.

HISP-S 614     #28706      12:45P-2:00P    TR      WH 108     Prof. Laura Gurzynski-Weiss