Foreign language learning trajectories through the perspective of complexity

Abstract

This paper aims at describing language learning trajectories from Letras undergraduate students who participate in the language advising project at the Federal University of Pará under the complexity perspective. Language advising is a learning support and consists of meetings between advisor and student, generally individually. The advisor works with the student as a facilitator, mentor, assessor, helper, supporter, and consultant. Data analysis was done based on complexity paradigm, according to which the observed phenomena take into account the instability and non-linearity of the complex systems. The use of this paradigm in language learning allows for the understanding of some phenomena, not entirely explained by traditional research. The data of the narratives allow the study of the main features of complex systems and the understanding of the influence that certain facts can have on the trajectories of these students in the advising sessions. The analysis brought up the complexity and unpredictability of each history, eliciting the great amount of factors which influence the learning trajectories of these participants as well as giving evidence of how interconnected these factors are.

Keywords: language learning, complexity paradigm, complex adaptive systems.