Playing the Bass in Discussion Class
By: William N. Kumai
Introduction
I sing and play songs with an electric bass guitar in a university elective discussion class to introduce topics that students will talk about in small groups. The bass guitar playing and singing touch upon the performance aspects of language instruction; the ensuing discussions incorporate a complex adaptive systems approach centered on emergent L2 arising from collective behavior (Holland, 1995; Larsen-Freeman, 1997). In this article I will apply this approach to both individual students and groups. The mind with its myriad interconnections is a complex adaptive system, for example, as modeled by neural networks (Rumelhart et al., 1986). Baicchi (2015) states that for the complex adaptive systems approach, students are “system agents interacting in the communicative environment where human cognition and language encounter [each other]” (p. 3) and meaning construction is “the outcome of complex synergistic dynamics across language levels and between neurophysiological and cognitive abilities” (p. 3). In this article, I touch upon aspects of both music and neurolinguistics in an English language learning setting.
Playing the bass guitar
Playing the bass guitar in class provides the immediacy of a live performance but at the same time strips the music of the ornamentation of chords and emphasizes the raw notes. This makes it easier for students to concentrate on the lyrics; the words are more central to the performance than the music or instrument. In a sense, the performing of lyrics accompanied by a bass guitar is like a poetry reading underpinned by music to enhance the students’ interest. The bass guitar plays the melody of a song (as opposed to playing the bass part of the song, if any).
The following is a list of equipment I use in class. The bass is an Ibanez SR1200; this is cabled to a Phil Jones Bass Double Four amplifier powered by a Sanwa BTL-RDC12N external battery. A Hercules GS402BB folding guitar stand and a Yamaha MS-303AL music stand complete the set. Everything except the bass guitar is loaded into or strapped on a plastic storage box and transported on a trolley cart. This set of equipment allows bass playing in any classroom without the need for any electrical power outlets.
Complex adaptive systems perspective
The complex adaptive systems perspective is integral to understanding how I designed the discussion questions. This perspective applies to collections of elements from which new behavior or information emerges from their interactions. Complex behavior is not predictable by studying a solitary element, such as an ant, but is only observable in groups, as in many ants collectively building an ant colony. The mind, as mentioned earlier, is a complex adaptive system; a group of students in a discussion also qualifies. Indeed, this is the foundation of the latter half of this article.
Two major concepts associated with complex adaptive systems are fitness landscapes and the edge of chaos. Fitness landscapes (Kauffman, 1995, p. 26) are abstract landscapes for which location is determined, in the case of language students, by the students’ L2 configuration or state (such as the state of the students’ fluency and grammar), and the “fitness” of that configuration. Fitness is a measure of how well a particular configuration (of a language learner, of a group of language learners, etc.) is in terms of L2, for example, as compared to a native L2 speaker. Any change in a student’s L2, which corresponds to changing the student’s location on the landscape, can lead to an improvement (or deterioration) of fitness. Thus fitness takes the role of elevation on a terrain map. Indeed, although multidimensional, fitness landscapes have similar properties to such maps with peaks and valleys.
During a class activity one can imagine a student trying out new L2 utterances or understanding a new phrase; the student is taking a step along the fitness landscape. A series of such steps is called an adaptive walk (Kauffman, 1995, pp. 166-167). Adaptive walks also apply to pairs or groups of students as they negotiate meaning during a discussion or activity. Fitness for a group refers to the average fitness of all the members.
Complex adaptive systems can be found in a range from orderly states, with infrequent changes, up to chaotic states. In between lies a regime known as the edge of chaos (Kauffman, 1995, p. 26; Kumai, 2021) where chaos provides the creativity for new structures to emerge, supported by the orderly regime. At the edge of chaos, fitness landscape exploration and peak climbing are at their most efficient. The edge of chaos corresponds to L2 learning concepts such as facilitative anxiety (Brown, 2014, p. 151), Krashen’s i + 1 (Krashen, 1982), Vygotsky’s (1978) zone of proximal development, cooperative learning (Johnson & Johnson, 1999), and negotiation for meaning (Long, 1996). The edge of chaos is dependent on the following Larsen-Freeman (1997) properties of complex adaptive systems: sensitivity to conditions (p. 144), feedback sensitivity (p. 145), and self-organization (pp. 144-145).
Discussion class with the bass
My 100-minute discussion class focuses on conversations in English, meeting twice a week for seven weeks. I conduct four sessions incorporating the bass guitar, which introduce eight songs for discussion, two at a time. Each song is introduced briefly and then played (and sung). The songs I chose have a narrative structure or strong message (as well as being playable by me). Students are arranged in groups of three or four and discuss two songs using discussion questions I provide for about ten minutes. Then I rearrange the groups for the next two songs. Two songs are used so that no group is finished discussing after ten minutes; the aim is to avoid quiet or L1 chatting times when a group runs out of conversation topics.
L1 support is used during the lesson: the lyrics provided are accompanied by translations (though some are computer-generated) and students are free to use translation applications on their devices but must speak in L2. Indeed this mirrors a technique used in community language learning (LaForge, 1983) where the instructor takes on the role of L1 to L2 translator for low-level students to mitigate anxiety. Removing the anxiety related to producing L2 helps the group immerse themselves deeper into the edge of chaos regime where the emergent structures are not only L2 but also the answers to the discussion questions. The hallmark of the edge of chaos is a continuous, lively discussion.
What follows are discussion questions I devised for the 1974 song “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin, a song about how a father misses key events in his son’s life due to job commitments, and finds that his son has grown up being similarly committed to his job. Though the questions may seem natural or ordinary, they were written from a complex adaptive systems perspective to help groups explore a fitness landscape not only about L2 but also about growing up and relationships. The questions were designed so that participation in discussions would be easy in order that the edge of chaos regime could be reached. It is also hoped that the questions would elicit interesting answers, increasing the feedback sensitivity of the participants. Note that answers depend on individual student opinions and experiences, making discussions dependent on the initial conditions of the groups. This displays the “perpetual novelty” (Holland, 1995, p. 31) that is a property of complex adaptive systems.
- What is the message of this song? What is the best line?
- Would you quit your job that takes you away from big events in your children’s life? Is it necessary for parents to attend big events in their children’s life, or would ZOOM be okay?
- Do children have long talks with their parents these days? Have smart devices taken over family communication?
- Do you want to emulate your mother or father? In what ways?
- Do you miss playing games with your parents? Are playing games together still important, or have game apps made playing together obsolete?
- Do you think you will see your teenage children very much? On the other hand, do you think teenage children might be home all day on social media?
- What do you think of the son’s being too busy to meet his retired father? Is modern society kind to families?
- Is this song ironic?
Groups climb discussion fitness peaks as they close in to some group consensus; this shows how consensus opinions self-organize in complex adaptive systems. Individual students climb L2 fitness peaks the more they participate in the discussion. In fact, the students are evaluated on their participation, as observed by the instructor going around the class during discussion time. The instructor is part of the complex adaptive system by bringing outside pressure to the student groups, which in turn induces the groups to explore and take adaptive walks across the fitness landscape.
Conclusion
As a discussion activity, the lesson I have described here has nearly 100% of my students participating in L2. The availability of smart devices for L1 to L2 translation as well as translations of the lyrics themselves support the weaker students. The bass guitar performance is in a sense an elaborate attention-getter, but one that reduces the anxiety of students. The thrust of the lesson is to guide the discussion groups to enter the edge of chaos regime and explore the fitness landscapes for peaks set up by the lyrics and discussion questions.
References
Baicchi, A. (2015). Construction learning as a complex adaptive system: Psycholinguistic evidence from L2 learners of English. Springer.
Brown, H. D. (2014). Principles of language learning and teaching (6th edition). Pearson Education.
Holland, J. H. (1995). Hidden order: How adaptation builds complexity. Addison-Wesley.
Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1999). What makes cooperative learning work. In D. Kluge, S. McGuire, D. Johnson, & R. Johnson (Eds.), Cooperative learning (pp. 23-36). Japan Association for Language Teaching.
Kauffman, S. (1995). At home in the universe: The search for the laws of self-organization and complexity. Oxford University Press.
Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practices in second language acquisition. Pergamon.
Kumai, W. N. (2021). Edge of chaos in language teaching. Academia: Literature and Language, 109, 145-161.
La Forge, P. G. (1983). Counseling and culture in second language acquisition. Pergamon Institute of English.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (1997). Chaos/complexity science and second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 18(2), 141-165.
Long, M. H. (1996). The role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. In W. C. Ritchie & T. K. Bhatia (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 413-468). Academic Press.
Rumelhart, D. E., Hinton, G. E., & McClelland, J. L.(1986). A general framework for parallel distributed processing. In J. L. McClelland & D. E. Rumelhart (Eds.), Parallel and distributed processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition, Volume 1: Foundations (pp. 45-76). MIT Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.
William Kumai is a native of Berkeley, California and has held a variety of jobs, as a physicist at a national laboratory, as a computer programmer for a small company, and as a Nanzan University instructor of English. His research focuses on the intersection of chaos and complexity with foreign language teaching.