Learning trajectories, language advising and complexity theory

Since the founding text linking complexity with foreign languages learning (LARSEN-FREEMAN, 1997), this theme has been present in researches in several countries. However, few studies reporting experiments described under this paradigm were published, explaining the success or failure in students´ trajectories. This text aims at showing how this can happen in language learners´ stories of TEFL undergraduates in a university in Northern Brazil. In language advising sessions, the authors, who are all advisors and researchers, identify bifurcation points, attractor basins, synergetic or entropic episodes in students´ trajectories. Results show how the interference of the advisor, as another agent in the system, can alter the learning process.

complex adaptive systems; foreign languages learning; learning trajectories; language advising