#Vivian koch beyond contact how to
#Vivian koch beyond contact update

Vivian started his prolific career as an author in 1968, with the textbook Active Intonation, followed by many English language coursebooks have been widely used all over the world. He became Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Essex in 1978, and eventually Professor at Newcastle University in 2004, where he remained (more recently as Emeritus) up to his final days. Vivian’s academic life started as a Lecturer of English as a Foreign Language at the then Ealing Technical College in London, and continued as Director of the Language Service at the then North East London Polytechnic. Every time I think about that talk, I smile. Indeed, that even comparing such a unique multi-competent individual with a monolingual speaker made no sense, we were qualitatively different like apples and pears. That’s when I first learnt that I was not a failed English native speaker, but a wonderful new creature with an array of knowledge and competencies. He arrived, immediately tripped over the microphone cable and almost fell on the floor, and started stuttering.

#Vivian koch beyond contact how to

I had no idea who he was, or how to come back from North London. She told me that the speaker was one of the most important applied linguists in the world. I was attending the MA Applied Linguistics at Birkbeck, when a classmate dragged me to this talk somewhere in North London. I had just arrived in the UK and I did not understand a thing. I remember very well the first time I saw Vivian and heard him talking about his approach.

Vivian kept being amazed at how far multi-competence had travelled (and hoping that people would remember to spell it with a hyphen). Over the decades, multi-competence has been influential in second language research, and also adopted in other fields, from signed-spoken bimodal bilingualism to Native American Languages. This affects the whole mind, including non-linguistic cognition, hence the multi-competent L2 user is qualitatively different from a monolingual. Multi-competence posits that the mind of an L2 user (or community) contains a system composed of all their languages. Over time, linguistic multi-competence developed from “the compound state of a mind with two grammars” (= two languages) in 1991 to “the overall system of a mind or a community that uses more than one language” in the 2016 Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Multi-competence, reflecting Vivian’s thinking and developments in the field. His main contribution has been linguistic multi-competence (with a hyphen, as he insisted), an approach to second language acquisition he first presented in 1991. Anyone who met him will remember him as a brilliant mind and an incredibly generous person. A prolific and influential author, Vivian was a theoriser and a popular writer. Vivian will be known to most scholars in the field for his work on second language acquisition, particularly the concept of multi-competence. Cook, Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University. We have sadly lost a leading figure in applied linguistics: Vivian J.

#Vivian koch beyond contact update

We will send our thoughts and deepest sympathy to Vivian’s family on behalf of EuroSLA, and update members if a memorial service will be possible in the new year. It’s also very heartwarming to see many personal tributes on Twitter and Facebook. There are two websites at the end of the Obituary for those who want to reflect on Vivian’s life and scholarship, and share any reflections or memories. Please see below an obituary by Dr Bene Bassetti. Vivian Cook was the EuroSLA founder, its first president, as well as its inaugural Distinguished Scholar.

We are sad to report the news of Vivian Cook’s passing.