Vivian Cook (academic)
Encyclopedia
Vivian James Cook is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. He is renowned for his work on second language acquisition
Second language acquisition
Second-language acquisition or second-language learning is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the name of the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process...

 and second language teaching, and for writing successful textbooks and popular books about linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

. He has worked on a number of topics such as bilingualism, EFL (English as a Foreign Language), first language acquisition, second language teaching, linguistics, and the English writing system. He has published more than 20 books and 100 papers. He was founder and first President of the European Second Language Association (EuroSLA), and co-founder of the Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

 journal Writing Systems Research.

Career

He started his career as a Lecturer in EFL and Director of Language Service in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, and during this time he published many innovative EFL textbooks (Active Intonation, 1968; Realistic English, with B. Abbs and M. Underwood, 1968–70; English Topics, 1975, Using Intonation, 1979, English for Life, 1980-1983). In 1978 he became a Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Essex
University of Essex
The University of Essex is a British campus university whose original and largest campus is near the town of Colchester, England. Established in 1963 and receiving its Royal Charter in 1965...

, and in 2004 he got his chair at Newcastle University.

In the 1970s and 1980s Professor Cook introduced various research
Research
Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...

 methods in second language acquisition research (elicited imitation, short-term memory
Short-term memory
Short-term memory is the capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active, readily available state for a short period of time. The duration of short-term memory is believed to be in the order of seconds. A commonly cited capacity is 7 ± 2 elements...

 measures, response times and micro artificial languages). He favoured an experimental approach to second language research and conducted various experiments. He wrote a very successful textbook about Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...

’s theories (Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction), and related Universal Grammar
Universal grammar
Universal grammar is a theory in linguistics that suggests that there are properties that all possible natural human languages have.Usually credited to Noam Chomsky, the theory suggests that some rules of grammar are hard-wired into the brain, and manifest themselves without being taught...

 to second language acquisition and teaching. He also published papers on second language teaching, and developed Computer-Assisted Language Learning
Computer-assisted language learning
Computer-assisted language learning is succinctly defined in a seminal work by Levy as "the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning"...

 programs for learning English as a Foreign Language, including adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...

s and syntactic parsing programs.

In the early 1990s he proposed the multi-competence
Multi-competence
Multi-competence is a concept in second language acquisition formulated by Vivian Cook that refers to the knowledge of more than one language in one person's mind. From the multicompetence perspective, the different languages a person speaks are seen as one connected system, rather than each...

 approach to second language acquisition. Multi-competence is ‘the knowledge of two languages in one mind’, and it holds that those who know more than one language have different minds from those with only one language, because knowing two languages changes the way people use their first language, and even the way they think. These multicompetent individuals should be called ‘L2 users’ rather than ‘second language learners’, because the word ‘second’ has negative connotations, and the word ‘learner’ should only be applied to those who are learning a language (just like a native speaker
Native Speaker
Native Speaker is Chang-Rae Lee’s first novel. In Native Speaker, he creates a man named Henry Park who tries to assimilate into American society and become a “native speaker.”-Plot summary:...

 is not called a ‘first language learner’). All human beings have the potential for becoming multi-competent, so monolinguals are not indicative of what the human mind can achieve. This has implications for language learners and teachers, for instance the purpose of L2 learning is to become a multicompetent user of more than one language, not to become a copycat of a native speaker of another language; the native speaker is not the best L2 teacher; L2 learners are allowed to use their first language in the classroom. Also, teachers and learners must bear in mind that L2 learning changes how people think. In a paper dated 1997 Cook first argued that knowledge of more than one language can change how people think. He then provided evidence in the first ever workshop devoted to the topic (workshop on ‘Bilingual Cognition’, 2002, within the European Second Language Association conference) and showcased research from a variety of disciplines and languages in his latest edited volume (Language and Bilingual Cognition, 2010, with Benedetta Bassetti).

Vivian Cook has also researched writing system
Writing system
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...

s, especially the English one. He published a successful textbook about English orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

, co-edited a volume on how people read and write a second language, and is currently editor of the journal Writing Systems Research (with Jyotsna Vaid
Jyotsna Vaid
Jyotsna Vaid is a Professor of Psychology at Texas A&M University and an adjunct professor of Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin...

 and Benedetta Bassetti). In 2004 he published a successful popular book called Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary: Or, Why can’t Anybody Spell?, which explains to the layperson how English orthography works in an entertaining but authoritative way.

Vivian Cook has given talks all over the world, in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

, Malaysia, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

, Gaza
Gaza
Gaza , also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories.Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC,...

, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 and the US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. His website presents his research and teaching, and includes SLABIB, a wide-ranging bibliography of second language acquisition: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Vivian%20Cook.htm

External links

  • Vivian Cook's homepage: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Vivian%20Cook.htm
  • Professor Cook on Newcastle University's website: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ecls/staff/profile/vivian.cook
  • Vivian Cook presents his latest book 'It's all in a Word' on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZu3NJ3tGrc
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