Session4SocialcontextsofSLA(2).doc

Session 4 Social contexts of SLA （2）

2.2 Interaction as the genesis of language
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural (S-C) Theory: Ratner (see Lantoff, 2006) defines SCT as the field that “studies the content, mode of operation, and interrelationships of psychological phenomena that are socially constructed and shared, and are rooted in other social artifacts”. Accordingly, human psychological processes are organized by three fundamental cultural factors:
1) activities (e.g. play, education, work, legal and medical systems, esthetic creation),
2) artifacts (e.g., use of physical tools, books, weapons, eating utensils, clocks, computers, and related technology as well as symbolic tools, including language, numeric systems, diagrams, charts, music, and art),
3) concepts (the understandings that communities construct of the personal, the physical, the social and mental worlds, religion, etc.).
Vygotsky argued that our biologically determined mental systems – including memory, attention, and reflexes – which in other species operate automatically as a consequence of direct stimulation from the environment or from internal bodily needs (e.g., hunger and thirst), are reorganized into a new, uniquely human psychological system once humans encounter cultural artifacts, activities, and concepts. These artifacts empower humans with the capacity to mediate and thus intentionally control their biologically endowed mental functions (see Lantoff, 2006).
Interaction is a causative force in acquisition and all of learning is seen as essentially a social process which is grounded in sociocultural settings. Learning occurs when simple innate mental activities are transformed into ‘higher order,’ more complex mental functions. This transformation typically involves symbolic mediation, which is a link between a person’s current mental state and higher order functions that is provided primarily by language.
Interpersonal interaction: communicative events and situations which occur between people. One important context for symbolic mediation is such interpersonal interaction between learners and experts (including teachers and more knowledgeable students). Vygotsky calls the level where much of this type of mediation occurs the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). This is an area of potential development, where the learner can achieve that potential only with assistance. According to the S-C Theory, mental functions that are beyond an individual’s current level must be performed in collaboration with other people before they are achieved independently.
Scaffolding refers to verbal guidance which an expert provides to help a learner perform any specific task, or the verbal collaboration of peers to perform a task which would be too difficult for any one of them individually (see the example on p.113).
Symbolic mediation can be interactional without involving face-to-face communication (e.g. reading involves an interaction between the individual and the author of a book, resulting in an altered state of knowledge.)
Intrapersonal interaction: communication that occurs within an individual’s own mind. Reading involves both intrapersonal and interpersonal activity. “We draw interactively on our ability to decode print, our stored knowledge of the language we are reading and the content schemata through which our knowledge of the world is organized.” (Ellis 1999). Intrapersonal interaction occurs when L1 resources are utilized to learn the L2.
Private speech, which belongs to one type of intrapersonal interaction, refers to the self-talk which many children engage in that leads to the inner speech that more mature individuals use to control thought and behavior. A common intrapersonal interaction that is closely related to private speech is ‘private writing,’ in which individuals write in order to help store items in memory, organize thought, solve problems, or such, without intent to communicate with others (e.g. keeping journals). (Is private speech found in L2 learning?)
The S-C theory gives little attention to the structural patterns of the L2 which are learned, focuses on factors outside the learner, who is a largely autonomous processor, and takes interaction as an essential force for learning.

2.3 Acquisition without interaction; interaction without acquisition
Two phenomena observed by S-T (p.116):
1) Some individuals are able to achieve a relatively advanced level of L2 proficiency without the benefit of any interpersonal communication or opportunity to negotiate meaning in the language with others.
2) Some individuals engage in extensive interaction with speakers of another language without learning that language to any significant degree.
Do you agree with Savaille-Troike? (e.g. living in Guagnzhou for years without being able to speak Cantonese.)
Communicative events cannot be completed without a common language in the absence of familiar context and props or when non-predictable information needs to be conveyed… If individuals have need and opportunity to develop increasing competence in the L2, they will do so; if they are not motivated to learn the L2, they may not – even if they have ample social opportunity. (In the Chinese context English-speaking children in a Chinese kindergarten acquire Chinese, and the Chinese kids also have the opportunity to learn English, but few acquire English. Why?)

3. Macrosocial factors

1) Global and national status of L1 and L2
(Political identification in nation-building. What is the status of English in China?)

2) Boundaries and identities
(Groups of immigrants or ethnic minorities integrate culturally and linguistically into the dominant society, and dominant group members often do not learn a minority language at all. How about dialect learning in China?)
Schumann’s (1978) Acculturation Model: Acculturation is a cause for L2 learning.
Psychological and social distance from speakers of the L2 community results in a diminished amount of input and affects SLA outcomes negatively.
The Model was based on a case study of a 33-year-old Costa Rican man named Alberto whose lack of acculturation resulted in his lack of linguistic development.
A counterexample was provided by Schmidt’s (1983) study of a Japanese artist named Wes who showed a desire to acculturate but failed to speak better English.
Gass and Selinker's conclusion: distance and affect provide an impetus for learning or perhaps even set the stage for learning, but do not cause learning.

3) Institutional forces and constraints
Linguistic social control takes the form of official or unofficial policies that regulate which language is to be used in particular situations. (language planning in China, L2 English teaching, minorities learning putonghua, English in HK, etc. )

4) Social categories (age, sex, ethnicity, education level, occupation, etc.)
Age of first exposure to a new language is less important for predicting ultimate ability than the age when learning the L2 really becomes important to the learners.
Lambert and Gardner distinguish between additive bilingualism, where members of a dominant group learn the language of a subordinate group without threat to their L1 competence or to their ethnic identity, and subtractive bilingualism, where members of a subordinate group learn the dominant language as L2 and are more likely to experience some loss of ethnic identity and attrition of L1 skills – especially if they are children.

5) Circumstances
Culture-based learning strategies (e.g. teaching encouraging memorization in China), formal vs. informal, naturalistic vs. instructed learning, opportunity to develop communicative competence (e.g. foreign language learning setting)

4. The Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) (de Bot, 2007; 2008)

DST refers to a class of theories which focus on the development of complex adaptive systems over time. Such systems are sets of interacting variables. They are self-organizing, dependent on initial conditions, sometimes chaotic, and they show emergent properties. DST employs computer models and simulations to describe changes of systems over time.
Language is seen as a dynamic system, and language development, both acquisition and attrition, as a dynamic process in which the time dimension is crucial: Language elements are not static but change through use and are highly context-sensitive.
Diane Larsen-Freeman (1997) is the first to apply complex adaptive systems as a model for second language development. She shows that language acquisition has all the characteristics of dymamic complex systems: It is dynamic and changes over time both synchronically and diachronically; it is complex with different subsystems (syntactical, phonological, lexical, textual) that interact; it develops nonlinearly and sometimes is unpredictable and chaotic; it is sensitive to initial conditions, open, self-organizing, feed back-sensitive, and adaptive; and there are attractors in development.

References
de Bot, K., Verspoor, M., & Lowie, W. 2007. A Dynamic Systems Theory approach to second language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 7-21.
de Bot, K. 2008. Introduction: Second language development as a dynamic process. The Modern Language Journal, 92, 166-78.
Larsen-Freeman, D. 1997. Chaos/complexity science and second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 18, 141-44

Activities
1. The author claims that face-to-face interaction is not absolutely necessary for second language acquisition. What do you think? Support or refute this claim based on your own experience.
2. Communicative competence is defined as ‘What a speaker needs to know to communicate appropriately within a language community.’ How is this different from pure linguistic competence? Do you believe linguistic competence is sufficient for effective communication or do you agree that communicative competence is necessary? Provide real-life examples to support your viewpoint, combined with theoretical explanations from the chapter.
3. Subtractive bilingualism is defined as having members of a minority group learn the dominant language as L2, where they are more likely to experience some loss of ethnic identity and L1 skills. What are the challenges to maintaining ethnic identity and L1 skills while learning an L2 in the L2 setting? Is it possible to be a minority group in an L2-dominant setting and experience more of an additive bilingualism, where the L1 skills and identity are maintained? Support your answer with your own experiences and the experiences of people you know.
4. Considering your own learning, or the learning of someone you know well, do you believe in scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development? Describe examples in your own life when you are the learner in need of scaffolding, and when you are the more advanced learner or teacher providing a learner with more opportunity for development.