SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF L2 LEARNING (Ch. 10)

Understanding SLALourdes Ortega (2009)

www.routledge.com/cw/ortegaPublished by Routledge © 2009 Mark Sawyer

THE UNBEARABLE INELUCTABILITY OF THE SOCIAL CONTEXT (10.1)

“SLA as chameleon” metaphor: Social forces are central to understand living agents

Social constructivism (cf. psych. constructivism) Reality doesn’t exist, but is created by agents, groups

Socioculturalism (Activity Theory??) Reality emerges anew in each contextualized activity

Poststructuralism (overlaps postmodernism) Reality emerges thru discourse (language, practices)

COGNITION IS SOCIAL: VYGOTSKIAN SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY IN SLA (10.2)

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) Higher mental operations have social origins

SocioCultural Theory (SCT) in SLA Introduced, developed by James Lantolf Popularized by Merrill Swain’s rethinking of

SLA cornerstones (output, interaction) Consciousness requires symbolic tools

SELF-REGULATION & LANGUAGE MEDIATION (10.3)

Human actions are regulated (enabled/disabled) by 3 sources: Objects: tools (+), obstructions (–) Others: (e.g. mothers) physical, linguistic

(social speech), nonverbal symbolic Self: thru private, inner speech

L2 self-regulation shows L2 development

SOME FINDINGS ABOUT INNER, PRIVATE, & SOCIAL SPEECH IN L2 LEARNING (10.4)

Learner regained affective control thru private speech after disappointing task (de Guerrero)

More private speech at lower levels (L&F)

Tense/aspect choices reveal regulation In languaging, verbalization causes learning

e.g. pun meanings (Tocalli-Beller & Swain) verb morphology (Donato)

SOCIAL LEARNING IN THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT (10.5)

All (higher) cognition appears interpersonally before intrapersonally

Microgenetic method Observing (visible) development in real time

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) distance between assisted & unassisted ability

NEGATIVE FEEDBACK RECONCEPTUALIZED (10.6) Graduated & contingent feedback

ensures helpfulness within ZPD Graduation: 12 levels from implicit “find

errors” to explicit examples of pattern (Lantolf & Aljaafreh)

ZPD-sensitive tutorials were better than ZPD-insensitive ones (Nassaji & Swain)

INTERACTION IS SOCIAL: CONVERSATION ANALYSIS & SLA (10.7)

Sociologist Harold Garfinkel studied interaction-based social organization, labeled ethnomethodology

Developed by his UCLA followers Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, Gail Jefferson

Applied to L2 by Numa Markee, Johannes Wagner, Alan Firth, Paul Seedhouse, Gabi Kasper, Junko Mori

THE CA PERSPECTIVE IN A NUTSHELL (10.8) Context-free (universal) machinery for

organizing talk/social life: turn-taking, repair, sequential design

Radically emic perspective: participant orientations, relevancies, intersubjectivities must be observed (Markee & Kasper)

No a priori categories, but a posteriori OK with witnessable evidence in transcriptions

SOME CONTRIBUTIONS OF CA-FOR-SLA (10.9) JPN EFL: CV-izing (e.g. raining-u) not

seen as error but interactional resource, showing incompleteness (Don Carroll)

JPN JSL: (only) at times, L2ers orient as “novices”, L1ers respond as “experts”

(Yuri Hosoda) Finland FSL: Such co-orientation does not

always occur, due to roles? (Kurhila)

LEARNING IN CA-FOR-SLA (10.10)

W/O concept of learning, hard to show it Strategy: show longitudinal changes

L1 JPN Danish L2er (Brouwer & Wagner) Vietnamese ESLer (Young & Miller, 2004) 2 ESLers from MEX, CHN (Hellerman,

2006)

CA may answer WHEN?, but not WHAT? or HOW?; needs help

GRAMMAR IS SOCIAL: SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS (10.11)

Developed by M.A.K. Halliday Dominant in Australia Analyses form based on meaning-making

within social contexts Focuses above sentence-level

LEARNING HOW TO MEAN IN AN L2 (10.12) L2 academic writing development:

lexical density , grammatical metaphor , grammatical intricacy (Achugar & Colombi)

Functional recasts T co-constructs academic oral expression

with L2er (Mohan & Slater, 2006) Academic identity development thru

resources of appraisal systems (A&C)

LANGUAGE LEARNING IS SOCIAL LEARNING: LANGUAGE SOCIALIZATION THEORY (10.13)

Socialization: Language, other cultural practices, values learned seamlessly thru interactions (e.g. with caregivers)

Extended by Shirley Brice-Heath to US school/home literacy practices

2nd generation focuses on multilingual & multicultural contexts

THE PROCESS OF LANGUAGE SOCIALIZATION: ACCESS & PARTICIPATION (10.14)

Community access & participation often involves struggles for L2ers

CAN HS L2ers silent because unfamiliar with popular culture references (Duff)

USA ES L2er needed chances to be cultural expert (Rymes)

CAN GS L2ers socialized differently due to approaches of instructors (Morita)

THE OUTCOMES: WHAT IS LEARNED THRU L2 SOCIALIZATION? (10.15)

Beyond L2, C2 identities, stances, ideologies, practices, values are learned

SA students in Indonesia: new stance to food (Dufon)

Fulbe children in Cameroon: different purposes of memorization in Arabic and French learning contexts (Moore)

Danger of assimilationist ideology

SENSE OF SELF IS SOCIAL: IDENTITY THEORY (10.16) Started with Bonny Norton’s (BN) study

of 5 immigrant women in Canada Identities are socially constructed &

constrained, dynamic, contradictory Investment: BN’s version of motivation Communities of Practice (real, imagined)

are targets for investment Right to Speak is unequally distributed

L2 LEARNERS’ IDENTITY & POWER STRUGGLE: EXAMPLES FROM CIRCUMSTANTIAL L2 LEARNING (10.17)

CHN in US HS unfairly positioned as low achiever, dropped out (McKay & Wong)

Oldcomers in US positioned favorably in HS, but not in CC ESL (Harklau)

Polish Katarina in CAN invested in computer rather than ESL to pursue well-educated self/community (BN)

CLOSE IMPACT OF IDENTITIES ON L2 LEARNING: EXAMPLES FROM ELECTIVE LEARNING (10.18)

Many L2ers embrace idealized NS target, but some selectively resist (Yumiko Ohara)

Community may resist L2er efforts to identify (Meryl Siegal)

Investments, desires, identity negotiations are affected by socially constructed categories of gender, race, & class: Spain (Livia Polanyi), France (Celeste Kinginger)

TECHNOLOGY-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION AS A SITE FOR SOCIALLY RICH L2 LEARNING (10.19)

Technology as medium enables intercultural communication, multimedia publication, distance learning, community participation, identity formation

HS SFL Chat: Wider variety of functions than face-to-face discourse (Darhower)

Community acceptance, engagement (Lam) Remarkable literacy engagement (Black, Yi)

NEVER JUST ABOUT ABOUT LANGUAGE (10.20) Many/most/all (?) L2ers try to transform

their worlds, seeking material, symbolic, affective, self-affirming returns

L2 social contexts are sites of struggle Proficiency ≠ success How can/should L2 teachers promote

empowerment, social transformation?