A Philosophy of Second Language Acquisition (MARYSIA JOHNSON)

The book is divided into two parts. Although several major current SLA theories and models are described and discussed in Part One, “Following the Cognitive Tradition” the purpose of this part of the book is not to introduce the reader to the fundamental principles of existing theories and models. The main purpose of Part One is to illustrate the strong cognitive and experimental bias of current SLA models and theories and to advocate the application of a new framework that would remedy this bias.

Part one consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of three major scientific research traditions: behaviorism, cognitive-computational, and dialogical. Chapter 2 provides a historical overview of SLA as a scientific field. The purpose of this overview is to explain the origin of this field and to illustrate the general trend of its adherence to the rules and norms established in other scientific fields. That is, after behaviorism, SLA turned to cognitive psychology for guidance. The mentalist approach to SLA is illustrated by the application of Noam Chomsky’s theories to SLA. The cognitive and linguistic origin of SLA theory and research is presented and discussed in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 discusses the impact of the information-processing paradigm on SLA theory and research. In Chapter 5 several communicative competence models are presented and discussed. The purpose of this chapter is to emphasize the cognitive view of interaction promoted in these models, in which the learner is solely responsible for his or her performance.

In order to introduce the reader to the new dialogical approach, the writer presents a thorough introduction to Vygotsky’s and Bakhtin’s ideas. Part Two,”A Dialogical Approach to SLA”, begins with such an introduction. Chapters 6 and 7 provide a comprehensive overview of Vygotsky’s and Bakhtin’s theories, respectively. Chapter 8 describes and discusses some of the major studies that examine the application of SCT to second language learning. In Chapter 9, THE WRITER proposed a new approach to SLA—a dialogically based approach—and he discussed some theoretical and practical implications of such an approach. The aim of this chapter is to provide theoretical and practical guidelines for developing, conducting, examining, and implementing research studies as well as teaching and testing practices within this new unified framework and to encourage and promote the implementation of the new relations among researchers, teachers, and students (see fig. I.2).

P A R T I Following the Cognitive Tradition

CHAPTER 1

Three Major Scientific Research Traditions

In this chapter the writer describe three major scientific research traditions that greatly influenced theories and methods of SLA. There are three scientific traditions can be ordered: Behaviorist, cognitive-Computational, and dialogical

1.      Behaviorism

The first tradition, behaviorism, dominated the field of SLA until the end of the 1960s and found its most visible application in contrastive analysis and the audiolingual method. In this tradition, the focus was on the learner’s external environment. It was believed then that this external environment served as a stimulus for the processes of learning. Learning was regarded as a habit formation, the process of making a link between stimuli and responses. This link, viewed as being instrumental for learning, had to be reinforced, observed, corrected, and practiced. In the behavioristic tradition, the learner’s mental processes were disregarded because they were not accessible to external observation.

The characteristics of scientific research in the era of behaviorism:

a.       The subject’s behavior was manipulated in order to elicit responses that were later interpreted by researchers according to their research questions and methods.

b.      The researcher elicited and interpreted subjects’ behaviors according to his or her own ideas and hypotheses.

c.       Objects under the control of researchers. Their behavior can be manipulated, controlled, and measured in such a way that it satisfies the requirements of the research question determined in advance by the researcher.

d.      The individuality of subjects’ intentions is disregarded.

2.      cognitive-Computational

The cognitive tradition was the most widely accepted scientific tradition in SLA, stresses the importance of mental processes. By the application of the logico-deductive method, which utilizes logical and mathematical reasoning, mental processes were made accessible to human investigation. The cognitive scientific tradition stresses the importance of human internal processes rather than external processes, thus reversing the well-established pattern of behaviorism, which, as we recall, focused on the external reality and disregarded the internal processes. In the cognitive tradition, the external environment is viewed as less important because human beings are born with the innate predisposition to evolve cognitively; we are born with the computer that is responsible for cognitive development. The external world serves as a trigger mechanism, as a switch for the computer program to be activated. The individual is solely responsible for his or her cognitive development.

In this period researchers tend to combine the cognitive approach and experimental types of methodologies into one category, which they call the nomothetic scientific tradition (Ochsner 1979; Markee 1994), and contrast it with the hermeneutic scientific tradition. Nomothetic science is concerned with explaining and predicting, whereas hermeneutic science is concerned with understanding and interpreting natural phenomena. Quantitative experimental methods based on statistical logic and probability are primarily associated with the nomothetic scientific tradition, whereas qualitative methods are associated with the hermeneutic tradition, which assumes that multiple realities exist and that ‘‘human events must be interpreted teleologically; that is, according to their final ends (Ochsner 1979, 54).

3.      Dialogical

The dialogical tradition stresses the importance of social, cultural, political, historical, and institutional contexts for the development of human cognition; it highlights the importance for human cognitive development of social interaction in a variety of sociocultural and institutional settings.

The researchers in this era look at the existence of multiple realties that are interpreted differently by different individuals. Qualitative research methods are given higher status than statistically driven quantitative methods. The subjects’ diverse voices, intentions, motives, and personal histories are not lost but are acknowledged and brought to the forefront of scientific inquiry.

Chapter 2

Behaviorism and Second Language Learning

Contrastive Analysis

The origin of SLA as a scientific field is embedded in the behavioristic tradition, which dominated the field from the 1940s to the 1960s. It is also closely associated with contrastive analysis (CA), which had a great impact not only on SLA theory but also on second language classroom teaching.

Behaviorism was regarded as a general theory of learning, and language learning. It was believed then learning is advanced by making a stimulus-response connection, by creating new habits by means of reinforcement and practice of the established links between stimuli and responses.

In accordance with the fundamental principle of behaviorism, first language learning was viewed as the imitation of utterances to which the child had been exposed in his or her environment. Children were believed to acquire their native language by repeating and imitating their caretakers’ utterances. This idea of habit formation is illustrated in Leonard Bloomfield’s (1933) explanation of the child’s first language acquisition. Bloomfield was considered the most prominent representative of American structuralism. Thus, the two theories provided theoretical foundations for CA: a general theory of learning—behaviorism—and a theory of language—structural linguistics.

Structural linguistics assumed that oral language (speech) was more important than written language. Oral data were to be transcribed and analyzed according to a well-established system for determining structurally related elements that encode meaning. Learning a language was viewed as the mastery of the structural units such as phones, phonemes, morphemes, phrases, clauses, and sentences and the rules for combining these elements.

Structural linguistics began the process of describing and analyzing a language at the lower levels (the phonetic level and the phonological level) and then moved to the higher-level systems, second language teaching followed the same method. That is, second language teaching began at the phonetic level. Once the building blocks of this level were mastered, then the student advanced to the next structural level.

In learning L2, the learner has a tendency to transfer his or her old habits to a new task—the task of learning a second language. Therefore, if both languages, first and second, possess the same structures, language transfer will be positive, and the process of learning a second language will be facilitated and accelerated. On the other hand, the transfer of old habits will be negative when both languages do not possess the same grammatical structures.

The contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH) existed in two versions: a strong version, also known as the a priori version, and a weak version, also known as the a posteriori version. The proponents of the strong version claimed that, based on a careful examination of two languages, it would be possible to predict all difficulties in learning the second and the weak starts with the evidence provided by linguistic interference and uses such evidence to explain the similarities and differences between systems.

In CA, errors were viewed as interference, or negative transfer of the learner’s first language habits to the target language habits. Since language learning was viewed as a set of automatic habit formations, the learner’s errors provided evidence for the learner’s bad habit formations. Also, since mental processes were totally disregarded in the behavioristic tradition, the occurrence of errors was to be examined and explained within the context of the learner’s environment.

Chapter 3

The Cognitive Tradition and Second Language Acquisition

The cognitivism like Chomsky does not view language as speech to be used in real-life communication but as a set of formal properties inherent in any natural language grammar. He proposed that there must be an innate language faculty that is independent of other mental faculties and that assists the child in first language acquisition. He confines L1 acquisition to the domain of grammatical competence. He separates linguistic competence from pragmatic competence. The language faculty (UG), which helps the child to acquire grammatical competence, consists of a set of abstract rules, universal principles, and language-specific parameters. Certain parameters vary within a well-defined set of values. The child’s responsibility is to fix the value of certain parameters based on positive evidence provided by the environment. Universal grammar is responsible for the native speaker’s implicit knowledge of the formal grammatical properties of his or her native language and the native speaker’s intuition about the grammaticality or ungrammaticality of sentences. In the Chomsky theory, the environment is relegated to the role of a trigger mechanism that initiates the operation of UG. Once ‘‘turned on,’’ UG unfolds in a genetically predetermined way.

Chomsky’s theory of language acquisition has not gone unnoticed by some researchers working in the field of SLA. Kevin Gregg, one of the staunchest proponents of Chomsky’s linguistic theory, calls for its application to SLA. Gregg claims that the field of SLA suffers in two areas: the area of its unspecified domain and that of its theory. With regard to the first problem, he states that the domain of SLA should be restricted to linguistic competence and not include linguistic performance. Linguistic theory needs to be ’a theory of grammar’ (Gregg 1989, 24).

The L2 learner’s access to UG are controversial and inconclusive, some researchers openly deny that L2 learners have access to UG. For example, Robert Bley-Vroman (1989) considers the logical problem of adult second language acquisition. Robert Bley-Vroman (1989) describes nine fundamentally different characteristics of adult second language learners to justify his position that they have no access to UG, such as the degree of attainment, different goal, fossilization, personality, motivation, attitude, and aptitude,

Another proposed from Long (1997), the main object of SLA inquiry should be the acquisition of linguistic knowledge, which he associates with the acquisition of phonology, lexicon, and morphosyntactic rules. The SLA research community should concentrate its efforts on understanding the nature of the learner’s mental processes, which may not necessarily be governed by UG. A social setting in such a cognitive approach is acknowledged, but only superficially. It almost exists for the sake of existence: ‘SLA is a process that (often) takes place in a social setting, of course, but then so do most internal processes—learning, thinking, remembering, sexual arousal, and digestion, for example—and that neither obviates the need for theories of those processes, nor shifts the goal of inquiry to a theory of the settings’ (Long 1997, 319).

Chapter 4

Information Processing Models

The writer presents the theories of the information processing paradigm— the newer version of the cognitive tradition that proposed by Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis (1985) and Michael Long’s (1983b, 1996) interaction hypothesis, which influenced the selected information processing models and the field of SLA in general.

Krashen’s Input Hypothesis

Krashen’s input hypothesis is part of his larger theoretical framework, which attempts to account for second language acquisition processes. It consists of five hypotheses:

1.         Acquisition-Learning

Second language acquisition can be developed in two ways, by means of two independent processes: acquisition, which refers to subconscious processes that result in acquired knowledge, and learning, which refers to conscious processes that result in explicit knowledge about the grammatical properties of a second language. Knowledge about the formal properties of a second language, such as one’s ability to explain the form of the English present perfect tense, does not lead to acquisition. In contrast to acquisition, learning requires the formal teaching of grammatical rules and structures. Since this formal teaching does not lead to acquisition, the teaching of grammar is relegated in Krashen’s framework to the periphery and is associated with the operation of the monitor hypothesis.

2.          Natural Order

The natural order hypothesis, states that SLA proceeds according to a well-defined order. That is, the second language is acquired in a predetermined way; it unfolds along a natural path of development that cannot be altered. This hypothesis sets the stage for an information processing view of second language acquisition: If there is a natural order of acquisition, there must be a mechanism that processes the incoming information according to an innate, universal, and rule-governed system.

3.          Monitor

The monitor hypothesis accounts for the existence and the operation of learned knowledge.

4.         Input

The fourth hypothesis, the input hypothesis, claims that humans acquire language in only one way—by understanding messages, or by receiving ‘comprehensible input. Comprehensible input is operationalized as i + 1, where i represents the learner’s current level of language competence and 1 the next level of competence in the natural order of development. Krashen’s input hypothesis refers to acquisition, not learning. Krashen claims that if there is enough comprehensible input ‘‘the necessary grammar is automatically provided.

5.         Affective Filter

The affective filter hypothesis—claims that although comprehensible input is the necessary condition for, indeed the cause of, moving along the natural order of development, there is another factor that affects SLA

Swain’s Comprehensible Output Theory

Merrill Swain (1985, 1993, 1995) proposed that not only comprehensible input but also comprehensible output is required for second language acquisition. The production of comprehensible output forces the learner to notice a gap between what they want to say and what they can say.

Swain (1995, 128) identifies three functions of comprehensible output, which, she hypothesizes, relate to ‘‘accuracy rather than fluency:

1.      The the noticing/triggering function, or what might be referred to as its consciousness-raising role;

2.      the hypothesis-testing function;

3.      the metalinguistic function, or what might be referred to as its reflective role.

Long’s Interaction Hypothesis

Long’s original hypothesis regarding the role of conversational adjustments in SLA has been revised in his updated version of the interaction hypothesis (IH). Long defines the IH as follows: ‘‘It is proposed that environmental contributions to acquisition are mediated by selective attention and the learner’s developing L2 processing capacity, and that these resources are brought together most usefully, although not exclusively, during negotiation for meaning. Negotiation for meaning draws the learner’s attention to language as object during a generally meaning-oriented activity. Negative feedback obtained during negotiation work or elsewhere may be facilitative of L2 development, at least for vocabulary, morphology, and language-specific syntax, and essential for learning certain specifiable L1-L2 contrasts. According to Long’s definition, environmental contributions are mediated by selective attention and the learner’s developing L2 processing capacity. Both these mediational devices are part of the learner’s mind.

Long disagrees with Krashen (1985) as to the role of grammar teaching in SLA. Long and Robinson propose a different approach, which they call focus on form. Focus on form refers to how attentional resources are allocated. Focus on form draws the learner’s attention to both form and meaning. It involves learners’ orientation being drawn to language as object, but in context. In the context of semantics, Long’s insistence on helping the learner to pay attention to both form and meaning is self-evident and redundant. Semantic meaning requires the ability to make a connection between form and meaning on the sentential level.

The writer concludes that the IH is all about comprehension. In relation to some finding, indirectly seem to validate VanPatten’s claim that the learner cannot attend to form and function at same time, a notion that Long’s IH seems to reject.

VanPatten’s input processing model is based on three principles:

1.      P1. Learners process input for meaning before they process it for form.

2.      P2. For learners to process form that is not meaningful, they must be able to process informational or communicative content at no (or little) cost to attention.

3.      P3. Learners possess a default strategy that assigns the role of agent to the first noun (phrase) they encounter in a sentence. We call this ‘‘first noun strategy.’’

Another model proposed by Gass and Selinker. Gass’s model identifies five major stages that are involved in second language acquisition in conversion of input to output: apperceived input, comprehended input, intake, integration, and output.

Chapter 5

Communicative Competence versus Interactional Competence

Concept of Communicative Competence

Noam Chomsky is considered to be the originator of the notion of linguistic competence, which he associates with an ideal speaker’s tacit knowledge of his or her native language’s grammatical structures only. Chomsky divides linguistic theory into two parts: linguistic competence and linguistic performance. The former concerns the tacit knowledge of grammar, Linguistic performance as the actual use of language in concrete situations.

Chomsky’s opinion criticized by Hymes, he stated that Chomsky does not make clear whether performance should be viewed as the actual use of language in concrete situations. Hymes’s proposed a communicative competence is dependent upon both (tacit) knowledge and (ability) for use. This tacit knowledge includes both grammatical competence and sociolinguistic competence. ability for use is ‘Noncognitive factors, such as motivation’ and other factors such as those identified by Goffman (1967): ‘Courage, gameness, gallantry, composure, presence of mind, dignity, stage confidence, capacities’.

Michael Canale and Merrill Swain expanded Hymes’s model into a model of communicative competence for SLA but it does not include Hymes’s ability for use they placed ability for use within communicative performance. Communicative competence model consisted of three components: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. In 1983, Canale added discourse competence to their original model. Grammatical competence is defined as knowledge of lexical items and rules of morphology, syntax, and sentencegrammar semantics, and phonology. Their sociolinguistic competence is similar to Hymes’s (knowledge of the rules of language use). Strategic competence is defined as ‘verbal and non-verbal communication strategies that may be called into action to compensate for breakdowns in communication due to performance variables or to insufficient competence. Discourse competence is defined as knowledge of how to achieve cohesion and coherence in a text and is based on the work of Halliday and Hassan.

Canale and Swain expanded Hymes’ s communicative competence model by adding two other competencies: discourse competence and strategic competence. Canale and Swain are also responsible for introducing, perhaps unintentionally, the notion of interaction, which they viewed primarily as a cognitive issue rather than a social issue. By doing so, they also raised a question regarding the nature of the mechanism responsible for such interaction. The popularity of Canale and Swain’s model remained unchallenged until Bachman (1990) introduced his communicative language ability model (CLA).

Lyle Bachman describes CLA as consisting of both knowledge, or competence, and the capacity for implementing, or executing that competence in appropriate, contextualized communicative language use (1990, 84). His model consists of three competencies: language competence, strategic competence, and physiological mechanisms. Of these three, the most important is strategic competence, which drastically differs from Canale and Swain’s strategic competence. Bachman’s strategic competence pertains to general underlying cognitive skills in language use such as assessing, planning, and executing, which are instrumental for achieving communicative goals.

Interactional Competence

Interactional competence is a theory of the knowledge of language that one needs to possess in order to participate in interactive practices. It is a theory of second language acquisition because it identifies processes (stages) that lead to the acquisition of resources that are indispensable for the development and use of interactional competence. Interactional competence is locally developed and jointly constructed by all participants in interactive practices.

Interactional competence, as its name indicates, focuses on competence rather than performance. interactional competence offers new insights into the nature of second language acquisition, these insights have their roots in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. In order to fully understand and appreciate the fundamental principles of interactional competence, such as the notion of locally developed competencies, the role of social, cultural, and institutional settings in the development of interactional competence, and the origin of Hall’s (1995) three stages in the acquisition of interactional competence, one needs to refer to the work of Vygotsky.

P A R T II

A Dialogical Approach to SLA

Chapter 6

Fundamental Principles of Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory can be summarized in terms of three major tenets (Wertsch 1990, 1985a; Johnson 2001):

1.      The developmental analysis of mental processes;

The first tenet of Vygotsky’s SCT, his genetic method of analysis of human mental functions, states that only by a thorough analysis of human mental processes at all four levels—phylogenesis, sociocultural history, ontogenesis, and microgenesis—simultaneously can we arrive at a complete and accurate interpretation and understanding of human mental functioning. He claims that ‘‘we need to concentrate not on the product of development but on the very process by which higher forms are established

2.      The social origin of human mental processes

The second tenet of Vygotsky’s SCT claims that higher mental functions, such as rational thought and learning, originate in social activity. All higher mental functions originate in a social activity— on the interpersonal plane. The interpersonal plane is transformed into the intrapersonal plane by the gradual, dynamic process of internalization of the patterns of social activities to which the individual has been exposed in the course of his or her entire life. The process of internalization of these socially originated human behaviors is possible because of the mediated function of sign systems. Contrary to the proponents of the cognitive paradigm, Vygotsky maintains that sociocultural factors occupy the central position in the development of human higher functioning. Although he recognizes the importance of biological constraints on human mental development, he denies the human brain the central position in cognitive development. For Vygotsky, the development of higher mental functioning such as voluntary attention, logical memory, rational thought, and learning represents not the unfolding of innate cognitive abilities but the transformation of these capacities that is initiated by the child’s sociocultural environment. Socioculturally constructed mediational signs such as algebraic symbols and above all, language, generate this transformation.

3.      The role of sign systems in the development of human higher mental functions.

Vygotsky’s theory points to the multileveled nature of inner speech and its connection to external speech. Connections between speech and thought originate on the interpersonal plane, where speech is used for communication among people. By means of the mediated power of semiotic sign systems in which language plays the most crucial role, the patterns and behaviors observed on the social plane are being internalized.

For Vygotsky, learning and development are not the same thing. Vygotsky made a revolutionary claim that social factors can override biological or natural factors in the development of higher mental consciousness. The child’s unfolding development is not shaped by a programmed cognitive code, as Piaget’s cognitive psychology seems to suggest, but by other people in the community to which the child has been exposed. The speech of this community affects the child’s higher mental development.

Thought, in Vygotsky’s view, is basically inner speech. And since the roots of inner speech can be found on the social plane, in social speech, thought is fundamentally a human activity in which learning plays a crucial role. Learning, especially learning in educational settings, provides a unique opportunity for the development of decontextualized meanings of words indispensable for the development of inner speech and thus higher levels of rational thinking.

Vygotsky’s semiotic theory—his theory of mediational functions of sign systems—provides a crucial line between cultural and communicative forms of behavior among individuals (on the interpersonal plane) and psychological processes within the individual (on the intrapersonal plane). He writes: ‘The internalization of cultural forms of behavior involves the reconstruction of psychological activity on the basis of sign operations (1978, 57). We engage in many social activities, which are mediated by all kinds of signs including linguistic signs. With the assistance of these mediational means, ’sign operations’, the external interactions conducted in a variety of social contexts are appropriated and become inner speech—speech for oneself— verbal thinking.

In SCT linguistic signs and cognitive processes do not precede their application in real-life social contexts: they are the results of the individual’s participation in social activities. Social interaction constitutes the prerequisite for the emergence of higher forms of consciousness. From SCT’s perspective, linguistic signs should not be viewed as arbitrary because their origin can be traced back to a variety of social interactions.

Activity Theory

The theory of activity was developed by Vygotsky’s student and follower, Leont’ev. Although some disagreement as to the relation between these two theories still exists, the theory of activity is viewed as part of sociocultural theory (Wertsch 1981). Activity theory is described in terms of the following features: the structure of an activity (motives, actions or goals, and operations); mediation (activity is mediated by tools and sign systems); method (activity is investigated by applying a genetic method); interaction (activity is developed in social interactions); and internalization (activity is developed by the process of internalization of the patterns observed initially on the interpersonal plane).

Chapter 7

Bakhtin’s Dialogized Heteroglossia Mikhail

Bakhtin viewed language not as an abstract system of linguistic forms—lexicon, morphology, and syntax—but as speech. He contrasted the unit of speech with the unit of language as a form. The utterance is the unit of speech, and the sentence is the unit of language.

Bakhtin provides a detailed description of the basic unit of speech: the utterance. The utterance, in contrast to the sentence, possesses the following three characteristics.

1.      Utterance has its boundaries delineated by ‘a change of speaking subjects’ (1986, 71).

2.      The second feature is its completion, which assures that there will be a response to the utterance, some kind of reaction to it. This characteristic is associated with the notion of addressivity, which Bakhtin defines as follows: ‘Any utterance always has an addressee (of various sorts, with varying degrees of proximity, concreteness, awareness, and so forth), whose responsive understanding the author of the speech work seeks and surpasses.

3.      The author of the utterance, with a greater or lesser awareness, presupposes a higher superaddressee (third), whose absolutely just responsive understanding is presumed, either in some metaphysical distance or in distant historical time.

The utterance, not the sentence (which is an abstraction of the utterance devoid of a context), presupposes, because of its second characteristic—responsiveness — a dialogic relation between the speaker and the addressor. Thus, each utterance evokes three entities: the speaker, the addressee for whom the utterance was intended (whether this addressee is present or ‘invisible’ like the future generations for whom the utterance was intended), and the superaddressor, who, like God or absolute truth, fully understands the intention and the meaning of the utterance.

The utterance may take on a variety of forms, anything that can be responded to, small or lengthy. An exclamation, a gesture, a question, a letter, a lengthy work of literature—each falls into the category of the utterance as the basic unit of speech communication. Bakhtin writes: ‘‘Any utterance—from a short (single-word) rejoinder in everyday dialogue to the large novel or scientific treatise—has, so to speak, an absolute beginning and an absolute end: its beginning is preceded by the utterances of others, and its end is followed by the responsive utterances of others (or, although it may be silent, others’ active responsive understanding, or, finally, a responsive action based on this understanding).

Utterance can be look at a particular speech genre.  A speech genre is ‘not a form of language, but a typical form of utterance; as such the genre also includes a certain typical kind of expression that inheres in it. In the genre the word acquires a particular typical expression. Genres correspond to typical situations of speech communication, typical themes, and, consequently, also to particular contacts between the meanings of words and actual concrete reality under certain typical circumstances. Speech genres organize our speech.

Chapter 8

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning

This chapter is divided into four sections. Each presents studies that focused on one particular principle of SCT such as the zone of proximal development (ZPD), the role of interaction, activity theory, and private and inner speech. Most of the studies discussed in this chapter are included in Lantolf and Appel (1998) and Lantolf (2000).

The Zone of Proximal Development

The investigation of SLA by Richard Donato (1998) reveals that learners themselves could be considered a good source of L2 knowledge. Donato rightly points out, underlying the constructs of L2 input and output in modified interaction (for example, Long 1985; Swain 1985) is the outdated conduit metaphor model.

The role of input and interaction maintain that social interaction supplies linguistic input to the learner, who develops the L2 solely on the basis of his or her mental processing mechanism. Donato’s findings validate the importance of collective scaffolding for the learner’s L2 development. The knowledge acquired during the scaffolded interaction among the learners was retained long after the study took place. At a later time, the participants could produce individually the linguistic forms that they previously could only produce with the scaffolded assistance of their peers.

In ‘Linguistic Accommodation with LEP and LD Children’, Linda Schinke-Llano (1998) reviewed two experimental studies, which were analyzed from a Vygotskian perspective. Linguistic accommodations and their effect on the participants’ language development and cognitive development are the focus of the two studies. Although in both cases the students differed greatly as to their age, gender, and the type of task they were asked to solve, the similarities of the outcomes of the two studies are striking.

In the first study presented in Schinke-Llano (1998), fifth- and sixth-grade teachers were asked to participate in problem-solving activities with twentyfour students and in the second study reviewed by Schinke-Llano, the subjects were twelve mother-child dyads whose native language was English and who came from Anglo-American backgrounds. Despite the differences in age, language background, gender, sociocultural background of the participants and the nature of the problem-solving task, the results of these two research studies are strikingly similar. Adults in LEP and LD dyads structured their interaction and assistance differently than did those in NS and NA dyads. The adults’ interactions with LEP students and LD children were more other-regulated, speech directed at them was less abbreviated, and the subsets of the tasks were made more explicit than they were with the NS students and NA children.

Further, The work of Lantolf, who has been one of the strongest advocates of the application of sociocultural theory to SLA was conducted a research under the assumption that there is some positive connection between error correction (negative feedback) and second language learning. He found the five levels of the scale which represent three developmental levels: other regulation (levels 1 to 3), in which the learner relies on the tutor’s help to notice and correct an error, partial regulation (level 4), in which the learner is capable of noticing the error but is not able to correct himself or herself, and self-regulation (level 5), in which corrective feedback is self-generated and automatic.

The findings of the study support Vygotsky’s claim that different learners, although at the same actual level of development, exhibit different ZPDs; therefore, they require different levels of regulation or assistance. This particular point is illustrated by the learners’ varying need for help in using the English article system. It seems different learners have different levels of potential development.

Exploring the Role of Interaction from a Vygotskian Perspective

Sociocultural theory attunes us to the fact that human cognitive development does not take place in a sociocultural vacuum; a universal value system does not exist no matter how well-packaged or how well-intentioned this system may be. In order to understand human behavior outside or inside the classroom, whether L1 or L2, one needs to examine the sociocultural contexts to which the individual has been exposed in the course of his or her life.

Sullivan’s findings send a cautionary note to the advocates of group and pair work activities to pay attention to the sociocultural and personal experiences that guide students’ behaviors in the classroom. Vygotsky’s SCT offers a powerful tool for understanding complex student behavior

Activity Theory and Second Language Acquisition

An activity is a dynamic and individual process that cannot be easily generalized from one contefxt to another. Roebuck, Coughlan, and Duf call for ‘reconditioning’ our way of current thinking about generalizability, oruniformity of the learner’s behavior from one study context to another where supposedly the same task is employed. We need to get accustomed to the fact that if activity theory were to be applied to SLA, particularities, unpredictability, and ‘‘fuzzy’’ findings should not be viewed as ‘unscientific’ Such findings should not be disregarded because in this seeming chaos insights about human learning wait to be discovered.

The Role of Private Speech and Inner Speech in SLA

Private speech (egocentric speech) plays a crucial role in human cognitive development; it represents, according to Vygotsky, a clear illustration of the interconnectedness of language and thought. Private speech also signals the learner’s attempt to self-regulate, to take control of his or her cognitive growth.

The researcher expected that ESL learners at the low proficiency level Wwould employ private speech more often than ESL students at the higher level of L2 proficiency because of their greater difficulty in expressing themselves in English as a second language. The nature of L2 inner speech and its functions are investigated in Maria C. M. de Guerrero’s (1998) study, described in ‘Form and Functions of Inner Speech in Adult Second Language learning. Findings of this study have led to the development of a second language inner speech model. Input is processed and transformed into inner speech, and from inner speech it is transferred to long-term memory, where L2 knowledge is permanently stored, then retrieved from long-term memory for the purpose of speaking and writing. Thus, according to this model, inner speech serves as a conduit for L2 thoughts and L2 external realizations of these thoughts. According to this model, inner speech involves the integration of L1 knowledge and graphic symbols

Chapter 9

Building a New Model of Second Language Acquisition

In this chapter the writer describes a new model of SLA that is based on Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogized heteroglossia, and  its implications for SLA theory and practice.

A Dialogically Based Model of SLA and Its Implications for SLA Theory and Research

Vygotsky’s and Bakhtin’s theories provide a bridge between the learner’s external and internal realities. The external world affects and transforms the individual’s mental functioning, which, in turn, affects and transforms social, cultural, and institutional settings. A variety of potentially new sociocultural and institutional settings, and discursive practices associated with these settings, are viewed as having a major impact on the learner’s consciousness, on his or her cognitive growth. The communicative competence models according to Vygotsky’s and Bakhtin’s theories, is the integration of language competence and language performance

In this new model of SLA, the origin of second language competence lies not in the language acquisition device or any other mechanism, such as Bley-  Vroman’s (1989) general problem-solving system, but in social reality—in language use. Social contexts create language, and language creates social contexts. Within this new paradigm, SLA research would focus on identifying, describing, and explaining all the possible speech genres one may encounter in a given sociocultural and institutional context, and also investigating the effects of various speech genres on the learner’s second language ability. The complex processes that lead to the establishment of intersubjectivity, the mutual understanding of a shared reality by participants in a given sociocultural context, need to be carefully examined.

The ultimate purpose of the dialogically based model of SLA is to discover the processes that allow the L2 learner to become an active participant in the target language culture, or to investigate how participation in a variety of local sociocultural contexts affects the learner’s second language ability and how participation in one sociocultural context affects the learner’s participation in another.

The new dialogical model of SLA based on Vygotsky’s SCT and Bakhtin’s

heteroglossia can be summarized as follows:

1.      Language learning is not universal or linear but localized and dialectical.

2.      Language performance and language competence cannot be separated because they are in a dialectical relationship.

3.       Language is not viewed as a linguistic code but as speech embedded in a variety of local sociocultural contexts.

4.      The learner is not viewed as a limited processor that cannot attend to both form and meaning at the same time. Therefore, information-gap tasks such as structured input activities or spot-the-di√erence-in-pictures tasks are not considered to be useful for the appropriation of new voices or for the appropriation of language viewed as speech.

5.      To acquire the target language is to acquire discursive practices (speech genres) characteristic of a given sociocultural and institutional setting.

6.       Discursive practices typical of a given sociocultural setting are not limited to verbal signs. They also include nonverbal signs such as gestures, facial expressions, and other semiotic signs such as graphs and maps.

7.      Cognitive and second language development are not separated in this model. They are in a dialectical relationship; one transforms the other.

8.      Interaction between new voices and old voices is essential for the learner’s language and cognitive development.

9.      The development of second language ability is viewed as the process of becoming an active participant in the target language culture. The participation metaphor should replace, not complement, the existing acquisition metaphor.

10.  The responsibility of researchers within this new approach is to investigate the processes that lead to becoming an active participant in locally bound social contexts. Such investigation requires that qualitative research methods be acknowledged as appropriate research methods for the field of SLA.

11.  New research methods need to be developed to capture the fundamental processes of the participation metaphor. These methods need to investigate L2 learners who were successful or unsuccessful in their border-crossing endeavors. The ultimate goal of this investigation is to develop a prototype of an active participant in the target language

culture.

Teaching

According to Newman, Griff, and Cole, ‘‘the zone of proximal development is something more than social support that some today call scaffolding; it is not just a set of devices used by one person to support high-level activity by another. The ZPD is the locus of social negotiations about meanings, and it is, in the context of schools, a place where teachers and pupils may appropriate one another’s understandings.

Second language teachers should not be afraid to experiment with creating as many interactive activities as possible with learners of the same L1 backgrounds or different backgrounds or with L2 learners who are at the same or different levels of language proficiency. This ‘‘experimentation,’’ however, should not be conducted for the sake of experimentation. It should be conducted with a goal in mind: to help expose L2 learners to di√erent interpretations of the same reality, to create an awareness of the existence of a multitude of shared realities, or to help L2 learners develop di√erent levels of intersubjectivity. Also, the knowledge and skills acquired in interactive classroom activities within individualized ZPDs should be relevant to the L2 learner’s particular needs and goals outside the classroom.

Testing

Potential ability is part of the dialogic paradigm, in which interaction is viewed as a social, not a cognitive, issue. Potential development, although dependent on the learner’s actual development, is predicated on the interactive skills of the tester. Potential ability cannot be assessed by a paper-andpencil test or a computerized version of such a test, a method that is typical of aptitude tests. The learner’s potential development needs to be assessed in a face-to-face interaction. Also, this interaction needs to take place in a real-life context where speech, not the linguistic system, is being assessed. Potential ability cannot be assessed by asking the test taker to solve a linguistic problem by himself or herself. Potential ability needs to be assessed in a jointly created activity in which the learner’s potential ability is negotiated during a face-toface interaction with the tester.

A Dialogically Based Model of SLA has practical implications. That is, it can be applied to second language classroom teaching and language testing. In the context of classroom teaching and testing, it stresses the importance of interaction as a social, not as a cognitive, issue and the creation of the ZPDs that are unique to each L2 learner’s needs and goals.