Voices and Representations in EFL Materials Design, Pedagogy, and Research Phaisit Boriboon B. A. (English), M. A. (TESOL) A thesis submitted in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to Linguistics and English Language School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences University of Edinburgh July 2008 Copyright 2008 by Phaisit Boriboon All rights reserved.
To My Parents, ???????? ????????? ???????? , in Heaven Abstract This study presents a multi-faceted analysis of EFL learners’ voices in a Thai context, aimed at testing a hypothesis that the discourse of foreign, western-compiled textbooks project identities disconnected from EFL learners’ lived experiences, adversely affecting their meaning-making during discursive practices.
I employ a multi-modal, multi-case study for data collection: 1) the use of two sets of materials in mini-course action research with two groups of learners — one group using published materials selected from New Headway Elementary Course (Soars & Soars, 2000) and the other using modified, parallel ‘Third Space’ materials; 2) audio- and video-recordings of classroom interactions and their transcriptions; 3) post-lesson and post-course questionnaires; 4) semi-structured interviews; and 5) video-based stimulated recall interviews.
Drawing from Bakhtinian-Vygotskian sociocultural theories, I show through a microscopic analysis of learners’ interactions and utterances how dialogic relations between Other-discourse and Self-discourse shape learners’ meaning construction during their appropriation of mediating discourse for activities such as role-play. A macroscopic analysis of learners’ attitudinal voices based on the questionnaires and interviews is then provided for triangulation.
The Essay on Discourse Community Analysis
In order to be accepted into a discourse community, a person must learn typical ways people in that community communicate and argue. In this paper I will prove that I entered the discourse community of my high school soccer team by acquiring knowledge, establishing my credibility, and learning the game I love. In other words, I will be using the ethos, logos, and pathos appeals. I love to play ...
The findings are 1) both groups have marked potential to infuse their contextual meanings into the Other-discourse of their materials for Self-representation; 2) ‘Third Space’ materials have more potential to enrich linguistic resources and opportunities for learners’ meaning-making and scaffolded learning than ‘Headway’ materials; 3) the majority of participants prefer the coexistence of voices and meanings between their culture and Other cultures as the mediating discourse for i speaking activities, rather than the conventional models.
The study thus supports the use of a dialogic framework for inclusion of cultural voices and representations in EFL materials design, and also offers other implications for pedagogy and future research. ii Declaration of originality I hereby declare that I have composed this thesis myself, and that it contains no material previously submitted for the award of any other degree. All work presented in this thesis is my own, unless specifically stated otherwise. Phaisit Boriboon iii Acknowledgements
First I would love to express my utmost gratefulness to the Royal Thai Government who granted me the scholarship covering travel costs, tuition fees, and living stipends throughout this academic journey in the UK, without which the completion of my study would not have been possible. As traditionally practised by Thai students, I am now considering myself a student of Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Lev S. Vygotsky, and their followers. I am grateful for their wisdom which I have explored through my reading of their works and appropriated for the present study.
True to what Bakhtin has said about the construction of an authorial voice which grows out of a dialogic encounter, I would not have been able to complete this thesis, had I not engaged in intellectual conversations with certain people over the course of four years. My heartfelt gratitude goes to the main dialogic interactant, Professor John Joseph, my research supervisor, for having been the greatest source of encouragement, insightful and detailed feedback, as well as relentless, benevolent assistance in shaping my academic voice. Thanks also to Dr.
The Research paper on Research Study on Gender Bias in Education
These instructions were used as a form of deception to prove my hypothesis. My hypothesis was that women would be more affected by this deception than would the men. My results proved otherwise. Results showed there was little difference in the way the women and men performed on these tests on either version. The ANOVA testing showed these clear results. Does Performance Reflect Success? Gender ...
Tony Lynch, my second supervisor, for his invaluable instructions and comments on my work. I wish to thank the teachers and students at the University of Edinburgh from whom I reaped helpful comments and suggestions at various occasions: the participants of the Language in Context Research Group, the Theoretical and Applied Linguistics Postgraduate Conference, and the Institute of Applied Language Studies Research Seminar, who were present in my paper presentations. I thank Barry Campbell, the sound technician, for his technical assistance. My sincere iv ppreciation extends to all my friends, Melada, Thanawat, Porpot, Sasithorn, Jit-apa, Tim, Hannele, Sherry, and Frances, who helped out during the materials adaptation stage, and to Aileen who advised me on the use of VocabProfile. My special thanks also go to Assanee for his kindest assistance in binding this thesis. Thanks so much to all my dear friends, Vipas, Somchai, Pajaree, and Sherice among others whose names are all too many to be included here, for their emotional support and encouragement during the difficult times of my intellectual endeavour.
I am indebted in particular to my friend and former colleague, Aric Letzring, for his inquisitive mind that always led to our interesting conversation about cultural phenomena in the EFL classroom, which initially sparked my interest to pursue this line of research. I would like to thank all the people at Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University, Thailand, who allowed my fieldwork to be undertaken with ease and convenience. Special thanks have to go to all the students who were part of such a pleasant and rewarding experience of data collection.
According to Phungphol (2005), education reform in Thailand, addressing particularly the importance of learner-centredness instead of the traditional teachercentred approach, has swept across the country as a consequence of the enactment of the National Education Act in 1999. Since then, central organisations, in particular the Ministry of Education, have constantly arranged training programmes and activities for schoolteachers and educators nationwide so as to instigate measures for promoting educational priorities, including the learner-centred approach to teaching.
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1. I have now been a teacher for 2 years and am currently teaching at Einstein middle school. 2. I knew I wanted to teach ever since I was a young girl. I would love playing with my friends, and would always pretend as if I was a teacher and my friends were students. I even had a little blackboard that I would write on and pretend that I knew what I was saying. Eventually I grew a passion for ...
In response to the demand from society for educational improvement, institutions of higher education, especially publicly funded universities, have also undergone massive change for nearly ten years (Kirtikara, 2002; Prpic & Kanjanapanyakom, 2004).
In 2004, small-sized institutions of higher education, such as the Rajabhat Institutes and the Rajamangala Institutes of Technology, were also designated as universities, a status which requires them to be more autonomous in virtually all aspects of their management — academic, personnel-related, and financial.
How these universities will perform after obtaining their new status is at this stage uncertain, but the task of moving forward is not an easy one, and it may take years before they can stand on their own feet. 1. 1. 2 Thailand and EFL English is part of the educational curriculum at all levels in Thailand, and has been a compulsory subject for students beyond Grade 4 since 1921 (Aksornkul, 1980, as cited in Foley, 2005).
This means that the role English plays in the social 5 Chapter 1 Introduction and economic development of the country has long been recognised.
Nevertheless, the fact that most Thai students cannot use the language to communicate effectively in spite of years of continuous English classes remains a major problem that is still waiting to be solved by educators and teachers. As recently as 2001, Wiriyachitra (as cited in Foley, 2005, p. 231) noted that Thai students have an unsatisfactory level of English in basically all skills despite the fact that the 1996 National Curriculum of the country made English a compulsory subject for students starting earlier than before in Grade 1 (Foley, 2005, p. 24).
Wiriyachitra’s report of the below-average proficiency of English among Thai students should serve as a call for serious attention from policymakers, educators, and teachers. All agencies involved in the educational development of the country are already greatly concerned with English teaching, because while there is an everincreasing demand for international communication skills, Thai students’ low English oral proficiency is deeply unpromising for the development of the country in general.
The Ministry of Education has thus constantly emphasised that teachers need to reform their teaching approach to put less stress on rote learning, memorisation, and the grammar-translation method, and to implement an approach that enhances communicative skills. They also declared 2006 a year of English teaching reform. 1 With regard to the emphasis on communication in the classroom, English teachers in Thailand have kept themselves abreast of innovative ideas for teaching disseminated from western agencies in the past years. Following the global trend of 1
The Term Paper on Teaching Phase Students Syllabus Lesson
ON THE DESIGN OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE CURRICULA Discuss the steps involved in planning a general English language course. In designing a syllabus for a group of Greek learners in a public secondary school what factors would you take into account in its development, how would you go about developing it, what would the nature of this syllabus be and why? Planning a general English language course can be ...
Source: ‘Education goals should be “lifted”’, The Nation [On-line], Retrieved April 6, 2006, from http://www. nationmultimedia. com/2006/03/28/national/national_30000359. php 6 Chapter 1 Introduction ‘communicative language teaching’ (CLT), university teachers across the country have attempted to implement this approach (Saengboon, 2002).
According to Wongsothorn (2000), schoolteachers have also set the development of communication as a main goal in their teaching since 1996, and have adopted what is described as the ‘functional-communicative’ approach (as cited in Foley, 2005, pp. 24-5).
The CLT core tenets are also in line with the premise of ‘learner-centredness’ set out in the 1999 National Education Act (Phungphol, 2005).
Discussions and debates about CLT and its implementation in learning and teaching contexts still appear to be vigorous. While some scholars are sceptical of its worth, calling for its modification or its replacement by other approaches (Bax, 2003; Harmer, 2003; Hu, 2005), others are insistent that CLT should be adopted in its entirety without taking account of contextual factors (Liao, 2004).
Certain key researchers in CLT have been promoting CLT relentlessly but have to some extent compromised its principles for the sake of its translation into different contexts (e. g. , Savignon, 2003, 2004).
Scholars’ perceptions of CLT still lack unanimity, and this leads to the question as to how much CLT and its tenets can accommodate the current need of language teachers to help learners exploit the classroom time and resources available so as best to serve their practical needs. The answer may be elusive and the reality of classroom teaching as far as CLT is concerned is probably messier than one can imagine.
Based on my own experience and the information gained from conversations with my counterparts, English teachers are likely to end up combining an approach resembling CLT and other approaches in their actual teaching. As Bax (ibid. ) states, a more traditional method such as Grammar Translation still reigns over CLT in many global settings (p. 278).
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Education can be referring as the pathway of success for students striving in the learning process of education system. However on the other hand this seems not true and easy for students that are beginning their first year of study at university level, as often there are several factors relating to the life at the university. These generally become a great deal of challenges especially for first ...
7 Chapter 1 Introduction Notwithstanding its shortcomings, however, CLT is still seen by stakeholders in language policy and planning as an approach that will help improve learners’ communicative competence and is a fact of life that many teachers, myself included, need to grapple with.
My stance is that since CLT is premised on the interdependence of language and communication, and the encouragement of studenttalk through pair and group activities or problem-solving tasks (Richards & Rodgers, 1987, p. 66), it will also be useful when communicative self-expression is emphasised. This is when learners generate their own meanings through utterances based on their intentions and thoughts, ideally using as much of the foreign language available in their identity repertoire as they can.
My experience suggests to me that the aim of realising the communicative possibilities implied in the notion of CLT is still a valid and feasible one. The greatest challenge, though, is not to perceive the means to achieve this aim as a monolithic, prefabricated set of principles and actions applicable to every single context and every task or activity. I suggest that we look further into classroom processes to analyse how an interaction between contextual factors at a macro-level and classroom events with different characteristics can have an impact on learners’ ‘communicability’ or ability to engage with ‘meaningful’ conversations.
I believe that learners’ sociocultural identities should be taken into account in teachers’ decisions as to how to maximise language learning opportunities for learners. To this end, I propose in this study an example of how the interrelationship between identity and various concepts like community, motivation, investment can 8 Chapter 1 Introduction be explored, which are of high interest among applied linguists at the moment. 2 By doing so, I hope to shed light on the notion of ‘communicative’, in order to understand better what scholars generally hold to constitute a communicative approach.
The Essay on International students in English speaking universities
Introduction With the brisk pace of economic globalization, higher education is becoming more internationalized as well. An increasing number of students choose to receive higher education abroad in countries like the US, the UK and Australia, where there are many world-class universities that are expected to provide high-quality education for both domestic and overseas students. However, due to ...
For example, Saengboon (2002) refers to two core tenets of CLT: meaningfulness of tasks and authenticity of texts, and students as autonomous learners. Sullivan (2000a) points out that western-style CLT tends to value the notion of ‘reality’, which encourages students ‘… to give real information about real events, and to do real tasks that relate to the real world’ (p. 120).
All these ideas about learners, texts, meaningfulness, reality and the real world need to be clarified in order to better understand CLT or any ‘communicative’ approach to language teaching. 1. 1. Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University (SNRU) and education Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University, formerly known as Rajabhat Institute Sakon Nakhon, is located in Sakon Nakhon Province in north-eastern Thailand (see Figure 1).
Sakon Nakhon is about 647 kilometres from the Thai capital, Bangkok. Initially established as a teacher’s college, the institution then became a Rajabhat 3 institute, and changed its status to a university four years ago. It has provided education to people in Sakon Nakhon and nearby provinces, namely Nakhon Phanom, Mukdaharn, Kalasin, and Nong Khai, for more than four decades, and is 2
For example, the theme of the Japan Association for Language Teaching Conference held from 2-5 November 2006 was ‘Community, Identity, Motivation’. Tim Murphey, the Conference Chair, states on their website that we may ask in the classroom who we are asking our students to be, what groups they identify with and to what end, what kind of community we are asking them to participate in and how, what their motivations are and how they are related to their communities and identities, and how we can use this information to help them learn more effectively. Retrieved April 9, 2006, from http://conferences. alt. org/2006/index/call [Online] 3 The name was granted by His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand on 14 February 1995. Retrieved May 18, 2007, from http://www. snru. ac. th/history. php (My translation).
It means ‘government official’ as teachers are regarded as government officials in Thailand. Retrieved May 18, 2007, from http://www. thai2english/com/dictionary/11229. html 9 Chapter 1 Introduction currently composed of six faculties at the present time: education, humanities and social sciences, management science, science, agricultural technology, and industrial technology.
The philosophy of the university is as follows: ‘Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University is an institution of higher education which provides academic excellence grounded upon morality in order to contribute to local development as well as social development in general’. 4 Hence it is crucial that this university caters for the personal and social development of the local population through the provision of adequate and appropriate education. The people in these provinces (see Figure 2) are generally from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
Sakon Nakhon was ranked 67th among the 76 provinces in Thailand for per capita income in 2000, and the situation is not very different in the other provinces nearby. 5 It is thus understandable that students are hopeful that Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University will help them to acquire the social and academic skills deemed essential for paving the way to a ‘better’ life. For the majority of SNRU graduates, a new life awaits them in the capital and other large cities where jobs in tourism, service industries, business companies, and factories are on offer.
While the institution makes every effort to ensure that the curriculum is beneficial for their future, pedagogical implementation and practice are always difficult, particularly because the majority of students who flock to this university each year are not at the top of the academic pecking order. This situation is connected with the social inequality discussed earlier. The Thai educational system is strongly bound up with social reproduction, with students continuing to compete with one another based 4 5 Retrieved May 18, 2007, from http://www. snru. ac. th/mission. hp (My translation) According to the data provided by the Ministry of Finance on their website, http://www. mof. go. th/provice_data. htm, Mukdaharn was ranked at 55, Nong Khai 64, Kalasin 68, and Nakhon Phanom 74. 10 Chapter 1 Introduction Figure 1: Map of Thailand showing the research site in the red line, Source: Modified from http://www. lib. utexas. edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/thailand_admin_2005. jpg Figure 2: Map of northeastern Thailand showing the provinces where SNRU students are mainly from (within the yellow line), Source: Modified from http://www. thailand. om/travel/map/map. htm 11 Chapter 1 Introduction on their academic attainments long after they leave the system. The disparity between universities along the hierarchical order being great, the best students always choose to enter more reputable, long-established public universities located in big cities. Those students who can afford high tuition fees and living expenses usually opt for private universities, either in Thailand or overseas. Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University has thus become the refuge for students who have failed academically or whose families do not have much money.
A large number of them fall into both categories. It is not feasible in this thesis to pinpoint where the origin of this problematic condition lies; society and education are tightly bound up with each other, and the problems are complexly interconnected. The problems that occur in society will certainly affect education and give rise to educational problems. Those of us who teach in such a situation at times find it disheartening, but it is our task to find innovative ways to improve our classroom practice and the educational experience for our students. . 1. 4 EFL at Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University provides three degrees in English: Bachelor of Arts (English), Bachelor of Arts (Business English), and Bachelor of Education (English).
Students who enrol for these degrees are required to take a group of English subjects generally aimed at developing their English proficiency in all four major skills. The difference among students of these three majors is that BA (English) students and BA (Business English) students have to do a job pprenticeship in the business sector, whereas BEd (English) students do a teaching practicum in local primary or secondary schools in the last semester of their fourth 12 Chapter 1 Introduction year. The curriculum in use today is the same as that laid down in the 2000 Curricula Handbook written in cooperation with the other Rajabhat Institutes located in northeastern Thailand since before they were designated as universities. As discussed in section 1. 1. 1, the economically and geographically divided structure of Thai society to a large extent determines the types of students who enrol at our university.
In Lin and Luk’s (2005) terms, the majority of students have an ‘identity of failure’ 6, which stems from their being regarded as under- and lowachievers. Students who major in English tend to have a very low level of English proficiency to begin with. They are not, however, wrong to believe that the identity of ‘English-major graduate’ which they hope to construct will be their passport to a world of careers beyond the rice fields and farms in which they have grown up. In today’s society, there are always more opportunities for people with some English skills.
Most of these students move from their hometowns to live in big cities where chances are more plentiful after their graduation. Nevertheless, their career aspirations are usually low; for example, most students aim to work in hotels, tourist resorts, guest-houses, tour agencies and companies, and factories because they believe that these jobs are what their academic skills can afford them. 1. 2 The present study 1. 2. 1 Background to the problem The main courses aimed at developing the speaking skills of English majors in our institution are Listening and Speaking 1, 2, 3, and 4 (see Appendix 1 for course The notion of ‘identity of failure’ was used in Lin and Luk’s (2005) manuscript, but they do not use it in the published work. I think it serves the purpose of describing the students in this research well, so I use it in this paper. 13 Chapter 1 Introduction descriptions).
The time these students spend in the classroom studying these subjects is one of the rare opportunities they have to practise English communicative skills, since there are not many foreign visitors with whom they can interact.
Although the English curriculum has been in place for many years, we still lack the time, financial and human resources to write and develop our own set of textbooks to be used for teaching these courses, as our faculty of about 15 English teachers is responsible for 500 students in both regular weekday and adult weekend classes. In addition, we also have to provide fundamental English courses to other non-English-major students at the university. The teachers assigned to Listening and Speaking courses are allowed to select textbooks and design lessons as they see fit for specific groups of learners.
The time constraints associated with this overwhelming workload, together with the influence of the dominant ELT ideology, means that we tend to turn to the resources readily available on the market, starting with foreign, western 7-compiled textbooks. We rely on them because they are part and parcel of ELT methodology as disseminated from centre agencies. These textbooks have their good points: the contents and linguistic skills are systematically presented, and they are convenient to use.
Yet, the model dialogues presented for practising communicative skills mostly revolve around cultural events, places, practices, and values outside learners’ lived experience, and the cultural meanings, artefacts, and visual signs embedded in these textbooks are disconnected from students’ social backgrounds. Coming from low socioeconomic levels, their social experience and physical worlds are largely different from those projected in these materials. 7 The term ‘western’ is used here to represent how people in Thailand normally conceive and refer to European and North American countries, from where ajor publications of ELT materials are imported, particularly from the UK and USA. 14 Chapter 1 Introduction As a teacher, my perception has been that this condition hampers learners’ potential to contribute verbally in the classroom. I remember one day in 2003, not long before I was granted a PhD scholarship, when an American colleague walked into the office frustrated. He had just finished a Listening and Speaking class using a textbook published by an American publisher. My colleague then commented that certain students he had just taught did not understand the concept of ‘shopping’.
I was at first bemused before asking him for more details of what had happened around this ‘shopping’ incident. One thing he told me has reverberated in my mind since the day we talked. He pointed out that many of these students were poor, and that as they had little money to live on, they may never have been ‘shopping’ in their lives. The closest thing to going shopping would be going to the market. Indeed, this is not just one of many examples. Going on ‘holidays’ away from home is another experience the textbooks assume to be universal, but which very few of our students have ever experienced.
I had taught this course myself on several occasions, and had often wondered how effective it was to use foreign, western-compiled books as mediating texts. Although apart from occasional signs of disinterest and non-motivation on some learners’ part, I had never experienced such an incident where codes, concepts, and meanings in texts became as explicitly problematic as this American teacher had, I had thought all along that appropriate texts should reflect both old and new experiences, combining existing voices with new voices for learners to interact meaningfully in the classroom.
The points my colleague made about texts and their meanings and the learners’ identity help confirm that, for mediating speaking activities, the contrast between, on the one hand, properties of identity, voice, or role 15 Chapter 1 Introduction assigned to students by the text and on the other, the learners’ actual sociocultural identities, can be a source of tension and deserves further investigation. I argue that learning about the ‘target culture’ 8 is one thing; we would not want to exclude it from foreign-language learning and should encourage our students to acquire cultural knowledge.
But speaking is a different situation. It involves thinking before uttering words to make meanings, and must engage the speaker’s mind. Otherwise, speaking activities amount to parroting meaningless discourse, rendering the lesson unimaginative, ineffective, and boring. 1. 2. 2 The basic research problem Following the above discussion, I can state my basic research problem as follows: Mismatches between learners’ lived experiences and the voices and representations in the discourse that dominates in textbooks, task materials, and the like, can adversely affect learners’ learning experience.
Discursive construction — speaking for purposes of communication — is when this experience can be affected most strongly. The mismatch renders the discourse ‘illegitimate’, as opposed to Bourdieu’s (1977, 1991) sense of ‘legitimate’ discourse that comprises certain characteristics, including the user’s right, subjectivity, and power to use that discourse with a receiver who is in a social position suitable for that discourse.
The dominant discourse in foreign, western-compiled textbooks is ‘illegitimate’ for use as mediating discourse for discursive construction in the speaking mode for learners in this context. It is illegitimate where learners’ agency, right, subjectivity, and power 8 The notion of culture is used in this study to refer mainly to ‘how people live’. The full definition will be given in section 2. 12 where working definitions of key terms are presented. 16 Chapter 1 Introduction are concerned, because these are important determinants of the ‘meaningfulness’ of learners’ speaking activities.
The dominant discourse as presented in foreign, western-compiled textbooks is illegitimate because it constrains learners’ possibilities for interactional opportunities with representations, and deprives them of social positionings that allow them to exercise their own linguistic resources for their voice construction and local creativity. This is not to say, however, that this type of discourse is not suitable to be used in learning a foreign language in general, just in activities specifically aimed at being ‘communicative’.
The illegitimacy can lead in the worst instance to lack of motivation and unwillingness to communicate. All these entangled problems have led to a series of five research questions which will be presented in section 2. 13. 1. 2. 3 The organisation of the present study Chapter 2 is a review of the literature, which summarises both the literature of the broad multidisciplinary theoretical framework and that concerning Vygotksy’s and Bakhtin’s sociocultural theories, as well as scholarship which has adopted and applied their tenets to investigate certain aspects of identity and language learning relevant to this research.
A review of literature related to identity and its representation in textbooks is also offered in order to show the different ways researchers have looked into identity representations and their effects on learners and their language learning. I provide a review of identity, motivation, and investment in language learning which summarises the current stance on how to look beyond learners’ motivation as an affective factor that defines their learning behaviour and outcome. As this study deals with representations projected through cultural content, 17 Chapter 1 Introduction brief section on the current views of the interrelationship among the English language, culture, and the thematic content of ELT materials, as well as a review of how materials designers and developers are currently treating cultural representations in ELT materials are also given. There are separate discussions of my conceptualisations for this research and of working definitions for certain notions. The chapter ends with the outline of research questions. Chapter 3 provides the details of my research methodology, and outlines the stages of how this study was planned before it was actualised in my fieldwork.
There will be a discussion of the rationale for the materials adaptation and design, as well as the characteristics of the alternative materials. This chapter also explains the procedures of data collection, and addresses the problems encountered and how they were solved at each stage of data collection, including the methodological changes made. Chapter 4 offers an analysis of dialogic interaction at a micro-level. It highlights selected episodes of learners’ discursive activities on the basis of interactional voices between learners, their identities, and the mediating discourse or teaching materials.
It gives an analysis of learners’ discourse or utterances within the Bakhtin-Vygotsky sociocultural framework, theorising their discourse produced during speaking activities as different degrees of dialogic interaction between learners’ identities and mediating discourse. There follows a discussion of how voices and meanings embedded in mediating discourse that are orientated to distant life-worlds, as opposed to their current life-worlds, shape learners’ meanings as they appropriate mediating discourse.
A conventional view of learners’ discourse is also provided for comparison. 18 Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 5 presents an analysis of dialogic interaction at a macro-level. The data have been drawn from learners’ attitudinal voices collected from questionnaires, interviews, and video-based stimulated recall interviews, particularly their attitudes towards the English lessons they attended as well as towards the roles and identities they engaged in so as to make meaning during speaking activities, such as role-play.
The discussions further involve learners’ attitudes towards their own culture and other cultures, and their beliefs about the right place for these cultures to be present as mediating discourse in the classroom. These attitudinal voices are aimed at triangulating the interactional voices presented in Chapter 4. Chapter 6 discusses implications related to the designing of ELT materials for learners to speak English in order to enhance dialogism in the classroom. In light of the findings and current theories of language and culture pedagogy, it considers how ‘culture’ should be re-theorised as emergent dialogically in the English classroom.
Other discussions comprise the presentation of a dialogic framework for inclusion of cultural voices and representations in materials for discursive activities, in particular oral discursive practices. Also considered are teacher talk and the use of L1 and its significance in ELT practices. Chapter 7 presents the conclusions of this study and implications for future research. It also discusses the characteristics of this research. 19 2 Theoretical framework and literature review In a broad sense, this research is grounded in a multidisciplinary perspective, namely educational sociology, social developmental psychology, and critical pedagogy.
It is applied linguistics with a social angle, as it has drawn insights from sociolinguistics and has investigated the practice of applied linguistics with a ‘critical’ view. I begin this chapter by discussing the broad theoretical framework that inspired me to conduct this research (sections 2. 1 to 2. 3).
The relevant literature is reviewed in a way structured to show to how I arrived at particular conceptualisations that guided the present study, of which more detail is given in section 2. 11. Sections 2. 4 to 2. provide a literature review of past studies relating to the ultimate concerns of this inquiry. Section 2. 4 presents a review of literature relevant to self/identity formation and language learning from Vygotsky and Bakhtin (L1 view) up to current applications of their key concepts in L2 research, concepts which will be addressed in my own research. Section 2. 5 focuses on previous research that uses Bakhtin’s and Vygotsky’s as well as other sociocultural theories to delve into the interrelationship among identity, power relations, and language use and learning. Section 2. reviews research informed by Bakhtin and Vygotsky that focuses on foreign language and culture learning from a dialogic perspective. Section 2. 7 gives an account of how researchers have conceived textbook contents as carrying identity representations and how they expect these texts to influence the learning process and its outcome. Section 2. 8 discusses the interrelationship among identity, motivation, and investment, which is necessary for understanding learners’ 21 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review behaviour during learning processes. Section 2. summarises current theories on the interrelationship among the English language, culture, and the thematic content of ELT materials, as well as how materials designers and developers have so far acknowledged this interrelationship in their theory and practice. Section 2. 10 gives a brief review of the notion of self/identity as defined and used by applied linguists. Section 2. 11 outlines the core conceptualisations for this research that have sprung from the literature review. Section 2. 12 provides working definitions for some key concepts employed in this study. Lastly, the research questions are laid out in section 2. 3. 2. 1 Situated learning and cognition Jointly inspired by the anthropological research tradition and the sociocultural theory of Lev S. Vygotsky (1896-1934), a great Russian linguistic psychologist, situated learning as initially propounded by Lave and Wenger (1991) emphasises the development of cognitive skills by virtue of extensive interaction between the learner and the environment. Knowledge is commonly held to be situated in the lived-in world where the learner has to participate to become a full member, such as learning through apprenticeship in workplaces.
As Wenger (1998) has noted, theories of ‘situated experience’ emphasise agency and intentions, and hold that interpersonal activities such as conversations are the product of local construction and focused experience (p. 13).
Situated learning theories have evolved into various approaches to learning in different contexts with different theoretical emphases and practical purposes, and these approaches are not always consistent with one another (O’Connor, 2001, p. 22 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review 285).
Primarily projected at education in general, Lave and Wenger’s ideas have been applied in language education, and the term ‘situated’ has since received a slightly different interpretation from applied linguists. Rather than using it to refer to an activity that takes place in an authentic material world of social practices in which case learning by immersion should be regarded as the ideal mode for language learning, applied linguists use it mainly to describe human activity in a particular place and time, such as situated interaction in the classroom and other teachinglearning settings (see Lantolf, 2000).
Thorne (2000) has posited that the processes of second language acquisition (SLA) have to take into account learners’ ‘rich and specific historical situatedness, webs of social interactivity, context contingent identity work’, and has emphasised the historical and situated quality of ‘cognition’ (pp. 220-1).
According to Kramsch (2000), learners construct discursive selves who can take on different roles when they engage with linguistic and non-linguistic signs intertwined in a socially and historically situated environment, and this characteristic significantly determines how they create or interpret meanings on their own terms using these signs.
Kramsch has added that SLA is the process by which ‘learners acquire ever greater conscious control of the semiotic choices offered by the foreign language’, and that involves: the dialogic construction of rhetorical roles through the written and spoken medium that students experience themselves as both private, individual, and public, social sign makers, and that they appreciate the fluidity of meanings they can attribute to themselves and others. p. 151) Foreign and second language learning and development is situated because it unfolds in different ways under different circumstances (Donato, 2000, p. 47).
Toohey (1998) uses sociocultural theories in conceptualising and investigating L2 23 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review learning as ‘situated cultural, institutional, and historical practices’ (p. 62).
O’Connor (2001) describes a critical approach to understand situated learning on the basis of a critical theory of social practice in which learning is bound up with the reproduction and transformation of social order, arguing for ‘the importance of close attention to the contested and conflictual nature of practice in learning contexts, to the multiple social identities that are potentially relevant for social actors, and to the complex interconnections among contexts’ (p. 86).
This requires a true understanding of the interconnectedness and interdependence between learners, who are social actors, and the material world or immediate environment embodied in learners and learning processes at the learning moment. A community-of-practice perspective (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) is commonly used by sociolinguists (e. g. , Eckert, 2000; Meyerhoff, 2006).
Meyerhoff has characterised a community of practice as a social network that runs over a period of time at a place in which its members are mutually engaged with one another through direct personal contact and ongoing conversations, using a mutually understood collection of language and norms to undertake activities in order to reach the same goal (p. 189).
Regarding a group of learners as a ‘community’ is by no means a genuinely innovative idea, as the approach called ‘community language learning’ has been developed since the 1970s by Charles Curran, but here the term is used simply to describe language learning through group interaction where the teacher ‘provides a translation of what the learners wish to say from their L1 to the target language’ (Knight, 2001, p. 153).
The community-of-practice stance is, by contrast, utilised to conceptualise and investigate the dynamic complexity of social life in the L2 classroom.
In fact, this notion has been used extensively by applied 24 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review linguists whose work in language acquisition has for some time now been based on an ecological or a relational perspective (see Kramsch, 2002).
The ideas put forth through the notion of community of practice have led to my conceptualisation No. 1 discussed on page 105. Van Lier (2000) has stated that ecological language learning is in line with situated learning (p. 53), which Lave and Wenger (1991) have associated closely with the notion of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’, as when language learners participate in target-language exchange practices which natives regard as authentic or legitimate. Lave and Wenger (1991) have held that learners are required to move toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community, which means that learning to talk like a full participant is key to making the peripheral participation of newcomers or learners ‘legitimate’.
In this process, we may say that the imitation and adoption of styles and voices are vital. I have applied the notion of legitimate peripheral participation and discuss how I apply this notion for the present research in my conceptualisation No. 2 on page 106. 2. 2 Critical pedagogy and applied linguistics Critical pedagogy, as it has developed from the work of Paulo Freire, Henry A. Giroux, and others, is currently the source of critical perspectives adopted by a number of applied linguists (e. g. , Auerbach, 1995; Kanpol, 1999; Norton & Toohey, 2004).
It emphasises the relevance of classroom practices and students’ lives and is aimed at alleviating forms of oppression, alienation, and subordination learners may face so as to promote equitable, democratic approaches to educational practices. Even though literacy is the focus of most researchers (e. g. , Freire & Macedo, 2003; 25 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review Peterson, 2003; Stein, 2004; Canagarajah, 2004), the viewpoints set out by these educators have significant implications for learning and teaching other skills.
Peterson (2003) describes an approach that involves the idea of teaching organically, which is sometimes called the ‘language experience’ approach in North America. He cites Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1965), who successfully taught Maori children in New Zealand to learn words using a similar approach to Freire’s by drawing on learners’ interests and experience within the cultural context they brought to school, as she understood that their failure in school was due to their cultural clash with the ‘Anglosized’ (sic) system.
The core concept of ‘organic teaching’ is to use learners’ own language and experience as the basis for carrying out classroom instruction, and is aimed at creating a ‘language rich’ environment in the classroom, which is believed to assist learners in developing both their language and thinking abilities as naturally as possible. Peterson cites Krashen and Terrell (1983) and Goodman (1986) in support of this approach, and has claimed that it is applicable for both first and second language learning (p. 68).
A ‘generative theme’ approach is one aspect of this organic-teaching concept, whereby teachers are supposed to draw an issue or topic for classroom activities from students’ experiences. By doing so, the types of culture and experience learners bring with them from outside the classroom, which are often in discordance with the texts of the dominant curriculum, can be used to stimulate their thinking, imagination, and creativity.
One of the most essential components of this critical approach is ‘a dialogical instructional method’ which does not envision learning as transmission of knowledge, but rather encourages learning as an empowering process. This can be done by helping learners 26 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review turn immediate reality and world knowledge into the language they are supposed to acquire, so that linguistic knowledge is simultaneously instigated.
According to Auerbach (1995), pedagogical choices as regards content and materials are inherently ideological in nature, as much imbued with issues of power and politics as are other macro-level components of the language classroom, such as language policy and planning. The classroom is thus the site of struggle about whose knowledge, experiences, ways of using language, literacy, and discourse practices count. By valuing those elements that are more characteristic of the dominant class and ideology in educational institutions, instructors perpetuate unequal power relations.
For example, when it comes to materials, questions of whose voice they represent and how their content is related to the reality of students’ lives are crucial. In order to increase the meaningfulness of language instruction, teachers need to connect the word and the world by finding out what the world — the lived experience — is for learners. Auerbach discusses Freire’s notion of conscientisation, in which teachers pose problems and engage students in dialogue and critical reflection, thus turning the classroom into a context in which students analyse their reality for the purpose of participating in its transformation.
She has also said that inappropriate texts may cause students’ to lack active or enthusiastic involvement, a problem which teachers tend to associate with learners’ insufficient memory and comprehension (p. 21).
Auerbach has stated that texts that are intended to promote correct forms for functional purposes in specific situations rather than to encourage the generation of new meanings, or those which leave minimal space for the generation of content through learners’ contribution of their experience, preclude what Bakhtin calls true ‘appropriation’ of the language (p. 1).
27 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review Candlin (2001) has pointed out that since learning a foreign language brings along ‘exotica’ which are external to the lived experience and consciousness of learners and often of teachers, interculturally it is a means through which selves may experience the Other (pp. xii-xiv).
He adds that, intraculturally, learners may become better able to observe their own community’s practices and beliefs critically and evaluate them.
Self-reflection is an essential part of this, and foreign language learning is consequently as much about education in one’s own language and society as in the foreign one. Foreign language education, therefore, entails diversity and Otherness. This suggests that learners’ externally enacted roles and practices outside the school, especially those that involve foreign-language learning, should be valued and given appropriate space in school curricula.
Interdiscursivity — code-switching and heteroglossia, for example — between the discourses of the street and playground and the discourses of the class should be accommodated to some extent. Learners’ identities are creatively enhanced and fulfilled through the mediation of various discourses ranging from those of the school and its curricula, to those of the local Other, personal and social. I have drawn from the viewpoints proposed by critical pedagogues as reflected in the studies of Peterson (2003) and Auerbach (1995), as well as from Candlin’s ideas for my conceptualisation No. , related to the materials design discussed on page 107. 2. 3 Critical applied linguistics The stance of critical pedagogy has been embraced by some applied linguists (see for example Canagarajah, 1999; Pennycook, 1994, 1995) as part of what has been called ‘critical applied linguistics’ (Pennycook, 2001).
Critical applied 28 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review linguistics covers a wide range of concerns, including interdisciplinarity and autonomy, social change, and relating language teaching and learning to broader social, cultural, and political issues, such as class, power, gender, and identity.
Pennycook (1994, 1995) discusses the relationship between the spread of English and the reproduction of global inequalities. He says that English textbooks tend to contain ‘forms of Western knowledge that are often of limited value and extreme inappropriacy to the local context’ (1995, p. 42).
ELT is thus a process whereby learners’ cultural forms are likely to be dominated by the mainstream culture 9, which is known to be that of the West. Culture, in his opinion, is the process by which people make sense of their lives, involving struggles over meaning and representation.
English is therefore not neutral, but closely tied to politics, and is consequently the source of meanings in contention. He discusses unequal power/knowledge in discourse and the formation of counter-discourse whereby, for instance, English was used by the colonised to express their lived experiences and to oppose the central meanings of the colonisers. Importantly, citing Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin’s (1989) two elements of counter-discourse or writing back — abrogation and appropriation — Pennycook (1995) equates these two terms with his own notions of diremption and redemption, respectively (p. 3).
Diremption is ‘the challenge to the hegemonising character of prevailing Western discursive practices’ and redemption is ‘the emancipation of subjugated knowledges and identities that 9 Some work done by critical applied linguists partly inspired my interest in doing this research. As their reference to ‘culture’ at times appears to imply a dichotomous view of ‘Western culture’ as opposed to ‘local culture’, I started out in this study being influenced by a somewhat fixed view of culture in relation to textbook content.
However, as I came to a fuller understanding of Vygotsky’s and Bakhtin’s theories, along with those who have followed their lead, my view of culture also developed into an unfixed or emergent one, which I have attempted to materialise through cultural voices and representations in the adapted materials used in this study. 29 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review have been submerged beneath or marginalised by the predominant discursive practices and power/knowledge relationships’ (ibid. , p. 53).
Recently, Angel M. Y.
Lin (1999) has expressed her concerns about social class and how particular ways of teaching English might result in the reproduction or the transformation of class-based inequalities. She takes up the notions of ‘cultural capital’ and ‘habitus’ as used by Bourdieu (1991), where habitus refers to ‘language use, skills, and orientations, dispositions, attitudes, and schemes of perception’ as embodied practice, and cultural capital to habitus conceived of in terms of its socioeconomic value (p. 394).
It is the product of cumulative socialisation over the course of our histories.
She has pointed out that the way the teacher uses either L1 or L2 can lead to compatibility or incompatibility between students’ habitus and the classroom, which is dominated by the target language. Canagarajah (1999) explores resistance and appropriation in certain types of discourse among students in rural Sri Lanka. It was evident that students who were somehow marginalised resisted English discourse that entailed meaning and representation alien to their background; the students would tell him, ‘Rather than talking about apples, talk about mangoes; rather than talking about apartment houses, talk about village huts’ (p. 4).
This reflects how incompatible meaning and representation embedded in discourse can lead to students’ perception of their selves as being oppressed by classroom discourse. Because language, culture, and context are inseparable from one another, teachers need to fully understand their interrelationships if they are to achieve the best teaching tools for their contexts. Canagarajah has stated that the discourses used when students become engaged with classroom learning are important, and that teachers need ‘to be sensitive to the 30
Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review multiplicity of cultures students bring from outside the classroom, and the ways in which these mediate the lesson’ (p. 98).
Learning a foreign language, therefore, entails various forms of cultural clashes, and the English classroom is the place where individuals have to continuously negotiate their identities. The critical viewpoints put forward by Pennycook (1994, 1995), Lin (1999), and Canagarajah (1999) have led to my conceptualisation No. 4, as explained on pages 107-108. 2. Self/identity formation, language learning and development from Vygotskian and Bakhtinian perspectives This section presents a review of literature on both theories and research associated with self/identity formation and second/foreign language learning and development, informed by sociocultural theories put forward by Vygotsky and Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895-1975).
Vygotsky’s theories are commonly known as sociocultural theories of mind, whereas Bakhtin’s theories are widely recognised as theories of dialogism or dialogicality (Wertsch, 1991).
Both Bakhtin’s and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theories have lent themselves to fruitful accounts of L1 and L2 learning for several decades. The last ten years have probably seen more impact on SLL research from Vygotskian devotees (e. g. , Lantolf, 2000; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), and it was not until recently that Bakhtinian followers worked collectively to apply his ideas to second/foreign language learning (Hall, Vitanova, & Marchenkova, 2005).
Their premises will collaboratively inform the procedure of the present study. 31 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review 2. 4. Vygotsky’s legacies 2. 4. 1. 1 From formations of thought/concepts to formations of identity and language: L1 view Vygotsky’s work has passed through decades of interpretation and application. From its original concern with the appropriation and development of cultural forms and functions, including first language acquisition, it has lent itself to countless accounts of second language learning. His view on the mutual structuring between thought and language as part of identity development is the foundation of a great many contemporary arguments. For Vygotsky (1986, pp. 86-7, 1987, pp. 14-5), higher mental operations, such as the use of signs, undergo four stages of transformation: 1) Preintellectual speech or signs develop alongside children’s first behavioural engagement with an activity; 2) Children’s intelligence or ‘practical mind’ begins with their first use of tools to relate to their own bodies and surrounding objects through physical experience with an activity; 3) Children use external signs that operate in their environment to assist their internal operation of mind in solving tasks, appearing as ‘egocentric speech’; and 4) The external signs move inward and become internally managed signs or inner speech, which later becomes thought. The inner and outer operations constantly influence and shape each other, thought coming out as verbal speech and speech turning inward to form thought 32 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review (Vygotsky, 1986, pp. 87-8).
As children grow up, however, the developmental paths for their thinking and speech diverge from each other before merging again at a certain point unknown to psychologists (pp. 93-4).
In sum, inner speech develops through the cumulative changes children undergo, starting with their exposure to the social functions available in the external speech that accompanies their sociocultural experience, and continuing through their use of the egocentric functions. In so doing, it contributes to the foundation of their thinking (p. 94).
Vygotsky has postulated that signs or words are vital tools for directing and controlling the course of our mental operations in order to solve a problem, so that they thus play a crucial role in the formation of concepts or conceptual thinking (pp. 106-7).
Fully developed conceptual thinking and behaviour emerge for adolescents as a consequence of their encountering tasks that stimulate and challenge their intellect within various communities of their sociocultural worlds (p. 108).
The process of higher intellectual development or mental function begins with elementary structures that connect mental operation with objects and content of practical experiences, through the use of signs and words, before these significative connections are radically transformed as they are qualitatively incorporated into the complex structure of an individual’s intellectual operation as conceptual thinking (pp. 108-9).
Concepts or word meanings that children attain themselves through direct engagement with concrete experience are ‘spontaneous concepts’, whereas those which they realise primarily through ready-made meanings of words provided through systematic learning at school are ‘scientific’ or ‘nonspontaneous concepts’ (pp. 146-8).
These two types of concepts develop in close connection and 33 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review continuously influence each other (p. 157).
Vygotsky has drawn an analogy between the development of spontaneous concepts and learning a native language, as well as between the realisation of nonspontaneous concepts and a foreign language (p. 159).
Importantly, a foreign language is acquired by using the semantics of the native language as its foundation (pp. 159-60).
He has concluded that the smallest analysable unit that characterises verbal thought or the interrelation between thought and word is word meaning, which is a generalisation or a concept. As generalisations or concepts are operations of thought, so meaning can be regarded as an occurrence of thinking. That is to say, word meaning represents an event when thought is embodied in speech, and speech is meaningful only when it is the product of thought (p. 212).
In conclusion, Vygotsky’s core interest is in an individual child’s cultural development as a whole, which is inextricably tied to the acquisition of language and cognitive progress. It can be said that the child’s self/identity is the language he or she has culturally acquired. The child’s individuality and language has a sociocultural origin because during the early stages, the child still relies on others’ language and actions to act upon the external world before the thought or concept of his or her own self/identity gradually increases through cumulative internalisation of others’ language, which the child can then control and use to act upon the external world.
Vygotsky’s premises have inspired me to conceptualise ideas for materials adaptation as explained in section 3. 1. 1. 1 on page 117. 34 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review 2. 4. 1. 2 Vygotsky-inspired research into L2 learning and use: Mediation, ZPD, and Scaffolding Vygotsky’s ‘sociocultural’ 10 theory (SCT) has been used as a framework for research on second language acquisition and use for nearly two decades (e. g. , Hall & Verplaetse, 2000; Lantolf, 2000; Lantolf & Appel, 1994; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006).
This school comprises the largest group of scholars to have offered an alternative to the traditional psychological approach of SLA for understanding L2 learning and use.
However, there are currently divergent emphases within SCT approaches to L2 learning and use (Thorne, 2005, p. 394).
One of the main approaches can be characterised as ‘psycho-sociocultural’ L2 research, since it places emphasis on psychological mechanisms of L2 learning and use. There is potential for this strand of research to examine the psycholinguistic processes of L2 functions and development in greater detail (see Lantolf, 2006 for example).
A great deal of research in this line is restricted to the analysis of L2 learning and use through data collected from experiments involving learners working by themselves on tasks, or collaborative interactions between two or more learners while they are solving problems or carrying out activities.
Some cases include an intervention from a nonlearner. In other words, the researchers use true experimental and quasi-experimental designs to obtain data. The difference between the two is that true experimental research involves fewer participants whose task-based interactions are recorded on Lantolf (2006, pp. 68-9) points out that some researchers have referred to Vygotsky’s theory as ‘cultural psychology’ or ‘cultural-historical psychology’, and that the term ‘sociocultural’ is currently used by other researchers (Hall, 1997; Norton, 2000) to conceptualise a framework that broadly considers social and cultural factors that play a role in second language learning and use. Thorne (2005, p. 94) indicates that many researchers use the hyphenated form of this term to describe social and cultural contexts of human activity. However, both Lantolf (2006, p. 69) and Thorne (2005, p. 394) prefer the term ‘sociocultural theory’ or SCT to be directly associated with Vygotsky-inspired studies. 10 35 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review fewer occasions (one or two), while quasi-experimental research involves task-based interactions produced over a longer period of time in language lessons or classroom settings. In order to keep their focus on tasks or activities, researchers have sometimes incorporated A. N. Leontiev’s activity theory into their data inquiry. The most distinct feature of this ype of L2 study is that researchers have construed the process of L2 learning in virtually the same way as Vygotsky viewed L1 learning. For these researchers, the term ‘sociocultural’ appears to represent the view that language acquisition and use is socially constructed because learners interact with others in the process, and as far as ‘culture’ is concerned, learners’ L1 and gestures are what they have paid attention to, rather than learners’ sociocultural backgrounds and lived experiences. The other current sociocultural approach is put forward by social constructionists, who do not always take Vygotsky as their framework (Lantolf, 2006, p. 68-9).
Vygotsky-inspired L2 research is centred on a fundamental view of the human mind as being ‘mediated’ by artefacts constructed in a culture — symbolic or psychological tools, mainly language. This mediation allows people to relate themselves to the world and simultaneously conceive and transform themselves (Lantolf, 2000, p. 1; Lantolf & Appel, 1994, p. 7).
Mediation is thus the process whereby an individual’s mental system is influenced by external signs and symbols with which he or she comes into contact. ‘Semiotic mediation’ refers specifically to the meaning in signs that is socially available for cognitive mediation and cultural formation (Donato, 2000, p. 45).
The other two key concepts normally used together with the concept of mediation are the zone of proximal development (ZPD) and scaffolding.
The ZPD is the difference between the level of a child’s existing 36 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review intellectuality when solving problems independently and when solving problems with assistance (Vygotsky, 1986, p. 187).
This concept has been used as the foundation of the notion of ‘scaffolding’, a metaphorical concept that refers to the temporary assistance a caretaker or teacher gives to a learner who is trying to do an activity, solve a problem, and understand concepts within their ZPD. The teacher gradually decreases the assistance as the learner starts to function more independently in the activity or task (Gibbons, 2002, p. 10).
Neo-Vygotskians 11 have interpreted Vygotsky’s concepts of mediation, the ZPD, and scaffolding diversely. In other words, they have dealt with many kinds of linguistic mediation, or mediational means and tools, in order to show the effects of linguistic and metalinguistic mediation on language learners’ higher mental activity or the scaffolding within learners’ ZPD. Their main focus is to investigate social interactions between two or more people, or between individuals and the language embedded in cultural artefacts, and their effects on the way interlocutors involved in the process are scaffolded linguistically, cognitively, and culturally, so as to improve learning performance or solve learning problems.
The following is a review of selected research in second/foreign language learning that has used these three notions in one way or another to address mediation through social interaction with regard to language in use or meaning-making processes, both in writing and speaking. I choose to describe all researchers who base their studies on Vygotsky’s premises as ‘NeoVygotskian’ because I think that although their work is inspired by some of Vygotsky’s tenets for their simulation of language learning processes, they have, in most cases, not dealt directly with his core proposition of the relationship between thought and language as an outcome of conceptualised signs through concrete sociocultural experience.
I would rather reserve the term ‘Vygotskian’ for describing researchers who hold such a perspective on thought and language. 11 37 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review One group of researchers have looked into forms of mediation associated with task-based interactions. This line of research is rather experiment-orientated, so it usually involves a small number of participants. Donato and McCormick (1994) studied the mediational role of a portfolio assessment procedure in the development of language learning strategies among university learners of French as a foreign language. They viewed learners’ use of portfolios as a form of cognitive mediation that improved their language learning strategies.
This mediation was encouraged by the learners’ recording and reflecting on their own language development, as well as reporting to the teacher experiences that had increased their functional knowledge of the language. Villamil and de Guerrero (1998) address peer revision, focusing on its impact on intermediate ESL college students’ essays of two rhetorical modes, narration and persuasion. The data were drawn from seven pairs during two revision sessions. The researchers showed how learners incorporated peers’ suggestions made during the revision sessions into their final drafts of essays, and pointed out that regulation is contingent on the joint activity of collaborative revision, which assists writers to move through their ZPDs.
Similarly, de Guerrero and Villamil (2000) use the concept of scaffolding in conjunction with the ZPD to analyse how two intermediate ESL college students realised and developed strategies for revising a narrative text one of them had written. They show that through collaborative revision, the student who was the reader of the other’s text first mediated assistance in revising the text within the ZPD. As this process continued, however, the writer gained more selfregulation and started to take an active role in revising the text, turning unidirectional scaffolding into mutual scaffolding. 38 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review Nassiji and Cumming (2000) use the notion of scaffolding in a case study of interactive dialogue journals in which a Canadian teacher and a six-year-old Farsi speaker beginning to learn English constructed and sustained their conversation.
They found that various patterns of written exchanges in these journals maintained conditions that helped scaffold literacy learning and development, and concluded that the complimentary, dynamic and evolving features of dialogue over an extended period of time contribute to the formation of the ZPD. Other researchers have focused on spoken rather than written language as what comes to mediate language learners’ mental operation. Appel and Lantolf (1994) investigate how speaking mediated the cognitive function of L1 and advanced L2 speakers and readers of English as they embarked on the task of reading and orally recalling a narrative and expository text.
In calling speaking a mediational tool, they meant that learners speak not only to report or ‘recall’ what they have read, but also, especially in the form of private speech, to comprehend the written text at hand (p. 437).
Ahmed (1994) also inspects speaking as a means of cognitive regulation using data drawn from two dyadic task-based conversations, one between native and nonnative speakers and the other between native speakers, which occurred while the speakers were solving puzzles. Ahmed argues in the same vein as Frawley and Lantolf (1985) that there is a relationship between form and function; speakers employ certain features of the language (in Ahmed’s case, tense/aspect) when they encounter particular level of cognitive demand in tasks.
Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) investigate an expert’s collaborative assistance given in one-to-one tutorials to three ESL learners in order to help them correct errors in their essays. They show how the expert gradually and contingently 39 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review regulated these learners’ mental activity through scaffolding questions within the learners’ ZPD, and maintained that the help or intervention should be ‘graduated’, implemented only after it is clear what kind of help or in which area help is needed, and ‘contingent’, given only when it is really needed (p. 468).
Adair-Hauck and Donato (1994) study the communicative dynamics of teaching within the ZPD using a one-hour-long storytelling tutorial session between an expert and a novice speaker of French.
Their purpose was to investigate the discourse strategies the teacher used explicitly for instructing a foreign language grammar point to a student. Swain and Lapkin (1998) explore mediation generated by a dyadic conversation between two Grade 8 French immersion students as they carried out a jigsaw puzzle task, and showed that this dialogue was both a means of communication and a cognitive tool. That is, the learners can use language to talk with each other so as to realise the meaning they need to accomplish the task while simultaneously constructing their L2 knowledge. Swain (2000) re-emphasises this view and proposes an extension of the concept of ‘output’ to embrace its function as ‘a socially-constructed cognitive tool’ (p. 112).
Ohta (2001) uses the notions of ZPD and scaffolding in her examination of various interactional mechanisms operated by two second-year university-level learners of Japanese as a foreign language as they scaffolded within the ZPD so as to assist each other in accomplishing a translation task. These mechanisms include a wide range of articulatory and suprasegmental features, such as intonation contours, glottal stops, and vowel elongation. Importantly, she affirms Aljaafreh and Lantolf’s (1994) stance regarding the need for scaffolding to the ‘sensitive’, only providing it when truly needed. 40 Chapter 2 Theoretical framework and literature review
Some researchers have not addressed meaning-making and negotiation of meaning in immediate interactions, but have looked into mediation in the form of arranged interactions for the purpose of directly giving assistance to learners. Donato (1994) explores ‘collective scaffolding’ or guided assistance that was mutually exchanged throughout dialogic interaction among three American learners of French in a one-hour planning session for an oral activity. His analysis of their discourse produced in this planning session and in their performance of the oral activity shows many cases of scaffolded help in which reappeared the linguistic contents of what had been discussed and explained in the planning session.
Likewise, Ko, Schallert, and Walters (2003) use the notion of scaffolding in describing a short session arranged for ESL learners after they had produced two- to three-minute narratives, in which they engaged in negotiation of meaning with their audience (the teacher and two peers) before they had to retell their stories to a new audience. The researchers show how in this session the students received scaffolding from questions about aspects of their stories that were unclear or needed elaboration. Nassaji and Swain (2000) compare the effectiveness of negotiated help within the ZPD with random assistance given to learners irrespective of their ZPDs in tutorial sessions that focused on the use of
