Stephen van Vlack Sookmyung Women’s University Graduate School of TESOL Second Language Learning Theories Spring 2010 Week 12 - Answers M&M, Chapter 7: Sociocultural perspectives on second language learning 1. How might the phenomenon of inner speech be related to second language learning? The big question here revolves around the role that inner speech may or may not play in second language learning. According to Vygotsky (1986), learners use inner speech as a mechanism for organizing their thoughts and language. Inner speech is supposed to facilitate the use of language as we endeavor to use language to explain the world/in dealing with the world. The basic idea is that because inner speech is used as a way of thinking, language and thought are inextricably entwined. We use language, or a reduced form thereof, even when we are not talking. Thus, thought and language have a reciprocal effect on each other when we consider learning. Following this argument, getting students to talk will improve the way they think and visa versa. Looking at instances of inner speech as reported in the studies in the chapter we can see the deep connection between cognition and actual language use. In fact, on the sociocultural view language and thought are reciprocal. One affects the other. The development of inner speech is reliant of the development of language, which is, in turn, developed out of personalized speech, which is interactional in nature. In the developed adult all three of these still exist and put to use in different ways depending on the situation. In general, personalized speech is used when one needs to slow down due to a novel situation, or another reason which is causing difficulty for the regular inner speech and linguistic systems. Personalized speech, can, therefore be seen as a mechanism for internalized scaffolding. It should be acknowledged, and this is an interesting point, that the use of personalized/inner speech in native speakers has been shown to have a detrimental effect on cognitive processing as a whole (for a review see Meissner & Memon, 2002). Referred to as a "verbal shadowing" effect, trying to actually get people to use language to encode non-linguistic information, thus creating a possibility for inner speech during the encoding or retrieval (using) of this knowledge, actually often results in poorer retrieval of the knowledge and even encoding/storage of the knowledge (Dodson et al., 1997). Again, this is an effect on certain types of knowledge as demonstrated in native speakers. Verbal shadowing works in a very simple way. Generally, a researcher provides two types of input simultaneously (usually linguistic and non-linguistic, but it may be two different types of non-linguistic) to a subject and analyses their effects on each other. Research indicates that the verbal shadowing effect is a negative one. We can explain this through the concept of attention and processing. If there is too much input coming in, especially if the input is conflicting, then the person will be torn as to what should be focused on and without a clear focus they will not be able to encode as well. The large question remains, since second language learners do seem to use personalized speech and other compensatory phenomenon to help them scaffold a task is the use of personalized speech more helpful or less helpful and maybe even detrimental to actual language use and cognition? The conclusion based on the research we reviewed for this week is that even if inner speech/personalized speech seems to slow processing down and causes some general confusion due to an over straining of attention and by association processing systems, this may be a good thing for learners. If learners are to learn by doing and in social settings then they need to slow down. In this way, the verbal overshadowing effect may actually be helping people when they learn provided we as teachers are aware of it and try to slow things down a bit or repeat them so that deficits in processing can be overcome. It also means that we need to repeat certain tasks and situations so that students can identify the plethora of different environmental variables that apply. Since attention is strained in novel situations, they will need multiple practices to pick up on these variables which can be featured differently by the teacher each time. The teacher needs to try to construct each task so that the students’ attention is focused on a different important contextual variable. 2. How can activity theory be related to learner variability? The basic idea here is that again every learner has a different cognitive background and therefore they will approach a specific task in different ways. As teachers it should be clear that the kind of freer, less controlled task necessary for interaction is going to be open to all sorts of variation on the students’ part. This is simply the reality of language teaching. Interestingly, McCafferty et al. (2001) are able to show some sort of development within how different learners approach tasks in general. They identify a dramatic shift wherein learner's first move indirectly around the task to where learners directly confront and approach attacks using specific strategies. This is also called moving from othercontrolled to self-controlled processes. For us as teachers this is an important and, in my experience, true observation. It's important in that it tells us that we need to somehow get our students to actively engage their tasks. This engagement is a form of problem solving. It is the active engagement of a task which allows language development to ensue. In its relation to the first question we can also see that for the development of strategies and more active engagement students do not seem to need to use inner speech overtly in helping them to direct and shape their cognition in relation to a task. It is important to realize that students will not walk into your class knowing how to engage task, a specially if your tasks are more real world focused with an open end and not very specific pedagogical tasks, for it is these closed ended for focused pedagogical pass that students are most use to. It is also important to realize that students equally will not know how to interact with their other students in English and on these types of tasks. For these reasons it is very important that teachers actually tried to do this. One has to begin at some point to engages students on this front and by doing so have then engage the world using English. At the same time this is not easy, particularly in the beginning. Making the shift to a more socio-cultural type of classroom puts an awful lot of demands on the students and a teacher. Bear in mind that students will initially be frustrated because they simply won’t know what’s going on and exactly what to do. Teachers making a shift to a more socio-cultural type of classroom will need to train their students and spend time getting them ready to deal with the class. The good news is that based on the research and on my own experience doing this in the classroom, students will figure out how to deal with this type of classroom very well provided you give them the chance and keep on trying. 3. How can the concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) be used in SLA? The important thing to remember about the zone of proximal development is that it seems to be closely related to interaction. If the zone (ZPD) is a magical area surrounding a student/person wherein they are capable of learning then we somehow need to activate learning within that zone by both pushing the `right` type of input/information into the zone as well as by pulling the learner toward the input/information we want them to engage with. In the sociocultural model the way people learn is through interaction. That is, interaction with others, themselves, and with the situation in which the learner is found. Therefore, for us as language teachers, interaction becomes the most important thing that we can foster in the classroom. While Vygotsky focused on expert and novice types of interaction in developing learning through the zone of proximal development, we probably do not have that luxury. We are not able to engage in one-on-one tutoring for the most part, but rather need to try to activate learning in the zone through classroom-based interaction. This means we need to try to get students to interact with other students, the materials which we would like them to deal with, as well as the situation. Thus, it becomes obvious that pair work and small group work is imperative for language development. It should be equally clear that we need to give them tasks with very clear goals or students may not know how to deal with each other. Research has shown that this is in fact the case. Many studies have shown that students do scaffold each other as they work through tasks (Storch, 2002). The reason behind this need for scaffolding is often cited as cognitive/processing/memory limitations. A student who is actually trying to produce a piece of language has too many things to try to think about at the same time and therefore can benefit dramatically from facilitative help given by a partner who has time to better organize what is happening around them since they are not directly involved in the actual production. What is interesting here is that sometimes lower-level speakers can help scaffold higher level learners, depending of course on the task and the relationship between the students involved. In fact, relationship has a much more important effect than level in this. These are some important findings for us in the classroom (See: http://www.researchtopractice.org/files/I_PresenterPowerPointsandHandouts /I_pdfs_presenterPowerPoints/302_Harris_PairWork.pdf) to see some presentation notes on this). First of all it tells us that we need to get students to engage each other and work collaboratively on tasks. In order for this to happen we need to give them tasks upon which they can work collaboratively. This means we have had more open-ended tasks. Then, of course, there's also the variability of the groups which we create. More important than simply the level of the students is their personalities. Students who can and will work together regardless of level should be paired up. Studies have shown that is a tremendous amount of variability and how much students can actually learn through interaction based on who their partners are (Sato, 2001). Students who were overly competitive are generally not good partners. It has also been shown that students can be taught how to better interact with each other to foster more learning. Therefore, we find a substantiation here of something we probably already knew, namely that pair work and group work really does work but only when a group is composed of students who know how to deal with others effectively. Cooperation is the key. 4. How has sociocultural theory affected the field of SLA? Coming first from the field of general education sociocultural theory has a much more general appeal then a specific appeal to SLA as yet. In the same vein, sociocultural theory has opened up a huge can of worms in that it has started people questioning innatist models. But like many other `new` theories for all the questions it may seem to answer it opens up twice as many new ones which are, as yet, unanswered. For example, if pair work in group work fosters interaction and learning in the zone of proximal development, what are the best ways of doing this? There's a mind-boggling array of different variables in how we could possibly manage interaction in the classroom based on the zone of proximal development idea. Aside from that there are strong theoretical concerns and variables related to the zone of proximal development and learning in that zone. Therefore, at this point we still need to acknowledge that sociocultural theory is more of a fledgling theory of SLA than a firmly established one. Part of the problem is that it is so radically different from the current models that it is hard to fit it in. Mitchell and Myles (2004) both correctly and incorrectly claim that socioculturalism is a model without a model of state (it has little backing from theoretical linguists in that it does not fit in with current mainstream models of language. For the model to be accepted it needs first to be able to make claims about what language actually is like. Fortunately we do have a cognitive model of linguistics which unfortunately many SLA researchers seem to be totally oblivious to. Not only does a cognitive linguistic model give us a state which correlates nicely with connectionist models of language processing and organization, but it may also provide a workable language state model for sociocultural views of learning, which incidentally must also be supported by connectionist ideals. This seems to be the movement of the future in SLA and one which we should really focus our attention on more. Johnson, Chapter 8: Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and second language learning 5. What kinds of studies have been carried on the concept of the ZPD in SLA? Donato (1998) - Input and interaction This study focused on the role that interaction plays in getting people to internalize or appropriate input. Rather than focusing on the internal mechanisms of the learner this study showed that interaction is necessary for input to actually be appropriated. Once more the interaction does not necessarily need to be between an expert and a learner or learners of various levels. Learners of the same level can actually help each other in this process. Schinke-Llano (1998) - Accommodation In this study she focused on the queues that learners give to each other regarding their need for assistance in a process. Too much help or accommodation actually impedes the learning process, therefore it is important to examine how people actually know when to give help and when not to supply help for their partner. What this study shows is interestingly that experts often supply too much help depending on their perception of the person they're working with. The shows that interactions can be quite dangerous and that students and teachers might need to be trained about how to go about interacting. Washburn (1998) - Fossilization From this study we get a very fresh idea of the ideal fossilization. Often fossilization is misinterpreted by teachers as well as students of language as being somehow related/limited to errors or error analysis. Certainly fossilized individuals may show certain patterns of errors, but then again they may not. What fossilization really is is when learning stops or slows down to an almost imperceptible crawl. In this study Washburn tries to interpret fossilization through the sociocultural model. We can simplify this by simply coming up with our own definition of fossilization which says that fossilized individuals have smaller and sometimes very tiny zones of proximal development. This means that they are resistant to learning and learning is difficult for them. This is not because they have fossilized forms as is often thought to be the case but is often because they have had negative experiences in their learning. From the sociocultural perspective, fossilization needs to be countered by working to expand the zone of proximal development for these people. Washburn says that we need to go back and examine where the learning might have gone wrong and start off again from that point. This is a useful idea for us as language teachers in Korea where we can assume that many of our students either already are or will be fossilized at some point. Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) - Negative feedback This is an extremely important paper and really a first of its kind to investigate specifically how we might actually get into and use students' zone of proximal development to help them learn material. They have a very interesting research designed focusing on just three learners and their interaction with tutors. By getting feedback first it is very in explicit and they and seeing how the learners react to this the tutors can slowly determine what is the right level of feedback to give to the learners. We are given a scale of feedback moving from implicit to more explicit. The authors advocate that when getting feedback to students we always start with more implicit type of feedback and depending on the students need them only move to more implicit when it is necessary. It should also be noted that different students are going to need different levels and types of feedback and that even the same student depending on the error present will also require different types. In addition to their levels of feedback they also give us levels for students related to their ability to notice errors. This is all very important information for us and how we can actually manage our classroom where students need to actually interact with each other and engage in language production. Ohta (2000) - Interaction In this study she focused on interaction between peers. What was basically found is that, at least for her students, not only did peers provide effective scaffolding, but they were also able to pick up on the necessary clues related to when scaffolding was required. This paper provides quite positive information about actually trying to use some of these approaches in the classroom. Of course such findings also come with certain warnings. While her results are impressive, they might not reoccur in every situation. We as teachers need to try to make sure that such results do reoccur in our own classroom and much more often than they do not. She uses a model for how we might want to construct and regulate the interactions between our students. 6. How does Vygotskian interaction work in second language learning? Swain (2000) - Output The point of this paper is to argue that we need to expand our definition of output and the output hypothesis to include output as a means not just of internalizing learning but learning across individuals. This is a very important claim and is the basis of Vygotsky's model. It is useful to see an article which supports this claim in a very simple and basic way. Sullivan (2000) - Mediation In this paper Sullivan criticizes the current way in which the communicative approach is done in the classroom as again simply following this basic conduit metaphor: Students apply other students with information. She claims that information is not the basis of learning. Contrary to this, it is mediation which is responsible for learning. Learners learn through interactive processes and mediating meaning. This falls back to the basic idea that everybody approaches a learning situation from a different position. In this way mediation is not only necessary but is also to be expected. Because every learner different as they move through a task they will have to mediate meaning. Even as they appropriate forms from each other they have to take ownership of these forms through a mediating process and this is where learning occurs. Interesting! 7. What do studies reveal about activity theory and SLA? Gillette (1998) - Learner roles In this paper she explores the difference between good learners and maybe not so good learners. This is an important variable for us as teachers trying to follow some sort of sociocultural approach because a bad learner, defined as someone who puts very little effort into the learning process, will disturb the learning of those they are interacting with. In order for interactions to be effective and useful all people involved need to be motivated to try and learn and to help other try to learn. It is these different learning orientations which really affect learning outcomes and teachers need somehow to determine ways to effect is in their own classrooms. Coughlan and Duff (1998) - Tasks In this paper the authors investigate how different tasks affect different learning outcomes. This of course is something that is extremely important for teachers, particularly teachers who are somewhat new to the task-based approach and task development for sociocultural types of teaching. They claim that tasks need to be strongly differentiated from activities and that tasks need to have a degree of unpredictability built into their design wherein different students can achieve the goals of the task in different ways. Roebuck (2000) - Learners in tasks The idea in this article is that learners, in doing the same task, show a remarkable amount of variability. While this should not be surprising to us at this point it sheds further light on the idea that we need to construct tasks with allow for and also have tolerance for variability in our students. 8. What do studies reveal about inner speech and SLA? McCafferty (1998) - Private speech and proficiency The main hypothesis underlying this study is that as proficiency increases the use of private speech will diminish as it is no longer necessary. Not surprisingly this is exactly what was found. The results clearly show the importance of private speech as a mechanism for learning. As people move through different stages of proficiency they will go through periods where they need sometimes more, and increasingly less, private speech to help them not only organize but also, as we saw earlier, give them time to think about what it is that they're going to say. Thus, private speech seems to be a very important aspect of learning and is something that we need to encourage our students to do. de Guerrero (1998) - Forms and function This study focused not on the diminishing necessity of private speech but on the nature of private speech itself. The results find that as proficiency levels rise so too does the complexity of the private speech used by the learner. Therefore a direct correlation is found between not only private speech and learning but private speech and linguistic proficiency. Interestingly, she also found a correlation between proficiency development and non-verbal communication. McCafferty and Ahmed (2000) - Gestures Based not only on the findings of the previously mentioned study but also on Vygotsky's own assertions about the importance of gestures as a prelinguistic means of encoding concepts, this study endeavors to find a closer relationship between gesturing and learning. Again, it was claimed that gestures were learned not through instruction as much as through interaction, much like language itself. In addition it was also found that naturalistic environments in which students need to interact and engage each other provided ample opportunity for gestures to be learned. These are important findings based on the role gestures play in the sociocultural model. Pavlenko and Lantolf (2000) - Internal cognitive restructuring This is an important study in that it deals with the learners’ idea of their inner associations, what the authors call the participation metaphor. To a large extent we could simply define this as being a kind of acculturation type study, but taken from a sociocultural perspective. The idea is that as people shift their identity from one culture to another they have to actually start behaving differently and this means engaging in different ways. For us in the classroom this basically tells us something very simple. Learners who still think of themselves as Koreans and behave distinctly like Koreans and refuse to behave as speakers of the target language will have tremendous difficulty learning. 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