Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition

Dwight Atkinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781136825798
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume presents six alternative approaches to studying second language acquisition – 'alternative' in the sense that they contrast with and/or complement the cognitivism pervading the field. All six approaches – sociocultural, complexity theory, conversation-analytic, identity, language socialization, and sociocognitive – are described according to the same set of six headings, allowing for direct comparison across approaches.

Each chapter is authored by leading advocates for the approach described: James Lantolf for the sociocultural approach; Diane Larsen-Freeman for the complexity theory approach; Gabriele Kasper and Johannes Wagner for the conversation-analytic approach; Bonny Norton and Carolyn McKinney for the identity approach; Patricia Duff and Steven Talmy for the language socialization approach and Dwight Atkinson for the sociocognitive approach.

Introductory and commentary chapters round out this volume. The editor's introduction describes the significance of alternative approaches to SLA studies given its strongly cognitivist orientation. Lourdes Ortega's commentary considers the six approaches from an 'enlightened traditional' perspective on SLA studies – a viewpoint which is cognitivist in orientation but broad enough to give serious and balanced consideration to alternative approaches.

This volume is essential reading in the field of second language acquisition.

1

THE SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH TO SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Sociocultural theory, second language acquisition, and artificial L2 development

James P. Lantolf

The sociocultural theory (SCT) approach to SLA (henceforth, SCT-L2) is grounded in the psychological theory of human consciousness proposed by L. S. Vygotsky. Although not developed specifically to explain SLA, SCT as a theory of human mental activity has much to offer regarding how individuals acquire and use languages beyond their first. Although some SCT researchers have examined bilingual acquisition, including issues relating to biliteracy, most SCT research within the field of SLA has concentrated on adult learners. Therefore the focus of the present chapter is on SCT-L2 research relating to adult SLA.

Overview

The central thread that runs through most SCT-L2 research since its inception (Frawley & Lantolf, 1985), and which marks it off from other SLA approaches, is its focus on if and how learners develop the ability to use the new language to mediate (i.e., regulate or control) their mental and communicative activity. To be sure, research concerning the Zone of Proximal Development (see below) has directly addressed acquisition, but even there development is understood not only in terms of target-like performance but also in terms of the quality and quantity of external mediation required. Seen as a whole, then, SCT-L2 research is distinguished from other SLA approaches by the fact that it places mediation, either by other or self, at the core of development and use.

Theoretical Principle(s)

SCT’s foundational principle is that “all specifically human psychological processes (so-called higher mental processes) are mediated by psychological tools such as language, signs, and symbols” (Karpov & Hayward, 1998, p. 27). Mediation is the creation and use of artificial auxiliary means of acting—physically, socially, and mentally. In the physical world, auxiliary means, or tools, include shovels, hammers, bulldozers, dynamite, etc., all of which greatly enhance the human body’s power to shape the environment: It is much easier to dig a hole with a shovel than one’s hands. In the social and psychological worlds, our tools consist of symbols, e.g., numbers, graphs, models, drawings, and especially linguistic symbols. As with physical tools, the power of symbolic artifacts resides not in their structure but in their action potential. Thus, the physical structure of a shovel says little about its function. One must press it into service to discover its capacity to mediate digging action.

Similarly, the structure of language tells us little about its power to mediate our social/communicative and mental lives. Language’s power resides instead in its use value—its meaning-making capacity. Early on, children start to appropriate the symbolic tools of their culture through joint goal-directed activity with adults. The process continues throughout the school years and into adolescence. According to Karpov and Hayward (1998), SCT distinguishes two types of symbolic mediation: self-regulation—the ability to plan, monitor, check, and evaluate self-performance (p. 27); and concept-based regulation—resulting from the appropriation and internalization of cognitive tools needed for mediation in specific “subject-domains” (p. 28). As Vygotsky stated:

Man [sic] introduces artificial stimuli, signifies behavior, and with signs, acting externally, creates new connections in the brain. Together with assuming this, we shall tentatively introduce into our research a new regulatory principle of behavior, a new concept of determinacy of human reaction which consists of the fact that man creates connections in the brain from outside, controls the brain and through it, his own body.

(1997, p. 55)

Children’s early appropriation of language is implicit (i.e., beyond awareness) since the main function of interaction is not usually language learning but learning something else, including how to participate appropriately in social activities. Language serves as a symbolic artifact to facilitate such activities, but it is in and through these activities that language is appropriated (Wertsch, 2007, p. 185). Consequently, language remains largely invisible, at least if and until children enter school, where they are immersed in literacy activities. The effect of schooling is thus to make language highly visible and to enhance children’s capacity to consciously shape it to meet their communicative needs.¹

Crucially, there is a close relationship between the social and psychological uses of language. In its communicative function, language entails interaction between “I” and “You.” Eventually, however, a new function emerges, in which the conversation becomes intrapsychological, i.e., between “I” and “Me”, where “I” formulates plans and makes decisions and “Me” (the counterpart of “You” in social conversation) evaluates, critiques and revises these as necessary before the plan’s external deployment (Vocate, 1994). The “I–Me” conversation is generally referred to as private speech, a termed coined by Flavell (1966) to replace Piaget’s “egocentric speech.”

To appreciate how the symbolic “I–Me” conversation serves to mediate behavior, consider Marx’s example, borrowed by Vygotsky (1997, p. 68), of the architect, who first works out the design of the building symbolically in blueprint form before beginning to build. The blueprints comprise the plan of action on the ideal plane. The completed blueprint is actualized, or objectified, through physical activity that gives rise to the physical edifice. Vygotsky reasoned that all intentional human behavior, mental or physical, entails a transition from the ideal symbolic plane to the concrete objective plane. This includes acts of speaking, which are just as material as buildings. In other words, speaking entails the realization of an ideal symbolic plan of action that is realized in vocally emitted sound waves moving through space.

Research Methods

Because SCT focuses on the formation of mediational ability through appropriating and internalizing symbolic artifacts, it is not very useful to study this ability once formed, as with competent users of a language. That is, it is difficult to observe mediation once it has been internalized. In reaction-time research, for instance, when participants are asked to push a button in response to some stimulus, the thinking process that underlies the behavior is not observable and must instead be inferred by the researchers (Vygotsky, 1978).

Since SCT holds that development originates in the integration of biologically endowed abilities with culturally organized artifacts that mediate thinking, research concentrating on fully formed, “fossilized” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 68) processes cannot differentiate behavior arising from one or the other source. The solution, according to Vygotsky (1978), is to trace the relevant processes during their formation—as they still operate on the external plane. This approach is known as the genetic method—“genetic” not as in found in genes, but because it is historical (i.e., tracks change over time). Thus, child development researchers study mediation by presenting children with tasks beyond their current developmental level while simultaneously offering them potential mediating artifacts and observing whether and how they integrate these artifacts into the problem-situation. Vygotsky (1978, p. 74) called this “the functional method of double stimulation” because, in essence, the children were presented with two tasks: to solve a difficult problem beyond their current ability and also to figure out a way to use an external auxiliary artifact to help them solve the problem. In L2 development, this means studying how learners deploy the new language to regulate their behavior when confronted with communicatively or cognitively challenging tasks.

Examples of how this methodology functions in L2 research are provided below. For present purposes, however, consider the forbidden-colors task (Vygotsky, 1986). Participants of different ages are asked questions and instructed to avoid using a specific color in their responses. Thus, participants might be asked to describe their home, with white being the forbidden color. Four-year-olds find it difficult to avoid using the forbidden term in such circumstances if their house is actually white. To help the children over this hurdle researchers provide pieces of differently colored paper as external mediational tools for thinking. However, four-year-olds cannot use the tool and continue producing the forbidden colors. But seven-year-olds use the paper, which they often place nearby to remind them of the forbidden color. Twelve-year-olds and adults have no need for external support since they can remind themselves on the internal plane which colors are forbidden. This experiment suggests that children gradually develop the ability, first, to use external mediation and, later, to internalize it.

Supporting Findings

SCT-L2 research reflects both ways of conceptualizing symbolic mediation: self-regulatory mediation and mediation provided by conceptual knowledge. It must be stressed that the distinction is only analytical—in normal activity the two aspects of mediation are inseparable. The first phase of SCT-L2 research focused on the self-regulatory function of L2 mediation, beginning with Frawley and Lantolf (1985). This line of research has been thoroughly reviewed (e.g., Lantolf & Beckett, 2009; Lantolf & Pavlenko, 1995; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), so only its major findings will be treated here. The second phase of SCT-L2 research began with Negueruela (2003), when concept-based instruction (CBI) first attracted the attention of researchers. However, this does not mean that work on self-regulation has ceased: It continues unabated but with an expanded scope that now includes nonverbal components, in particular gesture. Since the latter research has not previously been reviewed in detail, it will be examined more closely here along with the CBI research. The first three subsections that follow address the research carried out on self-regulation, while the remainder of the chapter discusses the growing body of work on concept-based mediation and how this is developed through educational praxis.

Mediation as Self-Regulation

The focus of Frawley and Lantolf (1985), as with most research dealing with self-regulation, was not on the accuracy of learners’ speech but on how their performance manifested their ability to maintain and regain self-regulation, in this case on picture-sequence narration tasks. Thus, the intermediate speakers in this study, unlike the advanced speakers, frequently used progressive aspect to describe events (e.g., “Here the little boy is eating the ice-cream cone”), much as one would describe action in a photograph. The researchers interpreted this usage as indicating that the speakers did not control the task and therefore could not create a coherent narrative. Instead, they opted to do what they were capable of—describe isolated pictures/events. Other speakers used the past tense to narrate some story events (e.g., “The man took the little boy’s ice-cream cone.”) rather than the historical present used by native speakers (NSs) and advanced L2 speakers. The researchers argued that this past-tense usage represented an attempt to regain self-regulation because past-tense morphology provides a kind of temporal distance from events, much like how standing back from a painting allows one to see the whole. Other studies (e.g., Appel & Lantolf, 1994; McCafferty, 1994) uncovered similar though by no means identical mediational L2 uses to carry out complex tasks.

Based on extensive research in Russia, Ushakova (1994) suggested that L2 learners are unlikely to develop the capacity to use the L2 to mediate mental functioning, even when they can use it in social interaction. She cast her conclusion in metaphorical terms: “[A] second language is looking into the windows cut out by the first language” (p. 154). A decade later, Centeno-Cortés and Jiménez-Jiménez (2004), using a more complex research design than in previous studies, again found that L2 speakers, including advanced speakers, were unable to use the language to mediate their online thinking during complex tasks. They reported that, even when able to sustain L2 private speech (i.e., self-speech as a mediational tool), speakers could not complete the tasks given. If, however, they switched to their L1 in its psychological function, they were much more likely to complete the tasks.

Coughlan and Duff’s (1994) important study was the first to consider L2 self-regulation from an activity-theory perspective. Activity theory is considered by many SCT researchers as a sub-theory of SCT. It argues that human behavior is determined by its motive, goal, and the material circumstances in which it is enacted (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006). Coughlan and Duff showed that L2 performance need not be consistent across tasks for single learners or across different learners for single tasks. They argued that performance depends greatly on the specific goals individuals have for speaking. Similarly, Lantolf and Ahmed (1989) explained the variation in one L2 user’s performance across three speaking tasks—picture story, interview, and free conversation—as shaped by the speaker’s communicative goals. Specifically, the learner produced more accurate language when seeking to comply with the assumed interests of the researchers—to elicit evidence of his L2 ability. However, when conversing on a particular topic of interest to him, he produced much more speech and longer turns than in the previous tasks, but at the same time his speech became formally less accurate. The researchers concluded that the learner’s accurate performance reflected other-regulation by the researchers, whereas his less accurate but more interesting and relevant performance exhibited his ability to self-regulate through the language. In other words, the learner’s accurate performance in the first task reflected his attempt to comply with what he perceived as the interests of the researchers—to perform accurately in the L2 regardless of the content of the message. His performance in the second task reflected his personal interest in the topic and the only way for him to fully express this was through L2 speech that was not formally accurate.

Two studies have investigated using private speech to internalize L2 fe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Introduction Cognitivism and second language acquisition
• 1 The Sociocultural Approach to Second Language Acquisition: Sociocultural theory, second language acquisition, and artificial L2 development
• 2 A Complexity Theory Approach to Second Language Development/Acquisition
• 3 An Identity Approach to Second Language Acquisition
• 4 Language Socialization Approaches to Second Language Acquisition: Social, cultural, and linguistic development in additional languages
• 5 A Conversation-Analytic Approach to Second Language Acquisition
• 6 A Sociocognitive Approach to Second Language Acquisition: How mind, body, and world work together in learning additional languages
• 7 Sla After The Social Turn: Where cognitivism and its alternatives stand
• Index