L2 learning context The Sociocultural perspective Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

Vygotsky stated that language emerged as a result of the social interactions between individuals. Sociocultural theory views speaking and thinking as two related processes. Speaking and writing mediate thinking. ?? people gain control over their mental processes as a consequence of internalizing what they say to others and what others say to them.

Vygotsky’s theory has been compared to several notions in the field. Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

Vogotsky’s ZPD and Krashen’s i+1 (comprehensible input) ?? Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani These two concepts differ in relation to their view of how development occurs. ZPD is a metaphorical situation in which learners co- construct knowledge in collaboration with other people. Krashen’s i+1 is about the comprehensibility of the input that is beyond the learner’s current level of development which comes from outside the learners.

Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani So, ZPD emphasized the re-construction of the learner’s knowledge which is based on the interaction with their interlocutor or in Private Speech (i.e. the language we use when we are talking to ourselves).

Vygotsky and the Interaction Hypothesis Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani They differ in the way they emphasize the internal cognitive processes. In The Interaction Hypothesis, the emphasis is on the individual cognitive processes in the mind of the learners. Interaction facilitates those cognitive processes by giving the learners access to the input they need to activate internal processes.

Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani In Vygotsky’s theory, the emphasis in on the conversations themselves because learning occurs through these social interactions. Sociocultural theory states that people gain control of their cognitive processes as knowledge is internalized during social activity.

How do you think we can apply Vygotsky’s theory in L2 learning context?? Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

Second language applications: Learning by talking Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani Many researchers were interested in investigating how interaction with other speakers helps learners acquire the language. ZPD is the interaction not only between an expert and a novice (teacher/student), but also between novice and novice (learner/learner).

Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani Some researchers such as Swain (1985) proposed “The output Hypothesis” as opposed to Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis. Swain argues that asking the students to write or speak pushes the learners to process the language deeply because they have to pay more attention to meaning. This proposal was suggested after several studies that concluded that most learners are weak in writing and speaking than in reading and listening comprehension.

Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani Although Swain’s work was influenced by the cognitive theory, his recent work was influenced by the sociocultural theory. ?? Swain and other did a series of experiment to study the affect of the “collaborative dialogue” on the co- construction of the learners’ knowledge of the language. They tried to investigated how this collaborative dialogue draw the students’ attention to the forms and meanings.

Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani They noticed that students test their hypotheses about the language, discuss these hypotheses and decide which forms were best to express their meaning. As a result, Swain concluded that collaborative dialogues is the cognitive and social activity where language use and language learning can co-occur.

The difference between the sociocultural perspective and that of other researchers who focused on interaction. Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani Sociocultural theory assumes that cognitive processes begins as an external socially mediated activity which will be internalized. Other interactionist models assume that modified input and interaction provide learners with the raw material for internal cognitive process.