Sociocultural theory and Second Language Acquisition

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SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

James P. Lantolf with Aneta Pavlenko

INTRODUCTION

Although the sociocultural theory (henceforth SCT) of mental activity, rooted in the work of L. S. Vygotsky and his colleagues, has certainly come to the fore in developmental and educational research (cf. Forman, et al. 1993, Lave and Wenger 1991, Moll 1990, Newman, et al. 1989), it is still very much the "new kid on the block" as far as SLA research is concerned. Recently, however, SCT has begun to enjoy increased attention among L2 researchers, as is amply attested in the bibliography of this paper. This research has focused on three general areas: activity theory and the relevance of motives and goals for L2 learning; the role of private speech in L2 learning; and learning in the zone of proximal development. These areas serve as the organizing basis for the survey that follows. The overview begins, however, with a brief, but necessary, overview of the theory itself.

OVERVIEW OF SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY

The goal of SCT is to understand how people organize and use their minds for carrying out the business of living. According to Vygotsky, its proper unit of study is the higher forms of mental activity, or consciousness, including voluntary attention, logical memory, rational thought, and the planning, execu-tion, and monitoring of mental processes. Vygotsky argued that these mental functions could not be studied adequately through controlled experiments or through introspective methods; rather, he believed that mental activity could only be fully understood when observed either in its formation over time, or when it is disturbed, as in pathological performance (cf. Vygotsky 1978). Formation over time for Vygotsky refers not only to the ontogenetic development of children, the major focus of his own research, but the emergence of the human species as tool users and the development of human cultures (Luria 1976; 1982, Vygotsky 1987,

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Vygotsky and Luria 1993). As for pathological disruptions, Vygotsky and his colleague A. R. Luria concerned themselves with the study of retarded and deaf children and with adults who suffered mental dysfunctions due to stroke or other traumatic cerebral insults (Luria 1961; 1973, Vygotsky 1993). In addition, Vygotsky called for research in the microgenetic domain—the domain in which changes arise in mental activity over relatively short stretches of time, such as when subjects are trained to a criterion before the start of an experiment, or when people undertake to learn a second language (cf. Wertsch 1985a).

While the importance of biology is recognized as a constraint on the possibilities of mental activity, SCT maintains that sociocultural factors occupy a central position in organizing mind on the foundation of the possibilities (Luria

1973; 1979). Development does not proceed as the unfolding of inborn capaci-ties, but as the transformation of innate capacities once they intertwine with socioculturally constructed mediational means. Here, Vygotsky draws a critical analogy between the role of physical tools and psychological tools, or signs, including algebraic symbols, schemes, mnemonic techniques, and above all, language. Unlike physical tools, however, which are externally oriented toward the object of activity and imbue humans with the ability to alter the object in ways that would otherwise be impossible, psychological tools are internally directed at organizing and controlling our mental activity in ways that would not be possible in their absence (Vygotsky 1978:55). For instance, people generally have little choice over which of the events in their lives remain in natural mem-ories. On the other hand, because two stimuli are connected in mediated memory, people are able to exercise much greater control over what, and even how, they remember when assisted by a symbolically created link. This is what happens when a person ties a string around his or her finger, uses paper and pencil to write down a phone number, or sketches an outline of a recently read text.

The fundamental tenet of SCT holds that sociocultural and mental activity are bound together in a dependent, symbolically mediated, relationship. From this perspective, the ontogenetic development of children, for example, entails the integration of symbolically constituted mediational means into biologically

specified patterns of behavior. ACTIVITY THEORY AND SLA

In laying the foundation for activity theory, Vygotsky sketched out the basic unifying explanatory framework for understanding how mediated minds are formed and how they function. While we cannot here delve into the complexities and controversies of the theory, it is helpful to at least outline its major claims.

Activity theory is not interested in seeking out causes for specific human behaviors in the sense that causality is construed in nomological science. Rather,

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it views causality as "a disposition to respond to certain conditions in certain ways" rather than other ways, but it assumes that people are in no way compelled to behave in a pre-specified way (Harre and Gillett 1994:120, 123). The disposi-tions arise from motives, which are culturally constructed and validated discourses that organize our world according to certain meanings and not others (Harre and Gillett 1994:123). To borrow an example from Harre and Gillett, if a man feels he has to be successful in order to have self-respect and the respect of others, and if the discourse to which he belongs "tells him that his success is in his own hands, that a real man is in charge of his own life" (p. 123), chances are his

goals will reflect this motive; he is then likely, but is not forced, to pursue a

course of action intended to realize these goals, which may include schooling followed by a good job (the concrete circumstances in which he seeks to opera-tionalize his goal). If he fails to carry through on his goal, the mismatch between motive and goal attainment may give rise to feelings of frustration, worthlessness, and shame, depending on what is made available to him by his discourse. He may then opt for a course of self-destruction or he may turn his frustration outward and behave violently toward others (p. 124). The point, however, is that his responses down the line may be likely but are not inevitable.

From the sociocultural stance, acquiring a second language entails more than simple mastery of the linguistic properties of the L2. It encompasses the dialectic interaction of two ways of creating meaning in the world (interpersonally and intrapersonally); such interaction ultimately enhances an individual's under-standing and ability to deploy linguistic phenomena for interpersonal and intraper-sonal functions (John-Steiner 1985:368). Meaning creation is a process that fundamentally arises in dialogue, either with others or with the self. Hence, the

sentence—a. construct central to Chomskian theory, which fuses speaker and

hearer and extracts them from their world—loses its privileged status as the primary unit of linguistic analysis. It is replaced by utterance—the dialogic output of real speakers and listeners engaged in real goal-directed activities; the dialogic output arises from culturally formed motives and is embedded in real circumstances (Sampson 1982, Volosinov 1973, Wold 1992). For Artigal (1992; 1993), in fact, the language acquisition device is not located in the head of the individual but is situated in the dialogic interaction that arises between individuals engaged in goal-directed activities.

Several recent L2 studies have directly explored the implications of activity theory for SLA. Gillette (1994), for example, conducted a series of in-depth case studies of successful and unsuccessful adult L2 learners. Through extensive interviews, class notes, and diaries, she not only found a connection between the discursive backgrounds (i.e., motives) of learners and their goals for studying a foreign language (e.g., to learn the language or to fulfill the language requirement), she also uncovered a possible link between the motives and goals of learners and the kinds of language learning strategies they deploy. Similarly, Donato and McCormick (1994) show how L2 learners' orientation to language

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learning and their use of learning strategies can be influenced through the self dialogue that arises in the development of a learning portfolio.

Coughlan and Duff (1994), investigating task-based performances of L2 speakers, demonstrate not only that different learners react to the same task differently but that the same learner can react to the same task differently on different occasions. They conclude that tasks are not constants but are at best "blueprints" for actions. It is the orientation of individual speakers as human agents that decides how tasks will be operationalized as activities. Consequently, they counsel caution when generalizing from task-based research.

Brooks and Donato (1994) support Coughlan and Duff's perspective on activity with empirical evidence from the pedagogical context. They suggest that all talk that arises during a collaborative task, even that which occurs in the learners' LI, is relevant to the ways in which the participants orient themselves to the task and to each other; such orientation through interaction converts the task into a real activity. Platt and Brooks (1994) take a similar stance, but also call into question our understanding of comprehensible input and the acquisition-rich

environment.

PRIVATE SPEECH IN SECOND LANGUAGE RESEARCH

The primary, and ontogenetically earlier, function of speech is communi-cative; speech serves to mediate our relationships with other individuals. The secondary, or egocentric, function of speech (secondary only because it derives from the primary function) is intrapersonal—in this use, speech mediates our relationship with ourselves. Here Vygotsky parted ways with Piaget, and particularly with Piaget's belief that the appearance of egocentric, or private, speech in children merely signals the transition from individual to social speech and eventually disappears. Vygotsky, instead, proposed that egocentric speech is the initial stage in the child's formation of an autonomous mediated mind; it does not disappear at all, but goes underground as verbal thought, or inner speech.

At the outset, private speech is structurally identical to social speech, but as it moves toward its mental function as inner speech, it becomes increasingly elliptical in appearance and less coherent to the ear of one listening to it. Eventually only a single word may be all that is left. The elements that tend to be maintained in private speech concentrate "the speaker's attention in uniquely positioning the speaker in relation to the task" (Frawley 1992). Thus, when a speaker tries to solve a jigsaw puzzle and utters "Green," this serves as an instruction to the self to search for and/or select a green piece to place into the puzzle. The utterance, in fully syntactic version would be similar to: "The next piece I need to place into the puzzle is the green one." Once private speech goes underground as inner speech, the child is then assumed to be a fully self-regulated individual to the extent that he or she no longer needs to rely on mediation from

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others to perform certain tasks. (See Berk and Diaz 1992 for current research on private speech in children.)

In one of the earliest empirical studies of private speech in L2 adults, Frawley and Lantolf (1985) make the controversial proposal that what may appear to be erroneous L2 performance (erroneous in the sense that it fails to match the supposed native-speaker target) often reflects not so much failure, but the mental orientation of the speakers to what it is they are attempting to say. In their view, development is neither linear nor static but dynamic and fluid; hence, even though adults are assumed to be self-regulated individuals, they do not necessarily remain so permanently, and they often experience problems maintaining and regaining control over their inner order in the face of difficult tasks. In such circum-stances, because of the principle of continuous access, adults frequently revert to ontogenetically earlier knowing strategies in order to maintain, or regain, control of their mental activity (Frawley and Lantolf 1985: 22-23). Effects of the principle are manifested in the reemergence of inner speech as private speech (Sokolov 1972).

Frawley and Lantolf argue that not only is the content of speakers' private speech revelatory with regard to mental activity, but so too are its linguistic properties. Their study explores some of these linguistic properties as they surface in the speech of adult ESL learners and native-speaking children who attempt to relate a story presented in a series of pictures. Contrary to advanced L2 speakers and LI adults, the intermediate L2 speakers and the LI children were not able to produce a coherent narrative. Significantly, however, their perfor-mance was quite similar with regard to specific linguistic properties, including, among other things, their marking of tense and aspect. Unlike the advanced L2 speakers and LI adults, who generally used the expected atemporal present to relate the story, the children and the intermediate L2 subjects made frequent use of the progressive aspect; this use distinctly marked the protocols as descriptions of the events depicted, much as happens when people describe photographs, but not as stories. According to Frawley and Lantolf, to dismiss such linguistic behavior as reflecting a lack of underlying linguistic competence clearly fails to bring out the full picture of what is at stake. They argue that use of the progres-sive in the picture narration task represents an attempt by the relevant speakers not to relate the events depicted as a story, but to discover what the events are. Hence, for these speakers, the task becomes a markedly different activity than it is for the advanced L2 and adult LI speakers.

Ahmed (1994) and McCafferty (1992; 1994a) replicate and expand the work of Frawley and Lantolf (1985). Ahmed used several one-way and two-way tasks of increasing complexity and included mixed LI and L2 dyads among his subjects. Essentially, his findings confirm the claims of Frawley and Lantolf concerning the mental functioning of tense/aspect. Interestingly, in a relatively complex task requiring subjects jointly to reconstruct a narrative puzzle presented

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in a scrambled picture format, Ahmed reports that both LI and L2 adult speakers of English shifted tense and aspect in very much the same way that Frawley and Lantolf's subjects did as they worked out the solution. That is, they used die present progressive to describe die events presented in each frame as diey struggled to work out the solution; they used die past tense to tell diemselves and each other those parts of the solution that tiiey had already worked out; and they shifted to the atemporal present to relate the events once they had solved die puzzle.

McCafferty's work also used a procedure similar to that used in die original study; however, he considered more carefully die effects of language proficiency on die production of private speech. McCafferty (1994b) found no statistically significant difference between his low-intermediate and advanced subjects on die use of die present progressive in dealing widi his narration task; yet he does report a significant difference between the groups for die past tense, with the advanced subjects using it more frequendy. In anodier extension of private speech research, McCafferty (1992) compared die private speech of L2 speakers from Asian countries widi diat of L2 speakers from Hispanic countries and reports diat die latter group produced a significandy higher frequency of private speech dian did die former group when carrying out his picture narration task. He suggests diat cultural background may well influence speakers' use of private speech.

A number of odier studies have explored diis research approach further. DiCamilla and Lantolf (in press) investigate the linguistic properties (e.g., modality, tense/aspect, anaphora, and deixis) of die private writing (the written correlate of private speech) of LI English college students, a line of research extended by Roebuck (1994) in her study of the private writing of L2 Spanish learners in written recalls of Spanish and English texts. Finally, Appel and Lantolf (1994) study die private speech generated by LI and advanced L2 English speakers (LI German) asked to produce oral recalls of narrative and expository texts in English. They conclude diat their subjects not only spoke in order to recall die texts, but also to try to comprehend die texts they had read. Thus, they suggest diat recall tasks include a pedagogical function and not just an assessment function.

Additional research on die potential of private and inner speech in SLA processes has been presented by de Guerrero (1994), Ushakova (1994), and Saville-Troike (1988). De Guerrero, in a large-scale study of Puerto Rican college-aged learners of English, concludes that inner speech plays a central role in rehearsing short-term memory features (phonological, lexical, and gram-matical) of the L2 which are dien transferred to long-term memory. A particularly interesting finding is diat L2 learners appear to attain a level of confidence and lose some anxiety about speaking the language as a result of internal rehearsal. Ushakova (1994) reports on a series of experiments which

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represent the eastern European research tradition that, of course, included

Vygotsky himself (although to the western research taste these experiments would lack the requisite plethora of quantitative trappings). She argues that the inner speech we develop as children in our native language remains with us and provides the foundation by which all future language learning is supported. In Ushakova's words "the second language is incorporated into the classification already available in the first language.... To put it figuratively, the second language is looking into the windows cut out by the first language" (154).

In perhaps the only study of private speech in child SLA, Saville-Troike (1988) discovered that the so-called "silent period" in child language acquisition may not be so silent after all. At some point on the way to acquiring a second language, children become reluctant to interact socially in their second language; at this time, however, they produce a high frequency of private speech in the L2. Using wireless microphones, she documented five specific strategic learning functions manifested in the private speech of the children during the silent period: repetition of others' utterances; recall and practice; creation of new forms; substitution and expansion of utterances; and rehearsal for overt social perfor-mance. Once the children emerged from the private speech phase, they were more creative in their use of the L2. (See also McCafferty [1994a] who presents a critical survey of the L2 private speech research.)

THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT (ZPD) AND

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

In considering the mental growth of children, Vygotsky uncovered a crucial distinction between their actual and potential levels of development. The former level represents children's ability to perform certain activities indepen-dently of another person (i.e., without help), and it reflects those functions that have stabilized; the latter level comprises those functions not yet sufficiently stabilized for children to perform autonomously and, consequently, intervention of another person is required. The difference between the two developmental levels is the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1978:86; see also Forman,

et al. 1993, Rogoff and Wertsch 1984). The ZPD is important because it is in

the transition from potential to actual development that children appropriate those forms of mental functioning valued by a culture (Newman, et al. 1989:68). As formulated in the general law of cultural development, Vygotsky states that any mental function, including voluntary attention, logical memory, concept forma-tion, and voliforma-tion, is initially distributed between two individuals (e.g., novice and expert) as intermental activity; it later becomes intramental activity as it is appropriated by the novice in the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1981:163).

Adair-Hauck and Donate (1994) report on a small-scale study of L2 learning in the ZPD which looked at the microgenetic development of a single

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secondary school beginning learner of French over the span of one hour. Through analysis of the expert/novice dialogue, they show how the learner was able to assume responsibility (self-regulation) for her own L2 performance by appropriating the assistance negotiated between herself and the expert. In line with the general law of cultural development, Adair-Hauck and Donato trace the appropriation process through four levels. At first, responsibility for the task is almost completely vested in the expert; in the final level, responsibility is situated almost completely within the learner. In this way, the learner is able to perform without initial competence; in other words, language use becomes language learning.

Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) report on an extensive microgenetic study of three ESL learners over a nine-week period covering four specific linguistic properties of the language. Parallelling the findings of Adair-Hauck and Donato, they investigate how negative feedback—as other-regulation—can result in L2 learning, provided that the corrective moves of the expert are sensitive to the relative position of specific interlanguage features within a given learner's ZPD. They suggest that L2 development is not only a function of the appearance of, and/or change in, the linguistic features of the IL, but also a function of the level of help negotiated between expert and novice, and they propose a regulatory scale designed to capture developmental progress through the ZPD.

Artigal (1992; 1993) integrates Peirce's notion of indexical space (i.e., a bounded semiotic territory that imbues signs with their meaning) with the ZPD and draws on his teaching experiences with children to show how classroom learning can be promoted through language use in the absence of immediate competence. His proposal is that the teacher establishes and regulates indexical spaces allowing for the joint construction of meaning. Eventually, the responsi-bility for meaning-building passes to the students (Artigal 1993:463). In other words, meaning construction transfers from potential (other-regulated) behavior to actual (self-regulated) activity.

The work of Washburn (1994) and Schinke-Llano (1994) underscores the complex nature of the ZPD and cautions against the presumption that all negoti-ated interactions necessarily generate positive outcomes. Washburn, drawing on Vygotsky's account offossilization in mental development, shows that not all expert/learner interactions result in L2 development and that learning is possible only if the learners, in fact, have a ZPD. Hence, fossilized learners are learners who have no higher potential level of development; consequently, they fail to appropriate the help offered by the expert (Washburn 1994). According to activity theory, fossilized learners lack a motive to extend their language use to new functions because they are denied access to certain discourses, a circum-stance that cannot be remedied by teaching forms in the absence of a change in the learner's discursive space (Sampson 1982).

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Studying the role of the expert, Schinke-Llano (1994) compares the language of teachers and parents when interacting with LEP and learning-disabled children, and their language when interacting with native-speaking and normally-achieving children. In LEP and LD interactions, adults structured task situations in ways different from their interactions with NS and NA children. In the former situation, not only did adults assume a greater share of joint responsibility for carrying out a task, and were more reluctant to cede this responsibility to the children than in the latter case, they also modified their linguistic production in ways that might actually impede language development (Schinke-Llano 1994:67).

The construction of a ZPD does not require the presence of expertise. Individuals, none of whom qualifies as an expert, can often come together in a collaborative posture and jointly construct a ZPD in which each person contrib-utes something to, and takes something away from, the interaction. Donato (1988; 1994) documents how L2 French learners are able to co-construct solu-tions to specific language-based tasks and appropriate and extend these solusolu-tions to novel situations. Donato and Lantolf (1990) argue that the monitor can be constructed in collaborative activity in the ZPD. Finally, de Guerrero and Villamil (1994) study how L2 writers provide mutual strategic assistance in collaborative peer revision. They conclude that this collaboration can be a potentially powerful mechanism for learning because "it allows for interchange-ability of roles and for continuous access to strategic forms of control in accordance with task demands" (p. 493).

CONCLUSIONS

SCT compels us to look at SLA from a perspective that differs from most current mainstream approaches to the phenomenon. It erases the boundary between language learning and language using; it also moves individuals out of the Chomskian world of the idealized speaker-hearer and the experimental

laboratory, and redeploys them in the world of their everyday existence, including real classrooms (Lave and Wenger 1991). In so doing, it situates the locus of learning in the dialogic interactions that arise between socially constituted individuals engaged in activities which are co-constructed with other individuals rather than in the heads of solipsistic beings. Learning hinges not so much on richness of input, but crucially on the choices made by individuals as responsible agents with dispositions to think and act in certain ways rooted in their discursive histories. Because of its insistence on the embeddedness of human activity, SCT allows us to observe learning in all of its fuzziness as it emerges from dialogic activity. This perspective is quite distinct from waiting for learning to crystallize into transitory or permanent steady states of IL competence. SCT is also in tune with the hermeneutic tradition adopted from the human sciences by current discursive approaches to psychology and sociology; as such, it is removed from the nomological tradition and its objectification of individuals and search for causality (cf. Polkinghorne 1988). Clearly, SCT is very much at the margins of

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L2 research; perhaps this is even an appropriate place for it. There is epistemo-logical value in fostering a multiplicity of views, provided, of course, that we allow for the confrontation of the margin with the mainstream (Frawley 1993).

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adair-Hauck, B. and R. Donate 1992. Discourse perspectives on formal instruc-tion. Language Awareness. 1.73-90.

This article reports on the instructional discourse of two foreign language high-school teachers with differing orientations to the classroom, one

monologic and one dialogic. The monologic teacher used self-directed

rhetorical questions and meta-statements, allowed no opportunities for verbal interaction when giving linguistic explanations, and did not en-courage students to move beyond what was perceived to be their compe-tence. The dialogic teacher engaged her students in proleptic instruc-tion—the expert assesses the novices' current level of development and, from there, guides them through the process of completing activities which they cannot do independently. In the process, both participants (expert and novice) come to acquire relevant knowledge of the other's understanding of the activity and its outcome. Turn-taking is shared and novices are challenged to push their prior abilities beyond their limits. In this way, even formal classroom instruction can take on a collective perspective, embodied in the evolving discourse relations between teacher and learners.

Adair-Hauck, B. and R. Donato. 1994. Foreign language explanations within the Zone of Proximal Development. Canadian Modern Language Review. 50.532-553.

This article reports on a microgenetic study of the communicative dia-logue between a teacher and a student in the ZPD as they engaged in the activity of understanding a simple fairy tale in French. By analyzing the formal and semantic properties of the dialogue, the authors trace how the dyad co-constructs a ZPD and then moves from teacher-regulated to student-regulated interaction; that is, from distributed intermental activity to appropriated intramental activity. They conclude that learning within the ZPD is purposeful and contextualized, that explanations are co-constructed, and that skill-using precedes skill-getting.

Artigal, J. M. 1992. Some considerations on why a new language is acquired by being used. International Journal of Applied Linguistics. 2.221-240.

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This article analyzes the mechanisms of meaning-building in teacher/ student interactions. The author proposes that, in order to learn a lan-guage, one must use it without having competence. He then addresses the issue of how this is, in fact, possible. He argues that to use a lan-guage one must first want to use it—an orientation grounded in a person's relationships with other individuals. However, he cautions that this desire alone is not enough to allow for language use; learners have to be able to use the language. To resolve this seeming paradox, Artigal borrows Peirce's concept of shared indexical territory—the playing field on which linguistic signs serve as symbols for the construction of mean-ing. The teacher's task at the outset is jointly to construct with the students the indexical territory in which they can create meaning in a language they do not yet know. To attain greater proficiency in an L2, the learner must acquire the ability to share new semiotic territories with someone else. Initially, the territories must be regulated by the expert-other, who accepts most, but not all, of the responsibility for constructing the territories; over time this expert-other cedes an ever-increasing share of responsibility to the learner.

Brooks, F. and R. Donate 1994. Vygotskian approaches to understanding foreign language learner discourse during communicative tasks. Hispania.

77.262-274.

This article presents a reanalysis of speech data from eight pairs of third-year high school learners of Spanish who were engaged in two-way problem-solving tasks. The authors focus on different features of talk produced by the learners during the tasks, including talk about the task, talk about the talk, and the use of LI talk. They conclude that encoding-decoding perspectives on interaction are inappropriate for capturing and understanding what the learners are attempting to accomplish during the face-to-face activity; or, in other words, not all speaking between classroom learners in communicative tasks is communicative in intent. The discursive interactions reveal that learners attempt to control the task by constructing it for themselves verbally as an activity and orienting themselves to both the language and task demands as they understand them. In this regard, metatalk in the LI is not to be ignored. Foley, J. 1991a. A psycholinguistic framework for task-based approaches to

language teaching. Applied Linguistics. 12.62-75.

The author presents a principled rationale for task-based approaches to L2 teaching based on the Vygotskian hypothesis of regulation. He then compares propositional grammar (or functional/notional) approaches to task-based instruction. The former is characterized as either object- or other-regulatory to the extent that students are controlled by texts,

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exer-cises, or teachers. Task-based learning, on the other hand, is seen as a unified system of communicative tasks which focus upon the sharing of meaning through spoken or written interaction, with self-regulation established as the goal of learning. Task-based learning serves as the bridge between what learners can do in their LI and their future abilities in the L2. Borrowing from the work of Prabhu, Foley claims that task-based L2 learning is an enabling rather than an equipping process; as an enabling process, it leads learners toward participation in other commu-nities without loss of their individuality or surrendering of self-regulation.

Lantolf, J. P. and M. K. Ahmed. 1989. Psycholinguistic perspectives on interlan-guage variation: A Vygotskyan analysis. In S. M. Gass, et al. (eds.)

Variation in second language acquisition: Psycholinguistic issues.

Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. 93-108.

This paper is a case study of the L2 performance of a single speaker across three tasks: a picture narration, an interview, and a conversation. The authors found that the linguistic features of the speaker's perfor-mance varied across the three tasks, with the narration showing the highest degree of accuracy in the L2 and the conversation revealing the least convergence with the target language. However, when comparing the interview to the conversation, the authors discovered that while the speaker's accuracy declined from the interview to the conversation, the speaker asserted a greater degree of control over the conversational properties of the interaction between himself and the researcher. This greater control was indicated by topic shifts and turn-taking patterns as well as significantly increased amounts of speech produced on each turn. Lantolf and Ahmed explain this variation in terms of regulation. In the interview, the learner's performance was more accurate because the locus of control was situated in the researcher/interlocutor; in the conversation, on a topic of intense interest to the learner, control shifted to the learner, but the only way he was able to maintain his self-regulation was to generate language that was inaccurate in terms of its formal properties. Lantolf, J. P. and G. Appel (eds.) 1994. Vygotskian approaches to second

lan-guage research. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

This is the first collection of sociocultural studies on SLA published in North America. The volume contains nine papers organized according to three general topics: L2 learning in the ZPD, L2 private speech, and activity theory. It also contains a lengthy introductory discussion of the development of sociocultural theory.

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Schinke-Llano, L. 1993. On the value of a Vygotskian framework for SLA theory and research. Language Learning. 43.121-129.

The author argues that Vygotskian psycholinguistic theory is not only compatible with current SLA theory and theory building, but also ex-tremely useful as a productive research paradigm. The author presents an overview of several Vygotskian concepts that she finds to be particularly relevant for SLA research, whether the focus is on children or adults. These concepts include the interface between language and thought; the social development of language acquisition and concept formation arising from joint problem-solving activities; the zone of proximal development; learning as movement from other- to self-regulation; and the function of private speech. She then briefly reviews selected L2 studies which address each of the concepts and concludes with recommendations for future research. Her recommendations include work on 1) the relation-ship between learner errors and task control; 2) communication strategies as regulation; 3) the transition of cultural knowledge in native and non-native speaker interactions; 4) language loss; and 5) the formation of mediational strategies in bilingual education programs.

UNANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ahmed, M. K. 1994. Speaking as cognitive regulation: A Vygotskian perspective on dialogic communication. In J. P. Lantolf and G. Appel (eds.)

Vygotskian approaches to second language research. Norwood, NJ:

Ablex. 157-172.

Aljaafreh, A. and J. P. Lantolf. 1994. Negative feedback as regulation and second language learning in the Zone of Proximal Development. The

Modern Language Journal. 78.4.465-483. [Special issue on sociocultural

theory and L2 learning].

Appel, G. and J. P. Lantolf. 1994. Speaking as mediation: A study of LI and L2 text recall tasks. The Modern Language Journal. 78.4.437-452. [Special issue on sociocultural theory and L2 learning.]

Artigal, J. M. 1993. The L2 kindergarten teacher as a territory maker. In J. E. Alatis (ed.) Strategic interaction and language acquisition: Theory,

practice, and research. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

452-468. [Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1993.]

Berk, L. E. and R. M. Diaz (eds.) 1992. Private speech: From social interaction

to self-regulation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Coughlan, P. and P. A. Duff. 1994. Same task, different activities: Analysis of a SLA task from an Activity Theory perspective. In J. P. Lantolf and G.

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Appel (eds.) Vygotskian approaches to second language research. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. 173-194.

DiCamilla, F. and J. P. Lantolf. In press. The linguistic analysis of private writing. Language Sciences.

Donato, R. 1988. Beyond group: A psycholinguistic rationale for collectivity in second language learning. Newark, DE: University of Delaware. Ph.D. diss.

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