RE: Thinking in a foreign language

From: Phil Chappell (phil_chappell@access.inet.co.th)
Date: Sun May 04 2003 - 02:56:57 PDT


At 12:19 2/5/03 -0700, Elina wrote:
>We tried to create different sociocultural situations, which required
>different speech genres to be used. Instead of going from new words as
>elements, or grammar structures, we were learning various social roles and
>language neccesary to mediate the actions in the activities.

This topic is becoming more and more interesting by the minute. Elina, the
curriculum that you partially describe sounds very much like an approach to
teaching EFL that I am working with and doing some exploratory research on.
It is based on a genre approach to literacy development that has evolved in
Australian schools. I am interested in how it can be used to develop oracy.
It views such factors as the interlocutors' relationships, roles and
purposes, as well as the institutional, social and cultural values and
expectations that influence the emergence of particular genres as the
points of departure for planning and executing activities such as role plays.

Just today, as I was reading Leontiev (A.N.) on activity theory (a plug for
the xmca course ;-), I found an interesting intersection between "goal
directed processes or actions in activity" as described by Leontiev, and a
broadly held view (in Australia) of genres as "staged, goal directed,
purposeful activity" that results in text (spoken or written).

I am finding that these more holistic focuses develop a diverse range of
motives during role plays on the learners' parts. Some focus on the role
relationships, others on the rhetorical staging of the encounter, and
others on problematic language (grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation) that
is impeding the success of their role play. I haven't directly investigated
the role of inner speech, but it is interesting to see in some transcripts
the role of L1 (Thai) as almost an exasperated outburst during a
problematic stage of the role play. It is also interesting to see how "peer
scaffolding" in L1, in what I would say is one of the interlocutor's zone
of proximal development, helps the learner manage the role play to unfold
more meaningfully. These instances are with adult learners. I wonder how
this would differ with young learners, particularly with respect to their
level of conceptual development vis-a-vis everyday concepts and
scientific/schooled concepts?

Phil

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