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Part II: Issues in Second-Language Learning
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L2 (meta-talk) while involved in communicative tasks, learners develop awareness of
the L2. This and subsequent work by Swain and her colleagues concerning dialogic
learning explicitly invokes elements of the Vygotskian theoretical framework, in-
cluding the ZPD (see Kinginger 2002).
Activity Theory and Microgenesis
Current research is aligned with the paradigm of Vygotskian approaches to L2 re-
search and, more specifically, with activity theory and microgenetic analysis.
2
Al-
though activity theory is relatively new to Western researchers (e.g., Cole 1999;
Engstrom 1987, 1993, 1999; Kostogritz 2000; Kozulin 1998; Lantolf and Pavlenko
2001), it has a long tradition in the former Soviet Union (e.g., Alexie N. Leont’ev and
Peter I. Zinchenko), with philosophical roots in the works of Karl Marx.
Incommensurable with traditional theories of knowledge construction that retain
dualist distinctions between mind and world, activity theory set out to resolve Carte-
sian splits in psychology by focusing on the dialectical interrelationships between
thought and the material world, mind and body, individual and society. In this respect,
activity theory tries to demonstrate (through theory and practice) the inextricable rela-
tionship between mind and activity as well as the inseparability of mind/activity from
the historical, cultural, and social contexts in which it is embedded (Leont’ev 2002).
To understand mediated human, social, and mental activity, Vygotsky (1978)
proposed
genetic analysis
(
genetic
meaning having to do with genesis). Vygotsky
(1986) points to the analysis of linguistic signs, or word, as the minimal unit in which
the form, function, and genesis of consciousness could be investigated. Wertsch
(1985), adding to Vygotsky’s framework, proposes the observation of action that oc-
curs on both interpersonal and intrapersonal planes (tool-mediated action) as a
proper unit of analysis. Vygotsky believed, however, that an understanding of medi-
ated forms of human behavior could not be achieved through exclusive reliance on
descriptive research. For the theorist, mere descriptions of actions would yield inter-
pretations analogous to scientific analysis. This point is important because
Vygotsky’s goal was to understand rather than to predict “what was uniquely human
in human activity” (Vygotsky 1978).
Therefore, Vygotsky advocated a research methodology that transcended mod-
els borrowed from the positivist paradigm. From his point of view, the focus on ge-
netic analysis was a means to understand mental processes through disclosure of
their emergence and subsequent growth. That is, by observing precisely how partici-
pants integrate a system of signs and symbols into a task, the researcher can gain ac-
cess to the psychological functions of human beings (Wertsch 1991). Within this
framework communication plays an important role, not only as the medium of inter-
action but as an analogue for analysis of episodes in which communication is en-
gaged in—for example, through gesture, facial expressions, and so forth.
The elements that compose activity are not regarded as static or as existing in
isolation from each other; they are dynamically and continuously in interaction with
each other. Furthermore, within activity there are contradictions or tensions among
the elements. These tensions have been characterized by Engestrom (1987) and
Bateson (1972) as double-bind situations (for example, as in this study, when a
CREATING ZONES OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT IN A THIRD-GRADE MULTILINGUAL CLASSROOM
115
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common language is not present among people who need to speak to each other) that
prompt participants to “innovate, create, change or invent new instruments for their
resolution through experimentation, borrowing or conquering already existing arti-
facts for new uses”(Engestrom 1987, 165, quoted in Leander 2003, 5). Our study re-
gards identifying double binds, creating hybrid functional systems, and ultimately
transforming activity as key aspects of language play and creating ZPDs.
In drawing together the foregoing discussion before turning to our study, we em-
phasize that language play in dialogical contexts is richly imaginative and can take
many different forms. At the same time, however, it involves making meaning (in-
cluding gathering sense) through novel or comic use of aspects of the linguistic sys-
tem or, in the case of semiosis, by combining signs to create a hybrid system to con-
stitute meaning. These processes produce fertile grounds for learning-leading
development (the co-construction of ZPDs) with regard to language as linguistic and
semiotic systems, enhancing metalinguistic knowledge—through both understand-
ing and production—and, in turn, facilitating language learning.
The Study
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