Abstract
Within the frameworks of Sociocultural theory, particularly Vygotskian sociocultural theory and ZPD, Lave and Wenger’s CoP, and contemporary sociocultural theory, this paper seeks to examine the unfavourable scholarly portrayal of learners and their identities based on learners’ behaviours, attitudes, and beliefs about the social element of learning, particularly non-mainstream, non-normative behaviours. Such behaviours may be, to the learner, salient accompanying identity traits that were celebrated in one context but demonized in another. While learners have a degree of agency in subsequent critical, even hostile, settings, often this demonization leads to a degree of withdrawal, a retreat to grassroots rather than the mainstream, and a perpetration of accepted student norms. The deconstruction and critique of the ‘Good Language Learner’ gives insight into dominant discourses and metanarratives. Further to this, we see implications of these academic discourses on practitioners, especially for Asian English language teachers, as well as recommendations. Keywords: Sociocultural theory, dominant, non-mainstream, Good Language Learner, metanarratives, social setting
Highlights
Within the frameworks of Sociocultural theory, Vygotskian sociocultural theory and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), Lave and Wenger’s Community of Practice (CoP), and contemporary sociocultural theory, this paper seeks to examine the unfavourable scholarly portrayal of learners and their identities based on learners’ behaviours, attitudes, and beliefs about the social element of learning, non-mainstream, non-normative behaviours
My concern is for the negative association ascribed to learners who shun peer interaction or gravitate towards solitude in language learning for any number of reasons
My belief is that scholarly demonization will fade in light of the elucidation these whole, rather than fragmented, narratives bring. As we examine these narratives, we see that perspectives on ‘good’ language learners imply the deficiency, no matter how elegantly or delicately phrased, of ‘bad’ language learners: all who fall outside the definition of ‘good,’ even considering how broad ‘good’ is
Summary
Within the frameworks of Sociocultural theory, Vygotskian sociocultural theory and ZPD, Lave and Wenger’s CoP, and contemporary sociocultural theory, this paper seeks to examine the unfavourable scholarly portrayal of learners and their identities based on learners’ behaviours, attitudes, and beliefs about the social element of learning, non-mainstream, non-normative behaviours. The genesis of this paper lies in the growing dominance of sociocultural perspectives in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) scholarship, occurring with little critique of normalized learner behaviours, habits, social norms, and preferences. Approaching this dominance from the perspective of a teaching practitioner as well as as a student, I detect multiple instances where leaners may be demonized in literature by the very researchers who seek to give insight into language learning, leaving such learners delegitimized. Applying my findings to future praxis, I discuss implications for an Asian, situated teaching context
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