Learners’ Dialogical Interaction in the Service of Linguistic Knowledge Acquisition in Group Settings: Based on Contextual Factors

Abstract

This paper highlights some connections between dialogical interaction and knowledge acquisition in group settings. In learners’ quest to develop communicative competence and self-identity or social identity and acquire knowledge, dialogical interaction is applied to three contexts of knowledge-acquiring process where learners’ identity, learners’ mindset, learners’ rapport, learners’ communicative competence and learners’ knowledge are involved. Simply speaking, learners in collaborative contexts tend to share existing knowledge to generate potential knowledge; learners in competitive contexts are inclined to build knowledge, learners in cohesive contexts just use knowledge as a tool to organize knowledge. However, it is contended that dialogues are supposed to be explicitly regarded as part of the knowledge-acquiring process. There is a tendency to enable more effective knowledge acquisition through communicative talk, especially dialogues, in the interactive contexts with scaffoldings, tutoring or even intervention.