Abstract
This paper aims to show how English learners exert control over the factors intervening in their learning process while they are working in groups. This study was undertaken in a self-access centre (SAC) at a government-funded university in Mexico. It looks at self-regulation in beginner English language learners while completing a learning task. We conducted an analysis of learners’ discourses during their interactions in triads in order to present several salient features of self-regulatory activity. The study is framed within Sociocultural Theory (SCT) since SCT outlines interaction and collaboration as fundamental for becoming independent language learners. The findings support the idea that students’ development or activation of self-regulatory mechanisms is tightly intertwined with social and affective factors. Collaboration through group work provides the opportunity for regulating the self-and foster learners’ autonomy through social activity.
Highlights
It is through collaboration that learners become actively involved in their learning process while providing assistance to their peers by encouraging each other, prompting, discussing, and/or trying to solve and construct the knowledge required for the task (Pifarre & Cobos, 2010)
We argue that the task the learners engaged in fostered their willingness to communicate, so they could interact with each other
At this level of language development, regulation is oriented to the objective of performing the task, so students use a series of communication strategies to express themselves, negotiating meaning to overcome miscommunication
Summary
This theory, developed out of the work of Lev. Vygotsky (1980), and is founded on the following principles: a) individual cognition is developed in social and cultural contexts, b) human activity is mediated by symbolic tools, such as language, and c) these two—cognition and behavior—are best studied through developmental analysis (Mahn & Reierson, 2012). The higher forms of thinking, which require self control and conscious awareness Examples of the latter are the use of critical skills in problem solving and the process of making decisions (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006). Students are able to develop their language abilities
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