Development Of Sociocultural Competence Research Articles

Learner interaction in a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG): A sociocultural discourse analysis

AbstractThis exploratory study investigates the linguistic and social interaction of four intermediate EFL learners during game play in a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). Twelve illustrative episodes drawn from the participants’ text chat, collected in four 70-minute sessions held over a one-month period, are analyzed from a sociocultural perspective. Qualitative analysis reveals the presence of interactional features associated with the development of sociocultural competence. Throughout this study the learners successfully engaged in collaborative social interaction involving dialogue, conducted exclusively in the target language. Participants made appropriate use of politeness involving greetings, informal language, small talk, humor, and leave-takings, as a means to support the operation of collaborative interpersonal relationships. These relationships appeared based on reciprocity, friendship, and teamwork. They were effective in facilitating the creation of a low stress atmosphere characterized by social cohesion that was conducive to co-construction, and the consistent production of coherent target language output. The data indicates that the learners were able to jointly establish, and maintain, states of intersubjectivity through the use of continuers, and requests for assistance relevant to in-game tasks. Learner feedback was positive, and suggests that although the participants found the game play challenging, as this research progressed they became increasingly comfortable as their familiarity with the game increased. Aspects of participation identified by the learners as beneficial included opportunities for risk-taking, enhanced fluency practice, and exposure to vocabulary not normally encountered in regular language classes. The analysis suggests that the game provided access to an environment conducive to forms of collaborative target language use and social interaction identified as beneficial in the sociocultural account of language development.

Theorizing Affect in Foreign Language Learning: An Analysis of One Learner's Responses to a Communicative Portuguese Course

In this study we explore a student's affective responses to classroom foreign language learning. In 2 meetings each week throughout an 8‐week Portuguese course for beginners, the first author described her language learning experiences to the second author. Sessions were transcribed and then coded and analyzed. A theoretical model grounded in the learner's experiences was developed to understand the learner's affective responses to the language learning process, the events from which her affect sprang, and her affective trajectory over the 8 weeks. This study is a response to the need for methodological and epistemological diversity in second language acquisition research and contributes to studies that focus on the affective responses of the learner to the language learning experience. Implications for the role played by emotion in learners' classroom foreign language learning and the development of sociocultural competence in a second language are discussed.

Investigating the Psychological and Emotional Dimensions in Instructed Language Learning: Obstacles and Possibilities

In this article I put forth the core argument that Second Language Acquisition (SLA) needs to account for the psychological and emotional dimensions of second language (L2) learning, but that a number of epistemological and methodological difficulties must be surmounted before this new research program can be a reality. To illustrate my arguments, I examine in depth 2 research programs developed by my colleagues and me over the last decade: research on extraversion as a psychological variable investigated within the tradition of individual differences in SLA, and research on the expression of emotion in the L2. Throughout the article, I argue against research isolationism and for more interdisciplinarity in the field of instructed SLA. I contend that research on instructed SLA would benefit from an increased methodological and epistemological diversity and that a focus on affect and emotion among researchers might inspire authors of teaching materials and foreign language teachers to pay increased attention to the communication of emotion and the development of sociocultural competence in a L2.

The Role of Oral Practices in the Accomplishment of Our Everyday Lives: The Sociocultural Dimension of Interaction with Implications for the Learning of Another Language1

People are in continual engagement in socioculturally framed face-to-face activities as they participate in and live their everyday lives. Participation in these oral practices is bounded to some extent by one's knowledge of the interactive resources needed for participation and of the conventional ways of using the resources. Active and frequent participation in the oral practices of one's group leads to the development of sociocultural competence and the ability to use the resources to display and/or modify this competence. The formal study of such practices2 leads to the development of an understanding of the resources available to and used by the participants in a practice, and of those people whose practices they are. In what follows I argue for the incorporation of this sociocultural perspective of interaction and the concomitant study of oral practices into the disciplinary schema which currently defines second and foreign language learning. This study includes the identification of practices important to those groups whose language is being learned, and the description and analysis of the situated use of the interactive resources of such practices. To develop the argument I first situate the notion of oral practice in its larger interdisciplinary context and then present an etic framework to facilitate such study. I then discuss the current treatment of oral language in the literature on second and foreign language learning in order to demonstrate how the incorporation of the notion and study of oral practice can contribute to the development of a more complete model of language learning. A discussion of the pedagogic implications concludes the paper.