English Language Teaching in its Social Context

andregisters260 PAULINE GIBBONSincreases this blurring. Leaving a detailed message on an answering machine, for example,may be quite linguistically demanding since, in the absence of two-way contact, and without(initially at least) the shared understandings and expectations which are implicit in twoway,face-to-face communication, we are required to ‘speak aloud’ the lund of language thatwould more usually be written. Thus in terms of the mode continuum it is perhaps moreappropriate to describe texts as ‘more spoken-like’ or ‘more written-like’ , and these arethe terms which will be used here.In many ways the continuum reflects the process of formal education itself, as studentsare required to move from personal everyday ways of making meanings towards the sociallyshared discourses of specific disciplines. A second language learner is likely to have fewerdifficulties with producing something like text 1, where the situational context itselfprovides a support for meaning and there are thus fewer linguistic demands, than with morewritten-like texts, where more lexico-grammatical resources are required. It is worthnoting, too, that when children are expected to write simply on the basis of personalexperiences, they are being asked to take a very large linguistic step (as can be seen bycomparing text 1 and 3), and one which is beyond the current linguistic resources of somesecond language learners.In the classroom described here, a major focus is on students using spoken language inthe way that text 2 illustrates, that is, language which, while spoken, is not embedded inthe immediate situational context in which it occurs. This more ‘written-like’ spokenlanguage can be seen as a bridge between the language associated with experiential activitiesand the more formal ~ often written ~ of the curriculum.The role of talk in learningWhile the importance of talk in learning has long bccn rccognised (Barnes 1976; Bruner1978; Martin et al. 1976), a more recent focus, largely influenced by the work ofvygotsky,has been on the social and cultural basis for learning (Mercer 1994, 1995 and Chapter 15of this book; Maybin, Mercer and Stierer 1992; Wells 1992, 1999). A socio-cultural or ‘neo-Vygotskian’ perspective places interactions and the broad social context of learning at theheart of the learning process; the classroom is viewed as a place where understanding andknowledge are jointly constructed, and where learners are guided or ‘apprenticed’ into thebroader understandings and language of the curriculum and the particular subject discipline.The notion of apprenticeship into a culture is particularly relevant in an ESL school context,where, in order to participate in society, students must learn to control the dominant genresthrough which that culture is constructed (Martin 1986; Dclpit 1988; Kalantzis, Cope,Noble and Poynting 199 1 ).SLA researchers have also shown the significance of interaction for second languagelearning (see for example, Ellis 1985, 199 1, 1994; van Licr 1988, 1996 and Chapter 5 ofthis book; Swain 1995; Swain 2000). Of particular importance are the kinds of on-goingmodifications which occur as meaning is negotiated or clarified (Long 1983; Pica,Youngand Doughty 1986; Pica 1994). Swain (1985, 1995) also argues for the need for‘comprehensible output’, whereby learners pay attention to their own talk, and as a resultproduce more comprehensible, coherent, and syntactically improved discourse. Thisattention to output ‘stretches’ the learner, in that s/he is pushed to attend to syntactic aswell as to semantic processing. The classroom implication for this, I suggest, is not thatlanguage ‘form’ per sc should become a major teaching focus, but that it is important, attimes, for learners to have opportunities to use stretches of discourse in contexts where