English Language Teaching in its Social Context

314 MICHAEL P. BREENwhich they not only recalled but also retained over a longer period were never overtlynegotiated about in the text of the lesson. Only 27% of retained vocabulary items had beenovertly topicalised in the lesson, whilst 56% of retained vocabulary could be traced to theindividual learner’s personal work upon items occurring in the spoken or written texts ofthe lesson which triggered efforts to seek items in a dictionary, to make associations withwhat they knew already, to write the word down to find out its meaning later, and so on.In essence, a key characteristic of items which individual learners learned from the lessonswas the relative incomprehensibility of that item to an individual learner and this resultedin covert individual work towards understanding and, thereby, remembering it. In fact,Dobinson discovered that there was a converse relationship between the amount of overtnegotiation about new vocabulary items and their retention by 1earners.The more an itemwas focused upon in the text of the lesson, the lcss likely it was to be retained. She concludedthat there must be an optimal degree of overt negotiation which facilitates learning. Infocusing upon learner participation, Dobinson also discovered that learners who did notparticipate at all recalled equal or greater numbers of previously unknown words from thelessons as did higher participating learners.From Slimani’s and Dobinson’s research it appears that we can deduce that individuallearners appear to be capable of navigating the discourse in ways that reflect their individualpurposes and agendas. In certain circumstances, discursive pressure to respond or tonegotiate with the teacher or other learners facilitates acquisition only for some learners.However, as with all deductions from classroom language learning research, these findingshave to be seen in the light of thc context from which the data were obtained. Slimani andDobinson located their studies in classrooms that were conventionally teacher-fronted withstrong teacher control over the text of the lessons. It appears, therefore, that there may bea difference in learning outcomes based upon overt negotiation for meaning in this kind ofclassroom context as compared with dyads or small groups of learners ncgotiating formeaning without the intervention of the teacher. This discovery, of course, would supportthe argument that context makes a difference. Overt participation in classroom discourseappears to serve other purposes in addition to the purpose of learning. In thesecircumstances, some learners will deliberately avoid discursive prcssure so that they candevote their attention to their own learning agendas. And the Slimani and Dobinson studiesconfirm that it is likely that learners will differentially gain from such practices.Social practices in the classroomLearners selectively work through the discourse of the classroom not only as discursivepractitioners within the immediate lesson but also on the basis of how they judge whichsocial practices are appropriate in the particular classroom group. Their selectiveparticipation and the judgements on which they base it are derived from their definition ofthe particular teaching-learning situation and from their experience with other realms ofdiscourse beyond the classroom. Learners therefore navigate the discourse in two constantlyinter-weaving ways; for learning purposes and for social purposes. Differential outcomesfrom lessons may reflect the fact that learners will differ in their abilities to balance thesetwo priorities and, crucially, in their relative allocation of attention to them.Classroom discourse is, for the learner, a voyage of discovery in the close company ofothers with a teacher who leads the expedition or, at least, carries the map. On the onehand, learners navigate classroom discourse in order to discover here and now what countsas valid interpretation, what counts as knowledge worth accommodating, and what counts