lantolf 1995

Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (1995) 15, 108-124. Printed in the USA.Copyright © 1995 Cambridge University Press 0267-1905/95 $9.00 + .10

SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

James P. Lantolf with Aneta Pavlenko

INTRODUCTION

Although the sociocultural theory (henceforth SCT) of mental activity,rooted in the work of L. S. Vygotsky and his colleagues, has certainly come tothe fore in developmental and educational research (cf. Forman, et al. 1993, Laveand Wenger 1991, Moll 1990, Newman, et al. 1989), it is still very much the"new kid on the block" as far as SLA research is concerned. Recently, however,SCT has begun to enjoy increased attention among L2 researchers, as is amplyattested in the bibliography of this paper. This research has focused on threegeneral areas: activity theory and the relevance of motives and goals for L2learning; the role of private speech in L2 learning; and learning in the zone ofproximal development. These areas serve as the organizing basis for the surveythat follows. The overview begins, however, with a brief, but necessary,overview of the theory itself.

OVERVIEW OF SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY

The goal of SCT is to understand how people organize and use theirminds for carrying out the business of living. According to Vygotsky, its properunit of study is the higher forms of mental activity, or consciousness, includingvoluntary attention, logical memory, rational thought, and the planning, execu-tion, and monitoring of mental processes. Vygotsky argued that these mentalfunctions could not be studied adequately through controlled experiments orthrough introspective methods; rather, he believed that mental activity could onlybe fully understood when observed either in its formation over time, or when it isdisturbed, as in pathological performance (cf. Vygotsky 1978). Formation overtime for Vygotsky refers not only to the ontogenetic development of children, themajor focus of his own research, but the emergence of the human species as toolusers and the development of human cultures (Luria 1976; 1982, Vygotsky 1987,

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SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 109

Vygotsky and Luria 1993). As for pathological disruptions, Vygotsky and hiscolleague A. R. Luria concerned themselves with the study of retarded and deafchildren and with adults who suffered mental dysfunctions due to stroke or othertraumatic cerebral insults (Luria 1961; 1973, Vygotsky 1993). In addition,Vygotsky called for research in the microgenetic domain—the domain in whichchanges arise in mental activity over relatively short stretches of time, such aswhen subjects are trained to a criterion before the start of an experiment, or whenpeople undertake to learn a second language (cf. Wertsch 1985a).

While the importance of biology is recognized as a constraint on thepossibilities of mental activity, SCT maintains that sociocultural factors occupy acentral position in organizing mind on the foundation of the possibilities (Luria1973; 1979). Development does not proceed as the unfolding of inborn capaci-ties, but as the transformation of innate capacities once they intertwine withsocioculturally constructed mediational means. Here, Vygotsky draws a criticalanalogy between the role of physical tools and psychological tools, or signs,including algebraic symbols, schemes, mnemonic techniques, and above all,language. Unlike physical tools, however, which are externally oriented towardthe object of activity and imbue humans with the ability to alter the object inways that would otherwise be impossible, psychological tools are internallydirected at organizing and controlling our mental activity in ways that would notbe possible in their absence (Vygotsky 1978:55). For instance, people generallyhave little choice over which of the events in their lives remain in natural mem-ories. On the other hand, because two stimuli are connected in mediatedmemory, people are able to exercise much greater control over what, and evenhow, they remember when assisted by a symbolically created link. This is whathappens when a person ties a string around his or her finger, uses paper andpencil to write down a phone number, or sketches an outline of a recently readtext.

The fundamental tenet of SCT holds that sociocultural and mental activityare bound together in a dependent, symbolically mediated, relationship. Fromthis perspective, the ontogenetic development of children, for example, entails theintegration of symbolically constituted mediational means into biologicallyspecified patterns of behavior.

ACTIVITY THEORY AND SLA

In laying the foundation for activity theory, Vygotsky sketched out thebasic unifying explanatory framework for understanding how mediated minds areformed and how they function. While we cannot here delve into the complexitiesand controversies of the theory, it is helpful to at least outline its major claims.

Activity theory is not interested in seeking out causes for specific humanbehaviors in the sense that causality is construed in nomological science. Rather,

110 JAMES P. LANTOLF WITH ANETA PAVLENKO

it views causality as "a disposition to respond to certain conditions in certainways" rather than other ways, but it assumes that people are in no way compelledto behave in a pre-specified way (Harre and Gillett 1994:120, 123). The disposi-tions arise from motives, which are culturally constructed and validated discoursesthat organize our world according to certain meanings and not others (Harre andGillett 1994:123). To borrow an example from Harre and Gillett, if a man feelshe has to be successful in order to have self-respect and the respect of others, andif the discourse to which he belongs "tells him that his success is in his ownhands, that a real man is in charge of his own life" (p. 123), chances are hisgoals will reflect this motive; he is then likely, but is not forced, to pursue acourse of action intended to realize these goals, which may include schoolingfollowed by a good job (the concrete circumstances in which he seeks to opera-tionalize his goal). If he fails to carry through on his goal, the mismatch betweenmotive and goal attainment may give rise to feelings of frustration, worthlessness,and shame, depending on what is made available to him by his discourse. Hemay then opt for a course of self-destruction or he may turn his frustrationoutward and behave violently toward others (p. 124). The point, however, is thathis responses down the line may be likely but are not inevitable.

From the sociocultural stance, acquiring a second language entails morethan simple mastery of the linguistic properties of the L2. It encompasses thedialectic interaction of two ways of creating meaning in the world (interpersonallyand intrapersonally); such interaction ultimately enhances an individual's under-standing and ability to deploy linguistic phenomena for interpersonal and intraper-sonal functions (John-Steiner 1985:368). Meaning creation is a process thatfundamentally arises in dialogue, either with others or with the self. Hence, thesentence—a. construct central to Chomskian theory, which fuses speaker andhearer and extracts them from their world—loses its privileged status as theprimary unit of linguistic analysis. It is replaced by utterance—the dialogicoutput of real speakers and listeners engaged in real goal-directed activities; thedialogic output arises from culturally formed motives and is embedded in realcircumstances (Sampson 1982, Volosinov 1973, Wold 1992). For Artigal (1992;1993), in fact, the language acquisition device is not located in the head of theindividual but is situated in the dialogic interaction that arises between individualsengaged in goal-directed activities.

Several recent L2 studies have directly explored the implications ofactivity theory for SLA. Gillette (1994), for example, conducted a series of in-depth case studies of successful and unsuccessful adult L2 learners. Throughextensive interviews, class notes, and diaries, she not only found a connectionbetween the discursive backgrounds (i.e., motives) of learners and their goals forstudying a foreign language (e.g., to learn the language or to fulfill the languagerequirement), she also uncovered a possible link between the motives and goals oflearners and the kinds of language learning strategies they deploy. Similarly,Donato and McCormick (1994) show how L2 learners' orientation to language


learning and their use of learning strategies can be influenced through the selfdialogue that arises in the development of a learning portfolio.

Coughlan and Duff (1994), investigating task-based performances of L2speakers, demonstrate not only that different learners react to the same taskdifferently but that the same learner can react to the same task differently ondifferent occasions. They conclude that tasks are not constants but are at best"blueprints" for actions. It is the orientation of individual speakers as humanagents that decides how tasks will be operationalized as activities. Consequently,they counsel caution when generalizing from task-based research.

Brooks and Donato (1994) support Coughlan and Duff's perspective onactivity with empirical evidence from the pedagogical context. They suggest thatall talk that arises during a collaborative task, even that which occurs in thelearners' LI, is relevant to the ways in which the participants orient themselves tothe task and to each other; such orientation through interaction converts the taskinto a real activity. Platt and Brooks (1994) take a similar stance, but also callinto question our understanding of comprehensible input and the acquisition-richenvironment.

PRIVATE SPEECH IN SECOND LANGUAGE RESEARCH

The primary, and ontogenetically earlier, function of speech is communi-cative; speech serves to mediate our relationships with other individuals. Thesecondary, or egocentric, function of speech (secondary only because it derivesfrom the primary function) is intrapersonal—in this use, speech mediates ourrelationship with ourselves. Here Vygotsky parted ways with Piaget, andparticularly with Piaget's belief that the appearance of egocentric, or private,speech in children merely signals the transition from individual to social speechand eventually disappears. Vygotsky, instead, proposed that egocentric speech isthe initial stage in the child's formation of an autonomous mediated mind; it doesnot disappear at all, but goes underground as verbal thought, or inner speech.

At the outset, private speech is structurally identical to social speech, butas it moves toward its mental function as inner speech, it becomes increasinglyelliptical in appearance and less coherent to the ear of one listening to it.Eventually only a single word may be all that is left. The elements that tend tobe maintained in private speech concentrate "the speaker's attention in uniquelypositioning the speaker in relation to the task" (Frawley 1992). Thus, when aspeaker tries to solve a jigsaw puzzle and utters "Green," this serves as aninstruction to the self to search for and/or select a green piece to place into thepuzzle. The utterance, in fully syntactic version would be similar to: "The nextpiece I need to place into the puzzle is the green one." Once private speech goesunderground as inner speech, the child is then assumed to be a fully self-regulatedindividual to the extent that he or she no longer needs to rely on mediation from


others to perform certain tasks. (See Berk and Diaz 1992 for current research onprivate speech in children.)

In one of the earliest empirical studies of private speech in L2 adults,Frawley and Lantolf (1985) make the controversial proposal that what may appearto be erroneous L2 performance (erroneous in the sense that it fails to match thesupposed native-speaker target) often reflects not so much failure, but the mentalorientation of the speakers to what it is they are attempting to say. In their view,development is neither linear nor static but dynamic and fluid; hence, even thoughadults are assumed to be self-regulated individuals, they do not necessarily remainso permanently, and they often experience problems maintaining and regainingcontrol over their inner order in the face of difficult tasks. In such circum-stances, because of the principle of continuous access, adults frequently revert toontogenetically earlier knowing strategies in order to maintain, or regain, controlof their mental activity (Frawley and Lantolf 1985: 22-23). Effects of theprinciple are manifested in the reemergence of inner speech as private speech(Sokolov 1972).

Frawley and Lantolf argue that not only is the content of speakers'private speech revelatory with regard to mental activity, but so too are itslinguistic properties. Their study explores some of these linguistic properties asthey surface in the speech of adult ESL learners and native-speaking children whoattempt to relate a story presented in a series of pictures. Contrary to advancedL2 speakers and LI adults, the intermediate L2 speakers and the LI children werenot able to produce a coherent narrative. Significantly, however, their perfor-mance was quite similar with regard to specific linguistic properties, including,among other things, their marking of tense and aspect. Unlike the advanced L2speakers and LI adults, who generally used the expected atemporal present torelate the story, the children and the intermediate L2 subjects made frequent useof the progressive aspect; this use distinctly marked the protocols as descriptionsof the events depicted, much as happens when people describe photographs, butnot as stories. According to Frawley and Lantolf, to dismiss such linguisticbehavior as reflecting a lack of underlying linguistic competence clearly fails tobring out the full picture of what is at stake. They argue that use of the progres-sive in the picture narration task represents an attempt by the relevant speakersnot to relate the events depicted as a story, but to discover what the events are.Hence, for these speakers, the task becomes a markedly different activity than itis for the advanced L2 and adult LI speakers.

Ahmed (1994) and McCafferty (1992; 1994a) replicate and expand thework of Frawley and Lantolf (1985). Ahmed used several one-way and two-waytasks of increasing complexity and included mixed LI and L2 dyads among hissubjects. Essentially, his findings confirm the claims of Frawley and Lantolfconcerning the mental functioning of tense/aspect. Interestingly, in a relativelycomplex task requiring subjects jointly to reconstruct a narrative puzzle presented


in a scrambled picture format, Ahmed reports that both LI and L2 adult speakersof English shifted tense and aspect in very much the same way that Frawley andLantolf's subjects did as they worked out the solution. That is, they used diepresent progressive to describe die events presented in each frame as dieystruggled to work out the solution; they used die past tense to tell diemselves andeach other those parts of the solution that tiiey had already worked out; and theyshifted to the atemporal present to relate the events once they had solved diepuzzle.

McCafferty's work also used a procedure similar to that used in dieoriginal study; however, he considered more carefully die effects of languageproficiency on die production of private speech. McCafferty (1994b) found nostatistically significant difference between his low-intermediate and advancedsubjects on die use of die present progressive in dealing widi his narration task;yet he does report a significant difference between the groups for die past tense,with the advanced subjects using it more frequendy. In anodier extension ofprivate speech research, McCafferty (1992) compared die private speech of L2speakers from Asian countries widi diat of L2 speakers from Hispanic countriesand reports diat die latter group produced a significandy higher frequency ofprivate speech dian did die former group when carrying out his picture narrationtask. He suggests diat cultural background may well influence speakers' use ofprivate speech.

A number of odier studies have explored diis research approach further.DiCamilla and Lantolf (in press) investigate the linguistic properties (e.g.,modality, tense/aspect, anaphora, and deixis) of die private writing (the writtencorrelate of private speech) of LI English college students, a line of researchextended by Roebuck (1994) in her study of the private writing of L2 Spanishlearners in written recalls of Spanish and English texts. Finally, Appel andLantolf (1994) study die private speech generated by LI and advanced L2 Englishspeakers (LI German) asked to produce oral recalls of narrative and expositorytexts in English. They conclude diat their subjects not only spoke in order torecall die texts, but also to try to comprehend die texts they had read. Thus, theysuggest diat recall tasks include a pedagogical function and not just an assessmentfunction.

Additional research on die potential of private and inner speech in SLAprocesses has been presented by de Guerrero (1994), Ushakova (1994), andSaville-Troike (1988). De Guerrero, in a large-scale study of Puerto Ricancollege-aged learners of English, concludes that inner speech plays a central rolein rehearsing short-term memory features (phonological, lexical, and gram-matical) of the L2 which are dien transferred to long-term memory. Aparticularly interesting finding is diat L2 learners appear to attain a level ofconfidence and lose some anxiety about speaking the language as a result ofinternal rehearsal. Ushakova (1994) reports on a series of experiments which


represent the eastern European research tradition that, of course, includedVygotsky himself (although to the western research taste these experiments wouldlack the requisite plethora of quantitative trappings). She argues that the innerspeech we develop as children in our native language remains with us andprovides the foundation by which all future language learning is supported. InUshakova's words "the second language is incorporated into the classificationalready available in the first language.... To put it figuratively, the secondlanguage is looking into the windows cut out by the first language" (154).

In perhaps the only study of private speech in child SLA, Saville-Troike(1988) discovered that the so-called "silent period" in child language acquisitionmay not be so silent after all. At some point on the way to acquiring a secondlanguage, children become reluctant to interact socially in their second language;at this time, however, they produce a high frequency of private speech in the L2.Using wireless microphones, she documented five specific strategic learningfunctions manifested in the private speech of the children during the silent period:repetition of others' utterances; recall and practice; creation of new forms;substitution and expansion of utterances; and rehearsal for overt social perfor-mance. Once the children emerged from the private speech phase, they weremore creative in their use of the L2. (See also McCafferty [1994a] who presentsa critical survey of the L2 private speech research.)

THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT (ZPD) ANDCOLLABORATIVE LEARNING

In considering the mental growth of children, Vygotsky uncovered acrucial distinction between their actual and potential levels of development. Theformer level represents children's ability to perform certain activities indepen-dently of another person (i.e., without help), and it reflects those functions thathave stabilized; the latter level comprises those functions not yet sufficientlystabilized for children to perform autonomously and, consequently, interventionof another person is required. The difference between the two developmentallevels is the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1978:86; see also Forman,et al. 1993, Rogoff and Wertsch 1984). The ZPD is important because it is inthe transition from potential to actual development that children appropriate thoseforms of mental functioning valued by a culture (Newman, et al. 1989:68). Asformulated in the general law of cultural development, Vygotsky states that anymental function, including voluntary attention, logical memory, concept forma-tion, and volition, is initially distributed between two individuals (e.g., noviceand expert) as intermental activity; it later becomes intramental activity as it isappropriated by the novice in the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky1981:163).

Adair-Hauck and Donate (1994) report on a small-scale study of L2learning in the ZPD which looked at the microgenetic development of a single


secondary school beginning learner of French over the span of one hour.Through analysis of the expert/novice dialogue, they show how the learner wasable to assume responsibility (self-regulation) for her own L2 performance byappropriating the assistance negotiated between herself and the expert. In linewith the general law of cultural development, Adair-Hauck and Donato trace theappropriation process through four levels. At first, responsibility for the task isalmost completely vested in the expert; in the final level, responsibility is situatedalmost completely within the learner. In this way, the learner is able to performwithout initial competence; in other words, language use becomes languagelearning.

Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) report on an extensive microgenetic study ofthree ESL learners over a nine-week period covering four specific linguisticproperties of the language. Parallelling the findings of Adair-Hauck and Donato,they investigate how negative feedback—as other-regulation—can result in L2learning, provided that the corrective moves of the expert are sensitive to therelative position of specific interlanguage features within a given learner's ZPD.They suggest that L2 development is not only a function of the appearance of,and/or change in, the linguistic features of the IL, but also a function of the levelof help negotiated between expert and novice, and they propose a regulatory scaledesigned to capture developmental progress through the ZPD.

Artigal (1992; 1993) integrates Peirce's notion of indexical space (i.e., abounded semiotic territory that imbues signs with their meaning) with the ZPDand draws on his teaching experiences with children to show how classroomlearning can be promoted through language use in the absence of immediatecompetence. His proposal is that the teacher establishes and regulates indexicalspaces allowing for the joint construction of meaning. Eventually, the responsi-bility for meaning-building passes to the students (Artigal 1993:463). In otherwords, meaning construction transfers from potential (other-regulated) behavior toactual (self-regulated) activity.

The work of Washburn (1994) and Schinke-Llano (1994) underscores thecomplex nature of the ZPD and cautions against the presumption that all negoti-ated interactions necessarily generate positive outcomes. Washburn, drawing onVygotsky's account offossilization in mental development, shows that not allexpert/learner interactions result in L2 development and that learning is possibleonly if the learners, in fact, have a ZPD. Hence, fossilized learners are learnerswho have no higher potential level of development; consequently, they fail toappropriate the help offered by the expert (Washburn 1994). According toactivity theory, fossilized learners lack a motive to extend their language use tonew functions because they are denied access to certain discourses, a circum-stance that cannot be remedied by teaching forms in the absence of a change inthe learner's discursive space (Sampson 1982).


Studying the role of the expert, Schinke-Llano (1994) compares thelanguage of teachers and parents when interacting with LEP and learning-disabledchildren, and their language when interacting with native-speaking and normally-achieving children. In LEP and LD interactions, adults structured task situationsin ways different from their interactions with NS and NA children. In the formersituation, not only did adults assume a greater share of joint responsibility forcarrying out a task, and were more reluctant to cede this responsibility to thechildren than in the latter case, they also modified their linguistic production inways that might actually impede language development (Schinke-Llano 1994:67).

The construction of a ZPD does not require the presence of expertise.Individuals, none of whom qualifies as an expert, can often come together in acollaborative posture and jointly construct a ZPD in which each person contrib-utes something to, and takes something away from, the interaction. Donato(1988; 1994) documents how L2 French learners are able to co-construct solu-tions to specific language-based tasks and appropriate and extend these solutionsto novel situations. Donato and Lantolf (1990) argue that the monitor can beconstructed in collaborative activity in the ZPD. Finally, de Guerrero andVillamil (1994) study how L2 writers provide mutual strategic assistance incollaborative peer revision. They conclude that this collaboration can be apotentially powerful mechanism for learning because "it allows for interchange-ability of roles and for continuous access to strategic forms of control inaccordance with task demands" (p. 493).

CONCLUSIONS

SCT compels us to look at SLA from a perspective that differs from mostcurrent mainstream approaches to the phenomenon. It erases the boundarybetween language learning and language using; it also moves individuals out ofthe Chomskian world of the idealized speaker-hearer and the experimentallaboratory, and redeploys them in the world of their everyday existence, includingreal classrooms (Lave and Wenger 1991). In so doing, it situates the locus oflearning in the dialogic interactions that arise between socially constitutedindividuals engaged in activities which are co-constructed with other individualsrather than in the heads of solipsistic beings. Learning hinges not so much onrichness of input, but crucially on the choices made by individuals as responsibleagents with dispositions to think and act in certain ways rooted in their discursivehistories. Because of its insistence on the embeddedness of human activity, SCTallows us to observe learning in all of its fuzziness as it emerges from dialogicactivity. This perspective is quite distinct from waiting for learning to crystallizeinto transitory or permanent steady states of IL competence. SCT is also in tunewith the hermeneutic tradition adopted from the human sciences by currentdiscursive approaches to psychology and sociology; as such, it is removed fromthe nomological tradition and its objectification of individuals and search forcausality (cf. Polkinghorne 1988). Clearly, SCT is very much at the margins of


L2 research; perhaps this is even an appropriate place for it. There is epistemo-logical value in fostering a multiplicity of views, provided, of course, that weallow for the confrontation of the margin with the mainstream (Frawley 1993).

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adair-Hauck, B. and R. Donate 1992. Discourse perspectives on formal instruc-tion. Language Awareness. 1.73-90.

This article reports on the instructional discourse of two foreign languagehigh-school teachers with differing orientations to the classroom, onemonologic and one dialogic. The monologic teacher used self-directedrhetorical questions and meta-statements, allowed no opportunities forverbal interaction when giving linguistic explanations, and did not en-courage students to move beyond what was perceived to be their compe-tence. The dialogic teacher engaged her students in proleptic instruc-tion—the expert assesses the novices' current level of development and,from there, guides them through the process of completing activitieswhich they cannot do independently. In the process, both participants(expert and novice) come to acquire relevant knowledge of the other'sunderstanding of the activity and its outcome. Turn-taking is shared andnovices are challenged to push their prior abilities beyond their limits. Inthis way, even formal classroom instruction can take on a collectiveperspective, embodied in the evolving discourse relations between teacherand learners.

Adair-Hauck, B. and R. Donato. 1994. Foreign language explanations within theZone of Proximal Development. Canadian Modern Language Review.50.532-553.

This article reports on a microgenetic study of the communicative dia-logue between a teacher and a student in the ZPD as they engaged in theactivity of understanding a simple fairy tale in French. By analyzing theformal and semantic properties of the dialogue, the authors trace how thedyad co-constructs a ZPD and then moves from teacher-regulated tostudent-regulated interaction; that is, from distributed intermental activityto appropriated intramental activity. They conclude that learning withinthe ZPD is purposeful and contextualized, that explanations are co-constructed, and that skill-using precedes skill-getting.

Artigal, J. M. 1992. Some considerations on why a new language is acquired bybeing used. International Journal of Applied Linguistics. 2.221-240.


This article analyzes the mechanisms of meaning-building in teacher/student interactions. The author proposes that, in order to learn a lan-guage, one must use it without having competence. He then addressesthe issue of how this is, in fact, possible. He argues that to use a lan-guage one must first want to use it—an orientation grounded in a person'srelationships with other individuals. However, he cautions that thisdesire alone is not enough to allow for language use; learners have to beable to use the language. To resolve this seeming paradox, Artigalborrows Peirce's concept of shared indexical territory—the playing fieldon which linguistic signs serve as symbols for the construction of mean-ing. The teacher's task at the outset is jointly to construct with thestudents the indexical territory in which they can create meaning in alanguage they do not yet know. To attain greater proficiency in an L2,the learner must acquire the ability to share new semiotic territories withsomeone else. Initially, the territories must be regulated by the expert-other, who accepts most, but not all, of the responsibility for constructingthe territories; over time this expert-other cedes an ever-increasing shareof responsibility to the learner.

Brooks, F. and R. Donate 1994. Vygotskian approaches to understanding foreignlanguage learner discourse during communicative tasks. Hispania.77.262-274.

This article presents a reanalysis of speech data from eight pairs of third-year high school learners of Spanish who were engaged in two-wayproblem-solving tasks. The authors focus on different features of talkproduced by the learners during the tasks, including talk about the task,talk about the talk, and the use of LI talk. They conclude that encoding-decoding perspectives on interaction are inappropriate for capturing andunderstanding what the learners are attempting to accomplish during theface-to-face activity; or, in other words, not all speaking betweenclassroom learners in communicative tasks is communicative in intent.The discursive interactions reveal that learners attempt to control the taskby constructing it for themselves verbally as an activity and orientingthemselves to both the language and task demands as they understandthem. In this regard, metatalk in the LI is not to be ignored.

Foley, J. 1991a. A psycholinguistic framework for task-based approaches tolanguage teaching. Applied Linguistics. 12.62-75.

The author presents a principled rationale for task-based approaches to L2teaching based on the Vygotskian hypothesis of regulation. He thencompares propositional grammar (or functional/notional) approaches totask-based instruction. The former is characterized as either object- orother-regulatory to the extent that students are controlled by texts, exer-


cises, or teachers. Task-based learning, on the other hand, is seen as aunified system of communicative tasks which focus upon the sharing ofmeaning through spoken or written interaction, with self-regulationestablished as the goal of learning. Task-based learning serves as thebridge between what learners can do in their LI and their future abilitiesin the L2. Borrowing from the work of Prabhu, Foley claims that task-based L2 learning is an enabling rather than an equipping process; as anenabling process, it leads learners toward participation in other commu-nities without loss of their individuality or surrendering of self-regulation.

Lantolf, J. P. and M. K. Ahmed. 1989. Psycholinguistic perspectives on interlan-guage variation: A Vygotskyan analysis. In S. M. Gass, et al. (eds.)Variation in second language acquisition: Psycholinguistic issues.Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. 93-108.

This paper is a case study of the L2 performance of a single speakeracross three tasks: a picture narration, an interview, and a conversation.The authors found that the linguistic features of the speaker's perfor-mance varied across the three tasks, with the narration showing thehighest degree of accuracy in the L2 and the conversation revealing theleast convergence with the target language. However, when comparingthe interview to the conversation, the authors discovered that while thespeaker's accuracy declined from the interview to the conversation, thespeaker asserted a greater degree of control over the conversationalproperties of the interaction between himself and the researcher. Thisgreater control was indicated by topic shifts and turn-taking patterns aswell as significantly increased amounts of speech produced on each turn.Lantolf and Ahmed explain this variation in terms of regulation. In theinterview, the learner's performance was more accurate because the locusof control was situated in the researcher/interlocutor; in the conversation,on a topic of intense interest to the learner, control shifted to the learner,but the only way he was able to maintain his self-regulation was togenerate language that was inaccurate in terms of its formal properties.

Lantolf, J. P. and G. Appel (eds.) 1994. Vygotskian approaches to second lan-guage research. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

This is the first collection of sociocultural studies on SLA published inNorth America. The volume contains nine papers organized according tothree general topics: L2 learning in the ZPD, L2 private speech, andactivity theory. It also contains a lengthy introductory discussion of thedevelopment of sociocultural theory.


Schinke-Llano, L. 1993. On the value of a Vygotskian framework for SLA theoryand research. Language Learning. 43.121-129.

The author argues that Vygotskian psycholinguistic theory is not onlycompatible with current SLA theory and theory building, but also ex-tremely useful as a productive research paradigm. The author presents anoverview of several Vygotskian concepts that she finds to be particularlyrelevant for SLA research, whether the focus is on children or adults.These concepts include the interface between language and thought; thesocial development of language acquisition and concept formation arisingfrom joint problem-solving activities; the zone of proximal development;learning as movement from other- to self-regulation; and the function ofprivate speech. She then briefly reviews selected L2 studies whichaddress each of the concepts and concludes with recommendations forfuture research. Her recommendations include work on 1) the relation-ship between learner errors and task control; 2) communication strategiesas regulation; 3) the transition of cultural knowledge in native and non-native speaker interactions; 4) language loss; and 5) the formation ofmediational strategies in bilingual education programs.

UNANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ahmed, M. K. 1994. Speaking as cognitive regulation: A Vygotskian perspectiveon dialogic communication. In J. P. Lantolf and G. Appel (eds.)Vygotskian approaches to second language research. Norwood, NJ:Ablex. 157-172.

Aljaafreh, A. and J. P. Lantolf. 1994. Negative feedback as regulation andsecond language learning in the Zone of Proximal Development. TheModern Language Journal. 78.4.465-483. [Special issue on socioculturaltheory and L2 learning].

Appel, G. and J. P. Lantolf. 1994. Speaking as mediation: A study of LI and L2text recall tasks. The Modern Language Journal. 78.4.437-452. [Specialissue on sociocultural theory and L2 learning.]

Artigal, J. M. 1993. The L2 kindergarten teacher as a territory maker. In J. E.Alatis (ed.) Strategic interaction and language acquisition: Theory,practice, and research. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.452-468. [Georgetown University Round Table on Languages andLinguistics 1993.]

Berk, L. E. and R. M. Diaz (eds.) 1992. Private speech: From social interactionto self-regulation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Coughlan, P. and P. A. Duff. 1994. Same task, different activities: Analysis of aSLA task from an Activity Theory perspective. In J. P. Lantolf and G.


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