talking yourself into spanish: intrapersonal communication and second language learning

Talking Yourself into Spanish: Intrapersonal Communication and Second Language LearningAuthor(s): James P. Lantolf and María-del-Carmen YáñezSource: Hispania, Vol. 86, No. 1 (Mar., 2003), pp. 97-109Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and PortugueseStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20062818 .

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Applied Linguistics Prepared by Joseph Collentine

Talking Yourself into Spanish: Intrapersonal Communication and Second Language Learning

James P. Lantolf and Mar?a-del-Carmen Y??ez

The Pennsylvania State University

Abstract:: An empirically-supported theoretical argument is made for the relevance of private speech, or intrapersonal

communication, in the internalization of an L2. We propose that the process is parallel to that attested in children

learning their LI. In internalization learners imitate the linguistic affordances made available by the classroom

community. Imitation, in the theoretical perspective that informs the study, is not mimicking; rather it is a uniquely human, and potentially transformative, process in which the individual constructs his or her unique psychological

understanding of the new language. We analyze a data set taken from recordings of the private speech of an adult

classroom learner of Spanish. The analysis shows that learners are cognitively active participants in classroom

communities even when they are not engaged in overt social interaction. It also shows that learners focus on aspects of

the L2 that do not necessarily coincide with the teacher's instructional goal.

Key Words: private speech, internalization, imitation, classroom learning, sociocultural theory, affordances, communication

1.0 Introduction

Lantolf (2000), argues that communication with the self, or what in sociocultural theory is

termed private, and inner, speech, is the means through which learners actively

develop the repertoire of symbolic artifacts (i. e., language) which they draw on

when engaging in communicative activities (verbal and visual) in the L2. The key to this process,

according to Lantolf, resides in internalization. On this account, people "talk themselves" into a

second language. At the core of this claim resides the assumption that humans are agents who come to control, or regulate, their brains rather than the other way around, as some theories would have it. As Vygotsky put it: "/ only want to say ... that without man [sic] (=operator) as a whole the activity of his apparatus (brain) cannot be explained, that man controls his brain and not the brain the man

" (Yaroshevsky 1989,230). In this paper, we will present evidence of intrapersonal

communication from a classroom learner of Spanish as an L2 and will consider its implications for learning. Before so doing, however, we will briefly review the theoretical arguments that sustain the relevance of private speech for language learning.

2.0 Intrapersonal Communication and Development

Virtually from its inception as a science, psychology (and to a considerable degree, linguistics), was plagued by the Cartesian mind/world, dualism. Consequently, almost from its

inception, psychology split into two opposing camps: one asserted that the only legitimate domain of psychological research was "internal mental activity," concentrated on "innate competence," and either ignored completely or considered to be of secondary importance "the problem of how the social and physical context influences individuals' mental processes" (Wertsch and Stone

1985, 162); the other held that mental activity could only be studied through observation of the

Lantolf, James P. and Mar?a-del-Carmen Y?ftez

"Talking Yourself into Spanish: Intrapersonal Communication and Second Language Learning"

Hispania 86.1 (March 2003): 97-109



98 Hispania 86 March 2003

external behavior of the organism. The second of the two branches of psychology has been largely abandoned, while the first continues to flourish as cognitive psychology?a psychology that

views humans as autonomous processing devices. Vygotsky's project was aimed at overcoming the Cartesian dualism and constructing a unified psychology. The cornerstone of Vygotsky's

project was his contention that the human mind, unlike other minds, is mediated, or regulated, by the symbolic artifacts created by the cultures in which we reside. In this view, specifically human

ways of thinking and learning arise when our natural, or biologically endowed brains, encounter

culturally-constructed symbolic and material artifacts. The most powerful and pervasive of these

artifacts, according to Vygotsky, is human language (see especially chapters 1 & 2 in Vygotsky,

1999). For Vygotsky, it is possible then to observe human mental activity as it is being formed in

externally situated practical activity. This perspective overcomes the mind/world dualism by

establishing a necessary link between external and internal activity; or between speaking (and

writing) and thinking. The process through which the external becomes the internal is

internalization. As Frawley (1997, 96) notes, "higher thought is instrumental and involves the

deferral and recasting of the external world, never its direct apprehension in its own terms."

Internalization, as understood here, describes potentially transformative activity whereby individuals use symbols tools (e.g., language activity) to build systems of meaning (e. g., culture)

from affordances which are social in origin.

2.1 Internalization

Internalization is "the essential element in the formation of a higher mental function"

(Kozulin 1990, 116) serving as "a bridge between external and internal activity" (Zinchenko

1985, 106). Internalization is marked by the "abbreviation of interactive social speech into

audible speech to oneself, or private speech and ultimately silent speech for oneself, or inner

speech. Social dialogue condenses into a private dialogue for thinking" (Frawley 1997, 95). As

speech moves from social to private to inner, it becomes increasing elliptical in form and

condensed in meaning. Private speech is potentially understandable to someone "eaves

dropping." But inner speech, if it were somehow to be audibly projected, because of its formal and

semantic condensation, would be "incomprehensible to a listener" (Dance 1994, 200). Once

private speech goes underground as inner speech, it does not necessarily remain there

permanently, but can, in cases of particular psychological challenges (e.g., learning a language),

reemerge as private speech (see Frawley and Lantolf 1985 on reaccessing earlier forms of

development). As social speech grows inward, it carries with it traces of our mediated experiences in

interpersonal encounters with members of our cultural community, and thus "the social nature of

people comes to be their psychological nature as well" (Luria 1979,45). Daniel Dennett (1998,

292), a leader of cognitive science, writes concerning self-directed speech: "We refine our

resources by incessant rehearsal and tinkering, turning our brains (and all associated peripheral

gear we acquire) into a huge structured network of competencies. In our own case, the principle

components of this technology for brain manipulation are words, and no evidence yet unearthed

shows that any other animal is capable of doing anything like what we do with our words." Clark

(1998, 178), also an important figure in cognitive science, argues that our public language is

ideally suited to be co-opted for intrapersonal functions. In interpersonal communication we lay

open to inspection, critique, and modification ideas, concepts, problems, etc. In intrapersonal communication we do something similar, essentially talking ourselves into development

(Yingling 1994).

2.1.1 Imitation and Transformation

According to Vygotsky, internalization is fundamentally a transformative rather than a

replicative process. Indeed, as Frawley (1997, 94) indicates, "the dynamic and developmental



Intrapersonal Communication and Second Language Learning 99

character of Vygotsky's original Russian term vrashchivanie, or 'ingrowing' is diluted by the

English translation, 'internalization;' what is more, the Russian term strongly implies the

emergence of 'active, nurturing transformation of externals into personally meaningful experience'" (ibid.). If internalization were merely a transferring to the internal psychological plane activity from the external social plane, it would be a meaningless construct (Zinchenko 1985, 106). Internalization is the very process through which the "internal plane is formed" (Leontiev 1978, 110).

As odd as it may appear, internalization occurs as the person attempts to imitate privately processes that unfold socially. According to Newman and Holzman (1993, 151) imitation "is a

critically important developmental activity because it is the chief means by which in early childhood human beings are related to as other than, and in advance of, who they are." Imitation is aimed at the future, not at copying the past. It is development because "something new is created

out of saying or doing 'the same thing'" (ibid.). According to Tomasello (1999) imitation, unlike

exposure, stimulus enhancement, mimicking and emulation, is a uniquely human form of cultural transmission. In stimulus enhancement, "an adult picks up an object and does something with it,

which makes infants more interested in touching and manipulating that object as well"

(Tomasello 1999,81). In imitative learning, "the goal or intention of the demonstrator is a central

part of what they perceive, and indeed the goal is understood as something separate from the various behavioral means that may be used to accomplish it" (Tomasello 1999,30). Importantly, imitative learning of symbolic artifacts frequently occurs in symbolic play wherein the child

decouples "the intentional affordances from their associated objects and artifacts so that they may be interchanged and used with 'inappropriate' objects playfully" (Tomasello 1999, 85). In

playing with language, the child decouples language from its normal communicative function where attention is on purpose and focuses attention instead on the means (i.e., the language forms) (Cazden 1976, 606). We return to the notion of playing with language below.

In discussing imitation in child language, Lightbown and Spada (1993) view it as a process linked to traditional behaviorist views of language learning, asserting that while imitation, defined as "word for word repetition of all or part of someone else's utterance" (2), is attested among children, most children imitate less than 10% of what they hear around them. Importantly, however, "children's imitation is selective and based on what they are currently learning" (3). From Lightbown and Spada's perspective, imitation thus equates to mimicking. Ohta (2001,65), discussing adult learners' private speech in a Japanese FL classroom, also characterizes imitation as "repetition." The point here is that imitation, as a uniquely human activity, entails a transformative potential, and hence implies agency and intentionality, a feature missing from the usual interpretation of repetition. Many phenomena in nature repeat in the clear absence of agency and intentionality (Thorne, personal communication, April 2001), e.g., waves breaking on a

beach, the earth orbiting around the sun, the change in seasons, etc. The distinction between

repetition and imitation is basic to understanding the process through which human mental

capacity is formed from the outside in. Examples (1) and (2) below, borrowed from Lightbown and Spada (1993), manifest what we consider imitative activity, in the social rather than the

private domain. Lightbown and Spada do not concur, "since the forms created by the child were never produced by adults (7)."

(1) David (3 years, 11 months) Mother: Get undressed (after many repetitions) David: I'm getting undressed.

I'm getting on dressed, (italics in original) I'm getting on dressed.

I'm getting off dressed, (italics in original)

(2) At a 12th birthday party, adults propose several toasts with grape juice, as in the following utterance: Father: I'd like to propose a toast

Following a period of time during which no toasting was going on, David (5 years, 1 month) utters: David: I'd like to propose a piece of bread.



100 Hispania 86 March 2003 The adults not realizing that David was serious began to laugh, "which sent David slinking from the table."

(Lightbown & Spada, 1993: 6)

From our perspective the novel forms produced by the children are the consequence of

imitation, as construed by Vygotsky and Tomasello. Imitation, in this sense, exhibits a

recombinatory aspect that may include imitating words or even morphemes, but juxtaposing them in ways that are novel, experimental, purposeful, and unique.

Weir ( 1962) and Kuczaj ( 1982,1983) document patterns similar to those exhibited in ( 1 ) and

(2) in the language play, both social and private, produced by children in their LI. In (3), taken

from Kuczaj (1982, 200), a 29-month-old child manipulates an utterance produced by his/her

mother (gender of child not indicated), while in (4), the same child experiments with a self

generated utterance:

(3) Mother: Please get down

Child: Get down and stay down

(4) Child: That burns. That burns I touch it

Kuczaj (1983,225) distinguishes between imitation, which occurs when a child repeats "at

least part of another's preceding utterance" and repetition, which happens when "children repeat "at least part of their own preceding utterance." Thus, for Kuczaj, neither concept necessarily entails an exact copy of a previous utterance, and although he distinguishes imitation and

repetition on the basis of source, which we do not, his interpretation of the process seems closer

to ours than to Lightbown and Spada. Lantolf (1997), using a self-report instrument, found that adult L2 learners attest that they

also engage in similar activity, but privately rather than socially. Unfortunately, since this study was based on a questionnaire, it was impossible to investigate specific features of the adult

learners' language focused private speech. Presently, we will consider some examples from an

adult learner of the language. We believe that it is the play, or experimental, function of private speech that occurs during

imitative activity which facilitates L2 learning and may even be L2 learning "in flight," to borrow

a favorite expression of Vygotsky's. Play, Vygotsky argues, is not an "accidental whim, apastime, but an important vital necessity" (1997, 88). He notes that besides "useless and unnecessary

movements," play entails movements linked with future activity. To quote Vygotsky:

one could say that nearly all of our most fundamental and most characteristic reactions are created and develop in

the course of the games we play as children. It is this which is the meaning of the element ofimitation in children's

games; the child deliberately copies and assimilates what he sees in adults, thereby learning about relationships, and develops his earlier instincts, instincts that he will have need for in his future activity. (Vygotsky 1997, 89)

Play then entails imitation of what children in their everyday life are not yet capable of, as

when they play at being mommy and daddy. More than a way of having fun, it involves opening

up a Zone of Proximal Development wherein children behave beyond their current level of ability

(Vygotsky 1978). Although imitation and play represent the primary form of development among children,

adults exhibit similar types of behavior which is unsurprising, given the principle of continuous

access (see Frawley and Lantolf, 1985), that holds that as humans develop from children into

adults we do not leave behind earlier forms of learning and development but are able to reaccess

cognitive processes we engaged in during our ontogenesis into adult life. Thus, while adults are

capable of cognitive activities beyond those of children, we have available the same processes that children deploy, including imitation and play.

2.1.2 Cognitive Adaptation

Vocate (1994) argues that, as with social talk, self-talk is dialogic, but instead of an "I"

talking to a "You," private speech entails an "I" that makes choices on what to talk about and a




"Me" that interprets and critiques these choices. The interaction between I and Me "allows us to

adapt ourselves mentally, physically, or both before we think or act further" (Vocate 1994, 12). The selection and interpretation process carried out jointly by I and Me "is accompanied by

entropie reduction and change" because "the adaptation process that increases the organization of

the organism requires adjustments in either the individual, or the items to be ingested [i.e.,

internalized], or both" (Vocate 1994, 12). Cognitive adaptation, according to Vocate (12), is common in numerous human interactional activities, including the instructional process. While

"concepts and principles have to be restructured to facilitate internalization by the student" and

this is done "by simplifying relationships and using language that the student can understand,"

conversely "the student too must adjust (subroutine of accommodation) by remaining open minded and by attempting to understand the material" (12). Hence, cognitive adaptation entails two Piagetian subroutines: assimilation and accommodation. Cognitive adaptation, for Vocate, can also occur through intrapersonal communication, but in this case, instead of interaction

between teacher and student, the interaction is between the I and the Me. This means that people are capable of mediating their own learning on the intrapersonal level, but do so in ways reflecting their interpersonal experiences as sanctioned by their sociocultural environment (e.g., the values and forms of knowledge prescribed in a particular setting).

2.1.2.1 Abduction

Although cognitive adaptation is a very appealing notion, we believe that because it is defined as a process in which the individual either assimilates or accommodates to the affordances available in the environment (see van Lier 2000), it fails to capture adequately "the

dynamic tension between the social and the individual" that is fundamental to internalization

(John-Steiner and Meehan 2000,35). As Kozulin (1990,268) observes, "in the act of thinking the

object is constantly assimilated by thought, only to require a moment later an accommodation on

its part." Therefore we believe that a more appropriate characterization of what (potentially) happens during internalization is as dialectical synthesis. Lantolf (1997), borrowing from

MacWhinney's (1985) competition model, outlines how such a process might function in

language learning. Briefly, dialectical synthesis?a tripartite process?entails following: a thesis

(what the person assumes to true), an antithesis (a feature of the world which contradicts the

assumption and which the person somehow detects), and a synthesis (the person's attempt to deal with and overcome the contradiction). Although the process, as Vocate argues in her cognitive adaptation model, can occur socially or individually, we hold that even the individual process has its roots in interactions with others. Importantly, not all syntheses, e.g., in language learning, move in the desired direction, assuming that this direction is toward some adult native norm. Much

depends on the motive and goal of the individual and on the nature of the affordances, including those arising from teachers, peers, and proficient members of the speech community, made available to the person.

Child language learners, whether LI or L2, appear much more transformative in their

syntheses than adult learners, notably adults in classroom settings. Presumably this happens because children (and perhaps untutored adult learners) are more likely to engage in abductive inference in working toward a synthesis than are tutored adults, who more likely prefer inductive

synthesis. As most readers will be familiar with deductive (reasoning from rule through case to

result) and inductive (reasoning from case through result to rule) inference, we forego further discussion of these processes. Abduction, however, is probably less familiar and therefore calls for clarification. According to C. S. Peirce (1992, 189), in addition to inductive inference, synthesis can be and usually is achieved through what he calls hypothesis or abduction. Abduction infers the case from the rule and the result, as in the following example provided by Peirce: "Rule

?All of the beans from this bag are white. Result? These beans are white. Case ? These beans are from this bag" (188). Obviously, it may or may not be true that the beans are from the bag in

question; they could also be from some other bag. As Peirce notes, we often rely on hypothesis




when we encounter a "curious circumstance ... or where we find that in certain respects two

objects have a strong resemblance, and infer that they resemble one another strongly in other

respects" (Peirce 1992,189). Abduction does not result in a conclusion that we know to be true; rather it inclines us to surmise that the conclusion may be so (189). Said differently, abduction is a leap of imagination (Prawat 1999,270) that "infers very frequently a fact not capable of direct observation" (Peirce 1992,198); "it is extremely fallible..., but people go on using it even though it gives correct results only part of the time" (Anttila 1972,197). Most importantly, abduction "is

the idea of putting together what we never thought of connecting before," and therefore, unlike

deduction or induction, "introduces a new idea" (Anttila 1972, 197). With regard to internalization and language learning, deductive reasoning would occur under

the influence of an already-established rule (right or wrong), probably originating in a learner's

LI, the developing L2 system or linguistic universals. Inductive synthesis is exemplified by a

learner who reasons that all past-tense forms in English are formed with the suffix -ed, based on

the regular, though not exclusive, affiliation of this suffix past tense in the affordances from the environment. As abduction is more innovative than induction, one cannot determine with any reasonable certainty when and how it will be deployed by a learner. We believe that examples (1) and (2) above nicely illustrate abductive reasoning by a child, showing attempts to experiment

with, and perhaps push the adults' models beyond the "norm." Of course, for the child, at this

stage, the idea of norm has not yet crystallized, allowing for more free-wheeling play with the

language than generally found with adults (poets aside). To understand why this difference between adult and child learners might arise, consider that

adults, especially those enrolled in university courses, have spent much time in the educational

environment, which typically values "the right answer" over freewheeling experimentation and

knowledge creation. This applies especially to foreign and second-language classrooms, where

the native-speaker model has had a profound impact on teaching and assessment outcomes.

Adults have been saturated with expectations that they should produce the right answer, and

failure to do so is likely to result in disciplinary action by those empowered to oversee learning

(e.g., low exam scores and course grades). As Bakhtin argued, "authoritative discourse," easily the dominant mode in the institutional setting we call school, "demands that we acknowledge it, that we make it our own; it binds us, quite independent of any power it might have to persuade us

internally; we encounter it with its authority fused to it... it demands our unconditional alle

giance" and "allows no play with its borders, no gradual and flexible transitions, no spontaneously creative stylizing variants" (cited in Wertsch 1991, 78; see also Emerson 1983). Hence, given their history with authoritative language, adults are less likely, even privately, to experiment with

language in the freewheeling way attested among children still in the process of inculcation into

the culture of "correct answers," who therefore still have room for experimentation. Future

researchers must determine if adult L2 learners outside classroom settings manifest greater

experimentation in their imitative patterns than do their institutionalized counterparts.

3.0 Private Speech in L2

Here we consider samples of private speech obtained from child and adult L2 learners. The

child data, taken from Savill-Troike (1988) who studies a group of ESL children, is presented here

primarily for comparison with the Spanish adult L2 data.

3.1 Children

Perhaps the most robust study to date on intrapersonal communication in L2 learning is

reported on by Saville-Troike (1988). The study focused on nine Chinese, Korean and Japanese LI children learning ESL in a North American school setting. Audio- and videotaping the child

ren over a six-month period, Saville-Troike found that six children manifested varied language

learning strategies in their private speech: repetition of others' utterances; recall and practice;




creation of novel forms; expansion and substitution practice; rehearsal for interpersonal com

munication. The criteria for identifying utterances as private speech were: lack of eye contact

while speaking; apparent lack of expectation of response; reduced volume of the utterance

(Saville-Troike 1988, 573). A frequent pattern among the children was imitation of utterances produced by their teachers

and their native-English-speaking classmates. Example (5) below is taken from a three-year-old child and example (6) is from a four-year-old.

(5) Three-year-old A. Peer: I want you to ride the bike.

Child 1: Bike. B. Teacher: I need you to walk?

Child 1 : Walk? Walk? Walk? Walk? (6) Four-year-old

A. Teacher: You need to be down here and waiting too.

Child 2: Waiting too.

B. Teacher: What's happened there, (sic) Child 2: What's happened there.

(Saville-Troike 1988, 578)

Examples (5A and B) and (6A) evince Slobin's learning principle: pay attention to the ends of utterances (Saville-Troike 1988, 578). The repetition in (6B), however, produced by an older

child, entails the teacher's entire utterance. These repetitions appear similar to repetitions documented in the SLA negotiation literature, where learners repeat part or all of an interlocutor's

previous utterance. However, these learners' repetitions are not intended as an interpersonal communicative move, but rather have an intrapersonal orientation. That is, the children failed to establish eye-contact with their interlocutor, gave no signs of an anticipated response, and reduced volume. Admittedly, it is difficult to determine precisely which aspects of language the children were attending to and Saville-Troike provides no information in this regard, but does note that both children imitate intonation contour, s is especially clear in (6B).

In examples (7) and (8) the child experiments with English morphology:

(7) Four-year-old Child 2: Walking, walking, walk. Walking, walking, walk.

(Chanted while walking) Child 2: Quick. Quick, quick. Quickly. Quick. Child 2: Bathroom. Bath

(8) Three-year-old Teacher: Let's go outside

Child 2: Out. Outside


In (7) the child manipulates participles and verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and compounds. We aren't told if these utterances arose immediately after the child heard utterances containing the

structures produced by someone else, or whether, as work in LI research has shown (Kuczaj 1983), the child spontaneously produced the utterances from something stored away for later

experimentation. Regardless, we believe that the analysis underlying the child's private speech signals that the structures are clearly within the child's ZPD. Example (8) is intriguing because the child responds to the teacher's suggestion, not with an appropriate conversational turn, but with a morphological decomposition of a segment of her utterance.

In example (9), Child 2 makes an inappropriate substitution in the teacher's utterance:

(9) Four-year-old Teacher: You guys go brush your teeth. And wipe your hands on the towel. Child 2: Wipe your hand. Wipe your teeth.


As in the previous example, the child responds to the teacher's utterance with what from a




conversational perspective must be considered as an inappropriate move. Keep in mind, however, that the child's utterance is not intended to be such a move, since it has an intra- rather than inter

personal function. The child attempts to assimilate one pattern into another and ends up producing what looks like a violation of an L2 selectional restriction, but we believe this evinces

transformative imitation whereby the child creates new possibilities based on the affordances

made available by his environment. In terms of cognitive adaptation, it represents an instance of

assimilation. Under some circumstances it could be appropriate in English to say "wipe your

teeth," as one might perhaps do to clean off a bit of leftover lettuce! An additional example of

assimilation occurs in the child's production of the singular "hand" instead of the original "hands"

uttered by the teacher. The child's LI is Chinese, which does not morphologically mark plurals;

apparently in this case, the English plural is assimilated into an interlanguage system dominated

by the LI, at least for plural marking.

3.2 Adult Learner of Spanish

It is difficult to collect robust samples of private speech from adult language learners, due

partly to adults' higher self-awareness as compared to children. As Vygotsky (1987) notes, children generally lack a fully-developed sense of self as distinct from social others. The data

presented below were obtained over a two-week period in which we recorded on a daily basis the

private speech of a single university student, who volunteered to record her classroom language

production. We informed the volunteer that we were interested in collecting samples of Spanish that a typical classroom learner of the language would generate at the intermediate (fourth

semester) level. We did not inform the student that we were specifically interested in her private

speech production. In classifying performance as private or social, we rely on criteria developed in Saville-Troike's study, including whether the speech was produced as a whisper or with low

volume, especially if the class was focused on an activity other than what appeared to be the topic of the private speech, or if the instructor was attending to or interacting with another student.

The initial example from the Spanish learner, S, comes from an activity wherein a different

student questions the teacher concerning use of the preposition de "of." (Students other than S are

referenced as C, the teacher as T).

(10) C: Would it be puedo ver de mi ventana ?

S: Puedo ver

T: Desde mi ventana.

As C asks the question about the appropriate preposition to use to mean "from" S repeats

silently to herself puedo ver, eliminating the preposition, which is the focus of attention for C and

T. Instead, S seems to be concerned with how inflection works with modals. This is supported by what transpires in (11) in which T responds to S's question about how to say "overlook" in

Spanish.

(11) T: Dejar pasar S: Dejar ... pasar

Here S repeats slowly with low volume the instructor's response, almost as if she were writing while speaking. Following a pause, S then asks the instructor if both words are verbs and if only the first of the pair is inflected. Somewhat later in the same lesson, S asks T how to correctly say the full clause "if the details are overlooked," to which T responds:

(12) T: Si se dejan pasar los detalles ... for some reason sounds better after.

S: Los detalles. OK. Gracias

Se, se dejan

S repeats los detalles softly and quickly and then thanks the instructor. She then proceeds to

softly repeat the portion of the clause containing the so-called "reflexive passive" construction,




which is equivalent to the impersonal passive in English. S comments to herself that "we don't

have an agent in 'details are overlooked'" and "so we can use it with se rather than regular passive voice." Clearly, she struggles learning the difference between the true passive and the so-called

se-passive . The struggle continues in (13), as students engaged in a multiple-choice activity

requiring them to select the correct passive form from among four options to complete the

sentence El representante de la oposici?n dijo que_con desenlace de la situaci?n.

(13) C: El representante de la oposici?n se ... satisfac?ante ... ?

S:&, ...Oh!

In the activity S fails to realize that C has produced an incorrect response and begins to quietly

repeat it to herself. However, before she can do so, T interrupts and provides the correct answer,

fue satisfecho using the true passive instead of the se-passive. This surprises S as signaled by her

expletive "Oh."

As the lesson on passives continues, S focuses exclusively on the correct form of the past

participle, as seen in (14) and (15) in which T provides prompts in the active voice and asks the

students to convert them to passives. In true passives, Spanish requires gender and number

agreement between the participle and the passivized subject.

(14) T: Los rel?mpagos encendieron los ?rboles.

C: Los ?rboles fueron encendidos por los rel?mpagos. S: Encendidos

Here S repeats softly only the past participle, stressing the final segments in order to focus on

the agreement features.

(15) T: Felipe devolver? el regalo. C: El regalo ser? * devolvido por Felipe.

T: Only it's irregular. Devuelto. Devuelto.

S: Devuelto.

Here C incorrectly regularizes the past participle of the verb devolver instead of the correct

irregular form. T corrects the error and S, silently repeats to herself only the participle portion of the utterance.

At one point, S relies on English as a way of telling herself which Spanish preposition is

required in the true passive. Initially, in (16) S simultaneously and privately repeats the correct

preposition required as she works with her partner to jointly construct a sentence.

(16) C: [addressing the teacher] And we wanna say las monta?as est?n cubiertas ... *por nieve S: De, de [simultaneously providing along with the instructor, but in a low voice, the correct preposition]

Student C apparently confuses the construction in which the past participle cubiertas functions as an adjective with the true passive construction, not realizing that the verb estar, which occurs with descriptive adjectives, and not ser "to be" required in the passive. S clearly seems to understand the construction. However, she then overgeneralizes the preposition from this construction to constructions with the true passive, as in (17), whereupon the instructor

unsuccessfully prompts S to respond with the appropriate preposition.

(17) T: Mi pintura favorita ...

S: Fue pintada *de Monet ?

T: Fue pintada ... ?

S: *De Monet ?

T: Por ...

S: Por, no de (privately, while overlapping T's correction) T: Mi pintura favorita fue pintada por Monet.

S: [while T moves on to work with other students] From, from, from

Notwithstanding difficulty determining the intent of S's whispered repetition of the English




preposition, we believe that she is telling herself that Spanish de means "from" in English in order not to continue confusing it withpor. This might enable her to establish a clear separation between

the true passive in which the agentive phrase is introduced withpor. Interestingly, in the previous sentence ( 16) the appropriate English equivalent de would not be "from" but "with" or even "by,"

which was no doubt the source of confusion in the first place. Instructing herself that de can be

rendered as "by" in English, at least on some occasions, would have complicated matters for S.

The most frequent equivalent of de, the one most often stressed instructionally, is "from," making it unsurprising that S opts for this equivalent to help keep things straight.

In the next example, the instructor works with the entire class on an exercise requiring students to convert active sentences into se-passive constructions.

(18) T: M?s autos fueron vendidos el a?o pasado. Cl: Se vende m?s autos.

T: Se what ?

C2: Se vendieron.

S: Vendieron ... I knew it.

Here S realizes immediately that what the Cl says is incorrect and waits for the correct

response to emerge, as happens when C2 responds to T's leading question. Almost immediately, she quietly repeats the correct verb form, telling herself that she was correct. This important

episode allows us to infer that learners are actively involved in the classroom community even

when they are not engaged in overt social interaction. Furthermore, S's evaluative metacomment

"I knew it" reveals beliefs about what is known. If S really "knew it," why didn't she respond to

the teacher's prompt socially? We believe she wasn't really sure that she knew and needed

confirmation from an external source that she did. Once this was provided by C2, she could

confirm for herself that her assumption was indeed accurate.

In ( 19), taken from the same activity on se-passives, T is working with another student on the

correct way to render a se-passive sentence.

(19) T: Had been written and sent

C: Se hab?an escrito y mandado.

S: So it's se had been

Here S clearly focuses on the problematic se and repeats only this segment in Spanish,

switching to English to produce the complex verb construction. This strategy brings the Spanish

segment into much clearer focus than if S had produced the entire string in Spanish. In the final example (20), we observe S talking to herself about the correct verb form to use

as she carries out an other exercise on the passive.

(20) S: I need to change, I need to change fue ... ser?a

S: [20-second pause]

Imperfecto [whispered]

In writing a composition, S has problems deciding on the imperfect form of ser. She has

already written the preterit form, but recognizes that this is not correct the form and sets out to

change it. However, she appears unsure of the correct form and begins to run through various

possibilities, the initial one being the conditional. Apparently, she cannot decide on the

appropriate verb form but is able to tell herself in metalanguage that the form she needs is the

imperfecto. Hence, she knows the correct form, but at the metalevel only. Should this be

considered part of her internal knowledge of Spanish? We believe that it should be, since it can

guide her future discovery of the appropriate morphology.

4.0 Discussion and Conclusion

If we agree that the private speech produced by the Spanish learner is not an anomaly, it




appears that not only are learners active in directing their own learning, but they also have an

agenda for which aspects of the language to focus on-an agenda which may or may not coincide

with their teacher's. Ohta (2001, 71-72) affirms that they "grab on to bits of language for their

own personal manipulation and use." Surely, this cannot be for the purpose of filling time! Our

theoretical argument is that private speech serves the function of internalizing specific features of

the new language. Thus, as sociocultural theory proposes, learners pay attention to those

properties of the language that are within their zone of proximal development. We realize, of

course, that not all private speech necessarily serves language learning. Sometimes learners

deploy intrapersonal communication, as Ohta (2001) documents, to rehearse future utterances, an

activity which may or may not assist learning. Or, as with S above, private speech may help

prepare for learning, for example by explicitly naming the tense-aspect needed, "imperfecto," without knowing the necessary grammatical form. Private speech, in itself, can serve multiple functions, including guiding oneself through complex cognitive and emotional tasks (see Frawley and Lantolf, 1985; Sokolov, 1972; and Diaz and Berk, 1992).

Gillette (1994), in her study of successful and unsuccessful language learners, notes that

unsuccessful learners report that they rarely if ever attempt to repeat or manipulate L2 forms

privately (see also Lantolf 1997). If imitation of available affordances in private speech, is, as

argued here, internalization at work, it should surprise no one that some individuals simply do not

produce such self-communication since they are not trying to learn the language. However, we

cannot assume that production of private speech alone guarantees appropriate learning outcomes.

Much depends on the quality of the private speech. Some learners may produce considerable self

communication, transforming patterns in ways that are unacceptable when measured against some external norm (e.g., a textbook, a syllabus, an examination, or a native speech community).

We realize that for some this may be more a matter of ideology than neutral pedagogical practice, further discussion of which is beyond the scope of our study. Nevertheless, it is worth considering

ways for teachers to access learners' private speech, which may enable them to develop more

appropriate ways of helping individual learners than if they only attend to social language. This is an important area for future research, with potential to help teachers understand how

and why individual learners react as they do to their pedagogical efforts. From a theoretical

perspective, a close analysis of learner's language-focused private speech ought to inform our

understanding of which features available in their environments learners attend to and it should

also provide information on how learners operate on these features as they attempt to internalize

them.

A distinguishing feature of adult private speech in classroom settings is the appearance of

metalanguage, which, to our knowledge, has not been attested in any of the child private speech literature. As Vygotsky (1987,221) contends, one's native and any (schooled) foreign language

develop in opposite directions, as "the development of the native language begins with free and

spontaneous use of speech and ends with conscious awareness and mastery of the speech forms.

In contrast, the development of the foreign language begins with conscious awareness and

volitional mastery of language and culminates in free, spontaneous speech. The two

developmental processes move in opposite directions." Thus when language is presented to

classroom learners, especially university-level adults, as an object to be talked about and

analyzed, it seems logical that they also internalize the metalanguage used in the classroom

community. Although this is speculation, perhaps the presence of metalanguage in the private

speech of adult classroom learners contributes to their being less transformative (i.e., less likely to use abductive inference) than are children, who have not yet succumbed to the homogenizing influence of the educational setting.

Finally, and most importantly, there is need for future research to focus on establishing a link

between private and social speech among L2 learners, along the lines demonstrated in Saville

Troike's study, which showed that the aspects of the L2 initially found in children's private speech

eventually appeared in their spontaneous social speech when the children interacted with their

teacher and classmates in English. This provides a strong indication that intrapersonal




communication indeed results in internalization and language development.

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talking yourself into spanish: intrapersonal communication and second language learning

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