Bil Ed 593
Educating Teachers about Second
Language Learners
Spring 1999
Hokona 373
Thursday -- 4:00-6:30 p.m.
CLASS SUMMARIES
January 29th
Subject: TTE SESSION 2
Before opening the session , the instructor pointed out the need to
have somebody write the minutes of the session for those who went
to Denver conference.
Bethany volunteered for that.
TOPIC OF THE SESSION: LANGUAGE ACQUISITION.
FOCUS OF THE SESSION : HICKMANN'S ARTICLE
" Psychosocial Aspects of Language acquisition"
The instructor opens the session with a question on the meaning of
" zero anaphors "(cf p.24 Paragraph 3). The phrase itself sounds
paradoxical because an anaphor is a referential form that relates
a linguistic element to another element in prior linguistic
context. In other words, an anaphor has a backward pointing.So what
do we understand by " zero anaphor" ? The phrase is used in studies
about child referential forms during language acquisition to refer
to a referent which is not explicitly expressed in the discourse
but is presupposed.
The next point discussed was a question that Karen asked about
Piaget's position today. In other words, Is Piaget still popular as
he was when she was in High school/college? Her question took the whole
class into the focus of the article i.e. the contrast between
Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories about child language development
from the psychosocial viewpoint. Piaget's work has been much
influential for a long time . There is a general recognition of
Piaget's work over Vygotsky's. Two main reasons explain that
difference:
The first reason is that Piaget's work derived from Ferdinand de
Saussure who is a great figure in structural linguistic. So
Piaget's work reflects the western way of thinking and therefore
gained more popularity among the western scholars. Vygotsky's work
was not popular for ideological reasons. He is a russian. So his
work was associated with marxism. For most of the participants, it is only at the
University of New Mexico that they heard the name Vygotsky during
a class session.More to the point his work has been translated into
English with that western pattern of thinking. As a result, his
ideas are not accurately translated.
The second reason explaining that difference between Piaget and
Vygotsky lies in the status of language in relation to its
development in children.
Piaget regards language as something unchangeable, fixed.For him,
language development is independent of social-interaction and
context.
Vygotsky views language as something that changes over time.
Something which is moving has a qualitative transformation. The
points of transformation are important to understand the process.
In sum, Piaget focuses on language as a product whereas Vygotsky
regards it as a process; that is the fundamental difference between
the two theories.
The last point of discussion on the article was on the distinction
between egocentric speech and decentering. The point was brought by
Arnon for clarification. The instructor grasped the opportunity to
clarify four important notions in Vygotsky's theory. These are :
child egocentric speech, inner speech, private speech,and
decentering.
Egocentric speech refers to the kind of speech the child is not
conscious of. It is opposed to egocentricity in general where the
person consciously makes reference to himself/herself.The child
egocentricism is not referring to the social situation but often
refers to his biological needs.
Inner speech is an internal process of verbal thinking. Inner
thinking leads to verbal thinking that leads to thought.
Private speech is articulated speech that serves to regulate ongoing
cognitive activities. It is a way of thinking aloud as a strategy
for problem-solving.
Decentering is tied into the process of a child gaining consciousness,
becoming aware of the "Other". As the child begins to decenter, for Vygotsky
she begins to move away from egocentric speech.
Now what are the implications for ESL/EFL teaching?
It was noted that these theories influence language teaching.
Product approach to language to ESL teaching can be said to
originate from Piaget's theory of language development whereas
Process approach reflects Vygotsky's theory. The two theories are
actually complementary. The general tendency to emphasize the
mastery of structures in ESL teaching prepares learners as monitors
who cannot use their inner speech.
The second part of the session was devoted to an analysis of the
resources for this class. Some class members volunteered to look
for resources.
Christopher volunteered to contact the dean to have his opinion on
the shape of this course.
Arnon & Nestor volunteered to look for journals on the web.
Bethany volunteered to contact APS teachers to collect their
viewpoint.
Karen is going to talk about what the required child development course at
UNM covers and to talk to the Teacher Education Center about the required
courses.
The session ended with computing to show class members how access
to Forum discussion. Everybody has already got a unsername and a
password. To make the password more personal, it is advisable to
change it.
February 4
Class Notes
By Cathrene Connery
Please note: The class summary is an attempt
at an approximate translation of Dr. Golden's lecture. I may have missed
a few parts and the text is jumpy because of my limited comprehension in
Spanish and due to the fact that I tried to use his own words. Also, the
spelling of several of the names is incorrect.Thanks, Cathrene
Our guest speaker was Dr. Mario Golden from the University of Argentina
at Buenos Aires. Dr. Golden is an internationally recognized scholar of
Lev Vygotsky. After working with children as a teacher, Dr. Golden requested
his government to allow him to travel to the University of Moscow to study
this noted psycholinguist. In his early twenties, Dr. Golden arrived in
Russia despite the fact that he did not speak the language. After a year
of studying Russian, he was able to pursue and then later complete his doctorate
with first and second generation Vygotskian scholars.
Dr. Golden had traveled to the United States to interview a handful of
theorists who, in his opinion, had successfully developed Vygotsky's sociocultural
theory and applied this paradigm within the fields of education, psychology,
and linguistics. His investigations have led him to contend that a fundamental
difference exists between the Vygotskian scholars in the Eastern and Western
regions of the United States. He cites the influences of anthropology, bilingualism,
and social climate as potential contributing factors to his hypothesis.
As such, he arrived in Albuquerque to conduct an interview with Dr. Vera
John Steiner to further help shape his thinking in this regard. Dr. Golden
holds a concern that Vygotskian thought will become a passing fad with only
minimal and surface impact on the field of educational psychology and linguistics
in the United States. He will return to his home in Buenos Aires at the
end of February to begin writing a book on Vygotsky in the United States.
I. Background:
The work of Lev Vygotsky was virtually unknown to the western world until
his friend and associate Luria approached Jerome Bruner at an international
conference in 1962.Bruner returned to the Harvard University with a manuscript
of Vygotsky's book, Thought and Language, where it was subsequently published
by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Vygotsky's work was
significant at the time because his conception of the development of psycholinguistic
abilities contrasted with the work of Jean Piaget. Vygotsky differed from
the inatist point of view postulating that learning preceded development
instead of the reverse. Regrettably, the translation of Thought and Language
into English greatly reduced the original intention of the Russian's corpus
of thought. Sociopolitical reasons prevented the release of footnotes in
Bruner's version leaving Vygotsky's ideas even further decontextualized.
As a result, key concepts of Vygotsky's original theories were grossly under
represented, poorly explained, or left for the reader to infer.
During the 1970's, sociocultural theory began to diffuse throughout the
world. The United States embraced Vygotsky's work with several noted theoreticians
and scholars. The work of James Wertsch, Michael Kohl, Luis Moll, Vera John-Steiner,
Scribner, and Souberman include a solid understanding of sociocultural thought.
Currently, five volumes of Vygotsky's collected works have been translated
into English.
II. Tenets of Sociocultural Theory:
A. Mediation: Vygotsky emphasizes the use of mediation in the development
of language and higher cognitive processes. His stance on the importance
of mediation includes his concept of the Zone of Proximal Development. He
believes that the evolution of humans occurred because of and as a result
of the transfer of semiotic systems from one individual to another. Within
the transfer of coded information between the two communicators, the sign/code/symbol/language
takes on a life of its own apart from the communicators. Vygotsky contended
that the use of symbol, (in this case language) remained a key part of the
development of knowledge or human understanding. Language freed humans from
their own immediate and present constraints, allowing them the possibility
to discuss phenomenon in the abstract.
(i.e. things that were not there) This practice was a fundamental part
of the anthropological development of human consciousness.
B. Internalization: The concept of internalization is an essential theme
in Vygotsky's sociocultural theory. Piaget had contended that a child's
development of speech and thought took on a natural course driven by genetic
or biologic sources. Dr. Golden suggested that had Piaget lived at the same
time and under the same circumstances as Vygotsky, he would have arrived
at Vygotsky's own conclusions.While Piaget believed that speech grows out
of innate processes and is directed by nature to towards a social end, Vygotsky
asserted that nurture plays a more significant role in the development of
children's higher cognitive processes.The child begins her life in a social
world and it is out of this context that speech moves from external to internal
functions. At the age of four or five, a child will begin to internalize
the egocentric speech she has previously used to direct her own or other
individual's actions. The eventual subvocalization of speech by seven or
eight years of age gives rise to thought and is ultimately represented in
inner speech. Dr. Golden made use of the attached diagram to illustrate
the difference between Piagetian and Vygotskian theories of cognitive development.
He relayed that the period during the 1930's was replete with an ongoing
debate regarding the social foundation of language.
C. Higher Psychological Processes & the Affective Domain: Vygotsky's
work on cognition appears in several areas in the social sciences. He specifically
dealt with the formation of concepts, the function and capacity of memory,
perception, and voluntary attention. He had an interest in the development
of the personality, sentimentality, and even applied the zone of proximal
development to devise a theory on emotions. His work in this latter area
was restricted for two reasons. First and foremost, the psychologist had
a very limited number of years to develop such conceptshaving been diagnosed
with tuberculosis at a young age. He subsequently died of the disease at
thirty seven.
Second, while the scholar had included themes of affect in his work from
its onset, sociopolitical influences sculpted the focus of his studies.
At the time, Russia was considered to be a very backward country rising
from the ashes of an illiterate, feudal society prior to 1917. After the
Revolution, it was politically and socially imperative for the general populace
to become literate to insure the maintenance and prosperity of the new ideology.
Thus, the psychologist and his colleagues more thoroughly focused their
studies on cognition and learning in hopes to apply their findings on a
large, educational scale.
Although Vygotsky was hospitalized at the time, Luria's scientific expedition
into Uzbeckistan (spelling?) in 1934 was representative of such aims. Accompanied
by the Gestalt psychologist Franz Kafka, Luria's team sought to discover
how literacy developed in nomadic cultures and if such a culture could give
rise to superior intellectual processes. The results of the investigation
concluded that literacy did help in problem solving, however, not in the
higher intellectual processes already practiced by members of the culture.
The supposition of western values onto the native culture was identified
by the group. In a strange twist of fate, the Russian government thought
that the researchers were suggesting the superiority of the Uzbeckastani's
culture. As a result, their work was suppressed for forty years until it
was allowed to be translated. Michael Kohl replicated Luria's expedition
on a similar journey to Liberia in the 1970's to see how literacy might
affect problem solving and reasoning. His research can be found in Psychology
and Literacy, written by Kohl and Scribner.
III. Translations & Biographies :
Dr. Golden states that Alex Coselyn's translation of Thought and Language
is much more complete that Bruner's version. He also said that the Italian
School's translation is very profound. He warns that many of the biographies
of Vygotsky are flawed. While their writers are very serious, there is a
tendency to decontextualize the psychologist from his Marxist background
to make the subject matter more palatable to an American audience. The biographies
consciously try to remove him from Kant and Spinoza. At the same time, Vygotsky's
idea of dialecticism is different than that of Hegel.
IV. Philosophical/Academic Lineology and Influences:
Vygotsky's sociocultural theories form a trunk of a tree of cognitive
psychology. Some of the branches that have sprouted from this base include
Luria's investigation into the field of neuropsychology. Oliver Sachs extended
his work and was also involved in discovering functional localization found
in the brain. Luria is credited with bringing lie detectors to the United
States. His reabilitative work with a victim of an accident is being turned
into a movie. Because he survived Vygotsky by 50 years, he was eventually
able to represent his country at international conferences.
In his time, Vygotsky was seen to be a cosmopolitan thinker who ventured
beyond the boundaries of a pure Marxist psychology. He was known to have
read James, Durkheim, Stern, and French literature. One of his associates
was Franz Kafka, the father of Gestalt psychology from Germany. As such,
he was considered a threat by the authorities. Both Vygotsky and Luria were
registered members of the Psychoanalysis Association despite the fact that
sociocultural theory does not align itself with Freudian theory. It is considered
that Vygotsky studied Piaget and then transformed some of his work into
his own ideas. Luria translated Freud and picked out some of his ideas as
well. Vygotsky authored the introduction to Freud's book, Beyond the Pleasure
Principle . Lenin's wife was known to translate the American psychoanalyst
Melanie Kline's work on the sexual development of children.
Dr. Golden is a second generation Vygotskian having gone to University
with Leon Tiev and Galparon who were his colleagues.
A third generation of Vygoskians have formed in the United States, Italy,
Denmark, and Finland.
Issues of female psychology were absent despite the fact that Vygotsky
worked closely with four women psychologists. Ravina is known for her work
on private speech. Morrossova and Sygarnik lead the history of great women
in the Vygotskian tradition, especially in the psychology of personality.
Sygarnik was so proficient that no one believed that she was a Russian or
a woman. (I guess this is supposed to be a compliment.) No distinction was
made between men and women's psychologies perhaps because over eighty- five
percent of the doctors in Russia at the time were female. Females were expected
to assume traditional roles despite the fact they were practicing professionals
and scholars. Dr. John Steiner is the first to bring a feminist perspective
to sociocultural theory.
V. Historical Wrap Up: In 1924-1925, a great change occurred in Russia.
The Revolution had been trying to foster the New Human and it had been an
epoch the golden age of psychology. A decree set forth in 1936 outlawed
any publication in the field of educational psychology. Vygotsky's theories
were completely shut down and his students and associates were silenced.
His wife and daughters lived in poverty. She was left destitute and had
to clean houses to support the children. Vygotsky's writing's disappeared
and could not be found until 1955. If a graduate student wanted to read
them, they had to make application to the University which then had to report
the student's request to the government. If granted, the graduate student
had to sit in the office of an administrator or some form of official to
read the text.
VI. Homework:
A. Read Suzanne's Survey
B. Conceptualize the course as concretely as you can by writing a course
syllabus with adjunct activities. Model what we'd like our undergraduates
to do with their students in our own teaching at the University.
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