A relational view of learning an additional language: An analysis of classroom talk

To date, most research in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) has proceeded from either a predominantly social or a cognitive point of view. Most researchers who subscribe to a social view rely on the tenets of Vygotsky and on a sociocultural approach. Broadly speaking, any social perspective leads to a focus on language use, that is, on the ways learners jointly construct meanings. Cognitive researchers, on the other hand, tend to concentrate on the way language is internalized and individual cognition restructured. Although there is a growing awareness of, and interest in, the interplay of the social and cognitive domains, no theorists proceed from Piaget’s idea that both domains share the same structure and organization and are thus, in effect, indivisible. Taking this Piagetian view, I argue that his idea of equilibration—usually viewed by cognitivists as an individual internal process having to do with cognitive restructuring—is in fact a social process observable in classroom talk. I contend that equilibration is observable when students are given opportunities to engage in perspective taking and to work towards resolving perturbations or problems in meaning within cooperative interactions. In order to view these opportunities and the resultant processes, four levels of ESL classes (i.e., Beginner, Intermediate, High Intermediate, and TOEFL) were observed twice a week for ten months. Classroom talk was recorded, transcribed, and analysed according to a modified form of Conversation Analysis. The results of the study suggest that: 1) equilibration can be observed in talk; 2) perspective taking is central to the equilibration process; and 3) the complexity and range of perturbations increase as students develop their pragmatic language skills.