More than words
By Michael Rabbidge
When we think of language teaching, we more often than not place primacy on the teaching and learning of linguistic features. We think of how we can effectively teach grammatical structures, vocabulary items, and in some cases, appropriate use of these linguistic features. Teachers think of ways to facilitate their student’ emotional-cognitive processes in the act of noticing, ordering, representing, and remembering language to assist in the development of their newly evolving language repertoire.
But during these teaching and learning acts what else is occurring? What is the relationship between the language forms being learned and the contexts in which they’re being learned? The multifaceted nature of learning and teaching language is often an afterthought. Layers of social activity that influence language teaching and learning have been of concern for a growing number of second language acquisition researchers, and one model to have arisen from this concern attempts to capture the multi-dimensional nature of SLA by describing SLA as a series of mutually dependent layers of social activity (Douglas Fir Group, 2016).
The micro layer of social activity is where learners are said to employ internal cognitive mechanisms during interaction with their context. Everyday interactions in familiar contexts such as the home, the workplace or even the classroom create a routinized set of interactions that allow for a constant exposure to the semiotic resources central to these interactions, driving acquisition of not only linguistic features also knowledge of other interactional cues as well.
The meso layer of social activity is situated in the sociocultural institutions that these interactions take place, and are composed of varying social, political, economic, and cultural conditions. These conditions shape the myriad of attitudes, motives, values, and perspectives that influence what types of interactions are preferred, who has the authority to say what and when, and the linguistic features that are deemed appropriate for a given context. This in turn influences the social identities of the actors in such contexts as they are positioned by the way they speak and behave by others, and themselves, in interaction. This can lead to limited access to L2 learning opportunities for certain interactants if aspects of their social identity are cast in roles that devalue their voices.
The macro layer of social activity is comprised of ideological structures. These ideological structures are shared systems of beliefs and values that act upon the afore mentioned aspects of culture, politics, economics and so on. These beliefs are mostly unarticulated in society, invisible in daily interactions, and taken for granted as unchallengeable truths by people during interaction. They shape the assumptions we have about ‘correct’ language use and form, effective teaching practices, and even expectations about the roles of social actors in a given interaction.
All three layers of social activity are in constant and dynamic interaction with one another, affecting and being impacted by each other. The words we teach and the words we use are often upheld as the primary focus of language teaching, but as the three-layered model suggests, there are more than words at play when learning and teaching a new language.
The Douglas Fir Group. (2016). A transdisciplinary framework for SLA in a multilingual world. The Modern Language Journal, 100(S1), 19-47. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12301