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Sociocultural Awareness in ELT - Coggle Diagram
Sociocultural Awareness in ELT
Child Development
Theory of Vygotsky (Everything is social)
• Once children acquired language, language structured thought
• Then, through interaction with others, a child will have an awareness of himself or capacity for reflection
Development coming from the social to the individual
The Social Event
Communication is human, interpersonal and social
Within an activity or social exchange, the child is learning how to learn and using language as a tool
Learning a language, learning through language & learning to be particular person are closely related
The zone of proximal development (ZPD) or scaffolding is the gap between what child can achieve individually and what they can achieve together with others
Patterns of Exchange
Fairclough describes that patterns of exchange in school, over a period of time, will determine what sort of people the pupils will become.
If this pattern of exchange is overused in the classroom it can limit :
• the potential of ‘handover’ (an autonomous learner)
• individual agency (being able to challenge and negotiate a concept)
• expression of identity (bringing their home culture or cultural ‘niche’ into their classroom participation)
Identified by Edwards & Mercer as IRF (Initiation, Response, Feedback )
Peer Collaboration
The way in which children interact, and the degree of success depends on the nature of the task.
Children can build on each other's learning development through:
• turn taking
• negotiating and collaboration
• justifying and reasoning
Peer to peer talk is symmetrical and encourages the development of language and thought
Collaboration, participation and ground rules
Ground rules: A decision can not be taken until a majority of the group agree with the response
Phrases that can be used:
• I think that ….. (Expressing opinion) because ….. (Supporting opinion)
• What do you think? (Encourage turn taking)
• It’s your / my / his / her / her turn
•I think you are wrong / right …. because …..
Ground rules can be introduced to a class and taught in the same way as classroom language
Nurturing these ground rules within a participation-based learning environment constructs ‘cultural synergy’.
In order to have an optimum participation and cultural synergy, mix the dynamics of the group with:
• Starting lesson with a whole-class activity leading by the teacher
• work in pairs
• smaller groups