Contradictions, Appropriation, and Transformation: An Activity Theory Approach to L2 Writing and Classroom Practices.

Abstract

This paper proposes that activity theory provides a useful framework for understanding how students learn to write a foreign language and how student and classroom practices evolve over time. Activity theory emphasizes sociocultural and historical nature of learning setting. The paper outlines central tenets of activity theory, examining following: (1) how international students a first-year university rhetoric and composition course appropriated concepts and tools of rhetoric and self-evaluation; (2) how those concepts and tools mediated their learning to write English; and (3) how tensions and contradictions class led to changes composition activity system. Data from observations, student surveys and interviews, students' online learning records, and writing samples indicate that participation class, appropriation of rhetorical concepts and tools, conflicts students face appropriation, and ability to expand and generalize their learning are all mediated by concepts and tools of past and present activities which they have engaged and are engaging. The paper posits that activity theory has potential to contribute to understanding of strong influence of sociocultural factors on learning and to inform second language composition theory and pedagogy. The questionnaire is appended. (Contains 34 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are best that can be made from ori inal document. Contradictions, Appropriation, and Transformation: An Activity Theory Approach to L2 Writing and Classroom Practices CHARLES P. NELSON, University of Texas at Austin MI-KYUNG KINI, University of Texas at Austin In this report we propose that activity theory provides a useful framework for understanding how students learn to write a foreign language and how student and classroom practices evolve over time. Moving away from predominant focus of foreign language pedagogy (at least U.S.) on individual, activity theory emphasizes sociocultural and historical nature of learning setting. After first outlining central tenets of activity theory, we then apply them to understand (a) how international students a first-year university rhetoric and composition course appropriated concepts and tools of rhetoric and self-evaluation, (b) how those concepts and tools mediated their learning to write English, and (c) how tensions/contradictions class led to changes composition activity system. We conclude by positing that activity theory has potential for contributing to our understanding of strong influence of sociocultural factors on learning and for informing second language composition theory and pedagogy. INTRODUCTION A second language learner writes, course my desire to study it's my own decision but it's baised [sic] on way I was raised. Most studies field of second language composition focus on products and of individual students. Recently, though, an alternative approach to language learning is investigating language learners as social beings. Of course, fact that people are social is not a new concept. Williams (cited Horner, 1997) points out, however, that for most scholars this concept means merely that individuals live a social world or use inherited forms, not that the contents of [one's] consciousness are socially produced (p. 507). Asserting that cognition is in a very fundamental sense a cultural and social process (Hutchins, 1995, p. 353) and is mediated by tools and resources used (Wertsch, 1991, 1994), this approach emphasizes sociocultural and historical influences of institutions which students engage learning. As social beings, students and teachers embody institutional influences with result that sociocultural influences play a significant role how teachers teach and how students learn, which strategies they employ, and how they interact with other students and teachers. Heath's (1983) research Appalachia, for example, demonstrated how a family's with words influenced how their children talked and interacted school, thus preparing them for success or 38 Texas Papers Foreign Language Education failure. Scribner and Cole's (1981) work with Vai Liberia showed that social patterns of literacy practices affected cognitive functions. To understand, then, how students learn to write a second language, one must investigate sociocultural influences of institutions which they participate. One particular sociocultural perspective is activity theory. The word activity, from German Tiitigkeit, means doing order to transform something, and thus activity theorists study human practices as development processes (Kuutti, 1996, pp. 25, 41). Although activity theory is leading theoretical approach Russian psychology (Kaptelinin, 1996), it is just beginning to make inroads U.S. research. It has been used human-computer studies (Bodker, 1991, 1997; Nardi, 1996), developmental workplace research (Engestrom, 1987, 1996; EngestrOm & Middleton, 1996), and education (Dillon, 2000; Grossman, Smagorinsky, & Valencia, 1999; Kozulin, 1998; Moll, Tapia, & Whitmore, 1993; Newell, Gingrich, & Johnson, 2001; Wells, 1994; Wertsch & Toma, 1995). It and other sociocultural approaches are only slowly making headway L2 research (Hall, 1997; Lantolf & Pavlenko, 1995). Accordingly, we wish to use activity theory as a framework for investigating second language writing because, as biologist Henri At Ian has argued, interaction between seemingly disparate disciplines, with different classification schemes, theories, and methods is crucial developing new (quoted Syverson, 1994, pp. 7-8). THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Activity theory, along with other sociocultural approaches, traces its origins to Vygotsky, who asserted that knowledge is first seen on social plane and afterwards becomes internalized on psychological plane (Vygotsky, 1981, p. 163); knowledge is sociohistorically mediated. That is, people's ways of thinking and learning develop through and are shaped by activities which they participate, activities that are social nature and have historically developed tools, structures, and settings. Thus, their everyday actions-arid activities, people inherit and embody sociohistorical residue of their predecessors so that context-independent cognition is non-existent. Vygotsky's work focused on mediated learning of individuals. Differentiating between individual action and collective activity, A. N. Leont'ev, one of Vygotsky's colleagues, formulated beginnings of activity theory (Cole & Engestrom, 1993). Actions differ from collective activity that they have defined goals having a beginning and an end. Leont'ev used example of primeval collective hunt which some tribal members madenoise to frighten animals towards hunters waiting to catch them. The two actions of making noise and catching animals together constitute activity of hunting, and outside context of hunting, action of frightening animals would be meaningless because goal is not to frighten animals away but to catch them. Contradictions, Appropriation, and Transformation 39 To understand individual actions, therefore, one must know context which those actions are embedded, namely, a system of activity. Moving towards a better accounting of collective nature of activity, Engestrom (1987) expanded Leont'ev's concepts graphically to include rules, community, and division of labor (see Figure 1).

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 32 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.