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Oleo de José Tola
From: Carla
Date: 2/3/99
Time: 12:54:36 AM
Remote Name: 152.163.201.188
In class we discussed that the interactionist approach takes into account the learner’s internal and external mechanisms. It is evident from this article that the authors conform to the interacionist view. Their goal is to come up with a more balanced theory that describes SLA both culturally and cognitively. In their article, the authors criticize many traditional SLA views because they focus excessively on the cognitive aspect of language learning. The authors claim these traditional theories are 1) individualistic, 2)mechanistic, and 3)”they fail to account for interactional and sociolinguistic dimensions of language.” In addition, the writers mention that the predominant view of SLA places a negative connotation on the “learner.” For example, if I said: “My father is a non-native speaker of the English language,” you would most likely think of a defective communicator; someone struggling when transmitting a message to someone else. With their new approach to SLA, the authors want to view the “learner” in a more positive light.
So, to directly answer the first part of the posted question, I think that the authors mean that researched have “twister” or “slanted” toward the cognitive part of the interactionist approach, neglecting to take into account the sociocultural aspect of it. Does anyone agree with me?