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Oleo de José Tola
From: Assumpta
Date: 2/9/99
Time: 12:27:34 PM
Remote Name: 207.172.89.86
Firth and Wagner's article as we have seen is a critique that challenges prevailing views and dominant aspects in SLA researches. Point after point, they bring out the flaws of the predominant view of discourse and communication within SLA research (view that is basically "individualistic, and mechanistic [failling] to give an account in a satisfactory way for the interactional and sociolinguistic dimensions of language'). According to them, this highly cherished side of SLA research has led to an "imbalance" whhithin SLA reserach and this imbalance favors the "cognitive-oriented theories and methodologies" as they put it, "...The perceived imbalance has led to the prioritizing of the individual-as-"nonnative spaeker"/"learner" over the participant-as-language-" "user" in social interaction".From this standpoint, I will argue that these authors,eventhuogh they don't spell out their agenda for SLA research,they do enumerate new strategies that could be used in SLA resaerches. On page 286, 6th paragragh, they give an outline of the new strategies that can remedy the situation; thus proposing "a) a significantly enhanced awareness of the contextual and interactional dimensions of language use; b) an increase emic (i.e., participant-relevant) and c) the broadening of the traditional SLA data base".I would think that,these are clarly stated points to be followed; but the problem that i observe here is that the authors don't show how these strategies can be put in effect and in a positive way, they don't really bring out the advantages of these strategies.I would think that may be this is why their views are not congruent with the prevailing interactionist perspective on SLA that promotes collaborative learning, instructivism, hole language learning.To conclude i suggest that this article does have points that can be included in the agenda for SLA research and that the authors do spell out some of their concepts like the evolution of a holistic,bio-social SLA. Nevertheless, one thing is still to be done, developping a concise and precise methodological approach out of these suggestions (the authors').