ZPD environment:
factors and effects in language classroom interactions
Research questions
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We will use adjacency pairs as the major unit of discourse analysis to study the
social origin and nature of knowledge generated from language learning tasks.
In so doing, adjacency pairs that reflect certain attempts of cooperation and use
of language as a mediational tool may reveal the process of (re)constructing
knowledge, meaning, relations, culture, power, actions at the inter-mental plane
first, and later their possible internalization into the intra-mental planes of
individual students in the form of voluntary attention, memory, reasoning,
intention, planning, orientation, and evaluation.
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1. What factors in learners’ interaction condition instances of cooperative dialog
or instructional talk and trigger knowledge, meaning, and context construction on
the inter-mental plane in the process of performing language tasks in group with
pre-designed psycholinguistic interference?
2. Is there some sort of patterns or regularity in co-occurrence of identified
factors that may bring about those instances of collaborative dialog on the intermental plane of knowledge, meaning, and context construction?
3. ZPD-positive factors: which of the identified factors that condition collaborative
dialog on the inter-mental plane positively affected language development
process into participants’ intra-mental plane?
4. What meaning, context, and knowledge construction opportunities did the
identified ZPDs offer to individual learners? Describe all instances of such
constructions registered on the intra-mental plane.
5. Is there some kind of relationship between (3) ZPD-marking factors of
cooperation and (4) opportunities afforded through ZPD?
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Data gathering stage
1. Possible factors that may condition collaborative dialog or instructional
talk in classroom interaction:
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Prosodic features to signal request for help
Comprehension of meaning on the part of potential help provider
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Compliance of linguistically incorrect utterances with the context and / or
task
The importance of meaning communicated through a linguistically
incorrect utterance.
Type of task and the nature of its psycholinguistic interference
Mode of interaction: perception, production
Instructor’s guidance, moderation, directions, participation
3. Gauges for plotting ZPD instances
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Rejection of help
Verbal agreement with help
Independent coping with the target item when help is withheld
Running ahead or overlapping of partner’s corrections
Sustained use of items targeted in micro tasks later in MMA
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Research design
Language Learning Modes (LLM)
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Course project Meaning Making Activities (MMA)
Language Learning Exercises (LLE)
Communication Tasks (CT)
Discourse analysis (DA)
Task and Self-evaluation (TSE)
Group A – 17 people; Group B – 11; Group C – 14. All adults working late hours
at a major international computer hardware manufacturing corporation. This
English course was offered to them as an opportunity to develop professionally
and gain confidence in dealing with foreign customers. Their English level was
pretty advanced. As their daily routine, they are expected to correspond with
colleagues in English by email.
Mode A is the central and strategic element of the research design whose
purpose is two-fold: (i). to trace long-term learning gains or sustained language
development by individual language learners; (ii). to ensure task and content
continuity in the rest of the modes.
Mode B is a tactical element of the design and is included to elicit data for micro
analysis of ZPD construction processes with the primary focus on language form.
Mode C is a tactical element of the design and is included to elicit data for micro
analysis of ZPD construction processes with the primary focus on meaning.
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Mode D is used as a tool for raising learners’ awareness of learning opportunities
that can be afforded in micro tasks and throughout the entire course and
stimulate their sense of agency in participation.
Mode E is designed to tap learners’ actual awareness of what they have
accomplished and somehow validate my interpretation of possible development
in their language observed through instances of constructing ZPDs.
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