Sociocultural SLA

Sociocultural SLA

1. Second language acquisition (SLA)

   • Arises from the process of meaning-making in collaborative activity with other members of a given culture (Vygotsky, 1978)
   • Second language acquisition (SLA) is concerned with how individuals acquire a language other than their native language.

2. Sociocultural theories (SCT), developed by Lev Vygotsky in the 1920s and 1930s

   • Describe human cognition as developed by an individual through engagement in social and cultural activities with other people, objects, and events (Vygotsky, 1978; Wang, Bruce, & Hughes, 2011).

3. Saville-Troike (2012) defined second language acquisition as the study of individuals or groups who are learning a language subsequent to learning their first one as young children.

   • SLA has emerged as a field of study primarily from within linguistics and psychology, which emphasises the mental and cognitive processes involved in language acquisition apart from other fields such as linguistics and sociolinguistics