THE SOCIAL CONTEXT FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING—A NEGLECTED SITUATION?

8/13/2019 THE SOCIAL CONTEXT FOR LANGUAGE LEARNINGA NEGLECTED SITUATION?

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136 M. P. Breenways might I exploit the social reality of the classroom as a resourcefor the teachingof language?"

This paper offers particular answers to both the researcher's and the teacher'squestions. It begins with an examination of the approaches of current research towardsthe language class. I offer a partic ular evaluation of recent developm ents in investigationsdevoted to second language acquisition and to language learning in the classroomsituation. This evaluation, though necessarilybrief, has three purposes. First, to identifythe possible contributions of the language classroom which are perceived and revealedby current research. Second, to identify what seem to be significant contributions ofthe classroom which current research appears to neglect. And third, to deduce certainimplications for future research and for language teaching.

The researcher and the teacher are confronted by a crucial common problem: howto relate social activity to psychological change and how to relate psychological pro-cessing to the social dynamics of a group. The researcher must explain these relationshipsif he is to unde rstand adequ ately language learning as it is experienced by most peop lein a gathering made up of other learners and a tea cher. T he teacher is a direct participantin this social event with the aim of influencing psychological development. The teacheris obliged continually to integrate the learning experiences of individuals with thecollective and communal activities of a group of which, unlike the researcher, he is notan outsider. The researcher enters the classroom when a genuine sociocognitive exper-iment is already well under way. In evaluating the findings of research, because ofabstraction from the daily life of the class, we need to discover and make clear forourselves the particularperceptions of a classroom which we, as researchers, hold eitherbefore we enter it or subsequent to the collection of our dat a. It is a truism of socialanthropology that no human social institutions or relationships can be adequately under-stood unless account is taken of the expectations, values, and beliefs that they engage.Thi s is no less true of the institution of research . T he definition of the classroom situationthat we hold will influence how we perceive the classroom group and how we mightact within it, and this is as unavoidable for the researcher as it is for a teacher or alearner. O ne of the parad oxe s of research is to challenge taken-for-granted beliefswhilst, at the same time, clinging to beliefs which sustain the research endeavour. Beliefallows the researcher (and many teachers and learners) to take for granted the capacityof a classroom to metamorphose instructional inputs into learning outcomes. Is therepsychological proof for this relationship between teaching and learning, or is it a beliefsustained primarily by the social purposethat We invest in a gathering of teacher andtaught?

Can we detect particular definitions of the classroom situation within current languagelearning research? What metaphorsfor a classroom are availab le to us as researchersat present? I wish to explore two metaphors for the classroom that emerge from tworecent and influential research traditions. I am conscious that there may be as manymetaphors for the classroom as there are researchers in language learning. But I haveto be brief and I am encouraged to generalise here by the tendency of researchers toseek security around particu lar dominant parad igms or ways of seeing. O ne prevailing


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The Social Context for Language LearningA Neglected Situation 137metaphor is the classroom as experimental laboratory, and another, more recentlyemergent, is the classroom as discourse. I will briefly explore both.THE CLASSROOM AS EXPERIMENTAL LABORATORYWe are encouraged to regard the classroom as experimental laboratory by the area oftheory and research known as Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Its tradition canbe traced back to studies in first language acquisition, through investigation of thenatural order of acquisition of certain grammatical morphemes, through the compre-hensive theories of Krashen, and up to the recent flowering in the identification oflearner strategies from retrospective accounts offered by individual learnerseitherverbally or within learning diaries. The primary function of the language classroom asimplied or sometimes directly recommended by S L A research is that the learner, bybeing placed in a classroom, can be exposed to a certain kind of linguistic input whichmay be shown to correlate with certain desirable learning outcomes. Here, the valueand pu rpose of the classroom is its potential to p rov ide linguistic da ta that are finelytuned for the efficient processing of new knowledge; classrooms can wash learners withoptimal input. Researchers' more recent inferences from learners' accounts of their ownstrategies encourage us to deduce further that the classroom is a place in which wemight reinforce good language-learning strategies so that the input becomes unavoidablyoptimal. A s the mainstream of S L A research rests on the assumption that the com-prehension of input is the catalyst of language development, it implies a role for theteacher that is delimited yet complex. In essence, either the teacher must facilitatecomprehension through the provision of linguistic input sensitive to individual learnerinclinations, or the teacher should endeavor to shape individual learning behaviors sothat each learner may attain a repertoire of efficient processing strategies. T h e S L Ametaphor for the classroom implies teacher as surrogate experimental psychologist andlearners as subject to particular input treatments or behavioral reinforcement.

Ho we ver, this view of the language classroom leaves us with a num ber of unresolvedproblems that warrant more attention if we seek to understand the relationship betweena language class and language learning. First, the interesting variables of linguistic inputand the strategic behaviour of learners are not special to classrooms. They were notuncovered as prevailing features of classroom life at all. T he second and pe rhaps moresignificant problem is that two crucial intervening variables seem to have been by-passed by SL A research. Both of these variables are centrally related to the processingof input. Both will determine what a learner might actuallyintake. S L A research whichemphasises linguistic input (provided by instruction or exposure) as the independentvariable and some later learner output (in a test or in spontaneous speech) as thedependent variable leaps blindly over any active cognition on the part of the learner.With its heavy reliance on linguistic performance criteria for psychological change thereis a resultant superficiality in its attention to learners' internal perceptual processes.The research takes for granted what the learner may define as optimal for him. Morefundamentally, it does not addre ss the question of ho w a learner selectively perceives


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138 M . P. Breenparts of linguistic data as meaningful and worth acting upon in the first place. Therefore,the intervening variable of what the learner actually does to input or with input isneglected. G iven the importance attache d to comprehension by S L A research it seemsparadoxical that the active reinterpretation and reconstruction of any input by thelearner is not accounted for. The search for correlations between, for example, thefrequency of a grammatical form in input and the frequent occurrence of that form insome later learner performance seems motivated by a rather narrow view of humanlearning. The research leads us to a causal conditioning as opposed to a cognitive andinteractive explanation of language developm ent. W e are left unsure how and whylearners do what they do in order to intake selectively.

O n the face of it, learning strategy research seems to offer some help here. Ho we ver,these investigations primarily confirm that learners are unpredictable, inconsistent, andsometimes seemingly inefficient processors. Thus, the same learning outcome can beachieved by different strategies while different learning outcomes can be achieved bythe same strategy. Investigations into learner strategies have not yet helped us tounderstand how or why it is that one thing can be interpreted or learned by any twolearners with seemingly different profiles of strategies. Until we understand these things,the capacity of instruction to encourage or shape desirable or efficient strategic behaviourof learners remains unfounded.3 This problem emerging from the data we derive fromlearners concerning their strategies leads to the second crucial intervening variable whichseems to be neglected in S L A research. Lea rners certainly are strategic in how theygo about learning, but if we ask them what they think they do, or if they keep a diaryof what they do, such retrospections, inevitably post hoc rationalisations, will exhibita coherence that bears only metaphorical resemblance to the actual moment of learning.Something intervenes between a learner's introspections to a researcher or to a diaryreader, just as something intervenes between input to a learner and between what alearne r has intaken and some later test performance . I suggest that one thing whichcrucially intervenes is the learner's definition of situation: the definition of being aninformant to someone investigating strategies, the definition of being a language learnerin a classroom, and the definition of doing a test. If we hope to explain fully therelationship between classroom input and learning outcomes, or to explain possiblerelationships between strategic behavior and language learning, then we need to locatethese relationships socially. How and why learners do what they do will be stronglyinfluenced by their situation, who they are with, and by their perceptions of both.

Given that we wish to understand how the external social situation of a classroomrelates to the internal psychological states of the learner, the metaphor of the classroomas provider of optimal input or reinforcer of good strategies is inadequate. Itreducesthe act or experience of learning a language to linguistic or behavioural conditioningsomehow independent of the learner's social reality. N ot only is S L A research currentlyoffering us a delimited account of language learning, reducing active cognition to passiveinternalisation and reducing language to very specific grammatical performance, themainstream of S L A research is also asocial. It neglects the social significance of eventhose variables which the investigators regard as central. The priority given to linguisticand mentalistic variables in terms of the efficient processing of knowledge as input leads


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The Social Context for Language LearningA Neglected Situation 141of experience must interrelate and influence one another. However, classroom discoursealone allows us a partial view from which we are obliged to describe others' experiencesas if "through a glass darkly."

Classroom-oriented research shares with S L A studies the tendency to reduce oravoid consideration of certain intervening variables which inevitably influence how andwhy learners may internalise input and how and why learners interact with a teacherin the ways they do. This reductionism is characterised by an emphatic focus uponlinguistic performanceupon observable features of language and discourse. To befair, neither research tradition may intend to understand or even explain languagelearning in the classroom situation. H ow eve r, any researcher w ho tries to correlatefeatures of linguistic performance data in terms of classroom input with some learningoutcome is, at least implicitly, seeking a possible explanation of that learning outcome.And such an explanation can only be causal. Classroom research is not asocial likeS L A research, but it does share a non-cognitive view of learner comprehension an dreconstruction of input despite its potentially richer view of input as discourse ratherthan merely grammatical data. Classroom-oriented research perceives the learner asactively contributing to the discourse. But how can we relate such contributions or evennon-contributions to language learning? Lea rners and teachers are not dualities of socialbeing and mental beingan idea apparently unfortunately supported by the veryseparateness of S L A and classroom-oriented research priorities. It is incumbent uponclassroom-based investigations of language learning to account for those social psycho-logical forces which generate classroom discourse and for those socio-cognitive effectsof the discourse even if its objective is primarily to describe social phenomena. If thesubjective and intersubjective experiences of and from classroom discourse are reducedto what we can find in the discourse alone, then w e are allowed to dedu ce tha t classroomlanguage learning results from discoursal conditioningno more nor less than socialdeterminism

It appears that the two metaphors for the classroom which we have available to usat present offer definitions of the classroom situation which seem to neglect the socialreality of language learning as it is experienced and createdby teachers and learners.Both metaphors unfortunately constrain our understanding of language learning becauseeach takes for granted crucial intervening psychological and social variables which arethe fulcra upon which language learning is balanced. The reconstructive cognition oflearners and the social and psychological forces which permeate the processes of teachingand learning must reside within any explanation concerning how and why people dowhat they do when they work together on a new language. More seriously, perhaps,both contemporary m etaphors implicitly reduce hum an action a nd interaction to classicalconditioning, wherein learners though superficially participating are essentially passiverespondents to observable linguistic and discoursal stimuli. It therefore appears necessarythat research has still to adopt a definition of the classroom which will encompass bothcognitive and social variablesso that their m utual influence can b e be tter und erstoo d.More precisely, we need a metaphor for the classroom through which teacher andlearners can be viewed as thinking social actors and not reduced to generators of input-output nor analyzed as dualities of either conceptual or social beings. Perhaps the


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142 M . P. Breenmetaph or w e require can prov ide a basis for the synthesis of S L A and classroom-oriented research endeavours whilst necessarily being more comprehensive than both.These deductions lead me to propose a third metaphor for the classroom in the hopethat it might further facilitate our understanding of classroom language learning. Oneof the characteristics of my third metaphor is that it is likely to be more experientiallyfamiliar to most language teachers and learners than it may be to some researchers.

THE CLASSROOM AS CORAL GARDENSA proposal that the classroom situation could be perceived as coral gardens may beinitially reacted to as rather odd. The metaphor derives from Malinowski's classicalstudies of Trobriand island cultures, in particular those investigations he described inCoral Gardens and Their Magic. I offer the metaphor because it entails three require-ments for research d evoted to classroom language learning. Fir st, in order to und erstandthe process of learning within a human group, our investigations are necessarily ananthropological endeavour. Second, the researcher should approach the classroom witha kind of anthropolog ical humility. W e should explo re classroom life initially as if weknew nothing about it. And, third, it is more important to discover what people investin a social situation than it is to rely on what might be observed as inherent in thatsocial situation. Just as g ardens of coral were gran ted magical realities by the Tro bri an dislanders, a language classoutwardly a gathering of people with an assumed commonpurposeis an arena of subjective and intersubjective realities which are worked out,changed, and maintained. And theserealities are not trivial background to the tasks ofteaching andlearning a language. They locate and define the new language itself as ifit never existed before, and they continually specify and mould the activities of teachingand learning. In essence, the metaphor of classroom as coral gardens insists that weperceive the language class as a genuine culture and worth investigating as such.

If we can adopt this definition of the classroom situation, then research may getcloser to the daily lives of teachers and learners. W e can a ppr oac h the raison d'etreof a language classthe working upon and rediscovering of language knowledgeasinvolving socio-cognitive construction and reinterpretation. A particular culture, bydefinition, entails particular relationships between social activities and psychologicalprocesses and changes. S L A research asserts comprehension as central, whilst theclassroom as culture locates comprehension within the intersubjective construction ofmeaningfulness and the subjective reinterpretation of whatever may be rendered com-prehensible. In other words, input is never inherently optimal, for any new knowledgeis socio-cognitively rendered familiar or unfamiliar by those who participate in itsexploration. The culture of the class generates knowledges and a focus upon anyinternalised linguistic outcomes will tell us little about classroom language learning inaction. Classroom-oriented research explores the discourse of lessons, whilst the class-room as culture extends across islands of intersubjective meaning and depths of subjectiveintentions and interpretations which only rarely touch the surface of talk and which thediscourse itself often deliberately hides. The discourse of lessons will mainlysymbolise


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h Social Context for Language LearningA Neglected Situation 145an d a group teachinglearning process. Therefore individual psychological change willcontinually relate to group psychological forces. The researcher is obliged to discoverthese two worlds because they are distinctive. To inferindividual learning process fromclassroom process or vice versa will lead to a partial understanding of classroom languagelearning. W e need to explore both and how they relate one to the othe r.

The Culture of the Classroom is Highly NormativeOur membership in any culture implies that our behaviour will be evaluated againstcertain norms and conventionsmembership entails showing we belong. However, inall our lives, classrooms are very special in this regard. Schools and classrooms areamong the main agencies for secondary socialisation and, as the first public institutionmost of us enter during our lives, our views of classrooms will be significantly colouredby this initial experience. More importantly, our personal identities as learners withina group derive much from such experience. This is due to the fact that our publiclearning selves have been moulded by a continual and explicit evaluation ofour worthas learners.W hen a language learner enters a classroom, he anticipates that the eval-uation of him as a learner is going to be a crucial part of that experience. This impliesthat the search for external criteria for success in coping with language learning and,less optimistically perhaps, the day-to-day search for ways of reducing the potentialthreat of negative judgements of one's capabilities will impinge upon whatever internalcntena a learner may evolve regarding his own learning progress. Learners in a classwill obviously vary with regard to their relative dependence upon external and internalcriteria. However, one of the prevalent features of the culture of the classroom is theestablishment of overt and covert criteria against which its members are continuallyjudged. In other words, the culture of the classroomreifies the persons who participatewithin it into "good" learners and "bad" learners, "good" teachers and "bad" teachers,"beginners," "advanced," "high" participators and "low" participators, etc. , etc. Putbluntly, the language class is a highly normative and evaluative environment whichengages teacher and taught in continual judgement of each other, less as persons, butas members who are supposed to learn and a member who is supposed to teach. Thishighly normative characteristic of classroom life implies for the researcher that we needto discover the overt and covert group criteria {and members' individual interpretationsof these criteria) against which learning behaviour a nd p rogress a re judg ed. T o infer,for example, that a teacher's error corrections are consistently based upon objectivelinguistic criteria or are otherwise apparently random would lead to a superficial analysisof phenomena which, though opaque, are deeply significant for a teacher and learnersin the particular classroom.

The Culture of the Classroom is AsymmetricalBecause teachers are expected to know what learners are expected not to know, certainsocial and psychological consequences inevitably obtain for the human relationships in


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146 M . P. Breenthe class. The culture of the classroom insists upon asymmetrical relationships. Theduties and rights of teacher an d taugh t are different. M ore significantly, bo th teacherand taught may be equally reluctantto upset the asymm etry of roles and identities towhich these duties and rights are assigned. In most societiesperhaps all, despite somerelative variationan egalitarian relationship between teacher and taught is a contra-diction of what a classroom should be. Teachers and learners are very familiar withthe experience of gradually establishing the precise degree of asymmetry which enablesthem to maintain a relatively harmonious working group. As teachers, we are alsofamiliar with a class which erodes what they perceive as being too democratic or tooauthoritarian an approach on our part, even though we ourselves may perceive ourteaching style as consistently something else entirely H er e is a pa rad ox . Learn ersgivea teacher the right to adopt a role and identity of teacher. And a teacher has to earnparticular rights and duties in the eyes of the learning group. However, the history ofthe tribe marches behind the teacher, and a teacher through the unfolding culture ofthe particular classroom group will similarly allocate rights and duties to learners.Indee d, one of the rights and duties of a teacher is to do precisely tha t Ho we ver,asymmetrical relationships do not only exist between teacher and taugh t. Sub-group ingswhich are asymmetrical with the dominant classroom culture also emerge and prosper,such as anti-academic peer groupings or certain learners who identify themselves asmore successful or less successful and even groups who share a common identity (suchas friendship grou ps) outside the classroom . T hus, not only is the culture of the classroomindividually differentiated yet collective, it is also made up of sub-grou ps which developfor themselves mainly covert, though sometimes overtly expressed, roles and identitieswhich are potentially asymmetrical with both the dominant culture and with other sub-groupings in the class.

Asymmetry of roles and identities, and of the rights and duties they bear, derivesfrom and further generates conceptual and affective dissonances. Asymmetrical rela-tionships very often entail disagreement in beliefs, in attitudes, and in values held. Thecollective nature of the classroom culture and the negotiated compromises which permeatethe teaching-learning process often hide within themselvessometimes with difficultyand often only for a time different views of what should be happening in a class andwhat should not. This suggests that, although the nature of interpersonal and mtergrouprelationships within the language classroom may be complex and changing, the researcherneeds to uncover what these are if we wish to describe what happens in the class andfurther interpret this as it is experienced by those within the class. As researchers inthe past, we have tend ed to be teacher-centred in our assuming that the major asymmetryin role and identity, and the likely location of dissonance in perceptions and affects,resides between the teacher and the rest. W e have also perh aps underestimated thepossible effectsboth negative and positiveof asymmetry and dissonance within theclassroom upon the language learning process.The Culture of the Classroom is Inherently ConservativePerhaps one of the best ways of revealing the established culture of the classroom groupis to try to introduce an innovation which the majority neither expects nor defines as


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h Social Context for Language LearningA Neglected Situation 147appropriate. Most teachers have had direct experience of the effort to be radical intheir approach with a class (be it through different material, tasks, or procedure, etc.)and have suffered the experience of at least initial rejection. A genuine culture is onein which its mem bers seek security and relative harm ony in a self-satisfactory milieu.As such things take time to develop, anything which the group perceives as changewill also take time to be absorbed or it will be resisted as deviant. (This does notmean that harmony will necessarily reign in the classroom, for even ap pa ren t an arc hy as long as it is the preferred ethos of that groupmay be quite consistent with adefinition of classroom life for some seemingly unsociahsed collection of learners ). Inessence, a classroom group seeks a particular social and emotional equilibrium just assoon as it caneven one which may seem to be antithetical to learning. It will sub-sequently resist any threat to the newly established order. The individual learner risksostracisation from the group if he does noto vertly at leastcon form, and the teacherrisks rebellion in various forms if he does not honour the conventions expected by thecollective definition of what a language teacher should be. Although this conservativespirit has its origins in the prior educational experiences of the learners, each newclassroom group reinvents "the rules of the game" in ways which both reflect and formthe classroom-culture assumptions of the particular p articipa nts w ho are sud denly sharingeach others' company. It has to be said, of course, that a teacher may participate inthis conservatism and, indeed, workthrough it in order to help develop group harmony,security and efficient ways of working. And teachers are certainly familiar with thedilemma of wishing to innovate whilst being cautious of disruption. This means thatthe very presence of a researcher, or even the awareness within the group that theyare the focus of apparently objective evaluation and study will mobilise change. Ourpersonal experience of having someone visit our home for the first time and then lookingat it with them, as if seeing it through their eyes, can remind us of the effect of intrusion.In a sense, the classroom changes in the eyes of those within it and, therefore, willchange in certain wa ys. T his is, of course, the truism of observer effect. But there isalso the observer's paradox in that the classroom we now see will be in a state of dis-equilibrium: it will not be the same classroom as yesterday and we will be investigatinga classroom grou p which is newly adapting in a number of subtle wa ys. T hi s p henomenoncan be either bad news or good news for the researcher. It will render short-term, one-shot investigations into classroom language learning largely invalid and unre liable . If,on the other hand , we ap proa ch studies of classroom langua ge learning on a longitudinalbasis, then we may be able to explore the process of re-establishment of social andemotional equilibrium which our initial arrival challenged. In other words, we mayuncover more precisely the "rules of the game" which represent the self-maintainingculture of that particular working group.

The Culture of the Classroom is Jointly ConstructedWhilst we may accept the truism that all knowledge is socially constructedmostespecially if we are working with the knowledge of a language and how it is usedbetween peoplewe need to consider how classrooms re-constructknowledge. In a


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148 M . P. Breenlanguage class, the classroom group together not only freshly evolves the new language(the content of lessons), but together also jointly constructs the lessons (the socialprocedures of teaching and learning). Whether or not the teacher plans a lesson inadvance, the actual working out of that lesson in the class demands joint endeavour.The lesson-in-process is most often different from that which either the teacher or thelearners anticipated before the lesson began. The social dynamic of the group insiststhat lessons evolve through explicit or implicit negotiation. In whatever ways the lessonmay be perceived by those who participate in it, the route it takes will be drawn bythe joint contributions of most, if not all, of the members of the class. Teachers andlearners are well aware that lessons are rarely straightforward journeys but are punc-tuated by hesitant starts, diversions, momentary losses of momentum, interesting sidetracks, and unexpected breakdowns. That it may be better to plan classroom learningin advance has little to do with this entirely normal and creative evolution of lessons.

Several important implications for the researcher result from the fact that the contentand process of language classes are jointly constructed. First, any teacher-centred (orresearcher-centred) perspective on lessons is partial. Second, the researcher's back-ground knowledge of the actual language being worked upon in a class can be a serioushandicap because it potentially blinds us to the process of re-invention of that languagewhich teacher and taught engage in together. (This implication warns us against relyingon external linguistic criteria alone in assessing the nature of comprehensible input, forexample.) The problem reminds us of a similar gap between the teacher's definition ofthe new language and the different lear ner s' definitions. The re a re likely to be as manyversions of the new language, and changing versions of it, as there are people in theroom. Third, the researcher has to be continually wary of being dazzled by whatseemssalient in classroom life. For example, even the most passive or non-contributory learnerin a class can be a poltergeist on the proceedings. Silence, encouraged or not, is acharacteristic part of the culture of the classroom and it has great significance. Silenceor withdrawal can change a lesson just as powerfully as their opposites, and not justfor the person who withdraws, but also for all the others who sense it. The fourthimplication of the joint construction of the content and process of a language class isparticularly significant for researchers who wish to examine the effects of classroomlanguage learning. The fact that lessons-in-process are communal endeavours meansthat any learning outcome, for any member of the class, has been socially processed.T h e actual n ature of individual achievements has been communally moulded. T he cultureof the classroom inevitably mediates between a new language and a learner in class.The culture of a particular class will shape what is made available for learning, willwork upon what is made available in particular ways, will evolve its own criteria forprogress and achievement, and will attain specific and various objectives. (It is worthemphasising here that linguistic input is only a part of the first of these classroom-basedphenomena.) What someone learns in a language class will be a dynamic synthesis ofindividual an d collective experience. Individual definitions of the new language, of whatis to be attended to as worth learning, of how to learn, and personal definitions ofprogress will allinteract with the particular classroom culture's definitions of each ofthese things. If strictly individualised or autonomous language learning is desirable


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The Social Context or Language LearningA Neglected Situation 49or even possible then theclassroom is necessarily antithetical towards it. The lan-guage I learn in a classroom is a communal product derived through a jointlycon-structed process.

The Culture of the Classroom is Imm ediate ly S ignificantWhat is overtly done in a classroom and what can be described by an observer areepiphenomena; they are reductionsof classroom reality. How thingsaredoneand whythingsare done have particular psychological significance for theindividualand for thegroup. The particular cultureof a language class will sociallyact in certain ways, butthese actionsareextensionsormanifestationsofthe psychologyofthe group ,itscollectiveconsciousness and subconscious. Individual perceptions and definitions will, of course,feed into and evolve from thoseof the group. However, the socio-cognitive worldofthe classits culturewill be a world other than the sum of the individual worldswithin it. W h a t is significantfor learners (and a teacher) in a classroom is not onlytheir individual thinking and behaviour nor, for instance, a longer-term mastery of asyllabus, but the day-to-day interpersonal rationalisation of what is to bedone,why,andhow. The immediate significanceof theexperienceof classroom language learningresides in how individual priorities (teacher and learner definitions of what , why, andhow)can begiven social space hereand now. It is precisely this interplay between theindividual, the individual as group member, and the group which represents andgenerates the social and psychological nexus which I have proposed as the cultureofthe language classroom. Most often the flow of classroom life is actually under thesurface. What is observable is the rim of a socio-cognitive coral reef Classroom lifeseemsto require that many learners spend surprising amountsof time doing little, whilsta teacher spends equally surprising amountsoftime tryingto do toomuch.A s researcherswe can describe such overt peculiarities, but we also need to explain them. We haveto ask whether or not such phenomena are true, and we must doubt the integrityofthe observable. If we do, then we are led towards discovering what is, in fact,immediately significant for the group of people westarted to observe. The search forthe significance whicha person, learneror teacher, invests inmom entsof classroom life(and for the significance granted to these momentsby the classroom culture) isneithertrivialnor avoidable, thoughit may becomplex and subtle. We will never understandclassroom language learning unlessweexplore its lesson-by-lesson significance for thosewho undertake it.

REVIEWINGTHECLASSROOM SCULTUREI have offered brief descriptionsofeight featuresof thegenuine cultureof thelanguageclassroominorder toachievetwopurposes. F irst, toillustratethepotentialofclassroomlife itself, itssocial and psychological richness. The particular features I have selectedare offered withnoevaluative intent. Iwouldnotwishto suggest here that such featuresare "good"or "bad"aspectsof a classroom. Theyare theinevitable characteristicsof


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150 M . P. Breenthe social event in which most people learn a foreign language. My second purposehas been to draw attention to significant social and psychological variables which weseem to be neglecting in our current research in language learning. My main argumentwould be that, if we wish to investigate language learning, these variables must becontained in whatever metaphor we have for that special social location from which agreat deal of language learning actually derives.'2

My practical purpose in exploring the metaphor of the classroom as culture has beento seek to offer a possible means for relating social and cognitive variableswhich mayinfluence language learning; to suggest a particular frame through which we may cometo understand language learning in a more contextually valid way. The culture of theclass resembles a single person through its integration of psychological and social factors.A teacher or a learner is not either individual mind or social actor when participatingin lessons. Each is at once cognitive and social, and so are the classroom realitieswhich each perceives. Current language learning research tends to examine psycho-logical change in an asocial way or social events in a non-cognitive way. Either ap-pro ac h implies distinctiveness of psychological an d social dimensions of learning a nd ,thereby, risks offering both a partial account and a simplistic causal explanation ofthe relations between social phenomena and individual development. The metaphorof the classroom as culture allows us to perceive the two dimensions as irrevocablylinked and mutually engaged. The metaphor also captures the classroom group as asocio-cognitive dyna mic w hich is anextensionof the individual within it. Because theclassroom culture is a human enterprise, it provides the researcher with a living sub-ject, an informant, not unlike a single learner. When investigating an individual'slearning process, we may endeavour to account for the particular permutation of at-tribute s an d a ctivities of that learn er w hich may influence the learning. Sim ilarly, thestudy of a language class as culture can provide us with a holistic and integratedframework which incorporates the experimental and discoursal attributes of a class-room, but which also locates these at t r ibutes within a r icher cluster of typicalcharacteristics.

T h e eight features I have described are selective, and there are further features whichreflect and create the socio-cognitive realities of a language class. A classroom groupwill achieve interaction, collectivism, or significance in its own ways. But all of thefeatures overlap and interrelate, and a class will evolve particular permutations offeatures over time. Just as each feature will vary as the life of the class proceeds, therewill also be changes in the patterning and interaction of all the features. Although Iwould suggest that the classroom as culture and the features which represent its culturalnature areuniversalto language classrooms w herever they may b e, a particular classroomwill evolve both individual features and a synthesis of features in particular ways atpar ticu lar times. A n d it is the synthesis of features which is the specific cu lture of aclassroom group. If such proposals are acceptable and valid, what do they imply forundertaking research within a language class? Also, what does the metaphor of class-room as culture offer to the language teacher? I wish to conclude by briefly outliningsome major deductions for researching and teaching.


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152 M . P. Breenfrom intrusion towards a reciprocity of trust and helpfulness; becomingwithinthe classroomculture over time and being seen as contributing as much to the group as we receive fromit.

If the above objectives are seen to be difficult or impossible to attain, then our futureinvestigations into classroom language learning will need to acknowledge more explicitlythose things which we have not accounted for.

TEA CH ING W ITH IN THE CLASSROOM AS CULTUREAs direct participants in the culture of their language classes, teachers are very likelyto be highly sensitive to the nuances of the features of classroom life which I have triedto describe. However, the metaphor of the classroom as culture suggests two majorimplications for the language teacher. The first relates to the special task of teachinga language, and the second relates to the teacher's direct concern with the process oflearning in classrooms.

1. H ow can the culture of the classroom be exploited as a resource for the devel-opment of linguistic and communicative knowledge and abilities? Although a classroomis an apprenticeship for later authentic communication and any use of the new languageprimarily serves the learning and teaching of that language, any group of languagelearners has two significant contributions to make to the development of the newlanguage: first, individual prior definitions and experiences of language and commu-nication, of learning, and of working in classrooms: second, the capacity to be meta-linguistic and metacommunicative, to talk about, to explore collectively, and to recon-struct jointly language and its use. The language class has the communicative potentialfor a dialogue about subjective definitions of language, how language may be bestlearned, and how the classroom context may be best used. The positive and explicituse of the interactive, collective, normative, and jointly constructed nature of lessonscan be a means to uncovering and sharing what individual learners and the teacherperceive as significant for them in learning a language together. And what is revealedcan, in turn, provide the starting points for later interaction, collective endeavour,agreed evaluation, and the joint construction of subsequent lessons. Put simply, alanguage class may be a place where the underlying culture of that class can be mobilisedand engaged more overtly. I do not have space here to detail the practicalities ofmobilising the culture of the classroom for language learning, but I would suggest twopedagog ic motivations for such a prop osal. First, a gathering of people in a classroomprovides a reservoir of prior knowledge and experienceboth reflective or abstractand concreteof language and communicating from which any new knowledge andexperience must flow. Second, the teachinglearning process requires decisions to bemade, and decision making has high communicative potential. The sharing of decisionmaking in a language class will generate communication which has authentic roots ingetting things done here and now.

2 . H ow can the culture of the classroom help the teacher to facilitate classroomlanguage learning? The culture of the class has the potential to reveal to the teacher


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The Social Context for Language LearningA Neglected Situation 153the language learning process as it is actually experienced. In this way , tea ching langu ageand investigating language learning may be seen to be synonymous. Teachers andlearners already undertake research in classrooms, but their joint investigation tends tofocus upon subject matterthe new language and its use. An additional focus ofinvestigation could be the language learning process as it actually unfolds and as it isdirectly experienced in the class. Many teachers and learners already undertake suchaction research, but it is sometimes rather implicit and accorded little space and sig-nificance. I am suggesting here that genuine classroom language learning research mayprogress to the extent that those people who are immediately involved in its everydayrealities also become explicitly engaged in a metho dical reflection upon their own learningand teaching. The pedagogic motivation would be that teacher-learner research hasthe potential to facilitate a delicate understanding and refinement of language devel-opment withinthe classroom itself. If this pedagogic purpose may be seen as valuable,then the researcher can offer knowledge and skills to a classroom rather than act onlyas a recipient of its riches.

LEARNING WITHIN THE CLASSROOM AS CULTUREI have briefly argued for the explicit use of shared decision making and for the teacher-learner research in the language class because both seem to me pedagogically ap pro pria tewithin classrooms devoted to the discovery and development of a new language andits use. However, both proposals derive from considering the potential of the cultureof the classroomfor language teaching. Both also derive from the wish to bring researchin language learning and the classroom experience of language learning closer together.The research approach suggested earlier requires participating investigators and lon-gitudinal involvement (at least), and it could lead to a positive erosion of the distinctionsbetween doing research, doing teaching, and learning.

Th is pap er is not intended as some Rousseau esque app eal for a return to the primitivesavagery of classroom life in reaction, perhaps, to a vision of finely-tuned classroomswherein learners might be discoursally programmed. Nor is it intended as a rejectionof the metaphors of classroom as experimental laboratory or classroom as discourse.Classrooms are experimen ts and they a re places w here the discourse symbolizes sig-nificant actions and thoughts of those participating. And classrooms are specific cultures.All three metaphors seem to me to be true, but all three are also partial. I have triedto show that the classroom as culture embraces variables which we may have formerlyneglected in research. The metaphor can allow us to see the classroom more distinctlyand to re-explore its potential more precisely. However, we still need to develop,during the research process, sufficiently sensitive methods of investigation so that theculture of the language class may be less of a metaphor and more of a revelation.

I am pleased to be able to end with one of Edward Sapir's enlightening observationsbecause he expressed, sixty years ag o, a crucial consideration re garding the relationshipbetween scientific efficiency and genuine culture. Sapir comments on his importantdistinction between human progress and cultural experience:


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154 M P BreenWe have no right to demand of higher levels of sophistication that they preserveto the individual his manifold functioning, but we may well ask whether, as acompensation, the individual may not reasonably demand an intensification incultural value, a spiritual heightening of such functions as are left him."

In this paper, I have tried to argue that our professional concern with one of theindividual's most socially motivated functionslearning how to communicate with mem-bers of another social group, another culturerequires us to understand how theindividual may best achieve this. A n d if the individual undertake s the task in a classroom,we need to understan d the socio-cognitive experience ma de available through the meetingof individual and classroom group. The classroom may be a relatively inefficient en-vironment for the methodical mastery of a language system, just as it is limited inproviding opportunities for real world communication in a new language. But theclassroom has its own communicative potential and its own authentic metacommunicativepurpose. It can be a particular social context for the intensification of the culturalexperience oflearning.NOTES

1. This tendency has been captured by Kuhn's (1962) analysis of scientific research. Research ex-emplifying the first view I wish to explore is represented in the excellent anthologies of Hatch (1978), Felix(1980), Scarcel la and Krashen (1983) and Bai ly, Long, and Peck (1984). The second prevalent view isimplied by recent studies of classroom language learning, fairly represented in the valuable collections ofLarsen-Freeman (1980), Sel iger and Long (1983) and Faerch and Kasper (1983). Of course, muchlanguage learning research makes no reference to the classroom and several researchers do not assume theperspec tives discussed in this pape r. M y emp hasis is upon currently influential views of language learningand what these imply for the functions of the classroom.

2 . Pa rad oxi cally , the features of optimal input were initially derived from ( I ) the order of emergenceof certain linguistic features in the production of language learners and (2) the characteristics of simple codesused by people other than learnerse.g., motherese, foreigner talk, talk to foreigners, etc. Neither phe-nomenon has been shown to have any necessary relationship with learning language. (On the relationshipbetween motherese and learning, for example, see Ne wp ort, Gleitman , and Gleitman 1977 ; Shan tz 198 2.)Most work on learning strategies has tended to be individual case studies undertaken outside classrooms orthrough simulated tasks. These points are not intended critically but suggest limitations in relating researchfindings on learning to the language classroom.3 . T o try to teach learning strategies seems to me an inappro pria te interpre tation of the investigationsof, inter al ia, Naiman, Frohhch, Stern, and Todesco (1978), Rubin (1981), and Cohen and Hosenfeld(1981). Apart from the major problem of the researcher having toinfer strategies from retrospections (Mann198 2) or from communication strategies (Faerch and K as pe r, 19 83 ), we need to maintain clear distinctionsbetween the act of learning and the influences of teaching. Language learning research currently lacks anapproach to learning strategies and styles which accounts for key intervening variablessuch as the contextin which the learner works and how the learner strategically reacts to that context. Examples of a morecomprehensive analysis can be found in Gibson an d Levin (197 5) , M ann (1 98 3) and Ma rton , Hounsell,an d E n t w i s t l e (1 9 8 4 ) .

4 . Alth oug h S L A re search evolved from work in L I acquisition, it has persisted in a narro w focusupon linguistic and mentalistic variab les whilst the last deca de of LI research has been charac terised by itsconcern with social, contextual and interactive variables also (W aterso n and Sno w, 197 8; Lock, 197 8).T he significant theoretical synthesis provided to S L A research by Krashen ( 1 9 8 1 , 1982) has encouragedthis asocial perspectiv e. H ow ev er, a para do x thrives at present wherein it is fashionable in some quarter sto belittle K rashen 's invaluable contributions to the S L A paradigm whilst many researchers unquestiomnglyassume his hypotheses proven as the starting point of their own investigations. Both positions seem equallyunjustified.

5. See M ueller's ( 19 79 ) historical analysis of the "science" of psychology. In this pa pe r, I will arguefor a socio-cognitive perspective on language learning. Current influential approaches to the social psychology


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156 M . P.Breen14 . In Breen ( 19 82 ), 1 examine the practical realities of classroom language and proced ures. T he m ore

explicit involvement of learners is considered in Breen (1983), whilst syllabus planning through shareddecision making is discussed in Breen (1984).

15 . This implies that my proposals for the researcher may also be directly relevant to the teaching-learning process itself. If the culture of the group is explicitly mobilised for sharing decisions and for reflectiveinvestigation, then the generahsabihty of what may be derived from thatclassroom may seem to be undermined.Bu t more may be gained from pa rticipa tory research than might be lost. We have failed, as yet, to discoveractual relationships between the classroom situation and language learning. W e simply do not know whatthe classroom contributes to the developmental process. Research which implies that phenomena unique toclassrooms must be the contributions to learning which only classrooms can offer is trapped in its owncircularity. Objective investigationsthrough discourse analysis or the quantification of selected variables ofclassroom life, for examplerepresent little more than a researcher'sinferencing an d, thereb y, remain onlyrelatively objective. Yet we cling onto a faith in the chasteness of neutral impartiality which is assumed tobe synonymous with non-participant data collection and analysis. Validity of classroom data and its inter-pretation demands direct teacherlearner intervention in the research process, whilst the researcher canfacilitate their exploration by contributing rigourous and established research methods and criteria.

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THE SOCIAL CONTEXT FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING—A NEGLECTED SITUATION?

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