Struggling Toward Development: Understanding Second Language Learning Through a Vygotskian Lens

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Wednesday 7:45am
  In Poster Session: Emerging Topics in Second Language Research

Abstract

This study investigates how high school ESL writers’ struggles in argumentative writing may become developmental sites under responsive mediation, informed by Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory (SCT). Five students participated in a writing intervention program, which consisted of pre- and-post-tests, and a series of writing workshops. Analysis of the interactions between learners and the mediator revealed four types of writer struggles: linguistic, genre and rhetorical, cognitive-planning, and emotional. In addition, the mediation leveraged writer struggles, transforming these difficulties into moments of writing development. The study contributes to the field by reconceptualizing struggle in a developmental-oriented manner and operationalizing perezhivanie in assessment contexts. L2 writing instructors are therefore better equipped with pedagogical insights that help them better understand and navigate writer struggles.

Author

• Zhaoyu Wang-Doyle, University of Massachusetts - Amherst