I haven’t said much in my learning blogs about the social
aspect of my Russian learning, but it is there, if only minimally. When I’m
going over the Rosetta Stone lessons I will often ask my wife, a native Russian
speaker, how to pronounce something or what a certain word means. The
translation is helpful because RS does not give the English translations. I’m
still thinking of how much this kind of social interaction relates to
Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development. But there are other times, however,
when my wife will quiz me on certain words, forcing me to recall them and
helping to extend my potential. This also goes both ways because she always
asks me how to pronounce a certain word in English or what a word means. For
example, we made hot chocolate in a pot the other day and the directions said
to stir it until it was “frothy,” but she had never heard that word before. I
tried to explain what it meant, but since I’m an expert [recall the Ambrose
article] in English, it can be challenging to explain what certain words are
when I intuitively understand them. In this way I think the zone of proximal
development is at work since she is learning something from me, and by me
trying to explain it, I’m learning about how to explain and understand it in
different terms. And I don’t know if the Ambrose article brought up the
importance of the expert having patience, but I think it’s good to keep in
mind. It’s helpful being on the novice end so that I am reminded of what it is
like to learn something new and what I also expect from a teacher.
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| This is my effort to illustrate a combination of the ideas about learning from experts while using a sociocultural approach like legitimate peripheral participation or cognitive apprenticeship. Also notice how some of the matroyshka dolls are talking to each other and not just the expert in the middle. Cool huh? |
Back to the sociocultural aspect of this. After this weeks
Lave and Wenger reading and the Brown et al article on situated learning, I’m
wondering what these authors might say about language learning. They talk about
how it is best to learn something in the context that you will use it in, so
does that mean that I shouldn’t bother learning Russian outside of Russia
(i.e., the context where I plan to use it)? Or that my learning Russian through
Rosetta Stone will only be good within the context of Rosetta Stone? Would they
discourage learning a language in a more structured, formal environment? They
might discourage it, but would they think it’s useless? I’m not saying these
authors don’t have an answer, I just don’t know what it is. The cognitivist
would have an easy answer to this question, and it is that you can still store
up things in your memory for use later on. My goal in learning Russian is to
combine both of these theories in that I hope to give myself as much prior
knowledge as I can so that it can then be retrieved when I am in a more
appropriate context. In other words, when I go to Russia, I’m hoping I can
recognize some of the things I’ve learned, and then figure out how to use my
prior knowledge by observing others. And by the way, isn’t this also the aim of
formal schooling and education? To help give us some basic knowledge and skills
to get us started in the workplace environment? As much as I like the
sociocultural approach and the idea of the cognitive apprentice, it still seems
limited, which is no surprise since all these theories appear inadequate in
different ways.
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