Published

2016-01-01

The Co-Construction of Participation Through Oral Mediation in the EFL Classroom

La co-construcción de la participación a través de la mediación en el aula de lengua extranjera

Keywords:

Discourse moves, interaction, oral participation, mediation (en)
herramientas discursivas, interacción, mediación, participación oral (es)

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Authors

  • Jose David Herazo Rivera
  • Anamaría Sagre Barboza
Sociocultural theory argues that an individual’s mental, social, and material activity is mediated by cultural tools. One such tool is the language or discourse teachers use during whole class interaction in the second language classroom. The purpose of this study was to examine how a Colombian se-cond language teacher mediated her ninth-grade students’ participation during classroom interaction. We videotaped and transcribed five lessons and interviewed the teacher after each lesson. Findings revealed that the teacher mainly used questions, elaborations, recasts, and continuatives in patterned combinations to help learners co-construct relevant content and sustained participation. Such mediation provided learners with frequent affordances to engage in meaning-making, a necessary condition for developing a new language.
La teoría sociocultural argumenta que las herramientas culturales median la actividad mental, social y material de una persona. Una de estas herramientas es el habla o discurso del profesor(a) en interacción con sus estudiantes durante la clase. Esta investigación analizó la forma como una profesora de segunda lengua medió la participación de sus estudiantes y las implicaciones de dicha mediación. Se realizaron cinco observaciones de clase seguidas de entrevistas a la profesora. Los resultados muestran que la profesora utilizó principalmente preguntas, elaboración, reformulación correctora y continuativos para la co-construcción de contenido y participación de los estudiantes. Dicha mediación ayudó a los estudiantes a construir significado, condición necesaria para aprender una nueva lengua.

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