An Ecosystem-Wide Study of a Complex ESL Program through Activity Theory and Semiotics

Abstract

Abstract:The purpose of this study was to investigate how a learning environment went about for second language (L2) learning. Drawing on an ecological perspective, this work conceives an after-school program aimed for promoting a group of secondary-school students' L2 learning as an ecosystem or a whole that was highly complex due to interrelated layers of any contextualized details. In this context, to understand how a group of L2 learners regulated their L2 learning strategies in the environment became a complexity issue. To take on this challenge, this study turned to activity theory in terms of semiotics of signs to transforming any contextualized details -drawn from observations over 12 lessons -into an interwoven set of ecosystem-wide characteristics found relevant to L2 learning. The research focused on a group of four secondary-school students in Hong Kong, in an after-school home environment over 12 lessons, examining a range of teaching-learning activities. Data consisted of videotaping and field notes during and after each class based on a participant perspective through observations. As a result, the L2 learning environment was on the one hand described to be one where meaning-making signs were diversified and interrelated while maintaining their informational dynamism. On the other hand, active engagement, guidance-oriented regulation and activity aims were also found to function together progressively for (1) reaching specific L2 meaning-making goals closer and closer and (2) increasing opportunities for making meaningful contributions to each other's mental understanding in L2.

Ecosystem-Wide Characteristics of an ESL Environment in Situ: An Affordance-Semiotics Perspective

“…The current study can be considered a revisit to the data sets originally derived from Lai (2013). In the previous study, I attempted to examine the data from an activity theory perspective while this study fundamentally looks at the data with a whole new light.…”

“…Throughout the 12 lessons, the four students participated in three L2 learning activities included newspaper article sharing, English language movie watching, and two podcast talk shows (under the topics of fusion energy and real supernatural stories).However, the podcast talk show (under the topic of real supernatural stories) was the only yet intensely focal activity in this paper while others have been studied systematically in the counterpart study (i.e., Lai, 2013). Further details of this focal activity will be introduced in the next section.…”

“…As compared to the affordance system, the system of information recycling that I introduced above in Lai (2013) for the purpose of preserving useful information for semiotic survival (or preventing useful information from being forgotten and reused to make further useful meaning). Especially for object-related information, it was prevented from disappearing or getting lost in the ecosystem when it was determined by a learner to be object-related, and then further perceived and picked up for further semiotic actions to be acted on by another learner.…”

“…In recent years, a groundswell of teaching and learning research has been seen on an environmental scale; one where individual learners actively interact with the everchanging teaching environment (e.g., Brine& Franken, 2006; Lai, 2013;Özad & Kutoğlu, 2004;Peng, 2011;van Lier, 2004;van Lier, 2007;Rumbaugh, 2012;Ziglari, 2012). Unlike traditional learning theory that limits emphasis to the straitjacket of stimulating or contingent events (i.e., input) that control or shape responses (i.e., output), the current orientation tends to regard learners as active actors who keep interacting with meanings potentially availableor situated -in their immediate environment (van Lier, 2004; also see Rumbaugh, 2012, p. 2).…”