Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach



Method I 127

of Multillnguallsm In Childhood, written in 1935 (it is discussed in
John-Stelner,1985), where he insisted on the importance of cognitive
strategies developed in the Ll for the subsequent acquisition of the L2.
More recent empirical work in the Vygotskian tradition (Frawley and
Lantolf,1985) confirms this position, across different age groups.

The 'communicative movement in language teaching' reveals the attempt to
use these conceptions on the nature and development of language to L2
learning in the classroom, with a variety of settings, purposes, learners
and resources. The tendency to stress the assets rather than the deficits
of the learner when confronted with an L2 is consistent with the views
on bilingualism presented in 2.1 and 2.2, even if it may not inform the
practice of expensive bilingual education programmes (Moll and Diaz,1985).
Vhat the L2 learner brings to the task is a general knowledge of
linguistic systems, his competence in learning and using another language
and therefore his abilities to find effective learning strategies
(metacommunicative and metalinguistic awareness, Interlanguage: Faerch
et
al.,1984).

Again, the problem for appropriate uses of theory in the classroom is
that teaching Is not the same thing as describing or understanding, and
mediation is necessary when the linguistic , psychological and
sociological systems are connected with the pedagogical. Power
relationships, hidden curriculum, degrees of teachers' competence and
self-assurance, financial constraints, (bad) definitions of aims,
structural asymmetry of the teaching and the learning process, simple
availability of target language speakers and of course learners' interests
are just some of the factors that prevent the classroom from being a
context for L2 learning such as the family is for Ll acquisition. Again,
then, it is a problem of selecting which features of the Ll acquisition
process are worth studying because they have direct applications to L2
learning, and to which of the many aspects of language teaching they can
be legitimately and practically related.

In the present study, the selection of discourse features of Ll communi-
cation to be studied was based on criteria of applicability to the oral



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