Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Second Language Teaching

DEI-SLT is an open educational resource website that offers support to educators who want to bridge language teaching and social justice.

Acquisition as activity and agency

Key Concept

1.Learners are historically and sociologically situated active agents, not just information processing machines.
2.Learning is about more than the acquistion of linguistic forms; it is about learners actively developing and engaging in ways of mediating themselves and their relationship to others in communities of practice.
3.Non-participation – a process of reactive resistance to attempts by target community members to marginalize the learner; or a passive process of acceptance of marginalisation by target community members.
4.Agency is always co-constructed via interaction with other agents.
5.Learning is part of the ongoing construction of self-identity (Giddens 1991) and the consequent ongoing construction of a personal narrative.
(Lantolf and Pavlenko, 2001 – cit. en Block, 2011, 109-110)