Introduction: The Learner and the Learning Environment: Creating New Communities

Abstract

Throughout the relatively short history of second language acquisition research there has been a clear division, and sometimes tension, between cognitive and socially-oriented approaches. Cognitive approaches view learners as individuals who process language input and produce language output. The major challenge for the researcher is to discover what happens in the ‘black box’ between input and output. In contrast, socially-oriented approaches see learners as part of a larger social matrix, affiliated with diverse communities and interacting in dynamic ways with members of these communities. Second language acquisition, and learning generally, is produced within communities of practice rather than reflecting an accomplishment of isolated individuals. Gibbons in this section expresses the distinction succinctly: learning is seen as occurring between individuals, not within them. Clearly, there is no absolute division here—all theorists acknowledge that learners are both cognitive and social beings, but there are certainly differences in emphasis accorded to these two dimensions in the research literature.