The discursive features of the collaborative interaction of advanced learners of Spanish: a sociocultural perspective

Abstract

This study investigates the collaborative interaction of English-speaking students enrolled in a university upper-level Spanish course. We have framed our research within the sociocultural theory of mind and language based on the work of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978, 1986). We examine specific features (e.g., repetition, sentence types, modal verbs, etc.) of student interactions in order to determine the social and cognitive functions of their utterances while performing three collaborative writing assignments. The focus of this research is how language, whether L1 or L2, functions as the principle mediating device in the process of learning a second language, particularly in a classroom setting. Two key elements of effective collaboration, scaffolding and intersubjectivity, are explored in order to understand how students use language to provide each other with scaffolded help and to achieve and maintain intersubjectivity.