One means, many goals
Overimitation of language learning resources
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/lst.30843Keywords:
Second language acquisition, sociocultural theory, imitation, verbalization, orientation, self-regulationAbstract
Overimitation – the imitation of irrelevant elements in an action – seems to be both uniquely human and developmental, just as language is. This case study looks at how an adult Thai EFL learner used verbalization through self-questioning during the final task in a six-week intervention on reading-to-write. The study is situated in sociocultural theory and involves a microgenetic analysis of a video-recording of the participant verbalizing during the task, triangulated with proficiency testing, questionnaires, interviews, classroom field notes, and member checking. The findings show the participant oriented to the reading-to write task in several ways, one of which was by overimitating a list of questions he had been provided as a meditational support, by using the question list not only in order to self-regulate by monitoring his comprehension and managing the task as he had been encouraged to do, but also to practice making questions. By practicing question making he repurposed a task at the edge of his abilities into one better suited to his proficiency level, and managed to address the task goals set by the researcher and his own goals. Examining imitation and overimitation can provide practical pedagogical information to teachers as well as theoretical insights into language learning.
References
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Bourdieu, P. (1973). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In R. Brown (Ed.), Knowledge, Education and Social Change. London: Tavistock.
Chaiklin, S. (2003). The zone of proximal development in Vygotsky’s analysis of learning and instruction. In A. Kozulin, B. Gindis, V. S. Ageyev and S. Miller (Eds), Vygotsky’s Educational Theory in Cultural Context, 39–64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840975.004
Cialdini, R. B. and Goldstein, N. J. (2004). Social influence: Compliance and conformity. Annual Review of Psychology 55: 961–621.
Coughlan, P. and Duff, P. A. (1994). Same task, different activities: Analysis of SLA task from an activity theory perspective. In J. P. Lantolf and G. Appel (Eds), Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Research, 173–194. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Daraswang, P., Reinders, H. and Waters, A. (2015). Innovation in language teaching: The Thai Context. In P. Daraswang and H. Reinders (Eds), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning: The Case of Thailand, 1–14. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137449757_1
DiCamilla, F. J. and Antón, M. (2004). Private speech: A study of language for thought in the collaborative interaction of language learners. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 14: 36–69.
Flower, L. (1994). The Construction of Negotiated Meaning: A Social Cognitive Theory of Writing. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Flower, L., Stein, J., Ackerman, M.J., Kantz, K. McCormick, and W. C. Peck (Eds) (1990). Reading-to-write: Exploring a Cognitive and Social Process. New York: Oxford University Press.
Frawley W. and Lantolf J. P. (1985). Second language discourse: A Vygotskian perspective. Applied Linguistics 6: 19–44.
Gal’perin, P. Ya. (1957/1989). Mental actions as a basis for the formation of thoughts and images. Soviet Psychology 27 (3): 45–64.
Gal’perin, P. Ya. (1976/1989). The problem of attention. Soviet Psychology 27 (3): 83–92.
Galloway, N. and Rose, H. (2015). Introducing Global Englishes. Abingdon: Routledge.
Gergely, G., Bekkering, H. and Kira?ly, I. (2002). Rational imitation in preverbal infants. Nature 415: 755.
Haun, D. B. and Tomasello, M. (2011). Conformity to peer pressure in school children. Child Development 82: 1759–1757.
Haun, D. B. M., Rekers, Y. and Tomasello, M. (2012). Majority-biased transmission in chimpanzees and human children, but not orangutans. Current Biology 22: 727–731.
Horner, V. and Whiten, A. (2005). Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (pan troglodytes) and children (homo sapiens). Animal Cognition 8: 164–181.
Karpov, Y. V. and Haywood, C. (1998). Two ways to elaborate Vygotsky’s concept of mediation. American Psychologist 53: 27–36.
Kenward, V. (2012). Over-imitating preschoolers believe unnecessary actions are normative and enforce their performance by a third party. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 112: 195–207.
Keupp, S., Behne, T. and Rakoczk, H. (2015). Why do children overimitate? Normativity is crucial. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 116: 392–406.
Kira?ly, I., Csibra, G. and Gergely, G. (2013). Beyond rational imitation: Learning arbitrary means actions from communicative demonstrations. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 116: 471–486.
Kirkpatrick, R. (2012). English education in Thailand: 2012. Asian EFL Journal 61: 24–40.
Lantolf, J. P. (2003). Intrapersonal communication and internalization in the second language classroom. In A. Kozulin, V. S. Ageev, S. Miller and B. Gindis (Eds), Vygotsky’s Theory of Education in Cultural Context 349–370. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lantolf, J. P. and Frawley, W. (1988). Proficiency: Understanding the construct. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 10: 181–196.
Lantolf, J. P. and Pavlenko, A. (2001). (S)econd (L)anguage (A)ctivity: Understanding learners as people. In M. Breen (Ed.), Learner Contributions to Language Learning: New Directions in Research, 141–158. London: Pearson.
Lantolf, J. P. and Poehner, M. E. (2014). Sociocultural Theory and the Pedagogical Imperative in L2 Education: Vygotskian Praxis and the Theory/Practice Divide. Hoboken NJ: Taylor and Francis.
Lantolf, J. P. and Thorne, S. L. (2006). Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lantolf, J. P. and Yán?ez-Prieto, C. (2003). Talking yourself into Spanish: Intrapersonal communication and second language learning. Hispania 86: 97–109.
Luria, A. R. (1961). The Role of Speech in the Regulation of Normal and Abnormal Behavior (J. Tizard, trans.). New York: Liveright.
Lyons, D. E., Damrosch, D. H., Lin, J. K., Macris, D. M. and Keil, F. C. (2011). The scope and limits of overimitation in the transmission of artefact culture. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 366 (1567): 1158–1167.
Lyons, D. E., Young, A. G. and Keil, F. C. (2007). The hidden structure of overimitation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104: 19751–19756.
Manchón, R. M., Murphy, L. and Roca de Larios, J. (2005.) Using concurrent protocols to explore L2 writing processes: Methodological issues in the collection and analysis of data. In P. K. Matsuda and T. Silva (Eds), Second Language Writing Research: Perspectives on the Process of Knowledge Construction, 191–205. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Markus, H. R. and Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review 98: 224–253.
Marno, H. and Csibra, G. (2015). Toddlers favor communicatively presented information over statistical reliability in learning about artifacts. PLoS ONE 10 (3): e0122129.
McCafferty, S. G. (1994). Adult second language learners’ use of private speech: A review of studies. Modern Language Journal 78: 421–436.
McGuigan, N. and Whiten, A. (2009). Emulation and ‘overemulation’ in the social learning of causally opaque versus causally transparent tool use by 23- and 30-month-olds. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 104: 367–381.
McGuigan, N., Whiten, A., Flynn, E. and Homer, V. (2007). Imitation of causally opaque versus causally transparent tool use by 3- and 5-year-old children. Cognitive Development 22: 353–364.
McGuigan, N., Makinson, J., and Whiten, A. (2011). From over-imitation to super-copying: Adults imitate causally irrelevant aspects of tool use with higher fidelity than young children. British Journal of Psychology 102: 1–18.
McGuigan, N., Gladstone, D. and Cook, L. (2012). Is the cultural transmission of irrelevant tool actions in adult humans (homo sapiens) best explained as the result of an evolved conformist bias? PLOS ONE 7(12): e50863.
Negueruela, E. (2003). Systemic-Theoretical Instruction and L2 Development: A Sociocultural Approach to Teaching-Learning and Researching L2 Learning. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation.) The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
Nielsen, M. (2006). Copying actions and copying outcomes: Social learning through the second year. Developmental Psychology 42: 555–565.
Nielsen, M. and Blank, C. (2011). Imitation in young children: When who gets copied is more important than what gets copied. Developmental Psychology 47: 1050–1053.
Ohta, A. S. (2001) Second Language Acquisition Process in the Classroom. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Roebuck, R. (2000). Subjects speak out: How learners position themselves in a psycholinguistic task. In J. P. Lantolf (Ed.). Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning, 78–95. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stetsenko, A. (2017). The Transformative Mind: Expanding Vygotsky’s Approach to Development and Education. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9780511843044
Tomasello, M. (1999). The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1934/1986). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1935/1978). Interaction between learning and development (M. Lopez-Morillas, Trans.). In M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner and E. Souberman (Eds), Mind in Society, 79–91. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Wall, B. G. (2015). Self-regulation During a Reading-to-Write Task: A Sociocultural Theory-based Investigation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Wertsch, J. V. (1985). Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (2007). Mediation. In H. Daniels, M. Cole and J. Wertsch (Eds), The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky, 178–192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ccol0521831040.008
Whiten, A. (2013). Making us smart, or making us dumb? Overimitation, conformity, noncomformity, and the transmission of culture in ape and child. In M. Banaji and S. Gelman, Navigating the Social World: What Infants, Children, and Other Species Can Teach Us 150 – 154. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Whiten A., Horner V., Litchfield C. A. and Marshall-Pescini S. (2004). How do apes ape? Learning and Behavior 32: 36–52.
Williamson, R. A. and Meltzoff, A. N. (2011). Own and others’ prior experiences influence children’s imitation of causal acts. Cognitive Development 26: 260–268.
Barnard, R. and Campbell, L. (2005). Sociocultural theory and the teaching of process writing: The scaffolding of learning in a university context. The TESOLANZ Journal 13: 76–88.
Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Bourdieu, P. (1973). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In R. Brown (Ed.), Knowledge, Education and Social Change. London: Tavistock.
Chaiklin, S. (2003). The zone of proximal development in Vygotsky’s analysis of learning and instruction. In A. Kozulin, B. Gindis, V. S. Ageyev and S. Miller (Eds), Vygotsky’s Educational Theory in Cultural Context, 39–64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840975.004
Cialdini, R. B. and Goldstein, N. J. (2004). Social influence: Compliance and conformity. Annual Review of Psychology 55: 961–621.
Coughlan, P. and Duff, P. A. (1994). Same task, different activities: Analysis of SLA task from an activity theory perspective. In J. P. Lantolf and G. Appel (Eds), Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Research, 173–194. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Daraswang, P., Reinders, H. and Waters, A. (2015). Innovation in language teaching: The Thai Context. In P. Daraswang and H. Reinders (Eds), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning: The Case of Thailand, 1–14. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137449757_1
DiCamilla, F. J. and Antón, M. (2004). Private speech: A study of language for thought in the collaborative interaction of language learners. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 14: 36–69.
Flower, L. (1994). The Construction of Negotiated Meaning: A Social Cognitive Theory of Writing. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Flower, L., Stein, J., Ackerman, M.J., Kantz, K. McCormick, and W. C. Peck (Eds) (1990). Reading-to-write: Exploring a Cognitive and Social Process. New York: Oxford University Press.
Frawley W. and Lantolf J. P. (1985). Second language discourse: A Vygotskian perspective. Applied Linguistics 6: 19–44.
Gal’perin, P. Ya. (1957/1989). Mental actions as a basis for the formation of thoughts and images. Soviet Psychology 27 (3): 45–64.
Gal’perin, P. Ya. (1976/1989). The problem of attention. Soviet Psychology 27 (3): 83–92.
Galloway, N. and Rose, H. (2015). Introducing Global Englishes. Abingdon: Routledge.
Gergely, G., Bekkering, H. and Kira?ly, I. (2002). Rational imitation in preverbal infants. Nature 415: 755.
Haun, D. B. and Tomasello, M. (2011). Conformity to peer pressure in school children. Child Development 82: 1759–1757.
Haun, D. B. M., Rekers, Y. and Tomasello, M. (2012). Majority-biased transmission in chimpanzees and human children, but not orangutans. Current Biology 22: 727–731.
Horner, V. and Whiten, A. (2005). Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (pan troglodytes) and children (homo sapiens). Animal Cognition 8: 164–181.
Karpov, Y. V. and Haywood, C. (1998). Two ways to elaborate Vygotsky’s concept of mediation. American Psychologist 53: 27–36.
Kenward, V. (2012). Over-imitating preschoolers believe unnecessary actions are normative and enforce their performance by a third party. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 112: 195–207.
Keupp, S., Behne, T. and Rakoczk, H. (2015). Why do children overimitate? Normativity is crucial. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 116: 392–406.
Kira?ly, I., Csibra, G. and Gergely, G. (2013). Beyond rational imitation: Learning arbitrary means actions from communicative demonstrations. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 116: 471–486.
Kirkpatrick, R. (2012). English education in Thailand: 2012. Asian EFL Journal 61: 24–40.
Lantolf, J. P. (2003). Intrapersonal communication and internalization in the second language classroom. In A. Kozulin, V. S. Ageev, S. Miller and B. Gindis (Eds), Vygotsky’s Theory of Education in Cultural Context 349–370. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lantolf, J. P. and Frawley, W. (1988). Proficiency: Understanding the construct. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 10: 181–196.
Lantolf, J. P. and Pavlenko, A. (2001). (S)econd (L)anguage (A)ctivity: Understanding learners as people. In M. Breen (Ed.), Learner Contributions to Language Learning: New Directions in Research, 141–158. London: Pearson.
Lantolf, J. P. and Poehner, M. E. (2014). Sociocultural Theory and the Pedagogical Imperative in L2 Education: Vygotskian Praxis and the Theory/Practice Divide. Hoboken NJ: Taylor and Francis.
Lantolf, J. P. and Thorne, S. L. (2006). Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lantolf, J. P. and Yán?ez-Prieto, C. (2003). Talking yourself into Spanish: Intrapersonal communication and second language learning. Hispania 86: 97–109.
Luria, A. R. (1961). The Role of Speech in the Regulation of Normal and Abnormal Behavior (J. Tizard, trans.). New York: Liveright.
Lyons, D. E., Damrosch, D. H., Lin, J. K., Macris, D. M. and Keil, F. C. (2011). The scope and limits of overimitation in the transmission of artefact culture. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 366 (1567): 1158–1167.
Lyons, D. E., Young, A. G. and Keil, F. C. (2007). The hidden structure of overimitation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104: 19751–19756.
Manchón, R. M., Murphy, L. and Roca de Larios, J. (2005.) Using concurrent protocols to explore L2 writing processes: Methodological issues in the collection and analysis of data. In P. K. Matsuda and T. Silva (Eds), Second Language Writing Research: Perspectives on the Process of Knowledge Construction, 191–205. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Markus, H. R. and Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review 98: 224–253.
Marno, H. and Csibra, G. (2015). Toddlers favor communicatively presented information over statistical reliability in learning about artifacts. PLoS ONE 10 (3): e0122129.
McCafferty, S. G. (1994). Adult second language learners’ use of private speech: A review of studies. Modern Language Journal 78: 421–436.
McGuigan, N. and Whiten, A. (2009). Emulation and ‘overemulation’ in the social learning of causally opaque versus causally transparent tool use by 23- and 30-month-olds. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 104: 367–381.
McGuigan, N., Whiten, A., Flynn, E. and Homer, V. (2007). Imitation of causally opaque versus causally transparent tool use by 3- and 5-year-old children. Cognitive Development 22: 353–364.
McGuigan, N., Makinson, J., and Whiten, A. (2011). From over-imitation to super-copying: Adults imitate causally irrelevant aspects of tool use with higher fidelity than young children. British Journal of Psychology 102: 1–18.
McGuigan, N., Gladstone, D. and Cook, L. (2012). Is the cultural transmission of irrelevant tool actions in adult humans (homo sapiens) best explained as the result of an evolved conformist bias? PLOS ONE 7(12): e50863.
Negueruela, E. (2003). Systemic-Theoretical Instruction and L2 Development: A Sociocultural Approach to Teaching-Learning and Researching L2 Learning. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation.) The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
Nielsen, M. (2006). Copying actions and copying outcomes: Social learning through the second year. Developmental Psychology 42: 555–565.
Nielsen, M. and Blank, C. (2011). Imitation in young children: When who gets copied is more important than what gets copied. Developmental Psychology 47: 1050–1053.
Ohta, A. S. (2001) Second Language Acquisition Process in the Classroom. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Roebuck, R. (2000). Subjects speak out: How learners position themselves in a psycholinguistic task. In J. P. Lantolf (Ed.). Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning, 78–95. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stetsenko, A. (2017). The Transformative Mind: Expanding Vygotsky’s Approach to Development and Education. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9780511843044
Tomasello, M. (1999). The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1934/1986). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1935/1978). Interaction between learning and development (M. Lopez-Morillas, Trans.). In M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner and E. Souberman (Eds), Mind in Society, 79–91. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Wall, B. G. (2015). Self-regulation During a Reading-to-Write Task: A Sociocultural Theory-based Investigation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Wertsch, J. V. (1985). Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (2007). Mediation. In H. Daniels, M. Cole and J. Wertsch (Eds), The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky, 178–192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ccol0521831040.008
Whiten, A. (2013). Making us smart, or making us dumb? Overimitation, conformity, noncomformity, and the transmission of culture in ape and child. In M. Banaji and S. Gelman, Navigating the Social World: What Infants, Children, and Other Species Can Teach Us 150 – 154. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Whiten A., Horner V., Litchfield C. A. and Marshall-Pescini S. (2004). How do apes ape? Learning and Behavior 32: 36–52.
Williamson, R. A. and Meltzoff, A. N. (2011). Own and others’ prior experiences influence children’s imitation of causal acts. Cognitive Development 26: 260–268.
Published
2017-05-03
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Feryok, A., & Wall, G. (2017). One means, many goals: Overimitation of language learning resources. Language and Sociocultural Theory, 4(1), 25-51. https://doi.org/10.1558/lst.30843
