چکیده:
This investigation postulates Vygotsky‘s (1978) concept of zone of proximal development (ZPD) and his related ―scaffolding‖ metaphor as well as Norton‘s (2006) principles of sociocultural identity as its theoretical foundation. This research intends to scrutinize the socioculturally-oriented mediational mechanisms utilized in student-student and student-teacher collaborations in an Iranian EFL writing class. Such scrutiny is to reveal the learners‘ sociocultural change in behavior, and how their sociocultural identity is scaffolded and developed through collaborative negotiation in writing. For this purpose, Lidz's Rating Scale (1991) was adopted to delve into the sociocultural-identity-conducive interactions produced by 32 sophomores of English Language and Literature at Shiraz University as they collaborated in writing. The analysis of such scaffolding-mediated discourse provides useful insights into the nature of the learners‘ sociocultural identity development. Particularly, the results provide evidence that dialogic exchanges through linguistic meanson the part of peers and the teacher include some behaviors such as intentionality, joint regard, affective
involvement, communicative ratchet, contingent responsivity, intersubjectivity, and L1 use in collaborative writing tasks which play the most significant role in establishing new identities and gaining self-regulation, i.e. developing sociocultural identity.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Particularly, the results provide evidence that dialogic exchanges through linguistic meanson the part of peers and the teacher include some behaviors such as intentionality, joint regard, affective involvement, communicative ratchet, contingent responsivity, intersubjectivity, and L1 use in collaborative writing tasks which play the most significant role in establishing new identities and gaining self- regulation, i.
Lantolf (2000, 2002) states that the central and distinguishing concept of SCT is that human mind is always and everywhere socially and semiotically mediated within the "zone of proximal development" (ZPD), or "the domain of knowledge or skill where the learner is not yet capable of independent functioning, but can achieve the desired outcome given relevant scaffolded help" (Mitchell & Myles, 2004, p.
In this line of research the objective of studying learners‘ interaction is to uncover how learners and teachers use speaking activity as an identity- conducive tool in a socioculturally-inspired writing task.
Conceptual Framework Sociocultural Theory, as Lantolf (2000, 2002) states, deals with the fact that human mind is always and everywhere socially and semiotically mediated within the ―zone of proximal development‖ (ZPD), or ―the domain of knowledge or skill where the learner is not yet capable of independent functioning, but can achieve the desired outcome given relevant scaffolded help‖ (Mitchell & Myles, 2004, p.
Statement of the Problem According to Englert, Mariage, and Dunsmore (2006), a sociocultural approach to writing development ―seeks to understand how culturally and historically situated meanings, and as a result identities, are constructed, reconstructed, and transformed though social mediation‖ (p.