Building a Safe Community for Second Language Learning

Sydney Institute of Language and Commerce.Shanghai University，Shanghai，201800）

Abstract：This paper is a theoretical discussion of socio-cultural aspect of second language acquisition，which is frequently ignored in the mainstream research literature.This paper attempts to address the issue of how the learning environment and classroom interaction affect second language learners' perception or altitude towards the target language in china.Building a safe learning community is a suggested way for further debate.

Key words：socio-cultural aspect of SLA；afe learning community；a theoretical discussion

中圖分類號：G642.0 文獻標志碼：A 文章編號：1674-9324（2013）18-00××-××

Purpose of This Paper

Second language acquisition normally starts from the acquisition of linguistic aspect of the language such as phonology，grammar games and basic vocabulary.In most cases，educators focus on teaching the linguistic knowledge of a second language while they neglect other aspects of the target language.This paper explores these other aspects，or more specifically the need of building a supporting learning community for second language learners.Does second language acquisition really need something beyond the linguistic and cultural knowledge in smoothing out the process of acquisition？If the answer is yes，what is this supporting community supposed to be？And how do we measure the formation of this intangible supporting community among the second language learners？In response to a series of questions raised by this paper at the very beginning，this paper aims at exploring second language acquisition as a socio-psychologically developmental process.By exploring the connections between second language acquisition and individual second language learner's socio-psychological development，this paper will discuss the need of building a benign and safe leaning community for second language learning.Besides that，this paper will present the invisible profile of such learning community and its criticism.

Rationalizations of a Safe Learning Community in the Field of Second Language Acquisition

Firstly，the idea of building a safe learning community for second language learning looks at the connections between socio-psychological factors and second language learning outcomes.Some pioneering studies of socio-psychological variables in second language learning by Gardner and Lambert（1959，1972）demonstrated that “a positive，statistically significant，relationship could be established between motivation，positive attitudes towards the L2 and its speakers，the mastery of those aspects of the L2 that are less susceptible to conscious manipulation，such as phonology.”Later，Schumann's acculturation hypothesis（1978，1986）suggests that “the degree to which the learner（particularly the adult immigrant）acculturates to the target language（TL）group controls the degree to which the learner acquires the TL.In this view，differential language learning outcomes are explained in terms of psychological and social distance between adult learners and the TL group”.These two arguments try to establish a certain kind of link between an actual second language learning outcome and socio-psychological，social difference within the target language group and second language learners.The idea of creating a safe learning community is based on the activation of a positive link such as spontaneous communicative desire with learners in this community and positive attitudes towards the L2 and its speakers.

Secondly，the aim of building such a learning community for second language learning is based on the conflicts resulting from the expansion of second language learners' identity.Another strand of socio-psychological inquiry examined the relationship between second language learning and ethnic group membership，drawing on Tajfel's（1974，1981）theory of social identity.Tajfel viewed “social identity as derived from group membership and suggested that，when individuals see their present social identity as less than satisfactory，they may attempt at times successfully，at times not-to change their group membership in order to view themselves more positively.”These researchers represented by Tajfel suggested that “members of groups where the in-groups identification is suggested that members of groups where the in-group identification is weak，in group vitality low，in-group boundaries open and identification with other groups strong may assimilate and learn the second language rapidly.”（Pavlenko，2002）whenever there is an identification or assimilation of something，there is the underlying assumption of differences either distinguishable one or unnoticeable one.This paper aligns with the assumption about one perspective of the arguments on social identity that there is such a thing called mainstream culture.“Many critics also point out that most of the studies within the socio-psychological paradigm have been carried out in English-speaking environments in the US，UK and Canada.In other words，there were carried out in environments where most often there was one clearly dominant language and culture.”（Pavlenko，2002）Just because of the existence of one distinguished dominant language and culture，the need of building a safe learning community is justified.And this paper considers that the need of building such a learning community is most needed when the second language learning happens in a society with one distinguishable and dominant culture such as China，Japan，UK，US and Canada.Since the existence of the mainstream culture，the identity of second language learners is expanded either voluntarily or unconsciously under the resistance to influence from the mainstream culture or voluntary assimilation into the mainstream culture.During this process，second language learners' identity is supposed to be transformed with subtle conflicts，big frustrations or joys.That is where the idea of building a safe learning community comes in.Second language learners expand their identities with a group of people who they can trust.

Thirdly，the intention to building a safe learning community for second learning is derived from the conceptualization of language in the poststructuralist framework.Language is conceptualized as “a site of identity construction”.（Pavlenko，2002）“Identities are seen as constructed by and in discourses that supply the terms by which identities are expressed（identity performance）and assign differential values to different identities or subject positions.Subject positions，in turn，refer to the intersection of factors that position individuals as single welfare mothers，Chicana lesbians，inner-city youth or middle-class accountants，and entail age，gender，sexuality，class and race，as well as other factors that influence the ways in which we are perceived by others”.（Pavlenko，2002）Just because learning a second language is not a simple matter of acquiring a system of linguistic proficiency it is always about reconstruction of individual learner's identity under the meaning renders by different discourses in the process of language acquisition.It is always about how to see oneself in terms of power relationship within different discourses.From this sense，learning a second language is not like building a high rise with different linguistic bricks.This process will definitely involve the psychological，emotional and ideological conflicts and development.In order to smooth out this process and nurture a positive development，the signification of building a safe learning community is rationalized.Last but not least，poststructuralist approaches reconceptualise second language as “an intrinsically social- rather than simply cognitive-process of socialization into specific communities of practices，also referred to as 'situated learning'”.（Lave Wenger，1991；Wenger，1998）Many researchers argue that “'second language socialization' is a more accurate description of the process by which individuals not only internalize a particular body of knowledge but become culturally competent members of a particular community.”（Bremer et al.，1996）Learning a second language from this aspect is deeply involved in becoming someone else who this second language learner has never become or has probably never expected to become.The way of becoming this new person is by the willing and meaningful interaction with the target language group.“Longitudinal ethnographic studies conducted in the poststructuralist spirit suggest that no amount of classroom instruction can replace spontaneous interaction in the target language”.（Miller，1999，2000；Moore，1999；Norton Peirce，1995）Second language acquisition from the perspective of poststructuralist approaches is to integrate the association with culture in the target language speaking community.Therefore the natural interaction in the target language becomes an essential component of second language acquisition process by the poststructuralist spirit.Building a safe learning community within second language learners can compensate the shortage of exposure from the target language.“Some target language speakers may simply refuse to interact with second language users，perceived by them as incompetent communicators.”（Pavlenko，2002）One ESL Japanese student in Canada states her experience of learning second language，“…we want desperately to get into the mainstream，but we can't because Canadians don't allow us and also because we know that they look down on us and despise us”（Kanno，2000a：7）This comment is the way how a second language Japanese learner feels about the interaction with the target language speaking community.This perception of target language speaking community has been termed “linguistic gatekeeping”.（Pavlenko，2002）In order to break this linguistic gatekeeping with the mutual respect between second language users and target language speaking community and elicited spontaneous interaction within a certain language learning community，the need of building a supporting learning community is well-established.

What is a supporting learning community supposed to be and what are their shortcomings？

I would like to begin with two scenarios，in which，one is based on real situation in the context of classroom.Because the aim of using scenario based on real story and real people is to illustrate vividly the intangible sense of safe learning community，few details might not be 100% accurate and all names will be faked.And second scenario is borrowed from an article；the truthfulness of the scenario will not be examined in this paper.

Scenario One：in the process of classroom discussion

Each student was asked to come and prepare no more than three discussion questions about the content they were going to deal with in classroom.Before the discussion，some students exchanged their questions because they are worried that their questions are too simple to present.Finally，the discussion begins.Nobody wants to be first person to present his or her questions.Nobody responds to instructor's invitation of presenting questions.After several minutes of silence，Sandy reports her questions.After Sandy reads out her questions，actually，these are really simple reading questions.Basically，they are produced without too much thinking about them.The instructor doesn't say anything about them and turns around and presents Cindy's questions the instructor saw from the beginning of the class.“Let us look at Cindy's questions.What does it mean by a reading-response question？”

Scenario Two：in a classroom activity（Sapon-Shevin，1995）

In one classroom，the students are assigned to read with a partner every day.They can go wherever they want in the classroom，and they take turns reading to each other.The teacher selects these partners by drawing tow tongue depressors（with students' names on them）out of a can.It is noticeable that when the teacher announces the selection-Freda and Manolita，Jeremy and Shamira，Nicole and Danielle- there are no groans，no “Oh，yuck”s，or “I am not reading with her”.

What does a supporting learning community look like？The key element for such a learning community is safety.Safety in a healthy learning community is “the safety to learn and to fail；the safety to show oneself fully and be appreciated or at least supported；the safety to succeed and the safety to be imperfect；the safety from humiliation，isolation，stigmatization，alienation from the group.This is the essence of a community.A community is a safe space to grow，a space that welcomes you fully，that sees you for who you are，that invites you participation，and that holds you gently while you explore.”（Sapon-Shevin，1995）In scenario two，the feeling for safety in that community is the intimate relationship between the community members.Nobody in the community is picky about others.But in scenario one，the safe feeling is hard to detect because the whole community needs more effort and time to build friendly competition in order to make everyone work hard.

After defining these important features of what constitutes a safe learning community and the biggest benefit second language learners can get from such a community，the problems come automatically with these distinguished features as well as the benefits from building a safe and caring learning community.The first problem a safe learning community has to deal with is the never ending competitions or comparisons like the situation in scenario one.This problem is derived from the how much investment individual second language learners put into second language acquisition.I consider this investment as，to what extent，English as second language will shape individual language learners' desire to be who they want to be in another language.For example，a middle aged housewife from the middle class begins to learn English because she just wants to know how to understand TV entertaining programs.Then her investment in this second language is low.She won't be so desperate for an idealized command of English like a communicative fluency of oral English，a standard academic English writing capability and a native-like English pronunciation.But if a second language learner sees this language as a ladder of social mobility，that is to say that second language is something that can change his or her life track，this second language learner may have the maximal investment in acquiring the second language.Different level of investment leads to different expectations and different level of English proficiency in a second language learning community.Then what will happen in this learning community？As an old proverb in Chinese goes，too many cooks spoil the taste.Competition between second learners with high investment and comparison between the ones with low investment and those with high investment is always a potential threat to a safe learning community.

The second problem comes from the multicultural component of a second language learning community.A safe second language learning community is built for easing the ideological and psychological conflicts when second language learners are expanding their second language identity.However，in the process of expanding their second language ego，the original cultural norms still play an important role in regulating second language behaviors and way of thinking.Therefore the differences between culture norms from diversified cultures constitute the gap for cross-cultural communication within the learning community.

The last problem is the teachers，instructors or anyone who will be the most active element of building this community.The problem is simple to express in words but it is very hard to fulfill in action.How can the builder of this community be never tired to contribute his or her care to the second language learners in addition to the contribution of professional second language teaching skills？Can't this primary caregiver of this safe learning community be hurt？Will this builder's ideological identity be changed by participating in this safe learning community？This builder is also learning from his or her teaching practice in this community.In what way，this builder of the community would know he or she is successful in building this safe community？How does this caregiver know the second language learners feel safe to be themselves and to express their identity free from humiliation？

The Assessment of the Safe Learning Community

The discussion of the rationalization of a safe learning community for second language learning and description of such a community and its critiques lead to the suspicion of the possibility for building such a learning community.How do participants know that they are in a safe learning community while they are still experiencing ideological conflicts？How much do second language learners，especially adults，change by learning second language？How much do second language learners still have to accomplish toward individual perception of final state of second language acquisition？These how-much questions concern about the assessment of how this safe learning community functions.Here，this paper would like to borrow a uni-dimensional model of assessment of personality and attitudinal changes as the framework to detect the intangible border of a safe learning community.In the past fifty years，various ideal point models，at both individual and aggregate level，have been introduced into the psychology and marketing research.This paper employs the ideal point of model，which measure the distance between current situation of individual learner in second language acquisition and ideal situation.

D（Ideal - Act）= PI（Ideal，i）- PI（Act，i）] * VIi（Naumann，1995）

In this model，D is for distance，distance between the current and the ideal.PI is for perceived instrumentality and is interpreted as perceived status in learning in this community.VI is value importance，how important individual learner considers a safe learning community.The assumption in this model is that each attitude is independent.They are not interconnected and don't influence each other.Another important assumption is that every learner in this community has a concept of what is ideal status for a second language acquisition.

The above is an example of how to use this model to measure the intangible border of a safe learning community on a learner.There are five attitudes about the process of expanding second language identity.A is openness to second language culture norms，eg.kissing as a greeting in the social situation.B is interaction with others in the classroom rather than silent participation.C is the willingness to use body language to explain ideas in target language.D is openness to the criticism about their error and mistakes in second language learning.E is the openness to the different ideological believes.The usage of this model is demonstrated in Figure 1：

The number from one to five means the degree of the feeling towards this attitude.One is nothing and five is strongly acceptable.VI is that how importance is this attitude.Therefore，as for the attributes in this learning community，Distance between the current point and the ideal point is A（5-3）﹡2= +4，B（3-5）*5= - 10，C（2-3）*3= -3，D（4-1）*1= +4，E（1-4）*4= -12.

From this model，it is not hard to spot that this learner has more negative attitudes than the positive ones in acquiring second language.The distance for attitudes B，C，E is negative.This is interpreted as that this learner probably considers attitudes B，C，E shouldn't be accounted into second language learning.And the positive result means the progress that individual learner makes toward ideal status of second language acquisition.Following this model，each learner in this community can be tested all by itself.If the overall result shows more positive numbers than negative ones，most learners in this learning community will feel safe.And the process of smoothing out ideological conflicts is supposed to easy.

Conclusion

This paper explored the idea of building a safe learning community for second language learning and rationalizations of such a learning community in second language acquisition.By borrowing concepts from the field of psychology and marketing literature，this paper offers a model of measuring the intangible attitudes in a learning community and aims at measuring degree of safety of a learning community.However，this paper doesn't intend to provide a happy-ever-after ending.Because sometimes mental phase of second language learners can be explained by the second language themselves some changes take place unconsciously and unnoticeably.Besides that，the ideal point model has been ever developing since last fifty years.The model used here intends to give a possible reference for measuring an intangible safe learning community and minimizing conflicts resulting from different belief systems.

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