생태학 관점으로부터의 소그룹 토론 활동 이해

Understanding small group discussion from an ecological perspective: Focusing on emergence and affordance

Discursive discussions of small group work have been found in the English language teaching and learning literature, often with pedagogical benefits highlighted for wider classroom applications in the teaching practice. Adding to the ongoing discussion, the current study is aimed at providing a new framework for interpreting small group discussions, with a special focus on two concepts proposed by van Lier(2002)’s ecological linguistics: emergence and affordance. Data were collected through verbal transcriptions and in-depth interviews with five university students. The overall research finding is that students participating in small group discussion had ample chances for linguistic emergence and affordance through interaction. Two types of affordance(self-made and other participants-initiated) were observed in the group work and demonstrated through students’ verbal data in this paper. From an ecological perspective, small group discussion serves as a rich semiotic budget to structure learners’ activities and participation so that access to language is available and engagement is encouraged.