Page, R. B. (1997). Political and economic aspects of vernacular literacy. In A. Tabouret‐Keller, R. Le Page, P. Gardner‐Chloros, & G. Varro (Eds.), Vernacular literacy: A re‐evaluation (pp. 23–81). Oxford, England: Clarendon.15 London, N. (2003). Ideology and politics in English language education in Trinidad and Tobago: The colonial experience and a postcolonial critique. Comparative Education Review, 47(3), 287–320.
16 McArthur, T. (1983). A foundation course for language teachers. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
17 Mfum‐Mensah, O. (2005). The impact of colonial and postcolonial Ghanaian language policies on vernacular use in schools in two northern Ghanaian communities. Comparative Education, 41(1), 71–85.
18 Nettle, D., & Romaine, S. (2000). Vanishing voices: The extinction of the world's languages. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
19 Ngugi wa Thiong'o. (1983). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. London, England: James Curry.
20 OAU. (1986). Language plan of action for Africa. Council of Ministers, Forty‐fourth Ordinary Session, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, July.
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22 Popham, P. (1996, January 20). The day a language died. Independent, pp. 39, 43.
23 Prah, K. (1995). African languages for the mass education of Africans. Bonn, Germany: German Foundation for International Development, Education, Science and Documentation Center.
24 Republic of South Africa. (1996). Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. Pretoria, South Africa: Government Printer.
25 Spencer, J. (1985). Language and development in Africa: The unequal equation. In N. Wolfson & J. Manes (Eds.), Language of inequality (pp. 387–97). The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton.
26 Tollefson, J. W. (2002). Language rights and the destruction of Yugoslavia. In J. W. Tollefson (Ed.), Language policies in education: Critical issues (pp. 179–99). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
27 UNESCO. (1995). The use of the vernacular in education. Paris, France: UNESCO.
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29 UNESCO. (2013). Adult and youth literacy: National, regional and global trends, 1985–2015. UIS Information Paper, June. Retrieved March 25, 2019 from http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/adult-and-youth-literacy-national-regional-and-global-trends-1985-2015-en_0.pdf
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31 Weinstein, B. (Ed.). (1990). Language policy and political development. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Suggested Readings
1 Bamgbose, A. (2000). Language and exclusion: The consequences of language policies in Africa. Hamburg, Germany: LIT Verlag.
2 Brock‐Utne, B. (2000). Whose education for all? The recolonization of the African mind? New York, NY: Falmer.
3 Diop, C. A. (1990). Towards the African renaissance: Essays in African culture and development: 1946–1960 ( E. P. Modum, Trans.). London, England: The Estates of Cheik Anta Diop and Karnak House.
4 Fabian, J. (1986). Language and colonial power: The appropriation of Swahili in the former Belgian Congo 1880–1938. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
5 Laitin, D. (1992). Language repertoires and state construction in Africa. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
6 Tollefson, J. W., & Tsui, A. B. (Eds.). (2004). Medium of instruction policies: Which agenda? Whose agenda? Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Agency in Second Language Acquisition
TOMOKO YASHIMA AND HARUNA FUKUI
Significance of Agency in SLA: A Theoretical Overview
The concept of learner agency has played a significant part in applied linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA) research for a long time. This is despite the fact that the term “agency” started to appear in SLA research articles fairly recently, influenced by sociocultural, poststructuralist, and critical theories. The significance of agency in SLA evolves through the history of SLA as a discipline.
With the advent of the so‐called “cognitive revolution” brought about by Chomsky (1959) and others, SLA research and pedagogy influenced by behaviorism (e.g., audiolingualism) gave way to psychological perspectives that regard language acquisition as a cognitive process. Unlike behaviorists, who see human actions as being at the mercy of external forces (that is, as reactions to stimuli and habit formation), cognitive psychology places human cognition at the core: Humans think, memorize, and try to understand and make meaning (William & Burden, 1997). People are regarded as active participants in the learning process, that is, as agents who can make choices regarding their behaviors and who have control over their actions and are therefore agentive. The cognitive perspective has influenced research into the psychology of L2 learners, including motivation (William & Burden, 1997), in which a humanist conceptualization of autonomous individuals is at the core.
During the 1980s and 1990s, cognitive‐interactionist models, represented by, for example, the input, interaction, output, and noticing hypotheses, became mainstream in the field. They focus on learners' cognitive processes of L2 acquisition through interactions with external factors (Ortega, 2009). In the mid‐1990s, a new trend characterized as the “social turn” (Block, 2003; Ortega, 2009) called for research informed by social theories. Within this trend, which encouraged researchers to turn to the sociocultural contexts in which language learning takes place, a new conceptualization of agency emerged. Within this broadly social approach, SLA is seen as embedded in sociocultural and macrosociopolitical contexts. From this perspective, viewing language learning as a purely cognitive process has been criticized because the approach fails to account for contextual forces and the sociocultural mediation that necessarily affect language learning.
In Vygotskyan sociocultural theory, the development of higher mental functions in a child is seen as originating in the child's interactions with adults mediated by physical and psychological tools. A child gains agency as he or she develops mental functions that allow for greater self‐regulation. Using this approach, SLA research also regards social interactions with more capable others and guidance by them as significant. As the novice gains greater ability to function autonomously, the experts relinquish control to the novice at the appropriate time (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006).
Since the social contexts surrounding individuals differ from person to person, the emphasis of research within this framework has shifted from universal processes of SLA toward paying attention to the unique situations in which language acquisition takes place. As a result, individual learners' histories, learning trajectories,
