The Social Construction of Beliefs in the Language Classroom

The notion of language learners’ and teachers’ beliefs and analyses of the roles they play in the language learning process has been treated quite peripherally in the SLA on literature. The emphasis in the past two to three decades of research in SLA on language acquisition as primarily an unconscious genetically “pre-programmed” process and the resulting debates about universals of language acquisition in SLA, left little role for individuals’ thoughts and perceptions about their learning. Aspects such as motivation, metacognition, learning strategies and beliefs have typically been lumped under the rubric of “individuals differences” or “non-language influences” in many SLA textbooks (for example, Archibald & Gass, 1994), falling outside the central pursuits of the field. Until recently, research on second language classroom processes, as exemplified by Chaudron (1989), primarily emphasized observables related to the input and interactional properties of classroom discourse; with little focus on internal factors such as teacher and learner thinking, intentions and beliefs.