A Study of Language Socialization: Learning and Making Sense in a Second Language Classroom

Abstract

This paper is about children's second language socialization. It is about how a child, a Japanese eight year old boy, tries to make sense of his world in a second language classroom. A justification for the title and the content of this paper is my belief that language acquisition does not happen in isolation. The way in which children develop their skills and competence in a second language, and the way they display them, are greatly affected by their classrooms, peers, teachers, family, etc., as well as by their personalities (Wong-Fillmore, 1979). To have a more hollistic understanding of the process of second language leaming, therefore, it is not sufficient to observe learners producing utterances in isolation, but it is necessary to take into consideration the social context as well. The present study, a description of a child's sociocultural development, is a complementary analysis to a linguistically oriented one. It is not intended to be better not more complete, but rather, to address issues that are more commonly left untouched.