SMARTWAY CLASSES

C-TET/UP-TET NOTES Vygotsky and Language

According to Vygotsky (1962) language plays 2 critical roles in cognitive development:
1: It is the main means by which adults transmit info to children.
2: Language itself becomes a very powerful tool of intellectual adaptation.
Private speech, also called internal speech, refers to occasions when people talk aloud to themselves. This is particular prevalent amongst children. Vygotsky was the first psychologist to document the importance of private speech and there has been considerable debate regarding its purpose and value in terms of cognitive and social development.

Vygotsky sees "private speech" as a means for children to plan activities and strategies and therefore aid their development. Language is therefore an accelerator to thinking/understanding (Jerome Bruner also views language in this way). Vygotsky believed that children who engaged in large amounts of private speech are more socially competent than children who do not use it extensively.

Vygotsky believed that language develops from social interactions, for communication purposes. Later language ability becomes internalized as thought and “inner speech”. Thought is the result of language.

Berk (1986) provided empyreal support for the notion of private speech. He found that most private speech exhibited by children serves to describe or guide the child's actions.

Berk also discovered than child engaged in private speech more often when working alone on challenging tasks and also when their teacher was not immediately available to help them. Furthermore, Berk also found that private speech develops similarly in all children regardless of cultural background.

Current applications of Vygotsky's work

A contemporary application of Vygotsky's theories is "reciprocal teaching", used to improve students' ability to learn from text. In this method, teacher and students collaborate in learning and practicing four key skills: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher's role in the process is reduced over time. Also, Vygotsky is relevant to instructional concepts such as "scaffolding" and "apprenticeship", in which a teacher or more advanced peer helps to structure or arrange a task so that a novice can work on it successfully.
Vygotsky's theories also feed into current interest in collaborative learning, suggesting that group members should have different levels of ability so more advanced peers can help less advanced members operate within their ZPD.

Critical Evaluation

Vygotksy's work has not received same level of intense succinctly that Piaget's has, partly due to the time consuming process of translating Vygotsky's work from Russian.

Perhaps the main criticism of Vygotsky work concerns the assumption that it is relevant to all cultures. Rogoff (1990) dismisses the idea that Vyogtsky's ideas are culturally universal and instead states the concept of scaffolding - which is heavily dependent on verbal instruction - may not be equally useful in all cultures of for all types of learning. Indeed, in some instances observation and practice may be more effective ways of learning certain skills.