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Bridgeta and John voyage to America from Norway and meet at La Crosse, Wis. They travel from there to North Dakota to take advantage of free land and start farming. It is there that they raise their children, learn English and live their lives. Of course, it has not been easy for them as there have been trials and struggles. Nevertheless, they continue living and believing that they can surpass everything. Their faith gave them strength.

Dynamic Assessment is an innovative approach to revealing the full range of learner abilities that has rapidly gained attention from language educators and researchers. While much of the research to date has examined Dynamic Assessment in Western countries, the research in this book further extends the framework by documenting its uses by Chinese scholars in meeting context-specific challenges.

Dynamic Assessment, or DA, originated in the writings of Russian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky concerning the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development. While many assessment approaches call for closer integration with teaching, DA embeds an instructional component, referred to as mediation, as part of the assessment procedure. Following Vygotsky, the picture of a person’s abilities is incomplete if focus is restricted to past development as diagnosed by what the person can achieve independently and without considering those abilities that are emerging as revealed through responsiveness to mediation. In this way, DA offers insights into learner abilities not easily obtained through other assessments. Widely employed in special education and general abilities testing, the second language field has witnessed a rapid growth of interest in using DA to better understand the full range of learner language abilities and to determine how instruction can optimally promote the development of all learners. This book brings together a collection of original studies conducted by scholars in China that build upon methods and principles from previous DA research and that leverage them to meet local demands. In so doing, this research collectively illustrates the extension of DA into new cultural contexts while simultaneously yielding findings that are sure to resonate with language educators, assessors, and researchers around the world.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Language Assessment Quarterly.

Dynamic Assessment is an innovative approach to revealing the full range of learner abilities that has rapidly gained attention from language educators and researchers. While much of the research to date has examined Dynamic Assessment in Western countries, the research in this book further extends the framework by documenting its uses by Chinese scholars in meeting context-specific challenges.

Dynamic Assessment, or DA, originated in the writings of Russian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky concerning the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development. While many assessment approaches call for closer integration with teaching, DA embeds an instructional component, referred to as mediation, as part of the assessment procedure. Following Vygotsky, the picture of a person’s abilities is incomplete if focus is restricted to past development as diagnosed by what the person can achieve independently and without considering those abilities that are emerging as revealed through responsiveness to mediation. In this way, DA offers insights into learner abilities not easily obtained through other assessments. Widely employed in special education and general abilities testing, the second language field has witnessed a rapid growth of interest in using DA to better understand the full range of learner language abilities and to determine how instruction can optimally promote the development of all learners. This book brings together a collection of original studies conducted by scholars in China that build upon methods and principles from previous DA research and that leverage them to meet local demands. In so doing, this research collectively illustrates the extension of DA into new cultural contexts while simultaneously yielding findings that are sure to resonate with language educators, assessors, and researchers around the world.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Language Assessment Quarterly.

Explicating clearly and concisely the full implication of a praxis-oriented language pedagogy, this book argues for an approach to language teaching grounded in a significant scientific theory of human learning—a stance that rejects the consumer approach to theory and the dichotomy between theory and practice that dominates SLA and language teaching. This approach is based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, according to which the two activities are inherently connected so that each is necessarily rooted in the other; practice is the research laboratory where the theory is tested. From the perspective of language education, this is what is meant by the ‘pedagogical imperative.’

Sociocultural Theory and the Pedagogical Imperative in L2 Education• Elaborates a new approach to dealing with the relationship between theory and practice—an approach grounded in praxis—the dialectical unity of theory and practice• Presents an analysis of empirical research illustrating praxis-based principles in real language classrooms • Brings together cognitive linguistics and sociocultural theory ─ the former provides the theoretical knowledge of language required of praxis and the latter furnishes the theoretical principles of learning and development also called for in a praxis approach• Offers recommendations for redesigning teacher education programs

Its timely focus on the theory-practice gap in language education and its original approach to bridging it put this book at the cutting edge of thinking about Vygotskian sociocultural theory in applied linguistics and SLA.

Explicating clearly and concisely the full implication of a praxis-oriented language pedagogy, this book argues for an approach to language teaching grounded in a significant scientific theory of human learning—a stance that rejects the consumer approach to theory and the dichotomy between theory and practice that dominates SLA and language teaching. This approach is based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, according to which the two activities are inherently connected so that each is necessarily rooted in the other; practice is the research laboratory where the theory is tested. From the perspective of language education, this is what is meant by the ‘pedagogical imperative.’

Sociocultural Theory and the Pedagogical Imperative in L2 Education• Elaborates a new approach to dealing with the relationship between theory and practice—an approach grounded in praxis—the dialectical unity of theory and practice• Presents an analysis of empirical research illustrating praxis-based principles in real language classrooms • Brings together cognitive linguistics and sociocultural theory ─ the former provides the theoretical knowledge of language required of praxis and the latter furnishes the theoretical principles of learning and development also called for in a praxis approach• Offers recommendations for redesigning teacher education programs

Its timely focus on the theory-practice gap in language education and its original approach to bridging it put this book at the cutting edge of thinking about Vygotskian sociocultural theory in applied linguistics and SLA.

The Routledge Handbook of Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Development is the first comprehensive overview of the field of sociocultural second language acquisition (SLA). In 35 chapters, each written by an expert in the area, this book offers perspectives on both the theoretical and practical sides of the field. This Handbook covers a broad range of topics, divided into several major sections, including:

This is the ideal resource for graduate students and researchers working in the areas of SLA and second language development.