Paraphrasing exercises

1- Of course, discourse production does not take place in a vacuum, but is an integral part of a
communicative context. For speakers to be able to fit what they say into this context, they must also
have a memory representation of that context, that is a context model. This model contains
information about the speech participants and their goals, and about the type of social situation
involved (e.g., breakfast, a doctor s visit, or a parliamentary debate). The context model controls
style but also content, and hence what information may or must be retrieved from the situation
model. Some topics are forbidden in some situations. Hence, context models monitor the strategic
searches through episodic memory (what models are relevant?) as well as within models (what
information about the situation should be mentioned?). (Van Dijk, 2006)

2- In this chapter we have first argued that social situations are represented in episodic memory as
models. These models are construed as the result of understanding and evaluating events in social
situations. They act as the personal, experiential basis for the formation of frames, scripts, or
attitudes. Models embody the knowledge and beliefs of language users, which underlie their
understanding and production of discourse. They are the starting point for the production of
discourse, and thus provide the information that may be used (or must remain implicit) in the
generation of the semantic text base of a discourse. Strategies are used for the search, retrieval, and
selection of information from situation models. Evidence from various sources has been considered
about the structural organization of situation models. This structure is hierarchical and categorical,
and features such elements as Setting, Circumstances, Participants, and Event or Action. The
process of model formation and use is monitored by the Control System, which among other
central information contains macropropositions (topics), and a Context Model, representing the
major dimensions of the communicative context.
Second, we have applied this theoretical framework to an account of ethnic prejudice and
its expression in discourse. Thus, we are able to link ethnic encounters, via subjective (and biased)
representations in models, to general ethnic attitudes. Evidence from natural storytelling about
minorities was used to speculate about the specific nature of ethnic situation models and the
strategies for their use in intergroup (WE vs. THEY) encounters or the intragroup diffusion of
prejudice through everyday conversation. (Van Dijk, 2006)

3- In this study, students were given the opportunity to reimagine their community in a time of social
and political instability. In Simon’s (1992) and Wenger’s (1998) formulation, the students did not
only wish for change, but also harnessed their imaginations to develop a project that could make a
difference in the lives of community members. They also took the opportunity to envision the kind
of society they would find desirable in the year 2020. Such an imagined community was one
perceived to be literate, knowledgeable about English, and technologically advanced. It was a
peaceful society, true to the principles of Islam, and respected in the international community. We
have argued that the struggle for literacy, access to English, and technological progress are
interdependent, and reflect the desire of a country in a postcolonial world to engage with the
international community from a position of strength rather than weakness. We have sought to
understand the students’ investments in English from a geopolitical and historical perspective, and
have suggested that the appropriation of English does not necessarily compromise identities
structured on the grounds of linguistic or religious affiliation. Our data suggest that English and the
vernacular can coexist in mutually productive ways and that the “politics of location” (Canagarajah,
1999) are important considerations in the social imaginary.
We conclude with an observation about conceptions of literacy held by both scholars and students.
Like Canagarajah (1999) and Luke (in press), we take the position that if we wish to understand the
meaning of literacy in the students’ imagined communities, we cannot ignore the imperatives of the
material world and the ways in which resources are distributed—not only nationally, but also
internationally. Canagarajah (1999) makes a compelling case that in periphery contexts in which
there is a daily struggle for food, clothing, shelter, and safety, “a diet of linguistic guerilla warfare,
textual resistance, and micro-politics will not suffice” (p. 34). Luke (in press), similarly, argues that
while we as educators might debate the meaning of critical literacy, we may not do justice to the
lived experiences of physical and material deprivation in diverse communities throughout the globe.
The students in the study made frequent reference to the relationship between literacy, the
distribution of resources, and international inequities. For these students, an imagined community
that is literate, skilled in English, and technologically advanced is also a community that has food,
shelter, and peace.

However, it is of some concern that students might overestimate the benefits that can accrue from
the development of literacy and the spread of English. Ahmed’s assessment, for example, that
people who are educated “are rich and have no problems” may lead to a crisis of expectations.
Further, May (2001) made a convincing argument that there is no correlation between the adoption
of English by developing countries, and greater economic well-being. Of even greater concern is the
ways in which pedagogical and social practices may be serving, perhaps inadvertently, to reinforce
the view held by the students that people who are literate are more rational and intellectually able
than those who are not literate. If students in Pakistan, and perhaps in other parts of the world,
equate literacy with rationality and intellectual ability, while at the same time embracing English as
the international language of science, media, and technology, is there a danger that they may
consider people literate in English as more rational and intellectually able than those who are not?
This is an important consideration for future research.

The imagined communities of students in Pakistan are best understood in the context of their
complex identities in a time of social and political instability, both nationally and internationally.
They value being literate, but recognize that literacy is a privilege. They see themselves as part of a
larger community of English speakers, but not as second-class citizens of the United States or the
United Kingdom. They regard themselves as members of the larger Islamic Pakistan nation, but
they recognize Pakistan’s marginal status in the international community. They desire
technological progress but not at the expense of peace. If, as Zaib suggests, “A society is nothing
but our attitude toward each other,” then our challenge as educators is to understand how attitudes
toward one another are socially constructed, to promote tolerance and respect for diversity, and to
harness our imaginations in the pursuit of peace.
Norton & Kamal (2009)
4- 2.1.2. Sociocultural aspect of second language learning
Language learning or acquisition, according to many scholars, does not only take place in the
cognition of the minds of the learners whose final production of the target language can be seen in
various language skills such as writing, speaking but it is influenced by many other factors in which
socio-cultural impacts have gained a lot of focus and reference in SLA in the last twenty years.
Socio-cultural aspects of second language learning is mostly attributed to Lev Semenovich
Vygotsky, a Russian scholar, who studied several subjects at school such as psychology,
philosophy, and literature and got a Law Degree from Moscow Imperial University in 1917. He
witnessed many problems during his lifetime and got down to a fatal illness, tuberculosis, which
eventually caused his death. His contributions to SLA research arena could not be understood
deeply during his lifetime for some political and inner conflicts of his country at those times
(Scrimsher &Tudge, 2003). Vygotsky ,during his time, criticized the conclusions from Pavlov’s
experiments with dogs and Köhler’s studies with apes as for conditioned reflexes to human
consciousness and he suggested that humans have the capacity to react to their environments as well
as being able to adapt or manipulate the environments for their own purposes, a skill of which does
not belong to animals.
Vygotsky focused mainly on the social mediation aspect of learning and the role of consciousness
with his other colleagues until his death. Vygotsky’s emphasis was about socially meaningful
activities on human consciousness for which he denied the norms of behaviorism and tried to find a
middle ground of taking environmental influence into account through its effect on consciousness.
The key to human development for Vygotsky can be related to interaction of varying factors such as
interpersonal, the social side of it, socio-cultural and historical and individual ones. When a person
faces interactions with his environment, this then can trigger developmental processes and growth
of cognition in that individual. However, this does not always happen for the children as the
interactions in a traditional sense may not work the same for them as the others. What the children
are opting to do is that they shape their experiences based on their existing knowledge and
characteristics and start to reshape their mental structures. Social environment of a learner,
according to Vygotsky is of great importance for learning in which social interactions can change or
reorganize learning experiences. The changes occurring in consciousness can be best identified by
the social activities and this refers to a psychological theory which might unify behavior and mind
(Kozulin,1986).
The learners transform or reshape their ways of thinking via interactions of different means such as
environments, influence of other persons, objects or various organizations or institutions which
explains Vygotskian focus on the contextual side of learning. The meaning for their concepts are
prone to change when they have a link with the world from which the schools becomes a place to be
an institution trying to promote learning and citizenship instead of being only a word or a physical
structure (Gredler,2009). Within this world, the learners’ cognition is shaped or influenced by
their social environments by means of the cultural aspects of the learners’ world, the spoken
language in the learning environment, and related social institutions like schools. What finally
comes up at the end is that there is a cyclical relationship between those factors in that interactions
are transformed by internalization and use of cultural tools around the learners (Bruning et al.,
2004). This outlook of interaction impact puts Vygotsky into a dialectical constructivism, according
to the scholars, as there is a constant interaction of the learners with his learning environment.
Mediation of learning in this insight is another important aspect of learning as psychological
processes of people are seen to be mediated by various means such as signs, symbols or language
spoken. What adults do in a community is that they try to teach or transfer these means to their off
springs during their cooperative activities. Lightbrown & Spada (2013) add that according to
Vygotsky theory, cognitive as well as language development are about the social interactions as
already mentioned above but this theory takes speaking and thinking as tightly dependent on each
other unlike other psychological theories which refers to them as independent. That is speaking as
well as writing might undertake a role to mediate thinking while the people can shape or have a
control over their cognitive processes when they listen to what others say to them or what they say
to others. Shunk (2012) explains the impact of learning environments on the learning process itself
by giving several examples of different disciplines. What the scholar highlights of
Vygotstkian Theory is that the experiences which the learners bring to the learning environments
may have a great influence on the ultimate outcome. The scholar summarizes the issue by giving an
example of an ice skating coach. The coach starts to observe his learners from the first beginning to
get an insight about their learning styles,
weaknesses or strengths in order to help them in a more effective way while the learners
come to the training sessions with their own backgrounds, beliefs, anatomic structures
or characteristics like balance, body movements, body control, and stamina and so on.
Veterinary students could be another example as some of them might have grown up on
farms before coming to the faculty, with knowledge of farm animals and their lecturer
or coach at the faculty may use their previous knowledge to help them better. Ingold
(2000) adds to the concept by giving an example of a novice hunter. This hunter is
always alert looking for clues about his hunt while wandering around, connecting his
previous knowledge to the new hunting environment to finally kill the animal he is
looking for. Although he might be a novice hunter, he is using every little bit of his
previous knowledge to get a perceptual awareness of his surrounding which is similar to
all kind of learners who look into deeper to their learning settings to get or obtain every
possible resource which can contribute to their learning processes.
To sum up, Vygotsky’s Socio-cultural Theory states that learning is done via the help of social
environments. There are some tools in this environment mainly working as facilitators to learning
like symbols, cultural tools, language itself and social resources. Learning as said before is done
through mediation of several components in a social world. Therefore the organization of social
environments is seen as a very important objective for learners the capability of human beings to
manipulate the environment at their own disposal can be best described from a quotation of
Vygotsky, who stated that:
“Man introduces artificial stimuli, signifies behavior, and with signs, acting externally, creates new
connections in the brain. Together with assuming this, we shall tentatively introduce into our
research a new regulatory principle of behavior, a new concept of determinacy of human reaction
which consists of the fact that man creates connections in the brain from utside, controls the brain
and through it, his own body.” (Retrieved from Lantolf, 2011).

We may assume from a socio-cultural view of language learning that language learner is somebody
who is able to adapt himself and several other factors at his best to succeed in which he has a
constant and mutual interaction with his language learning context and environment. Environment
and context may be working as a bridge between the learner’s cognition and learning outcomes but
this relationship does not seem very easy as the language learning process in a long and challenging
adventure including the evolution of many other factors as proposed by many scholars.
(Retrieved from Elcin,2018- http://openaccess.cag.edu.tr/xmlui/handle/20.500.12507/349 )