SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING

English language teaching (ELT) is a relatively young field. In its earlier years, pedagogical models were taken from foreign language teaching, and based on views of language taken from structural linguistics. Thus to come to speak a language entailed learning its vocabulary, structures and forms, and practicing these in scripted ways. Other chapters in this volume speak to changing views of language pedagogy, as the field has moved to communicative approaches, and those that teach language through content. A sociocultural approach does not displace these, and does not, in fact, proscribe particular texts or activities for language learning and teaching.