| Summary: | The purpose of this study was to explore the role that sociocultural context plays in
college students' socialization into the classroom culture of a Canadian community
college. To this end, it examined the nature of a college first year English literature
classroom; the social, cultural, and academic values and norms promoted both explicitly
and implicitly in that classroom; and the tasks designed by instructors to enable the
students to achieve the stated goals of the course and their own personal goals. The study
further explored the role of this literature class's ESL adjunct class in promoting language
and cultural socialization, and examined similarities and differences in the socialization
experiences of native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) of English.
This study employed an ethnographic approach and analyzed data mainly collected
from classroom observations, video- and audio-taping of classroom tasks and activities,
interviews with the instructors and students, and questionnaires. "Task" was the key unit
of analysis, viewed from a language socialization perspective: tasks as sociocultural
activities in which social and cultural components are embedded. This study was
conducted over one semester (fourteen weeks); sixty-five lessons for the English literature
class and twelve lessons for its adjunct were observed and video-taped. This study
examined the planned curriculum and the lived curriculum of the literature. The qualitative analysis of these two curricula~planned and lived—suggested the
complex nature of classroom culture created by its members' interactions with other
members. The tasks embraced social, cultural, and academic values and norms; while
engaging in these tasks, students learned academic language, reconceptualized their perspectives,
and acquired socially-constructed knowledge. The study also described non-native
speakers' difficulties, and suggested that the adjunct class provided them with
scaffolding and facilitated their language socialization. Looking to the future, this study
offers pedagogical implications for second-language learning and teaching: first, NNSs'
communicative competence is socially constructed through interactions with NSs, and
thus NNSs' language socialization should be examined in relation to that of NSs; second,
classroom tasks are not culturally neutral; thus sociocultural perspectives must be
considered when planning tasks; third, adjunct models are most effectively constructed
from a sociocultural perspective. Finally, this study suggests that creating a dichotomy
between NS and NNS, novice and expert, and North American culture and Asian culture
oversimplifies the challenges of a classroom culture which is likely to place sociocultural,
conceptual, and linguistic demands upon all students class in order to
analyze social, cultural, and academic values and norms promoted in the class, and how
students perceived these values and norms, created the classroom culture, and constructed
knowledge.
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