The Importance of ZPD in language Learning

The Zone of Proximate Development (ZPD) is a notion that commonly used by the Vygotskian socio-cultural theory to clarify the zone where the optimal development of language learning can be reached. In order to illustrate the importance of the perception of ZPD in language learning, this essay, firstly, will present two cases of classroom language learning problem experienced by an English teacher in an intermediate English class. The problems are mainly related to the lack of students' interest toward the English lessons. Then, some problem solving strategies regarding this issue will be proposed after identified the cause of this problem.

The lack of students' interest toward the language lessons
As mentioned before, this class was designed as an intermediate class. As the consequences the teacher tried to adapt the lessons; the course materials, the tasks and the learning activities to suit this level. Despite these efforts, in some of these lessons, teacher found that their interests toward the lessons were not as good as expected. Two examples of students' respond toward the lessons were provided below (see inbox).

First case:

The lesson in that day was about question words. Among the objectives of the lesson was for students to know how to use the question words and how to respond to these questions. To help students figure out how these question words work in the real situation, I brought an authentic material which was a quiz trivia about Australia that is downloadable from the internet. Then, I asked my students to answer the quiz. But, I was shocked to find out that most of these students were not able to do this task. Not only because they were not familiar with anything about Australia, but most importantly they also did not understand the majority of the words in the quiz. In the end, this situation has contributed to the lack of their interest toward the lesson.

Second case:

In contrast to the previous case, in this particular lesson about past simple form, I had asked my students to do grammar exercises which I took from the 'Cutting Edge' (the course core book). Most of my students, particularly Asian students were no having any difficulties to perform this task. I found that they had finished the task in only short period of time, and I also noticed that these students were not paying much attention to the lesson.

Source: Jamilah, 2008 (teacher' journal)

By comparing the two cases above, there are several points that can be drawn. The first lesson seems to have a high level of difficulty, while the second lesson is too easy. In the first case, the level of difficulty can be seen at least in two main aspects: context and words choices. In terms of the context of lesson, a lack of response from Asian students who newly arrived in Australia to answer the questions is mainly due to a lack of knowledge about Australia. Combined with the difficulty of the vocabulary, both factors had been a major formula that contributes to the failure of reaching the lesson objectives. While in the second case, a quick answer of students to the task might be because of English grammar especially the past simple form has been very familiar for them due to their previous educational background. As people might be aware of, in the past, Asian English teaching system relied heavily on traditional grammar translation method. As a result, these types of exercises were not longer challenging for them.

In conclusion, both lessons has shown that either too difficult or too easy lesson may have great influence to the culture of language learning, particularly in this case is students' interest toward the language learning.

How to solve these problems

Reflecting from both cases above, it is important to find the best approach that can be used to solve this problem. However, it is important to note that regardless to so many different approach in L2 learning and teaching (e.g. psycholinguistic- oriented approaches, sociolinguistic-oriented approaches, and pedagogically-oriented approaches), the most appropriate approach will depend heavily on the context of the situations, the teachers, the learner, and the prefer learning strategies of the learners. Therefore it will differ from one context to another (Williams & Burden, 1997 cited in Yu, 2003). Moreover, Brown also pointed out that "different aspects of language are better treated by different psychological approaches" (Brown, 1994a cited in Yu, 2003 p.5). These viewpoints are used as the basis principle of problem solving strategies proposed in this essay.

In order to find the best approach to solve the problem, firstly, it is also necessary to find the reasons of why this problem occurred. To serve this purpose, the Vygotskian socio-cultural perspective of language learning is put forward to clarify why the students might lose their interests toward the language lessons as mention above.

According to the Vygotskian socio-cultural theory , the human mind is mediated, either through physical or symbolic tools created by human culture. Moreover, based on Vygotsky experiment (see Lantolf, 2000), he concluded that the nature of the effectiveness of this mediation are varied from stage to stage. There are stages where any form of mediation are useless including the stage where the mediation were only making further confusion and the stage where the external mediation has been internalised (Lantolf, 2000).

This theory can be used to explain the learning conditions in both of classroom cases above. In the first case, due to the high level of the difficulty, the task is useless in term of developing learners' knowledge because the task has even created more confusion among students. And in the second case, as the learners were already familiar with the lesson, this mediation is also useless because it has been internalised in students' mind.

Furthermore, Vygotskian socio-cultural theory also clarified the stage where the mediation can optimally develop, according to this theory: "the site where social forms of mediation develop is the Zone of Proximate Development or ZPD" (Lantolf, 2000 p 16). Vygotsky defined the ZPD as:

"the distance between a child's actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86)

Accordingly, to help the students improve their language development, teacher as the guide need to consider this aspect in planning the lessons. Furthermore, this guidance in the term used by Vygotskian social interactionist constructivism, is also called "scaffolding" which is defined as "situation where a knowledgeable participant can create supportive conditions in which the novice can participate, and extend his or her current skills and knowledge to higher levels of competence" (Donato, 1994 p. 40 cited in Yu, 2003). In a broader sense, Nassaji and Swain defined scaffolding as "the collaboration of both the learner and the expert operating within the learner's ZPD" (Nassaji and Swain 2000, p. 36 cited in Yu, 2003)

In regard to this "scaffolding", Bruner has given an important comment that can be used by language teachers to reflect their teaching. According to him, "[The teacher] provides a scaffold to assure that the [learners'] ineptitudes can be rescued or rectified by appropriate intervention, and then removes the scaffold part by part as the reciprocal structure can stand on its own" (Bruner, 1983, p. 60 cited in Yu, 2003).

Another valuable approach that can be used to explain the phenomena of the classroom language learning above is Krashen' Input Hypothesis (see Krashen, 1987). According to this theory, "the input must contain i + 1 to be useful for language acquisition" (Krashen, 1987 p. 21). Where i is the current level of language development.

Although the ZPD approach and Krashen' Input Hypothesis have fundamental difference, especially on their view of language learning and language aqcuisition, both approach had the same perception about the need of the learners of comprehensible input. In the light of ZPD, the comprehensible input is viewed as one type of scaffolding. And to make it useful to the learners, the comprehensible input needs to be given a bit above their current level of development. In the mean time, in the Input Hypothesis, the learners are challenged by the comprehensible input provided. This comprehensible input needs to be beyond the current level but also not overwhelming (Dunn, W.E. & Lantolf, J.P. 1998). To conclude, both approaches are relevant for teachers to be considered as starting point to plan the lessons.