An Activity Theory Approach Towards EFL Undergraduates' Academic Language Development:A Case Study

Academic language is the basic linguistic and cognitive repertoire for subject content learning and individuals' participation within the disciplines(Bailey et al.,2007;Flowerdew,2013;Schleppegrell,2004;Uccelli et al.,2020 etc.).Academic language development is thus one of the major aims for higher education in most countries in the world.It is the same case in either native or second/foreign language learning contexts(Snow&Uccelli,2009).To date,research on second language learning and development has gradually witnessed a social turn,in which language learning is considered as a social practice(Block,2016).This is substantiated by individuals'active participation in the social practices,through which they gradually expand and internalize the language and semiotic resources and enhance their ways of participation within the academic disciplines(Duff,2010).The participation in the activities serves to mediate individuals' academic language development(Uccelli et al.,2020).It is against this background that the study was proposed,aiming at investigating three sophomore English majors' academic language development under a writing curriculum transformation from an activity theory perspective.Case study method was adopted with multiple datasets,including students'academic writing samples,semi-structured interviews,learning reflections,topic selection journals,audio-taped teacher-student conferences and classroom observations.Three major findings are obtained.Firstly,within an EFL context,individual academic language development is an agentive expansive learning process.The process is full of tensions and contradictions which prompts the learners to agentively overcome the difficulties and seek contextual affordances.However,individuals' previous learning experiences,L2 proficiency,motivation,cognitive style and language awareness can all impact the way they perceive and utilize these resources.Secondly,effective pedagogical mediation driven by authentic disciplinary practices can promote students'academic language development at the lexical,syntactic and discourse level.However,different aspects of academic language develop at a different rate.Compared to lexical complexity,development in syntactic complexity(particularly nominalization and grammatical metaphor)and discourse cohesion tend to be more challenging and time-consuming.Thirdly,effective pedagogical intervention creates authentic and meaningful objectives for learners,providing them with multiple instructional mediations,and designing a series of coherent and systematic learning activities.This process assists learners to demonstrate advanced performances above their actual competences.These findings suggest that firstly individual academic language development demonstrates both variability and conformity.On the one hand,academic language development embodies a complex interplay between the individual and contextual variables resulting in idiosyncratic developmental paths.On the other hand,it demonstrates particular developmental stages,as some aspects of academic language are more sensitive to pedagogical mediations.Relevant pedagogical practices should attend to different aspects of language development at lexical,grammatical and discourse level,as the latter is a distinguishing factor for different proficiency level learners' academic writing performances.Secondly,academic language development is both cognitive and social.Relevant pedagogical practices need to attend to students'individual differences in writing,gradually enriching their language and cognitive resources in learning and promoting them to be more self-regulated and autonomous.Theoretical contributions of the study include the following aspects.Firstly,it enriches the understandings of activity theory and expansive learning which results from a complex interplay between individual characteristics(language,cognitive and metacognitive resources)and contextual affordances(pedagogical mediation).Secondly,both cognitive-psychological and sociocultural factors count in this process.Practical contributions of the study involve the following aspects.Firstly,academic writing instruction in the study aims to mediate students' language development through cognitively demanding,authentic and meaningful disciplinary practices.However,individuals vary in their ability to adapt and align with the instructional demands with regard to their previous learning experiences,language proficiency and cognitive abilities.Secondly,premium foreign language curriculum cannot eliminate individual differences but intends to provide them with individualized developmental potentialities.These findings bear important contributions for EFL writing curriculum development.