f/sla from learner perspectives: a social activity or a cognitive process

in the past couple of decades sociocultural theory of sla and its implications in efl contexts have attracted attentions of research circles worldwide and aroused some controversies. firth and wagner (1997) have questioned the principles of the cognitive view which gives importance to mental constructs in favor of sociocultural view which highlights social and contextual constructs. but if sociocultural view considers social-contextual factors as important as individual cognitive factors, what will the learners own perspective be in this respect? how do learners look at language or language learning, as a social phenomenon or cognitive one? in this study we explore learners’ attitudes towards the language as a cognitive-individual or social-contextual phenomenon and the way their learning is affected differentially by the two perspectives in language teaching. furthermore, the traces of english as a lingua franca (elf) are witnessed in this study. accordingly, the implications of elf context will be meticulously scrutinized. to this end, 9-month diaries of 30 male high school students and their teacher in one of the rural schools of zanjan, iran, who apart from their school classes, regular classes, optionally participated in an out-of-school class after regular school hours. it should be noted that in school situation learners were involved mostly in cognitive activities like any other learning discipline in school, whereas in out-of-school situation they looked at learning as a kind of social activity, being taught by the same teacher and following the same syllabus. the interpretation of diaries, using metaphor analysis, suggests that as the nature of these two classes are different, learner’s perspective towards the learning english was different too. in the first class students looked at language as a means to fulfill their educational purposes like success in university entrance exams, whereas in the other class they were trying to be socialized, being able to communicate with some japanese and german engineers working in their village. my findings show that the difference in learner’s perspective can affect the way of their language learning. furthermore, in this piece of qualitative study, elf contexts in compared with efl contexts provided more outlets for language socialization of the learners.