Bridging the Divide: Synthesizing a Sociocultural-Cognitive Model of Language Acquisition

Abstract

"Though there exists many frameworks and theories of language acquisition and learning in the current literature, they often leave something to be desired as they attempt to stand alone as exhaustive concepts despite their inability to shore up gaps in their claims. This has led to a rather dichotomous split in the second language studies field, particularly concerning how acquisition is undertaken by learners. Many language instructors and theorists find themselves stuck in a juxtaposed rock-and-a-hard-place scenario, trying to navigate the sociocultural-cognitive divide. This places the burden of producing eclectic instruction on the language instructor as they attempt to weave the various theoretical propositions of the experts in the field into an applicable practice. This paper serves as an attempt to do just that-integrate the various claims of the field into one synergistic and holistic model that instructors can use to ensure that the lessons and activities that they undertake in their language classrooms are backed by the certainty of a composite of current accepted language acquisition theories. As we explore its innovated framework below, we will honor the insights of other models and theories-accepting most claims, rejecting others, and introducing some of our own-and intertwine these perspectives in an attempt to bridge the ""cognitive individual"" with the ""sociocultural environment."" In this way, we can establish the groundwork from which we can then propose various teaching implications that this new model considers and then propose instructional implementations to compensate for the constraints present in those considerations. Finally, this essay will then provide a demonstrative unit plan with key structures and activities that directly derive as exemplifications from the model and its teaching implicature in order to transition theory into practice. We begin, then, with a visualization of what I am coining as the holoprocesstic language acquisition model, henceforth HPLAM (/lup.wn/). The naming convention stems from the combination of""holistic"" (holo-) and ""processual"" (process-) in order to emphasize that this model is meant to represent both the consideration that the theories and claims of the second language acquisition field can be integrated as a comprehensive and interconnected nexus of cooperating explanations and processes while also taking into account the iterative, cyclical, and dynamic nature of the language acquisition process HPLAM is a series of four modules recumng m an indefinite cyclical fashion, contextualized by environmental modality and paracommunicative schema, with an indicative acquisition point. The model will be discussed in a processual manner, beginning with the discussion of sociocultural-cognitive modes, describing the processes of input identity in the environment, modification types in input interaction varieties, the conglomeration of various transformative processes for input into intake, the verification of acquisition through comprehensible output production, and the contextualization of the entire acquisitional process through paracommunicative schema.