Drawing on sociocultural theory, this paper presents preliminary findings from a non-interventional classroom observation PhD study of reading circles with young adult Swedish learners of English as a Second Language, aiming to understand how small-group conversations about novels in the target language can mediate language learning and meaning making.
To build responsible and just societies, the UN Agenda 2030 (UNESCO, 2016) argues for a world-wide educational focus on global citizenship and sustainable development. Foreign language education, with its intercultural learning aims, plays an important role in achieving these purposes (Byram et al., 2013), and can facilitate intercultural experiences in language classrooms by using literary texts (Bland, 2020). However, this involves the pedagogic dilemma of considering the cognitive processing load of reading in a second language (Grabe, 2009) against the potential benefits of aesthetic, intercultural, and language learning experiences. This paper presents preliminary findings from a non-interventional classroom observation study of reading circles with young adult Swedish learners of English as a Second Language, aiming to understand how small-group conversations about novels in the target language can mediate language learning and meaning making. Drawing on sociocultural perspectives (Säljö, 2013; Vygotsky, 1978; Stetsenko, 2017), this qualitative PhD case study explores how the learners' conversations in English contributed to the co-construction of meaning and how language supported their meaning making. Expanding on Mercer's (1995; 2000) and Swain and colleagues' work (Swain et al., 2009; Swain and Watanabe, 2019), the learners' conversations involved communicative patterns of using language to generate new and deeper knowledge about the literary texts. This languaging process involved e.g., counterarguments, elaborations, reformulations, and the uniting of perspectives. Led by the narrative arches of the literary texts, the learners focused on the characters' struggles and attempted to understand their feelings and motivations, both empathising with and rejecting their actions and decisions. Consistent with Stetsenko's (2017) view on human development, the learners' meaning making included not only the processing of language and story, but also the problematization of accountability, ethical and moral commitment, responsibility, and personal values.
