Vygotsky and learning language

Lev Vygotsky is a profound educational theorist. Vygotsky believes that social interaction is vital in language development, be it between learners or with a more knowledgeable person (McLeod, 2018). Vygotsky also believes that language is the key element in the learning process. Language acquisition involves the exposure of children to new words, thought processes and pronunciations. When a child socially interacts with another child they are constantly communicating and feeding off of each other in terms of vocabulary and ideas. This creates an active thought process which, in turn, enables the child to internalise this information. As one can see in the image above, there is a group of children who are intrigued and discussing something in that book. Each child will have an individual opinion, sentence, idea or thought about what they have discovered and will express this to their friends. In this way they are developing their language abilities. Scaffolding is another one of Vygotsky’s ideas. This is when a more knowledgeable person, such as a teacher, provides guidance or help until the learner is able to do it on their own. In relation to language learning, a teacher could provide scaffolding in terms of new vocabulary, correcting sentence structure as well as using the correct word in the correct situation. The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is another concept in which Vygotsky believes language acquisition may occur. The ZPD is the difference between what a child can do on their own and the potential they have with assistance. This could refer to the level of language a child possesses and how much it can develop through help and social interaction (Cherry, 2018). To summarize, social interaction is the main tool in language development according to Vygotsky.