ABSTRACT
Student teachers in second language education programs bring with them their histories as language learners, and these previous experiences shape their views of language and language teaching. As noted by Britzman (2007), “Growing up in education permeates our meanings of education and learning . . . It makes us suspicious of what we have not experienced and lends nostalgia to what has been missed” (p. 2). In many cases, prior experiences as language learners-particularly in formal settings-lead to the view that language is, above all, a set of grammatical rules, lexical items, and four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing). Such a perspective is often perpetuated and reinforced by the conceptual framework around which many second language education textbooks and courses are organized. As a result of the social turn in applied linguistics (Block, 2003) and increasing interest in a sociocultural theoretical perspective in second language teacher education (e.g., Johnson, 2006, 2009), new theoretical concepts offer the potential to broaden notions of language and what it means to be a language teacher.
