ABSTRACT
A student is someone who learns how to turn life into signs. More formally, education “is fundamentally about internalization of knowledge and abilities which can potentially . . . create new tools for regulation” (Negueruela, 2008, p. 195). Schooling aims to transform what Vygotsky called spontaneous or everyday concepts (informal, implicit, episodic, and unanalyzed knowledge) into scientific concepts (abstract, taxonomic, and explicit), that is, knowledge that transcends lived experience (Lantolf & Poehner, 2008, p. 11). Language teacher education often proceeds upon the assumption that this transformation is essentially transparent, not to mention a one-way street. In an MA TESOL class on SLA, for example, students may be asked to identify, through reflection, factors that shaped their exposure to second or foreign languages in various stages of their lives (Verity, 2009); rough parallels can then be drawn between those informal taxonomies and current SLA research paradigms, each with its own linguistic, psychological or social/cultural agenda (Lightbown & Spada, 1993; Ortega, 2005). This recoding of personal experience gives theoretical SLA concepts an episodic dimension, and may help students avoid the dangers of verbalism, a theoretical mastery of knowledge that remains separate from material practice (Lantolf & Poehner, 2008, p. 12; Negueruela, 2008, p. 189).
