Social autonomy and decision making in L2 group work

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation into the socio-interactional nature of learner autonomy in language learning groups. It is situated in the context of a mobile phone video project with 13 Mexican adult learners of German as a Foreign Language. The aim was to examine autonomy, heteronomy and participation in L2 classroom negotiations in a group work situation. These constructs have been shown to be highly influential to second language learning in an institutional context (Lave & Wenger 1991, Little 2000, O´Leary 2014, Schmenk 2008, Thornbury 2012). The analyzed corpus consists of 620 minutes of audiovisual data on groups in the process of decision making which is triangulated with 720 minutes of individual video-stimulated recall protocols. Decision making episodes of three project groups were analyzed from an interactional, participational and sequential point of view. This analysis offers both an etic and an emic perspective on L2- group negotiation processes and allows for the detailed reconstruction of collective and cooperative participation mechanisms. It unveils a strong link between individual interaction styles, different types of participation, group discourse patterns and the display of group autonomy and/or personal autonomy. Using video and transcript examples of the between-methods triangulation for illustration, the paper presents an empirically grounded, innovative theoretical model of social autonomy in the L2 classroom.