Activity: Linking the literature to the current research

In this activity you are going to examine an extract that appears at the end of the literature
review chapter in a dissertation on second language learning and culture. This extract shows
how the student who wrote the dissertation relates his own study to a similar research.

Instruction
Study the extract and consider the way in which the writer relates his own study to similar
research. Answer the questions that follow, making notes.

The examination of the literature on culture and language teaching has emphasized the
importance of linking language and culture teaching. Key concepts that will be drawn on in
this study include intercultural communicative competence, cultural awareness or critical
cultural awareness, the intercultural speaker, and the language learner and teacher as a mediator
between cultures (Byram, 1997). Related to this are social models of second language learning
(SLL) which stress the crucial role of the socio-cultural context in providing the basis of many
of the elements and processes of SLA. Especially relevant to this current study is the socio-
educational model of SLL (Gardner and MacIntyre 1993a) as it relates the socio-cultural milieu
in which learning takes place to the processes of SLA in formal English language teaching
(ELT) contexts, and it is within formal ELT context that this current study takes place.
Therefore these perspectives offer an explanation of the complex socio-cultural aspects of SLL
and these form the most relevant background for this current study. Different aspects of
relationship between cultural acquisition and language acquisition have been investigated but
there are few studies that have looked at this as a single process. This is due to both the obvious
complexity of the relationship and perhaps the relatively recent focus on this aspect of SLL. As
there has been little investigation into how acquisition and understanding of other cultures
influences SLL, especially in the Thai context, and given the importance of context and culture
to the teaching/learning of a language and SLL, this would seem a productive point of
investigation for further studies. (Adapted from Baker, 2003)

Questions:
• In what ways is this dissertation study similar to the studies undertaken by Byram, and
Gardner and MacIntyre?

• What phrase does the writer use to show that the content of their literature review all
feeds into the focus he has selected for his study?

• In what ways does the study in this dissertation differ from previous studies?

• How does the writer justify taking a different approach to the previous studies?