Linda’s task 1b. Understanding language: restate Vygotsky’s philosophy in your own words and offer some classroom examples of his theories in action.

Hi tutor and peers.

I want to share Task 1b. Understanding language: restate Vygotsky’s philosophy in your own words and offer some classroom examples of his theories in action. 

According to the reading about the theory of Constructivism by Vigotsky, it can be defined as a very important school of thought, which means that, the students must be the center of the teaching process and the student’s role should be active.

This theory has two perspectives. The first, the cognitive, where the students build their mental representation of reality, transforming new information in new learning.  The second, is the social part, where students must learn trough cooperative strategies and construct not only cognitive images but also emotional ones of reality.

Some examples are:

1 for the case of learners constructing their own representation of reality: when I was studying at the university, my peers, teacher and I traveled to a Colombian city in order to acquire information about the different processes of making food, so I consider we made the mental representation and starting from there some concepts were learnt in a significate way.

2 For the social part, I can say that as a UNAD learner, I know how important is to take into account peers’ opinions, contributions and decisions to make a good job together.  It’s true students nets are needed to build knowledge because it is an interchange of information to achieve some common goals.

Other function this theory presents is that the students can’t do activities alone, so a teacher or adult can assist them to active their ZPD- Zone of proximal development.

From my point of view, I can say that as a teacher I have applied this strategy of appropriate stimuli and assistance for the students’ meaningful learning.   Most of the times students are afraid to speak in front of others and less in another language, so it’s useful to motivate them and make activities so they can feel they are able to do it and well.

Thanks.