Teaching English through a Comprehensive Sociocultural Project

Abstract

This study is an application of Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory critiqued by McLeod (2022), emphasizing upon the role of social interactions in learning. Collaborative learning is founded upon the constructivism theory that expounds how students studying together for a shared goal achieve better learning outcomes compared to those studying in isolation. The primary objective is to foster a sense of motivation among students to wish for their peers' success, thereby encouraging them to support and teach each other a second language. Sociocultural project principles are not commonly employed in Pakistani Classrooms as a pedagogical strategy, it is criticized because of problems like lack of student’s active participation. The researcher experimented with this instructional strategy to assess its effectiveness in L2 teaching. The article is the result of a Survey project assigned to 95 BS English students to teach collaborative learning, research skills and hone their critical thinking and data management skills to enable them to conduct independent research in English language by improving their language competence in academic writing and evaluate their ability to work collaboratively on a project that could evoke higher order thinking skills. In addition, the secondary aim was to assess the sociocultural tendencies of the 250 Pakistani undergrad students of four universities in the twin cities Rawalpindi-Islamabad who acted as respondents of the Sociocultural Survey project. The mixed method study is based on constructivism with a clear focus on teaching SLA proposed by John (2018).