Contributions of vygotsky's theory to second language acquisition

Vygotsky's (1981) general genetic law of cultural developments states 'any function in the individual's cultural development appears twice, or on two planes. First it appears on the social plane and then on the psychological plane. First it appears between people as an interpsychological category and then within the individual child as an intrapsychological category. Therefore we can say that he has got a dialectical perspective which goes through all his works. We are familiar with his contrastive terminology pairs: lower and higher mental functions, phylogeny and ontogeny, everyday and scientific concepts and so on. For Vygotsky the determinants of human mental development are not biological maturation in ontogenesis and biological adaptation in the course of the struggle for life in phylogenesis, nor the mastery by the human being of the ideas of the universal spirit embedded in the products of culture, nor the relation of social cooperation, but human tool-mediated labor activity. Thus, Vygotsky's very starting idea of the mediation of natural functions by psychological tools entail the need to approach the cultural, higher mental functions as historical functions and therefore the need to study them by the historical method. In this paper the main contributions made by Vygotsky to second language acquisition are presented. And the core elements of his ideas are discussed.