Growing Participator Approach
The Growing Participator Approach is an alternative paradigm for second language acquisition created by Greg Thomson. In GPA, the goal is not language acquisition, but participation in the life of a new community, which is constantly growing over time. Thus, GPA uses the terminology of a 'growing participator' instead of a language learner, and a 'nurturer' instead of a teacher. Theoretically, GPA draws upon Lev Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory, especially as interpreted by James Wertsch. This includes in particular the mediated nature of human mental life, and the zone of proximal development, relabeled as the growth zone. A second influence is the psycholinguistic study of speech comprehension and production. A third influence is usage-based linguistics. Various areas related to linguistic anthropology also play roles In the language of pedagogy, GPA involves an approach, a method, and techniques.
Approach
Thomson suggests three dimensions of language learning which are important for GPA.Sociocultural Dimension
GPA supports Michael Agar's effort to erase the circle scholars attempted to draw separating language and culture. Essentialization or reification of "culture "are also resisted. One of the GPA slogans is "We don't do language; we do people ". Rather than "cultures" the GPA sees groups of people joined by their shared practices. As those shared practices are mediated by tools and signs that differ greatly from group to group, they are referred to as "languacultural worlds". Thus, instead of viewing "language learning" as a private achievement of individual human brains, the goal is to enter and grow within a "host langucultural world," by appropriating more and more of its practices over time through participation in life with concrete host people. Hence, GPA uses the terminology of "growing participators" rather than "language learners". Growing participation happens most effectively when host people interact with the growing participators within their growth zone.Cognitive Dimension
Drawing on fields of psycholinguistics and usage-based grammar, and noting that good comprehension of English speech requires a listening vocabulary of over 10,000 words, GPA emphasizes "massive comprehension vocabulary." However, instead of rote memorization, GPA advocates strong initial encounters with new words, followed by natural "strengthening encounters" in new contexts that make them meaningful. The strengthening encounters will occur in line with the frequency of the words. As new words are encountered and understood, their form is at first attached to the growing participator's home-world lexical concepts. Ultimately, the growing participator doesn't know words in a piecemeal way, but comes to understand them in connection with discourses in which they play a role, as the growing participator becomes party more and more to host-world discourses in which those words play a role. The development of a healthy mental lexicon will require "encountering a massive amount of understandable speech over a long period of time". Thus, GPA emphasises comprehension and listening as the natural pathway toward speaking ability in the host language. These principles apply not only to words, but to recurring word combinations and patterns of words. As noted, the bigger picture includes the sociocultural processes that the cognitive processes reflect.Temporal Dimension
All language programs emphasize time, but in GPA the focus is both on quantity of time, and on quality. "Host world time" is divided into "lifestyle growing participation time" and "Special growth participation time" In general, "Host world time" is time when the GP is interacting with host people using host words, and attempting to follow host ways. GPA aims for 20 hours/week during which "people interact with me in my growth zone in their languacultural world." As a result, because a beginning growing participator's growth is so limited, early growth requires that a dedicated host person be recruited as a special nurturer."Language Acquisition" in GPA Terms
Based on these three dimensions, GPA's approach can be summarised as follows:| Communing | 1. Early growth in participation requires that host people interact with growing participators in their growth zone for many hours per week. |
| Communing | 2. The "growth zone" is a social concept, and secondarily a mental concept |
| Communing | 3. To participate meaningfully and in one's growth zone is to grow |
| Communing | 4. Emotional dynamics in growing participation are social in origin |
| Communing | 5. The social relationships of growing participators with one another and with nurturers need to be enjoyable |
| Understanding | 6. New growing participators face the challenge of learning to perceive new speech sounds |
| Understanding | 7. Beginners benefit from at least thirty or forty hours of activities with nurturers in which they listen intensively and respond nonverbally |
| Understanding | 8. Early activities with nurturers lead to internalization of linguistic form through awareness-raising activities and Focus on Form. |
| Understanding | 9. When encountering word forms or word patterns, first priority is their function in comprehension. |
| Understanding | 10. From the beginning "grammar acquisition" is the accumulation of meaningful experiences of constructions. |
| Understanding | 11. Remembered experience with words, word forms, word patterns, etc. provides the basis for attempts at spoken production |
| Understanding | 12. Different growing participators have differing capacities for metalinguistic thinking about grammatical form. |
| Talking | 13. Talking means expressing oneself in one's own words, in interaction that allows for scaffolding |
| Talking | 14. In early talking, the growing participator depends a lot on assistance and feedback in interaction |
| Talking | 15. Growing participation is a long journey, by its very nature, never complete. |
| Evolving | 16. Growth is the fruit of meaningful interaction in the growing participator's growth zone, and not "study". |
| Evolving | 17. As the growing participator's level of ability changes, the nature of the special-growth activities with nurturers necessarily changes for growth to continue. |