ES actividad de aprendizaje / CAT activitat d’aprenentatge / FR activité d'apprentissage / DE Lerntätigkeit

Learning activities are the different tasks or exercises carried out by a person or group of people to progress in their learning process. They can be carried out inside or outside the classroom, individually or in groups, as part of or external to the syllabus of a subject, at the teacher’s request or on the student's own initiative. Learning activities may adopt very diverse forms and contents, depending on their particular purpose: they may be (use of) language activities, in the form of oral or written interactions, or text production or comprehension in both modes simultaneously; activities of reflection on linguistic phenomena, which attend to meaning, form, or both; or activities of management and control of the learning process (to create and keep an environment fostering group work in the classroom, self-assessment and co-assessment, goals and contents negotiation, etc.)

The “activity” concept has its roots in 20th-century Soviet psychology, particularly in Leontiev’s work (1972), which formulated the theory of human activity. Subsequent theorists of learning and knowledge psychology developed it (Cole 1999, Engström et al. 1999) and applied it to language teaching and learning (Lantolf & Pavlenko 2001). In this context, the term has been usually used as an equivalent for didactic task; it belongs to either a specific or a common approach and is usually integrated in a sequence structured by a textbook or the teacher’s program.

References

  • Cole, Michael (1999). Psicología cultural. Madrid: Morata.
  • Engeström, Yrjö; Miettinen, Reijo y Punamäki, Raija-Leena (1999). Perspectives on activity theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Lantolf, James P. y Pavlenko, Aneta. (2001). (S)econd (L)anguage (A)ctivity Theory: Understanding second language learners as people. En M. Breen (Ed.), Learner contributions to language learning. New directions in research, 141-158. Londres: Longman.
  • Leont'ev, Aleksei N. (1972), "The problem of activity in psychology", en Wertsch, J. V. (Ed.), The concept of activity in Soviet psychology, White Plains: Sharpe, 1981, 37-71.
  • van Lier, Leo (2007). Action-based teaching, autonomy and identity. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 1(1): 46-65.