Resumen de Promoting Semiotic Processes in Foreign Language Learning: The Analysis of Classroom Discourse Based on Microteaching with Regard to Teacher Language Awareness
Educational linguistics promoted by Leo van Lier (2004), being deeply rooted in Peirce's (1992/1998) semiotics, accentuates the value of personalisation in language learning as a form of building the narrative of life. To facilitate learning, it is important to make information personally relevant and present it through different sensory modes to make the semiosis complete and avoid situations in which language becomes an arbitrary symbol without substance. The concept of multi-modal learning elaborated by Heron (1992) encompasses "four modes of learning from experience: action, conceptual, imaginal, and emotional". The last mentioned, dealing with the awareness of different ways our feelings influence our learning, constitutes the basis of the learning pyramid.
Recognising emotional aspects in L2 language learning, as indicated by the iconicity of the sign referring to feelings, sensations or direct perceptual experience, it is important to accentuate their value in any form of education to guarantee more holistic development of students as individuals and as responsible participants in a healthy society. In this regard, learning a foreign language should sheer away from a rule-based mechanical operation of arbitrary symbols, which some students may find too challenging to turn them into personal voice. Handled with care, a language class may offer opportunities for phenomenological experiential knowing (Heron and Reason 1997) of the linguistic means of a foreign language. This, however, requires a level of awareness on the part of the teacher pertaining to the nature of semiotic processes. Thus this chapter aims at presenting an analysis of a classroom discourse as highlighting student-teacher awareness during an activity allegedly promoting autonomy in foreign language learning through the activation of meaning making processes. The study demonstrates how an interesting micro/eaching activity, pertaining to the saturation of signs (words) with feeling or perceptual enacting (Varela et al. 1993, 174), discloses a prospective teacher's language awareness, who gives little regard to experiential learning as the ground of all other forms of knowing (Yorks and Kasl 2002). In linguistic terms, iltranslates to holding to predication processes in meaning making rendering words to be encapsulated symbols. devoid of an experiential substrate or anchoring-"trying of the language to the world" (van Lier 2004, 66).
