Responses can provide additional ideas, thoughts, and personal experience, or appropriately challenge the reflections. Similar to reflections, responses should be based on the readings and class discussion.
 
This week’s readings discuss how social aspects can make an impact on learners’ second language acquisition. Social factors, like motivation, culture, and immersion, can all play a role. These factors can make a difference in students’ learning motivation, which in turn affects achievement. Therefore, teachers should strive to create an inclusive environment that encourages learners to practice their language skills.
 
After reading Anya’s article (2021), I thought of a quote made by Noam Chomsky, “A language is not just words. It’s a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It’s all embodied in a language.” However, as English is a lingua franca shared by all global citizens, people shouldn’t regard it as a language belonging to Americans, or Caucasians in particular. In other words, when choosing and using lesson materials, teachers are expected to include diversity in their lessons. In the Practicum class, Dr. Hoa mentioned that we could include names from different countries to diversify the course materials, reminding the students that English names are more than “Western names” (e.g., Sarah, Emily, Tom). Although it may sound insignificant and like trivia, I believe it can make a difference for students based on my personal experience. In my CLP class, I assigned the name “Elva Chang” to a Korean student to do a role-play activity. To be honest, I designed this name randomly without thinking too much because I thought “It was just a name; a fake name.” Much to my surprise, the Korean student took the name very seriously and even asked me, “Is this Elva a Chinese-American? I have never seen the surname ‘Chang’.” It was at that moment that I realized how these tiny details can make an impact on students. Since then, I have paid more attention to naming characters in role-play activities and tried to include diversity in my curriculum.
 
In addition, I was impressed by Norton’s (2001) discussion on the term, imagination, which suggests learners can “create images of the word and see connections through time and space via the extrapolation of experience” (p. 80). He also mentioned imagined communities and imagined identities in the article, which are both related to “envision.” I am convinced that it is essential to have students envisage the scene of speaking the target language in imagined scenarios with specific interlocutors. Speaking of imagination, Wenger (1998) also indicated that imagination does not mean that learners must create fictional stories or scenarios, but rather that they must be able to imagine the language being used in real contexts. They should also be able to imagine the reactions and responses of their interlocutors.
 
As the social aspect plays a significant role in language learning, Ellis (2015) also stated that “learning is no longer seen as essentially an individual, cognitive affair but as a participatory and social affair.” (p.224) That is, interaction is undoubtedly of paramount importance in language acquisition, which can be further proven by Schumann’s Acculturation Model and Gardner’s Socio-educational Model. As teachers, what we should bear in mind is that language learning is not just about learning linguistic knowledge. Rather, it is about developing interactional competence. It’s our responsibility to create a condition to foster students’ language acquisition.