science

Growing Participator Approach

Growing Participator Approach is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Growing Participator Approach rather than just read about it. In short: The Growing Participator Approach (GPA) 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.

Key takeaways

Growing Participator Approach belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Growing Participator Approach to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Growing Participator Approach from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Growing Participator Approach (GPA) 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 (identity theory, politeness theory, discourse analysis, communities of practice, figured worlds, etc.) also play roles In the language of pedagogy, GPA involves an approach, a method, and techniques.

Approach Thomson suggests three dimensions of language learning (or participation) 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 (and people talk [a lot])". 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 (ZPD).

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 (local frequency by discourse, or global frequency). As new words are encountered and understood, their form is at first attached to the growing participator's home-world lexical concepts (fast mapping). 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 (with situated meanings). The development of a healthy mental (comprehension) lexicon will require "encountering a massive amount of understandable speech over a long period of time". Thus, GPA emphasizes 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 socio-cultural processes that the cognitive processes reflect.

Temporal Dimension Where as many language programs emphasize quantity of time, GPA puts an additional emphasis on quality. "Host world time" is divided into "lifestyle growing participation time" (naturalistic immersion) 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 behavior. 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:

Method The Six-Phase Program (SPP), created by Thomson, is "an idealised program to guide a growing participator into deep involvement with a community." It involves 1,500 hours of special-growth activities, assisted (initially) by a dedicated native speaker —a nurturer, who is most often not a career teacher. It is "structured in such a way that the activities become increasingly advanced as the user grows, and the activities are "keyed to the sociocultural/human-relationship changes and cognitive changes that the growing participator (GP) undergoes."

Overview of the Six-Phase Program

Techniques GPA and the SPP utilise a wide array of techniques, such as TPR activities (in silence for the first 30-40 hrs), back and forth storytelling, wordless picture books, discussing speech acts with the use of resources such as Lexicarry, input/output flooding, ethnographic interviews, and extensive recording and playback for revision.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Growing Participator Approach

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Growing Participator Approach claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Growing Participator Approach before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Growing Participator Approach ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Growing Participator Approach

In research: Growing Participator Approach appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Growing Participator Approach in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Growing Participator Approach is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Language acquisition, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Growing Participator Approach outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Growing Participator Approach in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Growing Participator Approach means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Growing Participator Approach out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Growing Participator Approach in simple terms?

Why does Growing Participator Approach matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Growing Participator Approach?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Growing Participator Approach.