Writing as Externalization of Thinking (Reading Thought and Word)

While reading Thought and Word (1934), I was impressed by how Vygotsky cited the experiment result where children's inner speech was reduced (instead of being amplified) when the availability of social communication was reduced in the environment. This helps me understand the differences between two common writing assignments in online courses: submitting one's essay to the online instructor and publishing one's thoughts to the discussion forum. Students' thinking and its verbalization (writing) can be qualitatively difference due to its different social context. The meaning of writing would be different such as writing for instructor evaluation versus writing for social communication.

This makes me further think about what do we mean by authentic tasks in education. Authentic class activities should be providing meaningful social interaction. What we do with others should be similar to what we do on our daily because, learning and development occurs through a complex mechanism that must involve the integrated thinking and social interaction. So a meaningful class activities would motivate students to have meaningful communication. A simple and commonly seen example of inauthentic class activity is to ask students discuss on the online forum about closed ended question or simple using online discussion forum as the place to submit assignments.

[After class discussion: The class is authentic when a person is motivated. Motivation means making sense to the person. ]

My further question is: From Vygotskian perspective, how do we understand adults' writing for communication versus writing for thinking?

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