Contrasting Zones of Comfortable Competence: Popular Culture in a Phonics Lesson
Abstract The contrast between the current national skills-based reading agenda in the United States and the complex forms of technology and entertainment available for children today suggests a kind of “future shock” analogous to that identified by Toffler [Future Shock, Random House, New York, 1970] during the rise of television in the 1960s. He identified future shock as a disturbing recognition, in the face of rapid change, that one has grown up with expectations for a world that no longer exists. Adult reactions to future shock can take the form of a retreat to a comfort zone, in which one can deny that the world is changing. Children, however, bring their own familiarities with new media to the classroom, often in a way that can force adults out of this retreat, out of the role of expert, and into the role of novice. This paper looks at the notion of future shock as it becomes instantiated in language and interaction in a reading lesson with second language learners. Bringing the concepts of communicative competence and language socialization to a Vygotskian understanding of development, I suggest that current educational policy encourages teachers and students both to retreat to differing comfort zones, and that a policy which encourages them to depart from those retreats, by taking advantage of students’ multiple communicative competencies, could more adequately prepare students to take active roles in the current multimedia world.