Affordance

International Journal of Multilingualism, 2016

This article argues that the concept of affordances as put forward by James J. Gibson can make a major contribution to our understanding of multilingualism. It can throw some light on multilingualism in general as well as on specific aspects like successful and unsuccessful transfer, the challenges involved in teaching for multilingualism, opportunities for enhancing learner autonomy as well as for creating a sound basis for lifelong and lifewide learning, the particular importance of cooperative learning in multilingual settings, the pivotal role of motivation in multiple language learning, the effects of the political and social context on the emergence, maintenance or decay of multilingualism and the possibility of developing new quality criteria for multilingualism research. Affordance theory with its focus on the individual, the environment and the emergent character of language learning opportunities is particularly wellsuited for dealing with the complexity of individual and societal multilingualism. As affordances are located between past experience and potential future action affordance theory takes prior learning experiences, future learning opportunities as well as situational motivational factors into account.

2017

The growing use of the concept of an affordance raises questions about its meaning and has led to much debate. This exploratory evaluation of usage reveals divergent meanings, exposes tensions and explains why there is confusion about the concept. The notion of an affordance focuses attention upon possible action, raising the issue of how affordances give rise to action. The discussion reveals latency in the nature of affordances, that they do not exist in isolation, can be designed into artefacts and have social, temporal and spatial dimensions for their actualization. An affordance is a necessary condition for its enactment, but sufficiency arises with the situatedness of enactment. Moreover, an affordance, which is actualized through its enactment, is thus performative. It is concluded that the term affordance should be used with caution and with more precision and rigour, as its everyday use is fraught with vagueness saying little about the complex dynamics that underpins afford...

2017

The growing use of the concept of an affordance raises questions about its meaning and has led to much debate. This exploratory evaluation of usage reveals divergent meanings, exposes tensions and explains why there is confusion about the concept. The notion of an affordance focuses attention upon possible action, raising the issue of how affordances give rise to action. The discussion reveals latency in the nature of affordances, that they do not exist in isolation, can be designed into artefacts and have social, temporal and spatial dimensions for their actualization. An affordance is a necessary condition for its enactment, but sufficiency arises with the situatedness of enactment. Moreover, an affordance, which is actualized through its enactment, is thus performative. It is concluded that the term affordance should be used with caution and with more precision and rigour, as its everyday use is fraught with vagueness saying little about the complex dynamics that underpins afford...

The concept of affordances originating in Gibson’s work (Gibson, 1977) is gaining ground in multilingualism studies (cf. Aronin and Singleton, 2010; Singleton and Aronin, 2007; Dewaele, 2010). Nevertheless, studies investigating affordances in respect of teaching, learning or using languages are still somewhat rare and tend to treat isolated aspects of multilingualism. This is despite the fact that the theory of affordances can actually provide a valuable, supplementary, up-to-date framework within which a clearer, sharper description and explication of the intriguing range of attributes of multilingual communities, educational institutions and individuals, as well as teaching practices, become feasible. It is important that not only researchers and practitioners (teachers, educators, parents, community and political actors) but also language users and learners themselves should be aware of how to identify or, if necessary, design new affordances for language acquisition and learning. The aim of this article is to adapt the concept of affordances to multilingualism studies and additional language teaching, and in so doing advance theoretical understanding in this context. To this end the article contains a brief summary of the findings so far available. The article also goes further into defining the ways of how affordances work in relation to multilingualism and second language teaching and puts forward an integrated model of affordances.

In current foreign language education, few recent concepts have aroused more interest than affordance. Originally used by , an affordance is a reciprocal relationship between an organism and a particular feature of its environment. Affordance can be seen as one link in a continuum of concepts, starting with 'input', 'intake', 'interaction' and gearing towards other socioculturally loaded constructs. We argue that it is important for foreign language teachers and teacher educators to fully understand the linguistic and social potential embedded in the concept of affordance, as it is likely to have an empowering impact on various teaching, studying and learning environments.

2016

Abstract—The Traditional Chinese as a second language teaching put emphasis on classroom teaching and pay little attention to extra-curricular learning. Besides, the existing theories of second language acquisition fail to account for second language learners’ effective acquisition in the target language environment. Therefore, on the basis of the theory of Affordances, from the perspective of linguistics, the paper tries to develop the theory of Affordances from the two aspects of active learning ability of self-exploration and language niche. In addition, the developed theory of Affordances is practiced in the second language acquisition in the target language environment. The paper illuminates the effectiveness of second language acquisition in the target language and expounds the theory ’ representation and functions in second language acquisition in the target language. Keywords-second language acquisition; the theory of affordances; language niche; active learning ability base...

Education and Information Technologies, 2010

This paper revisits the concept of affordance and explores its contribution to an understanding of the use of ICT for teaching and learning. It looks at Gibson"s original idea of affordance and at some of the difficulties long associated with the use of the word. It goes on to describe the translation of the concept of affordance into the field of design through the work, in particular, of Norman. The concept has since been translated into research concerning ICT and further opportunities and difficulties emerge. The paper locates key points of divergence within the usage of "affordance", as involving direct perception, invariant properties and complementarity. It concludes by arguing that affordance offers a distinctive perspective on the use of ICT in education because of its focus on possibilities for action.

Theory & Psychology, 2020

This article will contest the claim made by many ecological psychologists that affordances are invariantly the objects of perception. First of all, the lack of agreement concerning what affordances actually are, what their true nature is, is considerable. Second, the metaphysico-ontological debate has obscured the important misunderstanding consisting in conceiving of affordances as ecological objects or entities of any kind. Third, an appropriate analysis of the notion of affordance will show that this concept is not primarily devoted to perception, and believing that it is has unnecessarily impoverished what we (can) see in our environment. From a Wittgensteinian and an ethnomethodological approach, to make sense of the relation between ourselves and our environments we should use only those concepts available to us, and the internal relation between our everyday concepts and the way we invoke them in practice will be shown. No theory of meaning is needed here.