Encyclopedia of

Language and Education

Series Editor: Stephen May

Steven L. Thorne
Stephen May  Editors

Language,
Education and
Technology
Third Edition
Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Series Editor
Stephen May
Faculty of Education and Social Work
The University of Auckland
Auckland, New Zealand
In this third, fully revised edition, the 10 volume Encyclopedia of Language and
Education offers the newest developments, including an entirely new volume of
research and scholarly content, essential to the field of language teaching and learning
in the age of globalization. In the selection of topics and contributors, the Encyclopedia
reflects the depth of disciplinary knowledge, breadth of interdisciplinary perspective,
and diversity of sociogeographic experience in the language and education field.
Throughout, there is an inclusion of contributions from non-English speaking and
non-western parts of the world, providing truly global coverage. Furthermore, the
authors have sought to integrate these voices fully into the whole, rather than as
special cases or international perspectives in separate sections.
The Encyclopedia is a necessary reference set for every university and college
library in the world that serves a faculty or school of education, as well as being
highly relevant to the fields of applied and socio-linguistics. The publication of this
work charts the further deepening and broadening of the field of language and
education since the publication of the first edition of the Encyclopedia in 1997 and
the second edition in 2008.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15111

Steven L. Thorne • Stephen May
Editors

Language, Education and

Technology
Third Edition

With 11 Figures and 3 Tables

Editors
Steven L. Thorne Stephen May
Portland, OR, USA Faculty of Education and Social Work
The University of Auckland
Auckland, New Zealand

ISBN 978-3-319-02236-9 ISBN 978-3-319-02237-6 (eBook)

ISBN 978-3-319-02238-3 (print and electronic bundle)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017945921

1st edition: # Kluwer Academic Publishers 1997

2nd edition: # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2008
# Springer International Publishing AG 2017
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Editor in Chief’s Introduction to the
“Encyclopedia of Language and Education”

This is one of ten volumes of the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

published by Springer. The Encyclopedia – now in this, its 3rd edition – is undoubt-
edly the benchmark reference text in its field. It was first published in 1997 under the
general editorship of the late David Corson and comprised eight volumes, each
focused on a single, substantive topic in language and education. These included:
language policy and political issues in education, literacy, oral discourse and edu-
cation, second language education, bilingual education, knowledge about language,
language testing and assessment, and research methods in language and education.
In his introductory remarks, David made the case for the timeliness of an
overarching, state-of-the-art review of the language and education field. He argued
that the publication of the Encyclopedia reflected both the internationalism and
interdisciplinarity of those engaged in the academic analysis of language and
education, confirmed the maturity and cohesion of the field, and highlighted the
significance of the questions addressed within its remit. Contributors across the 1st
edition’s eight volumes came from every continent and from over 40 countries. This
perhaps explains the subsequent impact and reach of that 1st edition – although no
one (except, perhaps, the publisher!) quite predicted its extent. The Encyclopedia
was awarded a Choice Outstanding Academic Title award by the American Library
Association and was read widely by scholars and students alike around the globe.
In 2008, the 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia was published under the general
editorship of Nancy Hornberger. It grew to ten volumes as Nancy continued to build
upon the reach and influence of the Encyclopedia. A particular priority in the 2nd
edition was the continued expansion of contributing scholars from contexts outside
of English-speaking and/or developed contexts, as well as the more effective the-
matic integration of their regional concerns across the Encyclopedia as a whole. The
2nd edition also foregrounded key developments in the language and education field
over the previous decade, introducing two new volumes on language socialization
and language ecology.
This 3rd edition continues both the legacy and significance of the previous
editions of the Encyclopedia. A further decade on, it consolidates, reflects, and
expands (upon) the key issues in the field of language education. As with
its predecessors, it overviews in substantive contributions of approximately
5000 words each, the historical development, current developments and challenges,
and future directions, of a wide range of topics in language and education. The

v
vi Editor in Chief’s Introduction to the “Encyclopedia of Language and Education”

geographical focus and location of its authors, all chosen as experts in their respec-
tive topic areas, also continues to expand, as the Encyclopedia aims to provide the
most representative international overview of the field to date.
To this end, some additional changes have been made. The emergence over the
last decade of “superdiversity” as a topic of major concern in sociolinguistics,
applied linguistics, and language education is now a major thread across all volumes
– exploring the implications for language and education of rapidly changing pro-
cesses of migration and transmigration in this late capitalist, globalized world. This
interest in superdiversity foregrounds the burgeoning and rapidly complexifying
uses of language(s), along with their concomitant deconstruction and (re)modifica-
tion, across the globe, particularly (but not exclusively) in large urban environments.
The allied emergence of multilingualism as an essential area of study – challenging
the long-held normative ascendancy of monolingualism in relation to language
acquisition, use, teaching, and learning – is similarly highlighted throughout all
ten volumes, as are their pedagogical consequences (most notably, perhaps, in
relation to translanguaging). This “multilingual turn” is reflected, in particular, in
changes in title to two existing volumes: Bilingual and Multilingual Education and
Language Awareness, Bilingualism and Multilingualism (previously, Bilingual Edu-
cation and Language Awareness, respectively).
As for the composition of the volumes, while ten volumes remain overall, the
Language Ecology volume in the 2nd edition was not included in the current edition,
although many of its chapter contributions have been reincorporated and/or
reworked across other volumes, particularly in light of the more recent developments
in superdiversity and multilingualism, as just outlined. (And, of course, the impor-
tant contribution of the Language Ecology volume, with Angela Creese and the late
Peter Martin as principal editors, remains available as part of the 2nd edition.)
Instead, this current edition has included a new volume on Language, Education
and Technology, with Steven Thorne as principal editor. While widely discussed
across the various volumes in the 2nd edition, the prominence and rapidity of
developments over the last decade in academic discussions that address technology,
new media, virtual environments, and multimodality, along with their wider social
and educational implications, simply demanded a dedicated volume.
And speaking of multimodality, a new, essential feature of the current edition of
the Encyclopedia is its multiplatform format. You can access individual chapters
from any volume electronically, you can read individual volumes electronically
and/or in print, and, of course, for libraries, the ten volumes of the Encyclopedia
still constitute an indispensible overarching electronic and/or print resource.
As you might expect, bringing together ten volumes and over 325 individual
chapter contributions has been a monumental task, which began for me at least in
2013 when, at Nancy Hornberger’s invitation, Springer first approached me about
the editor-in-chief role. All that has been accomplished since would simply not have
occurred, however, without support from a range of key sources. First, to Nancy
Hornberger, who, having somehow convinced me to take on the role, graciously
agreed to be consulting editor for the 3rd edition of the Encyclopedia, providing
advice, guidance, and review support throughout.
Editor in Chief’s Introduction to the “Encyclopedia of Language and Education” vii

The international and interdisciplinary strengths of the Encyclopedia continue to

be foregrounded in the wider topic and review expertise of its editorial advisory
board, with several members having had direct associations with previous editions of
the Encyclopedia in various capacities. My thanks to Suresh Canagarajah, William
Cope, Viv Edwards, Rainer Enrique Hamel, Eli Hinkel, Francis Hult, Nkonko
Kamwangamalu, Gregory Kamwendo, Claire Kramsch, Constant Leung, Li Wei,
Luis Enrique Lopez, Marilyn Martin-Jones, Bonny Norton, Tope Omoniyi, Alastair
Pennycook, Bernard Spolsky, Lionel Wee, and Jane Zuengler for their academic and
collegial support here.
The role of volume editor is, of course, a central one in shaping, updating,
revising and, in some cases, resituating specific topic areas. The 3rd edition of the
Encyclopedia is a mix of existing volume editors from the previous edition (Cenoz,
Duff, King, Shohamy, Street, and Van Deusen-Scholl), new principal volume editors
(García, Kim, Lin, McCarty, and Thorne, Wortham), and new coeditors (Lai and Or).
As principal editor of Language Policy and Political Issues in Education, Teresa
McCarty brings to the volume her longstanding interests in language policy, lan-
guage education, and linguistic anthropology, arising from her work in Native
American language education and Indigenous education internationally. For Liter-
acies and Language Education, Brian Street brings a background in social and
cultural anthropology, and critical literacy, drawing on his work in Britain, Iran,
and around the globe. As principal editors of Discourse and Education, Stanton
Wortham has research expertise in discourse analysis, linguistic anthropology,
identity and learning, narrative self-construction, and the new Latino diaspora,
while Deoksoon Kim’s research has focused on language learning and literacy
education, and instructional technology in second language learning and teacher
education. For Second and Foreign Language Education, Nelleke Van Deusen-
Scholl has academic interests in linguistics and sociolinguistics and has worked
primarily in the Netherlands and the United States. As principal editors of Bilingual
and Multilingual Education, Ofelia García and Angel Lin bring to the volume their
internationally recognized expertise in bilingual and multilingual education, includ-
ing their pioneering contributions to translanguaging, along with their own work in
North America and Southeast Asia. Jasone Cenoz and Durk Gorter, principal editors
of Language Awareness, Bilingualism and Multilingualism, bring to their volume
their international expertise in language awareness, bilingual and multilingual edu-
cation, linguistic landscape, and translanguaging, along with their work in the
Basque Country and the Netherlands. The principal editor of Language Testing
and Assessment, Elana Shohamy, is an applied linguist with interests in critical
language policy, language testing and measurement, and linguistic landscape
research, with her own work focused primarily on Israel and the United States. For
Language Socialization, Patricia Duff has interests in applied linguistics and socio-
linguistics and has worked primarily in North America, East Asia, and Central
Europe. For Language, Education and Technology, Steven Thorne’s research inter-
ests include second language acquisition, new media and online gaming environ-
ments, and theoretical and empirical investigations of language, interactivity, and
viii Editor in Chief’s Introduction to the “Encyclopedia of Language and Education”

development, with his work focused primarily in the United States and Europe. And
for Research Methods in Language and Education, principal editor, Kendall King,
has research interests in sociolinguistics and educational linguistics, particularly with
respect to Indigenous language education, with work in Ecuador, Sweden, and the
United States. Finally, as editor-in-chief, I bring my interdisciplinary background in
the sociology of language, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and educational
linguistics, with particular interests in language policy, Indigenous language educa-
tion, and bilingual education, along with my own work in New Zealand, North
America, and the UK/Europe.
In addition to the above, my thanks go to Yi-Ju Lai, coeditor with Kendall King,
and Iair Or, coeditor with Elana Shohamy. Also, to Lincoln Dam, who as editorial
assistant was an essential support to me as editor-in-chief and who worked closely
with volume editors and Springer staff throughout the process to ensure both its
timeliness and its smooth functioning (at least, to the degree possible, given the
complexities involved in this multiyear project). And, of course, my thanks too to the
approximately 400 chapter contributors, who have provided the substantive content
across the ten volumes of the Encyclopedia and who hail from every continent in the
world and from over 50 countries.
What this all indicates is that the Encyclopedia is, without doubt, not only a major
academic endeavor, dependent on the academic expertise and good will of all its
contributors, but also still demonstrably at the cutting edge of developments in the
field of language and education. It is an essential reference for every university and
college library around the world that serves a faculty or school of education and is an
important allied reference for those working in applied linguistics and sociolinguis-
tics. The Encyclopedia also continues to aim to speak to a prospective readership that
is avowedly multinational and to do so as unambiguously as possible. Its ten
volumes highlight its comprehensiveness, while the individual volumes provide
the discrete, in-depth analysis necessary for exploring specific topic areas. These
state-of-the art volumes also thus offer highly authoritative course textbooks in the
areas suggested by their titles.
This 3rd edition of the Encyclopedia of Language and Education continues to
showcase the central role of language as both vehicle and mediator of educational
processes, along with the pedagogical implications therein. This is all the more
important, given the rapid demographic and technological changes we face in this
increasingly globalized world and, inevitably, by extension, in education. But the
cutting edge contributions within this Encyclopedia also, crucially, always situate
these developments within their historical context, providing a necessary diachronic
analytical framework with which to examine critically the language and education
field. Maintaining this sense of historicity and critical reflexivity, while embracing the
latest developments in our field, is indeed precisely what sets this Encyclopedia apart.

The University of Auckland Stephen May

Auckland, New Zealand
Volume Editor’s Introduction to “Language,
Education and Technology”

Across the history of human social organization, information and communication

technologies have had enormous effects on the processes they mediate. Some
technologies have amplified existing activities in areas such as reach or speed,
while others have enabled the emergence of novel informational, communicative,
and social practices. In the contemporary era, global networks enable culture, music,
and linguistic repertoires to propagate, mutate, and cross-pollinate across media and
communicative modalities. Recent sociological analyses have documented that the
Internet has qualitatively transformed everyday communication and information
practices in commercial, financial, professional, educational, recreational, and inter-
personal realms (e.g., Castells 2004), all of which provoke questions as to how
language educators and researchers should orient themselves to the perennially
changing contexts and conditions of linguistically mediated life activity.
Engineering advances in digital technologies have been prodigious over the
years, but to paraphrase Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee, the Internet is less
interesting as a technological fact than as a social fact. Evidence for this exists
from the very beginning of the Internet. The initial series of networked computers,
called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), were created in
1966 and designed for file sharing and remote access to then rare computers. Email
emerged in 1971 and by 1973, use of email for professional but also interpersonal
and recreational purposes – the first listserv in existence, SF-Lovers, catered to fans
of science fiction literature – comprised 75% of ARPANET’s data traffic. From this
early point, the development of the Internet and associated connective devices has
continued to mirror the intensely social-relational nature of our species – evidenced
by mass participation in the sharing of user-generated content, the mercurial rise of
social networking sites, and the rise of infrastructure such as cloud-based computing,
mobile devices, and the Internet of things (network-enabled devices for collecting
and sharing data) – that perhaps in some ways problematically make technology
spatially and temporally ubiquitous in modern life.
This volume assembles the majority of technology-focused chapters in the 3rd
edition of the Encyclopedia of Language and Education. In the 1st and 2nd editions of
the Encyclopedia, contributions addressing various aspects of technology were dis-
tributed across multiple topical volumes. The genesis of this new technology-focused

ix
x Volume Editor’s Introduction to “Language, Education and Technology”

volume emerges from the unquestionably constitutive ways in which many areas of
educational practice, and life activity more broadly, are now affected by digital
mediation, a condition that creates opportunity but also friction, resistance, and
evidence for continuing global inequalities across world regions and social classes.

Contents of the Volume

This volume of the Encyclopedia, Language, Education and Technology, is

partitioned into five parts that in some cases include overlapping themes and topical
areas. In other ways, this volume is perhaps the most heterogeneous of all in the
series due to the extremely broad organizing domain of “technology.” Contributions
synthesize research ranging from discrete attention to particular technology envi-
ronments, instructional formats, pedagogical orientations, language and literacy
learning outcomes, and teacher professional development to issues of multimodality,
transnationalism, superdiversity, translanguaging, identity, and methodology (some-
times within the same chapter!).
Part 1, Perspectives on Technology, Multimodality, Literacy, and Language,
addresses a number of overarching issues pertaining to technology through the
lenses of criticality, literacy, ideology, multimodality, and popular culture content
and practices. The contributions in this part directly address the complexity of
analyzing and understanding language and literacy development in and through
digitally mediated practices and offer holistic and situated insights that help to
contextualize many of the more discrete and specific chapters appearing in subse-
quent parts.
The first entry in this part, by Karin Tusting, describes the ways in which
contemporary technologies have transformed everyday literacy practices in multiple
ways, such as the inclusion and prevalence of multimodal expression and the
entwining of written communication with socially relevant issues of participation
and identity formation. The array of technologies now mediating “informal learning”
include participation in online gaming and virtual worlds, social media environ-
ments, multilingual digital literacies, and the curation of identities and social pres-
ence across many of these settings (e.g., Ito et al. 2010). Of particular relevance to
language educators, Tusting directly addresses the clashes with accountability
regimes in educational settings that informal and recreational use of technologies
has provoked in recent years. In the following chapter, Ron Darvin presents a
critically informed discussion of digital literacy and argues that technologies are
never ideologically neutral. Rather, Darvin notes that technologies and the ways they
mediate the circulation of representations, meanings, and identities have redefined
notions of private and public space and in so doing, privilege and marginalize certain
ideas, cultures, and peoples. Building from a base in Bourdieu, forms of capital, and
the notion of sens practique (e.g., Bourdieu 1991; Darvin and Norton 2015; Thorne
2013), Darvin makes a powerful argument for the necessity of attention to how
power operates in digital spaces with the implication that language learners and
Volume Editor’s Introduction to “Language, Education and Technology” xi

educators should develop a sustained critical stance regarding biases, assumptions,

and the ideological work that occurs in online interaction.
Multimodality is an omnipresent feature of much communicative activity in
online environments. Carey Jewitt describes the complexity of multimodal semiotic
repertoires that can include written and spoken language, image, gesture and haptics,
and three-dimensional forms, among others, and explicates these forms of meaning
making through the lens of multimodal social semiotics (e.g., Jewitt 2014; Kress
2010). Bringing together theory and methodology from psychology, sociology,
anthropology, and systemic functional linguistics, Jewitt encourages multimodal
analysis across school curricula as a way to visibilize new forms of learning in
digital environments and to enhance the recognition and acknowledgement of
multimodal learning in classroom contexts.
It has been obvious for decades that access to technologies and the Internet is
unequally distributed across world regions and within communities (e.g.,
Warschauer 2003). Tamara Tate and Mark Warschauer present a contemporary and
international overview of what is known as the “digital divide,” focusing here on
language and literacy education in particular. The authors note that while initial
concerns regarding uneven access to devices and Internet connectivity remain
relevant, the simple binary of haves and have nots does not address the equally
relevant issues of individual’s and community’s opportunities to engage in mean-
ingful economic, social, and professional transactions.
The following three chapters turn more specifically to instructed language edu-
cation and use various disciplinary frameworks and school-external resources.
Lawrence Williams employs sociolinguistic criteria and theory to examine generally
text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) in instructed university-level
language learning settings. The particular focus of this chapter is on the development
of sociolinguistic competence and includes extended discussion of the variability of
language and discourse. The application to language education is that appropriacy
and effective communication extends beyond correctness and rather is contingent on
a wide range of contextual factors. Addressing early childhood education from
multiliteracies (New London Group 1996) and multimodality (Kress 2010) perspec-
tives, Heather Lotherington challenges the fundamental assumption that emerging
literacy needs necessarily to focus on alphabetic literacy in isolation from multi-
modal expression. This chapter, drawing upon innovative multimodal policy, cur-
ricula, and assessment methods in Canada, Finland, Singapore, and beyond, suggests
that the increasing availability of digital tools enabling multisensory learning offer
valuable opportunities for complex multimodal and multiliteracies expression that
potentially enhance not only traditional literacy development, but also the develop-
ment of social and emotional intelligence and critical thinking. The final chapter in
this part, by Yiqi Liu and Angel Lin, engages the interface between expectations of
formal genres of language in school settings and the broader social world of popular
culture relevant to students’ interests and lives outside of school. The authors take a
critical approach and acknowledge the tensions between institutional directives to
prepare students for high-stakes tests and the potential benefits of popular culture as
xii Volume Editor’s Introduction to “Language, Education and Technology”

a resource for the production of identities and exploration of various ethnic, sexual,
and socioeconomic themes and societal conditions.
Part 2, Plurilingual Practices in Digital Contexts, remains focused on school
externalities. All chapters in this part continue many of the themes addressed in
Part 1, including use of multiple literacies, multimodality, and identity formation in a
variety of digital settings, here ranging from web-based communities to online
fandom and social media sites such as Facebook. A defining quality of the chapters
in this part, however, is an explicit emphasis on the use by participants of multiple
languages. As a brief meta-commentary, while multingualism is pervasively evident
in digital environments, terminology associated with the use of multiple languages
within and across communicative encounters has become increasingly complex. In
common usage, “plurilingualism” and “multilingualism” are often seen as semanti-
cally equivalent, but both terms have been critiqued in recent sociolinguistics
research as problematic ideological abstractions, as they evoke the notion of multiple
discrete and stable linguistic varieties rather than the mixing and hybridity that are
often evident in contemporary communicative repertoires (e.g., Blommaert 2010;
May 2014; Pennycook and Otsuji 2015). Terminology describing mixing and
hybridity include translanguaging, a descriptor for bilingualism that does not
observe diglossic functional separation of the linguistic resources used into separate
monolingual idealizations of independent languages (for a discussion, see
Blackledge and Creese 2010). Use of multiple semiotic resources from diverse
linguistic varieties within and across utterances has been described by García as
transglossia (2009), while the term polylingualism (e.g., Jørgensen 2008) refers to
the intentional use of multiple languages that may not typically be found in combi-
nation with one another (in digital contexts, see Thorne and Ivković 2015). The
chapters in this part use differing terminology, but each addresses the Internet as a
massive language contact zone and each illuminates various aspects of the multilin-
gual and linguistically hybridized communicative activity visible in many online
environments.
Wan Shun Eva Lam and Natalia Smirnov review research on migrant and
diaspora youth and address issues of mobility, transnationalism, and identity con-
struction in online interaction. Describing primarily ethnographic research, this
chapter emphasizes the resourcefulness illustrated in online participatory practices
and shows how young people access, remix, and propagate language and cultural
practices as they create transnational pathways and relationships across digital
spaces. In an examination of digitally mediated multilingual and multimodal prac-
tices, Sirpa Leppänen, Samu Kytölä, and Elina Westinen review investigations of
informal, interest-driven participation in contemporary technology contexts that
include issues of heteroglossia, resemiotization, and agentive opportunities for
exploration of multiple positionalities. This chapter also critically frames challenges
associated with the compatibility of informally acquired competences in relation to
formal education, the problem of Anglophone centrism, and the need to remain
vigilant regarding inequalities of access and participation in geopolitical peripheries
(i.e., the Global South). Concentrating on themes of popular media and participatory
culture, Shannon Sauro explores burgeoning online fandom communities that
Volume Editor’s Introduction to “Language, Education and Technology” xiii

include fanfiction archives, gaming forums, and online interest groups within social
media platforms. Research on such affinity spaces (Gee 2005) shows significant
relevance for language learning, opportunities for language socialization, and explo-
ration of identity construction that may be particularly helpful for marginalized
youth (see also Thorne et al. 2015). Sauro touches on pedagogical approaches for
interaction with fandom communities and elsewhere has designed curricula that
bring together task-based language teaching with participation in interest-driven
fandom communities (e.g., Sauro and Sundmark 2016). The final chapter in this
part, by Brook Bolander, continues to explore identity construction through an
examination of multimodal and often multilingual participation on the social net-
working site Facebook. By far the largest social networking site, with two billion
reported monthly users, Facebook use is perhaps most importantly positioned as
interwoven with identity construction in offline contexts (Bolander and Locher
2015). Bolander traces the global evolution of Facebook use, describes specific
Facebook practices such as status updates, reactions to status updates, and the
template-driven “about” section as acts of positioning and identity claims. The
chapter concludes with an insightful discussion of methodological and ethical
challenges to research on social networking sites and encourages continued and
internationally focused diachronic and longitudinal research on the relationship
between changes to the Facebook interface, mobile versus computer-based access
of the site, and effects on patterns of linguistic and multimodal communication.
Part 3, Technology in World/Second Language Education Contexts, is the largest
in this volume and comprises 13 chapters. While the previous two parts primarily
outlined broader themes and informal learning in digital contexts that are generally
exogenous to formal education, this part presents an array of pedagogical uses of
digital tools that interface with, or are situated within, instructed language-learning
settings. Also included are chapters focusing on teacher professional development,
computer-assisted assessment, open educational resources, and various second lan-
guage acquisition research perspectives on computer-assisted language learning (i.e.,
sociocultural theory and complex dynamic systems theory). This part begins with
two chapters addressing overarching issues, namely distance (or location indepen-
dent) language education and open education resources. Robert Blake synthesizes
research on the digital delivery of second language instruction across traditional,
blended, and fully online formats. He notes that there is an increase in student
interest (e.g., flexible scheduling), that digital materials can serve multiple instruc-
tional formats, and that despite understandable hesitation on the part of some
instructors, multimodal digital teaching and learning environments are here to stay
and have been demonstrated to foster learner autonomy and developmental benefits.
In his chapter, Carl Blyth describes the history and evolution of the open education
movement, focusing particularly on digital open education resources for foreign/
world language education. Supported by an ethos that promotes the openness of
intellectual property, open education encourages collaboration between educational
stakeholders, the creation of free and adaptable content for widely taught languages,
and makes available curricular resources for less commonly taught languages that
are less well served or entirely ignored by commercial publishers.
xiv Volume Editor’s Introduction to “Language, Education and Technology”

Many of the contributions to this part present overviews on specific pedagogical

approaches relevant to, or requiring, digital mediation. Alex Boulton describes the
use of language corpora and students’ guided but largely autonomous efforts to
search out and find answers to language usage questions pertinent to their learning.
Termed data-driven learning (DDL), this approach marks a shift from traditional
practices such as consulting the teacher or ready-made reference materials. DDL is
premised on the notion of student-directed inquiry and exploration of large corpora
of authentic texts. Effectiveness research in this area shows that DDL both fosters
language acquisition as well as improves language awareness and noticing. The
following chapter presents task-based language teaching (TBLT), a method widely
used in traditional instructed settings. Marta González-Lloret argues that TBLT
represents an optimal approach to fully realize the potential of technology-enhanced
language learning. She traces the history of TBLT in digital settings and explores the
intersection between task design and a variety of new media, including online
gaming virtual environments (see also González-Lloret and Ortega 2014). Another
area that the advent of digital technologies has radically transformed is writing. Greg
Kessler reports on second language writing in new media environments and
describes a coevolutionary dynamic linking digital writing environments with the
development of collaborative and co-construction pedagogies. Kessler advocates for
collaborative writing pedagogies, in part because of the increasingly collaborative
and multi-party participatory dynamics of text production in the online world outside
of education.
Two chapters in this part discuss online intercultural exchange (OIE). OIE,
alternatively labeled virtual exchange, telecollaboration, and e-tandem learning,
involves instructionally mediated processes such as collaborative tasks, collective
inquiry, and opportunities for social interaction between internationally distributed
partner classes. OIE has been tremendously powerful in transforming participating
language learners’ experiences from a predominant focus on “language” toward
processes that make salient the need to develop the linguistic, intercultural, and
interactional capacity for creating and maintaining social relationships of signifi-
cance. In his contribution, Robert O’Dowd, a primary proponent in this area, pre-
sents the origins of OIE and outlines the primary approaches currently in use. Also
discussed are extensions of OIE that include intercultural learning in open Internet
environments, facilitator-based OIE projects, and an overview of frequent problems
and difficulties faced by instructors. Taking an explicitly critical theoretical stance,
Francesca Helm reviews OIE research and pedagogical innovations that include
lingua franca exchanges (where the language of communication is an L2 for all
participants), which challenge the assumption that native speakers are necessarily the
ideal project partners. She makes the case that lingua franca exchanges potentially
offer a wider range of identities for participating students that extend beyond that of
the deficient communicator that the native speaker target implies. Helm additionally
problematizes other widely held assumptions, for example, that intercultural contact
necessarily leads to understanding and fosters equality and the erroneous view that
technology is a neutral medium.
Volume Editor’s Introduction to “Language, Education and Technology” xv

Vygotskian sociocultural theory, particularly with its emphasis on mediation, has

been widely applied to technology-enhanced language learning for both research
purposes and as a heuristic lens for designing pedagogical interventions. Sociocul-
tural theory argues that human mental development is fundamentally constructed
through engagement with cultural practices, artifacts, and milieus. In this way,
sociocultural approaches emphasize the dialectical relationship between ontogenesis
(an individual’s development across the life span) and the social and material
conditions of everyday life, including those comprising formal instructional settings.
Rémi A. van Compernolle discusses sociocultural studies that illustrate the differing
affordances and constraints of technology use across communicative modalities, for
interaction across nation state boundaries (OIE projects in particular), and in relation
to the development of particular linguistic, pragmatic, and intercultural communi-
cation learning outcomes. He concludes by suggesting that sociocultural approaches
are well positioned to address key issues, namely the particular qualities of tool
mediation, especially in an era that shows the rapid emergence of new online social
formations and environments, and the transfer and transcendence of language
learning in technology-mediated environments to communicative activity in other
settings. Another emerging approach, complex adaptive systems (CAS, largely
equivalent with dynamic systems theory), offers new insights into the contingencies
and variability of computer-assisted language learning. Mathias Schulze aligns his
CAS-informed chapter with a foundation of cognitive and usage-based linguistics
and argues for a dialectical relationship between second language use and develop-
ment. Schulze describes the relevance of CAS characteristics, such as the intercon-
nectedness of subsystems, nonlinear development, and emergent properties, and
reviews recent technology research that highlights these dynamics.
As generational shifts in exposure to and use of new media broaden, teacher
professional development has been positioned as critically important to the success
of technology-enhanced language learning in instructed settings (Hubbard 2008).
Nike Arnold reports on research describing pre- and in-service technology integra-
tion in second language teacher education. In addition to discrete skills development
with specific technologies, issues such as changing roles for the teacher, building
community within and across technologies and residential instruction, developing
modeling and scaffolding techniques, and providing social and emotional support in
digital spaces all contribute to creating a successful twenty-first century learning
environment. In a closely related chapter, Mirjam Hauck and Malgorzata Kurek
address the issue of digital literacies in teacher preparation. Observing that learners’
digital literacy experiences may not closely align with formal academic discourse
competence, this chapter describes multiliteracies frameworks (New London Group
1996), the importance of attending to both historically antecedent literacy conven-
tions as well as those emergent of new media communicative practices (Kern 2014),
and multimodality informed approaches, concluding with pedagogical implications
for pedagogy.
The final two chapters in this part address the technology-heavy topics of
intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL) and computer-assisted
xvi Volume Editor’s Introduction to “Language, Education and Technology”

language assessment (CALA). In both cases, the sophisticated technologies involved

seek to computationally enable, augment, scale up, and potentially improve upon
human delivered instruction and assessment. Trude Heift focuses her review of
ICALL technologies on written learner language and includes descriptions of, and
second language research on, spell checkers, grammar checkers, automatic writing
evaluation, error-specific feedback, and other features subsumed under the rubric of
intelligent language tutoring systems. Paula Winke and Daniel Isbell present an
inclusive overview of computerized assessment that includes high-stakes proficiency
testing, placement tests, and assessment environments that include features such a
streaming video, oral-response recording, and enhanced input such as glosses,
metalinguistic feedback, and comprehension assistance that aid test completion.
They also describe alternative computer-based assessments such as electronic port-
folios and self-assessment systems that have been shown to promote self-regulation
and which are correlated with documented language development. Both ICALL and
CALA share certain advantages such as expedient delivery, digital records of student
progress and performance, and automated and objective feedback and scoring
possibilities.
Part 4, Gaming, Virtual Worlds, and Social Network Sites for Language Learning,
includes discussion of an expansive array of new media and the diverse social
practices, cultural formations, and speech communities that colonize them. The
mercurial rise of social media sites such as Facebook has been described earlier
(Bolander, this volume). For its part, online gaming is now itself a massive industry
with the Entertainment Software Association reporting that total consumer spending
on the video game industry was 30.4 billion US dollars in 2016 and that two thirds of
US households own a device used to play games. A similar pattern appears interna-
tionally, in regions of greater affluence, where gaming has eclipsed other major
media industries, such as film and music, in terms of revenue. Virtual worlds and
massively multiplayer online games arguably comprise the most socially and cog-
nitively complex forms of interactive media currently available. These facts are not
meant to valorize these digital media, but they do serve as an encouragement to
educators to take seriously the proposition that social media sites, online games, and
virtual worlds, as designed environments, present opportunities for both understand-
ing and engineering specific learning content and processes (Plass et al. 2015;
Reinhardt and Thorne 2016).
Hayo Reinders reviews the literature on digital games and second language
learning both in and outside of educational settings. He notes that there is a large
and growing body of evidence-based research showing that game play is correlated
with many developmental outcomes, such as more general cognitive and perceptual
gains, as well as having positive effects on motivation, willingness to communicate,
and opportunities for language socialization. Dongping Zheng and Kristi Newgarden
position their chapter on gaming within ecological psychology (e.g., Gibson 1979)
and dialogicality (Linell 2009), which they term an ecological, dialogical, and
distributed (EDD) approach. This decidedly theoretical contribution describes how
EDD research on gaming frames issues such as context, unit of analysis, theories of
language, and how interactivity is analyzed, with significant implications for the
Volume Editor’s Introduction to “Language, Education and Technology” xvii

future of research in this area. Frederik Cornillie brings the focus back to education-
ally oriented or “serious” game environments and in particular, game-generated
feedback designed to support specific second language learning skills. As Cornillie
notes, for language educators, the key issue is how to harness game mechanics in
order to maintain a primary focus on meaning and communication while also
supporting attention to linguistic form. This chapter highlights the specific
affordances of different game genres, such as mini-games for focused practice on
form (e.g., DuoLingo), text-only games for reading, and fully immersive games for
collaborative activity and sustained engagement. The history, present, and near-
future state of virtual worlds is the subject of Randall Sadler’s contribution. The
chapter begins with a genealogy of virtual worlds, starting with a discussion of early
text-based virtualities that were the precursor to contemporary virtual worlds and
massively multiplayer online games. Sadler usefully contrasts present-day virtual
worlds with online gaming environments, noting both similarities – such as three-
dimensional rendered spaces and customizable avatar embodiment for players – but
also describes key differences, for example, that virtual worlds include little pre-
structured goal-directed activity and are primarily places for social interaction.
Sadler suggests that the next evolutionary step in virtual world interaction will likely
include virtual reality (VR) technologies, where users will have fully immersive
experiences with VR headsets that may also include haptic interfaces and a move
from “looking at the screen to feeling that they are part of the scene” (Sadler, this
volume).
The final two chapters in Part 1 address social networking sites (SNS), Twitter,
and microblogging, with an overarching focus on how such sites and the networks of
individuals and communities they bring together might be exploited for purposes of
second language learning. Jon Reinhardt acknowledges that social media is a broad
term referencing any Web 2.0 digital environment that enables the creation and
sharing content, from textual messages (e.g., Twitter) to video clips, remixes and
mashups (e.g., YouTube). He therefore bounds his focus to SNS as defined by Boyd
and Ellison’s (2007) criteria that include user profile construction, connection
traversing (friending others), and connection articulation and rearticulation
(commenting on and liking posts and status updates). Within this narrowed domain,
Reinhardt synthesizes second language research on uses of vernacular sites such as
Facebook and SNS designed specifically for language learning. Findings regarding
SNS use within instructed learning settings suggest that both vernacular and educa-
tionally designed SNS potentially make available opportunities for high engagement
social-relational uses of the target language. A cautionary note is pertinent, however,
in that students focused on curricular driven objectives and/or high stakes tests may
consider social media and the genre of language used in such settings tangential to
their academic goals. Lara Lomicka examines research on microblogging environ-
ments, the most dominant of which is Twitter. She acknowledges that robust second
language acquisition studies of Twitter use have been largely inconclusive, but notes
that Twitter use has been shown to enhance communication between students and
teachers, increase student production of language, and, through analysis of tweets,
has increased students’ awareness of aspects of the target language.
xviii Volume Editor’s Introduction to “Language, Education and Technology”

Part 5, the final in this volume, is titled Methods and Methodologies in Technol-
ogy and Language Education and includes four chapters that describe methodolog-
ical issues related to digital tools and environments. These chapters are diverse in
that they include conversation analytic methods for analyzing computer-mediated
communication, corpus linguistic methodologies for exploration of second language
acquisition, the use of digital instrumentation for the study of language awareness,
and eye-tracking technology applied to the analysis of computer-assisted language
learning activity. Given the complexity of analyzing the structure and patterns of
language use, the sequential dynamics of multiparty communication, and the many
cognitive and social factors and processes contributing to language acquisition, all of
which are relevant to any holistic account of human language development, it is
fitting to conclude the volume with these contributions.
Ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA) has developed over the past 50
or so years to become one of the primary approaches for the study of naturalistic
conversation. Premised on core concepts such as language use as social action, turn
taking, the orderliness of sequence organization, and forms of repair (to name only a
few), CA began with an exclusive focus on face-to-face and voice (telephone)
communication. Following the advent of the Internet and explosive rise of digitally
mediated communication, CA has been applied to computer-mediated contexts as
well. Vincenza Tudini and Anthony Liddicoat orient their chapter toward CA studies
related to digital interaction in second language contexts, including voice and text
chat, video conferencing, intercultural communication in online exchanges, and
other elements of computer-mediated and computer-generated discourse (see also
Tudini 2010). In her chapter, Sylviane Granger describes uses of learner corpora
serving two primary functions, for making visible the mechanisms of second
language acquisition for researchers and as a source of data for language educators
that can help them directly address students’ attested linguistic difficulties. Various
learner corpora and their many research and pedagogical applications are described,
including contrastive interlanguage analysis, frequency analysis showing over and
underuse of linguistic elements, and studies that describe patterns of language use
not available in traditional approaches to grammar.
Christina Sanz and Beatriz Lado outline the benefits of various technologies for
the study of awareness in second language acquisition research. They begin by
describing the slippery nature of awareness and propose the definition that awareness
is an internal phenomenon that can be enhanced, or at least potentially affected, by
external attention-focusing techniques. They trace the incorporation of technologies
into language awareness research such as computers for reaction time studies,
tracking performance by click behavior, and most recently in neurolinguistic
research, the use of eye tracking and instrumentation. The latter include, among
others, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potentials
(ERP) for mapping regions and networks of brain activity and isolating processes
associated with specific sensory, cognitive, and motor events. Speaking of eye
tracking, in the final chapter of this volume, Marije Michel and Bryan Smith review
research on computer-assisted language learning that employs this methodology.
Based on the existence of the linkages between eye movement behavior and
Volume Editor’s Introduction to “Language, Education and Technology” xix

allocation of attentional resources, eye tracking can help researchers know the focus
of current cognitive processing via analysis of fixations (stable eye movement on, for
example, a word of portion of the screen), saccades (movement between fixations),
and regressions (reinspection of earlier text). The authors posit that eye tracking
provides access to behaviorally observable evidence that in part mitigates the
problem of relying on a static written language interaction record when in fact real
time language processing, in both production and comprehension modes, is a
dynamic and time-sensitive event (Smith 2012).

In Closing

The 3rd edition of the Encyclopedia of Language and Education presents a unique
opportunity to bring together the expertise of internationally visible scholars in a
wide range of language- and education-related areas. This volume, Language,
Education and Technology, contributes 34 chapters that represent tremendous the-
matic, conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical coverage, each
helping to form an expansive mosaic topology that maps ways in which language,
education, and technology interrelate with one another.
The contexts and empirical research discussed above represent many issues
relevant to language, technology, and education. Technology has catalyzed new
communicative hybridities and areas of scholarly inquiry; enabled new research
methodologies, assessment practices, and instructional formats; created new forms
of social connection and relationship maintenance; and altered the daily practices of
students and teachers. Participation in social media and online gaming environments
has the potential to propel language learners beyond the confines of the institutional
identity of “student” by fraying the boundaries separating language study from social
life, student from player, and information consumer from knowledge contributor. As
has also been mentioned at various points in this introduction, in some cases
technology has also exacerbated inequalities, increased disenfranchisement, and
produced dystopic social and psychological effects, suggesting that continued vig-
ilance and the cultivation of empathy and criticality are necessary as we move
forward in our collective production of a preferred future.

Portland State University (USA) and Steven L. Thorne

University of Groningen (NL)

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Acknowledgment

Thanks to the following for their key editorial support:

Consulting Editor: Nancy Hornberger
Editorial Assistant: Lincoln Dam

xxiii
Contents

Part I Perspectives on Technology, Multimodality, Literacy,

and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Ecologies of Digital Literacies: Implications for Education . . . . . . . . . . 3

Karin Tusting
Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Ron Darvin
Multimodal Discourses Across the Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Carey Jewitt
The Digital Divide in Language and Literacy Education ........... 45
Tamara Tate and Mark Warschauer
Sociolinguistic Insights into Digital Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Lawrence Williams
Elementary Language Education in Digital Multimodal and
Multiliteracy Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Heather Lotherington
Popular Culture and Teaching English to Speakers of
Other Language (TESOL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Yiqi Liu and Angel M. Y. Lin

Part II Plurilingual Practices in Digital Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Identity in Mediated Contexts of Transnationalism and Mobility . . . . . 105

Wan Shun Eva Lam and Natalia Smirnov
Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and
Literacies in Digital Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Sirpa Leppänen, Samu Kytölä, and Elina Westinen
Fandom and Online Interest Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Shannon Sauro
xxv
xxvi Contents

Language and Identity on Facebook ........................... 143

Brook Bolander

Part III Technology in World/Second Language

Education Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Distance Education for Second and Foreign Language Learning . . . . . 157

Robert Blake
Open Educational Resources (OERs) for Language Learning ....... 169
Carl S. Blyth
Data-Driven Learning and Language Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Alex Boulton
Technology and Task-Based Language Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Marta González-Lloret
Online Intercultural Exchange and Language Education . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Robert O’Dowd
Critical Approaches to Online Intercultural Language Education . . . . 219
Francesca Helm
Sociocultural Approaches to Technology Use in Language
Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Rémi A. van Compernolle
Second Language Writing, New Media, and Co-Construction
Pedagogies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Greg Kessler
Technology and Second Language Teacher Professional
Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Nike Arnold
Digital Literacies in Teacher Preparation ....................... 275
Mirjam Hauck and Malgorzata Kurek
History and Key Developments in Intelligent
Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Trude Heift
Complexity Approaches to Computer-Assisted
Language Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Mathias Schulze
Computer-Assisted Language Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Paula M. Winke and Daniel R. Isbell
Contents xxvii

Part IV Gaming, Virtual Worlds, and Social

Network Sites for Language Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

Digital Games and Second Language Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

Hayo Reinders
Dialogicality, Ecology, and Learning in Online Game Worlds ....... 345
Dongping Zheng and Kristi Newgarden
Educationally Designed Game Environments and Feedback ........ 361
Frederik Cornillie
Virtual Worlds and Language Education ....................... 375
Randall Sadler
Social Networking Sites and Language Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
Jonathon Reinhardt
Twitter and Micro-Blogging and Language Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Lara Lomicka

Part V Methods and Methodologies in Technology and

Language Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413

Computer-Mediated Communication and Conversation Analysis . . . . . 415

Vincenza Tudini and Anthony J. Liddicoat
Learner Corpora in Foreign Language Education ................ 427
Sylviane Granger
Technology and the Study of Awareness ........................ 441
Cristina Sanz and Beatriz Lado
Eye-Tracking Research in Computer-Mediated Language
Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
Marije C. Michel and Bryan Smith
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
About the Editors

Steven L. Thorne (Ph.D., UC Berkeley) is Associate

Professor of Second Language Acquisition in the
Department of World Languages and Literatures at
Portland State University (USA), with a secondary
appointment in the Department of Applied Linguistics
at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). His
research utilizes cultural-historical, usage-based, distrib-
uted, and critical approaches to language development,
often with a focus on human interactivity in technology-
culture contexts. He is currently working on a variety of
projects that examine mobile media and place-based
learning, technology use within and outside of formal
educational settings, Indigenous language maintenance and revitalization, and inter-
ventions that situate language learning at the heart of university study. In 2014, he
was selected to receive the Faculty Research Excellence Award for Assistant and
Associate Professors at Portland State University. His research has appeared in
numerous edited collections and academic journals such as The Modern Language
Journal, Language Learning & Technology, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics,
CALICO Journal, Language Teaching, Brain and Cognition, ReCALL Journal,
Intelligence and Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, among other venues.
Book length works include a coedited book on Internet-mediated Intercultural
Foreign Language Education (Thomson/Heinle, 2006) and the coauthored volume
Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development (Oxford
University Press, 2006). His homepage is https://sites.google.com/site/stevenlthorne/

xxix
xxx About the Editors

Stephen May is Professor of Education in Te Puna

Wānanga (School of Māori and Indigenous Education)
in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University
of Auckland, New Zealand. He is an international
authority on language rights, language policy, bilingual-
ism and bilingual education, and critical multicultural
approaches to education and, to date, has published
15 books and over 90 articles and chapters in these
areas. His key books include The Multilingual Turn
(2014), Language and Minority Rights (2nd edition,
2012) and, with Christine Sleeter, Critical Multicultur-
alism: Theory and Praxis (2010). In addition to being Editor-in-Chief of the 3rd
edition of the Encyclopedia of Language and Education, he is a Founding Editor of
the interdisciplinary journal, Ethnicities, and was from 2005–2015 Associate Editor
of Language Policy. He is also a Fellow of the American Educational Research
Association (AERA). His homepage is http://www.education.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/
stephen-may.
Advisory Board

Suresh Canagarajah Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

William Cope Common Ground Publishing, Champaign, IL, USA
Jim Cummins University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Viv Edwards University of Reading, Reading, UK
Rainer Enrique Hamel Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City,
Mexico
Eli Hinkel Seattle University, Seattle, WA, USA
Francis Hult Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Nkonko Kamwangamalu Howard University, Washington, DC, USA
Gregory Kamwendo University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
Claire Kramsch University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Constant Leung King’s College, London, UK
Luis Enrique López Universidad Mayor de San Simón, Cochabamba, Bolivia
Marilyn Martin-Jones University of Birmingham Edgbaston, Birmingham, UK
Bonny Norton University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Tope Omoniyi Roehampton University, London, UK
Alastair Pennycook University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Bernard Spolsky Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Lionel Wee National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
Li Wei University College London, London, UK
Jane Zuengler University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

Tope Omoniyi: deceased.

xxxi
External Reviewers

Language, Education and Technology

Martin East
John Hellerman
Jon Reinhardt
Lawrence Williams

xxxiii
Contributors

Nike Arnold Portland State University, Oregon, OR, USA

Robert Blake University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA
Carl S. Blyth University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
Brook Bolander The University of Hong Kong and Freiburg Institute for
Advanced Studies (FRIAS), Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
Alex Boulton ATILF, CNRS and University of Lorraine, Nancy, France
Frederik Cornillie KU Leuven (University of Leuven), Kortrijk, Belgium
IMEC, Leuven, Belgium
Ron Darvin Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of
British Columbia, Education Centre at Ponderosa Commons, Vancouver, BC,
Canada
Marta González-Lloret University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA
Sylviane Granger Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium
Mirjam Hauck The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
Trude Heift Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Francesca Helm University of Padova, Padova, Italy
Daniel R. Isbell Second Language Studies Program, Department of Linguistics
and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages, Michigan State University,
East Lansing, MI, USA
Carey Jewitt UCL Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, University College
London, London, UK
Greg Kessler Linguistics, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA
Malgorzata Kurek Jan Dlugosz University, Czestochowa, Poland
Samu Kytölä University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylän yliopisto, Finland
xxxv
xxxvi Contributors

Beatriz Lado Department of Languages and Literatures (Lehman College) and

Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages (The Graduate
Center), The City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, USA
Wan Shun Eva Lam Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Sirpa Leppänen University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylän yliopisto, Finland
Anthony J. Liddicoat Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick,
Coventry, UK
Angel M. Y. Lin Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong,
China
Yiqi Liu School of Education and Languages, The Open University of Hong Kong,
Hong Kong, China
Lara Lomicka The University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA
Heather Lotherington York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
Marije C. Michel Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster
University, Lancaster, UK
Kristi Newgarden Charter Oak State College, New Britain, CT, USA
Robert O’Dowd Universidad de León, León, Spain
Hayo Reinders Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
KMUTT, Bangkok, Thailand
Jonathon Reinhardt University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Randall Sadler University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
Cristina Sanz Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Georgetown University,
Bunn Intercultural Center, Washington, DC, USA
Shannon Sauro Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden
Mathias Schulze University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
Natalia Smirnov Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Bryan Smith Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
Tamara Tate School of Education, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA,
USA
Vincenza Tudini Research Centre for Languages and Cultures, School of Commu-
nication, International Studies and Languages, Adelaide, Australia
Karin Tusting Literacy Research Centre, Department of Linguistics, Lancaster
University, Lancaster, UK
Contributors xxxvii

Rémi A. van Compernolle Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon

University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Mark Warschauer School of Education, University of California, Irvine, Irvine,
CA, USA
Elina Westinen University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylän yliopisto, Finland
Lawrence Williams Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures,
University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA
Paula M. Winke Second Language Studies Program, Department of Linguistics
and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages, Michigan State University,
East Lansing, MI, USA
Dongping Zheng University of Hawaii, Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA
 Part I
Perspectives on Technology, Multimodality,
Literacy, and Language
Ecologies of Digital Literacies: Implications
for Education

Karin Tusting

Abstract
This article outlines research on digital literacies which takes a social practice
perspective, approaching digital literacies in real-life contexts as part of ecologies
of communicative practices, and draws out the implications of this work for
education. Early contributions are summarized, including analyses of hypertext
and multimodality and debates around the extent to which language online
changed from more speech-like to more writing-like forms. Major contributions
are then described. These include work on young people’s everyday literacy
practices, showing how these can transform established understandings of social
status and expertise, work which focuses on literacies for informal learning in
online settings and in video gaming, the nature of learning in communities in
online communicative contexts, and challenges to dominant discourses and moral
panics. Current areas of work in progress are identified including gaming and
virtual worlds, curation, multilingual digital literacies, and language learning
online. Challenges include clashes between the understandings generated by
this research and drawn on in some policies and the powerful accountability
regimes based on pen-and-paper testing which still frame many educational
systems, the need to develop appropriate research methods and ethical challenges
in this area, and the imperative of continuing to ensure a diversity of research sites
to avoid focusing only on the practices of the privileged. Future directions for
research are briefly addressed including the role of digital literacies in social
movements and the need for more research in coding literacies.

Keywords
Digital literacies • Multimodality • Information and communication technologies •
New Literacy Studies • Digital pedagogies

K. Tusting (*)
Literacy Research Centre, Department of Linguistics, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 3

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_3
4 K. Tusting

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Early Developments Including Initial Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Introduction

The possibilities afforded by digital technologies have transformed the way we work,
learn, and live. Our social world is mediated by texts, and much of this depends on
digital supports (Barton and Lee 2013). Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets
have become embedded in our everyday lives. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and
YouTube have made it easy for anyone to publish online. As Greenhow and Robelia
(2009) argue, there are important implications of these shifts for education. People
are bringing into education practices of participation and identities that are shaped by
their engagement in online environments.
The broad arena of research in language and technology has developed into a
range of fields, many of which focus on the language used in digital settings, drawing
on content, discourse, or narrative analysis (e.g., Herring 2004). The predominant
focus in this chapter is not on this discourse-focused research but on research which
addresses digital literacies as social practices, that is, as ways in which people draw
on and use material meaning-making resources in particular social, cultural, and
economic contexts (Barton 2007), with attention to the values, ideologies, power
relationships, and cultural understandings tied up in these practices. This perspective
is associated with research which engages with users directly, in addition to analyzing
online content. Jones and Hafner (2012) underline that we always draw on technol-
ogies, tools, and platforms in relation to each other, so it is important to think about
digital technological practices as part of complex ecologies, rather than to focus on
the affordances of single tools in isolation. Studies of literacies in social context
therefore engage with the use of digital devices and technologies as part of the
broader ecology of communicative practices.

Early Developments Including Initial Contributors

In early work researching the Web, attention was given to the possibilities offered by
hypertext for making new kinds of reading possible. These are explored in Kaplan’s
(1995) piece on “e-literacies.” Unlike many technologically deterministic commen-
tators of the time, she insists on the social origins and effects of electronic literacy.
Ecologies of Digital Literacies: Implications for Education 5

Her punning title, “e-literacies,” refers both to the reading and writing resources
specific to electronic texts and to the socioeconomic elites whose interests might be
served by these. Her hypertext links include extended passages from the authors she
cites, so it is a useful essay to look back on for an overview of debates at that time.
One key early area of debate around online literacies was the nature of language in
digital settings, particularly whether language online mixes characteristics of speech
and writing. An influential article from Baron (1998) addresses the language of email,
claiming that email brings together characteristics of written and spoken language.
Crystal (2006, first edition 2001) argued that a new language variety called “Netspeak”
is emerging. This shows characteristics of both speech and writing, is associated with a
particular lexicon including many acronyms, has ways of signaling paralinguistic
features with the use of symbols and emoticons, and has distinctive spelling.
Other early works focused on multimodality. Snyder (1998) looks at the implica-
tions of the shift from page to screen in a context of rapid change, addressing the
widening gulf between expert students and novice teachers. Multimodal communi-
cative practices in a globalized networked world were further explored in Snyder and
Beavis (2004), showing the uneven distribution of information and communication
technologies across the world. Chapters address what it takes to become competent in
a domain where words, symbols, images, and artifacts combine to create complex-
situated meanings; how different skills and experiences in this area can transfer
across domains, for instance, between home and school; and where these processes
are being blocked.
Work by Kress (2000) and colleagues has been particularly significant in this area.
He identified how the multimodal possibilities afforded by new technologies alter our
whole approach to communication, with school textbooks often looking more like a
Web page than like a traditional written text. Building on this, Jewitt (2005) argues
writing is becoming increasingly visual in character, with the traditional domination
of the word being unsettled by the predominance of the image, and that educators
need to develop new understandings of this.
A pedagogical approach to the multimodal communicative landscape was devel-
oped in Cope and Kalantzis (2000). This work is framed by an analysis of the
contemporary communicative situation as characterized by multimodality, multilin-
gualism, diversity, and post-Fordism. They develop a detailed framework for a
pedagogy of multiliteracies which aims to enable students to engage in new literacy
practices, producing, using, critiquing, and challenging multimodal texts.
Some early work in this area, particularly in the speech/writing debate, was fairly
technologically determinist, addressing changes to literacy and language practices as
if technology itself were responsible for generating these differences. Other work
insisted on the importance of the social context in shaping the practices which
emerged. Reinking et al. (1998) explored key differences between printed and
electronic texts, such as the interactivity, multimodality and nonlinearity of digital
forms, and the implications of these for redefining what it means to read and write,
inside and outside classrooms. The case studies in the book demonstrate that trans-
formations in technology, society, culture, and literacy need to be understood as part
of a sociocultural tapestry.
6 K. Tusting

Kress’ (2003) analysis identifies social, economic, communicational, and techno-

logical factors which shape new literacies. He claims that simultaneous, interplaying
changes in these four areas are so profound that we can justifiably speak of a
“revolution” in the landscape of communication, which calls for changes in our
theoretical perspectives and our education systems. Despite his insistence on the
essentially social nature of these changes, this work can tend toward a certain
utopianism, claiming that the shift to multimodal, interactive forms of communica-
tion carries with it intrinsically democratic potentials. Other writers (e.g., Freebody
2001) would challenge this, claiming that existing structures of power and control are
just as likely to be reinforced and continued through the use of new communications
technologies – as can be seen, for instance, by the predominance of the English
language on the Internet and the dominance of a small number of US corporations
such as Google and Facebook. Snyder (2002) explores a range of online literacy
practices in the context of a communicative order in which a technological revolution
is reshaping the material bases of society, embedded within a dominant political/
ideological order of high-tech global capitalism. They argue that the notion of “being
literate” changed with the advent of multimodal online practices and show how a
complex interplay between the new communication order, new political order, and
new work order shapes and circumscribes the lives, identities, and possibilities of
teachers and students.

Major Contributions

Major contributions of work in this area from a literacy studies approach have
developed this perspective, through studying digital literacy practices in real-life
contexts. As Barton and Lee (2013) and Gillen (2014) point out, work which seeks to
understand digital literacy and language in its social and discursive context enables
effective engagement with and critique of unsupported generalizations, both in
giving close attention to the specific details of how language is used and in under-
standing the contexts and structures within which this takes place.
Research which studies people’s everyday digital literacy practices has helped us
to understand their characteristics. Often, these studies have worked with young
people, exploring the implications of their practices for education and aiming to
understand how young people are adopting and adapting new literacies. Early studies
such as those in Alvermann (2002) showed how “new” literacies were rapidly
becoming part and parcel of everyday life for adolescents. Articles in Carrington
and Marsh (2005) similarly identified a “paradigm shift” in communicative practices,
showing how in a range of settings the production and use of digital texts by young
people were becoming not “new” but “normal.”
In the Digital Youth Project (Ito et al. 2010), nearly 40 researchers collaborated in
a range of ethnographic studies working with hundreds of young people to under-
stand their engagement with new media, digital literacies, and learning. They iden-
tified three different genres of engagement characterizing these patterns. Most young
people engaged in “hanging out,” using digital literacies to engage with their existing
Ecologies of Digital Literacies: Implications for Education 7

social networks of friends and extending these networks online. A lot of them were,
in addition, “messing around” – following up a wide variety of interests, using digital
literacies to access information online. And a smaller number ended up “geeking
out,” following up an interest such as programming in depth, linking into networks of
other experts and developing expertise together online. These practices turned
traditional social norms upside down, with social status emerging from being expert
within the community, rather than from other aspects like age or class. All these
genres of participation and learning involved social engagement with others online,
driven by young people’s own interests and concerns.
Taking an ecological perspective on new literacies has helped to develop new
understandings of learning, by examining the ways people learn to engage with new
literacies, which are often very different from traditional ideas about how people
learn. Barton and Lee (2013) underline the importance of the learning which is going
on constantly in online spaces using language and literacy, informally and in com-
munities, in a predominantly self-directed and autonomous way. For instance, Barton
(2012) explores the nature of informal learning on Flickr, showing how people
extend their learning both of photography and of writing (including in different
languages) through participation in informal social engagement and following delib-
erate learning projects which change over time as they develop expertise.
Meyers et al. (2013) highlight the importance of informal learning using digital
literacies in contemporary society, arguing that the boundaries of learning spaces are
fluid and that informal learning through digital literacy needs to be understood as
being an intrinsic part of our learning ecosystem, requiring a broader definition of
“literacy” than many contemporary discourses adopt. They highlight the need to
move beyond a focus on skills and instead to understand how people take advantage
of the possibilities afforded to them by socio-technical networks for learning and for
connecting with others. Papers in this special issue study a range of informal learning
contexts, including a fan writers’ forum (Lammers), gaming within and beyond
classrooms (Reynolds), and learning on YouTube (Tan), to show interactions
between formal and informal learning contexts.
A different perspective on learning is developed in Gee’s (2003) video games
research. Video games can be long, hard to master, and frustrating. Yet many are very
popular, with gamers devoting huge amounts of time to mastering them, in contrast to
much of what goes on in schools, where keeping students’ attention can be a
challenge. Gee argues that by understanding the principles of learning of game
design, we can understand more about all learning. He develops 36 principles of
learning, including active, critical learning, seeing interrelationships, being rewarded
for achievement, incremental learning of tasks at an appropriate level of difficulty,
discovering situated meanings, and being part of a learning community. Thomas’
(2005) study of adolescents playing online role-playing games shows their learning
in community as they engage in both playing their characters and in discussions on a
Web-based forum, including poetry recitals and storytelling, fan fiction, and critique.
She claims that the level these children reach in this arena may exceed the expecta-
tions of their teachers in schools and that this participation fulfils needs for belonging
and development which schools do not address. Similar arguments are made through
8 K. Tusting

Bulfin and North’s (2007) case studies of the literacy practices of teenagers in
Melbourne, Australia, which show students engaging in practices which flow
between home and school environments, leveraging their expertise to renegotiate
the affordances of school systems and find ways of drawing on their out-of-school
practices in the classroom, in ways which both support and challenge the agendas of
teachers.
The social aspect of much of this learning is very clear.
Early work by Rheingold (1993) identified the centrality of communities even
from the earliest days of the Internet, and this has remained a common theme. From
the mid-2000s, the shift to Web 2.0 and the participatory Internet has led to a huge
expansion in the online communities and networks people interact with. These are
new kinds of social groupings which require new ways of thinking about how we
interact together. Gee’s (2005) work on affinity spaces and semiotic social spaces
opened up this area for exploration, showing how affinity spaces could be associated
with different social languages. Davies (2006) showed the rise of communities of
photo-sharers learning together on Flickr, with the site enabling reciprocal teaching
and learning partnerships, generating new meanings and discourses, in a dynamic
multimodal learning community. Black’s (2006) analysis of online learning in the
communities on fanfiction sites illustrates how second language learning is supported
in an interest-driven space. Ito et al.’s (2010) research, described above, identifies the
importance of “voluntary spaces of participation,” peer and interest-driven networks
in which people choose to learn together.
Work with families and young children has shown how digital literacies extend
into the lives of the very young, providing new sets of affordances for children’s
learning from an early age. Burnett (2010) highlights the gap between the multi-
modal, screen-based experiences of sensemaking and literacy of many children at
home, revealed by studies such as Marsh (2004) and Carrington (2005a), and their
book- and paper-based experience of literacy in early years education. In a useful
review of research, she argues that educational settings which do not engage with
these practices, whether because of policies, dominant discourses about dangers of
screen-based learning in the early years, lack of knowledge, or lack of resources,
become increasingly anachronistic.
A significant amount of public discourse around digital and online literacy
practices highlights fears and concerns, with “moral panics” (Cohen 1972) arising
regularly in media and policy discourses around new technologies. Often these are to
do with changes in language, suggesting, for instance, that “text language” is starting
to be used in inappropriate settings, or with the effects on users of such transforma-
tions, such as losing the capacity to spell correctly or to concentrate on extended
texts. It is often suggested that language itself is being negatively affected by online
interaction, a position challenged by linguists such as Thurlow (2006) and Jones and
Hafner (2012). Other “moral panics” have included the effects of video games
(particularly “violent” ones) on young people’s social and moral development and
damaging social practices like bullying and sexual shaming on social media.
Research in new literacies from a social practice perspective can test out these
issues by observing people’s actual practices. Carrington (2005b) analyzes public
Ecologies of Digital Literacies: Implications for Education 9

discourses about mobile phone texting, critiquing a discursive chain linking texting,
youth, declining standards, poor academic achievement, and social breakdown.
Beavis and Charles (2005) challenge the notion that simulation games like The
Sims encourage gendered patterns in game play, showing how teenagers playing
the game in Australian schools used it to subvert traditional gendered practices. But
in a social situation where the dominant discourse includes this level of fear and
suspicion, it can be hard for the positive messages of research to be taken up in
constructive ways.

Work in Progress

Work in progress in this area addresses new and emerging practices and their
implications for education. Gaming is attracting increasing attention, with
researchers exploring learning and literacy in virtual worlds like Minecraft (Dezuanni
et al. 2015), Club Penguin (Marsh 2012), and massively multiplayer online role-
playing games (MMORPGs, Steinkuehler 2007). Merchant et al. (2013) bring
together a range of studies of children and young people learning in virtual worlds
and other interactive online spaces. They highlight the role of young people as active
agents, engaging in playful and creative ways with the possibilities afforded by these
spaces to build new kinds of social relationships and new forms of meaning-making.
By bringing together studies of vernacular and informal settings with research in
innovative educational environments using virtual worlds, they show the need to
rethink pedagogies and teacher-student relationships in these new kinds of
environments.
Another emergent theme is curation. Potter and Gilje (2015), introducing a special
issue of E-learning and Digital Media, claim that curation – “collecting, cataloguing,
arranging and assembling for exhibition and displaying” (p. 125) – is a new kind of
literacy practice, with new learning identities and authorships developing as people
collect and display online artifacts. This special issue explores curation in a range of
online settings including digital media production (Terras, Ramsey, and Boyle),
discussions of Minecraft on- and off-line (Dezuanni, O’Mara, and Beavis), film
and media production in school contexts (Doerr-Stevens, Dejayne), and Facebook
and learning management systems (Birkeland, Drange, and Tønnessen).
Increasing attention is also being paid to the multilingual nature of literacies online
and the potential of this for language learning. Researchers are beginning to see the
Internet as an “ecology of multilingual environments” (Thorne et al. 2015: 215),
providing spaces in which people can curate their online identity drawing on the
different linguistic resources available to them, engaging with communities of
speakers of different languages, and engaging in language learning both explicitly
and implicitly. Thorne et al. (2009) show how informal contexts such as fanfiction
forums, virtual worlds, and online gaming are characterized by intense socialization
into new forms of communicative practices, supporting language learning through
creativity, identity development, and management. Lee (2007) shows Hong Kong
teenagers creatively mixing English and Chinese writing in their instant messaging
10 K. Tusting

practices, and Barton and Lee (2013) develop the significance of the Internet as a
multilingual space.

Problems and Difficulties

The research described above suggests that the way to prepare students for the digital
world is to facilitate playful, explorative communities of peers following up their
interests, moving from expert-novice relationships to a relationship of equals explor-
ing together, with activities being realistically responsive to the broader social
ecology, and teachers and students prepared to go in unexpected directions. Many
national educational policies do now highlight the need to develop twenty-first-
century skills (Jenkins 2009) in discourses that echo those of transnational organi-
zations (OECD 2013).
However, this is difficult to achieve in a world in which more and more central-
ized, prescriptive curricula are being introduced, assessed by pen-and-paper skills
testing at increasingly regular intervals, which leaves little space for unstructured,
fluid explorations of ecologies of new literacies in the classroom (Luke 2002) – what
Lankshear and Knobel (2011: 9) call the “standards-testing-accountability-perfor-
mance” model. Bigum (2002) argues that schools have often “domesticated” new
technologies, adapting them to fit in with existing school culture and practice rather
than using them as they are used in the world beyond schooling. Burnett et al. (2014)
present a collection of studies of “twenty-first-century literacies” around the world to
support a critique of traditionalist discourses around education and literacy and
particularly the associated accountability and testing regimes, calling for pedagogical
approaches which recognize the range of practices students bring with them and the
diversity of meaning-making possibilities, supporting the development of an
empowering literacy education which adopts a critical perspective on the social
context of literacies. Furthermore, given the rapid pace of change in this field,
many teachers know far less about this area than (some of) their students.
Questions also remain open as to the most appropriate methods to use to research
this rapidly changing and developing area. Much of the work outlined above draws
on ethnographic methods, but how to incorporate the traditional participant-
observation approach to understand communicative practices that take place both
on- and off-line, in a range of virtual and real spaces in different and rapidly changing
communities, remains a challenge. A variety of approaches have been developed to
address this. Androutsopoulos (2008) has developed “discourse-centered online
ethnography,” which begins with a systematic analysis of the discourse online
(in his case working with linguistic analysis of hip-hop Websites and their networks)
and then engages more directly with the people who produced these texts through
interviews. Davies and Merchant (2007) used auto-ethnographic methods to research
their own blogging, highlighting their development of public identities as academic
bloggers, their membership of networks and communities, and their affective expe-
riences. Other approaches focus on the mediated action as the site of research
engagement. Jones (2004) highlights the need to begin from the perspective of seeing
Ecologies of Digital Literacies: Implications for Education 11

online engagement as actions rather than texts while at the same time addressing the
multimodal nature of the communications that these actions construct.
Ethical issues around researching digital literacies remain matters for debate.
People may, for instance, post on public forums which are potentially available to
researchers to analyze, without any expectation that their words will be analyzed in
this way, making the notion of “informed consent” problematic. Such issues are
considered in ongoing fashion by organizations like the Association of Internet
Researchers (e.g., Markham and Buchanan 2012) and addressed in more detail in
publications like Page et al. (2014) and require careful consideration in all research in
this area.
One of the challenges raised by research in this area is the need to ensure focus is
broadened beyond the practices of Western privileged middle-class in well-resourced
countries. Prinsloo and Rowsell (2012: 271), introducing a special issue on technol-
ogies in marginalized contexts, claim that “Much of the digital and new media
research takes place in predominantly Anglo-American or middle-class contexts,”
and their collection of papers shows how inequalities of power, pedagogy, and
resources are clearly shaping the affordances available. Nevertheless, Mills (2010),
in a survey of empirical research in this area published between 1999 and 2009,
argues that a lot of work addressing digital literacies from a New Literacy Studies
perspective is carried out in diverse contexts, challenging dominant assumptions
about digital literacies.

Future Directions

Future directions in this area can be hard to predict. Digital literacy practices are
changing faster than research can follow them. We do not know what changes may be
ahead, but we do know that there will be changes – what Alvermann (in the preface to
Lankshear and Knobel 2011) calls the “permanency of the new.” The meanings of
such practices are open and emergent, developing unpredictably as people work with
and reconfigure the affordances of the platforms they are using for their own purposes
(Santo 2011). It is impossible to predict the affordances which people will perceive
from new technologies, some of which – such as using hashtags on Twitter to identify
particular topics – may be completely unforeseen even by the designers of the
technologies (Greenhow and Gleason 2012). And it can be difficult to tell which
practices will remain and develop and which are short-lived trends.
Having said this, though, there are areas of research which appear potentially
fruitful at the moment. Interest in the area of digital literacy practices in the devel-
opment of critical social movements has been sparked by the role of Twitter,
Facebook, and other social networks in movements such as the Arab Spring and
Occupy, in which digital literacy practices made possible rapid informal learning and
communication across multiple networks (Gleason 2013). More generally, the impor-
tance of drawing on this research to maintain a critical stance toward social media
remains (Burnett and Merchant 2011). There has to date been little work from this
perspective on the more technical aspects of digital literacy practices such as coding
12 K. Tusting

(currently being introduced into many school curricula), and this is clearly an area for
future development. Questions are arising around the use of “big data” by corpora-
tions and governments to produce representations of ourselves that we have little
control over and to shape the affordances made available to us. Further analysis is
needed of the way the designs of digital platforms, and the algorithms driving them,
shape particular kinds of ideologies and approaches to the world and therefore
change the nature of people’s practices. These areas, along with many of those
mentioned above, will continue to make the study of digital literacies and their
implications for education a significant area.

Cross-References

▶ Identity in Mediated Contexts of Transnationalism and Mobility

▶ Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy
▶ Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital
Environments

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Kevin Leader and Cynthia Lewis: Literacy and Internet Technologies. In Volume:
Literacies and Language Education
Brian Street: New Literacies, New Times: Developments in Literacy Studies.
In Volume: Literacies and Language Education

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Baron, N. S. (1998). Letters by phone or speech by other means: The linguistics of email. Language
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Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital
Literacy

Ron Darvin

Abstract
Technology has revolutionized the way we produce and exchange information
and developed new modes of communication and socialization. Implicated in
relations of power, these digitally mediated practices are not ideologically neutral.
They shape the representation of meanings and identities, the circulation of
knowledge, the construction of social networks and formations, redefining
notions of private and public space, while privileging and marginalizing ideas,
cultures, and people. As technology increasingly becomes an integral component
of learning, this chapter asserts that learners must develop a critical digital
literacy to become more aware of how power operates in digital spaces, shaping
ways of thinking and doing that are implicated in social and cultural reproduction.
By sharpening this critical lens, learners equip themselves with the capacity to
examine linguistic and nonlinguistic features of digital media, their biases and
assumptions, in order to verify information and access the truth.

Keywords
Critical Literacy • Digital Literacy • Language • Power

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
The Representation of Meaning and Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
The Circulation of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
The Construction of Social Networks and Formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Issues of Control and Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

R. Darvin (*)
Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Education Centre
at Ponderosa Commons, Vancouver, BC, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 17

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_35
18 R. Darvin

Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Introduction
Technology has instigated a fourth revolution in knowledge production (Harnad
1991), and by accelerating the speed through which ideas are processed and shared,
it fortifies a knowledge economy where the production, distribution, and exchange
of information are vital. As people and ideas traverse transnational spaces with
greater fluidity, new means of representation and spaces of socialization also provide
greater opportunities for the construction of identities and networks. These practices
of “communicating, relating, thinking and ‘being’ associated with digital media”
(Jones and Hafner 2012, p. 13) or digital literacies have not only reconfigured
epistemological and social landscapes but also transformed identifications, alle-
giances, and notions of citizenship. As social practices (Street 2003), these new
literacies are implicated in the power structures of the different contexts where they
are developed, performed, and valued (Heath and Street 2008; Norton and Williams
2012; Prinsloo and Rowsell 2012; Warschauer 2009). To examine how power
operates in these multiple spaces requires a more critical understanding of the
“differentiated, situated and enculturated ways in which digital practices happen”
(Snyder and Prinsloo 2007, p. 173).
Because of the shared capacity to construct, redesign, and disseminate infor-
mation through the digital, truth becomes more open to interpretation and rein-
vention. In an era of “post-truth,” not only is knowledge acquisition now more
contextual and situational (Luke 2014), but the ideological mechanisms that
govern the production of truth within digital spaces become more invisible. To
dissect how power operates in these processes of digital production, consumption,
and socialization, learners need to develop a critical literacy that will allow them
to filter through the abundance of information, to contest, deconstruct, and
critique in order to discover legitimate knowledge (Luke 2003). Recognizing
how language and other symbolic forms can be a powerful means to maintain
and reproduce modes of exclusion, critical literacy also confronts how issues of
access, diversity, and design are implicated in structures of power (Janks 2000),
shaping identities, relationships, and interactions in unequal ways. As a conver-
gence of both digital and critical literacies, critical digital literacy examines how
the operation of power within digital contexts shapes knowledge, identities, social
relations, and formations in ways that privilege some and marginalize others. It
equips learners with the tools to examine the linguistic and nonlinguistic features
of digital media, to identify their embedded biases and assumptions, in order to
access the truth.
Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy 19

To examine more critically how technology facilitates the reconfiguration of

knowledge and the social order, one needs to be aware of the various perspectives
that surround it. On one end of the spectrum, technological dystopianism asserts that
it diminishes our ability to communicate and interact meaningfully, and is respon-
sible for shorter attention spans, language deterioration, and erosion of privacy.
Technological utopianism, on the other hand, subscribes to the idea that it contrib-
utes only to progress and greater freedom. The limitation of these absolute positions
is that it succumbs to a determinism that views technology as one that ultimately
controls ways of thinking and social practices. Ignoring the power of technology in
transforming societies and regarding it as ideologically neutral, however, would be
an enormous oversight (Jones and Hafner 2012). By asserting that technology
operates through power, critical digital literacy needs to strike a balance between
these views, and proceed from an understanding that while technology has the
capacity to empower and liberate, it also has the capacity to exclude and marginalize
others (Darvin 2016).

Early Developments

When electronic text forms and practices were just beginning to change the commu-
nication landscape, Peters and Lankshear (1996) called for a critical literacy that
would respond to the shifting textual environment and challenge “enclosured” forms
of consciousness. Highlighting the dematerialized, interactive, integrative, and
manipulable nature of the digital text, these scholars explained how these features
enabled greater intertextuality and hybridity, while posing new possibilities and
challenges for language and literacy education. Recognizing the attendant dangers
of the new digital environment – increased state surveillance, vulnerability to break-
down and sabotage, and risks of cultural imperialism, the paper posited the need for a
critical literacy that continually analyzed and evaluated how the digital transforms not
only textual and discursive practices, but ultimately ways of doing and being.
In the same year, the New London Group (1996) highlighted how the increasing
variety of text forms linked to information and multimedia technologies had great
implications for teaching literacy. In proposing a pedagogy of multiliteracies, this
group articulated critical framing as an important objective. Through this goal,
learners are able to link situated practice and overt instruction to the “historical,
social, cultural, political, ideological, and value-centred relations of particular sys-
tems of knowledge and social practice” (p. 34). Recognizing that website content
may manipulate readers and obscure an ideological agenda, Labbo et al. (1998)
pointed out how digital literacy requires being both a critical consumer and producer
of information. They defined critical digital literacy as “the ability to recognize,
interpret, and evaluate underlying ideologies in various types of hypertextually
linked information as it is presented in various data sources” (p. 282). Primarily
concerned with being able to bridge the digital literacies learned at school with those
required in the workplace, the authors assert that this critical approach is necessary to
20 R. Darvin

strategically navigate through data, and that teachers need to receive the support
necessary to develop these literacies.
Luke (2003) observed that with new media, meaning making and knowledge are
deterritorialized, and that the fluidity and plurality of engagement are marked by
simultaneous decoding, production, and interactional contexts. Making meaning
from hypertexts thus require greater lateral thinking – a cognitive mobility across
disciplines, genres, modalities, and cultural zones. Recognizing the risks and poten-
tial of information and communication technologies (ICTs), Luke proposed a critical
ICT literacy that would include “a metaknowledge, a critical and self-reflective
analysis of the sociocultural and political contexts of ICTs at global and local levels”
(p. 399). Beyond skills training and use of collaborative tools, she asserted the need
for critical analyses of power relations, identity politics, and language generated by
and through engaging with technology. Challenging the assumption that online
communication is hierarchy-free, she believed there should be a way to investigate
whether this equity exists, and if students of different cultural or linguistic back-
grounds are able to participate freely in these spaces. Activating this critical ICT
literacy requires a metaknowledge, a self-reflective analysis of the sociocultural and
political contexts of technologies at local and global levels. As online literacies
evolve, educational theorizing and research must devise more flexible concepts and
methodologies that involve a provisional and transformational epistemology.
In a report on media education in the twenty-first century, Jenkins (2006)
suggested that new media literacies should be considered a social skill and that to
engage within participatory cultures should involve a capacity to think critically
about information that is shared within these diverse spaces. Learners need to
acquire a critical understanding of how media representations “structure our percep-
tions of the world, the economic and cultural contexts within which mass media is
produced and circulated, the motives and goals that shape the media they consume”
(p. 31). By developing a critical awareness of how media frames worldviews and
reshapes experience according to its code and conventions, learners are able to
evaluate the quality of information technology has made highly accessible. Drawing
from Giroux’s (1994) notion of critical pedagogy, Merchant (2007) identified critical
digital literacy as an important component of literacy education. Developing a
critical lens is a responsibility of the educational system, and this entails providing
learners with tools to analyze discourses related to wider social issues, power
relationships, and inequities. While there is a need to nurture and preserve new
digital spaces, there should also be a means to understand their constructed nature.
As learners participate in these spaces, critical digital literacy enables them to
critique and challenge the dominant discourses circulating within these domains.

Major Contributions

As a construct, critical digital literacy continues to be labeled and interpreted in

different ways and for different ends. Developing a vision for student success in the
new global economy, The Framework for twenty-first Century Learning (Partnership
Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy 21

for 21st Century Skills 2011) identify information, media, and ICT literacies as
including both functional and critical thinking skills. In this context, developing new
literacies is viewed as necessary to participate as a productive member of the
knowledge economy. Concerned with how technology contributes to the collective
intelligence in a knowledge society, Poore (2011) refers to these two tiers of digital
literacy. Functional digital literacy deals with developing technical skills and chang-
ing mindsets and attitudes towards technology through workshops and training.
Critical digital literacy, on the other hand, examines digital contexts in a more
cultural sense and requires having teachers equipped with philosophical and ethical
frameworks for understanding digital cultures. As teachers guide learners through
the emerging knowledge space, they need to help bridge a digital divide constructed
by differential access to information, relationships, and networks.
Addressing this gap is also important to Facer (2011), who believes critical skills
are key to building strategic knowledge that will contribute to social change. Given
the ubiquity of online information, learners need to develop the capacity to discern
the relationship of information to other information, to goals and interests, and to the
contexts in which it is used. By understanding how the management of information
flows impacts the lives of other people, learners are able to participate in a new
culture of informal learning where technology can transform homes, neighborhoods,
and workplaces into an integrated learning society that benefits diverse groups of
people.
Because new technologies provide an immersive, interactive experience,
Wohlwend and Lewis (2011) use critical engagement to describe the critical inter-
pretation and production of digital literacies. As visual and embodied texts and
virtual spaces circulate through global flows, they become both universalizing and
fragmenting. Critical engagement enables an examination of how the motives of
information and communication providers can shape the dissemination of knowl-
edge, how participatory cultures can expand or limit the construction of texts and
social networks, and how power relations are inscribed in the practices and norms of
digital environments. Subscribing to the notion that emotion is structured through
ideology, these scholars posit that the critical interpretation and production of digital
literacies is bound to complex desires, and should therefore examine how digital
practices are tied to expressions of passions, attachments, and affiliations.
Because digital media does not just enable the production and consumption of
texts, but facilitates ways of thinking, relating, and interacting with others, critical
digital literacy encompasses these affordances. Research in this area examines how
power and ideology operates in the digital practices of representing identities,
producing and circulating knowledge, constructing social networks and formations,
and managing control and access.

The Representation of Meaning and Identities

At the very heart of critical literacy is the examination of how meanings are
represented in ways that maintain and reproduce relations of power. While the
22 R. Darvin

deconstruction of texts can reveal subtexts of power, digital technologies provide

means of representation that conceal ideology in new ways. Through wizards,
templates, drop-down menus, and preference settings, a semblance of personaliza-
tion is manufactured to provide the user with a sense of freedom and autonomy.
Although multiple and diverse, these affordances are never objective as they chan-
nel, and potentially limit, the meanings and representations one can make. To fit into
the coding logic of these sites, there is always a predefined set of alternatives that
prohibit finer gradations of meaning users can control. These default settings and
“givens” steer users to a set of normative behaviors and meanings, indoctrinating
users into social practices that are technologized around digital tools (Jones and
Hafner 2012). Because Facebook is in the business of selling data about users to
advertisers, the default categories users are made to fill out on their profiles (e.g.,
favorite books, movies, music) also encourage disclosure of personal interests that
serve Facebook’s commercial motives. The highlighting of how many friends one
has or the number of likes a post receives becomes a way of quantifying popularity,
encouraging particular ways in which people communicate with each other and
curate their identities. In a study of storytelling styles on Facebook, for instance,
Page (2012) observes the frequent use of an affective discourse style marked by a
high degree of intensification. Capitalization, repeated exclamation marks, repeti-
tion, exaggerated quantifiers like all and everyone, and frequent use of boosters, e.g.,
very, really, so are used to report on quotidian events. This linguistic pattern of
intensification demonstrates how users believe some form of exaggeration is needed
to make their stories “tellable” on social media. In this sense, the range of actions
enabled by digital tools promotes particular constructions of self and language use.

The Circulation of Knowledge

Another way technology can limit the perception of the world is the systematic
filtering of knowledge through algorithms. While people generally regard the Inter-
net as open arenas where free exploration is the norm, online search technologies
choose routes that are determined by programmed algorithms. The algorithmic
assessment of information represents a specific logic built on certain presumptions
of what knowledge is and the categories in which specific information belongs. By
deciding what the categories are and what belongs in each one, this fundamental
component of database design and management becomes a powerful semantic and
political intervention. It makes assertions of the nature of things, while concealing
these evaluative criteria, which are held as trade secrets. The “trending” algorithm of
Twitter, for instance, cannot be made public because this would leave them vulner-
able to those who may want to manipulate the system to get their sites to the top of
the search results or want their hashtags to appear on the trends list (Gillespie 2014).
Because of these conditions, the algorithm becomes a legitimate knowledge logic,
where commercial interests are integrated and protected. Search directory editors
and website designers lobby for specific sites and sponsored links to appear at the top
of search results. Some studies have also noted how structural biases of search
Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy 23

engines can prioritize commercial information providers and English language sites
(Granka 2010). By operating through these biases, public search tools lead to a
hegemonic rationality that privileges certain sources of information, while excluding
others (Kirkpatrick 2008).

The Construction of Social Networks and Formations

By calculating what is trending or popular, social networking sites do not only

control the circulation of knowledge, they also shape social and political discourse
and the publics in which people participate (Gillespie 2014). In a news service, the
information that is pushed is tailored to the user’s preferences, consequently
undermining the diversity of public knowledge and political dialogue. Because of
these algorithms that direct users towards likeminded people, they enter into “filter
bubbles” where one finds the news one expects and political perspectives one
already subscribes to (Pariser 2011). This filter exists in Facebook News Feeds as
well where results are based on algorithmic calculations that push status updates and
activities of friends whom one already interacts with the most by liking and
commenting on their posts. By ranking “objects” like an uploaded photo and
“edges” (i.e., interactions), Facebook algorithms shape the interaction of friends
through a programmed sociality based on findability and compatibility (Bucher
2013). The construction of online spaces of socialization also enables a mobility
that fuels a “networked individualism” where people are linked by scheduling,
monitoring, surveillance, and regulation. This individualism transforms life strate-
gies while exerting new demands on the self. Unbounded and deterritorialized,
identities are no longer tied to fixed localities, patterns, or cultural traditions (Elliott
and Urry 2010), and are able to participate in communities of interest that transcend
national boundaries. These communities tend to attract people from similar pro-
fessions, educational backgrounds, values, or lifestyles. As people build these
transnational networks, people can interact less with those from other social posi-
tions within their own local communities and country, reshaping their allegiances
and sense of co-citizenship (Gee and Hayes 2011; Warriner 2007).

Issues of Control and Access

While earlier views of the Internet recognized it as a decentralized and unregulated

space, Sassen (2008) points out how surveillance and management processes are
often overlooked. Governments are able to establish technical and operational
standard settings that enable agencies to collect data and engage in multiple forms
of surveillance. Corporations also privatize capabilities within the Internet that
support their interests. While the earlier Internet allowed open access to most spaces,
the growth of intranets and e-commerce have facilitated “zoning,” which limits
access to or distribution of goods and services on the Internet. Apart from the
ideologically laden processes of search engines, there have also been attempts by
24 R. Darvin

government agencies and private corporations to undermine net neutrality. By

invoking the need to control information traffic for greater efficiency, phone carriers
have proposed that Internet content can be delivered at variable rates. Such a
proposition would have tremendous implications on access to knowledge as power-
ful entities that can afford prioritized delivery service can push information that
serves their own interests (McKee 2011). This attempt to control the flow of
information is also reflected in the cost-free access to the Internet offered by Airtel
Zero and Facebook’s Internet.org. Marketed as corporate social responsibility
efforts, these initiatives enable economically underprivileged users to connect to
the internet. This connectivity however is limited to specific sites and applications,
thus restraining the knowledge and social networks these users can access (Murthy
2015).
Apart from institutional and corporate mechanisms of control, differential access
not only to technology but also digital literacies is an important concern of critical
digital literacy. While a great percentage of the population is still not connected to
the Internet, Prinsloo and Rowsell (2012) have also pointed out that when technol-
ogies travel and are located in new spaces, particularly in the global periphery, how
these resources are used can be subject to a number of restraints. They become
“placed resources” in that the specificity of place, its material conditions and social
practices, largely determine the use and benefits of these resources. This research
extends this notion of placed resources to how even within a local context there are a
variety of ways in which technology is taken up in specific settings like home and
school. In a comparative case study of two adolescent migrant Filipino learners from
different social class positions in Vancouver, Darvin and Norton (2014) examine
how differences in economic, cultural, and social capital can shape divergent digital
literacies and language use. While both learners had similar access to devices, the
differences in mentors, home literacies, and social networks can shape their percep-
tions of what technology is for and how they should use it. In this sense, learners of
different socioeconomic backgrounds are socialized into specific digital practices
that can either facilitate or disable upward social mobility.

Work in Progress

Drawing from the New London Group’s (1996) conception of design as a key
component of literacy education, Pangrazio (2016) proposes critical digital design
as a political model of digital literacy where understandings of discourse, ideology,
and power are scaffolded in the critique. Multimodal features of digital texts are
analyzed in parallel with the general architecture of technology and the Internet to
dissect how these structures reproduce systems of power and privilege. Rather than
focusing on specific technologies, the critical framework also begins with a more
personal position that reflects on one’s beliefs and emotions and refers to individu-
alized practice. Recognizing that ideology is intrinsic to the affective experiences of
texts, it links personal responses to digital texts to broader ideological concerns.
Through a “transcendental critique,” (p.8) learners create a sense of distance from
Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy 25

digital media by decontextualizing everyday use and reassessing their relationship

with it. Pangrazio is currently testing the viability of this framework through a study
that integrates visualization, self-reflection, and transcendentalism. The hope is that
the findings of this study will establish an evidence-based framework for critical
digital design.
Recognizing the value of critical digital literacy, Santo (2013) has proposed the
term hacker literacies to refer to how users can go beyond critique by actively
resisting and reconfiguring networked public spaces. Through the dialectical rela-
tionship of the social and the technical, digital spaces are malleable, open to
reformulation and reconfiguration. Learners are encouraged to be hackers, not in
any malicious or unethical sense, but to encourage them to collaborate and tinker
with technology and to actively resist systemic patterns of control by powerful
entities. Hacking practices could include designing and advocating for alternative
models of privacy settings for Facebook and instigating group action where users
intentionally alter their Facebook profiles to disrupt the marketing data the network-
ing site sells to companies. Reclaim Privacy, an open-source method of raising
awareness of Facebook privacy settings, created a technical response to Facebook’s
complex privacy interface. Through media watchdog groups and voices in academia,
the blogosphere, and afterschool digital programs (Dooley and Exley 2015), learners
are able to participate in subcultures that are able to challenge the hegemonic control
of established sites. By learning basic coding, game modding, and do it yourself
(DIY) approaches, they are able to push back against existing designs of mainstream
companies and resist their hegemonic stranglehold.

Problems and Difficulties

A significant challenge to developing a critical digital literacy is that because digital

media is so interwoven into the lives of learners and their personal and affective
experiences, it makes it difficult to stand back and take a more critical stance. To
reconcile the personal with the ideological requires an awareness of how digital texts
provoke strong emotions precisely because they reference a meaningful yet ideo-
logically circumscribed experience. Understanding the ideological architecture of
the digital is difficult because its technical foundation is complex and opaque, and in
schools, developing skills in navigating digital tools are prioritized over critiquing
them (Pangrazio 2016). In a study that examines the way young people use
Facebook, Pangrazio (2013) also suggests that the highly visual nature of the
medium together with the invisibility of the audience pressure young people to
adapt to the perceived conventions of the social networking site, rather than to
question them. While the participants were able to see how the site shaped their
view of others, it was more difficult to see how it shaped their own view of
themselves. Critiquing the digital practices around Facebook requires standing
outside the discourse. The banning of Facebook in some schools, however, disables
the possibility of critical analysis in classrooms. In some cases, literacy curricula do
26 R. Darvin

not just ignore but stigmatize the literacy practices in these social networking sites
(Thorne 2013).
Another challenge in developing this critical digital literacy is that it necessitates
an understanding of complex technical processes and political economic mecha-
nisms. Luke (2014) points out that mere digital engagement is not a critical literacy
approach. Critical literacy uses media “to analyze, critique, and transform the norms,
rule systems, and practices governing the social fields of institutions and everyday
life” (p. 20). It seeks to reshape political consciousness, material conditions, and
social relations, and examines how new literacies can transform both local and
geopolitical relations of power. Because they are developed through a historical
materialist lens, critical literacies have no universal model and are contingent on
local realities. As digital practices of knowledge circulation, identity representation,
and social network construction are carried out within capitalist infrastructure and
are implicated in consumer culture, the power asymmetries of digital contexts
intersect with a complex political economic order. The challenge in dissecting
these contexts is that it requires a new vocabulary to critique the economic structures,
flows, and forces through which the digital thrives. At the same time, a critical
approach also involves an examination of the complex interplay of information
processing, software dynamics, linguistic processes, and cultural practices that are
at work within these digital platforms. Software has become a technocultural actor
that shapes users’ cultural experiences of and through the web and reflects assump-
tions of roles, hierarchies, and practices. To examine how these biases and assump-
tions are embedded in digital platforms thus requires technical knowledge that is not
highly accessible (Langlois 2013).
Apart from the challenge of developing technical and political economic knowl-
edge, Pangrazio (2014) points out that current terms in digital studies mask their
ideological underpinnings and impede critical thought. Labels such as “participatory
culture” (Jenkins 2006) and “networked public” (Boyd 2014), for instance, connote
freedom, democracy, and civic engagement while concealing the gatekeeping mea-
sures and fragmented nature of these spaces. The word “user” reflects neoliberal
ideology that positions the individual as a consumer of resources rather than an
engaged citizen. To challenge these connotations, critical discourse analysis needs to
dissect assumed meanings of concepts like free, friend, link, like, and open in digital
contexts and to rearticulate these concepts with a counterhegemonic impetus.

Future Directions

Responding to the need for a more critical understanding of how power operates in
digital contexts, Darvin and Norton (2015) have developed a model of learning that
locates investment at the intersection of identity, capital, and ideology (See Fig. 1).
Extending theories of identity and investment developed in Norton’s earlier work
(Norton Peirce 1995; Norton 2013) to address the realities of a digital age, the model
recognizes that as learners retreat into private, isolated spaces and navigate both
online and offline worlds, the mechanisms of ideology become more invisible. This
Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy 27

Fig. 1 Darvin and Norton’s

2015 model of investment

affordances /
perceived benefits

IDENTITY CAPITAL

INVESTMENT
systemic patterns
positioning of control

IDEOLOGY

opacity makes it increasingly difficult to recognize how specific communicative

events are indexical of macrostructures of power. To respond to this challenge, this
model of investment highlights how, as learners move fluidly across spaces, ideol-
ogies collude and compete, shaping the identities of learners and positioning them in
different ways. The value of their economic, cultural, or social capital also shifts as it
travels across time and space, and is subject to the systemic patterns of control of
institutional structures and processes. By laying bare the interplay of these different
forces, the model can serve as a framework for critical digital literacy that examines
the operation of power in the digitally mediated construction of knowledge, identi-
ties, and social networks.
Instrumental also to developing this criticality, Darvin and Norton (2015) speak of
cultivating a sens pratique or practical sense that enables learners to know the “rules of
the game,” or the mechanisms of power that control digital contexts. Borrowing from
Bourdieu (1986), this practical sense enables learners to (i) master the rules, norms,
genres, and multimodal features specific to different communicative contexts;
(ii) seamlessly shift linguistic codes, practices, and strategies while moving across
spaces; and (iii) use linguistic and nonlinguistic resources to gain access to, challenge,
and transform these spaces. By repeatedly performing these repertoires and strategies
with greater autonomy, learners are able to sharpen their critical lens and navigate
different ideological landscapes. Being aware of the linguistic and nonlinguistic fea-
tures of online genres also help learners to recognize credible news sources and identify
online hoaxes. Also borrowing from Bourdieu, Thorne (2013) speaks of the need for
literacy education to develop a “generative disposition” among learners by socializing
them into ethical standards and raising their awareness of how media shapes perception.
Through this cultivated disposition, learners are not only able to identify and work with
regularities, selection biases, and performative conventions but also to shape and
transform the digital spaces they participate in.
28 R. Darvin

Recognizing how digital practices have the power to privilege some and margin-
alize others, Hull and Stornaiuolo (2014) have invoked the construct of cosmopol-
itanism to guide digital production and consumption. By enabling a “global culture
of open-mindedness” (Hansen 2010) and an awareness of one’s role as “citizen of
the world,” cosmopolitanism calls for an understanding of the ethics of communi-
cating and participating in a digitally mediated world. Hence, while critical digital
literacy exposes how power operates in this world, cosmopolitanism shapes dispo-
sitions that allow learners to navigate this world with greater respect and responsi-
bility. It enables them to value diverse knowledges, cultures, and identities, and
develop a greater openness to the world (Delanty 2006), while addressing the
material inequalities that circumscribe it. By complementing critical digital literacy
with a cosmopolitan imagination, learners are able to understand that critique is not
an endpoint, but a means to achieve genuine social transformation in an increasingly
digital world.

Cross-References

▶ Identity in Mediated Contexts of Transnationalism and Mobility

▶ Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital
Environments

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Brian Street: New Literacies, New Times: Developments in Literacy Studies. In

Volume: Literacies and Language Education
Kevin Leader and Cynthia Lewis: Literacy and Internet Technologies. In Volume:
Literacies and Language Education

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Multimodal Discourses Across
the Curriculum

Carey Jewitt

Abstract
Multimodality approaches representation and communication as something more
than language. It attends to the complex repertoire of semiotic resources and
organizational means through which people make meaning – image, speech,
gesture, writing, three-dimensional forms, and so on. A social semiotic approach
to multimodality sets out to reveal how processes of meaning making (i.e.,
signification and interpretation or what is called semiosis) shape individuals
and societies. In this chapter, we use multimodality to refer to “multimodal social
semiotics” (Kress, Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary
communication. London: Routledge, 2010). Its basic assumption is that meanings
derive from social action and interaction using semiotic resources as tools. A
variety of disciplines and theoretical approaches can be used to explore different
aspects of the multimodal landscape (Jewitt, The Routledge handbook of multi-
modal analysis. London: Routledge, 2014). Psychological theories can be applied
to look at how people perceive different modes or to understand the impact of one
mode over another on memory, for example. Sociological and anthropological
theories and interests can be applied to examine how communities use multi-
modal conventions to mark and maintain identities. The term multimodality is,
however, most strongly linked with theories rooted in linguistics, notably sys-
temic functional linguistics, social semiotic theory, and conversation analysis
(Jewitt et al., Introducing multimodality. London: Routledge, 2016a). Examining
multimodal discourses across the classroom makes more visible the relationship
between the use of semiotic resources by teachers and students and the production
of curriculum knowledge, student subjectivity, and pedagogy.

C. Jewitt (*)
UCL Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 31

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_4
32 C. Jewitt

Keywords
Multimodality • Literacy • Curriculum knowledge • Classroom research • Social
semiotics

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Early Developments: A Visual Start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Major Contributions: Key Themes in the Study of Multimodal Discourses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Mode and Semiotic Resources for Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Shapes of Knowledge, Pedagogy, and Subjectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Multimodality and New Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Multimodal Learning and Literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Developing Theory and Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Work in Progress: Distinctive Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
New Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Introduction
Multimodality approaches representation and communication as something more
than language. It attends to the complex repertoire of semiotic resources and
organizational means that people make meaning through – image, speech, gesture,
writing, three-dimensional forms, and so on. Strictly speaking, multimodality refers
to a field of application rather than a theory, and over the past decade, it has become a
widely used term in the academic world. A variety of disciplines and theoretical
approaches can be used to explore different aspects of the multimodal landscape
(Jewitt 2014). Psychological theories can be applied to look at how people perceive
different modes or to understand the impact of one mode over another on, for
example, memory. Sociological and anthropological theories and interests can be
applied to examine how communities use multimodal conventions to mark and
maintain identities. The term multimodality, however, is most strongly linked with
theories rooted in linguistics, notably systemic functional linguistics, social semiotic
theory, and conversation analysis (Jewitt et al. 2016a). In this chapter, we use
multimodality to refer to “multimodal social semiotics” (Kress 2010).
Multimodality is concerned with signs and starts from the position that like
speech and writing, all modes consist of sets of semiotic resources – resources that
people draw on and configure in specific moments and places to represent events and
relations. From this perspective, the modal resources a teacher or student chooses to
use (or are given to use) are significant for teaching and learning. In this way, a
multimodal approach rejects the traditional almost habitual conjunction of language
and learning. Using a multimodal approach means looking at language as it is nestled
and embedded within a wider social semiotic. Examining multimodal discourses
Multimodal Discourses Across the Curriculum 33

across the classroom makes more visible the relationship between the use of semiotic
resources by teachers and students and the production of curriculum knowledge,
student subjectivity, and pedagogy.

Early Developments: A Visual Start

A social semiotic approach to multimodality sets out to reveal how processes of

meaning making (i.e., signification and interpretation, or what is called semiosis)
shape individuals and societies. Its basic assumption is that meanings derive from
social action and interaction using semiotic resources as tools. It stresses the agency
of sign makers and focuses on modes, their affordances, and the social uses and
needs they serve. Gunther Kress, Robert Hodge, and later Theo van Leeuwen
developed social semiotics from two main strands of influence: linguistics, including
Hallidayan linguistics semiotics (Halliday 1978), and critical linguistics which is
now more commonly referred to as critical discourse analysis (CDA). Kress and
Hodge set out to expand and reevaluate multimodality’s linguistic realm of reference
drawing on other approaches (e.g., film theory, musicology, game theory). In the late
1970s, Michael Halliday first used the term “language as social semiotic” (1978) to
stress the relationship between a language sign system and the social needs it is used
to serve. He understood language in terms of sets of options that shape what people
can and cannot do with a language in a given social context. From this perspective,
every linguistic act is seen as involving choices. Language is understood as an
evolving system of meaning potentials. In the 1980s, Gunther Kress, Robert
Hodge, and others began to build on Halliday’s approach to describing language
as a system of meaning/semiotic choices, in order to analyze the meaning potential
of other sign systems, such as image.
In the mid-1980s, the influential Newtown Semiotic Circle was founded in
Sydney. Members included Gunther Kress, Robert Hodge, Theo van Leeuwen,
Jim Martin, and later Paul Thibault and Terry Threadgold, among others. They
started the work of looking at different modes of communication and the ways in
which they were “integrated” in texts. As these scholars moved beyond language to
consider the “whole domain of meaning,” they also drew on ideas from European
and American semiotics (e.g., the work of Roland Barthes 1993) and broadened it to
social semiotics. Hodge’s and Kress Social Semiotics (1988) examined the social
implications of writing and image in “print” media (e.g., advertisements, magazines)
and started to extend the focus on power and ideology to other modes (though at that
time they did not have the term “mode”).
By the mid- to late 1990s, a few books and papers on multimodality were starting
to be published. The primary focus of this work was visual communication and the
relationship between image and writing. The works of Gunther Kress and Theo van
Leeuwen (1996), the New London Group (1996), and Michael O’Toole (1994) were
particularly significant for multimodal research within education. This work chal-
lenged the notion that learning is primarily a linguistic accomplishment, sketched
34 C. Jewitt

key questions for a multimodal agenda, and began to define conceptual tools for
thinking about teaching and learning beyond language.
The call to understand pedagogy as multimodal was radical when it was first
made. A key design element of a future pedagogy of multiliteracies was heralded as
“designs for other modes of meaning” (New London Group 1996). In part this call
was a response to the social and cultural reshaping of the communicational land-
scape (related to globalization, new technologies, and new demands for work). In a
sense, the conclusion that reading this “new” multimedia, multimodal landscape for
its linguistic meanings alone is not enough was inevitable. A special issue of
Linguistics and Education on multimodality was an important publication (and
one of the first) to provide tools for educational researchers wanting to undertake
multimodal research (Lemke 1998).
Attempting to understand the relationship between image and text was central to
the development on multimodality. The redundancy of “nonlinguistic” modes was
argued against, and the idea that the meaning of modes is incommensurable was key.
Reading Images (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996) opened the door for multimodality
in the way that it discusses key concepts such as composition, modality, and framing.
This work offers a framework to describe the semiotic resources of images and
analyzes how these resources can be configured to design interpersonal meaning, to
present the world in specific ways, and to realize coherence. It demonstrates and
generates a series of semiotic network maps showing the semiotic resources of image
in play and how discourses are articulated visually through the design of these
resources.
Work by Kress on literacy and young children’s meaning making also helped
highlight the potential of multimodality for literacy. His concern with font, style, the
spatial design of the page, and the materiality of the written text positioned writing as
multimodal. This work began to make connections across multimodality and New
Literacy Studies – a combination that now offers a distinct theoretical “accent” to
multimodality (Street et al. 2014).

Major Contributions: Key Themes in the Study of Multimodal

Discourses

From early 2000, there has been an explosion of interest in multimodality within
educational research, and this approach has been actively taken up educational
researchers across a wide range of learning contexts. Some of the major contribu-
tions made by this work are discussed below (see also Jewitt 2014; Jewitt et al.
2016a).

Mode and Semiotic Resources for Meaning

In order for multimodality to be of use to educational research, a clearer sense of how

modes are used for meaning making is required. Much is known about the semiotic
Multimodal Discourses Across the Curriculum 35

resources of language in the classroom and curriculum, but considerably less is

understood about the semiotic potentials of gesture, sound, image, and so on. A
number of detailed studies on specific modes helped begin to describe these semiotic
resources, material affordances, organizing principles, and cultural references.
Alongside Kress and van Leeuwen’s work on images (1996), other key works that
contribute to an evolving “inventory” of semiotic modal resources include Van
Leeuwen’s work on the materiality of the resources of sound (1999) and color
(2010). With a focus on writing as a multi-semiotic resource, Kenner (e.g., 2004)
shows how young bilingual learners use directionality, spatiality, and graphic marks
to realize meaning and express identities in complex ways. The work of Kress et al.
(2001, 2004) maps how these modes interact and interplay in the English and
Science classroom. Bezemer and Kress (2016) have worked to map interaction
through a focus on the modes of gaze, gesture, movement, and beyond to provide
a multimodal theory of learning with attention to notions of sign making, recognition
and assessment, and so on.

Shapes of Knowledge, Pedagogy, and Subjectivity

Through detailed multimodal analysis, classroom research shows how teachers

orchestrate a range of modes in the classroom. Some key studies include Kress
et al. (2001) in relation to school Science and school English (2004) and mathemat-
ics (O’Halloran 2004). This research maps how curriculum concepts are “filled in”
by teachers’ pedagogic movement between, in the case of science, abstract diagrams,
embodied action, interaction with models, and canonical images to create complex
multimodal narratives. At times, the complex multimodal configurations realized by
teachers are designed to enable the tension between discourses and domains of
knowledge (e.g., everyday knowledge and specialized scientific knowledge) to
reside in the seams between modes: with one mode supporting one discourse and
another mode realizing a quite different one. The classroom itself can also be viewed
as a multimodal sign that articulates discourses of time, managerialism, ability,
subject knowledge, etc., through its spatial arrangements, furniture, visual displays,
equipment, and artefacts. This research shows how multimodality can be applied to
examine the connection between policies, the use of technologies, pedagogy, and
what it means to learn. Student subjectivity and identity have also been interrogated
in the work of South African educational scholars working in multimodality, notably
Stein (2003) and Archer (2014). In particular, their work demonstrates the potential
of multimodality to shed light on the challenges and opportunities of multimodal
pedagogy in contexts of diversity.

Multimodality and New Technologies

The ways in which modes are newly configured and made available for teaching and
learning via new technologies are a focus of multimodal research (Kress 2003; Jewitt
36 C. Jewitt

2008, 2013; Jewitt et al. 2016b). Burn and Parker’s (2001) work on media education
and digital animation explores how students design meanings across different sites
of display and semiotic resources and what this means for learning and literacy.
Multimodal research into new technologies and learning also explores the meaning
potential of a text’s structure: the semiotic facilities of linking, hypertext, and the
design of hyperlinks (Jewitt 2002; Lemke 2002; van Leeuwen 2005). These links
and structures create relations and continuity or discontinuity between elements,
what Lemke calls “hyper-modality” (Lemke 2002). Another term useful to multi-
modality is “resemiotization” (Iedema 2003), which focuses on how new technolo-
gies remediate discourses via multimodal representation and communication across
media. A multimodal approach has been used to investigate learning through the
analysis of student interaction with a wide range of technologies in the school and
informal learning environments (e.g., museums), including iPads and tablets
(Crescenzi et al. 2014), mobile technologies (Sakr et al. 2015), tangible technologies
(Price and Jewitt 2013), and whole body interaction (Price et al. 2015). Multi-
modality has also been applied to the analysis of social media and online commu-
nication environments (Adami 2009, 2015; Jewitt and Henriksen 2016). This work
has explored the changing relationships of image, text, color, and layout and the
interactional possibilities of digital texts.

Multimodal Learning and Literacy

Approaching the classroom as a multimodal environment demands a rethinking of

learning and literacy. Multimodal research shows the complex decisions of children
that are involved in the design of multimodal texts: what mode to use in order to
“best” represent and communicate a particular meaning. Considering students in the
classroom as designers of meaning in this way has important implications for
learning such as what semiotic resources are made available in the classroom and,
critically, how modes are valued in different contexts. Children’s multimodal selec-
tions, adaptations, and transformations of these semiotic resources to make their own
meanings are examined as one kind of evidence of learning (Kress et al. 2001, 2004;
Jewitt and Kress 2003). These transformations have been traced and mapped as links
in the “chain of semiosis” (Stein 2003; Pahl 1999). Flewitt has examined the
multimodal character of early year literacy practices (2012) and worked to combine
multimodality and ethnography in novel ways (2011). This rethinking of learning
also has implications for how to think about assessment (Bezemer and Kress 2016).

Developing Theory and Method

Alongside accounts of multimodal research, the need to develop multimodal

research tools remains. Kress and van Leeuwen’s book Multimodal discourses
(2001) contributes to the general theory of multimodality in their exploration of
Multimodal Discourses Across the Curriculum 37

the distinction between mode and medium and the formulation of the relationship
between discourse, production, dissemination, and design. Multimodal theory has
opened up the question of what constitutes a mode. The idea of mode has also been
expanded in van Leeuwen’s Introducing social semiotics (2005) to look at semiotic
resources such as food, dress, everyday objects, as well as image, music, gesture, and
writing.
Ethnographic methods have been combined with multimodality to look at semi-
otic literacy practices as well as texts (Street et al. 2014; Flewitt 2011). Stein (2003),
for example, explores how students in South African townships express complex
narratives of identities and culture through multimodal texts, highlighting the links
between representational means and the production of identities. This work explores
how multimodal pedagogy can reconnect linguistically disenfranchised learners –
through the use of performance, semiotic artifacts, and visual representation.
Scollon and Wong-Scollon (2004) combined multimodal semiotics and
intercultural communication to explore how the physical and material characteristics
of language as situated in the world give meaning to people’s actions. Norris (2004,
2014) takes up this approach to multimodal discourses and introduces several
interesting concepts to the multimodal debate, one of which is the idea of modal
density (intensity and complexity), a conceptual tool for separating out the modes as
analytical units. This sets out a way of thinking about the relationships between
modes in terms of a scale of low to high intensity and contributes to the theorization
of the relationship across and between modes. Additionally, Newfield (2014) has
developed the concept of the transmodal moment, which can be used in the exam-
ination of processes of modal translation in which meaning is materialized in a range
of differently modalized texts.

Work in Progress: Distinctive Directions

There is substantial work in progress that looks at multimodal meaning making

across a wide range of sites in preschool and early year writing and meaning making,
school English and Media education, games studies, Science education, Music,
Maths, and technology-mediated learning (e.g., Bearne and Kress 2001; Carrington
and Marsh 2005) and more broadly in surgical education (Bezemer and Kress 2016).
Building on this work, researchers are now looking at how the “choice” and use of
representational modes and media/technologies shape teaching and learning across
the curriculum in different ways – choices that are made by policy makers, teachers,
curriculum and software designers, and students at a national level, a local level, and
in the classroom. In this way, multimodal discourse analysis has begun to shift from
primarily descriptive accounts to connect more explicitly with macro-social, polit-
ical, and cultural concerns within education.
Ongoing multimodal research focuses on the development of more robust theo-
retical concepts and methodological tools. Practices of multimodal transcription and
systematic multimodal analytical processes for working with video data are an area
38 C. Jewitt

where significant work is continuing (e.g., Bezemer and Mavers 2011). The work of
conceptualizing modal hierarchies and relations, problematizing the concept of
semiotic resource, and moving toward multimodal corpus-based approaches to
multimodal meaning making is underway (Bateman 2014).
The need to rethink what it means to learn and to be literate is a thread that runs
through much multimodal educational research. This raises numerous research
questions in relation to learning including: how do representations impact on
thinking and learning? What kinds of opportunities do different modes present for
dialogue? How are modes “valued” in and out of the school? And what kind of
learners do schools want to “produce”? It also raises questions about what literacy is
and could be in a multimodal and multilingual communicational landscape. This line
of questioning has in turn led to research that sets out to ask what multimodality has
to offer as a pedagogic resource and how it can be shaped as a force for change.
The need to engage with social questions (beyond the role of description) is
realized in research that attempts to move from notions of critique to design. As
already described, multimodality can be used to build inventories of semiotic
resources and to understand how resources are used to articulate discourses across
the curriculum. Multimodality can also contribute to the development of new ways
of using semiotic resources. Focusing (through historical analysis) on how semiotic
resources come to be as they are, multimodality can ask why they are as they are.
This is a powerful approach enabling people to see how it is that a “reality” comes to
be represented and offers the potential to imagine it differently and to redesign
it. Highlighting the implications for the learning of how semiotic resources are used
can help to bring resources into the awareness of educational practitioners, and this
brings with it the potential for new ways of using and configuring – designing –
multimodal pedagogy.

Problems and Difficulties

Multimodal analysis is an intensive research process both in relation to time and

labor. One consequence of this is that research on multimodal discourses is generally
small scale and this can restrict the potential of multimodality to comment beyond
the specific to the general. It is perhaps important to be clear, however, that
multimodality can be applied to take a detailed look at “big” issues and questions
through specific instances. Nonetheless, the scale of multimodal research can make it
difficult to use findings for policy and educational strategy. The technical and
theoretical developments mentioned in earlier sections, for example, the develop-
ment of multimodal corpora, may help to overcome this problem. The potential to
combine multimodal analysis with quantitative analysis in innovative ways in the
future is an alternative and promising strategy.
A criticism sometimes made of multimodality is that it can seem rather impres-
sionistic in its analysis. How do you know that this gesture means this or that that
Multimodal Discourses Across the Curriculum 39

image means that? In part, this is an issue of the linguistic heritage of multimodality,
that is, how do you get from linguistics to all modes. In part, it is the view of semiotic
resources as contextual, fluid, and flexible – which makes the task of building “stable
analytical inventories” of multimodal semiotic resources complex. It is perhaps
useful to note that this problem exists for speech or writing as well. The principles
for establishing the “security” of a meaning or a category are the same for multi-
modality as for linguistics (or Philosophy or Fine Art). It is resolved by linking the
meanings people make (whatever the mode) to context and social function. Increas-
ingly multimodal research looks across a range of data (e.g., combining textual/
video analysis with interviews) and toward participant involvement to explore
analytical meanings as one response to this potential problem.
Linked with the problem above is the criticism that multimodality is a kind of
“linguistic imperialism” that imports and imposes linguistic terms on everything.
But these critics overlook the fact that much of the work on multimodality has its
origins in a particular strand of linguistics, namely, the social semiotic theory of
communication first proposed by Halliday (1978). This strand of research on
language and communication foregrounds meaning and the ways in which language
contributes to the construction of social life. The social component of this approach
to language sets it apart from narrower concerns with syntactic structures, language
and mind, and language universals that have long dominated the discipline. From a
multimodal perspective, this view of communication can be applied to all modes, to
gesture and image no less and no more than to speech and writing. That said, the use
of language as a starting point can lead to problems in that it can lead to the
shoehorning of other modes into linguistic concepts and categories – we therefore
need to be sensitive to the particularities of modes and to use linguistic concepts as a
loose framing to support a broader conceptualization of processes of meaning
making.
Description is theoretically grounded and contributes to theory building. There is
a need to actually ask questions of and through detailed description. For instance, to
ask what kind of discourses are being articulated in a classroom and why and what is
the social function of the representations being described. For example, to ask how
the multimodal design of the English classroom shapes what school English is, what
texts are included in English, and how do these choices and processes shape what it
might mean to be student in a particular classroom. This analytical focus is important
to show how discourses are articulated across the curriculum so that they can be
made explicit, shared or challenged, and redesigned. However, multimodal research
can be problematic if it offers an endless detailed description that fails to make clear
the broad questions it seeks to answer.
The question of where the boundaries of its effective work are located is key for
multimodality (as with any approach). In part, this is a question of scale. Multimodal
analysis works best with small elements or with larger level elements treated as
small, namely, as “signs.” But even this approach tends to exclude questions of
aesthetics and ephemeral experiences that are central to lived material experiences, a
gap that exploring synergies between the social sciences and the arts may help us to
40 C. Jewitt

understand (Jewitt et al. 2017). When the aims of enquiry shift to larger-level
relations in process, and historically over time, it may be necessary to shift theoret-
ical paradigms and combine multimodality with other theoretical approaches (Jewitt
2014). Introducing multimodality (Jewitt et al. 2016a) sets out a variety of
approaches to multimodality and how such approaches can be combined.

New Directions

The combination of multimodality with theories that attend to the social at a macro-
level is an area for development. Multimodal theories of communication and repre-
sentation emerged at a “pivotal moment” when boundaries were fraying across the
communicational landscape: modes were being recast, revalued, and redesigned by
the social demands on communication (the remaking of boundaries between nation
states, languages, work and leisure, as well as the use of new technologies). Such
moments and shifts have happened in the past and will continue to happen in the
future. The use and conventions of semiotic resources are established over time and
are fluid and situated as well as being shaped by community and culture. The work of
describing modes and semiotic resources as they are used in education is therefore an
ongoing and important one. To realize the full potential of multimodality research
also suggests the need to make links between what is happening in the classroom and
why it is happening – to ask how the micro-social interactions of the classroom
inflect, reflect, and connect with the concerns of macro-educational and broader
social policies.
The “change potential” of multimodal semiotics is another aspect that may be
developed more in the future. The potential for multimodal research to impact on
teacher training, the design of learning, and curriculum and software design is
immense. By challenging the exclusivity of the link between language and learning,
multimodality opens up the need to better understand the relationship between
multimodal pedagogy and learning. This raises significant questions about the
impact of modes of representation on learning: what does it mean for learning to
have all these modes operating in the classroom? What mode is best for what? How
does the move between modes impact on shapes of knowledge? What does all this
mean for cognitive load and learning? What forms of communication are students
being expected (often implicitly) to understand? Questions concerning what educa-
tionalists want learning to be and how a knowledge of multimodal semiotics could
enable it to be redesigned asks: How can students best be taught the skills to make
and interpret multimodal texts? A future direction for multimodality is to theorize the
relationship between semiosis and learning. This is needed to find pedagogically
productive ways to connect, on the one hand, the ways that students select, adapt,
and transform information in the classroom (including the resources that they bring
into the classroom for learning) and, on the other hand, the expectations and
demands of curriculum subjects.
As the technological landscape evolves, the potential of multimodality to explore,
identify, and explain new semiotic resources for learning and communication is
Multimodal Discourses Across the Curriculum 41

brought to the fore. For instance, new technologies are increasingly drawing the
semiotic features and capacities of touch into digital learning and communication
(Crescenzi et al. 2014). This points to a new direction for research on multimodal
learning, namely, how sensory resources are configured into semiotic modes.
Multimodality provides a pathway to explore this connection between the sensory
material character of communication and the social semiotic character of
communication.
The connection between student practices, curriculum, and pedagogy fore-
grounds the notion of assessment. There is a glaring disjuncture between multimodal
pedagogy, multimodal learning, and a primarily written language assessment pro-
cess. This is a growing focus within multimodal research across the curriculum and a
key direction for research in the future is to tackle the issue of assessment or
“recognition” (Archer 2014; Bezemer and Kress 2016) to ask how best to assess
students’ learning in a multimodal classroom.

Cross-References

▶ Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital

Environments

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: Ethnography and Language Education. In Volume:

Research Methods in Language and Education
Jennifer Rowsell and Diane Collier: Researching Multimodality in Language and
Education. In Volume: Research Methods in Language and Education

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The Digital Divide in Language and
Literacy Education

Tamara Tate and Mark Warschauer

Abstract
The term “digital divide” is used to describe unequal access to digital technology
and information. Simple binary constructions of access, whether of devices or the
Internet, have evolved to cover more complicated and nuanced discussions of
device density, Internet speed, and even relevant skills and social support. Current
concerns about the digital divide no longer simply relate to access to a device or
the Internet but rather to people’s ability to make use of the device and Internet to
engage in meaningful social practices. As such, rather than being understood as a
binary concept, in actuality, the “digital divide” is full of gradations and types of
divides. With the rapid growth of the Internet as a medium for both economic and
social transactions, being part of this network has become essential for inclusion
and participation.

Keywords
Digital divide • Digital technology • Access • Social inclusion

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Digital Divide or Divides? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Workability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Performativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

T. Tate (*) • M. Warschauer

School of Education, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 45

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_5
46 T. Tate and M. Warschauer

Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Introduction

The term “digital divide” is used to describe unequal access to digital technology
and information. Originally focused primarily on the issues of hardware (e.g.,
computers) and Internet access, it has evolved to cover the broader context of their
effective use, including skills, knowledge, and social support. With the rapid
growth of the Internet as a medium for both economic and social transactions,
being part of this network has become essential for inclusion and participation.
This chapter will describe the initial construct of the digital divide and the
evolving broadening of the concept. It then explores some of the components of
the digital divide, including home access, school access, school use, the gender
gap, the generation gap, and other potential gaps of concern. Efforts to address
this digital divide are discussed, particularly focusing on the issues facing
teachers: workability, accessibility, and performativity. Finally, the chapter con-
cludes with a discussion of future directions.

Early Developments

With the growing popularity and use of the Internet following the introduction of
World Wide Web browsers in the 1990s, officials became increasingly aware of the
potential consequences of unequal access to digital information. The term “digital
divide” began showing up in the popular press and was used in a speech by both Al
Gore and Bill Clinton in 1996 (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/ntiahome/101096clin
ton.htm); the same year sociologist Manuel Castells laid out a compelling analysis of
the critical role of information technology access and use in generating wealth, power,
and knowledge in the current era.
The simplest and earliest construct of the digital divide focused on devices and
physical access to devices. This construct allowed for clear lines demarcating
haves and have-nots and easy counting of who has how many. Similarly, access to
the Internet is only somewhat more complicated to measure in binary terms,
although the differences between dial up and broadband access have been
acknowledged.
The degree of access to computers by diverse demographic groups has been well
documented in the United States through reports issued by the National Telecom-
munications and Information Administration (NTIA, www.ntia.doc.gov) based on
the Current Population Surveys (CPS) of about 50,000 US households conducted by
The Digital Divide in Language and Literacy Education 47

the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Census Bureau. Another widely cited
source of related information comes from the telephone surveys of the Pew Internet
& American Life Project (www.pewinternet.org). These reports show increasing
computer ownership and Internet access, with differences largely reflective of
socioeconomic levels (reflecting differences both in economic status and educational
attainment).
Policy initiatives quickly followed the awareness of a gap in digital device access
in the United States. Many of these initiatives focused on schools, such as the E-rate
program, which has provided funding to assist Internet connectivity in schools and
libraries since 1996. Later, the National Broadband Plan, released by the Federal
Communications Commission in 2010, aimed to use stimulus funds to bring broad-
band connectivity and technology education to underserved populations, particularly
in rural areas. Other initiatives during the early years of public access to computing
and the Internet focused on creating low-cost devices to increase the affordability of
device ownership (e.g., Brazil’s People’s Computer, India’s Simputer, and the XO
computer used by One Laptop per Child, www.laptop.org).
Some digital technology advocates, particularly during this earlier period, believe
that access alone can improve education and other social problems. This belief is
exemplified by the “Hole-in-the-Wall” project in New Delhi in 2000, in which an
outdoor computer kiosk was placed in one of the poorest slums without teachers or
instruction. The idea was to allow children to teach themselves at their own pace and
was hailed as groundbreaking by many (e.g., Mitra 1999). Unfortunately the results
were less clear (Warschauer 2003), with many researchers and parents concerned by
the lack of supervision, instruction, collaboration, and value. Similar US projects
with little curricular integration, teacher development, or communication among
stakeholders such as the Birmingham, Alabama One Laptop per Child effort resulted
in dismal results (Warschauer 2011). However, researchers continue the quest for
what they call “minimally invasive education” through projects such as the School in
the Cloud project, which won the 2013 TED prize.

Major Contributions

Simple binary constructions of access, whether to devices or the Internet, have

evolved to cover more complicated and nuanced discussions of device density,
Internet speed, and even related skills and social support. Indeed, digital technology
and the Internet have environmental, social, and human consequences far beyond
their immediate purposes. The same technology can have quite different effects in
varying contexts. What is most important about digital technology and information
is no longer seen as simple access to a device or the Internet but rather people’s
ability to make use of them to engage in meaningful social practices (Warschauer
2003). As such, rather than a binary concept, the “digital divide” is full of gradations
and types of divides.
48 T. Tate and M. Warschauer

Digital Divide or Divides?

Home Access
Computer access in the home allows a degree of flexibility and autonomy difficult to
replicate elsewhere. For example, while teachers in higher socioeconomic commu-
nities generally assume home access, teachers in lower socioeconomic communities
have to be more cautious when facilitating homework and projects requiring home
use of digital technology and provide alternative assignments or access. Students
with home access may also have the ability to explore and create in ways that school
access rarely accommodates.
Census data from the United States shows that while progress has been made
providing computer and Internet access to low-income and minority households,
access remains uneven. Computer ownership continues to grow, with 79% of
households reporting computers at home in 2012 according to NTIA, a 3 percentage
point increase from 2011 and 28-point increase from 2000. Computer use tends to be
higher in households with children (e.g., 2010 data shows 86% of families with
school-age children had computer access compared to 78% of households without
children according to Pew). Low-income households (less than $25,000/year) were
significantly less likely (57%) than higher-earning ($100,000 or more/year) house-
holds (97%) to have a home computer in the 2012 NTIA data. Educational levels
also correlate with ownership; households with no high school graduates (49%) are
far less likely than households with college graduates (94%) to own a computer in
2012. Racial breakdowns show Asian-Americans with the highest computer own-
ership and African-Americans with the lowest. International data swings even more
dramatically with 42% of students in Mexico, 29% of students in Turkey, 74% of
students in Indonesia, and 61% of students in Vietnam not having a computer at
home (OECD 2016).
The density of usage, or people per computer, affects the amount of time a
computer is available for use by schoolchildren, for example, rather than adults, or
for homework versus unstructured uses. One study suggests that there are dramatic
differences in household members per computer by racial/ethnic group (Warschauer
and Matuchniak 2010). White families have roughly one household member per
computer, and Hispanic families have nearly four people per computer. This dispar-
ity would certainly restrict computer time available to Hispanic children particularly
for nonschool-related exploration and creation, which can be particularly useful for
students learning a new or second language. The age, quality, and specifications of
the actual hardware owned also impact the quality of home computer access.
Robust computer access requires more than simply owning a computer, it requires
access to the Internet, preferably reliable, fast access. Internet use is similar to
computer use: The percentage of Internet users generally increased with higher
family income levels. For example, in 2012, approximately 76% of people with
family incomes from $40,000 to $49,999 used the Internet, compared to 91% of
people with family incomes of $100,000 or more (NCES 2015). The percentage of
Internet users tended to increase with higher levels of educational attainment. For
example, 55% of persons who had not completed high school used the Internet,
The Digital Divide in Language and Literacy Education 49

compared with 66% of those who had completed only a high school diploma or
equivalent and 93% of those with a bachelor’s or higher degree (NCES 2015). In
2012, 72% of US households used broadband at home according to NTIA, while 2%
of households continued to rely on dial-up service. Broadband access allows for
easier, faster use, especially of applications requiring large amounts of data such as
video and sophisticated multimedia content of the type most commonly considered
valuable for school-age children.
Social and contextual factors are also important in shaping the quality of home
computer access (see discussion in Attewell and Battle 1999). Family and friends
influence the amount and type of computer usage by students. Indeed, home
computers may generate another “Sesame Street effect” or “Matthew effect,”
where advantaged students gain more from the innovation than disadvantaged
students (Attewell and Battle 1999). For example, research suggests that students
in lower socioeconomic areas tend to use computers more for content consumption
(passively viewing text, images, video, etc. created by others) and social uses (social
media, texting, etc.) and less for content creation (authoring their own text, images,
and video to express their own ideas) and interest-driven uses (learning more about a
subject of interest, exploring personal passions; see, e.g., Witte and Mannon 2010;
Zillien and Hargittai 2009). In order for students to use their home computers
successfully for more challenging, creative, and constructive purposes, they require
not only a higher level of technological resources (quality graphics, multimedia
capacity, digital recorders, etc.) but also social resources such as a community that
values and enables the sharing of media knowledge and interests. Family and friends
also provide resources for troubleshooting as issues inevitably arise and support is
critical in developing important digital literacy skills.

School Access
School access refers to the availability of digital technology in schools. If public
schools can help compensate for unequal access to computers at home, they can
provide an important means for promoting social inclusion and equality. As of 2009,
97% of teachers reported having a computer in the classroom every day, and the ratio
of students to computers in the classroom was 5.3:1 according to the National Center
for Education Statistics (2010). Despite improved access to computers and the
Internet, however, disparities between the quality of hardware, density of hardware,
and bandwidth remain.

School Use
Persistent achievement gaps exist in the United States particularly for non-Asian
minorities and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds (Chapman et al.
2011). Digital technology offers one avenue to meet these goals through its power
to facilitate personalized learning experiences. However, according to a recent meta-
analysis (Means 2010) of online learning studies, average students in online learning
conditions perform only modestly better than those in face-to-face instruction, and the
magnitude of the difference varies depending on several contextual factors. Thus,
increases in student outcomes depend on more than simple access to digital
50 T. Tate and M. Warschauer

technology. Instead, student outcomes depend on the ways in which technology is

implemented and integrated with both the learning context and learner characteristics
so that meaningful curriculum experiences, guided by knowledgeable teachers, can
promote higher levels of student engagement and motivation (Hassler et al. 2015;
Warschauer 2011). The question has become not whether digital learning environ-
ments can be effective but how to improve these experiences so that more students, in
particular from low-income and/or linguistic- and ethnic-minority backgrounds,
receive greater benefit. Concentration on the hardware itself, to the exclusion of
other factors such as teacher training, technical support, and curriculum reform, has
been behind many of the limitations seen in school use to date (Warschauer 2003).
A number of studies (e.g., Becker 2000; Schofield and Davidson 2004;
Warschauer 2003; Wenglinsky 1998) provide evidence of a strong correlation
between family income and race with the type of school use students encounter.
Generally, students in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods or who are black or
Hispanic have tended to use computers for lower-level drill and practice activities
compared to more complex and authentic activities. To some extent, this reflects that
students with lower literacy and language skills require more basic practice to reach
proficiency levels (Wenglinsky 1998). Nonetheless, it is important for teachers of all
levels of students to use digital technology in effective, meaningful ways. Indeed,
technology assists learners the most when it is not the sole or even the main focus of
teaching and learning but rather is used to help learners enter new communities,
address meaningful problems, and create authentic works (Warschauer 2003).
Blended learning strategies that combine digital and classroom instruction within
formal educational programs are becoming more widespread (Dell Foundation 2014;
Means 2010; Hashey and Stahl 2014; Staker and Horn 2012). The limited number of
rigorous studies of blended learning in K-12 environment (Dell Foundation 2014;
Means et al. 2014) suggests that the effective use of digital learning is undermined by
inadequate infrastructure and technology, insufficient teacher support, inconsistent
quality of available online instruction, lack of coordination with curriculum, limited
educator understanding and trusting of the student level data created by such pro-
grams, lack of sufficient student self-regulation for independent online work, and
lack of a good fit between the online learning opportunities and the motivational
characteristics of the students (cf., Dell Foundation 2014).
In addition, the digital interactions can provide data to the teacher and student that
should improve educational outcomes (Aleven et al. 2013; Baker and Siemens 2014)
if the feedback from the data is provided in a relevant, meaningful, and actionable
fashion. Teachers can customize the pace, focus of instruction, modality, and other
factors to meet students’ unique learning needs and interests (Hashey and Stahl
2014). Today, however, teachers are often inundated with poorly visualized and
meaningless data and little opportunity to modify digital content or pathways.

Gender Gap
Do boys and girls use digital technology differently? Early studies raised concerns
that girls were being shut out of computer use, and current efforts to increase the
The Digital Divide in Language and Literacy Education 51

number of girls learning to code, majoring in computer science, and working in the
information technology industry reflect similar concerns. Today research tends to
show that both genders use computers roughly the same amount but often in
different ways. In general, girls seem to use digital technology for social, relational
uses and boys tend to use it more for information and gaming (Lehnart et al. 2005).
Teachers should be cognizant that it is important to use collaborative games and
simulations in ways that allow boys to leverage their interest in gaming and girls
their relational interests to improve academic engagement and achievement.

Generation Gap
Finally, there is a gap between teachers and students: their comfort with digital
technology and background knowledge may be quite different (Prensky 2001). This
can be an important opportunity to model life-long learning, the value of making
mistakes, and problem solving techniques while empowering students – and often
the less academically engaged students may be the ones showing leadership in
digital technology if permitted.

Other Gaps
Additional gaps have been suggested as relevant to understanding digital technology
usage. Perhaps there is also a linguistic divide, because the confluence of the
Internet allowing for more international communication and the increase in the
prevalence of English has served to accelerate and amplify the dominant role of
English as a global lingua franca (Crystal 1997). Broad international forums are
often predominantly conducted in English. This reality can be leveraged by teachers
of English as a second language to provide authentic practice for their students.
Conversely, the Internet also protects linguistic pluralism by connecting small
numbers of speakers over wide distances and allowing the archiving and sharing
of minority and endangered languages (Warschauer 2003).
For both students and teachers, learning is as much about enculturation as it is about
transmission or discovery. It takes place in communities through a process of appren-
ticeship. An ideal learning situation provides the kind of scaffolding needed for
apprenticeship learning to take place in a safe, supported way. This scaffolding might
include the provision of models and resources, the organizing of learning activities in
desirable sequences, and the use of conversation and discussion to tackle difficult
questions. In addition, learning environments that include a great deal of informal
peer networking maximize students’ opportunities to learn (Means et al. 2014). Schools
must create these types of environments to break down the digital divides. However,
US schooling has been highly resistant to reform, and meaningful reforms that are
enacted primarily benefit economically privileged students (Cuban 2013). Reforms in
low-socioeconomic schools generally take place on the margins of the educational
process and fail to seriously transform the learning process (Cuban 1986). The require-
ments to cover curriculum, prepare for standardized tests, and maintain discipline while
under significant funding constraints limit the ability of teachers to engage in creative,
meaningful technology projects.
52 T. Tate and M. Warschauer

Work in Progress

The reasons for the disparities discussed above are varied and involve issues of
economics, infrastructure, politics, education, and culture (Warschauer 2003).
Schools have been a major focus of efforts to overcome the digital divide. Recent
political and policy efforts have been aimed at K-16 educational settings. In June
2013, President Obama announced the ConnectED initiative, which is aimed at
getting 99% of American students access to next-generation broadband by 2018.
EveryoneOn is a related private effort, with national partners working together to
increase access to free or low-cost home Internet access nationwide. The E-rate
program expanded its goals when renewed in 2014 as the E-rate Modernization
Order to include provision of high-speed broadband, particularly Wi-Fi to school
and libraries. Future Ready Schools is a multipronged effort led by the Alliance for
Excellent Education and the US Department of Education designed to maximize
digital learning opportunities and provide schools with support to align technology
and digital learning plans with instructional best practices and quality implementa-
tion. These are examples of some of the initiatives currently aimed at improving
some of the issues related to the digital divide.

Problems and Difficulties

The digital divide(s) create(s) a daunting task for teachers, especially in low income
and linguistically diverse communities. Some of the problems and difficulties faced
by educators include issues of workability, complexity, and performativity.

Workability

Workability refers to the everyday logistical challenges of coordinating access:

keeping it running, scheduling shared use, and updating software and applications.
This must be done in a highly mobile community of teachers and children passing
through schools for 4–8 years, and of course the highest turnover rate and mobility of
students are in found the most challenging social environments.

Complexity

Even if all the digital technology works and is available, it is difficult to integrate
quality usage into the (ever-evolving) curriculum. Students have different levels of
content knowledge, technology skills, etc. The current environment places a great
deal of importance on standardized test scores, many of which are not testing the
type of skills best suited to digital technology and only recently are the assessments
administered digitally (requiring modality-shifting by students who may not be used
to writing on computers, e.g.). Nonetheless, designing technology-enhanced lessons
The Digital Divide in Language and Literacy Education 53

for culturally and linguistically diverse students can be done and can lead to
meaningful learning. In addition, teachers may be able to help students use out-of-
school time to improve literacy skills through introduction to authentic communities
like fan fiction (Thorne et al. 2009). But educators should note that there is a
distinction between basic interpersonal communication skills and academic lan-
guage skills: Even though students may learn conversational skills by chatting
online, most require explicit instruction in using cognitively challenging language
necessary for fully participating in academic discourse contexts.

Performativity

Another difficulty often encountered is “performativity,” meaning uses of digital

technology for its own sake rather than to increase meaningful learning goals
(Warschauer 2011). Students may be able to design complicated PowerPoint pre-
sentations including sound and animation but fail to have simple understanding of
the content or meaningful communication skills. Comfort and fluency with hard-
ware, software, and the Internet are not ends in themselves but are important
components of broader learning goals and should be taught within that context.

Future Directions

As predicted (Warschauer 2003), with the use of the Internet becoming more
widespread, it has also become stratified, with some using it principally as an
entertainment and social communication device and others using it to seek and
create new knowledge. Thus, digital inequality research is increasingly looking at
the use of digital technology, moving beyond simple access to look at which groups
are using information online, for what purpose and for what length of time. Zillien
and Hargittai (2009) refer to this as the “Internet in practice.” Variations in use and
outcomes for different subpopulations are also being explored. For example, the
“digital production gap” – who is creating digital content – is one focus of current
research (Schradie 2011).
In order for all students to participate in educationally relevant uses of the Internet
(broadly construed), it must be accessible to people with various disabilities. Uni-
versal Design for Learning is a framework for the design of digital learning tools and
environments that are flexible and powerful enough to meet the challenge (and
opportunity) of personalized and socially interactive learning (Rose and Meyer
2002). The roots of UDL lie in several decades of research and development on
learning designs for the most marginalized and unsuccessful of students – students
with disabilities, English-language learners, and so forth. The UDL framework takes
advantage of developments in two complementary fields: (1) advances in the modern
“learning sciences” (especially cognitive and affective neuroscience as they relate to
variability in learning) and (2) advances in the technologies available for teaching
and learning (especially those technologies that expand the options and supports
54 T. Tate and M. Warschauer

available for “non-average” students, Meyer et al. 2014). UDL stresses the impor-
tance of optimizing individual choice and autonomy and fostering collaboration and
community. Neither of these design features are yet pervasive in cyber-learning
environments. For example, many “adaptive learning environments” preclude sig-
nificant choice on the part of the learner – and thus the engagement that comes with
it. Similarly, many cyber-learning environments “individualize” learning in ways
that preclude meaningful social interaction and support. As is often the case in
instructional interventions, many tasks in digital-learning environments are designed
for a mythical average student. In contrast, the UDL framework emphasizes that
there are no “average” learners in practice and that effective designs must take into
account the fundamental differences that actually exist in any population of learners,
especially to achieve equitable results with the most vulnerable and disenfranchised
(Rappolt-Schlichtmann et al. 2013).
Future directions in school use focus on optimizing blended learning – which
combines in class and online learning environments. Blended learning seems par-
ticularly well suited to providing opportunities to personalize learning so that it
meets the needs of a diverse range of students, particularly students who are low
performing, underrepresented minorities, and poor (e.g., Walkington 2013). Prom-
ising advances are being made in adapting instruction based on the characteristics of
individual learners, including their prior knowledge, preferences, goals, motivation-
related beliefs, mindsets, and interests (Wigfield et al. 2015). Digital technology
offers the opportunity to allow educators and learners to interact with, customize,
and control digital learning environments. Digital technologies used in conjunction
with evidence-based practices offer unprecedented opportunities to support the
mastery of and interest in content areas in personalized ways. Digital media that
are dynamic, individualized, and interactive can support motivation and skill acqui-
sition across a diverse range of learners (Graham et al. 2004). Integrating digital
learning opportunities into ongoing classroom practices if implemented with adher-
ence to UDL principles can allow teachers and students to access content that is
interesting, relevant to each student’s life spaces and identities, within each student’s
zone of proximal development, and scaffolded to allow each student to reach higher
levels of learning than otherwise possible (Means et al. 2014).
The concept of a digital divide has helped focus public attention on a critical
social issue: the extent to which the diffusion of digital technology and the Internet
fosters stratification and marginalization or development and equality (Warschauer
2003). The policy challenge is not to overcome the divide but instead to expand
access and use for promoting inclusion.

Cross-References

▶ Identity in Mediated Contexts of Transnationalism and Mobility

▶ Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy
The Digital Divide in Language and Literacy Education 55

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Brian Street: New Literacies, New Times: Developments in Literacy Studies. In

Volume: Literacies and Language Education

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Sociolinguistic Insights into Digital
Communication

Lawrence Williams

Abstract
This article provides an overview of research in two interrelated areas of
language learning and teaching: digital communication (sometimes referred
to as computer-mediated communication or CMC) and sociolinguistics. The
research selected for inclusion in this article is primarily centered around the
development of the sociolinguistic competence of learners of French because
this simply happens to be the focus of major contributions in this field. None-
theless, many of the studies reviewed here represent the use of a range of
different types of digital communication for many different types of tasks and
educational configurations.
The early developments and major contributions in this area of inquiry all deal
with the analysis of sociolinguistic dimensions of language. This means that the
research reviewed in this article is not preoccupied with aspects of communication
that are right or wrong. Instead, these are features of language and discourse that
are variable and, therefore, can only be considered appropriate or inappropriate
according to any number of contextual factors (e.g., age, location, political
affiliation, region, social standing, etc.).

Keywords
Computer-mediated communication • Language learning • Sociolinguistics

L. Williams (*)
Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of North Texas, Denton, TX,
USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 57

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_6
58 L. Williams

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Introduction

This article provides an overview of research in two interrelated areas of language

learning and teaching: digital communication (sometimes referred to as computer-
mediated communication or CMC) and sociolinguistics. As such, only work that uses
digital communication in whole or in part to foster the development of sociolinguistic
competence has been included. However, there are other articles that deal specifically
with digital communication and sociolinguistics as separate areas of inquiry.
The research selected for inclusion in this article is primarily centered around the
development of the sociolinguistic competence of learners of French because this
simply happens to be the focus of major contributions in this field. Nonetheless, many
of the studies reviewed in the next two sections represent the use of a range of
different types of digital communication for many different types of tasks and
educational configurations.
The early developments and major contributions in this area all deal with the
analysis of sociolinguistic dimensions of language. This means that the research
reviewed in this article is not preoccupied with aspects of communication that are
right or wrong. Instead, these are features of language and discourse that are variable
and, therefore, can only be considered appropriate or inappropriate according to any
number of contextual factors (e.g., age, location, political affiliation, region, social
standing, etc.).

Early Developments

Although the main contributions to this area of research have been produced in the
context of (text based) synchronous chat, one early study (Kinginger 1998) took
advantage of videoconferencing technology to link a class of 14 learners of French in
the Midwest of the United States and a class of 10 learners of English in Brittany,
France. As noted by the author, videoconferencing had already been adopted as a
widely used tool for language instruction, but it was typically used within a one-way
transmission paradigm. “In [such a] model, although there may be interaction
between teacher and student, there is no expectation that the rules of classroom
Sociolinguistic Insights into Digital Communication 59

language use will be altered. The physical arrangement may be different, but the main
business of teaching and ‘studenting’ remains the same” (Kinginger 1998, p. 502).
Therefore, one goal of Kinginger’s study was to promote active engagement by the
learners in both classrooms. “Specifically, during the videoconferencing event, the
objective is to encourage topical, relevant, face-to-face exchanges among the mem-
bers of classes in two (or potentially more) locations” (p. 502).
The motivation for this type of research stems from observations by Kinginger
(1998) and others (e.g., Di Vito 1991, 1992; Gilmore 2007; Kramsch 1985) that
textbooks often provide a limited range of discourse options for students. In the case
of French, for example, dialogs that are presented in textbooks as models for spoken
interaction typically reflect more formal, written language. Moreover, various struc-
tures and lexical items are often presented to students without contextual information
that could allow learners to make decisions regarding which items are more or less
appropriate in general or specific circumstances. “The initial decision to include
spoken forms must overcome prejudice concerning the ‘correctness’ of spoken
language” (Kinginger 1998, p. 503). Another issue highlighted by Kinginger is the
choice that must be made on the part of teachers to include or exclude different
varieties of spoken French. In sum, previous “studies suggest both that spoken
French has its own characteristic structure and forms, and that these forms are not
routinely included in American French language instruction, despite the ubiquity of
the forms and despite emphasis on speaking in communicative and proficiency-
oriented teaching” (Kinginger 1998, p. 504). Therefore, the overarching goal of
this study was to create an interactive communication space that would allow
students greater access to authentic discourse, and at the same time, a recorded
version of this videoconferencing event could be used as a basis for additional
learning.
Kinginger’s (1998) study is based on a 30-min period of time (half of the class
meeting) when French was used during the videoconferencing session and subse-
quent work done in the American classroom. An analysis of the interaction led
Kinginger to “conclude that the only attempt at learner-learner scaffolding during
the videoconference resulted in a difficult and face-threatening event for [one of
the American learners]” (p. 507). The difficulties encountered by the American
students highlight the importance of understanding sociolinguistic dimensions of
(transcultural) communication. Learners who interact only with their own teacher
and classmates do not necessarily gain an awareness of the consequences related to
choosing and using appropriate or inappropriate structures, styles, and registers.
One tremendous advantage of videoconferencing for the learners, as explained by
Kinginger, was that they were able to study authentic spoken French discourse
(interrogatives, pronouns, negation, etc.) at their own pace after the session had
ended. Although this study raised several issues, the two most important of these
are the following: “Foreign languages will need to be explained to learners in ways
that account for social and situational variation. Ultimately, if [native speaker]
models are available and are adequately described, the qualities of desired com-
municative ability can themselves become a matter of choice” (Kinginger 1998,
p. 511).
60 L. Williams

Another early study that highlighted sociolinguistic dimensions of digital com-

munication in a language learning context explores the developmental trajectory of a
Hong Kong immigrant teenager learning English in a California high school. In this
article by Kramsch et al. (2000), the authors explore the acquisition of second
language (L2) literacy through “two tenets of communicative language teaching—
authenticity of the input and authorship of the language user—in an electronic
environment” (p. 78). This work mirrors the previously reported study by Kinginger
(1998) in that the authors recognize the importance of authenticity and authorship in
the acquisition of sociolinguistic dimensions of communication. Moreover, the
authors highlight the need to undertake research that goes beyond analyzing tradi-
tional modes of communication, such as speaking and writing. “The advent of
computer technology in language teaching thus coincides with a renewed interest
among foreign language educators in the text, as the site where content and form
converge for authentic communication (Kramsch & Andersen, 1999)” (Kramsch
et al. 2000, p. 80). The authors adopt a postmodern approach to the analysis of
computer-mediated communication and discourse borrowed from Graddol’s (1994)
writings, which describe three different perspectives on language: structuralist,
social, and postmodern. According to Graddol, a postmodern perspective on lan-
guage “is concerned pre-eminently with texts, . . . it sees text as a combination of
many semiotic systems (e.g., words, typographical conventions, layout, photographs,
graphs, diagrams) that are uniquely historicized” (Kramsch et al. 2000, p. 81). From
this postmodern perspective, the authors argue that “physical characteristics of
computer hardware, rather than being separate from the software and from us, its
users, in fact define our actions, that is, our existence. In particular, they bring about
fundamental changes in the way we use language and other semiotic systems to
represent ourselves to ourselves and to others, and in the way we represent the world”
(p. 83).
One of the authors (Lam) of this study focused specifically on “young Hong Kong
immigrants in California high schools” (Kramsch et al. 2000, p. 89), and her case
study analyzed the development of one student (Almon) who “felt discriminated
against in school because of his Chinese accent and worried about his future life and
career prospects because of his inability to speak English like a native” (p. 89). Lam
observed that Almon was ultimately able to develop a sense of authorial authority and
narrative freedom in online contexts, which he had not been able to accomplish in
traditional communication environments. “Whereas classroom English contributed
to Almon’s sense of exclusion or marginalization (his inability to speak like a native),
. . . the English he acquired on the Internet enabled him to develop a sense of
belonging and connectedness to a global English-speaking community” (p. 95).
The two studies summarized in this section as early developments in sociolin-
guistic perspectives on digital communication in language teaching and learning
highlight the additional benefits that learners can gain if lessons and projects take
advantage of new technologies in order to expand discourse options, foster authorial
authority, and prioritize authenticity.
Sociolinguistic Insights into Digital Communication 61

Major Contributions

In a series of three articles (Belz and Kinginger 2002, 2003; Kinginger and Belz
2005) focusing primarily on the development of the use of second-person pronouns
in French and German, Belz and Kinginger offer substantial insights into learners’
abilities to determine appropriate ways of interacting in intercultural communication
environments. This type of research – and many of the other studies reviewed later in
this section – demonstrates the close ties between sociolinguistics and pragmatics,
two areas of (applied) linguistics that are inextricable linked. In the present article, the
acquisition or development of pragmatic competence has been included with the
acquisition or development of sociolinguistic dimensions of discourse, language, and
communication.
In the first article (Belz and Kinginger 2002) of this series, the authors explore L2
pragmatic development in the context of telecollaborative learning. “In particular, we
focus on the ‘microgenesis’ or development of the T/V (i.e., instantiations of you)
distinction in pronouns of address as a test case representative of broader L2
pragmatic concerns” (p. 189). The article offers two case studies, one using data
from learners of French (tu vs. vous) and the other using data from learners of German
(du vs. Sie). The case studies in this article demonstrate that even when students are
told specifically that the use of T (e.g., tu for French and du for German) would
probably seem normal to their telecollaboration partners, some students alternated
between different forms of T and V, sometimes within the same communicative
activity or episode. However, Belz and Kinginger observed that direct contact with
native speakers appeared to have had a positive influence on the US learners’
development of appropriate second-person pronoun use. The authors specifically
argue for greater emphasis on language awareness. “It is not rules that must be
acquired, but awareness of complexity, sensitivity to social cues, and the form-
meaning pairings that serve to index this knowledge within particular settings”
(p. 209).
In the second article of this series, Belz and Kinginger (2003) once again focus on
sociolinguistic and pragmatic development, but this time using only data from the
learners of German in their 3-year telecollaboration project. This study “examines the
microgenetic development of second-person pronoun use in a German-American
telecollaborative partnership” (p. 591) over a 2-month period. Data used for the
analysis by Belz and Kinginger were collected from Web-based biographies, e-mails,
student-designed websites, and multiroom, synchronous chat.
At the beginning of this study, the authors highlight the fact that the German
learners of English who initiated contact with the American learners of German used
only T forms. “Furthermore, there are no instances of V use by any of the German
students over the entire course of the partnership” (p. 617). Nonetheless, the authors
observed that in messages from American students, V use was present, sometimes
along with T use. This finding is very similar to what had been reported in the first
study in this series (Belz and Kinginger 2002).
62 L. Williams

Two main findings can be drawn from this work. First, even if learners have
mastered the morphological and syntactic structures of a particular language, they
may not be able to deploy those structures in sociolinguistic and pragmatically
appropriate ways. Second, this study provides a clear reminder that telecollaboration
can be a powerful learning context for something as complex as the development of
sociolinguistic and pragmatic dimensions of language and communication.
In the third article of this series, Kinginger and Belz (2005) once again explored
second-person pronoun use in a telecollaboration learning context (case study 1).
This article also includes data from study abroad research (case study 2); however,
that part of the analysis is not summarized here.
Case study 1 focuses on a learner of German, Grace, “a 19-year-old white woman
in her third year of undergraduate university study with a major in history and a minor
in German” (p. 378). This particular learner was chosen as the focus of this study
because she did not necessarily fit neatly into one of the three categories of develop-
ment (abrupt development, gradual development, and persistent variation), proposed
in the previous article in this series (Belz and Kinginger 2003). “In particular, we
were interested in investigating the relationship between Grace’s socio-pragmatic
knowledge (In what circumstances and with what interlocutors should a speaker of
German use T? When should V be used?), her pragmalinguistic knowledge (Which
of the ten forms for ‘you’ in German are T forms? Which are V forms?), and her
grammatical knowledge (What are the appropriate forms of ‘you’ in the various cases
in German and for the category of number?) . . . as well as her metapragmatic
awareness of all three types of knowledge” (p. 379).
A microgenetic analysis of Grace’s trajectory during the period of the tele-
collaboration project revealed that the inability to classify or understand her devel-
opment was due to the fact that several dimensions of second-person pronoun use are
interrelated. For example, the inappropriate use of a form of address may be due to a
lack of grammatical competence or pragmalinguistic knowledge. For Grace, “gram-
matical competence with respect to number for the T form (‘du’ vs. ‘ihr’) and case
(‘ihr’ vs. ‘euch’) [was] not yet firmly established” (p. 404). Moreover, “once she
adopt[ed] the T form, she still need[ed] to develop her pragmalinguistic knowledge
with respect to the ‘ihr’ form since this form is polysemous in German and can index
both T and V” (p. 404). The authors found that although Grace received explicit peer
assistance from her German telecollaboration keypals, she was not always able to
understand their feedback and see its relevance to her own sociolinguistic and
pragmatic development. The authors note that their findings align with work by
Aljafreh and Lantolf (1994), “who found that the relevance of explicit and implicit
correction in L2 tutoring varied for different pairings of novice learners and expert
teachers such that the type and amount of feedback had to be negotiated for each
individual pair” (p. 405).
Overall, the three articles focusing on sociolinguistic and pragmatic development
in telecollaboration contexts by Belz and Kinginger serve as models for future
research in other languages, and they also demonstrate the complexities of sociolin-
guistic dimensions of communication. The most important is the awareness that this
series of articles has raised concerning the importance of giving students access to
Sociolinguistic Insights into Digital Communication 63

expanded discourse options through networked technologies, especially for the

development of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence.
In another series of article, van Compernolle and Williams (primarily) focused on
learners’ development of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence in digital com-
munication, and although these articles also feature second-person pronouns prom-
inently, they expand the scope of this area of inquiry to include additional variable
features of French, such as negation (e.g., ne . . . pas ‘not’) and the use of on “one”
vs. nous “we.” The catalyst for this series of articles was a dissertation by Williams
(2003) in which he categorized different areas of focus (i.e., orientations) of the
participants who had been assigned to chat in triads comprising one student in French
1 (first semester), another in French 2 (second semester), and one more in French
3 (third semester). The purpose for having a member of each group from a different
learning level was to observe how learners with perceived lower levels of proficiency
would be able to provide peer-assistance performance to those with perceived higher
levels and vice versa. In the case of participants’ orientation to sociolinguistic
dimensions of communication and language, no clear patterns for providing peer-
assisted performance emerged because the students largely ignored inappropriate
uses of second-person pronouns. This finding reinforces the importance of early work
by Kinginger (1998), which demonstrated the enormous potential for learning
opportunities involving interaction in contexts (e.g., videoconferencing with native
speakers) where learners must necessarily be aware of and understand the real-life
implications of selecting specific sociolinguistic features of a linguistic system and
deploying them in ways that are culturally and socially appropriate.
Since the original study (Williams 2003) was designed as an initial exploration of
discourse and interaction among learners from different instructional levels, the
analysis did not go beyond categorizing and identifying difficulties encountered by
learners. The results demonstrated that learners encountered a substantial number of
difficulties related specifically to sociolinguistic dimensions of communication.
Therefore, the replication study (van Compernolle et al. 2011) examined more
closely the patterns of appropriate and inappropriate use of second-person pronouns.
The first result of interest in the replication study is that “although some students
tended to use one pronoun or the other more often for singular address, not one
learner used T or V categorically” (van Compernolle et al. 2011, p. 74). Another
important result (also clearly demonstrated in the original study) is that the partici-
pants were seemingly unfazed by any inappropriate use of second-person pronouns.
Nonetheless, in the one case (out of 787 times that a pronoun of address was used
inappropriately) where a participant mentioned that students could use T forms with
each other, one of his classmates did indeed switch to using T forms; however, the
third member of their chat group continued to use V singular. This is actually not too
surprising since a variable rule (VARBRUL, a type of linear regression) analysis
showed that V was quite problematic for these learners. “Pronoun (i.e., T vs. V)
emerges as the most influential independent variable (range = 51). The results
indicate that V is very unlikely to be used appropriately in comparison to T” (van
Compernolle et al. 2011, p. 81). Overall, the results of the initial study and the
replication study are strikingly similar. In both cases, it became clear that learners
64 L. Williams

need additional and/or better instruction and guidance regarding second-person

pronoun use beyond what is currently available in introductory and intermediate
textbooks.
In two related articles exploring learners’ awareness and use of sociolinguistic
variation in French, van Compernolle and Williams (2009b, 2012) focused on the
morpheme ne. The typical negation structure in French is the following:
[ne + verb + post-verbal morpheme such as pas “not,” jamais “never,” etc.].
“Although ne is required, or at least expected, in the formal written language and
in speech produced in formal contexts, a general preference for post-verbal negation
(e.g., verbal negation without ne) has been observed in everyday conversation in
different parts of the francophone world” (van Compernolle and Williams 2009b,
pp. 417–418).
In their first article examining the variable use of ne, van Compernolle and Williams
(2009b) compared a corpus of noneducational synchronous chat discourse and a corpus
of synchronous chat discourse produced by US university-level learners in their first,
second, or third year of French. The data from the noneducational context served as a
point of departure and benchmark for determining what learners should be taught to
anticipate if and when they eventually decided to engage in computer-mediated
(synchronous) communication outside of class or even long after they were no longer
learning and using French in a formal instructional setting.
The data from the noneducational context (i.e., involving participants who clearly
seem to be primarily native speakers of French) showed that ne retention was below
20% overall, with younger people (i.e., participants in a public chat room with the
name 18–25ans “ages18–25”) using ne 12.05% of the time and a slightly older age
group (i.e., participants in a public chat room with the name 25–35ans “ages25–35”)
using ne at a rate of 19.48%. When compared to the data from the educational
context, the enormous difference is striking. Learners in their first and second year
used ne on average 96% of the time, and for third-year learners, ne was used at a rate
of just under 80%. When taken together, this represents an average use of ne in
92.46% of all cases of the educational context.
Given the noticeable difference of ne use in educational contexts compared to
noneducational contexts, van Compernolle and Williams (2012) developed a peda-
gogical intervention designed to improve learners’ sociolinguistic competence. The
participants in this study were at the third-semester level of instruction in French at a
US university, and sources of data included notes from the authors’ observations of
classroom interactions, students’ explanations of the variable use of ne, and discourse
produced by the students during small-group synchronous chat sessions. Although
the pedagogical plan included only one formal classroom meeting devoted solely to
explicit instruction about the variable use of ne, various aspects of sociolinguistic
variation were “woven into the broader context of gaining a conceptual understand-
ing of variation in French [throughout the semester], not as isolated phenomena but as
part of a functional sociolinguistic system” (van Compernolle and Williams 2012,
p. 191).
By the end of the data collection period (i.e., one semester), the overall frequency
of ne use by this group of learners decreased from 98.5% to 90.0%. Of specific
Sociolinguistic Insights into Digital Communication 65

interest in this study is the observation that “all but one learner was able to define and
describe ne variation accurately by the end of the semester, and the majority of them
were also able to identify ne variation as an index of (in) formality in the analysis of
two texts. Further, some learners developed an understanding of ne presence versus
absence that transcended the formal/informal distinction, describing ne presence in
terms of emphasis or the evocation of one’s identity at the time of utterance”
(van Compernolle and Williams 2012, p. 200). This type of pedagogical intervention
revealed that learners’ conceptual understanding of variation does not immediately
carry over into the discourse that they produce, “especially when [they] are struggling
to unlearn what has been learned previously” (p. 192), a phenomenon that has been
explored in depth by Negueruela (2003). For this reason, van Compernolle and
Williams argue that “variation ought to be systematically introduced at the earliest
stages of L2 education” (p. 200).
As an expansion of their work on learners’ awareness of and control over the
variable features of French, van Compernolle and Williams (2009a) have also
explored yes/no questions and the subject pronouns nous “we” and on “one”/“we.”
In this study, 30 US university students in their first, second, or third year of French
instruction “engaged in several [50-minute] interlearner synchronous chat discus-
sions over the course of one semester” (p. 479). A corpus of noneducational data
(approximately 78,000 words) was used as a point of comparison with the data
produced by learners.
Not surprisingly, the first- and second-year learners used informal features of
French (i.e., those typical of everyday conversation) much less frequently than the
participants in their third year of French instruction. Even the third-year learners
were, for example, still quite far below (presumed) native speakers’ (in synchronous
chat rooms) use of the informal subject-verb interrogative structure (73.9% for third-
year learners vs. 97.7% for participants who produced the discourse in the corpus of
noneducational data). The difference between learners’ and non-learners’ use of on
was even greater in the case of third-year learners (64.2%) compared to data from the
noneducational corpus (95.7%). The analysis also revealed that learners seem to learn
sociolinguistic variables separately rather than producing discourse that includes
parallel levels or types of variation.
The series of articles by van Compernolle and Williams confirms that the typical
elementary and intermediate language curriculum (at least for French, in this case)
does not provide students with sufficient awareness of sociolinguistic dimensions of
language and discourse. Nonetheless, their work also demonstrates that learners can
develop sociolinguistic competence through explicit instruction supplemented by
opportunities to explore how variable features of language are and can be used in
different communication environments.

Work in Progress

Several scholars in the area of sociolinguistics have recently begun to pay more
attention to the linguistic landscape as a way to view, analyze, and appreciate
66 L. Williams

language variation and multilingual communication spaces. According to Landry

and Bourhis (1997), “the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street
names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government
buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or
urban agglomeration” (Landry and Bourhis 1997, p. 25). Although research in this
area tends to focus on the physical linguistic landscape, there seems to be increasing
interest in the virtual linguistic landscape (VLL). In one of the first major studies
of the VLL, Ivkovic and Lotherington (2009) highlighted the ever-changing nature of
online communication spaces and, by extension, the ever-increasing number of
possibilities for the types of research and teaching projects for which the VLL can
be used. Given the unique and evolving nature of the VLL and the growing interest in
this area of inquiry, there will be many opportunities for researchers and teachers to
explore ways in which language variation and communication in multilingual spaces
affect and influence human interactions.

Problems and Difficulties

One challenge related to learners’ development of sociolinguistic competence is the

rather heavy reliance on introductory and intermediate textbooks in many – if not
most – language programs. This is not necessarily a criticism of publishers or
commercially produced textbooks, but rather an observation that requires further
explanation. Although textbooks are often criticized for their lack of authentic
discourse samples and unclear or incomplete explanations of grammar and discourse,
it is important to realize that most publishers send new textbooks and new editions of
textbooks to a sample population of teachers in order to gauge their reactions to new,
revised, reorganized, or deleted content. If we accept the basic premise of the human
condition that change is often difficult – and therefore slow to occur – in both
personal and professional contexts, this explains a great deal about the current nature
of textbooks, which are often grammar manuals that have often been superficially
dressed up as “communicative” or “standards-based” (referring to the World-Read-
iness Standards for Learning Languages of the American Council on the Teaching of
Foreign Languages 2015).
A related issue is that teachers who review textbooks may already have a curric-
ulum (i.e., lesson plans that have taken a substantial amount of time to prepare) in
place, which could potentially reduce their inclination to challenge publishers of new
textbooks or new editions of textbooks to provide more authentic discourse samples
and include a greater emphasis on the development of sociocultural competence,
which, incidentally, was so important for Hymes (1972) that the main reason for his
proposal of a new model of communicative competence was so that sociolinguistic
competence could be included as a featured component (see also Celce-Murcia
2007).
Another related issue is the educational background of textbook authors. While it
is clear that some may have a great deal of experience as teachers and/or researchers,
they do not all have formal training in applied linguistics or, more specifically, in
Sociolinguistic Insights into Digital Communication 67

second-language acquisition. A close reading of the front matter in introductory or

intermediate textbooks sometimes reveals outdated, misleading, or inaccurate expla-
nations of theoretical approaches to language learning and teaching. Moreover,
content included in the front matter (often provided only in the instructor’s annotated
edition) sometimes includes a mix-and-match approach to explaining the theoretical
foundations of the organization of the textbook’s content and its intended use.
This observation is not intended to be a generalized indictment of the qualifications
of textbook authors. Instead, it is a reminder that textbook reviewers and users have a
responsibility to scrutinize any textbook under review or being considered for
adoption. Reviewers and users of textbooks must, for instance, decide whether or
not they want sociolinguistic competence featured in their curriculum; if so, it is their
responsibility to demand more content from publishers and textbook authors that
would promote the development of sociolinguistic competence.
Perhaps the greatest challenge related to the development of sociolinguistic
competence is the seemingly widespread attitude that learners of a foreign or second
language have to master a set of structures and lexical items before they should be
allowed to explore variable features of the language. Unfortunately, this mindset is
understandable since teaching grammar rules is often considered to be more straight-
forward (i.e., easier to explain and learn) than delving into sociolinguistic variation,
which can be fascinating, yet somewhat nebulous, which can be uncomfortable and
disconcerting for some teachers and learners. In addition to the perceived challenges
related to fostering the development of sociolinguistic competence, its assessment is
often perceived as an even greater challenge to teachers since traditional testing (and
textbook test banks) is limited to grammar points, vocabulary, listening, reading, and
writing in most – if not all – cases.
There are also some challenges related to the use of digital communication in
foreign language programs in all types of educational settings. The most obvious of
these is that new technologies are often expensive to purchase and maintain. How-
ever, it is also important to point out that simply having access to tools is not a
guarantee that anyone will know how to use them or how to integrate them into the
curriculum in a pedagogically sound way. A related difficulty for many teachers is
that technological innovations happen so quickly that it can seem almost impossible
to remain current. Additional details of the problems and difficulties often associated
with foreign language education can be found in a survey-based study by Williams
et al. (2014).

Future Directions

One suggestion for future research was suggested by van Compernolle and Williams
(2009a), “using complementary analyses of performance (i.e., production) and com-
petence (i.e., understanding or awareness) in sociolinguistic variation would contrib-
ute to [a greater and more complete] understanding of the development of
sociolinguistic awareness in L2 users” (p. 497). This is quite important because
there is a noticeable trend in foreign language education research to focus solely on
68 L. Williams

students’ performance without trying to determine whether or not their competence is

simply ahead of performance or if their competence is perhaps blocking further
development due to an incomplete or inaccurate understanding of how variation
works.
Another recommended future direction for research is to analyze learners’ partic-
ipation in noneducational digital communication contexts. One notable example of
this is an article by Hanna and de Nooy (2003). However, this type of research is not
undertaken very frequently, most likely because it can be extremely time consuming,
depending on the method of data collection, the number of participants, the type of
digital communication, and the technological capability of the researcher and the
learners. Another possible reason for the lack of this type of research might be the
unwillingness of some teachers to allow their students to explore communication
spaces that are not as structured as a classroom, and, by the same token, researchers
may often prefer settings where they can maintain control over all participants. In
spite of these possible pretexts for not conducting more research in noneducational
settings, it is unfortunate that interaction in real-life, naturalistic (electronic) envi-
ronments is still largely unexplored.

Cross-References

▶ Computer-Mediated Communication and Conversation Analysis

▶ Sociocultural Approaches to Technology Use in Language Education

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Angela Creese and Fiona Copland: Linguistic Ethnography. In Volume: Research

Methods in Language and Education

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Elementary Language Education in Digital
Multimodal and Multiliteracy Contexts

Heather Lotherington

Abstract
Early childhood education is intrinsically multimodal. The kindergarten discov-
ery orientation to learning emphasizes play and embodied multisensory learning,
but this is traditionally retracted as children gain control of alphabetic print in the
early grades. The introduction of digital tools and networks is more recent in
elementary education. Digital mediation affords a powerful lens on hands-on
learning, augmenting, expanding, and complicating multimodal learning and
introducing new tools, textual products, and spaces for reflection and communi-
cation. Digital multimodal literacies also challenge fundamental assumptions
about the starting point of emergent literacy, which is assumed to be the ABCs.

Keywords
Coding • Digital literacies • ECE • Emergent literacy • Game learning • Inquiry-
based learning • Multiliteracy/multiliteracies • Multimodality • Multi-semiotic •
Play-based learning

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Changing Literacies in Elementary School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Exploring Digital Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
New Literacies, New Competencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

H. Lotherington (*)
York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 71

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_7
72 H. Lotherington

Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Multimodality in Elementary Curricular Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Multisensory, Play-Based Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
DIY Learning and Social Media Sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Conceptualizing Multimodality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Cohesion in Educational Policy, Practice, and Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
The Pace of Digital Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Early studies of elementary multiliteracies and multimodal learning included research

conducted internationally in schools, communities, online learning sites, and homes.
Research illustrated the transformative potential of digital multimodal learning by
transferring agency to the learner, facilitating collaborative inquiry-based projects, and
encouraging learning through play. Curricula espousing twenty-first century compe-
tencies are emerging in forward-thinking nations, but political trends in elementary
education are neither widespread nor universal. Pedagogical innovations include
maker schools and game-based programs. A number of challenges remain in institut-
ing multimodal literacies in elementary learning contexts, including vague notions of
what multimodality comprises; a lack of alignment in educational policy, practice and
assessment; and difficulties in keeping up with the rapid pace of digital change.
Contemporary issues pertaining to the future of elementary literacy education include
the place and salience of alphabetic literacy, spelling and conventional grammatical
usage in a climate of merging human-digital memory, and the increasing importance of
coding as a fundamental literacy skill.

Introduction

Elementary educators are steeped in multimodal practices, which are foundational to

early childhood education (ECE). The tried and true routes for developing children’s
sensory capacities and communicative repertoire are informed by early twentieth
century theories of human development that argue for socially engaged, hands-on
learning. Consider the child’s multisensory engagement in activities such as tracing a
sandpaper alphabet, finger painting, playing with puppets, choral singing, and
rhythmic clapping. ECE invites embodied learning through play in the service of
language development and alphabetic awareness.
Kindergarten is a paradigm of multimodal learning. However, as Robinson
(2006) stresses, embodied learning experiences are educationally constricted as
children progress toward independence in abstract learning. He posits a universally
evident hierarchy of subjects in schools, stemming from the needs of the nineteenth
century industrialization that prioritize mathematics and language and relegate least
importance to fine and performing arts, commenting, “truthfully what happens is as
Elementary Language Education in Digital Multimodal and Multiliteracy. . . 73

children grow up we start to educate them progressively from the waist up, and then
we focus on their heads, and slightly to one side” (Robinson 2006, 9:15–9:25).
Contemporary attention to multimodality speaks to rapid digitization, which has
dramatically reshaped how we communicate, beginning with the fundamental tools.
Powerful, portable networked digital devices enable novel connections, interactions,
and modes of expression. Though there is a clear push for digital tools in the school,
the incorporation of digital communication in elementary education comes up
against the centuries-held notion that learning the ABCs is the starting point for
literacy learning. Does this still hold true?

Early Developments

The changing face of literacy was a topic of fertile discussion and debate at the close
of the twentieth century. New literacy studies, working from an anthropological
perspective, theorized literacy as social practice, opposing the position that literacy
was an autonomous cognitive skill (Street 1984). Critical scholars argued identity
politics and social justice perspectives in literacy and education (Lankshear 1997;
Muspratt et al. 1997). Cultural theorists and media literacy scholars were engaging
with the rising tide of pop culture and the onset of the digital revolution
(Buckingham and Sefton-Green 1994), and concurrently, ECE researchers were
documenting the yawning gap between children’s preschool literacy socialization
in pop culture worlds and the agenda of emergent literacy instruction (Dyson 1997;
Marsh and Millard 2000).
The galvanizing call to action was the New London Group’s 1996 manifesto on
multiliteracies, written collaboratively by a collective of eminent scholars to alert
educators to the disconnect between the monolingual print-based literacy education
of tradition, the culturally diversifying school population given increasing global
mobility, and the onslaught of the digital revolution. The New London Group
plaintively posed the question of what it meant to be literate at the dawn of the
twenty-first century. Their manifesto catalyzed scholars in language arts, critical
theory, cultural studies, second language learning, and new media literacies who
resounded the alert, pointing to particular and varied aspects of how globalization
and the digital revolution were radically changing communication and work
patterns.
By 2000, the members of the New London Group had revisited the conceptual
terrain and extrapolated the why, what, and how of multiliteracies (Cope and
Kalantzis 2000), moving toward an actionable agenda for changing educational
practice. Design elements were described in terms of linguistic, visual, audio,
gestural, and spatial meaning-making processes and interrelating multimodal pat-
terns; these constituted an elemental framework of multimodality. Scholars,
researchers, and educators were actively thinking and writing about how literacy,
learning environments, semiotic resources, discourses, and texts were changing.
Following Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (1996) foundational theorizing of visual
74 H. Lotherington

design, for instance, Unsworth (2001) extrapolated semiotic links between alpha-
betic print and image in the study of English literature for children in Australia.
It is important to remember that technological development at this time was Web
1.0: basically a searchable, self-publishing bulletin board in a networked world that
connected developed nations via wired computers. Documents at the turn of the
century could be searched, self-posted, and retrieved but not collaboratively
authored or interactively engaged with. Digital civilization had not yet reached the
development of Web 2.0 with its dynamic texts, shared authorship, multimodal
interaction, and machine-enabled translation, let alone the near future of ubiquitous
wireless access on wearable mobile devices. Thus, early theorizing of multiliteracies
and multimodality occurred in a climate of whirlwind technological change when the
greatest part of the upheaval had not yet hit.
But what was actually happening in school classrooms? When I walked into an
elementary classroom in Toronto, Canada, in the fall of 2002, with a research agenda
to document where and how trendsetting writing on multiliteracies was affecting
educational policy and teaching practice, I discovered that not much had changed,
despite the mushrooming professional and research literature. I had had the good
fortune to survey two public schools located in communities characterized by
immense cultural and linguistic diversity and low socioeconomic status in different
corners of Toronto for a comparative international study documenting schools at the
forefront of digital technology in 1999–2000 (Granger et al. 2002). Both schools had
been at the beginning of impressive journeys into digital literacies, and the admin-
istrators, teachers, and children had hugely impressed the researchers, who candidly
admitted to each other that the university needed to take a few lessons from
kindergarten on emerging digital literacies. Returning later (2002) to conduct eth-
nographic research in one of these digitally ahead-of-the-curve schools on how the
literature on multiliteracies was reshaping instructional practices in the classroom, I
realized that governing educational policy (in Ontario) had been moving in a
contrary direction, instituting standardized tests, and looking back to basics. The
digital literacies the school had been surging ahead with earlier were now being
shoehorned into the standards of print literacies.
The term multiliteracies had ignited scholarly zeal, but the concept was logisti-
cally problematic. The centrality of multiliteracies was appealing to researchers,
looking at patterns and crosscurrents in sociocultural communication, but confusing
to put into teaching practice, and antithetical to the back to basics lobby behind the
standardized testing movement that was sweeping across North America. Precisely
what multiliteracies indexed was vague: one could aspire to a multiliteracy approach
doing almost anything that was not traditional monolingual print literacy.

Major Contributions

The fieldwork in multimodal pedagogies grew out of research projects, small

and large, that were conducted in schools, communities, online sites, and homes
around the globe. The term multiliteracies inspired practical questions about how
Elementary Language Education in Digital Multimodal and Multiliteracy. . . 75

multiliteracies looked, sounded, and felt in practice and how multiliterate practices
could be taught and learned. Fieldwork informing educational practice emerged
from studies designed to develop multiliteracy pedagogies in school; studies
whose pedagogical trajectory led organically to a multimodal stance; studies based
in disciplines that informed multiliteracies, such as digital pop culture and multilin-
gual education; and explorations of digital trends and practices in online
communities.

Changing Literacies in Elementary School

A number of early studies of changing literacies in elementary school were moti-

vated by social justice concerns in contexts of cultural diversity. Stein’s (2008)
formative research and writing about multimodal teaching and learning was peda-
gogically exploratory, culturally sensitive, plurilingual in its incorporation of multi-
ple languages, and geared to the development of learners’ voices for political
empowerment. Her teaching of English to young black children in a South African
township during the politically repressive apartheid era was the doorway to her foray
into multimodal communication. Stein worked educationally to change the record of
violence and oppression by inviting children’s culturally rich forms of expression
into classroom sharing, working with drama, song, music, poetry, and, later, oral
histories and storytelling. Spaces opened up to other languages so stories could be
told as they were first heard. She describes, “What began as a fairly loose, unstruc-
tured language activity was transformed over a year into a sustained project in a
narrative across multiple semiotic modes in which students drew heavily on cultural
forms and resources familiar to them” (p. 8). Stein and colleagues honed their
exploratory, culturally responsive pedagogy toward critical multimodal pedagogy
in post-apartheid years.
Jim Cummins’ influential work on identity texts in education is rooted in activist
research in culturally diverse schools. Schecter and Cummins (2003) conducted
action research with children, teachers, and community members in two elementary
schools in Greater Toronto, working to change the character of interactions and
identity negotiations with linguistically diverse populations. The concept of the
identity text as a multilingual and multimodal textual vehicle in which emergent
bilingual students positively invest in their complex identities was theorized during
Cummins’ and Early’s (2011) explorations of “the instructional spaces that opened
up when the definition of literacy was expanded beyond its traditional focus on linear
print-based reading and writing skills in the dominant language” (p. 3). The research
reported in their 2011 volume includes case studies with young children in schools in
demographically diverse Vancouver and Toronto and in a wide variety of interna-
tional contexts, from orphanages to primary classrooms.
Whereas in Cummins and Early’s (2011) and Stein’s (2008) studies, the incorpo-
ration of digital technologies was marginal to the larger aims of the research, digital
exploration was centrally featured in other researchers’ agendas. Mills (2011)
explored multiliteracies by focusing on digital moviemaking in an elementary school
76 H. Lotherington

classroom in a culturally diverse suburb of low socioeconomic status in Queensland,

Australia. She noted a significant shift in classroom power dynamics as “students
[were] positioned to think and design collaboratively and creatively within a com-
munity of practice” (p. 2).
Lotherington (2011) and her colleagues began co-developing multiliteracy ped-
agogies in 2002, forming a learning community comprising teachers, researchers,
and community members. The collaborative action research was conducted in a
public elementary school in northwest Toronto. Researchers redefined and rebuilt
elementary education using experimental across-the-curriculum, cross-age, team
taught projects that connected diverse curriculum threads in plurilingual, multi-
modal, digitally supported texts. Their momentum to understand, design, and refine
pedagogies of multiliteracies for primary and junior learners continued for a decade.
Healey’s edited (2008) volume expounded research on multiliteracy pedagogies
in Australia and Singapore that included elementary education contexts. The case
studies illuminate interesting fissures accruing to the changing balance of knowledge
and agency in the classroom. Sticky problems identified in the volume persist in
contemporary practice: teachers fearing their lack of digital know-how restricted the
introduction of digital technologies to students who were observed to be technically
proficient, and creative teaching and learning being curtailed to prepare students for
high stakes testing.
Pahl and Rowsell’s (2006) edited collection merged multimodal and new literacy
perspectives to report on a wide-angled view of the expanding field of literacy,
welcoming research from different social contexts that included studies with young
children. The studies provide multifaceted evidence of the transformative power of
multiliteracies that reposition the learner at the center of learning.

Exploring Digital Worlds

Lankshear and Knobel’s (2006) forward-thinking work plunged headlong into

burgeoning social media practices, proposing digital epistemologies for classroom
learning. They identified the growing wedge between school literacies and children’s
after-school social literacy activities, illuminating practices confronting to school
literacies, such as remixing, and identifying and exemplifying (then) new practices
of blogging and podcasting that have, a decade later, become production modes used
in elementary schools. Their book posed tough questions about how wireless and
mobile access would change schooling and challenged teachers to acknowledge the
churning pace of digital innovation deeply affecting how students communicate in
and out of school.
Jewitt (2006) interrogated “what resources new technologies make available and
how these mediate the complex relationship between the learner and ‘what is to be
learnt’” (p. 76) in examining how digital resources remediate learner practices. She
researched game design and play in the elementary English classroom, where she
found that multimodal resources changed not only how learners represented learning
but also how they interpreted it.
Elementary Language Education in Digital Multimodal and Multiliteracy. . . 77

Gee (2003) began extolling the virtues of video games for learning well over a
decade ago when he began to play them with his young son. Gee, a member of the
New London Group, brought a distinguished record of discourse analysis research to
his focus on gaming as literacy. He applied his conceptualization of the affinity group
(p. 27) to video gamers’ identification as insiders to games and groups and described
the sophistication and value of the knowledge bases activated in gaming lifeworlds,
listing 36 learning principles of video games, including the multimodal principle.

New Literacies, New Competencies

This brief summary only skims the surface of important and detailed research
undertaken in the first decade of the twenty-first century that has led to better
educational understanding of multiliteracies and multimodality. What common
threads emerge in these studies?
Incorporating multimodal literacy projects in elementary school contexts is
transformative: multiliteracy projects encourage collaborative inquiry and transfer
agency to the learner. Multimodality enables textual hybridity that accommodates
multiple languages in the array of semiotic choice, thus supporting plurilingual
designs that positively support language learners and invite a global audience.
Digital technologies and social media platforms are sophisticated tools that require
knowledge of multiple semiotic resources and invite creative design. Multimodal
literacies support play-based learning, both on- and offline. Multimodal literacies, in
short, call for new competencies in elementary learning.
Though multimodality is not new in elementary education, it has traditionally
been corralled in early childhood education, with the apex of play centered in
kindergarten. The play-based orientation of kindergarten is increasingly being held
up as a model for learning more generally (de Castell and Jenson 2003). This
includes the growing recognition of the salience of creativity in formal education
and serves as a clarion call for approaches to learning that encourage innovation.

Work in Progress

In the manifesto A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures (New

London Group 1996), the authors proposed the maxim, “curriculum is a design for
social futures” (p. 73, original emphasis). As Robinson (2006) points out, “nobody
has a clue . . . what the world will look like in 5 years time, and yet we are meant to
be educating [children] for it” (2:12–2:22). Designing pedagogies for an unknown
and swiftly moving future is a significant challenge.
The research base amassed since the turn of the century has contributed useful
knowledge and perspectives on identifying and understanding multimodal literacies
in social context. An important educational outcome of the research on digital
multimodal literacies includes the emergence of policy-embedded approaches
to multimodal learning in elementary education. Policy, though, is not practice.
78 H. Lotherington

A strong movement toward do-it-yourself (DIY) learning is evident in play-based

pedagogical approaches, such as maker schools, game-based learning, and in online
social media networks.

Multimodality in Elementary Curricular Learning

Goals and characteristics of multimodal learning, together with statements of

twenty-first century competencies, can be viewed in the elementary curriculum
documents of top-performing Programme for International Student Assessment
(PISA) scorers. Finland is well known for its devolution of classroom authority to
schools and classroom teachers, who utilize curriculum guidelines as advisory rather
than a set of specifications to be completed. In its 2016 revised curricula, the Finnish
National Board of Education sets out reforms to basic education that include the
identification of seven transversal competence areas, a push on formative assessment
emphasizing learners’ development of critical self-assessment, and a move toward
collaborative practices (Halinen 2015, 5). Søby (2015) lists Finland’s competencies
aimed toward twenty-first century learning as:
C1. Thinking and learning to learn
C2. Cultural literacy, interaction, and expression
C3. Taking care of oneself, everyday life skills, safety
C4. Multi-literacy
C5. Digital competence
C6. Working life skills and entrepreneurship
C7. Participation, influence, and responsibility for a sustainable future (p. 65)

To offer another example, Singapore promotes a three-ring model of twenty-first

century competencies, emerging from a central core of values to a middle ring
espousing “Social and Emotional Competencies” (Ministry of Education, Singapore
2015, 5) to an outer ring, representing:

the emerging 21st Century Competencies necessary for the globalised world we live in. . . .

• Civic literacy, global awareness and cross-cultural skills

• Critical and inventive thinking
• Communication, collaboration and information skills (Ministry of Education,
Singapore 2015, 6)

Policy is an important indicator of motivation to effect systemic change in education,

though the translation of policy into practice is a complex and involved process.
Political adoption of multimodal perspectives and twenty-first century competencies
in early literacy education is still an emergent trend showing uneven progress: whereas
some political jurisdictions are embracing the diffusion of literacy learning across the
curriculum (Ontario, Canada), others are prioritizing basic content knowledge in
English, mathematics, and science in elementary education (England).
Elementary Language Education in Digital Multimodal and Multiliteracy. . . 79

Multisensory, Play-Based Learning

Early childhood education has historically been a bastion of multimodality in the

sense that it encourages and creates spaces for multisensory, multi-semiotic play-
based learning. In traditional K-grade 6 education, play-based learning spaces were
physically and educationally withdrawn, and children were increasingly relegated to
desks as their capacity for independence in abstract thinking grew. The linchpin was
alphabetic literacy. The traditional thinking went: first children learn to read; then
they read to learn.
Learning, however, has changed and so has reading. The design orientation has
inspired active, embodied inquiry in settings utilizing maker pedagogies and game
learning. Of primary note is the learner’s multisensory involvement. Whereas
traditional literacy concentrates on visual identification of abstract symbols, maker
spaces are inextricably haptic and play based. Indeed, the design manuals for maker
groups are called playbooks (cf: Makerspace team 2013).
The maker movement has its roots in educational research in the American
creative industry sector. Maker spaces are philosophically open and untethered to
specified topics, products, or tools. A similar movement is game simulation learning
in elementary school, using Minecraft as a learning platform. MinecraftEdu is “a
school-ready remix of the original smash hit game Minecraft,”1 which must be
purchased, though educational discounts for licensed use are offered. An extensive
sandbox approach to hands-on simulation learning in the classroom is offered in
conjunction with licensed educational use.

DIY Learning and Social Media Sharing

Online DIY forums have transformed how teachers are learning, teaching and
connecting with learners, teachers, parents, and community members. Online social
media sites that offer teachers advice; invite them into conversations; and connect
them with ideas, resources, and people run the spectrum from creative industry
affiliated educational blogs, such as Edutopia,2 to state online learning sites, to
individual teacher’s blogs. Crowd-sourced, cloud-based learning resources and
solutions offer a cornucopia of ideas for learning designs.
John Andrews3 is a teacher in the Greater Toronto area with 26 years of experi-
ence across the K-grade 8 elementary panel. He began tweeting his grade 2 class’s
work in 2008 for paperless communication with parents and as a time-saver on the
class newsletter. Teaching ECE, he took sole responsibility for the class Twitter
handle for privacy reasons but also to avoid young children’s confusion in learning
to write, given the syntax of a 140 character tweet. In junior and intermediate

1
http://minecraftedu.com/software
2
http://www.edutopia.org/
3
Pseudonym
80 H. Lotherington

teaching, he devolves responsibility for class tweeting to students, though he strictly

polices followers.
There are school board limitations on what the school is permitted to share on
social media, and parental approval forms are needed for media release, but John
now has close to 100% of parents on board. In addition to tweeting classwork to
parents, John has a class YouTube channel, which offers hands-on involvement for
young children who can post videos of their school projects (with assistance). Young
children learn to use approved software for photo capture and audio-video recording,
which assist them in communicating their schoolwork to their networked publics.
John lauds the benefits of YouTube posting for learning: children record, post, reflect
on, and revise their work for (controlled) public sharing with an authentic audience.
Communication and language learning are intrinsically multimodal.
With junior and intermediate grade students, John teaches basic coding. He began
with the programming language, Python, and then moved to the object coding
language built for elementary school learners, Scratch,4 which the junior/intermedi-
ate students taught to primary grade children. Learning to code he sees as part of the
changing face of assessment: students cannot code what they do not understand and
their coding projects graphically illustrate what they are capable of doing. Kids’
minds are very big places, he states, and pedagogies that release students from overly
prescriptive models, standards and basics, foster learning through action and creative
problem-solving.

Problems and Difficulties

Three significant hurdles to the adoption of digital multimodal perspectives in

elementary education can be identified: (1) the concept of multimodality is amor-
phous, so multimodal literacies programs cover a broad range of ideas and activities;
(2) educational policy, practice, and assessment often do not line up; and (3) the pace
of digital innovation outstrips the capacity of formal educational institutions to
formulate and institute pedagogical aims, learning processes, literacy tools, and
products appropriate to current (much less future) needs.

Conceptualizing Multimodality

The definition of multimodality varies considerably with intellectual tradition. The

predominant voices in literacy studies are grounded in the social semiotics theorizing
of eminent linguist Michael Halliday. Work in this vein has carefully delineated
changes in textual communication from alphabetic print on paper to multi-semiotic
genres, focusing on the growing importance of image and visual communication in

4
Scratch: https://scratch.mit.edu/
Elementary Language Education in Digital Multimodal and Multiliteracy. . . 81

the move from page to screen (Kress 2010; Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996; Jewitt
2006).
The definition of a mode, though, is left to cultural agreement. As Kress (2010,
p. 79) explains, “Mode is a socially shaped and culturally given semiotic resource for
making meaning. Image, writing, layout, music, gesture, speech, moving image,
soundtrack and 3D objects are examples of modes used in representation and
communication.” While this exemplification is intuitively useful, there is crossover
and inconsistency in identification of modes, e.g., music and soundtrack overlap,
moving images contain still images. Virtually everything is complexly multimodal in
this view, including traditional print, which utilizes font, layout, print size, and, in the
case of school texts, pictures, charts, graphs, maps, tables, and similar nonalphabetic
visual data.
Concepts of multimodality based in linguistic communication are generalized
to still and moving images, auditory, and performance arts from language.
Elleström (2010) focuses on fine and performing arts in his intermediality para-
digm and defines four modes that describe all basic media: material, sensorial,
spatiotemporal, and semiotic. In the intermediality paradigm, the semiotic cate-
gory, wherein linguistic meaning is largely contained, is but one of the categories
that must be considered.
Norris (2012), who conceptualizes multimodality from a perspective of mediated
discourse theory, maintains that modes do not in fact exist but they are heuristic
devices that “are not separate units. All communication is based on perception and
the embodied senso-motory [sic] processes, making it impossible in practical terms
to dismantle them into isolated parts” (p. 4). Despite their inseparability, Norris
discusses modes, identified as visual and touch, which are sense data. Indeed,
involvement of the senses looms large in the identification of multimodal literacy
practices. The sensory alphabet is an analytical tool that Marcus (2009) offers to
describe new media from a design perspective. This tool provides a means of
analyzing what she calls “pattern language,” (p. 1934) invoking “line, color, texture,
movement, sound, rhythm, space, light, shape” (p. 1934).
Modality and multimodality are thus slippery concepts, and multimodal literacies
subsume a range of projects, interfaces, and approaches. Nonetheless, varied multi-
ple approaches constitute a monumental step forward from the traditional portrait of
monolingual, alphabetic print literacy that continues to feature in much of language
testing.

Cohesion in Educational Policy, Practice, and Assessment

Educational policy documents began to incorporate the conceptual arguments and

emerging approaches to multiliteracies and multimodality in the first decade of this
century. However, conflicting forces affect formal education, including, promi-
nently, the results of the influential Programme for International Student Assessment
(PISA) test, which “assesses the extent to which 15-year-old students have acquired
key knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in modern societies”
82 H. Lotherington

(OECD 2014, p. 3). The PISA results in mathematics, science, reading, and problem-
solving rank 65 participating countries according to performance.
The latest published PISA results are from 2012; the ten top scorers in reading were
Shanghai, China; Hong Kong, China; Singapore; Japan; Korea; Finland; Chinese
Taipei, Canada; Ireland; and Poland (OECD 2014). These top-billed nations have
different educational histories, curricular approaches, and assessment paradigms, span-
ning education systems that are highly centralized and standardized with strong
examination cultures (e.g., China, Singapore, Japan), to those who devolve authority
to teachers and schools (e.g., Finland). Analyzed OECD results indicate “schools with
more autonomy over curricula and assessments tend to perform better than schools with
less autonomy when they are part of school systems with more accountability arrange-
ments and/or greater teacher-principal collaboration in school management” (2014,
p. 24). Nonetheless, strong testing lobbies persist, and the disjuncture between inquiry-
based curricula facilitating collaborative, across-the-curriculum projects that invite
creative textual products, and standardized testing of discrete language items and
grammatical usage creates a significant tension.

The Pace of Digital Innovation

There is no doubt that a culture of innovation pervades the high-tech industrial

sector. The pace of change in the products available for consumption on portable
personal digital devices is staggering, and the modest price of downloads for apps
and cloud-based services has encouraged a proliferation of digital products, accom-
panied by crowd-sourced app reviews. How are schools to determine what children
need to know to function in a climate of such rapid change? And how do institutions
plan for, budget, and purchase in a timely fashion the digital technologies needed to
facilitate learning, given the grinding political machinery of public education
oversight?
A first observation is that emergent literacy is deeply affected by the digital
revolution. Where once control of a pencil and knowledge of the alphabet allowed
a child to begin to write herself into the world, now children need to learn how to
operate complex hardware, navigate operating systems, select and use appropriate
applications, search and evaluate the legitimacy of information on the Internet, and
produce and customize machine-mediated text and code, all in addition to learning to
read and write alphabetically. Moreover, children are being socialized into digital
literacies before they reach school. Young children in strollers and supermarket carts
are seen to be operating smartphones, while their parents shop and do errands with
them in tow. These children are essentially learning online navigation as they are
learning to walk and talk. As preschoolers, they are engaging in video games that
utilize screen navigation tools and multimodal menus that are far more interactive
and complex than the static pages of the basal readers they encounter on school
entry. The rapidly changing engagement with multiliteracies in the current era
suggests the need for an openness to multimodality and an emphasis on creating
conditions for learning to learn as primary goals of elementary education.
Elementary Language Education in Digital Multimodal and Multiliteracy. . . 83

Future Directions

Multimodality is not new in elementary education, but digitization is (relatively

speaking), and digital innovation is perennially and swiftly moving. Digital media-
tion augments, expands, and complicates multimodal learning; it facilitates multi-
modal text building and sharing. Portable digital technologies, such as tablets and
smart phones, are sophisticated devices that embed multiple, complex programs that
enable young children to access, read (with assistance), record, photograph, draw,
animate, combine, and remix material that may or may not contain alphabetic text.
Using a digital tool to record a child’s multimodal production provides a novel lens
on abstraction from that envisaged in alphabetic independence in that it permits the
child to reflect on his or her own production, as well as to edit or augment it. Children
can build iconic texts with the help of a teacher, and then insert alphabetic text, or use
other modes of meaning to assist in interpreting letters, so that learning the ABCs
need not necessarily precede producing and reading multimodal text. The alphabet is
now but one of the available textual building blocks: traditional graphic literacy is
essential to school-based learning but is no longer itself sufficient.
The future of responsible and adaptive elementary school education elicits chal-
lenging questions regarding the place of physical printing and handwriting, as well
as expectations of spelling, grammar, and punctuation as these elements change
across the many genres and communicative modalities currently available. The mere
suggestion of expanding the focus of elementary education beyond prescriptivist
conventions of traditional grammar, spelling, and punctuation is often seen as
heretical. But while conventional print literacy skills remain important in many
contexts, formal education needs to be much more inclusive and ecologically
adaptive to human cognition and contemporary social practices as they become
increasingly interwoven with networked computer memory.
Digital literacy tools are immeasurably more complex than pencil and paper in
that they are massively mediated. If learning control of the mediating processes in
textual access and composition is the primary focus of basic literacy education, then
basic literacy should now include coding and programming. Children will have to
routinely learn to use machine language if they are to graduate from being capable of
consuming digital multimodal products to being capable of creating them from
anything other than a template. Maker schools, snap-together coding languages
such as Scratch and Snap!,5 and game-based learning workshops encourage produc-
tive, active multimodal literacies. However, much of elementary learning today is
analogous to the nineteenth-century mass education, which aimed to produce
workers who could listen, read, and understand directions, but not to write elo-
quently and analytically of the political and economic bondage such literacy skills
enabled. Today’s learners are skilled digital consumers. Creating an emancipatory
future through education requires not only that students gain the ability to write
themselves into the world but also that they gain the ability to code the world.

5
Snap!: http://snap.berkeley.edu/
84 H. Lotherington

Cross-References

▶ Ecologies of Digital Literacies: Implications for Education

▶ Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital
Environments
▶ Multimodal Discourses Across the Curriculum

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Popular Culture and Teaching English
to Speakers of Other Language (TESOL)

Yiqi Liu and Angel M. Y. Lin

Abstract
A review of current research on popular culture and TESOL shows that the
recurrent themes revolve around pedagogical affordances of popular cultural
resources in TESOL, evaluation of popular culture’s pedagogical potential, and
construction of learner identities via ESL/EFL popular culture. However, there is
a dearth of discussion on development of critical literacies when popular culture
is used in English classrooms and existing studies focus mainly on popular
cultural resources that are based on Anglo-American and European cultures.
Moreover, issues relating to how to use popular culture in school teaching
contexts that are constrained by the need to meet official curriculum requirements
and preparation for high-stake tests remain under-investigated. It is proposed that
more classroom-based and narrative-based research should be done to look into
the experiences and desires of EFL/ESL students from various sexual, ethnic, and
socioeconomic backgrounds as they learn English via popular culture. In addi-
tion, critical literacies and common meaning-making conventions of popular
culture can be introduced to TESOL programs so that learners can become
critical, active analysts, and producers in the popular cultural world that they
are immersed in.

Keywords
Popular culture • Digital literacies • Learner identity • TESOL • Language
education • Agency

Y. Liu (*)
School of Education and Languages, The Open University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
e-mail: [email protected]
A.M.Y. Lin
Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 87

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_38
88 Y. Liu and A.M.Y. Lin

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Pedagogical Affordances of Digitally Mediated Popular Cultural Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Evaluation of Popular Culture’ Pedagogical Potential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Construction of Learner Identities via ESL/EFL Popular Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Work in Progress: Digital Language Learning via Popular Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Introduction

Although using popular culture in EFL/ESL classrooms is not a new pedagogical

endeavor, research on popular culture and TESOL did not gain significant momen-
tum until the late twentieth century. This chapter looks into major issues revolving
around the use of popular cultural resources in TESOL. Early developments in this
area have been concerned with establishing pedagogical evidence regarding the
positive role of popular culture in increasing ESL/EL learners’ interest in learning
English and facilitating their language attainment. For instance, studies have focused
on how the use of popular culture enhances learners’ vocabulary and listening
comprehension through the use of excerpts of advertisements and TV/radio pro-
grams. Further development in this research area has to do with quantitative studies
to establish the relationship between use of pop culture and improvement in English-
language proficiency. Another strand of research has involved learners’ out-of-
school consumption and production practices of popular culture, especially with
new media and emerging digital technologies, and the subsequent pedagogical
implications for formal English instruction. With increasing interest in learners’
identities, much research attention has been directed to learners’ out-of-school
literacy practices vis-à-vis the (co-)construction, negotiation, and contestation of
racial, sexual, and social class identities. However, it has also been pointed out that
the feasibility of engaging popular culture in TESOL is still much debated in view of
institutional constraints and potential tensions between popular culture and school
and exam cultures. These will be discussed in detail in the following sections.

Early Developments

With the rise of studies in communicative competence and content-based

instruction in the 1970s and 1980s, popular cultural resources were introduced
to the ESL/EFL classroom to contextualize L2 learning with authentic content
Popular Culture and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language (TESOL) 89

material. The following quote from Sandsberry (1979) captures well this rising
trend:

More recently, however, several concurrent trends have resulted in a new view toward using
non-specialized materials for teaching language, trends such as the emphasis upon teaching
language in context; the shift of interest from small to increasingly larger units of discourse;
the goal of communicative competence taking precedence over that of linguistic compe-
tence; and bilingual education, in which students learn the second language through content
courses. One consequence of these trends, the move away from strictly controlled language,
means that not only can language activities focused upon everything from model villages to
recipes now be considered appropriate for elementary as well as very advanced classes, but
also that such activities need not be considered second-rate, slated for the last ten minutes on
Fridays. (pp. 501–502)

Early studies thus focused on how to use popular cultural resources to facilitate
L2 comprehension, enjoyment, and learning, capitalizing on learners’ interests while
offering grammatically correct and yet authentic materials to consolidate English
communicative competence. Research studies in this tradition mainly elucidated the
ways in which language teachers used popular cultural resources fruitfully in
language classrooms. Specifically, (pop) songs proved to be the pop culture genre
that guaranteed most pedagogical potentials. Richards (1969), for example, argued
that songs could help to teach children new sounds, rhythm and stress, polite forms,
and vocabulary due to its pleasurable nature. However, nonstandard grammatical
structures in songs were thought to hinder language learning, and teachers were
asked to adapt songs in classroom presentations. In addition, pop songs were seen as
“affective, simple and repetitive” (Murphey 1989), and teachers were asked to
design various song-based activities (e.g., role-play, grammar/listening comprehen-
sion drilling, teaching vocabulary/translation) for classroom use that would align
with learners’ preference. On the other hand, pop songs were considered to have the
“song-stuck-in-my head” (SSIMH) effect, or in Barber’s (1980) term “Din in the
head” (Murphey 1990), and so they were thought to be able to assist teachers in
instilling some information into learners’ minds (Murphey 1992). In the context of
Mexican secondary schools, Domoney and Harris (1993) reported that Spanish-
speaking students lacked interest in learning English because it was seldom used
outside the classroom, and teachers explored how to capitalize on students’ interest
in rap music to bridge the gap between out-of-school English exposure and formal
learning. Song-based fill-in the gaps were also found to facilitate language attain-
ment rather than just for atmosphere and mood enhancement among Japanese EFL
university students (Kamel 1997).
TV dramas proved to be useful aids in teaching English listening, pronunciation,
and vocabulary. Handscombe (1975), for example, documented how to appropriate
the TV series The Sunrunners in the Grade 3 ESL classroom in Ontario, Canada, for
exposing pupils to multiple dialects of English as well as consolidating their
grammatical knowledge and vocabulary of English. Videotaped news broadcasts
were also found to be useful materials to enhance students’ listening comprehension
in the classroom. In order to address the uneven development of the four language
90 Y. Liu and A.M.Y. Lin

skills (i.e., listening, speaking, reading, and writing), Brinton and Gaskill (1978)
maintained that compared with artificial language examples, news broadcasts could
bring real language materials to classrooms and enhance students’ English listening
comprehension, vocabulary, and understanding of the target language culture. TV
comedy was also found to present useful resources for teaching English as a foreign
language (McLean 1976).
Earlier research viewed popular culture as exciting and practical and to
provide a proxy environment similar to the actual English-speaking world. It
was assumed that the more students were exposed to authentic language use, the
more competent they would be able to cope with English in real life situations.
For example, Hafernik and Surguine (1979) advocated for the use radio commer-
cials to teach listening in ESL classes due to the high recording quality, the
entertaining nature, and the provision of everyday English in a contextualized
manner. They proposed designing instructional activities such as (1) true/false,
(2) multiple choice, (3) short answer, (4) matching, (5) cloze dictation,
(6) adapted role-play, (7) values clarification, (8) discussion, and (9) contact
assignments based on English radio commercials. In Hong Kong, Cheung
(2001) pointed out that popular culture, such as television, movies, music, gossip
magazines, comics, fashion, computer games, and the Internet, exerted signifi-
cant impact on young people’s feelings, attitudes, and knowledge about society.
Therefore, teachers were advised to tap into students’ “encountered knowledge”
(Cheung 2001) to design meaningful and communicative tasks in classrooms to
enhance their motivation to learn English.
In related research, comic strips were found to have an effect on ESL learners’
reading comprehension (Liu 2004). With a factorial design involving factors of
English proficiency (i.e., high-level or low-level ESL learners), text difficulty
(i.e., difficult or easy English texts), and visual support (i.e., with or without
comic strips), Liu (2004) argued that the reading comprehension of low-level ESL
learners could be significantly enhanced when difficult texts were supported with
relevant comic strips, because key information was abstracted and represented in
comprehensible visuals. However, the high-level ESL learners in Liu (2004) did
not benefit from comic strips because comic strips distracted their attention from
complex language structures and did not provide more information than they
could understand from the texts. It was therefore recommended that teaching
material developers should choose the visual supports that reflected the texts’
linguistic complexities so as to increase the quality of readers’ language input and
output.
Another way of using popular culture in TESOL was to make use of both its
language forms and content. For example, Sandsberry (1979) used magazine
advertisements in ESL classrooms to teach logical thinking and English language
alternately by asking students to interrogate the logics of the advertisement.
Despite the diversity of opinions toward using popular culture in classrooms,
there was general consensus that careful planning and adaption was the key
the successful integration of popular cultural resources in English-language
education.
Popular Culture and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language (TESOL) 91

Major Contributions

Pedagogical Affordances of Digitally Mediated Popular Cultural

Resources

With the transnational popularity of new information and communication technol-

ogies, popular culture is no longer seen as supplementary material for language
teaching but is increasingly seen as an important external force that can foster change
in EFL pedagogies. For example, Stapleton and Radia (2010) argue that L2 writing
pedagogies need to go beyond the debate among different perspectives, i.e., “prod-
uct,” “process,” and “genre,” and propose that emerging software and online
resources can supersede such a theoretical debate. Specifically, they evaluate the
effectiveness of existing resources and recommend that teachers draw upon corpus-
based and thesaurus tools to give feedback to learners’ writing.
Concerning the results of the new National English Program for Basic Education
in Mexico featuring early start EFL instruction and a sociocultural approach, Sayer
and Ban (2014) investigate Mexican primary school students’ engagement with
English outside the classrooms by interviewing 61 fifth and sixth grade students,
their teachers, and parents in central Mexico. It is found that students use English
outside schools more than commonly thought, mainly through computer-/technol-
ogy-mediated popular culture. They also find that students regard school English
lessons positively because such English lessons enable them to engage in out-of-
school English popular culture consumption. Due to the centrality of popular culture,
it is proposed that teachers should tap into students’ lived popular cultural experi-
ence, and some teacher control should be given up to make way for learners’ voices
in the lessons.
Compared with earlier studies, learners in recent studies are seen as playing a
more active role in the use of popular cultural resources for language teaching and
learning. For example, Murphy (2014) recommends YouTube videos and Ted Talks
as materials from which EFL/ESL teachers select intelligible, comprehensible, and
meaningful nonnative English speech samples for teaching pronunciation. As an
integral part of this process, learners are required to engage in detailed analysis and
imitation of the nonnative English speech samples so that they can counteract effects
of native speakerism in appreciating the linguistic, paralinguistic, and rhetorical
strengths of clear and intelligible nonnative English speeches.
The area of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has made significant
contributions to TESOL and emerging technology-mediated popular culture. For
example, Thorne and Reinhardt (2008) propose bridging activities to engage the
internet generation’s vernacular digital practices for enhancing relevance of formal
language education in advanced foreign-language learners’ day-to-day language use.
Specifically, learners are guided to compare the linguistic and multimodal features as
well as the social purposes of new literacy genres such as instant messaging, blogs
and wikis, remixing, and multiplayer online gaming with the traditional literacy
practices such as face-to-face spoken conversation and print media genres. Through
comparison and reflection on their own new literacy practices, students can become
92 Y. Liu and A.M.Y. Lin

more aware of their agentive role as critical genre analysts of both conventional and
digital text forms. In another study, Wang et al. (2012) maintain that Second Life
supports constructivist learning as it enables a more active student role and supports
students’ knowledge construction via the recreation of public entities and infrastruc-
tures that can include opportunities for intercultural exchange. Based on the princi-
ples of task-based learning, authentic activities, and collaborative learning, a three-
step activity model is proposed for designing foreign-language learning activities
with Second Life, which include Setting the Stage, Acclimating, and Testing the
Waters. “Setting the Stage” refers to giving technological support to novice users and
encouraging ESL students to develop a Second Life user manual in their native
language; “Acclimating” pertains to establishing a safe zone in Second Life where
EFL/ESL learners will be gathered to discuss assigned topics via text messages in
order to achieve higher English proficiency; finally learners will interact with native
English speakers in Second Life, i.e., “Testing the Water.”

Evaluation of Popular Culture’ Pedagogical Potential

While some studies on popular cultural resources counteract the dismissal of popular
culture as purely recreational and underscore learners’ language gains after active
analysis and participation in pop culture, another emerging theme is the assessment
of language gains by analyzing the pedagogical potential of a specific popular
culture genre and exploring the ways in which popular cultural resources can be
effectively used with quantitative research. For example, Rodgers and Webb (2011)
examine the word types, vocabulary reoccurrence, and the vocabulary size necessary
to reach 95% coverage of different English TV series in order to ascertain the value
of watching TV series for learning English vocabulary. Specifically, using the
computer software RANGE (Nation and Heatley 2002), Rodgers and Webb (2011)
compare the frequency of vocabulary in 142 episodes of six TV dramas, 24, Alias,
Crossing Jordan, CSI, Grey’s Anatomy, and House, which are treated as related TV
programs, with 146 episodes of six other randomly chosen TV dramas. Fewer word
types and families and higher vocabulary reoccurrence are found in related TV
programs than the unrelated, randomly chosen TV programs, and a vocabulary
size of the most frequent 3,000 word families is considered sufficient for under-
standing 95% of the words in the TV programs. Therefore, for less proficient
English-language learners, it is better to receive narrow, repeated L2 aural input by
watching different episodes of a single TV program or a single episode multiple
times. However, more advanced English-language learners benefit from receiving
more broad L2 aural input. Furthermore, teachers can design comprehension ques-
tions and pre-teach some low-frequency words from the TV programs as classroom-
based activities to aid students’ comprehension.
Lai et al. (2015) identify the close ties between out-of-school English learning
with information and communication technologies (e.g., the Internet, movies, TV
dramas, songs) and English proficiency with a group of junior secondary EFL
learners in a large city in southern Mainland China with both quantitative and
Popular Culture and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language (TESOL) 93

qualitative data. In particular, she finds that English movies and English songs are
what this group of students opt for in out-of-school English learning, and parents and
teachers are the most important socialization agents for this group of students. The
study suggests that in learning contexts where in-class instruction focuses heavily on
language forms rather than on language meaning, diversity of out-of-school English
learning activities should be enhanced to facilitate the learning of English-language
meaning. Lai (2015) also posits that teachers play a significant role in undergraduate
students’ digital self-directed foreign language learning (including English) with
semi-structured interviews and online questionnaires. In particular, teachers’ affec-
tive support can improve students’ sense of the perceived usefulness of technologies.
Additionally, teachers’ capacity support and behavior support are found to be
important in facilitating learning conditions and improving students’ computer
self-efficacy. However, quantitative evaluation of popular culture’s pedagogical
potential tends to overlook the effects of learner identities on learning and seems
to regard learners as homogeneous, rendering research findings in this tradition
dubious at a time of “superdiversity” (Blommaert 2013), when learners’ attitudes
and understanding of a popular culture text can vary considerably even within the
same classroom. In the next section we will turn toward a review of studies on the
issue of learner identities.

Construction of Learner Identities via ESL/EFL Popular Culture

An important research focus in popular culture and TESOL examines the construc-
tion of English-language learners’ identities, whether in traditional, print-based
media, or in new media environments powered by emerging technologies. Specifi-
cally, this line of work is less concerned with pop culture as an English-language
teaching/learning resource and rather examines the possible ways in which English-
language learners construct their relationship with English and the imagined com-
munities of English speakers via popular culture, including how power relations in
English learning/teaching are implicated in popular culture.
Pioneering work in this tradition is found in Lam (2000, 2004), who explores how
immigrant youths in the United States utilize popular culture to acquire more
symbolic resources, such as English-language competency and friendship. Lam
(2000) contends that computer-mediated communication (CMC) engenders vernac-
ular L2 development and enables users to construct more positive and powerful
identities for themselves compared with the negativity experienced in schools.
Albeit constrained by dominant ideologies, ESL learners manage to transcend their
social marginalization due to low academic English proficiency via connection with
a global English-speaking (including EFL) community. The enhanced social capital
and emotional support they create are central to sustaining a positive learner identity.
This view is also echoed in other recent studies (e.g., Lee 2013, 2014) on EFL
youths’ use of social media, and it is predicted that “newer social media will only
give rise to even greater diversity of both technology users and linguistic practices”
(Lee 2014, p. 180).
94 Y. Liu and A.M.Y. Lin

Hip-hop music genres are also found to have the potential to empower working-
class secondary EFL students, evidence for which is documented in Lin and Man
(2011)’s study. An extracurricular English hip-hop learning activity, called “The ELT
Rap Project,” was piloted in a low performing school in Hong Kong. The authors
investigate the possibility of transforming working-class students’ inferior learner
identities with rap and dance workshops offered by local artists and an English tutor
with dual foci, one on rap and the other on English phonetic skills. With pre-and
post-questionnaires and focus group interviews, it is found that the students have
demonstrated more positive learner identities and more linguistic capital, such as
knowledge of letter-sound relationships, which help to increase their investment in
English.
Popular culture can also help English learners to critically reflect on their identity
formation. Mackie (2003) provides a critical account of the influence of popular
culture on formation of one’s subjectivity after examining how she acquired implicit
knowledge about race from popular American films and her experience of being
othered when teaching English in China. Mackie and Norton (2006) examine the
affordances and complexities when teachers include films as resources for teaching
literacy in the L1 context. In related research, popular culture texts are found to be
conducive to language learning as language learners use these texts to “construct
their identities as learners, users, and consumers of the English language” (Chik and
Breidbach, 2011).
Recent studies have also examined how learners are positioned and position
themselves in second languages when they are involved in consumption and produc-
tion of popular culture texts. In engaging with popular culture in English teaching and
learning, social inclusion or exclusion is a significant dimension. Due to the diversity
of students, more attention over selection of pop culture materials is advocated to
avoid marginalization of learners. Indeed, as pointed out in Duff’s (2002) study on pop
culture and ESL students, teachers should know about the relevance of the popular
culture resources in students’ everyday life, especially when they come from different
sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds; moreover, teachers should unpack the forms
and functions of hybrid pop culture texts for immigrant students, because “relevance
and access cannot be taken for granted. People often do not share the necessary
sociocultural and psycholinguistic repertoires, practices, and abilities, and need assis-
tance from others to understand them. For newcomers to a discourse community,
references to dominant local pop culture are often both intriguing and confusing,
especially in highly intertextual or hybrid oral texts” (p. 486).
In the same vein, Black (2009) discusses the pedagogical value of Internet-
mediated communication for TESOL in the twenty-first century with examples of
English-language learners’ engagement in online fandom. Specifically, Black (2009)
identifies three major benefits of engaging in leisure-time, pop culture-based, tech-
nology-mediated activities in L2 English: improving English-language and compo-
sition skills (i.e., print literacy), developing “the twenty-first century skills” of
information literacy which refers to the ability “to seek out and critically evaluate
information across a range of media” (p. 693), and finally developing positive
identities as “powerful learners, language users, and as active producers of their
Popular Culture and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language (TESOL) 95

own social, cultural, and ideological materials” (p. 696), i.e., boosting learners’
academic self-concept.
Similarly, Norton and Vanderheyden (2004), in studying the ESL preadolescent
Archie comic readers who newly immigrated to Canada, observe that engaging in
ESL popular culture consumption such as reading L2 English comic books can
benefit English-language learners’ sense of belonging to the new community as well
as their language development. Specifically, they find that reading Archie comics can
help the newly arrived students learn the sociocultural practices of Canadian society.
In addition, the practice of lending the Archie comic books to native English-
speaking classmates’ can empower the ESL learners in terms of fostering interper-
sonal relationships.

Work in Progress: Digital Language Learning via Popular Culture

As discussed in the previous section, the potential benefits for integrating popular
culture in school-based EFL/ESL teaching have been well documented. Recently,
researchers have attempted, in an emerging body of work, to explore students’ infor-
mal, autonomous learning afforded by digital popular cultural resources. A literature
review on computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and second-language acquisi-
tion (SLA) done by Mroz (2014) identifies two main types of virtual language learning
environments (VLLEs) which can provide opportunities for meaningful use of L2
English, i.e., online commercial video games and non-gaming three-dimensional
multiuser virtual environment (3-D MUVE) such as Second Life. In particular, virtuality
is conceptualized as providing a “holistic and complex” immersive environment and
affording agency to language learners (Mroz 2014, p. 334).
In terms of the relation between gaming and L2 English learning, Sylvén
and Sundqvist (2012, 2016) find that L2 English proficiency is related to the frequency
of gaming and types of games played for a group of well-resourced Swedish fifth
graders. In the naturalistic setting of home life, frequency of gaming (i.e., 5 h/week)
and the variety of games are found to be correlated positively with the acquisition of
L2 English vocabulary. A study on Japanese university EFL learners’ collaborative
interaction in and attitudes toward Second Life conducted by Peterson (2012) reveals
that learners can obtain peer correction and peer scaffolding for unknown lexis.
Additionally, the students hold positive attitudes toward learning on Second Life due
to the appealing personalized avatars and the low-stress environment as compared
with a regular English class.
Despite the generally positive research findings regarding using digital popular
culture for self-directed English learning, and due in part to significant learner
diversity, a number of factors have impeded the effectiveness of learners’ self-
regulated language learning with technology. For example, Lai and Gu (2011)
indicate that lack of digital literacy, unawareness of useful technologies for language
learning, or little metacognitive knowledge about how to use them effectively can
significantly undermine learning foreign language via digital popular culture
resources and platforms. These issues are further explored in the section below.
96 Y. Liu and A.M.Y. Lin

Problems and Difficulties

While popular culture is celebrated as stimulating accessible resources for language

and content learning, there are several problems and difficulties regarding using
popular culture in TESOL. The research literature compels language education
researchers and practitioners to reconsider the ways in which popular culture is
positioned in formal English instruction and how it can be optimally integrated into
both formal and informal, self-regulated English learning. In particular, the question
of how to capitalize on popular culture in language education is complicated by the
differences between two social institutions: schools which favor academic achieve-
ment and traditional values and the mass media which features diverse values and
pursuit of pleasure and desires. In particular, teachers’ ability to recognize students’
local funds of knowledge about popular cultural tends to be circumscribed by the
institutional constrains which are “characterised by a nationally governed curricu-
lum, an emphasis on testing, and externally specified teaching frameworks” (Burn
et al. 2010, p. 13). Lo (2013) echoes this view in a study about the conflicts between
students’ production of L2 English comic strips and the formal literacy requirements
expected in primary school English. While teachers are encouraging students to
learn English in online entertainment and participatory culture settings, Lo (2013)
reveals that teachers are also caught in the dilemma of meeting formal English
teaching requirements. Therefore, special emphasis should be placed on the ways
in which educators can address and finesse these institutional tensions and how to
formulate possible pedagogical designs which allow students and teachers to do
what they are institutionally expected to do while meeting their own personal
interests in popular culture.
Much new media research on popular culture and L2 learning suggests that
learners can benefit from popular culture-/technology-based classroom activities
because students can potentially develop powerful identities and gain recognition
for their prior experience and knowledge (e.g., Black 2009). However, there is
reason to be concerned about the issue of accessibility as disenfranchised learners
without ready access to suitable devices and/or mass media texts may be excluded.
For example, what if some students have not watched the most widely discussed
TV drama? In order to address this concern, one way forward will lie in adding the
emic perspective in initiatives of using popular culture in English classrooms by
using ethnography to incorporate students’ pop culture practices. In addition,
more learner training in terms of digital literacy and awareness of useful technol-
ogies for language learning should be offered to English learners in need (Lai and
Gu 2011).
Numerous research has critiqued the dominance of written language (e.g., the
New London Group 1996; Gee 2004; Lankshear and Knobel 2007) and acknowl-
edged the potential of digital popular culture (e.g., social media and virtual environ-
ments) as an affordance for young people with sociocultural and linguistic
differences to construct alternative and positive identities (e.g., Lam 2000; Lee
Popular Culture and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language (TESOL) 97

2014). This said, symbolic violence regarding gender, race, and class is of course
present in cyberspaces, and how such power relations are enmeshed in students’ L2
English learning have not yet been adequately and critically investigated. In addi-
tion, the global and local symbolic capital of particular languages and cultures can be
a serious issue: many popular culture resources, whether Web 2.0 technology or
more traditional media such as films and TV drams, are often Anglo-American and
European. A potential corrective action is to utilize popular cultural resources in the
learners’ mother tongue or to incorporate those based on non-Western contexts in
order to decenter dominant cultures while also fostering multilingualism and desires
to learn other languages and cultures (Janks 2004).
Another potential problem lies in the register and language level of popular
culture materials. While most students need to acquire the powerful forms (i.e.,
academic register) of dominant foreign languages (e.g., English, French) for upward
socioeconomic mobility, the style of language in popular culture tends to be vernac-
ular. The vernaculars which students are acquiring through engagement with the
popular culture world are not always appropriate for, or readily transferred to, use in
academic settings (Madge et al. 2009; Thorne et al. 2009). In addition, a mismatch
between the proficiency level of beginning foreign-language learners and the com-
plexity level of authentic popular culture materials is reported by Lai and Gu (2011).
If teachers are not making conscious efforts to provide language support and bridge
the gap between L2 English everyday vernaculars and L2 English academic lan-
guage, students may not be able to benefit from popular culture-inspired language
instruction. English-language teachers should therefore caution against the assump-
tion that exposure to L2 English popular culture is always beneficial for students’
linguistic attainment and teach with more register awareness when popular cultural
resources are used.

Future Directions

Learning language via popular culture in the digital age is not “a lazy throwing open
of the school doors to the latest fad, but rather committing to a principled under-
standing of the complexity of contemporary cultural experience” (Willis 2003,
p. 411). Given the developments and problems in the field, future research should
be conducted toward more understanding of diverse popular culture’s influence on
L2 English learning and teaching, both in terms of students’ language attainment and
their identity development. Specifically, more naturalistic or (design) experimental
research can be done to examine the efficacy of using popular culture in TESOL and
to investigate when and form whom popular culture can be useful and in which
dimensions of the language ability. Additionally, more classroom-based or narrative-
based research can be done to reveal the affect and desires of learners from various
sexual, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds when they learn English via popular
culture so that language teachers can design language curricula accordingly. Another
98 Y. Liu and A.M.Y. Lin

future direction would be further studies and innovative pedagogical practices that
involve multilingual popular culture texts from a wider range of cultural contexts,
which can promote multiculturalism.
Furthermore, popular culture is a powerful source of fun, excitement, fantasies,
and desires as well as social controversies. Students immersed in popular culture
often do not have a chance and/or the analytical tools to critically reflect on how
their own subjectivities and identities, ways of seeing things, and relating to others
are implicitly and ideologically shaped or influenced by the popular cultural texts
that they consume pleasurably every day. Therefore, critical literacies can be
introduced to English-language learning programs so that students can identify
ideologies and biases implicitly embedded in popular culture and contest negative
subject positions which are discursively constructed by some popular culture
texts.
Finally, as Lin (2012) points out, “[l]anguage (e.g., L1, L2, L3) should not be seen
and planned as discrete separate entities but rather as continua (Hornberger 2003;
Canagarajah 2005) and. . .part of multimodal communication (Kress and van
Leeuwen 1996, 2001).” Teachers and researchers are encouraged to explore ways
to equip students with the techniques and meaning-making conventions of popular
culture and to teach them different ways to creatively produce content for the
purpose of promoting social justice and heteroglossia (cf. Lin and Luk 2005). In
this way, students are not merely passive consumers of popular culture but are also
critical, active analysts and producers of the cultural world.

Cross-References

▶ Ecologies of Digital Literacies: Implications for Education

▶ Elementary Language Education in Digital Multimodal and Multiliteracy
Contexts
▶ Identity in Mediated Contexts of Transnationalism and Mobility
▶ Language and Identity on Facebook
▶ Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy
▶ Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital
Environments
▶ Multimodal Discourses Across the Curriculum

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Popular Culture and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language (TESOL) 99

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 Part II
Plurilingual Practices in Digital Contexts
Identity in Mediated Contexts
of Transnationalism and Mobility

Wan Shun Eva Lam and Natalia Smirnov

Abstract
This chapter reviews research on the relation of literacy and identity in the context
of transnational migration and changing linguistic and communicative landscapes
with online connectivity. In particular, we focus on the ways that youth of migrant
backgrounds use digital and online media to construct networks and affiliations
with diverse cultural and language practices. The studies we review have pro-
vided lenses into how youth of migrant backgrounds draw from multiple linguis-
tic and semiotic resources to represent themselves, how they navigate
participation in diverse communities and networks that span national borders,
and how diaspora youth blend their cultural heritage and affiliation with transna-
tional youth culture in online participatory practices. The youths’ digital practices
indicate that they are orienting to different cultural discourses and practices
coming from both local and translocal spaces, across their countries of origin
and settlement, as these discourses and practices are accessed, remixed, and
circulated on new media platforms. We propose that, at a broader level, these
practices point to the ways in which people maneuver differentiated social spaces
within and across countries, how people create their own (cultural and historically
informed) pathways through them, and in the process reconstruct their under-
standing and relationships across these spaces. These processes of traversal and
reconstruction of social spaces have important implications for further research
and educational practice that seek to enhance people’s mobility in a global world.

Keywords
Literacy • Identity • Transnationalism • Mobility • Online practices • Digital
literacy

W.S.E. Lam (*) • N. Smirnov

Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 105

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_8
106 W.S.E. Lam and N. Smirnov

Contents
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Early Developments
Since the early 1990s, research on international migration has increasingly turned to
the notion of transnationalism to understand the various kinds of cross-border
connections that are created and sustained in the process of migration and how the
identities of individuals and groups of people are negotiated within social worlds that
span more than one place (Levitt and Jaworsky 2007; Vertovec 2009). These
connections are multilayered, multisited, and are influenced by a complex ecology
of labor and capital flow, circulation of ideas, cultural and material goods across the
world, and increasing digitization of social life. Research in diaspora media studies
has explored the adoption of various technologies, such as mobile phones, e-mail,
text messaging, video chat, and Internet websites among migrants to engage in
relationships of care and building cultural and political affiliations with family,
friends, conationals, and others across distances (Miller and Slater 2000; Panagakos
and Horst 2006). The “transnational turn” in anthropological and sociological
research of migration has provided a “new analytic optic” (Caglar 2001, p. 607)
for making visible how people constitute daily routines, activities, and institutional
affiliations that simultaneously connect them to more than one society. These
contexts of migration and mobility gave rise to the impetus to reassess our under-
standing of literacy and communicative practices, and how youth draw upon various
linguistic and multimodal resources to (re)define their identities and relations to
multiple localities and communities.
In educational research, scholars have argued that given the growing scope of
cultural and linguistic diversity in public and private spheres of society, coupled with
the changing communicative landscape, literacy pedagogy needs to move beyond
formalized, standardized, and its largely monolingual and monocultural framework
that currently is centered around the nation state (Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Luke
2003). Scholars associated with the New London Group proposed the concept of
multiliteracies to describe the literate abilities to navigate and negotiate diverse
social practices and representational forms that are integral to our changing societies
(New London Group 1996).The authors argued that mastery of contemporary
multiliteracies demands continual adaptation to new emerging textual forms, com-
fort with hybridization and crossing cultural boundaries, and the ability to reenvision
social futures. Importantly, along with others, they argued that linguistic and cultural
diversity is not a problem that needs to be standardized or normalized but should be
Identity in Mediated Contexts of Transnationalism and Mobility 107

seen as a cultural, civic, and economic resource in organizing literacy pedagogy. The
article (New London Group 1996) proposes three constructs for scholars and
educators researching literacies in the twenty-first century: (1) the construct of
“productive diversity,” which means seeing difference as a capitalizable resource,
(2) “civic pluralism,” which refers to the recognition of a broad range of affiliations,
values, and perspectives beyond national borders or traditions, and (3) the idea of
“multilayered lifeworlds” in which individuals participate and in the process develop
complex, textured subjectivities.
In developing constructs of identity as an analytic lens for educational research, Gee
(2000), who was coauthor of the New London Group article, contended that the
contemporary global economy, popular culture, and youth sociality promote new
contexts for constructing social identities that he termed affinity groups or affinity
spaces. An affinity group identity is developed through networking, collaborating, and
affiliating, sometimes across distances, around common interests, joint endeavors, and
shared causes. The source of this identity is coparticipation in a set of distinctive
practices – practices that are reflected in diverse kinds of youth engagement with
media around hip-hop, anime, music, games, and fandoms. Gee (2000/2001) pointed
out that affinity group identity can coexist with other forms of identity that come from
institutional positions and cultural discourses. In this sense, Gee’s formulation opens up
an analytic space to think about how different kinds of social structures (from societal
institutions, cultural heritage, and affinity group networks) may interact in practices of
cross-border communication, and how people may draw from discourses from these
different sources for representing and enacting identity.
Gee’s notion of affinity space is echoed in the idea of “participatory culture” in the
field of communication studies (Jenkins 2006), which refers to how everyday people
and groups engage in networking, media use and production to pursue their interests
and, in the process, shape the flow and circulation of media. The idea of participatory
culture has spurred educational research to examine digital spaces as important sites
for social connection, literacy practices, and cultural production.
These early developments provided some broad theoretical signposts for studying
the relation of literacy and identity in response to changing demographics and
migratory contexts, linguistic and communicative landscape, spatial affiliations,
and online connectivity. In particular, research began to examine the ways that
youth of migrant backgrounds use digital and online media to construct networks
and affiliations to diverse cultural and language practices. The next section describes
some major themes from this research that have begun to build a complex portrait of
youths’ transnational digital practices.

Major Contributions

Studies of youths’ literacy and identity practices in transnational contexts have

provided lenses into how these youth draw from multiple linguistic and semiotic
resources to represent themselves, how they navigate participation in diverse com-
munities and networks that span national borders, and how diaspora youth blend
108 W.S.E. Lam and N. Smirnov

their cultural heritage and affiliation with transnational youth culture in online
participatory practices.
A number of studies have focused on the online texts produced by immigrant
youth and shown how young people use their personal profiles and self-produced
narratives in online journals, instant messaging, and social networking sites to
signify their identifications with multiple communities across borders (McGinnis
et al. 2007; McLean 2010; Sánchez and Salazar 2012; Yi 2009). These signifying
practices include written texts, images, and music used by youth to reference the
national symbols and popular culture of their natal countries, and narrative texts that
target different audiences and contain references to the youth’s social relations and
schooling experiences in their different homelands. For example, McGinnis et al.
(2007) profiled how Julia (pseudonym), who migrated to the United States in her
fifth-grade year, used a variety of modalities, such as Latin music, graphics of
Colombian flags, and English and Spanish, to express her Colombian ethnic iden-
tification on Myspace (a social networking site). Her online gallery of friends
reflected her affiliation with other Colombian youths from her high school and
allowed her to maintain relationships with friends in Colombia. Additionally, Julia
expressed her community involvement with immigrant rights by using the site to
promote awareness and mobilize protests. The researchers’ analysis of the multi-
modal and multilingual texts of the youths in their case study led them to assert that
the online environment served as dynamic representational spaces for the youths to
express multiple identities and multiple loyalties and to reflect on the different social
and cultural contexts of their lives.
Besides serving as a narrative space to express one’s multisite and multilayered
affiliations, digital media are also platforms within which young people cultivate
their relationships with different communities. Studies have explored the diverse
online networks of youth and the nature of the communicative practices within these
networks, particularly how social, linguistic, and semiotic resources are accessed and
developed within these networks (Elias and Lemish 2009; Lam 2009; Lam and
Rosario-Ramos 2009; Stewart 2014). In a study of the instant messaging practices of
a 17-year-old girl who had migrated to the United States from China 2 years prior,
Lam (2009) examined how the youth acquired and made choices among different
varieties of Chinese and English to develop simultaneous networks across countries.
The linguistic repertoire that the youth demonstrated in her online communication
includes standard American English and hip-hop English that she used with an
online network of Asian American youth, a combination of Cantonese, Mandarin,
and English with her peers in the local immigrant community, and a blended form of
Mandarin and Shanghainese that she used to interact with her peers and learn about
events in her hometown of Shanghai. The researcher argued that such synchronic
movement across social networks represented the desire of the youth to develop the
literate repertoire that would enable her to thrive in multiple cultural communities
and mobilize social and semiotic resources within those communities. The study also
shows how the youth’s participation in these networks is oriented to diverse linguis-
tic economies where particular language norms, cultural resources, and forms of
creativity are circulated and take on symbolic and functional value.
Identity in Mediated Contexts of Transnationalism and Mobility 109

In an ethnographic study with four high-school youth from Latin America who
had been living in the United States for 9–20 months, Stewart (2014) demonstrated
the diverse networks and forms of literacy practices that youth navigate across online
and offline contexts. By interviewing and observing the youths’ routine activities in
different spaces, she noted how their social networking activities on Facebook
connect them to friends and family back home and those in diaspora communities
across Latin America and the United States, maintain their Latina/o identities
through music and other forms of popular culture, and enable them to cultivate
relationships through English with colleagues in their workplaces. Their online
activities mediate their simultaneous participation in diverse sets of social relation-
ships and institutional practices across geographic space.
These patterns of simultaneity of connection, navigation, and positioning in
different cultural communities through online media are replicated and further
illustrated in interview studies that draw on larger samples (Elias and Lemish
2009; Lam and Rosario-Ramos 2009). Elias and Lemish (2009) interviewed
70 immigrant youth from the former Soviet Union who had been living in Israel
from between 6 months and 5 years, and found that the youths used the Internet to
connect with their homeland and co-ethnics as well as to learn about the host society
and to create friendships with local peers. The youths orient to online media and
communicative platforms both as a source of information about the new society and
a connection to Russian language, information, and cultural symbols of identity.
These forms of continuity and simultaneous affiliations are actively cultivated and
mobilized by the youth to navigate and circumvent the ruptures and social margin-
alization that they experience in relocation. Elias and Lemish (2009, p. 547) suggest
that the youths’ experiences are indicative of “a postmodern experience of diaspora
in which homeland and identity have become fluid” and “new possibilities of
identity formation and notions of belonging that emerge in this process today.”
Other studies have shown how diaspora youth creatively signify their cultural
heritage and affiliation with transnational youth culture in online participatory
practices (Black 2008, 2009; Domingo 2012, 2014). In her study of youth of Filipino
heritage in London who are members of a hip-hop production group that has
transnational membership and affiliations, Domingo (2012, p. 178) proposes the
notion of linguistic layering to describe the “design and circulation of multimodal
texts as rhetorical resources for managing linguistic variety and cultural affiliation
across discourse communities.” The youth call themselves the “Pinoys” and network
with youth of Filipino heritage across Europe, Asia, and North America to engage in
various forms of digital hip-hop production. Their hip-hop music involves hybrid
lyrical and beat-making, visual and textual displays that draw from symbols and
references of diverse discourse communities of Filipino, British, hip-hop, and youth
pop culture. These multimodal ensembles and layering of culturally informed
expressions are produced and circulated in the wider online communities to express
their multiple affiliations and articulate social commentaries on their heritage and
sense of global belonging. By circulating and discussing their projects across online
platforms including Facebook, YouTube, and SoundClick (an online music-based
social networking community), the youth are not only creating messages about their
110 W.S.E. Lam and N. Smirnov

linguistic and artistic identities but also shaping digital and technological platforms
through their collaborative authorship across space.
Black’s (2008, 2009) study of multilingual and diaspora youths’ participation in
anime fan fiction community also shows opportunities for language development
that draws from diverse media genres, cultural knowledge, and linguistic skills. For
example, Black documented how youth of Chinese and Filipino descent who were
studying English as a second language were able to draw on their knowledge of
Asian cultures and languages to construct English texts with multilingual elements,
express pride as Asian-origin writers, and attain expert status in the transnational
anime fan fiction community. These youth, who were located in different countries,
also collaboratively reviewed and supported each other’s development as writers
within the networking spaces of Fanfiction.net. The study shows how the transborder
flows of cultural, symbolic, and ideological material in this online community
influence the identities the youth enact through their fan texts, the global connection
they develop, and the shaping and dissemination of their own media products.
These research studies on the digital literacy practices of youths of migrant
backgrounds show the multiple and complex influences that contribute to the literate
repertoires of these young people. The diverse influences are visible in the use of
multiple languages and hybrid linguistic codes; media genres and multimodal
expressions; as well as the content and cultural references that are represented
through the diverse semiotic forms in the youths’ digital texts. Indeed, the youths’
digital texts indicate that they are orienting to different cultural discourses and
practices coming from both local and translocal contexts, across their countries of
origin and settlement, as these discourses and practices are accessed, remixed, and
circulated in new media platforms.
What we also see from these cases is the creation of social and knowledge
networks across countries. The creation of these networks via digital platforms
allows the youth to connect to diverse cultural communities, access symbolic and
social resources, cultivate simultaneous affiliations, and reconstitute their sense of
belonging across geographical spaces. The reconstruction of social space in literacy
and learning requires further exploration, particularly as we conceptualize forms of
learning that relate to the transnational experiences and communicative repertoires of
migrant learners. In the following section we discuss some empirical and theoretical
work that move in this direction.

Work in Progress

A group of scholars supported by the MacArthur foundation in the United States

have been developing “Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design”
(Ito et al. 2013). The report and related work argue for design and research of
learning environments that are interest-driven, peer-supported, and oriented towards
economic, educational, and political opportunity. By leveraging digital media tech-
nologies, the educational designs under the connected learning framework look to:
“(1) offer engaging formats for interactivity and self-expression, (2) lower barriers to
Identity in Mediated Contexts of Transnationalism and Mobility 111

access for knowledge and information, (3) provide social supports for learning
through social media and online affinity groups, and (4) link a broader and more
diverse range of culture, knowledge, and expertise to educational opportunity” (ibid,
p. 6). Examples of connected learning include Quest Schools, a network of public
schools that incorporate approaches from game design and game-based learning to
reimagine school curriculum, culture, and pedagogy. Other environments are teen
library spaces where youth explore their various interests and receive mentorship
from adults and peers on diverse forms of creative and multimedia production. The
aim is to harness different forms of support structures across online and offline
spaces and across institutional boundaries to promote more equitable and personal-
ized learning for young people.
The Connected Learning framework is an educational movement seeking to
reimagine social spaces for learning and to support young people’s personal interests
and passions to craft meaningful learning and career trajectories. It also has the
expressed aim to relate to a broad range of knowledge and cultural communities with
which students affiliate. However, in order to do so, we need more understanding
and incorporation of the diverse profiles of cultural affiliations and resources for
learning mobilized by young people. The different kinds of social and knowledge
networks developed and valued by youth of diverse cultural backgrounds need to be
considered to truly promote more equitable learning.
To capture variation in forms of connectivity and learning practices, de Haan et al.
(2014) offer the notion of “networked configurations for learning” to describe the
particular online and offline connections that people form as related to their social,
cultural, and geographical history of mobility. Using social network interviews, the
researchers studied the online and offline networks of 79 youth from Native Dutch,
Moroccan-Dutch, and Turkish-Dutch backgrounds in the Netherlands. They found
that the second-generation youth of Moroccan and Turkish descent show both local
and transnational online connectivity, whereas Dutch youth of European descent
have online networks that are distributed more nationally (within the Netherlands).
For native Dutch youth, the Internet allows them to pursue individual hobbies and
learning interests with close friends and in online communities. For Turkish-Dutch
youth, their online networks are spread out across family and friendship networks in
the Netherlands and Turkey, including access to media resources of Turkish origin,
which provide them with particular cultural models and values. Moroccan-Dutch
youth maintain transnational relationships with family across countries but also seek
out online networking opportunities with other second-generation youth of Moroc-
can descent around common interests and concerns (e.g., on issues of gender,
religion, and politics) as they negotiate diverse norms and values in a multiethnic
society.
This study shows that, among youth of migrant backgrounds, their online prac-
tices and learning are informed by cultural and ethnic affiliations, transnational and
diaspora social networks, and the need and process for navigating multiple cultural
values and ideologies as ethnic minorities in the society. These social and structural
relations contribute to the priorities that the youth demonstrate in their online
practices. Hence, in order not to risk normativizing particular digital practices as
112 W.S.E. Lam and N. Smirnov

more conducive to learning, we need to understand the culturally configured prac-

tices of youth from diverse backgrounds, the historical context of their formation,
and the potential they hold for expanding literacy and learning opportunities for
young people.
Also as an effort to reimagine social spaces for learning, Lam and Warriner (2012)
propose that we consider issues of scale in understanding the ways in which migrant
learners relate to language and literacy norms and practices that are prevalent within
different geographical spaces, locally and translocally, and that have functional
purpose for them. The concept of scale is developed in social geography to analyze
how geographical spaces, and the social practices associated with these spaces, are
socially differentiated as well as contested and reconfigured through human activity
and institutional practices (Herod 2011; MacKinnon 2010). Scale is a way of
conceptualizing how power in society is exercised through the making and remak-
ing, through the production and transgression, of boundaries among different places
and sites of social practice. Such spatial boundary making and contestation are
carried out through both discursive/representational and material processes. For
example, the relations between English and Spanish in the United States, and the
legitimacy of each in different spaces (school, home, the workplace), are the object
of discursive struggle through society-wide debate and representation of the value of
these languages as well as the material processes of political mobilization, institu-
tional regulation, and legislation. The process of spatial differentiation produces
language norms and social practices that are prevalent in different geographical
scopes within and across nations. Recent work in sociolinguistics of globalization
and migration has drawn upon this geographical concept to describe how people’s
uses of language and literacy are scaled – that is, how they are indexed to or respond
to values, discourses, and practices at various geographical scopes and institutional
spaces (e.g., Blommaert 2010; Collins et al. 2009).
Our discussion of youths’ transnational media activities in the previous section
illustrate how they orient to different cultural discourses and practices coming from
both local and translocal contexts, even as these discourses and practices are
juxtaposed and engaged in parallel or sometimes blended and remixed in their
literacy practices. For some youth, their simultaneous interactions with diverse
communities allow them to shift across scales as a means of expanding their
identities and developing linguistic, information, and social resources with diverse
communities. Other youth, for example, the Moroccan Dutch youth described in
deHann et al. (2014), develop through their online practices a new kind of “scale” for
the youth to express their common concerns and experiences, and to reference and
contest the language and cultural ideologies coming from their home and host
societies. In other words, these youth are constructing a new geographical scale of
practice that articulates relations to cultural ideologies at other scales. While these
informal digital practices of the youth may not penetrate into their schooling
experience, they hold functional purpose and social value for the youth and may
serve to counteract the more limiting positions for immigrant learners in the tradi-
tionally monolingual and nationalist milieu of schooling.
Identity in Mediated Contexts of Transnationalism and Mobility 113

Problems and Difficulties

We obviously can benefit from more research to help us better understand the digital
practices and culturally configured networks of immigrant youth as well as other
youth who develop transnational relationships through their online, interest-based
engagements. We also need to understand how different social and demographic
variables affect levels and types of engagement, including capturing forms of
variation within ethnic groups. More comparative studies within and across migrant
communities would allow us to consider the social and structural conditions that give
rise to particular forms of transnational literacy practices. These conditions may
include geographical distance and economic and political relations between the
countries of origin and settlement, historical patterns of migration, the structural
positioning of migrants in the country of residence, and intersections with transna-
tional youth culture and media infrastructure across the different homelands.
The particular issue we want to point out and offer some suggestions for focus on
how the different lenses for investigating literacy and identity among immigrant
youths’ digital practices can be synergized for future research and rethinking edu-
cational opportunities for young people. The studies we have discussed adopt
different lenses for understanding immigrant youths’ digital practices. These lenses
include seeing the online practices as forms of representation of identity that draw
from diverse sources of cultural and ideological materials; as particular types of
social networks that connect people and artifacts across spaces; as affiliating and
navigating through these networks in specific cultural and linguistic economies; and
as creative adaptation of technological infrastructure to promote the preceding
processes. At a broader level, these lenses point to the ways in which people
maneuver differentiated social spaces within and across countries, how people create
their own (cultural and historically informed) pathways through them, and in the
process reconstruct their understanding and relationships across these spaces. We
believe these processes of traversal and reconstruction of social spaces have impor-
tant implications for further research and educational practice that seek to enhance
people’s mobility in a global world. In the next section, we offer the concept of scale
as a perspective to bring together the different lenses on literacy and identity in
mediated contexts for future research.

Future Directions

The concept of scale allows us to examine how people’s language practices and
affiliations span different geographical distances, and how through their practices
and activities they also reconstruct relationships between these spaces. Here we
propose three interrelated dimensions of scale for future research focusing on youth
media practices, identity, and learning. Firstly, how do young people navigate
differentiated social spaces and position themselves in diverse communities and
economies across geographical distances? Secondly, how do they develop ways of
114 W.S.E. Lam and N. Smirnov

knowing and representing the relationships between these different spaces? Thirdly,
how do networking technologies or other material practices contribute to
reconstructing spaces and creating new social spaces? In asking these questions,
we are interested in how young people both relate to and reorganize their under-
standing of and participation in diverse social environments in society for their own
learning and identity development.
In regard to the first question, scale allows us to attend to the differentiated spaces
and norms and practices in these spaces that people navigate through their online
(and offline) activities. We have seen that digital media allow youth who have access
to them to construct relationships with people and communities that span various
geographical distances and engage in diverse language practices. It is important to
understand how these language practices contribute to a larger communicative and
knowledge repertoire that the youth may leverage to position themselves in our
interconnected economies and societies. To do so, it is necessary to both study the
configurations of the digital networks that young people develop as well as situate
these networks within the social and linguistic practices prevalent in a particular
geographic community and economy. This may require a combination of methods to
map out the spread of networking activities of young people (e.g., through survey,
social network analysis, or interviewing) and ethnographic and historical study of
the communities with which youth are engaging through their activities.
For example, deHann and her colleagues (2014) show through social network
interviews that Turkish Dutch youth develop a distinct pattern of ethnically based
family and friendship networks that span across the Netherlands and Turkey. Lam’s
(2009) ethnographic study of the online networks of one Chinese youth in the United
States shows that the youth was navigating quite specific local language norms in her
Chinese immigrant neighborhood in comparison to her language practices with
people in her hometown of Shanghai. Studying how youth participate in transna-
tional networks may complexify our understanding of ethnicity and the diverse
linguistic, symbolic, and ideological sources that contribute to the construction of
Turkishness or Chineseness or other forms of identity. It may also allow us to see
how these sources of identity and social practices are mobilized by the youth in their
educational, career, cultural, and personal endeavors.
As people move across different geographic communities, they also construct
ideas and ways of knowing and representing the relationships between the different
spaces (Jones 1998; Moore 2008). This representational aspect of constructing
spatial relations is seen in Domingo’s (2012, 2014) study of Filipino youth in Britain
who participate in transnational hip-hop production as the youth draw from symbols
and references of diverse cultural and geographic communities. Their rhetorical
movements across spaces are manifested, for example, in the footage of their
music videos that connects sites in Manila and London, including scenes of poverty
and people in the Philippines protesting on the streets. The visual assemblage is
coordinated with the youths’ lyrics and bodily expressions to express a uniquely
Filipino hip-hop social commentary. As Domingo (2014, p. 16) stated regarding the
youths’ literacy practice: “Their digitally enabled text making is an ongoing process
that involves continued reshaping of multimodal ensembles across spaces.” The
Identity in Mediated Contexts of Transnationalism and Mobility 115

youths’ narratives that interweave events and practices across geographic commu-
nities create knowledge of the interrelationships of cultures and societies as well as
new pathways for the youth as hip-hop artists. Such narratives for re-presenting the
relationships between diverse social spaces may be particularly promoted and
supported in collective practices that serve an artistic, educational, professional, or
political purpose. However, they may just as well be present in the everyday
narratives that young people construct as they navigate cultural norms and practices
and grapple with information and perspectives from diverse societies. Further
research can explore how youth develop ideas and narratives that variously affect
their pathways and mobility across societies and different institutional domains of
society.
Lastly, we need to understand the role of networking technologies and other
material infrastructures in contributing to creating spaces of social contact and
cultural flows across geographic locations. Countries that have widespread online
infrastructure and home-grown media companies with a Web presence can readily
reach out to its diaspora populations with their media products and platforms.
Individuals and groups may also adapt these media infrastructures for their own
localized communication or networking with conationals in other migration coun-
tries. Immigrant communities that have strong civic and community groups may
promote online platforms for young people to participate and communicate around
their common concerns and interests. These structural conditions are important to
consider in understanding the geographical scale of people’s social connections, the
types of networked and mobile media that facilitate these social connections, and
the flows of information and material products and language practices in these
networks.
While we do not want to lose sight of continuing disparity in people’s access to
technology both within and across societies, it is also important to attend to how
people actively shape technological media for social purposes both individually and
collectively. This happens for undocumented youth living in precarious financial and
political circumstances who develop their resilience and define their own identities
as transnational Latina/os (Stewart 2014) as well as for hip-hop artists who mobilize
multiple media platforms to collaborate in creative production and to reach a
transnational audience (Domingo 2014). Understanding how youth affiliate within
and across territorial boundaries can help us reimagine forms of learning and
belonging that serve to support their social, economic, and political engagements
in our contemporary world.

Cross-References

▶ Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy

▶ Language and Identity on Facebook
▶ Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital
Environments
116 W.S.E. Lam and N. Smirnov

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Kevin Leader and Cynthia Lewis: Literacy and Internet Technologies. In Volume:
Literacies and Language Education
Brian Street: New Literacies, New Times: Developments in Literacy Studies.
In Volume: Literacies and Language Education

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Multilingualism and Multimodality
in Language Use and Literacies in Digital
Environments

Sirpa Leppänen, Samu Kytölä, and Elina Westinen

Abstract
This chapter focuses on language, discourse, and literacy practices in contempo-
rary informal digital environments. We will discuss work in sociolinguistics, new
literacies, and discourse studies that have investigated multilingual and multi-
modal aspects of digitally mediated practices. Moving from early key develop-
ments in the field via major contributions of the early 2000s to current work in
progress, we review key studies that have explored the interconnections of
multilingualism, multimodality, new literacies, and digital environments in dif-
ferent ways. Finally, we briefly discuss the implications of informal, interest-
driven digital literacy practices to focal societal issues such as learning and
challenges of compatibility and adaptability of informally acquired competences
in formal education and everyday life – as well as issues of equality and digital
divide(s).

Keywords
Multilingualism • Multimodality • Discourse studies • Digital environments •
Digital literacies

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Early Developments and Initial Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

S. Leppänen (*) • S. Kytölä • E. Westinen

University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylän yliopisto, Finland
e-mail: sirpa.h.leppanen@jyu.fi

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 119

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_9
120 S. Leppänen et al.

Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Introduction
Multilingualism is a pervasive feature of digital environments. However, what
multilingualism means can vary a great deal. For some, it can mean a repertoire
that allows them to fully participate in a range of sites and types of communication,
while for others, it can involve a more limited and context-specific set of heteroge-
neous linguistic resources. The “language” of digital media also involves multi-
modality – it is a texture of heterogeneous semiotic materials that are woven together
(Kress and van Leeuwen 2001) in ways that are socioculturally significant to the
individuals, groups, and communities of practice using it. To which degree partic-
ipants in digital activities and interactions can draw on and mobilize their semiotic
resources often depends on the normativities in play in the specific environments
with which they engage. These normativities are often polycentric, ranging from
site-specific norms to more general, institutional, cultural, and social ones. Who gets
to use what resources with whom and when is, thus, as much an issue in digital
environments as it is in physical, face-to-face communicative situations (e.g.,
Leppänen et al. 2014).
By digital environments, we refer here to digital media platforms that enable the
creation, sharing, and exchange of user-generated multimodal content and involve
social interaction between participants. In addition to digital platforms explicitly
building on the idea of mutual exchange of content (such as web forums or social
networking sites), we also discuss digital environments in which the main content
can consist of primarily single-authored or monophonic discourse but that also offer
an opportunity to authors and recipients to interact (such as discussion sections of
institutional media sites or blogs) (Androutsopoulos 2010, 2011; Leppänen et al.
2014).
In this chapter, our focus is on language, discourse, and literacy practices in
contemporary informal digital environments. We will discuss work in sociolin-
guistics, new literacies, and discourse studies that have investigated multilingual
aspects and multimodality of digitally mediated activities. Moving from early key
developments in the field via major contributions of the early 2000s to current
work in progress, we review key studies that have explored the interconnections of
multilingualism, multimodality, new literacies, and digital environments in differ-
ent ways. Finally, we briefly discuss the implications of informal, interest-driven
digital literacy practices to focal societal issues such as learning, challenges of
compatibility and adaptability of informally acquired competences in formal
education and everyday life, as well as issues of equality and digital divide
(s) (such as in the global South, from and about which significant work in these
areas is emerging).
Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital. . . 121

Early Developments and Initial Contributors

The history of the study of multilingualism in digital environments is relatively

short, with more concerted efforts beginning in the early 2000s. This area of study
has been characterized by a diversity of approaches (e.g., Androutsopoulos 2010,
2011; Leppänen and Peuronen 2012; Kytölä 2014; Lee 2015). Besides the studies
that have attempted to measure the presence of particular languages on the Internet,
from the early 2000s onwards, an increasing number of studies, representing ethno-
graphic, discourse analytic, pragmatic, or (socio)linguistic perspectives, have
focused on detailed analysis of language use and interactions by participants (e.g.,
Danet and Herring 2007).1 In these studies, the focus was often on young people,
thanks to their role as early adopters and adapters of new technologies, and the main
objective was frequently a descriptive one. The novelty of the technologies and
applications, often text-based only at this stage, and their linguistic and communi-
cative innovations spurred a great deal of interest but also concerns about the alleged
spread of “incorrect” and “inappropriate” language forms in such usages
(Androutsopoulos 2011). In addition, until the early 2000s, in these studies, the
primary interest was the English language, and the bias toward the Anglo-American
Internet sphere was rather strong.
As a prime example of an insightful early contribution to the field,
Georgakopoulou (1997) drew attention to Greek–English code-switching in
e-mails between intimates and style switches within monolingual Greek messages.
With its focus on both code and style switches, it also was an example of a more
holistic and inclusive view of linguistic diversity. Other examples of research at the
turn of the millennium are illustrated by the studies included in Danet and Herring
(2007). These studies on diverse contexts of multilingual language use online
represent an important turning point in language-focused research because, as
opposed to the Anglo-American bias mentioned above, they opened up research
focused on the multilingual nature of the Internet.
Since data in these earlier studies comprised mostly text-based digital discourse,
multimodality rarely featured as a focus of analysis. However, with the emergence of
Web 2.0, and the diversification of possibilities of digital communication, in the
early 2000s, multimodality started to attract scholarly attention, too (see Thurlow
and Mroczek 2011). One example of this emergent interest was Lemke (2002) who
emphasized “hypermodality” as a crucial aspect of hypertexts, giving rise to new
semiotic politics in hypermedia design. Suggesting a semiotic scheme for the
analysis of composite verbal–visual meanings, he highlighted the importance of
investigations that focus on the interplay of verbal and visual resources, creating
affordances for new forms of informational and design complexity. Other notable
examples are the multiliteracies approach by the New London Group (e.g., Cope and

1
Note that Danet and Herring (2007) is an edited volume, an updated and upgraded version of a
special issue in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication published in 2003. Thus, it
represents pioneering work done in the first years of the new millennium.
122 S. Leppänen et al.

Kalantzis 2009) and Kress and van Leeuwen’s work (2001) that emphasized the
importance of looking at not only language uses but also other modalities. According
to them, literacy – including digital literacy – should no longer be seen as mono-
modal only, but plural (hence “literacies”), and that multimodality, especially
visuality, needed to be taken seriously both in research and education as a crucial
means for meaning-making and communication.

Major Contributions

What characterizes much of the current language-oriented work on digital discourse

is an increasing focus on heterogeneity. Studies have shown how in some instances it
can involve an overall switch to using a particular language, whereas in other
contexts, it can manifest as a thoroughly enmeshed polyphonic style, involving
features conventionally associated with different languages, varieties, or styles, in
ways that are situationally motivated (e.g., Androutsopoulos 2011; Leppänen and
Peuronen 2012; Lee 2015). From this perspective, multilingualism in digital social
media cannot be seen as an exception but rather as an example of the “multilingual”
nature of human communication in general (Androutsopoulos 2010, 2011; Leppänen
2012; Tagg and Seargeant 2014; Kytölä 2014).
A key scholar in this area is Jannis Androutsopoulos, whose prolific empirical
work on computer-mediated communication, online communities, and social media,
as well as his theorizations and methodological suggestions integrating insights from
sociolinguistics, ethnography, and discourse studies, has played a crucial role in the
development of the agendas and approaches in language-oriented scholarship on
multilingual computer-mediated discourse. Androutsopoulos (2010), while empiri-
cally focusing on YouTube videos and their comments sections, is an insightful
discussion of the intersections between “Web 2.0” affordances, increased (and more
complex) participation frameworks, multimodality, and vernacular digital literacies.
Androutsopoulos (2011) extends this discussion to multilingual language use, using
the notion of heteroglossia to cover both multilingual (and stylized) language use
and issues of multimodal design and layout that create increased affordances for
participation in digital environments. His most recent work continues to discuss
aspects of digital multilingualism, online participatory cultures, and networked
multilingualism (i.e., being digitally connected to others and being in the web;
Androutsopoulos 2015).
Although the educational potential of information and communication technologies
and the Internet has been recognized from the 1980s onwards (see Warschauer 1997,
for an early discussion of the role and value of computer networking for language
education), work that has explicitly focused on multilingualism, literacies, and lan-
guage learning has only recently started to gain more scholarly attention. An example
of important work in this area is Eva Lam’s research that has examined the multilin-
gual digital literacies of immigrant teens in the United States. For instance, a study by
Lam with Rosario-Ramos (2009) looks at how teens utilize various languages in their
transnational, social, and information networks to create interactions, to maintain
Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital. . . 123

social ties across and between various geographical locations, and to search for
information from multiple sources. Their study shows how proficiency in multiple
Englishes and in multiple languages, in general, is often key to participation in a global
and networked society, suggesting that these multilingual literacy practices that are
transnational in scope could help form educational practices that fully consider and
embrace such resources, experiences, and knowledge.
Recent studies on digital multilingualism have also begun to pay more attention
to multimodality as a dimension. For example, Lee (2015, 2017) has shown how
people draw upon a wide range of multilingual and multimodal resources to project
new global identities, also discussing the implications that such semiotic action has
for education.2 The work by Leppänen and her colleagues (e.g., Leppänen et al.
2014, 2017) has highlighted how communication in digital environments is
increasingly characterized by both multilingualism and multimodality and how
processes of recontextualization and resemiotization are recurrent digital activities
in which semiotic material is circulated and resignified for different purposes and
audiences.
In the field of second/foreign language teaching and learning, multimodality has
also been recognized as something that both research and educational practices need
to take seriously. For example, drawing on key works on both multimodality
research and new literacies, Malinowski and Nelson (2010) give an informative
overview of key advances in understanding multimodality as a crucial ingredient in
all human communication and illustrate the complex interplay between language and
multisemiotic composition in the context of a Japanese university student’s digital
storytelling.
In an orientation to online intercultural exchange they term “telecollaboration
2.0,” Guth and Helm (2010) bring together chapters discussing a range of contexts
and aspects of the deployment of Web 2.0 affordances and “new online literacies”
(Guth and Helm 2010, p. 21) in educational institutions. Several of the chapters
discuss telecollaboration 2.0 from the perspective of multimodality, while multilin-
gualism features in some of them. For example, Steven Thorne, one of the key actors
in this field, discusses in his chapter (2010) how social media activities can offer
opportunities and incentives for intercultural communication and language learning.
Such themes have been central in his work more generally (see also Thorne 2006),
exploring, from a sociocultural perspective, various media technologies both outside
and within formal educational settings and their affordances and challenges in
connection with first/second/foreign language learning, multilingual literacy, and
communication.
In this kind of work, what is often highlighted is students’ active engagement with
digital media that provide them with meaningful opportunities for communication,
interaction, and identity work. Studies often make an explicit connection to the
informants’ out-of-school digital activities, but the main focus of research has
primarily been on formal educational contexts, such as classrooms, schools, and

2
These themes have also been addressed in collaborative work by Carmen Lee and David Barton.
124 S. Leppänen et al.

teacher training. This is the case with Lotherington and her colleagues who have
investigated practical means for redesigning multilingual and multimodal literacy
instruction for linguistically heterogeneous urban classrooms, informing policy
makers and contributing to theory (e.g., Lotherington and Jenson 2011). A similar
interest in studying linguistically and culturally diverse students is illustrated in work
by Ntelioglou et al. (2014) that discusses teaching approaches and practices which
showcase the significance of multilingualism, multimodality, and multiliteracies in
classrooms for the construction of students’ identity positions as “experts” in their
own right. In related research, Lytra (2014) has examined multilingualism and
multimodality in relation to media engagement in classrooms, involving Turkish-
speaking communities, paying attention to how students make use of, combine, and
transform different sets of linguistic and other semiotic resources in their classroom
activities, often with the help of a mobile phone. Her study emphasizes drawing
conclusions on interactional, individual, and community levels as regards linguistic
and cultural change: the students’ heteroglossic performance highlights culture as a
lived, transnational experience. In the Nordic context, chapters in Pitkänen-Huhta
and Holm (2012) explore changing and complex literacy practices and their con-
nections, from the highly local and situated to the global and mobile practices, thus
highlighting literacy as a multiple, multilingual, multimodal phenomenon, con-
stantly under negotiation.
Many studies argue explicitly that it is necessary to integrate young people’s
out-of-school digital literacy practices with formal educational agendas and prac-
tices. For example, Fraiberg (2010), in the context of the twenty-first-century
composition, engages with multimodal–multilingual literacy practices across (un)
official spaces, emphasizing the complex blending of multimodal/multilingual
texts and literacy practices in teaching and research (see also the collection by
Guth and Helm 2010). The resources students have, their ways of engagement
with, and the availability of digital activities are not, however, always empowering
or equally distributed. Studies have shown that, rather than being universally
advantageous, digital activities can in fact be “partially complicit” in a “widening
of the gap,” whereby inequalities can be produced and processes of class repro-
duction can happen in home contexts in relation to new media resources
(Lemphane and Prinsloo 2014; see also the introduction to and studies in Prinsloo
and Stroud 2014).
Pedagogies that unproblematically assume equality of access, resources, and
ways of engagement with digital activities can thus further enforce the
disenfranchising of already disadvantaged students. In this respect, a study by
Gachago et al. (2014) is particularly interesting as it provides insights into how
pedagogies can directly tackle varied student positionalities. Their multimodal
analysis of digital storytelling and “counterstorytelling” shows that pedagogies
that build on and critically extend students’ digital literacy practices can also provide
them with means to challenge social and racial injustices. Their empirical context
was a teacher education course in South Africa, on which notions of difference,
dominance, and resistance to unequal structures were powerfully brought up via
means afforded by digital multimodality.
Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital. . . 125

Current research has thus displayed a growing awareness of the complexity of

language use and literacies in digital environments, as well as of the potential they
have in terms of formal education, while also highlighting the inequalities and divisions
involved in digital activities both within and outside the contexts of formal education.

Work in Progress

An emergent theme in recent work is that digital discourse and literacy are not studied
in isolation, rather digital and physical environments are seen as interwoven (see, e.g.,
Peuronen’s research on Christian lifestyle sports 2013). A similar approach has also
been taken up by Stæhr and Madsen (2015) in their study of the linguistic practices of
a group of young rappers of migrant origin in both musical productions on YouTube
and in their peer interactions. Their study also highlights the educational aspects of this
cultural production as the mentors not only guide the young rappers in rap-related
skills but also as regards their official educational development. Other examples of
studies that span the on- and offline environments include the investigation of “Internet
language” in physical public spaces and texts, such as multimodal and translingual
signs (Lee 2015). The connected and networked nature of digital activities also shows
in how transnationality and translocality of digital activities are recurrent themes in
current research. Such a perspective appears, for instance, in Thorne and Ivković’s
(2015) investigation of the plurilingual commenting on the multilingual Eurovision
Song Contest in YouTube, which forms a translocal, multimodal, and virtual linguistic
landscape (see also Androutsopoulos 2010; Leppänen et al. 2014).
Creativity and playfulness also feature in ongoing work related to multilingualism
and multimodality in digital environments. These qualities are highlighted in Ana
Deumert’s (2014) recent research in which she investigates multilingual digital writing
in varied digital applications (such as SMS, e-mail, Facebook, tweeting, and
Wikipedia) as a creative semiotic practice. Remixings, resemiotizations, and
recontextualizations also illustrate current researchers’ interest in playful and parodic
activities and their social, cultural, and even political functions. For example, Koven
and Marques (2015) have investigated heteroglossic, semiotic practices in the
recontextualization of migrants’ speech online, and Leppänen and Kytölä (2017)
have looked at resemiotization as a resource for (dis)identification. Moreover, Rymes
(2012) has examined the various semiotic affordances of YouTube as influencing
young people’s communicative repertoires in ways that have implications for multi-
lingual and heterogeneous educational spaces (see also Knobel and Lankshear 2015).
A cursory (and by necessity not exhaustive) look at papers given in recent major
international sociolinguistic conferences can also give some indication of current
themes in the area of multilingualism and multimodality online. These include foci
on the semiotics of constructions of identity, alterity, ethnicity, and gender (Tetreault,
Maly and Varis, Peck), popular cultural activities in digital settings (e.g., hip hop
(Westinen)), (re)constructions of humor and parody (Spilioti, Georgakopoulou,
Leppänen), promotional digital activities (Vazou and Politis, van Nuenen and Varis),
and out-of-school literacy practices and language learning (Taylor-Leech, Chau).
126 S. Leppänen et al.

Problems and Difficulties

From an educational perspective, the intensive and sustained investment that many
(young) people make in communication and activities in digital social media is
something that clearly merits a reappraisal of the value and significance they can
have more generally. As argued by Knobel and Lankshear (2010), participants in
long-term committed cultural activities can develop into “professional amateurs,”
with resources that enable them as legitimate and knowledgeable actors in participatory
cultures or communities of practice. Why such resources can be particularly important
has to do with the fact that they can become a form of expertise that is far from trivial or
esoteric but that can actually constitute significant communicative resources in manag-
ing complex, late modern societies. For language and literacy education, this poses a
new challenge, and opportunity, to revise their agendas: the emphasis laid on the role of
communication in this picture suggests that networked communication is a central
means through which such transformations of expertise can take place.
The way in which formal education can contribute to the further development of
digitally literacies and multimodal practices is not, however, without its problems.
Although activities and interactions in digital environments often entail a great deal
of explicit instruction of, learning of, and socialization into particular language uses,
styles, genres, and literacy practices (e.g., Leppänen and Piirainen-Marsh 2009;
Kytölä and Westinen 2015), participants in such activities may themselves resist
any institutionalized attempts at the appropriation of what they see as their own
cultural, communicative, and literacy territory. The ways in which formal education
can usefully intervene in such a territory is a matter of negotiation – whether or not
and in what ways it can usefully build on the expertise students already have and
enhance their capacity to apply it in communication in other settings – education,
work, and citizenship, for example (for insightful suggestions, see Alverman 2015).
Another challenge, already touched on above, that further complicates the task of
educational policies and practices building on students’ existing capacities is the fact
that digital environments are not free from divides. On the one hand, there are the
haves and have-nots – those who have or do not have access to and means for digital
participation. On the other hand, there are also second-level digital divides between
the highly varied experiences and differences in participants’ resources and capac-
ities that can reinforce further divisions between learners at particular intersections of
class, gender, and ethnicity.

Future Directions

While non-Anglophone contexts have gradually become more prominent research

foci, existing work still falls short of properly encompassing geopolitical peripheries
such as the global South, where more striking digital divides may still be in place and
the lack of access to technologies may have consequences in terms of educational
opportunities, equality, and agency. Recent work that has begun, however, to cover
this ground includes, for example, Velghe’s (2014) study of the potential of mobile
Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital. . . 127

phones as a means for improving and expanding the literacy skills of women in a
township in South Africa and Juffermans’s (2015) investigation of multilingualism,
local languaging, and literacy in the semiotic landscapes of Gambia.
Due to the increased and accelerated flows of migration and mobility on a global
scale, research should pay more attention to migrants’ multilingual and multimodal
communications via mobile technologies as part of their trajectories, as well as the
demographically, socially, and sociolinguistically complex and diverse settings in
which many of them find themselves (see, e.g., Omerbašić 2015; Sabaté i Dalmau
2012). No less important topics for future research are the languages, literacies, and
discourses with which identifications and disidentifications, springing from tensions
related to migration, economic crises, violent conflicts, and various political, cul-
tural, and religious polarizations, are articulated, debated, and countered in the
discursive battlegrounds of digital environments. Such activities clearly call for
more concerted research efforts from scholars of digital language and literacies.
For the purpose of sociolinguistic understanding and explanation of everyday
language uses and literacy practices, digital media activities – in contexts where they
are easily available and accessible – should also be taken as one of the sites of
contemporary everyday life, to be investigated not in isolation as such but as
connected and enmeshed with other facets of everyday life. For this purpose,
multi-sited ethnography is needed as a perspective in order to fully understand and
describe the multilingual and multimodal practices and communication of the youth
(Peuronen 2013; Stæhr and Madsen 2015). Digital media should indeed be seen as
responsive to, contributing to, and in interplay with “the world outside the web” –
that physical and virtual settings are often intertwined and inseparable in young
people’s lives. This said, we should still welcome studies that, through close
ethnographic, sociolinguistic, and multimodal analyses, trace the ways in which
participants – in the confines of digital media sites – negotiate and craft their
messages and meanings. Such analyses can highlight characteristics, patterns, and
functions of language and other semiotic practices that are specific to particular
genres and activities, while being interconnected with and responsive to messages
and practices in other social and traditional media.
In the future, social media are likely to become an even more important venue for
nonformal and informal learning in interest-driven, participatory cultures, in more
organized communities of practice centering on joint enterprises, as well as in
grassroots political action. For instance, collaborative crafting of materials for the
purpose of informing and guiding others in their activities will provide an alternative
to mainstream education, an education that is geared toward the needs and objectives
of particular like-minded individuals and their shared, collective agendas. For
example, the participatory Web 2.0 is populated by various resources for learning,
e.g., “how-to-do-x” types of sites, Wikipedia-type entries, and instructional materials
for people to educate others and themselves. Learning very specific literacies in
different languages in the context of fan fiction or mash-ups are cases in point. The
pedagogies involved in such activities often rely on interventions and playful
modifications and, in so doing, encourage the kind of analytical and critical sensi-
tivity that are at the core of formal education, too.
128 S. Leppänen et al.

Cross-References

▶ Ecologies of Digital Literacies: Implications for Education

▶ Elementary Language Education in Digital Multimodal and Multiliteracy
Contexts
▶ Language and Identity on Facebook
▶ Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy
▶ Identity in Mediated Contexts of Transnationalism and Mobility
▶ Multimodal Discourses Across the Curriculum

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Brian Street: New Literacies, New Times: Developments in Literacy Studies.

In Volume: Literacies and Language Education
Kevin Leader and Cynthia Lewis: Literacy and Internet Technologies. In Volume:
Literacies and Language Education

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Fandom and Online Interest Groups

Shannon Sauro

Abstract
Within the scope of technology for language education, fandom and online
interest communities encompass a range of affinity groups in which individuals
can develop skills and knowledge potentially supporting language learning or
language mastery relevant to use in online and offline contexts. Initial work on
online interest groups investigated individual and collaborative literacy prac-
tices and identity development among users of pre-Web 2.0 technologies such
as Usenet discussions and personal fan websites. More recent research on
online interest groups, language learning and use looks to the creative work
and gameplay of international and multilingual users whose communities have
flourished as a result of Web 2.0 technologies, including fanfiction archives,
gaming forums, and wikis, and more general social media platforms. Alto-
gether, studies of fandom and online interest groups within the area of lan-
guage, education, and technology have revealed ways in which language
learners and language users make use of these online communities for language
learning, identity work, and the development of other skills and knowledge and
which hold implications for the integration of technology and digital practices
in language teaching.

Keywords
Fandom • Fanfiction • Identity • Collaborative writing • Web 2.0 • Twitter •
Multiplayer gaming

S. Sauro (*)
Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 131

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_10
132 S. Sauro

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Introduction

Within the scope of technology for language education, fandom and online
interest communities encompass a range of affinity groups in which individuals
can develop skills and knowledge to foster their potential language learning or
language mastery for use in online and offline contexts. Online fandom describes
affinity groups comprised of fans, people who share a deep positive emotional and
psychological connection to something or someone and who often engage in
online fannish practices such as writing stories about the object of their interest
(i.e., fanfiction), discussing their fan interests with others, or engaging in activism
inspired by or in response to the person or thing they are fannish about (Duffett
2013). Online spaces have also been welcoming to the formation of other groups
of users who may not share the same deep connection to a text or public figure that
fans do but who instead come together to engage in shared practices or offer
support around shared experiences. These online interest groups can include, for
example, a Usenet group for Chinese students, scholars, and employees working
and studying abroad in the United States (Bloch 2004), discussion forums for
players of popular video games (Chik 2014), and coffee drinkers and appreciators
who partake in larger conversations through use of the #coffeehashtag on Twitter
(Zappavigna 2014a).
Taken together, educational research on fandom and online interest groups
reveals ways in which participants make use of these online communities for
language development, identity work (i.e., increased self-efficacy, confidence, social
inclusion), and the development of other skills and knowledge, with implications for
the integration of technology and digital practices in language teaching.

Early Developments

Initial work in online interest groups is exemplified by the early studies of Lam
(2000, 2004, 2006) and Bloch (2004), who investigated individual and collabo-
rative literacy practices and identity development among users of pre-Web 2.0
technologies.
Fandom and Online Interest Groups 133

In the first of these, Lam (2000) used a case-study approach to explore the
language and literacy development and identify formation of a second language
(L2) English learner, Almon, during 1996 and 1997. Almon, a youth who had
emigrated to the United States from Hong Kong 5 years earlier, expressed fear
about being marginalized as a result of his English skills. After an introductory
course on email and Internet use, he began using these new skills to teach himself
web design to create a fan page for a Japanese pop singer and thereby establish his
presence as a member of an online fan community. Entry into this online interest
group granted Almon access to a global network of fellow fans with which he was
able to use and develop knowledge of the English of adolescent pop culture through
instant messaging and regular email correspondence. Such involvement contributed
to Almon’s language and identity development by allowing him to overcome the
exclusion and marginalization he often felt in formal classroom contexts, where his
English skills had led to a feeling of alienation relative to his English-speaking
US-born peers. In contrast, Almon’s access to an online fan network of English
language users allowed him to garner opportunities for English language use and to
subsequently negotiate a new identity as a global English speaker.
Such identity negotiation via digital technologies and fan networks was explored
further in another case study by Lam (2006) which followed the online fandom
practices of Lee, whose family had moved to the United States from Hong Kong
when he was nine. Like Almon, Lee’s entry into online fandom took the form of the
creation of a fan website, this time related to Japanese anime. While Almon’s personal
correspondence with fellow fans emphasized mutual interpersonal support, Lee’s
correspondence grew out of his sharing of links and offering of support for those
interested in collaborative projects or web development. In his online global fandom
community, Lee developed the reputation of being a helpful webmaster and fandom
expert. As in Almon’s case, Lee’s online fandom identity validated his English
language competence among a community of global English users. Additionally, his
technical expertise was acknowledged in a manner not recognized in offline spaces. In
both cases, these online fan communities provided L2 speakers of English and youth
immigrants to the US alternative spaces for both language and identity development.
Lam’s early work (Lam 2004, 2006) also explored language learning and identity
development among L2 English users in online interest groups beyond those asso-
ciated with fandom. This included virtual chatrooms frequented by L2 English
speaking youth in the United States who engaged in valuable identity negotiation
and English fluency development by interacting in hybrid or multilingual online
spaces. Lam’s focal participants, Tsu Ying and Yu Qing, were cousins who had
emigrated from Hong Kong to the United States several years prior and who
experienced social distance from their English speaking peers offline. Online, they
regularly took part in synchronous chats with other ethnic Chinese from around the
world who shared varying degrees of proficiency and comfort in communicating in
English or hybrid forms of written Cantonese and English. The linguistic hybridity
of these chatrooms served as a gateway toward greater ease and comfort in English
language use since both girls were able to more easily carry out English conversation
there without worrying about being embarrassed by their accent or accuracy. As a
134 S. Sauro

result, they found themselves gaining confidence and using more English in offline
interactions as well (Lam 2004). Much as Almon and Lee had done through their
involvement in global online fandom, Tsu Ying and Yi Qing were able to develop
their English competence and carry out identity work that resulted in greater access
to, and a growing confidence in, their use of English.
Other early work on online interest groups also includes Bloch’s (2004) investi-
gation of the collaborative writing practice and development of hybrid rhetoric
among a Usenet community for Chinese students, employees, and researchers in
the United States. Bloch’s analysis follows the mobilization of the members of this
Usenet group in 1994 in response to a news broadcast featuring a prominent Chinese
American newscaster on a major US television network regarding alleged Chinese
spying in the United States. What began as a critique of the broadcast transformed
into a collective written response as members of this community agreed that they had
the same rights as US citizens to speak out. The resulting collectively written letter,
detailing the potential harm of such stories for Chinese living in the United States,
drew upon both Chinese and US rhetorical norms and granted members of this
community the chance to write for an authentic audience.
Taken together, these early studies demonstrate the role of online interest groups
that used computer-mediated communication environments common to the late
1990s and early 2000s to carry out important identity work, language development,
and collaborative writing in a manner that enhanced or extended their competence
and social involvement as newcomers to the United States and as L2 speakers of
English offline.

Major Contributions

More recent research on online interest groups and language learning and use looks
to the creative work and gameplay of international and multilingual users whose
communities have flourished as a result of Web 2.0 technologies. As defined by
Kaplan and Haelin (2010), Web 2.0 consists of online platforms in which “content
and applications are no longer created and published by individuals, but instead are
continuously modified by all users in a participatory and collaborative fashion”
(p. 61). Web 2.0 environments encompass spaces such as fanfiction writing com-
munities, forums dedicated to multiuser gaming communities, and even corners of
social networking sites that have attracted online interest groups who often engage in
play or the use of tags or in-group language to index their affiliation. Research on
online interest groups and language learning in these areas has explored creative
production of identity development, the use of online spaces to index global citizen-
ship and multilingualism, the critique of gendered social expectations, and the
mechanisms through which participants index their affiliation in a wider interna-
tional network.
Within online fandom, the advent of Web 2.0 ushered in greater opportunities for
the publishing and sharing of creative fanworks with a broad global audience. The
most prominent of these fanworks, fanfiction, has been the subject of research on
Fandom and Online Interest Groups 135

identity construction and literacy development among L2 and multilingual writers.

Fanfiction, defined as a type of creative writing in which fans remix, extend, or
reinterpret an existing text or piece of popular media (Jamison 2013) and subse-
quently share, read, review, and critique one another’s writing among a community
of fans. The online publishing of fanfiction and the communal interaction around it
was fostered by the establishment of fanfiction archives including the multifandom
archive Fanfiction.net (FFN), founded in 1998. Adolescent fanfiction writing on
FFN has been explored in several case studies which have focused not only on the
literacy development of these young L2 writers but also on their use of the
affordances of the fanfiction archive to manage and build identities around their
writing (Black 2009; Thorne and Black 2011). A key feature of the fanfiction
published to FFN is the Author’s Notes, which accompany each story and which
authors use to communicate additional information and requests to their readers.
Such was the case with one writer, Nanako, who first used the Author’s Notes to
communicate her novice writer and new fan status in her earliest piece of fanfiction
(Black 2006) and used these same Author’s Notes to disclose other aspects of her
cultural and linguistic background (i.e., that she was an L2 speaker of English, that
she was of Asian heritage) as a way to negotiate the type of responses or feedback
she was open to receiving from her readers with respect to her writing style and the
content of her stories (Thorne and Black 2011).
The use of the affordances of the fanfiction platform and the community norms of
fanfiction writers and readers to negotiate aspects of L2 writer identity was also
employed by two other fan writers, Grace and Cherry-Chan (Black 2009). As these
L2 writers of English became more established in their fanfiction communities, they
also began emphasizing the multilingual and global aspects of their identity in the
themes or language incorporated into their fanfiction stories. This included, for
example, use of Romanized Mandarin Chinese (Hanyu Pinyin) and Romanized
Japanese (Romaji) to incorporate song lyrics and dialog from Mandarin and Japanese
as a way to index their language background, multilingualism, and knowledge of
multiple cultures within the FFN international online community. Similarly, the use
of multiple languages in stories written by young Finnish fans of both Japanese
anime and US television programs revealed the writers’ fandom affiliations, which
they indexed through the use of language associated with the fandom source material
(Leppänen 2009). Finnish fanfiction authors also displayed translocal identities in
the case of bilingual stories written in both Finnish and English (Leppänen 2007).
Beyond providing authors with a space to develop their writing skills and index
their affinity with a global community, online fanfiction communities have also
provided young and developing writers a space in which to confront or challenge
identify conflict and the social issues they face offline. Leppänen’s (2008) investi-
gation of young female Finnish authors of Mary Sue fanfiction, a type of self-insert
fanfiction in which the author writes herself into the story as an original character
(a Mary Sue) is one such example. In this study, these young authors used Mary Sue
fanfiction to explore nonsexualized and often humorous romances that challenged
the dominant sexual identity scenarios regarding young women’s sexuality within
Finnish society.
136 S. Sauro

Like fandom, online gaming represents another area around which online commu-
nities have formed using Web 2.0, which have served as a source of L2 learning and
socialization. While research exploring links between digital games and language
learning has more often focused on language learning during gameplay or aspects of
game design thought to be most beneficial for language learning, a select group of
studies has looked at L2 learning and use on game external web sites and forums
developed to support gameplay. Thorne et al. (2012) investigation of 64 Dutch and
American World of Warcraft (WoW) gamers brings together both strands of research
through its complexity analysis of language produced during gameplay as well as its
use of questionnaires and interviews to uncover sites and communities gamers regularly
visited to support their gameplay. All respondents indicated frequent use of these
external WoW-related websites to find information on strategy, lore, and weapons
before, during, and after gameplay session, leading Thorne et al. (2012) to conclude
that game external sites were crucial to the gaming experience. More importantly,
however, the three most frequently visited sites consisted of one fan generated wiki and
two sites that included extensive fan forums, highlighting the relevance of an online
community for creating, sharing, and discussing these resources as part of gaming (see
also Thorne 2012, for a discussion of WoW-related fanfiction).
Game external sites that hosted discussion forums were also integral for both
gameplay and language learning in Ryu’s (2013) investigation of nonnative English
speakers who engaged in English language learning through participation in online
game culture. In this study, Ryu relied upon the unofficial fan-based website
Civfanatics.com for the game Civilization to recruit participants. At the time of the
study, this fansite was home to over 50,000 members who could contribute to a wiki
and interact and collaborate with one another via moderated forums. Ryu’s participants
revealed a strong connection between their gameplay and language learning and the
reliance upon this online community to foster both. In particular, while gaming was
determined to be useful for the development of English words and phrases or
knowledge of history or geography, interaction with peer gamers in the community
of Civfanatics.com was valuable for the development of discourse level English skills.
The significance of these online communities for gamers who frequently gamed in
their L2 was further explored by Chik (2012, 2014), who investigated the L2 learning
practices of a focal group of online gamers from east Asian contexts (China, Malaysia,
and Hong Kong) and who regularly played games in either English or Japanese.
Gamers acknowledged relying on forums and the online community for developing
both the gaming skills and linguistic knowledge needed to play in an L2. This included,
for example, resources provided by more experienced gamers on language learning
practices, or links to related games that used simpler English for those interested in
developing their English skills. Some gamers were also active in using their language
skills to provide amateur translations of the games into their L1 before official versions
were released (Chik 2014). This practice is similar to that of fan-subbing, amateur
subtitling of television shows and movies that teams of fans produce before an official
version are made available (Pérez-González 2006, 2007). Taken together, gaming
communities and associated websites provide L2 speakers support and opportunities
for autonomous language development and target language practice.
Fandom and Online Interest Groups 137

While the affiliation of online communities around fandom and gaming often
intersect and share often very visible affiliations related to popular media, a third type
of online community includes those that emerge from the affordances of the specific
Web 2.0 applications. Here, affordances are defined as “. . .users’ interpretation of
what is made possible by the technology, based on their own technical competence
and communicative intent” (Tagg and Seargeant 2014, p. 165) and include such
things as a specific interest on Twitter (Zappavigna 2014a) and the degree of
openness and language choice in personal profiles on Facebook (Lee 2014).
Another form of affiliation through communication-like exchanges that do not
involve direct interaction between individuals but instead rely on shared and
solidarity-invoking practices is also prevalent in social-media based online interest
groups (Zappavigna 2014b). In her study of the Coffeetweets corpus, a subcorpus of
the HERMES corpus, which consists of tweets containing the string “coffee,”
Zappavigna (2014b) explored how users of Twitter formed a community around
their shared interest in coffee through the use of the #coffeehashtag. Similarly,
language choice can be another solidarity-invoking practice that has been explored,
this time among bilingual users of other types of social media. Lee’s (2014) study of
the techno-linguistic lives of bi- and multilingual undergraduates from Hong Kong
documented the online and offline interaction behind language choice among these
users on different social media platforms. For instance, the decision to use English in
Facebook comments but not in public discussion forums was tied to participants’
real-world identities or affiliations. For example, using English in the more private
and personal space of Facebook comments allowed one user to foreground his
identity as an English major among his friends and peers, but his concern over his
insufficient English knowledge led to the avoidance of English in a more public
online space where he might be judged for making a mistake. In another case, the use
of Mandarin Chinese and the avoidance of English in online forums predominantly
populated by users from mainland China was a way for one student to index his
Chineseness without revealing his Hongkongness, an affiliation that would be given
away through Chinese-English codeswitching.
These major contributions include research into online affiliations that arise from
shared interests in popular media and gaming and which result in fanworks that
transform the original source material (e.g., fanfiction) or the sharing of information
and strategy for the purpose of deeper engagement in gameplay. In addition, such
research also includes studies that examine affiliation that is indexed by the aware-
ness of the affordances (and constraints or inhibitions) of different social media
platforms and communities.

Work in Progress

Building upon the major contributions in this area are several different types of
works in progress that look more closely at language learning as a result of ambient
affiliation in social media (Solmaz under review) or which attempt to bridge the
138 S. Sauro

literacy practices employed in online fandom spaces with literacy development in

classroom contexts (Sauro and Sundmark 2016).
Employing an auto-ethnographic approach in which he was both researcher and
informant, Solmaz (under review) documented his use of Twitter hashtags to make
use of ambient affiliation for the purpose of developing his Spanish language skills.
Using multiple methods of data collection, including a journal, recordings of formal
Spanish lessons he took during this time, screenshots of Twitter conversations he had
with fellow Spanish speakers, and the collection of Tweets he produced, Solmaz
identified several patterns in his own practices to garner opportunities for interaction
in Spanish. This included the use of specific and popular hashtags to join active
conversations about Spanish football (e.g., #UCL, #AtletiBarca), hashtags to engage
in talk about celebrations or losses at individual and national levels (e.g.,
#FelizSabado to wish a friend a happy Saturday; #11M10Aniversario in remem-
brance of the 10th anniversary of the bombings in Madrid), and to a lesser extent, the
use of hashtags to index memes or jokes (e.g., a hashtag that mixed Turkish and
Spanish to share humorous observations about Turkish culture). Solmaz’s work,
therefore, represents an in-depth look at how an autonomous language learner takes
advantage of the affordances of Twitter, in this case hashtags, to successfully gain
access to speech communities in his target language.
Taking an opposite approach and beginning first by observing the literacy prac-
tices of online fandom to inform the design of a task-based project for advanced
English language learners, Sauro and Sundmark (under review) incorporated col-
laborative blog-based fanfiction writing into a literature class for preservice second-
ary school English teachers in Sweden for the purpose of both language and literary
development. The design of this fanfiction project was modeled upon blog-based
role-play fanfiction found in the Harry Potter fandom on LiveJournal (Sauro 2014).
Students were self-organized into small groups of 3–6 and given instructions to write
a missing moment from Tolkien’s The Hobbit, a required text for the course. To
foster discussion and collaboration, each group member took ownership of and was
responsible for writing six paragraph-length contributions to the group’s story from
the perspective and voice of a specific character from The Hobbit. This required
careful reading and discussion of the text to identify a plausible missing moment
from the story that would not interfere with the rest of the narrative as well as careful
attention to language choice and characterization to capture the voice of each
character and Tolkien’s writing style. Sauro and Sundmark’s work therefore repre-
sents analysis and incorporation of online fandom literacy practices to inform
classroom activities that draw upon real world creative language use.

Problems and Difficulties

As with all research that explores naturally occurring data and existing communities
in online contexts, research on online interest groups poses a number of ethical
challenges and difficulties. In addition, researchers and teachers who wish to explore
Fandom and Online Interest Groups 139

online fandoms and fan communities must also be mindful of engaging with a
subculture that may feel particularly threatened by exposure to or invasion by
more dominant mainstream perspectives (Duffett 2013).
Page et al. (2014) identify several major areas of concern when conducting research
on social media. Many of these challenges stem from the difficulty of distinguishing
what is public, private, and semi-private data in these online spaces and the degree to
which online discourse is to be treated as decontextualized text or to be treated as
inextricably connected to a person and therefore subject to the same need for consent
and anonymity. The former challenge reflects not only the many various entry
conditions and affordances of social media sites (e.g., a Twitter account can be set to
public or private) but also the various perspectives among the social media users
themselves. This can be seen, for instance, in online fandom members’ responses to
actors being asked to discuss fanfiction about characters they portray in television and
print interviews (e.g., Minkel 2014, October 17). Although such fanfiction is available
on technically public archives that can be viewed by anyone, many who publish in
these archives consider them a semi-private space and therefore perceive the reading of
fanfiction out of context to be a violation of local community norms that envision a
wall between mainstream media and fandom (see, for example, the roundtable dis-
cussion in a fan podcast on fan perspectives and the fourth wall: By Fans For Fans,
2014, July 1). The latter challenge, that of distinguishing between the text and the
individual, is of particular salience in light of research that shows the extensive and
valuable identity work that youth and language learners engage in through the texts
they produce online (e.g., Black 2009; Lam 2000, 2004, 2006; Leppänen 2008).
In addition, researchers must also be aware of and contend with the restrictions
articulated in the terms of service of social media sites and which limit how and what
kind of data researchers are permitted to collect and analyze (Page et al. 2014). A
further challenge stems from the ephemeral nature of online data and what to do
when online data are deleted or made private by an individual, communities, or
through changes to the social media platform.
An additional challenge with a possible set of solutions is the degree to which
applied linguistics research into online fandom is willing to be influenced by fandom
studies and the practices and concerns fan studies researchers regularly grapple with.
Duffet’s (2013) introduction to the study of media fan culture identifies several areas
of tension that have arisen when fans and fan communities have been the subject of
research or public scrutiny. This includes, for instance, the historical tendency in the
media and sometimes in psychology to pathologize fan behavior and to exploit such
negative perceptions for the purpose of increasing readership/viewership and profit.
Such treatment can make members of online fan communities particularly hostile to
outsiders wishing to seek permission to research fans or their digital literacy prac-
tices. Duffet (2013) recognizes the positive contributions of fan scholars, those who
are both fans and researchers, who have drawn upon their own familiarity with
media fan culture to approach fandom in a manner that is respectful and fan-positive
and who therefore can serve as models for other scholars carrying out research on fan
communities.
140 S. Sauro

Future Directions

Within the domains outlined above – fandom, gaming, and online interest groups –
language learning and identity and literacy development have primarily focused on
the practices of young people, often teenagers or university-aged students. Such a
focus has shed light on practices of particular relevance for youth, for instance, how
ESL students in the USA make use of online communities to negotiate alternate
identities to that of English language learner and new and greater opportunities for
English language use than may be available to them in offline classroom contexts
(e.g., Black 2009; Lam 2004). However, autonomous online language learning and
participation in online interest groups are not merely the domain of youth. Future
research on older fans, gamers, and social media users who do so in a second
language or for the purpose of broadening their literacy skills in their first language
(e.g., middle aged fans of a television show who begin writing fanfiction as training
for writing original fiction) represents a rich area for exploring lifelong autonomous
learning and literacy development.
In addition, the formation of intentional online interest groups for those seeking
alternative spaces represents an area where innovative practices in language social-
ization and language use could expand. This can be seen, for example, in numerous
online fandom groups that provide fans with communities for exploring alternative
interpretations of popular media as a way to address social and identity issues among
marginalized groups, including those that relate to gender and sexual orientation
(Duffet 2013). Such exploration often takes place in the writing and reading of
fanfiction in which familiar characters (e.g., Sherlock Holmes) are depicted as
having a different gender, race, or sexual orientation vis-à-vis their portrayal in
the original media, thereby allowing fans to depict themes or issues that may
not be present in the source material. An additional example involves the negotiation
of fandom community norms around pronoun use. In online discussions and on
fans’ profiles on social media sites, there is a growing awareness of the responsibility
to be inclusive of the needs and experiences of those who identify as transgender
or genderqueer (Thorne et al. 2015). These online fandom practices present rich
areas for exploring the way in which language and literacy practices are used to
critique or reinforce dominant discourses around identity within a global online
interest group.

Cross-References

▶ Digital Games and Second Language Learning

▶ Identity in Mediated Contexts of Transnationalism and Mobility
▶ Language and Identity on Facebook
▶ Second Language Writing, New Media, and Co-Construction Pedagogies
▶ Twitter and Micro-Blogging and Language Education
Fandom and Online Interest Groups 141

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Brian Street: New Literacies, New Times: Developments in Literacy Studies.

In Volume: Literacies and Language Education

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Language and Identity on Facebook

Brook Bolander

Abstract
As a site catering explicitly to the maintenance and construction of personal
relationships, social networking site (SNS) Facebook provides its users with a
wide range of spaces and means through which they can construct and perform
their identity. Despite technological advancements, including a notable and
progressive shift to increased multimodality, language remains central to these
practices. It constitutes a key way through which one can “type oneself into
being” (Sundén 2003, p. 3). This chapter provides an overview of sociolinguistic
research on language and identity on Facebook. In addition to delineating the rise
of SNSs and research on identity in SNSs, it reviews major contributions to the
study of language and identity on Facebook, outlines work in progress, addresses
major research challenges and difficulties, and provides an outlook to future
research.

Keywords
Social network sites • Facebook • Identity • Online-offline relationship • Web 2.0

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
The Rise of Social Networking Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Research on Identity in SNSs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Major Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

B. Bolander (*)
The University of Hong Kong and Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), Freiburg im
Breisgau, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 143

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_11
144 B. Bolander

Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Introduction

Early research on identity tended to conceptualize online communication as separate,

disembodied, and less “real” than offline communication, with means of identity
construction typically being explained through recourse to the medium, particularly
anonymity (e.g., the criticism of early approaches in Thurlow et al. (2004),
Androutsopoulos (2006), and Page (2012). While sociolinguistic research on identity
was rare (Androutsopoulos 2006), its upsurge in the mid-2000s was accompanied by a
progressive shift to a view of online identity as “multifaceted and interwoven with
identity construction offline in complex ways” (Bolander and Locher 2015, p. 105).
As a site catering explicitly to the maintenance and construction of personal
relationships, the social networking site (SNS) Facebook provides its users with a
wide range of spaces and means through which they can construct and perform their
identity. Despite technological advancements, including a notable and progressive
shift to increased multimodality, language remains central to these practices. It
constitutes a key way through which one can “type oneself into being” (Sundén
2003, p. 3). This chapter provides an overview of sociolinguistic research on
language and identity on Facebook. In addition to delineating the rise of SNSs and
research on identity in SNSs, it reviews major contributions to the study of language
and identity on Facebook, outlines work in progress, addresses major research
challenges and difficulties, and provides an outlook to future research.

Early Developments

The Rise of Social Networking Sites

The emergence of SNSs needs to be contextualized within a broader development from

Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, or a shift towards “the social web,” which is characterized by
increased dynamism, participation, and interaction (Zappavigna 2012, p. 2). Following
boyd and Ellison (2007), SNSs can be defined as “web-based services that allow
individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system,
(2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and
traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.” SNSs, in
other words, reflect “a shift in the organization of online communities” from commu-
nities centering on interests to platforms “organized around people” (boyd and Ellison
2007). Moreover, many of these serve to “support pre-existing social relations” (boyd
and Ellison 2007) and are thus substantially different from the anonymous environ-
ments studied in early research on identity online.
Language and Identity on Facebook 145

The first SNS, sixDegrees.com, was launched in 1997, yet the majority of SNSs
emerged from 2003 onwards, for example, MySpace in 2003, Flickr and Facebook
(the Harvard-only version) in 2004, YouTube and Facebook (for high school net-
works) in 2005, and Twitter and Facebook (for everyone) in 2006 (boyd and Ellison
2007). Indeed, “[b]y the end of the first decade of the 2000s, social network sites had
become an integral part of modern life the world over, and figured as paradigmatic
examples of the increased social-orientation of online activity” (Seargeant and Tagg
2014, p. 2).

Research on Identity in SNSs

Scholarship on SNSs goes back to the early and particularly mid-2000s, a timeline
which reflects the upsurge in the sites themselves, with major early research topics
being “impression management and friendship performance, networks and network
structure, online/offline connections, and privacy issues” (boyd and Ellison 2007).
An early focus on identity construction in SNSs is not surprising given that SNSs, or
“networked publics,” (boyd 2010) cater to the development and maintenance of
personal relationships. Such early research includes boyd’s (2004) article on identity
in Friendster; Donath and boyd’s (2004) research on social connections and links to
identity in Friendster, Orkut, Tribe.net, Ryze, and LinkedIn; and Donath’s (2007)
application of signaling theory and its implications for identity construction in SNSs
(cf. also the list of early research on impression management in boyd and Ellison
2007). Scholarship on identity in SNSs has continued to proliferate, as evidenced,
for example, by edited books devoted to the subject (cf. e.g., Papacharissi 2010).
Research on identity construction on Facebook emerged slightly later, since
Facebook only became publicly available in 2006. As with other SNSs, identity
and impression management were important early themes. Indeed, Facebook pro-
vides numerous options for identity construction. These include a profile page,
where Facebook users engage in labelling and description practices through which
they share information about themselves (e.g., age, sex, relationship status, school-
ing, and educational background), a profile picture (or cover photo post-2011), photo
albums, and a wall (pre-2011) or timeline (post-2011) where they write or post
photo/video status updates (prompted by a system message “What are you doing
right now” pre-2009 and “What’s on your mind” post-2009), perform other activities
(like sharing music, YouTube clips, and videos), and interact with their Facebook
“friends,” for example, by commenting on status updates. Importantly, as this list
implies, language is a key means through which an individual performs and con-
structs his/her identity, and it is through the use of language (in combination with
audio-visual practices) in these different spaces and over time that a discourse
centered on the Facebook user emerges.
Notable early publications on identity on Facebook include Walther et al.’s (2008)
paper on the collaborative nature of Facebook and ties to impression formation and
impression management; Zhao et al.’s (2008) study of implicit and explicit processes
of identity construction in the Facebook accounts of 63 university students; and
146 B. Bolander

Papacharisi’s (2009) comparative paper on Facebook, LinkedIn, and ASmallWorld,

which addresses ties between the architecture of these sites and identity and
community.

Major Developments

In one of the first linguistic studies of language and identity on Facebook, Bolander
and Locher (2010, p. 169) maintain that the “[l]iterature on Facebook thus far has
tended to come from communication studies, sociology and network studies. Lin-
guistic interest has been relatively limited”. However, since then, there has been an
upsurge in (socio)linguistic research on language and identity on Facebook,
mirroring a general rise in research on language and identity in various other online
environments.
Major contributions to the study of language and identity on Facebook include
Bolander and Locher (2010, 2015), Lee (2011), Page (2012), Barton and Lee (2013),
West and Trester (2013), Deumert (2014), Lee (2014), Leppänen et al. (2014),
Locher and Bolander (2014, 2015), Page (2014), and Koteyko and Hunt (2016).
Common to these contributions is an approach to identity as a multifaceted and
multi-layered performance and as emergent online when individuals use language
and other modes to engage in interaction. In this vein, Lee (2014, p. 91), for example,
refers not to “identity” but to “identities” in the plural; Bolander and Locher (2015)
to identity as “acts of positioning” and Leppänen et al. (2014, p. 112, emphasis in
original) to identity as “acts and processes of identification and disidentification.”
Identity construction is conceptualized as a process, which is continuously
enacted when Facebookers go onto their Facebook accounts and, as stated under
“early developments” above, intricately linked to the individuals’ offline lives and
identities. This process begins the moment a user establishes a Facebook account, as
s/he is encouraged to complete information about him/herself, for example, his/her
date of birth, relationship status, work and education, and hobbies. The majority of
this information is provided through written language, e.g., through the act of writing
short entries about one’s political and religious views, through copy/pasting links to
groups or one’s personal homepage or choosing from a list of pre-determined
response options pertaining to one’s relationship status – “married,” “single,”
“engaged,” etc.
While the “About” section prompts individuals to complete templates containing
information about themselves, on the remainder of the wall/timeline, Facebookers
are comparatively unconstrained with respect to what they want to post and how they
want to post it. Bolander and Locher (2010, p. 178) refer to this as “[c]reative
language usage.” This creativity is underscored by Lee (2011) who adopts a virtual
ethnographic approach to study the status updates and online profiles of 20 Canton-
ese-English bilinguals in Hong Kong, notably to analyze the “primary communica-
tive functions” of the status updates and how they are “embedded meaningfully and
creatively in the everyday lives of Facebook users” (Lee 2011, p. 111). Her com-
parative analysis of the primary communicative functions of the status updates in
Language and Identity on Facebook 147

connection with the 2009 shift in status update prompt (from “What are you doing
right now” to “What’s on your mind”) shows a “relatively high percentage of
messages expressing personal opinions, judgments, or beliefs about themselves,
other people, or events” (e.g., “Ariel thinks that no news is good news”, Lee 2011,
p. 115, emphasis removed). Lee (2011, p. 115) interprets this finding as suggesting
“that the participants often ignored the mechanical constraints imposed by
Facebook.” In other words, even despite the presence of a prompt, individuals
perceive the status updates as providing a social space for the performance of
identity, as well as other types of interpersonal behavior.
As stated by Vásquez (2014, p. 67), there was a tendency in early research to
prioritize profiles, typically considered the “backbone” of SNSs (boyd and Ellison
2007), and the major site for identity work. Yet existing research on language and
identity on Facebook goes beyond an analysis of personal profile pages to examine
identity construction through status updates (e.g., Bolander and Locher 2010, 2015;
Lee 2011; Page 2012, 2014; Lee 2014; Leppänen et al. 2014; Locher and Bolander
2014, 2015); reactions to status updates (e.g., Page 2012; West and Trester 2013;
Bolander and Locher 2015), alternate actions like “friending,” “liking,” or ritual acts
like posting birthday messages (e.g., Page 2012; West and Trester 2013; Deumert
2014); and through multimodality (e.g., Deumert 2014; Leppänen et al. 2014). As
the list of examples indicates, the tendency is for researchers to explore identity
construction across different practices within the SNS Facebook. In this way,
scholars attempt to take account of and do justice to the interrelatedness and
convergence of the practices, spaces, and modes where and through which identities
are performed on Facebook.
Bolander and Locher (2010) and Locher and Bolander (2014, 2015), for example,
explore identity construction in personal profile pages, status updates, and reactions
to status updates of ten Facebookers living in Switzerland and ten Facebookers
living in the UK. Adopting a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach, they
develop and apply a data-driven coding scheme to analyze the types of identity
claims made in status updates. On the basis of the analysis of a corpus of 474 status
updates, they determine that individuals most often use status updates to make
claims about their personality, followed by their pastime endeavors, sense of
humor, work, and relationships. For example, the status updates “Peter has lived
miami to the fullest” and “Peter packs” are categorized as “pastime endeavours,”
since in both instances, Peter underscores his status as someone who travels
(Bolander and Locher 2015, p. 100). Through subsequent analysis of 228 reactions
to status updates, Bolander and Locher (2015) are able to further show the tendency
for the identity claims in the status updates to be supported in the reactions to them.
In addition to underscoring the creative use of language in various Facebook
spaces, research highlights that a range of social and medium factors influence
processes of identity construction. Writing about the emergence of sociolinguistic
research on computer-mediated contexts, Androutsopoulos (2006) underscores a
move away from first “wave” approaches which over-emphasize the medium towards
research which acknowledges the interplay between technological affordances, like
synchronicity and social properties, such as participant relationships. Sociolinguistic
148 B. Bolander

research on language and identity on Facebook similarly underscores and analyzes this
variety.
Thus, Page (2014), for example, draws attention to the role played by the medium
factor of privacy as well as the social factors of participant relationships and
audience in her study of identity and authenticity in connection with Facebook
“frape,” a practice whereby a user hijacks another person’s Facebook account to,
for example, write status updates (e.g., “I’m such a filthy girl when I’ve had a drink”,
Page 2014, p. 58) or to change profile information (e.g., the person’s relationship
status). In such instances, language is used to make identity claims about and in the
name of someone else, which can be more or less “at odds with the victim’s
‘genuine’ identity” (Page 2014, p. 58). The technological affordances of Facebook
are such that audiences who are typically separate outside of Facebook (e.g., work
colleagues and family members) become a single group in the Facebook environ-
ment (Page 2014, p. 48), a factor typically referred to under the label of “collapsed
contexts” (boyd 2008, p. 34). This effects how frapes are interpreted, with different
types of addressees typically reacting differently to instances where expectations of
authenticity are violated (Page 2014). Indeed, “[t]he audiences constructed in
Facebook [. . .] blur the distinction between online and offline contexts, where the
interactions online influence the identities and interactions that spill over into offline
contexts” (Page 2014, p. 48). Through her analysis of examples of frape coupled
with the use of interviews, and with reference to both “the technology and social
setting” (Seargeant and Tagg 2014, p. 14), Page (2014) is able to demonstrate
intricate links between authenticity and identity and to problematize these links
with respect to the complex relationship between online and offline constructions
of social reality.
Additional important themes in the literature on language and identity on
Facebook are multilingualism and multimodality. The move towards research on
these subject matters mirrors appreciation of the multilingual Internet (cf. Danet and
Herring 2007) and recognition of the tendency for individuals to perform identity
work and to engage in interpersonal behavior through various modes or channels,
not solely language (cf. Bolander and Locher 2014). Multilingualism on Facebook
has been studied in connection with code choice, code-switching, and code-mixing
(see, e.g., Lee 2011; Barton and Lee 2013; Deumert 2014; Locher and Bolander
2014). Locher and Bolander (2014), for example, explore ties between identity
construction and code-switching practices in a corpus of 474 status updates and
795 reactions to status updates produced by Facebookers in Switzerland and the
UK. Their results demonstrate these ties with respect to differences between the two
focus groups with the Swiss focus group projecting “a more multilingual group
identity” (Locher and Bolander 2014, p. 172), as well as with respect to differences
in degree and type of code-switching in the status updates compared with the
reactions to status updates. While the status updates tend to be monolingual, the
reactions are comparatively multilingual, a finding which the authors interpret as
reflecting a decrease in the breadth of addressivity. In the small conversations
between individuals which emerge as reactions to status updates, the interlocutors
draw on the varieties they also use when interacting with one another offline, namely,
Language and Identity on Facebook 149

on Standard or Swiss German. In switching to these languages, they thus also “index
closeness” and make “friendship identity claims” (Locher and Bolander 2014,
p. 181).
While language remains central to the performance and construction of identity
on Facebook, “[p]eople combine images and other visual resources with the written
word online” (Barton and Lee 2013, p. 18). Indeed “[m]aking meaning through
multimodal means is a way of positioning the self and others” (Barton and Lee 2013,
p. 19). A prominent example on Facebook is the use of images. As shown in Zhao
et al.’s (2008) study of implicit and explicit identity construction in a sample of
63 Facebookers living in the USA, individuals tend to use photos to index a group
identity, even in profile pictures (with 31.1 % choosing a profile picture in which the
user appeared with a friend/s). For the authors, “[t]he fact that the majority of the
users chose either not to show their faces at all or to show their faces along with the
faces of others in their profile cover picture is very revealing, indicating, among
other things, an effort to construct a group-oriented identity” (Zhao et al. 2008,
p. 1827).
Linguistic means for identity construction on Facebook are often also intricately
interwoven with paralinguistic means like creative orthography and the textual
performance of images. This is highlighted in Deumert’s (2014) research on the
use of Facebook (and other SNSs) for the creative performance of a ludic self and for
online play. For Deumert (2014, p. 27) such involvement entails “mobiliz[ing] [. . .] a
particular type of self, as well as a particular set of social relations: light-hearted and
creative, enjoyable and full of possibilities,” through “text, sounds, and images.”
Posting happy birthday messages by drawing on different spellings or by drawing a
birthday cake by using various symbols and letters on one’s keyboard, for example,
constitute acts through which an individual not only performs “an important social
ritual” but also a means to publicly show “one’s linguistic creativity and originality”
(Deumert 2014, p. 36). For discussions of multimodality and the use of various
linguistic, visual, and textual means to perform identity, see also Kytölä et al. (2014)
and Koteyko and Hunt (2016).
Finally, the research highlights and presents evidence for the intricate links
between offline and online, thereby challenging a clear split between the two
(cf. also Jones 2004). This has both epistemological and methodological implica-
tions. In this vein, for example, Lee (2014, p. 94) argues for the importance of a
“situated” approach. This can be interpreted with respect to the need to contextualize
and analyze identity on Facebook within the SNS itself, i.e., across different spaces
on Facebook and notably, with respect to how Facebook activities are situated in
participants’ offline lives (see e.g., Lee 2011, 2014; Page 2012, 2014; Barton and
Lee 2013; West and Trester 2013). Further, Barton and Lee (2013) and Lee (2014)
introduce “techno-biographic” interviews as a methodology for studying the
situatedness of Facebook practices. Inspired by narrative approaches to interviews,
they combine a focus on linguistic practices on Facebook with an interview designed
to delve into the participants’ “life stor[ies] in relation to technologies” (Lee 2014,
p. 94). Part of the techno-biographic interview consists of a 30-min screen recording
of the participants’ activities, which s/he subsequently views and discusses with the
150 B. Bolander

researcher. This combination of observation and insider perspectives is argued to be

“crucial” for studies of identity online (Lee 2014, p. 94; cf. also Barton and Lee
2013). The mixture of online observations with interviews and discussions with
participants about their own practices is also compatible with the discourse-centered
approach to online ethnography outlined in Androutsopoulos (2008), and it mirrors
an appeal for more ethnographic research on Facebook (West and Trester 2013) and
in digital spaces more generally (Bolander and Locher 2014).

Problems and Difficulties

Two major challenges for research on language and identity on Facebook are
methodological and concern ethics and access to data. There has been widespread
change in ethical parameters, from a view which prioritized technical access to a site
as the key determinant for whether informed consent was needed, to one which
acknowledges that “public” and “private” can but need not overlap with “accessi-
bility” (cf. Landert and Jucker 2011; Bolander and Locher 2014). For example, there
are sites which are openly accessible online but which contain sensitive content or
are run by minors, both factors which would prompt researchers to ask for consent.
At the same time, technological parameters often provide a first starting point for
ascertaining whether permission should be sought from participants. In other words,
while numerous factors influence whether scholars seek informed consent from
participants interacting in publicly accessible sites online, there is general agreement
that when sites require registration, consent should be sought.
The comments by, and the practices adopted by, researchers studying language
and identity on Facebook suggest that consent needs to be sought to study the
Facebook accounts of individuals who are not public figures and with whom one
has to become “friends” in order to access smaller or larger portions of their profile
(in accordance with individual privacy settings). While it is relatively unproblematic
for a researcher to ask an individual for consent to download parts of his/her
Facebook account for research (cf. Bolander and Locher 2010; and West and Trester
2013 for ways in which this can be done), it is more challenging to deal with the
scores of other users whose information one ends up downloading, too (e.g., in the
comment sections) and from whom consent also needs to be sought. One possibility
is to ask all participants for consent. Page (2012), for example, obtained written
consent from each of the 100 participants whose profiles and status updates she
archived (Page 2012, Page, personal communication), and she did not use or quote
from profiles or status updates of individuals from whom she had not gained explicit
permission. Another similar way is to only quote examples produced by participants
from whom one has obtained consent and to use the other data, for example, as
background information (cf. Locher and Bolander 2014; Bolander and Locher
2015).
A second methodological challenge is access to participants. Sampling strategies
are evidently steered by research focus, as well as by feasibility. The two can also
overlap. It is probable that interest in a particular phenomenon stems from observation
Language and Identity on Facebook 151

of that phenomenon, i.e., through one’s use of Facebook or participation in a

particular Facebook community of practice. Perhaps this is a key reason why
many of the studies (which include information on sampling strategies) appear to
focus on the practices of university students and staff (and potentially on their
friends and families).
It is more challenging to get access to individuals with whom one does not
directly have contact online oneself and to study how their Facebook practices are
embedded in their offline lives, particularly, for example, if they live in different
geographical areas from the researcher (does one travel to the site to do ethnographic
fieldwork offline?), are part of a diaspora community (where should one study the
situatedness of practices – in the “sending state” or “receiving state”?), or highly
mobile (which geographical spaces are most relevant?). While online interviewing
can offer a useful means of obtaining more detailed insight into participants’ own
perspectives on the social meanings of Facebook and the role of language, there are
also many places where Internet connections are not stable enough to facilitate
online interviews. Clearly there is no simple solution to the challenges of finding
suitable participants. Yet scholars should be aware of and make explicit in their
publications how and why they chose their particular group of participants and
whether this choice was research-question driven, data-driven, convenience-driven,
or a combination of the three.

Work in Progress

Since the early 2000s, there has been an increase in sociolinguistic research on
language and globalization. This has been accompanied by an upsurge in new
terminology, often lexicalized by the affixes “super” or “trans,” for example, “trans-
idiomatic,” “translanguaging,” and “superdiversity” and by increased interest in
“transnational spaces,” both offline and online. Underlying these terms is the idea
that “globalization forces sociolinguistics to unthink its classic distinctions and
biases and to rethink itself as a sociolinguistics of mobile resources, framed in
terms of trans-contextual networks, flows and movements” (Blommaert 2010,
p. 1). This interest is, for example, reflected in a recently published article by
Schreiber (2015) entitled “‘I am what I am’: Multilingual identity and digital
translanguaging.” The paper presents a qualitative case study of the multilingual
practices and semiotic resources employed by Aleksandar, a student of English
studying at a Serbian university. Drawing on observations and analysis of
Aleksandar’s Facebook practices, and a lengthy semi-structured interview held via
Facebook chat, Schreiber (2015, p. 70) aims to “complicate our understanding of the
relationship between first and second language identity, exposing the deep gap
between students’ lived literacy practices and the narrow conception of language
use still widely held in language classrooms.” She thereby applies Canagarajah’s
(2011, p. 401) concept of “translingualism” or “the ability of multilingual speakers to
shuttle between languages, treating the diverse languages that form their repertoires
as an integrated system.” Schreiber (2015) then uses her results to reflect upon the
152 B. Bolander

pedagogical implications for students and teachers learning/teaching English as a

foreign or second language.

Future Directions

Much valuable research has been produced on the multifaceted nature of identity
construction through language, through different languages, and through different
semiotic resources, in various Facebook spaces, since the first upsurge of scholarship
on language and identity on Facebook roughly half a decade ago. The geographical
spread of this research has also been diverse, with scholars focusing on individuals
living in various places around the world, for example, the UK (Page 2012; Locher
and Bolander 2014, 2015; Bolander and Locher 2015), Switzerland (Bolander and
Locher 2010, 2015; Locher and Bolander 2014, 2015), Hong Kong (Lee 2011, 2014;
Barton and Lee 2013), South Africa (Deumert 2014), the USA (West and Trester
2013), and Serbia (Schreiber 2015). It is my hope that this body will continue to
grow, for example, through more research on Facebookers from backgrounds and
age groups which have, to date, received less attention, for example, adolescents and
elderly Facebook users, and Facebook users living in countries of the developing
world. That this is a pertinent direction for future research is underscored by
Dovchin, Sultana, and Pennycook’s recent (Dovchin et al. 2016) paper on “Unequal
Translingual Englishes in the Asian Peripheries,” which uses Facebook in combina-
tion with other data obtained through ethnography to address identity construction
amongst young adults in Mongolia and Bangladesh.
Future scholarship should also incorporate more diachronic and longitudinal
research on change, including the effects of increased multimodality and modifica-
tions to the Facebook interface, for example, in the spirit of Lee (2011) and Page
(2012), whose work includes analysis of the 2009 shift in status update prompt from
“What are you doing right now?” to “What’s on your mind?,” and Koteyko and Hunt
(2016), who conducted a longitudinal (4-month long) observation of 20 Facebook
profiles in their study of health identities on Facebook. The progressive rise of
Facebook via smartphone and via tablets (resulting from both the increase in
smartphone and tablet usage and the launching of apps, e.g., the Facebook for
iPhone App in 2008 and the Facebook for iPad App in 2011) warrants more research
on language and identity construction on mobile Facebook, too.
Finally, what has not yet been studied is how processes of identity construction do
not just straddle online and offline, or different spaces within Facebook, but also
different modes of computer-mediated communication. Facebookers are
constructing even wider networks across these modes, for example, through the
use of tweets as status updates and through the sharing of YouTube clips or blog
posts on Facebook. Such practices raise further questions about the boundaries and
borders between identity construction on and across different digital environments,
as well as about the social meanings and embedding of these practices in the offline
lives of the users themselves.
Language and Identity on Facebook 153

Cross-References

▶ Ecologies of Digital Literacies: Implications for Education

▶ Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy
▶ Multimodal Discourses Across the Curriculum
▶ Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital
Environments

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 Part III
Technology in World/Second Language
Education Contexts
Distance Education for Second and Foreign
Language Learning

Robert Blake

Abstract
Using technology to deliver second-language (L2) instruction is becoming com-
monplace, whether in support of traditional, blended, or fully online formats. This
article provides an overview of best practices with these new digitally enhanced
learning spaces that respond to greater student autonomy and the search for
increased access to the authentic cultural materials for all world languages.
Online language learning must also focus on the student’s need to find a place
in a multicultural, digitally infused world. In technological terms, the online
formats for L2 instruction will continue to evolve rapidly, making the issues of
teacher training in iterative cycles a pressing concern for any language program.
If the online language field retains an emphasis on collaborative exchanges and
co-construction of learning (i.e., the interactionist perspective), these new or yet-
to-be imagined technical advances have the potential of being smoothly absorbed
into a digital educational era that is here to stay.

Keywords
Blended learning • Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) • Computer-
mediated communication (CMC) • Online learning

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

R. Blake (*)
University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 157

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_13
158 R. Blake

Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Using technology to deliver second-language (L2) instruction is becoming com-

monplace, whether in support of traditional, blended, or fully online formats. These
new digitally enhanced learning spaces respond to greater student interest in digital
learning, the need for more schedule flexibility, the search for increased access to the
authentic cultural materials for the world languages, and increased focus on student
autonomy. Although many in the language profession still question whether or not
online L2 learning can support the same type of linguistic interactions purportedly
fostered in the classroom, the research on computer-mediated communication
(CMC) has clearly documented developmental benefits. However, teachers require
repeated training on how to best use these new online affordances and help in
leveraging technology in service of the L2 curriculum. Cross-culturally perspectives
also need to be reexamined with respect to online language courses because it should
not be assumed that everyone interacts online in the same way and with the same
cultural understandings and conventions. With respect to research, the field of
computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has begun to move away from asking
comparative questions such as which is better, in-class or online learning, to a more
nuanced examination of the L2 processes that highlight how students use technology
to further their L2 development. CALL is now framed in a much more multimodal
context where learners enjoy greater agency and autonomy to produce language
through digital forms. Today’s student not only learns grammatical structure in a new
language but also finds a place in this multicultural and digitally infused world.

Introduction

The use of technology to deliver second-language (L2) instruction is becoming

commonplace in the foreign-language curriculum (Blake 2013), whether in support
of traditional, blended, or fully online formats. This new practice constitutes a
response to student demand for (i) greater use of a medium they find inherently
attractive; (ii) more schedule flexibility unconstrained by time and place, and (iii)
better access to the authentic cultural materials, especially for less commonly taught
languages (LCTLs). The emphasis in education circles on more autonomous,
student-driven, and constructivist learning environments has only reinforced these
student preferences. Increasingly, our students have already entered the work force
but still need to finish a degree or pursue continuing education. They might be
simultaneously juggling school, work, and maybe even a family. While the needs of
work and family tend to be relatively inflexible, school schedules offer the only
component that can accommodate student life. Likewise, students are becoming
increasingly aware of the importance of world languages such as Arabic, Persian,
Hindi/Urdu, and Korean, to name only a few. Unfortunately, these languages are
Distance Education for Second and Foreign Language Learning 159

infrequently taught on many college campuses. In the face of scarce resources for
LCTL instruction and weak material response from publishing houses (it does not
pay for them), administrators and teachers have turned to blended or fully online
formats in order to enrich their language and culture programs. Nevertheless, many
in the language profession question whether or not L2 online learning can support
the same type of linguistic interactions purportedly fostered in the classroom through
seat time, which has traditionally constituted the gold standard. Research in
computer-mediated communication (CMC; see Blake (2016b) and Sauro (2009,
2011) for a general overview of CMC research) has partially addressed some of
these fears by documenting the benefits derived from electronic exchanges among
L2 students carrying out online tasks with other students or native speakers. How-
ever, teachers still require training in best online practice in order to take advantage
of these new online affordances.

Early Developments

Previously, L2 online learning (what used to be referred to as distance learning) was

delivered through multimedia sources such as CDs, DVDs, Internet links, and the
use of electronic writing forums. Today’s L2 online delivery typically takes place
within a learning management system (LMS) such as Blackboard, Moodle,
Brightspace (Desire2Learn), or Canvas. These platforms provide users with both
asynchronous and synchronous communication tools, along with a reasonable
amount of storage for PowerPoint Presentations, documents, files, Web pages,
Internet links, and LTI (i.e., learning tools interoperability) extensions to other
third-party applications.
Telecollaboration or tandem learning projects are commonly treated as a separate
instructional activity that focuses on the development of intercultural competence
between students with different L1 languages and lies outside the scope of this
review (but see Guillén 2014; Belz and Thorne 2005; O’Dowd 2007). Tele-
collaboration may still require students to be physically present at a specific place
and time to accommodate differences between overseas time zones.
Overall, the L2 field has produced relatively few empirical studies proving the
effectiveness of online language learning in comparison to the performance in
traditional classrooms. Early studies concentrated on evaluating hybrid courses,
where only part of the curriculum is delivered in class while other tasks occur online.
Understandably, the divergent array of tasks and curricular materials that each
language course exploits poses serious challenges for carrying out a felicitous
comparative study. However, the findings to date on hybrid courses suggests that
students who learn language with an online component may develop their literacy
skills to higher level than students just working in a classroom environment
(Warschauer 1996). In a study sponsored by the US Department of Education
(Allen and Seaman 2010), hybrid learning, without specific reference to a particular
discipline, appeared to produce better student outcomes than any other formats, at
least as measured by grades – “the best of both worlds: online and classroom.”
160 R. Blake

What language-specific comparative studies that do exist – Adair-Hauck et al.

(1999), Blake et al. (2008), Chenoweth and Murday (2003), Green and Youngs
(2001), and Grgurovic et al. (2013) – more often than not report no significant
difference between the performance of hybrid/online and classroom learners. These
studies appear to make the case that online learning can contribute to the student’s L2
learning, but much depends on the learning environment, pedagogical materials, task
design, administrative support, and individual differences among both teachers and
L2 learners. Since most of these studies combine online instruction with face-to-face
class meetings, it is difficult to generalize results to language courses fully
implemented in an online format.
One of the primary worries that language teachers voice with respect to using
technology to teach a L2 has to do with speaking: How can the use of the computer
replace the face-to-face oral production that occurs in the classroom, along with all
of the live interactions with the instructor, who represents the students’ best or only
model for correct usage? In the context of a fully virtual language course, this issue
often becomes the main obstruction to granting online class credit; some faculty and
course committees steadfastly refuse to accept online courses as equivalent to
presential language classes. These doubts often arise because of lack of knowledge
about the many speaking options offered by computer-assisted language learning
(CALL) and the different learning components routinely designed into the online
curriculum. These attitudes also reflect a belief that every presential class is a winner,
in terms of pedagogy.
Most recently, video conferencing using a variety of Internet 2.0 communica-
tion tools (e.g. Zoom, Skype, Adobe Connect, Big Blue Button, to name only a
few) offers real online opportunities for communication, even if this type of
exchange cannot strictly be considered equivalent to face-to-face exchanges.
Clearly, tangible L2 developmental benefits result from both activities (Blake
2016a, b). Videoconferencing gives students an alternative to the type of small-
group speaking practice that is assumed to occur in the classroom but often does
not actually take place given large class sizes and other practical classroom or
personnel limitations.
Small-group videoconferencing – for example, one instructor working online
with two to three students for an hour – allows for a far more intensive speaking
experience than sitting in class and responding maybe two or three times in an hour.
During the hour-long videoconference session, students are constantly taking turns
speaking in the L2, which can be an extremely active and a rigorous speaking
experience. Naturally, the instructor must prepare the conversational tasks ahead of
time so that the students know exactly what to expect and are primed with the
appropriate vocabulary and grammar constructions needed to bring the task to a
successful completion. In this way, students can gradually build up greater fluency,
reinforce vocabulary and lexical chunks, and smooth their discourse transitions – all
of which are important components of speaking proficient. Unfortunately, speaking
progress via videoconference is difficult to measure, partly because defining the
basic construct of speaking proficiency is a complicated undertaking, whether in the
face-to-face or CALL context (Hulstijn 2011).
Distance Education for Second and Foreign Language Learning 161

Major Contributions

To date, only three studies – Blake and Delforge 2006, Cahill and Catanzaro 1997,
Soo and Ngeow 1998 – have evaluated fully online language courses on the basis of
empirical data. In all cases, online learners were found to outperform students from
conventional courses on a grammar output measure.
Cahill and Catanzaro (1997) reported on an introductory online Spanish class that
relied on materials from Dos Mundos, a popular introductory Spanish text, along
with the accompanying audiocassettes and lab manual. Online activities included
synchronous chat sessions, open-ended Web assignments, practice tests, and a
substantial number of pen-pal letter writing assignments. Responses to two essay
questions were used to compare the progress of students participating in the exper-
imental group with that of students enrolled in conventional Spanish classes. Based
on ratings of global quality and percentage error scores, the writing samples of
students in the online course were judged to be significantly better than those from
the traditional classes. Although not discussed by the authors, it seems clear that
more writing was demanded of the online students, a fact that clouds to some degree
the ability to isolate the effect that the online format had by itself on performance.
Soo and Ngeow (1998) compared the performance of 77 students enrolled in
conventional English classes with 111 students who studied English exclusively
through use of a multimedia computer-assisted language-learning (CALL) program.
A comparison of pre- and post-Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)
scores revealed that the students in the online group made significantly greater gains
with respect to those who took part in conventional classes. In addition, given that
the experimental group started studying 5 weeks later than students in the control
group due to technical difficulties, it might be said that the online students not only
made more progress than learners in the control group but also that their language
skills improved more rapidly.
Blake and Delforge (2006) compared 21 continuing students enrolled in Spanish
Without Walls (SWW) through a university extension using both quantitative output
data (i.e., grammar tests and compositions) and qualitative measures (i.e., student
surveys). SWW was a totally virtual, first-year Spanish course that combined a first-
year CD-ROM packet (i.e., Tesoros, McGraw-Hill, 2001), Web readings with online
content-based activities, and bimodal CMC (i.e., sound and text) in both a synchro-
nous and asynchronous format. The data showed that students enrolled in the SWW
course fared statistically better than the undergraduates enrolled in conventional
introductory university Spanish classes in terms of grammatical accuracy. The
authors speculated that the online format with its primary focus on textual input
forced students to pay more attention to their textual output and, therefore, height-
ened their metalinguistic awareness (Schmidt 1990) of discrete grammatical con-
trasts. These results suggest that well-designed distance language instruction can
offer a viable option for learners without access to the traditional classroom setting or
for those who prefer the online learning environment to the conventional sit-down
class format. However, again, the question of whether or not the SWW students
developed the same oral proficiency as classroom students was left unanswered.
162 R. Blake

As in the case for the hybrid courses reviewed earlier, the outcome data from
these three fully online L2 studies lend support for the notion that online language
learning can be effective, at least as a means of improving writing, reading, and
listening comprehension abilities. Nevertheless, determining which aspects of the
online learning environment were responsible for these gains remains a daunting and
perhaps insurmountable endeavor. Perhaps the online students had a higher engage-
ment level with the texts themselves. More research will be needed to substantiate
these initial observations, but the individual variables put in doubt whether or not the
question could ever be resolved to the satisfaction of CALL researchers.
In recent years, the CALL field has shifted its research focus away from these
comparative assessments plagued with uncontrollable factors towards an approach
that delves more closely into how students actually use online materials and feed-
back in the course of improving their L2 competence. Heift’s (2002, 2010) research,
known in the field as ICALL or intelligence CALL, is representative of this new
perspective that seeks to chronicle the learners’ progress. In order to do this, a
database sits behind the learning system tracking student responses and reactions
to any feedback they receive. She found that 85% of her German students carried out
their assignments without peeking at the answers, while the weaker students tended
to be the most flagrant peekers. Her work also demonstrated that explicit feedback,
including metalinguistic clues, had a positive correlation with improved student
outcomes. These findings are consistent with an interactionist framework for L2
development, even when students are working individually with tutorial CALL
activities. The interactionist theories of L2 development prominently feature notions
such as the proximal zone of development, focus-on-form, negotiation of meaning,
task-based learning, and pair work – all constructs that rely on harnessing the power
of human interactions and appropriate feedback to stimulate language acquisition.
Another current line of investigation for online learning can be found at the
intersection of task complexity and L2 development. Since oral production – and
L2 proficiency, in general – is significantly affected by the complexity of any
particular task (Robinson 2011; Skehan 2003), researchers seek to discover if the
online affordances (i.e., Internet 2.0 tools) allow students more processing time in
order to process successfully and carry out their assigned tasks with long-term
memory benefits (i.e., true L2 acquisition). In a recent case study, Guillén and
Blake (2016) found that one L2 learner’s syntactic complexity and accuracy
improved significantly by being able to post online asynchronously her best-effort
videos as compared to what she was able to do when faced with the immediate
pressures of speaking during a synchronous videoconference session.
In general, present-day implementations of online courses strive to combine both
tutorial CALL programs and apps designed for individual study with synchronous
CMC communication intended for use in group practice, drawing on interactionist
theories about L2 development. The potential benefits of collaborative exchanges,
whether set in the classroom or managed online orally or in writing, depend more on
sound pedagogical design of the tasks the participants are asked to accomplish rather
than on the actual locus of the learning event (Doughty and Long 2003; Kern et al.
2004; Salaberry 2000; Van Deusen-Scholl et al. 2005). In other words, people
Distance Education for Second and Foreign Language Learning 163

working together perform better whether in a face-to-face or CMC environments,

provided that the activities have been well thought out so as to stimulate maximum
interaction among the participants.
Finally, fostering opportunities for L2 writing continues to be a fertile application
in online learning environments. The act of both personal and collaborative aca-
demic writing, whether mediated or not by the computer, should ideally involve an
iterative or staged process that constantly recycles analysis, design, development,
implementation, and evaluation (Caws 2012). Obviously, CMC tools can be used to
foster collaborate work and feedback at these various stages of the writing process,
as Oskoz and Elola’s (2014) study has illustrated. Writers, whether in their L1 or L2,
seek to produce texts that are coherent, well-organized, rich in content (including a
critical sense of multicultural knowledge in the case of L2 writing), appropriate with
respect to rhetorical and genre conventions, and accurate with respect to linguistic
and pragmatic norms. Clearly, these goals are a moving target where frequent
revisions and rewritings are part and parcel of the process. Any digital tool that
helps L2 learners engage in this process is bound to produce improvements over the
long run, as long as learners are engaged in this iterative design process. A blog puts
more emphasis on personal writing with the occasional reactions from other readers,
while wikis or Google docs facilitate a more collaborative product. Today’s digital
tools combine aspects of both collaborative writing and reading (Blyth 2014), while
also creating a sense of audience, which in turn, tends to stimulate more effort, if not
better writing, from L2 participants (Yoon 2008; Oskoz and Elola 2014).

Work in Progress

Interest has also increased in using CMC as a way to link native and nonnative
speakers in a growing variety of cultural exchange projects. In this context, CMC
takes on a new meaning as a medium of socialization. This line of inquiry has been
dubbed Internet-mediated intercultural communication in foreign language educa-
tion (Belz and Thorne 2005). From this perspective, researchers concentrate on the
importance of having online L2 learners develop sensitivity to one another’s cultural
identities and communicative styles. Proponents of this approach want their L2
students to reflect upon the fact that their own identity is culturally contingent on
certain patterns of interactions (Kern et al. 2004). Researchers caution the field
against viewing CMC as a simple tool-using activity in service of linguistic practice.
They argue that participating in online interactions is not a culturally neutral
endeavor but embedded in specific cultural and social norms that may or may not
be familiar to all participants, L2 and native speaker alike (Thorne 2003). Accord-
ingly, this more sociocultural approach seeks to examine the concept of digital
literacy in a way that goes beyond the ability to read and write online: How do L2
learners co-construct their own online roles and identities? The end result is that L2
students are increasingly responsible for diverse representations of knowledge and
learning (Van Deusen-Scholl et al. 2005), but, in many cases, participants will need
164 R. Blake

training in how to do this if the CMC exchanges are to be successful (Belz and
Kinginger 2002).
On a completely different front, video gaming provides another venue where new
technologies and CALL could possibly be harnessed for the benefit of L2 develop-
ment (Thorne et al. 2009; Peterson 2013). Games foster role-playing and agency by
allowing players to do something and construct meaning for themselves. Games
make the users feel that they are being competent and independent problem solvers.
Games encourage a participatory culture with different rates and learning paths in
response to the gamers’ interests and abilities. Within these designed experiences,
the participants enjoy the freedom to fail with low risks, experiment, fashion
imagined identities, exert varying degrees of effort, and interpret. However, there
have been few experimental studies to date that examine how L2 learners fare within
a virtual learning environment, which is a serious drawback to evaluating the
appropriate place for video gaming in the L2 curriculum (Peterson 2013).

Problems and Difficulties

Implementing and evaluating online language courses represent two separate issues,
each with their own respective challenges, as has been already mentioned above. To
implement a language course in an online format, L2 teachers cannot simply clone
existing print materials for the Web (Zhang 2014) or teach in ways familiar to past
experiences. Careful attention must be paid to making the online activities as
stimulating as possible as a function of the strengths of this particular medium.
Zhang (2014) recognizes five characteristics that are key to successful online course
design: (inter)active, constructive, intentional, authentic, and cooperative. For this
reason, the creation of an online curriculum is both expensive (i.e., the Open
University spends around 2 million dollars per course on an 8-year cycle) and time
consuming – two facts largely ignored by administrators and departments. By and
large, a content- or task-based approach (i.e., learning language through the study of
a specific subject matter or through a series of real-world tasks) renders better results
than the more traditional focus-on forms common to traditional grammatical
instruction.
Likewise, administrators tend to see the online format as a solution to over-
subscribed language classes. Large enrollments taught in the online format are just
as difficult to manage, if not more so, than in classroom formats. Teachers of online
language classes need to resist attempts by administrators to stuff their online classes
with more students than is the norm for language classroom (i.e., around
25 students).
On the practical side of delivery, extensive user support is key to maintaining
student interest and avoiding the frustrations that commonly afflict online delivery
formats (Simpson 2000). It is wise to remember that roughly half of the enrolled
online students are predicted to give up and drop the course (Carr 2000). It must be
Distance Education for Second and Foreign Language Learning 165

realized that not all students are ready to work independently and take responsibility
for the direction their own learning. No one is to be blamed when students are not
ready to work within the parameters of a given learning environment, although some
training is possible in all cases. Fortunately, LCTL students tend to already possess
solid skills for working independently in a stead fashion, a fact that would favor the
outcome of using online format for LCTL instruction.
The process of evaluating online courses encounters its own difficulties, as
discussed above, beginning with the obvious fact that the students have only a
virtual presence – they never see their instructor in person. Getting virtual L2
students to participate in pre-/posttests or evaluation instruments not related to the
computation of their grade is not as easy in an online environment, compared to the
captive audience that the presential teacher controls.
Perhaps the greatest hurdle to generalizing findings about online language
courses is a characteristic shared with the realities of doing L2 research in general:
inherently uncontrollable factors such as different instructors, different materials,
different time on task, different tasks and activities, different students all with their
own unique personality traits and cognitive endowments. With technology also
involved, individual differences, which account for a major portion of the outcome
variability, are just exacerbated since L2 learners mostly perform their assignments
from their own respective home environments, which are all radically different. At
the same time (and, unfortunately, for research purposes), allowing L2 learners to
self-direct their own learning activities constitutes one of the major attractions of this
learning environment. Similarly, longitudinal studies – which, again, are relatively
rare even in mainstream L2 studies – are almost impossible to carry out in the online
context where students are here today only virtually and gone tomorrow with the
flick of the on/off switch.
Fortunately, the CALL field has mostly moved on from asking the overly
simplistic question, “which is better, in-class or CALL L2 instruction and practice?”
This issue cannot be answered without controlling for factors that are inherently out
of the researcher’s hands.
In the best of circumstances, isolating the effects of the online format itself as
opposed to those of the learning materials or individual differences is exceedingly
hard to operationalize. Not surprisingly, the field has not made much progress on
teasing these factors apart.

Future Directions

Just as the linguistic field is beginning to view L2 development in more sophisticated

and integrated terms (for instance, learning vocabulary and collocations also implies
syntax), the heavy emphasis on an approach that only considers the four skills (i.e.,
production, listening, reading, writing) is beginning to diminish. Likewise, CALL
166 R. Blake

practice itself no longer deals with digital writing as separate from reading nor
implements speaking practice in isolation from listening. Speaking tasks will now
involve listening and writing as well, as students produce and post their videos;
listening will entail reading captions, linking to glosses, and reflecting on cultural
differences; and writing will be carried out in stages that leverage collaborative
chatting, wikis, videoconferencing, and repeated negotiations of their multicultural
competence and linguistic proficiency. And, again, as the sociocultural theorists
would remind us, none of these activities should be separated from the notion of
multicultural competence and the construction of a bilingual identity – what
Kramsch (2009) has called finding the third place vis-à-vis the L1 and the L2.
CALL is now framed in a much more multimodal context where learners enjoys
greater agency and autonomy to produce language through digital forms. Today’s
student not only learns grammatical structure in a new language but also finds a place
in this multicultural and digitally infused world (Kern 2014).
Accepting that online formats have a significant contribution to make to the L2
curriculum will continue to be unpalatable for some in the language profession,
especially given the fact that many teachers have an entrenched resistance to using
technology or even fear that online instruction will eventually replace them. Higher
education is beginning to reconfigure its delivery mechanisms in the face of new
affordances, growing costs, and instructor shortages (as in the case of LCTL
offerings), and the L2 curriculum will not be exempt from these trends. The field
must experiment and plan for alternate delivery mechanisms if it is to have a
significant say in how the L2 curriculum will be organized.
Further research is needed to demonstrate how synchronous CMC can help
maintain high levels of conversational interactivity using the new generation of
online communication tools. Similarly, more data should be gathered on how best
to use new advances in videoconferencing so as to formulate guidelines of best
practices for prospective online instructors who must be trained how to participate in
these digital exchanges.
Finally, the field must provide online instructors and curriculum developers with
more insights on how the CMC medium can be used most productively to foster
intercultural contexts. Students and instructors alike should not assume that every-
one uses chat in the same way and with the same cultural understandings and
conventions (Thorne 2003, 2016). This realization opens the door to using CMC
to construct and reflect upon one’s own identity in a new L2 space, as both Kramsch
(2009) and Kern (2015) have suggested.
In technological terms, the online formats for L2 instruction will continue to
evolve rapidly, making the issues of teacher training in iterative cycles a pressing
concern for any language program. If the online language field retains an empha-
sis on collaborative exchanges and co-construction of learning (i.e., the
interactionist perspective), these new or yet-to-be imagined technical advances
have the potential of being smoothly absorbed into a digital educational era that is
here to stay.
Distance Education for Second and Foreign Language Learning 167

References
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Open Educational Resources (OERs)
for Language Learning

Carl S. Blyth

Abstract
The term “open educational resources” (OER) refers to materials used for teach-
ing and learning that, unlike most materials produced by commercial publishers,
carry an open copyright license. Because of its open license, OER give users’
rights traditionally reserved for authors and publishers, such as the right to adapt
the original work and the right to disseminate derivatives free of charge. A global,
grassroots phenomenon, the OER movement coalesced at the end of the twentieth
century and the beginning of the twenty-first century when educators sought to
create intellectual content that was accessible to the Internet public. Thanks to a
democratic ethos that promotes the sharing of intellectual property, the OER
movement has resulted in the collaboration between educational stakeholders,
the creation of uniquely adaptable content, and the production of much-needed
resources for less commonly taught languages that are frequently ignored by
publishers. During the first decade of the OER movement, advocates focused on
the development and dissemination of free materials to combat rising costs.
During its second decade, however, the movement has begun to focus on empir-
ical research to ascertain the impact of OER on student learning, including FL
learning. In addition, open educators are beginning to explore different strategies
for bringing OER into the educational mainstream.

Keywords
Open education • Open educational resources • Open educational practices

C.S. Blyth (*)

University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 169

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_14
170 C.S. Blyth

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Introduction

First coined in 2002 during a UNESCO meeting, the term open educational
resources (OER) refers to openly licensed educational materials that allow end
users’ rights covered by copyright law, such as the right to adapt the original work
and the right to disseminate derivatives free of charge. Plotkin (2010, p. 1) defines
OER as “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain
or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits sharing,
accessing, repurposing – including for commercial purposes – and collaborating
with others.” In contrast to the static nature of print materials, digital OER are
increasingly produced in editable formats that make them better suited to the
dynamic and emergent nature of language learning in informal, online environments.
An extremely heterogeneous category, OER vary widely in terms of their pedagog-
ical goals and uses: annotation tools, assessment instruments, language corpora,
reference grammars, supplementary readers, textbooks, etc. (see examples at http://
nflrc.org). In addition, OER are diverse in terms of their size and sophistication
(Weller 2010). Despite these differences, however, OER are all distinguished by an
open copyright license that allows users’ rights traditionally reserved for authors and
publishers.

Early Developments

OER are the concrete products of open education (OE), a global, grassroots move-
ment that coalesced at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the
twenty-first century. OE is a collective term that refers to the advancement of
education through “open technology, open content and open knowledge” (Iiyoshi
and Kumar 2007). Viewed in its historical context, OE is an extension of the open-
source movement whose revolutionary idea was to give software developers free and
open access to source code (Perens 1999; Raymond 2001). Concerned that the rising
costs of tuition and textbooks were shutting out potential students, educators sought
to open up access to educational content as a means of democratizing the system.
Consequently, educators began to envision pedagogical materials as learning objects
that could be designed to foster adaptation by subsequent users. Richard Baraniuk,
Open Educational Resources (OERs) for Language Learning 171

a professor of computer engineering and a leading figure in the OE movement, sums

up the paradigm shift in terms of a set of widely shared values and beliefs.

The OE movement is based on a set of intuitions shared by a remarkably wide range of

academics: that knowledge should be free and open to use and reuse; that collaboration
should be easier, not harder; that people should receive credit and kudos for contributing to
education and research; and that concepts and ideas are linked in unusual and surprising
ways and not the simple linear forms that today’s textbooks present. OE promises to
fundamentally change the way authors, instructors, and students interact worldwide.
(Baraniuk 2007, p. 229)

One of the precursors to the OE movement was the UK’s Open University,
established in 1969 as a distance learning institution with minimal entrance require-
ments (http://www.open.ac.uk/). Today, millions of people from all over the world
access the Open University’s online content on a daily basis. Another early example
of OE is the open courseware initiative (OCW) that started at the Massachusetts
Institute for Technology (MIT). In 2000, MIT faculty proposed that their courseware
(e.g., syllabi, exercises, lectures, etc.) be placed online and be made available to the
public. Two years later, MIT launched a website that contained open content from
50 courses. Today, according to the OCW website, the entire collection of MIT
courseware is open to the Internet public (http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm).
As the OE movement took shape, it became apparent that the rise of informal
learning on the Internet required a new generation of flexible materials. Soon, open
educators began to think in terms of “open content” and “open design” (Conole
2013), and in 2002, the term “open educational resources” (OER) was coined during
a UNESCO meeting of the Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher
Education in Developing Countries (Johnstone 2005). Soon thereafter, the new term
was employed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) (http://www.oecd.org/). Thus, the general concepts of open content and
open courseware gave rise to the more specific concept of OER. Today, the distinc-
tive feature of OER is the open copyright license that promotes “4R” activities
(Wiley and Green 2012, p. 81):

• Revising – adapting the OER to meet the needs of the end user
• Remixing – combining or “mashing up” the OER with another OER to produce
new materials
• Reusing – using the original or derivative versions of the OER in a wide range of
new contexts
• Redistributing – sharing the original work or derivative versions with others

Major Contributions

During the past decade, educators have taken advantage of the affordances of
OER to make major contributions to the field of FL education. In particular, OER
have played a major role in facilitating the collaboration between educational
172 C.S. Blyth

stakeholders, in the creation of adaptable content, and in the publication of

materials for less commonly taught languages (LCTLs).
Fostering collaboration among educational stakeholders is a goal of most OER.
Open educators contend that educational publishing is largely controlled by a small
group of people in developed countries – publishers, editors, and academics – who
rarely collaborate with teachers and learners as coproducers of pedagogical content.
The new practices that are at the heart of OE and its “participatory culture” (Jenkins
2009) exemplify the concept of “cognitive surplus” (Shirky 2010), that is, the
increase in humanity’s ability to create things together for the common good, thanks
to the infrastructure of the Internet. A good example of how OER can facilitate
collaboration between multiple contributors is Français interactif, an online first-
year French program developed by faculty and graduate students at the University of
Texas at Austin (Blyth 2012a). Most commercial textbooks are written by two or
three authors who work closely with an editor. In contrast, Français interactif was
developed by a large team of more than thirty French professors, graduate students,
and undergraduates. The program focuses on the lives of undergraduate students
who were participants in a summer study-abroad program in Lyon, France. In a
series of documentary videos, these students describe their experiences living with
their host families in Lyon. As such, these students were central players in the
development of the materials, suggesting ways to create videos that documented
the growth of their linguistic skills during the study-abroad program. In addition to
the participation of undergraduates, graduate student instructors (GSIs) played a key
role in the making of Français interactif. GSIs contributed to the curriculum as part
of their professional training by designing new materials and testing the materials in
their classrooms.
Acceso, a second-year Spanish program developed at the University of Kansas,
was also the work of a large team of contributors, including GSIs. In fact, according
to Rossomondo (2011, p. 140), the professional development of GSIs was tightly
woven into the development of the Acceso curriculum itself. Rossomondo contends
that the creation and production of Acceso gave GSIs not only marketable skills in
developing digital materials but also a deeper understanding of how materials relate
to classroom practice. In short, because GSIs played an active role in helping to
develop the Acceso materials, they became more proficient users of the materials and
were more committed to the success of the materials. Finally, Rossomondo (2011,
p. 140) points out that Acceso fostered collaboration with other higher education
institutions through a wiki-based content development area and a discussion forum.
While most OER focus on a specific language as is the case of Français interactif
and Acceso, some OER function as tools that can be used for the teaching and
learning of any language. A good example is The Mixxer, a website whose goal is to
promote collaboration between FL students and native speakers via Skype (Bryant
2013). Telecollaboration has become a well-known method in intercultural
approaches to FL learning. And yet, such exchanges are often time-consuming and
difficult to organize. Moreover, teachers who wish to integrate telecollaborative
Open Educational Resources (OERs) for Language Learning 173

methods into their pedagogy do not always know where to find language partners. To
meet the need for a clearinghouse, The Mixxer was created as an archive of personal
profiles of “language partners.” Learners peruse the archive to locate potential
partners who match their language interests and proficiency levels.
OER are often touted as being more flexible than copyrighted, print-based
materials due to their open licenses that enable adaptation. Unfortunately, many
OER are difficult to adapt. For example, some are written in formats that are not easy
to edit such as PDFs, while others have few instructions to facilitate adaptation.
Nevertheless, newer OER are increasingly editable and accompanied by documen-
tation such as manuals or guides. A good example of this new generation of OER is
the Open University’s Languages Open Resources Online (LORO) (http://loro.open.
ac.uk/). Essentially an archive of learning objects such as lesson plans or classroom
activities, LORO contains resources that have been written in an accessible file
format such as Microsoft Word, openly licensed with a Creative Commons license
and tagged with metadata that explain the purpose and use of the object. While many
faculty members at the Open University archive their course content in LORO, any
FL teacher may upload content as long as he or she follows the required editorial
guidelines. Every LORO resource must carry a meaningful title and a brief descrip-
tion of what the learning object entails. In addition, information about attribution,
target language, and course unit must be specified. Other repositories such as
NFLRC.org and MERLOT.org have taken similar steps to assure that the content
of their OER is easy to find and adapt.
Another example of the new generation of OER designed for adaptation is the
Foreign Languages and the Literary in the Everyday project (FLLITE.org) supported
by the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL)
at the University of Texas at Austin (USA) and the Center for Educational Resources
in Culture, Language, and Literacy (CERCLL) at the University of Arizona (USA).
The FLLITE project constitutes a curated archive of literacy-based FL materials. The
project seeks to train FL instructors in the open digital practices needed for the
production and dissemination of OER: how to find open, authentic texts, how to
create an effective multiliteracy lesson based on an open text, how to choose an open
license, and how to share materials and documentation with other members of the
community. Thus, the overall goal of FLLITE is to create an educational community
of practice whose members help each other to generate crowd-sourced materials
specifically designed for adaptation.
Finally, the expansion of high-quality LCTL resources constitutes a major con-
tribution to FL education. OER are particularly relevant to the LCTL context
because they represent a promising alternative to traditional conceptualizations of
educational publishing associated with the values of more commonly taught lan-
guages (Blyth 2012b). Defined by their relatively small enrollments and faculties,
LCTLs are largely ignored by commercial textbook publishers who focus on the
more profitable major languages. Lacking pedagogical materials and institutional
clout, some LCTLs may not even have a departmental home at their institution and,
174 C.S. Blyth

as a consequence, may be administered through a campus language center. Given

these circumstances, resource centers such as the National FL Resource Centers in
the USA and LangOER in Europe have begun creating OER for the LCTL market.
For instance, LangOER produces materials for European LCTLs, e.g., Frisian
(http://langoer.eun.org/). High-quality LCTL resources are also produced by the
Language Flagship program that offers degrees in nine so-called critical languages
as determined by the US government (e.g., Arabic, Hindi, Korean, Persian, Portu-
guese, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, and Urdu). Created in 1991 to develop “global
professionals,” the Language Flagship program is administered by the National
Security Education Program (NSEP) of the US Department of Defense (http://
www.thelanguageflagship.org/).

Work in Progress

While surveys indicate that the use of OER is fairly widespread in North America
and in Europe, there is still a lack of empirical research about educational impact.
Thus, after more than a decade of intensive OER development, open educators are
beginning to develop a research agenda to determine the effects of OER on student
learning. The OER Hub, an initiative of the Open University, is serving as a de facto
clearinghouse for the many studies currently in progress (https://oerhub.net/). The
OER Hub seeks to create a network of OER researchers across four education sectors
(K-12, community college, university, and informal learning) who agree to share
methods and results. Findings of research studies are displayed in terms of 11 guiding
hypotheses. The first two hypotheses pertain to the nature of openness and are
relevant to all OER research studies:

1. The use of OER leads to improvement in student performance and satisfaction.

2. The open aspect of OER creates different usage and adoption patterns than other
online resources.

The next nine hypotheses examine specific ways that OER may impact students,
teachers, and the learning environment:

3. Open education models lead to more equitable access to education, serving a

broader base of learners than traditional education.
4. The use of OER is an effective method for improving retention for at-risk
students.
5. The use of OER leads to critical reflection by educators, with evidence of
improvement in their practice.
6. OER adoption at an institutional level leads to financial benefits for students
and/or institutions.
7. Informal learners use a variety of indicators when selecting OER.
8. Informal learners adopt a variety of techniques to compensate for the lack of
formal support, which can be supported in open courses.
Open Educational Resources (OERs) for Language Learning 175

9. Open education acts as a bridge to formal education and is complementary, not

competitive, with it.
10. Participation in OER pilots and programs leads to policy change at institutional
levels.
11. Informal means of assessment are motivators to learning with OER.

While there is strong evidence for the claim that OER reduce costs for students
and institutions (Hypothesis #6), the claims that OER promote student learning
(Hypothesis #1) and improve teacher cognition (Hypothesis #5) are still in need of
further evidence. Moreover, to date, there are few published research studies that
investigate the impact of OER on FL learning. In light of this situation, COERLL
and LangOER launched a joint 4-year study in 2014 to assess the impact of FL OER
in the USA and in Europe (http://coerll.utexas.edu/coerll/projects/oer-research). In
2015, COERLL surveyed 1,100 FL educators working at all levels of the American
educational system. The survey targeted American educators from all 50 states and
from different types of institutions (private vs. public, urban vs. rural). The goal of
the survey was to determine the obstacles to OER adoption in the USA as well as to
understand the motivations of early adopters. Based on the findings of the OER
survey, the next phase will involve a needs analysis of FL educators in the USA.
Data for the needs analysis will come from interviews with targeted teacher
populations in high schools, community colleges, and 4-year colleges.

Problems and Difficulties

Before achieving widespread acceptance, OER must first overcome two major
obstacles: lack of awareness about open licenses and concerns about quality control.
A 2011 survey conducted by the National Institute of Technology and Liberal
Education (NITLE) found that faculties at small liberal arts colleges in the USA
had minimal knowledge of OE and were unclear about how to locate OER. Based on
the responses to the survey, the authors suggest that there is a pressing need for OER
of high quality that are also easily “discoverable,” that is, optimized for search
engine recovery (Spiro and Alexander 2012, p. 1). Two years later, a survey of FL
program directors in the USA found similar results – teachers are confused about
how to find and teach with OER (Thoms and Thoms 2014). In fact, Thoms and
Thoms (2014, p. 144) note that many FL program directors “were not familiar with
the term open educational resources per se.” In 2015, in response to such survey
results, the US Department of Education hired an open education advisor to dissem-
inate information about OER via social media (e.g., Twitter campaign #GoOpen).
According to the OER evidence report disseminated by the OER Hub, teachers
who are new to OE rarely distinguish between OER and other pedagogical materials
found online (OER Evidence Report 2014, p. 14). As noted, the distinctive feature of
OER is an open license that allows its creators to share rights with end users in a way
that is legally sound and globally applicable. Surveys cited in the OER Evidence
Report discovered that educators who do not understand open licenses tend to treat
176 C.S. Blyth

OER like any other commercial product. Once they become aware of the implica-
tions of open licenses, however, teachers begin to adapt elements of the OER. Then,
with increased OER experience, teachers start to create their own materials, some-
times remixing several OER. Finally, according to the report, the most experienced
open educators actually begin to create resources and share them with their peers
using a Creative Commons license (OER Evidence Report 2014, p. 15).
In addition to lack of awareness, OER must overcome the public’s persistent
concern about quality control. In face of these concerns, OER developers have
adopted different approaches to ensure the quality of their products. In one approach,
the academic institution where the OER is produced plays a leading role in vetting
the OER according to traditional academic practices of peer review. A more digitally
native approach to quality control is crowdsourcing, as pioneered by the open-source
software community. In this approach, the quality of the OER becomes the respon-
sibility of the crowd of users who write reviews and aggregate ratings for the public
to consult (Plotkin 2010, p. 6). More recently, OER developers have begun com-
bining elements of peer review with the newer crowdsourcing approaches. For
example, many professional societies and organizations, such as OER Commons
(www.oercommons.org), Open Content Consortium (www.ocwconsortium.org),
Community College Open Textbook Collaborative (http://collegeopentextbooks.
org), MERLOT (www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm), and WikiEducator (http://
wikieducator.org/Free_textbooks), hire editorial teams to vet online content and to
organize it in ways that help educators find what they are seeking. OpenStax College,
an open publisher of higher education textbooks headquartered at Rice University
(Houston, Texas, USA), has adopted a quality control process that combines peer
reviews from experts and informal feedback from teachers in the field (https://
openstaxcollege.org/). To further increase the quality of their free and open text-
books, OpenStax College encourages users to report typos and errors that may be
periodically sorted and posted as errata sheets and editorial updates.

Future Directions

Educators and developers are taking different paths in their efforts to promote OER.
Headed in one direction are OER proponents such as the Hewlett Foundation who
seek to drive down the costs of education by bringing OER into the educational
mainstream. In general, these proponents seek to co-opt traditional publishing
practices in an attempt to render OER more “familiar” and therefore “adoptable.”
Headed in another direction are proponents who seek to revolutionize pedagogy by
emphasizing the unique features of OER. This group tends to focus on open
educational practices (OEP) that have the greatest potential to change the classroom
ecology (Zourou 2016a).
In a 2013 white paper entitled “Breaking the Lockbox on Education,” the Hewlett
Foundation outlined their strategy for mainstreaming OER in terms of three global
Open Educational Resources (OERs) for Language Learning 177

megatrends: an increased demand for education, an economic recession, and a surge

of interest in educational technology.

In the USA, state and local governments have made deep cuts in education over the past few
years as they have grappled with declining revenues that are the result of the worst recession
since the Great Depression. While the trend may be reversing as the broader economy
improves, overall school funding remains well below pre-recession levels. . .. While overall
state spending has contracted, interest in innovation and private investment in education
have nearly quadrupled in a decade, from $62 million in 2005 to an estimated $1.1billion in
2012. This education technology investment has given rise to a number of new players that,
like OER, are looking to retool classrooms.

The Hewlett white paper argues that the main problem facing OER is a critical
lack of “off-the-shelf offerings that teachers can adopt as their primary resources.”
In other words, the Hewlett white paper argues uneven and disorganized supply of
high-quality content is the biggest obstacle to mainstreaming OER. As such, the
report calls for developers to create future OER that rival commercial materials in
integration, usability, and completeness. Along these lines, the Hewlett white
paper cites Rice University’s OpenStax College as a model developer who has
embraced the goal of mainstreaming OER. Supported by several nonprofit foun-
dations, OpenStax College produces free, open textbooks for introductory college
courses with large enrollments, e.g., Psychology, Sociology, Statistics, American
History, etc. Run by professionals with years of experience in educational pub-
lishing, OpenStax College focuses on producing textbooks that meet industry
standards for scope and sequence requirements. In addition, all OpenStax College
textbooks are rigorously peer reviewed and accompanied by a suite of ancillaries
such as online exercises and teacher’s editions. By producing open textbooks that
rival commercial products in terms of their production values and standards-based
content, OpenStax College hopes to overcome concerns about quality.
In contrast, some advocates reject the strategy of producing OER that resemble
commercial products. Rather, these advocates hope to attract new adopters by
demonstrating how OER support open educational practices (OEP) (Blyth and
Dalola 2016; Kurek 2016; MacKinnon et al. 2016; Whyte 2016; Zourou 2016b).
OEP refers to teaching practices that are made possible by open licenses. These
teaching practices amount to the collaboration between content creators that invari-
ably involves the reuse of resources created by other persons (often peers). As an
example of OEP, Blyth (2012a) recounts the story of a French professor teaching in a
Nigerian university who asked her students to modify Français interactif, an OER
intended for American students learning French. To make the OER more suitable for
Africans, the professor asked her students to replace American cultural referents
found in the textbook with African equivalents. This practice not only led students to
reflect more deeply about the relationship of language and culture but also resulted in
an African version of the original. As advocates explore different ways to attract new
users, OER, despite their inherent diversity, will likely become part of the educa-
tional mainstream within the next decade.
178 C.S. Blyth

Cross-References

▶ Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy

▶ The Digital Divide in Language and Literacy Education

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Baraniuk, R. (2007). Challenges and opportunities for the open education movement: A connexions
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MIT Press.
Blyth, C. (2012a). Opening up FL education with open educational resources: The case of Français
interactif. In F. Rubio & J. Thoms (Eds.), Hybrid language teaching and learning: Exploring
theoretical, pedagogical and curricular issues (pp. 196–218). Boston: Heinle Thomson.
Blyth, C. (2012b). LCTLs and technology: The promise of open education. Language Learning and
Technology, 17(1), 1–6.
Blyth, C., & Dalola, A. (2016). Translingualism as an open educational practice: Raising critical
language awareness on Facebook. ALSIC Revue, vol. 19. https://alsic.revues.org/2962.
Accessed 12 Jan 2017.
Bryant, T. (2013). The mixxer: Connecting students with native speakers via Skype. In A. Beaven,
A. Comas-Quinn, & B. Sawhill (Eds.), Case studies of openness in the language classroom
(pp. 23–31). Dublin: Research-publishing.net.
Conole, G. (2013). Designing for learning in an open world. New York: Springer Publications.
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confronting-challenges-participatory-culture. Accessed 14 Feb 2016.
Johnstone, S. (2005). Open educational resources serve the world. Educause Quarterly 28(3). http://
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Perens, B. (1999). Open sources: Voices from the open source revolution. Beijing: O’Reilly Media.
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accidental revolutionary. Beijing: O’Reilly Media.
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Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. New York:
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Data-Driven Learning and Language
Pedagogy

Alex Boulton

Abstract
Language corpora have many uses in language study, including for learners and
other users of foreign languages in an approach that has come to be known as
data-driven learning (DDL). This boils down to the learner’s ability to find
answers to their questions by using software to access large collections of
authentic texts relevant to their needs, as opposed to asking teachers or consulting
ready-made reference materials. As such, not only do corpora contain the poten-
tial to answer many language questions, the consultation itself is likely to lead to
improved language awareness and noticing. This chapter discusses the nature of
corpora and their relevance in language learning, outlining the processes involved
in DDL, and looks at the history and research development in the field from its
beginnings to the present day, taking into account its limitations and gaps in our
current knowledge with an eye to the future.

Keywords
Corpus • Data-driven learning • DDL • Corpus-based language learning

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

A. Boulton (*)
ATILF, CNRS and University of Lorraine, Nancy, France
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 181

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_15
182 A. Boulton

Introduction

The essential condition for any language learning is exposure to the language itself.
In foreign language contexts in particular, such exposure may be inadequate: Zahar
et al. (2001: 558) estimate that an hour’s reading may lead to the incidental learning
of just two words; at that rate, it would take decades to build up a sizeable
vocabulary. Clearly exposure alone is not enough in such cases and may be
complemented by formal instruction intended to help speed up the process by
drawing learners’ attention to important points, explaining, demonstrating, provid-
ing examples, and so on. Fortunately, syntheses show that instruction does make a
difference (e.g., Norris and Ortega 2000), though that does not mean that any type of
instruction works equally well for all learners in all contexts (Hattie 2009). Formal
teaching may however oversimplify things: the contrived language that is presented,
the all-purpose definitions provided, the abstract rules given, as well as the structured
tasks to be completed. These can all have their uses, but if that is all there is then they
may lead to dependence on the teacher and an inability to work with authentic
language – i.e., to make the most of any real exposure.
This is where language corpora can be of use in what has come to be known as
data-driven learning (DDL). The basic concept is to allow massive exposure that is
still organized and focused. Using the power of computer software, learners can
query large collections of texts relevant to their needs, looking at frequencies and
distributions and multiple occurrences of target items in context. This essentially
constructivist, inductive approach means they can then reach their own conclusions
that are meaningful to them individually, and the cognitive processing should lead to
longer retention than simply “being taught.” This may be quite time consuming at
the start, but the real advantages lie not so much in the explicit knowledge gained as
in the processes involved – ability to deal with authentic texts in different genres;
awareness of frequency, chunking, and collocation; noticing forms and variation;
formulating hypotheses and inferring meanings; and so on. In other words, it should
help students become better language learners and users.

Early Developments

The word “corpus” can mean different things to different people in a variety of
disciplines. In corpus linguistics, it is a large collection of authentic texts that has
been deliberately sampled to be representative of the type of language one is
interested in; it is accessed by software often called a concordancer, though it can
usually do more than just concordancing as we shall see below. This is, however, a
prototypical definition, and corpus linguistic tools can be used with just a few
thousand words (wherever repeated searches can beneficially be conducted by
computer rather than regular reading), a single text (e.g., a novel), “non-authentic”
text (arguably simplified readers or textbooks, or learner essays), and collected
automatically (in the case of web-compiled corpora) or at least partly serendipitously
(depending on resources available). In language teaching, the overriding criteria are
Data-Driven Learning and Language Pedagogy 183

pedagogical rather than theoretical, and the ad hoc creation of a small, specialized
corpus of texts can be much more relevant to learners’ needs than some of the large,
general-purpose corpora that are publically available.
The first modern corpus is no doubt the Brown corpus, a million words carefully
sampled from 500 extracts of texts that had been published in 1961 (Kučera and
Francis 1967). This was partly motivated by dissatisfaction with the tools then
available for describing English which derived largely from intuition and fortuitous
examples. The goal here was to introduce greater scientific rigor from a more
systematic base. Later, the Bank of English at Birmingham University was designed
for linguistic purposes but also with pedagogical aims in mind (see Sinclair 1987, for
a review). This monitor corpus was designed to increase over time to account for
developments in British English, but originally just over 7 million words were used
to produce the first Cobuild dictionary. The corpus could be sorted on the computer
and then the short contexts (concordances) were printed out for every occurrence of
every item; the lexicographical work took place entirely on paper, similar to earlier
hand-compiled concordances from the Bible or Shakespeare, for example. The
100 million words of the British National Corpus (see Aston and Burnard 1998)
represented a truly monumental undertaking when it was built in the early 1990s, but
later advances made it possible for a single person to create the Corpus of Contem-
porary American English semiautomatically from the Internet, currently standing at
520 million words (see Davies 2009). Entirely automated procedures now mean that
billion-word corpora are regularly compiled (e.g., Baroni and Bernardini 2006). At
the top end of the scale, the searchable Internet has debatable status as a corpus but
can be usefully queried via regular search engines or more specialized software for
pedagogical purposes.
In the hands of experts, corpora can be useful in preparing all kinds of pedagogical
materials and resources, from general and specialized dictionaries to grammar books
and usage manuals, from syllabus design to testing, from wordlists to coursebooks.
Such uses are beyond the scope of this chapter, which is concerned with how learners
can use corpora directly.
Many of the early attempts at learner corpus consultation are based around Bir-
mingham with teachers in contact with the Cobuild project. McEnery and Wilson
(1997: 12) mention uses dating back to 1969, though the earliest publication seems to
be from San Francisco where McKay (1980) describes activities encouraging learners
to identify grammatical patterns to distinguish semantically similar verbs, based on
sentences printed out from a corpus. In Surrey, Ahmad et al. (1985) had their advanced
learners using a computer to query a corpus directly, though such early software could
be exasperatingly slow. Things really took off in the late 1980s back in Birmingham,
with Tim Johns as a leading pioneer often cited as the founding father of DDL. He
created a concordancer specifically designed with language learners in mind (Micro-
Concord, which later morphed into WordSmith Tools; see http://www.lexically.net/
wordsmith), and published a number of papers explaining many different ways in
which he used corpora for and with his students, with many widely-cited sound bites
and frequent citations, especially from the seminal collection of papers he coedited
(Johns and King 1991) and which included two papers of his own.
184 A. Boulton

Johns created or used different types of corpora – scientific texts, parallel corpora
of translations, a single novel – to be relevant to the learners’ needs. Authenticity
was important in terms not just of text but also of needs and indeed the task, since
corpus consultation involves exploring and thinking about language – crucial to any
language learning. In this way the learner was seen as a researcher with direct access
to the data, and the teacher as guide rather than dispenser of linguistic knowledge.
Proactive materials could be printed out for repeated use with lower-level students
for general purposes, while more advanced students could explore the corpus
individually or collaboratively, using the concordancer themselves for serendipitous
browsing or focused querying. Johns would leave the concordancer on in his classes
as an informant and used it in his one-to-one advising sessions to help with academic
writing. For him, DDL was not just learner centered but also provided a means to
keep language (especially lexicogrammar) firmly center stage. All of this was argued
to lead to greater autonomy; indeed, his final paper (Johns et al. 2008) provides some
evidence that the DDL participants outperformed the control group even on items
that had not been explicitly covered, suggesting that the processes may improve
language skills as a whole. The tremendous variety of uses of corpora promoted by
Johns set the agenda for years to come, though of course he was not alone, especially
in the UK and Europe. Of particular note is the biennial Teaching and Language
Corpora (TaLC) conference series inaugurated in Lancaster in 1994, each event
giving rise to a selected volume of papers; further information can be found in
Thomas and Boulton (2012: 17–34).

Major Contributions

Before going any further, it may be useful to see what DDL actually looks like.
Traditionally the user sees corpus data in the form of a concordance, typically in
KWIC (key word in context) format. Fig. 1 shows a random selection of 20 concor-
dance lines taken from a corpus of academic writing (110 papers focusing on DDL,

1. Jackson 1997); and in translation studies ( e.g. Pearson 1996; Aston 1999; Mallikamas 2001;
2. t is against the ideal of learner autonomy ( e.g., Johns, 1991a). As in real life, learners p
3. ally favourable in this and other research ( e.g. Johns 2002; Hadley 2002; Ciesielska-Ciupek
4. er-initiated and teacher-initiated queries ( e.g. Yoon 2008). As with corpus use in general,
5. oncentrating on written academic discourse ( e.g. textbooks and articles), and the other on o
6. significantly over that of a control group ( e.g. Goyette). Indeed the point of click-on reso
7. offer more readily recontextualised input ( e.g. EEL sub-parts of the EGAP and ESAP register
8. r-, or under-use of particular L2 features ( e.g., Granger, 1998; Granger, Hung, & Petch-Tyso
9. studies have examined vocabulary learning ( e.g. Kaur & Hegelheimer, 2005; O'Sullivan & Cham
10. ed according to formal linguistic criteria ( e.g., verbs, nouns, prepositions) or according t
11. lass activities into the intermediate class, e.g., letting students have hands-on practice, w
12. evens, 1991; Tribble, 1991) or translation ( e.g., Aston, Gavioli, & Zanettin, 1998; Bernardi
13. me lexical items were shared by both texts ( e.g., export/shipping products, taking action, o
14. re should be minimal formal accountability ( e.g. no required summaries or book reports). Ind
15. ies where English is not the main language ( e.g., China and India). As an illustrative examp
16. were items which were felt to be too noisy ( e.g. headlines). 5. Method The overall aim w
17. competent writers. Here corpus technology ( e.g., general corpus concordancing) is a promisi
18. of patterns, extrapolation to other cases ( e.g. Scott & Tribble, 2006: 6; Gaskell & Cobb, 2
19. 1995; Louw, 1997) and of translation (see, e.g., Bowker, 1998; Zanettin, 2001). This sectio
20. only be understood at the discourse level ( e.g. Braun 2005; Hughes and McCarthy 1998). Ther

Fig. 1 KWIC concordance of, “e.g.”, in a corpus of academic writing

Data-Driven Learning and Language Pedagogy 185

600 k running words) for the search term, “e.g.” here centered and in bold. This very
simple formal example highlights a number of features which may be useful to
learners. On the left, it is immediately apparent that most occurrences occur within
brackets (other searches show that this is true in 85% of cases), the implication being
that it is unusual in the syntax of the main sentence and should not be overused in
this way in this type of writing. On the right, the presence or absence of a comma
owes more to individual journal style guides than any generalizable pattern. Beyond
that, it is often used to introduce references, which can lead to further searches for
citation practices and discussion of whether in other disciplines or other languages,
research cited is thus typically relegated to brackets or not. Most corpus analysis
software offers this basic concordancing function. Other features include frequency
counts of individual words or clusters, collocates, distributions, and so on, all of
which can prove useful to L2 learners.
It is in the nature of innovations in computer-assisted language learning (CALL)
that early publications tend to be descriptive of classroom practices and software
developments. The situation gradually evolves, and Boulton and Cobb (2017)
identified over 200 publications attempting some kind of evaluation of corpus use
by L2 users; some of the more widely cited are briefly outlined below.
Much of the initial interest lay in emic studies to find out what learners thought
about DDL. The data were often gathered through interviews, diaries, or especially
questionnaires; the latter are still frequently used but often now as a complement to
other aspects. Long-term ecological studies are particularly valuable here, such as
Baten et al. (1989) who received overwhelmingly positive feedback from 400 Dutch
economics students after 4 months. More recent is the frequently cited paper by
Yoon and Hirvela (2004), who introduced corpora to their ESL students in the USA
over several weeks. The questionnaires again revealed considerable enthusiasm,
especially among those with comparatively low levels of linguistic proficiency,
which opens up the question of who DDL is most appropriate for. Across all studies,
the response is overwhelmingly positive which no doubt owes something to the
novelty factor and the Hawthorne effect, given that most researchers/teachers were
themselves enthusiastic. Nonetheless, it seems that DDL can appeal to a wide variety
of learners, though Turnbull and Burston (1998) provide a detailed case study of two
students needing English for a master’s degree in Australia: one was found to be field
independent and took to corpora very quickly; the other was field dependent and
found it largely a waste of time.
Another focus has been on the uses learners make of corpora, again mostly by
asking learners about their practices; a notable exception is Pérez-Paredes et al.
(2012) in Spain who tracked their learners’ searches. They found that lack of training
led to fairly unsophisticated queries, with learners approaching corpora in much the
same way as they did Internet searches; indeed, the most successful outcomes were
found to be combinations of corpus and web searches. The types of queries formu-
lated are analyzed by Kennedy and Miceli (2010), who usefully distinguish pattern
hunting (i.e., search for inspiration) and pattern defining (i.e., checking specific
questions); success was linked to trial and error, among other things. Charles
(2014) had her graduate students compile their own discipline-specific corpora to
186 A. Boulton

help with academic writing and followed up use a year later. Eighty six percent of the
respondents continued to use corpora at least occasionally in drafting or revising
their academic writing and 38% of them regularly. The overall picture that emerges
is that most students can use concordancers directly, though it remains controversial
how much training is needed. Where time or resources are limited, or for students
with lower levels of L2 proficiency, linguistic sophistication, or motivation, work
with printed data can provide one solution (e.g., Boulton 2010).
Others have attempted to see whether DDL leads to measurable outcomes from a
more etic perspective, i.e., whether it “works” or not. These again split into two
groups, the first evaluating the use of corpora as a learning aid, focusing on learning
outcomes usually of specified target items. The results generally derive from some
kind of language test, whether pre/post or control/experimental designs. Among the
earliest and most ambitious, Cobb’s (1997) PhD thesis and papers derived from it
showed that lower-level Arabic students were able to learn large numbers of words
using DDL over a long period of time and were significantly more likely to retain
them long term than control groups with word lists and dictionaries only. Most other
studies come to similar conclusions for vocabulary and lexicogrammar in general,
which may be what DDL is most suitable for, whatever the level of the learners (Lee
and Liou 2003). Much of the work here is relatively ecological, being based on a
regular course over several weeks or a semester. Chujo and Oghigian and their
colleagues in Japan run a semester-long DDL course on a regular basis enabling
different types of data collection and analysis, especially as they tweak the course
each time. In a 2012 paper looking at noun and verb phrases over two semesters, the
experimental group made significant gains in most areas compared to the control
group; the results are found to be particularly promising when printouts and hands-
on concordancing are combined.
The other group of studies interested in outcomes looks at the impact of corpus
use not as a learning aid but as a reference resource, especially while writing
(drafting or revising texts or translations). Some of it is short-term experimental
work such as by Frankenberg-Garcia (2014), who provided her Portuguese high-
school learners of English with dictionary definitions and multiple concordance
lines. Both were found to be useful for comprehension, but as few as three
carefully-chosen corpus examples proved significantly more effective in production.
O’Sullivan and Chambers (2006) got their Irish students of French to correct their
own essays; following training, they successfully corrected many underlined errors
of grammar and lexis in particular, as well as syntax and even formal things such as
spelling where dictionaries or other resources would have been quicker and just as
effective. Geluso (2013) also had his learners produce essays especially for the study,
but then got them to use Google frequencies as a test of formulaicity for sequences in
inverted commas which the students themselves chose as dubious. Four native
English speakers rated the results as being significantly more “natural.” Search
engines were also used by Todd (2001), but here with the snippets as an equivalent
to concordance lines to help correct errors; again, the results suggest that learners can
indeed make significant use of such self-selected data.
Data-Driven Learning and Language Pedagogy 187

Work in Progress

The essential ingredients in DDL are corpora and the software to query them, and
users today have access to tremendous numbers of both. More and larger corpora can
be compiled quickly and easily and distributed free or at small charge via the Internet
for many different languages: SketchEngine alone currently lists over 50 languages,
some with many different corpora (www.sketchengine.co.uk). However, the preva-
lence of (semi)automatic compilation aids means that few corpora are as rigorously
compiled as the BNC, for example, and care inevitably needs to be taken in
interpreting the results. Some tools such as BootCaT (bootcat.sslmit.unibo.it) are
publicly available and mean that ordinary users can compile rough-and-ready
corpora in a few minutes for specific purposes: all that is needed is to input a handful
of “seed” words which are characteristic of the type of language required; the tool
does the rest. The availability of large quantities of text via the Internet also means
that teachers or learners can manually identify and download texts to build their own
corpora for local use. These are often far smaller, which can be an advantage when
the needs are highly specific. Software development has also led to increasing
numbers of query tools often freely available on the web or for download, which
again helps to make DDL much more accessible. Some of these are highly specific,
some are intended for experienced researchers; others though are extremely simple
and sufficiently general for ordinary L2 learners to be able to work with. AntConc
(www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc) deserves a special mention here as it
has been among the most widely used in recent DDL studies, including some of
those mentioned above.
Technological advances have made DDL faster, simpler, more intuitive, prettier,
more accessible, and so on. But in terms of methodologies, the essential aspects of
DDL remain largely unchanged, typically featuring induction from multiple occur-
rences in context, augmented with lists and charts of frequencies, collocates,
wordsketches, etc. This means that much of the research has been in piloting specific
corpora or software, or in testing the basic approach with different learners in
different contexts with different needs and questions in mind – all the while doing
quite similar things. The advantage of this is that enough evidence has accumulated
to be able to take stock. Boulton and Cobb (2017) have undertaken the first
systematic meta-analysis of DDL with 88 unique samples from 64 separate studies.
The results show large effect sizes overall, both within and between groups. Mod-
erator analyses reveal gaps in the research agenda, including for languages other than
English, spoken skills, long-term uptake and occupational uses, etc.
Three trends in recent years are of particular note. First, a number of studies apply
essentially DDL-like practices to the web as corpus. The value here is that the web
itself is large and varied enough to contain almost anything the user might want; the
challenge of course lies in finding it using regular search engines as surrogate
concordancers (cf. Boulton 2015). At the same time, users are already familiar
with the web and with search engines, which may go some way toward countering
objections of technical difficulties, and further training in their use is more likely to
188 A. Boulton

be taken up long term precisely because the tools are so general purpose. A second
way to help integrate DDL into learning is to graft them into CALL packages.
Cobb’s Compleat Lexical Tutor (www.lextutor.ca) provides a number of tools in
addition to regular concordancing, allowing learners or teachers to create gap-fills
automatically from multiple concordance lines, to visualize the frequency bands of
words in a particular text, to click on a word in their own text for a concordance to
pop up, to consult and share concordances during writing or error-correction, among
other things. This is a way of bringing DDL to the learners rather than expecting
them to come to corpus linguistics. Finally, the traditional interest in lexicogrammar
is being complemented by more work at the level of discourse, especially using
corpora as a reference resource for academic writing. This is not necessarily obvious,
since many features of interest may be difficult to search for at surface level; having
the students build their own small, specialized corpora increases ownership and
familiarity and is one way forward suggested by Charles (2014).

Problems and Difficulties

The advantages of DDL notwithstanding, the fact that it is not mainstream practice
suggests that there are difficulties involved. Various questionnaires have noted
problems from the learner’s perspective, but many of these have dissipated over
time, and solutions exist for others. Despite copyright issues and questions of
ownership, lack of access to appropriate data is far less a problem today with the
increasing availability of large numbers of corpora, as well as the Internet itself.
Technical problems can be eliminated if the teacher prepares printed handouts for
activities, and software and interfaces have become far more user-friendly in recent
years. The ubiquity of Internet search engines have gone a long way towards
bridging the gap between everyday practice and DDL: the concept of data searching
is familiar and the techniques are largely transferable; users are able to read concor-
dance lines nonlinearly just as they are Google snippets and are less concerned with
“drowning in data.” Some learners may find the language in corpora difficult:
smaller, more relevant corpora may make them more approachable, especially
where learners are involved in choosing familiar texts. At lower levels of proficiency,
learners may be more comfortable with parallel corpora of translations (see below) or
even with corpora of simplified texts or graded readers (available for English on
www.lextutor.ca/conc/eng).
Perhaps the biggest problem lies in simply knowing what to query in the first
place: much work with error-correction, for example, relies on teachers indicating
problem areas (e.g., O’Sullivan and Chambers 2006). One possibility is to rely on
frequency data from the web as an indication, focusing on rare items except where
they include proper names or highly technical items, as suggested by Geluso (2013).
To the extent that DDL enhances language awareness, increased practice is likely to
make this easier and more intuitive over time. There is still the problem of formu-
lating the question as a query that the software can understand, and then interpreting
the results. Training is recommended by many just to get the most out of Internet
Data-Driven Learning and Language Pedagogy 189

search engines, and more may be required for dedicated concordancers and other
corpus software. How much training is needed for hands-on concordancing is a
controversial issue, though it will ultimately depend on the learners’ own needs and
preferences, and how much they are likely to want to use corpora in the future.
This raises the further question of the types of learners that DDL is likely to suit
best, given that there is considerable variation in their appreciation of the approach
and the benefits they derive from it. By far the majority of studies to date have
focused on university students, though there is no intrinsic reason why younger
learners cannot also benefit. On the other hand, there has been considerable work
with learners at lower-intermediate level who are majoring in disciplines other than
language, suggesting that language proficiency and sophistication may not be
insurmountable barriers. It may even be that DDL is more appropriate in such
cases for learners whose previous experience with more teacher-centered, deductive
approaches has left them uninterested or struggling (cf. Yoon and Hirvela 2004). All
that can really be said at the moment is that further work is needed in a number of
areas – which leads us to the final section.

Future Directions

Empirical DDL research has largely focused on university students with intermedi-
ate to advanced levels of English as a foreign or second language. It may be that this
is where it is most useful and appropriate, though for a more comprehensive picture
we would expect more work with younger learners, in secondary or even primary
schooling, in private language schools, and outside formal education. This last point
seems particularly important: if corpus consultation is argued to be useful for real
needs, then we know to know what it can bring to professional situations. Interest in
long-term uptake of DDL is at present limited (though see Charles 2014), and
introducing it to the workplace seems to be nonexistent except for academic writing.
As far as the corpora themselves are concerned, English is likely to remain the
major preoccupation for the foreseeable future, but we would expect more work on
other languages too. More important, concordancers work only with written text
(including transcriptions); since many learners are primarily interested in spoken
language, we would expect the next few years to see development of aligned corpora
with sound and even video. It is extremely time consuming to collect spoken data,
and the few that currently exist tend to consist largely of interviews (e.g., www.uni-
tuebingen.de/elisa/html/elisa_index.html or www.um.es/sacodeyl). An obvious
bypath would be to use existing subtitled documents which are already aligned,
albeit imperfectly: Aston (2015) describes such uses of the TED talks using Word-
Smith Tools; Quaglio (2009), among others, has shown that scripted dialogues are
closer to “authentic” spontaneous conversation than might be thought, and thus also
have their place in a spoken program of DDL for general language learning
purposes.
Parallel corpora of translated texts may also be further developed: at the moment,
they are relatively rare outside specialist translation courses, despite their obvious
190 A. Boulton

uses in many areas, as well as for learners at lower levels of proficiency. There are
currently very few that are freely available and easy to use, and they often have their
limits: of note is EuroParl, the proceedings of the European Parliament in 21 lan-
guages (www.statmt.org/europarl). While the status of Linguee (www.linguee.com)
as a parallel corpus may be debatable, it can be used in ways compatible with DDL
but with more than one language. Other initiatives can be expected as it becomes
easier to align translations for analysis with free parallel concordancers (e.g., www.
laurenceanthony.net/software/antpconc).
Technological advances have helped to bring DDL closer to its potential users,
with numerous corpora and software designed with L2 learners in mind. At the
same time, as technology and the Internet in particular become second nature,
learners are already involved in everyday practices that bring them closer to DDL.
Johns was originally determined to present DDL as radically different to tradi-
tional teaching; the time may have come for it to be seen as an extension of
ordinary practice. It will be interesting to see if and to what extent web searches
and DDL merge. Finally on the technological front, smart phones and other
mobile devices may also bring about substantial changes, but interfaces will
need to adapt to allow for screen size and processing speed in particular; entirely
new practices may emerge. For the most part, the basic shape of DDL was formed
quite early on: recent studies can in many cases be considered replications of
earlier work.
DDL is in line with a number of theories of language, learning, and use, some of
which derive from insights gleaned from corpus linguistics, but this is largely a
one-way relationship. The future may usefully see more empirical studies explicitly
designed to analyze the theoretical foundations in more detail. Among other things,
we know that language consists of regular overlapping sequences in the form of
chunks that are processed, stored, and retrieved as wholes rather than being
constructed bottom-up from grammar “rules” as traditionally thought, meaning
that any individual item is typically found in a limited number of contexts (Sinclair
1991, on the idiom principle; Hoey 2005, on lexical priming; Millar 2011, on
psycholinguistic evidence for chunking). This breaks down the grammar/lexis divide
suggesting that our language knowledge is the sum of the encounters we have with it,
both receptively and productively, in line with emergentist, usage-based theories
(Tomasello 2005). Taylor (2012) talks by analogy of the “mental corpus,” highlight-
ing that many of these theories not only support corpus linguistics and DDL but owe
much of their origins to them.
Finally, new research practices are needed to test the real benefits of DDL – not
just for learning specific items but in helping users to become better language
learners, more sensitive to language as a whole. This is the central claim, but so
far the only evidence is incidental and at best suggestive (Johns et al. 2008; Allan
2006). What is needed are careful longitudinal studies that specifically focus on this.
Ideally, for any technology or approach to become really useful, it needs to be taken
up outside the context of a single course – with teachers of other and subsequent
courses, and after the end of the instruction period.
Data-Driven Learning and Language Pedagogy 191

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Technology and Task-Based Language
Teaching

Marta González-Lloret

Abstract
The inclusion of technology in language education is a standard practice today.
However, not all technologies are equal, and it is essential that, if they are to be
used for language learning, their design, implementation, and evaluation are
guided by language development research. Among the existing methodologies
for language teaching, task-based language teaching (TBLT) presents an ideal
platform for informing and fully realizing the potential of technological innova-
tions for language learning. This chapter reviews the trajectory of the merge of
technologies and tasks from 2000 to today, highlighting those contributions that
impacted the way we understand technology-mediated task-based language
teaching today. The chapter presents current research that explores the intersec-
tion between task design issues (e.g., task complexity, language production) and
innovative technologies (e.g., online multiplayer games, mobile digital aug-
mented reality games, virtual environments). The implementation of new tech-
nologies and new language learning methodologies is never an easy and smooth
process. And without a doubt, there are some difficulties and issues that still need
to be resolved about technology-mediated TBLT: a clear definition and operatio-
nalization of a task, a plethora of possible technologies to include in a curriculum,
and the fast emergence of innovations. Finally, the chapter offers possible future
directions for the field.

Keywords
Technology-mediated Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) • Task • Needs
analysis • Curriculum design • Language learning • L2 culture • Computer-
mediated communication (CMC) • Web materials • Experiential learning • Inno-
vation • Gaming • Virtual worlds • Augmented reality • iCALL

M. González-Lloret (*)
University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 193

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_16
194 M. González-Lloret

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

Introduction

The inclusion of technology in education is the norm today, and second and foreign
language courses are not an exception. However, not all technologies are equal, and
motivation and novelty are not necessarily sufficient to make them effective tools for
language learning. It is essential that their design, implementation, and evaluation be
guided by curricular principles based on education and language development
research. Among all the existing methodologies for language teaching, task-based
language teaching (TBLT) presents an ideal platform for informing and fully real-
izing the potential of technological innovations for language learning.
TBLT is based on the idea of “learning by doing” or “experiential learning”
(Dewey 1938/1997). That is, we learn a language by doing something with it rather
than knowing about it. Rather than mastering a particular linguistic piece of the
language, in TBLT, the goal is to achieve communicative competence that is
accurate, complex, and fluent through tasks which require engagement with that
target language. Although there are multiple understandings of TBLT as a method-
ology, they all agree that tasks are the building blocks of a TBLT curriculum.
Corresponding to different views of TBLT, tasks are also defined and
operationalized quite differently, from tasks as more traditional classroom activities
(Nunan 2004) to tasks as the real things we do every day in life (Long 1985). However,
a few characteristics are common and essential to all tasks. See Ellis (2003) and
Skehan (1998) for in-depth discussions of types of tasks. Tasks are meaning oriented,
are communicative in nature, and focus on the content of the message. Tasks aim to
replicate target language use as authentically as possible and should be goal oriented,
incorporating real contextualized language with application outside of the activity
itself. Therefore, the assessment of a task is not so much on the use of discreet
language items but rather on the task outcome and the achievement of the task goal.

Early Developments

Early incorporations of technology into task-based language learning were mainly

translations of exercises/tasks that fulfilled principles of TBLT in face-to-face con-
texts into a computer platform. Technologies, mainly computer-mediated text-based
Technology and Task-Based Language Teaching 195

communication (CMC) platforms, were used to engage students in jigsaw,

dictogloss, information gap activities, decision-making tasks (closed-ended), and
discussion tasks (open-ended). These tasks were used to investigate the effects that
the technology had on the language produced by the learners, in comparison to face-
to-face interaction using the same task (i.e., Lee 2002). Results focused on the
amount and quality of interaction (modifications, feedback, uptake, etc.) and varied
across studies. While some of these studies found task-based CMC interactions to be
productive and conductive to language learning, others found negotiation in CMC
not as abundant as in face-to-face interaction. See Ortega (2009) for an in-depth
evaluation of negotiation in CMC research. The commonality of these studies is their
focus on the type of interaction produced by learners when facilitated by media
rather than focusing on the study of the task itself.
A subset of CMC studies were based on telecollaborative (teletandem) projects
among learners sharing each other’s L1s as L2s. These projects occupied several
weeks of the course syllabus and had a strong cultural learning goal. The tasks used
were mainly discussion tasks and were based in numerous shared cultural artifacts.
See Helm (2015) for an up-to-date review.
During the early years, a few researchers looked at the effects of task design (type
of task, number of participants, task difficulty) on learners’ interaction when it was
mediated by technology (e.g., Blake 2000; Keller-Lally 2006; Lee 2002; Smith
2003). The results of these studies are also quite inconclusive. While some found
no effect for task type (e.g., Keller-Lally 2006), others found jigsaw tasks to produce
language that incorporated more negotiation of meaning (e.g., Blake 2000), and
others found that decision-making tasks included more negotiation than jigsaw (e.g.,
Smith 2003). This early debate is still a productive line of research. See, for example,
Yilmaz (2011).
The idea that technology extends learning opportunities in ways that would be
difficult if not impossible to achieve in traditional classrooms (Sykes et al. 2008)
pushed the field to design task-based studies incorporating technologies other than
CMC. Some of the early research developed and evaluated tasks enhanced through
video (Levy 1999) and glosses (Plass et al. 1998), tasks embedded in web-based
spaces (e.g., González-Lloret 2003), and tasks delivered through interactional mul-
timedia software (Schrooten 2006). These studies aimed at assessing the potential
that the technology had to enhance comprehension as well as to produce the types of
rich interaction believed to promote language and cultural learning.

Major Contributions

During the early years of computer-assisted language learning (CALL), research

started to make connections between the use of technologies and tasks for language
learning, which served as the foundation for all subsequent research. Chapelle
(2001) laid out a task framework for CALL in which she proposed that tasks in
CALL should be authentic, practical, focused on meaning, and appropriate to the
students’ level and learning goals. CALL tasks, according to Chapelle, should also
provide opportunities for focus on form (an integral characteristic of TBLT
196 M. González-Lloret

instruction) and have an added benefit beyond the learning of language

(i.e., developing skills to use technology outside of class, increase students’ interest
in the L2 culture, etc.).
2003 was a productive year for work on technology and tasks. Chapelle’s (2003)
book examined second language learning principles and connected them with the
way technology may be most effective to promote language learning. She proposed
two types of technology-mediated tasks: those that employ CMC in their design and
those based on interaction between the learner and the computer. Both types of tasks
have been developed since then (CMC tasks in particular), with a growing interest
for the second group, which has moved the field into exploring tasks embedded in
and delivered through games, virtual environments, and augmented reality through
mobile technologies. These will be presented below.
Also in 2003, an article by Doughty and Long appeared in the open online journal
Language Learning & Technology which featured a clear intersect between tech-
nology and TBLT. In line with Chapelle (2001), they proposed that technological
choices should be based on second language acquisition (SLA) research findings and
offered methodological principles of TBLT as guidance for task development, such
as using tasks as the unit of analysis, including activities that promote “learning by
doing,” providing rich, elaborated input, corrective feedback and focus on form;
respecting the learners’ developmental processes, including individualized instruc-
tion; and promoting collaborative learning.
Finally, Skehan’s (2003) article in the Computer Assisted Language Learning
Journal pointed out the opportunities and dangers in the use of web-based materials
for language learning. Among the main advantages of technology, he maintains the
potential of the web as a source of language learning materials and input. However,
all that input by itself (simple exposure to information and language) is not enough to
develop language. Web materials, according to Skehan, need to be manipulated to
promote interaction, focus on form, and noticing of features of language and then to
consolidate those features through activities/tasks. Skehan points out that the task
literature can help with making decisions about what types of web materials to
incorporate based on existing knowledge about, for example, task complexity,
whether we want to focus on accuracy and fluency (language structure) or complex-
ity and accuracy (interactivity), what to include as pre-task, task, and post-task, etc.
Researchers are still currently trying to operationalize these ideas, investigating, for
example, what “task complexity” means when the task is mediated by technology or
whether we can even apply the same concepts and models from tasks that are not
technology-mediated. See section “Work in Progress” below.
Since 2003, multiple studies have looked at several technologies employing tasks
(from more traditional jigsaw-type tasks to more real-world tasks). In the last few
years, a renewed interest in technology-mediated TBLT has spiked, as demonstrated
by recent review studies (Lai and Li 2011; Thomas 2013) as well as volumes on
TBLT and technology addressing both practical and theoretical matters (Al-Bulushi
2010; González-Lloret and Ortega 2014; Thomas and Reinders 2010).
Thomas and Reinders’ (2010) edited volume follows Chapelle’s (2001, 2003) call
to investigate the interface between task-based L2 research and CALL. The volume
Technology and Task-Based Language Teaching 197

is a collection of research which explores the potential and challenges of different

technologies (mainly CMC) to incorporate tasks. Echoing previous research, the
Afterward of the collection points out the importance of developing technology-
mediated tasks that are informed by SLA research findings, as well as investigating
language learning within the digital environments in which students are commonly
immersed.
In a recent edited volume, González-Lloret and Ortega (2014) propose a new
understanding of technology-and-task integration, one that is fully integrative and
not just a translation of face-to-face tasks to online environments and one in which
pedagogic tasks would maximize the benefit of transformative new technologies. In
order to reach this full integration of TBLT and tasks, González-Lloret and Ortega
propose that, first, a clear definition of task should exist. Tasks integrated with
technology should primarily focus on meaning, rather than on grammatical forms.
They should also be holistic and authentic, drawing on real-world processes of
language use. Tasks should be learner centered, considering students’ needs and
wants for language, their technological applications, and their digital skills. Lastly,
tasks should bring reflection to the learning process; they should provide opportu-
nities for higher-order learning as part of principles of “experiential learning”
(Dewey 1938/1997). In addition to a clear definition of task, for a full integration
of technology and tasks, it is important to be aware of the implications that adding
technology has on the task. In addition to the emergence of new aspects to familiar
tasks, both new tasks and learning to use new technologies may need to be incor-
porated into the curriculum. Finally, in line with contemporary views of TBLT (Van
den Branden et al. 2009), a programmatic understanding of TBLT is advocated that
pays attention to all aspects of a language curriculum, from needs analysis to
assessment and evaluation, and that considers the role of technology in all of
them. Although we have still not seen many fully developed technology-mediated
TBLT curricula, recent research has started to define the different components for
such a curriculum, from illustration of a needs analysis incorporating technology and
tasks (González-Lloret 2014) to issues of task selection based on complexity (Adams
and Nik 2014), task implementation (Cantó et al. 2014), student assessment (Winke
2014), and course evaluation (Nielson 2014).

Work in Progress

The recent interest in technology-mediated TBLT is growing in parallel to a burst of

innovations beyond CMC tools that connect speakers with new possibilities through
faster hardware that allows multimedia, multiuser platforms. As with any new field,
pioneers in language learning through these technologies are exploring, first and
foremost, their general potential for language learning and integration into teaching
and their possible articulation with teaching and learning methodologies.
Among the new studies, gaming for second and foreign language learning has
gained special attention from the CALL community. There are strong connections
between gaming principles and the concepts behind TBLT. For example, the
198 M. González-Lloret

structure of most games is based on the completion of tasks, best known as “quests,”
which are sequenced according to principles of complexity (contextual, organiza-
tional, algorithmic, etc.) and aim at actively engaging participation in “doing some-
thing.” In addition, game players shape the games by the actions they take and the
decisions they make, much like speakers shape a task once they are immersed in
it. Game players learn to play mainly by playing (as well as talking to other players,
reading about the game, etc.) which fits with TBLT’s main educational philosophy of
experiential learning.
A few authors have explored the efficiency of tasks to promote language learning
within games and other virtual environments, but this is very much a work in
progress. Among the first studies is Sykes’ (2012, 2014) research into a virtual
environment called Croquelandia. The tasks in this environment were designed to
expose students to Spanish pragmatic speech acts that were infrequent in the
classroom (refusals and apologies), by interacting with avatars that presented differ-
ent situations common in the daily life of a student. Another example of the
incorporation of tasks and task-based principles into new technologies is Holden
and Sykes’s (2012) work on a mobile-based game Mentira. The game was designed
for Spanish students to interact among themselves, with the mobile devices, and with
a physical neighborhood in Albuquerque, New Mexico, through a mystery-type
activity composed of several tasks. Similarly, Collentine (2013) has also explored a
built 3D environment in which students need to engage in two different tasks to find
clues about a crime (one missing-person case and one murder mystery) interacting
with other learners via CMC as well as avatars (non-player characters) and a variety
of objects. Collentine investigated the relationship between linguistic complexity in
the input and L2 production. This is the first study that, using regression analysis,
looks at different measures of input complexity from a 3D world in Spanish to find
out which variables were actually affecting the complexity of learners’ output.
Collentine found that more information in the input resulted in more information
production and more linguistic complexity in the learners’ output. The learner’s
output contained more lexical variety when the input was dense (included nouns,
verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) but lacked lexical variety, and their output was more
dense when the input lacked lexical variety and was not syntactically complex.
Finally, the learners’ output was syntactically more complex when the input was
semantically but not syntactically complex. Collentine’s research demonstrates the
importance of designing tasks that include certain linguistic features in the input
(input rich in information rather than complex) for learners to generate complex
language.
In a similar line of investigation, Adams and colleagues (e.g., Adams and Nik
2014) are looking at several dimensions of task complexity (following Robinson’s
cognition hypothesis) to be able to predict student output. In their research, they have
found that in CMC tasks, when learners perform tasks more complex by a lack of
prior knowledge, they produce more lexical complexity and less negotiation. How-
ever if they perform tasks for which they have prior knowledge, their quantity of
language increases, but not their lexical complexity or their accuracy. This research
also consistently points out the limitations and challenges of employing theoretical
Technology and Task-Based Language Teaching 199

frameworks of face-to-face TBLT in the study of technology-mediated TBLT. See

Ortega and González-Lloret (2015) for a review of research on task complexity in
technology-mediated TBLT.
Another technology that is receiving considerable attention recently are social
virtual worlds and Second Life (a free 3D virtual world where than 450,000 users
can interact in a variety of academic and social settings) in particular. Investigation
into tasks performed inside Second Life have been studied looking mainly at the
affordances of the medium to promote L2 cultural awareness and cultural acquisition
through tasks. It should be noted that the work of the NIFLAR European Project is
managed by the University of Utrecht, which has developed several environments in
Second Life as well as pedagogical tasks to promote social interaction and cultural
awareness. More information can be found at http://niflar.eu/.
One more emergent area of research is that of augmented reality as a place for
tasks. Thorne et al. (2015) present research focusing on understanding how language
learners interact with a mobile digital augmented reality game played in groups
around one mobile phone (a pedagogically driven decision to promote collaborative
work and negotiation in the L2). The study investigates how participants orient to the
mobile device (a phone), to the physical world around them, and to each other for the
completion of the task. The importance of the device and the holder of the device is
demonstrated by how frequently participants orient to them for instruction and
leadership, by how the device was the center of most interactions and how informa-
tion from the device was made public and available through talk. We certainly need
more research to build a corpus of knowledge about how tasks and mobile technol-
ogies interconnect, and this study is a first step toward this goal.
As new technologies emerge, new research will be needed to gauge the impact
that incorporating tasks and technology-mediated TBLT principles within innova-
tion may have on language learning. Research will have to adapt and evolve as we
apply principles and theories of non-technology task-based research to technology-
mediated task research. New advances of theory, research, and practice will be
essential to have a clear set of concepts of what technology-mediated tasks are
(Chapelle 2014). These will not only help design research, develop materials, and
plan evaluation research, they will also help in moving the field of technology-
mediated TBLT forward. This idea brings about as much excitement as concern,
emphasizing one of the clearest challenges of technology-mediated TBLT: the speed
of innovation.

Problems and Difficulties

Given the rapid changes in technology and innovation, predicting what tools stu-
dents will need in the future to be able to accomplish a task in the L2 is pure
speculation. We can certainly find out what technologies students need to use
currently, but predicting those that they will need after graduating in 4, 5, or
10 years is almost impossible. For this reason, it is essential to focus research on
the affordances of a tool, environment, or activity which promote language learning,
200 M. González-Lloret

so that, when technology changes, we can revisit whether these essential compo-
nents are still intact.
This rapid change of technology affects one of the central tenets to TBLT: the idea
that there should be a close connection between the tasks performed in class and in
the real world, that the tasks should be as authentic and real-world as possible (Van
den Branden 2006). This notion gets even more complicated when we try to define
what is “authentic” in relation to technology. In most language classes, we will have
students who only use technology for academic purposes (word processor, search
engines, email. . .), others who may use technology to engage in social networking
with speakers of the target language, and there will probably be a couple of gamers
who would want to have access to a game in the target language. All of these
constitute real authentic uses for these learners and may pose difficulty when
developing a task-based curriculum. Deciding what technologies to include in a
classroom curriculum should not be different from the multiple needs and desires
that students may have regarding topics and activities in the classroom. A well-
developed needs analysis, with a balance of sources and methods, should help decide
which tasks, what language, and which technologies to include in the curriculum.
Another important challenge to technology-mediated TBLT (and to TBLT in gen-
eral) is the lack of a clear definition of task. As innovation brings more variety in what
we can do with technology, the definition of a task within technology may get stretched
and diluted. In order to maintain a recognizable methodology, we need to keep the core
characteristics and principles of a task intact while adapting it to new media.
Even with a clear definition of task, some of the issues that face-to-face research
on task faces do transfer to technology-mediated tasks, for example, the idea that a
task gets transformed by the students when they engage in it in ways that cannot be
predicted by the task designer. As Seedhouse (2005) argues, differences between
“task-as-workplan” (the expectations for how the task is implemented and executed)
and “task-in-process” (what actually happens when the learners engage with the
task) exist. These differences may actually be amplified by the inclusion of technol-
ogy, since it adds one more layer to the task design and therefore additional
opportunities for the task design to be changed. It is important, then, that
technology-mediated TBLT research pays attention to both “task-as-workplan” and
“task-in-process.” This necessitates the collection and analysis of data about the
actual carrying out of the task, rather than just making claims about the task before it
is executed and evaluated. It also necessitates inclusion in the analysis of possible
interactions that occur “around” the task that may be relevant for the completion of
the task as well as for language learning.
Finally, for the field of technology in TBLT, and CALL in general, it is essential to
understand technology as integral to the education system but without “technolog-
ical determinism” (Warschauer 2004). We need to develop a critical capacity for the
“analysis of the affordances of technology, needs of language learners, and oppor-
tunities missed when technology is selected” (Chapelle 2014, p. 329). Therefore, the
inclusion of technology (and what technologies exactly to include) should be driven
by the analysis of learners’ needs and conditions for task completion, and it should
be as carefully planned as any other aspect of the task design.
Technology and Task-Based Language Teaching 201

Future Directions

The directions for future research into technology-mediated TBLT will be heavily
influenced by the changes and new affordances of innovations in technology, which,
as stated above, are almost impossible to predict. However, future research will also
have a lot to do with the direction that CALL research and SLA in general are
exhibiting now.
Parallel to the evolution of CALL and SLA toward epistemological diversity and
inclusion of new theories (e.g., emergentism, dynamic systems, complexity theories
under the usage-based philosophy), technology-mediated TBLT will incorporate
new research agendas not yet addressed. In particular, it will include research topics
incorporating social dimensions of second language learning such as issues of
identity construction through tasks; the role that the technology has in mediating
knowledge; how we conceptualize privacy and social spaces; how knowledge is
distributed, co-constructed, and shared through different media in time and space;
what role pragmatics of a language play in the design of tasks; etc (González-Lloret
and Ortega in press).
In addition, as technologies reach populations that have not traditionally been part
of SLA studies, there will be more variety in studies. Technology use is now
pervasive among very young children, and we will need studies into pre-school
and school-age children learning language mediated through innovation in and out
of institutional settings. See Butler (2015) for an excellent example of research with
Japanese children on understanding gaming for language learning from the chil-
dren’s perspective. In addition, as people’s capacities to engage in technology
evolve, we will need studies of people learning languages with high and low
computer literacies, as well as multilinguals engaging with different technologies
within a TBLT framework.
Although Chapelle (2001) has already mentioned the need for more multilevel
analysis of technology-based tasks (analysis of the software, analysis of the task,
task success, and empirical evaluation of the learner’s performance), this is an area
that is still neglected in the field. Most studies are still constrained to the study of just
one of the aspects above. This may be a consequence of the difficulties of large time
and resources consuming research, as well as the still existing limitations of space for
publication in main journals in the field. A few examples of how multilevel analysis
can be conducted with tasks and technology are starting to emerge (e.g., Sykes
2014), but, without a doubt, more is needed.
With more research in all areas of technology-mediated TBLT, and a more
programmatic view of TBLT that will incorporate a range of aspects from needs
analysis to student assessment and evaluation, we will most likely see more research
on curriculum implementation and formal evaluation. Nielson (2014) is one of the
few studies today that has evaluated a technology-mediated full curriculum (for a
Chinese language course).
As language education becomes more specialized, the design and research of
technology-mediated language tasks for specific purposes will advance. Although we
only have a few examples for journalism (Appel and Gilabert 2002; Reeder 2010)
202 M. González-Lloret

and vocational technical professions (Schrooten 2006), the idea of incorporating tasks
designed specifically for a group of learners with common needs and goals fits perfectly
within the TBLT framework. As more technical training in second/foreign languages is
tailored to be delivered virtually through the Internet, we will need more research on its
development and implementation, as well as its efficacy and generalizability to other
similar contexts.
One last field of CALL that has just started to intersect with task-based
language teaching is iCALL (intelligent CALL) which employs AI (artificial
intelligence) practices. Up to now, most of the existing research has focused on
written interaction between the learner and the computer system. The first exam-
ples of iCALL for language learning in the mid-1990s could be considered the
first gaming and simulation environments for second and foreign language learn-
ing, designed to present the learners with interactive input, allowing them to set
the action of the activity, as well as providing them with corrective feedback. For
examples and discussion, see Schulze (2010). Although most research up to date
focuses on L2 reading and writing skills, as voice recognition software improves,
we will probably see more iCALL research focused on all four skills (reading,
writing, speaking, and listening). We could say that CALL research on gaming
(see above) is in some way iCALL research, but focusing on the user side of the
application rather than on the system that facilitates the human-computer
interaction.
Finally, of great importance for the successful implementation of technology-
mediated TBLT is teacher education. Without proper methodological education,
teachers revert back to the techniques and classroom resources that are familiar to
them. Not to mention how intimidating technology can be for teachers without
proper training. For an example of teacher education in the creation and implemen-
tation of technology-mediated tasks, the reader can see Winke’s presentation in the
colloquium “Technology-mediated TBLT” at the 2013 TBLT Conference at http://
technology-mediatedtblt.blogspot.com/2013/10/tblt-2013-colloquium-technology.
html. With a few examples of investigation in this area as a starting base (e.g., Raith
and Hegelheimer 2010), this important research will certainly increase in the near
future.

Cross-References

▶ Digital Literacies in Teacher Preparation

▶ Educationally Designed Game Environments and Feedback
▶ History and Key Developments in Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language
Learning (ICALL)
▶ Online Intercultural Exchange and Language Education
▶ Technology and Second Language Teacher Professional Development
▶ Virtual Worlds and Language Education
Technology and Task-Based Language Teaching 203

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Margaret E. Malone: Developing Instructor Proficiency in (Oral) Language Assess

ment. In volume: Second and Foreign Language Education

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Online Intercultural Exchange and
Language Education

Robert O’Dowd

Abstract
Online intercultural exchange (OIE), also referred to as telecollaboration or
virtual exchange, refers to the engagement of groups of students in online
intercultural interaction and collaboration with partners from other cultural con-
texts or geographical locations under the guidance of educators and/or expert
facilitators. This chapter begins by examining the origins of this activity and
outlines the main types of OIE that are currently being employed in foreign
language learning contexts. It then moves on to discuss new models of online
interaction and exchange and reviews some of the problems that educators have
encountered in its application in the classroom.

Keywords
Online intercultural exchange (OIE) • Telecollaboration • Language learning •
Intercultural communication • Intercultural communicative competence • Tandem
learning

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

R. O’Dowd (*)
Universidad de León, León, Spain
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 207

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_17
208 R. O’Dowd

Introduction

Online intercultural exchange (OIE), also referred to as telecollaboration or virtual

exchange, refers to the engagement of groups of students in online intercultural
interaction and collaboration with partners from other cultural contexts or geograph-
ical locations under the guidance of educators and/or expert facilitators (O’Dowd
2013). Online exchange has traditionally involved bilingual/bicultural interaction
between students in different countries who were studying each others’ languages.
For example, English students learning German may engage in online communica-
tion with students of English in a German partner institution. However, an increasing
number of new exchange models and constellations are beginning to emerge across
the globe which engage learners in online intercultural communication in a myriad
of ways. It is not uncommon, for example, to see students using a lingua franca such
as English in order to work on collaborative projects in online platforms such as
Wikis or Second Life. At university level, there are also a growing number of
facilitator-led models which have intercultural experts who take part in and guide
the online communication between students.
Online intercultural exchange (henceforth OIE) has come to be seen as one of the
main online activities for developing foreign language (FL) communication skills
and intercultural awareness in the foreign language classroom (Corbett 2010; Thorne
2006) as it allows educators to engage their learners in regular semi-authentic
communication with members of other cultures in distant locations, and it also
gives learners the opportunity to reflect on and learn from the outcomes of this
intercultural exchange within the supportive context of their classroom under the
guidance of their teacher.
Over the past two decades, OIE has begun to receive a great deal of attention in
the academic literature and in research circles. Several book publications have dealt
exclusively with the topic (Belz and Thorne 2006; Dooly 2008; Guth and Helm
2010; O’Dowd 2006, 2007; Warschauer 1995) as well as two special editions of the
journal Language Learning & Technology (volumes 7/2 and 15/1). Significant
amounts of funding have also been made available for research projects dedicated
to the area including the European Commission’s projects Moderating Intercultural
Collaboration and Language Learning (Dooly 2008), Intercultural Communication
in Europe (Kohn and Warth 2011), and Integrating Telecollaborative Networks in
Higher Education (O’Dowd 2013). In the USA, significant funding has also been
invested in numerous projects in this area, including the Penn State Foreign
Language Telecollaboration Project (Belz 2003).

Early Developments

The origins of OIE in FL education has been traced to the learning networks
pioneered by Célestin Freinet in 1920s France and later by Mario Lodi in 1960s
Italy, decades before the internet was to become a tool for classroom learning
Online Intercultural Exchange and Language Education 209

(Cummins and Sayers 1995, pp. 119–136). Freinet made use of the technologies and
modes of communication available to him at the time to enable his classes in the
north of France to make class newspapers with a printing press and to exchange these
newspapers along with “cultural packages” of flowers, fossils, and photos of their
local area with schools in other parts of France. Similarly, Lodi motivated his
learners and helped to develop their critical literacy by encouraging them to create
student newspapers in collaboration with distant partner classes. The link between
the principles and activities of these educators and the online work being carried out
today is discussed in detail by Cummins and Sayers (1995) and by Müller-
Hartmann (2007).
Despite the emergence of the internet and local area networks (LANs) in the early
and mid-1990s, initially there was relatively little telecollaborative interaction
between classrooms in different geographical locations as educators did not yet
have wide access to partner classes in other locations, and students found it difficult
to access the internet outside of the classroom. In this context, online interaction was
limited to learners in one class using synchronous text-based communication, such
as chats, MOOs, and LANs, to interact together in the target language. The text-
based nature of the communication was seen at the time as being a manner of
allowing FL learners to reflect on and plan their utterances in the FL before
committing them to the online interaction with their classmates.
Nevertheless, some isolated examples of online intercultural exchange in the
early 1990s can indeed be found in the literature. Early reports include the work of
the Orillas Network (Cummins and Sayers 1995), the AT&T Learning Circles (Riel
1997), as well as more in-depth research studies into tandem exchanges (Brammerts
1996; Eck et al. 1995). Warschauer’s publication, Virtual Connections: Online
Activities for Networking Language Learners (1995), included a collection of
“cross-cultural communication” projects that reported on students creating personal
profiles, carrying out surveys, and examining cultural stereotypes with distant
partners. At this stage a number of websites, including Intercultural E-mail Class-
room Connections (IECC) and E-Tandem, also became available online in order to
link up classrooms across the globe and to provide practitioners with activities and
guidelines for their projects, while practitioners such as Ruth Vilmi in Finland and
Reinhard Donath in Germany helped to make the activity better known by publish-
ing practical reports of their students’ work online (Donath and Volkmer 1997).
Vilmi’s work focused on online collaboration between technical students at univer-
sities across Europe, while Donath provided German secondary school teachers with
a wide range of resources and information about how projects could be integrated
into the curriculum.
The IECC website also contained a very active discussion forum between 1994
and 1995 where practitioners were often asked by the moderator and IECC
co-founder Bruce Roberts to react to questions related to how online intercultural
exchanges could be integrated into the classroom and what type of tasks were
successful in online exchanges. The responses to these questions reveal not only
many of the challenges which pioneering telecollaborators were facing during the
210 R. O’Dowd

infancy of the internet; they also demonstrate that many of the key pedagogical
principles of the time are still highly relevant for twenty-first-century teachers using
OIE. Practitioners wrote about the need for adequate time for students to reflect on
their email interactions as well as for adequate access to resources to ensure fluid
communication between classes. They also mention the importance of pedagogical
leadership on behalf of the teachers in organizing and exploiting the exchange.
Roberts summed up what he considered to be the key to success in email classroom
connections as being the pedagogical integration of the activity into the class and the
learning process: “when the email classroom connection processes are truly inte-
grated into the ongoing structure of homework and student classroom interaction,
then the results can be educationally transforming” (1994, n.p.).

Major Contributions

In the past decade, OIE has become one of the main pillars of network-based
language teaching (NBLT), and the contribution of online contact and exchange to
the development of intercultural awareness and intercultural communicative com-
petence (ICC) has been one of the main areas of research in this area (Müller-
Hartmann 2000; O’Dowd 2003; Ware 2005). Initially, however, the intercultural
learning outcomes of such contact tended to be at times exaggerated or over-
simplified. For example, it was common to read that intercultural learning could
be “easily achieved through [email] tandem learning” (Brammerts 1996, p. 122).
Soon, however, a more critical and in-depth body of research was producing
findings which demonstrated the difference between intercultural contact and
intercultural learning. Kern suggested that in the context of online learning, “expo-
sure and awareness of difference seem to reinforce, rather than bridge, feelings of
difference” (Kern 2000, p. 256). Similarly, Meagher and Castaños (1996) found in
their exchange between classes in the USA and Mexico that bringing the students to
compare their different attitudes and values leads to a form of culture shock and a
more negative attitude toward the target culture. Furthermore, Fischer (1998), in his
work on German-American electronic exchanges, warned that very often students,
instead of reflecting and learning from the messages of their distant partners, simply
reject the foreign way of thinking, dismissing it as strange or “typical” of that
particular culture.
Over the past two decades, the main models of OIE that have been used in foreign
language education have been e-tandem and blended intercultural models. Each of
these will now be looked at briefly.
The first of these, e-tandem (O’Rourke 2007), emerged from the tradition of
tandem language learning that has been widely practiced in many European univer-
sities. Tandem learning is essentially a language learning activity which involves
language exchange and collaboration between two partners who are native speakers
of their partners’ target language. Its online equivalent, e-tandem, thus involves two
native speakers of different languages communicating together and providing feed-
back to each other through online communication tools with the aim of learning the
Online Intercultural Exchange and Language Education 211

other’s language. E-tandem exchanges are based on the principles of autonomy and
reciprocity, and the responsibility for a successful exchange generally rests with the
learners, who are expected to provide feedback on their partners’ messages and on
their FL performance. In this sense, tandem partners take on the role of peer-tutors
who correct their partners’ errors and propose alternative formulations in the target
language. In the e-tandem model, the teacher assumes a facilitating role, and learners
are encouraged to take responsibility for finding their own themes for discussion,
correcting their partners’ errors, and keeping a learner diary or portfolio to reflect on
their own learning progress. E-tandem began to gain popularity throughout
European universities in the early 1990s, and a centralized internet site with
resources, bibliography, and guidelines was financed by European project funding
during this time.
In contrast to e-tandem models, the blended intercultural approach to OIE placed
a greater emphasis on intercultural aspects of language learning and required stu-
dents to work together with their international partners to make comparisons of their
cultures. Belz (2002), for example, reports on a USA-German exchange which
involved developing a website which contained bilingual essays and a bilingual
discussion of a cultural theme such as racism or family. Another popular intercultural
task for classroom-integrated exchanges has been the analysis of parallel texts. Belz
defines parallel texts as ‘linguistically different renditions of a particular story or
topic in which culturally-conditioned varying representations of that story or topic
are presented’ (2005, n.p.). Popular examples of parallel texts which have been used
in telecollaborative exchanges include the American film Three Men and a Baby and
the French original Trois hommes et un couffin. In German, telecollaborative projects
have engaged learners in the comparison of the German fairy tale Aschenputtel by
the Brothers Grimm and the animated Disney movie Cinderella.
A further task which reflected this approach was the application of ethnographic
interviewing in synchronous online sessions. O’Dowd (2005) trained a group of
German EFL students in the basic techniques of ethnographic interviewing, and the
students then carried out interviews with American informants in the USA using
group-to-group videoconferencing sessions and one-to-one email exchanges before
writing up reflective essays on their findings. The combination of synchronous and
asynchronous tools allowed the students to develop different aspects of their
intercultural competence. Videoconferencing was seen to develop students’ ability
to interact with members of the target culture under the constraints of real-time
communication and also to elicit, through a face-to-face dialogue, the concepts and
values which underlie their partners’ behavior and their opinions. However, email
was employed to both send and receive much more detailed information on the two
cultures’ products and practices as seen from the partners’ perspectives. In other
words, email was suited to foster cultural knowledge, while videoconferencing
supported the development of students’ intercultural negotiating skills.
Another OIE activity which has become very popular in recent years is the
Cultura exchange (Furstenberg et al. 2001; O’Dowd 2005). This intercultural
exchange uses the possibility of juxtaposing materials from the two different cultures
together on web pages in order to offer a comparative approach to investigating
212 R. O’Dowd

cultural difference. When using Cultura, language learners from two cultures (e.g.,
Spanish learners of English and American learners of Spanish) complete online
questionnaires related to their cultural values and associations. These questionnaires
can be based on word associations (e.g., What three words do you associate with the
word Spain?), sentence completions (e.g., A good citizen is someone who. . .), or
reactions to situations (e.g., Your friend is 22 and is still living with his parents. What
do you say to him/her?). Each group fills out the questionnaire in their native
language. Following this, the results from both sets of students are then compiled
and presented online. Under the guidance of their teachers in contact classes,
students then analyze the juxtaposed lists in order to find differences and similarities
between the two groups’ responses. Following this analysis, students from both
countries meet in online message boards to discuss their findings and to explore the
cultural values and beliefs which may lie behind the differences in the lists. In
addition to the questionnaires, learners are also supplied with online resources
such as opinion polls and press articles from the two cultures that can support
them in their investigation and understanding of their partner class’ responses. The
developers of Cultura (Furstenberg et al. 2001) report that this contrastive approach
helped learners to become more aware of the complex relationship between culture
and language and also enabled them to develop a method for understanding a foreign
culture. It is also important to point out that in this model, while the data for cultural
analysis and learning are produced online, the role of face-to-face teaching is
considered vital in helping the learners to identify cultural similarities and differ-
ences and also in bringing about reflection on the outcomes of students’ investiga-
tions on the Cultura platform.

Work in Progress

In recent years, alternative models and applications of OIE have begun to appear.
These involve forms of online intercultural interaction which are completely free of
institutionalized learning setups and others which are led, not by teachers, but
outsourced to educational organizations specialized in setting up and facilitating
online interaction initiatives. Each of these trends will now be briefly described.
The first of these “new-style” telecollaborative exchanges function completely
outside the “traditional” class-to-class arrangement and engage learners in specialized
online interest communities or environments that focus on specific hobbies or inter-
ests. Thorne et al. (2009), for example, describe the potential for intercultural contact
and learning in online fan communities, where learners can establish relationships with
like-minded fans of music groups or authors and can use Web 2.0 technologies
to remix and create new artistic creations based on existing books, films, and music
(see also Thorne et al. 2015). Learners also have increasing opportunities to use their
FL skills and hone their intercultural communicative competence through participating
in online multicultural communities such as multiplayer online games and public
discussion forums (Hanna and de Nooy 2009). Researchers working in this area are
Online Intercultural Exchange and Language Education 213

finding a complex range of data sources emerging from these noninstitutionally

located intercultural exchange contexts. Pasfield-Neofitou (2011), for example, ana-
lyzed a corpus of blogs, emails, social network site (SNS) interactions, chat conver-
sations, game profiles, and mobile phone communications between 12 Australian
learners of Japanese with Japanese partners they had contacted outside of their formal
learning environment, in order to explore issues of language choice, identity construc-
tion, and feelings of national identity and “foreignness” online.
Models of OIE which function at this level of integration require learners to
assume greater responsibility for how their linguistic and intercultural learning
progress online as they are given greater freedom in their choice of potential
intercultural learning partners and learning environments – many of which, as has
been stated, may be completely independent of organized classroom activity. Thorne
describes this form of telecollaborative learning as “intercultural communication in
the wild” (2010, p. 144) and speculates that this learning may be “situated in arenas
of social activity that are less controllable than classroom or organized online
intercultural exchanges might be, but which present interesting, and perhaps even
compelling, opportunities for intercultural exchange, agentive action and meaning
making” (Thorne 2010, p. 144).
The second new-style telecollaborative approach involves “facilitated” models
of OIE where trained online facilitators are hired by universities to guide syn-
chronous online discussions between learners in different universities. The project
Perspectives on the Euro(pean) crisis (Sharing Perspectives Foundation 2013),
for example, involved eight European universities and was coordinated by the
Sharing Perspectives Foundation, a Dutch organization which has been set up
purely to promote virtual exchange. During each week of this exchange, lectures
on the theme of the European crisis were recorded and broadcast online to
students from the participating institutions. These lectures were then followed
by synchronous discussions between the participants using a unique web-based
videoconference tool. These discussions were hosted by professionally trained
facilitators. At the end of the project, two students from each university were
selected to go to Brussels to present the results of their research to members of the
European Commission.
Another facilitator-based OIE project is the Soliya program which brings
together students from the East and West with the aim of developing a deeper
understanding of the perspectives of others around the world on important socio-
political issues and also to develop critical thinking, intercultural communication,
and media literacy skills (see Helm, this volume). Each iteration of the project
connects over 200 students from over 30 different universities in the USA, Europe,
and the predominantly Arab and/or Muslim world. Students are placed into small
groups of 8–10 students and guided through a 9-week, English-language dialogue
program by pairs of trained facilitators. Students receive credit from their local
institution for participating in the project, even though the facilitators and the
online exchange environment are contracted from the Soliya organization by the
different universities.
214 R. O’Dowd

Problems and Difficulties

The literature on online intercultural exchange demonstrates that these activities

potentially result in negative attitudes toward the partner group and their culture,
misunderstandings, and unachieved objectives. The main question which has occu-
pied many researchers is why this is the case and whether these instances of
intercultural communication breakdown should be seen as something problematic
or as opportunities for learning.
Kramsch and Thorne (2002), for example, found that the reasons for online
communication breakdown between participating French and American students
were due to both groups trying to engage in interaction with each other using not
merely different communicative styles but culturally divergent discourse genres.
Neither group appeared to be aware of this difference in discourse genres. While the
French students approached the exchange as an academic exercise and used factual,
impersonal, restrained genres of writing, the American group regarded the activity as
an opportunity for bonding with their French age-peer partners and subsequently
favored the strategy of seeking interpersonal rather than academic solutions to the
problems which arose.
Several other studies also looked at how the outcomes of intercultural exchanges
could be influenced by both macro- as well as micro-level aspects of the environ-
ments in which they took place. Belz (2002), reporting on a semester long email
exchange between German (studying English) and American (studying German)
foreign language students, found that the context and the setting of the two partner
groups had a major influence on the success and results of the exchange. Issues such
as different institutional and course demands and varying levels of access to tech-
nology led to misunderstandings with regard to deadlines for teamwork and there-
fore hindered the development of relationships on a personal level.
Other research has revealed how individual students’ motivation and intercultural
communicative competence can have an important influence on the outcome of
online partnerships. In reference to motivation, Ware (2005) identified individual
differences in motivation as being an important factor in the low functioning of an
exchange. In her study, success in the asynchronous exchange required students to
spend a substantial amount of time reading and replying to correspondence, and this
often clashed with the amount of time students had put aside for such an academic
activity. The importance of individual students’ intercultural competence is also
illustrated in O’Dowd’s study (2003) of five Spanish-English email partnerships.
He found that the essential difference between the successful and unsuccessful
partnerships was whether students had the intercultural competence to develop an
interculturally rich relationship with their partners through the creation of effective
correspondence. This type of correspondence took into account the socio-pragmatic
rules of the partner’s language, provided the partner with personal opinions, asked
him/her questions to encourage feedback, tried to develop a personal relationship
with the partner, and was sensitive to his/her needs and questions.
Online Intercultural Exchange and Language Education 215

In order to prepare educators for the challenges that await them in their tele-
collaborative exchanges, O’Dowd and Ritter (2006) provided a structured inventory
of possible reasons for the breakdown of telecollaborative exchanges. The inventory
organized the reasons for failed communication into four different levels: socio-
institutional, classroom, individual, and interaction levels. The individual level refers
to the learners’ psychobiographical and educational background, the classroom level
refers to how the exchange was organized and carried out in both classes, the socio-
institutional level deals with the different levels of access to technology and institu-
tional attitudes to online learning, while the interaction level looks at the actual
quality and nature of the communication which takes places between the partner
classes.
The question remains as to whether the repeated cases of communication break-
down and intercultural misunderstanding should be seen as a negative aspect of
telecollaborative exchange or rather as a potential “jump-off” point for exploring
why members of different cultures interpret behavior differently and how different
cultural perspectives can be reconciled. Intercultural communication in face-to-face
contexts and out of the classroom is also often characterized by misunderstandings
and the need to deal with different behaviors and beliefs. It is therefore fair to argue
that these cases of “failed communication” should be exploited as “rich points” for
learning in the classroom. Belz goes so far as to argue that “the clash of cultural
faultlines in telecollaborative learning communities . . .should not be smoothed over
or avoided based on the sometimes negative results of a study such as this one;
indeed, they should be encouraged” (2002, p. 76).

Future Directions

The chapter sets out to review how OIE has been employed to develop learners’
foreign language skills and intercultural awareness. After two decades of intense
practice and research, the following conclusions can be drawn about this activity:
First, OIE has at this stage demonstrated its educational potential and can make an
important contribution to language learning and intercultural competence and clearly
has the potential to form an important part of the foreign language curriculum.
Second, it is an extremely complex activity that is both time-consuming and
challenging for teachers and for students to engage in successfully. Third, in order
for it to be sustainable, OIE needs to go beyond being an isolated activity practiced
by practitioner-researchers in the area of computer-assisted language learning and
should instead form part of the common battery of educational tools (e.g., MOOCs,
the flipped classroom) used by educators across academic disciplines. Fourth, the
long-term success of OIE also depends on support by school/university management
and policy makers in the form of training for staff, academic recognition of students’
work, and acknowledgment of its value and importance in educational policy
documentation. Finally, in order to achieve the wider mainstreaming of the activity,
216 R. O’Dowd

practitioners and researchers also have a role to play by providing further transparent
research into the educational value of telecollaboration and by developing models of
telecollaborative exchange which are adaptable to other university disciplines and
which explicitly attend to the transversal competences that educators are required to
develop in their teaching.

Cross-References

▶ Critical Approaches to Online Intercultural Language Education

▶ Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital
Environments

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Chantelle Warner: Foreign Language Education in the Context of Institutional

Globalization. In Volume: Second and Foreign Language Education
Richard Kern, Paige Ware, and Mark Warschauer: Networked-Based Language
Teaching. In Volume: Second and Foreign Language Education

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Critical Approaches to Online Intercultural
Language Education

Francesca Helm

Abstract
This chapter explores critical approaches to online intercultural language education,
also referred to as telecollaboration or online intercultural exchange. The origins of
online intercultural language education lie in a critical view of the traditional
language classroom. As the practice has evolved, several researchers have adopted
a critical approach, questioning the many assumptions that have become ingrained
in foreign and online intercultural language education. Major contributors have
challenged notions such as intercultural learning being a natural outcome of online
contact or the concept of a static, monolithic, national standard language as the
target of language learners, whose ideal interlocutors are “native” speakers of this
language and experts of its equally static culture. They have also unpacked
conceptualizations of sociocultural competence and communicative language
teaching as well as the notion that technology is merely a tool through which
learners communicate. Recent work has looked, for example, at lingua franca
exchanges, which challenge the power dynamics of traditional exchanges and
offer a wider range of identities than the nonstandard, deficient communicator
that the native speaker target implies. The ecologies of online intercultural language
education and the mediating and shaping role of technology and its relations with
society have also garnered interest recently. Problems and difficulties in the adop-
tion of critical approaches include the reluctance of teachers to take a political
stance and the need to constantly question one’s practice. The chapter concludes
with reflections on preferred futures for online intercultural language education.

Keywords
Online intercultural exchange • Telecollaboration • Intercultural communication •
Critical pedagogy • Intercultural negotiation

F. Helm (*)
University of Padova, Padova, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 219

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_18
220 F. Helm

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Questioning the Theoretical Basis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
A Political Slant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Assumption 1: Intercultural Contact Leads to Understanding and Fosters Equality . . . . . . . 222
Assumption 2: The Native Speaker Is the Ideal Interlocutor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Assumption 3: We Should Aim to Foster Communicative and Sociocultural
Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Assumption 4: Technology Is a Neutral Medium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Challenging the Native Speaker Paradigm Through “Lingua Franca” Exchanges . . . . . . . . 226
Ecologies of Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Preferred Futures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Introduction

In the 2010 edition of Issues in Language Program Direction, entitled Critical and
Intercultural Theory and Language Pedagogy, the editors of the volume present
critical theory as “a means for language program directors, teachers, and students to
unpack, examine, and transform assumptions that have become so ingrained in
curricular, language-program-direction and teaching practices that they are consid-
ered second nature” (Phipps and Levine 2010, p. 6). This is a good starting point for
this chapter since like other areas of applied linguistics, online intercultural language
education, also known as telecollaboration, is imbued with assumptions about
languages and society, culture and identity, and of course technology. These “com-
mon sense” beliefs and ideologies contribute to the maintenance of inequalities and
power differentials and prevent us from challenging the dominant narratives in our
societies that are reflected in and often supported by our practice.
The chapter will start by exploring work that has questioned the assumptions
behind the theoretical underpinnings and the early practices of telecollaboration and
go on to explore the major contributions offering a critical perspective. The term
critical is also used to refer to practices in online intercultural language education
which draw on critical pedagogy and enshrine a belief in the transformative potential
of learning and teaching (Norton and Toohey 2004) and/or address issues of social,
cultural, and political relevance to learners. Adopting a critical approach is certainly
no easy task as the section on problems and difficulties highlights, for it entails
“self-reflexivity” (Pennycook 2001) and the constant questioning and also critiquing
of our own practices. The chapter closes with a vision of “preferred futures” for
critical approaches to the practice and research of online intercultural language
education.
Critical Approaches to Online Intercultural Language Education 221

Early Developments

Questioning the Theoretical Basis

Cognitive theories of second language acquisition (SLA) and socio-cognitive and

sociocultural theories of language and of learning provide the theoretical foundations
for telecollaboration. While interaction is key to both theories, the latter perspectives
are derived from a questioning of the assumptions of interactionist SLA (Kern and
Warschauer 2000; Kramsch 2000; Lantolf 2000), in particular the conceptualization
of linguistic forms and functions as stable and neutral and the view of communica-
tion as being essentially referential in nature (Block 2002). Sociocultural and socio-
cognitive theories view cognitive development as interdependent with social activity
and are based on a view of learning as a culturally and historically situated social
process (Thorne 2003, 2006). Network technologies are said to have contributed to
this pedagogical shift (Kramsch and Thorne 2002), which led to contextual and
collaborative approaches to language development with a greater interest in devel-
oping pragmatic knowledge and meaning (Kinginger and Belz 2005) and in
addressing culture (Furstenberg et al. 2001). The “social turn,” as Belz (2002)
wrote, saw language learners as “agents in sociocultural contexts” as well as input
“processing devices” (p. 60). From a sociocultural perspective, telecollaboration was
seen to offer not only opportunities to negotiate transactional meaning and develop
linguistic competence but also to foster intercultural communicative competence
(as defined by Byram 1997) and electronic literacies (Warschauer 1996, 1999).

A Political Slant

Online intercultural language education developed around a critical perspective on

the “traditional” foreign language classroom, which was seen to offer learners
limited opportunities for interaction and for learning. Global education networks
were one of the initial stimuli for telecollaboration projects as they opened up
opportunities for interactions outside the classroom. Margaret Riel, who set up the
(still running) Learning Circles project in the 1980s, saw a major limitation in
educational practices at the time as being the isolation of teachers from peers and
learning opportunities, which was then reflected in their view of learning as an
individual process: “It is difficult to imagine how teachers working alone in their
classrooms are going to be able to provide students with a worldwide perspective in a
rapidly changing world” (1993, p. 222). She saw a need for educational reform to
find ways to strengthen teachers’ links to world events and to global issues, and in
her view computer networking offered an opportunity for this.
Cummins and Sayers (1995) also saw the most appealing aspect of global
learning networks as being their potential in challenging what they described as
top-down control over learning which dominates most societies. They saw electronic
networks as key tools for worldwide problem solving as they offered opportunities to
222 F. Helm

increase intercultural communications and cooperation and presented a powerful

alternative to the directions that educational reform in the United States was taking at
the time they were writing. As the title of their book suggested, Brave New Schools:
Challenging Cultural Illiteracy Through Global Learning Networks, their stance
was explicitly political, and they saw online intercultural collaborations as deriving
their impact not from technology but from “a vision of how education can enact, in
microcosm, a radical restructuring of power relations both in domestic and global
arenas” (1995, p. 8). The approach they endorsed was built on transformative
pedagogy and centered around collaborative critical inquiry in which students are
encouraged to reflect critically on experiential and social issues.
This political slant was not so explicit in the E-Tandem approach to online
intercultural language education, though as Brammerts (1996) pointed out,
E-Tandem was a development of face-to-face tandem which had become an impor-
tant focus in language learning in Europe due to political developments after World
War II and the attempt to unite states in a multicultural and multilingual Europe.
E-Tandem was based on the assumption that learners needed to be embedded in
authentic sociocultural contexts where they could engage in direct exchange with
target language speakers and challenged the separation between learning and using a
language which characterized many classrooms that were (and still are), as
Schwienhorst writes (2003), far from being communities of practice that offer
learners opportunities to develop L2 identities and actually use a language.
In his early work Electronic Literacies, Warschauer (1999) highlighted the social
nature and power struggles that influence literacy practices and uses of new tech-
nologies. He examined the relation between new literacies, pedagogical practices,
and struggles for equality and power by exploring the use of technologies in four
different classrooms. He concluded by highlighting the need for students to have the
“chances to read, write, and think about issues of cultural and social relevance for
their lives, as they work together with others near and far to tackle authentic complex
problems collaboratively. If we as educators join with our students to help create
these opportunities, together we can strive for a digital era that is more free, more
just, and more equal than the print era we may one day leave behind” (1999, p. 177).

Major Contributions

In this section of the chapter, the main contributions to critical approaches to online
intercultural language education will be outlined around the major assumptions they
have challenged.

Assumption 1: Intercultural Contact Leads to Understanding

and Fosters Equality

The assumption that intercultural learning would automatically result from the
contact and interaction with distant “others” has been challenged from the outset
Critical Approaches to Online Intercultural Language Education 223

in telecollaboration research, as Lamy and Goodfellow (2010) point out, with

practitioners and researchers readily identifying difficulties, tensions, and failure in
telecollaboration projects. There have been many self-reflexive studies regarding
this issue. In her study of a project between students in Germany and in the United
States, Belz (2002) reported that connectivity did not necessarily translate into
perceived learning for all the students and attributed this both to issues of structure
and agency and differences in discourse styles. Kramsch and Thorne (2002) found
telecollaboration is inherently at risk of dissonances and ambiguities. The different
discourse styles of the speakers as they seek to request and exchange information,
the ambiguity of the roles/identities of their partners, and their lack of expertise could
lead to misunderstandings.
O’Dowd and Ritter (2006) identified four levels at which factors can contribute to
“failed communication”: the individual, classroom, socio-institutional, and interac-
tion levels. They point out that it is usually a combination of interconnected factors
that lead to failure. The level that seems to have received the most attention in the
research is the socio-institutional level, which regards the mediating technologies
and their design, the general organization of the students’ courses of study, and the
recognition of student participation. However, much attention has also been paid to
the interactional level, on which O’Dowd and Ritter identify cultural differences in
communication styles and behaviors, such as different attitudes to directness, non-
verbal communication, use of humor, and irony. Perhaps the area which has led to
most persistent questioning and reflection is the difficulty in getting students to
engage in deeper levels of interaction so they move beyond the “assumption of
similarity” and manage to take a critical, intercultural stance (Ware 2005; Ware and
Kramsch 2005).
Ortega and Zyzik question “euphoric views of L2 tech-based interactions as
inherently promoting egalitarian participation and optimal l2 production” (2008,
p. 333) and maintain that online interactions do not necessarily neutralize unequal
power relations but, on the contrary, can perpetuate them, as some studies on
participation patterns have shown. They also problematize the equation of language
production with engagement with L2 and SLA, for these views are based on the
Western-centric assumptions that value participation over silence.

Assumption 2: The Native Speaker Is the Ideal Interlocutor

One of the major tenets of online intercultural language education has been that the
ideal interlocutor is the “native speaker” of the “target language,” which is concep-
tualized as a “national standard language.” While these notions have been chal-
lenged in various fields of applied linguistics (Davies 2003; Rampton 1990), the
monolingual mind-set, “native speaker” ideologies, and “standards” of national
languages are still dominant in the discourses of foreign language teaching (FLT)
and, indeed, online intercultural language education.
Train (2006) argues that the ideology of national standard language (NSL) and the
related native speaker (NS) ideology have marginalized and devalued the identity
224 F. Helm

positioning of the language learner who is conceptualized as non-native speaker,

with the implication that they are a “deficient” communicator of the language who
commits “errors” and needs “correction.” He sees this ideology as particularly
vividly encapsulated in SLA-informed approaches to telecollaboration which view
online exchange as offering opportunities for interaction where negotiation of
meaning can take place, and students can focus on form, with no or scant attention
paid to cultural aspects of communication.
Approaches based on sociocultural views of language as situated social practice
are more in line with Train’s view of online intercultural language education, as they
conceptualize language as social practice and are concerned not only with the
linguistic context but also and above all the intercultural exchange between interac-
tants. Yet the notion of standardization has also pervaded the conceptualization of
interactants within these approaches as they tend to be discursively constructed in
terms of national languages, identities, and cultures, and the construction of native-
ness is closely intertwined with an ideology of essentialism. Train argues for a
critical take on standardization which problematizes “the assumption of
one-nation-one-culture-one-self as the only desirable model of community, lan-
guage, culture and identity” (p. 257).
This position has been echoed by other researchers, for example, Ortega and
Zyzik (2008, p. 341), who highlight the persistent identification of a fixed culture
with “so-called native speakers as a homogeneous group.” In their view, part of the
problem is the non-questioning of the meaning of “culture” in the models of
intercultural competence (Kramsch 2001) that telecollaboration practitioners have
drawn upon. They point to the ongoing debates in other strands of applied linguistic
theory around the limitations of homogeneous, essentialized, and static conceptual-
izations of culture. Ortega and Zyzik also question the focus on international
exchanges, because by making international dispersion a defining feature of this
practice, we “unwittingly reinforce the invisibility of immigrant communities living
in the united States, who are speakers of the target languages in question and who are
often regarded as being less than native, as it were, perhaps because their multi-
competence is hastily misunderstood as incompetence” (2008, p. 341). The point
Ortega and Zyzik make highlights the social divisions that the practice of tele-
collaboration may be serving to perpetuate. They see it as an ethical imperative
and an opportunity for L2 researchers who work with technology to examine
critically the images of interlocutors and learners that are privileged in L2 research
on computer-mediated interactions. This is an issue that has also been raised by
researchers who have focused on critical approaches and identity in language
learning, such as Norton and Toohey (2004, 2011).

Assumption 3: We Should Aim to Foster Communicative

and Sociocultural Competence

The communicative competence models on which much of foreign language teach-

ing (FLT) and also telecollaboration are based have been called into question by
Critical Approaches to Online Intercultural Language Education 225

Schneider and von der Emde (2006) who highlight the “conceptual blind spots”
within the communicative language teaching (CLT) paradigm and their implications
for intercultural interactions. Some of the sociocultural strategies embodied in this
model, particularly those for avoiding conflict, and the notion of effective or
successful communication are seen as representing a form of cultural imperialism.
Schneider and von der Emde take issue in particular with Savignon and Sysoyev’s
“sociocultural strategy for maintaining a dialogue of cultures” (2002), which is based
on the assumption that “mutual understanding” will take place in a “spirit of peace”
if one of the interlocutors suppresses their points of view. This “strategy,” they point
out, implicitly requires learners to “adopt questionable NS standards and forego their
privileges as NNSs” (Schneider and von der Emde 2006, p. 181). The findings of
other researchers support this stance. Ware (2005) for example found that in order to
avert miscommunication, that is, misunderstandings or tensions in communication
with their peers, students used avoidance strategies which could lead to “missed”
communication, that is, missed opportunities for meaningful intercultural learning
(Ware 2005, p. 66).
Drawing on the work of Bakhtin on dialogue and the conceptualization of
language as a site of struggle, Schneider and von der Emde (2006) argue that it is
more important to help students feel comfortable with conflict than to encourage
them to deny their own cultural approaches to disagreement or rush to find common
ground, for almost inevitably it is the dominant culture which establishes what
ground is common. They propose a dialogic approach as this type of approach posits
conflict not only as an inherent feature of intercultural exchange but also as a value.
Dialogue allows for the existence of differences without trying to overcome or
“tame” them. After pointing out some of the conceptual differences between dialogic
and communicative approaches to online interactions, they propose a course and
curriculum based on “teaching the conflicts,” citing their example of an exchange
between students in the United States and in Germany in which the topic chosen was
a controversial and sensitive one for both partners, namely, high school shootings.
They report how insistence in the face of silence or lack of suitable responses rather
than polite withdrawal (which sociocultural competence would have demanded) led
to a gain in knowledge and an improved understanding of their peers.
Schneider and von der Emde’s (2006) conceptualization of online intercultural
education as a “site for struggle” has much in common with Ortega and Zyzik’s
(2008) emphasis on the need to conceptualize computer-mediated interactions as “com-
plex and contested sites for intercultural negotiation and reconstruction” rather than as
“inherently productive moments for bringing about intercultural understanding” (p. 338).

Assumption 4: Technology Is a Neutral Medium

The limited attention paid in much of the literature to the design and ideologies
behind the Internet communication technologies used in online intercultural lan-
guage education suggests that there is an assumption that the media used to bring
students together are considered neutral. Taking for granted the existence of “the
226 F. Helm

Internet” and seeking to understand “its” effects on intercultural communication or

linguistic development, however, have been criticized for being reductionist and
failing to take into account the multiple forms of online-mediated activity; the
contexts of their creation, development, uses, and transformations; and their medi-
ating effect. Kramsch and Thorne (2002) raise the issue as they ask the extent to
which the medium changes the parameters of communication and the nature of
language use and stress the need to consider digital spaces as social places that do not
evade the inequalities of the “physical” world.
In his 2003 article, “Artifacts and Cultures-Of-Use in Intercultural Communica-
tion”, Thorne takes a cultural-historical perspective of human communication and
cognition and focuses on the concept of mediation, with specific regard to Internet
communication tools and their influence on intercultural foreign language communi-
cation. Thorne uses three case studies to demonstrate the critical role of the “media-
tional means” and its cultural-historical significance for users on the initiation of
communication and the development of interpersonal relationships. His first case
study shows how the ongoing construction of Internet communication tools as dis-
tinctive cultural artifacts can differ interculturally in much the same way as pragmatics,
communicative genres, and institutional contexts can; hence, they need to be taken
into account in a shared orientation to activity if substantive intercultural communi-
cation is to be fostered. However, as his third case study also shows, while cultures of
use can both mitigate and facilitate, they are also dynamic and will evolve in relation to
the object of individual or group activities. Thorne highlights how “cultural artifacts
are produced by and productive of socio-historically located subjects. Such artifacts
take their functional form and significance from the human activities they mediate and
the meanings that communities create through them” (2003, p. 58; Thorne 2016).
Helm and Guth (2010) explore how not only the tools but also the concepts and
ideologies behind Web 2.0 can be used in telecollaboration by teachers and learners to
promote the development of language, intercultural awareness, and also online liter-
acies. Drawing on the work of the new online literacy scholars Lankshear and Knobel
(2006), they present a framework to foster the development of these three domains on
three levels: the operational, the cultural, and the critical.

Work in Progress

Challenging the Native Speaker Paradigm Through “Lingua Franca”

Exchanges

Recently, online intercultural exchanges whereby participants use a foreign language

common to all of them, what has been described as “lingua franca” use, rather than
communicating with native speakers, have been gaining ground (Guth et al. 2012). It
has been suggested that the move toward English as a lingua franca (ELF) projects
may be partly due to the increase in projects involving multiple partners (Lewis et al.
2011), and it may also reflect the fact that English language teachers in particular
recognize that their students are more likely to communicate with “non-native” than
Critical Approaches to Online Intercultural Language Education 227

with “native” speakers. Lingua franca exchanges offer alternative identities for the
students who are no longer “deficient communicators” of the target language but
become, like their interactants, users of the language who are seeking to create
shared meanings.
From a critical perspective, while lingua franca exchanges challenge the native
speaker paradigm, and can contribute to the redressing of power inequities in
interaction, there is a risk that ELF telecollaboration projects come to be a
hegemonizing force (Train 2006), in much the same way as English as a medium
of instruction has done in higher education (Phillipson 2015). This would be
detrimental to the promotion of plurilingualism and foreign language study across
the globe. There is hence a need for these practices to be accompanied by critical
research which takes into consideration the implications of lingua franca exchanges
on the broader social, political, and linguistic context.

Ecologies of Learning

The mediating role of technology in online intercultural exchange has returned to the
attention of researchers, particularly as telecollaboration sites become more complex
and involve multiple modes of communication. Kern, for example, reminds us of the
strong interrelations between the technological and the social and calls for a “rela-
tional pedagogy” that looks at the many kinds of relationships that the design of
meaning entails and aims “to foster a reflective consciousness of how acts of reading,
writing, and storytelling mediate and transform meanings, not merely transfer them
from one individual or group to another” (2015, p. 234). Malinowski and Kramsch
(2014, p. 160) point to the “disjunctures in the flow of space and time” which
“profoundly affect the possibilities for heteroglossic language learning” in synchro-
nous, multimodal intercultural exchanges. Messina Dahlberg and Bagga-Gupta
consider the virtual learning site as a sociocultural cognitive system where partici-
pants, “in concert with the tools they have at hand” (2015, p. 262), perform specific
actions. They suggest that exploring how digital technologies frame participants’
interaction will provide clues on the ways in which students and teachers negotiate
their positions at the boundaries of the physical and virtual communities. Thorne
et al. (2015) explore the many different identity positions that digital contexts – both
within telecollaboration projects and in preexisting digital environments – offer.
They highlight the need for students to become “semiotically agile” to be able to
perform identities and share and co-construct meanings with others.

Problems and Difficulties

Although 20 years have passed since Cummins and Sayers’ optimistic prediction
that networked learning would be a part of all schools’ activities, online intercultural
exchange is still a practice which is very much on the periphery of FL pedagogy, the
domain of dedicated practitioners rather than a recognized and valued educational
228 F. Helm

practice (O’Dowd 2011). It is perhaps because of this marginalization that the

emphasis of practitioners and researchers has at times focused on the positive,
productive potential of telecollaboration to the detriment of a more critical approach.
Many educators, students, and certainly educational policy makers would likely find
a conceptualization of telecollaboration as a “site of struggle” threatening, intimi-
dating, or at best unappealing. Perhaps when, or rather if, online intercultural
language education becomes more mainstream, the need for more critical approaches
and conceptualizations will be more strongly felt.
The explicitly political stance of critical applied linguistics and the addressing of
social justice and transformation in critical pedagogy are not always well received,
and the same goes for critical approaches to online intercultural language education.
The beliefs of educators and their willingness to engage in a critical approach are an
important factor, as is their preparedness to take on such an endeavor. If the role of
the FL teacher is to “prepare students to deal with global communicative practices
that require far more than local communicative competence” (Kramsch and Thorne
2002, p.100), then we are placing great demands on FL instructors and may be
failing to take into account the social realities and institutional constraints that many
language teachers face (Akbari 2008). The unpredictability of the interactions that
unfold, the perceived risk of losing control and of conflict reaching levels of hostility
and offensiveness, and the risk of negative evaluations from students which could
jeopardize a teacher’s career certainly hold many teachers back from adopting a
critical approach in their practice. A recent survey on telecollaboration in Europe
included questions regarding teachers’ views on including controversial topics in
their exchanges. There were very mixed feelings on this issue, with almost equal
numbers of teachers saying they would favor their inclusion and those not, and a
high number of respondents saying they were not sure (Guth et al. 2012; Helm
2015). The findings of Ware (2005) and other researchers pointed to the need for
both instructors to be prepared to not only identify “missed” communication but to
have the skills to facilitate communication when there is misunderstanding. Lan-
guage teachers might argue that “conflict resolution” is not part of their skill set and
they would be more comfortable with noncontroversial topics.
Finally, a major difficulty in adopting a critical approach is in constantly
maintaining a critical stance, as Starfield (2004) writes, guarding “against the
complacency that may come with even partial entry into the establishment”
(p. 138). Online intercultural exchange projects need not only to be integrated into
school curricula but to be recognized as promoting critical inquiry and student
empowerment as Cummins and Sayers (1995) point out, or they risk being trivial-
ized as just another educational fad.

Preferred Futures

Pennycook (2001) uses the term “preferred futures” as a restrained and plural view
of where we might want to head because he finds that emphasizing the “transfor-
mative” mission of critical work’s potential for change through awareness and
Critical Approaches to Online Intercultural Language Education 229

emancipation is perhaps too grandiose. It is important, however, that these preferred

futures be grounded in ethical arguments for alternative possibilities.
It is not difficult to find ethical arguments for promoting practices which foster
greater understanding of “other” perspectives and which address social and political
issues in a world that seems to be increasingly polarized and characterized by
conflicts and migrations, inequalities, and injustices, a world where identities are
eroded.
Kramsch (2014) argues that globalization has altered the contexts and conditions
under which foreign languages are taught and learned and that these changes “call
for a more reflective, interpretive, historically grounded, and politically engaged
pedagogy than was called for by the communicative language teaching of the
eighties” (p. 296). While teachers should not impose their own views of students,
she says they are called upon to expose students to various perspectives, even
controversial ones, and to help them discuss and understand the points of view
and their motivations. Online intercultural exchange could play a role in this task, but
it is important to remember that access to technologies is still limited in many parts of
the world.

Cross-References

▶ Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy

▶ Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital
Environments
▶ Online Intercultural Exchange and Language Education

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Bonnie Norton: Identity, Language Learning and Critical Pedagogies in Digital

Times. In Volume: Language Awareness and Multilingualism
Chantelle Warner: Foreign Language Education in the Context of Institutional
Globalization. In Volume: Second and Foreign Language Education

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Sociocultural Approaches to Technology
Use in Language Education

Rémi A. van Compernolle

Abstract
This chapter examines the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC)
technologies in second and foreign language education from the perspective of
sociocultural theory. Drawing on the concept of mediation pervasive in
Vygotskian psychology, research that has examined the way that CMC affords
and constrains communicative activity and learning opportunities is presented.
While early developments in the 1990s focused on some basic questions regarding
new technologies’ potential benefits for language learning, the major contribution
of research conducted since the end of the twentieth century has been a focus on
how CMC connects people across time and space. Current research, it is argued,
reflects the normalization of CMC, which has become ubiquitous in most domains
of everyday life. Thus, we no longer ask whether or not CMC should be used in
language education but rather how and when it is the best tool for the job. This
brings about a variety of challenges, but also important possibilities, regarding
curricular goals and decisions about when and how to use different CMC tech-
nologies in order to meet learning objectives. Future directions for research that
center on the nature and complexity of mediation in CMC and the relationship
between CMC-mediated and non-CMC-mediated learning opportunities are
discussed.

Keywords
Computer-mediated communication • Desktop videoconferencing • English
language education • French • German • Google Chat • Kern’s analysis • Multi-
modal discourse analysis • Relational pedagogy • Sociocultural theory • Synchro-

R.A. van Compernolle (*)

Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 233

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_36
234 R.A. van Compernolle

nous chat discussions • Telecollaboration • Theme analysis • Zone of proximal

development (ZPD)

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Introduction

The proliferation of relatively low-cost and easily accessible networked communi-

cation technologies in the 1990s led many second/foreign language (L2) researcher to
explore the ways in which such technologies, including centrally computer-mediated
communication (CMC), could facilitate L2 learning processes within, and beyond,
the traditional classroom. Much early work in this domain was driven by cognitivist
L2 acquisition theories that emphasized the potential role of text-based communica-
tion in enhancing the qualities of L2 input, interaction (e.g., negotiation for meaning),
and output (Ortega 2009). At the same time, researchers drawing on sociocultural
theories of communication and learning were focusing on the use of CMC tools for
creating collaborative learning spaces, for fostering self-expression and the author-
ship of texts, and for facilitating intercultural exchanges across national borders
(Warschauer 1997).
This chapter will focus on the latter of these two themes, with focus on the ways
in which communication technologies connect people across time and space, and
how these communicative interactions may drive various aspects of L2 develop-
ment in educational contexts. Here, I use the term “sociocultural theories” in an
inclusive sense to mean theories of, or perspectives on, human interaction and
development that particularize the social and cultural dimensions of teaching,
learning, development, and so on. However, the main emphasis of this chapter is
on research that has integrated, or is at least compatible with, Vygotskian socio-
cultural psychology.1

1
Vygotskian sociocultural psychology (e.g., Vygotsky 1978, 1986), is often—if not normally—
called “sociocultural theory” in applied linguistics (see Lantolf and Thorne 2006), but I will avoid
the singular “theory” in preference for “psychology” in order to avoid ambiguity, as well as to better
reflect the nature of the theory.
Sociocultural Approaches to Technology Use in Language Education 235

Early Developments

Warschauer’s (1997) position paper published in the Modern Language Journal is

the earliest attempt at synthesizing, and unifying, research on communication tech-
nologies in language education from “the sociocultural perspective” (p. 471) – which
he defined as being associated with Vygotskian psychology – that I have been able to
identify. In contrast to more psycholinguistic work on L2 acquisition with its
emphasis on making L2 input and output more salient to language learners,
Warschauer’s focus was on the contribution of CMC for promoting collaborative
learning as reported in a wide range of early work in this domain. Warschauer
organized his review and argument around “five distinguishing features” (p. 472)
of CMC: “(a) text-based and computer-mediated interaction, (b) many-to-many
communication, (c) time-and place-independence, (d) long distance exchanges, and
(e) hypermedia links” (ibid.). Here, I will provide a summary of Warschauer’s take on
the sociocultural perspective and the main themes that arose in his treatment of early
research in this domain. The interested reader is referred to the original article for
further details.
A first theme identified by Warschauer (1997) was CMC’s potential to combine
the advantages of written text with (nearly) real-time, or synchronous, interaction.
Written text is less ephemeral than speech, and it can therefore more easily become an
object of conscious reflection. At the same time, CMC maintains some of the features
of spoken interaction (e.g., turn-taking in rapid succession). Accordingly, language
learners have more time to reflect on what is being said and how it is being said
because CMC is written, but the medium also allows them to use language
interactionally and to organize themselves for interactionally mediated collaborative
learning activities. Warschauer cited Kroonenberg (1994) as an early example of this.
Synchronous chat discussions between high school students of French allowed
students to gain experience interacting in real time, but they were able to pause and
reflect on the language since a written record was being produced on their computer
screens. In addition, many students seemed to be more verbose in the CMC envi-
ronment than in face-to-face interaction. Importantly, Kroonenberg argued that in a
follow-up in-class discussion, students were better prepared to participate, suggesting
that the benefits of CMC extend beyond the qualities of language and interaction
during the task and into the domain of fostering greater understanding and collabo-
rative learning than would be the case in spoken interaction.
Warschauer (1997) also noted that CMC afforded a sort of democratization of
many-to-many interaction. Whereas in classrooms some learners tend to talk more
than others, CMC seems – for whatever reasons – to even the playing field. Kern
(1995) and Warschauer (1996) are examples of research documenting increased
participation among language learners in CMC as compared to classroom interaction.
The conclusion drawn from this research is that CMC environments refocus attention
away from teacher-centered multiparty interaction (e.g., the traditional initiation,
response, feedback, or IRF, sequence ubiquitous in classroom) and encourage more
egalitarian turn-taking procedures (e.g., self-selecting as next speaker without a
teacher allocating the turn to a student). Some of this same research also reported
236 R.A. van Compernolle

higher quality discourse than is typically found in classroom interaction (e.g., Chun
1994).
Some forms of CMC afford interactions that are time and place independent,
including long distance communication. Warschauer (1997) argued that time and
place independence benefits collaborative learning in two ways: “it allows more
in-depth analysis and critical reflection” of interlocutors’ messages (e.g., email), and
“it allows students to initiate communication with each other or with the teacher
outside the classroom” (p. 474). Several studies carried out in the early 1990s showed
that homework assignments could be collaborative rather than independent and that
this improved the quality of students’ work as well as subsequent in-class discussions
(e.g., Crotty and Brisbois 1995; Lloret 1995; Kroonenberg 1994; Janda 1995).
Similarly, long-distance communication, or what we would now call tele-
collaboration, can help learners improve their L2 abilities because they are able to
interact with more capable speakers of the language (e.g., native speakers) who offer
assistance in various ways (e.g., Kern 1996; St. John and Cash 1995).
A final feature of CMC discussed by Warschauer (1997) is the option of embed-
ding hyperlinks in one’s communication. As he pointed out, links to one’s own work
(e.g., web portfolios) can be sent to communicative partners for collaborative work
(e.g., Barson and Debski 1996), but it is also possible to link authentic information
from across the World Wide Web and share it with one’s interlocutors. Of course,
sharing linked material with others is commonplace today (it is hard to image not
sharing on Facebook or giving URLs in emails), but in mid-1990s, this was a
somewhat revolutionary feature of communication.

Major Contributions

Early work on the use of CMC in language education from the sociocultural
perspective pointed to the potential for communication technologies to foster collab-
orative learning in a variety of ways (Warshauer 1997). Subsequent work took up
these ideas in a number of interesting directions. A particularly fruitful area of focus
was on connecting L2 learners to native-speaker peers. The studies summarized
below represent major contributions to the theoretical as well as the empirical
underpinnings of the sociocultural perspective. Interestingly, the major contributions
have all focused thematically on telecollaboration, which draws on CMC’s potential
to encourage time-and-place-independent communication, especially in long-
distance partnerships.
Kinginger (1998) reported on a teleconferencing exchange between US learners
of French and French students in Brittany. Although not technically CMC,
Kinginger’s study represents an important bridge between the early work outlined
by Warschauer (1997) and subsequent work that incorporated Vygotskian psychol-
ogy in an explicit way (and, as we will see later, teleconferencing has essentially
been replaced by CMC technologies such as Skype and FaceTime). The study
focused on the benefits and potential challenges of using teleconferencing in order
to give learners access to authentic language. This is an important aspect of
Sociocultural Approaches to Technology Use in Language Education 237

communicative language teaching, as Kinginger points out, because learner text-

books and other pedagogical materials rarely – if ever – focus on sociolinguistic,
pragmatic, and register variation. Drawing on Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of the zone
of proximal development (ZPD), Kinginger hypothesized that the learners’ native-
speaker interlocutors might be able to assist them in comprehending, and using,
nonstandard – or nontextbook-like – linguistic and interactional features of French,
thereby pushing the learners beyond their current capabilities.
Kinginger (1998) reported three principal findings. First, the US learners experi-
enced “new forms of language classroom anxiety induced by the stress of public
speaking in a networked or linked environment” (p. 510). This was because they were
being pushed to interact with native speakers of the language but whose language use
(i.e., every day, informal French) was relatively unfamiliar to the US students, on the
one hand, and because the teleconferencing technology was unfamiliar, especially the
half-second delay between what is seen on the screen and the audio. Second, much of
the language used by the French native speakers was beyond the learners’ ZPDs.
They were not able to benefit from any peer assistance because the language was so
different from the textbook French the learners were familiar with that it could not all
be explained within the context of a single teleconference, and they were only able to
interact in very limited ways. The third finding followed from this: Kinginger noted
that the learners were able to benefit later in a subsequent teacher-led awareness-
raising discussion of the differences between textbook French and the French the
students’ had been exposed to during the conference. The students examined a
videorecording of the conference along with a transcription of the interaction, and
in this way, Kinginger notes, “the activity of the class returned to the ZPD of its
members, this time with the objective of forming an adequate concept of language
variety, including the continuum between written and spoken forms” (p. 510). The
major contribution of Kinginger’s work to the sociocultural perspective on CMC is
that the technology-enhanced task cannot be conducted in isolation from other, larger
curricular goals. Rather, for learners to benefit from such experiences, it is often
necessary for teachers or other more capable persons to engage them later in
the ZPDs.
Belz and Kinginger’s (2002) study of second-person pronoun development
among US learners of German and French (i.e., du vs. Sie in German, and tu
vs. vous in French) is probably the most widely cited CMC study carried out from
the sociocultural perspective. The study involved telecollaborative partnerships
between US learners and native-speaker peers in Germany and France. The German
study involved synchronous chat, which occurred in real time, whereas the French
study involved email exchanges. Drawing on Vygotsky’s ZPD concept as well as the
idea of microgenesis (i.e., development within a short timeframe), Belz and
Kinginger traced the development of appropriate second-person pronoun use –
namely, the du and tu of solidarity – in the learners’ interactions with their tele-
collaborative partners.
The data analysis showed that the US learners seemingly randomly used second-
person forms at the beginning of the exchanges. However, because such variation
violated sociopragmatic norms, the German and French students drew the US
238 R.A. van Compernolle

learners’ attention to this and sometimes strongly requested that the more appropriate
du/tu forms be used. For example, the exchange between Gabi (German) and
Joe (American), excerpted below, included an inappropriate Sie form, iher ‘your’
(line 2), resulting in an explicit, and emphatic, request from Gabi to use the du of
solidarity.

1. Gabi: Did you get my e-mail that I’ve sent you in our partner folders?
2. Joe: Iher Idee ueber ‘First Love and how it affect prejudice.’. . .
‘Your [Sie form] idea about . . .’.
3. Gabi: Joe BITTE nenne mich DU ‘Joe PLEASE call me DU.’
(Belz and Kinginger 2002, p. 205)

Joe subsequently apologized for using Sie, excusing the infelicity as a “mental
lapse.” He then wrote “DEINE Idee ueber ‘First Love and how it affects prejudice. . .’
hat mir gefallen.” (‘I liked YOUR [T] idea about. . .’) (p. 205) in a subsequent turn,
which included the expected du form deine ‘your’. Belz and Kinginger argued that
“Joe experiences first-hand the social consequences of inappropriate [Sie] use in a
way that is highly meaningful to him. . .. and may come to realize that inappropriate
[Sie] use can present a threat to his positive face” (pp. 205–206). This observation
constitutes an important dimension of the sociocultural perspective that Warschauer
(1997) highlighted: CMC has the potential not just to provide a space for practicing or
reinforcing L2 forms (e.g., grammar) and discourse functions, but to connect people
in personally meaningful social relationships that are shaped by, and shape, how
language is used.
Thorne (2003) built on the sociocultural perspective by adding an important
theoretical specification regarding the status of CMC technologies as cultural arti-
facts that mediate human behavior. Drawing on a larger telecollaboration study,
Thorne examined how Internet communication technologies – namely, email, Instant
Messenger, and synchronous chat – are not neutral artifacts but instead derive their
significance from the activities that they mediate (i.e., communicative practices) in
the everyday lives of social members, or what Thorne refers to as cultures-of-use. Put
another way, CMC technologies are associated with particular practices and goals in
the everyday world that may not always aligns with how teachers and researchers
want to use them in educational contexts. In addition, different cultures-of-use can
develop in different parts of the world, such that participants in intercultural com-
municative contexts (e.g., telecollaboration) may end up having divergent expecta-
tions for the use and purpose of CMC tools. Thorne presented three case studies of
Americans using CMC technologies with partners in France. In the interest of space, I
will describe only the first since it effectively illustrates the concept of cultures-of-
use.
Thorne (2003) documented how American and French students oriented to email
exchanges in dramatically different ways. Whereas the Americans appeared to expect
the email exchanges to focus on social relationships and building mutual understand-
ing of, and interest in, the lives of Americans and French people, the French students
“used factual, impersonal, dispassionate genres of writing, including the use of
examples (e.g., data) and argument building logical connectors (“for example,”
Sociocultural Approaches to Technology Use in Language Education 239

“however,” “moreover”)” (p. 45). Thorne argued that the difference was related to
diverging cultures-of-use: the Americans reported using Internet communication
technologies outside of class for three or more hours every day, while the French
students had little access to the Internet outside of an academic setting. Thus, while
the American students saw the exchange as an opportunity to move beyond tradi-
tional classroom-style or academic discourse because of their histories as CMC users
in the everyday world, the French students maintained an academic stance since this
was the principal – if not only – context in which they had experience using CMC
technologies. The take-away point, and it is an important one, is that the same CMC
tool mediates activity in different ways depending on people’s unique histories as
CMC users. Prior history, or cultures-of-use, define expectations for tool use, and
when these expectations are misaligned, miscommunication can result.
Belz and Vyatkina (2008) expanded the sociocultural perspective in a unique and
fruitful way by integrating in-class teacher-led analysis of a learner corpus of
American-German chat discourse as a pedagogical intervention, with focus on
modal particles. As we saw earlier in Kinginger’s (1998) study, learners may not
be able to benefit from such communicative arrangement without teacher interven-
tion. In the Belz and Vyatkina study, American learners of German chatted several
times with German learners of English. In between chat meetings, the teacher led the
learners in lessons on the use of modal particles in German and helped the students to
examine the discourse that they and their German partners had produced in previous
conversations. This sets the study apart from other telecollaboration research (e.g.,
Belz and Kinginger 2002), which typically leaves learners to their own devices for
figuring out pragmatics.
The analysis presented by Belz and Vyatkina (2008) showed that the American
learners rarely used modal particles in a preintervention stage of the study. After the
interventions began, the learners made progress in understanding modal particles, but
they did not immediately incorporate them into their discourse. In fact, it was not until
the final stage of the study that a sharp increase in the frequency of modal particles
was observed in the students’ discourse: they in fact surpassed their native-speaker
partners’ use of modal particles. The Belz and Vyatkina study is important for the
SCT perspective because it ties language learning outcomes not only to technology as
a context for development but to a larger pedagogical program that integrating
intercultural communication via CMC with in-class, teacher-led instruction. Thus,
while the technology mediated the intercultural exchanges, other aspects of the
learners’ development (e.g., awareness of modal particle use) were mediated by
related instructional activities. In this sense, while CMC created opportunities for
development, instructional intervention on the part of the teacher was necessary to
make the CMC-generated discourse accessible to, and beneficial for, language
learners (i.e., to work within their ZPDs, cf. Kinginger 1998).
Kern (2014) offered an important update on the relationship between additional
language learning, culture, and technologies that mediate intercultural communica-
tion, with specific focus on desktop videoconferencing. As Kinginger (1998) showed
a decade and a half before, videoconferencing technologies mediate communication
in particular ways that do not always align with our offline expectations. Kern’s
240 R.A. van Compernolle

analysis showed how such seemingly insignificant aspects of technologies afford and
constrain communicative behaviors while also adding some ambiguity to
intercultural exchanges. For example, the fixed camera on an iMac cannot be
repositioned, and so there is a relatively limited space that one must remain in in
order to be seen by one’s interlocutor. In addition, as Kern pointed out, body
movement and gestures are exaggerated by webcams and mutual eye gaze is impos-
sible to achieve since the camera and screen are in different locations. Kern also noted
that because these technologies are familiar and every day to students (which was not
the case a decade or more ago, cf., Thorne 2003), “foreignness” and “otherness” are
somewhat limited. This is both good and bad: good, because students are familiar
with how to use the technologies but it presents challenges for foreign culture
learning because the communicative space may artificially reduce cultural differ-
ences that could lead to interesting and fruitful intercultural learning. Consequently,
Kern called for a “relational pedagogy” (p. 352) in which communication mediums –
whether technology-mediated or not – mediate interaction. The approach focuses on
raising students’ awareness of the ways in which mediums “contribute to the design
of communication and embody values and fundamental ideas about what communi-
cation is” (p. 353). Kern concluded by writing:

By making it possible to textualize and recontextualize language use, technology holds the
potential to defamiliarize the familiar, to itself induce a certain foreignness that can cause
language learners to de-automatize their perceptions, leading them to new insights and
understandings. (p. 354)

The idea here is the CMC-mediated learning opportunities can facilitate awareness-
raising and thoughtful reflection not only in terms of metalinguistic knowledge but of
discursive, interactional, and cultural dimensions of communication.

Work in Progress

The sociocultural perspective on CMC in language education is at present exploring a

number of interesting areas. Of course, work expanding on telecollaboration has
continued (e.g., Kern 2014, discussed above), and there has been some new emphasis
on the use of CMC technologies to address other practical concerns of classroom
language teaching. In some sense, this constitutes a normalization of CMC technol-
ogies, inasmuch as focus is not on using CMC as a “special” tool but rather as the one
of many available tools that just happens to be the most appropriate one to use in
order to achieve a specified pedagogical or curricular goal (see van Compernolle and
Williams 2009).
A first example is found in Canale’s (Canale in preparation) dissertation work. The
backdrop of the study is a national English language education initiative sponsored
by the Uruguayan government in collaboration with the British Council called Plan
Ceibal en Inglés (see Banegas 2013). Initiated in 2012, Plan Ceibal aims to address a
Sociocultural Approaches to Technology Use in Language Education 241

shortage of qualified English language teachers across the country, particularly in

rural areas, by using videoconferencing technologies to connect English teachers to
classrooms. Canale’s research involves two stages.
In the first, he is observing how the technological affordances are oriented to, and
understood by, the participants (i.e., remote English teachers, local classroom
teachers, and students). This involves an array of data (e.g., classroom observation,
field notes, interviews, instructional artifacts) and analytic procedures (e.g., theme
analysis, multimodal discourse analysis). What is interesting here is Canale’s broad
perspective on CMC technologies as a set of affordances that co-exist in the ecology
of the classroom with other, non-CMC affordances, which together mediate the
processes and products of Plan Ceibal. In a second stage, Canale plans to conduct
an ethnographic project-based design intervention in order to support the primary
actors in making the most of the multimodal affordances at their disposal.
A second example is found in the work of van Compernolle and Henery (van
Compernolle and Henery 2014, forthcoming). Their research focuses on teaching L2
pragmatics through a Vygotskian approach to pedagogy known as concept-based
instruction (see Lantolf and Poehner 2014). Accordingly, technology in general, and
CMC in particular, is not the central aspect of the work. CMC comes into play
because it happens to be the right tool for a particular set of learning activities
(described below). In this sense, this research is not so much a sociocultural perspec-
tive on CMC as it is a sociocultural approach to pragmatics instruction, a part of
which involves CMC.
Van Compernolle and Henery (van Compernolle and Henery 2014, forthcoming)
designed a series of strategic interaction scenarios (Di Pietro 1987) as part of their
pedagogical intervention. They decided to use Google Chat to mediate these scenar-
ios (performed by pairs of students) for a number of reasons. First, because the
learners were only in the second semester of French study, the believed text-based
chat would provide the benefits of written language while also allowing students to
practice rapid interaction (see Warschauer 1997). Second, the authors (one of whom
was the teacher) wanted to be able to track learners’ discourse in real time, which was
possible since the Google Chat produced a real-time written record (i.e., a transcript).
Third, using Google Chat rather than face-to-face interactions allowed all students to
simultaneously engage in two scenarios each time such tasks were assigned in one
class meeting. This would not have been possible in a classroom context. Research
continuing in this line of work is exploring other CMC technologies that are
appropriate for use within the concept of concept-based instruction.
While there are certainly more studies drawing on Vygotskian ideas, the two
research threads highlighted above focus on the almost mundane nature of CMC
nowadays. This is to say, it is more or less taken for granted that learners have
experience with such technologies and have been socialized into relevant cultures-of-
use (Thorne 2003). What is interesting and innovative here is how these technologies
are being integrated into larger curricular and educational objectives that aim to
mediate L2 development through the use of a variety of “old” and “new”
technologies.
242 R.A. van Compernolle

Problems and Difficulties

CMC offers many benefits in second language education. However, the use of such
technologies comes with numerous challenges as well. Of course, we should be
reminded that any tool – whether we consider it “hi-tech” or not – simultaneously
affords and constrains our behavior (van Lier 2004). For instance, a fork affords a
particularly efficient set of behaviors for delivering food to our mouths without
getting our hands dirty or sticky at the dinner table, but its design also constrains
our behavior: in order to use a fork appropriately, we have to shape our hand and
fingers in particular ways and not others (cf. the kinds of operations needed to use
chopsticks, a tool that accomplishes the same goal). So it is with CMC.
A particular challenge for the sociocultural perspective is understanding the ways
in which different CMC technologies afford and constrain behaviors (i.e., mediate,
cf. Kern 2014), and at the same time how different cultures-of-use (Thorne 2003)
have developed around particular technologies. The challenge here is keeping up
with technological advances – including the development of new web-based and
app-based technologies as well as upgrades of existing technologies (e.g., Skype’s
floating window, discussed by Kern 2014, which helped with maintaining visual
communication cues) – and how people use them. In other words, it is not enough to
understand the technology in isolation; instead, ethnographic, as well as interventive
action (Canale in preparation), work is likely required. It should also be noted that
cultures-of-use evolve over time, as Thorne (2003) pointed out, so they must be
thought of as dynamic processes rather than static products. Therefore, as much as we
need to understand ever-evolving tools, so too do we need to understand how tools
mediate human behavior and how different communities develop practices around
such tools.
Another challenge for the sociocultural perspective is the relationship between
CMC and different domains and contexts of L2 development. As Kern (2014)
reminds us, CMC has become commonplace in many domains of daily life; conse-
quently, in language education, the question is not “whether to use technology or not”
(p. 352) but instead when, and for what purposes, different technologies – both old
and new – can and should be used (see van Compernolle and Williams 2009). One
thread of such research has focused on developing learners’ digital literacies in order
to enhance their access to, and participation in, authentic online communities (see,
e.g., Abraham and Williams 2009 for a representative collection of papers). The
focus here is on developing CMC-specific L2 competencies – for instance, under-
standing the discursive, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and interactional practices that are
expected in particular CMC environments. Another thread common in the sociocul-
tural perspective sees CMC as a more general tool for developing L2 competencies
that are not necessarily domain specific. For example, Belz and Vyatkina (2008) and
Canale (in preparation) focus on L2 development in a more general sense (i.e., not
CMC specific), and CMC just happens to be the relevant tool for mediating learning
activity. Both goals are obviously worthy of attention. We certainly should want our
students to become competent participants in authentic CMC environments since so
much of daily life takes place through Internet-mediated communication, and we
Sociocultural Approaches to Technology Use in Language Education 243

certainly should also want our students to development more general L2 capabilities
that are relevant to CMC and non-CMC environments. The challenge for the
sociocultural perspective lies in making educational and curricular decisions about
the extent to which instructional resources and time can be devoted to each of these
goals since teachers, coordinators, and other administrators all face logistical, cur-
ricular, and time constraints.
A final challenge for the sociocultural perspective regarding curricular decisions
centers on the distinction between incidental and intentional learning in CMC.
Incidental learning refers to learning that occurs without any particular instructional
focus. For example in Belz and Kinginger’s (2002) work on pragmatic development
in telecollaboration, tu/vous and du/Sie development emerged as the focus because it
happened to be a feature that the American learners’ native-speaker interlocutors
oriented to as important, thereby creating learning opportunities in the absence of an a
priori curricular goal. By contrast, in Belz and Vyatkina (2008), German modal
particles were intentionally selected as a pedagogical focus, and offline learning
tasks were created in order to make German native speakers’ patterns of use visible to
the learners. The challenge is in making decisions about what to focus on intention-
ally and what can be left to learners to uncover on their own. In part, decisions need to
be driven by the goals of CMC use – developing CMC-specific competencies or more
general L2 abilities, as discussed above – as well as larger curricular objectives (e.g.,
grammatical, pragmatic, and cultural foci). Kern’s (2014) proposal of a relational
pedagogy, which aims to bring learners’ conscious attention and reflection to both
familiar and unfamiliar features of CMC discourse and interaction, appears to be one
helpful way of guiding such decisions.

Future Directions

Future directions for the sociocultural perspective are numerous, but they center
mainly around two issues: 1) qualities of tool mediation; and 2) transfer and tran-
scendence of CMC-mediated development.
The first line of research has already been brought up earlier. Understanding the
qualities of tool mediation – in this case, how difference CMC technologies mediate
communication in general and how they might mediate particular developmental
processes in particular – is a research thread that is continuously in need of explora-
tion. Technologies change constantly as do the cultures-of-use (Thorne 2003) that
develop around them. Consequently, there is the constant need to understand how
communication technologies mediate communication. In addition, future research
should also explore how different technologies that can be used for similar curricular
goals differentially mediate communication and development. For example, text-
based chat and desktop videoconferencing (e.g., Skype) can both be used for
telecollaboration, but given that they mediate communication in different ways, we
should expect any educational outcomes to be different as well. It would also be
worthwhile to explore how CMC and non-CMC environments mediate development
in different ways. As noted above, the work of van Compernolle and Henery
244 R.A. van Compernolle

(2014, forthcoming) used Google chat to mediate strategic interaction scenarios in

part for logistical reasons but also because it was assumed that elementary-level
French learners would not be able to sustain an oral interaction, especially at the
beginning of the academic term. This reasoning goes back to Warschauer’s (1997)
observation that text-based CMC offers some degree of text permanency but at the
same time rapid interaction. Thus, in the van Compernolle and Henery research, the
tool was chosen in order to mediate an activity (i.e., scenario performance) that they
would not have been able to accomplish in the same way or at all in an oral mode of
communication. While some comparative work of this type (i.e., comparisons of
different CMC tools, CMC vs. non-CMC tasks) exists in the cognitivist-interactionist
literature (see Ortega 2009), the sociocultural perspective has not focused on it as
much as it should.
Transfer and transcendence of CMC-mediated development is also an important
area for future research. While it is certainly interesting and relevant to language
education research and practice to explore development in CMC environments,
transfer of such development to non-CMC environments is an under-researched
phenomenon. From the sociocultural perspective, especially Vygotskian psychology
(Vygotsky 1978), transfer is an important issue because it shows that capabilities that
appear to develop in one context have been appropriated as one’s own. Put another
way, the recontextualization of an ability to a novel context shows that the learner can
transcend to boundaries of a learning task and put the new ability to use in a novel
environment or a more complex task. As a case in point, while Belz and Kinginger
(2002) convincingly argued that the French and German learners they followed
developed their control over tu/vous and du/Sie within the context of tele-
collaboration with the same interlocutors, we have no evidence that the learners
were able to recontextualize what they had learned beyond the specific context in
which they had developed their abilities. In other words, sociocultural research
should follow not only CMC-mediated development but how such abilities devel-
oped through CMC reappear in various, and potentially different, forms in other
communicative environments.
We can think of these two broad themes for future research programmatically by
asking the following questions:

1) What communication technologies are currently in use, and how do people use
them in educational and noneducational environments?
2) When existing communication technologies are used for educational purposes,
how, if at all, do learning objectives align with the cultures-of-use that participants
have developed around such technologies in noneducational environments?
3) How do different technologies mediate communicative behaviors, including
linguistic, interactional, and nonverbal features, and how does this afford and
constrain different kinds of learning opportunities?
4) To what extent, if at all, do learners transfer CMC-mediated development into
other domains of (non-CMC) communicative activity, and how, if at all, do these
abilities differ in CMC and non-CMC environments?
Sociocultural Approaches to Technology Use in Language Education 245

These basic research questions can provide a guide to pushing our basic under-
standings of CMC use in language education from the sociocultural perspective,
especially if the concept of mediation is given central importance (Kern 2014).

Cross-References

▶ Sociolinguistic Insights into Digital Communication

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Richard Kern, Paige Ware, and Mark Warschauer: Network-based Language Teaching.
In Volume: Second and Foreign Language Education
Amy Ohta: Sociocultural Theory and Second/Foreign Language Education.
In Volume: Second and Foreign Language Education

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Second Language Writing, New Media,
and Co-Construction Pedagogies

Greg Kessler

Abstract
Collaborative practices have become very common in second language learn-
ing contexts. In particular, collaborative writing has received a significant
amount of attention in recent years. This is largely due to the technological
innovations that offer teachers and learners a wide variety of potential oppor-
tunities to experiment with collaborative practices. As these tools have
evolved, approaches to collaborative pedagogy and practices have evolved
alongside them. Thus, collaborative writing is in a constant state of change.
This entry will provide an overview of the initial and major contributions that
have established collaborative writing practices. These contributions include
collaborative practices that have been documented in research studies as well
as more pedagogically inclined writings. Following these initial contributions,
readers will find an overview of the works in progress. These works include
examples from across a variety of language learning contexts, including formal
and informal settings. Many of the considerations evident in these current
practices are a reflection of the problems and difficulties associated with
collaborative writing practices. These challenges will be discussed. Future
directions, which are largely informed by these challenges as well as future
technological innovations and associated social practices, will be discussed as
the conclusion to this entry.

Keywords
Co-construction • Collaboration • Constructionism • Constructivism • New
Media • Second language writing

G. Kessler (*)
Linguistics, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 247

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_19
248 G. Kessler

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Early Developments and Initial Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

Introduction

Collaborative approaches to learning have become more common in language

education.
Collaborative writing, in particular, has received significant attention in recent
years. This increased attention is largely due to the socially engaging digital tools
and environments that have become widely and easily available. These tools allow
learners and instructors a diversity of opportunities to engage in collaborative
practice. Prior to these technological innovations, collaborative writing was limited
to pair work due to the constraints of sharing a paper writing space. The introduction
of word processing allowed an author to save a file that could be shared with another
author who could then edit the file and return it to the original author who could then
continue the process. This method essentially mimicked the exchange of paper
between writing partners. Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs, web-based
word processing, and other social media tools now make it possible for multiple
authors to contribute to a single collective document without needing to save and
wait for a peer to finish. Thus, partners can be engaged in the writing process
simultaneously. Further, these new tools allow for such collaborations to include
more than two participants, which expands the potential for these practices. The
contributions of each individual are identified so that a participant, or instructor, can
distinguish the work of each individual as well how this functions within the overall
process and document. Such observation is critical for addressing some of the
challenges presented by collaborative writing, including accountability, equity, and
assessment.

Early Developments and Initial Contributors

Collaborative writing is a fairly new practice in language instruction. Writing has not
only been considered an individual and often isolating activity, but this perspective
has also become entrenched in academic practices. With the introduction of com-
municative language learning approaches, many researchers and instructors began to
recognize the value of creating a variety of social activities for language learning.
Early collaborative writing studies were largely influenced by the theories of con-
structivism, particularly the work of Vygotsky (1978) and Bruner (1978) who argued
Second Language Writing, New Media, and Co-Construction Pedagogies 249

that learning is a social activity that can be supported by encouraging learners to

contribute to the construction of knowledge. This perspective contributed to a
variety of group work-based activities. Language teachers who employed collabo-
rative writing practices early on were likely to have been influenced by the process
approach to writing. This approach focuses upon the understanding that writing is a
recursive activity that incorporates planning, idea generation, and revision at differ-
ent stages throughout the writing process. As a result, the process approach involves
a variety of prewriting activities, cyclic revision, and extensive use of teacher and
peer feedback (Ferris and Hedgcock 2005). This use of peer feedback quickly
evolved into practices constructed around greater reliance upon peers through the
writing process.
As part of the process approach to writing, peer feedback has become a very
common practice, particularly in English as a second language (ESL) and English as
a foreign language (EFL) contexts. Such practice puts a heavy emphasis on student
involvement and control over the writing process, including the generation of ideas
and repeated opportunities for peers to exchange feedback while instructors serve as
a guide rather than the focal point. These practices had a profound influence on early
adopters of collaborative writing who recognized that they aligned well with the
practice of students collaboratively constructing knowledge (Storch 2005). Further,
additional benefits were observed, including enhanced brainstorming abilities,
dynamic opportunities for shared negotiation of ideas, and immediate access to
instructor and peer feedback (Storch 2013). Others have also noted that collaborative
writing processes allow learners to have access to formative feedback throughout the
text creation process (Hirvela 1999; Storch 2013). This access provides learners with
suggestions for improvements or alternatives to the emerging text at a time when it is
familiar and most salient. This is an important aspect that continues to guide much of
the current research into collaborative writing since it is not always obvious how to
increase the salience of feedback. However, we do know that raising students’
awareness of their role within the writing process throughout the various steps
prepares them to be more reflective, thoughtful, and self-correcting in their future
writing (Ferris and Hedgcock 2005).
It is relevant to note that while researchers have observed an increased awareness
on the part of students throughout the writing process when engaged in the process
approach, it is very likely that learners and instructors who are not prepared to
effectively participate in such activities will have less than desirable experiences. As
Ferris (2003) observed, students who are not adequately prepared to participate in
peer response are likely to “correct” sentences that are already correct or overlook
errors that require attention. Thus, some have offered suggestions for specific
approaches to training students for providing peer feedback (Hansen and Liu
2005). While collaborative writing has benefitted in a variety of ways from the
early investigation into peer feedback and other aspects of the process approach,
perhaps the most important contribution may be this recognition of a need to
adequately and explicitly prepare instructors and learners. Such preparation can
take on many forms, and it is not obvious which approach is ideal for any given
learning context. It is also likely that we will continue to see these approaches
250 G. Kessler

diversify. However, we can observe through studies that offer no preparation the
importance of some form of collaborative writing instructor and learner preparation
(Storch 2013).
There are a number of characteristics surrounding the collaborative writing
process that have changed since the earliest interventions. These are generally the
result of the dramatic influence that computers have had upon the production of text.
We have benefitted from the increased functionality of word processing on com-
puters in many ways, including the ability to save, copy, paste, and distribute text
easily. With the introduction of networks and the Internet specifically, we are able to
share texts easily and widely. In contrast, early collaborative writing projects were
paper based, focused upon academic tasks, and generally limited to pair work, while
the emerging trend is moving toward the use of Internet-based contexts that allow
multiple users to simultaneously contribute to a single text or even to a single
sentence within a text (Kessler et al. 2012). More recent studies have begun to
address more global processes involved throughout the text production process as
well as collaborative group behavior.

Major Contributions

With the growth of interest in collaborative writing in recent years, researchers have
identified a variety of collaborative writing behaviors. Many of these have relied
upon the work of Parks, et al. (2003, p. 40) who categorized collaborative writing
behaviors according to four types:

1. Joint collaboration is “two or more writers working on the same text who assume
equal responsibility for its production. . .although individual contributions to the
finished product may vary.”
2. Parallel collaboration is “two or more writers who, although working on the same
text, do not assume equal responsibility for its production. . .although again,
individual contributions to the final product varied.”
3. Incidental collaboration is “generally brief, spur-of-the moment requests for help
directly related to the writing task at hand.”
4. Covert collaboration is “getting information from documents or other linguistic or
nonlinguistic sources during the process of producing a text.” These types of
collaboration may not be apparent in all collaborative writing contexts.

This study, along with much of the early and ongoing collaborative writing
research, has focused on language-related episodes (LREs) as the unit of measure.
LREs, as defined by Swain and Lapkin (1995), include the language used by
students to deliberate about their linguistic production as they attend to a task.
LREs can take on many forms and are, therefore, difficult to operationalize. They
can be a single turn or a lengthy interaction between one or more learners. They can
be difficult to identify and isolate as well. Further, there is some disagreement about
what to include as an LRE. While Swain and Lapkin’s description of LREs includes
Second Language Writing, New Media, and Co-Construction Pedagogies 251

self-repair, Fortune (2005) does not include such episodes since he argues they are
not reflective of the collaborative process. However, recent research into the influ-
ence of collaborative writing upon individual writing may challenge this omission.
While LREs have been defined by different researchers in different ways making
direct comparisons between contexts and studies difficult, there are some general
observations that we can claim. The opportunity to write collaboratively provides
students with opportunities to communicate in meaningful ways that reflect a wide
range of functions that are unlikely to be present in conventional writing classrooms
where the teacher is the center of attention (Storch 2013). While students are not
likely to attend to all LREs in a given text production circumstance, research
indicates that they are likely to successfully correct most LREs when engaged in
collaborative writing activity (Storch and Aldosari 2013). Some have observed that
the success of attending to LREs may be influenced by any number of circum-
stances, including task type (Lee 2008), writing context (Kessler et al. 2012), and
group composition (Kessler and Bikowski 2010). Further, students are not likely to
attend to all LREs even when they are aware of their presence depending on their
individual or partner’s language levels (Storch 2005) or prioritization of errors
(Kessler 2009). Many of these observations were conducted through collaborative
dialogue, in which students engage in meta-discussion about their writing process
(Swain 2000).
Storch (2013) has observed that collaborative dialogue during the collaborative
writing process allows students to present initial ideas, suggest alternate ideas, and
express concerns. Vocalizing these thoughts propels the collaborative writing pro-
cess and elicits feedback from both peers and instructors. Studies that have focused
upon learner talk while engaged in collaborative writing practice have observed that
learners are likely to demonstrate increased attention to various aspects of writing,
including idea generation, organization, coherence, cohesion, and accuracy. Observ-
ing student behavior while they are involved in these aspects of the process writing
approach can be very informative.
A number of studies have focused more upon the nature of student behavior in
collaborative writing contexts. Recently, the majority of these have taken place in
wikis or tools that function much like wikis, including web-based word processing
tools such as Google Docs. These studies have focused upon various aspects of
student behavior, including their interaction with one another as well as their use of
the tool or writing environment in question. These exist across a spectrum of
learner language levels, learning contexts, academic tasks, and teacher involve-
ment. For example, Kessler (2009) observed students’ attention to form in the
co-construction of a wiki defining the term “culture” completely autonomously as a
single group of 40 students over a period of 15 weeks (with no teacher interven-
tion), while Elola and Oskoz (2010) observed eight students working in pairs over
the course of 15 days doing specific tasks that required intensive teacher interven-
tion. Thus, it is difficult to generalize universal conclusions from the existing body
of studies. But each study illustrates how collaborative writing can be employed in
particular contexts while identifying potential future implementations. Increasingly,
these studies are adopting a more ecological perspective and observing various
252 G. Kessler

behaviors of students rather than solely focusing upon specific linguistic elements
such as LREs.
These situated case studies have attempted to identify trends in collaborative
writing practices that may inform practice in other contexts. For example, Kessler
and Bikowski (2010) observed students as they developed their autonomous abilities
while co-constructing a wiki over a 15-week period. They observed behavioral
patterns across the entire group of 40 students and noticed that students collaborated
extensively as they built the wiki entry only to reach a point where a handful of
students began to dismantle significant portions. Then another small group
reconstructed the entry in a manner that was much more thorough and thoughtful
than the original. This observation of group behavior has been adopted by others in
recent years as well. Many of these studies have found that students use tools in ways
that demonstrate a variety of strategies (Kost 2011), to accomplish different goals
(Kessler and Bikowski 2010), and in ways that are often unanticipated by instructors
or researchers (Kessler 2009). Consequently, it is important to design instruction in a
manner that allows for flexibility and emergence of new tools and practices. One
consideration when selecting or designing a collaborative writing tool or context is
the potential for it to foster a sense of community. Collaborative writing can provide
students with a community within which they can feel compelled to write. When
such a community is successful, students rely on one another for guidance and
support.
Many have suggested that the immediacy of feedback in collaborative writing
practices allows students to reflect upon and revise their texts in ways that would not
be possible in individual, isolated writing (Storch 2005; Kessler 2009). While it is
obvious that learners benefit from immediate feedback since it is likely salient and
actionable, the extent of benefits resulting from this immediacy has yet to be fully
explored. Future studies will likely be conducted to develop a better sense of this
contribution. Others have observed that students are likely to contribute in ways that
are not proportionately equal (Kessler and Bikowski 2010). However, different
students are likely to attend to different aspects of a text and take responsibility for
different stages of the writing process (Kessler et al. 2012). Consequently, it is
important to create collaborative writing practices that allow students to contribute
across a range of roles and responsibilities, allowing them to experiment with
familiar and emerging language abilities. By allowing more flexibility and diversity
in these practices, we can develop a better understanding of how these adjustments
influence the collaborative writing process.
There have been a number of investigations comparing collaborative writing
practices to individual writing. These studies have observed a number of advantages
that collaborative writing offers over individual writing, including the opportunity to
take on unique roles such as tutor, critical reader, and sounding board (Weissberg
2006). As a result, collaborative writing practices allow students to engage in a
two-way interaction with feedback: giving and receiving. Further, the availability of
feedback throughout the entirety of the writing process is very different from
individual writing practices where feedback is likely to be provided only after the
text creation is finished and turned in. Storch (2005) has observed that students
Second Language Writing, New Media, and Co-Construction Pedagogies 253

writing collaboratively produce more accurate texts than when they write individu-
ally. She attributes this to the fact that they can discuss, negotiate, and rely on
partners as a sounding board when necessary. Elola and Oskoz (2010) observed that
learners who engaged in collaborative writing demonstrated improvements in their
subsequent individual writing and that they were more aware of structural concerns.
Collaborative writing in groups, larger than pairs, has received little attention.
However, the few studies that have focused on this kind of practice have revealed a
variety of opportunities and great potential. Kessler and Bikowski (2010) observed
that group writing projects can promote learner autonomy and that the fluidity of
collaborative text creation allows students to participate to the extent that they find
meaningful. They also observed that students focused upon meaning often at the
expense of accuracy. Kessler et al. (2012) observed that different small groups
behaved in very different ways and that these behaviors influenced the writing
process of the group. Groups that shared more responsibility for entire texts produce
higher quality work and had a higher level of satisfaction with the overall experi-
ence. Groups that divided the writing task into sections and worked individually
produced disjointed texts. In another study looking at group work, Dabao (2012)
compared the quality of texts written individually to those written collaboratively in
pairs and groups. She observed that students who wrote collaboratively focused
more of their attention to language-related episodes (LREs) than those who wrote
individually. Further, groups produced and resolved more LREs than pairs and,
consequently, achieved greater accuracy in their final written product.
These observations of the potential for group collaborative writing suggest that
we would benefit from more experimentation with a variety of group designs. There
is also some evidence that groups (pairs, at least) that include members of varying L2
proficiency will likely result in predictable dominant/passive roles. Storch and
Aldosari (2013), for example, observed that such relationships can be detrimental
to the collaborative writing process and that students in such situations are likely to
prefer writing individually. Group dynamics can be very complicated and difficult to
fully understand, but the observant writing instructor can certainly develop a better
sense of how these dynamics manifest in the classroom. Thus, it is important to be
conscious of how we as instructors present and model collaborative writing activities
and how we establish expectations for students. We can begin by attempting to create
collaborative writing groups in a thoughtful and deliberate manner. Perhaps more
extensive learner preparation regarding the expectations, practices, and benefits of
the collaborative activity would help to alleviate some of these misgivings. Perhaps
it would be beneficial to experiment with a variety of approaches to creating groups
in order to identify successful group design. Perhaps assigning roles to students that
are counter to their personalities would allow them to gain perspective on the
usefulness of the task.
Learners may need to gain more experience with collaborative practices in order
to truly value them and perform to the best of their ability within these new
paradigms. This is true for instructors as well since these practices can be very
different from traditional individual writing, particularly if an instructor is not
already practicing the process approach. Further, since these practices are not likely
254 G. Kessler

to be happening across a curricula or faculty, it is likely that when students do

encounter them, they are perceived as something of a novelty. The true benefits of
these practices can only be fully appreciated once these practices become familiar
enough to both learners and instructors. Such expansion will also provide
researchers with more opportunities to investigate the nature of these collaborative
practices. Thus, we look forward to an increase not only in these kind of activities
but also in the potential for research and its iterative contribution to continuing to
develop more effective pedagogical models.

Work in Progress

Investigation into collaborative writing is progressing in a variety of directions.

Along with the aforementioned shifts in research foci upon individual and group
behavior while writing traditional expository writing pieces, there are some who are
exploring writing that is taking place in less conventional contexts and genres that
are not often associated with academic writing. This includes the increasing variation
of collaborative writing that is now taking place in various web-based contexts and
communities as well as social and new media contexts such as Facebook (Shukor
and Noordin 2014), digital storytelling (Torres et al. 2012), and gaming (Kuhn 2014;
Bado and Franklin 2014). These contexts are particularly interesting since they are
ubiquitous in our social lives today, and consequently students associate this writing
as a social activity rather than one of isolation. This perspective can compel students
to contribute, participate, and provide feedback to others. It has been observed that
students today are writing more extensively due to the opportunities that these
contexts present (Purcell et al. 2013). This should certainly guide more instructional
practice. We can also see that social media platforms provide plentiful opportunities
for researchers to study the collaborative co-construction of knowledge in the form
of online identities, shared communities, cultural values, and visions for change. We
will certainly see more interest in the potential of these and many other writing
contexts in the near future.
Recently there have been recommendations for embracing more diversity in
genres in writing instruction. It has become fairly commonplace for digital story-
telling and fan fiction to be accepted in academic composition classes. These new
and emerging genres rely upon an array of emerging social and collaborative tools
and contexts for writing, including Internet memes for providing lower-level stu-
dents with a compelling reason to write and collaborative graduate-level research
projects to engage academics at the highest levels. These are just examples of a rich
body of potential new genres that students are likely to find much more engaging and
interesting than many conventional academic genres (Thorne et al. 2015). While
these practices offer great potential opportunities, it is the institutional conventions
that are most likely to make them difficult to implement. The longstanding conven-
tions of individual writing are a centerpiece of many institutional academic practices.
In spite of these potential benefits, as Storch (2005) notes, the affordances of
collaborative writing may require “a reconceptualization of classroom teaching”
Second Language Writing, New Media, and Co-Construction Pedagogies 255

(p. 169). This statement reflects a recognition of the dramatic differences collabora-
tive writing practices present compared to the long-established and institutionally
entrenched assumptions we associate with individualized writing. In particular, there
are a number of problems and difficulties when introducing such radically different
instructional practices.

Problems and Difficulties

A number of previous studies have identified other difficulties related to collabora-

tive writing. These studies are largely informed by a conscious comparison with
more traditional and familiar individual writing practices. Based on such previous
educational experiences, students are likely to view writing as an individual and
private act and consequently reject collaborative work (Murray 1992). Some have
been concerned about assessment and find that it can be difficult to determine how to
grade or evaluate each individual’s contribution to a product that has been created
collaboratively. Some suggest requiring equal contributions, but others argue that
there can be a qualitative strength in brief contributions while lengthy contributions
can be rambling or distracting (Kessler and Bikowski 2010). Accountability is often
associated with this assessment challenge. It is not obvious how to maintain
accountability when some students can simply let others take charge.
For many teachers and students, collaborative writing is still likely to be unfa-
miliar. As a result, there may be reluctance and even resistance to such practices. The
results of the many investigations included in this entry should help to convince
instructors, but it may be more difficult to convince students that these practices will
be beneficial, particularly when so many have had negative or unimpressive expe-
riences with poorly planned group work in the past (Zimmerman 2010). It may be
extremely helpful to create experiences that utilize these new social contexts in order
to engage students in these practices. Such implementation does not require that
conventional academic writing practices be abandoned. As Elola and Oskoz (2010)
suggest, individual and collaborative writing activities can be practiced together. In
fact, establishing a balance may help students develop a broader set of abilities.
Students who have been successful individual writers previously are likely to be
resistant to the introduction of these practices. It may be necessary to allow such
students to take on roles in a group that cater to their unique strengths. Teachers who
are new to collaborative learning are also likely to benefit from some guidance.
While it is possible to create small and large group collaborations, typically groups
are limited to pairs or triads. These smaller groups are easier to manage, maintain,
and observe, but there may be times when larger group work is desirable (Kessler
2009).
Language learning anxiety can be debilitating for some learners and collaborative
writing practices may increase anxiety for some students, but it is also possible that
collaborative writing will help students to overcome these concerns. While there is a
sense of accountability associated with writing as a member of a group, this can
introduce potential for embarrassment. Under well-designed and -managed
256 G. Kessler

circumstances, previous research has described approaches to guide students toward

greater comfort with these practices.
There is also evidence that lack of experience, concerns of fairness, and conflict
between individuals can threaten collaborative writing practices (Storch 2013).
Similarly, Spigelman (2000) found that it is critical that students trust one another
and embrace the willingness to share authorship. Such observations indicate that
perceptions are evolving regarding these collaborative practices. However, as we
have witnessed a growth in these practices, it is likely that we will see a change in
these expectations. In fact, we are beginning to see evidence that students are
developing an appreciation for these practices (Kessler et al. 2012).
In addition to the difficulties of implementing collaborative writing, there are a
number of challenges associated with researching collaborative writing. Collabora-
tively written texts can be complex, making it difficult to truly identify each
individual’s contribution.
The fluidity of participation, particularly in contexts where students may interact
with one another in a face-to-face context at one moment and online at another,
makes it difficult to observe exactly what is being produced by each individual
throughout the many iterations of a collaborative project. When we consider the four
types of collaboration identified by Parks et al. (2003), we can see that covert acts
only further complicate such attempts. Of course there are solutions to this, including
conducting research in controlled environments where all behavior can be observed
and recorded, but these are not likely to resemble authentic learning contexts, and,
thus, the behavior is likely to be different. However, as we continue to become more
comfortable with these collaborative practices in other domains, we are likely to
embrace these practices more easily as well.

Future Directions

The future of collaborative writing in second language learning contexts is promis-

ing and exciting. It is also unpredictable in many ways. These collaborative tools
have allowed us to “think collaboratively” as we construct and reconstruct our
understanding with one another through the process of sharing, altering, and refining
our collective awareness of the world around us. It should be no surprise that
collaborative practices would be experiencing a dramatic growth since we are
surrounded by the largely collaboratively constructed digital world. We should
definitely anticipate wholly new tools and contexts that allow us to co-construct
text in ways that may be difficult to imagine today. We can already use dictation
software to rely on our voices as our means of writing which can be convenient when
we are unable to attend to a keyboard. We can also produce text with gestures using
tools like the Leap Motion Sensor ®. Once these texts are created, there is no
evidence of its origin, and it can be shared with anyone anywhere in the world as
a potential collaborator. As instructors, we need to be aware that our students are
Second Language Writing, New Media, and Co-Construction Pedagogies 257

likely already producing texts using similar methods. In order to engage them in the
writing process in a way that is meaningful and authentic, we should embrace new
approaches to teaching writing.
We are likely to see collaborative writing that occurs within groups of various
online communities. One example is the community that contributes to Wikipedia.
Not only do contributors add, edit, and revise the text within each Wikipedia entry,
they also engage in a rich, complex, and detailed meta-discussion around each topic.
In many cases, these negotiations have continued for years with numerous engaged
participants sharing their thoughts about various nuances. It is a fascinating perspec-
tive, and taking a look may provide some readers with a view into what they can
expect from collaborative dialogue. Another example is the world of collaborative
online gaming. Gamers who share a quest or goal and work together to accomplish
tasks along the way are often writing in a very fast paced and determined manner.
Thorne (2012) has observed that this collaborative game play results in writing that
is extensive and complex, especially when we include player-produced game-exter-
nal websites that focus on strategy, lore and backstory, and analyses of items and
resources used in games. He also notes that players incorporate a variety of discourse
genres that involve extending the writing experience beyond the game in the form of
fan fiction and a variety of other cultural mashups. We can certainly anticipate seeing
these practices integrated into more formal instruction.
We are also likely to see more investigation into the alignment of tasks and tools.
As we have witnessed such dramatic and varied potential for collaborative tasks
across tools and contexts, we need to develop a better understanding on the rela-
tionship between task and tool. With the limited research that has been conducted
this far, it is impossible to predict how a new tool will best be implemented most
effectively for a particular task and a particular group of learners. Lund and
Rassmussen (2008) reflect upon the “complex relations that exist between agents,
tasks, and tools” and offer suggestions for conducting research into the alignment of
these variables modeled after the Vygotskian “double stimulation method” (p. 410).
This method also presents another way to observe the relationship between group
behavior and outcomes. It is also likely to guide many future instructors and
researchers toward better task/tool alignment. Considering the wealth of tools
released today and the hyper-collaborative participatory environment we are
witnessing today, this is likely to be an increasingly valuable resource.
As has been previously noted, digital contexts have dramatically increased the
number of genres and registers of written language, the possible processes and
pedagogies for learning to write, and more generally, digital environments increas-
ingly illustrate that texts are often co-constructed by multiple authors. Technological
innovation has contributed so much to the changing nature of collaborative practices,
and it is clear that technology and forms of written collaboration will continue to
coevolve. We can anticipate that we will see many future innovations that continue
to expand collaborative writing practices, both inside and outside of formal educa-
tional settings. We need to be responsive to these changes in order to keep instruc-
tional writing practice relevant.
258 G. Kessler

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Technology and Second Language Teacher
Professional Development

Nike Arnold

Abstract
This chapter describes the research on technology integration in second language
teacher education (SLTE). Using technology with pre- and in-service teachers has
often been motivated by a desire to create a space where they can interact and
ultimately learn with and from classmates, peers, language learners, and experts
in the field. These interactions have been analyzed both from a cognitive and
social perspective, for example, with a focus on critical thinking, collaboration,
reflection, sense of community, and social-emotional support. In addition, the
effectiveness of technology integration in SLTE has also been evaluated with
regard to experiential learning to determine how the experience of using technol-
ogy as learners affects pre- and in-service teachers’ willingness and ability to use
it in their own teaching. In addition to a review of this research (including primary
research frameworks and methods), this chapter describes some of the difficulties
in implementing and researching technology integration in SLTE. It concludes
with some concrete suggestions for future research based on gaps in the existing
literature and trends in teacher education research.

Keywords
Computer mediated communication • Second language teacher education • Com-
munity of inquiry • Preservice teachers • Identity • Collaboration • Experiential
learning • Cognitive presence • Social presence

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

N. Arnold (*)
Portland State University, OR, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 261

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_21
262 N. Arnold

Research Frameworks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

The Quality of Online Interactions in SLTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Building Second Language Teachers’ Professional Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Implementing Technology in SLTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Researching Technology in SLTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Future Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

Introduction

With technology becoming more accessible and more widely used in a variety of
educational contexts and subject areas, it has also significantly shaped teacher
education, including second language teacher education (SLTE). This trend has
been supported by increasing demands for online and hybrid courses and calls for
systematic teacher preparation in the area of technology integration. Additionally,
technology in SLTE has to be seen in light of developments in technology applica-
tions for second/foreign language learning, an area for which the general label
computer-assisted language learning (CALL) is often used. SLTE has been trying
to catch up with CALL while also seeking to both respond to and inform policy
developments.
First and foremost, technology integration in SLTE has been motivated by a
desire to harness its pedagogical potential. But it can also provide pre- and in-service
teachers with opportunities to experience technology-enhanced learning as learners
in order to eventually use it in their own language classrooms. There are multiple
ways to organize the research in the area of technology in SLTE, such as by tool
(e.g., blog, chat), participants (in-service vs. preservice teachers), task, research
focus, or methodology. The overview below distinguishes three popular approaches
to technology integration: intra-class, interclass, and collaborative projects with
other stakeholder groups. This organization was chosen because these setups are
inherently different from each other with regard to the quality of interactions and
their intended learning outcomes.

Early Developments

Particularly early on, research on technology in SLTE was significantly influenced

by work investigating pre- and in-service teachers of other subject areas. In fact,
some of the most frequently cited studies did not focus on second/foreign language
teachers (due to space limitations, these studies will not be discussed here). To a
great extent, this was a function of the field’s early developmental stage. Since then,
the field SLTE has continued to look toward related work in teacher education and
Technology and Second Language Teacher Professional Development 263

educational technology. Such an interdisciplinary orientation is definitely a strength

but only when research also accounts for the uniqueness of SLTE.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, research on technology in SLTE focused mostly on
asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC), probably because it was
more accessible than synchronous formats and was logistically easier to implement.
A few early studies mirrored trends in research on CMC for second/foreign language
learning, in particular what Blyth (2008) called the technological approach. With an
emphasis on exploring the potential of new tools, this early developmental stage of
research often compares technology with traditional teaching approaches. A parallel
with this body of CALL research can be seen in some early SLTE studies in terms of
research design, namely, the comparison of CMC and face-to-face interactions
(Kamhi-Stein 2000; Nunan 1999). Furthermore, these and other early publications
analyzed the same affective and participation features: in CMC in SLTE, some
participants feel more comfortable to participate and take a more active role in
shaping the discussion (e.g., Kamhi-Stein 1999; Nunan 1999; Son 2002). These
few studies are noteworthy because of their connection to other CMC research but
do not constitute a trend. SLTE research quickly focused on other topics that
continue to serve as major trends to this date.
By far the largest of these research strands relies on transcript analysis to
investigate the quality of pre- and in-service teachers’ online discourse. In some
early work, several topics came up that have received considerable attention since
then. One of these is the degree of interactivity: Henri’s frequently cited study
(1991) reported that financial professionals in a distance learning context often
engaged in monologues. While this study was not in SLTE, an early study working
with future language teachers also reported limited interactivity (Johnson et al.
2001). Even more extensively investigated has been the social and cognitive nature
of CMC in SLTE after early reports described benefits like social knowledge
construction and community building (Kamhi-Stein 1999; Nunan 2002; Pawan
et al. 2003).
Another influential early finding that continues to shape how technology is
integrated and researched in SLTE is experiential learning: by experiencing
computer-supported learning environments first hand as learners and reflecting on
this experience, pre- and in-service teachers can gain the confidence and the skills
needed to use computers with their own students. Hence, technology integration in
SLTE can serve a dual function with immediate and long-term value. This early
period was also marked by curricular discussions around the use of technology in
SLTE. CALL placed new demands on language teacher education programs and
therefore generated interest in detailed curriculum descriptions for preservice
CALL courses, which often included rationales and informal evaluations of specific
course features. While there is no longer the same need for such descriptive reports,
language teacher educators have discussed larger curricular issues beyond this early
period. This discussion has included several curricular models for giving preservice
teachers the opportunity to experience technology in their studies and ultimately
developing the professional skills to use CALL (Hubbard 2008; Wildner 1999).
264 N. Arnold

In these curricular discussions, however, the potential benefits and shortcomings of

online SLTE programs have received significantly less attention.

Major Contributions

Since the early 2000s, research on technology in SLTE has built on earlier, often
more anecdotal work by systematically investigating how pre- and in-service
teachers interact online and how this affects their professional development. As a
place-independent mode of communication, CMC can increase class contact time or
connect people that might otherwise not be able to meet. This feature provides
unique opportunities to address some of the constraints of teacher education, espe-
cially by bringing together people from different stakeholder groups, with different
backgrounds and in different contexts. To achieve this, teacher educators have
worked with both synchronous CMC (SCMC; e.g., chat, virtual worlds, voice/
video teleconferencing) and asynchronous tools (ACMC; e.g., discussion boards,
blogs). Despite the fact that in many contexts bandwidth no longer imposes the same
limitations, ACMC remains very popular in SLTE. This is in part because, without
the need to coordinate participant’ schedules (sometimes across time zones), ACMC
is easier to implement. But its popularity is by no means a mere function of logistics
– instead, ACMC offers powerful affective and cognitive benefits. In particular, the
lag time that ACMC provides allows participants more time to process messages and
compose their own. As a result, they are able to reflect, revise, and consult resources,
often feeling less anxious or hesitant to participate (e.g., Belcher 1999; Arnold and
Paulus 2010). Without visual cues, some also find it easier to critically engage with
their peers’ ideas (Yang 2009).

Research Frameworks

ACMC’s ability to encourage reflection has been particularly welcome given

SLTE’s recent emphasis on reflective practice (Wright 2010), that is, the process
of examining one’s assumptions, strengths, and weaknesses to identify alternative
actions for the future and stimulate professional growth. Furthermore, as interactive
tools, both synchronous and asynchronous CMC can foster collaboration and
community, both of which have also been key teacher education precepts. In fact,
the topics of reflection, collaboration, and community have been central in the
research on technology in SLTE, mirroring the general sociocultural orientation
of SLTE.
Several theoretical frameworks have guided research on community and collab-
oration in SLTE CMC. Grounded in situated learning, Wenger’s influential theory
of Communities of Practice (1998) has been used in SLTE research in general and in
SLTE CMC research in particular. Defined as a group of people that is passionate
about and strives to develop expertise in an area, a coherent Community of Practice
relies on mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire. Wenger and
Technology and Second Language Teacher Professional Development 265

his associates as well as other researchers have posited that technology can support
an established Community of Practice but might not work for a virtual group that
relies mostly or even exclusively on online communication. As will be discussed
further below, this issues has been a major focus in SLTE research.
Other community-related research has been based on the framework of commu-
nity of inquiry (Garrison et al. 2001), which was specifically developed for text-
based online learning contexts and defines three broad dimensions, teaching pres-
ence, social presence, and cognitive presence. Teaching and social presence, which
include specific indicators such as self-disclosure, information exchange, and recip-
rocal exchanges, have been a valuable tool for deductive transcript analysis that can
facilitate cross-study comparisons. In some cases, studies have only coded one type
of presence to narrowly focus on cognitive or social behaviors. There is significant
overlap between the theories of community of practice and community of inquiry. In
fact, the latter has been used to analyze a virtual group as a community of practice
(Arnold et al. 2007). Both theories reflect cognitive and social concepts on which
SLTE has placed significant value, such as collaboration, group cohesion, critical
analysis, social knowledge construction, and social-emotional support. As such, they
can help capture the developmental trajectories of pre- and in-service teachers.

The Quality of Online Interactions in SLTE

Relying on transcript analysis (sometimes as part of a mixed methods approach),

most research has investigated three major CMC approaches to SLTE: intra-class
interaction, interclass interaction, and formats that connect pre- or in-service teachers
with other stakeholder groups. Arguably the most basic is the intra-class, in which
students enrolled in the same class interact with each other online. This setup can be
used in the context of an online class (even a fully online program), a hybrid course,
or a technology-enhanced class where online assignments supplement, but do not
replace face-to-face contact hours. Generally on-task and interactive, such online
discussions are often characterized by substantial brainstorming, sharing of ideas
and opinions, and reflective engagement. What usually occurs much less frequently,
if at all, is applying or assessing ideas, which involve more advanced cognitive
processes. The integration of information can also be problematic: while some
studies have reported significant levels of integration of information, others have
found no evidence at all (e.g., McLoughlin and Mynard 2009; Pawan et al. 2003).
Capitalizing on CMC’s ability to bring together people in different locations,
interclass CMC projects involve two or more courses, usually at different institutions
in the same or even a different country. Overall, the research findings on such cross-
institutional or international collaborations have mirrored those of intra-class setups
in many ways. Exchanges on discussion boards, blogs, Twitter, and text- and video-
based synchronous platforms are typically on-task, but the level of interactivity has
been mixed, with some studies reporting one-sided communication patterns (Lord
and Lomicka 2008). Interclass projects are often marked by a strong social compo-
nent, such as a sense of community, information sharing, and emotional support
266 N. Arnold

(Arnold and Ducate 2006; Lord and Lomicka 2014). In terms of cognitive activity,
participants frequently engage in higher-order thinking skills such as reflection and
critical thinking. However, several studies have found only limited evidence of
advanced cognitive processes or cognitive collaboration beyond information shar-
ing. If participants do assess a solution or experience, it is often on their own. In other
words, online communication can help pre- and in-service teachers construct deeper
understandings, but this might not always be a result of direct collaboration
(e.g., Arnold and Ducate 2006; Mangenot and Nissen 2006).
The third pedagogical format connects pre- or in-service teachers with other
groups of stakeholders. One example is to utilize CMC’s ability to bridge distance
and time to provide virtual spaces for (future) teachers to engage with experts in the
field. Such virtual guest visits have been examined using the socially oriented
theories of learning discussed above (e.g., communities of practice), and similar
results were found, such as participants displaying significant social presence and
attempting to connect with and support one another. In terms of cognitive presence,
the interactions were marked by exploration with significantly less integration and
very few resolutions. Often based on telecollaboration (e.g., Belz and Müller-
Hartmann 2003), a second and contrasting approach involves placing student-
teachers in direct collaboration with language learners. This presents a fundamen-
tally different context since student teachers need to step into the role of the teacher.
Such experiences can form the basis for valuable reflection and ultimately trigger
professional growth, both in terms of pedagogical competence and teacher identity
(Doering and Beach 2002). Nevertheless, they are also often marked by tensions, as
student teachers have to navigate discourse types, cultures, institutional cultures,
rules, and expectations (Kitade 2014; Schocker-von Ditfurth and Legutke 2002).
As the above discussion has shown, CMC in SLTE can create a space for
community building and social learning, particularly sharing, comparing, and
exploring. Furthermore, studies indicate that CMC can help (future) language
teachers align with the community of professional language educators as well as
support their identity formation (Dooly and Sadler 2013; Farr and Riordan 2015;
Riordan and Murray 2012). However, it is difficult to confidently identify gener-
alizable trends. Theoretically, the use of similar analysis tools would allow for
cross-study comparisons. In reality, however, this has been hampered by differ-
ences in the implementation of CMC. Multiple studies indicate that the quality of
pre- and in-service teachers’ online contributions is profoundly shaped by task
design and instructor involvement (e.g., Arnold and Ducate 2006; McLoughlin
and Mynard 2009; Pawan et al. 2002; Yang 2009). Moreover, the tool itself also
plays a pivotal role by shaping user behavior directly or indirectly. Participants’
attitudes have the potential to affect their engagement, and they seem to prefer
synchronous modes (with the exception of virtual worlds like Second Life, whose
implementation has been challenging). A more direct influence is exerted by
specific tool characteristics, which seem to make blogs a good platform for
reflection and narration, chat (and face-to-face) for community building, and
forums for discussion. Dooly (2011) even argued that the mode of communica-
tions has a bigger impact than group composition.
Technology and Second Language Teacher Professional Development 267

Another CMC configuration, but one that has received very little attention so far,
involves (future) teachers connecting with peers, mentors, and the larger profes-
sional community outside of formal training events or courses. Personal learning
networks have been shown to play a very important role in helping teachers think
about if, when, and how to use CALL (Kessler 2006; O’Dowd 2015). The same
might be true for massively open online courses (MOOCs), which share some
characteristics with formal coursework but still warrant investigation into how
they support learning processes as well as outcomes.

Building Second Language Teachers’ Professional Skills

In addition to the quality of online interactions, another way to assess the effective-
ness of technology in SLTE is related to experiential learning methodology. There
are indications that learning through experience can help (future) language teachers
identify the possibilities and limitations of educational technology, get ideas for
specific tasks, and gain confidence in their ability to use it in their own teaching. In
each of the CMC configurations discussed above, the main purpose was to build
participants’ pedagogical knowledge, sometimes in combination with technological
skills (e.g., through experiential learning). So far, few studies have addressed the
issue of how CMC can promote development in the area of content knowledge, such
as target language proficiency. The studies that have been carried out in this area
indicate that CMC can provide valuable language practice and therefore help
improve non-native speaking teachers’ proficiency and lower their language anxiety
(e.g., Lima 2015; Yang 2009). At the same time, the process of engaging in
professional dialogue in a second language adds pressure and is time-consuming,
making it more difficult for some student-teachers to fully participate. Therefore, it is
important to carefully assess the linguistic, cognitive, and affective demands of
a task.

Problems and Difficulties

Implementing Technology in SLTE

With regard to the practice of technology in SLTE, there are several significant
implementation challenges. Uneven participation levels among participants, percep-
tions of forced or unnatural participation, and the time-consuming nature of engaged
participation have all been documented in the literature. However, independently
addressing one of these issues through task design might come at the expense of
another. For example, one common strategy to balance participation levels has been
explicit task requirements such as expecting a minimum number of posts from each
participant. But this can in turn make the conversation feel forced, thereby affecting
motivation and perhaps learning outcomes. Another challenge to SLTE involves the
possible discrepancy between how the instructor envisioned the use of technology
268 N. Arnold

and how participants actually end up using it. Learners appropriate technologies in
sometimes unexpected and unintended ways, which can pose problems if it leads to a
resistance to engage or when such appropriations limit the intended learning out-
comes. Antoniadou (2011), for example, reported that some preservice teachers
resisted using Second Life and resorted to other communication platforms. This
can be particularly problematic for experiential learning tasks, where learners’
experiences with technology-enhanced learning are supposed to help them develop
the skills to use it later on as teachers. Inevitably, using a tool differently or not at all
limits pre- and in-service teachers’ in developing a conceptual understanding of its
pedagogical value.
Cross-institutional/international projects or exchanges with other stakeholder
groups are associated with a unique set of opportunities and challenges. They are
logistically notoriously difficult and often involve the coordination of different
academic calendars, academic cultures, expectations and norms for specific com-
munication tools, etc. Just like in CALL contexts, there is the possibility of what
O’Dowd and Ritter (2006) have called “failed communication,” including tension
between participants, indifference or negative attitudes toward the partner group, and
even their broader national culture. Unfortunately, these and other potential difficul-
ties can prevent the potentially powerful intercultural online exchange format from
being implemented in the first place (O’Dowd 2011).
It is difficult to get a sense of how many SLTE programs include technology-
mediated projects, but there seems to be considerable room for growth. Integration
can be difficult due to a variety of constraints, but it also places considerable
demands on second language teacher educators. It requires expertise in CALL and
educational technology in general, in addition to the broad pedagogical knowledge
necessary to teach methods courses.

Researching Technology in SLTE

Research on technology in SLTE has also encountered difficulties. Similar to other

fields, one major problem has been the myriad of variables that come into play when
technology is used with pre- and in-service teachers. Factors related to the larger
institutional and cultural settings, the SLTE program and the specific course, its
participants, tasks, etc., all have the potential to shape what happens online and what
(future) teachers take away from this experience. It is therefore essential that research
provide detailed descriptions of context. Only then can readers identify how a
study’s findings might transfer to other settings. For comparative studies, these
extraneous variables pose a particular problem since it can be extremely challenging
to control for them.
Looking at the research to date, a major research trend quickly becomes apparent:
a reliance on transcript analysis. Transcript data, however, consist of externally
verbalized behaviors and therefore provide only a partial view of the processes
and outcomes of technology-mediated learning. As shown in Arnold and Paulus
(2010) and elsewhere, vicarious interaction can not only help explain what happens
Technology and Second Language Teacher Professional Development 269

in CMC but also capture its hidden aspects. Simply reading the contributions of
others, for example, can provide models for task completion and support community
building. Thus, this invisible side of CMC constitutes a form of pedagogical lurking.
Another limitation of transcript data is that it only captures the finalized product
that a participant has chosen to post. Smith (2008) has shown for second/foreign
language CMC that this data collection method misses important behaviors like
self-repair that occur before a message is sent. Similarly, we might gain new
understandings of CMC in SLTE by incorporating process-oriented data using
screen-capturing, think-alouds, and/or observation.
The research on technology in SLTE has been characterized by another limited
perspective as well. In the case of hybrid or face-to-face courses, it has usually
focused only on the technology-mediated component of the course. We are therefore
left with an incomplete picture that fails to account for how all the components of the
course come together to form a learning experience with certain learning outcomes.
Another fundamental problem in researching technology in SLTE has been one of
generality. It is widely accepted that teaching second/foreign languages is unique
from other subject areas. Consequently, SLTE is unique too, a perspective that is,
however, not reflected in the questions most of the research has tried to answer.
Future studies could, for example, connect the use of technology in SLTE to specific
CALL-related teacher competencies, focus on culture learning, or investigate non-
native-speaking teachers.

Future Direction

Given that technology in SLTE is a rather young field, many important questions
deserve further attention. One such future direction for research relates to the setting
in which CMC is implemented. To date, we do not understand yet how the process
and outcomes of CMC are shaped by the type of course or program. Questions like
the following will be central to determine how teacher educators can use technology
appropriately and effectively: What does (future) second language teachers’ online
engagement look like in an online course and to what extent is that a function of the
delivery method? (How) does it matter if it is part of a fully online program? How
might participants’ engagement be different in a hybrid or technology-enhanced
course? This will also help us think about the potential of online SLTE programs, a
crucial issue for our profession that deserves more attention and debate.
One way to investigate these questions is by focusing on the online-offline
connection, specifically how the two communication modes work together or against
each other with regard to social activity, knowledge construction, and professional
development. There are, for example, indications that in technology-enhanced
courses, preservice teachers sometimes remain focused on the face-to-face modality
as the main context for learning, support, and bonding (e.g., McLoughlin and
Mynard 2009). Similarly, further research is needed that analyzes how pre- and
in-service teachers engage across different online modalities and how these all come
together or build on each other to shape the learning experience. An example of such
270 N. Arnold

a study is Lord and Lomicka (2008), which investigated a blended class for pre-
service teachers by comparing the sense of community in its ACMC, SCMC, and
face-to-face components.
Two additional areas in which further research will move the field forward relate
to the rationales for technology use in SLTE. Cross-institutional and international
collaboration projects are often used to expose (future) teachers to different perspec-
tives outside their own experience. Research has shown that online exchanges
include many instances of information and idea sharing. What remains unclear is
if this sharing actually contributes new perspectives that go beyond what participants
already knew. And more importantly: How do participants incorporate this informa-
tion into their personal belief and knowledge systems and ultimately their teaching
practices? Along the same lines, more systematic evaluations of the effectiveness of
using technology in SLTE for experiential learning are needed. Interviews and
surveys have shown that from the perspective of the participants, this approach
can be effective. An important question, however, is if and how this manifests itself
in actual teaching practice.
When it comes to the online exchanges themselves, little attention has been paid
to the role of the instructor. This is particularly surprising since his/her role is
explicitly recognized in the teaching presence category of the community of inquiry
model for online interactions, which has been widely used. Techniques like model-
ing and scaffolding should be particularly valuable, especially since research has
shown that pre- and in-service teachers often do not reach advanced levels of
cognitive activity in CMC or engage in evaluation and other forms of knowledge
transformation in a rather solitary manner. A study by Yang (2009), for example,
showed that instructors can help preservice teachers reflect critically. Instructor
modeling and questioning pushed the future teachers to reflect more deeply and
more critically, which subsequently they were able to do more often and more
independently over time. The open question is if instructors can facilitate and
teach other forms of higher-order thinking (e.g., evaluating, connecting ideas,
proposing solutions) in a similar way. In general, any research that tracks develop-
ment over time, of which there is rather little to date, will provide valuable insights
for curriculum design.
A recent trend in teacher education research has been a focus on identity
development. It recognizes that a large part of learning to become a teacher is
developing a professional identity and thus reflects a holistic perspective of teacher
education. It seems that CMC would be an ideal space not only to observe but also to
support the professional identity development of novice teachers. After all, identi-
ties are enacted and negotiated through discursive practices. So far, identity has not
received much attention with regard to technology in SLTE. A notable exception is
Kitade’s study (2014), in which preservice teachers engaged with language learners
via CMC as part of a teaching practicum. It documented how the online interactions
forced the practicum teachers to confront some contradictions that are inherent in the
complex role of a language teacher. In fact, integrating CMC as part of a teaching
practicum is a way to capitalize on some of the powerful benefits documented in
research. Reflection, sense of community, risk-taking, and emotional support can all
Technology and Second Language Teacher Professional Development 271

help preservice teachers make the most of this often challenging experience. To date,
only few studies exist that investigate CMC in a practicum setting.
As the above review has illustrated, research on the use of technology in SLTE
has concentrated almost exclusively on CMC. But other technologies such as
simulations and games also hold promise for preservice teachers who need to gain
an understanding of the complex system of language classrooms. Furthermore, these
newer technology environments might create a safe space where they can step into
the teacher role and experiment with techniques and tasks.
In light of the current, often top-down push for online and hybrid courses in
higher education, it is vital for language educators to understand how technology can
support preservice teachers and what role factors like medium, task, and context
play. More research is needed to achieve that. Additionally, the field should also
respond to recent policy changes in teacher education by evaluating experiential
learning in light of specific teacher standards such as the TESOL Technology
Standards for Teachers (Healey et al. 2011).
As outlined in this review, in its short history, the SLTE field has established a
solid research base particularly with regard to the quality of interactions (future)
language teachers have via CMC in various pedagogical configurations. It seems that
the field is ready to address questions that are more difficult to research but which
will ultimately provide a holistic and in-depth understanding of the potential of
technology in SLTE.

Cross-References

▶ Second Language Writing, New Media, and Co-construction Pedagogies

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Jasmine Luk and Ching Man: Classroom Discourse and the Construction of Learner
and Teacher Identities. In Volume: Discourse and Education
Richard Kern, Paige Ware, and Mark Warschauer: Network-based Language Teaching.
In Volume: Second and Foreign Language Education

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Digital Literacies in Teacher Preparation

Mirjam Hauck and Malgorzata Kurek

Abstract
Being literate today means being able to navigate between a multiplicity of
voices, perspectives, cultures, and textualities in mostly technology-mediated
contexts. Since learners’ digital literacy skills do not necessarily align with
academic literacy required in formal contexts, teachers and educators need to
become key players in shaping their students’ attitudes and practices through
purposeful selection and use of technology-based tools, tasks, and environments.
Therefore, it is paramount for teachers to, first, be digitally literate themselves
and, second, be professionally prepared to assist learners in developing the
multiple literacies needed to engage with others online in an informed and
meaningful way. Considering the rapid pace of technological change, both
endeavors involve a lifelong learning process. In this chapter, we describe the
challenges for teacher training and professional development programs and
propose tested methods for moving forward.

Keywords
Teacher education • Digital literacies • Online intercultural exchanges •
Telecollaboration

M. Hauck (*)
The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
M. Kurek
Jan Dlugosz University, Czestochowa, Poland
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 275

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_22
276 M. Hauck and M. Kurek

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
Early Developments: Digital Literacy and Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
The Teaching of Digital Literacies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Training (Language) Teachers for Technology Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Telecollaborative Teacher Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Problems and Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Introduction

This chapter argues that digital literacy skills development should be an integral part
of pre- and in-service training programs for language teachers and that online
intercultural exchange (OIE), also known as telecollaboration, provides the ideal
setting for running such training.
The global shift from print to screen has had wide repercussions on how we
communicate, create social bonds, and – unsurprisingly – also how we learn. In the
wake of these changes, several technology-centered literacy models have emerged to
address the increasingly diverse ways in which people use mediating technologies to
make meaning and communicate (e.g., New London Group 1996; Cope and
Kalantzis 2000; Pegrum 2009a). The current conceptualization of digital literacy
covers a range of literacies emerging between technology and its users. It has been
defined very broadly as “capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and
working in a digital society” (Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) 2014).
Being technologically competent in this sense has been accepted as a transversal
skill which enables learners to acquire other key competences such as languages,
economics, or learning to learn and ensures their active participation in society (e.g.,
European Commission: http://is.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pages/EAP/DIGCOMP.html).
While acknowledgement of the need for digital literacy training is clear, the answer
to the question of how teachers in general and language teachers in particular can
best be supported in facilitating the learning of digital literacy remains a desidera-
tum. Technology-enhanced second language (L2) learning and teaching, which is by
default mediated twice – by the technology used and by the L2 – seems to be in a
prime position to raise awareness for the mediating effect of technologies and thus
for digital literacy skills development.
The broader the concept of (digital) literacy or literacies, the more elusive and
difficult it becomes to grasp and teach though (Thorne and Reinhardt 2008). Unlike
conventional teaching resources, contemporary textualities (Pegrum 2009b) repre-
sent a dynamic body of raw semiotic materials that, if it is to be educationally
explored, needs to be first identified and subsequently pedagogically addressed. To
Digital Literacies in Teacher Preparation 277

meet these challenges, teachers need to be agentive in an increasingly complex blend

of technical, pedagogical, and content competencies (see, e.g., Hampel and Stickler
2005; Desjardins and Peters 2007; Hubbard 2008; Guichon 2009). The remainder of
this chapter focuses on (1) the concept of digital literacy and its pedagogical
implications, (2) teacher preparation for technology-mediated learning and teaching
of languages, and (3) OIE or telecollaborative exchanges as the recommended
training context.

Early Developments: Digital Literacy and Pedagogy

The massive scale of the changes in the teaching and learning of languages and
cultures caused by technology has shifted the focus onto mediational channels and
has highlighted technologies’ transformative role in relation to meaning making and
expression. As Kern (2014) reminds us, literacies are multiple not only in relation to
their cultural, historical, and linguistic dimensions but also in relation to the demands
made by various media and multimodal communication practices. Since texts,
understood here in the wider sense of any artifact produced with the help of
representational resources, are increasingly multimodal, users need to be able to
draw from various semiotic systems to interpret and generate meaning. For instance,
multimodal online and mobile applications bring together a variety of modes
including spoken and written language as well as visual resources such as images
and icons and/or gestures in an “orchestration of meaning” (Kress and van Leeuwen
2001, p. 25). Multimodal competence then, which is “the ability to express ideas
across a wide range of representational systems or modes” (Kress 2003, p. 21),
becomes a central component of digital literacy. As Bezemer and Kress (2016)
explain, the “sign-makers,” or users, select from the available modes, with each
mode offering specific affordances, i.e., distinct and different potentials for making
meaning. Modes, in turn, have been defined as “semiotic resources which allow the
simultaneous realisation of discourses and types of (inter)action” (Kress and van
Leeuwen 2001, p. 22). In line with this, Kern (2014) draws attention to the “subtle
mediational effects” of networking technologies directing our attention from the
creative aspects of media and modes to the interpretative dimension of meaning
making, communication, and (language) learning. However, the prominence of
multimodality does not diminish the role of reading and writing in a traditional
sense, which remain core competencies enabling access and contribution to today’s
participatory online cultures (Jenkins et al. 2006; Pegrum 2009a). Yet, acknowledg-
ing the relevance of modes broadens the set of semiotic resources that digitally
literate users and also language learners in online or hybrid settings are expected to
master.
Such a wider concept of digital literacies justifies a closer examination of its
components and associated competencies. Pegrum (2009a) lists eight major liter-
acies for successful functioning in an increasingly digital society with print, search/
information, participatory, remix, and intercultural being the most prominent ones
278 M. Hauck and M. Kurek

and underpinned by other literacies such as multimodal, personal, and code.

Dudeney et al. (2013) take a slightly broader perspective and break digital literacies
down into four major areas encompassing language, connections, information, and
(re)-design. Thorne (2013) highlights the dynamic character of digital literacies:
“different systems of literacy can be seen to dynamically evolve in a wide variety of
often interrelated semiotic modes, genres and cultural contexts” (p. 193). They also
evolve in relation to the social and functional purposes they serve. Thus another
prominent aspect of digital literacies is their interdependence with the social and
cultural needs of their users. Well over a decade ago, Thorne (2003) introduced the
term “cultures of use” to refer to the cultural preferences and expectations of “genre-
specific communicative activity” (p. 200). “Becoming literate in a particular semiotic
practice,” he explained, “involves the ability to interpret and generate meaningful
signs within communities of practice” (p.194).
Jenkins et al. (2006) describe “participatory cultures” and the “set of cultural
competencies and social skills that young people [sic!] need in the new media
landscape” (p.4) and which are developed through collaboration and networking.
One way of achieving this is to follow Thorne’s (2003) suggestion to move students
“outside of the relative safety of explicitly educational interactions” (p. 201) and
encourage them to participate in “non-educationally oriented online communities.”
This, Thorne posits, can lead to acquiring culturally responsive and productive uses
of technology. In other words, enriching formal instruction with authentic participa-
tion in exogenous-to-education communities can assist both language learners, and
arguably also student teachers, with direct experience in the use of multiple semiotic
resources, modes, codes, and registers, and importantly, as described by Canagarajah
(2006), for the purposeful shuttling between various social-textual conventions. As
we will see, OIEs, when designed to facilitate the acquisition of the aforementioned
competencies, are a first step in this direction.

Major Contributions

The Teaching of Digital Literacies

Accepting the transversal nature of digital literacy inevitably brings pedagogical

considerations to the fore. The New London Group (1996) suggested structuring
“multiliteracies” instruction around four major stages in which learners (1) recognize
their available designs, (2) learn the specific discourses and required technical
competence, (3) interpret and reflect on their practices, and (4) are prompted to
transfer their knowledge to new contexts and discourses. Thorne and Reinhardt
(2008) suggest “bridging activities,” involving the collecting, exploration of, and
analysis of digital texts selected by the student to match their vernacular interests. In
this pedagogical approach, the next phase is that students are guided to author their
own contributions to their digital community or context of choice. The aim is to
foster learner awareness of communicative practices and their discursive framing
across various media and modalities and, in this way, to help learners gain a better
Digital Literacies in Teacher Preparation 279

understanding of the multiple dimensions of contemporary language use, and – we

would add – use of modes.
It is in this spirit that Kurek and Hauck (2014) offer a three-tiered framework that
calls for a conscious structuring of (language) students’ digital experience. In their
understanding, learners should be assisted in moving along a continuum from
informed reception of technology-mediated multimodal input, via thoughtful par-
ticipation in opinion-generating activities through to creative multimodal contribu-
tion, each of the stages being further attended to on the cognitive, social, discursive,
and operational levels. This form of scaffolding, they assert, will help learners
mature in their roles as informed digitally literate users.
Stein (2004) advocates “multimodal pedagogies” (p. 95), challenging the hege-
mony of written language in ESL classrooms. In her words, the paradigm shift in
language pedagogy from language to mode should lead to the exploration of what
modes are and how they can be used to maximize learning” (p. 105). Considering
technology-mediated language education, Hampel and Hauck (2006) pick up the
baton and explore how the challenges arising from Stein’s pedagogical
reconceptualization could be met through task design. They draw on Hampel
(2006), who reminds us that we cannot simply assume that learners are familiar
with the new media, aware of the affordances, and able to use them constructively in
a multimodally informed way (Kurek and Hauck 2014). They also follow Salaberry
(2000, p. 28) who suggests that “materials designers need to assess critically (. . .) the
features that characterize a potentially new type of literacy,” examining closely the
modes and their affordances of audio-graphic conferencing and thus critically
assessing its “technological capabilities.” Hampel and Hauck (2006) show that this
approach has significant implications for the way we teach and affects areas such as
task design, assessment, and tutor training (see also Hampel 2006; Hampel and
Stickler 2005). Hampel and Hauck (2006) explain that the varying degrees of
embeddedness of modes in new media make new demands on communication and
learning in general and language learning in technology-enhanced environments in
particular. “Language learners,” they conclude, will have to become competent in
both switching linguistic codes and switching semiotic modes and to do so con-
sciously” (p. 12). Hauck (2010b) and Fuchs et al. (2012) follow the approach
suggested by Lamy and Hampel (2007) “to start by identifying the modes involved
in making up a multimodal environment” and “then to consider the possibilities that
they afford the learner, both as single and as combined modes” (p. 47) for meaning
making, communication, and interaction. Similarly, prospective language teachers
need to be sensitized to the pedagogical affordances of online tools and applications.
In addition to developing multimodal competence, there is a need to make
learners aware of new types of social agency based on online community involve-
ment. With software and applications becoming increasingly social, the literacy shift
is moving from the acquisition and interpretation of multimodal content to its
production and related participatory literacy (Jenkins et al. 2006; Pegrum 2009a).
As digital mediation enables users to engage in communicative encounters across
geographical borders, there is a growing urgency to prepare learners for multiple
culturally grounded and technology-mediated linguistic codes and semiotic modes.
280 M. Hauck and M. Kurek

The content and outcome of any digital literacy training should therefore be tightly
linked to socially and (inter)culturally authentic contexts in which the learners,
teacher trainees being no exception, will be able to question and explore their beliefs
about technology mediation, communication, and the content under study and
reconsider them in the light of others’ contribution.

Training (Language) Teachers for Technology Integration

An ongoing challenge is how teacher training programs can better prepare prospec-
tive teachers to assist learners in their encounters with the rapidly changing and
“infinite variability of different forms of meaning making in relation to the cultures,
the subcultures, or the layers of an individual’s identity that these forms serve” (New
London Group 1996, p. 88). As Hampel and Hauck (2006) have pointed out, to make
meaning using a variety of modes should be a learning objective in its own right,
which requires teachers to be trained in the design of activities that make efficient use
of multiple modalities.
Today, there is consensus among language educators that only the full integration
of multimodal technology and pedagogy through entire teacher preparation pro-
grams can bring lasting changes (Desjardins and Peters 2007; Hubbard 2008). To
that effect, teacher trainees need to have hands-on experience with the media and,
above all, be personally engaged in virtual communities of practice. As Guikema and
Menke (2014) put it: “Teachers who have experienced collaborative digital commu-
nities are less likely to use technology as an instructional tool and instead view it as
an object of instruction” (p. 267). The authors also point to the need of shaping
trainees’ beliefs and values and, through reflective practice, assisting them in
developing their teaching identities. The latter, as they explain, are best developed
when teacher students can combine their dual experiences as technology users and
instructors. Kurek and Turula (2014), in their study of digitally autonomous teacher
practices, observe that only the multiliterate teacher can recognize the affordances of
tools and applications and can consciously navigate between the pedagogical options
at hand. Lack of adequate preparation leads to pedagogically uninformed technology
use which, in turn, can fossilize teacher centeredness and transmission models of
pedagogy.
From our literature review, we understand efficient teacher training programs
informed by digital literacies to be:

• Infused throughout the entire teaching program rather than serving as a one-off
course
• Integrating technology and pedagogy rather than teaching particular tools
• Using the available technologies as a means to an end
• Based on modelling and experiential learning rather than on instructive teaching
• Immersing participants in a community of practice
• Based on team teaching and collaborative instruction
• Fostering the questioning of attitudes and beliefs through reflective practice.
Digital Literacies in Teacher Preparation 281

As we argue, all these criteria can be met if teacher training is delivered as an

online intercultural exchange.

Work in Progress

Telecollaborative Teacher Training

Telecollaborative exchanges, now increasingly referred to as online intercultural

exchanges (OIE), were originally defined as the use of “Internet communication
tools such as e-mail, synchronous chat, threaded discussion, and MOOs (as well as
other forms of electronically mediated communication), to support social interaction,
dialogue, debate, and intercultural exchange” (Belz 2003, p. 2) among language
learners from different parts of the globe through structured tasks. Today, however,
they extend to include exchanges based on the use of a lingua franca, between
participants who are language learners and language teacher trainees, language
learners preparing for a study abroad period and learners from other subject areas.
This wider understanding of OIE is captured by Guth and Helm’s (2010) concept of
“telecollaboration 2.0” and based on what networked technologies such as forums,
blogs, wikis, and video sharing websites allow learners to do, namely, generating and
sharing content and becoming part of online communities. To participate, learners
have to be digitally literate or, as Pegrum (2009a) asserts, possess the “skillsets
necessary to engage effectively in contemporary communication” (p. 36). Conse-
quently, as Hauck (2010a) argues, collaborative online learning emerges as the
means and the end of the educational challenge highlighted by Pegrum (2009a).
Telecollaboration 2.0 then, seems to provide the ideal setup to meet the challenge
and acquire the skills and competencies in question as it is by definition based on the
use of networked technologies and, thus, affords exchange partners “on-the-job”
training in digital literacy skills (Hauck 2010a; Helm 2014).
OIEs also enjoy increasing popularity in teacher education (e.g., Hubbard and
Levy 2006; Müller-Hartmann 2006). When collaborating online with colleagues and
students representing other cultures and educational systems, teacher trainees can
first discover, then experience, and finally reflect on the multilayered aspects of their
own techno-pedagogy (Desjardins and Peters 2007) in authentic linguistic and
intercultural contexts. In such communities of practice (Arnold et al. 2007; Lave
and Wenger 1991), the mutual responsibility of team members for shared learning
outcomes allows for the articulation and reformulation of beliefs about teaching and
is conducive to the development of what Kurek and Turula (2014) have termed
“digital teacher autonomy.”
Despite inevitable tensions, OIEs tend to create a positive social online experi-
ence and provide teacher trainees with a viable pedagogical model in which digital
literacy both supports their online activity and is shaped through it. In this way, OIEs
offer the participants a lens through which to interpret different forms of mediation,
their pedagogical relevance and potential, as well as confront one’s views and beliefs
with those of trainees representing different educational systems and traditions. By
282 M. Hauck and M. Kurek

allowing teacher trainees to experience digital literacy as situated practice, OIEs can
assist teacher students in the appropriation and repurposing of technologies to match
educational objectives (for an overview of pedagogical benefits of OIEs, see
O’Dowd 2007; Guth and Helm 2010).
An example of a successful integration of digital literacy and teacher training is a
three-way telecollaborative exchange in which Hauck (2010a) and Fuchs et al.
(2012) pioneered tasks designed to raise the participants’ awareness of modes and
meaning making online. They took the interrelationship between multimodal com-
municative competence, digital literacy, and autonomy as their starting point and set
out to explore the competencies that (future) language teachers require to develop
first their own and then their learners’ autonomy in online and blended settings.
Their data suggest that OIEs can support language teachers – both in the role of
learners and instructors – in finding out about modes, meaning making, and online
communication and to become familiar with the mediating role of Web 2.0 tools and
environments. This approach, they explain, can also contribute to autonomy as
defined by Palfreyman: the informed use of a range of interacting resources in
context (2006). Their results show that task design for this context should follow a
certain sequence: First, tasks should focus on gaining an understanding of the digital
literacy skills required when working with tools such as forums, wikis, and social
bookmarking sites for language learning and teaching purposes. Ideally, this under-
standing should enable teachers to provide a rationale for using bespoke tools. Next,
tasks should raise their awareness of a tool’s specific affordances, i.e., the constraints
and possibilities of the modes available for meaning making and communication
(Hampel and Hauck 2006). This will allow the teachers to move to the next level of
Hampel and Stickler’s (2005) skills pyramid by fostering their multimodal commu-
nicative competence and thus their professional literacy. These steps are a precon-
dition for the subsequent phase in which teachers themselves design tasks with the
goal of fostering, in turn, their learners’ multimodal competence and autonomy.
Finally, they propose that this approach should become a learning goal itself both in
pre- and in-service teacher training and formal language instruction. Then, while
becoming gradually more versed in multimodality and digital literacy, teachers as
learners can take more control over and self-direct their learning in online environ-
ments, thus becoming more autonomous and gradually gaining the competence to
design tasks that also enhance their learners’ autonomy.

Problems and Challenges

As we have seen, the breadth and scope of digital literacy present challenges to
educators. Despite attempts at the pedagogical implementation of digital literacy
skills development, students’ vernacular practices are distributed across hetero-
geneous sectors of the Internet and, as such, can be odds with the predominantly
Digital Literacies in Teacher Preparation 283

print-based practices valued in traditional education. Thus, the gap between the
two continues to widen: on one hand learners see little correspondence between
formal education and their daily digital literacy practices and on the other hand
any digital skills they acquire informally “within a dynamic interplay of personal
and social collective experiences” (Thorne 2013, p. 194) remain educationally
unrecognized and unlikely to transfer to more formal educational contexts (Hub-
bard 2004; Littlejohn et al. 2013). Moreover, student teachers’ personal beliefs
about the educational uses of technology tend to be uninformed and thus inade-
quate, even if they perceive themselves as digitally savvy (Kurek and Turula
2014).
Kern (2014) reminds us that one of the major challenges arising from the rapid
technological and literacy changes is the unpredictability of the literacy requirements
of today’s school children at the time of their university graduation. Hence, it is
almost impossible to know how best to prepare them for tomorrow’s world. While
we would like to believe with Pegrum (2009a) in the great opportunities for youth
and the potential for a “semiotic democracy” where everybody can contribute to the
stories of our own times, we are also acutely aware that young learners’ digital
proficiency tends to remain superficial and does not readily transfer across domains
(Hubbard 2004; Littlejohn et al. 2013). Since students’ digital practices are by and
large characterized by textual variety and fragmentation across semiotic genres,
modes, and cultural contexts, (McKenna and Hughes 2013; Thorne 2013), training
teachers in today’s’ literacies means preparing them for how to handle diversity,
unpredictability, and change and, importantly, how to recognize pedagogical
affordances amidst a growing array of digital spaces and practices “A central
challenge at the moment,” Bezemer and Kress (2016) conclude, “is to understand
both the affordances, the facilities, and the constraints of contemporary media, in all
aspects of social action; and the affordances of the modes which appear there”
(p. 12).
The institutional approach to the teaching of digital literacy also needs to be
addressed. Paradoxically, one of the main issues is the ongoing normalization and
institutionalization of technology-oriented curricula. They tend to be informed by
fixed and regularized “competency frameworks” which provide instructors with
more or less explicit checklists of technical skills to teach and assess (Littlejohn
et al. 2013). Such institutional standards fail to accommodate the highly individual-
ized and often idiosyncratic nature of students’ digital practices. Moreover, since
they are used for assessment, they are mostly disliked by the students. A real
challenge is therefore for universities and teacher training programs to reconsider
the requirements underpinning their curricula so that they can embrace evolving
literacy standards. Neglecting to do so may further broaden the gap between
informal and educationally accepted digital discourses.
Yet another challenge is the need to address the divide between technocratic
and digitally autonomous uses of technologies in educational contexts. When it
comes to the former, they seem to be rooted in a misconception of technology as
284 M. Hauck and M. Kurek

pedagogically efficient in itself and result in inadequate, decontextualized training.

Kurek and Turula (2014) show qualitative mismatch between teachers’ high digital
self-esteem and their actual teaching activities which in fact fail to embrace the
“diversity and plurality (. . .) of resources, opinions, contexts, communication and
semiotic modes” (p.124), which arguably is the main educational value of today’s
technology.

Future Directions

The argument proposed in this chapter is that the developing dimensions of digital
literacy require a fundamental reconsideration of teacher preparation with much
greater focus on digital literacy as a contextualized social practice than on technical
mastery per se. Additionally, it is important for teacher training curricula to come up
with mechanisms that recognize and attribute formal academic value to informal,
interpersonal, multimodal, and multiauthored digital contributions. Questions that
need to be addressed in this context include the issue of assessment: How can or
should learners’ fragmented contributions produced within diverse communities of
practice be assessed? Should they be given the same weight as what continues to be
perceived as “proper” academic discourse? How can we prepare teachers for dealing
with assessment challenges in the context of practices with which they themselves
still need to experiment and which are in a constant state of flux? And, finally, how
can we instill in teachers the readiness to reformulate their teaching identities to
adapt to learners’ needs and to evolve over time in relationship with ever changing
uses of and genres of technologies?
The systematic integration of digital literacy into the daily practices of discipline-
specific academic instruction will be a crucial step in the right direction. Although
many academics do use technology as a research tool, few are familiar with creating
technology-rich and pedagogically sound learning environments (McKenna and
Hughes 2013). Therefore, student teachers have limited opportunity to develop
digital literacy as situated knowledge practice modelled by their instructors.
OIEs, which align well with the principles of efficient teacher training, provide a
learning context with a potential to soften the barriers between the actual uses of
technology and technology approached as content matter. With the theoretical and
practical ground for IOEs already well developed (e.g., O’Dowd 2007; Guth and
Helm 2010), the real challenge rests in making this teaching method universally
available across higher education institutions. As Helm (2014) specifies, lack of
institutional recognition may lead to reluctance on the part of the participating
students, even if they are awarded academic credit. Making OIE projects with
teacher trainees from culturally diverse educational backgrounds, a compulsory
component of teacher education would therefore be an important move toward
what the New London Group described as “reclaiming the public space of school
citizenship for diverse communities and discourses” (1996, p. 19).
Digital Literacies in Teacher Preparation 285

Cross-References

▶ Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy

▶ Online Intercultural Exchange and Language Education
▶ Technology and Second Language Teacher Professional Development

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Chantelle Warner: Foreign Language Education in the Context of Institutional

Globalization. In Volume: Second and Foreign Language Education

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History and Key Developments
in Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language
Learning (ICALL)

Trude Heift

Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language
Learning (ICALL) technologies for written learner language: spell checkers,
grammar checkers including systems for automatic writing evaluation, and
Intelligent Language Tutoring Systems (ILTSs). After discussing the goals
and challenges of processing written learner language more generally, the
chapter provides an overview of the developments of these distinct technolo-
gies by focusing on applications that specifically address the difficulties of
evaluating learner language. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion that
situates these distinct ICALL technologies within Second Language Acquisi-
tion theory.

Keywords
Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) • Intelligent Lan-
guage Tutoring Systems (ILTSs) • Spell checkers • Grammar checkers • Parsers •
Automated essay evaluation (AWE) • Natural language processing (NLP)

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Evaluating Written Learner Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Spell Checkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
Grammar Checkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Automatic Writing Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
Intelligent Language Tutoring Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
Learner Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
Individualized Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

T. Heift (*)
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 289

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_23
290 T. Heift

Conclusion and Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298

Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298

Introduction

Intelligent Computer Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) is a field within

Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) that applies concepts, tech-
niques, algorithms, and technologies from artificial intelligence to CALL
(Gamper and Knapp 2002; Heift and Schulze 2007; Nerbonne 2003; Schulze
2008). Artificial intelligence (AI) describes the science and engineering of
making intelligent machines. This includes work in robotics, intelligent agents,
and computer vision. One of the branches of AI most relevant to CALL is
research in Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP studies the problems of
automated understanding and generation of natural human languages. In natural
language understanding, the computer takes written or spoken language input
and turns it into a formal representation that captures phonological, grapholog-
ical, grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic features. In contrast, natural lan-
guage generation is the reverse process of going from a formal representation
to natural language output.
Natural language understanding faces many challenges whereby each language
often presents its unique problems. For instance, some written languages like Japa-
nese, Chinese, or Thai do not have single-word boundaries. However, any significant
automated text segmentation and analysis requires the identification of word bound-
aries thus posing difficulties for NLP systems designed for those languages. Lan-
guage can also be highly ambiguous (e.g., lexically, syntactically) which is extremely
challenging for automated text and speech processing.
The challenges that NLP faces are compounded when it comes to imperfect or
irregular input, commonly found with learner language. In language learning, errors
occur, not because the student’s knowledge is a strict subset of the expert knowledge,
but because the learner possesses knowledge potentially different from the expert in
quantity and quality.
This chapter provides an overview of ICALL systems that evaluate written learner
language. Unlike Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ILTSs), which often focus on a subset
of learner errors and/or restrict learner input to the sentence level by emphasizing
feedback and individualized instruction, spell checkers, grammar checkers, and
systems for automatic essay scoring evaluate L2 learners’ production of entire
texts. The following sections discuss these ICALL systems with respect to their
goals and challenges by highlighting applications that have been specifically
designed to address the difficulties that center around written learner language. The
chapter concludes with a brief discussion that situates these distinct ICALL
technologies within Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory.
History and Key Developments in Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language. . . 291

Evaluating Written Learner Language

In ICALL, the treatment of grammatical errors has received most attention

(Nerbonne 2003). Identifying and describing errors in written learner language
have played an essential role in research and development albeit often in a purely
computational framework by designing computational tools and algorithms that can
process erroneous language input. This focus meant that some ICALL researchers
(e.g., Schuster 1986), in their practical pursuit of error diagnosis, relied on a theo-
retical framework, such as that of Contrastive Analysis (CA) or Error Analysis (EA).
The advent of electronic learner corpora coupled with the need for elaborate error
data in ICALL research has also recently sparked renewed interest in the methodol-
ogies employed by EA.
When analyzing learner language, it is useful to make a distinction between text as
a process and text as a product. The former refers to an understanding of text
production processes during which communicative goals are modified, specified,
and finally met by searching for, selecting, connecting, and uttering appropriate
linguistic signs such as words, phrases, and sentences. If verbalized, some of these
processes can be observed in spontaneous spoken speech. It is much more difficult to
detect traces of the preceding processes in the written result, the text as product. If an
utterance in such a text adheres to all orthographic, grammatical, stylistic, and
pragmatic norms of the L2 as judged by a native speaker, then it is very difficult to
determine whether language learners have internalized the linguistic constraints of
the L2 or whether they applied normative knowledge from outside the L2 system and
coincidentally produced a well-formed utterance. Errors, on the other hand, provide
an excellent window into text production processes because they deviate from the L2
norms. Most often, the errors made by language learners reflect hypotheses of
linguistic norms that learners form about the L2. Insights into the process of second
language acquisition and the de-emphasizing of the notion of errors as failures are
clearly benefits of the application of error analysis in language learning software
(Chanier et al. 1992).
The two main components required for evaluating written learner language with
NLP are a parser and a grammar. A parser is one of the components in an
interpreter which checks for correct syntax and builds a data structure implicit in
the input tokens that the user provided. Most modern parsers are at least partly
statistical, that is, they rely on a corpus of training data which has already been
annotated, that is, parsed manually. This approach allows the system to gather
information about the frequency with which various constructions occur in spe-
cific contexts. The parser often uses a separate lexical analyzer to create tokens
from the sequence of input characters. In addition, an ICALL system generally
consists of a grammar that defines the valid sentences in a language. Finally, a
semantic component is required to analyze the meaning of words or the sentence.
These components then allow ICALL systems to evaluate learner language by also
employing AI methods and techniques (e.g., learner models) that predefine
292 T. Heift

information about the learner and/or the task thereby resulting in a unique set of
system responses and interactions.

Spell Checkers

The use of word processors is an integral part of the language learning classroom
and spell checkers, in particular, are a highly desirable tool for both native and
nonnative writers (see Rimrott and Heift 2005). With little controversy, spell
checkers are praised for their effectiveness in treating spelling mistakes. However,
generic spell checkers are based on the assumption that their users are competent
speakers of the language who primarily make accidental typographical mistakes
(e.g., as in the misspelling *langauge for language). For this reason, they are best
at correcting single typographical errors of letter addition, omission, substitution,
and transposition. A number of studies (e.g., Burston 1998), however, have
indicated that spell checkers are less successful in dealing with errors made by
writers with spelling deficits or nonnative speakers. Nonnative writers, for exam-
ple, are just as likely to make accidental typographical mistakes as native writers
are, but they also make errors that are due to their insufficient command of the
foreign language. These errors tend to deviate from the correct spellings in more
substantial but also somewhat predictable ways. Allerton et al. (2005:36), for
example, state that “[a]s learners’ errors often do not correspond to typical typing
mistakes, the algorithms used by spell che[ck]ers are of relatively little help in this
situation. What is needed to detect this type of variation and generate appropriate
feedback is an algorithm (coupled with a database) designed to deal specifically
with learner language.”
In an attempt to address the shortcomings of generic spell checkers in the language
learning context, a few researchers have designed programs that assist nonnative
writers with their spelling problems. Fallman (2002), for example, presents a descrip-
tive spell checker that uses the Internet as a database to retrieve the number of hits of a
given string. The number of hits for different possible spellings of a word can be
compared to determine the correct spelling (i.e., the alternative with the most hits is
most likely the correct spelling). Ndiaye and Vandeventer (2003) have developed a
spell checker for learners of French that is geared toward the correction of both
typographical and phonologically motivated spelling errors. It also includes an ad
hoc method for treating a specific type of morphological spelling error (the incorrect
plural formation of words ending in –al and –ail).
While these programs are all geared toward nonnative misspellings, they are
generally not based on an extensive empirical analysis of L2 spelling errors. This
said, many researchers (see, e.g., Cowan et al. 2003; Ndiaye and Vandeventer 2003;
Allerton et al. 2005) recognize the need to consider authentic learner errors in the
design of useful language learning programs. For example, Cowan et al. (2003,
p. 455) state that “[b]asing the selection of errors to be targeted for correction research
on empirical data [. . .] provides us with many examples of error types that can be
built into the CALL program.”
History and Key Developments in Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language. . . 293

Rimrott and Heift (2005) conducted a study on nonnative German spelling errors
and evaluated the performance of the generic spell checker part of MS Word that is
not specifically designed for second language learners. One of the study goals was to
determine the frequencies and kinds of errors it can successfully correct. In classify-
ing the spelling errors, they made a primary distinction between competence and
performance errors. Within the category of competence errors, they further distin-
guished errors according to language influence (interlingual vs. intralingual) and
linguistic subsystem (lexical, morphological, phonological, and orthographic). Per-
formance errors were subdivided into single letter violations (additions, omissions,
substitutions, and transpositions), multiple letter violations, and word boundary
violations. Frequency counts indicated that 80% of the errors were competence-
based, while 20% were random accidental typographical mistakes. In the competence
category, intralingual errors were much more frequent than interlingual misspellings.
In addition, phonological and lexical errors were more prevalent than morphological
or orthographic errors. Performance errors were largely comprised of single letter
violations. Multiple letter violations and word boundary errors constituted the
minority.
In assessing to what extent the MS Word 2003 spell checker can successfully
correct their misspellings, Rimrott and Heift (2005) found that, contrary to claims
with respect to L1 misspellings, only 52% of their nonnative misspellings were
corrected. However, the spell checker was much more successful in treating perfor-
mance errors than competence-based misspellings. Competence errors tend to devi-
ate more substantially from the target words than performance errors. This difference
in degree of deviation makes it harder for a spell checker to suggest the target words.
Furthermore, within the competence category, lexical misspellings were most fre-
quently not corrected, followed by morphological, and finally phonological mis-
spellings. Again, greater target deviation is the principal explanation: on average,
lexical misspellings evidence greater target deviation than morphological misspell-
ings which in turn deviate more from the target words than phonological misspell-
ings. Their results confirm that the spell checker is effectively serving its primary
purpose: correcting performance-based single letter violations. However, their error
data also demonstrate quite clearly that the spell checker’s task is different in foreign
language writing where most misspellings are competence-based and thus, most
commonly, involve greater target deviations. Along the lines of Tschichold’s
(1999) strategies for improving foreign language grammar checking, they propose
two main strategies to overcome the shortcomings of generic spell checkers in the
CALL classroom by increasing the spell checker’s effectiveness in treating nonnative
misspellings, and/or decreasing the language learners’ dependence on the spell
checker.

Grammar Checkers

There is a genuine need for evaluating grammar errors in written learner language.
Learners certainly perceive the correctness of second language utterances to be
294 T. Heift

important in written and oral communication. Language learning often has phases of
form-focused activities (Long 1991) in which students shift away from the negotia-
tion of meaning in a communicative setting to concentrate on the surface form of their
utterances. The thorough proofreading for errors of a text is such an activity. For these
form-focused activities, grammar checkers can be very useful tools, if they function
adequately. However, the shortcomings of commercially available grammar checkers
used by language learners have been discussed widely (Granger and Meunier 1994;
Wei and Davies 1997; Tschichold 1999). Evaluations of these grammar checkers
usually indicate that, for grammar checkers to be useful, they need to be adapted to
use by language learners. More linguistic rules are also needed to avoid simplistic
pattern and keyword matching.
In an attempt to address learner language more effectively, Knutsson et al. (2003),
for instance, adapted and tested Granska, a grammar checker for learners of Swedish
as a foreign language, which originally had been developed for Swedish native
speakers. They reported that Granska “detected about 35% of all errors” (n.p.).
Students noted that they had difficulties using the program because of a lack of
advanced computer training and due to the high number of false alarms the program
generated. Later Granska became the main language technology component of Grim
(Karlström et al. 2007), a tool for learners of Swedish. Grim combines the grammar
checker Granska with a surface syntactic parser, a concordance interface to the
Swedish version part of the Parole corpus, a dictionary, and an interface to a tool
for automatic word inflection (Knutsson et al. 2007).
Some commercially available grammar checkers are specifically designed for
nonnative writers. For French, for example, there are programs such as Antidote
and Le Correcteur. “Antidote Prisme” is a suite of software reference tools for
writing French. It has an advanced grammar checker which now corrects the
whole text at once instead of one sentence at a time. It has five great tools that
integrate directly and seamlessly into most major word processors and email
programs. It was designed as a tool for native French speakers and the grammar
checker now has a setting for nonnative French speakers.” (Taken from The World
of Reading, http://www.wor.com/shopping/products.asp?id=179, accessed June
1, 2015.)

Automatic Writing Evaluation

Another area in ICALL that deals with written learner language and one that has
received increased interest more recently is that of automated essay scoring or writing
evaluation (AWE) (Hegelheimer et al. 2016; Coniam 2009; Cotos 2011; Ware and
Warschauer 2006; Warschauer and Grimes 2008; Warschauer and Ware 2006).
Lonsdale and Strong-Krause (2003), for instance, present a parser-based essay rater
for beginning learners of English as a foreign or second language, which achieved an
inter-annotator agreement with human raters of 62.1–69.5%. The authors conclude
that a “purely syntactic parse does not always assure appropriate ratings” (ibid.).
They identified possible improvements to the linguistic processing and argued that
History and Key Developments in Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language. . . 295

“the output from a non-traditional syntactic parser can be used to grade ESL essays.
With a robust enough parser, reasonable results can be achieved, even for highly
ungrammatical text” (ibid.).
Coniam (2009) evaluates the Bayesian Essay Test Scoring System (BETSY) with
ESL examination essays from Hong Kong students. BETSY’s scores correlated
highly with those given by human raters and thus Coniam concludes that essay
scoring software is an efficient tool for the evaluation of word-processed essays. His
focus on automated essay scoring for assessment purposes is complemented by
studies by Warschauer and colleagues (Warschauer and Grimes 2008; Warschauer
and Ware 2006) who focus on the feedback capabilities of such systems and their use
in the language classroom. Warschauer and Grimes (2008) investigated the in-class
use of two systems, Criterion and My Access, in secondary schools. In their study, the
teachers’ highly positive perception of the benefits of AES in the classroom was
contradicted by their limited and infrequent use of the systems in class. Although
students clearly benefitted in a number of ways from their work with the two systems,
“almost all of the revisions that students made were narrow in scope” (p. 29).
Warschauer and Ware (2006) summarize their findings as follows:

We believe that both of the above-described potentials – technology that empowers by

providing instant evaluation and feedback, and technology that dehumanizes by eliminating
the human element – exist in automated writing evaluation software. Where on the contin-
uum between these two outcomes AWE [Automated Writing Evaluation] might fall depends
on how such software is used in specific teaching and learning contexts, a matter subject to
empirical investigation. (p. 20)

Similarly, Li et al. (2014) conducted a study on the usefulness of holistic scores for
classroom purposes using Criterion. The authors investigated the correlation
between Criterion’s holistic scores and instructors’ numeric grades and analytic
ratings on two course assignments in three ESL writing courses. Their findings
indicate a low-to-moderate positive correlation whereby students also made efforts
to revise their work in order to obtain a higher score. The authors highlight the
usefulness of Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) programs and provide justifica-
tion for AWE’s classroom-based formative assessment.
As for evaluating AWE programs with regard to SLA theories, Cotos (2011)
situates her study of IADE, a system that provides feedback on discourse moves in
academic texts (Pendar and Cotos 2008), within the interactional framework of SLA.
She states that IADE has “the potential to trigger noticing and focus on discourse
form [and will thus] enhance learning” (p. 444). Like IADE, TechWriter (Napolitano
and Stent 2009) provides assistance for specialized text genres, in this case, technical
writing. It relies on the public part of the American National Corpus and is tagged for
parts of speech. Learner texts are then checked against n-gram sequences of stemmed
words and part-of-speech tags. Their relative and absolute frequencies in the corpus
are then compared to the respective frequencies in the student text. Differences signal
the probable occurrence of an error. Feedback is provided through offering alterna-
tive n-gram sequences from the corpus data. Although the system has not yet been
evaluated formally, it is used by students at Stony Brook University.
296 T. Heift

Intelligent Language Tutoring Systems

In contrast to grammar checkers that target written learner language in texts of any
length, ILTSs are primarily designed to support form-focused instruction by identi-
fying ill-formed grammatical construction in learner output (see e.g., Schulze 2008)
commonly limited to the sentence level. However, after 30 years of development and
research of ILTSs (for a chronology of ICALL systems, see Heift and Schulze 2007),
these systems nowadays are rarely limited to form-focused instruction but, instead
and due to their sophisticated underlying technologies, allow for more diverse
learning environments. For instance, Dickinson et al. (2008) designed an ILTS that
is embedded in a synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) environ-
ment. The system provides feedback on particle usage for first-year L2 Korean
learners while they chat in CMC. Moreover, Harbusch et al. (2008) designed
a virtual writing environment for German for elementary-school children, The
Sentence Fairy, which deploys natural language generation technology to evaluate
and improve the grammatical quality of student output. Most other ICALL systems
provide a combination of form-focused and meaning-focused instruction. For
instance, the activity types in E-Tutor (Heift 2010a) allow for grammar practice as
well as reading comprehension and/or cultural knowledge. In addition, E-Tutor also
supports discovery learning in the form of exploration of learner language. For this,
user submissions over five years were compiled and from those a common learner
corpus was constructed that allows students to explore learner language according to
various parameters. Accordingly, learners can examine interlanguage or task-specific
phenomena by, at the same time, allowing language instructors and/or researchers to
examine the design of language learning material in addition to a wide range of
additional research topics (e.g., use of help options, interlanguage studies).

Learner Feedback

The main advantage of ILTSs over more traditional CALL environments lies in the
error-specific feedback that an ILTS can provide in response to learner output.
Traditional CALL programs are generally based on string matching algorithms,
that is, the student response is compared letter for letter against an answer key.
In contrast, and due to sophisticated NLP technologies, an ILTS identifies and
interprets errors as well as correct constructions in learner input and generates
appropriate, informative learner feedback accordingly.
Over the past decades, research has sought evidence that feedback in CALL
makes a difference in language development, and more specifically, what kinds of
feedback make what sorts of differences to the developmental processes of learners.
One of the early studies investigating different feedback types for Japanese grammar
instruction found that “intelligent” feedback (with a metalinguistic explanation) was
more effective than binary knowledge-of-result feedback (e.g., wrong, try again!)
(Nagata 1996). A number of studies followed (see e.g., Bowles 2005; Heift 2004;
Heift and Rimrott 2008; Pujolà 2001; Rosa and Leow 2004) and the results generally
History and Key Developments in Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language. . . 297

support the claim that students benefit from the more explicit feedback because they
subsequently perform better on particular target language structures and/or because
students’ grammatical awareness is subsequently raised.
A few studies have also considered learner strategies with respect to corrective
feedback in CALL rather than focusing on learning outcomes solely. For instance,
Brandl (1995), studying L2 learners of German, found that the learners’ language skills
influence their preference for a particular feedback type in CALL programs. More
specifically, results indicate that lower-performance learners have a more limited set of
strategies for processing feedback than learners of higher proficiency levels.
Evidence for effects of computer-generated feedback has also been sought in
studies examining learner error correction behavior, referred to as learner uptake, in
response to distinct feedback types. This body of research (see e.g., Lyster 2007)
proposes that successful uptake is the biggest predictor of learning, and even in
instances where no learning takes place at a particular moment, it suggests that
learners notice the feedback and thus process it. As a result, researchers tend to
view learner uptake as facilitative of L2 acquisition. Findings from studies with
ILTSs report significantly more learner uptake for the feedback type that provides
detailed corrections (see e.g., Heift 2010b).

Individualized Instruction

Research in second language acquisition (SLA) has investigated learner variability,

or interlanguage (IL) variation, by examining linguistic, psycholinguistic, and socio-
linguistic constraints with the goal to explain why speakers choose, consciously or
subconsciously, their forms of speech. This body of research has provided evidence
of extensive variability in learner language that can be attributed to individual
differences, task variables, as well as external variables (e.g., Gass et al. 1989).
All of these are said to affect learners’ learning processes.
An ILTS can adapt and tailor instructional materials and content to its users with
AI techniques that are used to model the individualized learning experience and
guide pedagogical decision-making. The goal here is to create learning programs that
come closer to natural language interaction between humans than has been the case in
traditional CALL. For this, the ILTS constructs a so-called learner model, which is a
description of the learner’s current skill level along with the student’s learning styles
and preferences relative to the learning task. Commonly, these models make some
assumptions about the learner by determining the current knowledge state of a
learner, which requires the ILTS to observe and record the learner’s interaction
with the learning system. Measuring learner knowledge, however, is a highly com-
plex task due to a number of variables that have to be considered in assessing and
capturing the individual differences that warrant individualization at any given point
in time (Heift and Schulze 2007). A number of learner models have been described
and implemented and, most commonly, they are used to generate individualized
feedback and unique learning paths for each learner (see e.g., Amaral and Meurers
2007; Bull 2000).
298 T. Heift

Conclusion and Future Directions

The ICALL applications to evaluate written learner language discussed above are
excellent examples of theory-based ICALL. Their functionalities, in particular those
of ILTSs, are grounded in relevant SLA theories. The researchers/developers are
cognizant of the importance of focus on form (Long 1991), interaction (Gass 1997;
Long 1996) and the noticing of linguistic features (Schmidt 1990). They conceptu-
alize the mediating role of technology by relying on an understanding of Activity
Theory (Lantolf and Thorne 2006) that can depict both language learning processes
as well as human computer interaction. Moreover, in interpreting “interaction” not
only in the context of SLA but also in terms of human computer interaction, it
becomes apparent that ICALL systems provide many different types and levels of
feedback, spanning from sentential input to the handling of large texts. Thus ICALL
systems have engaged or at least have the potential to engage language learners in a
wide variety of interactions. For a number of ICALL systems, such interactions
happen in the well-defined context of a communicative, language-learning task that
can also be supported by an increasing focus on individualized instruction.

Cross-References

▶ Complexity Approaches to Computer-Assisted Language Learning

▶ Computer-Assisted Language Assessment
▶ Learner Corpora in Foreign Language Education
▶ Technology and the Study of Awareness

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Complexity Approaches to Computer-
Assisted Language Learning

Mathias Schulze

Abstract
Complexity-theoretical approaches in Applied Linguistics are relatively new, but
they hold great promise as an integrative (meta-)theory, provide new ways of
hypothesizing about and conceptualizing the complex phenomena of language
use and (second) language development, and also require different data gathering
and analytical methods. This chapter sketches first the main tenets of a theory of
complex adaptive systems (CAS) as it applies to technology-mediated language
learning. The investigation of complex adaptive systems in computer-assisted
language learning (CALL) is in its infancy; a selection of representative CAS
studies in CALL will be discussed. As will become apparent, the main challenge
for future research in this area is the design and application of robust commen-
surate research methods. General facets of a CAS methodology in CALL will be
outlined and a general direction for future investigation will be given.

Keywords
Complex adaptive systems • Dynamic systems theory • Computer-assisted lan-
guage learning (CALL) • Nonlinearity

Contents
Introduction: A Complexity-Theoretical Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Language Use and Development, Mediation, and Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Major Contributions: CAS Studies in Call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Challenges and Future Directions: Establishing Methods in CAS Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

M. Schulze (*)
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 301

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_24
302 M. Schulze

Introduction: A Complexity-Theoretical Perspective

Language use, second-language development (SLD), and computer-assisted

language learning (CALL) are not only interwoven and interdependent processes,
these complex processes are also embedded in a rich context. A number of actors
(e.g., learners, instructors, and L1 speakers) and components (e.g., computational
hardware and software) participate in them. In their context, the actors and compo-
nents interact with one another and with a broader community, such as parents and
policy makers, and multiple external components, such as other learning materials,
linguistic artifacts, and educational institutions. In these interactions, both process-
internal and process-external variables keep changing. To capture the interaction and
interdependency of the variables of such processes and their contexts systematically,
we describe them as complex adaptive systems (CAS). It is important to note that
when we say CAS or just system, we mean the learning – not the learner; we mean
the second-language development – not a structure of acquired and applied knowl-
edge; we mean the learner–computer interaction – not the software nor the computer;
and we mean the online gaming – not the digital game. Due to their complexity and
fluidity, CAS are not completely deterministic. Thus, we cannot always establish
causal relationships between subprocesses and their outcomes. Yet, we can trace back
the change that occurred to its probable initial conditions (see the “butterfly effect” in
Lorenz 1963, 1993) and other influential factors. So, the predictive power of the
theory of complex systems is limited, but its explanatory power is considerable.
Such complexity-theoretical approaches have not yet been widely adopted in
CALL, although they have contributed to and influenced our understanding of SLD
since the early 2000s. Empirical CALL research still shows a preponderance of
pretest/posttest studies focusing on isolated variables and thus often yields
decontextualized results. Other CALL studies – particularly, those using ethno-
graphic or design-based research approaches – provide a qualitative analysis of
individual processes in context, but often lack the systematicity necessary for
replication, transfer to other contexts, and application in pedagogy. We argue that
when studying CALL activities, such as collaborative writing online or digital
gaming in the foreign language, the complex processes of language use, SLD, and
technology mediation are facets of a CAS, which have to be studied over time and in
interaction and context to be able to identify and explain change at the level of the
individual and across groups.

Language Use and Development, Mediation, and Complexity

For research on CAS in CALL, we assume that (1) language is emergent (Langacker
2008) and consists of linguistic constructions (Tomasello 2003) and (2) second-
language use and development are in a dialectical relationship. On the one hand, an
individual’s SLD is a complex process which is embedded in and influenced by
sociohistorical and cultural processes, and on the other, each individual participates
in the coconstruction of social, historical, and cultural processes through his or her
Complexity Approaches to Computer-Assisted Language Learning 303

second-language use (Lantolf and Thorne 2006; Swain et al. 2011). Therefore,
usage-based grammar is “epiphenomenal, a by-product of a communication process.
It is not a collection of rules and target forms to be acquired by language learners”
(Larsen-Freeman 2002, p. 42). When it comes to understanding SLD, we can say
that, although nonlinear subprocesses, such as developmental spurts, backsliding,
and fossilization, have been the research focus of second-language acquisition
research, they have often been treated as an anomaly and exception to the (linear)
rule. However, such processes are evidence that an L2 is being acquired at varying
speeds, which, of course, results in nonlinear developmental trajectories of individ-
uals. Due to individual language-learner differences, this diachronic variation is
compounded by the synchronic variability within groups of language learners.
Language development and use in CALL is mediated by computational technolo-
gies. In computer-mediated communication (Kelsey and St. Amant 2008), learners
interact with other learners, instructors, and L1 speakers via digital artifacts; in tutorial
CALL (Heift and Schulze 2015), learners interact directly with socially, culturally, and
cognitively imbued digital artifacts, which are central components of the CAS. In
CALL, digital components are “added” to the complexity of language use and SLD.
This results in increased levels of complexity, but also facilitates the unobtrusive
recording of structured process data through tracking learner behavior in online
environments and documenting learning outcomes over time, both of which offer
windows onto the complex processes of technology-mediated language learning.
From that perspective, it is surprising that thus far we have not seen more uptake
of complexity-theoretical approaches in CALL. Already since the late 1980s, we
have witnessed a proliferation of research approaches, concepts, and metaphors of
complexity that extend well beyond mathematics and the natural sciences, from
where they originated. Books like Gleick’s (1987) Chaos: Making a New Science
popularized research on complex and (ostensibly) chaotic systems and made it
accessible also for scholars in the social sciences and humanities. A decade later,
Larsen-Freeman (1997) introduced CAS to researchers in Applied Linguistics.
CAS have the following main characteristics (de Bot and Larsen-Freeman 2011,
p. 9):

(i) Sensitive dependence on initial conditions

(ii) Complete interconnectedness
(iii) Nonlinearity in development
(iv) Change through internal reorganization and interaction with the environment
(v) Dependence on internal and external resources
(vi) Attractor states
(vii) Iteration
(viii) Emergent properties

The sensitive dependence on initial conditions explains that small influences on

CAS must not be neglected because often they cause noticeable effects. “[For our
research . . . we need to have detailed information on the initial conditions if we want
to be able to explain differences and similarities in learning outcomes]” (de Bot and
304 M. Schulze

Larsen-Freeman 2011, p. 10). For example, phonological awareness and L1 literacy

are known to be initial conditions in SLD (de Bot et al. 2007), but the quality and
scope of their impact emerges in their interaction with the many other variables of
the CAS and its context over time; so they are being reflexively altered as the system
changes (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008a). Therefore, we cannot rely on the
initial conditions alone to explain change at all times. However, since a CAS goes
through many iterations and each potentially impacts an initial variable, a small
change in initial conditions has a disproportionate effect on later or final states of
the CAS.
It is not just the initial-condition variables, which are interconnected with other
system-internal and contextual variables. A CAS is completely interconnected; the
various components which “participate in” the system – the actors, the linguistic,
cognitive, and digital artifacts – and the factors that determine or influence it are
connected to one another; if one changes, the others will be impacted to at least some
degree and the whole CAS changes through the interconnectedness of its variables
and components. This also means that after changing a variable through a teaching
intervention or the introduction of a technology in the classroom, we cannot predict
the outcome with reasonable certainty. Instead, we must continue observing the CAS
as its variables go on to coadapt and induce development through iterative interven-
tions in which the same or other variables are changed. For example, in a study by
Penner and Schulze (2010), a change to group grades for student projects in a
language course impacted the perception of group collaboration, which in turn
changed how some students, depending on their initial conditions, perceived the
computer-mediated communication tools used in class.
The complete interconnectedness of a CAS is closely linked to the nonlinearity of
its development. For example, an affordance in a digital learning environment, such
as access to online lexical resources and the provision of corrective metalinguistic
feedback for the learner, will not result in the same quality and quantity of change for
each learner; nor will its use at different times and in different contexts result in the
same change. Since “there is no goal or direction in development; there is only
change” (de Bot and Larsen-Freeman 2011, p. 13), we should not expect a propor-
tionate change in a certain direction, but be prepared to continue to observe the CAS.
In empirical CALL research, this necessitates longitudinal studies because studies
with two or three data-gathering points – pre, post, and delayed posttest – rest on the
conceptualization of linear development with proportionate cause–effect relation-
ships, which are rarely found in social environments.
Different segments of a developmental trajectory display slopes of different
magnitude and speed of change (nonmonotone) and they are not exact repetitions
at regular intervals (nonperiodic). However, these trajectory curves can be fractal.
“Fractals are typically sets with infinitely complex structure and usually possess
some measure of self-similarity, whereby any part of the set contains within it a
scaled-down version of the whole set” (Nicholson 2014). For example, in tutorial
CALL, answering a linguistic quiz item is self-similar to answering the entire
practice quiz. Fractality in the CAS helps us to identify patterns at different scales
in these nonlinear trajectories.
Complexity Approaches to Computer-Assisted Language Learning 305

In CALL, CAS goes through many small process iterations, such as pressing a
particular button, making a lexical choice or a grammatical well-formedness deci-
sion, and requesting learning help by clicking a hyperlink. A thought experiment
based on Lorenz (1963, 1993) illustrates the power of iterations best: We build two
sequences of numbers, where the current number is always the square of its
predecessor. For the first sequence, we set the first number (our initial condition)
as 1.1; and use 1.1001 as a slightly different start for the second sequence. Compar-
ing the numbers in the two sequences after each iteration, we see that differences
remain miniscule after the first few iterations. Yet, after eight iterations, it is 2326 and
continues to grow exponentially thereafter. Taking the example of language practice
(de Keyser 2007) in tutorial CALL, each of the small iterative steps taken by the
learner – conjugate a verb, insert a preposition, manipulate a sentence – only
introduces a small change, yet the result is significant change in the CAS after
many iterations.
During the iterative, nonlinear development of a CAS and through the intercon-
nection of its actors, components, and variables, the system will reorganize inter-
nally and interact with its environment. Context becomes “the landscape over which
the system moves, and the movement of the system transforms the context” (Larsen-
Freeman and Cameron 2008a, p. 68). Here, coadaptation is fundamental. In the
context of digital gaming in education, Gee (2006) argues that the “proactive
production by players of story elements, a visual-motoric-auditory-decision-making
symphony, and a unique real-virtual story produces a new form of performance art
coproduced by players and game designers” (p. 61).
It is the internal and external resources of a CAS that construct and maintain the
system. Internal resources are within the language learner (de Bot and Larsen-
Freeman 2011), For example, motivation, time to learn, and the ability to solve
problems effectively or to use a computer. External resources can include the spatial
environment being explored or the material and digital artifacts with which the
learner interacts (ibid.). For example, in online games, interaction between non-
playing characters and other live players are examples of external resources that the
learner can utilize when playing the game in the foreign language. Thus, CAS are
open systems in that they do not come to a rest at an equilibrium as long as external
“energy” continually enters. For example, instructional sequences in online learning
environments affect change in the CAS, as long as the learner does not preclude them
from “entering” the learning process.
With external and internal resources impacting the iterative, nonlinear develop-
mental trajectories, the ostensibly chaotic nature of a CAS can make it difficult for
the researcher to understand the system. Here, attractor states, which are “land-
scapes, states, or particular modes of behaviors, that the system ‘prefers’” (Larsen-
Freeman and Cameron 2008a, p. 49), can provide useful confines within which a
system can be analyzed, as well as allowing a brief respite in order to determine at
least one result of the system, thereby providing some transparency to the otherwise
profound complexity. This “preference” of the CAS could be due to any number of
reasons, such as the state being relatively easy to reach or the subsequent state being
challenging to develop. A CAS in an attractor state continues to change; only the
306 M. Schulze

degree to which the system is changing is not (yet) sufficient to transition the system
out off the attractor state. For example, in working with computers in language
learning, the reliance on glosses, subtitles, or other L1 cues can act as an attractor,
being both useful currently and (potentially) hindering the learner’s progression at a
later state (see Sockett 2013).
At the opposite end of the continuum, there are CAS states which appear to be
possible, but they have never been observed. These state spaces are often labeled
repellors. In designing and analyzing learner-computer interactions, repellors are
important, in that they enable both the designer and the researcher to significantly
limit the search space for design solutions (e.g., help options such as glosses, which
were never requested, might not have to be implemented) or analytical algorithms
(compare the immense search spaces in computationally parsing learner texts in
ICALL; see Heift and Schulze 2007).
Through the iterations, interconnectedness, and self-organization of the CAS, its
properties emerge. Emergence refers to processes in which larger patterns and
regularities arise from the interaction of smaller and simpler entities. “[L]anguage
and culture are emergent phenomena of an increasingly complex social existence”
(Beckner et al. 2009, p. 3). Consequently, SLD captures the intertwined complex
processes of the emergence of a second language both at the individual plane and in
groups. We argue here that CALL research needs to aim to investigate the role of
technologies in SLD and can contribute to a deeper understanding of CAS in
Applied Linguistics as a whole.

Major Contributions: CAS Studies in Call

A number of CALL scholars have argued that CAS approaches are appropriate and
important in CALL research, but there is a scarcity of such studies in CALL, even
when conceived broadly. Chapelle (2009), discussing the relationship between
second language acquisition theories and CALL in the three decades prior, makes
a short reference to CAS research: “Whereas the ideas behind complex systems
theory are relatively new and not fully developed, its promise for [second language
acquisition] theory within the larger systems of learning make it worthy of attention”
(p. 748). Similarly, Colpaert (2013) argues for an ecological paradigm shift in CALL
(which is similar to a shift towards CAS), emphasizing that any single technology
alone cannot be responsible for language learning, but rather, SLD emerges from the
various actors, components, and factors that interact with one another. Marek and
Wu (2014) also position their research within CALL instructional design, declaring
that a CAS theoretical approach should be used. Taking into account as many factors
as possible, which could influence teaching and learning English as a foreign
language, they conceptualize a CALL ecology model and conclude that “technology
used for CALL is not an end in itself, but a means to an end that is based on fully
understanding the educational ecology” (p. 571). Since their conceptual article is
mainly based on a literature review and a thought experiment in broad strokes, their
conclusion remains rather vague. Similarly, disappointing (and not always fully
supported) conclusions appear in a few of the early CAS studies in CALL. In a
Complexity Approaches to Computer-Assisted Language Learning 307

study of the two groups using the different learning platforms Moodle and TelEduc,
Souza (2013) describes the quality of the texts in these virtual learning environ-
ments, after the course had been completed. The coarse-grained analysis leads the
author to conclude that students can achieve similar outcomes in both platforms.
Braga (2013) invokes the concept of fractality, interprets it very loosely, and applies
it to a description of online group work.
Liou (2012) conceptualizes the interactions in the virtual world Second Life as a
CAS to understand how learners interact with the environment and its many tools.
Twenty five EFL students were instructed to perform specific tasks within Second
Life, such as orienting themselves to the environment and doing peer review. The
author claims that, although the game environment was identical for each student,
the external resources of the system impacted the developmental potential of certain
students, leading to communication breakdowns and the inability to complete tasks.
It is disappointing, however, that when investigating the language-learning
affordances of Second Life, Liou mainly focuses on student perception data rather
than presenting an analysis of the students’ behavior in the virtual environment.
Relying on a systematic and comprehensive corpus analysis, Thorne et al. (2012)
investigate the role that texts in online multiplayer games have in forming, what they
refer to as, complex semiotic ecologies. The authors analyzed the linguistic com-
plexity of texts in World of Warcraft (WoW) and in relevant external resources, such
as discussion boards and wikis about the game. Thorne et al. conclude that “external
websites function as keystone species within WoW’s broader semiotic ecology”
(p. 296). They note the validity of analyzing such online gaming as CAS stating
that “the reading of texts and the associated action sequences of players form
complex and adaptive systems that reorganize themselves based on the contingen-
cies of the immediate goal-directed activity at hand” (p. 298).
In an ongoing study also on WoW, Scholz (2017), Scholz and Schulze (2017), and
Schulze and Scholz (2016) investigate learners’ SLD trajectories when gaming. A
heterogeneous group of 14 Canadian students volunteered to play WoW in German
on their own time over four months. Their data set consists of comprehensive game
logs, an entrance questionnaire, an exit interview, and transcripts of three monthly
face-to-face group conversations. The questionnaire elicited information about four
initial conditions: gaming experience, computer literacy, language-learning experi-
ence, and rationale for learning German. These four collective variables were
operationalized and the answer values were recorded as binary numbers. This
enabled them to correlate and cluster the individual students’ profiles of initial
conditions as well as the collective variables of their gaming and linguistic behavior.
This clustering was the basis for an iterative pairwise comparison of participants.
The participants in pairs – each with a high correlation of initial condition values,
behavioral traits in game, or both – are compared paying equal attention to com-
monalities and differences, then different pairs are compared with one another. In
this mixed-method analysis, they are able to trace different developmental trajecto-
ries from their outcomes back to the (initial) factors that induced this change. SLD is
operationalized as the students’ ability to transfer linguistic constructions encoun-
tered in game to the face-to-face conversations about the game. Their study provides
insight into the complex role of online gaming in the foreign language on an
308 M. Schulze

individual’s SLD by conceptualizing both digital gaming and SLD as CAS and by
paying particular attention to the interaction of the two systems.
Bertin and Narcy-Combes (2012), investigating the role of online tutoring in
distance education, reconceptualize their earlier understanding of online tutoring in
the light of emergentism. To begin their explanation of the complex processes in an
online learning environment, they state that, in order to explain complex phenomena,
“three basic approaches have been adopted: to reduce them to the sum of their
components, to study them as a global whole and to study them as complex systems”
(p. 112). Upon reflection, they reject reductionist and holistic approaches (see also
Larsen-Freeman 1997; Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008a, b). To develop a CAS
conceptualization, they deconstruct their own Didactic Ergonomics Model
(pp. 118–120) by taking into consideration its evolution in language learning
processes. They note that in their model, both the teacher-centered and learner-
centered subsystems undergo constant and often independent and unpredictable
change. This distance between the subsystems “reveals the discontinuity between
the teaching and learning actions and consequently generates a greater need for
monitoring to regulate both the tasks and the environment” (p. 125). Through
continuous monitoring and subsequently regulating components of the system by
the designers of the online course, they aim to adapt the complex technological
artifact “to the demands of the context(s)” (ibid.). Bertin and Narcy-Combes con-
vincingly show that a CAS analysis – mainly as a thought experiment based on a
wealth of theoretical, empirical, and practical insight carried out over an extended
period of time – provides a solid basis for modeling complex educational processes
and can inform instructional design decisions in online language learning and
beyond.
In one of the most comprehensive analyses of a CAS, Sockett (2013) observed a
group of nine students learning English online informally over the course of three
months. Analyzing a 35,000-word corpus, which was derived from their introspec-
tive writing, he purports that the English-language learners’ strategies – learning
strategies are at the center of his investigation – can be connected to the character-
istics of a CAS (de Bot and Larsen-Freeman 2011, p. 9). Sockett and Toffoli (2012)
highlighted four of these eight CAS characteristics, which are particularly relevant to
extramural online language learning: sensitive dependence on initial conditions,
attractor states, coadaptation as a result of the internal reorganization of the system,
and nonlinear development. In this study, they situate language learning with social
technologies as a CAS, moving away from a model of technocratic learner autonomy
to one that considers the social roles other members of the online communities play.
The informal learning that occurs while university students browsed the internet in
their spare time is understood to be emergent in nature. Listening, reading, written
interaction, and vocabulary building were all in focus as elements of SLD and they
were enhanced by participating in informal online environments, but the develop-
ment gains of each participant varied immensely due to the frequency and types of
interaction that emerged within the various online environments.
As is evident from the review of the still rare CAS studies in CALL, we need to
identify and consider appropriate methods in CAS research. The main goal of CAS
Complexity Approaches to Computer-Assisted Language Learning 309

analyses in CALL is identifying, describing, and explaining change in the SLD of

learners. Change refers here to both the variation of one or more variables or
components of the system because of their interdependence and interaction and the
change depicted in the developmental trajectories of individual learners in their
groups.

Challenges and Future Directions: Establishing Methods in

CAS Research

Two guiding principles are particularly important to the selection and application of
appropriate methods: (1) longitudinal, multivariate analyses of language learning
processes in CALL are necessary; neither reductionist snap shots in cross-sectional
quantitative studies nor isolated qualitative case studies are sufficient to investigate
developmental change; (2) the complexity of CAS and, consequently, the difficulty
with and the low likelihood of predicting their future states accurately means that we
need to identify (qualitative) retrodictive methods of analysis (Dörnyei 2014).
Retrodictive methods – an adjective neologism that denotes the opposite perspective
of “predictive” – reverse the process of analysis such that the outcomes of the CAS
are considered first, and then their development is traced back to determine which
components and variables induced or caused change. Essentially, all analysis of CAS
is an analysis of their change over time. This means that a research design of
experimental and control group is seldom necessary. Instead, the different states of
an individual process are compared iteratively. Commonalities and differences
matter in that both provide clues about from where and how the change originated
and was influenced.
In each investigation, we first and foremost identify the instantiations of the eight
CAS characteristics (de Bot and Larsen-Freeman 2011, p. 9) for the system:

(a) What are the initial conditions for this CALL activity? What aspects of change in
the activity showed sensitivity to or depended on these conditions?
(b) What collective variables, actors, artefacts, and other components induced,
influenced, and sustained change and development of which aspects of the
CALL activity? In which way are the variables, actors, artefacts, and compo-
nents connected with each other?
(c) What are the process trajectories of the CALL activity as a whole and of
(research-relevant) variables specifically? Which (fractal) patterns of change
can be identified in the trajectory of an individual and across individuals?
(d) What change occurred during the CALL activity? What were the processes and
outcomes of the corresponding self-organization of the CAS and of its interac-
tion with the environment?
(e) Which internal and external resources led to this change and how?
(f) What is the general nature of the change in the CAS? Which attractor and
repellor states can be identified? What can these phase spaces tell us about the
nature of the CAS?
310 M. Schulze

(g) What are important iterative subprocesses in the CALL activity? How does a
particular set of iterations introduce change into system?
(h) What properties of the CAS emerge in its evolution and how do they change?

As CAS are interconnected with their contexts, pondering these eight question
complexes requires the definition, description, and systematic analysis of the actors,
components, and properties of the system and its environment. For want of a better
word, we call the facets of these properties variables (but also see the argument about
the death of the variable in complexity-theoretical research in Applied Linguistics in
Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008b). CAS-essential and research-relevant vari-
ables have to be defined and operationalized, if their change is to be observed and
measured over time. Of course, a large number of variables make their continuous
observation as well as their analysis very challenging. To reduce the high number of
degrees of freedom of a CAS (see e.g., Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008a), we
adopt a technique from molecular dynamics: collective variables. “It is frequently
the case that the progress of some . . . process can be followed by following the
evolution of a small subset of generalized coordinates in a system. When generalized
coordinates are used in this manner, they are typically referred to as reaction
coordinates, collective variables, or order parameters, often depending on the con-
text and type of system” (Tuckerman 2008, my emphasis). Collective variables, such
as proficiency and motivation, are thus dynamic configurations of smaller variables
and are essential to describing the developmental change in a CAS. Yet, only three
CAS studies in CALL rely on an investigation of a well-defined collective variable in
context: Sockett (2013) on language learning strategies, Thorne et al. (2012) on
textual complexity, and Bertin and Narcy-Combes (2012) on online tutoring.
In response to the aforementioned research problems and challenges, Larsen-
Freeman and Cameron (2008b) suggest incorporating modified or adapted forms of
the following methodological approaches for use in CAS research:

• Ethnography
• Formative and design experiments, including action research
• Longitudinal, case study, time series approaches
• Microdevelopment
• Computer modeling
• Brain imaging
• Combinations of discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, second language
acquisition and corpus linguistics, second language acquisition and corpus
linguistics.

With the exception of brain imaging, the methodological approaches suggested

by Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008b) have begun to be utilized in CALL
research. This said, most existing studies that espouse a CAS framework suffer
from a reductionist focus on decontextualized variables, an unsystematic descriptive
perspective, or the frequently set goal of establishing linear (causal) relationships, all
of which suggest that such research is not commensurable with the essential tenets of
complexity theory. What is necessary for CAS-informed CALL research to move
Complexity Approaches to Computer-Assisted Language Learning 311

forward is a systematic investigation of language learning processes in technology-

rich contexts that respects their complexity (nonreductionist), accommodates and
acknowledges the probability of nonlinear development and constant change (non-
static), and which considers complex phenomena and processes in their context.
From an analytical and pedagogical standpoint, CAS implies a shift away from
affirmative stances of expecting things to happen to embracing the uncertainty in
what might happen (Davis and Simmt 2003).

Cross-References

▶ Computer-Assisted Language Assessment

▶ History and Key Developments in Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language
Learning (ICALL)
▶ Learner Corpora in Foreign Language Education
▶ Technology and the Study of Awareness

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Computer-Assisted Language Assessment

Paula M. Winke and Daniel R. Isbell

Abstract
Computer-assisted language assessment (CALA) employs the use of technology
to facilitate, contextualize, and enhance the assessment of linguistic abilities.
CALA is becoming normalized, concomitant with advances in technology and
its propagation in language learning contexts. Within CALA, though, most
attention has been devoted to technology in language tests (computer-assisted
language testing or CALT). Early CALT developments reviewed include initial
forays into performance tests, comparisons between paper-and-pencil tests and
CALT, and explorations into computer-adaptive tests (CATs). Major contribu-
tions to CALA have included foundational book-length treatments of CALT,
published in the 1990s and 2000s, as well as more recent review articles. Work
describing washback in CALA from the same period has provided lasting guid-
ance for researchers and practitioners. Large CALA projects are currently under-
way in a number of universities and governmental organizations, including efforts
to develop computer-delivered tests for a wide variety of languages, create
holistic e-portfolios, employ computers in placement and achievement testing
in K-16 contexts, expand computer-mediated performance testing, and provide
rater training. CALA, as a young and dynamic field, grapples with how techno-
logical advances and adoption filter into language learning and assessment,
challenging conceptualizations of CALA itself as well as language ability con-
structs. Exemplifying the latter, two contended language constructs are
highlighted: listening (with or without visual context) and computerized writing
assessment. In the future, research related to computerized writing assessment
(and scoring), CALA feasibility and fairness for underserved populations, and

P.M. Winke (*) • D.R. Isbell

Second Language Studies Program, Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and
African Languages, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 313

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_25
314 P.M. Winke and D.R. Isbell

forms of assessment which uniquely utilize technology is expected, and encour-

aged, to thrive.

Keywords
Computer-assisted language testing • Assessment • Testing • Computer-assisted
language learning • Computer-adaptive testing • Language testing

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
Early and Recent Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Performance-Based CALT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Comparison Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Computer Adaptive Tests (CATs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

Introduction

Computer-based tests with streaming video, oral-response-recording options, auto-

mated (or human-generated) feedback mechanisms, and dynamic or enhanced input
(such as hyperlinked text, answer choices, or interactive objects that provide glosses,
help, or feedback to aid comprehension or test completion) have expanded the
testing field and have triggered washback effects that have influenced the second
and foreign language classroom. In addition, alternative computer-based assess-
ments, including electronic portfolios (e-portfolios) and online self-assessment sys-
tems, promote self-regulation and provide qualitative and longitudinal
documentation of growth. Advantages of doing any type of assessment with com-
puter technology include greater authenticity, expedient delivery, digital record-
keeping options, and automatic, objective scoring possibilities.
Computers, multimedia, online gaming, tablets, smartphones, apps, and social
media have immeasurably changed the landscape of language learning over the
years (Godwin-Jones 2011). Concomitantly, technology use within language
learning has affected (or should affect) language testing because test-taking
tasks should mirror the classroom-learning tasks that are the basis of instruction
(Norris 2009). Three circumstances have widened this oncoming normalization
(see Chambers and Bax 2006) of tech-infused language assessment. First,
advances in technology are making it possible to have more sophisticated yet
low-cost computerized testing programs that go beyond online multiple-choice
testing. Second, commercial software packages for making online assessments are
(or can be) embedded into popular learning management systems (LMS) like
Computer-Assisted Language Assessment 315

Blackboard, Moodle, and Desire2Learn. With such tools, teachers can make short
e-quizzes for students to take at home before they come into the classroom so that
teachers know what to focus on most in their teaching (as in flipped classrooms;
see Spino and Trego 2015). Third, the generation of language learners typically
found in the classroom has grown up with computers, tablets, and smart phones.
Earlier impediments that centered on computer access and familiarity are less
concerning for mainstream test takers (older adolescent and adult learners), and
major testing operations have shifted almost exclusively to computer delivery.
Thus, the field of computer-assisted language testing (CALT) has not just
expanded, it has moved heavily toward normalization.

Early and Recent Developments

Early on, computer-based tests of foreign language learning involved item types that
were easily scored by a computer. Item types included multiple choice, multiple
select, drag and drop, and short-answer response and were presented linearly as they
were on their paper-and-pencil counterparts. This led to many comparison studies
between computerized and paper-and-pencil versions of the same test. Eventually,
computer-assisted testing changed. Instead of relying solely on discrete item types,
test takers were asked to respond to tasks that were more like real-world tasks. In
addition, they were asked to produce open-ended responses. The challenge has been
in scoring such items, both in terms of developing the criteria for scoring and in
developing programs to help with scoring, and research along this line continues to
flourish, especially in the area of computerized tests of writing ability (Dikli and
Bleyle 2014; Link et al. 2014; Ware 2011; Weigle, 2013), as discussed next.

Performance-Based CALT

The popularity of performance-based testing (in contrast to discrete-point testing),

as well as integrated-skill and task-based testing has resulted in the need to score
an enormous amount of student writing and speech, all recorded and submitted
through technological means. The sheer quantity of open-ended responses has
funneled much research and resources into automated scoring systems. In 2010,
there was a special issue of Language Testing devoted to automated scoring and
feedback systems for language assessment and learning, and another special issue
on the automated scoring of writing appeared in 2013 (see Elliot and Williamson
2013). The editor of the Language Testing issue, Xi, explained that validity
arguments for automated scoring are to be carefully constructed (as elaborated
on by Chapelle and Chung 2010), and the arguments will be influenced heavily by
whether automated scoring is the sole criterion or if automated scoring is com-
bined with human scoring (2010, p. 293). Xi warned that “the current limitations
of NLP and speech technologies. . . call for responsible and cautious use of them
316 P.M. Winke and D.R. Isbell

and call into question the appropriateness of using them alone in scoring assess-
ments for high-stakes decisions” (2010, p. 297–298).
As a field, language testing is further ahead in the automatic scoring of writing
than in speaking. The technology for scoring writing is rather advanced and robust
(see Ware 2011; Weigle 2013) and is used in many large-scale testing programs. One
automated essay scoring (AES) system is e-Rater, produced by Educational Testing
Service (ETS, www.ets.org/erater/about), which is based on natural language pro-
cessing (NLP). It is used alongside human ratings to judge the quality of TOEFL
test-takers’ writings. The e-Rater system is also used to evaluate essays submitted to
Criterion (www.ets.org/criterion), a commercially-available, web-based essay-
scoring system to which teachers or institutions can subscribe (and which has been
evaluated as effective for providing certain types of feedback, see Lim and Kahng
2012). Other programs include Intelligent Essay Assessor (IEA, part of the suite of
automated scoring systems at Pearson Assessment, see www.pearsonassessments.
com/) and RANGE (downloadable from www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/paul-
nation), a program that assesses lexical frequency that was developed by Paul
Nation.
AESs have not been without criticism. Deane (2013) noted a high agreement
between AES systems and expert human raters, which explains the proliferation of
AES in language tests spanning a number of L2s. But he cautioned that AES may
lead to different test-taking behaviors and writing processes. He noted that auto-
mated scoring may ignore the aspects of essay production that are important for
crafting a good written argument. Additionally, there has been much backlash in the
popular media over automated scoring. One question is, can AES systems be
gamed? Perelman has suggested that they can be (see Winerip 2012). In a 2014
commentary in Assessing Writing, Perelman wrote that AES systems overly rely on
essay length and may “encourage teachers to emphasize bloated and vapid prose”
(110). Researchers such as McNamara et al. (2015) recognized these limitations and
suggested that AES systems can and should be considered as a useful “intelligent
tutor” (54). McNamara et al. suggested that researchers should investigate how AES
algorithms might align with individual differences. They suggested this because
current algorithms do not take into account the social nature of writing nor have they
been studied in relation to writers’ backgrounds.
There has been much work on the computerized scoring of speaking ability as
well, and tools for automated speech scoring are on the market. For example, Versant
English (http://www.versanttest.com/) provides automatic scoring of L2 speech
tasks that require short responses to questions and brief story retellings, with high
reported reliabilities; however, it does not automatically score open-ended tasks
(Jamieson et al. 2013). Efforts to apply automated speech scoring to longer, open-
ended responses are beginning to show some promise, with much research stemming
from Educational Testing Service, which is working toward a system for automatically
scoring spontaneous, non-native English speech (e.g., Zechner et al. 2009) and
Pearson Knowledge Technologies, which is doing the same (see Bernstein et al.
2010). But such systems have not yet become operational in high-stakes contexts.
On a smaller scale, computer-delivered and automatically scored elicited imitation
Computer-Assisted Language Assessment 317

tasks are being researched to see if they are psycholinguistically valid estimates of
pronunciation or grammatical knowledge (see Cox and Davies 2012; Sarandi 2015).
The language testing field will benefit from more research along these lines. But most
certainly, criticisms of automated speech scoring will surface, as they have in relation
to AES. Researchers will need to justify the uses of scores from automated scoring
systems. Arguments for automated scoring that are based on convenience and cost-
savings may not withstand public scrutiny when the stakes are extremely high.

Comparison Studies

As we mentioned above, when computerized tests were first introduced, it was

important to establish that they were equal to, or improved upon, their paper-and-
pencil counterparts. Research focused on whether paper- and computer-administered
tests were equivalent in terms of scores (Choi et al. 2003), test-taker attitude
(Kenyon and Malabonga 2001), and motivation (García and Arias 2000). Investiga-
tions also explored other test features, such as the feedback types involved in paper-
and-pencil versus computer-administered tests (Delmonte 2002) and the ways in
which raters might differentially assign scores based on the mode of the response
item (i.e., typed or handwritten) (Russell and Haney 1997; Lee 2004; Breland et al.
2005). Results generally found differences, but overall the reports found that
computer-based tests shortened administration time, had high validity, and were in
some cases more motivating than paper-and-pencil based tests.

Computer Adaptive Tests (CATs)

Computer-adaptive tests (CATs) are technologically advanced assessment measures

(Dunkel 1999) that have been used in L2 testing since the 1980s. They use sophis-
ticated algorithms to move examinees from one item to the next based on the
examinee’s performance on the last item (Sets or blocks of items used for adaptive
purposes are called testlets, and CATs that use them are called semi-adaptive tests).
Brown (1997, p. 46) outlined CAT advantages as such: “(a) the items are selected and
fitted to the individual students involved, (b) the test is ended when the student’s
ability level is located, and, as a consequence, (c) computer-adaptive tests are usually
relatively short in terms of the number of items involved and the time needed.” These
advantages help with large-scale administrations and keep test takers from being
overburdened by too items that are too easy or difficult. But, CATs have not taken
over the assessment arena as one might have expected them to.
The main arguments against building CATs are that they are time consuming to
build and costly to maintain (see Ockey 2009). CAT test developers need to
(a) understand how to use guidelines and blueprints in designing CATs, (b) use the
appropriate IRT model and algorithm for item or testlet selection and for test
completion rules, and (c) field-test the items to obtain statistical information on
each item’s calibration and performance (Dunkel 1999). Even with semi-adaptive
318 P.M. Winke and D.R. Isbell

tests, large databanks of items are needed, and items within those databanks need to
be revisited and refreshed on a regular basis. Fulcher (2005), while pointing out that
the 2005 version of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL, see www.
ets.org) is no longer adaptive, but rather has returned to a linear format, declared that
“the era of adaptivity in mass international language testing is dead,” mainly because
in such contexts, item pools cannot be large enough to thwart test-security breaches
(a point also argued by Ockey 2009). But the concept of test adaptivity is alive and
well. Mislevy et al. (2008) offered an expanded framework of adaptivity, including
adaptivity of test claims (construct and interpretations) and control locus (i.e., who
controls adaptations of the test form). CATs and semi-adaptive tests are still often
used (and appropriately so) in institutional language-placement-test contexts. And to
that end, commercially available test software, such as QuestionMark, Perception for
Web, OWL, and Qualtrics, which can be integrated into LMSs, offer adaptive
functions and templates that are easy to use and do not require sophisticated
computer-programming knowledge. Such programs are helping smaller institutions
and language programs afford the development of CATs for smaller test-taker
populations.

Major Contributions

Several books have been published on the specific issues in computerized L2 testing
(Dunkel 1990; Chalhoub-Deville 1999; Chapelle 2001; Chapelle and Douglas
2006); other books have contributed to the development of computerized L2 testing
by reporting on education and educational measurement issues that concern online
testing and CATs (Wainer 2000; Howell and Hricko 2006). Several books and papers
on task-based learning and assessment have described how technology can be
implemented during task work and within the procedures for measuring the out-
comes of tasks (Long 2015; Thomas and Reinders 2010). In addition, major CALT
contributors have recently produced excellent overview articles on CALT in general,
such as Ockey (2009) and Chapelle (2010).
Taylor (2004, p. 143) wrote that both washback (the effect the test has on
classroom curriculum) and impact (the consequences the test may have on test
takers, test score recipients, and society) from high-stakes tests must be measured
and monitored and stated that “interests in this area is likely to grow as the range and
use of high-stakes tests increase worldwide and the consequences of test use,
especially the valid and ethical use of test scores, come under greater scrutiny in
the public domain.” Taylor’s cautions related to test security proved oracular, as
there has been a series of cheating scandals in relation to high-stakes, computer-
based tests, and there has been a global boom in test-prep centers. In response to
cheating, technology-enhanced security measures have been introduced by CALT
providers such as ETS (photographic and video records), Pearson (biometrics) and
Duolingo (video records). Such security measures are likely to become more
widespread.
Computer-Assisted Language Assessment 319

Work in Progress

Several CALA projects currently underway demonstrate the field’s direction and
depth and show how CALA is changing the way in which we test foreign and second
languages. For example, the Assessment and Evaluation Language Research Center
(AELRC) at Georgetown University and the Center for Applied Linguistics in
Washington DC is developing short, online assessments (C-tests) to measure foreign
language proficiency for research purposes. The language C-tests under develop-
ment are in Arabic, Japanese, Russian, Portuguese, and Turkish, with plans for more
C-test language tests in the works. The Center for Applied Second Language Studies
(CASLS) at the University of Oregon partners with institutions to create e-portfolio
systems based on LinguaFolio Online (https://linguafolio.uoregon.edu/). The Center
for Language Education and Research (CLEAR) at Michigan State University
continues to develop and host Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) for language
teachers. The RIAs are online tools (such as the oral recording apps Conversations
and Video Dropbox) that teachers can use for online formative and summative
evaluation of students’ language learning progress.
Lancaster University is now hosting the extremely successful and often studied
DIALANG tests (tests in 14 European languages; see www.lancaster.ac.uk/
researchenterprise/dialang/about for more information). These online tests are
intended to provide feedback to learners and to give them suggestions for strategy
use and/or ways in which to improve their L2 ability, but researchers use them too to
estimate their participants’ proficiency levels.
The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL,
www.actfl.org) is currently expanding its suite of foreign language tests (for place-
ment testing, proficiency testing, and/or for selection purposes) at the novice through
superior level. Recently developed are reading and listening tests of Arabic, Man-
darin Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. The semi-adaptive functions of the tests allow
for a single user to take the test more than once throughout his or her foreign
language learning process; the items the Novice-level test taker is presented with
are different from those at the intermediate or advanced level. The same is true of
ACTFL’s online Oral Proficiency Interview by Computer (OPIc), although for the
OPIc, currently test takers must self-select the level of test that they will take, which
can be problematic if test takers have a poor idea of their proficiency.
Similarly, a computer-assisted screening tool (CAST), whose framework is the
result of a five-institution collaboration (ACTFL, Brigham Young University, CAL,
the Defense Language Institute, and San Diego State University), is currently
available for assessing speaking proficiency in nine languages, including Spanish,
French, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino (Tagalog), Arabic (Modern Standard), Iraqi
Dialect, Persian (Farsi), and English as a second language. All CASTs are stored
on the Language Acquisition Resource Center (LARC) server at San Diego State
University (https://larc.sdsu.edu/). Like the ACTFL tests, the CASTs can be regis-
tered for and completed online.
CAL offers a computer-based speaking and listening test for adult English-language
learners, the Basic English Skills Test Plus (BEST Plus; www.cal.org/bestplus).
320 P.M. Winke and D.R. Isbell

A paper-based BEST Literacy test assesses reading and writing skills. The BEST Plus is
unique in that the test administrator uses a laptop to show prompts to the test taker, then
swivels the laptop around to enter scores. In this way, the test is computer-based in every
way, yet the test taker needs no computer skills. CAL has developed BEST Plus
administration training materials and is working on a newer version of the test, the
BEST Plus 2.0.
The Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS, www.casls.uoregon.
edu) at the University of Oregon developed a CAT called the Standards-based
Measurement of Proficiency (STAMP), currently managed by Avant Assessments
(www.avantassessment.com/stamp4s.html). The test assesses the reading, writing,
and speaking of novice-low to intermediate-mid learners (based on the ACTFL
scale). STAMP tests are available for assessing Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin and
Cantonese), English, French, Hebrew, Japanese, Spanish, German, and Italian.
STAMP is used by institutions for program evaluation and placement, as well as
for general proficiency testing. Hindi, Italian, Swahili, and Yoruba versions are
currently being developed and will add significantly to the small cadre of
criterion-referenced LCTL tests for grades 7 through 12 and at postsecondary levels.
As evidenced by CALA works-in-progress, CALA does not only encompass the
direct testing of learners. The field of CALA extends to other areas of the assessment
realm, such as rater training. At the University of Auckland, an online training
program for essay raters was created as part of the Diagnostic English Language
Needs Assessment (DELNA) project (see www.delna.auckland.ac.nz/en.html), a test
battery with listening, reading, and academic writing skills assessment. Other com-
puterized rater training programs currently in existence include CAL’s Multimedia
Rater Training Programs (MRTP, www.cal.org/mrtp/index.html), which are CD-
ROM-based rater training programs that train raters how to score the CAL Simulated
or Computerized Oral Proficiency Instruments.

Problems and Difficulties

One of the interesting problems in computer-assisted language assessment is defin-

ing it succinctly given the large realm that it encompasses today. Computer-assisted
language assessment has been defined as “any test delivered via a computer or a
mobile device” (Suvorov and Hegelheimer 2014, p. 2). But this definition might be
ready to be put aside as it may leave out assessment types that are not, technically,
“delivered.” With the push in learning-oriented (formative) and task-based assess-
ments, language performances are often created and stored (in the case of wikis,
blogs, Google docs, videos, or podcasts) online. The assessment may be iterative,
with multiple versions of it contributing to a tracking of the student’s growth over
time. The notion that a single assessment event is delivered might be outmoded. For
example, Long (2015) explained that in a task-based language teaching, task-based
performance tests will not evaluate language as an object, rather, the tests will assess
a student’s ability to perform a task. He suggested that students should not be asked
to fill in missing words in a set of directions (for example, street directions or how to
Computer-Assisted Language Assessment 321

find the bathroom in a large building) if the ability to follow directions is the task to
be assessed. Nor should students be asked if a set of given directions is right or
wrong. Rather, the test taker may be given a digital recording (on an iPad or smart
phone) of real directions. The student might be instructed to start at a certain point
and then follow the directions. The student’s performance will be evaluated on
whether he or she followed the directions correctly and if he or she ended up at
the right destination. Long went on to describe that if logistics mandate it, the
assessment could be moved to a computer-game format. The gist is that tests and
testing systems are no longer just computer-assisted. Rather, they are technology-
infused. And assessment is not always a single event but rather it may be a string of
related events serving multiple purposes.
A debate in the field is the impact of video-based listening tests and how the
construct of listening can or should be defined in light of the added (visual) stimuli.
Wagner’s (2008, 2010) research has been influential and groundbreaking in fueling
this ongoing debate. The larger issue may be a divide between theorists who see
language as involving four, separate skills (reading, listening, writing, and speaking)
that can and should be tested separately, and theorists who view language as an
integration of multiple, intertwined modalities, including the interpretation of the
social context, which involves reading visuals such as gestures, facial expressions,
laughter, and body language.
Another major concern is the construct validity underlying computerized writing
tests. First, Gruba (2014) warned that new media (such as wikis, vodcasts, and blogs)
are widely used by language teachers in the development of students’ writing skills
(and cultural and content knowledge), but that language assessments using the same
new media lag far behind. His concerns are real, as reviews of recent CALL
applications (see Garrett 2009) including collaborative, academic web-based writing
projects (Kessler et al. 2012), wikis (Rott and Weber 2013) and blogs (Arslan and
Sahin-Kizil 2010), showed that CALL researchers tend to not mention how such
teaching tools and collaborative writing projects contribute to the language pro-
gram’s overall assessment plan. Second, writing on the computer is a cognitive
process that differs greatly from the cognitive process of writing on paper, and this
distinction has been a major concern among CALT researchers for some time. This
problem is more pronounced when the language being learned has a writing system
that is very different from the students’ native-language writing system. For exam-
ple, Chinese character writing (by hand) is a process that is as much of a memorized
motor skill as it is a complex cognitive skill. On the other hand, the process of typing
Chinese on a computer involves a step that uses the Romanized alphabet system to
locate and select the appropriate characters. Understanding how the cognitive
construct of writing is changed when the mode of test administration is changed is
an important endeavor. It is also important to ensure that the way writing is tested
matches the way writing is instructed in the language classroom. Testing companies
currently wrestle with how to put foreign language tests of writing online if potential
test takers may not have yet learned how to write in the language digitally.
As tests for foreign languages are moved online, applied linguists will need
investigate whether the testing mode interacts with any individual differences and
322 P.M. Winke and D.R. Isbell

whether that interaction contributes to construct-validity issues (see Chen et al. 2011,
who found computer-based writing tests disadvantaged certain subgroups, such as
the economically disadvantaged). Recently, research on CALT validity has been
conducted on different populations of language-test-takers, such as young children.
For example, Ballard and Lee found that online oral tests for children ages 7–10 that
had countdown timers on screen were exorbitantly stressful for some of the children.
The unfamiliarity of the computer-based exam format also contributed to construct
validity issues. Porter (2015), writing for the Wall Street Journal, commented on the
negative washback effects of computer-based testing in the elementary grades of
schools. She noted that low socioeconomic status and low computer familiarity
impede the accurate online assessment of young learners. More CALT validation
studies are needed on child and adult populations with learning disabilities (see
Huang et al. 2011), physical disabilities (e.g., visual and auditory impairments; see
Hansen et al. 2005), low computer literacy (see Kpolovie et al. 2014), and socio-
economic disadvantages (see Hubbard 2013). These populations need to be studied
because as CALT becomes normalized, subgroups that before did not take CALTs
are now being mandated to do. The field needs research to assure that CALT is valid
for such subgroups.

Future Directions

The world of CALT will continue to develop, and this is seen “as a natural evolution
in assessment practice” (Dunkel 1999, p. 77). Tech-infused assessment planning is a
logical step. But a system of checks and balances is needed to assure that comput-
erized tests are increasing our ability to efficiently make valid inferences about
language learners’ abilities and weaknesses. We must ensure computerized tests
contribute overall to L2 programs and L2 learning. Computerized tests should not
just increase the efficiency of test administration and scoring but should also
accurately reflect the ways in which L2s are learned and should appropriately take
advantage of advances in technology to make for better testing conditions not just
different ones (Chapelle and Douglas 2006). A promising, though relatively young,
form of CALT that explicitly promotes L2 learning is computerized dynamic
assessment (C-DA). C-DA measures ability, like traditional tests, but adds mediation
and a focus on how learners respond to it (Poehner and Lantolf 2013). For example,
Teo (2012) used the Viewlet Quiz 3 platform in a classroom setting to provide
students with C-DA supporting inferential reading skills, leading to skill growth and
metacognitive strategy development. Continued efforts in C-DA should yield lan-
guage learning insights and inform classroom practices.
The scoring of essays (and soon, extended speech) will continue to be an issue in
the CALT environment for some time. However, as mentioned above, research has
shown promise in the use of computers for rating essays, especially when the
computer-generated scores are used as part of tutoring or in conjunction with
human-produced scores. The next steps in CALT will involve making computer-
infused tests more feasible and valid for all populations, including learners of
Computer-Assisted Language Assessment 323

languages that have differing scripts (e.g., French-speaking learners of Nepali),

young-child language learners, and computer-illiterate adults.

Cross-References

▶ Distance Education for Second and Foreign Language Learning

▶ History and Key Developments in Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language
Learning (ICALL)

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Margaret E. Malone: Developing Instructor Proficiency in (Oral) Language

Assessment. In Volume: Second and Foreign Language Education

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 Part IV
Gaming, Virtual Worlds, and Social Network
Sites for Language Learning
Digital Games and Second Language
Learning

Hayo Reinders

Abstract
As interactive, multimodal, immersive, and extremely popular environments,
digital games have received increasing interest from educators in recent years
for their potential to enhance the language learning experience, both inside and
outside the classroom. Review studies from general education have confirmed
that “playing computer games is linked to a range of perceptual, cognitive,
behavioral, affective and motivational impacts and outcomes” (Connolly et al.
Computers & Education 59(2):661–686, 2012) although this depends on the
subject matter (Young et al. Review of Educational Research 82(1):61–89,
2012). Early studies in the area of language acquisition have demonstrated
positive effects of game play on motivation, willingness to communicate, lan-
guage socialization, and a range of other factors involved in the language learning
process. As a relatively new field, however, there are significant gaps in the
available literature, and many worthwhile areas remain yet to be explored. In
this article, I will describe how research into digital games relates to earlier
research on game-based learning, primarily with younger learners, before
discussing the key areas in which studies have been carried out and their most
important findings. The following sections discuss some of the challenges faced
by the field and suggest future directions for research and development in this
field.

H. Reinders (*)
Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
KMUTT, Bangkok, Thailand
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 329

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_26
330 H. Reinders

Keywords
Digital gaming • Game-based language learning

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
Game-Based Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
Major Contributions and Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
The Affordances of Digital Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
Research on the Effects of DGBLLT: Language Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Research on the Effects of DGBLLT: Affective Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
Critical Appraisal and Future Directions for Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340

Introduction

As interactive, multimodal, immersive, and extremely popular environments, digital

games have received increasing interest from educators in recent years for their
potential to enhance the language learning experience, both inside and outside the
classroom. Review studies from general education have confirmed that “playing
computer games is linked to a range of perceptual, cognitive, behavioural, affective
and motivational impacts and outcomes” (Connolly et al. 2012: 661), although this
depends on the subject matter (Young et al. 2012). Early studies in the area of
language acquisition have demonstrated positive effects of game play on motivation,
willingness to communicate, language socialization, and a range of other factors
involved in the language learning process. As a relatively new field, however, there
are significant gaps in the available literature, and many worthwhile areas remain yet
to be explored. In this article, I will describe how research into digital games relates
to earlier research on game-based learning, primarily with younger learners, before
discussing the key areas in which studies have been carried out and their most
important findings. The following sections discuss some of the challenges faced by
the field and suggest future directions for research and development in this field.

Early Developments

Game-Based Learning

Research in digital game-based language learning and teaching (DGBLLT) is linked

to a much older interest in the role of play in language learning and in education in
general. Before describing research on DGBLLT then, it is important to understand
what is meant by “play” and how game play impacts development and language
learning.
Digital Games and Second Language Learning 331

Play is a natural process of learning whereby children develop physically, cogni-

tively, emotionally, and socially through problem-solving and perseverance. In an
influential early study, Bruner (1972) showed that children who had opportunities to
play with objects achieved similar to higher problem-solving skills than children who
had not but also that they developed greater tolerance in trying to solve problems and,
in dealing with difficulties in doing so, were more creative and had more positive
attitudes. In addition to helping children’s general cognitive and social development,
play also has an important role in the development of L1 language skills. Vygotsky’s
work has been particularly important in recognizing how play allows children to make
meaning based on resources (real or imagined) in their immediate context to express
feelings and to share intentions and ideas with other children, even in the absence of
fully developed language ability. For example, where a gap in children’s interlanguage
exists, the use of physical objects or movement can make up for this. This not only
allows for meaning to be expressed but for collaborative construction and scaffolding
of language to occur (Weininger and Daniel 1992). As Widdowson (2001, p. 137)
notes, “the playground culture is almost exclusively oral,” and this oral aspect requires
children to seek ways to express themselves verbally. A good example of an oral play
activity is a narrative, which, Seach (2007) argues, provides two key elements in
children’s language development: context and meaningful communication. Play part-
ners facilitate children to share their play experience with each other and implicitly
acquire vital pragmalinguistic knowledge. Play activities allow children to transfer
skills and knowledge to solve problems, discover, and analyze ongoing processes to
develop language skills and strategies. Frost et al. (2001) show how children use
metalinguistic ability when talking about their play. Language assists children in
structuring and understanding the meaning of their experiences and emotions and
recognizing and making sense of their sensory faculties; in other words, play, language
use, language development, and children’s wider cognitive and social development are
closely linked.
The use of games in foreign language teaching goes back many decades (Lee
1979; Rixon 1981), both for younger learners as well as adults, with some going so
far as to see a vital role for games in the language classroom: “If it is accepted that
games can provide intense and meaningful practice of language, then they must be
regarded as central to a teacher's repertoire. They are thus not for use solely on wet
days and at the end of term!” (Wright et al. 1984, p. 1). The fact that non-digital
games are still popular can be seen from the fact that the latter book is now in its third
edition (2005) and from the many websites dedicated to ideas for language games for
teachers. The role of physical games in second language acquisition also continues
to be explored (Tomlinson and Masuhara 2009).
The advent of gaming consoles and games designed for personal computers
certainly increased interest in game play by people of all ages and hence by
educators in general. As a result, games are now no longer seen as only appropriate
for children or in private settings but incorporate the wide range of genres found in
adult forms of communication, including ones unique to the gaming environment.
However, despite vast differences between games, they share a number of charac-
teristics. Prensky (2001) argues that most games involve the following:
332 H. Reinders

1. Rules
2. Goals and objectives
3. Outcome and feedback
4. Conflict, competition, challenge, and opposition
5. Interaction
6. The representation of a story.

These are also characteristics of many successful language teaching environments

and indeed (perhaps with the exception of the “representation of a story”) of task-
based language teaching, in particular as related to the use of technology (see
Thomas and Reinders 2010, for a collection of papers on technology in task-based
language teaching).
Another characteristic of many commercially produced recreational digital games is
their complexity, with many games including extremely elaborate story lines, multiple
characters, complex problems to solve, and plot twists. This complexity was initially
not found in games designed for use in education (sometimes referred to as “edutain-
ment”). Often limited to simple vocabulary exercises with the addition of a points
system, many such games do not meet the criteria proposed by Prensky and others.
As for the theoretical underpinnings of DGBLLT, sociocultural theory has played
a particularly important role in the implementation of games in education (Ma et al.
2011) and specifically in the area of language education (Lantolf and Thorne 2006;
Thorne 2008). In particular, collaborative games such as massively multiplayer
online role-playing games (MMORPGs), in which people play with and against
others online, and simulation games, in which players create and communicate in
virtual worlds, create many opportunities for collaboration and competition and rich
opportunities for exposure to L2 input as well as opportunities for L2 output and
interaction, all of which have rich theoretical bases in second language acquisition
research (e.g., Krashen on L2 input, 1982; Swain on output, 1985; Long 1981).
Another aspect of games in education is the additional control they give learners over
the learning process (Butler et al. 2014), for example, by allowing players to choose
different levels, avatars, scenes, and so on. Such control has been linked to (the
development of) learner autonomy, which in turn has been linked to language
acquisition (Benson 2013). A final theoretical basis comes from the fields of
embodied and grounded cognition (Clark 2001; Gibbs 2006), which highlight the
importance of our body, either virtual or real, in cognition. New developments in
virtual reality are likely to increase interest in this area in the future.

Major Contributions and Work in Progress

The Affordances of Digital Games

In order to understand the benefits of digital games in language learning and

teaching, it is helpful to consider existing research in terms of the ways in which it
attempts to draw on the affordances (or: context-dependent potential benefits
Digital Games and Second Language Learning 333

(Van Lier 2004) that digital games offer. In Gee’s view, digital games are “problem
solving spaces that use continual learning and provide pathways to mastery through
entertainment and pleasure” (Gee 2009, p. 65). Gee (2003) argues that good digital
games incorporate learning principles and have a variety of design features that “are
particularly relevant to language learning” (Gee 2012, p. xiii). In his 2003 book, the
list of 36 of these principles, including, to name a few, “the active, critical learning
principle,” which argues that all aspects of the learning environment are set up to
encourage active and critical, not passive, learning, and the “psychosocial morato-
rium,” which describes an environment in which learners can take risk and where
real-world consequences are lowered. The “practice principle” holds that learners get
a great deal of practice in a context where that practice is not boring. Gee found these
and other principles to be common in most of the digital games he looked at, and
they provide a helpful lens to investigate the potential benefits of games.
Reinhardt and Sykes (Reinhardt and Sykes 2012; Sykes and Reinhardt 2012)
propose a framework for understanding the different roles that games can play in
language research and practice, as game-enhanced, game-based, or game-informed,
where the former uses games designed for entertainment purposes, game-based
involves the use of educational games, and game-informed uses game play princi-
ples only. Each of these may raise different learning and teaching questions, such as
how game-enhanced learning happens in informal language learning or how certain
game designs afford particular learning behaviors (see also Reinhardt and Thorne
2016).
Whitton distinguishes between eight roles for games, i.e., learning with enter-
tainment games, learning with educational games, learning inspired by games,
learning within games, learning about games, learning from games, learning through
game creation, and learning within game communities (2014, p.4–5). Another
distinction can be made between studies that investigate primarily the effects of
game (-enhanced, -based, -informed) learning on either L2 acquisition or on affec-
tive factors involved in L2 learning. We use this broad distinction below to report on
some of the key studies in the field.

Research on the Effects of DGBLLT: Language Acquisition

Studies on the effects of game play on language acquisition are somewhat limited.
One of the reasons is that the use of digital games is usually a complement to existing
courses, and as such, it is difficult to control for all the variables that can have an
effect on learning outcomes. Most studies attempting to investigate acquisition have
instead (at least in part) focused on opportunities that games afford for exposure to
and interaction in the target language, on the assumption that these underlie language
acquisition. For example, a pilot study by Rankin et al. (2006) investigated interac-
tion between four ESL students in the MMORPG “EverQuest II” in an attempt to
determine if participation in the game could foster students’ English language
proficiency and knowledge of new vocabulary. In this study, students participated
in eight gaming sessions held over a period of 4 weeks. The findings demonstrated
334 H. Reinders

that students increased target language vocabulary output by 40% as a result of

interaction with non-player characters and produced a remarkable 100% increase in
target language chat messages during social interaction between players. The social
interaction among players in EverQuest II was further examined by Rankin et al.
(2009). The authors took a closer look at the in-game dialogues between eight native
and 18 non-native speakers and language socialization in MMORPGs. The findings
revealed that ESL students significantly increased their target language output by
interacting with their native speaker interlocutors. The findings also suggested that
EverQuest II, and possibly MMORPGs in general, encouraged L2 interaction as the
players must be active learners and engage with other learners within the
environment.
These findings were partly borne out by a recent study by Scholz (2016), who
used the popular MMORPG “World of Warcraft” in an extramural setting with
14 learners of German as a foreign language in Canada, to determine the impact of
game play on language development. Data was derived from both in-game experi-
ences and out-of-game conversations over a period of 4 months, without any
instruction or intervention on the part of the researcher other than three focus-
group meetings with other learners over this period, held in German. This is
therefore one of the few studies that were carried out in an informal setting and
that took place over a (relatively) long period of time. It was found that the game
environment was beneficial to the participants’ language development and that in
particular the process of transferring linguistics constructions encountered in the
game environment to a non-game environment (during the focus-group sessions)
played an important role in this.
Whether active engagement associated with gaming activity has downsides was
one of the concerns of de Haan et al. (2010), who investigated the effect of using a
music video game on vocabulary recall. In their study, 80 Japanese university
undergraduates were paired with one student playing a music game for 20 min
while the other simply observed. A vocabulary recall test and a measure of cognitive
load, followed by a delayed vocabulary recall test 2 weeks later, showed that all
participants had learned some of the targeted vocabulary but the players significantly
less so than the observers. The authors attribute this to the greater cognitive load
imposed on the players. A similar study by Mohsen (2016), however, found the
opposite: players outperformed observers.
A feature of much game-based learning is that it takes place in out-of-class
settings. Sundqvist and Sylvén have produced multiple studies describing the
ways in which Swedish learners make use of various media and games in
non-formal extramural settings and how this impacts on their acquisition of English
vocabulary. The first of these studies (Sylvén 2004) was a longitudinal study into the
effects of content and language integrated learning on vocabulary development
among upper secondary school learners. One of the main factors found to affect
acquisition was the use by students of digital texts and environments outside of
school. To investigate what types of texts were most beneficial, a second study was
conducted among secondary school learners (Sundqvist 2009, 2011). In this study, it
was found that out of school activities were positively correlated with L2 acquisition
Digital Games and Second Language Learning 335

and that in particular, more “active” types of activities such as use of the internet and
playing video games were more strongly correlated than more passive activities such
as watching TVor listening to music. Boys were found to engage more in the former,
girls more in the latter. A jointly authored third study focusing on 12-year-olds
(Sylvén and Sundqvist 2012) confirmed these findings, and a fourth study with
10-year-olds showed broadly similar findings (Sundqvist and Sylvén 2014).
One way of enhancing participation is to involve the learners in the design of
game-based activities. In this vein, Butler (2015) reports on a study that investigated
the use of games with young learners. In her study, 82 learners of 11–12 years of age
were asked first to identify vocabulary-learning elements in existing instructional
games they found attractive and to then design story boards for computer games that
could be used to teach vocabulary to their younger peers. Although this study did not
investigate language acquisition per se, it does give insight into the process by which
(young) learners identify useful features of games and the way they can incorporate
them into building their own learning environments.

Research on the Effects of DGBLLT: Affective Factors

A meta-analysis of the effects of digital games in educational (but not language-

learning-specific) contexts by Vogel et al. (2006) showed that its main benefits were
in the affective realm. It is perhaps not surprising then that most studies in DGBLLT
have investigated features such as student engagement, motivation, and anxiety. A
further role has been identified in games helping to facilitate learners’ language
socialization (e.g., Duff,2007; Tarone 2007) and the development of their social
identity in and through games (Thorne and Reinhardt 2008).
Anyaegbu et al. (2012) tested the above assumptions by investigating the effect of
the game “Mingoville” on the motivation, engagement, and interest of young
Chinese learners of English. The qualitative findings of the study indicated that the
majority of the students were motivated to learn English with Mingoville because the
game was fun for them and made them feel relaxed and avoided making them lose
face. This was shown in the amount of collaboration the learners engaged
in. However, there were some students who reported that the experience was
demotivating because they either found playing the game boring or generally did
not like games. This supports Whitton’s (2007, 2011) view that employing games for
motivational purposes alone is not sufficient justification for their use because they
might not be motivational for all students, particularly students in higher education.
Dalton and Devitt (2016) found a similarly positive attitude towards games in
education with a group of 25 primary school learners of Irish. In their study, they
developed a 3D game using the Open Sim platform that incorporated a number of
collaborative storytelling tasks. An interesting finding from their study is that
for these younger learners, goal orientation was one of the most important aspects
of the experience, whereas many games (and in particular virtual worlds) give
players a great deal of choice, the 9–11-year-old learners said they preferred more
structure.
336 H. Reinders

Taking a slightly different approach, and focusing on interaction in the L2,

Peterson (2010, 2011) showed that the highly learner-centered nature of the inter-
action provided by network-based games, the anonymity and the reduced inhibition
provided by personal avatars, and the reduction of paralinguistic cues in real-time
chat are characteristics that may reduce anxiety and improve self-confidence. Sub-
sequent studies by Peterson (2012a, b) focused specifically on learner interaction and
attitudes in MMORPGs. In his qualitative study (Peterson 2012a) of the use of the
MMORPG “NineRift,” six Japanese EFL university students participated in two
gaming sessions, lasting approximately 90 min each, which were held 1 week apart.
Peterson obtained data from learners’ chat messages exchanged during game play,
researcher observations, filed notes, learner responses to pre- and post-study ques-
tionnaires, and interviews. The findings indicated that learners actively participated
in the game, utilized different types of strategy to manage their interaction, under-
took collaborative dialogues exclusively in the L2, and had positive attitudes,
claiming that interaction in MMORPGs was engaging, motivating, and enjoyable
and improved their fluency and discourse management practice. In a later study,
Peterson (2012b) investigated the linguistic and social interaction and attitudes of
four intermediate Japanese EFL university students in the MMORPG “Wonderland.”
Participants were engaged in four sessions, lasting approximately 70 min each and
held once a week over a period of 1 month. Similar to the findings from the earlier
study, participants used a range of strategies and conducted their interaction exclu-
sively in the target language. Moreover, participants provided largely positive
feedback, claiming that interaction in MMORPGs, in combination with the ano-
nymity provided by the use of pseudonyms and avatars, helped to reduce anxiety
levels and encouraged opportunities for taking risks in using the target language and,
thus, creative and extensive use of the language.
Zheng et al. (2009) investigated the role of the virtual environment “Quest
Atlantis” in English language learning. The authors examined the interaction and
collaborative construction of cultural and discourse practices between two native
speakers and two non-native speakers of English. They were paired and were
requested to work collaboratively over a 10-week period. Data was collected through
participant observation, post-quest interviews, and an analysis of chat logs and
emails. It was found that participation in the game allowed learners to engage in
authentic and meaningful interaction with the native speakers while closely
cooperating with each other to complete the quests, enabling them to gain knowledge
from a more knowledgeable/experienced game player through action. That is, native
speakers were able to share their linguistic knowledge with language learners, and
language learners were able to share cultural information regarding the quests while
chatting with the native speakers in the game. This interaction was conceptualized as
negotiation for action and perceived as an extension of the concept of negotiation for
meaning. The findings suggested that negotiation for action could contribute to the
potential for greater cultural awareness as well as increased mutual collaboration and
cultural identity as a means to successful quest completion. The learners who
participated in this study recognized that negotiation of action was a type of interac-
tion that was unavailable in their learning experiences in the language classroom.
Digital Games and Second Language Learning 337

Willingness to communicate (WTC), or individuals’ “readiness to enter into

discourse at a particular time with a specific person or persons, using a L2”
(MacIntyre et al. 1998, p. 547) has received a great deal of attention in L2 research
in recent years, and the effects of digital games on WTC have also been investigated.
In a study of 30 Thai learners of English as a foreign language enrolled in a
university language course, Reinders and Wattana (2016) took the “game-enhanced”
approach one step by further by adopting a commercially available and very popular
online role playing game called Ragnarok. The game was completed during six
90-min lessons playing Ragnarok. The game had been installed on a private server
and was thus only available to participants in the study and modified to include
special instructions or quests (missions that players are assigned to accomplish in
order to get items and progress in the game) designed to encourage collaboration and
communication. To gauge participants’ WTC, a series of questionnaires was
designed, adapted from MacIntyre et al.’s (2001) WTC scale and previous studies
on language and communication anxiety (Horwitz et al. 1986; McCroskey and
Richmond 1982) and perceived competence (Compton 2004; MacIntyre and Charos
1996). These asked respondents about their (own perceptions of their) willingness to
use English, as well as their confidence, anxiety, and perceived communicative
competence in communicating in English. The questionnaires were administered at
the start of the course and again after six gaming sessions. Results on the first set of
questionnaires showed that students had low confidence, high anxiety, low perceived
competence, and low WTC. The second set of results showed a marked and
significant improvement, with participants feeling more confident, less anxious,
more competent, and more willing to communicate. The authors argue on the basis
of these results that the careful construction of tasks that draw on the affordances of
games can have a positive effect on the language learning process.

Problems and Difficulties

The research on DGBLLT faces a number of challenges, which can broadly be

categorized as operational, pedagogical, and methodological. In the first category
fall issues related to privacy, safety, and security, as well as concerns by parents and
other stakeholders about the appropriateness of games in educational settings. These
concerns are not to be underestimated as they have a major impact on how, or if,
games are used.
Also in the category of operational challenges fall technical issues. Many teachers
may not be familiar with game play and as such lack the skills and interest to play
games, let alone coach others. A number of the studies described above involved
some sort of manipulation of the game environment, which requires a level of
technical skill that many teachers will not have. At a practical level, games can be
expensive, either because they need to purchased or licensed and also because some
types of games (such as MMORPGs, or massively multiplayer online role playing
game) require fast processors and graphics cards, headphones and microphones, etc.
338 H. Reinders

In the second category fall pedagogical challenges. In most of the studies reported
above, the researchers were also the teachers delivering the game-based instruction.
For most teachers, who may not be as interested in DGBLLT, the use of games would
be a significant learning experience and the integration of games into an existing
curriculum a considerable challenge. Advocates of “gamification,” or the use of
gaming principles in education, argue that many examples of the use of games are
merely add-ons to existing classes that do not challenge current practice. The impact
of these issues on the effects of DGBLLT has not yet been carefully documented.
Methodological challenges include ways in which researchers can control for the
novelty factor of introducing games in the classroom. Although it could be argued
that for most learners, games are not new, their use in an educational setting often is,
and this in itself may give rise to a (temporary) excitement, which may translate in
higher motivation and even greater learning outcomes.
Partly because of the operational and pedagogical issues described above, most
studies on game play are relatively short. Although this is an argument that could be
made against most of the research in language learning and teaching, in DGBLLT
research, it is all the more important to conduct longitudinal studies that can minimize
the novelty effect. In studies that look at game play in out-of-class settings, it is
important to monitor the amount of time learners interact in the target language, as
otherwise any benefits could be attributed simply to greater time-on-task rather than
game play itself (although it could be argued that if game play causes learners to spend
more time interacting in the target language, for example, because they enjoy such
language use more than other forms, then this is a worthwhile benefit in and of itself).
A challenge with much research on DGBLLT is that it takes place (either entirely,
or in part) outside of formal settings. This can make data collection difficult (both for
practical as well as privacy reasons). At the same time, this challenge is one that
needs to be taken up if language researchers are to get a full understanding of the
entirety of the language learning process.
Finally, relatively little research has been carried out on the effects of DGBLLT on
language acquisition. Most studies look at affective factors, such as motivation,
engagement, and willingness to communicate. Although these are fruitful and
important areas of inquiry, it is important ultimately to link these to better learning
outcomes. Many studies are able to make tentative predictions at best. For example,
Reinders and Wattana (2015) make the reasonable assumption, based on existing
literature, that an increase in WTC will be beneficial to language acquisition and that
because they were able to establish an impact of game play on an increase in
participants WTC, games are likely to have a positive role in language acquisition;
however, they did not prove this link. Similarly Turgut and İrgin (2009) showed
increased strategy use from game play, and again, although there may well be a
positive link between strategy use and language acquisition, this is not certain, and
no direct benefit to learning could thus be established. A final example is offered by
Lee and Gerber (2013), who conducted a digital ethnographic study in which
interactions between one of the researchers and a Korean ESL learner on a study
abroad program in the United States in the online role-playing game World of
Warcraft were recorded over a period of 1 year, using transcripts of in-game chat
Digital Games and Second Language Learning 339

and screencast software. The researchers documented changes in the learners’ use of
language over this period. It was evident from the transcripts that many of the
in-game situations prompted interest in and a need for developing certain types of
language in order to successfully compete in the game. In this sense, the game
provided an environment for genuine communication, and this motivated the learner
to develop his language. However, it is difficult to attribute such changes to game
play per se, in particular in a second language situation. Clearly, significant chal-
lenges lie ahead for the field.

Critical Appraisal and Future Directions for Research

The current state of the field allows us to draw some early, tentative conclusions
about the possible role of DGBLLT in language education and – to a lesser extent –
its impact on language acquisition. It is clear from the above selection of studies that
games play a role in affective aspects of language learning that have, in turn, been
shown to be related to language acquisition. Games have been demonstrated to
increase motivation, lower anxiety, and to increase engagement and willingness to
communicate.
However, the learning experience through digital games is not yet fully under-
stood. A key challenge for future studies is to make strong links with what we
already know about (language) learning and teaching and the (potential) role of
digital games in this. Reichle (2012), for example, advocates building on studies of
memory processes, Jackson et al. (2012) on research into strategy instruction, and
Reinders and Wattana (2012) on studies of interaction and willingness to communi-
cate. Other potentially fruitful areas include the role of teacher and peer feedback, the
occurrence of focus on form in informal settings, and the quality and quantity of
input and opportunities for extended output in game settings. As Scholz (2016,
p. 268) argues, research that goes beyond learners’ reflections and that instead looks
directly at learners’ experiences (including their linguistics experiences) is vital for a
better understanding of the relationship between DGBLLT and acquisition.
Another challenge for the field is to better identify those aspects of games that
influence the language learning process. As Garris et al. (2002) summarize: “there is
little consensus on game features that support learning, the process by which games
engage learners or the types of learning outcomes that can be achieved through game
play” (p. 442). Wilson et al. (2009) argue:

Yet it is still under debate as to which particular aspects of a game lead to learning of any
kind. Do the motivating aspects lead to active participation or does the active participation
increase motivation? And what specific learning outcomes can be achieved? Without
evaluation of the impact of games on specific learning outcomes, games will continue to
be categorized largely as motivating and fun, but instructionally useless (p. 221).

Their call for a better understanding of the relationship between game attributes
and learning outcomes has not yet been comprehensively taken up, at least not in the
340 H. Reinders

area of language education. Similarly, for such an effort to be successful, multiple

research approaches are likely to be necessary.
Despite these concerns, digital games offer a promising environment for language
acquisition and deserve greater attention from researchers in the years to come. As
games become more embedded in our lives, including those of teachers, their
presence in the educational process is likely to grow. The challenge for teachers
and researchers is to identify and build on the affordances they offer to best support
the language learning process.

Cross-References

▶ Dialogicality, Ecology, and Learning in Online Game Worlds

▶ Educationally Designed Game Environments and Feedback
▶ Virtual Worlds and Language Education

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Dialogicality, Ecology, and Learning
in Online Game Worlds

Dongping Zheng and Kristi Newgarden

Abstract
This chapter presents an action-oriented understanding of second language
(L2) learning, occurring in play associated with massively multiplayer online
games (MMOG), such as World of Warcraft (WoW) or EverQuest, and multiuser
virtual environments, such as Second Life or Active World. In particular, we
focus on research that represents what we term an ecological, dialogical, and
distributed (EDD) perspective on language learning. The chapter emphasizes
research that views language learning as embodied, situated, dynamic, and
values-realizing, and is organized around the following questions: (1) how do
studies of L2 learning with games and virtual environments treat context?, i.e., as
input versus as sites with affordances for a range of action potentials; (2) what is
the unit of analysis?, i.e., individual perception versus perception and action
cycles or turn-by-turn utterances versus coacted communicative projects;
(3) how is language theorized?, i.e., language seen as a code versus differentiation
between real-time languaging (accounting for both language and actions) and
prescriptive lexicogrammars and discourse-semantic regularities; (4) how is
interactivity analyzed?, i.e., using transcription of utterances or text chat versus
using transcriptions of language and actions from dynamic multimodal texts. We
conclude with a discussion of future directions in EDD research.

Keywords
Ecological • Dialogical • Distributed perspective • Multiplayer online games •
Multiuser virtual environments • Second language learning

D. Zheng (*)
University of Hawaii, Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
K. Newgarden
Charter Oak State College, New Britain, CT, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 345

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_27
346 D. Zheng and K. Newgarden

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
Early Developments: Emergence of the Ecological View in Call Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
Theoretical Advancement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
Methodological Advancement and Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
Full-Blown Ecological-Dialogical-Distributed Game Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Recent Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357

Introduction

From an ecological, dialogical, and distributed (EDD) perspective, language learning is

embodied, situated, dynamic, and values-realizing. In tracing the development of EDD
views applied to second language (L2) learning with technologies that afford avatar
embodiment, this chapter promotes an action-oriented understanding of L2 learning, i.e.,
as it takes place in the dynamics of play in massively multiplayer online games
(MMOG), such as World of Warcraft (WoW) or EverQuest, and multiuser virtual
environments, such as Second Life or Active Worlds. Research taking an EDD view
of language has investigated the educational potentials of multiplayer online environ-
ments, highlighting them in a way that a traditional lens could not. This is in part due to
the EDD view that human values play a central role in language and cognition, grounding
all aspects of perceiving and action that involve intra- and inter-bodily movements. The
chapter centers on the following questions based on a review of the literature: (1) how do
studies of L2 learning with games and virtual environments treat contexts: as input versus
as sites with affordances for a range of action potentials; (2) what is the unit of analysis:
individual perception versus perception and action cycles or turn-by-turn utterances
versus coacted communicative projects; (3) how is language theorized: language under-
stood a code versus differentiation between real-time languaging (accounting for both
language and actions) and prescriptive lexicogrammars and discourse-semantic regular-
ities; and (4) how is interactivity analyzed: using transcription of utterances or text chat
versus using transcriptions of language and actions from dynamic multimodal texts. The
latter sections of this chapter focus specifically on game and virtual environment research
that elaborates and expands on the EDD approach.

Early Developments: Emergence of the Ecological View in Call

Literature

Computer assisted language learning (CALL), a subfield of applied linguistics with a

history of more than 50 years (Thorne and Smith 2011), has been influenced by the
digital games and learning research of the past two decades. Interest in games and
Dialogicality, Ecology, and Learning in Online Game Worlds 347

learning has been generated by critiques of schools (e.g., Gee 2003, 2013; Prensky
2001, 2006; Brown and Adler 2008), work on new literacies (e.g., Gee 2003; Shetzer
and Warschauer 2000), and studies of player participation in online game and
fan-fiction communities (e.g., Steinkuehler and Duncan 2009; Thorne et al. 2009).
Findings have pointed to high levels of player engagement, affordances for social
coordination and interaction, the formation of communities of knowledge-producers
(Squire 2012), and player-driven trajectories of learning that can influence and
improve upon school learning.
Between 2006 and 2009, a number of CALL researchers examining virtual
environments attributed L2 learning outcomes to social interaction, contextual,
participatory, and experiential functions. Experimental and quasi-experimental stud-
ies measured learners’ linguistic output, such as vocabulary gains and improvement
of affective factors. Due to their limited relevance to the EDD perspective taken in
this chapter, we will provide only a cursory review here (though see chapter
“▶ Virtual Worlds and Language Education,” by Sadler, this volume). Several
influential studies, such as Rankin et al. (2008), Rankin et al. (2009), and Zheng
et al. (2009), pointed to the value of social interactions between native speakers
(NS) and nonnative speakers (NNS) in gameplay in contributing to measurable
changes in L2 learners’ skills and affect. However, these researchers did not explore
the situated dynamics of learners’ actions and language.
A theoretical shift toward ecological and dynamic views can be traced to the
2009 special issue on CALL in the Modern Language Journal. Introducing the
issue, Lafford drew on the work of Lam and Kramsch (2003), Leather and Van
Dam (2003), and van Lier (2004) to frame her review of CALL trends from an
ecological perspective. While few studies had taken an ecological approach,
Lafford mentioned van Lier (2003), who investigated the contextual factors that
affect the efficacy of technology in project-based learning, Shin (2006), who
examined how context is configured in students’ language learning practices
through computer-mediated communication (CMC), and Zheng et al. (2009),
cited in the last section.
Leo van Lier deserves special mention for fully elaborating the ecological view of
L2 learning for the field of second language teaching and learning (L2TL) in his
2004 book, The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning. He conceptualized
L2 learning as a way of “relating more effectively to people and the world,” adding a
view of semiotics in which meaning-making is a dialogical process and the patterns
of language are shaped by history and culture rather than governed by a fixed system
of symbols and rules. In the ecological view van Lier (2004) delineated, contexts are
defining, the quality of learning experiences matter, diversity and variability are
acknowledged, and learning is activity in which movements, processes, and actions
are key. Processes, activity, discourse, and linguistic actions came into focus in the
following studies.
Reporting on a case study of WoW play by an American and a Ukrainian, Thorne
(2008) described WoW as a site for engaging meaningful communicative activities
and reported on players’ plurilingual conversations, collaboratively assembled repair
sequences, and distributed (alternating) opportunities for the performance of expert
348 D. Zheng and K. Newgarden

roles. In their 2009 study, Piirainen-Marsh and Tainio used conversation analysis to
illustrate how two teenaged L2 learners of English appropriated game resources such
as being able to playfully repeat nonplaying character voices and dialogue during
nonplaying segments of the online game Final Fantasy. The learners thereby
attended to prosody, constructions, and vocabulary while experimenting with
English-speaker identities. The authors looked at how learners used other-repetition
as a resource to attend to the game and to display their linguistic and interactional
competence.
Zheng et al. (2009), in a study of Quest Atlantis (QA) with Chinese middle school
students, reported on interaction data using sociocultural and ecological perspectives
and the perception and action cycle as the unit of analysis, concluding by identifying
a new construct, negotiation for action (NfA). By diverging from a commonly used
unit of analysis, i.e., sequential turns as in conversation analysis, Zheng et al. were
able to look at the dynamic alternating patterns between novice and expert roles.
With some similarity to Thorne’s (2008) findings, participants negotiated content
and identity in order to coordinate future movements. NfA is revolutionary when
compared with “negotiation for meaning,” which depends on the information trans-
fer model in which meaning is carried by words and their forms and not necessarily
by the content of game texts or activities, learners’ sociocultural histories or their
projected future actions.
The abovementioned studies explored L2 learners’ dynamic interactions, but the
analytical techniques adopted were limited by methodological constraints. The
authors made sense of NS and NNS interaction data; however, their analysis was
not yet fully ecological in accounting for action and context as part of meaning-
making. Actions such as jumping with joy alongside others in your gameplay party,
becoming invisible at a convenient moment, moving as a group through dangerous
castles, caves, or dungeons, and keeping other allied players healthy and alive are
emotional and make languaging in gameplay memorable and meaningful. This said,
almost all of the studies reviewed above looked for evidence of language learning
mainly by examining players’ text chat. Both Thorne (2008) and Zheng et al. (2009)
suggested the need for more “ecologically relevant participation frameworks”
(Thorne 2008, p. 28), including consideration of avatar-embodied actions and
temporal and spatial factors in future analyses.
Although van Lier’s seminal book appeared in 2004, few CALL studies took up
the ecological perspective as concepts such as “contexts are defining” were perhaps
too forward thinking. Instead, in many studies contexts were often treated as
containers, with environments as mere input, which limited what could be under-
stood about the complex structure of a 3D space inhabited and co-constituted by
those playing in it. But how can “contexts are defining” be applied in design of
research and materials, including activities designed within 3D spaces? What kinds
of data can capture the quality of learning experiences, learner variability, and
diverse learning trajectories? What analytical techniques can help us unfold the
learning process? These questions are in part answered in the contributions reviewed
next.
Dialogicality, Ecology, and Learning in Online Game Worlds 349

Major Contributions

A new wave of research appeared around 2012, including a special issue on Digital
Games for Language Learning in ReCALL (Cornillie et al. 2012). The studies aimed
beyond the “proof” aspect of research to challenge both CALL and second language
acquisition (SLA) through theoretical extension and methodological infusion of
dialogical and distributed perspectives.

Theoretical Advancement

A major rethinking of research on gaming and virtual environments was supported

by the distributed language (DL) movement. DL helped to expose the long-term
effects of written language bias (Linell 2005) and the code view of language (Love
2004) on applied linguistics, namely the prioritization of rules and misconception
that symbols and their meanings are disconnected from contexts. DL posits first-
order languaging as the dynamic meshwork of here-now coordination of actions,
language, and material artifacts that cannot be transcribed and analyzed only by
using second-order language or the symbols and words of written language.
Descriptive linguistics, such as lexicogrammar, and discourse-semantic regularities
are considered as historically accumulated second-order language that can be appro-
priated for use during first-order languaging (Thibault 2011).
DL built on ecological psychological standpoints, providing a framework to look
at dynamic action and interaction in terms of the synergistic activities of languaging
and making use of second-order resources. Also under the umbrella of DL, Bert
Hodges’s (Hodges 2007a, b, 2009) values-realizing theory strongly influenced the
studies that best represent the current stage of EDD perspectives on L2 learning.
Hodges’s (2009) theory of language as a perception, action, and caring system
underlies the view that conversing is not transfer of information, but rather a
means of way-finding and taking care of self and others, thus bringing in the critical
ethical dimension at the heart of Gibson’s (1979) ecological psychology (Hodges
and Baron 1992).

Methodological Advancement and Integration

Linell’s (2009) comprehensive work, Rethinking Language, Mind and World Dia-
logically, provided a new dynamic analytical framework for understanding commu-
nicative activities, namely Communicative Project Theory and Communicative
Activity Type (CAT) Analysis. CAT recognizes the situative and socio-institutional
boundaries of communication. As game rules of basketball differ from those of table
tennis, the communicative norms of a courthouse differ from those of an emergency
room. Thus communication is highly bound with socio-institutional norms, routines,
and roles. Sociocultural resources bridge the gap between situations and traditions
350 D. Zheng and K. Newgarden

(Linell 2009). Making uses of resources within and across CATs involves orienting
to situation transcending practices (Linell 2009, p. 49). In CAT, the unit of analysis is
the communicative project (CP). A CP is defined as a situated interaction that
“involves an implicit or overt co-action between two or more parties” (p. 193, Linell
2009), established by a minimum of three interacts in the pattern ABA, where the
initiator represents A and the responder(s) represents B.
The data-driven studies described next either took a descriptive approach or
stemmed from hypothesis testing, but the common methodology was multimodal
analysis using a transcription technique from Baldry and Thibault (2006). Game
player verbalizations, avatar actions and movements, and material artifacts in the
virtual environment are all transcribed as part of players’ meaning-making and
values realizing. By situating analysis of play activities within CAT, which assumed
certain game-specific grammars, and applying CP theory, the studies below were
able to answer research questions that the early studies could not.

Full-Blown Ecological-Dialogical-Distributed Game Studies

An initial theoretical piece suggested a rethinking of language learning in virtual

environments in dynamic EDD terms. To break free of computational concepts and
the code view of language and to take full educational advantage of virtual environ-
ments for L2 learning, Zheng and Newgarden (2012) called on L2TL to reconceive
four concepts at the core of widely held L2 theories, namely (1) from transfer to
coaction,(2) from input=output to affordances=languaging, (3) from tasks to
learning environments, and (4) from learning about to learning to be=become .
These proposed concepts were contrasted with common Second Life
(SL) pedagogies and dynamically operationalized with regard to SL features.
Using existing practices in SL as examples, Zheng and Newgarden (2012) advanced
the underlying assumption to EDD approaches that theory and practice are
co-defining. Specific examples from EDD models and research are discussed below.
Reporting on a descriptive multimodal analysis of adult learners of Chinese as an
L2 in a designed Chinese environment in SL, Zheng (2012) created the eco-dialog-
ical framework (Fig. 1). The framework built upon Linell’s (2009) dialogical
diamond-shaped model of semiotic activity, which extends C.S. Peirce’s triadic
model to include “the silent we,” i.e., the shared historical and sociocultural under-
standings that shape and are shaped by communicative interactions. Zheng inte-
grated the diamond with an outer model representing the main concepts from
ecological psychology (Gibson 1979; Reed 1996; Hodges 2007a, b, 2009), i.e.,
cognition as ongoing perceiving and acting to realize values by an agent in relations
with an environment.
Zheng (2012) also further developed Hodges’ (2007a) notion of language as a
caring, values-realizing system, and using CP (Linell 2009) as a unit of analysis,
described how multiscalar dynamics of perception, action, and caring systems
(Hodges 2007a, 2009) contributed to the skillful, rule-conforming languaging and
identity development. This was the first empirical research taking an EDD
Dialogicality, Ecology, and Learning in Online Game Worlds 351

Fig. 1 The eco-dialogical

model (Zheng 2012)

perspective that considered the holistic union of avatar action, verbal action,
material artifacts, and sociocultural norms.
In related research, Zheng et al. (2012) used a recorded WoW gameplay episode
from a semester-long course as data for a multimodal analysis of players’ coordinated
language and avatar actions. The authors utilized Transana (Woods and Fassnacht
2012) transcription and analysis software to generate visualizations of communica-
tive activities using CP as the unit of analysis. Key actions captured by audio and
video recordings were transcribed and coded with an abductive technique. Abductive
coding follows the reasoning of abduction (Peirce 1982; Magnani 2004, 2006) such
that coding begins with the visible results of the actions that are captured in
transcription of both verbal utterances and avatar actions and movements. The
transcript was parsed into CPs, which were each keyword coded. Keywords were
not predefined but emerged from following the theoretical framework and observable
communicative activities. Several ecological concepts, e.g., values realizing,
languaging, and skilled linguistic action were introduced and applied in an effort to
uncover WoW’s affordances for situated, embodied, distributed L2 learning. Voice-
enabled group play of WoW was found to provide a patterned periodicity of a range
of communicative activities (e.g., coordinating, negotiating meaning, seeking help,
expressing need, locating, apologizing) that developed as players coordinated proto-
typical WoW activities such as questing, traveling, and doing business in a city.
Zheng et al. (2012) also found that players realized multiple values through joint
communicative projects that were oriented to game culture, game goals and rules.
The studies described above (Zheng and Newgarden 2012; Zheng 2012; Zheng
et al. 2012) helped to shape a trans-disciplinary, theoretically holistic, and ecolog-
ically valid research agenda. This research facilitated efforts to design 3D gamelike
352 D. Zheng and K. Newgarden

spaces that support languaging and challenge educational models that were based on
“learning about” to cater instead to learners’ problem-solving potential and agency.
In van Lier’s terms, Zheng and her colleagues employed prolepsis in recognizing
that learners’ prior L1 language and cultural background are critical and founda-
tional resources for their future actions. This research also contributed to qualita-
tively understanding how L2 learners as players take advantages of what is offered in
virtual spaces.
Building on the studies reviewed above, the next research project was the first
attempt to test the eco-dialogical model using quantitative measures (Newgarden
et al. 2015). The purpose was to look at the relationships between the eco-dialogical
and distributed concepts of values realizing, languaging modality (verbalizing and/or
acting via an avatar), and skilled linguistic action. Zheng and Newgarden, sometimes
with colleagues and guidance from DL theorists, have collaboratively been devel-
oping an EDD view of L2 learning with a main goal of supporting L2 learners’
engagement in skilled linguistic action, which involves learners and practitioners
“managing activity under material and cultural constraints. As they [L2 learners] do
so, they link linguistic patterns (including ones shown in grammars and dictionaries)
with affect, artifacts and social skills” (Cowley 2012, p. 13).
To illustrate the relationship between skilled linguistic action and values realizing
manifested in a WoW gameplay episode, Newgarden et al. (2015) presented a
quantitative study of three adult English L2 learners and their ESL teacher.
Employing quantified categorical data from multimodal text transcription of voice
and video recordings and multinomial logistic regression, the authors developed a
statistical model for predicting the probability that players’ joint communicative
projects, which they enacted as they coordinated in virtual world activities, would
reflect wayfinding (getting information that helped them move forward in a positive
direction), orienting to we (attuning to a shared socioculture such as WoW or the L2),
or both of these values-realizing activities. The units of analysis were communica-
tive projects (CPs) (N = 133 from a 47 min gameplay episode) which, as discussed
above, are defined as a situated interaction involving implicit or overt coaction
between two or more parties (Linell 2009). The use of CPs was important because
each is a dialogically and ecologically accomplished project by at least two players,
so the raw data was not individually based utterances or turns of talk, but
co-established CPs. This treatment represents a move away from an individual-
based unit of cognition to dialogically based co-established projects. In addition,
by quantifying multimodal text data, the authors were able to test an updated theory
of values-realizing based on Hodges’ ecological account and Linell’s (2009) dialog-
ical orientation. The authors reported a reciprocal development between skilled
linguistic action, multimodal languaging (when verbalizing and avatar actions
were aligned), and values realizing. This development was attributed to agency
that was distributed in the open-ended game environment by players’ common
ground alignment (deploying language to orient jointly to objects or linguistic
features in the game) and prospective coordination (inviting others to move forward
together with a task). Multimodal languaging was found to predict communicative
projects that realized both wayfinding and orienting to a common socioculture. The
Dialogicality, Ecology, and Learning in Online Game Worlds 353

authors suggested this was evidence that multimodal languaging enriched the expe-
rience of conversing for these L2 learners (Newgarden et al. 2015).
Drawing on ecological and dialogical perspectives on language and cognition,
Zheng et al. (2015) showed how vocabulary learning took place in three distinct
situated co-questing examples. Using Zheng’s (2012) eco-dialogical model, they
illustrated language learning as appropriation of resources and as the result of
eco-dialogical embodiment. Through iterative multimodal analysis, vocabulary
learning became salient in both chat and avatar action data. To respond to a special
issue theme of “Embodied Cognition and Language Learning in Virtual Environ-
ments,” the authors treated embodiment as coaction between player–avatar and
player–player relations (Zheng and Newgarden 2012), as situative embodiment in
a perceptually and narratively rich context (Barab and Herring, 2007), and as a
dialogical achievement (Zheng 2012; Zheng et al. 2012).
Reflecting upon the findings of research undertaken over the past decade, we now
know more about L2 learners’ actions and interactivity in online games (and their
gamelike play in virtual environments) and the ways in which learning and knowing
are shaped. L2 learners are equipped with opportunities for a broad range of
communicative activities and agentive use of second-order language in problem
solving and coordination of gameplay. These empirical studies demonstrate the
power and potential of online gaming environments, particularly World of Warcraft
and similar multiplayer games, to augment, support, and in some cases, substitute for
L2 learning in other “real world” contexts.

Recent Work

Recent work in progress in the EDD framework has expanded in the breadth and
depth of investigations underway. In a study that was part of Newgarden’s multiple
manuscript dissertation completed in 2015, Newgarden and Zheng (2016) compared
three WoW gameplay episodes spanning a semester-long college course. By coor-
dinating recurrent prototypical WoW gameplay activities (questing, planning next
moves, traveling, learning a skill, etc.), which afforded multiple iterations of prag-
matic communicative activities, players learned to take more sophisticated skilled
linguistic action, requiring higher-level cognitive and linguistic skills. For example,
a recurrent languaging activity that became more salient was planning next moves,
which required knowledge of the WoW environment, knowledge of one’s skills and
importantly, predicational language. In addition, frequent activities were mapped to
Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) speaking proficiency descrip-
tors. Since CEFR descriptors often serve as the basis of L2 curricula, there was
evidence that informal gameplay engages players in the varieties of communicative
interactions that formal instruction seeks to facilitate.
In a second portion of her dissertation study that used the same WoW gameplay
episodes of a single group of players, Newgarden (2015) adopted Steffensen’s (2012)
dialogical system framework, finding that the group’s gameplay became more
coordinated over the timeframe of a 15-week game-centered course as players
354 D. Zheng and K. Newgarden

became more efficient at planning moves and completing more challenging quests.
As they probed the affordances of dialogical arrays (Hodges 2009), players’
co-agency and coactions meshed as a distributed cognitive system which balanced
the values of facilitating gameplay, making meaning, taking care of others and
having fun. Newgarden applied the linguistic style match metric (Gonzales et al.
2010) to test whether players’ spoken language within and across gameplay episodes
became more aligned as they coordinated gameplay activities. Linguistic alignment
was found to be higher in episodes of play in which interactions were more smoothly
coordinated. This finding lends support to Fusaroli and Tylen’s (2012) argument that
a dynamical framework can be applied in understanding how in situations of social
coordination, global linguistic patterns emerge and stabilize through a process of
local reciprocal linguistic alignment. This study also describes how designed features
of a game-centered course, including guided discussion and comparative reflection
on WoW culture and social values, opened affordances for conversational ease,
development of a class community, sociocultural and intercultural attunement, and
for L2 learners in particular, participation in multiple L2 communities of practice.
The following two studies stemmed from multimodal data of English learners
from China and US learners of Chinese in co-building activities in the open-ended
China World within the Atlantis Remixed (ARX) multiuser virtual environment.
Zheng et al. (2017) addressed the confluence of design in relation to space-time,
sociocultural places, activity, and virtual artifacts in a multiuser 3D virtual learning
environment (3D VLE). The authors designed open-ended problem-solving spaces
that encouraged meaning-making in situ, manipulation of virtual objects, and coor-
dination among players. By using a design-based research method, the authors
investigated how learners of Chinese and English coordinated on a project in
which they collaboratively decorated a virtual living room. The findings suggest
that socioculturally bounded places afford unique learning opportunities. Firstly,
learning occurred through referencing, which is the mutual clarification of a virtual
object’s meaning, position, and function, in relatively stabilized places, such as a
museum, and secondly, learning occurred through coordination between verbal
instruction and object manipulation in more adaptive places, which the authors
call eco-dialogical learning. The authors also found a strong relationship between
translanguaging and object manipulation. The authors conclude the paper from the
perspective of how the eco-dialogical model resulted in designs that promoted
cognition and interactivity.
In other recent research, Zheng and Cowley (in preparation) used cognitive event
analysis (Steffensen 2012) to trace pivotal moments and actions within a broader
context and flow of activity in a single episode of a co-building session in Atlantis
Remixed, analyzing the rise and use of opportunities for learning, as players
coordinated to construe situations, identify problems, and probe for solutions. The
study’s new contribution to the EDD perspective was the concept of manipulative
abduction. Similar to the aforementioned abductive technique for data coding,
manipulative abduction gives rise to the manipulation of objects, in that tinkering,
such as moving objects and avatar, or changing between first person and third person
perspectives, can provide insightful thinking for problems that are not solvable
Dialogicality, Ecology, and Learning in Online Game Worlds 355

through verbal information only. This manipulation, if simultaneously coupled with

verbal exchange and mixed language use, is called eco-dialogical translanguaging
from EDD viewpoints (Zheng et al. 2017).
Attributing action potentials to the open-endedness of activity design and virtual
environment technologies, the authors found that learners act as caretakers who draw
on manipulative abduction and are “pushed” to make sense of events by way of
translanguaging. Learning occurs as players create affordances, coact, and think
creatively. This study also offers an explanation of how learners make sense of an
activity, illustrating action-based learning in finer detail, with the implication that
L2TL should focus on helping learners develop the ability to engage in skilled
linguistic actions.

Problems and Difficulties

There are multiple obstacles preventing wider adoption of EDD research methods in
exploring L2TL with online games and virtual environments. The utmost challenge
is that many CALL studies follow classical SLA approaches, which are dominated
by individual-centered views of cognition. CALL game studies have made progress
in expanding the theoretical scope to consider social factors. However, many of these
studies follow a deductive approach to inquiry in which finding a result is the end
goal, or an inductive approach in which finding a pattern satisfies the curiosity
prompted by the initial research question. For example, in information-processing
approaches, participation in certain games and virtual environments led to gains in
the size of a learners’ vocabulary (Rankin et al. 2008).
The dominant methods of deduction and induction divide the field of second
language studies into those who discuss SLA and those who discuss second lan-
guage use using either psycholinguistic or sociolinguistic explanations that locate
language either in the brain or in a social domain. However, both approaches fall
short of providing a means to reach a full understanding of an L2 learner’s partic-
ipation in a social environment. The divisions in SLA between cognitive and social
approaches, which itself is an arguably problematic distinction, forms an arena that
may benefit from EDD methods and theoretical frames.
A second major obstacle for EDD research is the phenomenon that Linell (2005)
called “written language bias” and Harris (1981) called the “language myth,” both of
which continue to inform much L2LT research. The EDD view is that language is not
a code, but a human coordination system allowing language to flow and function
between people. A third obstacle is a lack of methodological advancement and
diversity. The new affordance layouts of 3D virtual spaces are quite different from
text-based or face-to-face interaction. 3D virtual spaces allow for person-to-person
interactions with and within a multimodal text (Baldry and Thibault 2006). The
complexity of virtual world technologies brings forth the need for new constructs
and research questions, which call for new methods of investigations.
A fourth major obstacle lies in “technology.” The fact that CALL follows
mainstream research is a rather controversial issue. Technology, in and of itself,
356 D. Zheng and K. Newgarden

has historically been a leading force in changing human communication and inter-
action behaviors, and hence, following the point above, new or adaptive investiga-
tive methods are needed. A final obstacle to the adoption of online games and virtual
worlds as language learning environments is an ethical one. Language learners have
a variety of linguistic and cultural resources at their disposal, some of which emerge
from engagement in online environments that have yet to be widely accepted as
appropriate or valuable in instructed language learning settings.

Future Directions

In the era of prevalent technology and multilingual diversity, the field of language
studies should respect L2 learners as whole beings with unique autobiographies,
cultural identities, and cognitive idiosyncrasies. Western science, dominated by the
Cartesian tradition of deductive reasoning, has been brought to task by those who
were unsatisfied with the linearity and nonapplicable results of controlled research.
From an EDD perspective, cognition depends on sense-saturated interactions
(Steffensen 2012) inclusive of brain and body and distribution between bodies,
challenging the mainstream view that takes the brain as the only organ of the
mind. However, brain-based theories fail to explain the full educational benefits of
gameplay and related (metagame) activities in game communities.
Theoretical advancement should be part of the CALL research agenda. There is a
shared sentiment among leaders in CALL (Lafford 2009; Garrett 2009; Bax 2003;
Thorne 2016; Thorne and Payne 2005; Zheng and Newgarden 2012) that an
indicator of progress for the field will be when CALL is no longer considered a
separate subfield, and instead, the suggestion is that technologies become a normal-
ized part of the everyday practices of L2TL. Future research with the intention of
advancing theory may focus on place-based learning, where learners can deploy both
virtual and real-world resources, and researchers are currently exploring how cog-
nition and communication are arrayed in these hybrid environments.
In a review article, Cowley and Zheng (2011) made a contribution to Linell’s
(2009) theory of dialogism by superimposing the philosophy of Daoism on the
dynamic nature of language on the one hand and code-like representations of
language on the other hand. The authors had no interest in taking sides or debating
the value of competing theories of language as cognitive or social, but, rather,
viewed the world as constantly unfolding from yin to yang and enfolding yang to
yin, constituting the opposite characteristics of duality, e.g., cold–hot,
water–mountain, moon–sun. Each characteristic gives rise to the other and both
interact to achieve the greater whole of Dao. We foresee that future work will include
more diverse perspectives in CALL game studies, especially those from
non-Western perspectives.
The EDD analytical frameworks reviewed here seek to build on techniques such
as multimodal text analysis (Baldry and Thibault 2006), use of a dialogical unit of
analysis such as communicative projects (Linell 2009), and application of the logic
of abductive reasoning (Magnani 2004, 2006). We raised new research questions
Dialogicality, Ecology, and Learning in Online Game Worlds 357

that challenge existing research models. This eclectic methodology can be applied to
new research agendas, e.g., (1) to investigate the affordances of technologies that
support embodiment in new ways, i.e., emerging virtual reality technologies and
integration of touchable, moveable, and even olfactory features in games; (2) to look
at processes of linguistic entrainment, coordination, and resonance (Hutchins 2000)
in investigating L2 learning as a distributed process; and (3) to explore how L2
learners contribute to functional, successful dialogical systems in the play of games
and virtual environments. Finally, EDD presents an ethical call to researchers and
educators to reconsider their subjects, participants, or students as human beings
living in socio-technologically entrenched worlds.

Acknowledgments We are very thankful for Steve Thorne’s thoughtful comments and feedback
which brought clarity and depth to the final version of the manuscript.

Cross-References

▶ Complexity Approaches to Computer-Assisted Language Learning

▶ Digital Games and Second Language Learning
▶ Educationally Designed Game Environments and Feedback
▶ Virtual Worlds and Language Education

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Educationally Designed Game
Environments and Feedback

Frederik Cornillie

Abstract
This chapter addresses the potential of educationally designed game environ-
ments and in particular that of game-generated feedback for encouraging, through
purposeful instructional design, learners’ engagement in the process of develop-
ing skills in a second or foreign language (L2). By reviewing the existing research
literature, it fleshes out the idea that gameful feedback may be a powerful design
element for engendering participant engagement in instructed L2 learning. We
define “engagement in game-based CALL” as learner behavior that is typified by
the following characteristics: (1) it is driven by intrinsic motivation; (2) it is
focused primarily on language meaning and communicative use; and (3) it
involves attention to linguistic form. The chapter reviews pioneer studies on
gameful engagement in CALL, describes recent research that addresses the role
of feedback in relation to designed engagement in CALL, and examines trends in
work in progress such as gamification, as well as problems in current research. We
conclude with challenges and directions for future research.

Keywords
Feedback • Online games • Mini-games • Engagement • Motivation • Computer-
assisted language learning (CALL)

F. Cornillie (*)
KU Leuven (University of Leuven), Kortrijk, Belgium
IMEC, Leuven, Belgium
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 361

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_28
362 F. Cornillie

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
Design Considerations and Descriptive Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366
Experimental Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372

Introduction

Today, digital games keep a significant and increasingly diverse audience playfully
engaged in activities that often involve interaction with and through language (e.g.,
Sykes et al. 2008). In recent years, applied linguists have documented language-
mediated play in online, off-the-shelf games (i.e., games not designed for educational
purposes) such as massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs) and
other popular genres. Descriptive, predominantly qualitative studies have shown
how such play induces language users and learners to meaningfully attend to and
appropriate complex game texts in written interaction (e.g., Thorne et al. 2012) as
well as in spoken interaction (e.g., Piirainen-Marsh and Tainio 2009), how play
incentivizes the construction of scientific discourse (Steinkuehler and Duncan 2008),
and how it engages second language (L2) learners in high-stakes communicative
activity with other players, often in plurilingual settings (e.g., Thorne 2008; Zheng
et al. 2012). Next to these descriptive studies, correlational empirical research shows
that frequent gaming in an L2 is associated with (though not a proven catalyst for) L2
proficiency (Kuppens 2010; Sylvén and Sundqvist 2012). Thus, evidence is accu-
mulating which suggests that engagement in an L2 in entertainment-focused,
uninstructed digital game environments is a useful and potentially quite powerful
avenue for naturalistic L2 development.
For language educators, a critical question is how the mechanics of digital games
can be harnessed for inciting learner engagement in instructed L2 learning environ-
ments, particularly in institutionalized settings such as L2 classrooms, with a view to
increasing the effectiveness of games for L2 learning. This question is in line with a rich
tradition of research on instructional design in the field of Computer-Assisted Language
Learning (CALL), which concentrates on “constructing environments purposefully
such that learning does not occur by accident, but through an understanding of the
key factors or variables that impact upon it” (Levy et al. 2015, pp. 3–4). Similarly,
design-oriented studies on game-based L2 learning (Holden and Sykes 2011) focus on
the purposeful and meticulous engineering and evaluation of playful spaces and
conditions that are conducive to effective and efficient L2 learning. Inextricably
bound to the effectiveness of game-based L2 environments is the question of how
engagement can be heightened and/or sustained by careful instructional design.
Educationally Designed Game Environments and Feedback 363

This chapter addresses the potential of educationally designed game environ-

ments and in particular that of game-generated feedback for encouraging, through
purposeful instructional design, learners’ engagement in the process of developing
skills in a second or foreign language (L2). The existing research literature fleshes
out the idea that gameful feedback may be a powerful design element for engender-
ing participant engagement in instructed L2 learning. We define “engagement in
game-based CALL” as learner behavior that is typified by the following character-
istics: (1) it is driven by intrinsic motivation in the broader game activity; (2) it is
focused primarily on language meaning and communicative use; and (3) it involves
attention to linguistic form. In the next section, we review pioneer studies on
gameful engagement in CALL. Subsequently, we discuss more recent research that
specifically addresses the role of feedback in relation to designed engagement in
CALL. Next, we examine trends in work in progress as well as problems in current
research. We conclude with challenges and directions for future research.

Early Developments

Over the past decade – especially due to the emergence of massively multiplayer
online games – digital game-based language learning has received increasing interest
in the CALL literature (e.g., Cornillie et al. 2012b; Peterson 2010; Reinhardt and
Sykes 2014). In fact, the design of games for instructed language learning goes back
to the early history of CALL. In 1987, for example, Phillips noted that the great
majority of CALL programs developed at that time were designed according to a
paradigm which he termed “the games model” (1987, pp. 276–280). According to
Phillips, such CALL programs distinguish themselves from other language learning
activities in that they are:

1. Intrinsically motivating or self-justifying (i.e., worth playing for their own sake,
rather than for some external reason)
2. Involve some aspect of competition (leading to win or failure states)
3. Driven by a system of rules that constitutes the activity as a particular type of
game and that regulates (i.e., reinforces and penalizes) the possible interactions

Early developments of game-based CALL programs include text adventure

games such as the British Council’s London Adventure (Phillips 1986), mini-
games for discrete practice of vocabulary and letter recognition skills, such as
Hangman (Stevens 1991), interactive participatory dramas like Traci Talk and
Who is Oscar Lake? (Hubbard 2002), and text-based, scripted multi-user environ-
ments known as MUDs and MOOs (Multi-User Dungeon and MUD Object-
Oriented, respectively), the predecessors of 3D virtual multi-user environments
like Second Life (see Peterson 2010; Thorne 2000).
It is worth noting that in these early days of CALL games design, there was little
empirical research that evaluated the usefulness of particular elements of gameful
design, such as feedback, time pressure, or between-learner competition, in terms of
364 F. Cornillie

language learning processes, outcomes, or levels of learner engagement. In relation

to the research on interactive participatory dramas, Phil Hubbard, a pioneering
theorist, researcher, and practitioner in CALL, noted that the majority of studies
from the mid-1980s until 2002 aimed at “demonstrating the validity of the general
approach rather than specific elements of implementation” (Hubbard 2002, p. 211).
Recent reviews of game-based CALL (Cornillie et al. 2012b; Peterson 2010)
indicate that this claim may be extended beyond interactive participatory dramas
to the majority of research on digital games for language learning. As a consequence
of the lack of empirical (in particular experimental) studies on design elements of
games, researchers and instructional designers today have a limited number of
empirically based insights, guidelines, and principles specifically related to gaming
environments that may inform the engineering of engaging spaces for language
learning, instruction, and practice. Notable exceptions to this gap in the early
empirical research on gameful engagement in CALL are three studies that focus
on, respectively, learner control (Stevens 1984a, b), the negotiability of outcomes
(Young 1988), and incidental vocabulary learning (Cheung and Harrison 1992).
These three studies are worth examining more closely for insights they may offer for
the design of game-mediated L2 learning spaces.
In an experimental study, Stevens (1984a, b) investigated the impact of learner
control on learners’ engagement and on their learning of English verb complements
(gerund vs. infinitive) in a CALL program designed for explicit language practice.
One version of the system comprised game paddles, by which learners could vary the
order of presentation of the practice materials, whereas the other version lacked this
playful interface mechanic and in which the order of the materials was fixed. Thus,
the version in which learners could control the presentation of the materials
borrowed aspects of the design of “games and autotelic environments [i.e.] activities
which contain their own goals and sources of motivation” (Stevens 1984a, p. 30),
where the lack of game paddles was thought to resemble the delivery mode of more
typical computer-based instruction and practice. In an experiment with 24 learners in
which 35 min were spent on practice, this study found that control was beneficial:
although no statistically significant differences were observed between the groups in
terms of knowledge development (perhaps due to the short treatment period), the
learners that had used the paddles were found to be engaged in more meaning-
focused processing of the practice materials than the learners that had practiced the
materials in a fixed order. In addition to eliciting more meaning-focused engage-
ment, the paddles also instilled more favorable attitudes toward the practice tasks
(Stevens 1984b). Although this was a small-scale study, its findings are noteworthy,
as they are in keeping with a motivational model of video game engagement based
on self-determination theory (Ryan et al. 2006), in which the player’s perception of
control (autonomy) is a key factor.
Young (1988) examined the effects of the negotiability of outcomes in CALL
materials. The starting point of this project was the observation that in computerized
drill and practice, the outcomes of pedagogical activities are fixed (i.e., pre-
determined by the computer), whereas role-plays, simulations, and games allow
participants to negotiate the outcomes of the activities. Building on Wells’ (1981)
Educationally Designed Game Environments and Feedback 365

interactionist perspective on SLA, the study hypothesized that activities which

involved a more open-ended, negotiable outcomes design would yield L2 discourse
more relevant for L2 development. It compared the discourse of two classes of
English L2 learners in, on the one hand, drill-and-practice activities and, on the other
hand, the computer games Fast Food and London Adventure (both developed by the
British Council). Analyses of the transcripts showed that the discourse spawned by
engagement with the games involved less reading aloud, was more creative, and
resembled the complexity of routine informal conversation.
A third empirical study relevant to the issue of gameful engagement in CALL is
Cheung and Harrison’s (1992) examination of incidental vocabulary learning in the
entertainment-focused text adventure game Colossal Adventure. After playing the
game in pairs for eight separate hours over a period of 2 weeks, 84 learners of
English as an L2 filled out posttests designed to measure gains in knowledge of
vocabulary included in the game. Analyses indicated that the students improved
significantly on “program-specific” lexical items (i.e., words highly relevant to the
game’s narrative), but not on prepositions of place and conditionals, although the
latter were frequent in the game text. In interpreting these results, the researchers
surmised that “perhaps mastery of the definitions of lexical items, including
program-specific lexical items, was a crucial vehicle for progressing in the game,
while knowing prepositions and conditionals was not” (Cheung and Harrison 1992,
p. 169). Thus, engagement with these particular lexical items, induced by the game
quests, may have contributed to the specific learning outcomes that were
documented.
From these early studies on gameful engagement in CALL, three lessons can be
drawn for the design of instructed game-based language learning spaces. First,
learner control enabled by playful interface mechanics may lead to more meaningful
engagement with the L2 and more favorable attitudes to CALL. Second, open-
ended, negotiable game outcomes may inspire more communicative engagement
with the L2. And thirdly, instructional designers need to consider the relation of
words that are to be taught with their function in a game’s narrative, as learners may
be more engaged with vocabulary that is central to a game’s narrative, and as a result
will acquire such words more rapidly. Thus, ludic engagement in the L2 may support
effective instructed L2 learning. To our knowledge, however, it is not until recently
that L2 engagement has been examined in relation to the type of feedback provided
in the learning environment. This is the subject of the next section.

Major Contributions

This section provides the rationale for focusing on feedback in the design of
instructed game-based L2 environments with a view to supporting learners’ engage-
ment in the learning process, defined as intrinsically motivated behavior in an L2 that
primarily involves meaningful and communicative L2 use but also attention to
linguistic form. We first formulate design considerations and then review descriptive
research contributions to game-based CALL.
366 F. Cornillie

Design Considerations and Descriptive Research

In their influential paper on the design of digital games for L2 learning and teaching,
Purushotma et al. (2009) argue that feedback should be a primary locus of attention.
They start from the observation that in well-designed off-the-shelf games, players are
typically stimulated to fail rather than to find “correct answers.” They further claim
that spending thought on the design of such failure states in educational L2 games
creates opportunities for providing developmentally useful as well as playful feed-
back that can support both learning and enjoyment.
In line with this paper, we argue that, as a design mechanic, feedback merits
special attention for three reasons. First, it is an indispensable feature of game design
that is hypothesized to support both players’ cognitive development and their
motivation or engagement (Becker 2007). Secondly, numerous studies have shown
that feedback can be developmentally useful, both in educational research (Hattie
and Timperley 2007) and in a wide range of research on L2 learning that focuses
specifically on corrective feedback (for reviews, see Li 2010; Lyster and Saito 2010;
Mackey and Goo 2007). Thirdly, in educational games for L2 learning – as in other
designed L2 learning environments that involve human-computer interaction and are
known as tutorial CALL (e.g., Heift and Schulze 2015) – feedback can be provided
much more systematically than is possible in classroom environments. This is
promising for its effectiveness, as meta-analyses on L2 acquisition research have
revealed significantly larger effect sizes for corrective feedback in more controlled
environments (Li 2010; Mackey and Goo 2007), of which human-computer inter-
action is an exemplary case.
In L2 pedagogy, we often enter into lively debates on how corrective feedback
should be given to learners, particularly because teachers have a plethora of feedback
options available. One popular technique is known as recasting and involves the
(relatively implicit) reformulation of a learner’s sentence that is ungrammatical or
otherwise deviant from the conventions of a target language. Recasting is frequent in
naturalistic (largely implicit) language learning, for instance, when parents correct
children’s speech as well as in communicative interaction in the L2 classroom. In
these situations, language teachers often prefer recasts to more explicit feedback
interventions, as they disrupt the communicative flow to a minimal extent and
potentially correlate with less frustration on the part of learners.
As a result of the predominance of recasting in communicative language learning
situations, designers of instructed gameful L2 environments that aim to primarily
engage learners in meaningful or communicative L2 use may be inclined to imple-
ment implicit corrective feedback strategies such as recasts, mimicking how feed-
back is typically given in naturalistic language learning environments. However, this
tendency resembles what Larsen-Freeman has called the reflex fallacy, i.e., “the
assumption that it is our job to re-create in our classrooms the natural conditions of
acquisition present in the external environment” (2003, p. 20). While this design
approach may protect gameful flow, the resulting problem is that the feedback may
pass unnoticed and that the opportunity to recruit language awareness in an other-
wise meaning-focused context is lost.
Educationally Designed Game Environments and Feedback 367

In a study with a game designed for the instruction of Spanish L2 pragmatics,

Sykes (2009) found little improvement in learners’ use of pragmatic strategies on
posttests. One explanation given for this lack of significant improvement was that
perhaps “the branching mechanism used to interact with NPCs [non-player charac-
ters] may not have been sufficiently explicit for the learners to notice pragmatic
differences [. . .]. Had they taken full advantage of the branching mechanism by
experimenting with different pragmatic choices and receiving varied reactions from
the NPCs, perhaps the results would have been different, indicating greater aware-
ness and acquisition of the L2 pragmatic norms” (Sykes 2009, p. 220). As an
implication for design, Sykes further suggested that the integration of different
types of feedback, ranging from implicit to explicit, is crucial for the effectiveness
of CALL games, because such feedback can help learners to notice differences
between their interlanguage and the L2.
This research suggests that instead of engaging in the reflex fallacy, such as
emulating the conditions of naturalistic (game-based) L2 learning in registers of the
L2 that are more central in formal education, educators might want to re-appropriate
game features so that their instructional designs can “accelerate the actual rate of
acquisition beyond what students could achieve on their own . . . helping our
students learn faster than they would on their own may well call for explicit teaching
and learning to complement the implicit learning that they naturally do” (Larsen-
Freeman 2003, p. 20).
One of the key mechanics by which acceleration of L2 learning may occur in
educationally designed gaming environments is explicit corrective feedback, poten-
tially accompanied by metalinguistic explanations. Although SLA research is not
entirely conclusive on the effectiveness of explicit feedback, current findings suggest
that explicit feedback, possibly accompanied by metalinguistic explanation, is likely
to facilitate L2 development more than implicit corrective feedback (e.g., Ellis et al.
2006; Lyster and Saito 2010). Instructional designers of ludic L2 spaces may thus
want to utilize the power of explicit feedback to create conditions for effective
learning. Providing explicit feedback – where necessary and if the learners are
developmentally ready for it – during the course of otherwise meaning-focused
play may well accelerate natural (implicit) L2 learning.
Thorne (2008) and Cornillie et al. (2012a) provide empirical evidence that
learners are willing to and do attend to explicit corrective feedback in game-
based L2 environments and are at the same time playfully and meaningfully
engaged. In a descriptive study on the MMORPG World of Warcraft, Thorne
(2008) noted opportunities for L2 use and learning in communicative exchanges
between a North American native speaker of English and a Ukrainian native
speaker of Russian. He observed naturalistic in-game episodes of explicit feed-
back and instruction focused on problematic instances of L2 production, pro-
vided by the respective native speakers. These episodes show that explicit
feedback may occur naturally in uninstructed contexts of game-based L2 learn-
ing when players take an interest in each other’s native language and need to
resolve communicative issues in order to attain nonlinguistic, task-based out-
comes (i.e., quest completion).
368 F. Cornillie

Cornillie et al. (2012a) took a different approach to the examination of corrective

feedback in relation to ludic engagement and implemented different computer-
generated feedback strategies in an educationally repurposed commercial role-
playing game that takes place in the Divinity universe created by game develop er
Larian Studios. The feedback included more implicit comments given by non-player
game characters (accompanied by character animations such as gestures and facial
expressions) as well as correct responses and metalinguistic explanations on prag-
matic issues in English as a L2. Analyses of interviews and questionnaires taken
from 83 Dutch-speaking learners show that learners considered the feedback embed-
ded in the game-mediated experience useful for learning as well as for realizing
transfer to contexts outside of the game. Moreover, the explicit, meta-pragmatic
explanations given immediately in the game dialogues were generally found more
useful for learning than, and preferred to, more implicit and communicative
instances of corrective feedback provided by the game characters. Lastly, learners’
perceptions of the explicit feedback were found to correlate with parameters related
to learners’ gameful engagement as measured by the questionnaires, namely, “game
experience” (defined as the degree to which learners were immersed in the experi-
ence, felt captivated by its vividness, and felt generally good as the result of playing)
and perceived competence. While no such relation was found for implicit corrective
feedback, learners commented in the interviews that the latter feedback type
absorbed them in the virtual world represented in the game, showed them the impact
of their actions, and that a combination of explicit and implicit corrective feedback
seemed best to them. The researchers concluded that corrective feedback need not
necessarily get in the way of gameful engagement and that future studies “should
distinguish by and large between, on the one hand, corrective feedback (and its
different subcomponents) aimed at increasing a learner’s understanding and, on the
other hand, more ‘game-like’ feedback elements that can contribute to intrinsic
motivation, namely, positive feedback (designed to increase a learner’s sense of
competence) and situational feedback adapted to the game’s theme (which can
increase a sense of immersion)” (Cornillie et al. 2012a, p. 274).
There is thus evidence that learners engaged in a game designed specifically for
L2 learning do not find explicit corrective feedback and instruction disturbing,
useless, or not worthy of attention. The study also contributes to an empirical basis
upon which to inform the design of playful feedback that is “both unabashfully
explicit, yet humorous and playful enough to actually have a positive impact on the
learner’s experience when they ‘make mistakes’” (Purushotma et al. 2009).

Experimental Research

Informed by the design considerations and descriptive research discussed in the

previous section, two experimental studies have been carried out that aimed to
examine whether properties of game-generated feedback could also impact upon
game-based engagement with an L2. The first of these studies addressed the effects
of gameful feedback on intrinsic motivation; the second investigated the extent to
Educationally Designed Game Environments and Feedback 369

which corrective feedback and focus on linguistic form provided in a meaning-

focused mini-game aided L2 development.
Cornillie and Desmet (2013) followed the suggestion of Purushotma et al. (2009)
to focus on the design of failure states in the development of instructed game-based
CALL and zeroed in on the affordances of a game design mechanic known as
positive failure feedback for supporting learners’ intrinsic motivation in game-
based L2 practice. Drawing on literature in game studies, they defined positive
failure feedback as a design element that signals failure to learners but does so in a
vivid and engaging way so as to give learners the idea that they are agentively
involved in the game environment. In a within-subjects experiment, 32 learners of
English as a L2 played three different versions of a mini-game intended for explicit
practice of dative alternation: one version comprised a game fantasy, namely, that of
a detective interrogating witnesses as well as vivid corrective feedback that consisted
of animations and sound effects; the second version included “plain” corrective
feedback (i.e., without these vivid characteristics); and the third version lacked both
vividness and the game narrative. All learners filled out questionnaires that were
aimed at gauging intrinsic motivation in game-based environments, based on a
model of video game engagement developed by Ryan et al. (2006). A selection of
learners participated in follow-up group interviews. The results are somewhat
inconsistent. On the one hand, statistical analyses of the questionnaire results
indicated that the game fantasy and vivid feedback had increased the participants’
sense of immersion in the environment. Further, in the interviews, one learner
confided that he had repeatedly tried to respond incorrectly because he was curious
about the feedback that would follow. This is consistent with reports of players who
actively seek out failure in off-the-shelf games and can, in instructed contexts, create
opportunities for learning from failing deliberately. On the other hand, learners
commented that the feedback animations and sound effects distracted from the
learning content – some even to the point of frustration. The researchers concluded
that cognitive load needs to be considered in the design of positive failure feedback.
In a follow-up experiment, Cornillie et al. (2015) utilized a redesigned version of
the mini-games in order to examine the impact of practice with metalinguistic error
explanation integrated into the feedback on L2 learning. The mini-games differed
from those in the earlier study in two respects: first, less salient gameful feedback
was implemented, and second, the games were embedded in meaning-focused
reading of a mystery story in class. Acknowledging that mini-games designed for
language learning – currently popular on mobile devices and elsewhere – may
simply be revamped drill-and-practice activities that do little more than focus
learners’ attention on linguistic forms, the design hypothesis was that “by inter-
weaving the form-focused mini-games with meaning-focused reading and discus-
sion activities, learners would be engaged in form-meaning processing during
practice, promoting transfer of practice to more complex follow-up activities”
(Cornillie et al. 2015, p. 216). One hundred twenty-five Dutch-speaking learners
of L2 English participated in the experiment, half of which were presented with
metalinguistic information during computerized practice. Analyses of the data of
various types of posttests of L2 knowledge demonstrated that learners were able to
370 F. Cornillie

transfer knowledge gained during practice to both immediate follow-up tests and
tests completed 1 month after practice. The effects were stronger for learners who
had received metalinguistic explanation as well as on tasks in which learners could
rely on explicit L2 knowledge. Additionally, the effects were more durable for
grammatical constructions that learners engaged with in more meaningful ways
during practice and reading. This study suggests that form focus (through feedback)
can accelerate implicit L2 learning when it is cleverly integrated with meaning focus
in the design of game-based L2 practice tasks.

Work in Progress

The preceding discussion of research on feedback design vis-à-vis ludic engagement

in a L2 reveals an emphasis on issues such as noticing, corrective feedback, and
explicit and implicit L2 learning. As this research indicates, the majority of studies in
this area are informed by a cognitivist second language acquisition (SLA) perspec-
tive. Fewer studies have tackled feedback design in instructed L2 environments from
a motivational point of view, utilizing the mechanics of games with a view toward
(re-)engaging learners that suffer from low motivation. An exemplary study that
focuses on motivation was carried out by Stanley (2014). Inspired by the literature
on gamification, which refers to the use of game design techniques and elements to
enhance non-game contexts such as L2 instruction, this case study used a combina-
tion of feedback strategies borrowed from game design such as experience points,
badges, levels, and leader boards in an attempt to encourage young learners’ writing
fluency and enjoyment in English as a L2. The gamified feedback system was
implemented by means of an interactive whiteboard and an online behavior man-
agement system called Class Dojo. In-class observations and interviews with
teachers showed that the intervention stimulated the pupils to write more extensive
texts and that they displayed more enthusiasm for the writing tasks. The researcher
did observe that the effects were not equally strong for all learners and that overall
the effects waned after a couple of months, which may potentially be due to a novelty
effect. This finding suggests that (predominantly) extrinsic reward systems are no
panacea for learners who suffer from amotivation.

Problems and Difficulties

Research on feedback and learner engagement in instructed game-based CALL

struggles with both conceptual and methodological issues. First, the constructs that
researchers in this area work with, like “game,” “game-based feedback,” and
“learner engagement,” are complex and often fuzzily defined. How, for instance,
are game-based L2 environments different from L2 environments that are not
considered game-based? What is it that turns a playful language learning experience
into a good language learning game? The challenge of clearly delineating the
concept of “language learning game” was noted in the literature more than two
Educationally Designed Game Environments and Feedback 371

decades ago (for discussion, see Cornillie et al. 2012b), but the massive diversifica-
tion of gaming genres, technologies, and player audiences in recent years has only
made this challenge more complex.
On a more detailed level, the concept of game-based feedback also requires more
thorough definition. Just as SLA researchers have managed to disentangle the
different constituents of corrective feedback, thereby uncovering the oversimplifi-
cation in the distinction between “implicit” and “explicit” feedback which was rather
unproductive for the advancement of knowledge (Lyster and Saito 2010),
researchers working on game-based CALL will need to “recognize that feedback
in CALL games is a multidimensional construct, which needs to be taken apart in
order to experimentally examine the effects of its constituents on learners’ percep-
tions, motivation and learning outcomes” (Cornillie et al. 2012a, p. 274).
Considering the lack of conceptual clarity of terms such as “feedback” or
“engagement,” it is critical that researchers look at such complex and often elusive
issues from the perspective of established theories, both in SLA and in related fields,
while remaining sensitive to the specificities of gaming environments. In the field of
SLA, candidate theories for investigating “engagement” include involvement load
theory (Laufer and Hulstijn 2001) and the willingness to communicate model (e.g.,
Reinders and Wattana 2014). Outside of SLA, an intriguing model of game engage-
ment is the needs satisfaction model (Ryan et al. 2006), based on the widely known
motivation model of self-determination theory.
A methodological problem inherent in the research on design elements in game-
based CALL concerns the generalizability of experimental research. Hitherto, exper-
imental studies have often involved prototypes of games rather than games that have
proven their merit in ecologically valid settings. To the benefit of the ecological
validity of research on design elements in game-based L2 learning, one approach is
to use games that are based on theory, pedagogy, and thorough empirical research
and which have proven themselves by being adopted by target audiences and having
passed the test of successful marketability. This would provide the best guarantees
for the generalizability of research findings on game-based L2 learning.
A second methodological problem is that current studies have relied on self-
report data such as interviews or questionnaires in order to examine engagement,
which may be prone to memory bias or may simply be inaccurate – students, for
instance, may respond overly positively to please the researcher. In contrast, behav-
ioral data may yield a more accurate or even different picture of how design elements
impact upon learner engagement. Behavioral data sources include the measurement
of frequency of play over longer periods of time and in relatively uncontrolled
settings or perhaps psychophysiological indices of engagement such as blood
pressure, perspiration, and heart rate (e.g., Ravaja et al. 2006).

Future Directions

We expect that despite currently being hyped in the media, games are here to stay in
the field of language teaching and learning and that language educators and inno-
vators will continue to develop an ever diversifying range of gaming environments
372 F. Cornillie

designed to incite learner engagement in processes leading to the development of L2

skills. These environments may include mini-games such as DuoLingo for focused
practice, place-based games such as Mentira (Holden and Sykes 2011) for situated
language learning, text-only games for reading practice, and fully immersive games
for niche markets such as Tactical Iraqi (discussed in Peterson 2010). For research
and practice, it is crucial that the (instructional) design of games is assessed in the
light of accepted theories of L2 learning and evidence based L2 pedagogy. More-
over, this assessment should be based on the collection of empirical data on learning
processes and outcomes. This approach provides a strong foundation for the suc-
cessful integration of games into the L2 classroom.

Cross-References

▶ Dialogicality, Ecology, and Learning in Online Game Worlds

▶ Digital Games and Second Language Learning
▶ Virtual Worlds and Language Education

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Virtual Worlds and Language Education

Randall Sadler

Abstract
This chapter examines the state and upcoming developments of virtual worlds
(VWs) in the field of language education. Beginning with an overview of their
historical development, the chapter will continue with a discussion of how VWs
evolved from purely text-based environments to two-dimensional spaces, ending
with the 3D interactive worlds that exist today. A selection of VWs will be
examined for the applicability to language teaching and independent language
learning, followed by a discussion of current challenges and difficulties in using
VWs for these purposes. The chapter concludes with upcoming developments
that will bring these environments into the realm of true virtual reality.

Keywords
Virtual worlds (VWs) • Language learning • Pedagogy • Virtual reality (VR) •
MUD • MOO

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
Major Contributions and Works in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Modern Virtual Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Theoretical Justification for VWs in Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Virtual Worlds Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387

R. Sadler (*)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 375

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_29
376 R. Sadler

Introduction

This chapter examines the state and upcoming developments of virtual worlds
(VWs) in the field of language education. Beginning with an overview of their
historical development, the chapter will continue with a discussion of how VWs
evolved from purely text-based environments to two-dimensional spaces, ending
with the 3D interactive worlds that exist today. A selection of VWs will be examined
for the applicability to language teaching and independent language learning,
followed by a discussion of current challenges and difficulties in using VWs for
these purposes. The chapter concludes with upcoming developments that will bring
these environments into the realm of true virtual reality (VR).
Virtual worlds (VWs) are a type of online environment that have a number of
applications for language teachers and learners. The idea of a virtual environment
(VE) is not new. Indeed, online VEs have existed since the very early days of online
networks in the form of online message boards and multiplayer online text-based
games (see below). VWs, as described by Sadler (2012), share the following
characteristics and may be understood as an evolution of these earlier varieties:

• Online 3D environment. This may simulate the real world or exist solely as a
unique online space.
• Avatars. These are the in-world characters representing their players.
• Real-time interactivity. Users interact with other individuals, via their avatars, in
real time in the VW and with objects in that environment.
• 24-h accessibility. When a user leaves a VW space, it continues to exist rather
than turning off.
• Persistence. When a user logs out of a VW, their avatar, and the actions taken by
that avatar, are not deleted.
• Social space. VWs vary greatly in terms of themes and appearance, but they all
exist primarily for social interaction. This is a key difference between VWs and
massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs).
• Numbers. Many VWs have thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, of
users online at the same time.
• Customizable appearance. Most VWs allow users to customize their avatars.

In the following sections, this chapter will examine the early stages and current
major developments in the field, followed by both challenges and future directions in
the use of VWs for language education.

Early Developments

Computer-based VEs as we know them today began in the 1970s with the develop-
ment of text-based games such as Will Crowther’s Colossal Cave Adventure (CCA)
in 1975 and Zork (created by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave
Lebling) in 1977. Will Crowther was both an experienced caver in real life and also a
Virtual Worlds and Language Education 377

Fig. 1 Colossal cave adventure opening screen

devoted player of Dungeons & Dragons, a desktop role-playing game in which

players take on the persona of characters with a Dungeon Master, creating the setting
for the adventure and controlling the path of the game. Crowther’s experience
exploring cave systems like Mammoth Cave in the USA led him to design CCA,
where the computer program essentially took on the role of the Dungeon Master.
This game was later expanded greatly by others. As seen in Fig. 1, CCA was purely
text-based and allowed for only very limited commands from the user. As anyone
who has played these early games can attest, it was very common to receive replies
of “Sorry, I don’t understand that” from the game due to the limited vocabulary
integrated into the program. However, while limited it is important to note that CCA
is the ancestor of virtually all computer gaming as we understand it today. Had it not
been for Crowther’s work, massively multiplayer online role-playing games
(MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft or VW like Second Life (SL) (see below)
might not exist today.
A critical next step in the development of VW took place in the 1970s, just as
computer networks began to spread and then expanded greatly in the 1980s with the
continuing growth of ARPANET. This development allowed for programs to expand
the interaction from user-to-computer, as seen in Zork and CCA, to user-to-user via
computer networks. Perhaps the earliest forms of these VW that took place online –
though these began before “online” as we understand it today existed – were in the
form of MUDs, commonly referred to as either multi-user domains or multi-user
dungeons. MUDs “typically combine text instant message chat rooms and role-
playing games” via users interacting “with other players and their surroundings by
typing text commands” (Childress and Braswell 2006, p. 188). In 1978, only two
years after the creation of CCA, Roy Trubshaw from the University of Essex created
378 R. Sadler

a program he called MUD or multi-user dungeon. Two years later, Essex University
connected to the ARPANET, and MUD became the first multiplayer “online” role-
play game (Mulligan and Patrovsky 2003), and this game may still be played today
on the British-Legends website (http://www.british-legends.com/CMS/). While the
interface for the game appears quite similar to that of CCA, MUD added a critical
element in the evolution of VWs: other players inhabiting the same game space. This
meant that users were able to communicate, interact, and of course battle and defeat
other players in the game.
A next critical step in the evolution of virtual spaces was the development of
MOOs (MUDs, Object-Oriented) by Stephen White in 1990. While MOOs are still
text-based environments, they added the ability to include object-oriented program-
ming. This meant that the owner/administrator of the MOO, referred to as the Wizard,
could more easily make changes in the environment, including adding new rooms and
objects and could also assign a “builder” role to any player desired. In the 1990s and
through the first decade of next century, MOOs were very popular for educators, and a
number schools and universities joined existing MOOs or created their own. While a
Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona, the author of this chapter joined the Old
Pueblo MOO. This gave me my own room in the MOO (later a suite of rooms) and
the ability for me to add objects into that room. I used the space on the MOO to have
online office hours with my students, with the room acting as a chat room, and also
used my expanded suite to have students engage in MOO-based peer review sessions.
Sadly, very few MOOs still remain, but one exception that may still be found online is
SchMOOze University (http://schmooze.hunter.cuny.edu/).
As the Internet continued to develop in the 1980s, though still largely unknown
by most of the world, online VW as we know them today began to emerge with the
creation of Habitat, produced by Lucasfilm (of Star Wars fame) in 1986 (See Fig. 2).
This VE still used text-based communication but for the first time it also included
a graphical interface that – although primitive by today’s standard – is familiar to
anyone who uses a modern VW or MMORPG. Habitat players took on the form of
avatars in the world and could interact with other individuals and avatars and could
explore 20,000 different regions (Fig. 2 shows one region). The creators of Habitat,
Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer, found that the ability for users to interact
was essential:

At the core of our vision is the idea that cyberspace is necessarily a multiple-participant
environment. It seems to us that the things that are important to the inhabitants of such an
environment are the capabilities available to them, the characteristics of the other people they
encounter there, and the ways these various participants can affect each other (Morningstar
and Farmer 2001, pp. 173–174)

While games had existed for some time prior to 1986 with users controlling
characters in the game, Habitat was the first massively multiplayer online 3D
virtual environment allowing player-to-player interaction via a modern graphical
interface.
Virtual Worlds and Language Education 379

Fig. 2 Habitat graphical interface

Major Contributions and Works in Progress

Modern Virtual Worlds

As discussed in the introduction of this chapter, VWs as we understand them today

share a number of key features. The majority of these elements are illustrated in
Fig. 3, which is a screenshot from the VW Habbo (See Sadler (2012) for a more
thorough overview of various VWs and their features). As shown in the image taken,
in one of the lounges of the Habbo Hotel Spain (there are Habbo versions for a
number of different countries), this is a 3D environment that users may explore
through their avatars. Each Habbo Hotel includes a number of different rooms (e.g.,
lobby, clubs, gardens, kitchen, individual rooms, etc.), with the primary function
being the provision of social spaces for interaction and play. Avatars may engage in
text chat with any other avatars in the same room (other VWs like SL also allow for
oral communication), and multiple avatars can engage in simultaneous chat. Each
avatar is given their own room in the hotel when they create an account, and this
room is accessible at any time. They may also access any room in the hotel that has
not been designated as private by the owner. As seen in the image, the avatars in the
hotel often look quite different from one another, thereby establishing their own
380 R. Sadler

Fig. 3 Habbo lounge

persona in the VW. A VW provides a persona, a home, and opportunities for

interaction – all important elements for students who may wish to practice language.
As shown in Fig. 4, as of 2014 Habbo had almost 300 million users worldwide,
ranking it as one of the most popular VWs for users in the 13–15 age range. There
are currently in excess of one billion VW users and hundreds of different VW
environments for a wide variety of user interests and age ranges (data from
KZero 2015). As shown in the figure, VWs appeal to a wide assortment of
ages, though the vast majority of users are 25 and under. This makes it quite
likely that students currently studying language at any level from kindergarten
through college may already have VW experience. When one considers that the
top three VWs in the 10–15 age range have over 900 million users and that Club
Penguin alone (the most popular in the 8–10 year old range) has almost
one-quarter billion users, it quickly becomes apparent that these environments
may already be the norm for many K-12 students.
Virtual Worlds and Language Education 381

Utherverse 22
Age 20+

Second Life 41
IMVU 120
Weeworld 55
Age 10-13 Ages 13-15 Age 15-20

Doofus 70
Maplestory 140
Minecraft 110
Habbo 295
Stardoll 310
Moshi Monsters 90
Moviestar Planet 182
Poptropica 313
Panfu 29
Age 8-10

Neopets 75
Club Penguin 225
Math Blaster 7
Age 5-8

Boombang 12
Jumpstart 22

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350

Number of registered users (in millions)

Fig. 4 Top virtual worlds by age (millions of users)

Theoretical Justification for VWs in Education

While a full examination of theoretical justification for the use of VWs in language
teaching is beyond the purview of this entry, the work of three scholars – two of
whom died long before the advent of VWs – may serve as an overview. John Dewey
found fault with “. . .the ordinary schoolroom, its time-schedules, schemes of clas-
sification, of examination and promotion, and rules of order. . . (Dewey 1939, p. 2).
He described traditional classrooms in much the same way that researchers still see
them today, with the teacher being at the center and students gaining their knowledge
largely from the teacher and textbooks. Dewey saw students in traditional class-
rooms as being largely passive, with knowledge trickling down from the teachers.
He argued instead for a progressive school in which students learn by doing with the
teacher’s role changing from “the position of external boss or dictator” to “that of
leader of group activities” (p. 66). Dewey’s ideal was to get students out of the
traditional classroom and into an environment that could instead provide them with
expanded opportunities for interaction.
The work of Lev Vygotsky, and in particular Mind in Society: The Development of
Higher Mental Processes (Vygotsky 1978), is very often cited in VW research.
382 R. Sadler

Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) is “the distance between the actual
developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of
potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance
or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 86). Because
Vygotsky argued that human learning was always social in nature, he maintained
that there can be no significant learning without interaction. For both Dewey and
Vygotsky, the role of play is also important. When children engage in play, this
“teaches the child to guide her behavior not only by immediate perception of objects
or by the situation immediately affecting her but also by the meaning of the
situation” (p. 97). For learning language, play allows children to practice speech
without specifically focusing on accuracy and historically established norms of
usage.
David Kolb’s Experiential Learning theory was influenced by both Dewey’s
earlier work and also by Jean Piaget’s work on child development. Experiential
learning, as proposed by Kolb (1984), is based on six key ideas:

• Learning is best conceived as a process, not in terms of outcomes.

• Learning is a continuous process grounded in experience.
• The process of learning requires the resolution of conflicts between dialectically
opposed modes of adaptation to the world.
• Learning is a holistic process of adaptation to the world.
• Learning involves transactions between the person and the environment.
• Learning is the process of creating knowledge (pp. 26–38).

For Kolb, an integral part of the learning process is the importance of concrete
experience because only by doing something can a learner then have the opportunity
to reflect on those experiences. Learners must be active participants in the learning
process rather than passive students sitting in a classroom. Following reflection on
their experiences, a learner may begin to form generalizations, and then test those
generalizations in new situations via new concrete experiences.
VWs can aid in both the development of Dewey’s progressive school, Vygotsky’s
ZPD, and Kolb’s experiential learning in several important ways. First, because they
are primarily social in nature, student interactions in VWs are usually active and the
role of the teacher as the “boss” is diminished. One of the most challenging aspects
of the ZPD for language teachers is to find “more capable peers” with whom their
students can practice language. VWs provide instant access to many millions of
users around the world, including native speakers of almost any language that might
be studied in schools. As discussed below, many individuals are already making use
of VWs precisely to find more capable peers with whom to practice language.

Virtual Worlds Research

Although research into VW in their present 3D form is relatively new, with most of
the published studies dating from 2000 to the present, it is also an area of very active
Virtual Worlds and Language Education 383

examination (see Sadler (2012) for a more thorough overview). The studies men-
tioned below illustrate three key findings that are consistent across VW research:
lessening of anxiety, increases in collaboration, and a merging of reality and the
virtual. Perhaps because the use of an avatar provides a user with something that
functions like a mask in a masquerade party, researchers like Love et al. (2009) have
found that learners may have reduced anxiety in a VW when learning a language
because the use of an avatar helps them to “loosen. . .up a bit. . .” (p. 68). Wehner had
similar results in her case study, finding that her two participants “felt more com-
fortable and confident using Spanish in Second Life when compared with other
situations (e.g., classroom, travel, Facebook, or Skype)” (Wehner 2014, p. 146). An
added explanation for this lowered anxiety may lie in the nature of VW communi-
cation. Since many VWs allow for both text and oral chat, some studies have found
that students appreciate VWs because they may take time to formulate their ideas
before communicating them in text chat (Childress and Braswell 2006).
Other researchers, such as Grant et al. (2013), have examined whether the
technical challenges of a VW might actually result in higher anxiety. They examined
students taking Introductory Chinese at an Australian University who engaged in
lessons in a simulation of a Chinese town created for the study in SL. They found
that not only did those students have a significantly lower level of foreign language
anxiety compared to students studying in a real life classroom, but also “. . .that there
was not a significant inherent level of technical related anxiety, nor did the technical
aspects of interacting in the virtual environment present significant additional levels
of technical anxiety” (p. 7). This finding was echoed by Mroz (2015) in her
examination of students studying French in SL. Her participants found that “the
quality and density of their social interactions had been enhanced by the decreased
anxiety and self-awareness that the anonymity of their avatar afforded them”
(p. 546).
The nature of social interactions in VWs requires some element of cooperation
and collaboration amongst participants whether avatars are building something
together, exploring a simulation (or “sim”) in a group, or engaging in role-play.
Brown and Bell (2004) examined the VW There for a nine-month period and
identified a number of features that were consistent in the environment. In addition
to finding that chat was an integral part of the avatar experience, they also found that
collaboration (and coordination) between avatars was a critical element and that
There “supports a sense of activities being carried out together with others” (p. 357).
This notion is echoed by Price and Rogers (2004), who found that these types of
environments “can support more diverse forms of collaboration, between children
and others” (p. 149). However, it is also important to note that the interaction as part
of the language learning process in a VW may not only be advantageous, but also
problematic. In their research, providing a direct comparison of the perceived
effectiveness of face-to-face and VW instruction, Chen, Siau, and Nah’s students
identified direct instruction (lecture) as less effective in VWs, but the identified
interactive activities and instruction in VWs as being equally effective to similar
activities in a traditional classroom (Chen et al. 2012). It is likely that the very nature
of VWs encourages collaboration because this is one of the primary ways that new
384 R. Sadler

users learn about the environment, how to do things there, and how to act. In keeping
with Vygotsky’s ZPD, this collaborative dynamic allows less experienced users to
accomplish more than they would be able to do so alone. This idea was confirmed by
Bystrom and Barfield (1999), who found that the participants in their VW educa-
tional research were able to complete tasks significantly better when working with a
partner in comparison to working alone.
Another active research area is the merging of the VW with real life. As discussed
above, a VW can lower the anxiety level of learners due to the ability of an avatar to
provide a mask for the learner, but others have discussed the vital connection
between the avatar and user and maintain that “the embodied ‘self’ via avatar is
not the separation of real-world ‘self’; instead, it is the link between the real ‘self’
mind/cognition and the virtual ‘body’ enabling immersion and learning” (Passfield-
Neofitou et al. 2015, p. 723). In essence, the argument is that for the language
learning process, the mind and the avatar become one. Grant et al. (2014) found that
students studying Chinese in a VW setting appreciated the VW interactions in
Chinese as they felt that they would more easily apply that language to real-life
situations in the future. VWs may also be used to provide practice and/or experiences
for students that might not otherwise be available. Roussou (2004) used a VW to
expose participants to settings that simply no longer exist, such as the workshop of
the Ancient Greek sculptor Phedias. Gu et al. (2009) took this focus on architecture
one step further by creating an architectural studio in SL where students designed
and built their own structures that were then judged.
One important question is whether individuals are actually making use of VWs to
learn languages outside of research studies. Sadler (2012) surveyed 237 SL users and
found that 78% of avatars surveyed used another language than their L1 when
communicating in SL at least part of the time. Forty-eight percent of the participants
maintained that using SL had “at least some positive effect” on their proficiency in a
second languages, with approximately 27% responding that SL had helped to
develop another language either “very much” or “some” (p. 94). The survey also
found (see Fig. 5) that, amongst the 202 SL users who were using SL to improve
their language skills, a wide variety of strategies were being utilized (see Fig. 5,
below).
While Sadler’s study examined strategies that individuals used to enhance their
language learning, other research has shown that students engaged in VWs also
engage in “incidental learning” even if they were not asked “to learn or remember
anything” during their time in VW activities (Thomas 2013, p. 112).

Problems and Difficulties

As with any area of teaching practice, there are challenges related to teaching and
learning in VW, particularly in the areas of technology and pedagogical practice.
Two of the problems sometimes associated with the use of VWs relate to hardware
issues and insufficient Internet bandwidth. Some VW programs such as SL have
minimum recommendations for processors, RAM, and graphics cards. However,
Virtual Worlds and Language Education 385

Attended a
Read text Joined school in SL,
chat, 71% groups that 8.40%
used the
language , Worked with
73% a tutor, 6.40%
Write text
chat, 50% Listen to
other things,
47%
Read other
things, 55% Speak in
audio chat,
Listen to 47%
audio chat,
83%

Fig. 5 Language learning methods in second life

these recommendations have actually decreased in scope over the last several years,
with SL now recommending a minimum of 1GB of RAM – substantially less than
the recommendations for Microsoft operating systems. The challenge of adequate
Internet speeds can be a larger challenge depending on the choice of VW. Some VWs
are graphically intensive and require a much larger rate of download and upload than
others. For users with access to more advanced hardware and sufficient Internet
speeds, VWs like SL or – when it is released – Project Sansar can offer a rich
educational experience, including almost limitless customizability of the environ-
ment. However, for users with less advanced technology, there are other VWs,
particularly those that are browser-based (e.g., Club Penguin, Habbo, etc.), that
can still offer opportunities for language practice.
Another concern for teachers making use of VWs is the perception that there is a
high learning curve in order to make best use of virtual settings. For example, users
must practice how to move, go to new areas in a VW, use text or audio chat, share
items, build things (in VWs that allow this), etc. However, even in advanced and
highly customizable VWs, language practice activities may be designed that are
integrated into this learning process so that groups of students form a learning
community as they build their skills (language and VW-related) together. In addition,
just as some VWs have lower technical requirements than others, the learning curve
to enter and “live” in these worlds varies greatly in terms of complexity. Educators
considering the use of a VW should explore a number of them to determine which
one is the best fit for their educational purpose and audience.
A further concern with the use of VWs is the potential exposure of unwanted
behavior to students in those environments. The threat of cyber predators and the
possibility of exposing young users to bullying, inappropriate materials, or other
unwanted behavior are certainly important. However, while these are all quite valid
386 R. Sadler

issues, it is best to think of using a VW as taking a field trip to any one of the great
cities in the world. Anyone who has been to New York, for example, can tell you
that it can be a magnificent city for students and learning with great museums,
theaters, restaurants, and sightseeing. However, there are also many areas in such
a city where it would be very irresponsible to bring students. Once again, any
educator seeking a VW to use with his students should do research on the
environment ahead of time. In the case of young learners, restricted settings on
a privately owned sim in a VW such as OpenSim can provide a very safe and
secure environment, but that safety may come at the cost of creativity or access to
a wider variety of resources.

Future Directions

Virtual worlds have now entered a stage where a shift is occurring towards virtual
reality with the integration of VR headsets into a number of MMORPGs and
VWs such as SL. The inclusion of these headsets is meant to shift the user
perspective from looking at the screen to feeling that they are part of that
scene. Wearing such a headset while interacting in SL (which now includes
support for the Oculus Rift headset) would mean that a user would see anything
their head is oriented to in that VW. Therefore, if a user turns her head and looks
behind her in real life, her avatar will also turn her head in the virtual environ-
ment and see what is behind her in the VW. This type of technology provides a
more fully immersive experience to learners, potentially allowing a language
student to experience being in cities like Paris or Tokyo in a way that has never
before been possible without actually being there.
Other VR headsets like the HTC Vive seek to take this experience even further by
integrating a number of additional features, as seen in Fig. 6.
This VR package includes the traditional headset (center) but also four addi-
tional items: two handheld controllers (bottom) and two base station motion
trackers. This combination of features is designed to allow VEs to track what a

Fig. 6 HTC Vive VR headset and equipment

Virtual Worlds and Language Education 387

user is doing in real life and translate it to an avatar. In other words, if a user
points at a screen, the motion trackers will detect this motion and transfer that
movement to the avatar in-world. At the time of this publication, no VWs were
supporting Vive, but given that a rapidly increasing number of games are doing
so, it is likely that this will happen in VWs as well. Project Sansar, a new VW
environment currently being developed by Linden Labs, the creators of SL, has
indicated that it will support Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and potentially other VR
headsets. While the depth of detail picked up by the HTC Vive is not yet clear,
other systems such as the Depthsense cameras by SoftKinetic are designed to
detect and track body movement as well as hand and even finger position and
movement. As these systems become integrated into VW settings, this will allow
learners to become fully integrated into the VR as they manipulate objects
in-world via their real-life motions.

Cross-References

▶ Dialogicality, Ecology, and Learning in Online Game Worlds

▶ Digital Games and Second Language Learning
▶ Educationally Designed Game Environments and Feedback

References
Brown, B. & Bell, M. (2004). CSCW at play: ‘There’ as a collaborative virtual environment. Paper
presented at the 2004 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work, Chicago,
Illinois.
Bystrom, K. E., & Barfield, W. (1999). Collaborative task performance for learning using a virtual
world. Presence, 8(4), 435–448.
Chen, X., Siau, K., & Nah, F. F.-H. (2012). Empirical comparison of 3-D virtual world and face-to-
face classroom for higher education. Journal of Database Management, 23(3), 30–49.
Childress, M., & Braswell, R. (2006). Using massively multiplayer online role-playing games for
online learning. Distance Education, 27(2), 187–196.
Dewey, J. (1939). Experience and education. New York: The Macmillan Company.
Grant, S. J., Huang, H., & Pasfield-Neofitou, S. (2013). Language learning in virtual worlds: The
role of foreign language and technical anxiety. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 6, 1–9.
Grant, S. J., Huang, H., & Pasfield-Neofitou, S. (2014). The authenticity-anxiety paradox: The quest
for authentic second language communication and reduced foreign language anxiety in virtual
environments. Procedia Technology, 13, 23–32.
Gu, N., Gul, L. F., Williams, A., & Nakapan, W. (2009). Second Life—A context for design
learning. In C. Wankel & J. Kingsley (Eds.), Higher education in virtual worlds: Teaching and
learning in Second Life (pp. 159–180). Bingley: Emerald.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the source of learning and development.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
KZero. (2015). KZERO Worldwide. Retrieved March 15, 2015, from http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/
category/universe-graph/.
Love, E., Ross, S. C., & Wilhelm, W. (2009). Opportunities and challenges for business education
in Second Life. In C. Wankel & J. Kingsley (Eds.), Higher education in virtual worlds: Teaching
and learning in Second Life (pp. 65–82). Bingley: Emerald.
388 R. Sadler

Morningstar, C., & Farmer, F. R. (2001). Habitat: Reports from an online community. In J. Frenkel
(Ed.), True names and the opening of the cyberspace frontier (pp. 239–330). New York: TOE.
Mroz, A. (2015). The development of second language critical thinking in a virtual language
learning environment: A process-oriented mixed-method study. CALICO Journal, 32(3),
528–553.
Mulligan, J., & Patrovsky, B. (2003). Developing online games: An insider’s guide. Indianapolis:
New Riders.
Passfield-Neofitou, S., Huang, H., & Grant, S. (2015). Lost in Second Life: Virtual embodiment and
language learning via multimodal communication. Educational Technology Research and
Development, 63, 709–726.
Price, S., & Rogers, Y. (2004). Let’s get physical: The learning benefits of interacting in digitally
augmented physical spaces. Computers in Education, 43, 137–151.
Roussou, M. (2004). Learning by doing and learning through play: An exploration of interactivity
in virtual environments for children. AMC Computers in Entertainment, 2(1), 1–23.
Sadler, R. (2012). Virtual Worlds, telecollaboration, and language learning: From theory to
practice. Bern: Peter Lang.
Thomas, W. W. (2013). Incidental learning and virtual worlds. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation).
University of Alberta, Alberta.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher mental processes. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Wehner, A. K. (2014). Exploring the relationship of motivation, anxiety, and virtual worlds in the
experiences of two Spanish language learners: A case study (Unpublished doctoral disserta-
tion). University of South Florida, FL.
In addition to the references cited in the chapter, there are several foundational editing volumes
related to VWs that are either currently published or forthcoming. For those interested in more
research on this topic, the following are highly recommended:
Wankel, C., & Kingsley, J. (Eds.). (2009). Higher education in virtual worlds: Teaching and
learning in Second Life. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
In addition to these book, ReCALL, the Journal of the European Association for Computer Assisted
Language Learning will have a special issue in 2018 on Interactions for language learning in
and around virtual worlds.
Social Networking Sites and Language
Education

Jonathon Reinhardt

Abstract
The use of social networking sites for second and foreign (L2) language learning
and teaching has recently gained attention by practitioners and researchers of
applied linguistics and L2 education. Informed by socially oriented theories of
language learning and computer-assisted language learning (CALL) studies,
researchers have examined L2 learning and its use in non-educational or vernac-
ular sites like Facebook, L2 pedagogy using vernacular sites, and the use of
commercial social networks designed specifically for language learning, like
livemocha. Findings implicate the role of self-organized, autonomous learning
processes, the development of socio-collaborative learning communities, and the
challenges of balancing the learning benefits emergent from the user-driven
agency of everyday use with the demands to meet formal curriculum-driven
objectives. After a brief discussion of influences and definitions, this chapter
examines, analyzes, and synthesizes selected research that illustrates these find-
ings, concluding with problems and future directions.

Keywords
Computer-assisted language learning • Facebook • Social networking sites •
Second language learning • Web 2.0

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
Early Developments, Influences, and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
L2 Learning and Use in Vernacular SNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
SNS-Mediated L2 Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
SNSs Designed for Language Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

J. Reinhardt (*)
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 389

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_30
390 J. Reinhardt

Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397

Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399

Introduction

Since its inception, the Internet has facilitated the human behavior of social net-
working – engagement in social activity within a network defined by dyadic and
group relationships. The activity we understand today as online social networking,
typified by use of social networking sites and services (SNSs), like Facebook and
Twitter, has diverse origins in proto-Internet technologies like Usenet and bulletin
board systems, which supported asynchronous discussion and resource sharing, and
graphical webpage software and hosts, which afforded the creation and hyperlinking
of personal homepages. Early services like America On Line and Compuserve
offered users a single interface for accessing newsgroups, sharing information,
and interacting socially with other network users. Starting in the early 2000s,
Friendster, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Facebook launched SNSs that allowed individ-
uals to create profiles, to connect to profiles of other users they knew or wanted to
know in real life, and to share content with them. Unlike that of previous technol-
ogies, the architecture of SNSs utilized Web 2.0 innovations like extensible markup
language (XML) to facilitate user-driven production, evaluation, and resource shar-
ing, stimulating new types of communicative, economic and learning activity. Over
the last decade, with increasing accessibility to broadband and the rise of mobile
technology, SNS use has become everyday linguistic and symbolic practice for
billions around the world in scores of languages (Facebook supports over 70). The
phenomenon has garnered increasing attention among applied linguists and second
and foreign language (L2) learners and educators, who have sought to understand
how this everyday activity might be leveraged for L2 teaching and learning (L2TL)
purposes.

Early Developments, Influences, and Definitions

Delineating the object of study in a review of SNS research is challenging due to

multifarious origins and nebulous distinctions among definitions of SNS, social
media, Web 2.0, and computer-mediated communication (CMC). While others
have taken broader interpretations (e.g., Lamy and Zourou 2013), the current review
adheres as close as possible to Boyd and Ellison’s (2007) definition of SNS as
typified by user profile construction, connection traversing, and connection articu-
lation and re-articulation – in Facebook, for example, this would involve updating,
posting, or sharing on one’s own profile, friending others and viewing their posts and
profiles, and commenting on and liking others’ posts. SNSs can be considered a type
of social media, that is, any online media that involves the creation and/or sharing of
Social Networking Sites and Language Education 391

media content, for instance, through blogging (e.g., Tumblr or Wordpress), micro-
blogging (Twitter), social gaming (Farmville or Clash of Clans), photo sharing
(Instagram), reviewing (Yelp or TripAdvisor), or a host of other activities (see
Solis 2015). Confusion arises because social media applications are increasingly
integrated into SNS interfaces or enhanced with SNS features, and different SNSs
emphasize certain features and configurations leading to different styles and
cultures-of-use (Thorne 2003). Different SNSs are popular in different countries –
for example, Mixi in Japan, vKontakte in Russia, and RenRen in China. In addition,
there are a host of commercial SNSs designed specifically for language learning
(SNSsLL), like LiveMocha, Busuu, or Babbel, each with its own design.
As SNS use has become global and mainstream, academia has taken interest. In a
review of over 400 studies on Facebook, Wilson et al. (2012) identified five major areas
of research focus: descriptive analysis of users, motivations for using Facebook, identity
presentation, the role of Facebook in social interactions, and privacy and information
disclosure. Education scholars (e.g., Selwyn 2008) have argued that SNSs can facilitate
the development of collaborative and participatory learning communities, as well as
opportunities for informal and unstructured learning. In line with social science and
general education, L2TL researchers and practitioners have also explored SNS use in L2
education – both vernacular SNSs like Facebook and Twitter and SNSsLL like
Livemocha. There has been a notable increase in publications and presentations on the
topic, in both technology-oriented and more general language education and applied
linguistics journals, as well as in special journal issues (e.g., Demaizière and Zourou
2012) and edited volumes (e.g., Lamy and Zourou 2013; Lomicka and Lord 2009). The
research has diverse origins in, and influences from, CALL scholarship focused on the
social and cultural qualities of formal and naturalistic online language use and interaction,
especially computer-mediated collaborative learning (e.g., Warschauer and Kern 2000),
intercultural communication, sociopragmatics, situated learning, and identity develop-
ment and self-presentation (e.g., Lam 2000). Perhaps because of the obvious connection,
the “social turn” in SLA has had considerable influence on SNS research, and theoretical
approaches used in current L2TL research often originate in socially informed frame-
works (e.g., Atkinson 2011). Commensurate with these frameworks, techniques and
methods have ranged from attitudinal surveys and frequency analysis to CMC discourse
analysis and ethnographic case studies. As has become the norm in CALL research on
new technologies, initial work has tended to be theoretically agnostic, descriptive, and
focused on potentials. However, as SNS technology has matured and become main-
stream, researchers have begun to analyze its use and pedagogical application empiri-
cally, with more rigorous theoretical and methodological frameworks, often adapted from
fields outside of traditional L2TL and applied linguistics.

Major Contributions

Research to date has had three general foci with complementary goals: L2 learning
and use in vernacular SNS, SNS-mediated L2 pedagogy, and the use of commercial
SNSsLL. The purpose of the first is not only to inform both SNS pedagogy and
392 J. Reinhardt

SNSLL design but also to inform the study of autonomous and naturalistic L2 use
and learning more broadly. The goal of research with the second focus is to leverage
the motivational and situated nature of everyday SNS use for L2 learning purposes
and to integrate SNSs into formalized pedagogical structures more effectively, as
well as to inform the study of CALL pedagogy more broadly. Finally, research on
SNSsLL seeks to understand how SNSsLL design integrates social network mechan-
ics with pedagogical structures and how designs impact learner-user experiences.

L2 Learning and Use in Vernacular SNS

One common focus in the study of L2 learning and use in vernacular SNSs like
Facebook is on the role of user agency and the diversity of user practices under what
might seem to be common conditions, giving heed to Thorne’s (2003) sociocultural
notion of cultures-of-use or “the historically sedimented characteristics that accrue to
a CMC tool from its everyday use” (p. 40). For example, Mitchell (2012) profiled the
experiences of nine adult ESL learners who used Facebook over 4 weeks. Coming
from a variety of L1s, proficiency levels, and education levels, her participants
exhibited notable variety in how they used the SNS to meet diverse individual
goals, which included establishing new and maintaining home relationships, gaining
exposure to English, and learning about US culture. While some goals, like meeting
new friends, proved difficult, the participants met others by utilizing site affordances,
such as maintaining privacy and managing audiences through customized settings or
compensating for linguistic proficiency by extensive use of visual media.
Related to agency, another emerging theme is recognition of SNSs as arenas for
self-presentation and identity negotiation and the unique transcultural and hybrid
qualities of these processes among L2 learners and multilingual users. Research with
this theme often hearkens to Lam’s work (e.g., 2000) on the online identity devel-
opment of L1 Chinese immigrant teenagers. For example, Pasfield-Neofitou (2011),
using a social realism lens that views “social action as shaped by an interplay of
social and systemic phenomena” (p. 95), examined the long-term use of a variety of
SNS tools by learners of Japanese and their individual networks. She found that
language choice in different SNS contexts varied according to user perception of
audience and cultural practice; for example, English was preferred in Facebook,
while Japanese was preferred in Mixi. In a finding that supports transcultural,
dynamic views of identity, participants were found to use their Japanese learner
and English speaker identities as strategic affordances for learning and interaction
(see also Klimanova and Dembovskaya 2013, below). Speaking to agency, the
researcher also found that learners recognized the general benefits of virtual immer-
sion and the affordances of different SNS and online tools for learning particular
linguistic domains.
Another related theme is the capacity of SNSs as user-driven environments for
socialization. To illustrate, Chen (2013) examined how two L1 Chinese students
studying in the USA projected their identities in Facebook over 2 years through
“deliberate choices and appropriations of language, discourse, social role, and
Social Networking Sites and Language Education 393

projection of cultural values and beliefs” (p. 145). Chen showed how one student’s
increase in English language information sharing over time demonstrated a growing
awareness of her audience and development of an expanded multilingual identity,
while the other student’s increase in status updates in Chinese demonstrated her
growing reliance on home relationships for social interaction.
While not focused on L2 education, Androutsopoulos’ (2014) sociolinguistics
work offers insight into the linguistic and interactional processes involved in SNS
use. Using concepts from superdiversity and audience design theories, he shows that
the multiple audiences facing an SNS user afford “context collapse,” resulting in
multilingual and multimodal language style strategies that localize, maximize, and
partition audiences. Implications are that online conversation norms vary consider-
ably from offline norms and that language style and choice in SNS contexts may be
shaped by the tension between needs for both intimacy and publicness in online
interaction. Androutsopoulos’s study represents the sort of work to which
researchers and practitioners of L2TL in SNS might turn for interdisciplinary
cross-pollination, for example, as a framework for analysis of SNS-mediated L2
learner interaction.

SNS-Mediated L2 Pedagogy

The application of vernacular SNSs in L2 instruction may be due to teachers wishing to

leverage the popularity of the latest technologies because they believe that quality alone
motivates students. However, while novelty was perhaps sufficient a few decades ago,
today there is sometimes resistance among students who may feel everyday technolo-
gies like SNSs are being wrongly co-opted for formal “high” purposes like academics
(e.g., Reinhardt and Zander 2011). While some practitioners have recognized the
opportunity to “bridge” out-of-school practices into awareness of language use as
personally and socially relevant cultural practice (Thorne and Reinhardt 2008), learner
familiarity with SNSs poses challenges that technology unique to language labs did not.
As per the norm, early work was exploratory and discussed potential benefits and
drawbacks. For example, McBride (2009) discussed the pedagogical possibilities of
SNSs, focusing on their potential to motivate younger “digital natives” and afford
the developmental benefits of “writing/remixing the self” in a socio-communicative
context. Predicting soon-to-appear work, she noted the potential of SNSs for the
development of socio-pragmatic competence and as an environment for role-play
through “fakebooking.” McBride also emphasized the challenge that forcing learners
to friend one another and the teacher might de-authenticate the experience and
negate the benefits deriving from learner-driven activity.
Notable work has also identified the potential of SNS to foster collaborative
learning, develop socio-pragmatic competence, and afford intercultural learning and
exchange. For example, Blattner and Fiori (Blattner and Fiori 2009) argued that L2
learners can develop a sense of belonging to a learning community through observation
of, and participation in, authentic Facebook group discussions in the language of study,
since those discussions may provide critical counterexamples to the academic or
394 J. Reinhardt

invented language samples of textbooks. In a 2011 application of their assertion,

Blattner and Fiori (Blattner and Fiori 2011) had L2 Spanish learners observe, docu-
ment, and analyze various functions of Spanish use in authentic Facebook groups,
specifically the variety of greetings and leave-takings, unique abbreviations, and
cultural references in wall posts. Learners reported the development of cultural and
metalinguistic awareness, particularly regarding pragmatic variance among CMC reg-
isters. The researchers also note the applicability and transferability of the literacies and
analytic skills developed through such activities to other media and contexts.
Other research has implied that the SNS affordance for collaborative learning and
learner community development may be due to its accessibility outside of formal
contexts – an implication perhaps facilitated by the fact that the studies looked at
Twitter, which was initially designed to be more mobile and “push” focused than
Facebook. For example, Antenos-Conforti (2009) had L2 Italian learners use Twitter
to interact with their classmates both in and outside of class. Learners used the tool not
only for the assigned tasks but also to help one another and reported satisfaction at
being able to use and interact in the L2 authentically in non-classroom domains. In a
similar, more empirical study, Lomicka and Lord (2012) had L2 French learners use
Twitter to interact with each other and with native speakers. The researchers analyzed
the learners’ tweets for social presence and defined as “the degree to which the
participants can present themselves, both socially and emotionally, as ‘real’ people in
their online community” which is theorized to be prerequisite to development of a
learning community (Garrison et al. 2000, in Lomicka and Lord 2012, p. 51). In their
analysis of the learners’ tweets, they found evidence for the interaction, emotion, and
self-disclosure that indicate some degree of social presence, as measured by markers of
affect, interactivity, and cohesion. The native speakers did not take to Twitter as much
as the learners, which the authors ascribe to the optional nature of the tasks for the
French collaborators, suggesting a possible misalignment of curricula that is sometimes
difficult to avoid in telecollaborative exchanges.
Like Lomicka and Lord, others have found in SNSs ideal spaces for tele-
collaborative intercultural exchange and learning. Findings are that learners may
gain cultural understandings through processes of socialization that involve collab-
orative negotiation of community, agency, and identity, all the while balancing
informal language use with formal learning demands. Work on SNS as sites for
self-presentation are descendants of earlier work on CMC and identity (e.g., Lam
2000). For example, using Norton’s concept of identity investment, Klimanova and
Dembovskaya (2013) examined how L2 Russian learners and native Russian
speakers enacted various identities in the Russian SNS VKontakte. Employing
“digital wisdom” (Prensky 2009 in Klimanova and Dembovskaya 2013, p. 69),
some participants were able to overcome the limitations of low proficiency by
privileging particular sign systems, construing heritage and learner identities, and
strategically investing in the “social enhancements” (p. 83) afforded by the SNS,
including “various forms of discursive practices (e.g., status updates, profile wall
postings, private messaging tools) and various semiotic modes of self-expression,
such as photos, avatars, choice of language input, and use of punctuation marks to
express emotions” (p. 81).
Social Networking Sites and Language Education 395

Liaw and English (2013) report on a telecollaboration project between English

learners in Taiwan and France who completed formal exchange tasks of introduction
and art commentary on an official school SNS. Independently, the participants then
set up a Facebook group to informally socialize and learn about each other’s culture.
Using an innovative approach to analyze textual features quantitatively and to
examine the systemic-functional field, tenor, and mode of learner production, the
researchers found that language use in the informal Facebook group exhibited more
interpersonal and textual features than language use in the official SNS, which
tended towards higher complexity and lexical density, even the presumably inter-
personal self-introductions. The authors suggest that it may have been the very
unsanctioned quality of the informal SNS that afforded experiential cultural learning
and the use, and ultimately learning, of vernacular, nonacademic domains. Implica-
tions from this study are to encourage and facilitate informal and organic connec-
tions, although perhaps in a “hands-off” manner.
Recognizing that the range of discourse types, registers, and genres inherent to
vernacular SNS use is not easily accessed through traditional L2 pedagogy, other
research-practitioners have used SNSs for role-play and situated learning activities.
Integrating SNSs with global simulation and situated learning pedagogy principles,
Mills (2011) developed and implemented Facebook-enhanced instruction for
advanced French learners. Over a semester, students developed simulated characters
and interacted through them online, thereby gaining awareness of genre, register,
voice, and identity. Mills analyzes the learning as reflective of the joint enterprise,
mutual engagement, and shared repertoire afforded by the interplay of the SNS and
the situated, contextualized nature of the instruction.
Working with intermediate L2 Korean learners, Reinhardt and Ryu (2013) devel-
oped and implemented a series of bridging activities (Thorne and Reinhardt 2008)
involving SNS-based alternate identity role-play, the purpose of which was to
develop social-network-mediated literacy and language awareness as well as offer
learners the opportunity to voice perspectives and use socio-grammatical structures
they would not normally with their true first person identities. Learners first observed
and analyzed snippets of expert Facebook interactions for samples of CMC register
and socio-pragmatic lexico-grammar – for example, particles and tense uses that
indexed relational status between author and addressee. In tasks designed to elicit
newly learned language, learners then role-played invented characters interacting
through Facebook posts. They then analyzed their classmates’ role-played produc-
tion and identified socio-pragmatic uses, discussing whether and why the language
used was appropriate and whether it fit with the character’s social status in relation to
the addressee.

SNSs Designed for Language Learning

While many people are learning languages informally and perhaps formally with
vernacular SNSs, many are also using SNSsLL – SNSs designed specifically for
language learning purposes. Definitional issues again come to the fore with SNSsLL,
396 J. Reinhardt

since most are combinations of self-study tutorials enhanced with social network
features, and as commercial products, they evolve, impacting user-learner experi-
ences. As of this writing, older SNSsLL like Livemocha and Palabea have gone
defunct, but Speaky has just started. Regarding more established SNSsLL, Lang-
8 claims 750,000 members, Babbel claims 20 million, and Busuu claims 50 million.
Most of these sites have yet to be examined objectively and empirically by L2LT
researchers; the fact that Livemocha was the most researched but is now defunct
illustrates why researchers may not want to commit resources to their analyses.
Findings from SNSsLL research mostly critique site design through usability
testing and show that most users are often well aware of poor design and when social
networking features do not afford L2 learning. For example, poor profile design may
lead to the inability for other users to know whether a fellow user is truly qualified as
an expert or if he is just looking for a good time (Stevenson and Liu 2010). Findings
echo those of research on vernacular SNS-mediated L2 use, learning, and pedagogy
– that SNSs may afford the practice of identity and agency and the development of
socio-collaborative learning through the processes of socialization but with the
added point that site design should actively support these activities as they relate
to language learning. Implications speak to whether and to what degree independent,
autonomous L2 learning within these sites can leverage the ecological affordances of
informal vernacular SNS-mediated learning, while seamlessly incorporating more
formal and potentially effective, instructional practices.
In a relatively early descriptive piece, Harrison and Thomas (2009) traced the
experiences of six L2 learners who used Livemocha. Utilizing Boyd and Ellison’s
(2007) conceptualization of SNS identity, the researchers found that the site design
supported self-presentation, network management, community participation, and
ultimately L2 learning in ways that appealed to some but not all participants. The
authors imply that socio-collaborative L2 learning can only emerge in SNSsLL if
sites afford learners individualized means to cultivate, manage, and develop identi-
ties and networks over periods longer than a semester. Similarly, Clark and Gruba
(2010) also evaluate Livemocha features but do so by describing their own experi-
ences using the site to learn L2 Korean and Japanese. While some features led to
motivation, like making friends or successful task completion, others led to frustra-
tion and demotivation, like boring and repetitive grammar-translation drills, usability
issues, and a sense of doing busy work.
Another research strand has examined how resourceful learners may use SNSsLL
successfully, perhaps in spite of site design. For example, framing development of
sociopragmatic competence as a matter of language socialization, Gonzales (2013)
uses conversation analysis to examine how an L2 Spanish learner manages rapport in
Livemocha. While the site’s chat tool includes supportive resources like a translator,
a keyboard with non-English characters and emoticons, and a list of suggested
topics, the learner did not use these and instead successfully established rapport
with his interlocutor through humor, small talk, textualized paralanguage, and shared
cultural reference.
Research on specific elements of SNSsLL design holds the most promise for truly
informing improved iterations, especially when it correlates those elements directly
Social Networking Sites and Language Education 397

with activities key to L2 learning. For example, using a combination of quantitative

and qualitative techniques, Zourou and Loiseau (2013) analyzed the design of the
culture section of Livemocha, noting how the lack of, or poorly conceived, SNS
features led to inconvenience and difficulty for the user and thwarted language-
focused interaction and networking. Examining mechanics rather than particular site
versions may also alleviate the issue of research becoming obsolete when sites
change.

Problems and Difficulties

In brief, research on SNSs in L2 education has found evidence that L2 learners

exercise considerable agency and diversity of linguistic and symbolic practice in
informal SNS contexts, making strategic use of site affordances to self-present, to
design identities, and to socialize and be socialized into the communities in which
they find or imagine themselves – whether local, global, or “glocal.” In more formal
pedagogical interventions, practitioners have demonstrated that SNSs can help to
develop learner socio-pragmatic competence and raise metalinguistic and
intercultural awareness. SNSsLL have shown some value for vocabulary memori-
zation but suffer from design issues and have yet to take full advantage of the social
interactional dynamics inherent to vernacular SNSs.
Challenges remain in both research and practice. Social media has become an
object of discussion and analysis in both popular and academic circles – especially
communication studies, education, sociology, political science, and economics –
which L2TL professionals should continue to reference. In view of the mixed
methodologies often employed, the vernacular, ubiquitous, and often ephemeral
nature of SNS use poses challenges to researchers, especially in addressing privacy
issues and gaining access to, collecting, and curating data. Research is also chal-
lenged by the moving nature of the target as sites evolve, merge, incorporate new
features, commercialize, and fall in and out of fashion – or in some cases, are
firewalled by governments.
Among US users, the 2014 Pew Internet report shows shifting trends, as
Facebook growth has slowed to account for around three quarters of all SNS
users. Other SNS platforms have gained users with about one quarter of SNS activity
occurring on LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter combined. While Facebook
is proportionally gaining older users, Pinterest trends towards women, over half of
SNS users under age 30 are favoring Instagram, and over half of all SNS users
participate on multiple platforms. Research opportunities abound if one asks why
and how these trends have developed, what tensions and synergies they afford, and
what they imply for L2TL – for example, Instagram favors images and visual
expression that would seem to have great potential for culture learning but not the
development of written fluency or interactional competence.
Designers and teachers of SNS-enhanced pedagogy and developers of SNSsLL
should recognize that learners bring considerable experiences with, and diverse
dispositions towards, social networking and L2 use and learning into formal and
398 J. Reinhardt

informal learning contexts. The question of how to leverage the self-organized,

autonomous learning activity seen in everyday SNS use for more structured learning
purposes still remains largely unanswered, as user agency can be negated through
curriculum-driven task design. Instructors should anticipate resistance and seek not
only to mitigate it – for example, by not forcing a student to use their real profile, or
by not requiring that tweets be sent over the weekend – but also to use it to raise
awareness of the potentials of cognizant SNS use for autonomous and collaborative
L2 learning. It makes sense to start by surveying students and matching their
interests and experiences with learning objectives and the various affordances of
different social media platforms.
SNSsLL are evolving into social network-enhanced commercial computer-
assisted language learning sites and services (“SNECSs” perhaps), as they use social
networking (and gamification) mechanics, like crowdsourcing, to enhance intelligent
(or not so intelligent) CALL tutoring environments. SNSsLL designers are driven by
commercial demands and, as long as new users and markets are available, do not
really have incentive to offer materials that comprehensively treat all skills or are
grounded in the best L2TL practices. SNSsLL should thus be used judiciously and
subjected to continued scrutiny by consumers, teachers, and researchers, who should
also look toward digital game-mediated L2TL and intelligent computer-adaptive
learning for educational applications and theoretical and analytical frameworks.

Future Directions

One direction forward is to focus on where SNSs differ from previous Internet
technologies and concomitant social paradigm shifts. Drawing from O’Reilly’s
conceptualization of Web 2.0 as both technological and ideological (Musser et al.
2007; in Zourou 2012), Zourou maintains that the ethos emerging from new
SNS-mediated socio-communicative interactions, social configurations, and socio-
literacies deserve closer attention – an ethos of user participation focused on sharing
and reuse, the open source ethos afforded by Web 2.0 architecture, and a new ethos
of social value and capital emerging from network effects like virality and social
network “echo chamber” effects. New social media-enhanced expressions of soci-
ality, literacy, culture, ownership, authenticity, production, consumption, democracy,
and civic participation require new understandings of language use as subject to
mediatization (Lundby 2009). They, in turn, compel the need for evolving critical
approaches to language education that recognize and forefront this ubiquitous and
everyday way of interacting and making meaning as central to language use and
learning.

Cross-References

▶ Ecologies of Digital Literacies: Implications for Education

▶ Language and Identity on Facebook
Social Networking Sites and Language Education 399

▶ Language, Ideology, and Critical Digital Literacy

▶ Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital
Environments
▶ Multimodal Discourses Across the Curriculum

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Twitter and Micro-Blogging and Language
Education

Lara Lomicka

Abstract
Over the past decade, Twitter has grown significantly in its popularity and has also
migrated into educational contexts. Although the use of Twitter and micro-
blogging has risen steadily, research exploring its potential in L2 learning has
been relatively limited. This chapter provides an overview of microblogging in L2
contexts, which began in 2009 (for a critical analysis of work done on Twitter from
2009 to 2016, please see Hattem and Lomicka, E-Learning and Digital Media
(Sage Publications), 1–19, 2016). It also provides insight into the development of
Twitter as well as the major contributions that Twitter has made to L2 contexts. L2
acquisition research has been varied in approach, task, and with different levels of
learners, but to date, it has been largely inconclusive. Early studies primarily
examined tweets at the surface level, including frequency and type. Subsequent
studies have shown that Twitter enhanced student engagement and improved
communication between teachers and students. More recently, research using
Twitter in L2 contexts has tended to focus on the areas of student production of
tweets and student analysis of tweets. While the production of tweets can increase
students’ L2 output, the analysis of tweets exposes students to L2 input. Research
has also looked at the use of Twitter to facilitate community within the language
classroom. As microblogging continues to emerge in education and is becoming
more prevalent in language learning contexts, future work could focus on the use
of hashtags, microfiction, and corpora use in Twitter. As the field is emerging, the
focus should remain on how learning occurs in microblogging-enhanced environ-
ments, what specific factors affect the learning processes, and how to support
effective learning in such environments.

L. Lomicka (*)
The University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 401

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_31
402 L. Lomicka

Keywords
Twitter • Microblogging • Language learning • Social media • Education • Tweets

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411

Introduction

Over the past decade, Twitter has grown significantly in its popularity and now ranks
close to Facebook in terms of social media use. Smith (2015) estimates that 302 mil-
lion active monthly users are on Twitter, which includes 100 million daily users. With
the exponential growth of microblogging, it has also migrated into educational
contexts. In fact, Shweiki media (2014) reports that 80% of college students use
Twitter, which comes in just behind Facebook (95%). The use of Twitter is on the rise
in academia, including among university professors, who, according to Rogers
(2013), are increasingly using twitter in education as it contributes to a more
engaging learning environment. Symmons (2013), for example, in a study conducted
on how professors use Twitter, found that as a teaching tool, Twitter was not as
popular as other social media tools in the classroom. She indicates that professors use
Twitter more as a source for gaining knowledge, external information, and to stay up
to date in their fields of study and expertise. However, Symmons also suggests that
Twitter use in the classroom is steadily on the rise. The role of Twitter as a learning
tool has shown potential in myriad ways over the last few years. For example, various
studies have suggested that microblogging can provide ways for learning to take
place out of the classroom, to serve as a tool for collaborating with experts (Lord and
Lomicka 2014; Wesely 2013), for enabling access and mobility (Antenos-Conforti
2009), to support authenticity in learning (Lomicka and Lord 2012), for fostering
student engagement and involvement (Raguseo 2010), to serve as a knowledge
sharing tool (Dennen and Jiang 2012), and that Twitter is participatory, authentic,
and immediate (Antenos-Conforti 2009).
Studies that have documented the role of Twitter in language learning have
focused primarily on language production (Antenos-Conforti 2009; Castrillo de
Larreta-Azelain 2013; Hattem 2014; Lomicka and Lord 2012), student perceptions
of Twitter (Antenos-Conforti 2009; Lomicka and Lord 2012; Perifanou 2009), target
language practice (Lomicka and Lord 2012; Fewell 2014), building second language
(L2) vocabulary (Fornara 2015; Montero-Fleta et al. 2015), teacher education and
Twitter and Micro-Blogging and Language Education 403

professional development (Lord and Lomicka 2014; Wesely 2013), community

building (Fewell 2014; Lomicka and Lord 2012), instructor guidance (Hattem
2012; Fornara 2015), and analysis of tweets (Blattner et al. 2015a, b). The next
sections will explore the multifaceted ways that Twitter has been used in the language
learning process.

Early Developments

Although the use of Twitter and microblogging has risen steadily over the last few years,
research exploring its potential in L2 learning has been limited. Early developments in
microblogging in L2 settings date to 2009 (see also Hattem and Lomicka 2016) and
have primarily examined tweets at the surface level, whether through frequency counts
as a way to develop competence or through community building. The next section
outlines some of the early contributions of Twitter to language learning.
In Twitter’s early stages of development, the first contribution to microblogging in
the L2 setting was a study conducted by Antenos-Conforti (2009), who looked at
microblogging practices in an intermediate Italian classroom. In her innovative study,
22 students enrolled in university-level Intermediate Italian tweeted during one
semester. Data were collected included tweets (documenting frequency and distribu-
tion), a Likert questionnaire, and a follow-up free-response questionnaire. Based on
her results, Antenos-Conforti suggested that the incorporation of Twitter can extend
the physical classroom as it provides a space encouraging participation and fostering
a sense of community. In another early study, Perifanou (2009) conducted research
using Edmodo (as a microblogging tool) in an Italian language class with 10 second
year students. Tweets were analyzed for frequency counts and from a sociocultural
perspective. Details of the coding and analysis were not provided. Results (primarily
from the questionnaires) indicate that that student response was extremely positive
and that microblogging increased collaboration, motivation, and participation and
had a positive effect on learning outcomes. In a larger study, Borau et al. (2009)
examined tweets from 90 ESL students enrolled in an online college course for a
period of 7 weeks. In all, students produced 5580 tweets, which were analyzed for
communicative and cultural competence by way of a questionnaire and content
analysis. Details of the coding framework and analysis were not provided. Borau,
Ullrich, Feng, and Shen claimed that students responded positively to Twitter,
establishing its status as a suitable tool for developing communicative and cultural
competence anytime, anywhere, without the need for face-to-face interaction.
In addition to serving as a tool to foster student language production, micro-
blogging also has the potential to foster a sense of community within and beyond the
walls of the classroom – to learn, share, reflect, and communicate. Kolowich (2011)
cites the work of a professor who used Twitter to encourage students to talk with a
class at a different institution: “students to talk about what’s going on in their lives in
the moment, and share that with the other class” (para. 5). While the language
professor specifically comments that Twitter does not replace traditional language
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instruction in the classroom, she adds that it does help to build community and to
extend learning outside of the classroom as it encourages students to use the target
language more often. Finally, Dervin (2009) suggests the Twitter has the potential to
aid in the development of reading, writing, listening, and speaking as well as to boost
task-based learning, and promote intra- and intercultural discussion among students.
While there was clearly an interest in using and conducting research with Twitter in
the L2 setting in early work, this research shows minimal use of theoretical frame-
works and methods regarding how to analyze Tweets and how to clearly and
consistently report the data.

Major Contributions

Recent research using Twitter in L2 contexts has generally focused on the areas of
student production of tweets and student analysis of tweets. While the production of
tweets increases students’ L2 output, the analysis of tweets exposes students to L2
input. Another area of research includes how Twitter can be used to facilitate
community within the language classroom.
We will first look at the studies that focus on the production of tweets by L2
learners. As mentioned earlier, Antenos-Conforti (2009) was the first to conduct a
study on the use of Twitter in the L2 setting. Her work set the path for future research
as an example of how students could potentially facilitate acquisition by providing
both input and output with an online audience. She notes that such exchange allows
for opportunities for negotiation of meaning as well as “good interaction” (Chapelle
1998, p. 24) in that communication goes beyond simply that which is unidirectional
(ibid, p. 24). While Antenos-Conforti’s study primarily reports on student responses
to the questionnaires, her work also provides basic data on both the frequency and
distribution of tweets, which were either reply tweets or status updates. Although
Antenos-Conforti did discuss some of the content in the tweets, a formal content
analysis was not performed. Hattem (2012) also looks at input, output, and interac-
tion through structured grammatical tasks to encourage noticing using the Twitter.
Forty-nine students participated in the 7-week study. Over 3500 tweets were col-
lected and analyzed with Corpus of Tweets. Additionally, questionnaires were
administered on input, output, and interaction and on automaticity. Findings suggest
that the use of Twitter helped to increase noticeability in input, output, and interac-
tion; Hattem further reports that microblogging represented an appropriate forum for
practice and memorization.
Another major contribution to microblogging research was a project conducted by
Lomicka and Lord (2012); they explored the use of Twitter among intermediate level
French learners, who used the tool to communicate with each other and with native
speakers of French. In this study, students both produced tweets and read tweets
produced by native speakers. Data were collected by way of surveys and tweets.
While survey data elicited some noteworthy attitudinal trends, content analysis
provided more compelling data (following Rourke et al. 2001). A framework used
to code tweets for social presence (1004 indicators, such as humor, emotion,
Twitter and Micro-Blogging and Language Education 405

agreement, and inclusive pronouns), which allowed the researchers to see whether
Twitter might be an appropriate tool for building community in the L2 classroom.
Researchers observed evidence of both cultural and linguistic gains and received
positive feedback from students with regard to their reactions to the project. Results
suggest that Twitter is capable of both building community and establishing social
presence, which was demonstrated largely through affective and interactive
indicators.
In a study by Castrillo de Larreta-Azelain (2013), who investigated learner
attitudes toward using Twitter in collaborative writing in German classes, students
produced tweets for writing practice. Using a mixed-methods study, Castrillo de
Larreta-Azelain used various sources of data, including a pre- and postquestionnaire
and tweets. Findings suggest that students were able to create a new learning
community and the Twitter task allowed students to develop writing competence.
While the researcher did perform a content analysis, coding procedures and frame-
works were not mentioned explicitly in the study. Castrillo de Larreta-Azelain’s work
does affirm, however, that learners, who self-reported on their participation in the
task, improved their German writing skills.
More recently, Fornara (2015) examined whether an instructor who models L2
usage might affect students’ use of L2 on Twitter. Ninety-three students taking Italian
2 were included in control and experimental groups and tweeted during an academic
semester. Tweets were tallied and analyzed via tweetdownload.net and pre- and
postsurveys were administered. Results presented both the number of new vocabu-
lary items and grammar structures used in tweets and results were not significant;
however, students indicated that Twitter was a useful tool and that it provided them
with additional opportunities to practice vocabulary and grammar. Results also found
that the presence of a co-tweeting instructor did not significantly influence linguistic
features used by students.
While prior contributions (Antenos-Conforti 2009; Lomicka and Lord 2012;
Hattem 2014; Fornara 2015) have looked at the tweets written and produced by
students, more recent work has looked at how students analyze tweets. For example,
two studies by Blattner et al. (2015a, b) provide an analysis of how learners identify
various lexical items such as abbreviations and of how English words are used
differently in various tweets from different native speaker tweeters. This contribution
also investigates students’ use of Twitter at the beginning levels of language learning,
unlike many previous studies where the focus was on the intermediate and advanced
level. In the study by Blattner et al. (2015a), participants were asked to analyze
authentic French tweets produced by well-known native speakers (NS). The analysis
focused on two features of cross-cultural pragmatics: (a) the use of abbreviations and
(b) nonce and established borrowings from English. Data were analyzed by the
regular distribution of a questionnaire which targeted various pragmatic variables
through a series of guided questions. Participants took screenshots of NS tweets and
then analyzed the tweets. Results indicated that a number of breakdowns occurred in
situations where students were able to identify but not contextually decipher high-
frequency abbreviations and novel English borrowings. In addition to serving as a
production-based tool, this study is significant in that it demonstrates that Twitter can
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also be used as an effective and “appropriate venue to assist students in the compre-
hension of cross-cultural pragmatics and the development of digital literacy skills”
(Blattner et al. 2015a, p. 227).
Blattner et al. (2015b) analyzed students’ understanding of 380 French tweets via
a linguistic analysis; data were also collected by means of a pre and post survey.
Students were enrolled in first and second semester university level French. As part of
the linguistic analysis, students were asked to identify English borrowings in each
tweet they analyzed. The task of identifying English in tweets caused students to
realize how prevalent English is in social media and especially in French-speaking
countries. Next, there were 19 unidentified English words among first-semester
participants versus 30 among second-semester participants, revealing a higher ten-
dency among more experienced French learners to interpret words presented in a
French context as established French lexical items, rather than scanning each item for
a counterpart in their native English. Finally, participants identified English words
and expressions at similar rates, but in the case of false cognates, second-semester
participants showed a greater tendency toward recognizing their language-specific
values.
Aside from investigating input, output, and meaningful interaction, Hattem’s
(2014) qualitative study is of particular importance as it looks at language play
using Twitter in the L2 setting and uses a case study design. Hattem followed three
participants who used Twitter as part of an intensive, ESL high advanced grammar
course. Looking for examples of ludic language play in tweets, Hattem analyzed and
coded tweets for characteristics of CMC coherence. He found that during the 7-week
session, students did use language play (repetition, joking, insulting, improvisational
word games, foreign words and references, imaginary worlds, and carnival language)
and they created their own learning contexts. Hattem argues that the three participants
did not just perform that task designed for them but rather co-constructed their own
activities and as a result directed their educational and social goals, which he
characterizes as “expansive learning” (p. 167).
The aforementioned contributions to research on Twitter in L2 contexts ranged
from using tweets to facilitate input and output, build community, and assess student
attitudes to student analysis of native speaker tweets and language play. These studies
provide a solid foundation from which to design and carry out future work. While a
variety of methodologies and interpretive frameworks were used, future research
would benefit from stronger methodologies, including more examples of productive
analytic approaches and coding procedures.

Work in Progress

Although research using Twitter is only in its beginning stages, Twitter has been used
in a variety of innovative ways for students to produce language and thus facilitate
participation, target language practice outside of the classroom, to build community,
and to target specific grammar, vocabulary and/or pronunciation learning. Current
Twitter and Micro-Blogging and Language Education 407

research has also used Twitter as a means for students to gain exposure to NS input
and to analyze sociopragmatic elements of the target language.
There are a number of emerging projects that show potential for future micro-
blogging research and that provide divergent avenues for creative activity in micro-
blogging. First, similar to work done by Fornara (2015), in that the instructor
distributes content related tweets, Mompean and Fouz-González (2016) examine
the role of Twitter on students’ participation and pronunciation. Sixteen EFL students
from a language school in Spain participated in this project, which involved several
steps: a pretest oral task with targeted stimuli and questionnaire, a battery of tweets
(distributed by the instructor to the students during 27 days and targeting pronunci-
ation), and a posttest interview and final questionnaire. Participants were also asked
to confirm reading tweets by posting a short response. Specifically, the researchers
attempted to facilitate active participation and to use Twitter to serve as a pronunci-
ation tool for ELS lexical items that are commonly mispronounced. Empirical results
(counts, content analysis) suggest that the use of Twitter did encourage participation
(reading comment rate of 82.4%) and that there was a beneficial effect on students’
pronunciation of the targeted lexical items (gain rate of 75.2%).
In addition to using Twitter as a tool to facilitate pronunciation, recent work
explores ways of using microfiction with microblogging. While not unique to
language learning, Twitter is being used as a platform for creating student-generated
microfiction literacy projects where students publish 140 word (or less) literary
narratives while engaging in real-time storytelling. As Ragueso clarifies, Twitter
fiction comprises an “original, self-contained work of fiction in each tweet published
by a Twitter user” (2010, n.p.). Fitzgerald (2013), in discussing Twitter fiction in a
TedTalk, reminds the audience of the emergence of the first episodes on radio and
then discusses how we can embrace new formats as we tell stories to today’s
audiences. In thinking about language specific contexts, students can create virtual
spaces in language class for stories where feedback is immediate, and students can be
pulled into stories, roles, and identities, leading to creative experimentation with new
formats for storytelling. In addition to Twitter fiction, other literary projects such as
Complete da Tweet (https://twitter.com/CompleteDaTweet) could be adapted to
language specific tasks for students at varying levels of language learning. Short
stories that were written with Twitter in mind, such as “Blackbox,” provide examples
of how Twitter can be successful with the distribution of serialized tweets. While to
date there is a paucity of research that documents this trend in the language class-
room, it does hold the potential for future pedagogical innovation and L2 research.
Finally, work on hashtags (#) is also in beginning to surface in the field. For
example, Solmaz (in press) uses an ecological framework to explore the potential of
hashtags, where hashtags are convention markers for annotating the content of
tweets. Using an autoethnographic approach, he analyzes his own Twitter experi-
ences in his target language during a 6-month period. He examines hashtags both
qualitatively and quantitatively and suggests that they can create affiliation with
target language speakers, allow students to better reach out to native speakers in
their communities, and join in on authentic conversations. Blattner et al. (2016)
investigate how French language learners in three different second and third year
408 L. Lomicka

French courses (intermediate and advanced levels) understand and interpret hashtags
using Twitter. Their study sheds light on how microblogging may provide an
authentic yet dynamic context that enhances the language learning experience
while developing students’ multiliteracy skills in a L2. Data from 18 students were
examined, including 579 analyzed tweets, 171 of which contained hashtags. Results
suggest that language learners tend to glance over the hashtags and make guesses
based on the information contained in them. Emerging research on microblogging
and pronunciation, twitter fiction, and hashtags hold the potential for interesting and
creative work in future language research.

Problems and Difficulties

For most students today, the use of Twitter is ubiquitous; it is also on the radar of most
educators. However, Twitter has not been without its share of challenges in the
educational setting. While some criticize Twitter for being a distraction in education,
the challenge is to ascertain whether Twitter can be used in meaningful ways in the
classroom and if it can facilitate language learning and communication in the L2
context. Ideas for use of Twitter in language contexts continue to emerge and evolve.
One challenge to the effective use of Twitter in the language classroom is finding
tasks that are solid and pedagogically innovative for both smaller and larger class-
room settings. For example, Professor of French Carolyn Shread integrates Twitter
feeds into Moodle with students in advanced elementary and intermediate level
French classes. To engage students in their viewing of 52 textbook videos, students
are each given characters from the video series. Students then posted about their
character’s private thoughts, lives, and activities throughout the semester, which
added a “playful and creative element to their learning” (Shread, 2015,
[email protected], personal e-mail communication). According to Shread,
students find the task engaging and challenging. Marshall (2015), who teaches
large lecture classes, finds ways to incorporate Twitter by using it as a way to facilitate
starter questions at the beginning of class. This use of microblogging engages
students to communicate both with the instructor and with each other during
in-class face-to-face sessions. Both examples show ways that Twitter can be used
effectively for teaching different types of classes and for diverse tasks. Another
challenge for those using Twitter is finding an effective yet creative use of hashtags
for both microblogging tasks and for research. Hashtags can be used in myriad ways,
such as to help connect learners, to examine engagement rates of tweets, to model
authenticity, and to promote communication. Tasks could ask students to follow and
analyze how hashtags are being used by native speakers and delve into socio-
pragmatic understanding of meaning in the tags. Little research in language learning
(see Solmaz in press; Blattner et al. 2016) has been conducted with hashtags on
Twitter, and it would be interesting to see the number and types of hashtags that
Twitter and Micro-Blogging and Language Education 409

learners can produce as well as learners’ understandings of hashtags from following

native speaker tweets.
As research involving microblogging in L2 settings is in its early stages, more
studies are needed to highlight longitudinal uses of Twitter. For example, research
could examine students’ use of microblogging across various levels and semesters of
language learning to help fill the current gap in literature associated with Twitter in
the L2 classroom. Studies that investigate the use of Twitter in the K-12 setting also
warrant further research. To date, Kim et al. (2011) document students’ use of Twitter
in grades 5, 7, and 10 in EFL classes. Forty-Five students participated in their
research which looked at the purposes, patterns, and features of student tweets.
Researchers noted a variety of patterns, purposes, and features and suggested that
Twitter stimulates learners, promotes language output, and encourages them to
socially interact with others.
A general trend in studies on Twitter indicates difficulty finding frameworks for
analysis, challenges in selecting appropriate and affordable tools to analyze tweets,
and a paucity of ways to analyze hashtags generated by students. While studies such
as Lord and Lomicka (2012) have employed tested frameworks (such as Rourke et al.
2001), these frameworks measure nonlanguage-specific data and more language-
sensitive approaches are needed, as well as examples of coding methodologies. As
frameworks and coding procedures are more consistently employed, it is also essen-
tial to allow language researchers to easily download tweets in a variety of learner
languages. Although numerous tools are available (BirdSong Analytics, Twitonomy,
Tweetdownload, to name a few), researchers need access to one’s own tweets as well
as twitter searches by hashtag. A common critique has been that access to Twitter
feeds (especially archives of tweets) is virtually inaccessible or only available at high
costs.

Future Directions

With the breadth of research on Twitter that has been conducted in the last decade, the
focus for the future should turn to depth and to further exploring the development
potential of Twitter use in L2 contexts (see also Hattem and Lomicka 2016). Studies
exploiting media coupled with tweets are just beginning to emerge (see Mompean
and Fouz-González 2016). Mompean and Fouz-González call for more research
addressing the types and content of tweets in order to exploit differences between
tweets that include both text and audio or video/images. Following the research
conducted by Mompean and Fouz-González (2016) and that of Fornara (2015), there
is also a need for more investigation of microblogging that is both instructor-led with
student responses where Twitter is used either to ask questions and/or provide
information to students. Differences in acquisition rate of items that are sent in a
single tweet and items that are sent in several tweets could also be examined as part of
this work.
410 L. Lomicka

Additional avenues for research could expand upon work on communities of

practice both with language learners and language teachers. For example Wesely
(2013) and Lord and Lomicka (2014) both explore the microblogging sphere as a
way to bring together language educator communities. Wesely (2013), from a
sociocultural perspective, looks at an online community of world language teachers
who used Twitter for professional development. The study suggested that Twitter
facilitated a new form of learning and collaboration among teachers in virtual spaces.
Similarly, Lord and Lomicka (2014) examine the role of Twitter in a graduate
methodology course. Approximately 80 teachers in training in the USA and
Canada tweeted reactions to and reflections of their experiences as new language
teachers. Both content analysis and survey data revealed that the microblogging tasks
allowed participants to form a virtual Community of Practice (Lave and Wenger
1991) in which they were able to learn, share, and reflect.
Twitter corpora studies also are beginning to appear that utilize tools that
researchers to monitor and collect tweets and hashtags so that corpora can be
built and investigated. To date, research has focused on various linguistic
aspects, such as lexical, morpho-syntactic, or orthographic aspects of Twitter
usage. Vilares et al. (2015) have begun to lay the groundwork for such studies
as they examine tweets from a linguistic perspective and describe how language
processing techniques could be adapted to deal with the informal register
language often present in Twitter messages. Finally, longitudinal investigation
using various methodologies could help to reveal insights about learners’ expe-
riences, particularly in the classroom context and also with the inclusion of
other variables such as target language, language proficiency level, and gender
(see Solmaz in press).
To conclude, microblogging continues to emerge in education and is becoming
more prevalent in language learning contexts. Studies have shown that Twitter
enhances student engagement and improves communication between teachers and
students. L2 acquisition research has been varied in approach, task, and with different
levels of learners, but to date, it has been largely inconclusive. As the field is
emerging, the focus should remain on how learning occurs in microblogging-
enhanced environments, what specific factors affect the learning processes, and
how to support effective learning in such environments.

Cross-References

▶ Second Language Writing, New Media, and Co-construction Pedagogies

▶ Technology and Second Language Teacher Professional Development

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Richard Kern, Paige Ware, and Mark Warschauer: Networked-Based Language

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Twitter and Micro-Blogging and Language Education 411

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 Part V
Methods and Methodologies in Technology
and Language Education
Computer-Mediated Communication
and Conversation Analysis

Vincenza Tudini and Anthony J. Liddicoat

Abstract
An increasing number of researchers use conversation analysis (CA) methodol-
ogy to investigate interactional dimensions of computer-mediated communica-
tion (CMC) and their impact on language and learning. While there is a
significant body of CA research focusing on naturally occurring telephone and
face-to-face conversation, researchers’ attention since the late 1990s has shifted to
new contexts where communication between human beings is mediated by
computers. This chapter is focused on CA research in the educational sphere,
where participants are using an additional or a foreign language. CA research on
human interaction developed robust analytical tools to identify and understand
the unique interactional resources which are available to users in technologically
mediated contexts. In particular, researchers are able to draw on previous CA
research on face-to-face and telephone interaction to explore affordances and
constraints of new technologies for learning, and how users use language to adapt
to new and evolving interactional contexts. This chapter will therefore provide a
brief overview of early CMC and CA research on technologically mediated
interaction. Following this overview, major contributions where CA is systemat-
ically applied to computer-mediated talk will be presented, focusing specifically
on findings related to language and interaction in L2 educational settings.

Keywords
Conversation analysis • computer-mediated communication • second language
learning • conversational repair • intercultural talk

V. Tudini (*)
Research Centre for Languages and Cultures, School of Communication, International Studies and
Languages, Adelaide, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]
A.J. Liddicoat
Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 415

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_32
416 V. Tudini and A.J. Liddicoat

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425

Introduction

An increasing number of researchers use conversation analysis (CA) methodology to

investigate interactional dimensions of computer-mediated communication (CMC)
and their impact on language and learning. While there is a significant body of CA
research focusing on naturally occurring telephone and face-to-face conversation,
researchers’ attention since the late 1990s has shifted to new contexts where
communication between human beings is mediated by computers. This chapter is
focused on CA research in the educational sphere, where participants are using an
additional or a foreign language. However, CA methodology was originally devel-
oped in sociology in the 1960s and since then has been applied to a range of social
and institutional contexts, including educational. The introduction of CMC tools in
foreign language programs to promote connectivity and interaction between L1 and
L2 language speakers also led to research interest in how interaction unfolds in new,
mediated forms of intercultural talk. CA research on human interaction developed
robust analytical tools to identify and understand the unique interactional resources
which are available to users in technologically mediated contexts. In particular,
researchers are able to draw on previous CA research on face-to-face and telephone
interaction to explore affordances and constraints of new technologies for learning,
and how users use language to adapt to new and evolving interactional contexts. This
chapter will therefore provide a brief overview of early CMC and CA research on
technologically mediated interaction. Following this overview, major contributions
where CA is systematically applied to computer-mediated talk will be presented,
focusing specifically on findings related to language and interaction in L2 educa-
tional settings.

Early Developments

Though CA was initially conceived as an account of face-to-face interaction (Sacks

1992), technologically mediated human interaction was an investigative focus from
the beginning in studies of telephone talk (Schegloff 1968, 1979). One significant
aspect of Schegloff’s work for understanding CMC was the observation that the
technology itself was a constituent part of the interaction and not merely the channel
Computer-Mediated Communication and Conversation Analysis 417

through which communication was conducted. In the case of telephone talk,

Schegloff showed that the ringing of the telephone was a key element of the
orderliness of such interactions and that telephone openings could not be properly
understood without reference to it. Thus from the beginning CA has acknowledged
that its main focus “talk” needs to be more broadly understood than simply referring
to oral language use. Subsequent studies have also shown the saliency of techno-
logical systems for understanding CMC. For example, Liddicoat (2011a) has shown
that CA takes the starting point that human action is orderly, and orderly at all levels,
and seeks to understand how orderliness in interaction is achieved by participants
through microanalysis of talk. In understanding orderliness in interaction, three key
elements have come to hold a central place in CA accounts of language use: turn-
taking (organizing participation of interlocutors in talk), sequence organization
(organizing interlocutors’ turns into coherent actions), and repair (dealing with
interactional problems as they occur) (Liddicoat 2011b). These elements are also
relevant to the study of technologically mediated forms of communication including
both spoken (e.g., voice chat) and written (e.g., text chat) forms of interaction. In
videoconferencing, it is necessary to consider not only the spoken language but also
written language and computer-generated language to understand how participation
is established and enacted.
While technology permits users to talk across distances without being physi-
cally co-present, it has also created constraints in relation to key interactional
resources such as eye gaze, facial expressions, gesture, and body movements
which are accessible in face-to-face talk but unavailable or altered in mediated
contexts. This is where CA researchers provided significant first insights on
technologically mediated interaction which are also relevant to computer-
mediated interactional contexts (see Schegloff 1968, 1979). One constraint that
telephone and computer-mediated interaction have in common is that users cannot
see one another. While they are temporally co-present, they are not physically
co-present, which impacts on the “procedural infrastructure of interaction”
(Schegloff 1991, p. 1338), including sequence organization, turn-taking, repair,
and conversational openings. In the case of telephone conversation openings,
specific practices are deployed by users to deal with the constraints imposed by
the medium. For example, identification in telephone openings in English is done
through voice recognition, through practices that provide voice samples to permit
recognition and identification activities that show that recognition has been
established. In other languages, and in institutional contexts in English, however,
explicit self-identification practices have been adopted as part of telephone open-
ings (e.g., Houtkoop-Steenstra 1991, for Dutch). In CMC, emoticons (emotion
icons) have become an integral component of text chat, given the lack of access to
prosody and facial expressions in written forms of interaction. Changes in tele-
phone technology have introduced new possibilities for identification (such as
caller recognition) but speakers continue to need practices that specifically attend
to the consequences of technological mediation on social interaction (Arminen
2005; Arminen and Leinonen 2006). Interactional practices will therefore con-
tinue to need to adapt to the affordances of the media used.
418 V. Tudini and A.J. Liddicoat

Increased access and use of communication technologies in the 1990s led to

numerous CA investigations on how users use language to adapt to and manage
interaction in a variety of computer-mediated contexts. CA perspectives have pro-
vided insights on how interaction and language change according to specific inter-
actional configurations created by different softwares. For example, interactional
features change according to whether users can see or hear one another, or whether
they are interacting with one person or in a group, as linguistic resources vary
accordingly. Online text chat, a form of mediated real-time written interaction, was
one of the first interactional contexts to be investigated from CA perspectives for a
number of reasons. Firstly, it was one of the first synchronous forms of computer-
mediated communication to become widely used in educational contexts, since its
beginnings in 1970s at the University of Illinois, where it was known as Talkomatic
(Grubbs 2004), and used both for professional and social purposes. Secondly,
researchers became interested in chat’s apparent similarity to spoken interaction
(Beauvois 1992; Negretti 1999), despite the fact that users could neither see nor
hear each other. The inability to hear one another in fact added a significant further
constraint when compared to telephone interaction where talk was at least audible.
This required users to interact without the interactional support of prosody and other
nonverbal cues and rely entirely on the co-constructed written conversation to create
meaning.
Since the late 1990s, CA researchers therefore began to investigate the nature of
interaction in online text chat (e.g., Garcia and Jacobs 1999; Herring 1999; Hutchby
2001), to shed light on conversational resources which are available and deployed by
users in a unique interactional environment. Garcia and Jacobs’ (1999) ground-
breaking study on turn-taking in group chat identified unique features of text chat,
such as the quasi-synchronous nature of interaction whereby users’ composition
processes and systemic constraints delay the appearance of posts on screen. The
features of the composition of language in chat had consequences for the orderliness
of interactions, because users are unable to access composition processes and are
technically unable to monitor for transition-relevance places (TRP) for the purpose
of turn-taking, and posts may not appear where the user intended. Furthermore, the
authors note that users treat each post on screen as a signal that a next post is due.
This creates problems for understanding processes of next speaker selection which
leads to increased addressivity in group chat where a post is intended for a specific
user. This promotes understanding and avoids the creation of “phantom” adjacency
pairs (Garcia and Jacobs 1999), where users construct adjacency pairs that are not
intended as such.
Herring (1999) also observes that speakers’ inability to control the placement of
their turns in relation to those of others creates problems for sequence organization
though the disruption of adjacency pairs such as question-answer pairs which in
face-to-face conversation normally follow one another (Schegloff and Sacks 1973).
Thus the sequence organizations of CMC are potentially different from those of
spoken interaction, as adjacency pairs, which are defined in CA terms as turns
“which are placed next to each in their basic minimal form” (Liddicoat 2011b,
p. 139), can no longer be understood in such a way. In fact, adjacency has to be
Computer-Mediated Communication and Conversation Analysis 419

reconstructed by participants in the interaction through reading processes (Zemel

and Çakir 2009), rather than being a feature of its orderly design.
Despite its significant interactional constraints, text chat was one of the first
technologies to attract the attention of teachers, especially language teachers, who
began to explore possible uses and affordances of text chat for L2 teaching and
learning through interaction. For example, L2 researchers suggested that chat could
provide a bridge to face-to-face interaction (Beauvois 1992; Kern 1995; Negretti
1999 ) and greater equality of participation for shy learners (Kern 1995; Warschauer
1996). Text chat was also perceived by some L2 researchers as an optimal environ-
ment for second language acquisition (Pellettieri 2000; Smith 2003; Tudini 2007)
due to its visual saliency and opportunities for negotiation of meaning, both linguis-
tic and intercultural. The diffusion of text chat and other technologies in educational
circles eventually lead to research interest in microanalysis of features, resources,
and affordances for learning, and exploration of the unique interactional aspects of
digital environments.

Major Contributions

Given the central objective of developing speaking skills and intercultural commu-
nicative competence in languages programs, it is unsurprising that teachers and
researchers of second language acquisition began experimenting with possibilities
for interaction and learning offered by CMC. Connectivity of language learners with
expert speakers of the target language was an especially promising feature of CMC
in countries that are geographically distant from the target language and culture.
However, most CMC research to date has focused on what affordances are provided
by CMC for language acquisition, and there is currently little work which examines
the interactional features of online conversations, whether text, voice, or video,
between L1 and L2 speakers. Kern and Liddicoat (2008) point out that language
learners need opportunities to engage in interaction if they are to become participants
in communities of use and develop their capacity to communicate in and through the
target language. Technologically mediated interactions are clearly an opportunity for
language use and participation in communities of use; however, they require further
microanalytic investigation based on previous CA work on face-to-face interaction
between L1 and L2 speakers (e.g,. Kasper 2004; Markee 2000).
Over the last 15 years, CA has been applied to L2 contexts to “understand and
explicate how language is used as it is being acquired through interaction” (Firth
and Wagner 1997, p. 768). In addition to providing new insights on SLA processes
in face-to-face contexts, Firth and Wagner’s (1997) critique provided a major
impetus for the application of CA to a range of online L2 interaction contexts,
including spoken, written, synchronous, or asynchronous modes. Unlike previous
studies of online L2 learning, CA investigations adopt an emic or participant-
relevant perspective (see Firth and Wagner 1997, for a detailed discussion) to
understand how specific technological contexts shape interaction and language
learning, as invoked by users during interaction.
420 V. Tudini and A.J. Liddicoat

One of the first CA studies of a technologically mediated interactional context is

Negretti’s (1999) study of text chat between native and nonnative speakers of
English. While the author concludes that chat promotes oral proficiency, the focus
of the study is on understanding differences between chat and face-to-face interac-
tion. The study identified a number of interactional resources which users deployed
within the text chat environment to ensure understanding, including sequence
organization, turn-taking, and adjacency pairs. The study also showed that sequenc-
ing and timing were dealt with differently in chat, compared to face-to-face, with
evidence of constantly disrupted or overlapping turns. While findings echo Garcia
and Jacobs’s (1999) study of group chat, Negretti’s (1999) group chat study included
both group and dyadic postings. Findings might have been different if group and
dyadic interactions had been analyzed separately as interaction changes according to
the type of technological tool used, number of users, and other factors. In other
words, findings of online talk investigations cannot be generalized across platforms
and contexts, despite identified interactional commonalities, as invoked by users
within the ever-changing multiplicity of platforms and technologically mediated
interactional configurations.
One of the first monographs on online intercultural interaction (Tudini 2010)
focused exclusively on dyadic text chat. This major study investigated turn-taking,
adjacency pairs, sequencing, and repair in dyadic text chat between native and
nonnative speakers of Italian. However, a significant proportion of the analysis
was dedicated to how different types of conversational repair are deployed by
users. CA differentiates repair according to who initiates and resolves problems in
understanding, which has implications for politeness and face. For example, in face-
to-face conversation, if a listener has a problem in understanding a speaker’s talk,
they initiate repair but give the speaker the opportunity to resolve the repair. This is
known as other-initiated self-repair, and has been shown to be preferred by speakers
over other-initiated other-repair, also known as correction (Schegloff et al. 1977).
Jefferson (1987) also showed that where correction does occur in face-to-face
interaction, it is more likely to be embedded in the topical talk rather than exposed,
without disrupting the flow of conversation and without drawing attention to the
speaker’s momentary lapse. Tudini’s (2010) study instead found that exposed other-
initiated other-repair was common in text chat where participants have differential
language expertise, regardless of whether there was a problem in understanding.
This was attributed to the permanency and reviewability of written conversation, as
well as the expert-novice roles and power relationships invoked by users due to
differential language expertise (see also Liddicoat and Tudini 2012).
Tudini’s (2010) findings have implications regarding how nonnative speakers use
and learn languages in online dyadic text chat, as it appears that an otherwise social
environment can become a locus of language practice and pedagogical talk, which
contributes to the hybridity of text chat as both social and pedagogical interaction.
The study therefore suggests that though it is oriented to as a dispreferred action, as
evidenced by use of mitigating actions such as emoticons and positive evaluations of
learners’ language, correction is perceived by users as a way to “do language
learning” and pursue affiliation in written social conversation, which may otherwise
be managed differently in the rapid fade of face-to-face conversation or voice chat.
Computer-Mediated Communication and Conversation Analysis 421

A major CA study on spoken CMC is Jenks’ (2014) investigation of multiparty

voice conversations conducted via computer on Skype between three or more
speakers of English as an additional language. By adopting a CA perspective, this
study shows how users deploy various elements of voice as interactional resources to
achieve understanding and promote learning. For example, there is evidence that
they manage turn construction and transition through the production and coordina-
tion of vocal cues, including micro changes in intonation. It also shows how
participants use pauses to deal with overlapping utterances, though prolonged spells
of silence can lead to simultaneous talk. This leads the author to conclude that pauses
in voice chat act both as an affordance and a constraint for learning. Jenks’ compar-
ison of turn-taking in both text and voice chat on the Skype platform also reveals
numerous interactional differences between the two modes. For example, transition
from one turn to the next occurs in one sequential location in text chat and in multiple
locations in voice chat. Another significant finding is that background noises have
interactional consequences for the management of voice chat, as they may halt
ongoing conversations or force participants to reestablish mutual orientation. The
study also identifies the specific interactional work that is accomplished to enter an
ongoing conversation, such as knowing who to address and when to speak, an issue
which is especially pertinent to multiparty interaction.
The implications of this study’s findings are that specific interactional competen-
cies are required to manage interaction in multiparty voice chat, which are different
to those which are used in face-to-face or text chat contexts. This has consequences
for task design in language programs, especially since modern day language learners
would benefit from opportunities to engage with a variety of authentic interactional
environments beyond the classroom, including familiar social media platforms.
In their CA study of videogame interaction, Piirainen-Marsh and Tainio (2009)
also identified voice as a key interactional resource and affordance for learning, both
of the game activity and English as L2. In particular, co-present Finnish videogame
players’ voice repetition of game characters’ English utterances was found to be an
important game and L2 learning resource through co-construction of
collaborative play.
CA has also been usefully applied as single-case analysis which reflects the
premise that “social action done through talk is organized and orderly not, or not
only, as a matter of rule or as a statistical regularity, but on a case by case, action by
action, basis” (Schegloff 1987, p. 102). For example, González-Lloret (2008) uses
CA in a longitudinal case study of a Spanish L2 learner engaged in text chat
interaction with a L1 Spanish speaker. This study found that repair was a key
resource for participants to promote understanding of rules of addressivity in
Spanish.

Work in Progress

While computer-mediated spoken interaction is becoming increasingly popular in

language programs, the dominant form of social interaction globally is written
interaction, with Facebook reported to be the leading social network as at August
422 V. Tudini and A.J. Liddicoat

2015 (Statista 2015). This platform offers users multiple interactional choices from a
temporal perspective, with asynchronous interaction as the dominant mode for one
to many multiparty communication, and quasi-synchronous for private one-to-one or
small group chat. However, in these environments users no longer rely solely on text
and emoticons to interact, as occurred in early forms of text chat described above.
With the advent of Web 2.0, written interaction has become multimodal with a
variety of embedded semiotic devices, including photos and YouTube videos, which
have specific interactional functions according to recent CA research on Facebook in
Italian (Farina in press). For example, in his study of sequential organization of
Facebook wall threads, Farina (in press) found that first posts were designed by users
to project multiple responses, including “likes” from “friends,” and that these posts
may be composed with text, video, and photos, on their own or in combination.
Friends in fact oriented to the first post in a thread as the first pair part of an
adjacency pair, by responding with relevant second pair parts, and often ignored
posts of other users in the thread. While this study does not specifically deal with
affordances of multimodal interaction for learning, it has learning implications,
especially for language programs, as it suggests that interactional features of
Facebook are fundamentally different from face-to-face, and need to be integrated
by teachers as a specific type of written interaction task, rather than a spoken
conversational task. CA research on multimodal multilingual written interaction,
where users are using an additional or foreign language, has barely started and is
likely to have implications for learning.

Problems and Difficulties

The analysis of CMC using CA, in education or other settings, raises some key
difficulties at both a conceptual and analytic level that need to inform thinking about
the ways interaction is understood and analyzed.
A first key problem confronting the application of CA to CMC lies in the potential
mismatch between the modalities of talk for which CA was developed and those on
which it is applied. As CA is an analytic approach designed for the study of spoken
interaction, the use of written and multimodal forms of language in online environ-
ments poses some problems for the direct application of CA concepts and methods.
One key problem for using CA to understand interaction in written interactions is the
idea of turn construction. In conventional CA understandings, turn construction and
turn-taking are based on projections of possible completion, but in written environ-
ments, this is not such a useful way of thinking as turns are completed when posted
(and so are actually rather than possibly complete). At the same time, an orientation
to short posts as the norm in synchronous or quasi-synchronous online environments
makes holding the floor for longer posts interactionally problematic as there is a need
to avoid long gaps between contributions, suggesting that the interactional accom-
plishment of “incompleteness” may be a more significant interactional issue than
that of completeness (see also Tudini 2014).
Computer-Mediated Communication and Conversation Analysis 423

A second key issue for CA analyses of CMC is the role of the technology itself as
a frame for the interaction and its effect on how interaction is conducted and
understood. The computer brings distal participants into quasi-co-presence, espe-
cially when the technology uses a visual channel (e.g., Skype or videoconferencing).
This creates a sense in which participants share a context, although the reality is that
participants share only a part of their own contexts with each other – that mediated
through the technology. This does not mean, however, that only that part of the
context which is mediated is pertinent to understanding the interaction. Malinowski
and Kramsch (2014) for example have argued that the computer screen “fixes the
user in disembodied, spectatorial relation to a removed ‘scene’ on the other side”
(p. 159). The question is whether a focus on this removed scene is the legitimate
focus of analysis or whether it constrains analytic possibilities.
CA has usually focused on the interaction as it unfolds for the participants and has
tended to consider features of interaction that are not available to all participants
through talk as less relevant for understanding the nature of talk in interaction. In
mediated contexts, and especially in contexts where education is a central concern,
this would appear to be a problematic analytic starting point. In mediated interaction,
there are observable elements of the interaction that are available only to one
participant, such as the composition process and off-screen behaviors, which can
be interactionally or acquisitionally salient (Suzuki 2013). Software is currently
available that can record aspects of the interaction such as tracking key strokes,
timing of contributions or capturing on-screen activity, and video recording of
participants during interaction, which can provide further data. Some of this infor-
mation is at least partially available to recipients with software showing that one’s
interlocutor is currently composing a message. Understanding the composition
process may provide significant information about how interaction is constructed,
including how adjacency structures responses, even where adjacency itself may be
split in the online representations of the talk, how self-repair processes work, and
how participants bring external resources to bear on their language production that
may be especially significant in understanding language acquisition and use. This is
not simply a case of collecting information about interaction as developing an
understanding of what information is salient for understanding interaction that
problematizes the accepted CA dichotomy between participants’ and analysts’
categories.
The technology as frame for the interaction also has effects on the representation
of the interaction that is mediated between participants. That is, the interaction on
screen is not simply perceived by participants but is constructed for them in ways
that may alter what is perceived. For example, in visually mediated interactions, eye
gaze is potentially available as part of the representation, but the way that eye gaze is
mediated is not actually a “true” representation. As the camera capturing the
speakers’ image is not positioned at the focal point of gaze, the participants’ gaze
is misrepresented. This means that eye gaze information is not available for partic-
ipants in the same way that would be the case for co-present interlocutors. Goodwin
(1980) has shown that eye gaze plays an important role for coordinating speakership
and that participants deploy repair practices to secure appropriately gazing
424 V. Tudini and A.J. Liddicoat

participants. Research has not currently investigated the consequentiality of the

disruption of eye gaze for the nature of interaction and the interactional practices
that speakers’ deploy as a result of the disruption.

Future Directions

The use of CA to study CMC is a relatively new area of scholarly activity and there
remains much to be done.
One key area for future work will be to develop an understanding of the
affordances and constraints created by the technological mediation of talk. These
constraints and affordances exist at the interactional level and, in educational
contexts, at the level of learning and there are complex interactions between each
of the levels that as yet have been little researched. Moreover, there is a need to
understand how CMC as language learning provides or limits interactional possibil-
ities, which in turn influence learning experiences. For example, Balaman (2015) has
used CA to show how the design of online tasks constructs interactional possibilities
that create affordances for learning.
There is also a need to understand more about the interactional (re)construction of
talk through CMC. In particular, there is a need for research on how users of written
CMC construct sequentiality when sequentiality is not directly inferable from the
ordering of contributions. In reconstructing sequences of interaction, users must
orient to adjacency pairs to understand the interaction as a coherent activity, but we
know little about how they draw on sequence organization as a resource for
reconstructing coherence or the consequences the need to restore sequentiality has
for language learners as users of CMCs.
A third area of future research would appear to relate to the complex interactions
of on-screen and off-screen activities in the interactional processes involved in
CMC. This would require a more critical engagement with the idea of CMC talk
as interaction and a reconsideration of the saliency of “external” activities to talk.
This involves more than simply studying off-screen activities, such as the composi-
tion process, to consider how such processes are implicated in and constituent of the
interaction. This research is also relevant to understanding the interactional com-
plexities and concurrent interplay of on-screen, off-screen, voice and text conversa-
tions with in-game actions of multilingual gamers, to understand affordances for
language learning within ludic environments. The impact of mobility on talk-in-
interaction, including embodied deixis during mobile augmented reality game play
(Thorne et al. 2015), adds a further dimension which is ripe for microanalytical
investigation.

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Doris Warriner and Kate Anderson: Discourse Analysis in Educational Research. In

Volume: Research Methods in Language and Education.
Computer-Mediated Communication and Conversation Analysis 425

Hansun Zhang Waring: Conversation Analytic Approaches to Language and Educa

tion. In Volume: Research Methods in Language and Education

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Learner Corpora in Foreign Language
Education

Sylviane Granger

Abstract
Analyzing learner language is a key component of second and foreign language
education research and serves two main purposes: it helps researchers gain a
better understanding of the mechanisms of second language acquisition (SLA)
and it is a useful source of data for practitioners who are keen to design teaching
and learning tools that target learners’ attested difficulties. The learner corpus
(LC) is a new resource that is currently bringing learner language back into focus
and is enjoying growing interest from the language education community at large.
It first emerged as a branch of corpus linguistics in the late 1980s but is only now
beginning to attract significant attention from L2 theoreticians and practitioners.
This chapter aims to highlight the relevance of learner corpora to the field of
language education. The next section gives an overview of the main defining
features of this new resource and some of the dimensions along which they can be
classified. The section “Work in Progress” is devoted to methods of analysis:
contrastive interlanguage analysis and automated analysis. “Problems and Diffi-
culties: Pedagogical Applications” presents some of the main pedagogical appli-
cations of learner corpus research, and the final section suggests some possible
avenues for future research.

Keywords
Corpus linguistics • Learner corpus • Learner corpora • Second language acqui-
sition • Contrastive interlanguage analysis • Automated analysis

This chapter is an updated version of that included in the 2008 edition of the encyclopedia.
S. Granger (*)
Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 427

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_33
428 S. Granger

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
Automated Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Patterns of Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
Annotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
Problems and Difficulties: Pedagogical Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438

Introduction

Analyzing learner language is a key component of second and foreign language

education research and serves two main purposes: it helps researchers gain a better
understanding of the mechanisms of second language acquisition (SLA) and it is a
useful source of data for practitioners who are keen to design teaching and learning
tools that target learners’ attested difficulties.
Learner data types can be ranged along a continuum that reflects the degree of
control exerted on language production. According to Ellis and Barkhuizen (2005),
the less constrained types of production should be favored, since “they demonstrate
how learners use the L2 when they are primarily engaged in message construction,”
unlike experimental data, which must be treated with circumspection, as it may
contain artificial interlanguage forms. Researchers have traditionally shied away
from the more natural data types, however, opting instead for experimentally elicited
samples precisely because they are more constrained. This allows for tighter control
of the many variables affecting learner output, thereby facilitating interpretation of
the results. In addition, as it is difficult to subject a large number of learners to
experimentation, SLA research has tended to be based on a relatively narrow
empirical foundation, which raises questions about the generalizability of the results.
Looking at the situation from a more pedagogical perspective, Mark (1998) deplores
the relative lack of focus on the description of learner language, which contrasts
sharply with the increased attention devoted to other aspects of mainstream language
teaching, such as learner variables (motivation, learning styles, etc.) and the descrip-
tion of the target language.
The learner corpus (LC) is a new resource that is currently bringing learner
language back into focus and is enjoying growing interest from the language
education community at large. It first emerged as a branch of corpus linguistics in
the late 1980s but is only now beginning to attract significant attention from L2
theoreticians and practitioners. This chapter aims to highlight the relevance of
learner corpora to the field of language education. The next section gives an
overview of the main defining features of this new resource and some of the
Learner Corpora in Foreign Language Education 429

dimensions along which they can be classified. Section “Work in Progress” is

devoted to methods of analysis: contrastive interlanguage analysis and automated
analysis. Section “Problems and Difficulties: Pedagogical Applications” presents
some of the main pedagogical applications of learner corpus research, and the final
section suggests some possible avenues for future research.

Major Contributions

Learner corpora are electronic collections of natural or near-natural foreign or second

language learner texts assembled according to explicit design criteria. Several
aspects of this definition require clarification. The term near-natural is used to
highlight the “need for data that reflects as closely as possible ‘natural’ language
use (i.e., language that is situationally and interactionally authentic) while recogniz-
ing that the limitations facing the collection of such data often obligate researchers to
resort to clinically elicited data (for example, by using pedagogic tasks)” (Ellis and
Barkhuizen 2005, p. 7). In principle, learner corpora can contain data from both
foreign language (FL) learners, who learn a language in a country where they have
little exposure outside the classroom (e.g., learning English in Germany or Japan),
and second language (SL) learners, who acquire a language in a country where that
language is the predominant language of communication (e.g., learning English in
the United States). The term texts highlights the fact that learner corpora contain
continuous stretches of oral or written discourse rather than decontextualized
sentences. This makes it possible to study a much wider range of interlanguage
features than in previous SLA studies, which have tended to focus on more local
features like grammatical morphemes. The requirement of explicit design criteria
stems from the necessity to control the wide range of variables that affect learner
language. As can be seen in Table 1, which lists the criteria governing the collection
of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) (Granger et al. 2009), some
of these variables pertain to the language situation or task, while others relate to the
learner.
It is this requirement that makes learner corpus collection such a laborious
undertaking and yet it is a crucial requirement: the usefulness of a learner corpus

Table 1 ICLE design criteria

Learner variables Task variables
Age Medium
Learning context Field
Proficiency level Genre
Gender Length
Mother tongue background Topic
Region Timing
Knowledge of other foreign languages Exam
Amount of L2 exposure Use of reference tools
430 S. Granger

is directly proportional to the care that has been taken in designing it, and
compromising the design stage inevitably leads to less solid results. If the variables
are recorded and stored in a database, they can be used to compile homogeneous
subcorpora. The interface of the ICLE makes it possible, for instance, to study
gender differences, topic effects, the influence of timing, even to compare FL
learners who have never spent any time in an English-speaking country with those
who have done so for extended periods of time.
Learner corpora can be classified on the basis of the following features:

– Target languages: while English still has the lion’s share, learner corpus collec-
tion is now active in a wide range of languages (Dutch, French, German, Italian,
Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish, inter alia) (for a survey, see the “Learner
corpora around the world” webpage on the Louvain website: http://www.
uclouvain.be/en-cecl-lcworld.html). Most learner corpora cover only one target
language, the MERLIN corpus (Abel et al. 2013) being a notable exception in this
respect. Bilingual learner corpora like the German-English Telekorp corpus (Belz
and Vyatkina 2005) are a promising development resulting from the growing use
of telecollaborative communication in language education.
– Mother tongue backgrounds: learner corpora can contain data from learners of
one and the same mother tongue background or from several mother tongue
backgrounds. The latter are necessary if the purpose of the data collection is to
produce generic pedagogical tools such as monolingual learners’ dictionaries (see
Section “Problems and Difficulties: Pedagogical Applications”). Most academic
learner corpora contain data from only one language background, for example,
Japanese learners of English in the case of the NICT JLE Corpus (Izumi et al.
2004), Chinese learners of English for the Chinese Learner English Corpus (Gui
and Yang 2002), or Swedish learners of French for the Interfra Corpus (Bartning
and Schlyter 2004). The International Corpus of Learner English, which covers
16 different mother tongue backgrounds, is a notable exception in this regard.
– Medium: corpora of learner writing were the first to be collected and are still the
dominant type today. The supremacy of written corpora is primarily due to the
difficulty of collecting and transcribing learner oral data. In spite of this difficulty,
some oral learner corpora have been compiled. These include the College English
Learners’ Spoken English Corpus, which contains data from Chinese learners of
English (Yang and Wei 2005), and the Louvain International Database of Spoken
English Interlanguage, which contains data from learners with 11 different
mother tongue backgrounds (cf. Gilquin et al. 2010). A new type, the multimodal
(or multimedia) learner corpus, which contains learners’ texts linked to audio-
video recordings, is a recent and welcome addition that enables analysts to
investigate nonverbal as well as verbal aspects of communication (Reder et al.
2003; Hashimoto and Takeuchi 2012).
– Genre: while some genres are well represented in current learner corpora, partic-
ularly essay writing and informal interviews, many are hardly covered at all,
which makes it difficult to assess the influence of task on learner production. The
NICT JLE Corpus (Izumi et al. 2004), which comprises three types of tasks –
Learner Corpora in Foreign Language Education 431

picture description, role-playing, and story-telling, is exceptional in this respect.

The collection of large multitask learner corpora is clearly one of the major
desiderata for the future.
– Time of collection: learner corpora can be collected at a single point in time or at
successive points over a period of time. Only the latter, which are much more
difficult to collect and are therefore in the minority, allow for longitudinal studies
of learner language and are a rich resource for describing stages of acquisition (for
L2 French, see Bartning and Schlyter 2004).
– Pedagogical use: corpora for delayed pedagogical use sample a given learner
population and are used to produce pedagogical tools that will subsequently
benefit similar-type learners. The vast majority of learner corpora collected to
date have been of this type. More recently, however, learner corpus collection has
begun to be integrated into normal classroom activities: learner data is collected
from a given learner population to inform pedagogical activities that involve, in
the first instance, those same learners, while also allowing for subsequent use with
similar-type learners. Learner corpora for immediate pedagogical use thus
involve learners as both producers and users of the data.

Learner corpora differ in their degree of accessibility. Many are unfortunately not
available outside the arena where they have been collected. However, a growing
number are available for scientific research and/or can be consulted online.

Work in Progress

Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis

A learner corpus is a solid empirical base from which to uncover the linguistic
features that characterize the interlanguage of foreign and second language learners
at different stages of proficiency and/or in a range of language situations. The
method that has mainly been used for that purpose is contrastive interlanguage
analysis (CIA) (Granger 1996, 2015a). Unlike classic contrastive analysis, which
compares different languages, CIA compares varieties of one and the same language
and involves the following two types of comparison:

1. Comparisons of corpora of learner language and native (or expert) reference

language
2. Comparisons of corpora representing different varieties of learner language

The first plays an important role in revealing or uncovering the distinguishing

features of learner language, while the second makes it possible to assess the degree
of generalizability of interlanguage features across learner populations and language
situations. The latter type has never come in for any criticism from SLA specialists,
unlike the former, which has been criticized for being guilty of the “comparative
fallacy” (Bley-Vroman 1983), i.e., for comparing learner language to a native
432 S. Granger

speaker norm and thus failing to analyze interlanguage in its own right. Although it
is important to stress the need to view interlanguage on its own terms, there are
several arguments that can be invoked in defense of native/learner comparisons.
First, the native speaker norm that is used in learner corpus studies is explicit and
corpus-based (Mukherjee 2005) rather than implicit and intuition-based, as has
usually been the case in SLA studies. Second, there is not just one reference corpus
but several to choose from. In the case of English, for instance, analysts can choose
between the many geographical varieties of English covered in the International
Corpus of English (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/projects/ice.htm), several of
which are available in electronic format, or may opt for a corpus of expert L2 user
data instead (Seidlhofer 2004). From a pedagogical point of view, comparisons of
learner data to a native or expert reference corpus is even more obvious, as they help
teachers identify the lexical, grammatical, and discourse features that differentiate
learners’ production from the targeted norm and may therefore be usefully integrated
into the teaching program.

Automated Analysis

One important feature that distinguishes learner corpus data from traditional learner
data is the fact that the texts are stored in electronic format. Once computerized,
learner data can be examined with a variety of software tools that can radically
change the way foreign/second language researchers set about analyzing learner
language. Some degree of automation is arguably essential, as several learner
corpora contain millions rather than hundreds or thousands of words. Automation
contributes to a better analysis of learner language in three main ways: (1) it makes it
possible to quantify learner language; (2) it helps discover interlanguage patterns of
use; and (3) it makes it possible to enrich learner data with a wide range of linguistic
annotations.

Frequency

One of the major contributions of automation is that it brings forth a wealth of

quantitative information on learner language that had hitherto been unavailable. Text
retrieval software tools like WordSmith Tools (WST) (Scott 2012) or Antconc
(Anthony 2014) are language-independent programs that enable researchers to
count and sort lexical items in text samples automatically. Using these tools,
researchers have immediate access to frequency lists of all the single words or
sequences of words in their corpora. One particularly useful function in WST allows
researchers to compare these lists, highlight the significant differences between
them, and draw up lists of words that display a significantly higher or lower
frequency of use in learner data. This option plays an important role in identifying
cases of over- and under-representation that, as already pointed by Levenston in
Learner Corpora in Foreign Language Education 433

Table 2 Sample of Overused verbs Underused verbs

significantly over- and
Think Describe
underused lexical verbs in
ICLE Get Occur
Dream Note
Want Suggest
Watch Require
Live Contain
Ban Obtain
Learn Identify
Pay Involve
Like Assume
Go Derive
Buy Follow
Need Include
Smoke Record
Spend Determine

1971, characterize learner language just as much as downright errors, especially at

the more advanced proficiency levels. For example, Granger and Paquot (2009) used
WST to compare the top 100 lexical verbs in the 3.7 million-word ICLE corpus of
writing by higher intermediate to advanced EFL learners and a comparable native
academic corpus (ACAD). As Table 2 indicates, the comparison shows that EFL
learners tend to significantly overuse some lexical verbs and underuse others.
While some of the overused verbs are topic-dependent (e.g., dream, ban, or
smoke), many are indicative of students’ over-reliance on high-frequency verbs
that are more typical of conversation than academic writing (e.g., think, get, or
want). The underused verbs, however, are typical EAP verbs that merit focused
pedagogical attention.

Patterns of Use

The quantitative benefits of computerized learner data should not obscure the equally
impressive qualitative insights afforded by computer-aided methods. Corpus
methods are very powerful heuristic devices for uncovering words’ preferred lexical
and grammatical company. The concordancing function in text retrieval software
tools enables researchers to extract all occurrences of a given lexical item (single
word or phrase) in a corpus and sort them in a variety of ways, thereby allowing
typical patterns to emerge. Table 3 highlights some of the striking differences that
emerge from the concordance of the word as in a corpus of essays written by native
American-English students (LOCNESS) and EFL learners with Spanish, French, and
German mother tongue backgrounds (ICLE).
While the figures reveal some degree of commonality between the three learner
groups, such as the tendency to overuse as far as and underuse as well as and as
434 S. Granger

Table 3 Patterning of the word as in native and learner corpora (relative frequency per 200,000
words)
Patterning of as LOCNESS ICLE-SP ICLE-FR ICLE-GE
as a conclusion 0 16.3 34.5 0
as far as 6.7 14.2 95.2 34.4
as far as X is concerned 1.3 11.2 87.9 15
as well as 108.2 34.6 46 61.9
as long as 57.4 2 16.7 23.8

As far as Billy Pilgrim is concerned, he is neither totally wrong nor totally right.
As far as the langage is concerned, both novelists make use of an easy style.
As far as de-dramatization is concerned, one main theme of the novel is war and death it involved.
People who really need T.V. cannot react against it anymore. This is, as far as I am concerned, the saddest
and the most dangerous thing for these persons.
These two soldiers stand for the whole U.S. army as far as their age is concerned.
As far as the American soldiers are concerned, they are merely disappointing samples of the American
Society.
As far as the future of the EC is concerned, nobody knows what it will be made of.
this first solution is likely to happen but is a negative solution as far as cultures and customs are concerned.
Europe 1992 will certainly be a nation as far as the economy is concerned
As far as the culture is concerned there are no fundamental changes between the north and the south.
As far as Mr Gould is concerned, he is an idealist.
As far as her relationship with the guests is concerned, she tries to achieve harmony
As far as the garden is concerned, it is divided into two parts

Fig. 1 Concordance excerpt of as far as x is concerned in ICLE-FR

long as, they also highlight varying patterns of use, such as overuse of as a
conclusion by Spanish- and French-speaking but not German-speaking learners.
As evidenced by several recent studies (e.g., Paquot 2013), this variability is often
the result of transfer from the learners’ mother tongue. For example, the striking
predilection of French-speaking learners for the phrase as far as x is concerned,
which emerges clearly from the concordance excerpt in Fig. 1, is modeled on the
French phrase en ce qui concerne. Most of the examples show students’ difficulty in
introducing topics and could serve as useful prompts for rewriting exercises.
Typical collocations, i.e., pairs of words that have a strong tendency to co-occur
within a few words of each other, can be extracted fully automatically using
statistical association measures. Durrant and Schmitt (2009) employ this method to
highlight differences in the patterning of adjective/noun + noun combinations in
learner and native writing. Clusters, i.e., recurrent contiguous sequences of two or
more words, can also easily be extracted from learner corpora. Applying this method
to a corpus of EFL speech and a comparable native speaker corpus, De Cock (2004)
shows that EFL learners significantly underuse discourse markers like you know or I
mean and vagueness markers like sort of or and things and therefore prove to be
lacking in routinized ways of interacting and building rapport with their interlocutors
and weaving into their speech the right amount of imprecision and vagueness, both
typical features of informal interactions.
Learner Corpora in Foreign Language Education 435

Annotation

A learner corpus can also be annotated. In corpus linguistics terms, “annotation”

refers to “the practice of adding interpretative (especially linguistic) information to
an existing corpus of spoken and/or written language by some kind of coding
attached to, or interspersed with, the electronic representation of the language
material” (Leech 1993, p. 275). In learner corpus terms, this means that any
information about the learner samples that the researcher wants to code can be
inserted into the text. In a learner corpus, it is therefore not only words that are
contextualized but also information about the words.
Although there is, in principle, no limit to the type of annotation that can be used
to enrich a learner corpus, two types are by far the most common: morpho-syntactic
annotation and error annotation. Part-of-speech (POS) taggers automatically attach a
tag to each word in a corpus, indicating its word-class membership. These programs
are particularly useful, as they help disambiguate the many words that belong to
more than one part of speech. Only a POS-tagged learner corpus would allow
researchers to attribute the over- or underuse of the word to to differences in
frequency of use of the infinitive particle to or the preposition to. It is important to
bear in mind, however, that morpho-syntactic annotation programs – whether
lemmatisers, POS taggers, or parsers – have been trained on the basis of native-
speaker corpora, and there is no guarantee that they will perform as accurately on
learner data. While the success rate of POS taggers has been found to be quite good
with advanced learner data, it has proved to be very sensitive to morpho-syntactic
and orthographic errors (Van Rooy and Schäfer 2003), and the success rate will
therefore tend to decrease as the number of these errors increases. To counter this
weakness, a number of researchers prefer to use CHILDES (MacWhinney 1999), a
suite of software tools that gives them a high degree of flexibility in the annotating
process. Initially designed for L1 acquisition research, it was subsequently adapted
for L2 data analysis (Myles and Mitchell 2004).
Although error analysis has fallen into disfavor in SLA, it remains a crucial aspect
of learner language and one that in fact still lies at the heart of many SLA studies,
hidden under labels such as negative transfer, fossilization, corrective feedback,
measures of linguistic accuracy, and developmental sequences. Two methods are
used in learner corpus research to chart attested learner errors: computer-aided
detection and error annotation. In the former, it is the analyst who chooses the
linguistic items on which to focus, using his/her intuition, pedagogical experience,
or previous SLA studies. Once selected, the linguistic forms can be searched
automatically in the learner corpus, then counted and sorted as described in section
“Patterns of Use”. The study of overpassivization errors by Cowan et al. (2003) is a
good illustration of this method. The problem is that this method presupposes that
one knows what errors to look for, which is far from always being the case.
The only method that can ensure comprehensive error detection is error annota-
tion, which is enjoying growing popularity, in spite of its difficulty and time-
costliness, and several systems have now been developed (for a survey, see Díaz-
Negrillo and Fernández- Domínguez 2006). In most of these, the error is coded for
436 S. Granger

error type (number, gender, tense, etc.), word category (noun, verb, etc.), and in
some cases, error domain (spelling, grammar, lexis, etc.). When applied to a learner
corpus that has been carefully compiled on the basis of strict design criteria (mother
tongue background, level of proficiency, etc.), error annotation is a valuable resource
that makes it possible to tailor pedagogical materials to the needs of a given learner
population (cf. Granger 2003). However, error annotation will always contain an
element of subjectivity, as the very notion of error is far from clear-cut. As rightly
pointed out by Milton and Chowdhury (1994, p. 129), “Tagging a learner corpus
allows us, at least and at most, to systematize our intuitions.” To cater for errors that
can have more than one interpretation, some systems allow for the inclusion of
several target hypotheses (Lüdeling and Hirschmann 2015). Whatever the system
used, it is essential that annotators be provided with a comprehensive error-tagging
manual and undergo rigorous training. It is also important to bear in mind that error
annotation is a very time-consuming, hence costly, process. Limitations in man-
power and/or budget may lead researchers to tag only part of their corpus or to limit
the tagging to some specific error categories (morphological errors, preposition
errors, article errors, etc.).

Problems and Difficulties: Pedagogical Applications

Among the many pedagogical applications that could potentially benefit from
learner-corpus-informed insights, only a few can boast a number of concrete
achievements: pedagogical lexicography, courseware, and language assessment.
The field in which advances have been quickest is pedagogical lexicography.
Monolingual learners’ dictionaries like the Macmillan English Dictionary for
Advanced Learners (2007), the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
(2014), and the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2013) contain error
notes based on learner corpora, which are intended to help learners avoid common
mistakes. These notes offer clear added value for dictionary users, as they draw their
attention to very frequent errors, which in the case of advanced learners have often
become fossilized (accept + infinitive, persons instead of people, news + plural,
etc.). Although the selection of the errors is not always optimal (cf. De Cock and
Granger 2005), this is a major first step that will undoubtedly be followed by others.
While learner corpus data has begun to have a marked impact on EFL dictionaries, it
has yet to find its way into EFL grammars. This is less surprising in light of the fact
that even native corpus data was only integrated into grammars as recently as 1999,
with the publication of the very first corpus-based grammar of English, the Longman
Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al. 1999). However, it seems both
inevitable and highly desirable that learner corpus data will become an essential
component of grammar design in years to come. Pedagogical grammars would
clearly benefit from corpus-attested information on the difficulty of grammatical
categories and structures for learners in general or some L1-specific learner popula-
tion. Recent initiatives such as the English Grammar Profile project (Harrison 2015)
hold great promise in this regard.
Learner Corpora in Foreign Language Education 437

While there may still be relatively little LC-informed courseware on the market,
a fair number of teachers have used learner corpora to develop their own in-house
teaching materials, which share a number of characteristics: (1) they tend to be based
on learner corpora for immediate pedagogical use; (2) they are often L1-specific
rather than generic; (3) they are designed with a clear teaching objective in a well-
defined teaching context; and (4) they tend to be electronic rather than paper tools.
This latter characteristic results from the fact that new technologies – web-based
platforms, CALL authoring tools, e-mail – have brought the design of electronic
pedagogical material within the reach of any computer-literate teacher/researcher
and provide an ideal platform for the production and use of learner corpus data. The
web-based writing environment of Wible et al. (2001) is the perfect example of a tool
that facilitates the generation, annotation, and pedagogical exploitation of learner
corpora. The environment contains a learner interface, where learners write their
essays, send them to their teacher over the Internet, and revise them when they have
been corrected by the teacher, as well as a teacher interface, where teachers correct
the essays using their favorite comments (comma splice, article use, etc.) stored in a
personal comment bank. This environment is extremely attractive both for learners,
who get immediate feedback on their writing and have access to lists of errors they
are prone to produce, and for teachers, who gradually and effortlessly build a large
database of learner data from which they can draw to develop targeted exercises.
Other researchers are using data resulting from computer-mediated written commu-
nication (Kung 2004; Belz and Vyatkina 2005) or oral tasks (Kindt and Wright
2001). Some pedagogical tools target LC-attested errors typical of a particular
learner population. Chuang and Nesi (2007), for example, have developed
GrammarTalk, an electronic resource focused on two of the most error-prone areas
for Chinese learners, viz. articles and prepositions.
A third field in which “research from learner corpora has much to offer” (Purpura
2004, p. 272) is language assessment. When carefully analyzed, learner corpora can
help practitioners select and rank testing material at a particular proficiency level
(Barker et al. 2015). Combined with natural language processing techniques, they
can also be used to draw up automatic profiles of learner proficiency. The Direkt
Profil analyzer, for example, provides a grammatical profile for L2 French and can
be used to assess learners’ grammatical level (Granfeldt et al. 2005). Learner corpora
are also increasingly being used to develop and fine-tune automated scoring
systems (Higgins et al. 2015).
All these applications show the tremendous potential of learner corpus data to
inform pedagogical tools and methods. At this stage, however, LC-informed mate-
rials are still the exception rather than the rule, and there is scope for the development
of a much wider range of applications in future.

Future Directions

Although learner corpora have not yet achieved a major breakthrough in the educa-
tional sector (Granger 2015b), the buzzing activity in the field and the number of
learner-corpus-informed reference and teaching tools that have already been
438 S. Granger

produced or are currently being designed are a clear indication that they are here to
stay. Efforts in the future should be directed towards collecting data representing a
wider range of target languages and sampling more diversified learner populations in
a wider range of language situations and tasks. Over and above data collection, the
focus should be on interpreting the data in the light of SLA theory and incorporating
the results into innovative pedagogical applications. Prime among these are elec-
tronic applications and, in particular, web-based environments that allow researchers
to collect and exploit learner data within the same environment and customize
instructional content to meet the needs of differentiated learner populations.

Cross-References

▶ Data-Driven Learning and Language Pedagogy

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Technology and the Study of Awareness

Cristina Sanz and Beatriz Lado

Abstract
Language awareness is an internal phenomenon that can be externally affected by
consciousness-raising or attention-focusing techniques. The implementation of tech-
nology in the study of second language (L2) awareness is a recent development: The
field caught full speed in the mid-1990s, becoming one of the most innovative areas
in SLA research. Technology is used to address questions about external conditions
leading to awareness, levels of awareness attained during input processing, the
association between awareness and language development, and individual variables
(such as cognitive capacity) that are posited to explain the differential effects that the
same conditions have on the development of awareness. The range of technology
used in this subfield of SLA research – which began with audio and video recordings
and old-fashioned overhead transparencies – today includes computers that deliver
multimedia treatments and tests, as well as recording performance (both accuracy and
reaction time), and that are fast replacing paper-and-pencil materials. Computers are
also used as tools to record verbal (think-aloud) protocols and to track performance
(e.g., click behavior). Furthermore, more complex devices are now being adapted
from cognitive psychology and neurolinguistics for use in research on second
language awareness; the number of publications that rely on eye-tracking and
neuroimaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and
event-related potential (ERP) data is growing exponentially.

C. Sanz (*)
Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Georgetown University, Bunn Intercultural Center,
Washington, DC, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
B. Lado
Department of Languages and Literatures (Lehman College) and Program in Hispanic and Luso-
Brazilian Literatures and Languages (The Graduate Center), The City University of New York
(CUNY), New York, NY, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 441

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_37
442 C. Sanz and B. Lado

Keywords
Language awareness • Second language acquisition • Feedback • Computer-
assisted language learning (CALL) • Input • Explicit learning • Implicit learning

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450

Introduction

A concise, comprehensive and singular definition of language awareness in second

language acquisition (SLA) is not easily found, nor constructed. Given the inclusive
nature of the Encyclopedia, however, and for the purposes of this article, we accept
the broadest definition possible to incorporate all knowledge of and about language.
Language awareness is an internal phenomenon that can be externally affected by
consciousness-raising or attention-focusing techniques.
The implementation of technology in the study of second language (L2) aware-
ness is a recent development: The field caught full speed in the mid-1990s, becoming
one of the most innovative areas in SLA research. Technology is used to address
questions about external conditions leading to awareness, levels of awareness
attained during input processing, the association between awareness and language
development, and individual variables (such as cognitive capacity) that are posited to
explain the differential effects that the same conditions have on the development of
awareness. The range of technology used in this subfield of SLA research – which
began with audio and video recordings and old-fashioned overhead transparencies –
today includes computers that deliver multimedia treatments and tests, as well as
recording performance (both accuracy and reaction time), and that are fast replacing
paper-and-pencil materials. Computers are also used as tools to record verbal (think-
aloud) protocols and to track performance (e.g., click behavior). Furthermore, more
complex devices are now being adapted from cognitive psychology and neurolin-
guistics for use in research on second language awareness; the number of
publications that rely on eye-tracking and neuroimaging techniques like functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potential (ERP) data is grow-
ing exponentially.
Computer-based research on language awareness can be classified into descrip-
tive, question-generating designs, descriptions of procedures or best practices, and
reviews of specific technology or software. However, the literature consists mainly of
Technology and the Study of Awareness 443

quantitative, hypothesis-testing studies with designs borrowed from the fields of

education and cognitive psychology.

Early Developments

Early studies involving technology and awareness are summarized in Levy (1997)
and Chapelle (2001). Levy’s volume is one of the first books devoted entirely to the
field of computer-assisted language learning (CALL). It describes projects from the
1960s and 1970s (PLATO, TICCIT), as well as advances in the 1980s (Hypercard,
The Athena Language Learning Project) and 1990s (The International Email Tandem
Network, CAMILLE). The author discusses implications of the role of computers –
either as a tool, as in CMC (computer-mediated communication), or as a tutor, as in
CALL – in terms of learning environment, methodology, the role of teacher and
learner, implementation in the curriculum, and evaluation. Chapelle (2001) goes back
to the 1950s in evaluating different computer applications to the study of SLA,
including research, language learning, and language testing. Her volume draws on
different disciplines, such as Educational Technology and Computational Linguis-
tics, and applies primary concerns in those fields to CALL in order to better address
the question of how computers can improve language learning. A brief overview of
the role of technology in L2 learning is provided by Blake (1998), who explains the
changes the field had undergone during the previous 30 years with regard to the
hardware base, the role of the learner, and presentation format.
Focusing on the use of computers for research, Hulstjin (1997) reviews
20 published studies that have used computers for input presentation, learning
instructions, feedback, and the elicitation and registration of responses, with or
without latency (reaction times). Hulstjin (2000) describes the various ways in
which computers have been used to elicit L2 data, including grammaticality judg-
ment tasks, the preferred technique for measuring metalinguistic awareness, and
others, such as sentence matching tasks and word recognition. Research conducted
by Hulstjin himself during the 1990s included computer-aided designs that investi-
gated the use of electronic dictionaries and measured reaction times in word and
sentence recognition to better understand incidental vocabulary learning.

Major Contributions

Major contributions to the field have appeared both in language acquisition journals
(Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Modern Language Journal, Language
Learning, Applied Psycholinguistics), usually focusing on awareness and its
operationalization and measurement, as well as in technology journals (CALICO,
Language Learning & Technology), usually focusing more on technological details.
As opposed to a more descriptive approach in the earliest reviews, the field has
444 C. Sanz and B. Lado

recently taken a more analytical point of view. Warschauer (2004) argues that the
discipline started with a structuralist standpoint during the 1970s, then moved on to a
more communicative position during the 1980s, and this eventually led to the present
integrative content-based approach. However, Bax (2003) claims that Warschauer’s
classification is ambiguous and does not account for aspects such as the evolution of
the software or the type of activities implemented in CALL. As a consequence, Bax
proposes an alternative analysis in which he includes three approaches (restricted,
open, and integrated) that incorporate, among other elements, the following: the type
of task, the teacher’s role, and the feedback offered to the student. Zhao’s meta-
analysis (2003) concludes that technology-based language instruction can be as
effective as teacher-delivered instruction; curriculum and content development
need to be addressed and empirical evaluations conducted.
Studies implementing computerized treatments in their designs have addressed a
current concern in SLA, namely, whether language development is possible without
attention or awareness during input processing (Schmidt 2001). Attention and
awareness in relation to language development have been measured either online,
with think-aloud protocols (Leow and Bowles 2005), or offline, with debriefing
questionnaires (Robinson 1997b). Robinson (1997b) investigated whether different
computerized treatments (i.e., implicit, incidental, and rule search) on simple and
complex grammatical rules in English could lead to different levels of awareness (i.e.,
noticing, looking for rules, ability to verbalize rules). The results revealed that
participants in the rule-search and instructed conditions looked for rules more than
those in the implicit condition. Moreover, it was found that only awareness at the
level of looking for rules and ability to verbalize the rules positively affected learners’
accuracy. Rosa and Leow (2004) further investigated the role of awareness in L2
development by implementing verbal protocols. Participants were exposed to (+/
explicit) computerized treatments (LIBRA cards) to teach Spanish contrary-to-fact
past conditional sentences. The study concluded that greater explicitness in learning
conditions led to a higher level of reported awareness, and that higher levels of
awareness were related to greater L2 development.
Technology has also been implemented in studies that attempt to investigate the
roles of type of practice, feedback, and grammar instruction in L2 development under
an attentional framework. Computer-assisted research has compared input-based and
output-based practice (Morgan-Short and Bowden 2006; Nagata 1998).
Implementing Authorware 5, Morgan-Short and Bowden (2006) observed that
although there was no difference between groups on interpretation measures, the
output-based group outperformed the input-based group on the production of
Spanish pre-verbal direct-object pronouns. This difference, however, was short-
lived.
Research on feedback includes various consciousness-raising or Focus on Form
conditions (Nagata and Swisher 1995; Lado et al. 2014). Nagata and Swisher isolated
the effects of more (with metalinguistic information) and less (without metalinguistic
information) explicit written feedback. After four computer sessions of practice with
a translation task, type of feedback had not affected production of verbal predicates,
but metalinguistic information was beneficial for the production of particles.
Technology and the Study of Awareness 445

Although the results in Nagata and Swisher seem to converge with the literature on
the positive effects of explicit feedback on language development, studies such as
Lado et al. (2014) showed that the advantage observed for the metalinguistic condi-
tion disappears in the long term, and that in fact the more implicit condition leads to
faster processing and greater long-term accuracy gains.
Other studies have investigated a combination of feedback and grammar instruc-
tion (DeGraaff 1997; Sanz and Morgan-Short 2004). DeGraaff (1997) assessed the
effects of explicit rule presentation when participants practiced target forms in
eXperanto through interaction with a computer lesson developed using TAIGA
(1987). Although the results revealed that explicit rule presentation was beneficial,
the study is limited due to the nature of the practice and the lack of control over the
amount of feedback. To avoid these problems, Sanz and Morgan-Short (2004)
isolated the effects of explanation and feedback in their investigation of the acquisi-
tion of Spanish word order by comparing four groups combining (+/ explanation)
and (+/ explicit feedback). All groups were exposed to meaningful structured input
through practice tasks. The implementation of LIBRA allowed for provision of
feedback that was immediate, individualized, and focused on the target form. Con-
trary to previous studies, results from Sanz and Morgan-Short showed no differences.
The authors concluded that exposing L2 learners to structured input through task-
essential practice was sufficient to promote acquisition, and that in such a context,
providing rule explanation, feedback, or both, does not significantly add to the
knowledge gained through practice.
The effects of rule presentation have also been studied without feedback
(DeKeyser 1995; Ellis 1993; Morgan-Short et al. 2010). Ellis (1993) examined rule
presentation of a grammar structure (Welsh soft mutations) with or without examples
and concluded that provision of computerized explicit grammar with instances of the
target form allowed for generalization at both explicit and implicit levels, thus
facilitating language development. Likewise, DeKeyser (1995) showed that explicit
rule presentation, as opposed to more implicit conditions, had beneficial effects for
the acquisition of categorical rules, and that rules, in fact, were not acquired by the
implicit group. In this study, computers were used to expose participants to combi-
nations of written sentences in an artificial language and their corresponding pictures.
Morgan-Short et al. (2010) used an artificial language paradigm to investigate the role
of explicit and implicit instruction on neural and behavioral measures. Whereas the
explicit condition included computer-delivered pre-practice grammar explanation,
the implicit learning condition contained only practice. Behaviorally, the results
revealed an advantage in performance for the explicit group only at low proficiency,
which disappeared at high proficiency. Interestingly, ERP measures revealed that
only implicit training led to a fully native-like brain activation pattern.
The role of feedback on L2 development is also being investigated extensively in
CMC research, an area that has grown significantly in the last decade. Many of these
studies are conducted under an interactionist perspective involving synchronous chat
and asynchronous email and address issues such as the role of explicit and implicit
feedback in fostering conscious processing and promoting L2 development during
interaction (Sagarra and Abbuhl 2013; Sauro 2009). For example, Sauro (2009)
446 C. Sanz and B. Lado

investigated the effect of providing CMC corrective feedback to 23 participants

assigned to three groups (control, recast, and metalinguistic) on the development of
the English zero article in abstract noncount nouns. The results revealed a significant
advantage of the metalinguistic over the control group in immediate gains, a differ-
ence that disappeared with time. While feedback in Sauro (2009) was provided by a
native speaker during task-based interaction in a text-chat environment, in Sagarra
and Abbuhl (2013), the feedback was administered by the computer during practice
exercises and was developed to foster error noticing and to promote linguistic
accuracy in Spanish gender and number agreement. In this study, which also explored
the role of working memory (WM) in the effects observed, participants were assigned
to 1 of 4 groups (no feedback, utterance rejection, recasts, or enhanced recasts) both
in written and oral mode. The results indicated that recast was more effective than
either no feedback or utterance rejection. Additionally, oral enhanced recasts were
more beneficial than oral unenhanced and written enhanced recasts. Recasts worked
best for high working memory (WM) individuals.
Technology has also played a crucial role in research exploring multimedia
annotations and incidental vocabulary learning. The studies conducted in the 1990s
concluded that the use of electronic glosses had a positive effect on incidental
vocabulary learning, and recent contributions have explored the cognitive processes
involved. Bowles (2004) compared computerized with traditional paper-and-pen
glosses. Analysis of verbal protocols did not identify differences in noticing, and
no differences were identified regarding L2 vocabulary development. Yanguas
(2009) used the same conceptual approach but included four computerized condi-
tions (no gloss, text gloss, picture gloss, and text + picture gloss). Results indicated
that all experimental groups noticed the words more than the control group, but these
differences in processes were not reflected in gains on the production test. Using a
different approach, Peters et al. (2009) investigated how the use of three potential
computerized enhancement techniques increased online vocabulary use and word
retention during and after reading an L2 text. The techniques included: (1) informing
students that the reading task would be followed by a vocabulary test, (2) making
students pay attention to unfamiliar words in the reading text by asking comprehen-
sion questions, and (3) requiring students to complete a vocabulary task after reading
the text. The results indicated that only 1 and 2 made participants use the online
dictionary more. Additionally, whereas 1 and 3 had a positive effect on a word
recognition test, 2 and 3 had a positive effect on word retention in the recall posttests.
Corpus linguistics is leading to the development of linguistic theories that chal-
lenge existing orthodoxies in applied linguistics. It also raises a number of questions,
such as how corpus data should be interpreted, and how it can be applied to areas in
which applied linguistics is active, including language awareness. Hunston (2002) as
well as Granger, Hung, and Petch-Tyson (2002), are accessible introductions to
corpus linguistics and essential for anyone interested in corpora and its impact on
applied linguistics. Finally, Jones and Haywood (2004) provide an example of
research that incorporates corpus linguistics into the study of awareness. They
found that the use of corpus-based tasks increased learner’s awareness of formulaic
Technology and the Study of Awareness 447

sequences, although this awareness did not transfer to more production of these
phrases in their own writing.

Work in Progress

A substantial number of projects that implement technology in the study of language

awareness are currently underway. Some use technology to enhance the development
of awareness. For others, technology allows for the observation and measurement of
awareness. More integrative projects combine both motivations to include technol-
ogy, an example of which is The Latin Project (TLP). Designed by Sanz and then
graduate students Bowden and Stafford in 2003, it is an investigation of the interac-
tion between prior experience with language (bilingualism) and type of input (vary-
ing in degrees of explicitness) that includes cognitive variables (working memory
and awareness) as moderating variables. The design is experimental with computer-
delivered treatments and tests, including oral and written interpretation, grammati-
cality judgment, and production, combining old items (present in the treatment) and
new items. Computers also administer a battery of working memory tests, debriefing
questionnaires, and gather think-aloud data for the study of the role of awareness
during online processing. The design consists of a web-based application combining
Flash and ColdFusion programming tools that delivers oral and written input com-
bined with images. The application also gathers reaction time and accuracy data and
stores it in a database available online. Web delivery allows for data gathering
wherever a personal computer can access a high-speed network. While the goal of
the input-based treatments is to promote language development, in designing the tests
the researchers strived to provide the most comprehensive picture of language
knowledge and its degrees of automatization to include both explicit and implicit
knowledge. The Latin Project has produced ten publications reporting empirical
studies with college-age and older (60+) learners, monolinguals, and bilinguals of
different proficiency levels. Results across studies show that all learners benefit from
“doing something” with input that carries meaning, that has been manipulated to
make it salient, that is frequent, and leads to error. In general, advantages for more
explicit conditions tend to be lost over 2/3-week interval, but retention is observed
when transfer of tasks is involved (from input-based practice to production tests) and
for the most complex aspects of the structure (Stafford et al. 2012). However, TLP
studies also show that explicit instruction helps and hinders depending on the
learner’s background. For example, older adults can learn in the absence of explicit
instruction, but when instruction is provided, the timing of explicit input makes a
difference: During practice (as feedback) it is detrimental; prior to practice, it gives an
advantage to aging bilinguals compared to aging monolinguals (Cox and Sanz 2015).
SLA researchers have begun to discover the potential contributions of new
methods, including neuroimaging techniques to the study of SLA. Two such tech-
niques are event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imag-
ing (fMRI). ERPs measure the brain’s electrical activity and provide temporal
448 C. Sanz and B. Lado

information that reflects the neural processing of an event. fMRI measures the brain’s
hemodynamic response to an event and provides information about what part of the
brain is activated in response to an event. Eye-tracking data studies attention during
online processing recording and calculating gaze direction and duration. Less expen-
sive and more popular is Praat (Boersma and Weenink 2015), a software application
for the analysis of speech in phonetics, and software like e-Prime that allows tracking
reaction time (i.e., RT or Latency). RT refers to the amount of time (in milliseconds)
between the presentation of a stimulus and the behavioral response of interest (i.e.,
making a decision and pressing a key). Generally, faster RTs are considered to reflect
efficient, fast execution of the mental procedures involved, though there is still debate
among some SLA researchers as to whether “faster” is also “more automatic” or is
instead related to speeded-up control (explicit) procedures. Work in progress relies on
ERPs (Faretta-Sttutenberg’s dissertation out of Morgan-Short’s lab), eye-tracking
(Sagarra and Sanz), self-paced reading (Marijuan), Praat-processed data (Nagle et al.
2016), and latency (Grey et al. 2015) to understand the interplay between cognitive
abilities and context of learning and to test new, frequency-based approaches to
language development. Taken together, these studies are characterized by a multi-
dimensional approach that assesses changes in linguistic abilities (overall profi-
ciency, grammaticality judgments, accuracy in sentence processing, lexical access,
pronunciation) and online processing (ERPs, latency, gaze) among intermediate and
advanced learners of Spanish as a second language. Directly related to this entry,
these studies are looking at the role of awareness in language development in the
absence of explicit instruction, i.e., as a result of intensive exposure to the L2 input
during study abroad, in the absence of classroom instruction focused on language,
and therefore in the most implicit learning context possible.
The abovementioned research by Morgan-Short, Sanz, Marijuan and colleagues
was presented in the year 2015 at the American Association for Applied Linguistics
(AAAL), the Second Language Research Forum (SLRF), Eurosla, and the 10th
International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB), where most empirical studies on
awareness in multilinguals are made public.

Problems and Difficulties

We began this article with the theoretical statement that there is not one definition of
language awareness but many, and that, for the purposes of the article, we accepted
the broadest definition possible to incorporate all knowledge of and about language.
A narrower definition would include only conscious knowledge of the language, that
is, knowledge of which the learner is aware. An even narrower use of awareness,
linked to Schmidt’s noticing hypotheses, distinguishes between language informa-
tion that has been processed in working memory under attention, a required condition
for input to become intake ready to feed the acquisition process, and that which has
not. Confusion over terminology is a serious problem: awareness, consciousness, and
explicitness are often used as synonyms. Sometimes they are applied to input
Technology and the Study of Awareness 449

processing, to knowledge, to input, even to pedagogical techniques. Naturally,

because constructs are hard to define, measurements will also be challenging.
In research on awareness it is often necessary to reformulate tests and revise
coding procedures. Researchers have to make decisions about which technique to
include in the design: Online measures, such as concurrent think-aloud protocols,
might turn against the researcher by altering the very processes under investigation
(i.e., reactivity). Offline measurements, like debriefing questionnaires and stimulated
recalls, have problems of veridicality: Is the participant making up processes that
never took place while completing the task? Whether online or offline, lack of
verbalization does not mean lack of awareness: Absence of evidence is not evidence
of absence. These problems in the study of awareness during processing parallel
those in the study of explicit and implicit knowledge. Most acquisitionists hold that
competence is equivalent to implicit knowledge, so the litmus test for effectiveness of
a pedagogical technique is whether it positively affects implicit knowledge. The
problem is how to determine that learners did not use their conscious knowledge of
rules to monitor their responses. Finally, a common limitation that L2 researchers
outside the cognitive approach associate with the studies reported here is that of
validity. Often, researchers have to choose between a preference for naturalistic
language behavior and controlled collection procedures that result in highly
restricted, sentence-level data. In those studies that compare teacher-directed versus
computer-assisted language instruction, the Hawthorne effect is almost unavoidable.
And to conclude, as in most SLA research, the disparity of methods implemented and
the lack of replication are a challenge for any scholar trying to draw general
conclusions from the research (Sanz 1997).
Including multiple tests (interpretation, production, judgments), measures like
latency (i.e., reaction time), and techniques such as eye-tracking and neuroimaging
in the design are ways in which researchers are taking advantage of technology to
avoid some of the limitations listed above, but they face practical challenges related
to the availability of samples, hardware, software, and technical help. Compensation
for participants, programmers, workshop attendance to learn the techniques, and
equipment rental and acquisition make this research much more expensive than
classic paper-and-pencil tests administered in the classroom. These conditions
make the availability of institutional funding a determining factor. Further detail on
challenges as perceived by researchers themselves can be read in Sanz et al. (2015).

Future Directions

In cognitive psychology, laboratory studies that utilize technology for data collection
are the norm, as technology allows for tighter control of individual and environmen-
tal variables as well as finer measures of the effects of treatments. For example,
response time, gaze (direction), time spent on particular portions of written input
(eye-tracking), response tracking (mouse-tracking, clickers) for the analysis of speed
(latency), frequency, and type of errors during treatment, in addition to classic
accuracy scores, are all measurable thanks to the use of technology. Acquisitionists
450 C. Sanz and B. Lado

nowadays are striving to adapt to the study of SLA techniques that are common in
cognitive psychology, including new measurements of awareness.
Technology is rapidly replacing paper-and-pencil delivery, allowing for individual
exposure to the treatment, facilitating randomization of participants, and control of
key variables in the treatment, such as the amount and type of feedback or input
frequency to which each participant is exposed, even to individually adapt treatments
based on performance. Computers also make research more convenient: Instead of
simultaneous use of an overhead projector, a VCR, TV sets, and multiple copies of
the testing and treatment materials, all that is needed is a computer. If the application
is web-based, as in The Latin Project, both data gathering and access to the database
are possible in multiple sites around the clock. Other advantages are also important:
Multimedia capabilities make the lesson far more attractive to the user and allow for
provision of video and audio input simultaneously, thus accommodating different
learning types and expectations among young learners.
To conclude, laboratory research on language awareness will continue to increase
the implementation of technology in the design as more and larger laboratories
become available, research institutions hire technicians, and software becomes
more adaptive and affordable. Additionally, the field is rapidly moving beyond
computers to make use of specialized devices such as eye-trackers, EEGs, and
MRI units.

Cross-References

▶ Data-Driven Learning and Language Pedagogy

▶ Eye-Tracking Research in Computer-Mediated Language Learning
▶ Learner Corpora in Foreign Language Education

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Eye-Tracking Research in Computer-
Mediated Language Learning

Marije C. Michel and Bryan Smith

Abstract
Though eye-tracking technology has been used in reading research for over
100 years, researchers have only recently begun to use it in studies of
computer-assisted language learning (CALL). This chapter provides an overview
of eye-tracking research to date, which is relevant to computer-mediated language
learning contexts. We first examine some of the foundational work, basic assump-
tions and key constructs in eye-tracking research and then explore uses of
eye-tracking in second language (L2) educational contexts. We then examine
the modest but growing amount of research in CALL settings and illustrate the
technique’s facility for contributing to SLA-relevant CALL research. We touch
on some of the known CALL-relevant eye-tracking research in progress and also
discuss some of the challenges researchers are likely to encounter when
employing eye-tracking techniques. We end with a discussion of possible future
directions and developments for eye-tracking in CALL settings.

Keywords
Eye-tracking • Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) • Second language
acquisition • Human-computer interaction (HCI) • Noticing • Awareness • Sac-
cades • Task complexity

M.C. Michel (*)

Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
B. Smith
Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 453

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6_34
454 M.C. Michel and B. Smith

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462

Introduction
Research into eye movement behavior – commonly known as “eye-tracking” – is a
fairly new methodology in second language acquisition (SLA) research (Winke et al.
2013) and educational literature (Lai et al. 2013; van Gog and Scheiter 2010). The
technique, however, has been used for many decades in psycholinguistic studies
looking at first language (L1) processing, research into Human-Computer-Interac-
tion (HCI) and visual scene perception (Poole and Ball 2006; Rayner 2009). The
basic assumption of eye-tracking is the existence of the “eye mind link” (Just and
Carpenter 1980), that is, information that is in the focus of visual attention is also the
focus of current cognitive processing. The most widely used measures of eye
movement behavior are (a) fixations (a relatively stable eye movement focusing at
a specific point, for example, a word on a screen) and (b) saccades (consecutive
movements between fixations). A third measure (c) regressions (movements in the
counter direction of reading) is commonly used in reading research as it indicates
readers’ reinspection of earlier text. During fixations, people can extract information
from the foveal area (central 2 ) of their visual field. In contrast, during saccades and
regressions, information encoding is thought to be impossible (Roberts and
Siyanova-Chanturia 2013). Typically, proficient first language (L1) readers of
English exhibit fixations of about 200–250 ms milliseconds while saccades comprise
7 to 9 letters (Rayner 2009). However, there is substantial variability both within and
between readers, for example, some fixations may only last 100 ms, whereas others
may be more than 500 ms. Longer fixations, more regressions, and shorter saccades
can be seen as indicators of greater processing complexity and difficulty (Poole and
Ball 2006; Rayner 2009; van Gog and Scheiter 2010).
Using eye-tracking methods is particularly useful in second language acquisition
(L2) research because they allow for the study of moment-by-moment processing
decisions during natural, uninterrupted comprehension without the need to rely on
participants’ strategic or metalinguistic responses (Roberts and Siyanova-Chanturia
2013). It is therefore surprising that to date so little CALL research has made use of
eye-tracking given that both CALL and eye-tracking research typically requires
participants to work on a computer or other digital device which, in the modern
era, constitute naturalistic settings with a high degree of ecological validity
(O’Rourke 2008). Because scholarship using eye-tracking in CALL environments
Eye-Tracking Research in Computer-Mediated Language Learning 455

is just emerging, we will first report on major findings from relevant L2 eye-tracking
research in general. Eye-tracking research in computer-mediated communication
(CMC) environments will be discussed under major contributions below.

Early Developments

Eye gaze studies in L2 research have received growing attention over the past two
decades. The majority of earlier work focused on spoken word recognition by
bilinguals in both their languages and differences between syntactic processes of
L1 versus L2 speakers (Dussias 2010; Roberts and Siyanova-Chanturia 2013).
However, eye-tracking techniques have recently been employed to examine specific
constructs in SLA theory. For example, Sagarra and Ellis (2013) used eye-tracking to
explore aspects of the associative learning theory, Godfroid and Uggen (2013) used
eye-tracking in examining L2 learners’ attention to verb morphology, and Winke
(2013) used this technique to test the claim that input enhancement (Sharwood Smith
1993) is a relatively unobtrusive technique to promote learner attention to targeted
linguistic forms. Thus, L2 eye-tracking studies have looked at various facets of
instructed SLA theory such as attention and task-based cognitive processing as well
other areas such as language testing (e.g., Bax 2013; Brunfaut and McCray 2015;
Suvorov 2013) and video captioning (e.g., Montero Perez et al. 2015; Winke et al.
2013). Since one of the clearest potential uses for eye-tracking is its ability to provide
rich learner process data, the following review will highlight a selection of studies
that have explored L2 processing and language learning.
Godfroid et al. (2013) used eye fixation times as a measure of noticing unknown
words during EFL reading. Noticing was defined as “a cognitive process in which
the amount of attention paid to a new language element in the input exceeds a critical
threshold, which causes the language element to enter working memory and become
the object for further processing” (p. 493). It was operationalized as increased
fixation duration on a target pseudo-word in comparison to fixation duration to a
baseline known word. Results showed longer focal attention for target than control
words. Crucially, gaze duration was positively related to the likelihood of word
retention on a subsequent vocabulary test. The authors interpret this as evidence that
eye-tracking metrics can measure noticing (see also Godfroid et al. 2010).
In another study of noticing, Kuhn (2012) focused on error detection in lengthier
texts by EFL users. With self-built eye-tracking equipment, he established that
noticing could be related to total fixation durations of an average duration of
400 to 500 ms. However, considerable individual differences existed in terms of
exact lengths. In Kuhn’s study, noticing was positively related to error correction by
the EFL participants. Again, this work supports the use of eye-tracking techniques in
investigating the construct of noticing.
More recently, Révész et al. (2014) applied eye gaze measures to task-based
language pedagogy to objectively gauge the cognitive demands induced by low- and
high-complexity versions of a structure-focused picture selection task targeting the
456 M.C. Michel and B. Smith

production of past counterfactuals (if. . . then-clauses). The eye-tracking data (total

number and total duration of eye fixations) distinguished significantly between the
two levels of designed task complexity. Similarly, Michel et al. (2015) sought
independent evidence for their manipulation of task complexity (simple
vs. complex) on three different types (narrative, map, decision making) of L2
speaking tasks. Their data showed limited relationships between the eye-tracking
measures (eye fixation count and duration as well as saccade latencies) and degree of
complexity in contrast to stimulated recall data and subjective as well as expert
ratings (Révész et al. 2016b). Given the characteristics of their tasks (speaking based
on a visual stimuli), Michel et al. (2015) conclude that our current measures of eye
gaze behavior might not suffice as estimates for gauging L2 processing during
multimodal perception and production tasks.
Recently, Montero Perez et al. (2015) looked at word form recognition after
participants watched captioned videos for a class on French economics. Target
words were either presented on their own (key word) or in context (sentence
including key word). Before watching the captioned movie, participants were either
informed (intentional group) or not informed (incidental group) about a follow-up
vocabulary test. Results show that participants in the key-word caption group
outperformed the full-sentence caption group. Those in the intentional-full-sentence
group showed positive correlations of the word recognition scores with total fixation
duration, indicating that noticing and learning are supported by intention.
In educational research related to CALL, that is, multimedia learning, eye gaze
analyses have been employed (a) to support or reject explanations for well-
documented effects in learning (e.g., split-attention effects); (b) to improve learning
material as we gain a better understanding of the underlying processes; and (c) as an
instructional tool in itself, for example, by replaying eye gaze recordings to learners
(van Gog and Scheiter 2010).
To summarize, the earliest studies using eye-tracking methodology in fields
related to CALL have provided evidence that eye gaze data can aid in our explora-
tion of concepts relevant to instructed SLA theory. In the subfield of CALL itself,
however, there is only limited work available. Most of these pioneering efforts tap
into computer-mediated writing and, more specifically, written synchronous
computer-mediated communication. The next section will review these studies.

Major Contributions

To date, only a handful of studies have been published that used eye-tracking in a
CALL environment. These studies are mostly of a qualitative, small-scale, and
explorative nature and focus on synchronous computer-mediated communication
(SCMC or text chat). This is largely because the earliest CALL researchers to adopt
eye-tracking technology did so as a way of providing more robust learner process
data to describe SCMC phenomena. Until recently (and continuing on today,
unfortunately) many SCMC studies relied solely on chat transcript logs – a very
static approach to explaining an extremely dynamic process (e.g., O’Rourke 2008;
Eye-Tracking Research in Computer-Mediated Language Learning 457

Smith 2010). In this line of argumentation, Smith (2010, 2012) argues that eye gaze
data may help to inform some of the contentious debates in SLA (e.g., is noticing a
prerequisite for learning?) and that the gaze tracking may be able to confirm or
disconfirm other established but more intrusive methodologies (e.g., stimulated
recall and think-alouds). Given their low number, each of these studies will be
reviewed by highlighting their major insights.
The earliest published CALL study that employed eye-tracking technology is
O’Rourke (2008). He used eye-tracking as a method of illustrating the insufficiency
of relying on output chat logs alone. While examining just a very short extract
(14 turns) of one native speaker chatting with an English L2 user of German he
revealed illustrative behavioral patterns during SCMC. The tracking of eye move-
ments revealed learner habits that could not have been detected using other sources.
For example, participants displayed three different behaviors when reading their own
output (a form of monitoring): (a) reading while drafting (simultaneous monitoring);
(b) reading after drafting but before sending (presend monitoring); and (c) reading
after sending (postsend monitoring).
O’Rourke (2012) extended his earlier analysis which revealed at least three types
of information eye gaze data may provide. First, the author analyzed “fixation
intervals, [defined as] the time that elapses between the end of one fixation and the
start of another” (p. 321). Interpreting fixation intervals of 500 ms or longer as
transitions between the screen and the keyboard, the author showed that the same
speaker made more transitions and had shorter intervals in the L2 than in the L1. This
pattern ties in with a view that more monitoring is needed when conversing in a
language other than the mother tongue. Second, O’Rourke identified two different
gaze behaviors when looking-back, that is, reading the on-screen transcript of the
conversation. There is “target-focused scanning”, fast reading to search for an item
one recalls in order to inform one’s own writing, for example, checking the correct
spelling of a word used earlier. In addition, while waiting for the contribution of their
partner writers “browsed” through the earlier turns, which seemed to function as a
way to refresh and organize the recent discourse. Third, the gaze replay allowed one
to reconstruct sequential aspects the individuals’ chat experience. That is, the chat
log alone does not show in what sequence an individual likely noticed salient
information in the conversation, but the eye gaze record does.
Prendergast (2011) qualitatively analyzed discourse patterns, negotiation rou-
tines, and noticing during SCMC drawing on the eye gaze data of six English
participants conversing in French with a native speaker tandem partner. The results
reinforce many of the findings of O’Rourke’s studies (e.g., individually sequenced
experience). One additional outcome was that in the NNS-NS dyads, typos by the
NS often resulted in longer/more fixations by the NNS and sometimes triggered
language related episodes or uptake of the erroneous spelling.
Likewise, Örnberg Berglund (2012, 2013) reiterates O’Rourke’s findings, specif-
ically, how eye gaze data help to reconstruct the experienced conversation. Her data
are based on a small-scale study among eight L2 users of English chatting with their
teacher who provided corrective feedback. In addition to eye gaze recordings, she
also collected keystroke logging data. Based on a qualitative analysis she argued that
458 M.C. Michel and B. Smith

participants often seemed to be focused on their own writing and read the teacher’s
contributions only once they had finished with their own composition and had hit the
enter button. Still, all of the teacher’s comments were seemingly noticed, though at
times long (up to 2 minutes) after they were posted. Furthermore, Örnberg Berglund
provides evidence that the feedback target needs to be understood by a learner before
it triggers increased fixation counts and times.
The work of Smith is a major step forward in eye-tracking SCMC interactions. He
takes a more quantitative approach to using eye gaze data in SCMC and introduces
gaze data as a measure of noticing (cf. Godfroid et al. 2010). Smith (2010) inves-
tigated the visual behavior of eight L2 users of English conversing with a native
speaker who provided recasts. This study targeted the following research questions:
(a) Do learners notice intensive recasts; (b) Do some types of intensive recasts get
noticed more than other types; and (c) Does noticing lead to target-like use of the
recast item. Noticing was defined as a fixation of at least 500 ms. Findings revealed
that learners attended to (i.e., noticed) roughly 60% of intensive recasts at this level.
Furthermore, the data showed that lexical recasts were much easier than grammatical
recasts for students to notice, retain, and produce more accurately on a written
posttest. Finally, lexical recasts were used more productively in the subsequent
chat interaction.
In a follow-up study, Smith (2012) targeted the noticing of recasts by 18 L2 users
of English who were chatting with a native speaker. Noticing in the eye gaze data
were established through coding of heat maps (and not a specific minimum fixation
duration). Accordingly, items were coded as having been noticed when longer
viewing times (i.e., “hotter” in the heat map) were visible relative to baseline
viewing data. These “noticing events” in the eye gaze record were compared with
those present in stimulated recall comments. Both noticing events were analyzed in
relation to gains on immediate and delayed posttest scores on the recast items.
Results showed that while both measures of noticing were able to predict posttest
success, the eye fixations were slightly better indicators. Findings also revealed that
learners engaged in similar amounts of viewing activity across recasts targeting
various linguistic categories. Overall, semantic and syntactic targets were noticed
more easily than morphological targets.
The study by Smith and Renaud (2013) extrapolated the above setup to Spanish
and German as target languages. Sixteen learners interacted with their tutor receiving
recasts on morphosyntax and semantics. This time, noticing was defined as any
fixation longer than 200 ms. The analysis counted both the total duration of all
fixations and the total number of fixations. Findings showed a positive relationship
between increased “total” time of eye fixations on lexical and grammatical form and
posttest success on previously unknown targets. Moreover, data tentatively
suggested that recasts that were fixated on exactly three times were most successful
in yielding correct posttest answers. Finally, the gaze data provided evidence that
recasts were noticed about 72% of the time – an encouraging number.
Leaving the area of SCMC, Stickler and Shi (2015) employed eye gaze data and
stimulated recall when researching what learners (N=10) attended to during multi-
modal online Chinese Tutorials. Heat map analyses showed great variation (3% to
Eye-Tracking Research in Computer-Mediated Language Learning 459

97%) in the use of Pinyin. That is, participants at lower levels (beginners to
intermediate) did focus a lot on the Pinyin script, while more advanced learners
spent most of the time on the Chinese characters. The eye gaze data also revealed
some unexpected user behavior, for example, participants spent quite some time on
the “social” areas of the screen which indicated who was currently acting in the
online environment.
To summarize, the work so far using eye-tracking methodology in a CALL
context has focused on SCMC. Most of these studies are exploratory in nature and
helped to identify characteristics of learner attention. Most importantly, eye gaze
data have provided evidence for different monitoring and reading patterns (e.g.,
scanning vs. browsing) and have lent support to the assumption that each chat
partner experiences an individual chat conversation, in particular because contribu-
tions are perceived and noticed in a different sequence from which they appear in the
chat log (O’Rourke 2012). The works of Smith (2010, 2012) and Smith and Renaud
(2013), taking a more quantitative approach, have shown how eye fixation data can
be related to noticing and language development. Their work represents a method-
ological step forward because they propose how to quantify the noticing of recasts
during SCMC. Taken together, the work on eye-tracking and SCMC provides strong
arguments for the perspective that CALL via text chat must not be studied by means
of chat transcript analyses alone as these present impoverished data, which at a
minimum underreport key aspects of the interaction. Eye-tracking methodology can
help overcome this shortcoming. Finally, Stickler and Shi (2015) have made an
important first move to use eye gaze data to understand learner’s viewing behavior in
an online tutorial environment. With growing numbers of online language classes,
more work in this area is to be expected.

Work in Progress

With eye-tracking equipment becoming more affordable, a growing number of

CALL researchers have now started to use eye-tracking methodology in their
work. Recent CALL conferences have seen several papers presented that use eye
gaze recordings. These studies investigate SLA constructs and hypotheses, provide
glimpses into learner processing, and examine the viability of certain pedagogical
tools in language education. For example, Boers et al. (2015) explore the question of
which type of glosses for vocabulary items in a reading prompt (verbal, pictorial, or
multimodal) most support productive post-reading communication. Gilabert and
Vasylets (2015) created captioned movies where target formulaic sequences were
input enhanced. Using a pretest posttest design, learning gains on the enhanced input
were explored and related to eye fixation duration and count. Latimer (2015) is
investigating what information L2 writers use when engaged in a computerized
reading-into-writing test targeting academic writing. Her design includes eye gaze
recordings, keystroke logging, and stimulated recall and attempts to triangulate these
sources in order to understand the different processes of writing and reading.
Similarly, Révész et al. (2016a) combine keystroke logging, stimulated recall, and
460 M.C. Michel and B. Smith

Fig. 1 Screen shot of an SCMC conversation with eye gaze indicators

eye movement recordings to explore the relationship between receptive and produc-
tive online text processing on the one hand, and the quality of the writing product,
that is, the text produced, on the other hand. Finally, Michel and Smith (2017) are
investigating alignment during task-based text chat interactions between L2 users.
Where chat log analysis suggests convergence of SCMC partners at both the lexical
and structural level, eye gaze data can confirm or reject attention to potential models.
Figure 1, above shows a short stretch of conversation between two participants. Dots
represent fixations and are larger the longer a fixation is. Lines represent saccades
between those fixations. Here participant 1 consults the construction “to find the
groups” of participant 6’s turn (Model) when writing “to find the groups” herself
(Target).

Problems and Difficulties

Early adopters of eye-tracking techniques in CALL research seem to agree on both

the benefits and challenges of this methodological approach. On the positive side,
eye gaze recordings (and stimulated recall protocols based on eye gaze replay)
provide exciting insights into L2 online processing millisecond by millisecond. As
such, it allows us to investigate computer-mediated language learning using a
dynamic tool that is sensitive to the dynamic processes of learning. Importantly,
the method provides processing data in an ecologically valid environment without
interfering with the aim of a pedagogical task.
One apparent drawback of eye-tracking methodology is the cost of the equip-
ment. Even though relatively inexpensive options exist (e.g., https://theeyetribe.
com/; http://www.mirametrix.com), only the more established systems (e.g.,
Eyelink, SMI, Tobii) are equipped with user-friendly software that allows data
collection, processing, and analysis without extensive programming knowledge.
For these latter options, however, both the software and hardware are still very
expensive.
A second and more important issue is that the data collection yields a quantity and
richness of data that is sometimes intimidating. Many CALL researchers might feel
Eye-Tracking Research in Computer-Mediated Language Learning 461

overwhelmed by the unwieldy amount of information one receives from gaze

recordings. Taking decisions about what data to use and what to discard is an
important interpretational step that requires the researcher to understand the concepts
and psychological processes underlying eye movements and fixations. Much of the
SLA-relevant eye-tracking research has looked at reading processes in a controlled
laboratory setting where the target is an item that is presented at a predefined time
and position, for example, words appearing at given X/Y coordinates of a screen at
regular intervals.
In contrast, the nature of CALL data is that it includes multimodal and dynamic
information, which often requires both receptive and productive language use. For
example, in task-based SCMC, we do not know beforehand what will be written by a
participant. Therefore, we cannot predefine what text will be typed, if and when text
will be edited, deleted, revised, and so on. Most importantly, in SCMC what appears
on the computer screen is dynamic rather than static. This poses a challenge because
as soon as a chat participant hits the enter button, the information on the screen
moves up. Also when scrolling through the previous chat conversation, the screen
content changes position. As a result, any target area of interest (AoI) that was
identified for analysis (most eye-tracking software requires identifying AoIs by
means of X/Y coordinates) will have a new location. As such, the abbreviation
SCMC could equally stand for data that is Spontaneously Created and Moving
Constantly, a fact that complicates data analysis.
Similar dynamic characteristics are inherent to any form of computer-mediated
behavior, for example, writing emails or text documents; reading, scrolling, and
following a link while browsing the web; and changing between different tools by
opening and closing windows. Consequently, typical CALL activities create a
combination of rich and dynamic data, which requires demanding and laborious
manual evaluation before any standard eye gaze metrics (fixations, saccades) pro-
vided by current software packages can be exported for statistical data analyses.
In addition, traditional measures are likely to be unsuitable for CALL data. For
example, how long is a saccade that includes scrolling? How do we define reading in
SCMC (O’Rourke 2012)? What are minimum and maximum thresholds for duration
and number of fixations for noticing, in particular on text that has been revised or
deleted (O’Rourke 2008; Smith 2010)?
Given these challenges, it is no wonder that to date most eye movement research
into CALL has remained exploratory. Future work will need to address these issues
so we can complement the valuable insights from earlier qualitative explorations
with more quantitative and generalizable findings.

Future Directions

The future of eye-tracking methodology in CALL environments will be both excit-

ing and enlightening given the fact that there is still so much to investigate. Its
progress will largely depend on technological advances that (a) make the equipment
available at lower costs; (b) allow less complex processing of the large amounts of
462 M.C. Michel and B. Smith

dynamic data inherent to CALL; and (c) enable gaze recordings on other devices,
such as mobile phones and tablets. For the specific field of language learning in
digitally mediated contexts, we could reiterate Lai et al.’s (2013) request for
eye-tracking in education:

“[A]s far as the data analysis software is concerned, collaboration between software engi-
neers and educational researchers could help to modulate existing data analysis programs,
making them suitable for education studies while reducing the cost of software development.
In short, it is possible to cut down the price of eye-tracking systems if we take into
consideration the specific needs and features of educational research” (p.100).
Apart from collaborations with engineers, future work will benefit from combin-
ing eye gaze data with output from other tools (e.g., keystroke logging for writing;
optical character recognition for screen replay information), research expertise (e.g.,
corpus linguistics, human-computer interaction, multi-media learning), and triangu-
lation with other more established (offline) measures of SLA, such as stimulated
recall, comprehension tests, and verbal protocols (Hyönä 2010).
In the near future, CALL researchers will need to develop standardized
approaches for the analysis of eye movement data in a computer-mediated environ-
ment. Similarly, it is imperative that the field proposes and evaluates new standard
measures to complement traditional metrics used in eye-tracking research that might
not be appropriate for CALL. Further down the road, it is not unlikely that techno-
logical advances in the field of HCI will create gaze-based adaptive systems that
create new and exciting avenues for CALL.

Cross-References

▶ Computer-Assisted Language Assessment

▶ Learner Corpora in Foreign Language Education
▶ Technology and the Study of Awareness

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Index

A C
Access CALL. See Computer-assisted language
broadband access, 46, 49, 52 learning (CALL)
to computer(s), 46, 48, 49 Cambridge Advanced Learner’s
to data, 150 Dictionary, 436
digital device access, 47 Chinese, 319, 320, 458
to digital technology, 50 character writing, 321
home access, 46, 48 Civfanatics.com, 136
internet access, 46, 48 Classroom research, 35
school access, 46, 48, 49 Cobuild dictionary, 183
Adolescent fanfiction writing, 135 Cognitive event analysis, 354
Affinity group, 77 Cognitive presence, 265
identity, 107 Cognitive process, 321
Affordances, 137, 159 Collaboration, 264
Agency, 95 Collaborative academic writing, 163
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Collaborative games, 332
Languages (ACTFL), 319 Collaborative learning, 393
Antconc, 432 Collaborative writing, 134, 248
Antidote Prisme, 294 advantages, 252
Arabic, 319, 320 benefits, 249
ARPANET, 377 characteristics, 250
Assessment and Evaluation Language Research collaborative dialogue, 251
Center (AELRC), 319 covert collaboration, 250
Asynchronous communication, 159 feedback in, 252
Auto-ethnographic approach, 138 future research, 256–257
Automated analysis, 432 in group(s), 253
Automated essay scoring (AES), 316 group dynamics, 253
Automated scoring systems, 437 incidental collaboration, 250
Automatic writing evaluation (AWE), 294 instructor and learner preparation, 250
internet based contexts, 250
joint collaboration, 250
B LREs, 250
Basic English skills test plus (BEST Plus), 319 parallel collaboration, 250
Bayesian Essay Test Scoring System peer feedback, 249
(BETSY), 295 potential benefits, 255
BirdSong analytics, 409 problems and difficulties, 255–256
Blended, 158 process approach, 249
Blog, 163 student behavior, 251
Brown corpus, 183 trends in, 252

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 465

S.L. Thorne, S. May (eds.), Language, Education and Technology, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02237-6
466 Index

Collaborative writing (cont.) emoticons, 417

in web-based contexts, 254 features, 235, 419
Web, 2.0 technologies, 248 interactional (re)construction of talk, 424
Collapsed contexts, 148 multiparty voice conversations, 421
Collective variables, 310 second-person pronoun development, 237
Communicative activity type (CAT) time and place independence benefits, 236
analysis, 349 written text, 235 (see also Conversation
Communicative project, 350 analysis)
Community, 264 Connected learning, 110
of inquiry, 265 Construct validity, 321
of practice, 264 Context, 268
Complex adaptive systems (CAS), 302, 306 Contrastive interlanguage analysis, 431–432
Complex semiotic ecologies, 307 Conversation analysis
Computer-adaptive tests (CATs), 317 developments, 416
Computer-aided detection, 435 early developments, 416–419
Computer-assisted language assessment future research, 424
(CALA) L2 contexts, 419
computer-adaptive tests (CATs), 317 language usage, 418
computer-adminstered vs. paper-and-pencil problems, 422–424
tests, 317 text chat, 420
future research, 322–323 videogame interaction, 421
L2 testing, 318 Corpora, 184, 187
performance-based testing, 315–317 Corpus, 182
problems and difficulties, 320–322 linguistics, 446
rich internet applications, 319 Covert collaboration, 250
STAMP, 320 Critical digital literacy
Computer-assisted language learning (CALL), algorithmic assessment of information, 22
160, 321, 346, 348, 355, 362, 364, challenges, 25
391, 443, 444, 456, 459, 461 control and access issues, 23–24
challenges and future research, 309–311 critical engagement, 21
characteristics, 363 definition, 19
complex adaptive systems studies in, design, 24
306–309 future research, 26–28
complexity-theoretical approaches, 303 hacker literacies, 25
design of failure states, 369 information and communication
early developments of, 363 technologies, 20
effectiveness of, 367 social networks, 23
game outcomes, 365 Critical engagement, 21
history of, 363 Critical literacy, 19, 26
incidental vocabulary learning, 365 Critical pedagogy, 220, 228
instructional designers, 365 Croquelandia, 198
iterations, 305 Cross-institutional/international projects, 268
language development and use, 302 C-test language tests, 319
learner control, 365 Culture, 251
mediation, 303 heritage, 109
tutorial CALL, 366 Curriculum, 263
Computer-assisted screening tool (CAST), 319 knowledge, 33
Computer-mediated communication (CMC), 58,
263, 296, 415. See also Sociocultural
theory D
desktop videoconferencing, 239 Data-driven learning (DDL), 182
email exchanges, 238 data searching, 188
Index 467

future aspects, 189 Distance learning, 159

advantages, 182, 188 Double stimulation method, 257
CALL packages, 188 Dungeons & Dragons, 377
corpora, 184
corpus linguistics, 182
data collection and analysis, 186 E
KWIC format, 184 Early childhood education (ECE), 72
linguistic proficiency, 185 Eco-dialogical model, 350, 353
search engines, 186 Ecological, dialogical and distributed (EDD)
unsophisticated queries, 185 perspective
technological advances, 187 distributed language, 349
Desktop videoconferencing, 239 early developments, 346–348
Diagnostic English Language Needs future research, 356–357
Assessment (DELNA) project, 320 game studies, 350–353
DIALANG tests, 319 manipulative abduction, 354
Dialogism, 356 methodological advancement and
Didactic ergonomics model, 308 integration, 349–350
Digital communication, 58, 60, 63, 68 problems in, 355–356
challenges, 67 Education, 402, 408
early developments, 58–61 Embodied learning, 72
future research, 67–68 Emergence, 306
language perspectives, 60 Engagement, CALL. See Computer-assisted
linguistic landscape, 65 language learning (CALL)
major contributions, 61–65 English, 121, 319, 320, 335, 392, 405,
problems and difficulties, 66–67 420, 432
Digital divide, 46–52, 54 language education, 240
Digital environments, 120, 123, 126 language proficiency, 333
Digital ethnographic study, 338 e-Rater system, 316
Digital game-based language learning and Error annotation, 435
teaching (DGBLLT), 330 Ethics, 150
affective factors, 335–337 Ethnography, 150
challenges, 338 E-Tutor, 296
future research, 339–340 EverQuest II, 333
issues, 337 Expansive learning, 406
language acquisition, 333–335 Experiential learning, 263
sociocultural theory, 332 Experiential Learning theory, 382
Digital literacy, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12, 96, 110, Explicit feedback, 162
122, 124 Explicit learning, 445
critical (see Critical digital literacy) Eye-tracking, 454, 456–458
definition, 276 computer-assisted language learning, 456
functional, 21 future research, 461–462
implementation of, 282 problems and difficulties, 460–461
and pedagogy, 277–278 in second language acquisition, 454
systematic integration of, 284
teaching of, 278–280, 283
telecollaborative teacher training, 281 F
training (language) teachers for technology Facebook, 22, 144, 390–395, 422
integration, 280–281 friends, 145
Digital pedagogies, 5, 9, 11 profile picture, 145
Digital technology, 46, 54 status updates, 145
Digitization, 73 wall, 145
Discourse studies, 122 Fanfiction, 135, 138
468 Index

Feedback, 363, 444–446 individualized instruction, 297

cognitive development and motivation, 366 intelligent language tutoring systems,
corrective feedback, 366, 371 296
on intrinsic motivation, 368 learner feedback, 296–297
learners’ perceptions, 368 spell checkers, 292
positive failure feedback, 369 Intelligent essay assessor (IEA), 316
recasting, 366 Intelligent language tutoring systems (ILTSs),
strategies, 368, 370 296
tutorial CALL, 366 Interactionist framework, 162
Filipino, 319 Interactivity, 263
Fractals, 304 Inter-class projects, 265
French, 236, 237, 294, 319, 320, 404, 405, 434 Intercultural communication, 163, 208, 213,
215, 222, 226
Intercultural communicative competence (ICC),
G 210, 212, 214
German, 237, 297, 320, 458 Intercultural competence, 159
Globalisation, 151 Intercultural E-mail Classroom Connections
Google Chat, 241 (IECC), 209
Google docs, 163, 251 Intercultural negotiation, 225
Grammar checkers, 293 Intermediality, 81
Greek-English code-switching, 121 Internet 2.0 communication tools, 160
Internet 2.0 tools, 162
Internet language, 125
H Iraqi Dialect, 319
The Hobbit, 138 Italian, 320, 422
Habbo, 380 language, 403, 405
Habitat graphical interface, 379
Hacker literacies, 25 J
Hawthorne effect, 449 Japanese, 319, 320, 336
Heat map analyses, 458 Joint collaboration, 250
Hebrew, 320
Human-computer-interaction (HCI), 454
Hybrid courses, 159 K
Hypermodality, 121 Korean, 319
KWIC (key word in context) format, 184

I L
ICALL, 162 Language, 18, 20, 23, 24
Identity, 132–135, 140, 144 assessment, 437
development, 270 awareness
texts, 75 computerized enhancement
Images, 149 techniques, 446
Implicit learning, 445, 448 definition, 442
Impression management, 145 feedback and grammar instruction,
Incidental collaboration, 250 445
Information and communication technologies, 5 feedback on L2 development, 445
Informed consent, 150 future research, 449–450
Input-based treatment, 447 problems in, 448–449
Intelligent computer assisted language learning education, 91, 96
(ICALL), 162 learning, 210, 211, 215, 383, 385,
automatic writing evaluation, 294–295 407, 408
description, 290 myth, 355
grammar checkers, 293–294 testing, 316
Index 469

Language related episodes (LREs), 250 Mingoville, 335

group composition, 251 Mini-games, 363, 369, 372
task type, 251 Mixi, 391, 392
writing context, 251 Mobility, 106, 111, 115
The Latin Project, 447, 450 Mode, 81
Learner Modelling, 270
corpora MOOs, 378
annotation, 435–436 Motivation, 363, 364, 366, 368, 370, 371
automated analysis, 432 MUD, 378
classification, 430–431 Multilingual and multimodal language style
contrastive interlanguage analysis, strategies, 393
431–432 Multilingualism, 122, 148
description, 428, 429 creativity and playfulness, 125
future research, 438 description, 120
patterns of use, 433–434 digital literacy practices, 124
problems, 436–437 heteroglossia, 122
identity, 93 media engagement in classrooms, 124
model, 297 and multimodality, 123
Learning management system (LMS), 159 teaching approaches and practices, 124
Learning tools interoperability (LTI), 159 Multiliteracies, 73, 106
Lingua franca, 208 Multimedia, 159
Linguistic layering, 109 Multimedia Rater Training Programs
LinkedIn, 397 (MRTP), 320
Literacy, 34, 36, 38 Multimodal and dynamic information, 461
and identity Multimodal discourse analysis, 241
connected learning, 110–111 Multimodality, 5, 32, 34, 36, 38, 41, 73, 121,
early developments, 106–107 144, 148
future research, 113–115 creativity and playfulness, 125
networked configurations for learning, 111 digital storytelling and
problems in, 113 counterstorytelling, 124
scale, 112 media engagement in classrooms, 124
youth, 107–110 second/foreign language teaching and
skills, 159 learning, 123
L2 writing, 163 teaching approaches and practices, 124
Multimodal languaging, 352
M Multiplayer gaming, 134
Maker schools, 78 Multiplayer online games (MMOG), 346
Mandarin Chinese, 319 Multisemiotic, 80
Mary Sue fanfiction, 135 Multisensory, 72
Massively-multiplayer online role-play games Multi-user domains, 377
(MMORPGs), 332, 377 Multi-user virtual environment, 346, 354
Media literacies, 20 Music video game, 334
Mentira, 198
Metalinguistic clues, 162 N
Micro-analysis of talk, 417 Narrative, 331
Microblogging Natural language processing (NLP), 290, 291
early developments, 403–404 Negotiation for action, 348
future research, 409–410 Networked configurations for learning, 111
growth, 402 New Literacy Studies, 11
microfiction, 407 Non-digital games, 331
problems, 409 Nonlinearity, 303, 304
Microgenesis, 61 Non-native German spelling errors, 293
Minecraft, 79 Noticing, 455, 458
470 Index

O Part-of-speech (POS) taggers, 435

Offline and online, 149 Pedagogical lexicography, 436
Online fandom Persian, 319
auto-ethnographic approach, 138 Play, 331
early developments, 132–134 Playbooks, 79
fanfiction, 134–135 Popular culture
future research, 140 digital anguage learning, 95
gameplay, 136 digitally mediated resources, 91–92
problems in, 139 early developments, 88–90
Web 2.0, 134 future research, 97–98
Online games, 362, 363 learner identities, 93
Online intercultural exchange (OIE), 208, 276, pedagogical potential, 92–93
281, 284. See Online intercultural problems in, 96–97
language education Portuguese, 319
early developments, 208–210 Power, 21, 24, 26, 27
education Practice principle, 333
communicative and sociocultural Practicum, 270
competence, 224–225
contact and interaction, 222
cultural-historical perspective, 226 Q
E-Tandem approach, 222 Quest Atlantis, 336
global learning networks, 221
internet communication
technologies, 225 R
lingua franca, 226–227 Ragnarok, 337
native speaker, 223–224 Reflection, 264
sociocultural and sociocognitive Relational pedagogy, 240
theories, 221 Reliability, 316
‘traditional’ foreign language RenRen, 391
classroom, 221 Retrodictive methods, 309
long-term success, 215 Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), 319
models and applications of, 212–213 Romanized alphabet system, 321
problems and difficulties, 214–215 Russian, 319
tandem learning, 210–212
Online oral tests, 322 S
Online practices, 111, 113 Saccades, 454, 460, 461
Online text chat, 418 Scaffolding, 270
Open education (OE), 170, 175 Scale, 112
Open educational practices (OEP), 176, 177 Search engines, 186
Open educational resources (OER), 169, Second language acquisition (SLA), 196, 442,
171, 175 444, 447, 454
Open Sim platform, 335 Second language learning, 346, 347, 349, 350,
Oral Proficiency Interview by Computer 352, 392–393
(OPIc), 319 Second language teacher education (SLTE),
262
ACMC, 264
P community building and social learning, 266
Paralinguistic, 149 degree of interactivity, 263
Parallel collaboration, 250 experiential learning, 263
Parsers, 291, 295 future research, 269–271
Participatory culture, 107 reflective practice, 264
Index 471

research on technology, 268 technology-mediated tasks, 196

sociocultural orientation, 264 web materials, 196
teaching and social presence, 265 early developments, 194
technology implementation, 267–268 future research, 201
transcript analysis, 265 gaming principles, 197
Second Life, 377 methodological principles, 196
Situated approach, 149 problems and difficulties, 199
Situated learning, 264 quests, 198
Skype, 421 teacher education, 202
Social and medium factors, 147 Task complexity, 455
Social inclusion, 49 Task design, 266
Socialization, 392 Teacher education, 202, 281, 284
Social media, 402, 406 Teaching and Language Corpora (TaLC), 184
Social networking sites (SNS), 144 Teaching presence, 265
definition, 390 Tech-infused assessment planning, 322
future research, 398 Techno-biographic interviews, 149
language learning, 395–397 Technological affordances, 148
L2 learning and use in vernacular, 392 Technology-mediated TBLT, 202
pedagogical possibilities, 393–395 Telecollaboration, 159, 236, 243, 276,
problems in, 397–398 281–282. See also Online
uses, 391 intercultural exchange (OIE); Online
Social presence, 265 intercultural language education
Social semiotics, 32, 33, 39, 41 project, 395
Socio-collaborative learning, 396 Telephone, 417
Sociocultural approach, 163 TESOL, 93, 94, 97. See also Popular culture
Sociocultural theory, 332 Test adaptivity, 318
challenges in, 242–243 Testlets, 317
cultures-of-use, 238 Test of English as a Foreign Language
definition, 235 (TOEFL), 318
future research, 243–245 Text chat, 419, 420
in-class teacher-led analysis, 239 Theme analysis, 241
Sociolinguistics, 58, 67 Timeline, 145
Spanish, 319, 320, 458 Transcript analysis, 265
Speaking proficiency, 160 Transnational turn, 106
Spell checkers, 292–293 Transnationalism, 106
Standards-based Measurement of Proficiency Turkish, 319
(STAMP), 320 Tutorial CALL, 162
Swedish learners, 334 Tweets, 79, 402–410
Synchronous chat discussions, 235 Twitter, 132, 137, 138, 394, 397
Synchronous communication, 159 early developments, 403–404
future research, 409–410
T in language learning, 402
Talkomatic, 418 in L2 contexts, 404–406
Tandem, 159 problems, 408–409
learning, 210, 211
Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT), V
194, 332 Validity, 315, 322
challenges, 200 Video-based listening tests, 321
characteristics, 194 Videoconferencing, 58, 60, 211
contributions, 195 objectives, 59
experiential learning, 197 advantages, 59
472 Index

Virtual environment, 378 W

Virtual exchange. See Online intercultural Web 2.0, 134, 136, 144, 390, 398, 422
exchange (OIE) technologies, 248
Virtual worlds (VWs) Wikis, 163
characteristics, 376 Willingness to communicate (WTC), 337
description, 376 WordSmith Tools (WST), 432
development of, 377 World of Warcraft (WoW), 307, 377
early developments, 376–378 Written language bias, 355
future research, 386–387
Habbo, 379
MOOs, 378
problems and difficulties, 384–386 Y
research, 382–384 Youtube, 80
theoretical justification for use, 381
vKontakte, 391
Vocabulary recall test, 334 Z
Voice chat, 421 Zone of proximal development (ZPD), 237, 382