Disruptive Technologies And The Language Classroom: A Complex Systems Theory Approach 3030313670, 9783030313678, 9783030313685

Table of contents :
Epigraphs......Page 5
Preface......Page 7
Contents......Page 9
Abbreviations......Page 13
List of Figures......Page 14
1 Introduction......Page 15
1.1 Background: Computer-Assisted Language Learning......Page 16
1.2 The Disruptive Potential of New Technologies......Page 18
1.3 Approach......Page 22
1.4 Outline of the Book......Page 25
References......Page 27
2 Theoretical Framework......Page 30
2.1.1 Complex Systems Theory......Page 36
2.1.2 Complex Systems Theory and Applied Linguistics......Page 38
2.2 Sociocultural Theory......Page 41
2.2.1 Social Interaction......Page 42
2.2.2 Tools Use and Mediation......Page 44
2.3 Theory of Multimodal Communication......Page 46
References......Page 48
3 Human Meaning-Making: Communication Tools and Modes and Epistemic Practices......Page 53
3.1 Development of Tools and Modes of Communication......Page 54
3.2 Communication Modes and Their Affordances......Page 56
3.3 Development of Learning and the Use of Particular Modes of Communication......Page 58
References......Page 59
4 Computer-Mediated Communication and Meaning-Making in the Language Classroom: Disruptions in Learning and Teaching......Page 60
4.1 Approach......Page 61
4.2.1 Traditional Interaction Patterns in Language Education (Attractor 1)......Page 63
4.2.2 Active Meaning-Making and Negotiation of Meaning by Learners Online......Page 67
4.2.3 New Interlocutors and Multiple Resources......Page 71
4.3.1 Communication in the Traditional Face-to-Face Language Classroom (Attractor 2)......Page 72
4.3.2 Written Computer-Mediated Communication Across Space and/or Time......Page 75
4.3.3 Social Presence in Online Communication......Page 79
4.3.4 Multimodal Communication and Its Use in the Classroom......Page 81
4.3.5 Multimodal Online Communication in Language Learning and Teaching Settings......Page 85
4.4 Changes in Learners’ Positioning in Relation to the World......Page 89
4.4.1 Learner and Teacher Identities in the Traditional Language Classroom (Attractor 3)......Page 90
4.4.2 Constructed Identities, Imagined Communities and Online Affinity Spaces......Page 91
4.4.3 Linking the Language Learner with the Larger Social World......Page 96
4.4.4 Learning in the Wild......Page 98
4.5 A Phase Shift in Language Learning and Teaching......Page 101
References......Page 102
5 What If?......Page 112
5.1 What If Dichotomies That Have Been Axiomatic in Certain Linguistic Theories Obscure Insights into the Nature of Language and Its Learning Rather Than Facilitate Them?......Page 113
5.2 What If Applied Linguists Should Be Seeking to Explain How Language Learners Increase Their Participation in a Second Language Community Rather Than, or in Addition to, How They Acquire the Language of the Community?......Page 114
5.4 What If Learning Is Viewed as an Open, Continually Evolving, System Rather Than a Closed One?......Page 115
5.5 What If Learning a Language Is Not Only About Learning Conventions but also About Innovation and Creation?......Page 116
5.7 What If Language Learning Tasks Are Not Viewed as Static Frames? What If They Are Seen Not as Providing Input but Instead as Providing Affordances?......Page 117
5.8 What If Understanding Through Talk Is the Result of the Dynamics of the System? What If All Aspects of Language Use Are Dialogic?......Page 118
5.9 What If Absolutist Prescriptions and Proscriptions About Teaching Are Doomed to Fail?......Page 119
References......Page 120
6 Implications for Teaching and for Research......Page 123
6.1 Implications for Teachers and Institutions......Page 124
6.2 Implications for Educational Policy......Page 128
6.3 Implications for Research and for Researchers......Page 130
References......Page 133
7 Conclusion......Page 136
7.1 CALL and Theory......Page 137
7.2 Digital Technologies Transforming the Way We Learn......Page 138
References......Page 140
References......Page 141
Index......Page 160

Citation preview

Disruptive Technologies and the Language Classroom A Complex Systems Theory Approach

Regine Hampel

Disruptive Technologies and the Language Classroom

Regine Hampel

Disruptive Technologies and the Language Classroom A Complex Systems Theory Approach

Regine Hampel Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies The Open University Milton Keynes, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-31368-5  (eBook) ISBN 978-3-030-31367-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31368-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Epigraphs

Technology gives us the facilities that lessen the barriers of time and distance—the telegraph and cable, the telephone, radio, and the rest. But technology is a tool, not a virtue. (Emily Greene Balch [1948], Nobel lecture)

To my parents; and to Fiona.

Preface

Moving from a language teaching post at a conventional UK university to the Open University in 1999, I first experienced a model of distance education that was based on the traditional correspondence approach enriched by audio cassettes and the addition of optional faceto-face tutorials. However, I quickly became involved in the creation of a CD-ROM for students of German in 2000. This alongside a university pilot developing and trialling a tool that combined voice conferencing over the Internet with text chat started to break the mould of the time-honoured distance education approach. I then joined a team in the then Centre for Modern Languages that was collaborating with the in-house Knowledge Media Institute to develop, trial and mainstream an integrated audiographic conferencing system (called Lyceum) that allowed distance language learners and their teachers to communicate with one another online using the speaking mode as well as through text chat, a concept mapping tool, a whiteboard, and a document module. Over time, Lyceum was replaced by different generations of videoconferencing systems (for more information on these development and the underlying pedagogical principles, see Hampel and de los Arcos 2013), which today are accompanied by a panoply of other technological tools that students use—not just at the Open University but globally. This first-hand experience gave me valuable insight into the opportunities for interaction and communication that the new digital media offer to language students and teachers but also the challenges that are associated with them. It also led to my engagement in research which has been ix

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PREFACE

built on the premise that the technologies that we have introduced are not neutral tools but instead change the ways in which we teach and the ways in which students learn. These implications should not be ignored if we want to ensure that our students become successful communicators in their second language. This book will hopefully contribute to our understanding of what the effects of this change are and enable language teachers and learners to use the new technologies successfully. I would like to thank my Open University colleagues who gave me feedback on the manuscript—Theresa Lillis, Jane Seale and Uschi Stickler—as well as the anonymous reviewers of the book proposal. A thank-you also goes to the anonymous reviewer of the journal Applied Linguistics who—when I first tried to publish a much shortened version of this book—provided very constructive and valuable feedback, while also indicating that there was much more to this piece than an 8500word journal article could accommodate. Milton Keynes, UK

Regine Hampel

Contents

1 Introduction 1.1 Background: Computer-Assisted Language Learning 1.2 The Disruptive Potential of New Technologies 1.3 Approach 1.4 Outline of the Book References

1 2 4 8 11 13

2 Theoretical Framework 2.1 Complex Systems Theory: System and Context 2.1.1 Complex Systems Theory 2.1.2 Complex Systems Theory and Applied Linguistics 2.2 Sociocultural Theory 2.2.1 Social Interaction 2.2.2 Tools Use and Mediation 2.3 Theory of Multimodal Communication 2.4 Conclusion References

17 23 23 25 28 29 31 33 35 35

3 Human Meaning-Making: Communication Tools and Modes and Epistemic Practices 3.1 Development of Tools and Modes of Communication 3.2 Communication Modes and Their Affordances

41 42 44

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CONTENTS

3.3

Development of Learning and the Use of Particular Modes of Communication References

46 47

4 Computer-Mediated Communication and MeaningMaking in the Language Classroom: Disruptions in Learning and Teaching 49 4.1 Approach 50 4.2 Changes in Interaction Patterns 52 4.2.1 Traditional Interaction Patterns in Language Education (Attractor 1) 52 4.2.2 Active Meaning-Making and Negotiation of Meaning by Learners Online 56 4.2.3 New Interlocutors and Multiple Resources 60 4.3 Changes in Communication 61 4.3.1 Communication in the Traditional Face-to-Face Language Classroom (Attractor 2) 61 4.3.2 Written Computer-Mediated Communication Across Space and/or Time 64 4.3.3 Social Presence in Online Communication 68 4.3.4 Multimodal Communication and Its Use in the Classroom 70 4.3.5 Multimodal Online Communication 74 in Language Learning and Teaching Settings 4.4 Changes in Learners’ Positioning in Relation 78 to the World 4.4.1 Learner and Teacher Identities in the Traditional Language Classroom (Attractor 3) 79 4.4.2 Constructed Identities, Imagined Communities 80 and Online Affinity Spaces 4.4.3 Linking the Language Learner with the Larger Social World 85 4.4.4 Learning in the Wild 87 90 4.5 A Phase Shift in Language Learning and Teaching 91 References

CONTENTS  

5 What If? 5.1 What If Dichotomies That Have Been Axiomatic in Certain Linguistic Theories Obscure Insights into the Nature of Language and Its Learning Rather Than Facilitate Them? 5.2 What If Applied Linguists Should Be Seeking to Explain How Language Learners Increase Their Participation in a Second Language Community Rather Than, or in Addition to, How They Acquire the Language of the Community? 5.3 What If the Process of Learning and the Learners Cannot Be Usefully Separated? What If Individual Routes to Acquisition/Participation No Longer Need to Be Idealized Away? 5.4 What If Learning Is Viewed as an Open, Continually Evolving, System Rather Than a Closed One? 5.5 What If Learning a Language Is Not Only About Learning Conventions but also About Innovation and Creation? 5.6 What If We Truly Understand That Teaching Does Not Cause Learning? 5.7 What If Language Learning Tasks Are Not Viewed as Static Frames? What If They Are Seen Not as Providing Input but Instead as Providing Affordances? 5.8 What If Understanding Through Talk Is the Result of the Dynamics of the System? What If All Aspects of Language Use Are Dialogic? 5.9 What If Absolutist Prescriptions and Proscriptions About Teaching Are Doomed to Fail? 5.10 A New Approach to Language Learning and Teaching References 6 Implications for Teaching and for Research 6.1 Implications for Teachers and Institutions 6.2 Implications for Educational Policy 6.3 Implications for Research and for Researchers References

xiii

101

102

103

104 104 105 106

106 107 108 109 109 113 114 118 120 123

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CONTENTS

7 Conclusion 7.1 CALL and Theory 7.2 Digital Technologies Transforming the Way We Learn References

127 128 129 131

References 133 Index 153

Abbreviations

CALL Computer-assisted language learning CAS Complex adaptive system CLIL Content and language integrated learning CMC Computer-mediated communication DST Dynamic systems theory EFL English as a foreign language FB Facebook ICT Information and communication technology IM Instant Messaging L1 First language L2 Second language MFL Modern foreign languages MMOGs Massively multiplayer online games MMORPG Massively multiplayer online role-playing games MOOC Massive online open course NNS Non-native speaker NS Native speaker SLA Second language acquisition VC Videoconferencing VoIP Voice over internet protocol VR Virtual reality

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1

Theoretical framework The development of key communication modes and example tools in the history of humanity

20 42

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract This chapter introduces the core question that is at the centre of this book—originally posed by Roger Säljö in 1999—that is, whether the new digital technologies are transforming language learning and teaching. A follow-up question asks what this would mean for learners, teachers and researchers. The chapter then sets out a particular understanding of language as a tool for communication and meaning-making and introduces the theoretical approach taken in the book, an approach that brings together complex systems theory with sociocultural theory and the theory of multimodality. It ends with an overview of Chapters 2–7. Keywords Digital technologies · Transformation · Meaning-making · Complex systems theory

Much of traditional language learning takes place in the confined space of the physical classroom where interaction is somewhat limited to spoken communication with the teacher and the other students and engagement with written texts. New technologies have the potential to not only open up the classroom to new patterns of interaction and multimodal communication but also to link learners with the real world where language is not just a set of abstract concepts and rules but where it is actually used by speakers to make meaning. However, technologies are not neutral tools but have an impact on language learning and teaching. © The Author(s) 2019 R. Hampel, Disruptive Technologies and the Language Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31368-5_1

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This introduction sets out the core question that will be at the centre of this book, exploring the potential of the new digital technologies—which have afforded a move from the book and the page as well as the audio cassette to the screen and from unidirectional to bidirectional communication (Kress 2003)—to transform systems, approaches and processes commonly used in language learning and teaching and to examine the implications for learners, teachers and researchers. I will also introduce my theoretical approach, using complex systems theory (which is also referred to in the literature as dynamic systems theory, complexity theory/science or chaos theory/science) alongside sociocultural theory and the theory of multimodality to help answer this question. Following Cameron and Larsen-Freeman (2007), I will consider “the language classroom as a complex system, not reducible to its component parts, but in which the parts contribute to the whole while also being formed by the whole. A systems perspective can help understand language classroom problems and issues and suggest how to intervene to improve learning” (p. 236). However, while Cameron and Larsen-Freeman do so in the context of face-to-face language learning, I will be exploring online language learning and teaching, with a particular focus on the impact of the new digital media on interactive meaning-making in and beyond the classroom. The use of digital technologies in language education has dramatically increased in recent years but books that use complex systems theory to explore their use are non-existent. Therefore the key significance of this book is that it brings together two areas which are of great interest to researchers and practitioners today but which have not yet sufficiently been explored in conjunction—online communication and meaning making in language learning and teaching contexts on the one hand and complex systems thinking on the other—in order to see how the new technologies are changing the language learning and teaching landscape. The introduction ends with an overview of the chapters that make up this book.

1.1

Background: Computer-Assisted Language Learning

Digital media have greatly increased in significance for language learners and teachers in a relatively short time. This is reflected for example in the position statement of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (http://www.actfl.org/news/position-statements/

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role-technology-language-learning), which acknowledges the potential of technology as a tool to support and enhance classroom-based as well as distance language instruction and encourages its use. Similarly, “New media in language education” is one of the thematic areas of the European Centre for Modern Languages. They are “revolutionising the learning and teaching of languages” by providing access to authentic materials, enabling direct contact with others, and allowing us to find out and comment on what is happening in the world (https://www.ecml.at/Thematicareas/ NewMediainLanguageEducation/tabid/1630/Default.aspx). It is thus not surprising that the use of new technologies for language learning and teaching has become the focus of numerous books and myriads of journal articles as well as of a number of journals (including Language Learning & Technology (LLT), ReCALL, Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), CALICO Journal, Innovations in Language Learning and Teaching, System: An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics, and JALTCALL). The number of books in the area has also been growing in the past decade. However, there are several key limitations to existing work. Firstly, much of the literature on computerassisted language learning (CALL) shows that the teaching approaches used often continue to rely on cognitive theories of learning that have been questioned in the wake of the ‘social turn’ in second language acquisition (Block 2003). Secondly, many researchers work within a positivist research paradigm and/or follow a monomodal approach, generally exploring written or spoken language rather than considering the multimodal orchestration of meaning by learners. Thirdly, much of the work published is still not very strongly theorized, especially in the new and growing areas of learning beyond the classroom (as e.g. Wang and Winstead point out in their 2016 Handbook of Research on Foreign Language Education in the Digital Age). Furthermore, many of the books published in this area are edited books which are well suited to giving an excellent overview of an area but are less able to examine a subject in greater depth. This book is based on an understanding of the language classroom that is informed by ecological, semiotic and sociocultural principles that encourage participation and interaction. It is within the tradition of research which shows that language learning goes beyond developing the ability to compute input and produce output—a view still held by many teachers as well as researchers. As Young in his Series Editor’s Foreword to Seedhouse (2004, p. xi) remarks:

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The notion of learning as increasing participation in social activity is clearly a very different view of second language development from the cognitive one, but if we adopt the participation metaphor for learning, the relevance of social context becomes clear, and the central question in SLA [Second Language Acquisition] becomes understanding the organization of talk— direct interaction between persons—as the primordial site of sociality.

Thus I will focus on how learners use language to try and make meaning, on the importance of socialization through and into a language. Lam and Kramsch (2003, p. 5) point to the metaphor of ecology “to capture the interconnectedness of the psychological, social and environmental processes in SLA”. And linking into this, Larsen-Freeman (2016) argues for “the need to move beyond input-output metaphors to embrace a new way of understanding, one informed by Complexity Theory with its ecological orientation – one of affordances.” This book puts the focus squarely on the affordances that new technologies have for communication and meaningmaking. However, I am focusing not just on communication through the spoken word but will also include other modes of communication such as writing and gesture, which have often been neglected in applied linguistics research of language learners’ interactions. A growing number of key applied linguistics researchers (such as Diane Larsen-Freeman, Kees de Bot, Marjolijn Verspoor, Anne Burns and Sarah Mercer) started to use complex systems theory in the early 2000s. More recently, interest in this area seems to have accelerated, as evidenced in an increase in articles and edited books (e.g. Ellis and Larsen-Freeman 2009; Housen et al. 2012; Ortega and Han 2017). However, most of the research published so far focuses on second language development of learners. An exception to this is Larsen-Freeman and Cameron’s 2008 book Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics (Oxford, OUP), which uses complex systems theory to explore a range of areas in applied linguistics more generally.

1.2

The Disruptive Potential of New Technologies

In 1999 Roger Säljö posed the following question about the impact of the new information technologies: “[D]o they support new forms of teaching and learning that radically transform the manner in which people appropriate knowledge? Or is the change less dramatic than it might appear?

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These are questions that do not as yet have any clear answer” (Säljö 1999, p. 148). In what can almost be read as a response, James Wertsch wrote the following in his commentary on the contributions to a special issue of the journal Distance Education on ‘Studying Collaboration in Distributed PBL (Project-Based Learning) Environments’: The authors [in this special issue] often make comments suggesting that computer mediation is simply a detail, or something that provides a quantitative increment in efficacy, but no fundamental change to the processes involved. It seems to me that it is worth considering the possibility that we may need a more radical realignment of our analytic approach. Rather than viewing the introduction of a new cultural tool as making an existing form of action easier or more efficient, it may be important to consider how it introduces fundamental change – sometimes to such a degree that we can question whether the same form of action is involved at all. (Wertsch 2002, p. 106)

Wertsch’s comments suggest that our answer to Säljö’s question should be ‘yes’, that is, new information technologies do support new forms of teaching and learning that radically transform the manner in which people appropriate knowledge. Similarly, Spence and Brandao’s (2019) survey of MFL teachers, researchers, professionals and students suggests that the new digital tools “may transform pedagogy” (p. 17). This is contrary to and critical of the more naïve stance of some researchers who ignore the fact that mediation may lead to a different form of action and seem to be solely looking for tools that address issues around tight resources or simplify an existing activity. This stance has also been critiqued by Levy (2000, p. 190), Thorne (2003, p. 38) and previous work by the author (Hampel 2003, p. 34; 2006, p. 106; 2014) who—informed by sociocultural theory with its focus on the importance of social interaction in the development of an individual’s cognition and on the role of tools and their mediating role (Vygotsky 1978)—point out that tools are not neutral and that technology makes a difference to how we learn. Sharples (2002, p. 504) introduces the idea of mobiles as devices which “disrupt the carefully managed environment of the classroom”. This is picked up by Somekh (2004, p. 170) who—also drawing on Lankshear et al.’s (2000) work—expands this idea of the disruptive impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on our education systems. At an apparently superficial level ICTs have the potential to disrupt the routine procedures of schooling and challenge some of the basic principles which

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it symbolically upholds (Sharples 2003). At a more fundamental level, following Bernstein (1971), schools and education systems can be seen as sites for both strong classification and strong framing of knowledge, which are fundamentally challenged by the destabilising impact of ICT on concepts like knowledge, teaching, the disciplines and rationality […].

Two decades after Säljö asked the question about the potential transformative nature of technology, technology seems to have transformed learning, which is now global, networked, increasingly open and accessible on a massive scale—at least on the surface. Most of us today—both in developed countries but increasingly also in developing countries—will probably agree that the growth of digital technologies has had wide-ranging effects on almost all aspects of our lives, including education. A MOOC on FutureLearn, for example, was hailed in 2015 as the “biggest online university course” in the UK with 370,000 students enrolled (Coughlan 2015); learning is increasingly characterized by the use of multimodal online environments (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001); and it is taking place in a world where cognition is ever more distributed (i.e. located in external systems outside the mind of the individual, see Hutchins 1995) and where the flows of knowledge are becoming as important as the creation of knowledge (Littlejohn et al. 2012). So digital tools are obviously having an impact on how we make meaning and communicate with others. Despite this, technology is often not used to best effect in class by students and teachers. This continues to be an outcome in the annual reports on the ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology. The 2015 study concluded that “leveraging technology as a tool to engage students in meaningful ways and to enhance learning is still more of a promise than a practice” (Dahlstrom et al. 2015, pp. 4–5). In the latest study, the authors found the following: faculty are mostly comfortable with integrating technology to enhance their pedagogy, improve communication, and carry out course tasks—all good things for sure. These practices, though, are largely under the control of the instructor and are teacher-centered. Our data suggest a distinct break between these items and those where students were asked if they were encouraged to use their own devices in class—practices that involve some relinquishing of faculty control, are more student-centered, and can encourage more active learning pedagogies. (Galanek et al. 2018)

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And, as Thorne (2016, pp. 241–242) highlights (and reminiscent of Wertsch’s point above), in many institutions pedagogy has not changed greatly, despite the technological advances. In some cases, when new technologies are included, they serve as a digital simulacrum of earlier analog practices, and while some uses present opportunities for new forms of engagement and communicative interaction, others were developed in good part because of their recognisability or due to an unreflexive faith in the efficacy of, to take one example, patterned repetition of the sort that has informed language learning drills and worksheets for decades.

A recent survey of people involved in modern foreign languages (MFL) in the UK and beyond shows that this situation continues. There was strong consensus amongst the respondents—who included mainly researchers and teachers in higher education, some other professionals working in the area of MFL, and some MFL students—that digital culture and technology is having a significant effect on the personal engagement of respondents with modern language education and research as well as on the field in general, for example by giving “access to tools and authentic content; greater connection to target language and culture; new multilingual habits; opportunities for active, collaborative learning” (Spence and Brandao 2019, p. 1). However, the study also highlights “[d]oubts about the current state of digital adoption/integration” (p. 19) in higher education. So it seems timely to explore whether there is evidence for the more fundamental and transformational changes and the disruption that have been suggested. Are the new digital media really transforming systems and processes that aid language learning and development, thus reshaping how we learn languages? And how can new technologies be harnessed to advance the kind of participative education that they afford, one that opens up the language classroom to the world, one that encourages a communicative and interactive approach to language learning and teaching that is informed by ecological, semiotic and sociocultural principles, thus transforming many of the traditional approaches, systems and processes that characterize language learning and teaching? The next section lays out an approach that may help us understand the recent changes to language learning and teaching.

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1.3

Approach

My understanding of language education is informed by Henry Widdowson who sees “language as an instrument of communication” (1978, p. 77). His programmatically entitled book Teaching Language as Communication lays out his approach to language teaching as one “which will develop the ability to communicate” (ix). The book includes activities and exercises—which he calls “pedagogic procedures” (ix)—for developing learners’ communicative abilities. Reflecting the pedagogy of his time, Widdowson’s book is very much classroom-focused, describing oral teacher drills and activities for developing learners’ written discourse, with the teacher centre-stage. Today, communication continues to be seen both as an aim in as well as an instrument for language learning, but the pedagogic procedures (or ‘tools’, if we use a sociocultural term) have changed. The twenty-first century notion of a language classroom is very different from 40 years ago. Nevertheless, the role of tools is still crucial, with the new digital media in particular playing a central role in allowing learners to develop this ability to communicate. Sociocultural theory will provide an appropriate lens to examine this further in this book, reflecting the belief that learning is socially, culturally, institutionally, and historically situated (Vygotsky 1978; Wertsch 1991), that it is a social process which has to do with how people appropriate and master tools (including language and technology) in a given culture. And to take account of the fact that technology-supported meaning-making is increasingly multimodal, I am also drawing on the theory of multimodal communication (see, e.g., Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001; Jewitt 2014). However, the overarching framework for this book is complex systems theory, conceptualizing the language classroom as an ecosystem made up of different interacting parts and thus allowing for a focus on the changes that language learning and teaching has undergone over the past couple of decades as a result of the introduction of new technologies. For the purposes of this book, this ecosystem includes learners, teachers and other interactants as well as the learning context that they are in and the tools that they use, from language and other modes of communication to new technologies—all of which are “cultural products shaped by cultural environments [which] cannot be culturally neutral” (Kern 2006, p. 189). Two leading complex systems scientists describe complex systems as follows:

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A “complex system” is a group or organization which is made up of many interacting parts. Archetypal complex systems include the global climate, economies, ant colonies, and immune systems. In such systems the individual parts—called “components” or “agents”— and the interactions between them often lead to large-scale behaviors which are not easily predicted from a knowledge only of the behavior of the individual agents. Such collective effects are called “emergent“behaviors. Examples of emergent behaviors include short and long-term climate changes, price fluctuations in markets, foraging and building by ants, and the ability of immune systems to distinguish “self” from “other” and to protect the former and eradicate the latter. (Mitchell and Newman 2002, p. 1)

Complex systems theory has also been introduced into applied linguistics. For Larsen-Freeman (2016), “Complexity Theory with its ecological orientation” is an appropriate theory to reflect the world we live in today, a world which is characterized by environmental issues; connected, transnational lives; technological innovations; and interdependence of national economies, and she extends this theory to SLA to help us move beyond computer processing input-output metaphors. The core question that drives this book revolves around whether the new digital technologies have the potential to transform—and have already started to transform—approaches, systems and processes used in language learning and teaching and what the implications are for learners, teachers and researchers. As Larsen-Freeman (2016) states, “[b]ecause of the dynamic quality of classrooms as complex systems, circumstances change” (p. 379). Although the new digital tools have changed our everyday practices and personal and professional lives (including the lives of students), there still seems to be an assumption by many researchers as well as teaching professionals that their use in the classroom is transparent or inconsequential. Alternatively, they are seen as a distraction—May and Elder (2018), for example, found in their literature review of media multitasking in relation to academic performance that “media multitasking is negatively associated with GPA, test performance, information recall, comprehension, and notetaking, especially when students multitask to engage in off task activities” (n.p.). So how can we ensure that our learning and teaching practices befit the new digital spaces and that they are used in ways that realize their potential? Based on a review of the literature and my own empirical research and by using complex systems theory, this book takes an innovative approach to

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show how technologies impact on social and interactive meaning-making in language learning and teaching. It uses the notion of disruption—or “perturbation of a system” as Verspoor et al. (2009) call it following the writing of the physical chemist Ilya Prigogine (1996)—to probe language learning and teaching practices. Recent empirical studies provide evidence of the disruptive effect of technology in traditional language learning settings which has the potential to result in a phase shift (“a sudden and dramatic change” as defined by Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008, p. 43) that is reshaping language learning and teaching by creating new interaction patterns, opening up new ways of meaning-making, and introducing more real-world communication into the classroom. The book looks at the implications of this and concludes by proposing some ways for learners, teachers and institutions to respond to this shift. By aligning theories that have not been brought together before in this way the book shows that technology fundamentally changes the way in which we learn a language, thus contributing to key discussions today about the nature of communication as well as of language learning and teaching. It helps practitioners understand how the transformative potential of technology can be used successfully in the language classroom. It also makes a key contribution to theory-building, illustrating how complex systems theory can be used in conjunction with other theories to elucidate language learning via technology. The reader should note that (unless specified) the term ‘classroom’—as it appears in the title, for example—is used in a broad sense to include formal, non-formal and informal learning contexts where a second language (L2) is being learned, with and without a teacher. The Council of Europe defines formal learning as learning that is situated within a “structured education system”. Non-formal learning “refers to planned, structured programmes and processes of personal and social education for young people designed to improve a range of skills and competences, outside the formal educational curriculum.” Informal learning “refers to a lifelong learning process, whereby each individual acquires attitudes, values, skills and knowledge from the educational influences and resources in his or her own environment and from daily experience” (https://www.coe.int/en/web/ european-youth-foundation/definitions). While this definition of a classroom is all encompassing and makes it difficult to delineate what a classroom actually is, it also illustrates the expansive conceptualization of what a learning context is today (see, e.g., Edwards

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and Usher 2008). Conversely, where I talk about ‘the real world’ or ‘realworld’ settings, these include both physical localities outside the formal face-to-face classroom as well as virtual environments that learners may use to communicate in the context of formal or informal language learning. While some readers may again find this too broad a view, it reflects the wide range of opportunities for language learning that exist today beyond the traditional classroom. The inverted commas used here help capture the fuzziness of the notions of ‘classroom’ as well as ‘real world’, but I will refrain from using them throughout the book.

1.4

Outline of the Book

Chapter 2 sets out the theoretical lenses that the book uses. Firstly, complex systems theory provides a metatheory or a paradigm. It provides a coherent set of principles for as well as a fresh perspective on examining processes of change, and it allows us to look at dynamic organisms over time, to take account of contextual factors (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008, p. 34), and to trace how order is followed by periods of disorder before the system settles into a new order (Larsen-Freeman 1997). Secondly, sociocultural theory provides an appropriate approach to understanding learning with technology. It reflects the belief that learning is a social process which has to do with how people appropriate and master tools (including technology) in a given culture (Vygotsky 1978; Säljö 1999) and allows for a focus on mediation. Central theorists and researchers whose ideas I discuss include Lev Semionovitch Vygotsky, James Wertsch, James Lantolf, and Steven Thorne. Thirdly, as the focus of this book is on interactive meaning-making in a language learning context, the multimodal theory of communication (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001; Jewitt 2014)—which explores how people make meaning using visual, spoken, gestural, written, spatial and other resources—allows us to approach the impact of new technologies on language learning and teaching from a semiotic perspective. Communication is a crucial means as well as an end in language education, and this theory helps to take account of how learners and teachers use the multimodal resources available today in the language classroom. As meaning-making and communication is central to this book, Chapter 3 gives an overview of the development of communication, from early human tools and modes to the digital media that are used today, and also considers their use in the context of learning and teaching. This sets the scene for exploring the shift at the centre of the subsequent chapters.

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Chapter 4 starts with two key premises. These are based on LarsenFreeman and Cameron’s (2008) suggestions that face-to-face conversation is the original form of discourse, and that it is a complex dynamic system which is characterized by certain attractors—that is, states or “modes of behaviours […] that the system ‘prefers’” (p. 49). I then describe my approach, which consists in examining a number of attractors that relate to meaning-making in face-to-face language learning and teaching contexts. They are set classroom interaction patterns, particular ways of communicating in terms of space and time and mode, and the positioning of the language learner in relation to the world. These traditional attractors are then used to explore the implications of introducing new digital technologies into language learning and teaching, to determine whether this is causing a phase shift, and, if so, in what ways the system is disrupted and transformed. I use relevant research to give the reader both a broad overview of the developments in relation to each of the three areas and introduce her/him to exemplar studies which help to pinpoint where and in what ways technology is having a transformative effect on some of the key approaches and systems that have traditionally characterized language learning and teaching in a communicative framework (and that I have characterized as attractors above). Chapter 5 picks up Larsen-Freeman and Cameron’s (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008) ‘what if’ questions which they pose at the beginning of their book (pp. 9–11). I use these nine questions to explore the opportunities offered to language learners for meaning-making, opportunities that are revealed by shining a complexity theory lens on use of the new digital technologies—a theory which highlights change and adaptation. In Chapter 6, I examine what the implications of this phase shift are for teachers and institutions as well as for policy-makers, and how learners can be supported to communicate successfully in online environments. To do so I employ for example the notion of ‘soft assembly’, that is, language learners using the resources that are available to them and adapting to their sociocultural environment in order to communicate (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008), and the concept of multiliteracies, a pedagogy which recognizes that meaning-making is an active, transformative process (Cope and Kalantzis 2009). I also outline what the implications are for research and researchers. To conclude, in Chapter 7 I return to Säljö’s question posed above.

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References Block, D. (2003). The social turn in second language acquisition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Cameron, L., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (2007). Complex systems and applied linguistics. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17 (2), 226–239. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2007.00148.x. Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2009). “Multiliteracies”: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(3), 164–195. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/15544800903076044. Coughlan, S. (2015, May 13). UK ‘biggest online university course’. BBC. Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-32721056. Dahlstrom, E. with D. Brooks, S. Grajek, & J. Reeves. (2015). ECAR study of students and information technology, 2015 (Research report). Louisville, CO: ECAR. Available at https://library.educause.edu/resources/2015/8/~/ media/24ddc1aa35a5490389baf28b6ddb3693.ashx. Edwards, R., & Usher, R. (2008). Globalisation and pedagogy: Space, place and identity. Abingdon: Routledge. Ellis, N. C., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (Eds.). (2009). Language as a complex adaptive system (Special issue). Language Learning, 59(Suppl. 1). Galanek, J. D., Gierdowksi, D. C, & Brook, D. C. (2018). ECAR study of undergraduate students and information technology. Available at https:// www.educause.edu/ecar/research-publications/ecar-study-of-undergraduatestudents-and-information-technology/2018/introduction-and-key-findings. Hampel, R. (2003). Theoretical perspectives and new practices in audio-graphic conferencing for language learning. ReCALL, 15(1), 21–36. https://doi.org/ 10.1017/S0958344003000314. Hampel, R. (2006). Rethinking task design for the digital age: A framework for language teaching and learning in a synchronous online environment. ReCALL, 8(1), 105–121. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344006000711. Hampel, R. (2014). Making meaning online: Computer-mediated communication for language learning. In A. Peti-Stanti´c & M.-M. Stanojevi´c (Eds.), Language as Information: Proceedings from the CALS Conference 2012 (pp. 89–106). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Housen, A., Kuiken, F., & Vedder, I. (Eds.). (2012). Dimensions of L2 performance and proficiency: Complexity, accuracy and fluency in SLA. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge: MIT Press. Jewitt, C. (2014). The Routledge handbook of multimodal analysis. London: Routledge. Kern, R. (2006). Perspectives on technology in learning and teaching languages. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 183–210. https://doi.org/10.2307/40264516. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the media age. London and New York: Routledge.

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Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold. Lam, W. S. E., & Kramsch, C. (2003). The ecology of an SLA community in a computer-mediated environment. In J. Leather & J. Van Dam (Eds.), Ecology of language acquisition (pp. 141–158). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic. Lankshear, C., Peters, M., & Knobel, M. (2000). Information, knowledge and learning: Some issues facing epistemology and education in a digital age. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 34, 17–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752. 00153. Larsen-Freeman, D. (1997). Chaos/complexity science and second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 18(2), 141–165. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ 18.2.141. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2016). Classroom-oriented research from a complex systems perspective. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 6(3), 377–393. Available at http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1. element.desklight-54c09aeb-a66a-4cc9-844c-c5d8ae381623/c/SSLLT_6_3_ _377-393_Larsen-Freeman.pdf. https://doi.org/10.14746/ssllt.2016.6.3.2. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levy, M. (2000). Scope, goals and methods in CALL research: Questions of coherence and autonomy. ReCALL, 12(2), 170–195. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0958344000000525. Littlejohn, A., Milligan, C., & Margaryan, A. (2012). Charting collective knowledge: Supporting self-regulated learning in the workplace. Journal of Workplace Learning, 24(3), 226–238. https://doi.org/10.1108/13665621211209285. May, K. E., & Elder, A. D. (2018). Efficient, helpful, or distracting? A literature review of media multitasking in relation to academic performance. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 15(13). Available at https://educationaltechnologyjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10. 1186/s41239-018-0096-z. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-018-0096-z. Mitchell, M., & Newman, M. (2002). Complex systems theory and evolution. In M. Pagel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Evolution. New York: Oxford University Press. Available at http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~mm/EncycOfEvolution.pdf. Ortega, L., & Han, Z. H. (Eds.). (2017). Complexity theory and language development: In celebration of Diane Larsen-Freeman. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.48. Prigogine, I. (1996). The end of certainty: Time, chaos and the new laws of nature. New York: Free Press.

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Säljö, R. (1999). Learning as the use of tools: A sociocultural perspective on the human–technology link. In K. Littleton & P. Light (Eds.), Learning with computers: Analysing productive interaction (pp. 144–161). London and New York: Routledge. Sharples, M. (2002). Disruptive devices: Mobile technology for conversational learning. International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Lifelong Learning, 12(5/6), 504–520. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJCEELL.2002. 002148. Somekh, S. (2004). Taking the sociological imagination to school: An analysis of the (lack of) impact of information and communication technologies on education systems. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 13(2), 163–179. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14759390400200178. Spence, P., & Brandao, R. (2019). Survey of attitudes towards digital culture & technology in the modern languages. London, UK: Language Acts and Worldmaking. Thorne, S. L. (2003). Artifacts and cultures-of-use in intercultural communication. Language Learning & Technology, 7 (2), 38–67. Available at https://www. lltjournal.org/item/2430. http://dx.doi.org/10125/25200. Thorne, S. L. (2016). Engineering conditions of possibility in technology-enhanced language learning. In C. Caws & M.-J. Hamel (Eds.), Language-learner computer interactions: Theory, methodology and CALL applications (pp. 241–246). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Verspoor, M. H., Lowie, W. M., & de Bot, K. (2009). Input and second language development from a dynamic perspective. In T. Piske & M. Young-Scholten (Eds.), Input matters in SLA (pp. 62–80). Bristol, Buffalo, and Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. London and Cambridge, MA: Harvester Wheatsheaf and Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (2002). Computer mediation, PBL, and dialogicality (Special issue). Distance Education, 23(1), 105–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 01587910220124008. Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching language as communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Young, R. (2004). Series editor’s foreword to Seedhouse: In the interactional architecture of the language classroom—A conversation analysis perspective. Language Learning, 54(Suppl. 1), x–xiii.

CHAPTER 2

Theoretical Framework

Abstract This chapter argues that many of the theoretical approaches currently used to explore computer-assisted language learning originate in face-to-face pedagogy and do not provide explanatory power to account for change in learning contexts where digital tools are being used for communication and interaction. It proposes an alternative approach where complex systems theory is used as a metatheory, offering an overall framework for examining processes of change. In addition, sociocultural theory reflects the belief that learning is a social process, and the multimodal theory of communication allows for a focus on how language learners make meaning today using the various resources that different technologies provide. Keywords CALL research tradition · Complex systems theory · Sociocultural theory · Theory of multimodality

As Albert Einstein observed, “Erst die Theorie entscheidet darüber, was man beobachten kann.” [“It is the theory which decides what we can observe.”] (Heisenberg 1969, pp. 79–80). However, as Hubbard and Levy (2016, p. 25) point out in the context of computer assisted language learning, there is no established CALL theory or even set of CALL theories that have been developed internally by scholars in the field to uniquely characterise it. © The Author(s) 2019 R. Hampel, Disruptive Technologies and the Language Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31368-5_2

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Instead, CALL is largely a consumer of theories from other sources, not only at the level of teaching and development (Levy and Stockwell 2006, p. 39) but arguably also in its research tradition.

In a way, this is not surprising as there also is no theory of book-assisted language learning. As Hubbard and Levy suggest, this does not mean that online language pedagogy is devoid of theory. Firstly, we can look to theories that provide conceptual foundations for language or for meaningmaking and communication more generally. These include structuralism, universal grammar, functional theories of grammar, and semiotics and social semiotics. Semiotics started with Ferdinand de Saussure but more recently have been encapsulated in Michael Halliday’s work, the theory of multimodal communication initially put forward by Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen, and approaches such as geosemiotics . Also crucial are theories of learning, for example B. F. Skinner’s behaviourism, Noam Chomsky’s innatist theory, Jean Piaget’s cognitivism, constructivism, and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. And then there are theories that attempt to explain different aspects of second language learning—for example Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis, Michael Long’s interaction hypothesis, Merrill Swain’s output hypothesis, Richard Schmidt’s noticing hypothesis, and Lantolf’s application of sociocultural theory to second language acquisition. The above-mentioned theories are however premised on the idea of face-to-face pedagogy. Computer-assisted language learning is different from the learning that happens in a traditional classroom as it is mediated through the computer—a tool that has quite different affordances compared to a physical environment—thus opening up different opportunities for learners and teachers. James Gibson (1979, p. 127) explains the concept of affordances in his ecological approach to visual perception: The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill. The verb to afford is found in the dictionary, but the noun affordance is not. I have made it up. I mean by it something that refers to both the environment and the animal in a way that no existing term does. It implies the complementarity of the animal and the environment.

Leo van Lier (2004a) uses the concept in his semiotic and ecological approach to language learning, describing it as “action potential”, which “emerges as we interact with the physical and social world” (p. 92).

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A possible theoretical framework that addresses the questions posed above by Säljö, Wertsch and others—whether the new digital media are indeed transforming systems and processes that aid language learning and development, thus reshaping how we learn languages, and what approaches can help us to understand the recent changes to language learning and teaching (see Sects. 1.2 and 1.3)—would need to operate at several levels. Not only would it need to provide explanatory power to account for change, but it would need to do so in a learning context where particular tools are being used, and it would need to allow for a focus on language and communication in the context of language learning. In an edited book, Lantolf and Appel (1994) extend Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory into second language research, focusing in particular on the zone of proximal development, inner and private speech, and activity theory. Others taking a similar approach include Thorne who also explores the opportunities of going beyond cognitive approaches to second language acquisition. Thorne argues that “a broad intellectual framework would be critical for interconnections with findings in other fields”, one that pays “attention to context and socio-cultural-historical issues” (2000, p. 220). Following Lantolf, Thorne and others, I propose to use sociocultural theory to explore the impact of the new technologies on language learning and teaching. It will allow for an understanding of learning in its cultural, historical and institutional context and a focus on interaction that is mediated not only through the use of language but also physical tools, including computers. While communication and meaning-making have been at the centre of language learning and teaching for a long time, communication has become more obviously multimodal (both at the point of consumption and production). I therefore also suggest using the theory of multimodal communication, which understands language and other meaning-making systems as semiotic resources that are orchestrated in a particular context and for a particular purpose. In addition, I propose to use a theory that neither deals with language nor with learning directly, namely complex systems theory, to act as a metatheory for the book and a useful heuristic for conceptualizing the impact of new technologies on language learning and teaching practices today. The theoretical framework for this book is thus made up of several complementary parts (see Fig. 2.1). Complex systems theory acts as a metatheory (Larsen-Freeman 2015) or a paradigm, providing a coherent set of

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Fig. 2.1 Theoretical framework

principles (see Larsen-Freeman 2017). Sociocultural theory with its focus on historical, cultural and social tools and other artefacts which mediate learning affords an appropriate approach to understanding the use of technology for communication and interaction in a learning context. And the theory of multimodal communication allows for a semiotic perspective, directing the focus on how language learners and teachers make meaning using different digital resources, meanings that “rely not just on linguistic but also on all other meaning resources of physical, social and symbolic kinds” (van Lier 2004b, p. 80). There is some contention around the commensurability of complex systems theory and sociocultural theory, with some proponents arguing that there is considerable common ground between the two theories and others maintaining that the two are incompatible because of different ontologies and concerns. Kirshner and Kellogg (2009, p. 46), for example, come to the “reluctant conclusion [that] points to the possible incompatibility of complexity framed by its mathematics and hard sciences roots to basic requirements of a social science.” According to them, Vygotsky’s emphasis on teaching and learning, and on development as self-planning and self-regulation is not compatible with chaos-complexity theory as long as it continues to be based on the natural sciences. “The complex dynamic modeling that has been found so useful for describing self-organization in

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the evolutionary origins of speech (Oudeyer 2006; Ke and Holland 2006) is much less useful for describing how speech is learnt and how it changes” (Kirshner and Kellogg 2009, p. 53). In contrast, de Bot et al. (2013) see dynamic systems theory as a “comprehensive theory of second language development” as the title of their chapter indicates. While I am more concerned with how language learning and teaching has been changing due to the influence of the introduction and subsequent pervasiveness of new technologies and computer-mediated communication and interaction and the potential disruptive impact that this has had on learners and teachers, it is still worth considering why a theory that is rooted in the natural sciences and uses complex mathematical modelling can provide useful insights in the social sciences. As mentioned earlier, I see it more as a useful heuristic that provides metaphors and concepts—a variant of de Bot’s ‘soft approach’, one “that links up with an existing way of thinking in the social sciences that could be labelled as ‘the ecological approach’” (de Bot 2011, p. 127). So I would argue with a number of other researchers that the two approaches can be used to complement each other. In their introduction to a special issue ‘Language Emergence: Implications for Applied Linguistics’, Ellis and Larsen-Freeman (2006) summarize their approach as follows, bringing together models of representation (property theories) which focus on static competence and models of acquisition and use (transition theories) which focus on dynamic process and performance. This Special Issue is motivated by the belief that our interests in language can better be furthered when it is conceived of as the emergent properties of a multi-agent, complex, dynamic, adaptive system, a conception that usefully conflates a property theory [focusing on language representation and competence] with a transition theory [focusing on language acquisition and use]. (558)

Thus Ellis and Larsen-Freeman talk about “[s]ocioculturally situated cognition” and state that “language is socially constructed” (572) while also claiming that “[l]anguage has the properties of complex adaptive systems in being open, adaptive, reciprocal, and self-organizing” (575). Similarly, Beckner et al. (2009) (also calling themselves the “Five Graces Group”) point out the usefulness of using a complex adaptive system (CAS) approach to explore how language—which they see as having a profoundly social function—is acquired and used and how it changes. CAS conceptualizes

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language as an adaptive system made up of multiple interacting agents, with speakers’ behaviour triggered by past interactions and as a result of different factors. “The structures of language thus emerge from interrelated patterns of experience, social interaction, and cognitive mechanisms” (Beckner et al. 2009, p. 2). The authors also point to the CAS approach revealing similarities in many areas of language research, “including first and second language acquisition, historical linguistics, psycholinguistics, language evolution, and computational modeling” (p. 2). Ellis and Larsen-Freeman (2006) also extend the usefulness of seeing language “as the emergent properties of a multi-agent, complex, dynamic, adaptive system” (p. 558) to language phenomena more generally: There are many agencies and variables that underpin language phenomena, even as apparently simple a phenomenon as that of cross-linguistic lexical intrusions. Language is complex. Learners are complex. These variables interact over time in a nonlinear fashion, modulating and mediating each other, sometimes attenuating each other, sometimes amplifying each other in positive feedback relationships to the point where their combined weight exceeds the tipping point (Gladwell 2000), which results in a change of state. Just as there are no magic bullet solutions, so no one discipline of inquiry has the monopoly on language, not literature, not education, not psychology, not linguistics, not ethnography, not even brain science. (pp. 560–561)

Quoting Vygotsky—“it is through others that we develop into ourselves”— Jörg (2009, p. 1) similarly points out that thinking in complexity enables us “to develop a new view of the complex nonlinear reality of learning and education, with learners as potentially nonlinear human beings.” This and the other examples introduced above show that complex systems theory and sociocultural theory can complement each other. Both traditions focus on the crucial role of development and process, even though complexity theory sees these as non-linear, with change emerging in a messy way, while in sociocultural theory development is more structured. Also, both theories focus on the interrelationship between systems and the environment. In their editorial to issue 32.1 of the CALICO Journal, Schulze and Smith (2015) advocate the greater use of theory in computer-assisted language learning research and point to the explanatory power of approaches such as complex systems theory and sociocultural theory. Similarly, McNamara (2015) reflects on the need in applied linguistics to re-connect to theory, particularly to social theory. This book is part of an attempt to do so in the area of CALL, bringing together different theories to examine

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the potentially disruptive impact of using new communication technologies for language learning and teaching. Complex systems theory provides an overall frame, while sociocultural theory allows me to focus on learning and development through using tools such as language and technology; and the theory of multimodal communication directs our attention towards how learners make meaning using the different modes and media that the new technologies offer.

2.1

Complex Systems Theory: System and Context 2.1.1

Complex Systems Theory

In 1997 Diane Larsen-Freeman introduced complex systems theory into applied linguistics as chaos/complexity science. Although complex systems theory (which variously has also been called dynamic systems theory, complexity theory/science or chaos theory/science as well as complex evolving systems theory or complex adaptive systems theory) was originally developed in the sciences it also has potential for interrogating phenomena in other areas. The key idea underpinning this book is that complex systems theory as described by Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008) can provide a suitable framework that gives us a fresh perspective on the impact that technology has on social and interactive meaning-making in language learning and teaching contexts. It allows us to identify and explore potential shifts and disruptions—which have also been called perturbations, going back to Erwin Schrödinger’s (1926) work on Störungstheorie in quantum mechanics. It will help us to address the questions posed by Säljö and Wertsch above, by allowing us to explore language learning and teaching systems and processes over time, taking account of the new contexts that technology provides and tracing how order is disrupted and followed by periods of disorder before the system settles into a new order (see Larsen-Freeman 1997). In order to explore complex systems theory, it is useful to go back to Ilya Prigogine, a Belgian physical chemist who investigated the behaviour of complex physical systems. Prigogine (1996) showed that “for a large class of dynamic systems, small perturbations in the initial conditions are amplified over the course of time” (p. 30)—the so-called butterfly effect. One of the paradoxes Prigogine and his school of non-equilibrium physics tackled was how “Living Forms [can] appear and self-organize by reducing

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their Entropy, defying the universality of the Second Law of Thermodynamics” (Antoniou 2003, p. 78). His “principle of ‘order through fluctuations’ describes how patterns emerge far from equilibrium, where there is no global extremum principle. The system ‘finds its way’ through attractors and repellers, experiencing critical transitions as the order parameters change, driven by fluctuations” (p. 78). Key features that characterize complex (or dynamic) systems are complexity, adaptation, non-linearity, emergence, spontaneity, interaction, change over time, development, phases and process. Here is how de Bot et al. (2013) describe dynamic systems theory (DST): DST is a theory of change that takes time as a core issue. Dynamic systems are complex, adaptive systems in which variables affect each other over time. Systems are sets of interacting components. They are complex because they develop over time in a non-linear fashion and they “emerge spontaneously from the interaction of a large number of agents and/or a large number of items” (Lee et al. 2009: 4). They are adaptive because the interacting components react to each other over time. Because DST emphasizes change over time, research focuses not on the more or less static phases themselves, but on the transitions between phases. As Spivey (2007: 23) suggests, “The emphasis is on the journey, not the destinations.” Because most research in applied linguistics, including the work on developmental stages, has been typically product oriented, the change of focus from product to process will have implications for the field. (p. 201)

According to Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008, pp. 26–36) a complex dynamic system is made up of many different, heterogeneous elements or agents; it is dynamic, with everything changing all the time; it is non-linear (i.e. the interactions among elements and agents in the system change over time and change is not proportional to input); it is open, allowing energy and matter to come in from outside; it is adaptive in that change in one area of the system leads to change in the system as a whole; and it is inextricably interconnected with the context. This is how they describe it in their own words: The trajectory of a complex dynamic system […] is characterized by nonlinearity due to the interactions of its agents and elements and the fact that they change, as does their relationship within the complex system. It is the variability of the system that shows that it has the potential for further change and development. Complex systems also construct the contexts of which they

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are a part. The system and its environment co-evolve over time through coadaptation in time. (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008, p. 253)

The key elements that I would like to draw on for the purposes of this book are the notions of complexity and adaptivity, which allow for a focus on variables interacting with one another in non-linear ways and affecting change over time, and a focus on the transitions between phases. 2.1.2

Complex Systems Theory and Applied Linguistics

Bar-Yam (2009, p. 43) highlights how the field of complex systems theory cuts across all traditional disciplines of science, as well as engineering, medicine and management. Although he does not mention any other social sciences, complex systems theory has also influenced applied linguistics. Cook and Seidlhofer (1995), for example, point to the inherent complexity of language which cannot be captured in one single view—for example as a genetic inheritance, a mathematical system, a social fact, the expression of individual identity, the expression of cultural identity, the outcome of a dialogic interaction, a social semiotic, the intuitions of native speakers, the sum of attested data, a collection of memorized chunks, a rule-governed discrete combinatory system, or electrical activation in a distributed network. (p. 4)

If we recognize the complexity of language, we do not have to choose; language can be all of these things. Applying complex systems theory to language, language learning and language use, Ellis and Larsen-Freeman (2006) explain how changes in the system are engendered by agents’ adaptation to their environment. Thus, the natural character of the linguistic system can be defined as a dynamic adaptedness to a specific context (Tucker and Hirsch-Pasek, 1993). It is the imperfect relationship between what the context demands and what the system provides that drives the system forward through successive reorganizations. Due to its self-organizing property, the new organization of the language system emerges qualitatively different and novel from earlier organizations. (pp. 576–577)

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As Ellis and Larsen-Freeman (2006) summarize, language is open, adaptive, reciprocal, and self-organizing, emerging, evolving and changing over time. One of the areas that researchers have been exploring with the help of complex systems theory is the messy, emergent nature of language and of language learning, captured in the concept of emergentism. Ellis (1998) summarizes it as follows: Emergentists believe that simple learning mechanisms, operating in and across the human systems for perception, motor-action and cognition as they are exposed to language data as part of a communicatively-rich human social environment by an organism eager to exploit the functionality of language, suffice to drive the emergence of complex language representations. (p. 657)

Most studies over the past two decades have been focusing on individual learners or groups of learners in the context of their language development. In their attempt to open up applied linguistics, de Bot et al. (2005a) encouraged the use of dynamic systems theory to more fully “acknowledge the dynamic nature of language systems in the multilingual mind”. Applying it to language acquisition, they argued “that language can be seen as a dynamic system, i.e. a set of variables that interact over time, and that language development can be seen as a dynamic process” (de Bot et al. 2007a, p. 7). In 2008, The Modern Language Journal devoted an entire issue to the theme of second language development as a dynamic process (see the introduction by de Bot 2008). Other research has been concentrating on individual language students (e.g. Mercer 2011a, b, 2014), learner prototypes in the classroom (Dörnyei 2014), second language development (de Bot et al. 2005a, b; de Bot et al. 2007b; Verspoor et al. 2008), and learner confidence, motivation, and independence (Finch 2001). In contrast, Diane Larsen-Freeman and Lynne Cameron have been using complex systems theory to explore applied linguistics in a second language learning and teaching context more generally (see Larsen-Freeman and Cameron [2008] and Cameron and Larsen-Freeman [2007]), and Larsen-Freeman (2012) has made the case “for complexity as a transdisciplinary theme” (p. 203) in applied linguistics. Similarly, a position paper entitled ‘Language Is a Complex Adaptive System’ by Beckner et al., states that the complex adaptive system approach that they are proposing “reveals

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commonalities in many areas of language research, including first and second language acquisition, historical linguistics, psycholinguistics, language evolution, and computational modeling” (p. 2). The language classroom is another area where complex systems theory provides a new perspective. Thus Burns and Knox (2011) present a relational model of the language classroom as a nested system, which brings together physical, environmental, cognitive and social elements. And situating himself in a postmodern context, Breen (1999) describes the classroom group as one defined by its inherent pluralism and the need for genuine diversity. In order to do justice to this, Breen proposes that “the classroom group needs to be a dynamic self-organising learning community. It becomes the site for a struggle for encouraging and sometimes the harmonising of different voices” (p. 53). Even though the new technologies pervade language learning and teaching today, researchers who use complex systems theory have been paying little attention to this phenomenon. And vice versa, CALL researchers have generally been ignoring complex systems theory. This is despite Chapelle (2009) pointing to the usefulness of complexity theory in the context of CALL; Larsen-Freeman (2013) identifying “complexity theory, designbased research, and CALL [as] a promising combination for investigating matters of language learning and teaching” (p. 23) because of the dynamic environment it offers learners; and Schulze and Smith (2015) in the CALICO Journal advocating the use of approaches such as complex systems theory. And although Hubbart and Levy (2016) mention complexity theory in their chapter on ‘Theory in computer-assisted language learning research and practice’, it is not one of the three theories that “stand out” (p. 29) for them; instead, they focus on the interaction account, sociocultural theory, and constructivism. One of the few exceptions is the chapter by Schulze and Scholz (2016), which conceptualizes learner-computer interactions in CALL as a complex adaptive system. Focusing on change, the authors identify eight characteristics of complex adaptive systems and apply these to a number of CALL studies. This includes the study by Marek and Wu (2014) who use a systems analysis approach to examine the environmental factors that impact on successful use of computer-assisted language learning. Chapter 4 of this book will therefore use complex systems theory to frame a number of studies that explore the use of computer-mediated communication in the context of language learning and teaching, focusing on the impact that the new technologies are having on three attractors that characterize traditional language learning and teaching.

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Although Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008) use complex systems theory to explore various areas in applied linguistics which include language learning and teaching, the use of digital technologies does not feature in their book. However, the ‘what if’ questions—which they pose at the beginning of the book (pp. 9–11)—are significant in the context of using the new digital media for language learning and teaching. Their answers reveal much about how Larsen-Freeman and Cameron perceive the impact of exploring applied linguistics through a complex systems lens. They suggest that language is a structure and a process; that language acquisition is a social process and not limited to individual cognition; that language itself is a complex system that is continually evolving; that language learning is a matter of innovation and that teaching needs to achieve more than encourage reproduction; that there is no causal relationship between teaching and learning; that tasks are not really about providing input in cognitive terms but that they provide affordances for meaning-making; and that all aspects of language use are dialogic. I will come back to these principles at the end of this book and propose some answers that relate to the use of digital media in language learning and teaching and learner communication and meaning-making.

2.2

Sociocultural Theory

Sociocultural theory stresses the inherent cultural, historical, and institutional context of mental functioning. As Cole and Scribner point out in their introduction to Vygotsky’s Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes (1978), “for Vygotsky, in the tradition of Marx and Engels, the mechanism of individual developmental change is rooted in society and culture” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 7). John-Steiner and Mahn (1996) summarize three central tenets of a Vygotskian framework as follows: “(a) social sources of individual development, (b) semiotic (signs and symbols, including language) mediation in human development, and (c) genetic (developmental) analysis” (p. 191). They use these principles to examine the relation between learning and development in the context of literacy acquisition and the implications for classroom learning and teaching. The findings show how learning is distributed, interactive, contextual, and the result of learners’ participation in a community of practice. David Block in 2003 introduced the notion of a possible ‘social turn’ in the field of SLA, moving from understanding language as a cognitive phenomenon to a social one and from a view of acquisition as information

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processing to “more socially sensitive (or ‘ecological’) models of cognition” (p. 5) inspired by sociocultural theory and activity theory. Many researchers have taken this ‘social turn’—as Dwight Atkinson’s edited book Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (2011) illustrates. The various approaches to SLA that the authors represent include the sociocultural approach, a complexity theory approach, an identity approach, language socialization approaches, a conversation-analytic approach and a sociocognitive approach. This section will examine in more detail two key sociocultural concepts that are particularly relevant in the context of the use of digital tools for language learning and teaching, namely (1) social interaction and (2) tool use and mediation. 2.2.1

Social Interaction

For Vygotsky, the relation between a child and their physical and social environment was crucial, with social interaction being seen as central for human development. Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals. (Vygotsky 1978, p. 57)

Following an “interactionist-dialectical analysis of development” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 124), he believed that children’s developmental processes are stimulated by interacting with peers and teachers, for example, in successive ‘zones of proximal development’, which he explains as follows. “[L]earning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when the child is interacting with people in his environment and in cooperation with his peers. Once these processes are internalized, they become part of the child’s independent developmental achievement” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 90). For sociocultural theorists, cognition is thus understood as shared and situated and thinking as social practice (see Resnick 1991). Packer and Goicoechea (2000, p. 229) summarize the sociocultural approach to cognition as follows:

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Scribner (1990/1997b) identified three key aspects of the sociocultural approach to human cognition: Cognition is culturally mediated by material and semantic artifacts such as tools and signs, it is founded in purposive activity (“human action-in-the-world,” socially constituted systems of activity designed to satisfy human needs), and it develops historically as changes at the sociocultural level impact psychological organization. These conceptions are generally traced to Vygotsky, Leontiev, Luria, and others; they arise from an effort to overcome the strict demarcation of person from world.

For learning—as Daniels (2007) points out—this means that “pedagogies arise and are shaped in particular social circumstances” (p. 307). In the context of learning generally and language learning specifically, Ellis and Larsen-Freeman (2006, p. 572) pinpoint a number of key factors of sociocultural theory alongside some key publications. Here they are, presented as a list: • Learning […] takes place in a social context, involving action, reaction, collaborative interaction, intersubjectivity, and mutually assisted performance (Donato 1994; Lantolf 2006; Lantolf and Appel 1994; Lantolf and Pavlenko 1995; Lantolf and Thorne 2006; Ricento 1995; van Geert 1994) • Speech, speakers, and social relationships are inseparable (Norton 1997) • Activity theory emphasizes how individual learning is an emergent, holistic property of a dynamic system comprising many influences, both social, individual, and contextual (Lantolf and Appel 1994) • Action provides a context within which the individual and society, mental functioning and sociocultural context can be understood as interrelated moments (Wertsch 1998; Wertsch et al. 1995) • Uttering invokes feedback that is socially provided (Tarone 1997) • Consciousness itself can be viewed as the end product of socialization (Vygotsky 1980; Wertsch 1985) • SLA is also dialectic (Kramsch 2002; Lantolf and Pavlenko 1995; Lantolf and Thorne 2006; Larsen-Freeman 2002; Swain 2000), involving the learner in a conscious tension between the conflicting forces of their current interlanguage productions and the evidence of feedback, either linguistic, pragmatic, or metalinguistic, that allows socially scaffolded development.

Particularly important for the purposes of this book is the focus here on the social context of learning, on interaction and collaboration, on the

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individual being part of a dynamic system with multiple influences, on interrelationships, and on scaffolding. 2.2.2

Tools Use and Mediation

For Vygotsky, the use of tools is central to learning. He explains that the tool’s function is “to serve as the conductor of human influence on the object of activity; it is externally oriented; it must lead to changes in objects” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 55). As Ellis (2003) says: “The essence of a sociocultural theory of mind is that external mediation [by an expert or by some artefact] serves as the means by which internal mediation [when an individual uses his or her own resources to achieve control over a function] is achieved” (176). Language (or sign use more generally) is closely related to tool use, and Vygotsky sees “the dialectical unity of these systems in the human adult [as] the very essence of human behaviour” (p. 24). Resnick (1991) points out the following: “Primary among the tools that, for Vygotsky, are each individual’s cultural patrimony is language, which mediates all thought” (8). Sociocultural theory is thus well suited in the context of this book in two respects—to examine the use of digital tools and to do so in the context of language learning and teaching. Lantolf—who introduced sociocultural theory to language researchers in 2000—picks up this idea of mediation, pointing out that “the most fundamental concept in sociocultural theory is that the human mind is mediated” (2000, p. 1). Sociocultural theory holds that specifically human forms of mental activity arise in the interactions we enter into with other members of our culture and with the specific experiences we have with the artefacts produced by our ancestors and by our contemporaries. Rather than dichotomising the mental and the social, the theory insists on a seamless and dialectic relationship between these two domains. In other words, not only does our mental activity determine the nature of our social world, but this world of human relationships and artefacts also determines to a large extent how we regulate our mental processes. (p. 79)

Thus mediation occurs as a result of social activity, in a given culture. Lantolf suggests that mediation involves the following: social mediation (i.e. mediation by others in social interaction), self-mediation (i.e. mediation by the self through private speech), and artefact mediation (i.e. mediation by

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language and other symbolic artefacts, but also by material artefacts such as portfolios or tasks or technology). And Thorne (2003) provides not just an overview of the concept of mediation but also applies it in three case studies of computer-mediated intercultural communication. Lantolf and Thorne (2007) describe the importance of higher-level tools in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. [T]he distinctive dimension of human consciousness was its capacity for voluntary control over biology through the use of higher-level cultural tools (i.e., language, literacy, numeracy, categorization, rationality, logic.). These higher-level cultural tools serve as a buffer between the person and the environment and act to mediate the relationship between the individual and the social–material world. (pp. 198–199)

Like speech and language, technology is such a tool that mediates activity and through which humans can engage with and impact on their environment. Thus Ludvigsen et al. (2011, pp. 3–4) point to the importance of the new digital technologies for learning and the appropriateness of sociocultural theory to try and understand the change that using new tools brings about. As part of the more general social transformation that takes place through the digital technologies, the development within the specific field of ICT creates new conditions for learning and communication. Consequently, it seems reasonable to argue that a sociocultural theory of learning is a vital tool for understanding change and innovation in various sectors and practices in society.

This links directly to the purpose of this book—to try and understand change and innovation brought about by the introduction of new technologies into language learning and teaching. Sociocultural theory is particularly useful in this endeavour by providing a lens on the social origins of individual development and allowing us to focus on the impact of technology mediation on learning.

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Theory of Multimodal Communication

As mentioned above, language—both verbal and nonverbal—is key in human development; it is also the most important tool for meaningmaking. How people use various modes for meaning-making in communication is the focus of what Kress and others have called the theory of multimodal communication (Kress 2000a, p. 158)—a theory that can also help us to understand the demands made by the new digital media and how to make best use of them. It links back to Michael Halliday’s work on social semiotics, which understands languages as systems of meaning potential. In addition, it stresses the fact that language is usually multimodal; speech, for example, is invariably accompanied by gestures, facial expressions etc. Kress et al. (2001, p. 44) explain modes such as visual communication, gesture and action as resources that “have evolved through their social usage into articulated or partially articulated semiotic systems in the same way that language has […] [as] a network of interlocking resources for making signs.” So rather than seeing language “as a code or set of rules for connecting signs and meanings” (Jewitt 2014, p. 24) as in traditional semiotics, researchers interested in the theory of multimodal communication understand language as “semiotic resources” that people can use in particular ways. These are “a product of a social process of sign-making”, where a signmaker “‘chooses’ a semiotic resource from an available system of resources. […] [T]his choice is always socially located and regulated, both with respect to what resources are made available to who, and the discourses that regulate and shape how modes are used by people” (Jewitt 2014, p. 24). This is about doing things with the resources that language provides, for example in terms of Halliday’s textual, interpersonal and ideational metafunctions in the context of a usage-based approach to linguistics. In the context of globalization, Jan Blommaert (2010) talks about “a sociolinguistics of mobility [which] is concerned with concrete resources. Put more concisely, it is a sociolinguistics of ‘speech’, of actual language resources deployed in real sociocultural, historical and political contexts” (p. 5), with speech referring to utterances, that is actual instances of language use in whichever mode they occur. In 2000, Kress points to the fundamental changes in the semiotic landscape, which “cannot be adequately described and understood with currently existing theories of meaning and communication” (Kress 2000a, p. 153) and which necessitate new theories of representation. What he

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suggests is “a semiotic (-linguistic) theory of transformation and remaking [in which] the action of the individual is that of the changing of the resources: using existing resources in the guiding frame of the makers’ interest” (p. 156). This results in the theory of multimodality, which Kress and van Leeuwen (2001, p. 20) explain as follows: “We have defined multimodality as the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event, together with the particular way in which these modes are combined—they may for instance reinforce each other […], fulfil complementary roles […] or be hierarchically ordered.” According to Kress, this theory sets “a new agenda of human semiosis in the domain of communication and representation” (2000b, p. 183), with the notion of the semiotic system being “replaced by that of a dynamic, constantly remade and re-organised set of semiotic resources” (2000a, p. 157) which places people in a more active role in terms of the production of meaning. Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001, p. 21) explain the central concepts that underpin this theory as follows: • discourse: “socially situated forms of knowledge about (aspects of) reality” • design: of “(1) a formulation of a discourse or combination of discourse, (2) a particular (inter)action, in which the discourse is embedded, and (3) a particular way of combining semiotic ‘modes’” • production: giving form to designs and adding meaning. The multimodal theory of communication helps us to explain how in order to make meaning we use the following modes: • • • • •

linguistic mode (e.g. speech, text) visual mode (e.g. images, characters, colour, layout) aural mode (e.g. sound, music, noise, tone) spatial mode (e.g. arrangement, organization) gestural mode (e.g. facial expressions, hand gestures, body language).

Modes are usually not used singly but in combination with one another, and I will be exploring intersemiotic relationships later in this book (see Sect. 4.2.2). Kress et al. (2001, p. 25) talk about the ‘rhetorical orchestration of meaning’, with people using a range of resources that are available to them. Thus face-to-face communication is normally not limited to verbal

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language but also includes body language—also called nonverbal language, that is, posture, gesture, tone of voice, facial expression, touch, and personal space. Digital environments potentially make it much easier to bring together different modes of communication into one medium which can be operated by one person (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001, p. 2). This allows for greater choice as users can select the modes to suit their purpose, thus for example catering for different audiences with different preferences. At the same time it means that social and interactive meaning-making has changed, with new technologies ‘remediating’ reading and writing practices (Jewitt 2005a, p. 316). Jewitt (2005a) also suggests that “the multimodal character and facilities of new technology require that traditional (print-based) concepts of literacy be reshaped. What it means to be literate in the digital era of the twenty-first century is different than what was needed previously” (p. 330).

2.4

Conclusion

This chapter has introduced the theoretical framework that informs this book. Complex systems theory functions as a metatheory to frame the argument. Sociocultural theory offers a focus on learning and development through employing tools such as language and technology, and the theory of multimodal communication focuses on how learners make meaning using the different modes and media that the new technologies offer. Together they provide the explanatory power for examining the potentially disruptive impact of using new communication technologies for language learning and teaching. The next chapter will focus on human meaningmaking in more detail.

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Mercer, S. (2011a). Language learner self-concept: Complexity, continuity and change. System, 39(3): 335–346. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2011.07. 006. Mercer, S. (2011b). Understanding learner agency as a complex dynamic system. System, 39(4), 427–436. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2011.08.001. Mercer, S. (2014). A complexity perspective on the self. In S. Mercer & M. Williams (Eds.), Multiple perspectives on the self (pp. 160–176). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Norton, B. (1997). Language, identity, and the ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly, 31(3), 409–429. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587831. Packer, M. J., & Goicoechea, J. (2000). Sociocultural and constructivist theories of learning: Ontology, not just epistemology. Educational Psychologist, 35(4), 227–241. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep3504_02. Prigogine, I. (1996). The end of certainty: Time, chaos and the new laws of nature. New York: Free Press. Resnick, L. B. (1991). Shared cognition: Thinking as social practice. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 1–20). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/10096-018. Schrödinger, E. (1926). Quantisierung als Eigenwertproblem. Annalen der Physik, 80(13), 437–490. https://doi.org/10.1002/andp.19263851302. Schulze, M., & Scholz, K. (2016). Complex adaptive systems. In C. Caws & M.-J. Hamel (Eds.), Language-learner computer interactions (pp. 65–87). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/isse.2.04sch. Schulze, M., & Smith, B. (2015). In theory: We could be better. CALICO, 32(1), i–vi. https://doi.org/10.1558/calico.v32i1.26142. Thorne, S. L. (2000). Second language acquisition theory and the truth(s) about relativity. In J. P. Lantolf (Ed.), Sociocultural theory and second language learning (pp. 219–243). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thorne, S. L. (2003). Artifacts and cultures-of-use in intercultural communication. Language Learning & Technology, 7 (2), 38–67. Available at https://www. lltjournal.org/item/2430. http://dx.doi.org/10125/25200. van Lier, L. (2004a). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A Sociocultural perspective. New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, and Moscow: Kluwer Academic. van Lier, L. (2004b). The semiotics and ecology of language learning: Perception, voice, identity and democracy. Utbildning & Demokrati, 13(3), 79–103. Verspoor, M., Lowie, W., & Van Dijk, M. (2008). Variability in second language development from a dynamic systems perspective. The Modern Language Journal, 92(2), 214–231. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008.00715. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER 3

Human Meaning-Making: Communication Tools and Modes and Epistemic Practices

Abstract This chapter sketches out the development of communication, from early tools and modes such as the body and gesture used by early primates to the digital media that are used by humans today. It also considers the affordances of different communication modes and reflects on how the changes in how we communicate have had an impact on our epistemic practices. This sets the scene for exploring the shift in communication tools and modes in language learning and teaching settings that have been the result of the introduction of new technologies into the language classroom at the centre of the subsequent chapters. Keywords Communication modes · Communication tools

So how have meaning-making and communication changed over time? What are the tools and the modes that have developed and how have they been contributing to learning? This chapter will explore how human meaning-making practices have been developing over time, allowing—at least potentially—for greater freedom in how to access information, how to communicate and how to learn. Recent advances in multimodal digital technologies are changing education, allowing for a combination of faceto-face learning and teaching (through spoken communication as well as reading and writing), and giving access to printed as well as online audiovisual materials. They also enable learners to engage in written and spoken © The Author(s) 2019 R. Hampel, Disruptive Technologies and the Language Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31368-5_3

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interaction online, and offer real-world learning, for example with the help of mobile devices, thus opening up the physical language classroom.

3.1

Development of Tools and Modes of Communication

To provide some background for examining the disruption that is at the centre of this book, this chapter gives a short overview of how communication and meaning-making have developed, examining how ideas, knowledge and beliefs have been represented through the history of humankind, and the social practices that have developed around this. I will focus particularly on the tools that have been used and the modes of communication that these tools have afforded. If we look at the modes that have been used for communication, we notice that meaning-making has undergone some significant changes since the early beginnings of humanity. Human language as a socially learned tool of communication developed from non-human primate communication and has undergone a number of important stages in terms of the dominant modes and tools used (see Fig. 3.1). The reader needs to note that for the purposes of this book the development of how we communicate has been simplified. Also, earlier practices do not necessarily disappear but they are added to; and changes in practice have varied across cultures.

Fig. 3.1 The development of key communication modes and example tools in the history of humanity

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While the more sophisticated type of communication amongst apes was mostly gestural rather than vocal (Tomasello 2008), homo sapiens developed vocal language approx. 200,000 years ago—and this remained the main mode for a long time. Pictorial drawing was the next key mode of human communication to emerge, which for the first time allowed for a physical representation of the world that the person doing the drawing inhabited. Evidence of proto-writing—using ideographic symbols—dates back to about the 7th millennium BC. Written language appeared from around 3000 BC in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Central America— probably independently in each of these areas. In the course of further development, written language as representation of speech (rather than inscription) gave humans new opportunities for communication without actually depicting the object or the activity itself, developing from keeping records (e.g. bean-counting in Mesopotamia, see MacGregor 2010, p. 93) to demonstrating power and transmitting religious beliefs and to exploring new ideas (e.g. in literature). The importance of written language has continued through the centuries, particularly in more formal contexts, including in education. Richard Kern in his book entitled Language, Literacy, and Technology (2015) gives an insightful overview of ancient writing in Mesopotamia (pp. 135ff.) and of the introduction and development of paper and print (pp. 150ff.). Despite these developments in communication modes from gesture to writing, for almost 5000 years one-to-one communication between people generally took place face-to-face using the spoken mode accompanied by gestures. An exception in the more recent past can be found in Europe in the eighteenth century, the heyday of letter writing (exemplified by the German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose estate comprises approx. 15,000 letters, many of them written to people who lived close to him). If we then leap forward into the late nineteenth century, we come across a tool that allowed for the transmission of text—wireless telegraphy using radio waves. Further changes started to occur in the twentieth century and have continued into the twenty-first century, first with the invention and take-up of the telephone, which allowed for synchronous verbal communication over a distance albeit without the face-to-face aspect. The development of electronic communication via email in the 1990s changed the communication landscape again and also re-introduced a strong written element into communication as well as asynchronicity. Since then we have witnessed the introduction and proliferation of new digital

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tools such as instant messaging (IM) that offer real-time text transmission over the Internet, of technologies that allow for voice over internet protocol (VoIP) used by Skype, new social media such as Facebook (FB), virtual worlds such as Second Life, and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs, also referred to as MMOGs, that is, massively multiplayer online games). They have opened up communication to languageas-writing, visual images, gesture and action, but also language-as-speech, with many tools allowing us to combine modes—but frequently without the face-to-face element. While communication has always been multimodal up to a point (even written language has multimodal features, e.g. through font type and size, or layout), digital technology has made it easier to bring together different modes in one medium. “Digital technology […] has now made it possible for one person to manage all these modes, and to implement the multimodal production single-handedly” (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001, p. 47). The ubiquity of a wide range of computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools today gives people easy access to particular types of multimodal communication. At the same time, written language also seems to have gained in importance again as for practical purposes people often choose asynchronous written tools (the fact that mobile phones are used more for texting than for speaking is a case in point).

3.2

Communication Modes and Their Affordances

Different modes of communication have different affordances. Gestures are fleeting and only work in the moment and in relatively close proximity. Sound and speech carry further but they are also ephemeral, being made up of sound waves, which—unless recorded—disappear immediately after being produced. Being able to write (or make other marks) means having a record that can be revisited at a later time. Once writing systems had been invented, it became much easier to record knowledge for posterity—by using tools such as stone or clay tablets in the early days of humanity, later paper (and books) and now computers. While a number of past and present scholars have been assuming “that writing is simply a ‘representation of speech’ in a physically preservable medium” (Kern 2015, p. 4), Plato, for example, recognized the different

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affordances of the two modes, and was suspicious of writing. Socrates, as Plato’s mouthpiece in Phaedrus, explains the difference between speech and what he calls ‘written speech’ (276a)—also referred to by Phaedrus as ‘dead discourse’ (276a)—as follows: The painter’s products stand before us as though they were alive: but if you question them, they maintain a most majestic silence. It is the same with written words: they seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling just the same thing for ever. (275d)

He goes on to add that once something has been written, it can get into the wrong hands, with people either not understanding it or not having any business with it. Written speech also is not able to defend itself (see Phaedrus 275e). In contrast, poststructuralist and deconstructionist philosophers question such dualistic thinking. In Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida, for example, critiques the logocentric tradition with its belief that words are a fundamental expression of an external reality that Plato inspired in Western metaphysical systems. He proposes the notion of writing instead—which he describes as having ‘plurivocity’ (Derrida 1976, p. 75)—and proposes a grammatology (the history and theory of writing) that undoes logocentrism. “It is thus the idea of the sign that must be deconstructed through a meditation upon writing which would merge, as it must, with its undoing [sollicitation] of onto-theology, faithfully repeating it in its totality and making it insecure in its most assured evidences” (Derrida 1976, p. 73). For Derrida, “every concept is inscribed in a chain or in a system within which it refers to the other, to other concepts, by means of the systematic play of differences” (Derrida and Kamuf 1991, p. 63). He calls this play ‘différance’ or ‘archi-writing, archi-trace’ (p. 66)—which is “no longer simply a concept but rather the possibility of conceptuality, of a conceptual process and system in general” (p. 63). “What is written as ‘différance’ […] will be the playing movement that ‘produces’ – by means of something that is not simply an activity – these differences, these effects of difference” (1982, p. 11).

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3.3

Development of Learning and the Use of Particular Modes of Communication

The developments in how we communicate have also had an impact on our epistemic practices—that is, the way we create and disseminate knowledge—and on how we learn. There is no scope in this book for including a detailed description of how learning has developed but a short overview of how particular modes have been emphasized might be useful for the reader. At a time when people had to rely on spoken communication, learning could only take place through oral transmission from one person to another person who had to be co-located. This changed when writing (or other mark-making) was introduced, as Säljö (1999) points out. [T]he ways in which humans learn – i.e. retain, reproduce and produce information, knowledge and skills – changed dramatically when writing became used as a resource for communicating in social life. Some learning activities became more or less obsolete (like memorising verbatim long poems or stories), while other skills, for instance, the ability to produce coherent and intelligible texts or the skills of organising information, became important. So, technological development runs through human history. (p. 147)

Institutional learning in the past tended to take place in face-to-face classroom contexts in schools, monasteries, and universities, where learning was teacher-led and where verbal teaching was supported by the writing of the teachers—and by books once printing had been invented. Students developed their knowledge through writing, and written assessment was paramount—and in many learning contexts this tradition continues. If we look at approaches to language learning and teaching in the past, it becomes clear that the grammar–translation method dominated instruction for a long time. It had initially been developed for teaching Latin and Greek and was then transferred to modern languages where it persisted into the twentieth century and even beyond. This meant that the focus was very much on the acquisition of forms of written language by the individual learner. The fact that language is not only a vehicle for recording knowledge in writing but also a tool for communication was disregarded. This changed fundamentally in the second half of the twentieth century with the development of the communicative approach to language teaching influenced by the work of Dell Hymes, work which led to the introduction of

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more interactive elements in the second language classroom, and a particular focus on speaking (see also Sect. 4.3.1). Advances in digital technology and the development of new and increasingly mobile tools have further changed education—which has expanded beyond the physical classroom and today is characterized by a mix of faceto-face learning and teaching (through spoken communication as well as reading and writing), printed as well as audio-visual materials, online elements (resources as well as tools for written and spoken interaction) and increasingly elements of real-world learning. This has also had an impact on informal learning. Key aspects of this in relation to language learning will be explored in Chapter 4.

References Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press. Derrida, J. (1982). Margins of philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, J., & Kamuf, P. (1991). A Derrida reader: Between the blinds. New York: Columbia University Press. Kern, R. (2015). Language, literacy, and technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold. MacGregor, N. (2010). A History of the world in 100 objects. London: Penguin. Säljö, R. (1999). Learning as the use of tools: A sociocultural perspective on the human–technology link. In K. Littleton & P. Light (Eds.), Learning with computers: Analysing productive interaction (pp. 144–161). London and New York. Routledge. Tomasello, M. (2008). Origins of human communication. Cambridge and London: MIT Press.

CHAPTER 4

Computer-Mediated Communication and Meaning-Making in the Language Classroom: Disruptions in Learning and Teaching

Abstract This chapter focuses on the changes that the new technologies have brought about and the opportunities that these technologies offer language learners. It sets out two key premises—that face-to-face conversation is the original form of discourse, and that it is a complex dynamic system which is characterized by certain attractors, i.e. modes and behaviours that the system prefers. These are set classroom interaction patterns, particular ways of communicating in terms of space, time and mode, and the positioning of the language learner in relation to the world. Research studies provide a broad overview of the developments in relation to these attractors, illustrating how electronic communication technologies have been disrupting language learning and teaching. The chapter concludes by highlighting the resulting phase shift. Keywords Attractors · Classroom interaction · Ways of communicating · Positioning of the online language learner · Learning in the wild · Phase shift

The development of new tools and technologies, accompanied by changes in the communication media and the modes that people use to make meaning as well as changes in learning mean that language learning and teaching © The Author(s) 2019 R. Hampel, Disruptive Technologies and the Language Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31368-5_4

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is also changing. Online tools have very different affordances for interaction and communication compared to face-to-face environments. Realworld learning (i.e. learning outside the classroom) is more easily available to a greater number of learners today, who can communicate in a second language with speakers of this language, for example in telecollaborative settings or in online games, or who can explore the second-language environment using mobile devices. This chapter understands communication and meaning-making in the language classroom as a complex system that is made up of different interacting sub-systems. The traditional language classroom is characterized by various attractors that are typical of face-to-face language learning and teaching, that is, set classroom interaction patterns, particular ways of communicating in terms of space and time and mode, and the positioning of the language learner in relation to the world. A range of studies focusing on the use of new technologies in language learning and teaching contexts help to provide a broad overview of the developments in relation to each of the three attractors. They illustrate the disruption that electronic communication technologies have effected, highlighting a phase shift in language learning and teaching and showing how technology is having a transformative effect on some of the key approaches and systems that have traditionally characterized language learning and teaching in a communicative framework.

4.1

Approach

In order to develop a complex systems view of communication and meaning-making in the language classroom, I will follow Larsen-Freeman and Cameron’s (2008) suggestion (borrowed from Clark 1996) “that faceto-face conversation [as the primary type of language use] must be characterized first and that characterization used to build descriptions of other discourse settings” (p. 164). I then describe my approach, which consists in characterizing face-to-face conversation in the language classroom as the original discourse which is characterized by certain attractors—that is, states or “modes of behaviours […] that the system ‘prefers’” (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008, p. 49), and then comparing it with computer-mediated communication to explore how the new technologies are changing these attractors and with them the system of face-to-face classroom-based language education that has existed for centuries.

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The notion of attractors was first proposed in the context of complex systems theory to describe how complex systems over time start to self-organize, temporarily settling in attractor states—“with this state just emerg[ing] from the way the components interact” (van Geert 1994, p. 244). These states are “preferred but unpredictable, so-called ‘attractor states’. States that are never preferred and settled in are so-called ‘repeller states’” (de Bot et al. 2005, p. 116). The attractors which are at the centre of this chapter are set patterns of classroom interaction (teacher–learner and learner–learner), particular modes of communication which rest on synchronicity and bodily presence, and a second-hand experience of and engagement with the second language that is disassociated from the real world in which the language is used. I will describe each of these traditional attractors and use them as starting points to explore what the implications of introducing new digital technologies are for meaning-making in the context of interactive language learning and teaching (see Sects. 4.2–4.4). This will be done using the findings from a number of studies most of which were published over the past 20 years, focusing in particular on early ground-breaking studies and on more recent state-of-the-art research. The aim is to determine whether the new technologies are causing the dramatic change that indicates a phase shift, and, if so, in what ways the system based around classroom language learning has been disrupted and transformed. It should be noted that although the three attractors are covered in three separate sections, they are connected. Thus some of the studies that are used to exemplify particular phenomena in Sects. 4.2–4.4 could also have been included in the context of one of the other attractors. To gauge the potential impact of technology on meaning-making in the language classroom, recent research on computer-mediated communication in a language learning context will be examined through the lens of complex systems theory. Thus the focus is on those studies that exemplify how digital media are introducing fundamental changes and disrupting current systems of language learning and teaching while also showing how learners and teachers as well as researchers are developing new approaches to deal with the challenges, thus potentially creating new systems and reintroducing a different kind of order. The review of the literature reveals three areas where there are potential changes or disruptions—all of which offer new opportunities alongside new challenges. Firstly, there are changes in classroom interaction patterns that relate to how learners are positioned in relation to the teacher and

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to other learners, and how the design of online tools and their availability allows interaction with first language (L1) speakers, opening up direct access to knowledge (see Sect. 4.2). Secondly, there are changes in communication that relate to space and time and to the arrangement of multimodal elements and their availability in online communication systems, thus providing new organizational structures for communication (see Sect. 4.3). Thirdly, there are changes in language learners’ experience of the world that relate to how digital tools have the potential to open up or even replace the more traditional classroom setting, disrupting the traditional dichotomy between the teacher and the learner and between the classroom and the world out there, and thus also raising questions about learners’ and teachers’ identities (see Sect. 4.4).

4.2

Changes in Interaction Patterns

Online tools today allow for interaction between language learners, between learners and the teacher and between learners and speakers of the language, thus changing the traditional practice of classroom discourse and opening up alternative ways of accessing knowledge. This section presents evidence for a disruption in how learners interact with others for language learning purposes, particularly with the teacher. We will consider two classroom patterns and see how the use of digital technologies impacts on these. The interaction patterns are the so-called IRF pattern, which relates to how learners are positioned in interaction vis-à-vis the teacher, and the model for negotiation of meaning, which focuses more on how language learners engage with each other. The focus in this section is mainly on synchronous computer-mediated communication. 4.2.1

Traditional Interaction Patterns in Language Education (Attractor 1)

As Drew and Heritage (1992) suggest, institutions—including “educational establishments” (p. 3)—have their own particular forms of interaction. To the extent that the participants’ talk is conducted within the constraints of a specialised turn-taking system, other systematic differences from ordinary conversation tend to emerge. These differences commonly involve specific “reduction” of the range of options and opportunities for action that are

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characteristic in conversation and they often involve “specialisations” and respecifications” of the interactional functions of the activities that remain. The ensemble of these variations from conversational practice may contribute to a unique “fingerprint” for each institutional form of interaction – the “fingerprint” being comprised of a set of interactional practices differentiating (it) both from other institutional forms and from the baseline of mundane conversational interaction itself. (p. 26)

The language classroom is a prime setting for such restricted interaction, with much of the input traditionally being provided by the teacher— through teacher talk, teacher-initiated and teacher-led communication, teacher-devised tasks and teacher-led use of textbooks. A commonly used turn-taking routine in the face-to-face classroom is the IRF (or IRE) model (Sinclair and Coulthard 1975), which consists of teacher initiation (I), student response (R), and teacher feedback (F) or evaluation (E). LarsenFreeman and Cameron (2008) call it an attractor (see pp. 179–182); it is a pattern that works and that the system prefers, ‘a relatively deep well in the discourse system landscape, with perturbations not easily pushing the system into other paths’ (p. 182). While it limits more genuine communication opportunities, it makes classroom interaction more manageable. In his book entitled The Interactional Architecture of the Language Classroom: A Conversation Analysis Perspective, Paul Seedhouse includes turntaking (of which IRF would be a prime example) as one of three key patterns of classroom interaction, alongside sequence and repair, and examines them in form-and-accuracy contexts, meaning-and-fluency contexts, and in task-oriented contexts. As Seedhouse (2004) states, even in the communicative language classroom, “the interactional architecture [is] rational, in Levinson’s terms, in that it is functionally oriented to and derived from the core goal” (p. 182). This core institutional goal “is that the teacher will teach the learners the L2 [second language]” (p. 183). This means that the teacher is in control of the interaction; “whatever methods the teacher is using—and even if the teacher claims to be relinquishing control of the classroom interaction—the linguistic forms and patterns of interaction which the learners produce are normatively linked in some way to the pedagogical focus which is introduced” (p. 191). In terms of turn-taking in form-and-accuracy contexts, Seedhouse’s data show that “this generally involves tight control of turn taking and an adjacency pair consisting of teacher prompt and learner production

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with optional evaluation and follow-up actions” (p. 111). In meaningand-fluency contexts, the interaction is less narrow and rigid, giving learners more interactional space to focus on and develop their own meanings. And in task-oriented contexts, the outcome is key (i.e. successful task completion) and the task drives the turn-taking system. Communicative and task-based approaches to language teaching have led to more learner input and learner-led interaction (see Krashen 1985; Varonis and Gass 1985) than is suggested by Seedhouse’s data (which come mainly from the 1980s to 1990s), weakening the IRF model somewhat. Nevertheless, it persists in the classroom, and I would like to suggest that the IRF pattern remains an attractor that continues to characterize the face-to-face classroom. As Meskill and Anthony (2015) confirm, the pervasiveness of the IRF sequence is still prominent. A second classroom interaction routine that has been identified by researchers and practitioners is the negotiation of meaning. Long (1983) introduced the notion of the ‘negotiation of comprehensible input’ in the context of native speaker interaction with non-native speakers. “Only comprehensible input will do [in the SLA process]” (p. 138). He lays out three hypotheses, focusing on the linguistic and conversational interactional adjustments that native speakers (NSs) make when communicating with non-native speakers (NNSs): 1. Native speakers modify not just their speech to non-native speakers, but also various features of the interactional structure of their conversations with them. 2. Modifications of the interactional structure are greater and more consistently observed, particularly when NS–NS and NS–NNS data are sampled from comparable speech events. 3. Modified interaction is observed even in cases where some kinds of input modification usually considered ‘basic’ (e.g. reduced syntactic complexity) are absent. (Long 1983, p. 131)

In their comparison of NS–NS, NS–NNS and NNS–NNS discourse, Varonis and Gass (1985) found “that negotiation of meaning is most prevalent among NNS/NNS pairs” (p. 71) and propose a model for negotiation of meaning. The model that they set up in the article applies to sequences that they call non-understanding routines. [Non-understanding routines] help interlocutors regain their places in a conversation after one or both have “slipped”. We suggest that the conversational

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episode which is represented by this model serves essentially one of two functions: (1) negotiation of non-understandings, and/or (2) continuation of the conversation. Non-understanding routines are operationally defined as: those exchanges in which there is some overt indication that understanding between participants has not been complete. (p. 73)

These routines have been modelled as T → I → R → RR, consisting of a trigger (T) by speaker 1, which leads to an indicator of non-understanding (I) from speaker 2, which is followed by a response (R) by speaker 1, and often finishes with a reaction to the response (RR) by speaker 2 (see Varonis and Gass 1985, p. 74). Negotiation of meaning can be relatively formulaic but embeddings can make the routines more complex—Varonis and Gass’s data include an example of complex embedded negotiations of meaning consisting of more than 30 turns. Negotiation of meaning is a concept that arose in the context of learner interaction in the language classroom and focuses on speech. However, more recent research that deals with multimodal meaning-making has also been exploring the role of gesture and body movement and positioning alongside speech and thus widening this concept. In a study of embodiment in an elementary second language classroom, Rosborough (2014), for example, shows the importance of gestures and movement which function as meditational tools, supporting the meaning-making experience of the students. Differing from many typical reductionist approaches to teaching a second language, Mrs. Dee [the English teacher] employed a materialized approach where much of the intersubjectivity and interactions occurred mimetically through body positions and hand gestures. The participants’ gestures demonstrated joint attention towards an object and comprehension for a shared purpose. (p. 244)

Jewitt (2014) points out that “[d]iscourses of gender, social class, race, generation, institutional norms and other articulations of power shape and regulate people’s use of semiotic resources” (pp. 24–25). I would argue that both the IRF model and negotiation of meaning (at least as defined in language learning contexts) are examples of what she refers to as ‘normative discourses’.

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4.2.2

Active Meaning-Making and Negotiation of Meaning by Learners Online

Meskill and Anthony (2015)—whose book ‘Teaching Languages Online’ is grounded in sociocultural theory and describes their task-based approach to language teaching online—suggest that online courses “can be orchestrated as motivating communities where sociability and social processes constitute the forum for learning the new language” (p. 18). For them, instructional conversations—“those carefully calibrated and constructed things we say that comprise the essence of good teaching” (p. 16)—are key to learner development, and they contrast them with the managerial, teacher-fronted pedagogy embodied in the IRF sequences. “[I]nstructional conversations engage learners not in recitation of known answers (or punishment/remediation for unknown ones), but in thoughtful, engaging, communicative interaction” (p. 17). Early studies of synchronous computer-mediated conversation (i.e. text chat) identified a number of opportunities for enhancing language learning and teaching but also show that the online medium has an impact on how learners interact and make meaning. In 1994, Dorothy Chun carried out a study with first-year students of German who were using a real-time synchronous writing networking programme to interact with one another and with the teacher. Her data show the quantity and quality of language produced, with the computer network allowing students to develop discourse skills and interactive sociolinguistic competence while at the same time decentralizing the role of the instructor. For her, one of the most striking features of the data is “that students interact directly with each other, as opposed to interacting mainly with the teacher” (Chun 1994, p. 28). Focusing more specifically on the potential of synchronous CMC to enhance negotiation of meaning, Pellettieri (2000) found that CMC facilitated negotiation of meaning and form-focused interaction. She proposes that CMC might be conducive to developing grammatical competence because learners have more time to process language and produce it. This suggests that negotiation of meaning online is markedly different when we compare it to what happens in the face-to-face classroom. From her vantage point in 2001, Lee summarizes the opportunities of synchronous written computer-mediated communication as identified in a range of early studies as follows.

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• CMC provides a more equal participation than face-to-face interaction • CMC allows the learner to have sufficient time to process input, monitor and edit output by means of a self-paced learning environment in which learners read and type comments at their own pace • CMC increases language production and complexity. (Lee 2001, pp. 234–235)

Lee’s own study of intermediate-level students of Spanish communicating synchronously in small groups in a private chatroom shows both the opportunities and the challenges of online communication. The learning environment allowed learners to negotiate meaning by using “interactive strategies that facilitate the comprehension of input and output” (2001, p. 242), particularly comprehension checks, clarification checks, requests and self-repairs. However, Lee also points out that while students focused on the meaning of the communication they ignored the form and that their online written discourse was short and brief. Similarly, Kötter (2003) found that the text-based communication of German students (who were learning English) and American students (learning German) produced a very high number of clarification checks— which Long (1983) defined as “any expression by a native speaker designed to elicit clarification of the interlocutor’s preceding utterance(s)” (p. 137). Kötter also notes a high number of turns indicating overt understanding, agreement or non-understanding—which can be explained by the absence of body language. Thus the study shows “how important it is for learners who communicate with each other in real time in the absence of aural, visual and tactile cues to identify and employ appropriate substitutes to convey this kind of information” (p. 159). Sotillo (2000) carried out a study of discourse functions and syntactic complexity in synchronous and asynchronous online environments and compared these with face-to-face conversation, involving two groups of students studying English as a Second Language and their teachers. Her results demonstrate that the discourse functions (quantity and type) in synchronous discussions were similar to those in face-to-face conversations, showing the kind of modifications that support second language acquisition. In contrast, in asynchronous discussions, the discourse functions were similar to the more restricted IRF pattern in the traditional face-toface classroom. At the same time syntactic complexity increased because learners had more time to think.

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Many of the early studies into CALL were informed by psycholinguistic approaches to language learning, using “an overly technical model of interaction” (Block 2003, p. 4). Nevertheless, they do illustrate some of the opportunities that the availability of networked environments provided to learners and teachers as well as the potential for disrupting some of the more traditional classroom interaction routines. Over the past decade, multimodal environments have become more ubiquitous and online learning is increasingly taking place in settings beyond the classroom. Hampel and Stickler (2012) carried out a study of online communication in the context of online tutorials in a distance education setting. They illustrate how using a multimodal communication tool such as videoconferencing can disturb the conventional patterns of classroom interaction, replacing them with more complex patterns that are characterized by a new interplay of modes. As outlined in the previous section, the IRF model traditionally is a pattern of talk; in contrast, initiation, response and feedback in online settings can happen in multiple and different modes. In a multimodal web conferencing environment, for example, a teacher can initiate a topic orally as well as in writing, or s/he can give written feedback to one student while another student is still responding orally. Several learners can respond in writing to a teacher’s spoken initiation move at the same time, or they can use the written mode for off-task asides. So modes can compete with one another, be used to complement each other, or compensate for one another, and the new digital environments allow users to combine them in new intersemiotic relationships. Teachers today can also make use of mobile devices for providing input and helping with scaffolding learning. Informed by socioconstructivist theories and set in an immersion context Pellerin’s (2014) study focused on primary school children who were engaging in collaborative language activities using mobile devices. She found the following: “The use of mobile devices by the young language learners in this inquiry represents a move away from teacher-generated content; each learner becomes the designer and developer of his or her language learning experiences and the generator of his or her own content” (p. 24). The use of objects by students—chewing gum, clothes as well as a virtual castle and a puppet—provided a multisensory environment and seemed important in fostering their learning. Lee et al. (2019) explored learner interaction outside the classroom via videoconferencing (VC), examining “the role of gesture in negotiation of meaning when learners are communicating via Skype VC accessed on

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mobiles from contexts beyond the language classroom” (p. 29). An information gap task was used to scaffold learning, stimulating dyads of adult language students located in different places to interact with one another. The findings make it clear that the affordances of the mobile devices helped the two learner dyads to negotiate meaning multimodally in the following way: • trigger: speech accompanied by a deictic gesture via the mobile device, showing the object in question (antlers hanging on the wall) or by iconic gestures that illustrate a key scene in a film (a head coming through something) • indicator: speech accompanied by an iconic gesture (antlers coming out of the speaker’s head) • response: speech accompanied by more iconic gestures • reaction to the response: speech This is quite a different way of negotiating meaning compared to a faceto-face classroom and the learners need to have particular skills to do so successfully. This includes skills to do with the technology, with multitasking, and with dealing with disruptions such as noise that characterize real-life environments. These examples show the opportunities for interaction that the new digital media offer language learners, both inside the classroom and beyond, using a panoply of tools from written chatrooms to multimodal videoconferencing. However, each of these tools have different affordances; although today’s multimodal online environments seem to replicate faceto-face interaction, the difference in materiality between the face-to-face setting of a traditional classroom and a computer conference has a notable impact on how we communicate and needs to be taken into account for communication and interaction to be successful (Hampel 2003, p. 111; Kern 2014). Learners need to be aware of the affordances of the digital tools that they are using and they need to know how to combine them with more traditional means of communication such as speech and gesture to ensure successful interaction. Thus, training students before such activities to ensure that they are familiar with the technology and de-briefing them afterwards to reflect on the learning, even individually, is crucial for their success.

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4.2.3

New Interlocutors and Multiple Resources

With the arrival of technologies such as email, instant messaging, forums, blogs and wikis new opportunities for interaction became available—not just in the context of formal and non-formal language learning but also opening up informal opportunities for engaging with speakers of the language that one is learning. This means going beyond the traditional means of language learning with the help of a teacher or by exchanging letters with a penfriend or visiting the country where the language is spoken. Telecollaboration is one such opportunity for engaging with others— usually in semi-formal ways through arrangements made by one’s school or university. An early project whose influence continues today is the Cultura project (see Furstenberg et al. 2001), which used forum discussions to bring together students of English in France with students of French in America. The study shows how the project helped learners to develop cross-cultural literacy by trying understanding the target culture and becoming aware of how they are rooted in their own culture. Rather than following a set curriculum, the project allowed students to produce the ‘data’ which then became the focus on the class. Telecollaboration—which has variously also been called online interaction and exchange (Dooly and O’Dowd 2012) and online intercultural exchange (O’Dowd and Lewis 2016)—has been explored for approx. 20 years now (see Lewis and O’Dowd 2016 for a state-of-the-art overview of research). It involves paired speakers (or groups of speakers) interacting online in a tandem setup, where one person’s first language is another person’s second language and both can provide input for one another without direct mediation of a teacher. Telecollaboration can be part of formal language learning, or it can be non-formal. By providing learners with a way of using the language that they are learning and giving them access to another culture, telecollaboration allows learners not only to develop their language skills but also their intercultural competence. However, because of the lack of direct teacher input, telecollaborative projects need to be set up carefully to be successful by ensuring linguistic as well as cultural scaffolding and feedback. For the teacher, debriefing students, even individually, thus becomes more important. A new development is the linking of classrooms across different institutions or different sites within institutions through high-definition videoconferencing technologies, for example in the context of lesser taught or heritage languages where small groups mean that separate courses would

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not be viable. Deusen-Scholl (2018) describes how “three institutions have designed compatible learning spaces which are intended to facilitate a small, highly interactive, learner-centered, multimodal environment that seeks to emulate a traditional language classroom” (p. 239). The studies highlighted above show a move away from traditional classroom talk as a basis for language learning. Digital communication tools offer new interaction patterns that disrupt the conventional IRF model, allowing learners to interact with other learners directly as well as with other speakers of the language. It also changes the traditional way of negotiating meaning in the language classroom. Learners can combine speech with text, gestures and other visuals in new intersemiotic relationships. The new media also allow for direct interaction with speakers of the language, opening up new and more authentic ways of interacting beyond what school-based student–teacher interaction can offer while at the same time providing a less predictable experience.

4.3

Changes in Communication

This section presents the disruptions to traditional communication patterns that new technologies afford and that relate to how communication takes place between teacher and student as well as between students in terms of space, time and mode. Face-to-face conversation in the traditional classroom is characterized by synchronicity and by orality. In contrast, digital media offer a somewhat different panoply of opportunities— synchronous and/or asynchronous technologies, mono- and/or multimodal tools, classroom-based or telecollaborative settings—thus providing new spatial, temporal, modal and organizational structures for communication. The focus here is mainly on asynchronous computer-mediated communication that is integrated into an overall context of more formal language learning. 4.3.1

Communication in the Traditional Face-to-Face Language Classroom (Attractor 2)

For centuries, the typical classroom was characterized by synchronicity and the written L2. It consisted of one teacher and a group of students who were co-located in a teaching space and were communicating in real time. Instruction was through writing and speaking. Until the 1960s and 1970s language instruction was informed by the grammar–translation method,

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with the teacher interacting with his/her students in their first language. This changed with Michael Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics, which takes a social semiotic approach focusing on ‘the meaning-making resources’ that language offers (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004/2013, p. 4) and the work of Dell Hymes, an American linguist and anthropologist interested in language use across speech communities, particularly in the US. As Halliday himself notes, “the value of a theory lies in the use that can be made of it, and I have always considered a theory of language to be essentially consumer oriented” (1985, p. 7). His Systemic Functional Linguistics is a theory of language in context. In contrast to more traditional grammars which look at the system and structure of a language in terms of phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics and which are prescriptive, the focus of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar is on the function of grammatical phenomena within the overall system. It is “both communicative and language-oriented” (Steiner 1997, p. 17); it is systemic in that it “views its language model to be organized around systems of choices, rather than a hierarchy of structures” (p. 17). As Steiner (1997) points out, “[l]anguage, the system, when it has to ‘function’ necessarily becomes discourse and text, i.e. language in use” (p. 17). This has made Halliday’s approach particularly attractive to language teachers. Hymes (1972) highlighted communicative competence in the language development of children across cultures (in contrast to Chomsky’s concept of linguistic competence). Clearly work with children, and with the place of language in education, requires a theory that can deal with a heterogeneous speech community, differential competence, the constitutive role of sociocultural features – that can take into account such phenomena as White Thunder [a native American who was reported by Leonard Bloomfield, an American linguist, to speak neither English nor his native language well], socioeconomic differences, multilingual mastery, relativity of competence in “Arabic”, “English”, etc., expressive values, socially determined perception, contextual styles and shared norms for the evaluation of variables. (p. 277)

The communicative approach to language teaching with its focus on language use and interaction which Hymes inspired has meant that while grammar still continues to be taught, development of the four language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) has become a key focus of

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the language class. Canale and Swain (1980) describe how it differs from the grammatical approach which is organized on the basis of grammatical forms: “A communicative (or functional/notional) approach […] is organized on the basis of communicative functions (e.g. apologizing, describing, inviting, promising) that a given learner or group of learners needs to know and emphasizes the ways in which particular grammatical forms may be used to express these functions appropriately” (p. 2). They also critique some of the principles that guided language teaching at the time and point out the need to focus on strategies that deal with communication breakdown and on tasks and evaluation criteria. This has resulted in a list of guiding principles, which include a focus on communicative competence, the importance of the learner’s communication needs, opportunities for meaningful interaction with speakers of the language, the optimal use of existing communicative competence, and teaching being guided in the main by the learner’s communicative needs and including some teaching about language and culture (see Canale and Swain 1980, pp. 27–28). The communicative approach meant a move away from using the students’ (and usually also the teacher’s) first language for classroom talk and a greater focus on communicative activities. As Canale and Swain (1980) point out, this can be particularly challenging for learners, and they suggest the following: [I]t is crucial that classroom activities reflect, in the most optimally direct manner, those communication activities that the learner is most likely to engage in (cf. Savignon 1972, for example). Furthermore, communication activities must be as meaningful as possible and be characterized (at increasing levels of difficulty) by aspects of genuine communication such as its basis in social interaction, the relative creativity and unpredictability of utterances, its purposefulness and goal-orientation, and its authenticity. (p. 33)

As a result of the pedagogical work that Canale and Swain and others did in the context of the communicative approach, certain kinds of classroom activities became popular that embodied the principles of the communicative approach to a greater extent than grammar and translation exercises. These included role-play, group work, interviews, jigsaw tasks, and information gap tasks, that is, activities that are learner-centred, encourage active learning and involve cooperation. This reflected a move away from the

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strong focus on written language in the past towards not only a more communicative approach but also one that has multimodal elements, including image, gesture, posture and gaze alongside writing and speaking. However, classroom-based language learning and teaching continued to rely on synchronicity and physical presence. 4.3.2

Written Computer-Mediated Communication Across Space and/or Time

With the development of asynchronous technologies such as email, forums, blogs, wikis and bulletin-board systems in the 1990s new opportunities for communication and interaction became available. Computer-mediated communication thus offered an alternative to face-to-face or telephone communication as well as written interaction (via letters for example). The new tools opened up new ways of engaging not just with other learners in the context of more formal language education settings (e.g. via telecollaborative setups, see Sect. 4.2) but they also made it easier to engage informally with speakers of other languages beyond the classroom (something that will be dealt with in more detail in Sect. 4.4). In the early 1990s, online communication was mainly asynchronous, via email, forums or online bulletin board systems. In addition, some synchronous tools such as Internet Relay Chat started to appear. An early article by Warschauer et al. (1996) examines the use of the computer as a communication medium, focusing on how it allows students to “share information and documents, hold electronic discussions, do collaborative writing and organize cross-cultural exchanges” (p. 1). The paper concludes “that computer learning networks […] have the potential to empower students when they are used appropriately” (p. 1). Another ground-breaking study, by Lamy and Goodfellow (1999), examines the asynchronous interaction between distance learners using a bulletin board system, pointing out that such a tool is particularly useful for interaction as well as for conscious reflection on learning and the development of learner autonomy. They propose a pedagogy that focuses on the generation of reflective conversation. Teachers and researchers have highlighted the advantages of asynchronous text-only discussions, allowing for a “shift in locus of control in favour of the learner with less domination of the discussion by the teacher”

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(Murphy and Coleman 2004), thus helping students to develop independence. Warschauer and Healey (1998, p. 64) point to the use of email discussion groups to give students opportunities for authentic writing assignments, for authentic communication, and for collaborative projects. Sykes (2018) also points to the benefits of asynchronous written tools such as blogs and email tools for language learners in the context of interlanguage pragmatics, “slowing down interaction” and allowing “for reflection and careful analysis of pragmatic topics” (p. 129). This is particularly useful in telecollaborative settings which bring together students from different languages and cultures, where misunderstandings can occur, especially if participants do not monitor their output carefully. Asynchronous tools such as wikis offer a different kind of learner interaction, that is, collaborative writing (see, e.g., Elola and Oskoz 2010; Kessler and Bikowski 2010; Lund 2008). Li and Zhu (2017) examined “the dynamic nature of group interactions and interpret the interaction dynamics in the wiki writing task environment” (p. 97), using sociocultural theory. They found that interaction varied from a collective pattern to an active–withdrawn pattern to a dominant–defensive pattern, influenced by sociocultural factors. Li and Zhu end on a cautious note: “The wiki is a prominent collaborative tool for group writing, but collaborative functions of the technology cannot automatically result in participants’ collaborative approach to writing tasks, as shown by the results of our study” (Li and Zhu 2017, p. 114)—a conclusion that applies to all digital collaborative classroom tools. This shows that asynchronous communication also has potential challenges. In an early study of email, in organizational communication in two divisions of a large American company, Sproull and Kiesler (1986) found that it “reduced social context cues, provided information that was relatively self-absorbed, undifferentiated by status, uninhibited, and provided new information [i.e. information that respondents would not have got if there were no electronic mail]” (p. 1509). While a school or university classroom is a very different setting from a business context, CMC in educational contexts has also been found to encourage aggressive behaviour online and cyber-bullying (sometimes called flaming), especially when misunderstandings or minor grievances—which can arise easily in language learning settings—are not being dealt with immediately (see for example Black 2006; Peterson 2011; Roed 2003; Warschauer 1997). Dominating

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students can also be an issue, and Murphy and Coleman (2004) summarize their disappointing experience in the context of a forum discussion conducted by students on a web-based graduate programme as follows: Challenges related to students’ behaviour included domination of the discussion by individual students or groups of students resulting in feelings of exclusion, frustration and inadequacy. Text-only communication caused difficulties related to misinterpretation and conveying and deriving intent. Challenges related to the purpose and value of the discussion resulted from low quality and high quantities of postings to meet grade requirements. (n.p.)

The studies highlighted here exemplify the ‘battle’ between those educators and researchers who felt that CMC is a tool that allowed for greater student control and more reflection and offers “a more intrinsically social medium of communication than the apparently ‘richer’ face-to-face communication” (Thurlow et al. 2004, p. 67) and those who took what has been called a ‘deficit approach’ to CMC, pointing to the anonymity and reduced social cues of the medium that potentially result in learners’ disinhibition and deindividuation, and the lack of quality engagement by learners. However, with CMC now having become ubiquitous, both in our social lives and in education, we have to realize that the challenges around asynchronous tools in particular, that is, anonymity and reduced social cues of the medium, etc., are not due to shortcomings that are inherent in the online medium. Instead, they are linked to the fact that there has been “a shift in modes, with written (and often asynchronous) communication taking over some of the functions of spoken language (e.g. interaction)” (Hampel 2014, p. 93), with many users choosing asynchronous written tools such as email to communicate over face-to-face interaction—often for practical reasons. However, the affordances of these new tools are different from face-to-face conversation, and interactants have to adjust to the online environment by for example using other functions such as emoticons to express what in a face-to-face context would be expressed by paralanguage such as gestures and facial expressions. More recently, synchronous written tools such as instant messaging have started to offer teachers and students the opportunity for real-time online communication. They are different from asynchronous technologies in terms of “both communicative affordances and pedagogical consequences” (O’Rourke and Stickler 2017, p. 2). While they do not have the flexibility of asynchronous technologies, which allow for easy communication across

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space as well as time (including different time zones), there are practical as well as affective advantages. In the context of a special issue entitled ‘Synchronous communication technologies for language learning: Promise and challenges in research and pedagogy’, O’Rourke and Stickler (2017) give a useful description of synchronous—in contrast to asynchronous—communication which suggests that while the distinction is more one of degree rather than kind, “joint attention to the communicative event” (p. 14) is the key feature that differentiates the two. This ‘joint attention’ does make online communication somewhat easier, especially in managed environments where there is some level of teacher mediation and learner preparation. In a study on synchronous interaction via chat, Darhower (2002), for example, reports that learners were able to use the environment for social interaction as well as for developing their sociolinguistic competence by taking ‘ownership of the chat room environment and construct[ing] a dynamic, learner-centered discourse community characterized by discussion of topics of mutual interest, social cohesiveness and group belonging, joking, teasing, experimenting with identities, role plays, and even playfully insulting each other’ (p. 273). At this point it needs to be noted that synchronous tools and asynchronous tools do not have to be alternatives; instead, teachers and researchers have been keen to use the advantages of one to compensate for the shortcomings of the other and vice versa. Hampel et al. (2005), for example, report on a study which combined the two. In the study, a group of learners of German interacted online with speakers of German who were located in a different time zone. The synchronous communication tool (an audiographic conferencing environment that included an audio facility as well as text chat) was used for discussion and presentation purposes, alongside a set of asynchronous tools (website and blogs) that allowed the participants to share information and experiences as well the artefacts which they had produced. This made communication between the groups easier. Findings included the following: (1) negotiation of procedures and expectations at all levels is required to avoid miscommunications and potential faux-pas; (2) the loss of embodiment may be experienced as both liberating and restricting in terms of communicating online; and (3) performance anxiety appears to depend not simply on linguistic proficiency or ICT-literacy but rather on psycho-social factors and the learning context. Finally, what became quite clear over the course of the

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project was that the environment needs to be accepted as different from faceto-face, offering unique features on which to capitalize and around which to design specific tasks. (Hampel et al. 2005, p. 26)

Multimodal environments that go beyond the written (and basic visual) mode will be covered in more detail in Sect. 4.3.4. 4.3.3

Social Presence in Online Communication

While O’Rourke and Stickler (2017) use the term ‘co-presence’ borrowed from Zhao (2003) to refer to interlocutors sharing a communicative space (especially in face-to-face and in synchronous online environments), there is also the notion of ‘social presence’—a concept that researchers such as Charlotte Gunawardena were using even before the growth of synchronous tools in their attempts to try and understand CMC characterized by “[t]he asynchronous or time-independent feature, text-based communication and computer-mediated interaction” (1995, p. 148) and the impact it has. Borrowing the concept of social presence from Short et al.’s (1976) book on The Social Psychology of Telecommunications, Gunawardena carried out several studies using this concept to examine the use of CMC in the context of a community of inquiry. She focused on students who used a listserv to engage in a series of online conferences that “linked several universities to discuss issues related to distance education, engage in collaborative learning and research related to distance education, and experience distance education by using a medium that is increasingly being used to deliver distance education” (1995, p. 149). Starting with Short et al.’s (1976) definition of social presence—“degree of salience of the other person in the interaction and the consequent salience of the interpersonal relationships” (p. 65), Gunawardena (1995, p. 151) sets out to explain the concept as follows: This means the degree to which a person is perceived as a “real person” in mediated communication. They [Short et al.] define social presence as a quality of the medium itself and hypothesize that communications media vary in their degree of social presence, and that these variations are important in determining the way individuals interact. The capacity of the medium to transmit information about facial expression, direction of looking, posture, dress and nonverbal cues, all contribute to the degree of social presence of a communications medium.

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Gunawardena then proceeds to explain that Short et al. associate two concepts with social presence—intimacy and immediacy. Intimacy “depends on factors such as physical distance, eye contact, smiling, and personal topics of conversation”. Immediacy on the other hand “is a measure of the psychological distance which a communicator puts between himself or herself and the object of his/her communication. A person can convey immediacy or non-immediacy nonverbally (physical proximity, formality of dress, and facial expression) as well as verbally” (p. 151). However, Gunawardena challenges Short et al.’s view that social presence is largely an attribute of the communication medium, agreeing with other researchers that social presence can be ‘cultured’ among participants in a teleconference, by replacing nonverbal cues in writing, for example by using emoticons created out of punctuation marks. Therefore, she supports the relational perspective that Walther (1992) suggests, one that “offers an approach to the process that differs from a channel-effects view alone. A relational perspective suggests that functional and social factors should be examined” (Gunawardena 1995, p. 155). So social presence today tends to be understood “as the ability of learners to project themselves socially and affectively into a community of inquiry” (Rourke et al. 2001, p. 1). Building on Garrison et al.’s (2000) view that social presence is a direct facilitator of learning, Satar (2015) explains the key role of social presence in distance education by pointing to the fact that it enhances learners’ satisfaction with learning, makes communication more natural and helps learners manage turn-taking. In her own work, Satar (2011) applied the theory of social presence to multimodal language learning contexts, creating “a social presence framework developed for the analysis of online multimodal language learner interactions” (Satar 2015, p. 480). This consists of building intimacy, sustaining interaction, establishing intersubjectivity, multimodality, apprehension and relaxation, beliefs about online communication, and foreign language. While fully online learning means moving away from the physical presence that characterizes face-to-face learning, Sun (2018) shows the placemaking that students enrolled on a fully online language course engaged in. Firstly, they did so at home in terms of creating a space to study and made sure that the materials they needed were portable and accessible (personal learning). Secondly, there was pair/group learning, with the students creating both physical and online spaces to meet with their fellow students, using Skype, Facebook, Messenger, WeChat, and Google Docs. They preferred this over the institutionally-provided virtual room in Blackboard Suite with

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which they were less familiar. Thirdly, students created their own individual informal extended learning spaces, using what Sun calls “their own ‘social context’ or ‘social fabric’” (p. 948). Examples are practising with speakers of the language at the supermarket, taking extra lessons or using a social media platform for language learners. Sun concludes that the learners in her study are very much socially and spatially situated, despite being involved in a fully online course. 4.3.4

Multimodal Communication and Its Use in the Classroom

As mentioned above, the 1970s and 1980s witnessed the introduction of the communicative approach into language teaching and learning, which brought with it a move away from the strong focus on grammar translation and on written skills to recognising the importance of interaction and of developing learners’ speaking skills. “[T]he most fundamental element of the [communicative] approach was its explicit emphasis on the role of authentic communication within classroom contexts” (Bygate et al. 2013/2001, p. 2). Thus spoken language became the principal communication tool in the language classroom as well as an important focus of language education, and while the authenticity of classroom communication has been called into question, the importance of speaking for second language learning has continued into the twenty-first century. However, language use is multimodal, involving not just speech but also writing and the body. Multimodality has been defined as the use of multiple semiotic modes in the design of a “semiotic product or event” (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001, p. 20), with a pre-occupation as to the role of image, gesture, speech, posture, gaze, and spatialization within communication. Yet as detailed above, for a long time language education was primarily concerned with the mode of writing. This changed when the focus widened to include spoken language; however, the role of other modes of communication in meaning-making remained unexplored. This has been changing only relatively recently, as The New London Group (2000, p. 28) in their programmatic piece entitled ‘Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures’ point out. Now becoming increasingly important are modes of meaning other than Linguistic, including Visual Meanings (images, page layouts, screen formats); Audio Meanings (music, sound effects); Gestural Meanings (body language,

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sensuality); Spatial Meanings (the meanings of environmental spaces, architectural spaces); and Multimodal Meanings. Of the modes of meaning, the Multimodal is the most significant, as it relates all the other modes in quite remarkably dynamic relationships.

The advent of new technologies has changed the communicational landscape, initiating what has been called a ‘multimodal turn’ (see, e.g., Block 2013), which could first be observed in print in the mass media (such as newspapers and journals) before starting to characterize digitally produced artefacts and online environments (see Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001). At the same time, it has opened up our awareness of the importance of multimodal communication in many contexts from everyday activities (Norris 2004) to operating theatres (Bezemer 2014), and has stimulated interest in its use, particularly in the context of learning and teaching. Early examples range from research into representational resources in education, including the way that text books are designed (see Kress et al. 2000) to the multimodal teaching and learning that goes on in the science classroom. Kress et al. (2001) link their work exploring the rhetorics of the science classroom back to Halliday and his social theory of communication. But unlike Halliday, their focus goes beyond language to include other modes—“like language, visual images, gesture and action have also been developed through their social usage into articulated or particularly articulated resources for representation into modes” (p. 12). These modes are used in an “orchestrating of meaning across and between modes” (p. 25). While Kress et al. (2001) focus on meaning-making in the face-to-face science classroom, their work is also relevant for online language education contexts. Teachers and learners today have access to a range of multimodal environments that can be used for language learning purposes. These include publicly available communication tools—including social media (for example Twitter or Facebook), videoconferencing environments (such as Skype), virtual worlds (such as Second Life) or online games. In addition, there is a range of environments that are designed for educational purposes to which many learners have access via their institutions (i.e. learning management systems, also called virtual learning environments, such as Moodle). There is a diversity of tools, and with it a choice of whether learners want to engage synchronously or asynchronously or both; whether they want to communicate in the written mode (e.g. through forums or text chat), through speaking (e.g. via webconferencing) and/or with a more visual emphasis (using blogs, wikis, video sharing platforms such as

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vimeo or other tools) or multimodally (through e.g. virtual worlds or online games). These tools and environments have the potential to augment the traditional classroom in a blended format or they can replace it. Having multiple modes available for communication in the online or blended classroom also means that learners can choose the mode that they are comfortable with. This greater choice in terms of tools and modes that learners can use to communicate may enhance their motivation but possibly also provides less of an incentive to develop all four language skills (see Stickler and Hampel 2010). Speaking is more challenging than writing—especially in a second language, and teachers may need to encourage language learners to use a particular mode; also, learner can challenge themselves by choosing a mode that they feel less comfortable with. Although not an explicit focus of communicative language teaching, a crucial part of communication is body language—or nonverbal language. It comprises posture, gesture, tone of voice, facial expression, touch, and personal space (Hecht and Ambady 1999) as well as gaze and nonverbal vocalizations, and contributes to establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships. Gullberg (2006) describes the functions of gestures as follows: [G]estures are multi-functional and have both self- and other-directed functions, sometimes simultaneously. Interactional functions include turn regulation, feedback eliciting, agreement marking, attention direction (pointing), etc. Self-directed functions include things like organising thought for expression, enhancing some aspect of the message to be conveyed, etc. (p. 105)

As Kendon (2004) has shown, speech and gesture operate in multimodal concert—and his 1986 paper entitled ‘Some reasons for studying gesture’ supports a focus on gesture in second language learning contexts. Yet almost 25 years later Gullberg (2010) concludes that the lack of attention to gesture in SLA research continues. In contrast to face-to-face conversation, most online communication takes place with significantly reduced options for nonverbal language, thus making interaction different—and potentially more difficult. Written communication via a forum or a blog, for example, is a disembodied experience, which—if not addressed—can lead to learners disengaging or becoming disruptive. Even in sophisticated synchronous environments such as videoconferencing, the lack (or restricted view) of body language as well as the lack of information about the environment of one’s interlocutor can make

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turn-taking more difficult—resulting in parallel conversations in text chat or people either talking over each other or falling silent in webconferencing settings. Learners thus have to work harder to create social presence and establish social bonds that enhance learning (Satar 2013). Some environments help the user by providing additional tools such as emoticons or yes/no buttons, which, however, increase the need for multi-tasking for a language learner who may already be carrying a considerable cognitive load (Hampel 2014). These issues relate to the concept of intersubjectivity—that is, an understanding of each other’s subjective reality—or to be more precise and following Husserl, “the possibility [my italics] of human interaction and human understanding” (Duranti 2010, pp. 10–11). Duranti summarizes Husserl’s view of intersubjectivity as comprising “the human relation with the natural world, the role of tools and other artifacts in evoking other minds and other lives, the sense of belonging to a community or to a particular relationship even when others are not co-present, the participation in particular types of social encounters, the access to and use of human languages and other semiotic resources” (p. 14). Intersubjectivity is crucial for learning but—as Malinowski (2015) shows in his study of three language classrooms located in different universities and connected via high definition videoconferencing equipment—it is complex to achieve in mediated settings. The challenges he identifies relate to the framing and enactment of ‘mundane’ classroom events, dealing with misunderstandings and mistakes and with changes in tempo and tone of classroom discourse, needing to be explicit in the discussion and negotiation of control over the communicative medium, and alignment among students. Kress et al. (2001) also raise some practical issues around using multiple modes in the classroom and suggest ways of dealing with them. In terms of pedagogy, teachers need to be multimodally aware and be able to decide on what is best communicated using which mode; they need to know what the possible repercussions are of the move towards the visual mode and the written mode; and they need to make sure that assessment follows the multimodal approach taken in the classroom.

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4.3.5

Multimodal Online Communication in Language Learning and Teaching Settings

Advances in technology since the early 2000s have meant that teachers have access to networked multimodal communication tools that combine speaking, writing and the visual, thus offering new opportunities for language learning and teaching, including in mobile contexts. Videoconferencing is of particular interest as it allows participants to see one another, thus offering an additional mode that potentially helps to create social presence, and it is being increasingly used by teachers to bring together language learners in a multimodal environment. Thus Kern (2014) reports on a study that examined the use of desktop videoconferencing to link American students learning French with French students enrolled on a Masters level teaching French as a Foreign Language course. The feedback by students was very positive; they reported that the exchange helped them to learn how to deal with communicative pressure, and that it increased their self-confidence and their motivation to study or work abroad. They also felt that the interactions were authentic and engaging, and that the exchange was a useful addition to their classroombased course. In a study of multimodal interaction, Austin (2015) linked two primary school language classes via Skype desktop videoconferencing. In his analysis of the children’s interaction he focused on voice, using Blommaert’s (2008) definition, that is, how “people use language and other semiotic means in attempts […] to make themselves understood by others” (p. 427), and employing geosemiotics as the analytic framework (Scollon and Scollon 2003). The findings as summarized in Austin et al. (2017) show how the children use embodied action combined with speech to make meaning, also highlighting the importance of artefacts (such as books or a teddy bear). They conclude that multimodal resources serve a variety of speaker and addressee purposes, including “indicating different social spaces, managing roles in the conversation, indicating a lexical gap, enhancing the understanding of spoken language and representing something that cannot be voiced through spoken language by the child” (p. 18). Austin et al. (2017) conclude that “children’s Skype-mediated communication provides them with rich opportunities to practise their developing communication skills when conversations are child-led” (p. 32). Lee et al. (2019) carried out a study of learner dyads interacting via Skype videoconferencing in ‘real-world’ settings such as cafés or museums.

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Using Skype recordings as well as stimulated recall interviews, they focused on the multimodal interaction of language learners across real-world spaces via mobile devices, with a particular interest in the interplay of speech and gesture. The analytic framework used brought together the negotiation of meaning framework (Varonis and Gass 1985) and gesture-speech analysis (McNeill 1992) to show the impact of the technology mediation on the conversation. A key finding is how the learners directed their mobile devices at objects of interest, which the authors interpret as pointing gestures. “The deictic gesture which Andrea […] first mobilizes is formed with the mobile device acting as ‘embodied prosthesis,’ and serving the purpose of enabling Andrea to point to a specific object which is situated within the historical building. She uses the gesture to establish joint attention in order to coreference this object with her interlocutor Fay” (p. 32). Learners thus make use of multiple modes to negotiate meaning and to establish joint attention and intersubjectivity. However, even with tools that seem to mirror some of the affordances of face-to-face conversation—such as videoconferencing—the fact that communication is mediated by a particular technology means that it works differently. As Kern (2014) and Lee et al. (2019) found, this has a particular impact on gesturing. Most language learners are not aware of the importance of gestures, but as mentioned above, gestures are often intricately connected with language. They are used to replace speech when there are problems in communication and they also often accompany speech (Gullberg 1998). While videoconferencing environments can create the illusion of contact, gestures are often not very well picked up because of the relatively small size of the screen, they are not visible because they happen outside the area that the camera captures, or the webcam exaggerates the effects of movement (see Kern 2014). Another problem that Kern (2014) as well as Satar (2011), Austin (2015), and Austin et al. (2017) identified is the location of the webcam, which tends to prevent direct eye contact. To ensure successful communication the webcam has to be used in very conscious ways, with participants having to be relatively immobile, gestures having to occur in a restricted area, and two people using the same camera have to sit very close to one another. In addition, Kern (2014) also raises some issues that relate to the fact that the webcam can create the illusion of contact, the difficulty of eye contact, and the invisibility of some gestures. There was also greater self-consciousness and audio-lag, and the computer interface seemed to “induce a sense of geographic and cultural neutralization” (p. 351). And as Malinowski (2015) has shown, even in language

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classrooms connected via high definition videoconferencing there are challenges for participants in terms of developing intersubjectivity. These issues can be amplified when learners use mobile phones in realworld settings that are outside the institution that the learner is associated with. However, different devices also offer different opportunities for communication as in Lee’s (2019) example of Andrea and Fay above. Despite these difficulties, the learners managed to communicate multimodally, using the affordances of the mobile devices not just for speaking but also to form deictic gestures. Using gestures also helped another dyad in Lee’s study who had to deal with a very noisy environment but succeeded in arriving at “mutual understanding” (p. 35). Virtual worlds such as Second Life and MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft move even further away from traditional face-to-face communication models, turning the disembodiment (which users—particularly learners—often experience as a deficit in webconferencing) into a kind of re-embodiment. Rather than representing the interlocutors via webcams, virtual worlds provide users with avatars, which they can employ to create their own identities, re-presenting their own selves. This means that nonverbal communication takes centre stage—for example through physical appearance, body language, facial expressions, clothing, hairstyle and jewellery, and bodily activities. Peterson (2011) points to the “multimodal nature that provides for multiple communication channels” (p. 68), including text chat and audio chat as well as on-screen text, all situated in a potentially rich, visually appealing environment. In Second Life, interaction takes place outside the user’s own body, with one’s bodily characteristics having to be deliberately chosen (including even basic attributes about one’s appearance, e.g. whether one is male or female, human or animal) and one’s body language such as gestures or turning towards another avatar having to be consciously controlled. This gives language learners the choice between replicating their own physical appearance as far as possible and taking on a different identity (or anything in-between) while using the spaces that Second Life affords for engaging in roleplay. Wigham and Chanier (2013) investigated how language learners can make use of movements and gestures of their avatar in Second Life (SL) to compensate for the lack of facial expression—which plays a crucial role in face-to-face communication. Using their own methodological framework for classifying verbal and nonverbal communication acts—a framework which they also present in their article—they studied the multimodal

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communication of a group of students who were engaged in an architecture course on Second Life and used a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approach. In terms of their findings, they highlight the interaction between modes—for example between students’ proxemic acts and speech or between iconic gestures and verbal interjection. They also point to the different communication modes in Second Life compared with those in face-to-face communication, such as “multidirectional synchronous written communication possibilities and the use of iconic gestures rather than facial expressions to display emotional states” (p. 82). As mentioned above, in Second Life the resources for bodily meaningmaking have to be deliberately chosen. This may change with technological advances; a more recent study by Oh et al. (2016) tried out a specially developed virtual 3D environment that allowed for participants’ facial expressions to be replicated (or enhanced) in their avatars. The researchers found that “participants who interacted with each other using avatars that enhanced their actual smiles felt more positive affect and a greater sense of being present with their partner (i.e., social presence)” (p. 12). Gaming environments also enable language learners to communicate and socialize using multiple modes in visually rich and potentially motivating environments. A recent review of research by Jabbari and Eslami (2019) shows the following opportunities that MMOGs offer for practising and developing second language skills: negotiation of meaning, discourse management practices, production of L2, traditional and modern literacy practices (including multimodality), socialization in the TL [target language], intercultural communication, and conversational skills. While Jabbari and Eslami (2019) conclude that MMOGs provide socially supportive and emotionally safe environments, there are also concerns around the safety of learners. If such gaming platforms (or virtual worlds) are used within more formal learning contexts, then the need for institutional safeguarding as well as training arises—not only for learners but also for their teachers. The studies introduced here exemplify how the new technologies can disrupt the power of the spoken word in the language classroom and change the ways in which modes of communication are used individually and in conjunction with one another. They show how traditional classroom communication that centres on the spoken mode has changed under the influence of the new online media to incorporate writing as well as the visual and how these modes can come together in multimodal online environments, offering both new opportunities and new challenges.

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Changes in Learners’ Positioning in Relation to the World

Traditionally, learning has been linked to particular contexts and particular activities, and our understanding of what a learner is is still closely associated with educational institutions, where learning takes place in synchronous time and is embodied, with learners and teachers physically present. This means that learner identity is bound up with notions of time, place and the body that are closely linked to institutions (Hampel 2019, pp. 2–3). As illustrated above, the new digital media are providing language learners with new opportunities for interaction and communication—not just in the context of formal language learning but also opening up informal opportunities for engaging with speakers of the language that one is learning. This has repercussions as to how learners are positioned in relationship to the world where the second language is spoken and how they engage with this world. There is far more scope today for engaging with others outside the classroom than in the past when access was more difficult, and communication limited to corresponding with a penfriend through letters, talking with L1 speakers on the telephone or on visits to the country where the language is spoken. There are also more opportunities for using one’s environment for scaffolding language learning. In addition, virtual worlds, online games and other so-called internet interest communities (e.g. communities of fans) have the potential to provide language learners with new ways of interacting with other speakers of the language—very often in informal learning contexts. Rather than providing structured opportunities for interaction, these contexts can offer an immersion experience (Bytheway 2015), an experience that is less artificial than interaction in the L2 with a classmate in a conventional classroom. Language learning in these contexts is often incidental and informal (but can also be more formalized), resulting from interaction with other speakers of the language—who often are not L1 speakers either. However, with the notion of the ‘native’ speaker waning in research on second language development, and the notion of authenticity being replaced by appropriateness (Kramsch and Sullivan 1996), it has become less important whether one’s interactants are L1 or L2 speakers as long as they use the language for real-life purposes. Johannes Wagner and others talk about learning in ‘the wild’—which represents the fact that learners are usually on their own, without the security that classroom-based interaction

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provides. Sundqvist and Sylvén (2016) focus on ‘extramural English’ in their book, that is, English encountered outside the classroom. However, there are also attempts to incorporate such real-world learning into more formal language learning contexts. The reader will already have had a glimpse of this in Sect. 4.2—however, the use of computer-mediated communication depicted there was still integrated into an overall context of more formal learning, for example as part of a classroom project set in a virtual world or as part of a teacher-supported activity using mobile devices in real-world settings. This section presents evidence for the changes in how language learners experience the world and their sense of themselves, changes which relate to how digital tools offer informal and non-formal opportunities for engaging with speakers of the language and by engaging in community activities, thus disrupting the traditional dichotomy between the classroom and the world out there and between a learner and a speaker of a language. 4.4.1

Learner and Teacher Identities in the Traditional Language Classroom (Attractor 3)

Kasper and Wagner (2011) describe identities that are tied to institutional activities as being “constituted through actions that implement institutional agendas, whether through complementary categories such as service person and customer, teacher and students, or same-category relations such as business partners in a meeting or members of a committee at work” (p. 121). They conclude that identities “are not assumed to reside in a person but are interactionally produced, locally occasioned, and relationally constituted” (p. 122). The traditional approach to teaching and learning is to institutionalize it, to reduce it to something that happens in a classroom, where the content is determined by a set curriculum and tested regularly and where the teacher instructs and the students learn. And the distinctions are even more fine-grained, allowing educational institutions for example to distinguish between a successful and an unsuccessful student. As Hawkins (2005) points out, “[f]or children to acquire school-affiliated identities, they must acquire the language as well as the behaviors, attitudes, resources, and ways of engaging needed to recognizably display the identity of a successful student” (p. 59). Only those children who show this kind of ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu 1986) will be deemed to be successful students.

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As I have argued in Hampel (2019, p. 7), a traditional face-to-face classroom can be defined by how the notions of time, place and the body are conceptualized. • It [the traditional classroom] is organized temporally—e.g. formal education covering a particular age range, primary education being separated from secondary education, the school day as well as individual lessons following particular temporal patterns; • It is located in a bounded place—e.g. the classroom, featuring a familiar geography and certain ways of being, which in turn is situated within an institutional structure, e.g. a school or a university with particular rules and regulations; • It is made up of a set group of embodied participants—including one or several teachers or lecturers, learners (usually in groups), who play particular roles, follow particular rules and regulations, and interact in particular ways. In the context of language learning it also means limiting learning to interaction between learner and teacher where focus on form and accuracy rather than communication and social practice is paramount. Harper’s (2011) general critique of institutionalized education thus also applies to language teaching: The limitations inherent in the formal curriculum span beyond the narrow perimeters of whose knowledge is presented or the marginalizing of varied ways of knowing […]. In the institutional setting constraints fall back upon themselves. The bureaucratic environment of the institution becomes regulatory and normalized to the point of constriction (Foucault, 1995). Spaces for experimentation, mistake making, ambiguity, and thus growth become less and less, until the institution reaches a point of irrelevance to life and learning. (p. 6)

4.4.2

Constructed Identities, Imagined Communities and Online Affinity Spaces

A contrasting picture to the one of institutionalized language learning above (and the resulting institutionalized language learner) is painted by Bonny Norton, who takes a sociocultural approach to language learning.

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For her, language learning is a complex social practice (see Norton and McKinney 2011), and a language learner’s identity is all about integrating “the individual language learner and the larger social world” (Norton 2013, p. 2). “[S]peaking a second language is always identity construction and negotiation” (Norton 1997, p. 410). As Darvin and Norton (2017) point out: Recognizing that learners are social beings with complex identities, the construct of investment, introduced by Norton in 1995, highlights the socially and historically constructed relationship between learners and the target language (Norton 2013; Norton Peirce 1995). This construct demonstrates that commitment is not just a product of motivation, but that learners invest in a language because they recognize how it will help them acquire a wider range of symbolic and material resources, which will in turn increase the value of their cultural capital and social power. (p. 2)

Norton’s view of identity brings together sociocultural theory with poststructural and critical theory and applies it to identity and language learning, thus supporting language learning as an activity which is culturally, historically, and institutionally situated and represents a shift away from a psycholinguistic approach to language learning. It is worth quoting Norton’s (2006) five characteristics of a sociocultural conception of identity in full here, a conception which goes beyond a Vygotskian framework and draws on “theories of a range of scholars who are associated with this broader conception of sociocultural research (Bakhtin, Bourdieu, Weedon, and Lave and Wenger)” (p. 22). (i) A sociocultural conception of identity conceives of identity as dynamic and constantly changing across time and place. Indeed, a recurring theme throughout much research on identity and language learning is that of “transition.” (ii) Much research on identity conceives of identity as complex, contradictory, and multifaceted, and rejects any simplistic notions of identity. As Toohey (2000, p. 16) notes, “My research takes a different perspective on learners and learning. I reviewed feminist, cultural and poststructural theorists’ positions on identity as socially constructed, contradictory, dynamic and entailing power.” (iii) Most researchers note that identity constructs and is constructed by language. As Pavlenko (2004, p. 54) argues, “Language is seen

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in this paradigm as the locus of social organization and power, and as a form of symbolic capital as well as a site of struggle where subjectivity and individual consciousness are produced.” (iv) Most researchers note that identity construction must be understood with respect to larger social processes, marked by relations of power that can be either coercive or collaborative. As Pennycook (2001, p. 27) notes, “The notion of politics I am using here takes as its central concern the notion of power and views power as operating through all domains of life. Power is at the heart of questions of discourse, disparity, and difference”. (v) Finally, much research seeks to link identity theory with classroom practice. As Canagarajah (1999 p. 186) notes: Learners should be encouraged to become reflexive about their classroom relations since knowledge is socially constructed. Eventually, learners must be encouraged to become reflexive about themselves,—i.e. how their values, community membership, historical background, and subject-positions motivate them to negotiate language and knowledge in particular ways. (pp. 24–25)

Norton and the colleagues mentioned here emphasize the importance of language in identity construction and the link between identity and learning. Using an overall sociocultural conception of identity, they are influenced by various other perspectives such as poststructuralism, feminist theory, and translingualism. In an earlier article—an introduction to the special issue of the 1997 TESOL Quarterly on Language and Identity—Norton uses the notions of investment, imagined communities and imagined identities, conceiving “of the language learner as having a complex history and multiple desires. An investment in the target language is also an investment in a learner’s own social identity, which changes across time and space” (p. 411). The concept of imagined communities refers to the potential that “the target language community may be, to some extent, a reconstruction of past communities and historically constituted relationships, but also a community of the imagination, a desired community that offers possibilities for an enhanced range of identity options in the future” (Norton 2013, p. 3). Another useful construct is James Gee’s notion of affinity spaces— “loosely organized social and cultural settings in which the work of teaching tends to be shared by many people, in many locations, who are connected

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by a shared interest or passion” (Gee 2018, p. 8). According to Gee, this is something that traditional schools are unable to provide. Instead, young people find their most powerful learning opportunities online, outside the compulsory school system. These online affinity spaces feature educational practices that are markedly different from those in traditional schools. Gee (2005, pp. 225–228) characterizes an affinity space as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Common endeavour, not race, class, gender or disability, is primary Newbies and masters and everyone else share common space Some portals are strong generators Internal grammar is transformed by external grammar Encourages intensive and extensive knowledge Encourages individual and distributed knowledge Encourages dispersed knowledge Uses and honors tacit knowledge Many different forms and routes to participation Lots of different routes to status Leadership is porous and leaders are resources.

Comparing what goes on in these spaces with traditional school-based environments, Gee (2005) not only comes to the conclusion that schools usually do not feature these characteristics of affinity spaces but he also states the following: “This comparison is particularly important because many young people today have lots of experience with affinity spaces and, thus, have the opportunity to compare and contrast their experiences with these to their experiences in classrooms” (223). Thus Gee and Hayes (2011) explore how these affinity spaces could effect a paradigm change in schooling. Affinity spaces share certain features with communities of practice, which Lave and Wenger (1991, p. 98) describe as follows: A community of practice is a set of relations among persons, activity, and world, over time and in relation with other tangential and overlapping communities of practice. A community of practice is an intrinsic condition for the existence of knowledge, not least because it provides the interpretive support necessary for making sense of its heritage. Thus, participation in the cultural practice in which any knowledge exists is an epistemological principle of learning.

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For many language learners, however, the reality is still an approach where emphasis is placed on the acquisition of a linguistic system of signs and symbols in which they have no investment, rather than being offered the opportunity to participate in a real or imagined community where the language is actually used for meaning-making purposes. This can have a negative impact on motivation. As Ushioda (2011, p. 203) points out, identity is linked with L2 motivation. “Identity perspectives on L2 motivation thus bring into sharp relief the significance of current L2 learning experiences and interactions as well as evolving identity goals and future aspirations.” The new digital media are one way of enabling learners to participate in language communities, to experience language as a social practice in affinity spaces and to develop their own identity as language learners. As I have shown in Hampel (2019), online learning has an impact on how time, place and the body in online learning environments are conceptualized. This is different compared to face-to-face classrooms, which in turn has a fundamental impact on the nature of the learner. Firstly, learning online offers greater flexibility in terms of time, giving language learners and teachers access to target language communities 24/7 via interaction tools that support synchronous or asynchronous communication. Secondly, online learning expands the limited space that the classroom offers with its physical properties (e.g. particular pieces of furniture and equipment) and set actors (a teacher or lecturer and a group of students) whose relationship is defined by a certain hierarchy, rules about behaviour, set content, fixed interaction patterns (such as the IRF model), and different types of activities (e.g. teacher presentation, teacher-led discussions, group work, assessment). It is set within an educational institution which is similarly characterized by certain physical characteristics, set actors and particular structures and hierarchies, rules and regulations. Thirdly, whereas learning in face-to-face environments is embodied, with learners and the teacher physically present, online learning is disembodied, especially when using communication tools such as email, instant messaging, blogs or audioconferencing. This lack of embodiment makes nonverbal communication difficult if not impossible. Even videoconferencing can interfere with common notions that guide communication such as eye contact or interpersonal distance. The following sections give some examples of how language learners are positioned today in relation to the world, moving from more formal language learning settings to informal contexts.

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Linking the Language Learner with the Larger Social World

There is a panoply of approaches and devices that help to link—or even integrate—language learners with environments where the language they are learning is used. This can be in the context of trying to make a formal language class more relevant or of learning a language informally by communicating with others, allowing the learner to make an investment in the target language and become part of the imagined community. Although the creation of artefacts has been part of language learning and teaching for a long time, the new digital media now make it easier to share these products more widely. In a study with Mexican university students, Montoro Sanjosé (2013) devised a speaking activity for his language learners, asking them to record a video introducing themselves—“the CALL task replicated a common practice of YouTube users”. Once the students had created their recordings, they had the option of uploading them to YouTube. As Montoro Sanjosé states, “‘real’ dialogue can […] emerge if learners post their videos online and YouTube users are inspired to comment on them” (p. 81). Sampurna et al. (2018) report on online project-based learning with Indonesian university students studying EFL (English as a foreign language) who in small groups engaged in the task of creating the content of a website aimed at children wanting to learn English. Once the participants had succeeded in creating the required artefacts, these were made available online. And Yeh (2018) carried out a study of the perceived benefits of multimodal video making in developing multiliteracies. The participants, advanced EFL undergraduate students at a Taiwanese university, produced “a digital video employing multiple modalities to introduce any topic of their choice related to Taiwan’s culture based on their own interests (e.g., virtues of Taiwan, beauty of Taiwan, people of Taiwan, etc.)” (p. 29). The production of the videos was accompanied by reflective essays and group presentations, and the project ended with the students uploading their videos. While the scenarios described above constitute forms of one-way communication with an imagined audience or community, the new technologies also provide opportunities for two-way communication. We have already explored the use of telecollaboration to link learners with other learners or with speakers of the language (see Sect. 4.2.3). Mobile learning is another way of connecting the learner with the real world. Agnes

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Kukulska-Hulme (2010) describes how the understanding of mobile learning has shifted over time, from focusing on the attributes of mobile technology to a focus on mobility itself. This denotes not just physical mobility but the opportunity to overcome physical constraints by having access to people and digital learning resources, regardless of place and time. The availability of mobile technologies means that learners can move about within a classroom or outside and still have access to digital information and means of communication with other learners, with their teachers and with the world, on their mobile phone or other mobile device. (p. 181)

Mobile settings are also useful for providing less formal language learning opportunities, particularly for learners who are located in the country where the language is spoken or where there are significant groups of speakers. The MASELTOV (Mobile Assistance for Social Inclusion and Empowerment of Immigrants with Persuasive Learning Technologies and Social Network Services) project, for example, explored the potential use of contextually aware mobile language learning to support recent immigrants to Europe with the aim of helping them with social inclusion (see Gaved et al. 2014). Mobile learning thus allows the learner to physically move out of the closed classroom and use language to experience the world around them as well as design their own learning experiences. Agnes Kukulska-Hulme (2015) also points to the opportunities of mobile devices connecting formal and informal language learning—what Thorne et al. (2009, p. 802) call “the interstitial spaces between instructed L2 contexts and entirely out-ofschool noninstitutional realms of freely chosen digital engagement.” Kukulska-Hulme et al. (2015, p. 7) stress that mobile technologies enable active participation in language teaching and learning which in turn means that learners take responsibility for their own learning. So students can use their mobile devices to do the following: • • • • • •

create and share multimodal texts communicate spontaneously with people anywhere in the world capture language use outside the classroom analyse their own language production and learning needs construct artefacts and share them with others provide evidence of progress gathered across a range of settings, in a variety of media. (Kukulska-Hulme et al. 2015, p. 7)

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However, the authors also add that teachers need to play their part in enabling this. Lee et al.’s (2019) study discussed in Sect. 4.2.2 provides an example of a successful mobile project which made use of the “contextual factors around settings such as cafés and sites of historical interest [which] include affordances which can both stimulate and support negotiation in potentially new ways through forms of task design” (p. 36). The mobile devices allowed learners to communicate successfully, using speech but also deictic gestures. However, the authors also point out the challenges that learners face (as well as the teachers who support such projects). This includes the multitasking of talking, watching and listening simultaneously; high level of coordination; the fact that the embodied communication is constrained by the size of the screen (which on a mobile phone is rather small); and the unpredictability of the location in terms of noise. It is also interesting to see that in this study “learners paid little attention to form, with lexical items and task goals acting as triggers to negotiation” (p. 36). What is particularly innovative in this study of mobile language learner communication in mobile settings is the use of post-task sessions which were organized with individual students to discuss a short video clip from the interaction—not just for research purposes but also to support the learners. The findings provide evidence for Kukulska-Hulme’s (2010) more general point that the mobility in mobile learning “introduces profound changes to established teaching practices that reverberate through education, initially in a low key way but building up to increasingly visible effects that cannot be ignored” (p. 181). 4.4.4

Learning in the Wild

Online environments outside the traditional classroom that support interaction and communication with other speakers of the language that one is learning include virtual worlds such as Second Life, digital games (e.g. MMORPGs), fanfiction and other internet interest communities. These environments offer an immersion experience through participation in existing communities—and opportunities for language learners to use their L2 for authentic communication purposes in a setting that has many of the features of an affinity space. There is also an identity angle, linking back to Norton’s work introduced above (see Sect. 4.4.2), with these environments offering learners the opportunity to become part of a desired community, presenting them with identity options.

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These opportunities have not gone unnoticed by language educators who increasingly have been seeing virtual worlds and games as possible routes to language learning. Chen (2016), for example, argues that Second Life (SL) provides “a dynamic space for language learners to work on authentic, interactive problem-solving tasks” (p. 153) and summarizes its opportunities as an immersive environment as follows: Features afforded by SL, such as task simulation, real-time collaboration, identity exploration, and flexible multimodality, can foster intercultural communication competence and negotiation of meaning […]; reinforce engagement, learning autonomy, and sense of belonging during task-based interaction […]; enhance language acquisition through synchronous multimodality […]; and facilitate real-world task delivery that transcends physical boundaries […].

The 2014 special issue of Language Learning & Technology on ‘Gameinformed L2 Teaching and Learning’ includes Chik’s (2014, p. 85) study, which shows how students playing commercial off-the-shelf games can engage in productive, autonomous L2 learning activity. She describes game playing as a community activity where gamers can take on roles as language teachers and advisors. Bytheway (2015) explores the immersion experience that gaming environments offer, concluding that games are motivational as they help “to ensure that learning experiences remain relevant and meaningful to learners” (p. 522). As Gee (2007) points out, games also allow learners to develop multimodal literacy. And online games offer language learners the opportunity to become a member in a community of practice, where they can learn from more experienced gamers or induct others into the practice of gaming. Rooted in his interest in usage-based linguistics, Wagner has been exploring ‘language learning in the wild’. In a presentation (Wagner 2015) he listed some of the key ingredients: • • • • • •

Bring learners into contact with the language environment. Use the language environment for usage practices. Use daily life routines as model for teaching. Model daily life routines. Redesign the wild. Reflect the social issues.

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• Center on users’ social needs. • Create social anchorpoints. • Share and bring back. Pavlenko (2015) gives an insight into the advantages of learning in the wild. She reports on psycholinguistic research which has found that the crucial differences between second language learning in the classroom and ‘in the wild’ are caused by the learner’s memory systems and in the depth and nature of language processing. In an immersion context the speaker is forced “to engage the same automatic processes and the same implicit memory that subserve native language use” (n.p.); the interactions are meaningful and personally relevant; and embodied simulation helps with language processing. While today’s real world is becoming increasingly disconnected, the virtual world seems to offer new relationships, including for language learners. This is confirmed by early studies in the field, including one by Thorne et al. (2009, p. 802), who examined “participation in Internet interest communities such as fan fiction and virtual diaspora community spaces and […] a continuum of three-dimensional graphically rendered virtual environments and online games” showing “extended periods of language socialization into sophisticated communicative practices” which can help participants develop and manage their identity. Initially, language learning in these environments was incidental or it was intentional informal learning by someone who wanted to practise their language skills and potentially improve their skills in the process. Sauro and Zourou (2017) give the following working definition of CALL in the digital wilds in a call for papers for a special issue of Language Learning & Technology on that very same topic: “informal language learning that takes place in digital spaces, communities, and networks that are independent of formal instruction contexts” (p. 186). However, all the papers in the resulting special issue (two articles on fanfiction alongside a study of digital games and two papers focusing on the use of informal digital learning of English more generally) show that increasingly such opportunities ‘in the wild’ are being used by teachers to encourage learners to make use of their language and increase their motivation, thus domesticating these practices. This shows how more recently online fan communities have become an opportune setting for both unintentional as well as deliberate language learning ‘in the wild’. In her systematic review, Sauro (2017) looks at “the intersection of practices in the digital wilds with digital practices in the

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classroom” (pp. 142–143). She ends with a number of guidelines on how to integrate fan sites and the notion of afficity spaces into the classroom. The studies presented here illustrate how on the one hand digital tools can bring the world into the classroom and how on the other hand the physical classroom space can be expanded—either into the real world or into virtual worlds with a real-life purpose for communicating. This offers multiple opportunities for learners to use language to make meaning in the world and to construct their identities as speakers of the second language rather than just language learners, without, however, the companionship and safety that the conventional classroom offers.

4.5

A Phase Shift in Language Learning and Teaching

Rafael Salaberry had pointed out as early as 1999 that research into computer-mediated communication and face-to-face communication was not taking account of relevant differences between the different communication media (Salaberry 1999, p. 91). This chapter has focused on three areas to illustrate the disruption that electronic communication technologies have effected in language learning and teaching. A number of studies were introduced that relate to one or more of the three areas in focus (i.e. interaction patterns, communication modes, and learners’ positioning in relation to the world). The studies all show how digital technologies are transforming traditional approaches to and practices around interactive meaning-making in the language classroom. Using disruption as a core concept to interrogate recent research on the use of new technologies in language learning and teaching has allowed me to set out the evidence for the following changes: • a change in classroom interaction patterns, away from the hegemony of traditional classroom interaction to new classroom discourses in digital spaces that also allow for interaction with L1 speakers, thus opening up more direct access to knowledge (using tools from text chat to videoconferencing, e.g. in the context of telecollaboration) • a change in communication, away from real-time spoken face-toface communication in the classroom to multimodal communication online that extends the classroom across geographical spaces (e.g. in

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mobile learning) and often happens in new asynchronous time frames, thus providing new organizational structures for communication • a change in language learners’ positioning in relation to the world, away from the physical classroom setting with its traditional dichotomy between the teacher and the learner and between the classroom and the world out there to learning in the real world (e.g. in so-called affinity spaces such as virtual worlds and online games), with often little teacher input and resulting in implications for learners’ identity, integrating the individual language learner with the larger social world. Pellerin’s (2014) summary of her study provides a fitting conclusion to this chapter, showing how the affordances of the new digital tools can be used to create new language learning opportunities that are rooted in learning theories. Her study illustrates not only how the affordances of the mobile technologies supported and promoted oral language production amongst the children, but also how these affordances changed teaching practices, resulting in “the creation of innovative learning environments and authentic language learning experiences, learner-generated content, social interaction and peer scaffolding, sense of audience and agency, language learning being visible, and metalinguistic awareness” (p. 20). Her findings exemplify what other researchers have found—some of whose studies have been included in this chapter. They all show the potential of the new media to change the traditional social practices of the classroom in terms of interaction, communication, and the learner’s link with the L2 world, be it in formal or in informal learning contexts. My claim is that if we consider these changes together, they amount to a phase shift in language learning and teaching. The next chapter will explore what the implications are of this phase shift for learners and teachers as well as for researchers.

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Satar, H. M. (2013). Multimodal language learner interactions via desktop videoconferencing within a framework of social presence: Gaze. ReCALL, 25(1), 122–142. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344012000286. Satar, H. M. (2015). Sustaining multimodal language learner interactions online. CALICO Journal, 32(3), 480–507. https://doi.org/10.1558/cj. v32i3.26508. Sauro, S. (2017). Online fan practices and CALL. CALICO Journal, 34(2), 131–146. https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.33077. Sauro, S., & Zourou, K. (2017). Call for papers. Language Learning & Technology, 21(1), 186. https://www.lltjournal.org/item/2983. https://dx.doi.org/ 10125/44603. Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. W. (2003). Discourses in place: Language in the material world. London: Routledge. Seedhouse, P. (2004). The interactional architecture of the language classroom: A conversation analysis perspective. Language Learning, 54(Suppl. 1), 1–300. Short, J., Williams, E., & Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. London: Wiley. Sinclair, J., & Coulthard, M. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sotillo, S. (2000). Discourse functions and syntactic complexity in synchronous and asynchronous communication. Language Learning & Technology, 4(1), 82–119. Available at https://www.lltjournal.org/item/2317. http://dx.doi. org/10125/25088. Sproull, L., & Kiesler, S. (1986). Reducing social context cues: The case of electronic mail. Management Science, 32(11), 1492–1512. https://doi.org/10. 1287/mnsc.32.11.1492. Steiner, E. (1997). Systemic functional linguistics and its application to foreign language teaching. Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada, 26, 15–27. Available at ela.cele.unam.mx/index.php/ela/article/download/340/320. Stickler, U., & Hampel, R. (2010). CyberDeutsch: Language production and user preferences in a Moodle virtual learning environment. CALICO Journal, 28(1), 49–73. https://doi.org/10.11139/cj.28.1.49-73. Sun, S. Y. H. (2018). Student configuration and place-making in fully online language learning. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 31(8), 932–959. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2018.1466808. Sundqvist, P., & Sylvén, L. K. (2016). Extramural English in teaching and learning: From theory and research to practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Sykes, J. M. (2018). Interlanguage pragmatics, curricular innovation, and digital technologies. CALICO Journal, 35(2), 120–141. https://doi.org/10.1558/ cj.36175.

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The New London Group. (2000). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. Available at http://www.sfu.ca/~decaste/ newlondon.htm. Thorne, S. L., Black, R. W., & Sykes, J. (2009). Second language use, socialization, and learning in Internet interest communities and online games. Modern Language Journal, 93, 802–821. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781. 2009.00974.x. Thurlow, C., Lengel, L., & Tomic, A. (2004). Computer mediated communication: Social interaction and the Internet. London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi. Sage. Ushioda, E. (2011). Language learning motivation, self and identity: Current theoretical perspectives. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 24(3), 199–210. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2010.538701. van Geert, P. (1994). Dynamic systems of development: Change between complexity and chaos. New York: Harvester. Varonis, E. M., & Gass, S. (1985). Non-native/non-native conversations: A model for negotiation of meaning. Applied Linguistics, 6(1), 71–90. https://doi.org/ 10.1093/applin/6.1.71. Wagner, J. (2015). Designing for language learning in the wild: Creating social infrastructures for second language learning. In T. Cadierno & S. W. Eskildsen (Eds.), Usage-based perspectives on second language learning (pp. 75–102). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110378528-006. Walther, J. B. (1992). Interpersonal effects in computer-mediated interaction. Communication Research, 19(1), 52–90. Warschauer, M. (1997). Computer-mediated collaborative learning: Theory and practice. The Modern Language Journal, 81(4), 470–481. https://doi.org/10. 1111/j.1540-4781.1997.tb05514.x. Warschauer, M., & Healey, D. (1998). Computer and language learning: An overview. Language Teaching, 31, 57–71. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0261444800012970. Warschauer, M., Turbee, L., & Roberts, B. (1996). Computer learning networks and student empowerment. System, 24(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/ 0346-251X(95)00049-P. Wigham, C. R., & Chanier, T. (2013). A study of verbal and nonverbal communication in Second Life—The ARCHI21 experience. ReCALL, 25(1), 63–84. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344012000250. Yeh, H.-C. (2018). Exploring the perceived benefits of the process of multimodal video making in developing multiliteracies. Language Learning & Technology, 22(2), 28–37. Available at https://www.lltjournal.org/item/3067. https:// dx.doi.org/10125/44642.

CHAPTER 5

What If?

Abstract This chapter adopts Larsen-Freeman and Cameron’s ‘what if’ questions that they pose in their book Complex systems and applied linguistics and applies them to the context of this book. The proposed answers suggest that the new technologies have the potential to contribute to a new approach to language learning and teaching, an approach that challenges existing systems and beliefs, overcomes traditional dichotomies and simple causality, emphasizes change, creativity and the dialogic, and favours participation and the learner’s perspective. For the language learner, this means going beyond the narrow confines of the classroom to draw on the opportunities for social, interactive and multimodal meaning-making in both the real world and in virtual worlds, develop learner agency, become an effective communicator in the new digital spaces, and develop an identity as a speaker of the second language. Keywords Participatory approach to language learning · Language learning as an open system · Creativity and innovation · The dialogic · Organic nature of change

Taking a complex systems perspective to interrogate the studies presented above has allowed us to see in what ways and to what extent digital technologies are disrupting traditional approaches to and practices around meaning-making in the language classroom. We have seen a move away © The Author(s) 2019 R. Hampel, Disruptive Technologies and the Language Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31368-5_5

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from traditional classroom interaction, a move away from the hegemony of spoken face-to-face communication in the language classroom, and a move away from the physical classroom setting into other spaces. I would argue that if we consider these changes together they amount to a phase shift that has occurred in language learning and teaching. To help explore the repercussions of this phase shift, I will adopt the ‘what if’ questions that Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008, pp. 9–11) pose at the beginning of their book and apply them to the context of this book, that is, the use of online technologies for interactive meaning-making in the language classroom and beyond and their disruptive potential. Larsen-Freeman’s and Cameron’s questions introduce the following sections, with my responses reflecting the insights gleaned from the various studies that I have introduced as evidence in this book together with my own conclusions, taking into account the three areas where disruptions to meaning-making in the language classroom have been identified. I will also bring in the insights of various other scholars to provide additional support for the argument made. (The reader should note that some of the original questions have been shortened to make them more manageable for the purposes of this book.)

5.1

What If Dichotomies That Have Been Axiomatic in Certain Linguistic Theories Obscure Insights into the Nature of Language and Its Learning Rather Than Facilitate Them?

As Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008, p. 9) observe, “the dualistic thinking is perhaps unnecessary”, and so “complexity theory forces us to contend with, not ignore, the dynamism of language and all the messiness it engenders”. Applied to the context of this book, this would mean for example that teachers and learners are ill-advised to separate the classroom from the real world and that the distinction between the teacher (as the person endowed with knowledge) and the learner (as passive recipient of knowledge) is misguided (see, e.g., King’s [1993] catchy notion of the teacher today needing to change ‘From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side’, a notion which has been picked up in particular by researchers focusing on educational technology). Many of the new learning settings and approaches that have been discussed in this book show up the fallacy of

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these dichotomies and offer new approaches. The new digital media offer plenty of opportunities where learners learn without teachers or where the learner/teacher roles are fluid. Telecollaborative activities and participation in online gaming, virtual worlds or online interest communities allow learners to explore, construct and negotiate their identity not just as language learners but also as speakers of the language, often without the presence of a teacher. Another dichotomy that the new technologies are undermining is the difference between writing and speaking in terms of their functions. As shown, this is becoming less clear-cut, with written language increasingly taking over some of the functions of spoken language—caused for example by the increase in text messaging and email and the accompanying decrease in telephone conversations.

5.2

What If Applied Linguists Should Be Seeking to Explain How Language Learners Increase Their Participation in a Second Language Community Rather Than, or in Addition to, How They Acquire the Language of the Community?

Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008, pp. 9–10) argue for understanding language acquisition as a cognitive and individual process as well as a social act, building for example on the work of Anna Sfard (1998). If research focused more on increasing participation in an L2 community rather than (or in addition to) language acquisition, researchers would need to look towards sociocultural theory to inform their work, moving the focus away from the acquisition of particular linguistic features. Instead, they would need to focus on interaction, on the use of tools (including language and technologies), modes (focusing in particular on how multiple modes are used for meaning-making), and the role of mediation, and on how the notion of the zone of proximal development can be integrated into educational practice. The role of identity in second language learning in online environments would also be of particular interest—for example in the context of how learners can be supported to make an investment in the practices of a target language community and develop imagined identities—as would be the affordances of certain digital tools and tasks for interaction, alongside multimodal communication, critical literacy and multiliteracies, interactive competence of learners, their socioaffective experience and development,

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learner support (for example in mobile environments), and many other aspects that have to do with participatory approaches to language learning (see also White 2014).

5.3

What If the Process of Learning and the Learners Cannot Be Usefully Separated? What If Individual Routes to Acquisition/Participation No Longer Need to Be Idealized Away? Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008, p. 10) suggest “that each individual achieves the success that he or she does in a unique way”; there is no single successful way of learning a language that will one day be discovered by researchers. As Sfard (1998) points out, neither the acquisition nor the participation metaphor are sufficient; there is no “unified, homogeneous theory of learning” (p. 12). Rather than all learning being mapped out and led by the teacher, students could be provided with a choice of pathways to learning to ensure that one or several suit them, thus also taking account of research on individual difference (see, e.g., Skehan and Dörnyei 2003). Digital tools can help with this, for example by providing access to different types of content and resources, linking learners with one another or with other speakers of the language, and offering a diverse range of modalities and modes for meaning-making. Jewitt (2005), for example, has explored how the use of new technologies in the classroom is reshaping learning pedagogy and what impact the move of writing from page to screen is having on students’ situated literacy practices and how this affects learning.

5.4

What If Learning Is Viewed as an Open, Continually Evolving, System Rather Than a Closed One?

If this is the case, Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008, p. 10) speculate, then “there is no end state to language”. Learners would thus need to be aware that language learning is a process that has no end point. As Ellis (2008, p. 233) points out, “[l]anguage learning and language use are dynamic processes in which regularities and systems arise from the interaction of people, brains, selves, societies, and cultures using languages in

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the world.” This focus on process characterizes emergentist approaches to language, which Ellis (1998, p. 644) summarizes as follows: emergentists believe that the complexity of language emerges from relatively simple developmental processes being exposed to a massive and complex environment. Thus emergentists substitute a process description for a state description, study development rather than the final state, and focus on the language acquisition process […] rather than language acquisition device.

Learners would need to realize that learning a language is a lengthy undertaking in which motivation is important (Dörnyei 2001) and one that might be fostered by non-formal and informal opportunities. As we have seen in previous chapters, language learning as a continual and dynamic process can be greatly sustained by the use of new technologies.

5.5

What If Learning a Language Is Not Only About Learning Conventions but also About Innovation and Creation?

According to Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008, p. 10), then, learners should not be encouraged to develop just one mental model of language, that is, the model that the teacher represents. Instead, they should be using the language they are learning creatively, for example with other speakers of the language and with the teacher guiding them in their learning towards solving problems independently (Vygotsky 1978). This would also fit with Bakhtin’s (1981) ideas of the plurality of language, heteroglossia and language play. Digital environments can foster creativity and innovation by exposing students to new language models and allowing them to create content, to make use of informal communication opportunities beyond the classroom, and to bring together various modes in creative multimodal meaning-making and play. Online games or other internet interest communities can offer a playful approach to learning and act as affinity spaces that motivate language learners while also providing input and opportunities for interaction and intercultural learning.

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5.6

What If We Truly Understand That Teaching Does Not Cause Learning?

Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008, p. 10) claim that “[a]t best, there is a non-linear relationship between the two” and conclude that this would invalidate experimental approaches to research. This would mean, for example, that studies comparing the effectiveness of new technologies for learning with face-to-face learning are fallacious. It would mean that the focus would need to be on understanding the learners’ needs as well as the affordances of tools (including technologies) to support language learning and on providing learners with opportunities. As Wenger (1998, p. 266) points out, instruction “creates a context in which learning takes place, as do other contexts. Learning and teaching are not inherently linked. Much learning takes place without teaching, and indeed much teaching takes place without learning.” It would thus follow that learning beyond the formal classroom is invaluable. Teachers could encourage learners to make use of mobile devices to explore language use in their environment or engage in affinity spaces (such as internet interest communities). As Gee (2018, p. 9) states, teachers should think about “how we might better organize our work around students’ interests and passions”. This has the potential to increase motivation—a key factor in language learning. Dörnyei and Ushioda (2011) point out that “a particularly fruitful way forward in L2 motivation research is to focus on the close relationship between identity processes and motivational processes, and on how engagement in learning might be linked to membership in an imagined or real community” (p. 8).

5.7

What If Language Learning Tasks Are Not Viewed as Static Frames? What If They Are Seen Not as Providing Input but Instead as Providing Affordances?

Larsen-Freeman and Cameron’s (2008, p. 10) answer is that tasks should be seen “more variably, evolving through use by individuals”. Coughlan and Duff (1994) found that different learners who do the same task perform the task differently and do not learn the same thing from the task. Similarly, Montoro Sanjosé (2013) showed how students’ online activities are often markedly different from the task plans devised by the teacher. This would mean that tasks should not be closed activities that prescribe action. Instead,

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online tasks should give learners both the opportunity and the agency to realize the affordances of technology-based tasks to experience the world, interact with other speakers of the language, and to do so in ways and using modes of communication that are appropriate to them. This would necessitate a certain digital literacy on the part of the learners in terms of the affordances of various tools, such as an awareness that for example gesturing via mobile devices works differently compared to using gestures in faceto-face environments. Using new technologies “as a digital simulacrum of earlier analog practices” (Thorne 2016, pp. 241–242) would not be good enough; institutional settings and curricula would need to encourage teachers to stop doing the same thing that they have always done (e.g. language learning drills such as patterned repetition focusing on form) and instead take account of and make use of the affordances of the new technologies to focus on meaning.

5.8

What If Understanding Through Talk Is the Result of the Dynamics of the System? What If All Aspects of Language Use Are Dialogic?

The notion of the ‘dialogic’ links back to Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of heteroglossia, of language being dialogic, creating meaning only in relation to other things and being made up of a multitude of voices. “A unitary language is not something given [dan] but is always in essence posited [zadan] – and at every moment of its linguistic life it is opposed to the realities of heteroglossia” (Bakhtin 1981, p. 270). While Bakhtin’s work focuses on literature, it has also been influential in applied linguistics. The concepts of the dialogic and of voice, for example, have been taken up Blommaert. What, in short, has language in actual practice to offer to real humans? “Meaning” in itself is a very weak and uninformative answer to that. A concept such as “voice” may offer us more value for money. People use language and other semiotic means in attempts to have voice, to make themselves understood by others. This process is complex and only partly predictable, because whatever is produced is not necessarily perceived or understood, and having voice is therefore an intrinsically social process – that is a process with clear connections to social structure, history, culture, power. (Blommaert 2008, pp. 3–4)

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If all aspects of language use are dialogic, then communication technologies should be supported which allow for dialogicality—in terms of allowing learners to have voice and enabling them to engage with the world outside the classroom for real-life purposes by interacting with speakers of the language (rather than focusing on conventionalized and teacher-led interaction patterns), and by experiencing the contradictions that this may raise. Austin (2015), for example, used Skype in his study to bring together two groups of children, giving them the opportunity to express their voice across country and language barriers. As Blommaert (2008, p. 4) comments: The dialogue to which Bakhtin referred is thus not just a meeting of different voices on neutral ground: it is a social and political diagnostic that is played out in a field which is never neutral but always someone’s home turf. The rules of the dialogue are rarely democratically established; they are more often imposed, either by force or by consensus.

We thus need to think about how voice is expressed materially in a multimodal digital communication environment. In order to communicate successfully, learners would need to be supported in developing greater awareness of their own cultural practices alongside an awareness of the social structures, history and culture in which they are embedded, and of the power relations that these have engendered.

5.9

What If Absolutist Prescriptions and Proscriptions About Teaching Are Doomed to Fail?

As Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008, p. 11) observe, “the organic nature of change’ would need to be taken into account and pedagogic interventions would need to be adaptable. If learning is supposed to be about participating in an L2 community, if there is no one route to participation, if it is an open and evolving system, if it is innovative and creative, if it is not caused by teaching, if tasks are not static frames and if language is dialogic, then prescriptive interventions will not work. Instead, learners’ needs and contexts would have to be taken into account. Alternative approaches to prescriptive and proscriptive teaching could turn to sociocultural theory. Influenced by Vygotsky’s notion of the zone of proximal development, John-Steiner and Mahn (1996) point out that

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learning within a sociocultural framework has been conceptualized as distributed learning, interactive learning and contextual learning and as the result of the learners’ participation in a community of practice. They also point to the importance of artefacts (including computer environments) as one of the active agents within the zone of proximal development, and to collaboration. All these approaches and tools offer alternatives to prescriptive teaching interventions, with the digital media playing an important role in contributing to these socioculturally informed opportunities. It would mean that teachers and learners have to become accustomed to new forms of learning and communicating, using digital media to make meaning and following student-led approaches (e.g. through telecollaborative projects, mobile learning or investment in internet interest communities).

5.10

A New Approach to Language Learning and Teaching

The proposed answers to these ‘what if’ questions suggest that the new technologies have the potential to contribute to a new approach to language learning and teaching, an approach that challenges existing systems and beliefs, overcomes traditional dichotomies and simple causality, emphasizes change, creativity and the dialogic, and favours participation and the learner’s perspective. For the language learner, this means going beyond the narrow confines of the classroom to make use of the opportunities for social, interactive and multimodal meaning-making in both the real world and in virtual worlds, develop learner agency, become an effective communicator in the new digital spaces, and develop an identity as a speaker of the second language. As we have seen in some of the examples in Chapter 4, in many contexts this is already happening. The next chapter will explore what the implications of this are for teaching and for research.

References Austin, N. (2015). Video conferencing and multimodal expression of voice: Children’s conversations in a second language using Skype (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Milton Keynes, The Open University. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (M. Holquist, Ed.). Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Blommaert, J. (2008). Bernstein and poetics revisited: Voice, globalization and education. Discourse & Society, 19(4), 425–451. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0957926508089938. Coughlan, P., & Duff, P. (1994). Same task, different activities: Analysis of SLA task from an activity theory perspective. In L. P. Lantolf & G. Appel (Eds.), Vygotskian approaches to second language research (pp. 173–93). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Dörnyei, Z. (2001). New themes and approaches in second language motivation research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 21, 43–59. Dörnyei, Z., & Ushioda, E. (2011). Teaching and researching motivation (2nd Rev. ed.). Harlow: Longman. Ellis, N. C. (1998). Emergentism, connectionism and language learning. Language Learning, 48(4), 631–664. https://doi.org/10.1111/0023-8333.00063. Ellis, N. C. (2008). The dynamics of second language emergence: Cycles of language use, language change, and language acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 92(2), 232–249. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008. 00716.x. Gee, J. P. (2018). Affinity spaces: How young people live and learn online and out of school. Phi Delta Kappan: The Professional Journal for Educators. Available at https://www.kappanonline.org/gee-affinity-spaces-young-people-livelearn-online-school/. Jewitt, C. (2005). Technology, literacy, learning: A multimodal approach. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203964101. John-Steiner, V., & Mahn, H. (1996). Sociocultural approaches to learning and development: A Vygotskian framework. Educational Psychologist, 31(3–4), 191–206. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.1996.9653266. King, A. (1993). From sage on the stage to guide on the side. College Teaching, 41(1), 30–35. Available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/27558571. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Montoro Sanjosé, C. (2013). The language learning activity of individual learners using online tasks (EdD thesis). Milton Keynes, The Open University. Available at http://oro.open.ac.uk/50081/1/MONTOROthesis.pdf. Sfard, A. (1998). On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one. Educational Researcher, 27 (2), 4–13. Available at http://journals.sagepub. com/doi/pdf/10.3102/0013189X027002004. Skehan, P., & Dörnyei, Z. (2003). Individual differences in second language learning. In C. Doughty & M. Long (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Thorne, S. L. (2016). Engineering conditions of possibility in technology-enhanced language learning. In C. Caws & M.-J. Hamel (Eds.), Language-learner computer interactions: Theory, methodology and CALL applications (pp. 241–246). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available at https://pdfs. semanticscholar.org/aa93/9897656839e593d8c456607a646f89808a13.pdf. White, C. (2014). The distance learning of foreign languages: A research agenda. Language Teaching, 47 (4), 538–553. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0261444814000196.

CHAPTER 6

Implications for Teaching and for Research

Abstract This chapter explores how the potential that the new technologies offer in the context of language learning and teaching can be realized at a time when the system of the traditional classroom is in a period of turbulence, or in chaos. It suggests possible ways of responding to the current phase shift, which is the result of traditional models and approaches to meaning-making in the language classroom being challenged by the introduction of new technological tools. The focus is on what teachers and institutions can do to support learners to use the new digital environments successfully and what the implications are for policy makers and researchers. The chapter concludes by calling for a social justice orientation to computer-assisted language learning (CALL). Keywords Learner support · Soft assembly · Multiliteracies · Teacher development · Social-justice oriented CALL · Qualitative research methodologies in CALL

This chapter explores how we can realize the potential that the new technologies offer in the context of language learning and teaching while also supporting learners and teachers at a time when—as I have been arguing— we have seen a phase shift and the system of the traditional classroom is in “a period of turbulence, or ‘chaos’, where the system keeps on changing dramatically” (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008, p. 44). What are © The Author(s) 2019 R. Hampel, Disruptive Technologies and the Language Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31368-5_6

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possible ways of responding to this phase shift, which is the result of traditional models and approaches to meaning-making in the language classroom being challenged by the introduction of new technological tools? What can teachers and institutions do to support learners to use these environments successfully? What about policy makers and researchers? I will attempt some answers to these questions, first at the micro and meso levels of education, that is, in terms of what teachers and institutions can do, and then at the macro level (in terms of wider changes that are needed). I will also focus on the ways in which learners need to be allowed to shape the tools they use—in often unpredictable ways—and the on-going transformative effects of the digital media with their different affordances on individual and collective practices.

6.1

Implications for Teachers and Institutions

First of all, let us look at the micro and meso levels of education, that is, what teachers and institutions can do to ensure that language learners can benefit from the opportunities that the new interactive digital media offer for meaning-making in the language classroom while also being supported appropriately. As we have seen, online technologies allow students to step out of the classroom, both metaphorically and literally, and to communicate and interact multimodally with a multitude of speakers. Language teachers can use various approaches such as telecollaboration, mobile learning and learning in the wild to ensure that learners benefit from these opportunities. UNIcollaboration (https://www.unicollaboration. org/) for example helps higher education institutions to find partners for telecollaboration projects and provides training. eTwinning (https://www. etwinning.net/en/pub/index.htm) offers a platform for staff in schools in Europe to communicate and collaborate. And resources such as KukulskaHulme et al.’s (2015) teacher’s guide provide pedagogical advice for using mobile learning. In order to ensure learner engagement and interaction in computermediated learning contexts, task-based approaches are particularly useful. Although Doughty and Long (2003) consider task-based language teaching from a psycholinguistic perspective, some of their ten methodological principles are also relevant in the context of sociocultural approaches to learning. These principles are as follows:

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using tasks, not texts, as the unit of analysis promoting learning by doing elaborating input providing rich input respecting ‘learner syllabuses’/developmental processes promoting cooperative/collaborative learning (see Doughty and Long 2003, pp. 52–53).

Other suggestions would be to get students to use their own resources and their own contexts as these are imbued with greater meaning for them than teacher-generated tasks. Teachers also need to accept that different students learn in different ways and at a different pace and ensure that there is flexibility, for example in how learning activities can be approached. This might make the learning context less stressful for learners, thus reducing language anxiety (Horwitz et al. 1986). It is also important for teachers and institutions to move away from seeing the ‘native speaker’ as the ideal interlocutor and the ‘standard language’ as the goal that students should strive for. Rather than taking a deficit approach and focusing for example on error correction, teachers should focus on dialogue and on the notion of a ‘lingua franca’ and on fostering their learners’ communicative and sociocultural competence (see Helm 2017). Students are both experts and novices when it comes to language learning with the help of new technologies. They may know how to communicate with their friends online but are likely to benefit from teacher support, for example when it comes to communicating in a telecollaborative setting with a stranger or a group of strangers in another country or in the context of mobile learning. They will know what a traditional language classroom is like but will not necessarily be familiar with the particular online environments that are being used for learning. They are likely to be familiar with their mobile phones but will require help when asked to use the multimodal toolkit that for example a videoconferencing environment offers in ways that develop their linguistic skills, create social presence and establish social bonds that enhance learning. For online interaction to be successful, teachers need to be aware of the mediating effect that technology has. As Li and Zhu (2017) point out: We believe that computer-mediated collaborative writing can be more effectively implemented in L2 classes when teachers and researchers understand

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more clearly how students approach online writing tasks, what sociocultural factors mediate peer interaction and how they co-function, and how writing tasks and technological tools jointly mediate collaborative writing in an online context.

This applies not just to writing but to online learning and teaching more generally. Teachers will have to develop a deeper understanding of the transformative impact of using digital tools to access a variety of resources that include potential interactants and a panoply of multimodal ways of meaning-making that cater for different learning preferences and open up opportunities for scaffolding. They also need to be aware that the traditional classroom is shaped by various attractors, for example, set interaction patterns, certain communication modes and a particular institutional positioning of learners and teachers, and that the new technologies are now destabilizing this setup, potentially opening up learning. Learner support is thus crucial and both individual teachers and institutions have to not only enable students to learn in these new contexts but they also have to ensure their well-being and their safety online. Just stepping back and letting students get on with communicating online is not sufficient. Lee et al. (2019) suggest that the stimulated recall sessions which were used in their study to gather learners’ views on the role of gesture in mobile language learning settings were also useful for supporting learners in developing particular skills: They may have also supported learners in ways which appeared to encourage their multimodal competence as they were given opportunities to understand the modal interplay of gesture and speech. It has been suggested that teachers need to support language learners to develop multimodal competence based on raising their awareness as to how combinations of modes operate. (p. 36)

This will allow students to experience the second language as well as the other modes available as a dynamic system and to use technologymediated language alongside visual and other modes of communication, “soft-assembling what they can from their resources for different tasks and purposes” (Cameron and Larsen-Freeman 2007, p. 237). The way that the learners in Lee et al.’s (2019) study used their mobile device to perform deictic gestures, pointing at objects of interest, is an example. It is similar to the kind of pointing with a camera that Thurlow and Jaworski (2014)

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describe and which they interpret as ‘prosthetic embodiment’. Pointing is achieved “technologically – or prosthetically – by means of the camera” (p. 476). The teddybear that one of the children in Austin et al.’s study (2017) shows the children on the other side of the screen in an invitation to interact is another example. This emphasis on what learners can accomplish with the resources they have rather than homing in on what they cannot do (Larsen-Freeman 2015) also means moving away from a deficit model of language learning. This applies particularly to assessment; rather than focusing on form and decontextualized language and using external standards for assessment, learners should be evaluated on how they can make meaning with the linguistic and other resources they have. It is still common practice in schools and universities to open up the language classroom to new technologies and new ways of learning while keeping assessment practices unchanged. Thus Chapelle and Voss (2016) conclude their analysis of research from the last two decades on the theme of technology and second language assessment as follows: “We hope to see increased attention in teacher education programs on the role that technology plays not only in language learning but also in second language assessment” (p. 125). Dynamic assessment may be a possible approach to achieve the necessary change (see, e.g., Poehner 2008; Lantolf and Poehner 2004; Ware and Kessler 2014). However, in many institutions, new technologies continue to be used “as a digital simulacrum of earlier analog practices” (Thorne 2016, pp. 241–242). This means that institutional settings and curricula or lack of institutional-led training encourage teachers to continue doing the same thing that they have always done; although teachers today are likely to be using digital tools, many are not encourage to take account of and make use of the affordances of the new technologies. Language learning drills such as patterned repetition focusing on form rather than on meaning are one example for this. “The major problem with repetition in audiolingualism […] was that it didn’t necessarily require students to use language meaningfully. Repeating the form as precisely as possible was seen to be sufficient” (Larsen-Freeman 2013, p. 194). While the new technologies have visibly and powerfully transformed the communicative and informational activity of a huge number of people worldwide, formal educational activity has thus been unevenly influenced to date. Dooly’s (2018) study shows how students use technology in unexpected ways, diverging from the plan that the teacher had. Her conclusion is as follows:

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… teachers [may need] to be more flexible in their planning of how communication technology is used in language learning tasks by proposing situations that challenge the students communicatively in the target language and then encouraging them to deploy communication technology creatively, collaboratively, and through the combination of different technologies to resolve communication gaps, thereby legitimizing their use of communication technology in innovative ways. (p. 215)

And last but not least, institutions have to provide support for research— not just on the practical use of the new media but also around the bigger questions around how new technologies are changing learning and the learner—for example through action research and the sharing of experiences (see also Sect. 6.3).

6.2

Implications for Educational Policy

At the macro level of educational policy there is the need to recognize the importance of interpreting literacy as multiliteracies to reflect our changing times and new social practices and translate this to the classroom. This is particularly crucial for language learning. As Wagner (2015, p. 75) points out, “[t]he target for many second language learners is not just ‘to speak another language,’ but to become part of the social and cultural environment in which this language is used.” Cope and Kalantzis (2009) have reformulated the four pedagogical orientations that were originally proposed by The New London Group (2000)—situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice—as pedagogical acts or knowledge processes, namely experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying. As they point out, “[t]he logic of multiliteracies is one that recognizes that meaning-making is an active, transformative process, and a pedagogy based on that recognition is more likely to open up viable life course for a world of change and diversity” (Cope and Kalantzis 2009, p. 175). This is consistent with the complex systems approach used in this book, as the exploration of Larsen-Freeman and Cameron’s (2008) ‘what if’ questions has shown. The multiliteracies approach provides another lens on the three areas that I have examined in this book. First of all, it understands literacy as providing “a set of supple, variable, communication strategies” (Cope and Kalantzis 2009, p. 170), moving away from the rigid interaction that characterizes the traditional classroom. Secondly, it can help to account for new digital communication practices and provide a literacy pedagogy that

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is “centred on learners as agents in their own knowledge processes, capable of contributing their own as well as negotiating the differences between one community and the next” (p. 172). Thirdly, it can address the ways in which meaning is made in the world. “In a pedagogy of multiliteracies, all forms of representation, including language, should be regarded as dynamic processes of transformation rather than processes of reproduction” (p. 175). Language learners’ meaning-making in the real world is potentially a powerful process of transformation. Connected to this are the implications in terms of teacher development. Teachers who are able to support their students with learning in online spaces need to have a particular knowledge and skills set. They need to know what tools are available and what their affordances are for language learning in general and communication in particular. They have to be able to design tasks for online environments, moderate online discussions, give feedback and develop appropriate assessment; and they need to have the skills to help learners to develop social and intercultural skills (see Stickler and Hampel 2015) as well as skills to do with cybersecurity. Teacher education can greatly help with this (see, e.g., Cutrim Schmid 2017; Lord and Lomicka 2008). However, in 2009, Stockwell concluded that only a small number of teachers who plan to use or are using new technologies in their language classroom have access to training that includes “sufficient grounding in CALL theory and practice, as well as knowledge of what technologies are available to them in order to be able to effectively implement CALL in their specific language learning environments” (p. 99). For many teachers this has not changed. A recent study of language education professionals across 30 countries revealed that almost half of the 285 respondents were dissatisfied or only partially satisfied with the ICT training received, particularly in relation to “currentness of content, balance between theory and practice (indicating a need for more hands-on practice), and duration, intensity, and depth” (Karamifar et al. 2019, p. 3). The authors also note “professionals’ lack of satisfaction regarding post-training, applicability/relevance to their personal needs, access to technology, the curriculum, and institutional support/recognition.” Finally, policy makers have to ensure that the benefits which the digital media offer for language learning reach everyone, including learners located on the other side of the digital divide. Over the past years, a body of ‘critical CALL’ has developed, as Gleason and Suvorov (2019) point out in their introduction to a special issue of the CALICO Journal on ‘Promoting Social Justice with CALL’. Critical CALL focuses on how CALL can be

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used both “to ameliorate or, in some cases, exacerbate problems of discrimination, marginalization, and inequity” (p. i). They also provide questions that could guide a research agenda for social-justice oriented CALL. Similarly, Ortega (2017) calls for research focusing more on “multilingualism and digital literacies for all, not just for the privileged” (p. 307).

6.3

Implications for Research and for Researchers

Using a complexity theory approach to CALL helps us to try and understand the impact that the introduction of digital and online media has had and continues to have on language learning and teaching as well as on language learners and teachers and to show in what ways this change is transformative. As quoted earlier in this book, “CALL is largely a consumer of theories from other sources, not only at the level of teaching and development […] but arguably also in its research tradition” (Hubbard and Levy 2016, p. 25). Examining the final 2018 issues of key CALL journals (Language Learning & Technology, CALICO Journal, ReCALL, Computer Assisted Language Learning, JALTCALL and International Journal of ComputerAssisted Language Learning and Teaching [IJCALL]), it is interesting to see that many researchers prefer to follow a quantitative, experimental research tradition based on a positivist paradigm (15 articles out of a total of 34). In 7 articles, mixed methods were used; qualitative methods were employed in 7 articles; and there was 1 literature review. There were also 4 meta-analyses and systematic reviews (or reviews of systematic reviews). These fit with a more positivist approach to research, thus bringing up the total number of articles rooted in a more positivist tradition to 19 articles out of 34. The dominance of more quantitative and experimental approaches reflects at least partly an environment (created by priorities set by governments as well as funding agencies) in which ‘evidence-based research’ (a term coined in the context of medical research, see Lund et al. 2016) trumps. In principle, evidence-based inquiry is not biased towards randomised trials, experimental pre-test/post-test designs or meta-analyses. Sackett et al. (1996), editors of The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal ), for example, state that “[e]vidence based medicine is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making

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decisions about the care of individual patients”, bringing together individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research. And in their book on evidence-based research in education, McMillan and Schumacher (2010) cover qualitative research alongside quantitative research. However, if we look at the funding behaviour of two educational research funding bodies, it becomes clear that quantitative research is favoured. The British Nuffield Foundation, for example, whose strapline is “Improving social well-being through education, research and innovation”, fund more quantitative than qualitative research— despite pointing out the following in their 2018 Grants for Research, Development & Analysis: Guide for Applicants: “Our research is often founded on quantitative evidence and analysis, but we also believe that the insights provided by well-designed qualitative research or combinations of qualitative and quantitative methods can help to shed light on the problems facing our society and support the development of solutions” (http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/sites/default/files/files/Guide% 20for%20applicants%20v_FINAL%20(Feb2018).pdf, p. 3). And the latest (2019) American Educational Research Association (AERA) Grants Program seeks to fund studies “using rigorous quantitative methods to examine large-scale, education-related data” (http://www.aera.net/ Professional-Opportunities-Funding/AERA-Funding-Opportunities/ Grants-Program/Research-Grants). This is also the environment in which CALL research operates. However, CALL also provides a rich context for exciting and valuable qualitative research. While quantitative researchers ask closed-ended questions to confirm (or disprove) hypotheses and explain phenomena, qualitative approaches are more suited to asking open-ended questions to explore, explain and understand phenomena. This is particularly important in an area that is still quite new but is also constantly shifting with the continual development of new tools and with the identification of new online language learning opportunities. Qualitative approaches to research are also more appropriate in the context of the sociocultural approach that this book has taken, an approach which understands learning as socially, culturally, institutionally, and historically situated and sees the appropriation of new technologies as a social process within a particular culture, rather than as a laboratory-based activity where change can be observed and measured. In the course of the book a number of areas has arisen that CALL researchers may want to explore further, including the following:

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• • • • • • • • •

CALL and social justice multiliteracies language learner identities in online environments pedagogical approaches to fostering online collaboration supporting language learners in the wild using the affordances of particular technologies to best effect intersubjectivity in online environments dealing with the socioaffective experience of learners the challenges around using multiple communication modes and a second language • ensuring that students focus on meaning in interaction and on form • training teachers to teach languages online. In addition, there are challenges in terms of research methodologies in CALL contexts which are worth investigating. Examples include the following: • data collection: capture of data that provide information about the context and linking text and context, i.e. “not privileging discourse or social action but, rather, seeing discourse as one of many available tools with which people take action, either along with discourse or separate from it” (Norris and Jones 2005, p. 4) • data collection: capture of information from two or more interlocutors where one or more are not co-located with the researcher (e.g. in mobile settings) • data transcription: representation of the body and of sensory modes (e.g. proxemics, posture, gesture, head movement, gaze, music) which are part of the complex “multimodal ensemble” (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001, p. 111), rather than focus on linguistic data only • data analysis: fine-grained analysis of what is often an overwhelming amount of multimodal data. Taking account of the implications identified in this chapter, focusing more on qualitative studies and tackling the challenges in terms of research methodologies would be beneficial for both learners and teachers and is likely to enhance current educational practice as well as research.

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References Austin, N., Hampel, R., & Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2017). Video conferencing and multimodal expression of voice: Children’s conversations using Skype for second language development in a telecollaborative setting. System, 64, 87–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2016.12.003. Cameron, L., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (2007). Complex systems and applied linguistics. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17 (2), 226–239. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2007.00148.x. Chapelle, C. A., & Voss, E. (2016). 20 years of technology and language assessment in Language Learning & Technology. Language Learning & Technology, 20(2), 116–128. Available at https://www.lltjournal.org/item/2950. http://dx.doi. org/10125/44464. Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2009). “Multiliteracies”: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(3), 164–195. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/15544800903076044. Cutrim Schmid, E. (2017). Teacher education in computer-assisted language learning: A sociocultural and linguistic perspective. London: Bloomsbury. Dooly, M. (2018). “I do which the question”: Students’ innovative use of technology resources in the language classroom. Language Learning & Technology, 22(1), 184–217. Available at https://www.lltjournal.org/item/3024. https:// dx.doi.org/10125/44587. Doughty, C. J., & Long, M. H. (2003). Optimal psycholinguistic environments for distance foreign language learning. Language Learning & Technology, 7(3), 50–80. Available at http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num3/doughty/. Gleason, J., & Suvorov, R. (2019). Promoting social justice with CALL. CALICO Journal, 36(1), i–vii. https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.37162. Helm, F. (2017). Critical approaches to online intercultural language education. In S. L. Thorne & S. May (Eds.), Language, education and technology (pp. 219–231). Cham: Springer. Horwitz, E. K., Horwitz, M. B., & Cope, J. (1986). Foreign language classroom anxiety. The Modern Language Journal, 70(2), 125–132. Available at https:// www.jstor.org/stable/327317. https://doi.org/10.2307/327317. Hubbard, P., & Levy, M. (2016). Theory in computer-assisted language learning research and practice. In F. Farr & L. Murray (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of language learning and technology (pp. 24–38). London and New York: Routledge. Available at https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10. 4324/9781315657899.ch2. Karamifar, B., Stickler, U., Hampel, R., Germain-Rutherford, A., Hopkins, J., Heiser, S., et al. (2019). Perspectives and trajectories of the language teacher in the 21st century. In WorldCALL 2018 Proceedings. Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold.

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Kukulska-Hulme, A., Norris, L., & Donohue, J. (2015). Mobile pedagogy for English language teaching: A guide for teachers. British Council 2015. London. Available at https://englishagenda.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/attachments/ e485_mobile_pedagogy_for_elt_final_v2.pdf. Lantolf, J. P., & Poehner, M. E. (2004). Dynamic assessment: Bringing the past into the future. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1, 49–74. https://doi.org/10. 1177/1362168810383328. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2013). Complex systems and technemes: Learning as iterative adaptations. In J. Arnold & T. Murphey (Eds.), Meaningful action: Earl Stevick’s influence on language teaching (pp. 190–201). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2015). Toward an integrative framework for SLA. In AAAL Conference 2015. Toronto, Canada. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lee, H., Hampel, R., & Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2019). Gesture in speaking tasks beyond the classroom: An exploration of the multimodal negotiation of meaning via Skype videoconferencing on mobile devices. System, 81, 26–38. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.system.2018.12.013. Li, M., & Zhu, W. (2017). Explaining dynamic interactions in wiki-based collaborative writing. Language Learning & Technology, 21(2), 96–120. Available at https://www.lltjournal.org/item/2998. https://dx.doi.org/10125/44613. Lord, G., & Lomicka, L. (2008). Foreign language teacher preparation and asynchronous CMC: Promoting reflective teaching. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 15(4), 513–532. Lund, H., Brunnhuber, K., Juhl, C., Robinson, K., Leenaars, M., Dorch, B. F., et al. (2016). Towards evidence based research. BMJ, 355(8079), 5440. Available at https://repository.ubn.ru.nl/bitstream/handle/2066/165826/ 165826.pdf. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i5440. McMillan, J. H., & Schumacher, S. (2010). Research in education: Evidence-based inquiry (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson. Norris, S., & Jones, R. H. (Eds.). (2005). Discourse in action: Introducing mediated discourse analysis. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Ortega, L. (2017). New CALL-SLA research interfaces for the 21st century: Towards equitable multilingualism. CALICO Journal, 34(3), 285–316. https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.33855. Poehner, M. E. (2008). Dynamic assessment: A Vygotskian approach to understanding and promoting L2 development. Berlin: Springer. Sackett, D. L., Rosenberg, W. M. C., Gray, J. A. M., Haynes, R. B., & Richardson, W. S. (1996). Evidence based medicine: What it is and what it isn’t. BMJ, 312, 71. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.312.7023.71.

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Stickler, U., & Hampel, R. (2015). Transforming teaching: New skills for online language learning spaces. In R. Hampel & U. Stickler (Eds.), Developing online language teaching: Research-based pedagogies and reflective practices (pp. 63–77). New language learning and teaching environments. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. Available at http://www.sfu.ca/~decaste/ newlondon.htm. Thorne, S. L. (2016). Engineering conditions of possibility in technology-enhanced language learning. In C. Caws & M.-J. Hamel (Eds.), Language-learner computer interactions: Theory, methodology and CALL applications (pp. 241–246). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. Thurlow, C., & Jaworski, A. (2014). ‘Two hundred ninety-four’: Remediation and multimodal performance in tourist placemaking. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 18(4), 459–494. Wagner, J. (2015). Designing for language learning in the wild: Creating social infrastructures for second language learning. In T. Cadierno & S. W. Eskildsen (Eds.), Usage-based perspectives on second language learning (pp. 75–102). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110378528-006. Ware, P., & Kessler, G. (2014). Telecollaboration in the secondary language classroom: Case study of adolescent interaction and pedagogical integration. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 09588221.2014.961481.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

Abstract This chapter revisits the role of theory in CALL and argues for more theoretically-influenced approaches to CALL research, approaches such as complex systems theory that allow researchers to focus on how new technologies are changing learning, what the implications are for learners and teachers and how they can be supported. A summary of how the new technologies have been causing a phase shift, disrupting tradition patterns of meaning-making in the classroom and encouraging new patterns is followed by a confirmatory response to Roger Säljö’s question which he posed in 1999 about whether the new information technologies are radically transforming the way we learn and which opened this book. Keywords CALL theories · Disruption and transformation

The conclusion returns to the role of theory in CALL before giving a résumé of the argument put forward in the book and finishing with a response to the opening question posed by Roger Säljö (1999) about whether the new information technologies are radically transforming the way we learn.

© The Author(s) 2019 R. Hampel, Disruptive Technologies and the Language Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31368-5_7

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7.1

CALL and Theory

In 2015, Tim McNamara published a paper entitled ‘Applied Linguistics: The Challenge of Theory’ where he links the lack of engagement with theory in applied linguistics with the fact that this field of study emerged in the second half of the twentieth century in the UK and in the US as a “practice-related research field associated with the education of international students seeking to study in English-medium universities” (p. 466) and in continental Europe to support the learning of European languages after the World War II. This started to change in the early twenty-first century, with applied linguists such as Michael Halliday, Norman Fairclough, Arthur Pennycook, Ben Rampton, Gunther Kress, Claire Kramsch, and Tim McNamara himself turning to theories that go beyond those used commonly in linguistics. Computer-assisted language learning seems to be in a similar position today as applied linguistics was at the turn of the twentieth to the twentyfirst century. Thus, in 2015 Schulze and Smith published an editorial in the CALICO Journal entitled ‘In Theory – We Could Be Better’ in which they “plead[ed] for a concerted effort by CALICO Journal authors and scholars to further improve the basis of research in CALL” (p. ii). Using ontology, epistemology and methodology as cornerstones, they provide some pointers. In terms of ontology, they refer the reader to scholars such as Lantolf, Larsen-Freeman and Tomasello who support sociocultural theory, dynamic systems theory and emergentism. They conclude the following: Consequently, we have to exclude linear and static metaphors, which are frequently employed in SLA research and language pedagogy, e.g., the linearity of mastery learning and programmed instruction and the assumptions of linearity of cause and effect in studies with a pre-test/post-test research design; and we are grappling instead with the nonlinear nature of language-learning processes in CALL. (p. ii)

In terms of epistemology, they advocate explanation and exploration over prediction. And in terms of methodology, they favour methods that help with “detecting, localizing, describing, explaining, and interpreting change” (p. iii), influenced for example by frameworks such as activity theory or complex systems theory. Their list of theories and methods can be extended by 0’Rourke and Stickler’s (2017) suggestions:

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The teaching and learning of languages online is by now far enough developed to offer a rich variety of approaches and practices; data is accessible and easier to collect and analyse than equivalent face-to-face classes; and there are established methods to help us investigate the issues. Amongst the most promising are eyetracking, Social Network Analysis, and discourse and conversation analysis, for synchronous short-term online encounters; and reflective, activity-theoretic and ethnographic techniques for long-term studies. (p. 11)

Where already in use, these theories and methods are greatly enhancing applied linguistics and they will also help researchers to move away from more positivist approaches to computer-assisted language learning and to focus more on questions as to how new technologies are changing language learning, what this means for learners and teachers, and how they can be supported.

7.2

Digital Technologies Transforming the Way We Learn

In this book, I have used a complex systems theoretical perspective in conjunction with a sociocultural understanding that learning is socially, culturally, institutionally, and historically situated and that technology is a tool that mediates action, and multimodal theory which directs our attention to the fact that we make meaning not just through spoken or written language. In doing so, I have shown that the language classroom (in the widest sense) constitutes a complex system that is changing over time as it interfaces with digital technologies. Taken as a whole, the findings from the studies presented in this book indicate that we are in a phase shift where the new technologies are disrupting traditional patterns of meaning-making in the classroom and where we are moving towards new patterns—which have the potential to lead to new stable states (that is, ‘attractors’, or preferred modes of behaviour). This reshaping of language learning and teaching includes the following: • changes in interaction patterns, opening up the standardized communication routines which are often led by the teacher and carried out with other learners in the classroom to include less regulated interaction both inside and outside the classroom;

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• changes in modes, with the new digital tools and technologies enabling new forms of multimodal communication that allow learners to bring together the linguistic mode with the visual mode, the aural mode, the spatial mode, and the gestural mode; • a move away from the physical classroom as the main space where meaning-making in the L2 takes place towards a new positioning of the learner in relation to the world and towards new learner roles, moving for example from passive consumers in the classroom to more active creators of knowledge in the wild. This also reflects Breen’s (1999) notion of the postmodern language classroom, which is characterized by a shift away from “the place where knowledge of language is made available by teacher and materials for learners and it becomes the place from which knowledge of language and its use is sought by teacher and learners together; the classroom walls become its windows” (p. 55). So in answer to the question that Säljö raised in 1999 about whether “[the new information technologies] support new forms of teaching and learning that radically transform the manner in which people appropriate knowledge” (Säljö 1999, p. 148) and that opened this book, I would argue that from a language learning and teaching perspective which is informed by complex systems theory, digital technologies have indeed transformed the way we learn. We have arrived at a point where the technological changes that we have been experiencing are having a fundamental impact on our social and communicative practices, which in turn are changing the way we learn languages—using new interaction patterns, new communication modes, and new real-world contexts. And this is likely to continue, with emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR) offering increased levels of immersion that can be harnessed for language learning and teaching (see, e.g., Cross et al. (2018) who report on a project where 360 degree video was used in conjunction with mobile VR for language teacher development in India) or artificial intelligence systems to promote customized learning through for example language robots (see, e.g., Kannan and Munday 2018). Säljö’s prediction in 1999—“what we conceive of as learning will be somewhat different when our communicative practices change” (145)— seems to have been accurate. However, only when teachers, institutions

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and policy makers as well as researchers are aware of this and the resulting opportunities and challenges will language learners be able to use the affordances of the new digital tools to develop into speakers of the language with interactive, multimodal, and intercultural skills.

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Index

A Activity theory, 19, 29, 30, 128, 129 Adaptation, 12, 24, 25 Affinity space, 82–84, 87, 91, 105, 106 Affordances, 4, 18, 28, 44, 45, 50, 59, 66, 75, 76, 87, 91, 103, 106, 107, 114, 117, 119, 122, 131 Agency, 91, 101, 107, 109 Appel, Gabriela, 19, 30 Artificial intelligence, 130 Assessment, 46, 73, 84, 117, 119 Asynchronous communication, 43, 44, 57, 61, 64–68, 84, 91 Attractor, 12, 24, 27, 50–54, 129 Audio conferencing, 67, 84 Avatar, 76, 77 B Bakhtin, Mikhail, 81, 105, 107, 108 Block, David, 3, 28, 58, 71 Blog, 60, 64, 65, 67, 71, 72, 84 Blommaert, Jan, 33, 74, 107, 108 Body language, 34, 35, 57, 70, 72, 76 Bourdieu, Pierre, 81

Breen, Michael, 27, 130

C Cameron, 101 Cameron, Lynne, 2, 4, 10–12, 23, 24, 26, 28, 50, 53, 102–106, 108, 113, 118 Chaos theory/science, 2, 23 Chatroom, 57, 67 Chomsky, Noam, 18, 62 Cognition, 5, 6, 21, 26, 28–30 Cognitive language learning theories, 3, 4, 19, 22, 27, 28, 73, 103 Collaboration, 5, 7, 30, 58, 64, 65, 68, 82, 115, 116 Collaborative learning, 115 Communication, homo sapiens, 43 Communicative approach to language teaching, 46, 54, 62–64, 70, 72 Community of inquiry, 68, 69 Complex adaptive system, 21, 26 Complex system, 2, 4, 8–11, 19, 20, 22–28, 50, 51, 101, 118, 128–130

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 R. Hampel, Disruptive Technologies and the Language Classroom, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31368-5

153

154

INDEX

Complex systems theory, 2, 4, 8–11, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25–28, 35, 51, 128, 130 Complexity theory, 2, 12, 20, 22, 23, 27, 29, 102, 120 Computer-assisted language learning (CALL), 3, 17, 18, 22, 27, 58, 119–122, 127, 128 Computer-mediated communication (CMC), 27, 44, 56, 57, 65, 66, 68, 90

D Data, 122, 128 de Saussure, Michel, 18 Derrida, Jacques, 45 Disembodiment, 72, 76, 84 Disruption, 5, 7, 10, 21, 23, 35, 42, 50, 52, 72, 90, 102 Dynamic system, 12, 23, 24, 26, 30, 31, 116 Dynamic systems theory, 2, 21, 24, 26, 128

E Ecology, 3, 4, 7, 9, 18, 21, 29 Ecosystem, 8 Email, 43, 60, 64–66, 84, 103 Embodiment, 55, 56, 63, 67, 74–76, 78, 80, 84, 87, 89, 117 Emergence, 24, 26 Emergentism, 9, 21, 22, 26, 30, 128 Epistemic practices, 46

F Face-to-face communication, 12, 34, 50, 57, 66, 72, 75–77, 90, 102 Facial expression, 33–35, 66, 68, 69, 72, 76, 77 Fan communities, 78, 87, 89

Forum, 56, 60, 64, 66, 71, 72

G Gaming environments, 77, 88 Gass, Susan, 54, 55, 75 Gaze, 64, 70, 72, 122 Gee, James, 82, 83, 88, 106 Geosemiotics, 18, 74 Gesture, 33–35, 43, 44, 55, 58, 59, 61, 64, 66, 70–72, 75–77, 87, 107, 116, 122 Gibson, James J., 18 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 43 Grammar–translation method, 46, 63, 70 Gunawardena, Charlotte, 68, 69

H Halliday, Michael, 18, 33, 62, 71, 128 Hampel, Regine, 5, 58, 59, 66–68, 72–74, 78, 80, 84 Hubbart, Phil, 27 Hymes, Dell, 46, 62

I Identity, 25, 29, 52, 67, 76, 78, 79, 81, 82, 84, 87–91, 101, 103, 106, 109, 122 Image, 34, 44, 64, 70, 71 Imagined communities, 82, 84, 85 Imagined identities, 82, 103 Instant messaging, 44, 60, 66, 84 Instructional conversation, 56 Intercultural communication, 32, 60, 77, 88, 105, 119, 130 Internet interest communities, 78, 87, 89, 105, 106, 109 Intersemiotic relationships, 34, 58, 61 Intersubjectivity, 30, 55, 69, 73, 75, 76, 122

INDEX

Investment, 82, 84, 85, 103, 109 IRF pattern, 52–58, 61, 84 J Jewitt, Carey, 8, 11, 33, 35, 55, 104 K Kern, Richard, 8, 43, 44, 59, 74, 75 Kramsch, Claire, 4, 30, 128 Krashen, Stephen, 18, 54 Kress, Gunther, 2, 6, 11, 18, 33–35, 44, 70, 71, 73, 128 L Language anxiety, 115 Lantolf, James, 11, 18, 19, 30–32, 128 Larsen-Freeman, Diane, 2, 4, 9, 11, 12, 19, 21–28, 30, 50, 53, 101–106, 108, 117, 118, 128 Lave, Jean, 81, 83 Learning in the wild, 78, 88, 89, 114, 130 Learning in the wild, 87 Learning management system, 71 Levy, Mike, 5, 17, 18, 27, 120 Literacy, 28, 32, 35, 60, 67, 77, 88, 103, 104, 107, 118 Long, Michael, 18, 54, 57 M Massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs), 44, 76, 87 McNamara, Tim, 22, 128 Mediation, 5, 11, 18, 19, 21, 28–32, 44, 51, 52, 56, 60, 61, 67, 68, 73–75, 79, 103, 115, 116 Mobile device, 42, 44, 50, 58, 59, 75, 76, 79, 86, 87, 106, 107, 115, 116

155

Mobile learning, 85–87, 91, 109, 114 Mobile technology, 86, 91 Mode, 4, 8, 12, 23, 33–35, 41–45, 49–51, 58, 61, 66, 68, 70–75, 77, 90, 103–105, 107, 116, 122, 130 Multiliteracies, 12, 70, 85, 103, 118, 119, 122 Multimodality, 1–3, 6, 8, 11, 18–20, 23, 33–35, 41, 44, 52, 55, 58, 59, 61, 64, 69–77, 85, 86, 88, 90, 101, 103, 105, 108, 109, 115, 116, 122, 129, 130

N Native speaker, 25, 54, 57, 115 Negotiation of meaning, 52, 54–59, 61, 75, 77, 88 New London Group, 70, 118 Non-linearity, 22, 24, 25, 106 Non-native speaker, 54 Nonverbal language, 33, 35, 68, 69, 72, 76, 84 Norton, Bonny, 30, 80–82, 87

O Orchestration of meaning, 3, 19, 34, 71

P Pennycook, Arthur, 128 Perturbation, 23 Phase shift, 10, 12, 51, 91, 102, 114, 129 Piaget, Jean, 18 Plato, 44, 45 Positivism, 120 Posture, 35, 64, 68, 70, 72, 122 Prigogine, Ilya, 10, 23 Psycholinguistic language learning theories, 58, 89, 114

156

INDEX

R Reading, 35, 41, 47, 62 S Säljö, Roger, 4–6, 11, 12, 19, 23, 32, 46, 127, 130 Scaffolding, 30, 31, 58–60, 78, 91, 116 Second Life, 44, 71, 76, 77, 87 Seedhouse, Paul, 3, 53, 54 Semiotics, 3, 7, 11, 18–20, 25, 28, 33, 34, 55, 62, 70, 73, 74, 107 Skype, 58, 69, 71, 74, 108 Social media, 44, 70, 71 Social presence, 68, 69, 73, 74, 77, 115 Social turn, 3, 28 Socialization, 4, 29, 30, 77, 89 Sociocultural theory, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 18–20, 22, 27–32, 35, 56, 65, 80, 81, 103, 108, 114, 121, 128, 129 Speech, 3, 19, 21, 31–34, 43–47, 54, 55, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 66, 70–72, 74–76, 85, 87, 91, 103, 116 Swain, Merrill, 18, 30, 63, 70 Synchronous communication, 43, 51, 52, 56, 57, 61, 64, 66–68, 72, 77, 78, 84, 88, 129 Systemic Functional Linguistics, 62 T Task-based language teaching, 54, 56, 88, 115 Telecollaboration, 50, 60, 61, 64, 65, 85, 90, 109, 114, 115 Text chat, 56, 67, 71, 73, 76, 90, 103 Thorne, Steven, 5, 7, 11, 19, 21, 30, 32, 86, 89, 107, 117 Tomasello, Michael, 43, 128

Tools, 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 18–20, 23, 29–33, 35, 41, 42, 44, 46, 47, 49, 52, 55, 58, 59, 61, 64–68, 70–75, 79, 84, 90, 91, 103, 104, 106, 107, 109, 114, 116, 117, 119, 121, 122, 129–131 Touch, 35, 72 Turn-taking, 52, 53, 69, 73 V Van Leeuwen, Theo, 6, 8, 11, 18, 34, 35, 44, 70, 71 van Lier, Leo, 18, 20 Varonis, Evangeline, 54, 55 Videoconferencing, 58–60, 71–76, 84, 90, 115 Virtual reality, 130 Virtual worlds, 44, 71, 76–79, 87, 88, 90, 91, 101, 103, 109 Vygotsky, Lev Semionovitch, 5, 8, 11, 18–20, 22, 28–32, 105, 108 W Wagner, Johannes, 78, 79, 88, 118 Webcam, 75, 76 Webconferencing, 71, 76 Weedon, Chris, 81 Wenger, Etienne, 81, 83, 106 Wertsch, James, 5, 7, 8, 11, 19, 23, 30 Widdowson, Henry, 8 Wiki, 60, 64, 65, 71 Writing, 35, 41, 43–47, 56, 58, 61, 62, 64, 65, 69, 70, 72, 74, 77, 103, 104, 115, 116, 129 Z Zone of proximal development, 19, 29, 103, 108