Cross-platform language learning: A spatial perspective on narratives of language learning across digital platforms

Abstract

In the current reality of digital activity, individuals often explore more than one digital platform for language learning. Despite increasing research on the uses of digital platforms for language learning in informal contexts, the cross-platform experience remains in need of elucidation. Drawing on spatial perspectives on digital technology and language learning to conceptualize digital platforms as digital spaces, this study examines the cross-platform experiences of two international students studying English in Australia based on narrative data collected from journal entries, stimulated recall interviews, and social media posts. A narrative approach to the analysis reveals precisely how they organized a variety of digital resources and learning opportunities in online gaming, searching, media-sharing, social networking, and language learning spaces. The learners strategically orchestrated this particular range of digital spaces in alignment with personal interest and need. In accordance with the specific affordances of technological features in these spaces, they created a shared space of interaction in which learning occurred across geographically remote, networked individuals through multimodal language practices. The narrative approach is seen to add analytical power to the issue of space in the sphere of informal digital language learning, in which unique learning pathways for navigating diverse digital spaces are important.