Instanarratives: Stories of foreign language learning on Instagram

Abstract

In a networked society, social media has become central to individuals’ lives. It has enabled people to access information, interact with communities, share experiences, find entertainment, and learn. This paper explores an online community on Instagram where members connect by sharing narratives, stories, memories, and other accounts of foreign language learning. The research seeks to assess the ways an online community on Instagram can be a learning network. It also investigates the affordances perceived by the community members in their language learning histories (LLHs). The analysis revealed that the community matches the network principles proposed by Downes (2012): autonomy, diversity, openness, and interactivity. Also, LLHs reveal that, in their personal learning networks, narrators have perceived affordances to interact with foreign language speakers; explore multimodality; make connections between native and foreign language; interact with technologies and cultural artifacts; practise repetition; find personal connections with the foreign language; participate in fandoms; and pay attention to foreign language speakers. The stories shared in the learning network indicate that the actions upon affordances perceived in informal environments seem to have a positive impact on learners’ linguistic repertoires, identities, and emotions.