Investigating Affordance in Technology-Enriched Language Learning Environment Through Exploring Students’ Perezhivanija

Abstract

Abstract Preceding works tend to explicate affordance through supposing what is happening here and now. They seldom relate it to actual social, diachronic activities, such as foreign language learning. To tackle this issue, this study explores how students actualize affordances in technology-enriched language learning environment (TELLE) by examining their perezhivanija (lived and emotional experience), a term borrowed from sociocultural theory. Because an individual’s social life is a developing process or a perezhivanie Perezhivanie is the singular form of perezhivanija. , it is necessary to base the research in a dynamic development of language learning to figure out how the affordances are actualized. Narrative interviews were adopted to collect data from three Chinese college students who learn English as a foreign language in a Northeastern university in China. The results showed that due to the students’ different past perezhivanija in English learning, their present interpretations of the perceived affordances in TELLE varied. This influenced hugely in their actions taken during their English learning in college to actualize the affordances. The findings indicated that the actualization of affordances is historical, dynamic and developmental instead of static. It does not lie in the autonomy of the students or the teachers, but in the institutional and cultural legitimacy of technology use in student’s social life. The paper contributes to the application of affordance theory in foreign language learning and provides implications to language teaching practice in TELLE.