Places for Learning: Technology-mediated Language Learning Practices Beyond the Classroom

Abstract

This chapter presents a case study of a Finnish English language learner’s everyday, out-of-school, technology-mediated, multimodal language learning practices. The study is based on Mediated Discourse Analysis, a research framework that draws on multiple methods and data in the study of social action, to investigate how technology-mediated language learning takes shape in learners’ lives outside the classroom. The data for the study were collected from within the everyday environments of the participant, extending to his peer networks online, and include observation logs, video-recordings of in situ action and interaction, interviews and various types of computer data. The study shows that online computer games and activities around such games may provide important affordances for language learning, not as an objective as such, but as a means of nurturing social relationships and participating in collaborative problem-solving and networking among peers.KeywordsLanguage LearningLanguage TeacherTeacher AutonomyInternet Relay ChatLanguage Teacher EducationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.