BINBIN ZHENG AND CHIN‐HSI LIN
Out‐of‐school literacy practices have been a topic of increasingly scholarly interest over the past two decades, from different theoretical perspectives, in various contexts, and for a variety of purposes (Hull and Schultz 2001). Hull and Schultz stressed the importance of leveraging students' out‐of‐school identities and literacy practices in classroom environments. However, the gulf between students' out‐of‐school and in‐school literacy practices has only been widened by the rapid emergence of digital media (Harklau and Pinnow 2009), as people with access to digital tools and the internet now have unprecedented opportunities for learning via social media, language, games, and problem‐solving activities (Ito 2010).
Indeed, digital media have reshaped the forms, genres, and purposes of reading and writing in ways that transcend traditional literacy's emphasis on the encoding and decoding of print‐based texts (Chun et al. 2016). New literacies research, an evolution of the sociocultural perspective, focuses on multilingual, multicultural, and multimodal reading, writing, and meaning‐making as social and cultural practices mediated by digital technologies (Gee 2000; Knobel and Lankshear 2007; Reinhardt and Thorne 2011; The New London Group 1996). The boundaries among literacies, genres, and representations start to blur (Godwin‐Jones 2015), and the emergence of digital technologies, such as wikis, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook calls for a new understanding of the genres and forms of new literacies, and a closer examination of these technology‐supported literacy practices' affordances and challenges for students' language and literacy development (Kress 2003; Mills 2010). Such an examination is perhaps especially urgent for multilingual learners, who experience special challenges in reading and writing their target foreign languages, and who thus might benefit disproportionately from the communicative opportunities digital technology provides (e.g. Black 2005).
This chapter will first discuss various perspectives on how technology‐supported out‐of‐school literacy practices can influence second‐language (L2) learners' writing. Then, it will discuss how such literacy practices can be leveraged in the classroom, and the implications of this for teaching, learning, and instructional design.
Technology's affordances for language learning vary along with the unique features of each technological tool and the ways that multilingual learners utilize it. This section groups such affordances into four main categories: (i) identity development, (ii) motivation and autonomy, (iii) interaction and reflection, and (iv) language use, each of which is discussed in turn.
Technology‐facilitated informal language learning helps language learners to build their senses of audience and authorship, and to develop their identities as L2 writers through the processes of expressing their thoughts and interacting with a broad spectrum of readers (Black 2008; Kramsch et al. 2000; Lam 2004). A sense of authorship supports the meaning‐making process, as it helps learners become more aware of the rhetorical structure of their texts (Flower 1987). It is stronger among more proficient language learners; and older learners are more aware of authorial intent than younger ones are (McGEE 1992; Tierney and Shanahan 1991). Authorship of blogs is usually represented through a real name or pseudonym for each blog entry, or through the user profiles that present audience members with varying amounts of information about their authors (Warschauer and Grimes 2007). Likewise, audience awareness is closely associated with writing quality: better writers tend to be more sensitive to their audiences, and able to adapt their texts to meet different audience needs (Flower and Hayes 1981; Roen and Willey 1988). Blogs' audiences are usually established through comments left on blog posts, and/or reading other user' comments. Writers tend to construct their writing more thoughtfully when they take the full authorial responsibility and when they are aware of a real broad‐base audience.
Compared to native speakers, L2 learners are often less engaged during classroom activities. As such, it is reasonable to suppose that digital media's affordances for supporting audience‐ and authorship‐awareness could be especially beneficial to such learners' building of their identities as authentic writers through informal writing. As part of a series of studies of the literacy practices of immigrant adolescents who participated in online communities (Lam 2000, 2004, 2009), Lam (2000) documented how Almon, a high‐school student who had immigrated with his family from Hong Kong to the United States, constructed an online identity that differed from his everyday one through out‐of‐school online writing. Almon felt marginalized in his traditional school context, as he perceived his English skills to be insufficient not only for school but for day‐to‐day communication. However, through designing a multilingual website focusing on a popular Japanese singer and multilingual exchanges with his online pen pals, Almon developed his identity as a person knowledgeable about Japanese pop culture. In other words, while the standard English he learned in school produced a sense of otherness, Almon's out‐of‐school use of non‐standard English enabled him to connect with a global adolescent fan community. Subsequently, Lam (2004) highlighted how a bilingual chatroom helped two adolescent immigrants from Hong Kong to the US construct their identities as Cantonese/English bilingual. Both these participants reported that through engaging in the chatroom with interlocutors from similar linguistic and cultural backgrounds, they increased their fluency and confidence in speaking English within their US context; and both also adopted a mixed‐code variety of English through a process of language socialization with their peers. Similarly, Black (2008) studies three young English learners' participation in fanfiction.net, a public online platform for the sharing of users' fictional writing. Through composing fictions in the forum and exchanging feedback with a global audience of other writers, Black's participants all constructed their online identities as popular multiliterate writers and developed strong senses of audience and authorship.
To sum up, there is a growing body of evidence that informal language learning on digital media could provide multilinguals with opportunities to practice writing in various genres, not only with/for their L2 peers from similar language backgrounds, but also for broader English‐speaking audiences all over the world. Through language socialization, L2 learners in both Lam's (2000, 2004, 2009) and Black's (2008) studies constructed their identities as multilingual speakers and writers in ways that transcended geographic, linguistic, and cultural boundaries. The senses of authorship and audience that they developed via informal writing on an online platform was of profound importance to their L2 learning.
Due to the inherent difficulty of L2 writing, it is reasonable to expect that L2 learners will have low levels of interest in and motivation toward writing activities, especially in classroom settings. Nevertheless, when provided with opportunities to craft authorial voices and build authentic audiences through digital writing in out‐of‐school contexts, language learners tend to be highly motivated, deeply engaged, and more thoughtful when constructing written texts (Wheeler et al. 2008). This may be linked to findings that informal language learning provides a less judgmental environment for language learners, who feel more comfortable engaging in out‐of‐school literacy practices, which could further increase their motivation to write, especially in the case of less‐proficient language learners' practices (Vikneswaran and Krish 2016). In addition, the personal engagement of language learners in non‐school‐related activities drives them to actively acquire the knowledge and skills they need to participate in such literacy activities (e.g. Godwin‐Jones 2015).
Moreover, research has shown that when students' fears about making grammatical errors are mitigated, they can develop more positive attitudes toward writing, focusing more on its global as opposed to local aspects (e.g. Rama et al. 2012; Sun 2010). Rama et al. (2012), for example, studied two undergraduate learners of Spanish, Emilio and Silvania, who participated in a Spanish version of the massively multi‐player online role‐playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft (WoW). Emilio was a beginner Spanish speaker and an advanced WoW player, while Silvania was an advanced Spanish speaker and a novice WoW player. Given that MMORPGs are goal‐oriented, players are not labeled based on their language proficiency. Emilio was able to lead Silvania and other Spanish‐proficient players in their exploration of the game while enjoying social interactions with them. Rama et al. pointed out that the affordances of MMORPGs included providing safe spaces for socialization in the target language with native speakers and the goal‐oriented nature of such games created numerous collaboration opportunities, through which L2 speakers could develop their communicative competence, increasing their motivation.
Increased motivation is not a unique affordance of MMORPGs, however. Research on informal writing in out‐of‐school contexts has consistently demonstrated that this benefit is manifested in various technological environments, especially on social media (e.g. Lin et al. 2016). Specifically, Lin et al. (2016) found that L2 learners who did not have access to native speakers in their day‐to‐day life became more motivated when they were engaged in authentic communications with native speakers online; and Black (2005) demonstrated how the peer‐review feature on fanfiction.net encouraged L2 writers to keep up their writing. Vandommele et al. (2017), who examined multimodal composition both in and out of school, detected no differences in the effects of these two contexts on the writing development of Dutch as L2 learners; however, they did find that learners in the out‐of‐school group were more motivated and engaged, and ascribed this to these learners' greater control over content‐ and mode‐selection, and their more frequent opportunities to collaborate with experts – in this case, freelance artists.
Informal writing and gameplay can also help students develop L2‐learning autonomy. Based on Benson's (2013) autonomy framework, which consists of four dimensions – location, formality (i.e. incidental vs. intentional learning), pedagogy, and locus of control – Chik (2014) showed that gamers learned an L2 through social interaction within games. They chose physical locations for gaming or virtual L2 immersive environments for learning, while also switching between incidental and intentional learning, and between leisure and learning practices. In terms of pedagogy, Chik found that, though a lack of structured instruction and/or learning materials might restrain gamers' L2 learning progress, they also tended to go beyond games to explore other gaming‐community resources, e.g. serving as language advisers or translators for other gamers. And lastly, regarding locus of control, Chik found that gamers were able to make learning decisions during gameplay.
Engaging in technology‐supported literacy practices outside school contexts usually involves opportunities to interact not only with learning resources, but also with other individuals around the world. More specifically, the interactive nature of digital platforms allows people with internet access to engage in feedback exchange with peers, and this could be especially beneficial to L2 learners' language development. Peeters (2018) has proposed a peer interaction model for language learning, encompassing cognitive, metacognitive, organizational, and social‐affective processes. Peeters explains that by interacting with peers, language learners engage in meaning‐making and negotiation process through composing and revising, while also applying metacognitive strategies to plan and reflect on their interaction. In addition, this process also involves the selection and use of available resources to facilitate the interaction. Finally, peer interaction is also a social and affective communication which is proven to be essential for enhancing motivation and engagement in language learning.
It is also important to note that the communicative and interactive affordances of digital platforms vary widely. Cho's (2017) examination of three L2 learners' interaction patterns during collaborative writing activities in an informal debate‐club environment found that, when they collaborated on Google Docs using the text‐chat function, their interaction exhibited high mutuality but low equality; whereas, their communication on Google Docs using Skype for voice‐chat was more collaborative, with mutuality and equality both being high. In other words, the instant and interactive nature of voice communication appeared to enhance L2 learners' interaction and collaboration.
The commenting function of MMORPGs and social media such as blogs, Twitter, and Facebook allows users to exchange feedback (Ferdig and Trammell 2004), which – in the case of informal language learning – can be divided into two general types. One is corrective feedback, focusing on the accuracy of grammar (e.g. tenses and word choice), sentence structure, and sentence transitions; and the other is content feedback, covering the content of the writing, such as the themes and the communicative effectiveness. Given that online communities are largely either friendship‐driven (e.g. Facebook and Snapchat) or interest‐driven (Ito 2010), content feedback is more prevalent than corrective feedback, except on social‐media platforms that specifically focus on language learning where corrective feedback is prevalent due to the focus of the sites on learning an L2 (see Lin et al. 2016).
Providing content feedback on others' writing requires L2 learners to think critically about what others write, while receiving content feedback from others provides them with opportunities to reflect on their own writing and to cultivate their metacognitive skills. Research on fan fiction (Black 2005) and online chatrooms (Lam 2004) has shown that these platforms facilitate L2 learners' engagement in authentic and meaningful exchanges with native speakers; and that the giving and receiving of comments fosters a high degree of interactivity between audience and authors, which could encourage deep thinking as well as additional dialogue. The sustained conversation produced between audience and authors in these social‐media environments can also provide L2 learners with opportunities to generate new ideas, and lead them to further writing and thinking (Downes 2004). Another example of content feedback in informal settings is provided by MMORPGs, whose major focus is on completing quests with other players; research has shown that such games facilitate L2 learner players' learning of new discourses and development of communicative competence (e.g. Chik 2014; Rama et al. 2012). During this process, language is used as a communicative tool to convey ideas and facilitate conversation, linguistic errors are overlooked, and corrective feedback is seldom offered.
Compared to native speakers, L2 learners generally have smaller vocabularies, make more grammatical errors, and express their ideas less clearly (Silva 1993). It is therefore reasonable to expect that informal writing in out‐of‐school contexts could potentially facilitate L2 students' language development by increasing their vocabulary sizes, enhancing the complexity of their writing, and providing concrete experience of writing in various genres and for different purposes. The literature suggests that language development has two main aspects: language use and multimodality across genres on digital writing in informal language learning environments.
Technology‐supported writing in out‐of‐school settings, including social media (Black 2005; Lam 2000) and gaming (Rama et al. 2012; Scholz 2016) has been found capable of enhancing L2 learners' vocabulary sizes and language complexity; and vocabulary learned in MMOPRGs can be transferred to other, non‐gaming contexts (Scholz 2016). Moreover, when L2 learners know that a broad audience will read the texts they have written, their attentions to linguistic forms are usually heightened (e.g. Blake 2000), a phenomenon sometimes labeled “the construct of noticing” (Smith 2012). However, such noticing does not necessarily lead to improvement in L2 accuracy. Lin et al.'s (2016) linguistics‐based study of learner‐initiated writing activities by 20 Chinese‐speaking English learners on Livemocha, a large language‐learning social‐networking site, found that although the participants' target‐language complexity improved after using the platform for several months, they also made more errors than when they started. Nevertheless, such results should not be interpreted as condemnations of digital writing outside of the school; as Lin et al. noted, making more errors over time is not uncommon, even among L2 learners using a well‐designed curriculum and receiving explicit corrective feedback.
In addition to being studied in terms of its linguistic forms, language use can be approached from a sociocultural perspective, focusing on its appropriateness to specific social contexts. Research in this vein has suggested that, in real‐life scenarios, the cultural appropriateness of language use and value‐realizing actions might be valued more highly than linguistic accuracy, and that these social skills and communicative competences are less likely to be gained from formal educational settings than informal ones (e.g. Hanna et al. 2009; Newgarden 2015). A study of WoW gamers by Newgarden and Zheng (2016) clearly demonstrated that beginning gamers accessed a special type of social discourse within the game, and leveraged it to complete advanced quests as they progressed. In other words, the social affordances of MMORPGs provide environments for situated learning (Newgarden 2015) in which gamers demonstrated their understandings of the game through skilled linguistic actions (e.g. established routines to complete a particular quest in cooperation with others).
Literacy practices in online spaces normally involve the use of multimodal texts across genres. While digital writing is primarily text‐based (e.g. blogs, wikis, and Twitter), it can also include other modalities, such as still images (e.g. Snapchat, Instagram) or videos (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo). Multimodal representations offer L2 learners, especially beginners, important opportunities for learning, communication, and cultural exchange. Lam (2000, 2004) and Black (2005) have shown that beginning learners of English developed their English proficiency through multimodal texts on their websites, fiction writing, and/or conversations in online chatrooms, in part because the multimodality of their digital writing helped them to express their ideas more easily and clearly than texts alone would have allowed. The linguistic and cultural hybridity highlighted by Black and Lam gave their participants expertise in certain content areas that was closely tied to their identities as L2 users, and this process facilitated their gradual development of literacy skills. Similarly, Benson and Chik (2010) reported how a Norwegian woman discussed the meaning of an English word with a native English speaker around a photograph shared on the image‐hosting site Flickr, and how this online space facilitated situated literacy practices and L2 learning; and the study of WoW by Newgarden and Zheng (2016) highlighted that L2 gamers' quests involved a wide variety of multimodal communications, such as text‐ and verbal‐communicative activities (e.g. planning next moves), embodied actions (e.g. traveling), or both at the same time.
While hybridity of digital writing enables L2 learners to design meanings to suit their audiences, each technological tool or modality may also have its unique affordances. By comparing L2 students' collaborative writing via voice‐chats and text‐based wikis, Oskoz and Elola (2014) found that innate affordances of these two modes of communication resulted in different impacts on students' writing: specifically, the synchronous nature of voice‐chat enabled students to focus more on the global aspects of writing (e.g. content and organization), whereas the editing feature of wikis encouraged students to pay more attention to the local aspects of writing (e.g. vocabulary use, grammar).
It is important to make connections between language learners' out‐of‐school literacy activities and school learning. According to a study of 4000 middle‐school students in the US, “students recounted their technology using practices outside of school and suggested that more creative, interactive, and media‐oriented use of technology in school would lead to their increased engagement” (Spires et al. 2008). However, this call was not always recognized by literacy teachers or school administrators. Classroom teachers either do not see literacy practices such as writing online fan fiction, producing videos, or communicating via online gaming as relevant literacy activities (e.g. Thorne 2000), or have concerns that engaging in these informal online language‐learning activities may not be beneficial or may even be detrimental to learners' formal language learning, especially in response to high‐stakes language assessment (Godwin‐Jones 2015). Opponents may also argue that out‐of‐school literacy activities are usually unstructured and not always well aligned with specific learning content or a fixed format of language learning. Nevertheless, new literacies research has stressed the importance of multiple voices, language use in various sociocultural contexts (e.g. jargon, code‐switching between L1 and L2), and using language as a tool for communication and interaction, all of which tend to be overlooked in a traditional classroom environment (Ware 2017).
Based on these needs, Thorne and Reinhardt (2008) established a “bridging activities” framework and further proposed a three‐stage model – observation and collection, exploration and analysis, and creation and participation (Reinhardt and Thorne 2011) – to implement this framework into L2 literacy practices. This framework emphasizes strengthening L2 learners' linguistic awareness and meaning‐making process in specific social cultural practices through the bridging of literacy experiences that learners gain from everyday life and the affordances of schooling such as teacher scaffolding and appropriate guidance. We now discuss the implications of this bridging framework for L2 writing pedagogies as well as assessment.
L2 classroom teachers could consider bringing social media into the formal learning environment as learning tools (Chen and Bryer 2012). For example, by incorporating social media tools such as blogs, wikis, and Twitter, instructors could connect learners with not only peers in the classroom, but also a broader audience including outside communities, experts in different fields, or peers around the world. However, doing so requires instructors to rethink the writing pedagogy and the dynamics among teacher, learner, and technology.
The incorporation of social media into the classroom has transformed the relationship between teachers and learners. It is important for teachers to play an active role as facilitators in the learning process, and to look for a balance between providing necessary instructional guidance or scaffolding and giving students a certain degree of flexibility in ensuring the authentic and creative affordances of technology‐facilitated literacy practices (Zheng and Warschauer 2017). In addition, teachers should recognize the competencies and skills students bring in to the classroom environment from informal literacy activities, and provide an authentic and flexible environment for students to maximize the affordances of those skills they have gained from the out‐of‐school environment for language learning (Smith et al. 2017). It also means that teachers need to recognize that sometimes students could be more advanced in certain technologies and that the authority is not one‐way. This is well supported by new literacies research, which suggests that in interactive learning communities, all participants assume the role of both teacher and learner; teaching and learning could be distributed among community members (Black 2008, 2009; Gee 2004; Lankshear and Knobel 2007).
Besides bridging out‐of‐school literacy into classroom environment, teachers could also provide support for language learning beyond classrooms. It is suggested that teacher belief about the connections between language learning in and outside classroom could determine the degree of support and preparations teachers provide for students' out‐of‐school language learning, which could further affect student learning (Reinders and Benson 2017). Teachers could design and assign action research projects to language learners, promoting autonomous learning in authentic everyday life environment. For example, in Chern and Dooley's study (2014), young Chinese learners of English were encouraged to “walk down the streets of Taipei” to observe bilingual signs and posters. Four resources model were introduced – text code‐breaker, text user, text participant, and text analyst (pp. 114–115) – to take students into the linguistic landscape especially in this globalized city.
On the other hand, teachers should also help students develop learning skills that are essential for informal language learning in out‐of‐school contexs. These skills could include independent and autonomous learning; the ability to locate, utilize, and evaluate online resources or modes; identity construction through social media; and awareness of language‐learning opportunities in informal settings (Reinders and Benson 2017).
Kurek and Hauck (2014) have proposed three key principles for designing multiliteracy activities: informed reception of multimodal input, thoughtful participation in opinion‐generating acts, and creative collaboration (pp. 127–130). First, from the cognitive load theory (Mayer and Moreno 2003), the provision of multimodal information should not exceed learners' cognitive capacity which would lead to students being overwhelmed with a vast amount of information rather than learning of the content itself. Clear guidance and cognitively sound design are needed to increase students' germane load while decreasing their extraneous load.
Second, since many language learners, especially less experienced ones, often lack experience in thoughtful opinion‐giving and focus heavily on simple expressions or using emoticons during online communications, it is important to choose the appropriate communication modality that will best support the learning purposes. For example, if the purpose is for students to gain a deep understanding on a certain topic and increase language complexity, asynchronous text‐based online discussion may be a better platform than synchronous voice‐based mode. Likewise, if we want students to strengthen their individual authorship identity, a more appropriate technology might be the one targeting a broader audience such as blogs or twitter, rather than a closed online discussion or wiki which promotes multiauthorship and collaborative writing.
Finally, creative contribution focuses more on the output or what was called “semiotic initiators” (Canagarajah 2003). Thus, we could encourage the use of multimedia authoring tools to facilitate the process of restructuring ill‐constructed content or encoding content into different modes (Kurek and Hauck 2014, p. 131). Tools such as Diigo, Pinterest, and YouTube facilitate the curation (i.e. content creation) process. For example, language learners could use Pinterest to create a collage of a specific language‐learning topic using multiple modalities texts, images, and videos in order to present their thoughts and ideas through creative collaboration (Godwin‐Jones 2015).
Language learners are actively engaged in a wide range of technology‐facilitated writing activities in their out‐of‐classroom settings, such as blogging, tweeting, messaging, and online gaming; however, these are either not recognized as language learning or their affordances for language development have not been fully exploited. Our chapter has discussed how L2 learners' informal literacy activities in online communications could potentially be beneficial for their writing development in multiple ways, including: helping students develop their multilingual and multiliterate identities and strengthen audience and authorship awareness; increasing motivation and autonomy in writing; enhancing interaction and feedback exchange between readers and writers; and facilitating language development and multimodal composition. We further highlighted an urgent need to bridge the gap between out‐of‐school and in‐school literacy practices, and discussed the implications for L2 writing pedagogies, providing learner support, and activity design.
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