Multilingual Computer Assisted Language Learning
296
Multilingual Computer Assisted Language Learning
296Paperback
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781788921473 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Channel View Publications |
| Publication date: | 08/09/2018 |
| Series: | Bilingual Education & Bilingualism , #114 |
| Pages: | 296 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.15(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Daniela Elsner is Professor of foreign language learning and teaching and Director of the Academy of Teacher Education and Research at Goethe UniversityFrankfurt, Germany. Her research focuses on early language learning, bi- and multilingual practices in language learning, multiliteracies, and higher education teaching.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Multiple Languages of Digital Communication
Wolfgang Hallet
The Cultural Need to Communicate in Multiple Languages
The notion of multilingualism traditionally refers to a multiplicity of verbal languages in which individuals are proficient and which are used or co-present in discursive and social interaction. A large number of societal and cultural factors have led to a growing diversification of the languages in everyday communication and in almost all cultural domains. In light of more recent European and worldwide tendencies of a return to nation-state policies and nationalized thinking, the obvious needs to be restated: migration (forced and free) and globalization have made it almost impossible to communicate solely in the native language any longer. Jobs and employees move freely across Europe and other continents, and even smaller companies often operate globally or Europe-wide so that the world of work has clearly become multilingual. The same applies to public communication and the circulation of knowledge or content of all kind, and of popular cultural artifacts in particular. Media corporations operate globally; TV channels, the film industry, streaming portals and the world wide web in general have made it possible to communicate everything in almost any language globally, so that anyone who is proficient in the language of the content that they would like to access (a Spanish website, a French feature film or an American TV show, for example) is able to do so, no matter where they are located. The same applies to the domain of education and knowledge production. In many educational institutions, the national language is no longer the only medium of instruction and scientific knowledge; moreover, due to cultural multilingualism (as is the case in countries such as Switzerland, Northern Italy and Luxembourg) the education system as a whole is multilingual. Last but not least, people seek refuge across states and continents or decide to migrate, and people's personal lives have become more mobile. Travelling has become an almost natural part of people's private lives so that they experience the need to communicate in a foreign language in their own personal lives.
To summarize: the need to educate multilingual citizens (or 'multilingual subjects', as Claire Kramsch [2010] terms them) is not simply a pedagogically desirable goal, but it is a response to cultural developments represented by all of these processes of migratory, cultural and economic globalization and is therefore a pressing educational issue (Elsner et al., 2013: 57). However, all of the processes sketched above are not only characterized by the use of different languages, often in the same communicative or institutional context. They have also produced, or at least go hand in hand with, new ways and modes to communicate. The internet has enhanced the spread of other symbolic languages, and visual languages (diagrammatic, photographic, filmic, etc.) in particular, and communication in general has become diversified in terms of the sign systems that are routinely used. This is why this chapter argues that the concept of language needs to be extended beyond the system of linguistic signs in order to account for the large number of other symbolic languages that are used in everyday communication, and in digital environments in particular. These other symbolic languages and semiotic modes can be considered languages in their own right that engage in specific ways of making meaning, either on their own or in combination with each other and the verbal language (multimodality). In a semiotic approach, the large potential and the chances that the use of linguistic and non-linguistic sign systems offer in multilingual environments and all processes of meaning-making needs to be investigated. In such an approach, second and foreign languages are conceived of as semiotic resources and modes of meaning-making, among a large range of other semiotic modes. One of the conclusions that will be addressed concerns the need to incorporate the acquisition of other non-verbal literacies into language learning in order to equip learners with the symbolic resources that are required in multimodal and multilingual acts of communication and develop their semiotic competence, or 'symbolic power' (Kramsch, 2010: 13–14). In that sense, all language learning is almost 'naturally' bound to be 'multilingual'.
Digital Communication: From 'Language' to 'Literacies'
In the domain of teaching and learning languages, communicating content between interlocutors in given situations and interactions is the core of the use of language and of all language learning. What, then, do we do with digital types and forms of communication that are inherent to the utterance itself? Examples of such digital communicative forms are the combination of a photograph and a small story on one of the instant messaging platforms (WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram), an explainer video on a video platform, but also an electronic slide that may combine verbal text, an image and sound in a single 'text' (the slide).
Since the digital texts in these examples are quite distinct and generically different from each other (e.g. the digital story and the explanatory text), subsuming all of them under 'media' doesn't appear to be a particularly appropriate way of conceptualizing or categorizing them. In any case, it is not helpful in terms of a concept of language learning. On the other hand, as a result of its implementation in the federal educational standards for foreign languages, 'media' is a category and an explanatory framework that is widely used in pedagogical theories, and 'media competence' (Medienkompetenz) has become the most popular and widespread pedagogical concept in Germany on which everybody in the field draws as a standard rationale applied to (or imposed on) all aspects of foreign language learning (e.g. KMK, 2012: 22–23). However, 'media' is an extremely broad and abstract concept that can mean anything and everything: the feature film, the internet, the graphic novel, the tablet, the email, the smartphone, the photograph, the tweet – all of these are counted under media, although, obviously, the term encompasses a wide range of inconsistent categories. As the examples demonstrate, 'media' may refer to the artifact or 'text' as well as to the technical device or to the channel that carries the signs; it may refer to the hardware as well as the software; and it may denote a whole media system (e.g. 'the press') as well as a single learning device like the electronic dictionary. On the other hand, pen and paper ('old media', as it were) or the printed book don't really come to mind when the notion of 'media' is used, although they obviously are part of the ('old') media system. Most likely, no one would argue that reading a novel enhances 'media competence' – whereas a feature film is supposed to do so. That's why 'media competence' is not particularly apt to grasp the phenomena that one needs to focus upon in the contexts of teaching and learning languages.
To summarize: technologies in themselves do not 'naturally' affect or transform language learning processes and interactions, nor do they enhance them, unless this transformation is pedagogically conceptualized and put into practice. As David Buckingham (2009) argues:
We need to move beyond the idea that technology has consequences in and of itself. There may indeed be great creative, educational and democratic potential here; but whether that potential is realized depends on how the technology is used, and on the social relationships that are constructed around it. We need to think creatively about the new forms of educational practice, and the new forms of community, which can make this happen. Technology in itself will not make children creative, nor will it motivate or enable them to learn. Children need to develop specific skills both in using software and hardware, and in more 'traditional' areas of literacy and artistic expression, if the potential is to be realized. (Buckingham, 2009: 138)
This critique of 'media' as a category and of computer or technology-oriented concepts in language learning is, of course, not meant to deny or ignore the valuable, often innovative proposals and contributions that have been made by them in the field of learning and teaching languages. On the contrary, historically and methodologically, they were the first and the most productive approaches that accounted for the role of what used to be (and sometimes is still) called 'the new media'. However, since digital technology is no longer one factor among others or a single phenomenon, but has instead become a whole, omnipresent dimension of everyday life that affects everybody's ways of thinking, communicating and doing, and society as a whole as well as the social lives of individuals, 'digitalization' must be reconceptualized as a dimension of school education. It is not a factor that is additional or external to acts of communication and to language learning. Rather, digitalization has become inherent to the use and acquisition of languages, no matter whether they are native, second or foreign: to a great extent, communication itself has taken on a digital form; a large number of communicative acts are digital themselves and occur in electronic environments. This is why digital acts of discourse and digital formats of communication – digital modes and genres, the digital languages – need to be taught and learned in the language classroom.
The emergence of new multimedia technologies, of the digitalization of communication and of the electronic hypertext in particular, has therefore made it most urgent to account for the combination of different symbolic forms in displays and environments in which 'meaning' can no longer be explained as resulting from the use of the natural human language alone. In digital communication, the contribution of other codes and sign systems such as sound and music, maps and diagrams, photographs and moving images, is most obvious and almost standard:
Multimodal production is now a ubiquitous fact of representation and communication. That forces us urgently to develop precise tools requisite for the description and analysis of texts and semiotic entities of contemporary communication. (Kress, 2010: 102)
Therefore, theories not only of cultural semiosis and communication, but also of language learning and of multilingualism must explain and describe how meaning is made across (and simultaneously through) a variety of different semiotic systems, semiotic and generic modes (carried by different 'media' and placed in different medial environments, digital media among them), and how a combination of all of these modes and media is able to produce one integrated, or even coherent and more or less conventionalized meaning.
Multiliteracies pedagogy (The New London Group, 2000) has responded to both, the fundamental cultural changes delineated in the first section of this chapter, and the need for a new pedagogy in light of these sociocultural and economic changes. Therefore, the purpose of the multiliteracies pedagogy is twofold:
First, we want to extend the idea and scope of literacy pedagogy to account for the context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalised societies; to account for the multifarious cultures that interrelate and the plurality of texts that circulate. Second, we argue that literacy pedagogy now must account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies. (The New London Group, 2000: 9)
The fundamental cultural changes in communication, interaction and orientation as described by The New London Group (2000) can briefly be summarized as the global circulation of texts of all kinds (resulting in the pluralization and individualization of cultural, ethical or religious orientations), the enormous multiplication of the amount of data and information that is accessible (e.g. through online search tools), the acceleration of the distribution of information and texts (of all kinds) and the use and combination of a large variety of semiotic modes in single acts of representation and communication, be they visual, diagrammatic or cartographic or other languages (cf. Elsner & Viebrock, 2013; Etus, 2013: 36).
These social, cultural and communicative changes were partly, but not exclusively, caused by digitalization. In any case, this more or less sociological and cultural analysis urges us to develop an emancipatory pedagogical theory that attempts to define the competencies, abilities and skills that schools need to teach in order to educate young people for a self-determined life, and full and equal participation in all spheres of the societies in which they (will) live and work. Digital education [digitale Bildung] must therefore be conceived as part of a larger pedagogical framework that draws upon the social, cultural and societal changes, processes and conditions in which the young generation live and which they must be able to actively design and create ('designing social futures', The New London Group, 2000; also cf. BMBF, 2016: 6).
As the name suggests, the multiliteracies approach responds to the large variety of semiotic modes that are used in everyday and in online communication and the need to integrate the teaching and learning of these 'languages' into school education. As opposed to media- or technology-oriented concepts, multiliteracies pedagogy focuses upon the processes of meaning-making in communicative interaction. It addresses the various modes of communication and draws attention to the specificity of the respective sign system that is used in a communicative act. Sometimes, this occurs on its own, as in a photograph, but it may also occur in combination with other modes, as in the combination of language and images in a film or on TV. Accordingly, the multiliteracies approach articulates the need to educate the students' proficiency in a range of literacies (the 'languages' of the different sign systems) and their combination in communicative interaction. Although the multiliteracies approach was not designed for the foreign language classroom, the literacies concept points to the fact that an individual's capacity to 'pursue their happiness' and to participate fully in societal processes and cultural discourses depends largely on the ability to make meaning of signs; to acquire and share knowledge; to articulate thoughts, emotions and experiences; and to engage in all sorts of communicative interaction (being 'literate') in a large variety of sign systems, not least in a foreign language.
This is why in the English classroom, generally speaking, digital education must account for the digital dimension and the multisemiotic character of discourses in the foreign language and in the individual's cultural, political and social environment. School education needs to equip the students with digital competencies and multiple literacies (cf. Walker & White, 2013: 8–9). For the English classroom, this must be specified as digital and multiliteral discourse competence in the foreign language, which encompasses proficiency in a wide range of digital communicative formats across sign systems and languages (with a main focus on verbal language); their combination in a single act of communication (multimodality, as in electronic slides or online videos); the ability to engage in social and communicative practices in digital environments; and the ability to reflect critically upon their own and others' digital practices and ways of self-constitution, social interaction and sociality.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Judith Buendgens-Kosten and Daniela Elsner: Multilingual CALL: IntroductionMultiliteracies and MCALL
Chapter 1. Wolfgang Hallet: The Multiple Languages of Digital Communication
Chapter 2. Oliver Meyer, Do Coyle and Kevin Schuck: Learnscaping – Creating Next-Gen Learning Environments for Pluriliteracies Growth
Multilingual Texts
Chapter 3. Sonja Brunsmeier and Annika Kolb: “I like the character, weil er so richtig funny ist” - Reading Story Apps in the Primary EFL Classroom
Chapter 4. Daniela Elsner and Judith Buendgens-Kosten: Awareness Of Multilingual Resources: EFL Primary Students' Receptive Code-Switching During Collaborative Reading
Chapter 5. Henriette Dausend: This Is How I Say It! Discourse With Tablets among Multilingual Learners
Chapter 6. John Michael Alvarez: Über die Grenzen des einsprachigen Habitus: Application of Computer Assisted Language Learning through Home Language Content in Secondary Level Classrooms
Chapter 7. Judith Buendgens-Kosten and Daniela Elsner: Playful Plurilingualism? Exploring Language(S) With the Multilingual Serious Game Melang-E
Intercomprehension and CALL
Chapter 8. Manuela Pohl: (A) CALL For Slavic Intercomprehension: The Promotion of Minority Languages in the Modern Foreign Language Classroom
Chapter 9. Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer: When Non-Romance Languages Break the Linguistic Contract in Romance Languages Chat Rooms: Theoretical Consequences for Studies on Intercomprehension
Multilingual Online Exchange and Telecollaboration
Chapter 10. Euline Cutrim Schmid: Developing Plurilingual Competence in the EFL Primary Classroom through Telecollaboration
Chapter 11. Antonie Alm: Advanced Language Learners as Autonomous Language Users on Facebook
MCALL and Professional Development of Teachers
Chapter 12. Rae Si‘ilata: Multilingual Digital Translanguaging and Storying With New Zealand Pasifika Learners
Chapter 13. Heike Niesen: The Use of Teacher Trainees’ Own and Peer Videos for the Introduction of Multilingual-Sensitive Teaching Approaches In Pre-Service Teacher Training Classes
Concluding Remarks
Afterword: Gabriela Meier: Learning In Multilingually and Digitally Mediated Spaces: The MCALL Approach