Language learning as the agency for a social purpose: examples from the coronavirus pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic is a reality affecting human activity worldwide, including language education. This paper addresses practices and possibilities for L2 learning and use occurring informally, particularly those taking place in bottom-up, community-driven digital actions of citizens in the fig...
Gespeichert in:
| Veröffentlicht in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/alsic, |
|---|---|
| 1. Verfasser: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprache: | Anglais |
| Veröffentlicht: |
Alsic
2021
|
| Schlagworte: | |
| Online Zugang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Zusammenfassung: | The coronavirus pandemic is a reality affecting human activity worldwide, including language education. This paper addresses practices and possibilities for L2 learning and use occurring informally, particularly those taking place in bottom-up, community-driven digital actions of citizens in the fight against the pandemic. Since January 2020, many technology-mediated social participation (TMSP) forms (Preece & Shneiderman, 2009) were launched locally and globally, where citizens contribute voluntarily to actions that serve a social purpose in crises. Four TMSP types are analysed through the examples of cases drawn from the pandemic: a) massively multiplayer online games, b) emergency response expert hackathons, c) digital activism in grassroots communities and d) citizen science. The paper builds on sociocultural understandings of the language learner as a social actor and an active citizen meaningfully engaged in collective action during the pandemic to identify current practices and future possibilities at the crossroads of language learning and agency for a social purpose in crises. Despite the scarcity of practices so far, the paper offers a tentative mapping of the TMSP features that depict their potential for L2 learning and use and open up research perspectives in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). |
|---|