Abstract:

This article proposes a model for a critical social-constructivist (CS-C) approach to the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in language/culture education. CS-C theories emphasize a critical approach to social interactions, interpersonal relations, communication, and the influence that these activities have on learning. I will use the model to explore the extent to which CS-C approaches, especially in relation to the principles of connectivism, impact postsecondary language and culture education and its effects on identities within the constraints of a CMC institutional setting. Readers will participate in an exploration of new ways of thinking, learning, and teaching that emerge from the ecology of second language and culture classrooms integrated with CMC. There I have found the life experiences of learners and my own experiences as a teacher to be highly relevant to the learning processes at hand. I develop these explorations using global qualitative discourse-based analyses of selections from learner data produced in asynchronous CMC contexts over the course of 3 years. My focus is on the learning of culture rather than on second language acquisition in a narrow sense. Language learning and even language attrition are thematized in the learning ecologies that are my focus. This study does not, however, make any claims about language acquisition that are not mentioned in learners' own reflections. The data include written conversations produced in both English (often as the second language of the participants) and German (most often as a foreign language for the participants) using various platforms for asynchronous CMC interactions.

Author: Mary E. Wildner-Bassett