Plenary talk for the 2017 annual conference of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics (IRAAL), at the University of Limerick.

1. Looking to the Future of
Technology-Mediated Language
Teaching & Learning
Shannon Sauro
Malmö University
@shansauro l ssauro.info l shannon.sauro@mah.se

2. “For many diverse learners, the use of computer
technology for all facets of second language learning
has dramatically increased as the reach of the internet
continues to spread, providing access to social media,
reference materials, online instruction, and more. The
implications for language teachers, learners, materials
developers, and researchers are extensive.”
(Chapelle & Sauro, 2017, p. 1)

3. “Before computers came along, we never referred to our
tools as learning ‘assistants’ (early CALL as Chalk-
Assisted Language Learning?)…. Doubtless in the future,
our focus will return to our methods and goals, with less
prominence given to the technologies that help us
realize them.”
(Otto, 2017 p. 21)

4. What language learners
are served by technology
& how?
What technology-mediated
tasks best serve learners’
needs?
What linguistic and digital
skills and knowledge do L2
learners need?
How does technology
mediate languagculture
learning?

5. What language learners
are served by
technology and how?

6. “CALL began in the United States with several high-profile
projects that pioneered the use of mainframe computers
for language learning in the 1960s and early 1970s (1) The
Programmed Logic for Teaching Operations (PLATO) project
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; (2) the
tutorial Russian project at Stanford University; and (3) the
Time-shared Interactive Computer Controlled Information
Television (TICCIT) project at the University of Texas and
Brigham Young University (BYU).”
(Otto, 2017, p. 12)

7. “…deHaan (2005) followed a young adult L2 Japanese
learner playing a sports game and documented how
the learner-player manipulated the game in order to
control and repeat the audio and visual input for
learning purposes. ”
(Reinhard, 2017, p. 206)

8. “The refugees were able to obtain relevant information
through direct contact with other migrants in Europe (via
WhatsApp , Viber , Skype or other VoIP services and over
social media networks) as well as pages on Facebook and
channels on YouTube that they considered trustworthy – if
not always totally reliable. These sources satisfied many of
their needs for information.”
(MiCT, 2016, p. 5)

9. “In 2015, of the roughly 163,000 people who sought
asylum in Sweden, over 35,000 were unaccompanied
minors (Migrationsverket, 2016)…. Even after two
years of [Swedish as a second language] instruction,
many of these students continue to need additional
language support in Swedish and in their other subject
areas, including math, science, and English.”
(Sauro, 2016, p. 5)

10. “The purpose of this study is to explore the use of the
smartphone as a mediating tool for integration of newly
arrived migrants. In particular, this study investigates how
migrants learn foreign language pronunciation by means of
mobile technology. The starting point is to examine the
mobile activities that newly arrived migrants are engaged in
when learning Swedish. ”
(Bradley, Lindström & Hashemi, 2017, p. 2)

11. What linguistic and
digital skills and
knowledge do L2
learners need?

12. “Students nowadays constantly engage in reading and
interacting often by using short, de-contextualized informal
language that may distract them from focused thinking.
One important challenge today for educators is then to find
creative and effective ways to lead distracted readers back
to productive language learning.”
(Liaw & English, 2017, p. 70)

13. But consider Curwood’s (2013) case study of a 13-year-old
fan named Jack, “whose fan involvement included
participating in discussion-board-based debates about Thee
Hunger Games, which required not only character analysis
skills, but also the ability to use textual citations, including
page numbers, to support his claims, much like one might
find in academic writing.”
(Sauro, 2017, p. 139)

14. An ongoing case study of
Steevee, a Sherlock fan,
which explores her
informal L2 English
language learning and
digital literacy development
in online fan spaces.
(Sauro, 2017)

15. …it was the opportunity to
completely immerse myself in the
English language. That was it for
me. I was so stoked. I’m going
to get online and I’m going to
talk to people and learn English.
And I’m going to learn new
words. And I used to sit there
with a notepad next to Twitter
and write down words I’d never
seen before, look them up, learn
them.
(Interview, 14 December 2015)
Art: Foxestacado

16. Spoiling is “…the
purposeful discovery of
crucial developments in the
plot of a fictional story of a
film or TV series before the
relevant material has been
broadcast or released.”
(Duffett, 2013, p. 168)

17. Due to the massive increase
of hits and followers due to
setlock, I somehow became
someone who was consulted
on various things and I
realized that if I wanted to
help/give answers etc, I’d
have to make myself
understood in the way I
wanted to be – that’s when
my answers got longer and
more in-depth, as I wanted to
make sure my arse was
covered XD
(Email, 7 January 2016)
Art: Foxestacado

18. “Many young people today consider what exists on the
Internet freely available raw material to be used however
they see fit. Moreover, tools for copying and modifying this
raw material are simple and abundant. What is distinctive
about the digital environment is not borrowing per say …
but rather the sense that borrowing does not require an
acknowledgement.”
(Chun, Kern & Smith, 2016, p. 69)

19. I had no idea what Tumblr
was about until I got yelled
at… And from then on I
knew, you give credit. You
reblog. You can tag some
things. So somebody took me
by the hand, and I’ve taken
hundreds of people by the
hand over the years, letting
them into the fandom on
Tumblr, so to speak. Don’t
steal anybody’s art.
(Interview with Steevee, 14 December 2015)

20. Twenty-first century
skills include critical
thinking, information
literacy, global
citizenship.
(Suto, 2013)

21. “In light of the ease of spreading unverified rumors and false
information via fan networks on Twitter and Tumblr, Steevee’s
fact-checking skills were particularly crucial... Her newly
developed critical information literacy skills have also proven
useful for Steevee in her non-fandom online interaction, as
indicated in her ability to better evaluate the veracity of
information in news articles she encounters on Facebook.”
(Sauro, 2017, p. 140)

22. What technology-
mediated tasks best
serve learners’ needs?

23. Consider a task for research: “The two tasks used in this
study were picture-based narrative tasks that incorporated
screen-shots taken from episodes of the British television
series Mr. Bean. The picture narrative tasks were modeled
on those used in prior SLA studies examining L2
performance under different planning time conditions…”
(Sauro, 2012, p. 340)

24. “technology-mediated tasks should primarily focus on
meaning, rather than on grammatical forms. They should
be learner-centered, considering students’ needs and wants
for language, their technological applications, and digital
skills. They should also be holistic and authentic, drawing
on real-world processes of language use. And finally, tasks
should bring reflection to the learning process…”
(González-Lloret, 2017, p. 236)

25. The Blogging Hobbit: A
collaborative story of a
missing moment from The
Hobbit:
• Story outline and map
• Collaborative blog-
based roleplay
fanfiction - each group
member to write from
the perspective of one
character from the
novel
• Reflective paper
(Sauro & Sundmark, 2016)

26. “this writing activity has
influenced my language
skills…. During this project I
have been able to expand
my repertoar [sic] of English
words which are not so
commonly used in everyday
English anymore.”
(Sauro & Sundmark, 2016, p. 420 )

27. “For some students, unfamiliarity with publishing in blogs
affected the potential readability of their published stories;
however, other students were able to take advantage of
blogs' various characteristics such as sequential comments
to a blog post, a linked list of chapters in the header bar, or
embedding of multimedia to illustrate songs written as part
of the fanfiction.”
(Sauro & Sundmark, in press)

28. How does technology
mediate languaculture
learning?

29. “The langua in
languaculture is about
discourse, not just about
words and sentences. And
the culture in
languaculture is about
meanings that include, but
go well beyond, what the
dictionary and the
grammar offer.”
(Agar, 1994, p. 96)

30. The psychological concept of affordances “include[s] not
only the possibilities and constrains of environments or
tools (including digital technologies and new media) but
also users’ perceptions of these technologies’ possibilities
and constraints based on their own prior knowledge and
experience (Lee, 2007)”.
(Sauro & Chapelle, 2017, p. 469)

31. "Our story is so much better looking. Yeah, because when
you have like this blog post, it comes, like the first is at the
bottom and then you have to read up. And that was like
really annoying when I looked at the other groups. Because
I read most of the other groups, but shut some of them
down after like, okay, now I can't handle this anymore.
Exit. Exit. No."
(Sauro & Sundmark, in press)

32. “Webcams mediate gestures as well. Our in-lab videos show
that gestures are used extensively during videoconferencing
exchanges, but when these occur outside the webcam’s field
of view they are invisible to online partners. Gestures can be
helpful to students not only in monitoring meanings but also
in managing turns of speaking…”
(Kern, 2014, p. 346)

33. “the future of L2 teaching and learning with technology …asks
the field to explore diverse learner populations whose familiarity
with digital technologies and specific langua‐technoculture
needs are different from those we regularly investigated, that
the langua‐technoculture learning tasks and assessments
designed for these populations also account for the skills and
knowledge required of these 21st‐century language learners
and users, and that investigations of digital tools consider the
actual and perceived affordances of these populations.”
(Sauro & Chapelle, 2017, p. 470)

34. Acknowledgements
Fanart Graphics
Fox Estacado of The Art of Fox Estacado: Fine Fan Art and Geekery
(artbyfox.storenvy.com). All rights reserved and used in this presentation with
permission.