Till Örebro universitet

This study examines the question of how language teachers in a highly technology-friendly university environment view machine translation and the implications that this has for the personal learning environments of students. It brings an activity-theory perspective to the question, examining the ways that the introduction of new tools can disrupt the relationship between different elements in an activity system. This perspective opens up for an investigation of the ways that new tools have the potential to fundamentally alter traditional learning activities. In questionnaires and group discussions, respondents showed general agreement that although use of machine translation by students could be considered cheating, students are bound to use it anyway, and suggested that teachers focus on the kinds of skills students would need when using machine translation and design assignments and exams to practice and assess these skills. The results of the empirical study are used to reflect upon questions of what the roles of teachers and students are in a context where many of the skills that a person needs to be able to interact in a foreign language increasingly can be outsourced to laptops and smartphones.

This chapter illustrates a learner-centric approach to investigating the potential of online resources for language learning. In contrast to studies that look at the use of particular applications, tools, or social media platforms in formal educational contexts, this approach takes into account the totality of the personal learning environments learners create for themselves, intentionally and unintentionally, which may include online vocabulary-training applications, connection with native speakers of the target language through social media, immediate and free access to cultural products such as films, music, and the press, and increasingly ubiquitous machine translation. Using an activity theory framework and questionnaire data, the empirical portion of this chapter illustrates some aspectsof the personal learning environments of adults studying a foreign language at the beginner level and draws the following conclusions: (a) exploring the applicability of technologies for language learning can be done bottom up rather than top down; (b) digital tools do not replace nondigital tools, they complement them; (c) the digital native/digital immigrant distinction (Prensky, 2001; Benini & Murray, 2014) is questionable; (d) learner objectives do not always correspond to curricular objectives; and (e) the lines between language learning and language use can be blurred, and this is enabled in part by technology.

This article aims to contribute to an understanding of how social and institutional factors affect the language learning environments of university students studying less-commonly taught languages (Turner, 1958), at beginner level by distance online. The empirical material is drawn from longitudinal case studies of students who enrolled in beginner-level distance courses in LCTLs at a regional Swedish university in the early 2010s. The study supports previous research illustrating the importance of sociocultural factors in learning activities. Furthermore, the study adds to research showing that for LCTLs an online learning context provides affordances that simply may not exist in campus settings and makes the study of LCTLs accessible to people for whom it would otherwise not be, an important contribution to linguistic diversity. The novel finding of this study is the direct and clearly articulated effect of different policies and frameworks on individuals’ choices of how, when and where to study, which suggests a need to examine further the ways that government and supranational entities shape the decisions made by adult learners.

The purpose of this report is to contribute to an understanding of the technological, institutional, and social conditions that affect language learning and the different ways that adults can undertake the activity of language learning over two to four years within these conditions.

Data for this report was collected between 2012 and 2016 from twelve learners enrolled in beginner-level courses in foreign languages taught by distance at a regional Swedish university. From asynchronous and synchronous computer-mediated interviews over this period, a narrative of each subject’s learning process was constructed to illustrate language learning contexts and trajectories. These contexts and trajectories are conceptualized through the personal learning environment (PLE) placed in an activity-theory (AT) framework. The PLE encompasses contextual factors that can affect the learning process, rather than focusing solely on ICT tools, to contribute to an understanding of how new tools can interact with old tools and with the other affordances and constraints in a learner’s surroundings. This report reveals some of the contradictory pressures that teachers, curricula, institutions, social welfare systems and ICT can exert on a PLE.

Previous longitudinal and narrative research on language learning is described and placed in the AT framework to identify the factors relevant to the PLE and organized according to the AT features of subjects, objects, tools, rules, community, and division of labor as well as evidence of change over time.

Both the previous research and the empirical material analyzed in this report illustrate the significant role played by communities in shaping language-learning goals. Teachers can be seen as part of the target language community and play an important role in defining the kinds of tasks that make language studies interesting and relevant to learners’ goals. Learning institutions exert pressure on teachers through curricula and program requirements. Other institutional structures determine how education is funded, which can create situations in which learners intentionally choose courses or institutions whose curricula do not match their own learning goals.

While learners express a preference for campus studies, in many cases online distance courses are the only learning form that allows for a given learner to engage in institution-based learning. However, the further a learner gets from an institution, the more difficulties they may encounter, with some online tools becoming inconvenient, incompatible, or unreliable across borders and time zones.

Social media can bring learners in contact with TL communities from afar, but it can also keep some learners from engaging in local TL communities fully.

In short, adult foreign language learners’ PLEs and trajectories within university distance education in Sweden in the 2010s can take many different configurations depending on an individual learner’s own goals and personal objectives, location, and even health.