Integrating naturalistic digital interaction in foreign language programs

Interaction by textual means, also known as chat, remains the most popular form of interaction for young people (Anderson & Jiang, 2018; Statista, 2022b). It is therefore appropriate to incorporate chat in foreign language education programs, to adequately prepare learners to engage in various forms of social interaction in the target language. Foreign language education programs across the globe have in fact embraced digital environments for language teaching and learning because they extend learner interaction to naturalistic contexts beyond the classroom. These environments allow language learners to connect with multiple interlocutors in a variety of technological-interactional configurations (Tudini, 2020). Access to age-peer expert speakers of the target language is also known to be highly motivating, especially in one-to-one interactions (Tudini, 2010). Digital interactions need however to be adequately scaffolded and integrated in the assessment to facilitate and prioritize learning of pragmatic features of the target language. Ideally a reflective component is also required to promote learners’ awareness of language learning behaviors and pragmatic components of language they engage in during interaction (Sykes & González-Lloret, 2020). This presentation proposes a framework for integration of regular digital target language interaction practice in foreign language programs at various linguistic levels. It focuses on affordances and constraints of real time chat, which has unique characteristics despite its similarity to spoken interaction. The proposed framework seeks a balance between digital and face-to-face, and formal versus informal interaction contexts to assist foreign language learners in consolidating their linguistic and pragmatic repertoires.

Dr. Vincenza Tudini works in the Education Futures academic unit at the University of South Australia. Her research interests include the application of conversation analytic techniques to online interaction. Her work on online language, learning and interaction has been published in various book chapters and journals, including The Modern Language Journal and Journal of Pragmatics. Her book, Online Second Language Acquisition: Conversation Analysis of Online Chat, was published by Continuum (London/New York) in 2010 and a new book entitled Children's Online Language and Interaction will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2024. 

Dialogue, language development, and school literacy: From the early years to adolescence
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Why is it important to study language development during adolescence and its relationship with reading and writing skills in school? Why is dialogue important from very early in development? What type of dialogue positively influences language development and why? In this conference, Paola Uccelli will present results of studies that investigate the contribution of dialogue in language development and the contribution of language skills to learning reading and writing during adolescence.

Dr. Paola Uccelli is a professor at Harvard University, in the Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on language, reading, and writing development during the school years, with special emphasis on understanding individual and sociocultural differences in monolingual and multilingual populations. She studied Linguistics and Literature at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and obtained her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard University. Her current research seeks to identify the language skills most relevant to school reading, writing, and learning, describe individual differences in the development of these skills, design and validate instruments to assess language and reading skills, and investigate how students learn. to use a variety of discourse structures flexibly and successfully for various communicative purposes. Her research projects have been funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, the Lemann Foundation and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, among others. Her work has been published in various academic journals such as Child Development, Journal of Child Language, Applied Psycholinguistics and Reading Research Quarterly. She conducts her research in collaboration with other researchers and educators in schools in the United States and several other countries, especially in Latin America where she frequently participates in research projects and conferences.

Games and Game Design in the L2 Classroom: Opportunities and Challenges for Research

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The use of games in educational settings is not new and a significant body of research now exists on L2 learning through gameplay in a variety of genres. Indeed, games have been lauded for being contextualized, goal-oriented, motivating, and eliciting language use (see Reinhardt, 2019). How about using a (game-)design approach to L2 learning? How can we document what or how L2 learners organize and perform "learning" in this space? Anchored in the context of a multi-level French course entitled “culture of games and gaming culture” the trajectory of this presentation will follow how games can be envisioned as cultural objects before envisioning the learning potential of gameplay. Finally, we will examine what it means to use game design as a way to structure and support L2 learning. Marrying the frameworks of game design (e.g., Schell, 2019), transformational game design (Culyba, 2018), and L2 pedagogy (notably the multiliteracies framework – New London Group, 1996 – and its emphasis on meaning design), we used design thinking as a broad encompassing, iterative problem-solving process that can readily apply to language learning. We will discuss the challenges associated with researching in this environment.

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Dr. Sébastien Dubreil is Teaching Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Second Language Acquisition, and Technology-Enhanced Learning at Carnegie Mellon University. Specializing in CALL, his research interests focus on the use of technology in fostering transcultural learning. His most recent research examines the notions of social pedagogies, linguistic landscapes, and game-based language and culture learning.

Participatory ethnographies: Research to transform

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The school constitutes a strategic space of action in which multilingual scenarios connected to migration are managed and in which the processes of change of superdiversity are represented (Vertovek 2007). Along these lines, research carried out in recent decades has shown the need to introduce local varieties and migrant languages into the educational curriculum to promote social inclusion. In this conference we will propose ICT-TAC-TEP resources (Prego & Zas, 2018) within the framework of a participatory research developed in the EquilinGalicia project: Spaces of sociolinguistic transformation in the Galician educational context: speaker agency, multilingual repertoires and (meta) communicative practices (R&D Project, ref.PID2019-105676RB-C44/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). The objective is to show how, through these participatory research resources and metalinguistic reflection, we investigate in collaboration with students the invisible linguistic repertoires in the classroom so that they become more valued.

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Dr. Gabriela Prego Vázquez is a Full Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Santiago de Compostela. Her fields of study are critical sociolinguistic ethnography and language education. The results of her research have been published in books and specialized journals such as Journal of Sociology of Language, Discourse Studies, Discourse and Society, Spanish in Context or Pragmatics, among others. She is part of the EDiSo Association in which she held the positions of vice president, member of Speech and Social Justice and coordinator of the Speech Observatory.