Abstract #1591

Abstract: Language learning practices are challenged because new ways of reading and writing come to play through and with technologies (Gillen, 2014). One particular feature epitomizing this challenge is language technologies –such as dictionaries, checkers and translation software, seen as “scaffolding tools” in reading and writing (Warschauer, 2010). Our objective is to ascertain whether such technologies are actually used to enhance literacy skills and how. This is a qualitative, multi-sited case study in the context of 1x1 (one-laptop-per-child) secondary schools in Catalonia. We build a corpus based on 11 interviews with language teachers, 37 interviews with students, 17 classroom observation sessions and 17 screencast videos of students’ writing online. Applying content analysis to verbal and observed data, and a functionalist approach to text production (Beaugrande and Dressler 1997) and translation (Nord, 2009), we are able to determine teachers’ discourse and students’ practices. Teachers prefer official and monolingual lexicographical and spelling resources, with a focus on linguistic form and univocality. They limit their teaching to introducing the resources to the students while offering recommendations on which resources are never to be used (Google Translate). Students offer a wider selection of resources –covering sociocultural, pragmatic, syntactical, lexical and morphological information. Students’ resources are frequently collaborative, multifunctional and multilingual, such as WordReference and Google Translate. However, students display varying degrees of competence, which calls for further training on how to benefit from language technologies. A starting point can be a yardstick of analysis covering both the technical aspect of the technology at play (potential and limitations) and language awareness regarding the search, the input and the output within the resource as well as the pragmatic adequacy of what the student intends to communicate.

Keywords: language technologies, digital literacy, teacher discourse, student practice

References

Beaugrande, R. y W. Dressler. (1997). Introducción a la lingüística del texto. Barcelona: Ariel
Gillen, J. (2014). Digital Literacies. New York: Routledge.
Nord, C. (2009). El funcionalismo en la enseñanza de traducción. Mutatis Mutandis: Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción, 2, 209–243. Retrieved from http://aprendeenlinea.udea.edu.co/revistas/index.php/mutatismutandis/article/view/2397/2080
Warschauer, M. (2010). Learning to Write in the Laptop Classroom. Writing & Pedagogy, 1(1), 101–112. http://doi.org/10.1558/wap.v1i1.101

Learning language through language technologies: teachers’ discourse versus students’ practices