Second Language Literacy Practices and Language Learning Outside the Classroom

Miho Inaba

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781788922128
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Psycholinguistique

This book presents a comprehensive and detailed study of literacy practices and language use outside of the classroom by university students of Japanese. It investigates both tasks related to classes (e.g. homework and preparation for classes) and voluntary activities in the target language (e.g. watching TV and writing emails) and discusses how values, motivations and types of activities differ between the two contexts. It employs sociocultural perspectives to observe reading and writing activities within and under the influence of individual and social contexts, such as learner motives, peer networks and the language classroom, and contributes to the related research areas in the field of second language acquisition, such as motivation, autonomous language learning and language learning strategies.

Crucially, the book not only documents out-of-class literacy activities, but also examines which teaching practices facilitate and promote such out-of-class language learning and use. It considers which literacy activities in the target language students undertake out-of-class, which factors encourage or discourage such out-of-class activity and how and with which tools they undertake these activities. As such the book provides guidance for classroom teaching and suggests that slight changes to teaching practices in the classroom may enhance autonomous learning outside the classroom.

1 Introduction

This book reports on research exploring out-of-class language learning and use activities undertaken by learners of Japanese at an Australian university, placing a particular focus on literacy activities in their target language, Japanese. This research was derived from my personal experiences as a teacher of Japanese when I taught the language at a Swedish university in the 2000s. Although Japanese culture was becoming popular in Sweden at that time, there were no other resources for my students to refine their knowledge of the language other than Japanese textbooks in the city where I taught the language. However, my students told me that they enjoyed various materials related to Japanese pop culture, such as manga (Japanese comic books) and anime (Japanese cartoons). Some students also told me that they used online resources to aid their Japanese study. Another striking discovery was that many first-year students knew at least a couple of words in the language, which they picked up from Japanese movies and anime, when they started learning Japanese at university. This anecdotal evidence made me realise that various resources in Japanese were easily accessible even outside of Japan, and I naturally developed my interest in out-of-class language learning.

This personal experience reflects the transformation of language learning environments triggered by the development in information and communication technology (ICT) around the turn of the 21st century. Traditionally, it was often said that learners in a foreign language (FL) environment, where learners learn a target language in their own country or in a country where the target language is not utilised as a common language of communication, needed to make a conscious effort to seek target language resources (Thomson, 1997). However, this situation has changed significantly due to the expansion of the internet, even for learners who study languages other than English (LOTE) (Benson, 2013). In the case of Japanese, for example, the prevalence of the internet in combination with the popularity of Japanese pop culture overseas (Japan Foundation, 2011; Sakuma, 2006) makes it possible for learners of Japanese to access Japanese language and cultural resources, even when they are situated outside of Japan (Akahori, 2002; Sasaki, 2006). In fact, research into the effects of Japanese pop culture on learning Japanese, including how to use Japanese pop culture materials in language classes overseas, has been conducted since the mid-2000s (Fukunaga, 2006; Kawashima & Kumano, 2011; Makino, 2008; Shibata, 2008; Williams, 2006). The advances in ICT also enable learners to access resources and tools for learning Japanese, such as online dictionaries and websites focusing on Japanese grammar (Sasaki, 2006). It is anticipated that such online tools may affect the ways in which learners approach assessment tasks, as well as self-directed use of Japanese in authentic contexts. Although I only illustrated the case of Japanese in this context, the advancements in ICT have significantly influenced not only the opportunities for language learning as well as authentic language use but also the manner in which students engage in assessment tasks and any activities involving their target languages. In particular, literacy skills in a second language (L2) or FL have become crucial in order to expand the possibility of out-of-class activities in a target language in this digital world (Benson, 2013), in addition to utilising paper-based materials. This is the reason why I primarily focused on literacy skills rather than speaking and listening skills.

L2 literacy practices undertaken outside of the classroom can be regarded as one form of autonomous language learning and authentic language use activities, which has been viewed as an important factor in mastering target languages (Benson, 2011). In particular, an effective combination of authentic language use outside of the classroom and classroom-based instructed language learning activities is thought to accelerate the language learning process (Ellis, 2008; Hall, 2009; Miyazaki, 2006). Drawing on these points of view, a comprehensive analysis of both class-related tasks and voluntary L2 use activities is beneficial to better understand the relationship between formal language learning and authentic language use outside of the classroom. However, the existing research explored either assignments for language classes or learners’ voluntary L2 learning in out-of-class settings. In the latter type of research, the role of language classes in out-of-class language learning has been underexplored, although many learners still learn a target language in classroom settings (Inaba, 2013; Lai, 2015). I was thus motivated to investigate not only voluntary L2 learning and use activities but also class-related tasks undertaken outside of the classroom.

Out-of-Class Literacy Practices in L2: Why Sociocultural Perspectives?

Research focusing on reading/writing in out-of-class settings first flourished in the field of literacy studies. In the 1990s, scholars in the field of literacy studies established the New Literacy Studies (Barton, 1994; Gee, 1992, 2008; Street, 1993, 1995), which views literacy as social practice situated within social and cultural discourses, and claimed the necessity of exploring literacy outside of the formal education parameters (Schultz & Hull, 2002). Consequently, a number of studies have been conducted to investigate the literacy practices undertaken by schoolchildren or adolescents outside of the classroom (e.g. Camitta, 1993; Finders, 1996; Mahiri & Sablo, 1996; Neilsen, 1998; Schultz, 2002). Although these studies produced a number of interesting results, such as the function of literacy practices in adolescents and the divergences between students’ private writing activities in comparison to school activities, most of these studies addressed literacy practices in their first language (L1 – English), though the research into L2 literacy practices conducted by adolescents with an immigrant background has also been expanding recently (e.g. Black, 2005, 2008; Lam, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2009a, 2009b; Yamada, 2005; Yi, 2005, 2007). Moreover, although the New Literacy Studies has emphasised the social aspects of literacy practices, Haneda (2007) indicates that it does not provide a rigid framework for analysing literacy practices of language learners and their relation to social and contextual factors.

In the field of second language acquisition (SLA), L2 reading and writing research has been predominantly conducted from the perspectives of cognitive psychology, for example, L2 reading research driven from the bottom-up or top-down model as well as schema theory (Eskey, 2005) and L2 writing research based on a process approach (Leki, 2002). These studies view reading and writing as mental processes that occur in individual learners, and therefore, employ experimental settings. Although previous studies have revealed the complexities of reading and writing processes, contextual factors, such as personal, social and educational considerations, which have the potential to heavily influence L2 learning were not emphasised in these studies. That being said, in consonance with the social turn in SLA during the mid-1990s (Block, 2003) that is the growing attention to social and contextual aspects of language learning (e.g. Firth & Wagner, 1997; Lantolf & Johnson, 2007; van Lier, 1996), prominent researchers in the area of L2 writing and reading research have advocated the importance of integrating sociocultural perspectives (e.g. Atkinson, 2002; Eskey, 2005; Leki, 2002; Santos et al., 2000). Indeed, particularly in the area of English for academic purposes (EPA), an increasing number of studies have begun to explore writing activities in naturalistic contexts from socio-cognitive (e.g. Leki, 1995; Manchón et al., 2007; Riazi, 1997; Spack, 1997) or sociocultural perspectives, including Activity Theory (e.g. Cumming et al., 2002; Haneda, 2005, 2007; Lei, 2008; Park & De Costa, 2015; Yang et al., 2004).

Out-of-class language learning research has expanded due to interests in autonomous language learning and qualitative investigation in L2 learners’ lives. Nevertheless, the number of studies on this topic is still scarce compared to studies in language teaching and learning in classroom settings (Benson, 2011). Moreover, Benson (2013) suggests that because of the development of ICT, the nature of autonomous language learning today has changed considerably from when learner autonomy was introduced into SLA in the 1970s. A shift in the focus of autonomous language learning research has already occurred, from discussing the way to facilitate out-of-class and independent learning by providing resources (e.g. self-access centre) towards revealing the complex and dynamic nature of contexts for autonomous language learning beyond the classroom (Benson, 2013). For example, a growing number of studies have examined out-of-class language learning in relation to the individual and societal factors of learners’ learning contexts from sociocultural perspectives once more (e.g. Gao, 2010; Kalaja et al., 2011; Menezes, 2011). This study, therefore, employs sociocultural perspectives and, in particular, Activity Theory, which enable us to observe reading and writing activities within individual and social contexts.

Literacy Activities and Literacy Practices

Before proceeding to a discussion, an explanation of the important terms used in this study will be provided, such as ‘literacy’, ‘literacy activities’ and ‘literacy practices’, relying on the discussions in the field of literacy studies. Literacy traditionally refers to reading and writing skills (Mayer, 2008). However, the contemporary view of literacy often includes visual and audio modes because textual information is inextricably linked to the visual and the audio in multimedia environments, such as the internet (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Mayer, 2008; Pailliotet & Monsenthal, 2000). This study employs this viewpoint of literacy to include textual information in visual resources (e.g. subtitles in Japanese TV serials).

In this book, I use ‘literacy activity’ to indicate an individual and concrete action involving written language, for example, writing the draft of an essay assignment, reading a Japanese novel. In the field of literacy studies, the term ‘literacy event’, which represents ‘any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of participants’ interactions and their interpretive processes’ (Heath, 1983: 93), has been preferred. However, I employ literacy activity rather than literacy event, because literacy event seems to include a nuance of focusing on the situations in which reading and writing activities happen. Literacy activities also include audio/visual (viewing) activities, which may involve reading activities (e.g. reading subtitles and textual information).

Another important term utilised in this study is ‘literacy practice’. According to Schultz and Hull (2002), Scribner and Cole (1981) introduced the term ‘practice’ in order to conceptualise literacy within the Sociocultural Theory framework. In their study, Scribner and Cole (1981: 236) expound the concept of practice as ‘a recurrent, goal-directed sequence of activities using particular systems of knowledge’. They also state that ‘literacy is not simply knowing how to read and write a partic...