This presentation shows how narrative data from journal diaries and stimulated recall interviews were used to understand learning in informal spaces in a case study of five international students in Australia. It discusses students' creative uses of emerging image-based social media as resources for informal second language learning. Drawing on a complex systems perspective on learning (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008) and spatial views on digital technology and learning (Benson, 2021; Ciolfi, 2013; Kuure, 2011), the study examined how students incorporate the use of TikTok into their language learning and lives. The findings revealed how they adapted their multimodal experience of learning into technological innovations in TikTok's features. The findings also revealed how they utilised those features as their linguistic resources in response to the afforances that emerged in everyday communicative situations and spaces. The individual language learning consisted of numerous spaces and resources that an individual used and created in the course of unique learning journey. Using narrative data, this study provides deep insights into innovative and creative ways of informal second language learning for three main reasons. Firstly, it highlights how learners made use of audio-visual learning in the latest technological innovations of the 2020s. Secondly, it reflects the current reality of informal second language learning that occurs in daily life spaces where students access social media with devices and mobilities. Adding to Sockett (2013), lastly, it shows how the data collection of emic data can best fit into the informal learning that may create the emergence of unexpected outcome and behaviours, which are not easy to collect data from the private sphere without understanding students' own perspectives and learning process.
Bibliography
Benson, P. (2021). Language learning environments: Spatial perspectives on SLA. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Ciolfi, L. (2013). Space and place in digital technology research: A theoretical overview. In S. Price, C. Jewitt, & B. Brown (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of digital technology research (pp. 159–173). SAGE Publications.
Kuure, L. (2011). Places for learning: Technology-mediated language learning practices beyond the classroom. In P. Benson & H. Reinders (Eds.), Beyond the Language Classroom (pp. 35–46). Palgrave Macmillan.
Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford University Press.
Sockett, G. (2013). Understanding the online informal learning of English as a complex dynamic system: An emic approach. ReCALL, 25(1), 48–62. https://doi.org/10.1017/S095834401200033X
