The successful mass acquisition of second languages through informal engagement with digital media has been well-documented in quantitative studies across a wide range of international settings and contexts in the past two decades. But an additional set of questions also exists, not about outcomes but about processes, or about how individuals acquire/learn new languages through digital media. These questions require fine-grained examination of qualitative, ethnographic data (interviews, logs, diaries, field notes) and the tracing of narratives across time and multiple contexts, to generate a global, generalized narrative of informal language development (ILD).
Our methodology follows the seven-stage "primer" for Qualitative Research Synthesis (QRS) described by Chong and Plonsky (2021; see also Chong & Reinders, 2021). First, we have designed two research questions:
- Is there a general narrative and timeline for ILD that can be traced from nascent exposure to a new language through levels of development?
- What salient geographic, demographic, and formal educational variables (e.g., national context; availability of digital resources; age; gender; availability of resources; co-occurring formal instruction) contribute to variations in the general narrative of ILD?
Second and third, we are currently developing a list of keywords to guide our literature search (e.g., ethnography/ethnographic; case study; naturalistic language learning; autonomous language learning; OILE/IDLE/EE; qualitative; narrative) from two sources: 1) a set of studies from a pre-selected comprehensive review of databases on ILD between 2000 and 2020; and 2) an updated review of databases from 2020 to June 2022. In the fourth stage, we are narrowing our list of studies to mixed-method and ethnographic, qualitative studies that include case studies and narratives of individuals learning a language informally. Our preliminary review of these studies shows that they are geographically divergent but demographically and educationally convergent and include studies from nearly every world region and continent.
In the fifth QRS stage, we will extract the narrative portions of ILD from each selected study, along with any contextual variables named in each study, with attention to which portions are "raw data" and which are "interpreted findings" (p. 1030). In the sixth stage, we will begin to synthesize this data using grounded theory and three rounds of coding: initial, focused, and axial, to generate thematic narratives of ILD. In the latter stages of coding, we will rely on constant comparative (Glaser, 1965) methods to synthesize a general narrative and differentiations according to salient contextual variables.
In the seventh, final stage, we will report our findings in three forms: 1) a written, narrative report; 2) data charts and tables; and 3) visual representations using figures and possibly animation. Our goal is to remain ethnographically focused, considering the entire range of contextualizing variables presented through narrative reportage.
Chong, S., & Plonsky, L. (2021). A primer on qualitative research synthesis in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 55(3), 1024-1034.
Chong, S., & Reinders, H. (2021). A methodological review of qualitative research syntheses in CALL: The state-of-the-art. System, 103, 1-15.
Glaser, B. (1965). The constant comparative method of qualitative analysis. Social problems, 12(4), 436-445.
