The study of informal second language learning encompasses a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. While most research in the field focuses either on measuring acquisition from informal contexts through testing, or characterising attitudes to informal learning through questionnaires and interviews, the use of corpora offers insights into a range of phenomena relating to ISLL (Sockett, 2014). The availability of concordancing tools and wide range of fan activities, such as transcription, subtitling, and fan fiction production, make this dimension of ISLL study one which is particularly suited to researchers who wish to look beyond classroom learners as sources of data on informal learning.
Three broad areas will be covered in this talk. The first is the constitution and analysis of written and oral corpora of language which the informal learner is likely to be exposed to (Sockett, 2011). Since much is known about the habits of informal learners, particularly their listening activities relating to television series and vlogs, an analysis of the scripts of frequently viewed television series and popular vlogs provides insights into the linguistic characteristics of these two genres and the affordances they present for language learning. Examples will be presented of corpora of the vloggers Zoella and PewDiePie, which will be contrasted with corpora from popular television series.
The second is the constitution and analysis of corpora of texts written in informal contexts by non-native speakers. Websites such as Fanfiction.net offer extensive examples of productions which seek to reproduce the themes and styles of film and television production and many of which are written by non-native speakers. Although research into this area offers limited data about the authors gleaned from their profiles, such contents offer a number of advantages over studying production in a formal setting, particularly in terms of quantity of texts available and issues relating to the authors' affective filter. Examples will be presented from a corpus of Game of Thrones fan fictions.
While productions by classroom learners are likely to differ in many ways from fan fictions produced in informal contexts, it is nonetheless useful to look thirdly at corpus data gleaned from productions envisaged as bridging activities (Thorne & Reinhardt, 2008) in a formal context. Productions such as fan fictions written in the classroom (Sauro, 2019) may therefore provide helpful insights into the nature of uptake from informal sources (Sockett & Kusyk, 2015).
Bibliography
Sauro, S. (2019). Fan Fiction and Informal Language Learning. In M. Dressman & R. W. Sadler (Eds.), The Handbook of Informal Language Learning (1st ed., pp. 139–151). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119472384.ch9
Sockett, G. (2011). From the cultural hegemony of English to online informal learning: Cluster frequency as an indicator of relevance in authentic documents. ASp, 60, 5–20. https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.2469
Sockett, G. (2014). The online informal learning of English. Palgrave Macmillan.
Sockett, G., & Kusyk, M. (2015). Online informal learning of English: frequency effects in the uptake of chunks of language from participation in web-based activities. In T. Cadierno & S. W. Eskildsen (Eds.), Usage-Based Perspectives on Second Language Learning (pp. 153–178). DE GRUYTER. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110378528-009
Thorne, S. L., & Reinhardt, J. (2013). 'Bridging Activities,' New Media Literacies, and Advanced Foreign Language Proficiency. CALICO Journal, 25(3), 558–572. https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.v25i3.558-572
