Jonathon Reinhardt

Conceptualizing Digital Game-Mediated L2 Learning and Pedagogy: Game-Enhanced and Game-Based Research and Practice

With millions of players worldwide, digital games have grown in ubiquity, diversity, and accessibility over the last decade across the globe. They are now played in most of the world’s major languages. Once confined to the physical boundaries of an arcade, single PC, or television console, games have boomed with the expansion of broadband Internet, in the form of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and, most recently, casual social networking games (SNGs). In combination with a growing variety of platforms and player configurations, new narrative forms and distinct game genres have emerged, merged, and re-emerged as new forms.

Multiuser Digital Games as Sites for Research and Practice

Digital games are significant for language learning not only as potentially useful new tools within the confines of traditional foreign language contexts, but more importantly, as new semiotic and cultural environments that construct, and are constructed by, social practices. In this chapter, we explore multiuser games as ontologically new social practices that warrant attention within the scope of language learning. In doing so, we specifically address two types of multiuser digital games—multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and synthetic immersive environments (SIEs)—and their role in research and practice. In terms of research, we suggest goal orientation and social consequence as two especially meaningful elements of multiuser digital games for language learning. We then highlight ways multiuser digital games might be meaningfully considered in educational practice. This includes a discussion of task-based approaches as well as literacy development.

An Ecological Analysis of Social Networking Site-Mediated Identity Development

There is no doubt that students abroad make use of social networking sites (SNS) to connect to old friends at home and new friends in their new contexts. SNS like Facebook have boomed in popularity in recent years — according to the Facebook Newsroom Key Facts page in November 2012, over 1 billion people around the world use the service, with over 580 million using it daily and 81 percent of its users outside North America. Observing this ubiquity, applied linguists have claimed that social networking holds great potential for second language (L2) learning (for example Blattner and Fiori, 2009; McBride, 2009; Reinhardt and Zander, 2011; Stevenson and Liu, 2010), but have not yet undertaken much research grounded in empirical data on how L2 learners actually use SNS outside the classroom. Moreover, little research examines SNS practices from a longitudinal, developmental perspective (although see Reinhardt and Zander, 2011; Choi et al., 2011) in the context of a study abroad experience.

The Potential of Corpus-Informed L2 Pedagogy

Abstract Corpus linguistic methods have led to many revelations about the nature of language use and language learning which are otherwise untenable. To date, however, these findings have not had major impact on L2 (second and foreign language) teaching, except in a few areas like L2 for specialized purposes. This may be due to a number of reasons, including issues of theoretical commensurability and the nature of ‘teaching revolutions’. Still, corpus continues to influence SLA researchers, and pedagogical innovators continue to design, implement and evaluate corpus-informed L2 curricula. The future of corpus in L2 pedagogy depends on the extent to which this research and innovation can impact professional L2 instructor education and the design of commercial L2 teaching materials, as well as the continuing development of corpora and corpus-informed resources that are accessible, diverse, and adaptable.