Wan Shun Eva Lam

L2 Literacy and the Design of the Self: A Case Study of a Teenager Writing on the Internet

This article presents a case study that uses ethnographic and discourse analytic methods to examine how electronic textual experiences in ESL figure in the identity formation and literacy development of the learner. First, the article reviews some recent work in literacy studies, L2 learning, and computer-mediated communication to provide a conceptual basis for studying discursive practices and identity formation in L2 learning. The results of a case study of a Chinese immigrant teenagers written correspondence with a transnational group of peers on the Internet then show how this correspondence relates to his developing identity in the use of English. This study develops the notion of textual identity for understanding how texts are composed and used to represent and reposition identity in the networked computer media. It also raises critical questions on literacy and cultural belonging in the present age of globalization and transborder relations.

Multilingual literacies in transnational digitally mediated contexts: an exploratory study of immigrant teens in the United States

This study explores the literacy practices that are involved in transnational social and information networking among youths of immigrant backgrounds in the United States. In particular, it investigates the ways in which young migrants of diverse national origins in the United States are utilising digital media to organise social relationships with friends and families, and engage with news and media products across the United States and their native countries. Based on results of interviews with 35 adolescents of diverse national origins, and survey data with a larger group of youths, this paper shows that digital media have become major tools and avenues for these young people to maintain and develop relations with people, media, and events across territorial boundaries. Within their digital networks, the youths mobilise multiple languages to conduct interpersonal relationships and seek out ideas and information from various sources in their ‘home’ and ‘host’ societies, and sometimes across a larger diaspora. We suggest that such literacy practices of a transnational scope provide a basis for re-assessing our understanding of multilingualism as both community and transnational resources and envisioning societal education that recognises and leverages such transnational resources in the literacy education of our young people.

Transnationalism and Literacy: Investigating the Mobility of People, Languages, Texts, and Practices in Contexts of Migration

ABSTRA C T This review of research offers a synthesis and analysis of research studies that address issues of language and literacy practices and learning in transnational contexts of migration. We consider how theoretical concepts from transnational migration studies, including particular Boudieusian-inspired concepts such as transnational social field, capital, and habitus, as well as sociolinguistic studies of language and transnational space, might inform and extend the field of literacy research. We mobilize these concepts in relation to each other as interpretive frames for discussing an emerging body of empirical studies that address various aspects of language and literacy practices as they are intertwined with issues of cross-border relations and mobility. Studies reviewed examine practices in families and communities, practices among youth and within educational settings, and practices with transnational media (broadcast and digital communications). We argue that as a whole these studies show the important role of language and literacy practices in constructing and maintaining social relations across borders, and in how migrants navigate and position themselves in various social fields within and across national boundaries. We consider the intergenerational process in the family in mediating participation in these social practices, how language ideologies at multiple scale levels influence family and youth practices, and the variable ways in which institutional structures of schooling position the transnational affiliations and linguistic resources of migrant students.

The Ecology of An Sla Community in a Computer-Mediated Environment

Computer technology and its electronic environments force us to confront the constitutive role played by the acquisition environment in both second language acquisition (SLA) and our understanding of SLA. Through its uncontrovertible material and virtual presence, the electronic medium not only affects the way we conceive of language, language learning, and human communication, but is itself the product of a distinctly technological human imagination that makes the paradigms of SLA research historically and socially contingent.

Literacy and Learning across Transnational Online Spaces

This article reviews the emerging research literature on literacy in transnational migrant contexts and extends research in this area through an-depth study of how two immigrant teenagers navigated online media across countries to participate in a domain of interest, which included online forum discussion of philosophy and websites related to global Japanese animation and manga (graphic novels). In particular, it examines how the transnational affiliation and frame of reference of the youth affect their literacy development and knowledge making in these interest-based communities. Data consisted of observations, interviews, screen recordings, and think-aloud demonstrations by the youth of how they participated in the online communities. The analyses examine how the youth participated in the specialist language of their domain of interest and, in the case of one of them, how multiple languages were used to gather diverse sources of information and media content distributed across Internet sites in his native and adopted countries. Implications are drawn for an understanding of literacy in transnational migrant contexts as involving knowledge making with people and textual artifacts in distributed networks that reach across national boundaries.

What Immigrant Students can Teach us about New Media Literacy

Understanding how immigrant students use digital media outside of school could help develop digitally connected forms of pedagogy in schools.

Journalism as Model for Civic and Information Literacies.

ABSTRACT Journalism can serve as a generative disciplinary context for developing civic and information literacies needed to meaningfully participate in an increasingly networked and mediated public sphere. Using interviews with journalists, we developed a cognitive task analysis model, identifying an iterative sequence of production and domain-specific cognitive constructs of journalism expertise. We diagnose common discrepancies between professional practices and typical youth journalism pedagogies, and offer suggestions for teaching participatory politics and civic literacies through journalism.