Informal Learning and Institution-wide Language Provision: University Language Learners in the 21st Century (New Language Learning and Teaching Environments) 3030378756, 9783030378752

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NEW LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING ENVIRONMENTS

Informal Learning and Institution-wide Language Provision University Language Learners in the 21st Century Denyze Toffoli

New Language Learning and Teaching Environments

Series Editor Hayo Reinders Department of Education Anaheim University Anaheim, CA, USA Department of Languages King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi Bangkok, Thailand

New Language Learning and Teaching Environments is an exciting new book series edited by Hayo Reinders, dedicated to recent developments in learner-centred approaches and the impact of technology on learning and teaching inside and outside the language classroom. The series aims to: • Publish cutting-edge research into current developments and innovation in language learning and teaching practice. • Publish applied accounts of the ways in which these developments impact on current and future language education. • Encourage dissemination and cross-fertilisation of policies and practice relating to learner-centred pedagogies for language learning and teaching in new learning environments. • Disseminate research and best practice in out-of-class and informal language learning. The series is a multidisciplinary forum for the very latest developments in language education, taking a pedagogic approach with a clear focus on the learner, and with clear implications for both researchers and language practitioners. It is the first such series to provide an outlet for researchers to publish their work, and the first stop for teachers interested in this area.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14736

Denyze Toffoli

Informal Learning and Institution-wide Language Provision University Language Learners in the 21st Century

Denyze Toffoli LanSAD University of Strasbourg Strasbourg, France

New Language Learning and Teaching Environments ISBN 978-3-030-37875-2 ISBN 978-3-030-37876-9 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37876-9

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Mendowong Photography/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

The list of people to thank is long and the words used here are insufficient recognition of all the help and support each has provided. I would like first and foremost to thank many colleagues at, or from, the University of Strasbourg, who made this work possible, in many different ways: – Geoff Sockett, first and foremost, who welcomed me into academia, engaged me intellectually as a research partner and got me started on the informal learning adventure, who also reread the manuscript, commented and advised and with whom I continue to have a fun and stimulating approach to research and academia, – those in the Département de linguistique appliquée et didactique des langues and particularly Peggy Candas, Laurence Schmoll and Julia Putsche, – Pia Acker, Tania Heissler, and the entire IWLP (Pôle lansad) team, – my doctoral students and colleagues Kossi Seto Yibokou and Laurent Perrot,

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– my many Masters’ students over the years, who forced me to rethink ideas and follow paths that would have remained unexplored without them, – Nicole Poteaux, who was particularly instrumental in helping me forge my thoughts on many of these subjects, – Dominique Dujardin, who walked me through methodological issues that I wouldn’t have dared attempt otherwise. Other colleagues from elsewhere have also been instrumental in the initial production of this manuscript: – Annick Rivens Mompean, for her pertinent feedback and exacting scientific expectations, – Sophie Bailly, Jérôme Eneau, Claire Tardieu and Robert Vanderplank, for their reading of a prior version of this text, in French. A special thank you to Pauline, Corentin and Hadi who authorised me to use and analyse long excerpts of their work in this publication and to the many Masters’ students who allowed me to use short citations from their writing. Finally, I would like to thank family and friends for their support and encouragement: – Jacques, who encouraged me to follow my ambitions, – Walter, who supported all of them from afar, – Gerda, who not only supported and encouraged, but also carefully reread and eliminated lingering francisms.

About This Book

University students aged 18–25 or 30 today learn foreign languages as actors in a complex system where their roles as students, Internet users, employees, travellers, gamers, consumers and so on are played out, sometimes simultaneously, in a globalised context. Reinders and White (2016) observe: we are currently entering a phase in educational practice and thinking where the use of technology is enabling a shift of focus away from the classroom – and indeed in some cases formal education – taking instead the learners’ lives and their experiences as the central point for learning. Our understanding of how learners design their own learning experiences and environments and the role technology plays in this design are starting to [e]merge, requiring a re-visioning of the role and shape of education. (p. 143)

The present volume seeks to explore this recent reality particularly in France, as that is where my practice is anchored, but also drawing on experience from other countries, examining the interplay between formal

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About This Book

education and informal learning,1 targeting different levels of language and diverse technological practices and provoking encounters between theories that are sometimes opposed or at least divergent with regard to language acquisition. Informal Learning and Institution-wide Language Provision would like to draw attention to this new type of learner in higher education, digitally literate, familiar with Web 2.0 applications, and highly involved with their L2.

Bibliography European Commission. (2012). First European survey on language competences— Final report. European Commission website http://ec.europa.eu/languages/ eslc/docs/en/final-report-escl_en.pdf. Reinders, H., & White, C. (2016). 20 years of autonomy and technology: How far have we come and where to next? Language Learning and Technology, 20 (2), 143–154.

1The European Commission defines informal learning as follows: “learning resulting from daily activities related to work, family or leisure. It is not organised or structured in terms of objectives, time or learning support. Informal learning may be unintentional from the learner’s perspective. Examples of learning outcomes acquired through informal learning are skills acquired through life and work experiences. Examples are […] languages learned and intercultural skills acquired during a stay in another country; …[etc.]” (European Commission, 2012, p. 17). We will define this concept in more detail in Chapter 6, Sect. 2.

Prologue

Language learning and teaching have evolved significantly over the past few decades. My own journey has seen traditional classrooms equipped with language laboratories morphed into open-access learning centres, themselves transforming with respect to informal language learning into what some have called the digital wilds (Godwin-Jones, 2019; Little & Thorne, 2017; Sauro & Zourou, 2019). While this may not be so easily perceived in countries where native English speakers make up a significant majority of the population, it has been glaringly present elsewhere and is starting to be noticed even in traditionally Anglophone countries, where the need to speak one of the other major global languages (such as Spanish, Chinese, Arabic or even French) is beginning to be felt. Administrators, teachers and learners have all seen major changes and made considerable adaptations to today’s new environments and modalities of language learning. Observing these trends, contemporary language learners can be seen as complex psychological beings, living their life in an equally complex social sphere, constantly adapting to their ever-changing environment. As we better understand how language development takes place for the L2

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learner, we can attempt to adjust teaching to learning, creating learning environments propitious to effective, pleasant and perhaps even accelerated learning. Although a historical view of knowledge sees it as a cumulative body of human effort through the ages, in many ways each and every researcher is required to rediscover fire or (depending on the metaphor chosen) reinvent the wheel in their own way. Knowledge in any particular discipline is neither part of a phylogenetic accumulation, nor some sort of Jungian collective unconscious and is (unfortunately) not transmitted as an inventory to each new generation of researchers. Each of us must build, deconstruct and reconstruct differently, by interpreting our own readings, choosing (or being subject to) the order in which we encounter them, comparing our own human and scientific experiences and processing the information thus accumulated with our own individual intellectual endowments, which are also the result of unique starting points and developmental paths. While the progress of humanity through history is a source of amazement, as an individual I am nonetheless dissatisfied with this constant need to “keep re-inventing the wheel”. Of course each new beginning is not entirely new, yet it does often appear to be so. I am tempted to think that any approach to research in our discipline, applied linguistics or language didactics, is somewhat insignificant, except perhaps to satisfy some individual, even selfish needs, such as advancing along a semi-determined career path or achieving some degree of personal satisfaction. To that extent, the present book is both a source of satisfaction and admittedly a reiteration of insights of both those that have preceeded me and of my contemporaries. It is nonetheless a personal view of the latest research in an exciting and developing field of applied linguistics and an attempt to draw together some previously separate threads of thought. To that extent, it is a contribution to the field and a unique piece of work. In a book consecrated to foreign language learning and development and for which a previous version exists in rudimentary form in my main L2 (French), I also feel the need to comment in this preface on the extent to which the language of the writing process itself guides, constrains and determines our thought processes. One example of this is the use of gender-inclusive writing, which I first adopted as a student in a women’s

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studies programme in Toronto in the 1980s. Attempting to pursue this in French, which is a gender-conditioned language, was a particular challenge, which brought with it a new lot of learnings about both languages. The approach in English, using the plural (they, their) to avoid gender conflict, seems simple and effective to me and, with some exceptions, I will adopt it here. I am aware that this approach does disturb some readers. I have also decided to avoid the use of acronyms as much as possible, in favour of repeatedly using the long form of various terms. The reading process does not appear to be overly burdened by this approach (although it would be interesting to find reference to specific experiments, perhaps using approaches from cognitive psychology, to support it), which has the advantage of supplying permanent access to the constituent parts of each term. Nevertheless, I have retained some acronyms for very long terms or those that have fallen into common usage, at least within the small community of applied linguists (e.g. “CEFR”). A third example, shared by most of my peers publishing in our field, concerns the non-modification of student quotations, especially when they write in their second or nonnative language. My final example of the weight of language (and certainly the most significant one) concerns translation, a technical exercise with which I have never had to deal, except intuitively. The translations in this document are my own and I am solely responsible for any mistakes incurred, especially as I have often relied on initial drafts provided by the online translator DeepL.1 As far as the activity of writing itself is concerned, my first scholarly publications and written reports for industry were produced in my second language (French) with all the limitations and defects that this implies. I must admit that it is both a liberation and a gratification to publish my research in my L1 (English) — the “royal road” to global scientific dissemination.

1 www.deepl.com.

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Becoming a Researcher in Applied Linguistics Commonplace “coffee table” psychology encourages us to see in children’s favourite games the beginnings of their future careers: as a child, I played “school” with my dolls and friends, and inevitably played the teacher. Thus, although the objective of this short biography is a retrospective of my research career, I do think that professional identity is built not only from the moment we begin to practice, nor even from the moment we begin our professional training, but well before that, in a profusion of personal events, haphazard discoveries and serendipitous encounters. This justifies, or at least perhaps excuses, the hiatus that will follow, especially when it comes to presenting a work wherein the psychological dimension is paramount. My primary and secondary education took place in English-speaking Canada, in contexts where pedagogical experimentation was rife: multilevel, “open area” classes were the norm. I spent my two final years of primary school in the class of a teacher who was passionate about projectoriented pedagogy. From there, the integration of an experimental secondary school was a logical continuation. No bells, no homeroom by age or grade level, courses were individualised at the macro (choice of subjects), the meso (choice and ordering of sequences within a subject) and the micro (pursuit and completion of elements) levels. I found myself stimulated and happy, but also challenged and critical: Why would the fear of a mathematics teacher (a subject in which I previously excelled) lead me to drop this subject? How did the need to go through the mediation of a schoolmate to understand physics explanations say something about me and/or the teacher? How could the audio-lingual language laboratory methods used for foreign language learning (French and Russian) ever enable me to communicate with the families of my relatives, who still resided largely in continental Europe? How, moreover, could they allow me to become fully a part of this Canada whose recently decreed national bilingualism was to determine its identity? I am of the generation that recognises itself in the motivational assumptions proposed by Gardner and Lambert (1972), although my schooling began before the first “French immersion” schools were set up at local levels.

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My roots in that multicultural, officially bilingual English-French (although functionally multilingual: dominant English, coexisting with the languages of the region’s great migratory waves — Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, Hindi, Greek, Italian, German) society gave me a different perspective when I arrived in France. Here, at least in the Paris region, official and functional monolingualism met a rich profusion of cultures and influences very different from those I had known previously, particularly from North and West Africa, cultures that are present but not recognised, often marginalised, undervalued or even disparaged. These experiences aroused my interest in education, learning, and what favours or inhibits learning on the one hand and, on the other hand, encouraged my fascination with foreign languages, those “secret” codes that allowed my relatives to communicate with each other, without me being able to understand or intervene. The seeds to a research career in language learning and teaching had already been planted. This career was initially marked by trial and error in teaching. As a professional English trainer in large companies, I mainly met people who had not learned English successfully at school; some felt no need to do so, but were constrained by their hierarchy or the exigencies of a changing job description. In this context, how was I to do my job? How can we help others to succeed in such a long and complex learning process? How can we reconcile the adult learner with schooling that often labelled them as failures? These questions then led me to more theoretical, academic and focused research: a Ph.D., collaboration on various research projects, publications, presentations in colloquia and conferences. Working in the context of vocational training, then continuing education, has made me aware of the relative and evolving importance of English-language skills for employees in different professional sectors. From the all-English imperative in the professions of some sectors to the total absence of needs or multilingual necessities in others, exposure to this multiplicity of situations has also taught me restraint and mistrust with regard to a certain number of commonplace injunctions2 concerning language teaching/learning. My integration into the academic community has somewhat modified this position: the education of young 2 For

example: everyone needs English; learning a foreign language is essential nowadays, etc.

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people must also integrate the moral, civic and cognitive aspects of education. In these circumstances, foreign languages can play their part in the teaching of tolerance, flexibility and openness to others.3 The specificities of the long, nonlinear learning that constitutes language acquisition, the particular needs of the different worlds of initial, vocational and continuing education, have made it clear that I favour pedagogical and didactic options that no longer fall within these particular categories of training, but within the perspective of lifelong learning and therefore of training outside the usual institutional channels. Since 2006, at the University of Strasbourg, I have invested considerable time and energy in responsibilities for projects I believe in: FrancoBritish dual degrees in teaching, the creation of a new Masters’ degree in 2013 and the redesign of the courses that compose it, heading up a department of applied linguistics, fulfilling a mission identified by the university presidency to redefine and restructure institution-wide language provision (IWLP). My previous knowledge of audiences in various sectors allows me to better understand how individuals in non-language disciplines approach the learning of a foreign language, each in their own way and from their own point of view. It also allows me, as a teacher, to accept and take into consideration the fact that they may not consider language learning to be important, interesting or even useful. I began this prologue by looking through a very personal kaleidoscope of still images representing different viewpoints related to the central themes of this book. This somewhat intimate narrative will be followed by a more objective account of my scientific production to date. My research concerns various aspects of foreign language (L2) acquisition. I have explored this theme through psychological theories (motivation, goal-setting, self-determination, attribution or attachment), sociological theories (the socio-educational model, socio-constructivist approaches) and linguistic theories (construction grammar, usage-based models) of learning in general and language acquisition in particular, contextualising issues related to teaching and learning. By drawing on the global framework of complex and dynamic systems, my work can be considered part of a current in applied linguistics that emerged in the 3 See

Claire Kramsch or Lourdes Ortega, among others.

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wake of Larsen-Freeman and Cameron’s (2007) seminal publication. I consider L2acquisition to be an emergent phenomenon, resulting from multiple interactions between systems specific to each individual (selfdetermination,4 agency,5 autonomy,6 attachment,7 self-efficacy,8 selfesteem,9 motivation,10 …), those dependent on their social context (interactions, learning resources, various media, immersion, …) and those related to a cognitivist understanding of language. However, my position refutes the Chomskyan notion of a language acquisition device (lad) as the seat of innate knowledge of a universal structural grammar (Chomsky, 1965). My conception of acquisition is based on rationality (frequency, salience and recency) and exemplar-based models such as those found in the emerging theory of construction grammar and usage-based acquisition (Ellis, 2006; Tomasello, 2005). Interdependent integration of these theories of language learning provides me with my own understanding of the ways in which an L2 is acquired in adulthood. From a methodological point of view, I aim for robust results by relying on a strategic combination of diverse methodologies. At the beginning of my research career, I relied heavily on a particular type of interviewing, referred to in French as “entretiens d’explicitation” (Vermersch, 1994), which involves obtaining detailed descriptions of behaviour by subjects who project themselves into familiar target situations. More recently, six of my studies have relied entirely or partially on survey approaches, which is particularly useful for gaining initial information about the types and extent of practices within a circumscribed population. Discourse analysis of student writings, examination of logbooks 4The theory of Edward Deci, professor of psychology, and Richard Ryan, clinical psychologist, will be discussed in the chapter devoted to Self-determination Theory. 5 Agency will be addressed in the context of Albert Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy and in relation to autonomy, as seen by David Little. 6 Autonomy has been studied in particular detail in applied linguistics by researchers such as Henri Holec, David Little and Phil Benson and will be reconsidered in the light of their work here. 7 Attachment refers to the theory of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. 8The concept of self-efficacy refers to the work of Albert Bandura. 9 Self-esteem refers to the work of Bandura, but also Ryan and Deci and more particularly Zoltan Dörnyei and Ema Ushioda in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). 10 Research on motivation in general and in applied linguistics in particular is extensive and will be the subject of many references and explanations further on.

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detailing L2 activities outside the classroom and ethnographic observation are also particularly useful approaches in attempting a full understanding of the phenomena at work. It seems imperative today that research combine these and other methodological approaches, as it is the complementary dialogue between the emic and the etic that can lead to a more profound understanding of language development and acquisition (Blanchet & Chardenet, 2011; Dörnyei, 2007; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2007). From an action research perspective, the constant to and fro between research and activity in the field with teachers and learners, as well as the personal involvement of the researcher in an ever-evolving context, prevents the implementation of controlled experimental protocols (as might be obtained in a laboratory context). Mixed methodology permits a certain objectivity in the treatment of subjects which concern humans and human activity and which necessitate a certain theoretical “polytheism” (Block, 1999). An approach using metaphor seems to be particularly meaningful and adapted to a researcher who began her career studying literature. The metaphor intended to guide me in my thesis research was that of the funnel (Narcy-Combes & Narcy-Combes, 2000), describing a broad body of knowledge, which could be reduced as time goes by, targeting a very specific research object and thus allowing it to be precisely framed and described. The metaphorical reference of the sieve is also sometimes used, implying the removal of elements (theoretical or field data) non-essential to the targeted end-product. These utilitarian and somewhat mechanistic images of research seem to me today to be far removed from the one I have built for myself, which is more like a neural network with its synaptic, electrical and temporary links, reinforced by use and weakened when neglected, as the neural points themselves multiply or decrease in number according to the nutritional intake they receive. Another metaphor that could represent my current approach would be that of a window opening onto starry infinity. Through this window, I see only a tiny number of existing stars and, depending on the moment, or on events that have nothing to do with the stars, I pay more attention to some of them; I draw constellations. I may even be able to project myself very close to one of them to have a different perspective and discover other previously unknown stars and thus design other new constellations by drawing

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lines between them. I therefore conceive my research today not as something that is being refined in relation to an ever-more-distinct objective, but as something that is moving, expanding and enriching itself with new points, sometimes seeming very distant from this object, which itself is moving, redefining and reinventing itself. Perhaps my convocation of the theory of complex and dynamic systems is better understood as a metatheory (Dörnyei, Henry, & MacIntyre, 2015) capable of encompassing not only this diversity, but also this movement. Fortunately or unfortunately, applied linguistics is not a unified field. Applied linguists constitute their epistemological frameworks from several disciplines, themselves multiple (language sciences, educational sciences, psychology, sociology and so on). We do not always share the same references. I therefore allow myself to explain, sometimes in some detail, the theories on which I rely. The objective is not to make the text overly academic, nor to infantilise the reader, but to allow them to follow my reasoning. My focus will be the L2 development of contemporary language learners in higher education and all of the arguments I develop will circle back to this point.

References Blanchet, P., & Chardenet, P. (2011). Guide pour la recherche en didactique des langues et des cultures: Approches contextualisées/sous la direction de Philippe Blanchet, Patrick Chardenet (P. Blanchet et P. Chardenet, Éds.). https://hal. archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01436588. Block, D. (1999). Who framed SLA research? Problem framing and metaphoric accounts of the SLA research process. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (pp. 135–148). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press. Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research methods in applied linguistics: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dörnyei, Z., Henry, A., & MacIntyre, P. D. (2015). Motivational dynamics in language learning. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Ellis, N. C. (2006). Cognitive perspectives on SLA. Themes in SLA Research: AILA Review, 19, 100–121. https://doi.org/10.1075.

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Gardner, R. C., & Lambert, W. E. (1972). Attitudes and motivation in secondlanguage learning. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED081270. Godwin-Jones, R. (2019). Riding the digital wilds: Learner autonomy and informal language learning. Language Learning & Technology, 23(1), 8–25. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2007). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Little, D., & Thorne, S. L. (2017). From learner autonomy to rewilding: A discussion. In M. Cappellini, T. Lewis, & A. Rivens Mompean (Eds.), Learner autonomy and web 2.0 (pp. 12–35). Sheffield: Equinox. Narcy-Combes, J.-P., & Narcy-Combes, M.-F. (2000). Épistémologie et méthodologie de la recherche dans le secteur LANSAD: Qu’apporterait une harmonisation des pratiques? ASp. la revue du GERAS, (27–30), 243–251. https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.2136. Sauro, S., & Zourou, K. (2019). What are the digital wilds? Language Learning & Technology, 23(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10125/44666. Tomasello, M. (2005). Constructing a language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Vermersch, P. (1994). L’entretien d’explicitation. Issy-Les-Moulineaux, France: ESF Editeur.

Contents

Part I 1

Theoretical Views on the Contemporary L2 Learner

Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) 1 Initial Conditions 2 Non-linearity 3 Dynamism 4 Attractor States and the Search for Stability in a System 5 Emergence 6 Coadaptation, Self-Organisation and Phase Shifts 7 Complex Dynamic Systems Theory and Language Learning 8 Methodological Considerations in Complex Dynamic Systems Theory 9 Other Theories of L2 Development and Complex Dynamic Systems References

5 6 8 9 9 10 11 12 13 15 19

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2

3

Contents

The Triple-A of L2 Learning: Autonomy, Ability and Attachment 1 Autonomy in General Theories of Motivation 2 Autonomy in the Applied Linguistics Literature 3 The Skills of the Contemporary Language Learner in Higher Education 3.1 Self-Efficacy 3.2 Self-Direction and Autonomy in Learning 3.3 Digital Literacy 3.4 L2 Competence 4 Relatedness 4.1 Attachment 4.2 Relevance of Adult Attachment Theory for Contemporary Language Learners in Higher Education 4.3 Social Agents and Action-Oriented Learning 5 Conclusion on Self-Determination References

49 53 54 56

Portrait of Two Contemporary Language Learners in Higher Education 1 Hadi, May 2018 2 Corentin, April 2016 Reference

63 63 65 69

Part II 4

23 25 28 32 34 37 39 40 45 46

Contexts of Contemporary Language Development

Institution-Wide Language Provision 1 ESP, CLIL and Other Classroom-Based Arrangements: Targeting Student-Centred Language Through Content-Based Teaching 2 The Thorny Issue of B2 Target Levels

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79 81

Contents

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Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL): Disciplinary Education as a Foundation for Language Learning References

84 92

3

5

6

7

Targeting Student-Centred Language Through Self-Access 1 Self-Access/Language Resource Centres 2 IWLP at the University of Strasbourg 3 University Language Centres and Pedagogies as Seen by Students 4 Relevance of Self-Access for Language Learning in Higher Education References

97 97 105

Students Outside the System: Informal Learning 1 Informal Digital Learning of English (from OILE to IDLE) 2 Definitions and Terms 3 Practices 4 Acquisitions 5 The Lexicon from American Series 6 Other Lexical and Grammatical Acquisitions 7 Effects on Pronunciation 8 Strategies, Resource Use and Identity 9 The (Special) Place of Music 10 Initial Conclusions Regarding the Online Informal Learning of English References

125

Teaching Language to Contemporary Learners in Higher Education 1 Pedagogical Presence 2 Socio-Emotional Presence

107 119 122

129 130 132 135 136 137 138 142 144 150 154 163 169 170

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3 4

Mediators of Speech Drawing Together Research on Language Learning from Both LRC and OILE Contexts—Conclusion to Part II References Part III 8

172 173 178

University Language Learners in the 21st Century

A Portrait of Contemporary Language Learners in Higher Education 1 From Modelling to Profiling 2 Cllohé 3 A Complex and Composite Profile References

185 185 188 191 195

Appendix: 2014 Questionnaire

199

Bibliography

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Index

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Acronyms and Abbreviations

CEFR CLIL CRAL CTL ESP FASIL GA IDLE IIEF IWLP L1 L2 LEA LLCE LRC LSP OCLL

Common European Framework of Reference for Languages Content and Language Integrated Learning Language Learning and Resource Centre (Centre de ressources et d’apprentissage des langues) — Strasbourg, France Classroom-Trained Learners English for Special Purposes Fully Autonomous Self-Instructed Learners General American Informal Digital Learning of English International Institute of French Studies (Institut International d’Études Françaises) — Strasbourg, France Institution-Wide Language Provision First Language or Mother Tongue Second or Foreign Language Applied Foreign Languages (Langues étrangères appliquées) Languages, Literatures and Foreign Cultures (Langues, litératures et cultures étrangères) Language Resource Centre Language for Special Purposes Out of Classroom Language Learning

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Acronyms and Abbreviations

OILE OILL RP SAES

Online Informal Learning of English Online Informal Language Learning Received Pronunciation Society of Anglicists in French Higher Education (Société des anglicistes de l’enseignement supérieur ) Self-Determination Theory Second Language Acquisition Centre for Innovation and Resources in Language Learning (Service pédagogique d’innovation et de ressources pour l’apprentissage des langues) — Strasbourg, France

SDT SLA SPIRAL

List of Figures

Chapter 2 Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5

Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9 Fig. 10

Interactions between different types of autonomy (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017) Self-efficacy, at the interface of competence and autonomy The influence of digital literacy on L2 use and competence (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017) Overlap of “autonomy” and “skills” areas Language issues for the contemporary language learner in higher education — interactions between L2 competence, L2 use and L2 autonomy (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017) The competencies of the contemporary language learner in higher education Interaction between types of autonomy and aspects of the L2 (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017) Self-determination diagram of the contemporary language learner in higher education Bartholomew and Horowitz’s Model of adult attachment (1991 — adapted) Attachment or the relatedness cluster

31 36 40 41

43 44 44 45 49 53

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Fig. 11

List of Figures

Self-determination of the contemporary language learner in higher education

55

Chapter 4 Fig. 1

The CLIL continuum according to Taillefer (2013, pp. 36–37)

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Chapter 5 Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

The Self-Access Centre as satellite The Self-Access Centre as part of an integrated system The Language Resource Centre as a language learning centre

101 101 102

Chapter 6 Fig. 1

Key aspects of Online Informal Learning of English (OILE)

151

Chapter 7 Fig. 1

Contemporary language learners in higher education in the different contexts in which they encounter their L2

175

Chapter 8 Fig. 1

One (fictional) contemporary language learner’s trajectory through the complex terrain of L2 development

187

List of Tables

Chapter 5 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5

Language teaching/learning structures at the University of Strasbourg Appreciation of learning for the various language centres Fields of study and enrolment in language centres Perception of content for the various language centres Students’ perceptions of teachers for the various language centres

108 113 114 115 117

Chapter 6 Table 1

An example of one student’s OILE activities over an 8-week period (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012, p. 142)

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Chapter 7 Table 1

Comparison between IDLL/LRC

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Part I Theoretical Views on the Contemporary L2 Learner

Language learners at the beginning of the twenty-first century are different from those at the end of the twentieth century, particularly in view of the technologies they can and do use to access language resources and the variety of ways in which they engage with these resources. Language learners of the 1980s and 1990s came into contact with their foreign language mainly during a language class or, for a lucky few, through immersion in the country where it was spoken. For those taking language classes, they would generally start with a group which had the same background (usually grade level), the same resources (a teacher, a textbook and the audio-visual resources to accompany it, sometimes an audio-active-comparative language laboratory) and that progressed at the same pace. For students particularly committed to their learning, they could supplement their language course with some activities outside the classroom, for example by listening to recorded music in the foreign language or finding a pen pal with whom to exchange letters once or twice a month. The arrival of the Internet at the end of the 1990s completely changed this situation and opened the door to a multitude of new activities for learning. The motivating factors behind individuals’ desires to learn a new language were no doubt the same as those of the past, but

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new resources and new ways of accessing them profoundly changed the game. Language teachers who lived through these changes are aware of the entirely new language-related media their students encounter. They see students participating in various leisure-type activities in their L2, particularly when that L2 is English. They can sometimes catch them watching all types of videos in their L2 online, talk to them about gaming or singing songs in their L2 and hear about various other activities that they engage in to contact other learners or speakers of their target language. As researchers, we are keen to know more: What exactly are they involved in? If looking at a specific group, such as students in higher education, how extensive and how intensive are such activities? Do these practices change over time, according to the age of the pupils or students, or simply from year to year according to trends or technical innovations? Are there measurable effects on the acquisition (or development1 ) of the language itself and if so, on which aspects: auditory perception, comprehension (of words, concepts), production of meaning, grammaticality, pronunciation, or something else? Depending on the results, what do we do with this feedback when returning to our role as teachers? How can learners’ knowledge influence twenty-first-century language didactics? Several of my contemporaries (Benson & Reinders, 2011; Cole, 2015; Dressman, 2017; Kusyk, 2017; Schwarz, 2013; Sockett, 2014; Sundqvist & Sylvén, 2016; Vanderplank, 2016) have tackled these questions and my contribution should be considered in the light of their work and as a complement to published studies and ongoing research in this field. When answering the above questions, I’d like to begin by situating a number of notions and debates that have shaped my own understanding of how an L2 is acquired and how individuals can position themselves in relation to learning in general and to learning an L2 in particular.

1 Larsen-Freeman

(2015) urges the use of the word development as an alternative to learning or acquisition, as she considers it more neutral and inclusive of a variety of different factors.

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References Benson, P., & Reinders, H. (2011). Beyond the language classroom. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cole, J. (2015). Foreign language learning in the age of the internet: A comparison of informal acquirers and traditional classroom learners in central Brazil (Doctoral thesis). University of Oxford, Oxford. Dressman, M. (2017). Informal language acquisition and classroom teaching: Complementary, not competitive, approaches. Presented at Korea TESOL International Conference. Seoul, South Korea. Kusyk, M. (2017). Les dynamiques du développement de l’anglais au travers d’activités informelles en ligne: Une étude exploratoire auprès d’étudiants français et allemands (Thèse de doctorat). Pädagogische Hochschule Karlsruhe and Université de Strasbourg. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2015). Saying what we mean: Making the case for second language acquisition to become second language development. Language Teaching, 48(4), 491–505. Schwarz, M. (2013). Learning with Lady GaGa & Co: Incidental EFL vocabulary acquisition from pop songs. Views, 22, 17–48. Sockett, G. (2014). The online informal learning of English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sundqvist, P., & Sylvén, L. K. (2016). Extramural English in teaching and learning—From theory and research to practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. http://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137460479. Vanderplank, R. (2016). Captioned media in foreign language learning and teaching: Subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing as tools for language learning. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

1 Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST)

A number of the notions that have proven fundamental for recent second language acquisition research can be found within the global theoretical framework of complex and dynamic systems (CDS), as taken up and articulated around language acquisition by scholars such as Diane Larson-Freeman and Lynne Cameron (2007), Zoltán Dörnyei, Alastaire Henry, and Peter MacIntyre (2015), Jean-Marc Dewaele and Peter MacIntyre (2014), or Geoff Sockett (2012) writing in English and JeanClaude Bertin (2012), Meryl Kusyk (2017) or Gregory Miras (2017) in the French context. Systems theory is generally said to have originated with Henri Poincaré’s Chaos theory, established around the end of the nineteenth century and concerning mathematical models explaining the stability of the solar system. Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s work in biology in the 1950s and 1960s is also considered seminal in this area. It establishes the idea that a system consists of different elements participating in some type of central process, interacting with each other and organising themselves as a function of the process itself. The meteorologist Edward Lorenz is another important figure in the history of systems theory, known for his work on initial conditions in the 1970s. Examples of systems from © The Author(s) 2020 D. Toffoli, Informal Learning and Institution-wide Language Provision, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37876-9_1

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the physical and biological sciences include weather systems, solar systems and ecological systems. Developed by the French sociologist Edgar Morin in the latter part of the twentieth century as part of a general epistemology of the humanities and social sciences, the theory has expanded to include ideas of complexity, uncertainty and self-eco-organisation. Morin argues that a system is more than the sum of its parts (Morin, 2005). Reference to dynamic systems theory in applied linguistics is relatively recent, with the first major work addressing the subject being published by Larsen-Freeman and Cameron in 2007. Around the same time, members of the University of Gröningen in the Netherlands also began publishing works in applied linguistics referring to complex dynamic systems (De Bot, 2008; De Bot, Lowie, & Verspoor, 2007; Lowie, 2017; Verspoor, 2012; Verspoor, Lowie, Chan, & Vahtrick, 2017; Verspoor, Lowie, & Van Dijk, 2008; Verspoor, Schmid, & Xu, 2012). Bertin justifies the use of complex dynamic systems theory in the field of language didactics insofar as its main objects (language, the learner, the teacher) and the process (language acquisition/learning) around which the system organises itself, are themselves complex constructed objects. (Bertin, 2012, p. 252)

Many aspects of complex dynamic systems theory make it an ideal candidate as an overall theoretical framework for understanding the phenomena of L2 acquisition and development (Dörnyei, Henry, & MacIntyre, 2015; Lowie, 2017). The emphasis on initial conditions, non-linearity, dynamism, attractors, emergence and coadaptation is eminently present in second language acquisition (SLA) research. In order to understand the overall theory in terms of SLA applications, a good starting point will be to look at each of these six parameters one by one.

1

Initial Conditions

Complex dynamic systems theory considers the initial conditions of a system to be decisive in determining the trajectories that will be followed

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through the system as well as the results obtained at the end. The notion was initially described by the meteorologist Edward Lorenz (1972), with his presentation to the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences entitled Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas? In this presentation, he discusses the fact that minimal changes to the initial data input into computer simulations of weather conditions could create maximal and often unforeseeable trajectories and results. His title was meant to be provocative and not literal, underlining how seemingly incidental initial conditions might have important effects on a system. Considering contemporary language learning, the subject of this book, it is obvious that initial conditions are far from uniform. Only a generation ago, before the massive arrival of the Internet in our lives, many European students arrived at university with a seven- or eight-year background in school English (middle and high school) and few other experiences or encounters with this language, creating a certain homogeneity among students in general and even within each class group. In today’s fast-paced and constantly evolving world, all language learners, whether they be students in higher education, children at school or adults in continuing education, come into the system (language centre, self-study software program, course, etc.) with their own specific background, composed of their own previous experiences of the particular L2 being learnt, but also of languages, language and learning in general. In the specific case of English, including English for specialists in non-linguistic disciplines (IWLP English, as I shall later call it), learners arrive with their school experience, but also with very diverse out-of-classroom language learning experiences (OCLL) (Benson & Reinders, 2011), often unknown to or unimagined by the teacher. Among these experiences, we might find, for example, a few trips or meetings with other (native or non-native) speakers of the L2. On the other hand, all these students (even the most reluctant) will have encountered English through the media, even if only isolated words or expressions in advertisements or displays. Even in France, where preservation of the French language

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is considered to be a national priority,1 some very French brands, like Renault, have taken to using English slogans, such as the French touch. The vast majority of students in higher education are in almost daily contact with English: watching American (or sometimes British) series, reading information on websites, interacting on blogs, forums or video games, communicating in either writing or speech with international players in multiplayer online games, etc. For some people, this exposure can reach several hundred hours of English per year (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012), a much higher number of contact hours than classroom exposure, even in the case of bilingual or immersive classes.

2

Non-linearity

Complex dynamic systems are considered to be fundamentally nonlinear in nature. As opposed to simple mathematical equations, which result in single straight lines, complex systems, if they were to be plotted on a graph, would result in erratic, non-linear trajectories, with portions that are sometimes curving, sometimes straight and sometimes interrupted. Learning can likewise be pictured as a non-linear and unstable process. Moreover, the terrain through which the language learner progresses is multi-dimensional. Each of the (language) elements being acquired, whether grammatical, phonological or lexical, comprehension or production, can be seen as a separate dimension and none are acquired following a strict order or (as shown below) attained at a fixed pace. The (language) learning of the students we are interested in is impossible to predict precisely upstream (or even downstream), regardless of context, yet it has become even less predictable because of its integration of what happens both within the university context (the education paradigm) and outside it (the development paradigm).

1 See,

for example, texts like the “Loi Toubon” of 1994, regulating the usage of languages other than French in French media and advertising.

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Dynamism

A third important concept of complex dynamic systems theory for applied linguistics concerns the system’s movement. Dynamism can be seen as a synonym for constant change and can be opposed to stability or lack of movement. Dynamism and stability are two manifestations of the same phenomenon. If we consider language learning as a system, we can see that learners go through more or less dynamic phases, where learning can be faster or slower paced, sometimes coming to a stop (when the learner ceases all activity in the L2) or even regressing (which is a dynamic movement backwards, so to speak), as during a long period of lack of practice or of no contact with the L2. The learners we are interested in, once at university, continue their language development at varying paces, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but constantly evolving and in a state of flux. This is what we refer to as the dynamism of the process.

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Attractor States and the Search for Stability in a System

The individual language learner and language user advances into this multi-dimensional territory of language development under the influence of various elements. Some, the attractors, offer paths of lesser resistance, often steering the learner away from their goal or bringing them to a dead-end or a more or less temporary state of stagnation (Lowie, 2017). The opposite of an attractor state, a “repulsor” state, requires considerable energy to get close to it and does not allow one to remain there. Metaphorically, it can be compared to a ball rolling up a slope to reach the top. More prosaically, it can be seen as a New Year’s resolution somewhat remote from our daily habits. While it may represent a desired outcome, it may also be practically impossible to attain. Attractors are therefore elements that can often divert learning energy away from the most direct trajectory to the desired objective. Phil Hiver (2015) encourages us

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to view states such as apathy, autotelia2 or acquired helplessness as emerging and dynamic attractors, rather than as simple variables in language learning. Thus, the L1 can be an attractor that limits experimentation or restricts the search for variability in the L2 and leads to different fossilisation effects. In our 2017 article (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017), we put forward the idea that autonomy, L2 competence and digital literacy3 can all function as positive attractor states, as can the attraction (or even fascination) of a video game, TV series or good novel.

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Emergence

The concept of emergence is that of an open process of permanent selfrenewal, without a predetermined or even desired end state. With regard to language learning, the long-considered ideal of skills identical to or comparable with those of a native speaker is now considered illusory (Council of Europe, 2000; Lowie, 2017) and even counterproductive (May, 2013). For researchers espousing emergence, it would be more productive to target the very process of learning or of language practice, rather than targeting a final state or objective. Some refer to this using the neologism “languaging ” or even “translanguaging ” (Garcia & Wei, 2013), that is to say the creation of language through interactions between plurilingual individuals, their social contexts and various linguistic codes. The complex development of language competence recognises partial skills emerging differentially in individual learners, in a constantly but irregularly changing context, both influencing and being influenced by innumerable factors, including other languages and people(s). (Toffoli, 2015, p. 26)

2 Or

“flow” cf. (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008). address this issue more specifically in the section on digital literacy in the chapter on self-determination.

3 We

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Knowledge about a particular language and about language in general emerges from this process of interaction between the individual, language and the world, language practices and L2 skills.

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Coadaptation, Self-Organisation and Phase Shifts

In a complex dynamic system, a change or modification in one system produces changes in other related systems or subsystems. The very interaction of subsystems produces changes that are self-organising (no influence other than the system itself is involved) and therefore unpredictable. This is both a cause and a product of emergence. The mutual influence of all these different subsystems creates non-linear trajectories. Lowie confirms that language development emerges from a complex history and continues in an unpredictable way: Language development is not predetermined, but emerges from the complex history of all affecting factors, which include communication and input. Consequently, language development is essentially non-linear and difficult to predict. (Lowie, 2017, para. 9)

Learning trajectories are eminently individual and personal, but they do not take place in isolation, or as purely solitary endeavours, far from it. Students create interactive relationships (which require constant adaptation) with other learners, with native and non-native speakers of the language, with teachers and even with resources, both digital and analogue, thus creating interdependence and complexity in a permanent process of reconfiguration or reorganisation. This coadaptation can produce profound changes, or phase shifts, which fundamentally modify the qualitative nature of the system and make it possible to identify the parameters that control the system (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2007). An example of a phase shift from another area is that of the change from walking to trotting or trotting to running. Although each of these states is qualitatively different from the others, the precise moment of transition from one to the other is difficult if not impossible to determine.

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Likewise, learners learn and progress without necessarily realising it and then, at some point, recognise that they have skills that they did not have before. These transitions between different phases are of particular interest to researchers, because they modify our vision of the learning process, which is no longer seen as just a replication or restitution of taught patterns (Sockett, 2012), but as the emergence of new and unique skills.

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Complex Dynamic Systems Theory and Language Learning

The metaphor of complex dynamic systems was initially used in applied linguistics to qualify language (Verspoor et al., 2017). Kail (2015) traces this use back to “one of the most influential articles for cognitive science”, published in 1990 by Jeffrey Elman,4 which introduces the idea that language is a dynamic system and that language categories do not need to be defined a priori as discrete entities in mental representation, but can emerge from the interaction between the learner and the linguistic properties of the environment. (Kail, 2015, p. 79)

However, the learner and systems of learning themselves could also be considered from this perspective. As such, both of these complex dynamic systems, as well as the interactions between them, will be of central interest in the pages that follow: we shall be focusing on the one hand on learners and on the other hand on the learning environments in which their language skills develop and progress. If many researchers today consider that language learning functions as a complex and dynamic system, it is due to the six characteristics of these systems presented above: the importance and variability of initial states, their non-linearity and dynamic nature, attractor (and repulsor) states, emergence and coadaptation which are all manifest in L2 learning. We will see further on that these are also the defining elements of the contemporary language learner. 4 Elman,

J. L. (1990). Finding structure in time. Cognitive Science, 14 (2), 179–211. https://doi. org/10.1207/s15516709cog1402_1.

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Although many aspects of complex dynamic systems theory seem to provide an excellent framework for an overall understanding of the phenomena of L2 acquisition and development (see above), it is neither a predictive tool nor a operational framework for instructional design. Marc Trestini (2016) reminds us that a complex system is unpredictable in nature. It is therefore not possible to predict, through calculation, however advanced it may be, the outcome of the processes or phenomena involved, even in a probabilistic way. (p. 118)

Daniel Véronique (2017) doubts that emergentism, particularly in the form of complex dynamic systems, “can contribute to curriculum activities in language didactics, to the structuring of the subject to be taught, to the definition of teaching tasks or to the implementation of pedagogical conduct in language classes” (Véronique, 2017, para. 27), which is another way of saying the same thing and referring it specifically to the field of language teaching. Understanding the complex and dynamic system of contemporary language learners will not facilitate the design of a language centre, a learning app or any other device intended to support learning. On the other hand, it could provide a better understanding of how learners learn within their particular contexts today, how they seize the affordances of various resources (or not) and how their personal learning trajectory evolves. Other theories, more specific to language acquisition, can also be seen as anchored in the global framework of complex dynamic systems and thus as proposing explanations of L2 development today, compatible with the current state of research concerning learners and contemporary contexts.

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Methodological Considerations in Complex Dynamic Systems Theory

Research requires the use of methodologies that match the theoretical frameworks adopted and that allow the emergence of new perceptions or perspectives. The orientations recommended in the epistemological

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frameworks of language and educational sciences, particularly in a systemic, complex and dynamic perspective, argue for crossed methodologies in order to produce robust research (Blanchet & Chardenet, 2011; Dörnyei, 2007; Dörnyei et al., 2015; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2007). In the pages that follow, reference will be made to surveys that have often been used as a starting point to identify trends in a population. These quantitative approaches provide a valuable initial means to delineate the scope of a phenomenon, identify broad lines of practice or get a general idea of the perceptions of a particular audience on a subject. Larsen-Freeman (2018), however, points out that working on the basis of averages (of a given group) does not teach us everything about the population concerned and strongly advocates the adoption of methodologies that examine the individual, rather than the general. Emic approaches, such as case studies based on an analysis of content and discourse from reflective learning blogs, make it possible to understand cognitive and affective aspects of learning that remain relatively inaccessible in surveybased approaches. Since one of the characteristics of complex dynamic systems is precisely their evolution over time, research claiming to take such a perspective must include diachronic analyses of the systems involved. In order to study the dynamic phenomena of the contemporary language learner in higher education over time, two approaches are used in the research described here: longitudinal studies of one or a few individuals concerning detailed phenomena and survey replication, dealing with more global phenomena, a few years apart. Retrodictive studies (Dörnyei, 2014), where individuals reconstitute their own changes over time, can also be useful for this type of work. The diversification of tools (light questionnaires, follow-up of student work, blogs, classroom observations), as encountered in many of the studies referred to here, shifts the researcher’s vision from a specific moment in time to a longer-term and more contextualised perspective, important for understanding the development of language skills (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2007). In this book, I will thus build on various research methodologies, in order to provide as clear a picture as possible of the contextual terrain of the contemporary language learner in higher education. Although I

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initially sought to model the contemporary language learner in higher education, I shall, in the long run, attempt to profile this character, in all their systemic complexity.

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Other Theories of L2 Development and Complex Dynamic Systems

What is an L2, how do individuals initially start learning one and how does it develop over time? I do not intend here to give an entire history of applied linguistics or even of language teaching methodologies over the centuries, but a very brief recap of some of the major currents of thought concerning language and its acquisition will make it easier to follow my reasoning and to better describe contemporary language learners in higher education. Even laypeople notice a significant difference between the acquisition of an L1, the mother tongue we learn in early childhood, and an L2, whose learning begins at a later age. Without going into the question of the “critical age” that has preoccupied many researchers and is still the subject of study and debate, it is fairly clear to all that up to a certain age, language learning seems to be practically automatic and that after that point it seems to become a difficult, long and uncertain undertaking. Two main streams have competed in theorising the organisation and development of meaning and linguistic structure with regard to the acquisition of an L2 during the twentieth century and first part of the twenty-first century: the behaviourist current and the cognitivist current. The former postulates imitation as the essential vector of learning. During the 1950s and 1960s, Robert Lado, in line with the work of B. F. Skinner, argued that the acquisition of grammatical structures was a matter of habit creation. But he also defended the idea that learning an L2 is based on the acquisition of a large quantity of lexemes for semantic purposes and that it is the complexity induced by the quantity of lexical elements that requires the use of grammatical notions (Ellis, 2002). Almost concurrently, the Chomskyan model advanced the idea of a deep linguistic structure that underlies all the languages of the world and that, in a way, is part of our genetic heritage, providing us with

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the potential to generate any utterance or statement in any language. This idea of generative linguistics made it possible to explain the paradox between the relative poverty of the language to which children are exposed and the fact that, from around the age of 5, they can create an innumerable number of sentences to express their thoughts. By the time they reach adulthood, the number and the complexity of the sentences become almost infinite. The learning of an L2, according to this model, is driven by learning the (surface) rules of a particular language that allow us to generate simple phrases and word groupings and then progressively more and more complex sentences and constructions. Two observations have prompted research to move beyond these basic models. On the one hand, no physical “language acquisition device” has ever been found in the brain (although distributed language areas exist and are visible in brain imaging). On the other hand, prescriptive learning of rules (which were originally intended only as a description of how a language works) does not seem to lead to satisfactory results when it comes to producing L2 utterances in a communicative situation. Such observations have led researchers like Stephen Krashen to envisage the pertinence of a quantitative approach to L2 exposure. Krashen (1978) thus proposed his hypothesis of comprehensible input, where he suggests that language acquisition occurs from exposure to a significant amount of L2 input. Krashen’s hypotheses and this conception of L2 learning have been relatively discredited for nearly 40 years in Europe and North America, in the face of the power of the Chomskyan current. In many ways, the generative grammar hypotheses were seen as more intellectually compelling than the somewhat simplistic attraction of Krashen’s natural hypothesis, which considered that in many ways, languages could be learnt without much conscious effort. New research conducted over the past twenty years using powerful computational systems has tested the idea that the human brain can process large amounts of language information relatively effortlessly. Thus, since the 2000s, some researchers have re-explored the conception of language as constructed from chunks of language that are created in a similar way or according to the same patterns. Nick Ellis (2002) shows how

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each aspect of language5 actually relies on frequency effects to produce the language itself, both in the L1 and in an L2. Heather Hilton (2009) describes this particularly well, providing both a theoretical and a historical understanding of the interaction and alternation between these two perspectives for language teaching. These positions have given rise to a tension that still exists between explicit and implicit approaches to language learning and development. Ellis (2007) bundles the most recent research in this area into an “associative-cognitive” theory that he calls “CREED”, an acronym for the keywords that compose it. His theory thus presents language acquisition as being based on five parameters; it is construction-based, rational, exemplar-driven, emergent and dialectic. Clarifying each of these terms will allow us a quick understanding of what it is about. Construction grammar, as practised by researchers such as Adele Goldberg (1995) or John Sinclair (1991), construes language as a constructed set of semantic units or collocations,6 often appearing as fixed phrases. These are not necessarily idiomatic expressions such as “it’s raining cats and dogs”, but words that are very often found together and thus constitute a kind of unity, for example: “what is it”, “round about”, “one or the other” “and so on”. When speaking (or writing), speakers effectively construct language, assembling many such ready-made chunks, thus minimising cognitive effort focused on grammar and freeing it up to attend to the meaning of what they want to express. The notion of rationality expresses the fact that the brain will prioritise information according to its salience, frequency or how recent it is. Information that meets these criteria is more cognitively accessible than information that is older, less frequent or less prominent. In the case of language development, rationality also implies that priority is usually given to the norms of the L1 and these norms influence what we pay attention to in the L2. Exemplar-based acquisition is established in opposition to rule-based acquisition. Thus, learners integrate as exemplary the constructions to 5 Phonology,

phonetics, reading, spelling, lexicon, morphosyntax, phraseology, comprehension, grammar, sentence production and syntax. 6 A recent master’s thesis by Pierre Werey (2018) lists more than thirty denominations for these phraseological units.

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which they are frequently exposed; these then become models on which they base their understanding or production of other statements. For example, if we frequently hear the expression “do you want a [coffee]”, we would be tempted to extrapolate at some point to substitute other objects or perhaps even other subjects or verbs, depending on the other frequent constructions encountered around the same time. The notion of emergence has been described above in Sect. 5 and refers to the fact that it is the systemic and complex interactions between these different elements that allow language to emerge, be constructed and develop. Again, this emergence is neither linear nor regular and may accelerate and decelerate, at varying rates. Finally, Ellis (2007) argues that learning is the result of dialectical tension between known phenomena in the L1, which act as attractor states, encouraging interlanguage fossilisation, and new L2 phenomena that require learners’ attention and that would allow them to continue to progress along the ever-changing trajectory of their interlanguage. From this point of view, the explicit feedback that learners can gather about form (linguistic, pragmatic or metalinguistic) will lead to the progressive development of this interlanguage. This emergent vision of learning offers a compelling explanation for the complexity of L2 development. But this explanation is only valid inasmuch as we recognise the essentially individual nature of language learning (Lowie, 2017). Thus, for Lowie, a language cannot be taught, but only learned.7 Adopting Nick Ellis’ CREED (2007) and referring to the framework of complex dynamic systems therefore requires integrating this conception of the individual nature of learning and the active nature of the learner (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012; Toffoli & Perrot, 2017). This also leads to the integration of other theoretical frameworks to position and understand the psycho-social aspects of human beings in their desire to learn. The most ambitious of these, and the one whose broad ramifications will

7 “Languages,

we can conclude can be learned, but cannot be taught. The only thing a teacher can do is to provide optimal conditions for learning to take place” (Lowie, 2017, para. 11).

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allow me to continue to build a coherent representation of the contemporary language learner in higher education, is self-determination theory (SDT).

References Benson, P. (2011). Language learning and teaching beyond the classroom: An introduction to the field. In P. Benson & H. Reinders (Eds.), Beyond the language classroom (pp. 7–16). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bertin, J.-C. (2012). Approche systémique de l’innovation pour l’apprentissage en Centre de Langues. Language Learning in Higher Education, 1(2). https:// doi.org/10.1515/cercles-2011-0016. Blanchet, P., & Chardenet, P. (2011). Guide pour la recherche en didactique des langues et des cultures: Approches contextualisées/sous la direction de Philippe Blanchet, Patrick Chardenet (P. Blanchet et P. Chardenet, Éds.). https://hal. archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01436588. Council of Europe. (2000). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/ Source/Framework_EN.pdf. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper Perennial. De Bot, K. (2008). Introduction: Second Language Development as a Dynamic Process. The Modern Language Journal, 92(2), 166–178. https://doi.org/10. 1111/j.1540-4781.2008.00712.x. De Bot, K., Lowie, W., & Verspoor, M. (2007). A dynamic systems theory approach to second language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10 (1), 7–21.https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728906002732. Dewaele, J.-M., & MacIntyre, P. D. (2014). The two faces of Janus? Anxiety and enjoyment in the foreign language classroom. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 2, 237–274. https://doi.org/10.14746/ssllt. 2014.4.2.5. Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research methods in applied linguistics: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dörnyei, Z. (2014). Researching complex dynamic systems: ‘Retrodictive qualitative modelling’ in the language classroom. Language Teaching, 47 (1), 80– 91. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444811000516.

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Dörnyei, Z., Henry, A., & MacIntyre, P. D. (2015). Motivational dynamics in Language Learning. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Ellis, N. C. (2002). Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24 (2), 143–188. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0272263102002024. Ellis, N. C. (2007). The associative cognitive creed. In B. Van Patten & J. Williams (Eds.), Theories in second language acquisition (pp. 77–95). Mahwah, NJ: LEA. Elman, J. L. (1990). Finding structure in time. Cognitive Science, 14 (2), 179– 211. Garcia, O., & Wei, L. (2013). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Goldberg, A. (1995). Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hilton, H. (2009). Systèmes émergents: Acquisition, traitement et didactique des langues (HDR, Université Lumière Lyon II). https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/ tel-00605188/document. Hiver, P. (2015). Attractor states. In Z. Dörnyei, A. Henry, & P. D. MacIntyre (Eds.), Motivational dynamics in language learning (pp. 20–28). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Kail, M. (2015). L’acquisition de plusieurs langues. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. https://www.cairn.info/l-acquisition-de-plusieurslangues–9782130630470.htm. Krashen, S. D. (1978). The monitor model for second language acquisition. In R. Gingras (Ed.), Second language acquisition and foreign language teaching. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Applied Linguistics. Kusyk, M. (2017). Les dynamiques du développement de l’anglais au travers d’activités informelles en ligne: Une étude exploratoire auprès d’étudiants français et allemands (Thèse de doctorat). Pädagogische Hochschule Karlsruhe and Université de Strasbourg. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2018). Looking ahead: Future directions in, and future research into, second language acquisition. Foreign Language Annals, 51(1), 55–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12314. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2007). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lorenz, E. (1972). Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas? Presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences.

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Lowie, W. (2017). Emergentism: Wide ranging theoretical framework or just one more meta-theory? Recherches en didactique des langues et des cultures. Les cahiers de l’Acedle, 14 (1). https://doi.org/10.4000/rdlc.1140. May, S. (2013). Disciplinary divides, knowledge construction, and the multilingual turn. In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL, and bilingual education (pp. 7–30). New York: Routledge. Miras, G. (2017). Émergentisme. Recherches en didactique des langues et des cultures. Les cahiers de l’Acedle, 14 (1). http://rdlc.revues.org/1383. Morin, E. (2005). Introduction à la pensée complexe. Paris: Seuil. Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation: Describing English language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sockett, G. (2012). Le web social—La complexité au service de l’apprentissage informel de l’anglais. Alsic. Apprentissage des Langues et Systèmes d’Information et de Communication, 15 (2). https://doi.org/10.4000/alsic.2505. Sockett, G., & Toffoli, D. (2012). Beyond learner autonomy: A dynamic systems view of the informal learning of English in virtual online communities. ReCALL, 24 (2), 138–151. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344012000031. Toffoli, D. (2015). University students’ plurilingual profiles in a French fronier city: Similarities and differences between more and less plurilingual students. Language Learning in Higher Education, 5 (1), 25–43. https://doi.org/ 10.1515/cercles-2015-0002. Toffoli, D., & Perrot, L. (2017). Autonomy, the online informal learning of english (OILE) and learning resource centers (LRCs): The relationships between learner autonomy, L2 proficiency, L2 autonomy and digital literacy. In M. Cappellini, T. Lewis, & A. Rivens Mompean (Eds.), Learner autonomy and web 2.0 (pp. 198–228). Sheffield: Equinox. Trestini, M. (2016). Théorie des systèmes complexes appliquée à la modélisation d’environnements numériques d’apprentissage de nouvelle génération. Environnements Informatiques pour l’Apprentissage Humain (HDR, Université de Strasbourg). https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01432687. Véronique, G. D. (2017). Réponse à Wander Lowie: L’émergentisme, la recherche sur l’acquisition des langues et la didactique des langues étrangères. Recherches en didactique des langues et des cultures. Les cahiers de l’Acedle, 14 (1). https://doi.org/10.4000/rdlc.1385. Verspoor, M. (2012). Symposium: Dynamic systems/complexity theory as a new approach to second language development. Language Teaching, 45 (04), 533–534. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444812000213.

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Verspoor, M., Lowie, W., Chan, H. P., & Vahtrick, L. (2017). Linguistic complexity in second language development: Variability and variation at advanced stages. Recherches en didactique des langues et des cultures. Les cahiers de l’Acedle, 14 (1). https://doi.org/10.4000/rdlc.1450. Verspoor, M., Lowie, W., & Van Dijk, M. (2008). Variability in second language development from a dynamic systems perspective. The Modern Language Journal, 92(2), 214–231. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008. 00715.x. Verspoor, M., Schmid, M. S., & Xu, X. (2012). A dynamic usage based perspective on L2 writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 21(3), 239–263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2012.03.007. Werey, P. (2018). La place de la phraséologie dans l’enseignement/apprentissage du FLE: Étude d’un paradoxe linguistique à part entière (Unpublished masters’ thesis). Université de Strasbourg.

2 The Triple-A of L2 Learning: Autonomy, Ability and Attachment

This chapter views the contemporary language learner through the lens of self-determination theory and its three main components: autonomy, competence and relatedness. As can be seen in the title, I will be examining these elements in the light of other related theories, such as literacy (linked to specific abilities in the L2 or with digital material) or attachment. Self-determination theory (SDT) is considered to be a metatheory of human personality and motivation. For its originators, “self-determination theory is a contemporary, empirically based approach to motivation and development” (Ryan & Deci, 2017, p. 202). It is a psychological theory, which claims to be anchored in an organismic dialectical approach, taking into account both the biological phenomena that underlie psychological processes and evolutionary perspectives (Ryan & Deci, 2017). In this sense, it is fully compatible with a complex dynamic systems perspective. Learning has received particular attention within self-determination theory, given its emphasis on human action, development and the ways in which human beings find answers to their basic psychological needs. Educational contexts have thus provided the

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setting for many studies exploring self-determination theory; its explanatory power of motivational functioning has made it particularly relevant in this context where the need for pragmatic action is a major concern. Self-determination theory considers learning to be innate and natural and views every human being as curious, naturally seeking novelty and internalising new practices and values throughout life (Ryan & Deci, 2013). From birth, human beings are intrinsically motivated to learn. Among the forty or so existing theories of motivation in psychology (Thill & Vallerand, 1993) and the four or five of them that seem particularly relevant to research in language acquisition (Raby & Narcy-Combes, 2009; Toffoli, 2003), self-determination theory may well be the most relevant. This theory postulates three classes of motivation: intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and amotivation. What distinguishes them is the degree to which they are determined by the individual (Ryan & Deci, 2017). Self-determination theory holds that most learning is based on intrinsic motivation, even though schooling does not generally exploit the possibilities this type of motivation affords (Ryan, 2014; Ryan & Deci, 2013, 2017) Intrinsic motivation is inherently selfdetermined. Unlike intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation is instrumental, i.e. one pursues an activity not for the activity itself but to obtain something or to avoid an unpleasant consequence (Deci, Vallerand, Pelletier, & Ryan, 1991) Four sub-categories (regulations) are used to nuance extrinsic motivation: external regulation, introjection, identification and integration (Ryan & Deci, 2017), each representing a higher degree of selfdetermination than the previous one. Self-determination theory makes it possible to understand the intensity of motivation, its degree of interiority and its relationship to the surrounding environment. It postulates qualitatively different types of motivation that affect its intensity (Ryan & Deci, 2017). Self-determination theory can provide guidance to teachers seeking to promote or increase learners’ motivation. For Ryan and Deci, “internalization of extrinsic motivation is critical to effective academic functioning at all levels of education” (Ryan & Deci, 2013, p. 198). We will return to the notion of motivation in teaching further along in this work.

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Self-determination thus creates intrinsic motivation, motivational volition, but also human well-being and human development in general (Deci et al., 1991). It builds on three basic psychological needs: the need for autonomy, the need for relatedness and the need for a sense of competence (Ryan, 2014). Self-determination theory provides a pertinent means of analysing informal language learning as providing the particular association of autonomy, competence and relatedness that motivates students to a new relationship with their L2. In the discussion below, I will first present autonomy as an essential feature of the contemporary language learner, indicating how self-determination theory makes it possible to conceptualise this factor in relation to other definitions of autonomy found in applied linguistics. The other parts of this chapter on self-determination will be devoted to different competencies and to the notion of relatedness. This will allow us to sketch an initial portrait of contemporary language learners in higher education, based on theoretical considerations.

1

Autonomy in General Theories of Motivation

In order to weave together the different threads that I will explore here relating to autonomy, it will be helpful to first situate the term etymologically. From the Greek αυτoσ (autos) “oneself ” and νoμoσ (nomos) “use, custom, law, rule” (Bailly, 1901), an autonomous city, in the time of ancient Greece, was one that managed its own laws. Although it would be complete antinomy for each individual to manage and follow their own laws, the idea that an individual has free will, behaves in congruence with themselves and can choose whether or not to submit to the laws of society, determines their autonomy. Such behaviour is established in opposition to heteronomous behaviour, which is “subject to external controls and impositions” (merriam-webster.com). This distinction is fundamental to understanding the autonomy component of self-determination theory and will be useful for understanding how the concept has been developed in the context of language learning.

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Self-determination theory considers autonomy to be one of the three basic psychological needs that support our volition, well-being and development (Ryan & Deci, 2017). For self-determination theory, phenomenally, autonomy concerns the extent to which people experience their behavior as volitional or as fully endorsed, rather than being coerced, compelled or seduced by forces external to the self. (2017, p. 97)

Autonomy, defined in this way, is closely linked to the related notion of agency, i.e. the perception of oneself as someone who acts in the world and not as the relatively passive object of the actions of others. Defined by Albert Bandura1 (2007) as part of his sociocognitive theory, agency is about exercising control, being an agent. Bandura sees agency as linked to personal values and states that people “tend to choose actions that offer them personal satisfaction and a sense of their own worth, and reject those that devalue them”. They look for ways to orient their lives in the desired direction. It is their agency that allows them to take the directions they choose. Being an agent means “making things happen through your own actions and intentionally” (Brewer, 2013, p. 200). According to Bandura, the ability of humans to anticipate (imagine their future, set goals and consider the consequences of their actions) increases their agency (Bandura, 1977). Contemporary language learners in higher education, who undertake various activities in the target language, demonstrate such agency. Researchers studying agency seek to understand the various components which constitute it. Autonomy, seen in this way, is quite distinct from independence, individualism, selfishness or freedom. According to self-determination theory, autonomous behaviour is in accordance with enduring values and interests and the autonomous person recognises the legitimate nature of external demands and influences, even if he does not necessarily approve of them. Activity in general is presumed to be autonomous and to demonstrate congruency between the explicit and implicit motives that drive it (Ryan, 2014). For Ryan and Deci (2017) a subject’s autonomy is defined in opposition to persons or external factors who want

1 Interview,

Sciences Humaines n° 148, 2004.

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to exercise control over their activity. The more an individual can exercise their autonomy, without neglecting their feelings of competence and of relatedness, the more they internalise the factors that motivate them for the activity in question and the stronger their motivation becomes, thus producing “the direction, intensity and persistence of behaviour” (Thill & Vallerand, 1993, p. 18) necessary to achieve an objective. From this point of view, autonomy is essential to motivation and therefore to progress in learning. As Ryan (2014) indicates, with examples to support his suggestions, autonomy, competence and relatedness are elements which a teacher can play on. In my own research (Toffoli, 2000, 2003) I documented, for some learners, changes in the quality of their self-determination over the duration of year-long attendance in a Learning Resource Centre: in seven cases out of thirty, more internalised self-determination, bringing the learners closer to intrinsic motivation, was observed. There were no cases in this sample of thirty where the degree of self-determination decreased. When Little (2017, p. 18) takes up self-determination theory, he emphasises that this desire to set and follow one’s own path in life is a fundamental human characteristic. Young adults at university are not only unique individuals, but they are intrinsically autonomous. In the university context, perhaps more than elsewhere, students have (or develop, or should have) the desire to exercise their agency. One of the teacher’s roles is to challenge this desire, to nurture it and propel it towards activities that will support learning. Little, Dam, and Legenhausen (2017) suggest that the pedagogically astute teacher would exploit the inherent autonomy of learners by linking it to the purposes of language learning. In order to deepen our understanding of the complexity of autonomy, I will refer to several theories in our discipline, linking them all to self-determination. For me, these are not theories in competition with what we have seen so far, but theories that enable further understanding of contemporary language learners in higher education from different perspectives, complementing or supplementing concepts explored so far. The wealth of complex and dynamic interactions between these theories (dynamic since they change according to our position and according to the subject we are looking at) will allow us a more complete view of

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these students and their learning. Essential concepts such as self-efficacy, self-direction, agency, attribution and even activity (a concept with a particular resonance in language didactics) will be discussed.

2

Autonomy in the Applied Linguistics Literature

The beginning of this section focuses on the importance of the construct of autonomy in second language acquisition research, before addressing the different types of autonomy present in the literature and reconsidering them in the light of self-determination theory as competencies and not, for the most part, as manifestations of autonomy as such. Among the most recognised publications on the concept of autonomy in language learning, the work of Holec (1979), Holec and Huttunen (1997), Benson (2001, 2006, 2009, 2011, 2012) and Little (1991, 2000, 2002, 2007, 2015, 2016, 2017; Little et al., 2017) stand as references. Using concepts from psychology, autonomy, as directly related to language learning, has been approached from the perspective of strategies (Cohen, 1998; Gremmo & Riley, 1995; Wenden, 1991, 2002), but it has also been widely used to discuss the context of Language Resource or Self-Access Centres (Candas, 2009; Castillo Zaragoza, 2006; Gremmo & Riley, 1995; Holec, 2000) or the training of counsellors and learners (Bailly, 1995; Bailly, Ciekanski, & Guély Costa, 2013; Ciekanski, 2005; Gremmo, 2009). The publication of Holec’s book on Autonomy and Language Learning (1979) by the Council of Europe, opened up a field of research and innovation in language didactics that was to lead to several hundred publications. According to Benson, Holec’s definition of autonomy (“learner autonomy is the ability to take charge of one’s learning”) was the most cited twenty-five years after its publication (Benson, 2006, p. 21) and probably still is. The concept has been taken up extensively and developed to produce more precise and nuanced definitions, but also broader definitions, to encompass social and interactive aspects of learning, which are not very present in Holec’s conception. In the work presented here, I argue that contemporary language learners in higher education are autonomous in their learning of an L2, even if this

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autonomy does not always correspond or lead to the types of learning that some teachers wish to see. In the field of adult education, Knowles, Malcolm, Holton, and Swanson (1998) or Tremblay (2003) present autonomy as a psychological disposition, facilitating lifelong learning. For Mezirow (2000), learner autonomy is considered to be a factor of emancipation and empowerment, leading to transformation of the individual, or even of society. Thus based on liberal educational philosophies, Little declares that “autonomy is at once the goal of developmental learning and a characteristic of its underlying dynamic” (Little, 2000, p. 31). The institutional context sometimes imposes a much more prosaic vision, where the concept of learner autonomy is seen as a pragmatic response to massification and cost control in higher education, as Albero (2000) recognises. This seems to be the case particularly in language education, where the skills in question (communicating in a foreign language) are increasingly considered to be fundamentals (such as reading or arithmetic), not necessarily bestowing high added value (everyone should be able to speak at least one foreign language, the goal for EU countries being two2 ), but nevertheless mandatory. The lengthy time-frame of language acquisition (as with literacy or numeracy) also contributes to a search for solutions that will rationalise spending. Piron (1994) points out that “10,000 to 12,000 hours of active exposure to the foreign language would be required[…] for a non-native academic to be able to actually work in that language”. From social, societal and individual perspectives, duration and numbers of learners make language education a costly undertaking. While institutions and policies are sensitive to financial cost, it is up to teachers and learners to manage the social and psychological factors. We will see further on that duration is an important parameter both for learning as a process and for the development of language competence. While it may have justified the establishment of Open-Access Centres and other set-ups designed to exploit individual autonomy for

2 In

2008, the European Parliament adopted a resolution proposed by the Council of Europe that educational institutions should promote “1+2”—the knowledge of one’s own L1, plus 2 other languages.

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language learning in a university or corporate context, it is also fundamental to the autonomous language practices of contemporary language learning outside the institutional framework. Through this brief review of the literature on the subject, the issue of autonomy is presented as one that can serve instrumental and institutional as well as psychological and individual needs. I will now explore this second aspect in more detail, although I will come back to the first in the discussion of different types of learning set-ups and more particularly Language Resource or Self-Access Centres. On the individual scale, Germain and Netten (2004) distinguish three types of autonomy when it comes to language learning: general autonomy, language autonomy and learner autonomy. General autonomy refers to the psychological predisposition for autonomy discussed above within the overall framework of self-determination theory and seems to correspond to what Benson (2012) calls “personal autonomy”. Put simply, it is a question of having the means to be free to act, whether it be at home, at work, for study, for leisure or for some other purpose. In the university or school context, Germain and Netten subordinate the relationship between autonomy and language learning to the pedagogical methodology used. For them, language teaching as a disciplinary subject, as an “object of study” and therefore as “knowledge” (as opposed to “know-how”), cannot lead to the development of autonomy. On the other hand, they postulate that “it is possible to develop learner autonomy when language is taught as a real means of communication” (2004, p. 4). This is in line with Little’s position, even if he does not make the same distinction between learner autonomy and language autonomy, because he believes that it is the use of language to communicate in and out of the classroom that allows both language and autonomy to be developed (Little, 2015). Toffoli and Perrot (2017) explore autonomy as it is experienced within a Language Resource Centre today, in connection with online informal practices, based on easy and unlimited access to resources found on the Internet. In their attempt to model the links between learner autonomy, L2 competence, language autonomy and digital competence (literacy), they argue that autonomy is a dynamic and dialogical process between

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the three types of autonomy identified above (general, learner and language autonomy, see Fig. 1), on the one hand, and between different aspects of the L2, a question to which I will return in Sect. 3.4 of this chapter. Today, and in light of the conceptual frameworks that I have chosen to highlight here, it would seem that, for the contemporary language learner in higher education, the pattern of these interactions is articulated differently. This will be the subject of the last part of this book. For our purposes, all university students should be considered to exercise general or personal autonomy, even if they still live with their parents or may not yet be able to assume all the tasks of an independent life. This is not entirely the case when we talk about learner autonomy and language autonomy, essential attributes for the contemporary language learner in higher education, but related more to factors of competence than to autonomy per se (cf. Sect. 3). As such, self-determination theory is important in our profiling of the contemporary language learner in higher education, as it establishes the links between these three basic psychological needs (competence, relationships and autonomy) and their effects on intrinsic motivation and thus on learning. As a conclusion to this section, Steve Thorne’s definition of autonomy in language learning

language

general (personal)

learning process

Fig. 1 Interactions between different types of autonomy (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017)

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would seem to be appropriate, as he attempts to bring all these ideas together, from an outsider’s perspective (he is not an autonomy specialist): autonomy can be seen as “enhanced opportunities for agency, identity formation, decision-making, and taking control of your own learning” (Little & Thorne, 2017, p. 27). Having presented some general aspects of the notion of autonomy above, as it appears in the literature in applied linguistics and in selfdetermination theory, we will focus below on the other two components of self-determination theory: competence, whether perceived or measurable, and relatedness, which will be explored in more detail through attachment theory (see Sect. 4.1 ff.).

3

The Skills of the Contemporary Language Learner in Higher Education

In the context of applied linguistics, the word competence is polysemic and may refer to different phenomena. Chomsky (1965) uses the term “competence” to identify the underlying and essentially unconscious knowledge (especially grammatical knowledge) that he opposes to “performance”, the visible or audible manifestations of such competence. The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) defines competence as “the sum of knowledge, skills and characteristics that allow a person to perform actions” (Council of Europe, 2000, p. 9). It states that general competences are “not specific to language, but […] are called upon for actions of all kinds, including language activities” (p. 9). The use of the word “competence”, “competences”, “skill” or “skills” some 535 times in this document of reference for our discipline has rendered the notion omnipresent. The provision of very detailed charts for all language skills has helped to ensure the transition of the notion of level from a vague concept, to a criterion-based profile of skills. The notion of instructional design using a “competence-based approach” for the design of curricula has become known in the language training community through the CEFR since its publication in 2000. In the broader academic community, in France at least, these notions of

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skills-based learning and criterion-referencing are still relatively new to many of our colleagues. While language competence is at the heart of my concerns as a teacher and researcher in language didactics, three other areas of competence seem essential for contemporary language learners in higher education, advancing along their individual trajectories of language learning. The first is self-efficacy, as the awareness of competence itself, in whatever area. This will be addressed in Sect 3.1. The second concerns learning and the ability to implement the elements necessary for learning. We have discussed it above under the heading of learner autonomy. We will come back to this in Sect. 3.2. A third skill, digital literacy, is a much newer element in language learning, which concerns the contemporary language learner in higher education and has not affected previous generations of language learners. It will be addressed in Sect. 3.3. The final component is of course language competence, which we will examine in Sect. 3.4, in all its polysemic splendour. Thus, after a more global reflection on the notion of competence, as an essential element of self-determination, we will return to an examination of the four specific competencies that should be taken into account for the contemporary language learner in higher education: self-efficacy, learning skills, digital literacy and language proficiency. In the context of self-determination theory, the need for competence is a driving force in the learning process (Ryan & Deci, 2017, p. 27). Indeed, when we are completely satisfied with our competence in a field, learning stops and we act on what we have learned. In addition, competence is readily thwarted. It wanes in contexts in which challenges are too difficult, negative feedback is pervasive, or feelings of mastery and effectiveness are diminished or undermined by interpersonal factors such as personfocused criticism and social comparisons. (Ryan & Deci, 2017, p. 11)

Finally, to feel truly competent, we must consider ourselves responsible for our competence and feel that it belongs to us fully (Ryan & Deci, 2017, p. 95). It is this perception of competence that drives motivation and therefore action.

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Albert Bandura’s (2007) sociocognitive theory provides a useful means of understanding this through the notion of self-efficacy. Like others, I link the notions of perceived competence (from self-determination theory) and the notion of self-efficacy as developed by Bandura. Although some argue for a conceptual (and even statistical) distinction between the two notions (see, e.g., Rodgers, Markland, Selzler, Murray, & Wilson, 2014), my objective is not to deny the distinctions, but to work from a pragmatic perspective, which allows the notion of competence to be rendered operational for the contemporary language learner in higher education.

3.1

Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy is a factor of competence because it allows us to perceive it, to “grasp” it and to believe in it. A closer look at self-efficacy, how it works and how a language learner can use it will allow us, when we return to a more incarnate description of the contemporary language learner in higher education (who is this student and what does he or she do?), to conceptualise their particular functioning in their environment in a holistic manner. Self-efficacy refers to the set of beliefs individuals hold about their personal effectiveness (Bandura, 2007). These beliefs may therefore differ from actual effectiveness. Self-efficacy is one’s perceived effectiveness; as such, it also differs from self-esteem. Self-efficacy engenders individuals’ willingness to change their habits (their choice of objectives), influences the way they see themselves changing (the efforts to be made) and stimulates the perseverance necessary to make the changes they have decided on. It also influences their emotional state in the face of obstacles, their ability to regain control after failures and to maintain good habits (Bandura, 2007). Albert Bandura’s work focuses on the exercise of this control and regulation (Rondier, 2004). In the field of second language acquisition research, scholars such as Benson (2006), Dörnyei and Ushioda (2010) or Barbot (2000) have taken up the theory of self-efficacy to exploit its potential to explain the development of motivation when learning an L2. In what

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follows, I try to clearly show the impact of these motivational phenomena on language learning, indicating why they are particularly important for the contemporary language learner in higher education. Self-efficacy is constructed from four sources of information (Bandura, 2007): active mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and physiological and emotional state. These sources also make it possible to modify the feeling of self-efficacy, but to different degrees (Carré, 2005). In addition, although active mastery experience is the most important source of information on the feeling of self-efficacy (ibid.), these four sources complement each other and vary according to the individual and the context. Bandura points out that any information from these four sources will be useless until it has been cognitively processed (Bandura, 2007). This treatment involves engaging the learner’s attention, leading to the selection of specific information that will constitute a data set for evaluating his or her sense of effectiveness. Learners must set up a process of evaluation and integration of this information, which contributes to the construction of their self-efficacy (ibid.) and which requires reflection. A reflective attitude leading to awareness and proper interpretation of information will therefore help to better understand and reinforce self-efficacy. This cognitive processing allows learners to transform information, which would otherwise be without effect, into procedural, behavioural knowledge (Carré, 2003, p. 89) which can be pragmatically used for learning. People with a highly developed sense of self-efficacy will not hesitate to choose difficult tasks that they see as challenges to be addressed (Brewer, 2008) and which they will tackle with confidence. They are also able to intensify and extend their efforts as needed to deal with potential failure (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2010). On the other hand, a person with a low sense of self-efficacy views difficult tasks as personal threats, focuses on his or her own weaknesses and on obstacles that he or she perceives as insurmountable (rather than considering possible solutions) and therefore easily gives up (ibid.). In other words, the feeling of self-efficacy is at the root of an individual’s motivation to choose, to take action and to persevere in a particular direction. Transposed to a language learning context, self-efficacy refers to learners’ beliefs in their ability to achieve desired results through their own

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action (Chateau, Ciekanski, Guély Costa, Pereiro, & Normand, 2014), i.e. achieving effective communication in the new language they are studying (Brewer, 2013). This feeling influences their motivation to get involved and persevere in learning the language and in the specific tasks related to it. Chateau et al. consider that it is up to the various actors in the educational context to offer, as far as possible, the necessary conditions for students to develop their self-efficacy, which is essential to their perception of themselves as agents, to their perceived sense of control and therefore related to empowerment (Chateau et al., 2014). My own view is that it is first and foremost up to the learner to take charge and demonstrate their own agency, as is often the case for contemporary language learners in higher education. I nonetheless recognise that at the very start of the language learning process, or when elements are missing to bring it to full fruition, the intervention of an advisor, a teacher or a tutor can indeed prove useful or even essential. Self-efficacy can therefore be considered to be one of the skills to be learned, in relation to autonomy, and would seem to be situated in direct interface with general autonomy (see Fig. 2). It is a key factor for contemporary language learners in higher education, who gradually build and create their own learning environments and develop their own selfimage as language learners.

Fig. 2 Self-efficacy, at the interface of competence and autonomy

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Self-Direction and Autonomy in Learning

Other aspects of this macro-skill to learn can be found in the literature in applied linguistics under the title “learner autonomy” (Little, 1991, 2000, 2007, 2013, 2015, 2016) or “learning autonomy”3 (Germain & Netten, 2004). These can also help to further define the profile of contemporary language learners in higher education, whether or not they study in higher education contexts such as self-access (with an explicit aim of “autonomy”) and whether or not they be involved in L2 activities independently of the formal university framework. In language didactics, Holec (1979) was the first to associate these skills with “learning to learn” and the development of a personal culture of learning. Holec specifically identified a series of nine skills that a learner must develop in order to learn effectively, particularly in the context of a Learning Resource Centre. These skills are not always fully mastered upon arrival at university, and they mostly involve cognitive operations: the initial decision to learn, definition of objectives, determining of content and progress, selection of learning methods and techniques, monitoring of the acquisition process and evaluation of learning outcomes (Holec, 1979). With the exception of monitoring and self-evaluation, these are essentially decisions and choices. From Holec’s perspective, once learners have mastered these operations, they can be considered autonomous. Inaccuracies in translation may account for some terminological discrepancy here, as these operations which Holec calls “autonomy” correspond to those of self-direction as defined by Malcolm Knowles4 (1975). In a similar perspective, Albero (2000) identifies seven categories of skills involved in effective autonomous learning: technical, informational, methodological, social, cognitive, metacognitive and psychoaffective skills. Stephanou, Perencevich, DiCintio, and Turner (2004)

3Translation

of autonomie d’apprentissage. learning’ describes a process in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes” (Knowles, 1975, p. 18).

4 “‘self-directed

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grouped these skills into three broad categories: organisational, procedural and cognitive. Organisational autonomy, which is essentially technical, includes skills such as defining and respecting rules in the classroom or choosing deadlines for work to be completed. Procedural autonomy, which would include both the informational and methodological skills identified by Albero, concerns the search for information and the choice of one’s own resources, tools and media. Cognitive autonomy covers all the cognitive, metacognitive, social and psycho-emotional aspects of learning and involves, for example, how learners analyse different parts of a problem, test hypotheses and results, reflect on the learning process, cooperate with others or seek help. It also concerns self-confidence and tolerance of uncertainty (Toffoli & Speranza, 2016). In his discussions of autonomy, Little (2000, 2002, 2013, 2015; Little et al., 2017) also incorporates cognitive and metacognitive skills, including the ability to distance oneself and reflect on one’s own learning processes (Little, 1991) that I have linked to self-direction in learning. As they also have a psychoaffective dimension, it seems to me that many of these skills are also to be linked to the notion of relatedness, which I will associate with the theory of attachment (see Sect. 4.1). Little (2016) notes that these skills are not specifically related to language learning (and could therefore apply to any type of learning). Selfdirected language learning skills should therefore be considered as a subcategory of self-directed general learning skills, which seems to be Holec’s (1979) orientation. Although originally referring to the specific context of Learning Resource Centres or other open-access learning centres, Holec identified the organisational and procedural skills that enabled a student to cope in an environment and at a time when direct access to foreign languages and L2 speakers was only possible through resources provided by an educational institution. This is no longer the case for contemporary language learners in higher education, as we will see in Part II of this book. The learning environment with which these learners are confronted is even more complex than the language centre environment of the 1980s and 1990s (Toffoli & Sockett, 2015). For this reason, before returning to the notion of language skills, I will make a brief detour to discuss the notion of digital competence or literacy.

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Digital Literacy

It may seem obvious, but one of the essential factors in the use of technology for language learning is precisely the technical skills of students, enabling them to access large numbers of resources and exploit them to the maximum benefit. Authors such as Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel (2011) or Malgorzata Kurek and Mirjam Hauck (2014) consider the mastery of technology an essential literacy of our time. The former assert that these literacies “involve the use of digital technologies to encode and access the texts through which we generate, communicate and negotiate meaning in a socially recognizable way” (Lankshear & Knobel, 2011, p. 258). The latter remind us that the Council of Europe considers digital literacy to be one of the eight key competencies of lifelong learning (Kurek & Hauck, 2014). Their text is published in a collection that defines digital literacy as a means of being a committed, responsible and reflective citizen within a global community of the twenty-first century, impregnated with multimodal technologies. Fuchs, Hauck, and Müller-Hartmann (2012) link learner autonomy and digital literacy specifically with regard to language learning. Although technical skills alone are not enough for language learning to take place, even in the context of online or digital learning, a certain mastery of these tools is a prerequisite for any engagement with this type of learning. It is likely that digital literacy (and the equipment to which students have access) strongly influences the type of digital learning activities in which contemporary language learners in higher education engage. Kusyk’s (2017) studies or our own (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017) reveal significant differences between student practices in the humanities and social sciences and those in technical and computer-related fields. Guichon (2015) finds differences in digital literacy according to students’ national origins. Other studies he refers to in the same article point to inequalities in digital literacy related to grade or other ethnic and socio-economic variables. The issue of digital literacy as an underlying competence for language learning also has a place in any description of contemporary language learners in higher education. This digital competence acts on

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Fig. 3 The influence of digital literacy on L2 use and competence (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017)

language competence indirectly, allowing access to both the L2 and different ways of training with it. Toffoli and Perrot (2017) have schematised this indirect link between the two competencies as follows (Fig. 3). Although there is significant literature on the use of digital technology in language learning, my objective here is only to highlight the importance of digital literacy and not to repeat other aspects of this work. To complete our overview of the competencies of contemporary language learners in higher education, after self-efficacy, self-direction and digital literacy, let us finally return to the notion of L2 competence and its corollary in the literature on language didactics, L2 autonomy.

3.4

L2 Competence

Several definitions of L2 competence have been provided within the conceptual framework of L2 autonomy. Macaro identifies language autonomy as the ability to say what one wants to say rather than to reproduce the language of others (2002). Benson argues that “the ultimate importance of foreign language learning is not the acquisition of a shared body of knowledge, but the ability to say what one wants to say in more than one language” (2012, p. 37). Rivens Mompean and Eisenbeis (2009) use a definition similar to Germain and Netten (2004), who target “the learner’s ability to take language initiatives and spontaneously use new statements in an authentic communication situation in L2”. What emerges from these definitions of language autonomy is the strong link between it and communicative L2 skills.

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Little (2015) also targets language competence as the real objective of such learning. For him, success in L2 learning depends crucially on authentic and spontaneous L2 use, […] when learners are fully involved, have access to a wide range of discourse roles, initiating as well as responding, and are encouraged to think about what they are doing. (Little, 2015, para. 11)

Little focuses here on two inseparable aspects of this learning: the use of the target language and involvement in the act of learning. With regard to the first, the learner described here must have the ability to use the L2 (whatever their level) in real contexts where they must solve situational or communication problems. At the same time, they must also have the learning skills that enable them to reflect on their communication: perhaps it is a question of knowing where to look for the meaning of a word in the L2, or how to write it, or how to attach it to another word; perhaps it is a question of deciding what to learn later or evaluating their current skills. Thus, we are again in a position of interface, or perhaps of overlap, this time between autonomy and skills (both language skills and learning skills). The following diagram illustrates this interaction between the two areas (Fig. 4). If the main objective of learning an L2 is to communicate with others (whether in writing or verbally, in simultaneous or non-synchronous, real or virtual communication), the notion of levels of competence can allow

Fig. 4 Overlap of “autonomy” and “skills” areas

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us not only to describe more or less effective communication (as in the CEFR descriptors), but also to address different learning needs related to these levels of proficiency. Cognitive load theory (CLT), which explains individuals’ cognitive capacity for processing information received, suggests that different teaching methods and strategies should be adopted depending on the learner’s level of competence, whatever the field. The cognitive needs of the novice and the expert are different, and teaching techniques should be consistent with these differences (Chanquoy, Tricot, & Sweller, 2007; Sweller, Ayres, & Kalyuga, 2011). Benson makes a broad distinction between the divergent needs of L2 novices and experts as follows: Up to a certain point, learning a foreign language may, indeed, involve acquiring a defined body of knowledge (of the most frequent words and basic phonological and grammatical structures, for example), but beyond this point … the content of language learning is related to the ‘why’ of language learning: what the learner wants to do with the language, or more fundamentally, who the learner wants to become as a user of it. (Benson, 2012, p. 37)

Studies on informal language learning with digital technology (Cole, 2015; Sockett, 2014) reinforce this position: for the contemporary language learner in higher education, those who do not have a sufficient level do not access most informal activities and those who have reached the “threshold level” (about level B1 of the CEFR) do undertake activities that are related to their identity (current or desired). In the second part of this work, I will be looking more closely at the question of the language level of contemporary language learners in higher education (see Chapter 4, Section 2), when looking more specifically at the university context. In my reflection on competencies with Laurent Perrot (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017), this led us to identifying a second dynamic system, in interaction with the autonomy system already described, centred on the L2 itself. In it, the elements that influence each other are L2 competence, L2 use and L2 autonomy. We schematised it in Fig. 5. Rethinking these relations within the broader framework of selfdetermination requires this cluster of competencies to be expanded to

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Fig. 5 Language issues for the contemporary language learner in higher education — interactions between L2 competence, L2 use and L2 autonomy (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017)

include the other three aspects presented here, digital literacy and the two competencies related to autonomy: learning autonomy and self-efficacy. In our 2017 publication (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017), the diagram which makes it possible to visualise the articulation between the “L2” and “autonomy” clusters does not fully integrate all the skills mentioned here or in any case does not yet make them totally explicit. Thus, language autonomy is at the intersection of the two clusters, but learning skills, including self-efficacy, are not yet present. A simple superposition of Figs. 6 and 7 does not provide a readable mapping of these elements; what is important is the interweaving and articulation of the different aspects of competence (language, learning, self-efficacy and digital literacy), of the L2 (use, autonomy and competence) and of autonomy (general, learner and L2). The colour coding in Fig. 8 is an attempt to render visible the elements that are similar or the same, while maintaining the configuration of relationships described above. This diagram does not reproduce Fig. 7 identically, because it was impossible to show all the “double entries” in an identical configuration. In the colour coding here, red represents the elements related to L2 competence, blue represents L2 autonomy, green represents various aspects of learning (whether autonomy or competence), purple represents digital literacy, and black represents the more fundamental and general aspects

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Fig. 6 The competencies of the contemporary language learner in higher education

Fig. 7 Interaction between types of autonomy and aspects of the L2 (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017)

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Fig. 8 Self-determination diagram of the contemporary language learner in higher education

of the person (personal autonomy and self-efficacy). A real integration in three or four dimensions would see words of the same colour superimposed on the same point.

4

Relatedness

In the context of self-determination theory, relatedness is the third fundamental psychological need, allowing the individual to grow and to find a sense of well-being. Relatedness is associated with the feeling of being socially connected, loved by others, but also with the idea of belonging and feeling important within a group (Ryan & Deci, 2017). This relationship to the other is seen in different psychological theories as one of the basic needs of the human being, not only in terms of survival of the species, but above all in terms of the psychological and emotional wellbeing of the individual. This is particularly the case in self-determination

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theory, but also in the theory of attachment, which we will look at in some detail below. In both cases, the satisfaction of the need for connection is fundamental to the harmonious development of the human being, and in return, it also allows the establishment and maintenance of deep and nourishing relationships with others. For Ryan (2014), empathy, human warmth and recognition of emotions are all part of this notion of connection. It is also an essential component of learning (the latter being a particular form of personal growth), focusing on networks, links and connections between people, while also implying the support that is required in order to progress. Relatedness is the driving force behind scaffolding, when one person accompanies or guides another along the path to new knowledge, when one takes another as a model or competes with him or her. It is particularly important in the development of an L2, because language involves communication and in the process of learning an L2 one is often communicating with others. Even if mastering the code can be an objective, the reason for mastering the code is generally to allow or enhance communication.

4.1

Attachment

When referring to relationships with other human beings, to autonomy and to the construction of the individual, the notion of attachment has played a major role in psychology for many years. In the case of the contemporary language learner in higher education, this theory offers potential explanations for the sometimes highly variable successes of students in different language learning situations, particularly those which rely more on contexts often described as “empowering”. This is all the more relevant within the framework I have chosen, because Ryan and Deci consider the concepts of relatedness and attachment to be very similar (Ryan & Deci, 2017, p. 370) and believe that secure attachment goes hand in hand with the satisfaction of basic psychological needs (ibid., p. 380).

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The convergence of these factors led me in 2013 to start exploring autonomy in language learning from this perspective (Toffoli, 2016).5 As a first step, I undertook to find traces of the existence of adult attachment in data from university students’ learning logs in order to establish the possible relevance of this theory to language learning, particularly in the contexts of Language Resource Centres. Attachment theory is recognised as having a powerful explanatory force in child development psychology. According to Cyrulnik (2006), it is now the most widely cited theory in psychology, since it integrates the biological, emotional, psychological, social and cultural aspects of the human being. The link between the attachment created in early childhood (between the baby and a mother figure) and the more or less autonomous behaviours of the adult is well established (Crittenden & Landini, 2011; Rholes & Simpson, 2006). In the last fifteen years, attachment theory has found new areas of application in the field of education, involving both adults and children (Fleming, 2008; Geddes, 2006). In contrast, in applied linguistics (in English-speaking countries) and language didactics (in France), despite the importance and amount of research on autonomy (Benson, 2006; Candas, 2009), almost nothing has been published about the possible links between language learner autonomy and attachment theory. The foundations for attachment theory lie in the encounter between psychoanalysis, ethology and the theory of evolution. Originally conceived by John Bowlby (1907–1990), attachment theory was empirically tested by Mary Ainsworth in post-World War II Great Britain. Its purpose was to explain the reactions of young children, separated from their parents for long periods of time (or sometimes definitively), to separation. Later, it became a complete theory of child maturation, from a state of total dependence to a state of physical, psychological and emotional autonomy. The theory postulates that it is the quality of a baby’s attachment to its earliest maternal caregivers6 that allows the 5A

2018 special edition of Recherches et pratiques pédagogiques en langues de spécialité, entitled “Trust, Relatedness and Language Learning in Higher Education” is devoted to related themes. 6 Also referred to in the literature as “adult caregivers”. Most of the time it is the mother, but it could be anyone else who assumes this emotional, protective, nourishing role.

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child to establish herself or himself psychologically, to grow to become autonomous in the long term and to flourish in society. Attachment has been defined as “an enduring tie with a person who provides security” (Fleming, 2008, p. 35). This strong bond induces behaviours that allow the baby to stay close to the person who can provide this safety and affection (Riley, 2011). A child with secure attachment will gradually begin to explore their environment and create their own place in the world as they do so. Children who have always been in secure attachment relationships become autonomous adults (Cyrulnik, 2006). They “have a healthy and balanced view of self and others. They are happy to be interdependent” (Riley, 2011, p. 26). Mary Ainsworth (1913–1999) was particularly instrumental in testing attachment theory, with a clinical procedure that distinguished between different behaviours children exhibit in the absence of their mother (or mother figure). Ainsworth identified two types of insecure attachment: attachment avoidance and resistant-ambivalent attachment. The loss or fear of the loss of the mother (or mother figure), the anxiety of separation or angry responses to this anxiety, as well as despair, grief and different coping mechanisms (e.g. denial of the need of the other) are all reactions in the complex sociobiological system of a child’s insecure attachment. As the field of psychology evolved to include child psychology into a broader perspective of human developmental psychology, some researchers (notably Hazan & Shaver, 1987, 1990, 1994, cited by Riley, 2011) have hypothesised that new attachment processes are involved in adult relationship situations. Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991) proposed a matrix model of adult attachment, characterised by the interaction between avoidance and anxiety (see Fig. 9). The four types of attachment identified make it possible to describe the relationships that an individual has with others, as well as the ways in which he or she is able to interact socially. Each individual interacts in coherence with their inner working model, i.e. their vision of the world, composed of a series of implicit rules, representations and expectations about others and relationships.

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Fig. 9 Bartholomew and Horowitz’s Model of adult attachment (1991 — adapted)

4.2

Relevance of Adult Attachment Theory for Contemporary Language Learners in Higher Education

The study I published in New Directions in Language Learning Psychology (Gkonou, Tatzl, & Mercer, 2016) had one main objective: to determine whether attachment theory can provide a relevant theoretical framework for better understanding learner autonomy and L2 autonomy, particularly in informal learning contexts. Specifically, I wondered if it could provide an explanation for what seems to be a predisposition to learner autonomy in the contexts of Language Resource Centres and informal learning? Would it provide a better understanding of the divergent successes of language learning in these autonomous or self-professed empowering contexts? To do this, I chose to explore three underlying research questions:

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• Do we see traces of different attachment styles in language learning logbooks? • Is there a progression towards autonomy (both learner and L2) in these logs? • Can the limits of a learner’s capacity for autonomy be pushed back (i.e. is it possible to change attachment style)? Based on a corpus of 14 learning blogs (approximately 49,000 words), initial exploratory reading determined one of the blogs to be appropriate for an in-depth interpretive analysis related to attachment styles. The case study provided significant examples of the different attachment styles and made it possible to understand the learning process from this point of view, as well as putting into perspective different relational aspects of this process. This case study (Toffoli, 2016) identifies three types of relationships and their corresponding influences on this learner’s autonomy and language practices. The first are those of early childhood with the early maternal figures which generate basic attachment styles and therefore strongly influence the potential for autonomy (both general and learner). The second type of relationship is described as being with people who influence the learner’s feelings about the foreign language: these are people with whom the learner has a deep connection and who represent, embody or otherwise influence what a particular L2 means to the individual. The third type is the relationship with the L2 itself. It is by exploring these three complementary directions that I see the potential and consequences of attachment theory for autonomy and language learning. The position of traditional psychology, supported by most publications with respect to attachment, is to consider it as a personality trait (Fraley & Brumbaugh, 2006), in other words, something relatively immutable, established during early childhood and not apt to evolve much over time. This is a deterministic position that some researchers explore with an aim to promoting the idea of a particular aptitude for language learning, based on an intellectual quotient or some sort of specific linguistic intelligence. An orientation more in line with current research in language acquisition (e.g. Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009; Mercer & Williams, 2014; Norton, 2000, 2014) would instead adopt a situated

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view of psychological constructs, considering them to be variables under the influence of other, both internal and contextual, variables. Such positioning allows a more in-depth exploration of the second type of relationship suggested above: relationships with other people who influence the learner’s feelings about the language. These may be different types of speakers of the L2: native and non-native, teachers and other people in the community who express strong opinions about the L2 in question. Finally, language learning itself can be considered to be not an object, but the development of a relationship where the other is the L2 and associated cultures being acquired. As such, learning an L2 would be influenced by the same psychological processes (inner working models) as relationships with human beings. These processes would therefore include those of attachment/detachment and the development of autonomy. The L2 itself (or the learning of it) becomes a kind of personality, capable of arousing admiration, anxiety, frustration, fear, satisfaction, pleasure and the whole range of human emotions. As Piccardo (2013) elegantly states, this emotional side of language learning has often been present, yet hidden throughout the history of language didactics. Over the past decade, researchers such as Dewaele, Petrides, and Furnham (2008), Pavelescu and Petri´c (2018), MacIntyre and Vincze (2017), López and Aguilar (2013), among others, have studied emotions in L2 learning, particularly in relation to motivation. These phenomena thus represent an effort to identify the learner’s relationship or position with regard to a particular language or with regard to different learning situations, contexts or cultures. Toffoli (2016) highlights the developmental stages a specific student goes through in her learning of German and illustrates her passage through each of the four categories of Bartholomew and Horowitz’s attachment (1991—see above). While based on a single case, this perspective indicates that neither learner autonomy nor L2 autonomy are fixed or predetermined for every single learner. On the contrary, they should be considered as factors that can be influenced, modified and developed over time and place. This perspective frees learners from a deterministic view of the ability to learn a language (“I am a poor learner”). It also frees them from immutable representations of the other,

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whether this other be the language (“the language I am learning is inaccessible”) or people (“those who speak it are not attractive”). It also allows us as researchers to envisage using means suggested by attachment theory to overcome the limits of a learner’s autonomy. While preliminary, this study seems significant to me, insofar as it provides observations that make it possible to consider the use of attachment theory as a new resource for studying L2 development, particularly as regards the notion of autonomy. Contrary to its initial objective, namely to provide an explanation for what might appear to be a predisposition to learner autonomy in the context of Language Resource Centres and extramural learning, it reached a completely different conclusion, namely the situated nature of different attachment “postures” with regard to a learning object (in this case an L2). The results, although modest, indicate that all of the different attachment styles can be discerned along the same L2 learning path. They also seem to provide a useful framework for studying the relationships that language learners establish with the language they are learning and with the people who accompany them in this process. As such, adult attachment theory could provide new and interesting guidance for research in language acquisition, particularly with regard to developmental perspectives on autonomy and self-directed learning situations. Attachment associated with L2 development can involve three types of meaningful relationships: those of early childhood that have determined our basic attachment styles, those with people who influence or personify this language for us, or our relationships with L2 itself (see Fig. 10). Whichever of these three types of relationship we choose to examine, attachment theory allows a fuller and richer description of the relational aspects of language learning. As such, it has the potential to foster a better understanding of the development of autonomy, especially as concerns the contemporary language learner in higher education, exercising full agency with regard to both their L2 learning and their L2 use. In view of this potential, I have integrated attachment into the relatedness cluster of self-determination theory, as an influential factor in the complex and dynamic system of these learners.

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Fig. 10 Attachment or the relatedness cluster

4.3

Social Agents and Action-Oriented Learning

In order to conclude this section on relatedness, it is important to recognise that knowledge of the individual, including taking into account individual differences and psycholinguistic aspects of L2 development, cannot be separated from the social context in which that individual works, lives and learns. Attempts to isolate pertinent variables are but wishful thinking, as each and every L2 user is part of a system and as such develops in relation to a social environment that itself influences the different individual parameters. Given that human activity always takes place within a social context, learning can be seen as constructed both by the individual and through social interaction (Bandura, 2007). This is the basis of Bandura’s (1977) Social Learning Theory. The action-oriented approach advocated by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2000) is also developed from a “vision of the user/learner as a social agent, co-constructing meaning in interaction” (Council of Europe, 2018, p. 23). For Little et al. (2017), the CEFR’s action-oriented approach seeks to exploit individual agency and transform it into social agency, as described by Bandura (2007). Moreover, it is in the language classroom, designed in terms of the notion of autonomy (what Little et al. call “the autonomy classroom”), that learning can best take place and

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that learners’ agency can best be channelled, because “the TL [target language] itself is the principal tool of learning and the medium through which the learners’ agency is channeled” (Little et al., 2017, p. 18). It is also a matter of remembering that a language is fundamentally and essentially a tool for communication, and therefore a social device, and that it is in the fulfilment of its social role that we begin to learn an L2.

5

Conclusion on Self-Determination

Self-determination, as we have presented it, is a general theory of human motivation based on three pillars: autonomy, competence and relatedness. In the preceding pages, I have explained how the use of this framework offers a coherent and pertinent understanding of current research in applied linguistics and perhaps new ways to understand the relationships between these areas (such as autonomy, digital literacy or attachment), while respecting the broader scientific framework of complex dynamic systems theory. I have associated the notions of self-efficacy, learner autonomy, the L2 itself and digital literacy all with the “competence” pillar of self-determination, insofar as they are all learnt skills and that they all render language development more or less efficient. This led to Fig. 3 (cf. this chapter, Sect. 3.3). The notion of autonomy itself in this perspective is more restricted than in much of the literature in applied linguistics, as the aspects related specifically to competence are excluded from the larger notion of autonomy, leaving the latter focused on the deep psychological aspiration to be and become oneself and to be able to decide on one’s own actions. This is a philosophical and phenomenological position, as well as a psychological one. It distinguishes the “self ” from the “other”. Finally, relatedness reintegrates the notion of others and the fundamental psychological need of being socially connected. In this cluster, I include research on attachment (which has not traditionally been part of the literature in applied linguistics), and I see a particular interest in envisaging empowerment in education as being built on a solid attachment base. This framework seems to me to be particularly fruitful for profiling contemporary language learners in higher education, because their learning is autonomously built on a vast technical and social network, as we will see later on. Figure 11 illustrates the

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Fig. 11 Self-determination of the contemporary language learner in higher education

self-determination of the contemporary language learner in higher education as I described it in this section. Having thus paid close attention to the individual and to the psychological and psycholinguistic aspects of their learning through selfdetermination theory in this chapter, the following “mini-chapter” or “insert” will sketch an initial portrait of contemporary language learners in higher education with the help of two first-year undergraduate students in Physics.

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Little, D. (2013). Learner autonomy as discourse: The role of the target language. In A. Burkert, L. Dam, & C. Ludwig (Eds.), The answer is autonomy: Issues in language teaching and learning (pp. 14–25). Canterbury, Kent: IATEFL. Little, D. (2015). University language centres, self-access learning and learner autonomy. Recherche et Pratiques Pédagogiques en Langues de Spécialité. Cahiers de l’Apliut, 34 (1), 13–26. https://doi.org/10.4000/apliut.5008. Little, D. (2016). Learner autonomy and second/foreign language learning (LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies). Language Resource Centre website https://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/1409. Little, D. (2017). Three versions of learner autonomy and their implications for English-medium degree programmes. In R. Breeze & C. Sancho Guinda (Eds.), Essential competencies for English-medium university teaching (pp. 145–157). https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-31940956-6_10. Little, D., Dam, L., & Legenhausen, L. (2017). Language learner autonomy: Theory, practice and research. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Little, D., & Thorne, S. L. (2017). From learner autonomy to rewilding: A discussion. In M. Cappellini, T. Lewis, & A. Rivens Mompean (Eds.), Learner autonomy and web 2.0 (pp. 12–35). Sheffield: Equinox. López, M. G. M., & Aguilar, A. P. (2013). Emotions as learning enhancers of foreign language learning motivation. PROFILE: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 15 (1), 109–124. Macaro, E. (2002). Learning strategies in foreign and second language classrooms. London: Continuum. MacIntyre, P. D., & Vincze, L. (2017). Positive and negative emotions underlie motivation for L2 learning. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 7 (1), 61–88. Mercer, S., & Williams, M. (Eds.). (2014). Multiple perspectives on the self in SLA. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning as transformation: Critical perspectives on a theory in progress. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED448301. Norton, B. (2000). Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity and educational change. Pearson Education: Harlow. Norton, B. (2014). Identity and poststructuralist theory in SLA. In S. Mercer & M. Williams (Eds.), Multiple perspectives on the self in SLA (pp. 59–74). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

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Stephanou, C., Perencevich, K., DiCintio, M., & Turner, J. (2004). Supporting autonomy in the classroom: Ways teachers encourage student decision making and ownership. Educational Psychologist, 39 (2), 97–110. https://doi. org/10.1207/s15326985ep3902_2. Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011). The redundancy effect. In Explorations in the learning sciences, instructional systems and performance technologies. Vol. 1: Cognitive load theory (pp. 141–154). Switzerland: Springer. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4419-8126-4_11. Thill, E., & Vallerand, R. (1993). Introduction à la psychologie de la motivation. Laval, QC, Canada: Éditions Études vivantes. Toffoli, D. (2000). Au coeur de la formation: L’apprenant. Une recherche-action sur l’apprentissage de l’anglais en milieu professionnel (Thèse de doctorat). Université de La Rochelle. Toffoli, D. (2003). De la théorie à la pratique: Appliquer des modèles cognitifs de la motivation dans un centre de langues. ASp. la revue du GERAS, 41–42, 99–114. https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.1198. Toffoli, D. (2016). Attachment theory: Insights into student postures in autonomous language learning. In C. Gkonou, D. Tatzl, & S. Mercer (Eds.), New directions in language learning psychology. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Toffoli, D., & Perrot, L. (2017). Autonomy, the online informal learning of english (OILE) and learning resource centers (LRCs): The relationships between learner autonomy, L2 proficiency, L2 autonomy and digital literacy. In M. Cappellini, T. Lewis, & A. Rivens Mompean (Eds.), Learner autonomy and web 2.0 (pp. 198–228). Sheffield: Equinox. Toffoli, D., & Sockett, G. (2015). L’apprentissage informel de l’anglais en ligne (AIAL), qu’est-ce que ça change pour les centres de langues? Recherche et pratiques pédagogiques en langues de spécialité. Cahiers de l’Apliut, XXXIV (1). https://apliut.revues.org/5055. Toffoli, D., & Speranza, L. (2016). L’autonomie comme facteur déterminant dans la réussite d’un enseignement Lansad en sciences historiques. Recherche et pratiques pédagogiques en Langues de spécialité. Cahiers de l’Apliut, 35 (spécial 1). https://doi.org/10.4000/apliut.5505. Tremblay, N. A. (2003). L’Autoformation—Pour apprendre autrement. Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal. Wenden, A. (1991). Learner strategies for learner autonomy (1st ed.). New York: Prentice Hall College Div. Wenden, A. L. (2002). Learner development in language learning. Applied Linguistics, 23(1), 32–55. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/23.1.32.

3 Portrait of Two Contemporary Language Learners in Higher Education

In order to conclude Part I on contemporary language learners in higher education, I propose to move from theoretical considerations to the examination of two student writings that will give them substance. Hadi and Corentin herein report their own practices in English and with languages more generally. I comment on each portrait according to the theories that have been presented so far and areas that will be developed later.

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Hadi, May 2018 24 hours with Hadi using english1 Well in Lebanses so everyone knows that we can use three langagues in one sentence : « Hi, Kifat, ça va ? » So when I wake up, I talk with my brother using english. Then I open my phone who is also in english because I can read faster in english more than arabic. So after some time

1This is Hadi’s title. The students’ writings have not been corrected or modified, other than being typeset.

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at the phone I get up (waking up is different than getting up). I go to the university while listening to english music. Well I hate arabic songs and I dont listen to french music also I dont know other than these three languages. So english is my only option. But because I listen just at english music everyday I get bored so I need to wait for new songs. Nevermind. Let’s go back to the story. I arrive to the university I see my arabs friends. One is from Yemen the other one is from Saudi Arabia. Well the arabic is somehow a little different so we talk mostly in english. After university I go back while listening to english music. When I get home the first thing that I go to is my PC. I turn it on and open 3 things 1) Is Youtube I cant do anything without listening to english. 2) If it’s a Tuesday/Wednesday/Sunday it’s an anime day. If not it’s a series day. 3) I open League of legends we communicate in english. If I get bored I open CSGO (counter strike global offensive). We talk in english mostly but we use a little of russian in it. At like 10pm I turn off my PC and talk with my turkish friend. She prefer to talk in english rather than french. (2 hours)

This short text highlights various elements of the theories discussed in the previous pages. First of all, Hadi introduces himself as a multilingual student. His Arabic, English and French seem perhaps unsurprising, as they constitute his native and working languages. Many foreign students living and studying in France also have a similar array of languages in their repertoire (Toffoli, 2015). Interestingly, he also incidentally mentions Russian, which he will sometimes use when playing an online game. This is perhaps more unusual. It nevertheless illustrates the omnipresence of plurilingualism in this young man’s daily life, whether it be with his family, on the street or at university. He never mentions his compulsory (English) language courses as a source of language contact. We see that what encourages him to use one language or another is not above all a question of learning objectives, nor really a question of love of the language, but essentially a question of pragmatic considerations (Yemeni, Saudi and Lebanese Arabic are too different to allow mutual understanding in popular Arabic, so they opt for English; the Turkish friend does not like to speak in French, so English is used; the

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games played — League of legends and CSGO — are played predominantly in English). Some choices, especially of music, seem to be based more on an idea of what is “cool” (“I hate arabic songs and I dont listen to French music ”) and thus illustrate a notion of affect linked to the choice of language. There are also several linguistic paradoxes. A number of common expressions (“never mind”; the use of “get” in different contexts; “like” as a discursive marker instead of “around”) are always used correctly. Nonetheless, interlanguage phenomena common at a level B2 (e.g. the persistence of forgetting the final -s on third-person singular verbs; the non-capitalisation of names of languages; confusion between the relative pronouns “who” and “which”; preposition problems) are also glaringly present. We clearly detect the elements that appear in Fig. 5 (Chapter 2): his basic, personal autonomy behind both his choice of and his engagement with various activities; his autonomy, but also his language skills, which allow him to carry them out quite independently; his self-efficacy, which provides the self-image of a perfectly competent speaker of English; and his digital literacy which influences his use of an L2 for games, music and the screening of series and animes. Finally, all this is done in relation to the many people around him: his brother when he wakes up, his two Arabic-speaking friends at university, the players (competitors and companions) of his online games and his Turkish friend. The music he listens to on his commutes may also be a way of staying “connected” to the world, during more solitary moments. Our second example, Corentin, is both more developed in its selfanalysis and less complex in its plurilingualism.

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Corentin, April 2016 How do I learn english informaly? I think that when you have English grammar basis and vocabulary, learning informally is the best way to improve your English. English class are much less useful when you have a good level in English, at least for oral and written comprehension and written expression. Why is English the easiest language to learn informally?

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First of all because of its popularity. English is the first worlds language. It means that most of the things that you are looking for on the internet will be in English. That’s why it is very important to know how to speak English properly. How do I learn informally? There is several way to learn informally. But I’ve never been in a mindset such as “Today I will try to learn English informally”. It has always been natural. Why? Because on the internet, when you want to find something really relevant and interesting it will be most of the time in English. So that’s why you will naturally improve without even wanting to. Basically I’m reading a lot on the internet. Not because I want to improve my written comprehension but because I’m just looking for stuff about a specific topic or subject and most of the interesting website about it are in English. A very simple example is Wikipedia. Most or the article in Wikipedia exists in French and in English. But very often (even always) the English version is much more complete. And there is a very simple explanation for that: the English community is much bigger than the French one. That’s why you will always prefer to read in English rather than in French. And so you read about it without even thinking that you are actually working on your English and you improve with no efforts. It’s the same thing for oral comprehension. Most of movies, series, YouTube channel are in English. Movies and series production are nearly always English. And you should always prefer to watch it the original version, it’s much better to have the real actor voice, no translation error, no fail lip synchronization. And the good thing is that, regardless if you are good or bad in English you can improve your oral comprehension with movies and series because if you have trouble in English you can put on the French subtitle, if you are average you can put on English subtitles and if you are good but still want to improve you can just disable subtitles. By doing this activity you’re enjoying a movie or a series without even thinking that you are trying to improve you English. I’m also watching a lot of YouTube channels and TED talks, not because I want to improve my English but just because it is very interesting stuff about a subject that I wanted to know about but it’s doubly good because in addition of learning about a subject you improve your language skills. Written and oral expression are harder to train informally. For written expression you learn by simply interacting with people on the internet, asking for help about something or having a debate on

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a subject. Very often you talk with people in another country and the language you use is English. But the only problem is that there is nobody to correct you if you make small mistakes. Oral expression is also trainable by talking with other peoples on video games etc. But that’s some very simple interaction so I would say that improving oral expression informally is very hard if you’re not living in an English country. And I think that’s it’s the only point of English class: training oral skills. That’s why when I was in high school I took a class called “European English class” which was basically training your oral skills by having 4 or 5 oral presentation to do each semester on a historical or geographical subject. To summarise it, when you come to a certain point in English, English class are only useful to train oral expression and correct written expression with the teacher. Oral and written comprehension are skills that are really easy to train informally.

Compared to Hadi’s experience, Corentin’s does not have the same plurilingual amplitude. He is French, French-speaking, but with practices and academic experience in English that seems to exceed Hadi’s. Corentin provides a fairly detailed and relevant analysis of the particular place of English with regard to informal learning (popularity and ubiquity of English online, size of the English-speaking community and therefore superior quality of collaborative sites, quantity of resources available, interest in English-language videos, without the disadvantages of dubbing). He addresses several factors tied to the “natural” side of informal learning, such as being able to find subjects that are intrinsically interesting to the learner, but also questions of ease of uptake and incidental acquisition. He also touches on the question of language level: according to him, courses are better suited to start learning an L2; informal activities would be “the best way to learn” for someone who already has a grammatical and lexical foundation. Corentin discusses the question of strategies for listening comprehension, particularly regarding the use of subtitles, and proposes incremental use according to level of competence. He concludes that informal learning is very useful for the development of receptive skills (comprehension), both written and aural. His comparison with formal English

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classes is to present the usefulness (in his opinion) of formal learning for the practice of written and oral expression. He shares his experience of a “European section” in secondary school (where history and geography are taught in English) and which, for him, was particularly useful because of having to make oral presentations in English several times a year. Corentin’s written English is more developed, more fluid and less prone to error than Hadi’s writing. Looking again at Fig. 5 (Chapter 2), we see with Corentin, as with Hadi, personal autonomy where he chooses various activities, without external coercion. He appears have a large degree of self-confidence regarding his L2. We discern the linguistic aspects (L2 autonomy and skill in English) which allow him to carry out these activities in practice, and his sense of self-efficacy, providing him with a selfimage as a competent English speaker. He seems to be totally at ease with his L2 identity. Digital literacy is less emphasised than in Hadi’s story, but access to resources via the Internet is omnipresent. Relatedness is also less apparent in Corentin’s text. He talks about interactions with other people (mainly “strangers”) on the Internet to discuss a subject or ask for help, but less for relational than functional reasons. (He considers it useful for training, but regrets that there is no correction.) Even in the language class, Corentin comments more on the teacher’s usefulness in correcting than on the interest of relationships that could be developed with the teacher or with other learners. The relational aspect of this text seems to emerge only in the style of writing, which is direct, very personal and seems to target a familiar interlocutor, especially through the writing in the second person. While talking about his personal experience (using the first person), Corentin seems to take the opportunity provided by the text to give advice. I interpret this as a sign of relatedness. These two self-portraits give succinct substance to the main elements I have presented in Part I of this book. In them we find illustrations of the different aspects of learner autonomy, seen from the perspective of selfdetermination, but also from the perspective of other research in applied linguistics. They also include references to the concepts of competence mentioned, as concern the L2 itself, digital literacy and learning. Finally, we see too, particularly in Hadi’s text, the importance of relatedness in the use of the L2. These different interdependent elements act, influence

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and evolve in a way that is not very predictable, but is totally coherent within the individual system of each of these two learners. Their learning can thus be seen as two examples of a more general complex and dynamic system. Through these two portraits, I hope that my description of the contemporary language learner in higher education, presented through the prisms of self-determination and complex and dynamic systems, has come alive. Part I of this book thus consists of a personal theoretical approach enabling the description of contemporary language learners in higher education. Part II explores the terrain on which contemporary language learners in higher education develop and the social and technical contexts which allow them to motivate themselves in order to follow through on their trajectory of appropriation of a new language as a young adult. I will focus at length on university set-ups, particularly Language Resource Centres, as well as learning in informal contexts, outside the university. My objective will be to create a “model”, or at least a “schematisation” of the contemporary language learner in higher education.

Reference Toffoli, D. (2015). University students’ plurilingual profiles in a French frontier city: Similarities and differences between more and less plurilingual students. Language Learning in Higher Education, 5 (1), 25–43. https://doi.org/ 10.1515/cercles-2015-0002.

Part II Contexts of Contemporary Language Development

Despite the many contexts in which adult language learners learn and can potentially be studied, this book focuses on university students, primarily because they make up a large percentage of European youth and are destined to become the workforce — professionals, civil servants, managers and technicians — of tomorrow. Why target this particular audience? While a century ago less than 3% of the population of what were considered “developed countries” attended higher education, today, the majority of these countries target higher qualifications for over 50% of the population (Murray, 2016). This makes university students a particularly important group to study and understand. While Reinders (2012) suggests somewhat cynically that targeting university students for research may be because of easy access for university-based researchers to a captive and amenable audience, others, such as Poteaux (2014), link this interest to an educational aim: university is the last place where students can train for self-directed lifelong and lifewide learning before entering a professional career. To that end, one of the purposes of this book is to envisage how the academic community can put this and similar research to use in order to support such outcomes. How can teachers and instructional designers configure university language courses in such a way as to ready students for life after university, in the knowledge that if they are

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to maintain competence in foreign languages, they will need to maintain regular and ongoing practice of those languages, much in the same way that they will need to maintain regular and ongoing physical activity, if they are to remain physically fit throughout life? By assuming different postures (those of researcher, consultant and teacher, as well as that of lifelong language learner) in this work, I attempt to provide nuanced insights into this contemporary L2 student. My objective as a researcher is to study these language learners, their practices of informal and formal language learning and the interactions between the two, in order to identify activities that produce the best results in the appropriation and development of an L2. My contribution, as a consultant, is to evaluate and recommend, on the basis of solid research, the implementation of coherent and effective programmes and resources for L2 learning within a university context. My challenge, as a teacherpractitioner, is to try to stimulate L2 training and learning practices that could last throughout life. And finally, my objective, as a learner, is to test the contexts, tools and approaches studied myself. Having clarified in Part I my position in relation to different theories of learning and language acquisition, I shall reconsider contemporary language learners in Part II from the contexts in which they learn their L2. Chapter 4 will situate institution-wide language provision (IWLP) and recent debates around this target, primarily in France and in Europe, but where possible attention will also be paid to other contexts. I will focus at length on language teaching/learning systems and in particular on a certain conception of the Language Resource Centre (LRC), in its declarative (sometimes ideological) and praxeological aspects. I then will turn to a description of informal language development practices outside of institutional arrangements, and finally integrate them into a global scheme that models the complexity of these systemic interactions.

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References Murray, N. (2016). Standards of English in higher education: Issues, challenges and strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Poteaux, N. (2014). Les langues étrangères pour tous à l’université: Regard sur une expérience (1991–2013). Les dossiers des sciences de l’éducation, 32, 17– 32. Reinders, H. (2012). The end of self-access? From Walled garden to public park. ELTWorldOnline.com, 4. http://blog.nus.edu.sg/eltwo/2012/06/13/ the-end-of-self-access-from-walled-garden-to-public-park-2/.

4 Institution-Wide Language Provision

The theories of language, learning and development of the person presented in Part I constitute a coherent system of interacting constructs, providing an in-depth understanding of the fundamental needs and developmental trajectories possible for individual language learners, from a theoretical standpoint. In addition, complex systems theory reaffirms the importance of context for any system, and it is easy to assume that learning contexts may be particularly influential in learning outcomes. This is perhaps both a presupposition and a desire of many in educational professions, justifying our very existence to a certain extent. As the contemporary language learner in higher education is the central subject of this book, it therefore seems relevant to examine this context in detail while also questioning the premises of the aforementioned assumption. To what extent do the educational choices made by institutions of higher learning effect the learning and language outcomes of students who go through them? Can we find evidence for establishing or integrating certain instructional approaches rather than others? How do students react to different types of learning? What does the science tell us? And can we prescribe “best practices” and preferred pedagogies? This chapter will take a look at theoretical perspectives on what works and what doesn’t in © The Author(s) 2020 D. Toffoli, Informal Learning and Institution-wide Language Provision, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37876-9_4

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institution-wide language provision. An initial look at some recent orientations in higher education will lead to the examination of the case of one institution, before looking outside the formal system into students’ own personal language learning world. When delving into the literature on foreign language learning worldwide, two trends seem to emerge: the preponderance of English-language teaching throughout international higher education (see below, but also the example of Rose & McKinley, 2018), and some fairly marginal studies (quantitatively speaking) concerning the learning of other languages, both in anglophone countries and universities and in other language institutions worldwide. Faced with the near-impossibility of providing a balanced overview of language policies, even on a purely European basis, I have chosen to look briefly at institution-wide language provision in the UK, where some nation-wide surveys have been carried out and at the somewhat equivalent notion of “Lansad ” in France, involving the teaching of (any) foreign language to non-language specialists. This will allow a closer look at the French context, through a case study of what may be similar situations in other developed countries, where the tension between internationalisation through English and preservation of a strong national linguistic identity can often be felt to be at odds. The acronym “IWLP” (institution-wide language provision) is a term that appears to have been coined by John Morley, Caroline Campbell, Peter Howarth, and Filippo Nereo (2013) in Britain for use in the context of a survey carried out on behalf of the University Council of Modern Languages (UCML) and the Association of University Language Centres (AULC) in 2012. In it, they “aimed to obtain a picture of the current availability and demand for Institution-wide Language Provision (IWLP) across the higher education (HE) sector in the UK” (p. 3). On the basis of their data and in comparison with earlier surveys of a similar nature, the authors conclude that IWLP is on the rise (“almost a doubling of IWLP numbers in just over a decade”, p. 4), despite a decline in registration in language programmes for specialists (UK Universities and Colleges Admissions Service 2012 data — Morley et al., 2013, p. 4).

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In France, the term “Lansad” (Langues pour spécialistes d’autres disciplines 1 ) was devised in 1993 by Michel Perrin (1993) with the aim of providing a positively formulated term that would make it possible to identify all participants, particularly in university settings, who are learning one or more foreign languages, without this being part of their academic major or minor. At the time, the objective was to find a name that would avoid the negative connotations surrounding the term “nonspecialist”, traditionally used in language faculties to designate these audiences and the different types of courses intended for them. Despite the somewhat abstruse aspect of the word Lansad, it clearly meets a need, to the point of being part of common terminology in French universities today, much as IWLP (institution-wide language provision) is in the British context. The importance of properly identifying this audience has increased with the growing importance of languages in French and European educational policies, supporting European integration and the internationalisation of society as a whole. The French Société des anglicistes de l’enseignement supérieur (SAES ) has, for several years, been paying particular attention to the issues raised in the context of IWLP, as shown by the publication of its 2018 white paper (SAES, 2018). It also highlights the diversity of teaching configurations in this context, the diversity of teachers’ status, resources and implications for the management of language policy at the local level. Niel Murray (2016) identifies six key factors that shape current higher education policy and practice particularly as concerns the English language in the most affluent Anglophone countries. He cites “the social justice agenda […], new technologies, globalisation, funding mechanisms […], international students and multicultural classrooms, and […] the student experience” (p. 36). We could probably argue that these same factors are influencing not only English-language policies in Anglophone countries, but quite likely all language policies in most universities, at least in developed countries. While differing cultural contexts do mean that the first and last of these factors (the social justice agenda and the

1 Languages

for specialists of other disciplines.

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student experience) may represent very different things in different countries, by and large most universities are confronted with very similar contexts in terms of new technologies, globalisation, funding and international and multicultural campuses. A university like Strasbourg, which in 2018 boasted more than 50,000 students, had some 3000 enrolled in degree courses in 23 languages including English, compared to some 30,000 enrolled in L2 courses to meet degree requirements within another discipline.2 These proportions are typical of French universities, as the 2016 SAES survey showed (SAES, 2018). It is also a national specificity, insofar as each country determines its own linguistic and educational policy. For example, in Great Britain, since languages became optional in secondary education (2004) and university fees increased significantly (2012), Morley et al. (2013) have documented a sharp drop in the number of students studying specialised languages at university, but a significant increase in IWLP. In Britain, IWLP is associated with the teaching of both general or standard L2, associated with needs such as travel and basic communication, and language for specific purposes, often academic, including literary and cultural, but also sometimes business or other (Morley et al., 2013; Murray, 2016). This is somewhat in contrast to the situation in other European countries, where L2 courses, often compulsory, tend to have a more specific, often disciplinary, orientation (see, e.g., Wilkinson & Walsh, 2015). In France, a group of teachers and researchers began to reflect on the concepts related to English for special purposes, English for specialists and English for non-specialists in the 1980s. Researchers such as JeanMarie Baïssus, Francisque Costa, Michel Perrin and Michèle Rivas met under the auspices of the Groupe d’Études et de Recherche en Anglais de Spécialité (GERAS ) and defined a certain number of specificities, other than the purely lexical, for each of these terms concerning English “specialisation”. They also felt that there was a necessary difference between teaching for students whose main discipline is a foreign language and 2I

only count here students enrolled in bachelor’s or master’s degree where language courses are compulsory. I also leave out the language specialists who are required to learn a 2nd or even 3rd L2, because their approach to this type of learning would appear to differ from that of “specialists of other disciplines”.

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those whose L2 learning is a subsidiary (although often compulsory) subject. In the following paragraphs, we will see that this difference in the status of the L2 also gives rise to different curricula.

1

ESP, CLIL and Other Classroom-Based Arrangements: Targeting Student-Centred Language Through Content-Based Teaching

In 2011, in their framework document on English-language teaching in higher education, the SAES proposed definitions of the terms Lansad and Specialty Languages (LSP ). It identifies the purpose of English for specific purposes (ESP) as follows: Its study focuses both on specialised fields (in an approach similar to that of civilisationists and using methodologies that may be common) and on the language/speech from which these fields are constituted. It involves defining the key terms of the field, its symbolic workings (terminology, genres, metaphors, etc.), its dynamics (history of thought, emergence/evolution of lexicons, neologisms and changes in scientific paradigms, etc.). (SAES Academic Committee, 2011, p. 3)

In the case of English, specialised studies have thus concentrated on the specificities of legal English, medical English, economic and financial English, etc. This research, although it is not just on specialised lexis, can include the constitution of specialised lexicons related to a particular discipline. It can also take the form of structural analyses of larger or smaller segments of discipline-specific discourse (sentence, paragraph, full discourse, interactions), through analyses of register (degree of formality, spoken or written mode), to taking into account the particular social factors of the speakers, and so on. In France, ASp, la revue du GERAS, has published many such papers since 1993. ESP refers to the specific professional English of doctors, lawyers, economists, scientists, air traffic controllers, etc. and can therefore be the focus of IWLP training for these audiences. A targeted pedagogical approach in this regard

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could therefore build on this type of LSP research and provide content for medical, law or history students to master the metalinguistic aspects of these specific discourses. Michel Van der Yeught advocates such an approach and believes that today these teachings lack specificity: “quite simply, the resources in the specialised varieties of English they will need do not yet exist” (Van der Yeught, 2010, para. 11). He argues that the considerable body of research on the multiple LSPs of English has not yet been identified, organised and structured into coherent areas of knowledge that can be transmitted to students in English…. The knowledge they urgently need remains scattered in hundreds of research articles that are still too disconnected from each other to combine into homogeneous knowledge. (ibid.)

This type of approach is supported by the “discourse areas” mentioned by Shona Whyte (2013) and is in line with Ken Hyland’s perspective when he advocates “research-based language training” (Hyland, 2002, p. 385). This perspective would appear to limit targeted learning to “language courses” in which the foreign language is considered to be an object of study, a discipline in itself (and therefore to include essentially, if not exclusively, linguistic and metalinguistic content, although cloaked in disciplinary texts). The didactic premise of such an approach posits that English courses be determined by the discipline of reference and should therefore focus on clarifying the linguistic aspects of the associated discourse. In the IWLP sector in France, as in many countries, two principle organisational logistics can be identified. Thus, students may be grouped according to discipline (medicine, law, economics, mathematics, engineering, to name but a few) and a particular type of specialised discourse be identified and targeted in class, with the aim of enabling the linguistic and cultural integration of the future professional (cf. SAES framework document, 2011, p. 2). This orientation corresponds quite well to the “research-based language training” prescribed above. A second didactic

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approach involves gathering students from a variety of disciplines, creating interdisciplinary groups and anchoring teaching in the transdisciplinary aspects of language (ibid., p. 2). Such transdisciplinary language courses are in some ways closer to general education, as is often found at the secondary level. Practically, this type of orientation, at university, often involves students being grouped by language level (following a placement test), rather than by discipline, and language acquisition levels corresponding to a “common base” are targeted. It is just such a base that is targeted by the European “threshold level” (Coste et al., 1976) and by the implementation of the general objectives of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR — Council of Europe, 2000). With the introduction of language policies that increasingly integrate certification projects, such as CLES 3 or TOEIC,4 learning objectives with a general academic focus or unspecified “professional environment” may divert students and teachers from a more specialised approach. Before further addressing the question of specialised approaches, it seems relevant to address the question of language levels in the IWLP context.

2

The Thorny Issue of B2 Target Levels

Despite the compulsory teaching of at least one foreign language in the majority of European university programmes (particularly since integration of the Bologna process in 20045 ), the young French adult entering university is generally perceived, even today and in a completely caricatural way, as monolingual, having possibly added a few other language strings to their scholastic bow, but having few real plurilingual skills. These students begin their university career with the reputation of being 3 CLES

is a French university-designed language certificate, commissioned by the ministry, that is available in 8 languages. Equivalent certificates exist in other European countries: ACERT (Poland), AICLU (Italy), CertAcles (Spain), ReCles (Portugal), UNIcert (Germany), UNIcert LUCE (Slovakia and Czech Republic) and UNILANG (UK and Ireland). These have recently (2017) formed the Network of University Language Tests in Europe (NULTE) consortium, which guarantees mutual recognition for all of these certificates for participating countries. 4Test of English for International Communication. 5 In France, this was further to an official ministerial decree in 2002.

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“bad at languages” (Poteaux, 2012; Taillefer, 2014) and are generally far from reaching the European objective of a B2 level in two foreign languages (the so-called 1 + 2 adopted by the European parliament in 2008). Various studies, such as the rigorous First European Survey on Language Competences (European Commission, 2012), are not very flattering to the French public. The aforementioned study tested the foreign language skills (where the principle foreign language is English) of 15year-olds from 13 different European origins. In France, this age corresponds to the end of middle school, i.e. after four years of compulsory English, with between 120 and 320 hours of instruction in this language. The study compares the results on tests of reading, writing and listening skills. In these three areas, the majority of young French adolescents had skills at level A1 or below (this level was based on tests of nearly 60% of the population for writing and over 75% for reading or listening) and very few had skills that reach level B2 (around 5%). These results placed the French in last place, behind all the other European nationalities tested. Poland, Portugal and Bulgaria came out as similarly weak, as compared to countries like Sweden, Malta, the Netherlands and Estonia, where a near majority of students had attained target B2 levels by this (relatively) early stage in their education. Although English-language skills certainly continue to improve during the three years of senior secondary school, the proportion of students actually reaching the B2 level targeted by the national education system at the time of the baccalaureate is uncertain. Halimi (2012) notes the disparity between expected (CEFR) levels and observed student performance, a disparity which is also identified by many teachers in the field. The results of undergraduate language certifications (CLES B2) leave some 50% of candidates not achieving the required results (Olive & Socha, 2013). B2 level, which should theoretically (politically) be acquired by the time students enter university, remains, in most French universities, the target level for the end of their bachelor’s or even master’s degree. Linda Terrier and Cristelle Maury (among others) point out the “paradox of an identical target level at high school graduation and, five years later, at the end of a Masters” (2015, para. 10). A few additional comments may shed light on this enigma, if not actually providing a solution. Most young baccalaureate graduates are

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convinced that they will arrive at university with a B2 level, as this is the official target level of the baccalaureate. However, as explained by an inspector from the Strasbourg Academy to an audience of higher education teachers,6 it should be understood that this level would be consistent with a perfect (100%) score in the modern language component of the baccalaureate. This is of course rarely the case and students may even pass their baccalaureate while having failed miserably in the modern language components. Teachers in higher education certainly perceive a (sometimes large) discrepancy between the levels announced and the skills of first-year students. Thus, in most institutions of higher education in France and for the majority of courses, the B2 level has also been determined as the target level for licence (bachelor’s) and master’s degrees. Attainment of this level by the end of a university programme is considered to be quite respectable by European experts such as David Little.7 Given the current context, it is therefore probably appropriate to determine the contours of a […] university B2 level, [as distinct from a school B2], for example on the basis of mastery of the specialised language relating to the students’ field of study, to guide in the design of IWLP training. (Terrier & Maury, 2015, para. 10)

This “academic” B2 could effectively target language skills related to adult usage of language in professional and extra-professional activities, rather than those related to general needs for younger students. The language objectives of students’ academic content should both consolidate the academic B2 prerequisites and encompass academic and disciplinary language objectives at the university level, rather than targeting more ambitious goals. For the many students who arrive at university with levels below B2, at least in certain skills, it is a question of establishing the means to reach this university level. In many ways, this also corresponds 6 Meeting

between members of the Faculty of Languages and the Academy’s modern language inspectors on 27 September 2017. 7 Who called it “an acceptable minimum level of proficiency at the end of a degree programme provided it is appropriately focused ”, during a communication on evaluation to IWLP teachers at the University of Strasbourg on 18 March 2017.

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to the difficulties that many universities are struggling with in Anglophone countries regarding standards of English (Murray, 2016). This was the difficulty faced by Lauren Speranza in a Faculty of Historical Sciences and which led to an action-research project (Toffoli & Speranza, 2016) where students were given a large measure of freedom in identifying and working on individual projects related to their discipline. The results would indicate that, based on the principles of autonomy and with caring support (relatedness), students can make significant progress towards this target.8 To position IWLP teaching in relation to these fundamental objectives is to decide which language to teach, which levels to target, whether or not to tackle teaching of discipline-specific language and how to undertake such teaching. One of the approaches which has been widely tested at university, as well as in some school contexts in the last thirty years, advocates a focus on specialised language by integrating language teaching and disciplinary content. That is the subject of the following section.

3

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL): Disciplinary Education as a Foundation for Language Learning

As we have seen in Sect. 1, the essentially linguistic and “Capital C” Cultural approach to “languages for special purposes” tends to emphasise the “language” aspect. Other approaches favour the teaching of content subjects in a foreign language, where the language is used essentially as a vehicle for transmitting subject content. From the teaching of history and geography in foreign languages at secondary level (Halimi, 2012) to university degrees taught entirely in foreign languages (most of the time in English, according to Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010; Truchot, 2010 or Wilkinson & Walsh, 2015), several denominations and varying instructional designs are used to target what are often seen as “two for the price of one” educational set-ups. The objective, based on students’ supposed superior interest in the discipline in question, is to

8 For

more information on this project, see below, in the latter part of Sect. 3.

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provide content instruction in the foreign language, thus making it possible to “kill two birds with one stone”, as Roussel and Goanac’h (2017) put it. The prospect of “double value for money” has opened the door to the creation of multiple ways of integrating the teaching–learning of language with that of the subject itself. Known by various names, including content-based language teaching (CBLT), content-based language instruction (CBLI), English as a medium of instruction (EMI), integrating content and language (ICL), bilingual education, instruction in vehicular English or content and language integrated learning (CLIL), I shall adopt primarily the latter acronym, CLIL, due to its status formalised by the European Commission (Roussel & Goanac’h, 2017) and to the numerous publications documenting its use (among others Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010; Dalton-Puffer & Smit, 2013; Greere & Räsänen, 2008; Marsh, 2002; Rumlich, 2016; Taillefer, 2013; Wilkinson & Walsh, 2015). The first widely documented experiences of this type of education date back to the 1970s with immersion schools in countries such as Canada, Luxembourg, Belgium or Switzerland, where official bilingualism or multilingualism exist. Modelled on very young children’s “natural” learning of their mother tongue, Canadian immersion schools (for example) offered French-language instruction to children in English-speaking provinces as of their 6th birthday. Without explicit instruction in the foreign language, children were expected to acquire it through exposure to content adapted to their age and areas of interest. Transposed to other countries in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s, bilingual curricula in Germany (Bilingualer [Sachfach-]Unterricht ) or “European sections” in France, Spain and elsewhere flourished, with the main differences being that only certain subjects were taught in the L2 and that most of these schools were aimed at an audience of young teenagers or pre-teens (middle schoolers), from the age of 10 or 11 and up (Rumlich, 2016). In universities, the desire for internationalisation, encouraged by the Bologna process and supported by European Union policies (particularly the Erasmus programmes), has given rise to many degrees being offered in English since the 1990s (Murray, 2016; Truchot, 2010; Wilkinson & Walsh, 2015).

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Considered by many as somewhat of an ideal for language teaching and learning, CLIL is widely perceived in the literature as a positive force with effective results, although a number of studies since 2010 provide reason to doubt its effectiveness as the sole, or even principle contributor to language learning. In order to have a balanced view of CLIL, it is important to consider both the perceived benefits of this type of education, as well as its criticisms. Both have valid points to make. Dominik Rumlich (2016), in a 500-page thesis on CLIL in Germany, summarises the main arguments in its favour. Basically, the idea that all content is transmitted by language, and therefore mediated and learned by it, leads to the observation that language and content are inseparable. For Fredricka Stoller, learning disciplinary content contributes to language learning and language proficiency provides easier access to content9 (Stoller, 2008). The assumptions behind the implementation of CLIL are that the language used in a subject-based course is qualitatively different from that used in a language class. The first is authentic, with the emphasis on meaning as related to the field of study; the second highlights artificial and decontextualised statements, to focus on formal aspects (Rumlich, 2016). In the case of technical content, CLIL discourse consists of a standardised repertoire of recurrent terminology, less diversified and thus easier to master than in other contexts (Rumlich, 2016). Some authors believe CLIL promotes cognitive engagement, as it focuses on content rather than form. This engagement with content is seen to be not only essential for information processing, but also as a means to encourage learners to spend more time on tasks, which is essential for learning to take place (Rumlich, 2016). Stoller (2008) states that CLIL is supported by educational and cognitive psychology, with regard to deep processing and learning, processing and understanding of discourse, flow, expertise, motivation, attribution and learners’ interest. CLIL is also seen to be an ideal vehicle for fostering other essential skills that universities wish to promote, such as communicative intercultural skills, learner autonomy, learning and communication strategies or 9 “Content

and language create a symbiotic relationship; that is, the learning of content contributes to the learning of language and a mastery of language gives learners easier access to content” (Stoller, 2008, p. 59).

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awareness of how language works. For Rumlich (2016), most of these skills are also expected to catalyse the effects of teaching and maximise its results. For some researchers, CLIL epitomises language teaching combining both a communicative and an action-oriented approach (Dalton-Puffer & Smit, 2007). Despite enthusiastic support for CLIL in much of the literature, Rumlich (2016) criticises several aspects, starting with the very foundations that justify such language learning. He points out that there is no unified theory about how a language is learned in CLIL, that research knows little about CLIL, including even the conditions necessary for its success (Rumlich, 2016). In the empirical part of his thesis, he studies the effects of CLIL in bilingual programmes at four Gymnasiums in Germany, compared it to learning of the same L2 in “normal” classroom conditions. His statistical analysis of data from more than 1000 students reveals significant differences in the initial conditions of the two groups. For the bilingual programmes, he notes entry-level selection, students from privileged socio-economic backgrounds and preparatory language provision before the start of the programme. Taking these effects into account, as well as those due to smaller and more homogenous class sizes and increased hours of language instruction, he finds no statistically significant effects of CLIL, other than a slight increase in self-esteem (Rumlich, 2016). Further critiques of CLIL come from cognitive psychology and concern in particular the effects of cognitive load. As part of a study on “dual tasks”, Stéphanie Roussel, André Tricot and John Sweller created an experiment to determine the quality of subject knowledge acquisition in an L2 task (Roussel & Goanac’h, 2017). Three groups of French law students, of comparable L2 levels and accustomed to studying law in their L2 (German or English), were required to read a legal text, either in French, in their L2 or in a bilingual version. They then took both a language test and a content comprehension test. The results may seem obvious: reading in their L2 (the “immersive” situation) did not allow any students to obtain the best results on either of the tests. Logically, they got the best results on the comprehension test when they read in their L1. They obtained the best results on the language test when they

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read the bilingual version. The researchers explain that, according to cognitive load theory, each of the cognitive activities performed as part of a complex task comes at a cost, and a deterioration of performance may occur if the total cost exceeds the capacities of working memory. So-called “secondary” knowledge (both an L2 and the subject taught) requires […] conscious efforts. The simultaneous learning of two secondary skills […] can lead to cognitive overload. In this respect, it cannot be said that this situation always makes it possible to “kill two birds with one stone”. (Roussel & Goanac’h, 2017, pp. 105–106)

Roussel and Goanac’h draw attention to one of the inherent flaws in the pro-CLIL discourse: the fact that it is probably not a potential cost-saver, nor an easy way out. Ideal CLIL is often described in the literature as a dynamic balance between content and language learning, where neither is subordinate to the other (Taillefer, 2013). However, in practice, explicit learning in this type of education often focuses on the non-linguistic discipline and relegates language learning to almost entirely implicit discovery and acquisition. Learners are expected to integrate and develop their foreign language skills through a kind of osmosis. Several studies on CLIL (DaltonPuffer & Smit, 2007, 2013; Marsh, 2002; Rumlich, 2016; Taillefer, 2004, 2013) clearly show that the place of language diminishes in these dual-purpose teachings. In their definition of CLIL, Christiane DaltonPuffer & Ute Smit clearly place language at the periphery, with the subject matter at the centre: “CLIL can be seen as a foreign language enrichment measure packaged into content teaching” (Dalton-Puffer & Smit, 2013, p. 546). Gail Taillefer (2013) analyses the different ways language and content coexist within CLIL education and presents this along a five-degree continuum (see Fig. 1). At the one end, absence of CLIL and classic LSP teaching progressively give way to the type of implicit language focus found in many CLIL programmes. At the “high” end, explicit focus on both the content and the language itself involves both a double set of objectives and

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Fig. 1 The CLIL continuum according to Taillefer (2013, pp. 36–37)

of teaching and learning strategies. The optimal (for Taillefer) configuration of a “true, dual-focused” CLIL (Taillefer, 2013) usually involves close collaboration between subject specialists on the one hand and language specialists on the other. Ideally, this could lead to a confrontation between content and form, between what is strictly linguistic and what is non-linguistic in the discourse, with explanations of both. The reality of the university environment in most countries, under the pressures of massification, budgetary restrictions and increasing research and teaching responsibilities on colleagues, makes such solutions difficult, if not impossible. The realities of the IWLP sector reveal that the majority of teachers working there are either specialists of a particular language (having themselves learned it in a language degree, often literature or culture-oriented, before training to become a teacher) or native speakers of the language in question, sometimes having received training for language teaching. Often, these teachers are called upon to practise high disciplinary versatility, working with students from extremely diversified disciplines and having neither the time nor the possibility to become experts in each of them (Toffoli & Speranza, 2016). A few rare exceptions (e.g. in Strasbourg, out of a cohort of 38 tenured secondary school teachers seconded to the IWLP department, three) are native speakers, with degrees in both language teaching and the disciplines in which they are involved (in these cases pharmacy, psychology and biochemistry). They are thus providing “true dual-focused CLIL” without having to seek out and implement sometimes complex collaborations with colleagues from other disciplines and other faculties. This in turn raises the question of how a practitioner, who is a general language teacher or a specialist in an often literary aspect of the language and culture in question, can approach specialised language teaching. People working in a language for specific purposes perspective have found

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(partial) solutions, such as those identified by Van der Yeught (2010), drawing on linguistic research in specialised languages to address the needs of specialists in other disciplines. Yet one must admit the difficulties of such practices for secondary school teachers, who have little or no experience of research in applied linguistics and who have a much higher teaching load than their researcher colleagues, leaving them little time for the background research and reflexive practice that this implies. One might also wonder whether language and content integration is not a false issue. Learning a language necessarily involves both language learning and content learning. Methodologies which have tried to minimise the importance of one or the other have all led to failures for a large majority of learners (Little, 2015). On the one hand, approaches that favour language learning at the expense of content (level 0 CLIL) have done so at the cost of learners’ boredom. To illustrate this case, Little (2015) cites grammatical approaches that focused on learning rules of form and audio-lingual methods that worked on rote learning. On the other hand, subject-based lecture courses with disciplinary teachers teaching content to an amphitheatre in what is often their own L2, without explicit language objectives or criteria (Taillefer, 2013; Truchot, 2010), produce lower learning outcomes than other configurations, both in the foreign language and in the subject area (Roussel & Goanac’h, 2017; Rumlich, 2016). This appears to be due to the cognitive overload caused by the simultaneous undertaking of two highly demanding cognitive activities, particularly when students have not yet reached the threshold level in the L2 (which might make it possible to avoid these cognitive disadvantages and to benefit from the potential advantages of bilingualism) before starting this type of programme (Rumlich, 2016). Issue number 3, Volume 35 (2016) of the journal Recherche et pratiques pédagogiques en langues de spécialité, les cahiers de l’APLIUT,10 entitled “LANSAD et langues de spécialité,”11 specifically addresses this relationship between languages for special purposes and IWLP. On the one hand, according to Van der Yeught (2010), IWLPs are, by definition, 10 Research and pedagogical practices in languages for special purposes, Papers of the Association of Language Professors in Higher Technical Education. 11 IWLP and Specialty Languages.

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already structured in a specialised way by the “other disciplines”, and on the other hand, there appears to be a didactics of IWLP with “specific properties from applied linguistics concerning the teaching and learning of specialised languages” (citation from the text of the call for submissions for this issue). As seen above, notably with Taillefer (2013), the focus then moves to the question of the ratio between content and language, as well as that of pedagogical approach. As a result, the notion of a didactics or pedagogy specific to IWLP can be entertained. Toffoli and Speranza (2016) propose a kind of third way: they analyse an approach centred on student empowerment, implemented in a Historical Sciences classroom where initial reflection on integrated language and disciplinary content learning (as theorised by Bartik, Maerten, Tudor, & Valcked, 2012; Greere & Räsänen, 2008; Marsh, 2002; Taillefer, 2013) had led to attempts to adopt subject-specific content in an “English for Historians” course. The difficulties encountered in terms of the teacher’s (non-)mastery of the subject-specific content, inaccessible language for many of the learners (due to divergent subspecialisations and heterogeneous language levels), as well as institutional obstacles and reticence, had led to profound questioning by the teacher. Her subsequent choice to adopt an individualised approach to encourage the emergence of content-based projects in English led the students to pursue personal interests related to their chosen discipline. This approach induced learning that went beyond either of the two frameworks (disciplinary and language) alone and that perhaps indicates promising directions for IWLP. The project highlighted the importance of integrating a profound reflection on the identity of the IWLP student, as well as on the notions of learning that were examined in Part I of this book: self-determination, autonomy, competence and relatedness. A number of learners made tangible progress, at least on a personal level, by working within this loosely structured framework, where they were given great freedom of choice. Working in this way, without teacher-provided readyto-use knowledge, where students really need to invest personally in order to produce results, is reminiscent of the achievements of Leni Dam’s learners (Little, Dam, & Legenhausen, 2017). The precise way in which a foreign language is acquired is subject to much scientific debate, even after decades of study, but, whether one

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positions oneself on the cognitivist side or on the socio-constructivist side of the question, the teacher-practitioner is faced with complex individuals and is prey to multiple changes due to both their environment and their own internal dynamics (de Bot, Lowie, & Verspoor, 2007; LarsenFreeman & Cameron, 2007; Verspoor, 2012). These social, emotional, psychological and contextual differences seem to me to be less characteristics of the disciplines in question than of the individuals seeking to learn. This description of the IWLP context and the issues associated with language learning in higher education aims to provide the initial background necessary to understanding contemporary language learners in higher education. Although the majority of examples were taken from France and sometimes other European countries, elements documented by Murray (2016) lead us to believe that the situation is not so different in many other countries. The first level of analysis adopted has examined how the objective of foreign language proficiency is being addressed on the institutional level and why, despite inconclusive research, CLIL is increasingly envisaged as an appropriate response today. On the other hand, in order to understand how contemporary students can move forward on their individual and specific trajectories of L2 appropriation, it seems important to look now at other types of learning arrangements present within the university and to examine how the types of teaching described above can be articulated with them. The following chapter continues the contextual exploration of language training in higher education by examining the notion of self-access and by taking a closer look at some of the pedagogical principles associated with it.

References Bartik, K., Maerten, C., Tudor, I., & Valcked, J. (2012). A discussion brief of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) at the faculty of Applied Sciences [University of Cordoba]. http://www.uco.es/poling/multilingualism_ plan/?p=69.

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Coste, D., Courtillon, J., Ferenczi, V., Martins-Baltar, M., Papo, E., & Roulet, E. (1976). Un niveau-seuil: Systèmes d’apprentissage des langues vivantes par les adultes. Paris: Conseil de l’Europe, Hatier. Council of Europe. (2000). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/ Source/Framework_EN.pdf. Coyle, D., Hood, P., & Marsh, D. (2010). CLIL—Content and language integrated learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dalton-Puffer, C., & Smit, U. (2007). Introduction. In Empirical perspectives on CLIL classroom discourse (pp. 17–23). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Dalton-Puffer, C., & Smit, U. (2013). Content and language integrated learning: A research agenda. Language Teaching, 46 (4), 545–559. https://doi.org/ 10.1017/S0261444813000256. de Bot, K., Lowie, W., & Verspoor, M. (2007). A dynamic systems theory approach to second language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10 (1), 7–21. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728906002732. European Commission. (2012). First european survey on language competences— Final report. European Commission website http://ec.europa.eu/languages/ eslc/docs/en/final-report-escl_en.pdf. Greere, A., & Räsänen, A. (2008). Redefining CLIL—Towards multilingual competence. Commission of the European Communities Lifelong Learning Erasmus Network programme website http://www.lanqua.eu. Halimi, S. (2012). Apprendre les langues, Apprendre le monde (p. 76) [Pilotage du système éducatif ]. Ministre de l’éducation nationale, de la jeunesse et de la vie associative: Comité stratégique des langues website http://www. education.gouv.fr/cid59284/apprendre-les-langues-apprendre-le-monderapport-du-comite-strategique-des-langues-preside-par-suzy-halimi.html. Hyland, K. (2002). Specificity revisited: How far should we go now? English for Specific Purposes, 21, 385–395. https://doi.org/10.1016/S08894906(01)00028-X. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2007). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Little, D. (2015). University language centres, self-access learning and learner autonomy. Recherche et Pratiques Pédagogiques en Langues de Spécialité. Cahiers de l’Apliut, 34 (1), 13–26. https://doi.org/10.4000/apliut.5008. Little, D., Dam, L., & Legenhausen, L. (2017). Language learner autonomy: Theory, practice and research. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

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Marsh, D. (2002). CLIL/EMILE—The European dimension: Actions, trends and foresight potential (European Commission EACEA No. 2001 – 3406 /001 – 001). Finland: University of Jyväskylä. Morley, J., Campbell, C., Howart, P., & Nereo, F. (2013). UCMLAULC survey of institution-wide language provision in universities in the UK (ISBN: 978-1-907207-68-6). The Higher Education Academy website https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/detail/disciplines/ Languages/Survey_of_institution_wide_language_provision. Murray, N. (2016). Standards of English in higher education: Issues, challenges and strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Olive, M.-N., & Socha, J. (2013). Bilan national CLES 2012–2013. http:// www.certification-cles.fr/files/bilan2013.pdf. Perrin, M. (1993). Des centres de langues dans l’Enseignement Supérieur: Pour quoi faire? Pour y faire quoi? Actes de la 2è rencontre de CercleS. Présenté à Université Bordeaux 2, Bordeaux/DLVP. Poteaux, N. (2012). Autonomie et plurilinguisme: Une même aventure? Arena Romanistica Journal of Romance Studies, 11, 138–151. Rose, H., & McKinley, J. (2018). Japan’s English-medium instruction initiatives and the globalization of higher education. Higher Education, 75 (1), 111–129. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0125-1. Roussel, S., & Goanac’h, D. (2017). L’apprentissage des langues. Paris: Retz. Rumlich, D. (2016). Evaluating bilingual education in Germany: CLIL students’ general English proficiency, EFL self-concept and interest. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Société des anglicistes de l’enseignement supérieur (SAES). (2018). Livre blanc de la formation en études anglophones (No. 1, p. 120). http://saesfrance.org/ wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Livre-blanc-formation-180318.pdf. Société des anglicistes de l’enseignement supérieur (SAES), Commission formation (Éd.). (2011, janvier). Évolution et enjeux des formations et de la recherche dans le secteur LANSAD. http://www.apliut.com/pages/associationsamis/ Lansad.pdf. Stoller, F. L. (2008). Content-based instruction. In N. van Deusen-Scholl & N. H. Hornberger (Eds.), Encyclopedia of language and education (2nd ed., Vol. 4, pp. 59–70). Second and Foreign Language Education. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_89.

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Taillefer, G. (2004). Enseigner une matière disciplinaire en langue étrangère dans le contexte français des sciences sociales: Défi, observations et implications. ASp. La Revue Du GERAS, 45–46, 111–126. https://doi.org/10.4000/ asp.884. Taillefer, G. (2013). CLIL in higher education: The (perfect?) crossroads of ESP and didactic reflection. ASp. La Revue Du GERAS, 63, 31–53. https:// doi.org/10.4000/asp.3290. Taillefer, G. (2014). Les langues étrangères à la fac. http://journals.openedition. org/dse/540. Terrier, L., & Maury, C. (2015). De la gestion des masses à une offre de formation individualisée en anglais-LANSAD: Tensions et structuration. Recherche et pratiques pédagogiques en langues de spécialité. Cahiers de l’Apliut, 34 (1), 67–89. https://doi.org/10.4000/apliut.5029. Toffoli, D., & Speranza, L. (2016). L’autonomie comme facteur déterminant dans la réussite d’un enseignement Lansad en sciences historiques. Recherche et pratiques pédagogiques en Langues de spécialité. Cahiers de l’Apliut, 35 (spécial 1). https://doi.org/10.4000/apliut.5505. Truchot, C. (2010, novembre 21). L’enseignement supérieur en anglais véhiculaire: La qualité en question—Institutions [Revue Géopolitique]. http:// www.diploweb.com/L-enseignement-superieur-en.html. Van der Yeught, M. (2010). Éditorial. ASp. La Revue Du GERAS, 57, 1–10. Verspoor, M. (2012). Symposium: Dynamic systems/complexity theory as a new approach to second language development. Language Teaching, 45 (4), 533–534. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444812000213. Whyte, S. (2013). Teaching ESP: A task-based framework for French graduate courses. ASp. La Revue Du GERAS, 63, 5–30. https://doi.org/10.4000/asp. 3280. Wilkinson, R., & Walsh, M. L. (2015). Integrating content and language in higher education. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

5 Targeting Student-Centred Language Through Self-Access

The concept of self-access in language learning has received significant attention over the past fifty years. While the ostensible objectives of student-centred language and student-centred learning that it was intended to provide are still eminently relevant, many forms of self-access would appear to deviate from these initial intentions and respond to objectives that may not always be in the students’ best interests. This chapter will take a new look at self-access and examine to what extent it may no longer be relevant today and in what ways it may be reinvented to correspond to the needs of the contemporary learner in higher education.

1

Self-Access/Language Resource Centres

The concept of self-access came into being in the 1970s and 1980s in a number of European and “inner circle” (Kachru, 1985)1 Anglophone 1I

refer here to Kachru’s Concentric Circles model, in which the “inner circle” refers to countries where English has traditionally been the official language, the “outer circle” to countries who © The Author(s) 2020 D. Toffoli, Informal Learning and Institution-wide Language Provision, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37876-9_5

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countries. While most of the Anglophone countries refer to the concept as “self-access” and to the study centres as Self-Access Centres (SACs), European work on the subject, even in English, tends to prefer the term Language Resource Centre (LRC). Both refer to essentially the same type of set-up and promote similar concepts. In the paragraphs that follow, I shall use the two terms quasi-interchangeably, striving nonetheless to maintain the usage of the original authors in each case, dependent (usually) on their geographical context. For Cotterall and Reinders (2001, p. 25), working in an Australian context, the SAC … consists of a number of resources (in the form of materials, activities and support), usually in one place, that accommodates learners of different levels, styles, and with different goals and interests. It aims at developing learner autonomy among its users. Self-access language learning (SALL) is learning that takes place in a Self-Access Center.

Similarly, the European LRC Handbook 2 defines the Language Resource Centre in terms of the services it provides, the resources it possesses, the missions it targets, all focused on language learning/teaching and research. Both consider such centres as places or spaces for language learning that provide access to a great variety of resources, both human and material, and allow individualised study and learning to take place. In France, the experience of the Centre de recherches et d’applications pédagogiques en langues (Crapel), initiated in the 1970s (Gremmo & Riley, 1995), has often served as a model. Many Language Resource Centres have begun with rather modest means (a collection of resources) and evolved to become centres consisting of one or more rooms where students go to study and learn a language using specialised teaching materials, on dedicated equipment. The technical constraints limiting access to foreign language resources (especially spoken language) at that preInternet time, largely justified this collection and provision of resources in dedicated spaces.

have had strong historical ties with English, often through colonisation, and the “expanding circle” to countries who see English as the most important foreign language to master. 2The LRC handbook: Guidelines for setting up, running and expanding Language Resource Centres (LRCs) (Socrates Programme, 2003).

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Researchers such as Little (1991) consider self-access to be one of the most important advances to have changed the way foreign languages are learned. In the Crapel set-up, learners in the Resource Centre are accompanied by a specially trained counsellor who helps them to determine a personalised programme tailored to their own needs and who then accompanies and offers support for the completion of the programme. Rivens Mompean (2013) indicates the important role of in-depth experimentation and research carried out in France and elsewhere to develop such systems and the specific pedagogies adopted for the IWLP audiences they were to serve. These innovations have fuelled significant research on learning in these places and the parameters of autonomy defined by Holec are often seen as the sine qua non condition for success in this type of space (see, e.g., the special issue of Mélanges Crapel — Holec, 1995). My own work on and around the concept of a Language Resource Centre began in 1990, when I was asked to do a study and provide recommendations for language teaching in the French National Agency for Adult Vocational Training (AFPA3 ). At the time, my approach was exploratory and experimental, and theoretical contributions were limited to Dickinson (1987) and Sheerin (1989) and a visit to the Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research (CILT) in London. Working with a team of teachers from four different centres nonetheless made it possible to lay the foundations for a national policy for foreign language training within the institution (AFPA), indicating preferred pedagogical and organisational methods and an approach to assess the adequacy between the needs of a centre and the human and material resources to be put in place. The ensuing report specified the elements necessary to set up a Language Resource Centre, in terms of premises, facilities, human resources, equipment, teaching materials, organisational systems and budgets. Most publications on the subject from the 1980s and 1990s (Dickinson, 1987; Esch, 1994; Gardner & Miller, 1999; Holec, 1995), including my own, aim to support individuals and teams wishing to create Self-Access Centres. They detail not only pedagogical methodologies for such centres, but also (and sometimes especially) the practical aspects of their implementation, including project management, organisational 3 Association

de Formation Professionnelle des Adultes.

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aspects, and the recommendation of equipment and materials. In a special issue of Mélanges Crapel devoted to Language Resource Centres (Holec, 1995), Rivens Mompean notes that “the question of configuration […] is recurrent” (2013, p. 285). This is an example of the conceptual convergences to which I referred at the very beginning of this work (see Prologue), and the fact that, despite previous research, each individual must, to a certain extent, start over, in order to understand a concept, make it their own, and guarantee its coherence and solidity. In this way, “new” concepts are not only built on research, but are also constructed within the researcher. In my early work, and in particular during two conferences given for the CEGOS in 19924 and 1994,5 I was already using a systemic approach to the Self-Access Centre and had described its dynamic change (emergence) in relation to that of the learner. Like others working in continuing and professional education (e.g. Abe, 1995), my notion of Self-Access, as early as 1990, was to reverse the usual dynamic between the Self-Access Centre and teacher taught classroom, going beyond the move “from satellite to integrated device” (Rivens Mompean & Scheer, 2003), to a macro-concept of the SelfAccess Centre within which all language learning-related activities would be organised. In concrete terms, even today, the majority of Self-Access Centres, particularly in universities, are still designed as satellite or subsidiary to the traditional classroom (see Fig. 1). In most cases, this articulation sees the Self-Access Centre as a peripheral structure, providing either additional training for people enrolled in a more traditional language course or providing access to language learning for people not otherwise6 entitled to it. The integrated structure proposed by Rivens Mompean and Scheer (2003) could be schematised as in Fig. 2.

4 «Autoformation

et Centre de ressources» (Self-Instruction and Resource Centres), CEGOS: Démultiplier la formation 1992. 5 «Communiquer pour aborder l’international » (Communication as a Strategy for Going International), CEGOS: Démultiplier la formation 1994. 6This was the case, for example, in some universities in France during the period around 2010 when future teachers had to certify a language level, but no training was explicitly provided in their degree programme, according to the Rivens Mompean survey (2013).

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tandems various resources

language course Language Resource Centre workshops

Fig. 1 The Self-Access Centre as satellite

Fig. 2 The Self-Access Centre as part of an integrated system

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In non-university contexts, other configurations have emerged. The specificity of the structures I created at AFPA, or for companies like Rank Xerox or the Caisse d’Épargne, was to turn the concept on its head: the Language Resource Centre became the central structure and any other activity related to language learning in the institutional context went through it (see Fig. 3). This is also the option that Nicole Poteaux and her teams had chosen at the University of Strasbourg in 1991 (Albero & Poteaux, 2010; Poteaux, 2014). The first Wulkow Memorandum (Working Party of European Language Centre Directors, 2009), the result of a working group of 27 language centre directors from thirteen European countries, states that language centres are one of the main vehicles for language teaching in the university context in Europe. It specifies that Language Resource Centres aim to promote individualised learning, learner autonomy, innovation, e-learning and research related to these fields. Among the main characteristics of higher education language centres listed, six essential points of the memorandum are directly related to learning and student-centred practices and needs. These are the points which I would like to take up and develop here, in order to come back to them later as points of comparison with the informal digital learning of English.

material resources

students human resources

pedagogies

Fig. 3 The Language Resource Centre as a language learning centre

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According to this memorandum, the language centre in higher education must 1. “contribute to effective student progression”, 2. “bridge the role between Higher Education and the business and public communities”, 3. “devise teaching and learning spaces which specifically cater to the needs of the learner and support autonomous learning”, 4. “stimulate innovation in research and development in the area of language learning and teaching”, 5. “deliver innovative, high quality courses in Languages for Specific Purposes at all levels”, 6. be “at the forefront of developments in e-learning and the adaptation of new technologies for teaching and learning” (Working Party of European Language Centre Directors, 2009, p. 1). These points include the institutional and political aspects of Language Resource Centres, as well as pragmatic and pedagogical aspects. Points 2 and 5 are linked in that the relationship between specialty language and a profession is often the first bridge created between language teaching in higher education and the professional world, whether through personal contacts or on a less direct and more bookish level. Pedagogically, making links with the business community and working in the specialty language can target the CLIL/ EMI-type approaches discussed in Chapter 4, Sect. 1 above. Points 4, 5 and 6 have a common emphasis on innovation, whether through the integration of new technologies (e-learning) or through innovative pedagogy. This is also a recurring theme in publications on Language Resource Centres,7 although this may seem paradoxical in that, after 40 years, their simple existence is no longer an innovative fact in itself.8 Points 1 and 3, although obvious (the primary objective of any training scheme is to enable learners to learn), are probably the most complex 7 See

Rivens Mompean (2013) for an analysis of the main publications in France and Lazaro and Reinders (2009) for a discussion concerning other, principally Anglophone, countries. 8 See Reinders (2012) for a sharp critique of SACs as “glorified homework rooms”.

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and difficult to provide. They point to aspects that Rivens Mompean identifies as related to “learning modalities” (2013) and which, in the French literature on Language Resource Centres, most consistently benefit from elaborate epistemological approaches. Having turned, from the very beginning of this work, to the theories of language learning and research, I am no exception to this approach. Self-Access and Learning Resource Centres tend also to be intensely imbricated in the ideological positions of their founders and promoters. They are often seen as instrumental in the path to personal development and pedagogical empowerment. Reinders reminds us of the philosophical and pedagogical roots of the first Self-Access Centres: When it first emerged in the 1970s, self- access was grounded in clear pedagogical convictions about what education should look like. In this view, language learning was a profoundly personal enterprise, one that belonged to the learner, and not to an institution, a teacher, or national curriculum. […] Self-access as a pedagogical approach to individual learning was designed as a way to empower the learner, both in practical terms as well as through the development of the learner’s ability to take responsibility for his or her own learning, […], a space where there was an integration of learning and life. The second aspect of self-access learning, the pedagogic aspect, […] emphasises the need for learners to develop the necessary skills for reflection and awareness, both of their learning and of themselves, in order to ultimately be in charge of their own learning. (Reinders, 2012, pp. 1–2)

Poteaux discusses the ambition for personal development as being wired into the instructional design of the Language Resource Centre: The most important element in the [LRC] setup focuses on developing learners’ attitudes. The very design of the system acts as a trigger for reflexivity, stimulating the development of subjects’ decision-making, empowerment and self-control. (2014, p. 27)

Nonetheless, ideological positions such as these also had to confront pragmatic, political and pedagogical constraints. If we take the example of the University of Strasbourg alone, several different concepts of

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IWLP teaching and several different visions of Self-Access Centres coexist. Poteaux describes them as follows: … on the one hand, the LRCs of the former scientific university [see above], on the other hand, a centre equipped with technology based on different principles (prescribed courses) from the former university of the humanities, departments dedicated to language specialists (degree students) offering IWLP courses and, here and there, traditional language courses organised by other departments, sometimes with statutory staff and often with several individual contract teachers. (2014, p. 28)

As we shall see in Sect. 4 below, there is no longer any real need for Language Resource Centres as suppliers of resources and materials. Nonetheless, the Language Resource Centre can continue to fulfil an important function today to the extent that it performs its job supporting learning and striving to empower learners. Within the higher education context, Language Resource Centres seem to be the type of set-up best suited to providing individualised and differentiated pedagogy for each learner and most capable of preparing students for lifelong language learning. In many cases, they provide an initial bridge between formal and informal contexts, through support to strategically inform students’ language development. I shall therefore continue to devote the next two sections to analysis and discussion of their relevance.

2

IWLP at the University of Strasbourg

As we have already indicated, the learners we are attempting to profile are enrolled in higher education programmes, studying a foreign language within an institutional framework and at the same time engaging in foreign language practices in informal contexts, outside of and with no official connexion to their higher education courses. In several publications, I have, with various colleagues, explored the contours of the Online Informal Learning of English (OILE) and the different facets of the learners involved in these activities. In this section, via a survey conducted in 2014 (Toffoli, El Khatib, Fierro-Porto, & Hamade, 2014), I will present some insights into these language learners by taking

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a look at the specific institutional arrangements where they study languages through the course of their higher education. To this end, I will first present both the institution, which is typical in many ways of any French university, and the language learning systems in place (atypical, in several respects). The analysis of this particular context should provide a more nuanced view and therefore a better understanding of the contextual phenomena at work for contemporary language learners in higher education. I will go into some detail about the different arrangements and structures that exist, how they are perceived by the students who attend them and what relevance that may have for those responsible for setting up and running them. As the very first French university to merge local9 universities in 2009, the University of Strasbourg is unique in France: its geographical location and its long history teetering between France and Germany, between Catholic and Lutheran denominations, as well as the large diversity of languages taught there (some 24), confer a special status. As in many large universities, language learning at the University of Strasbourg takes place in several different settings and centres. Specialists doing degree programmes in languages, literature and foreign civilisations (LLCE ) or in applied foreign languages (LEA) take specialised courses reserved for them. Specialists in other disciplines take their language courses in structures that depend either directly on their discipline or department or on a centralised language teaching structure. The “IWLP Cluster10 ”, which was functionally created at the University of Strasbourg in 2016, brings these various centres and structures together. It includes ten language centres, encompassing four different pedagogical systems with different approaches and different target audiences. Among them are language courses provided by the LLCE departments, which usually involve the integration of students into “specialist” courses. Pedagogy in these courses tends to be traditional, with a grammar-translation 9The French student riots of 1968 were followed almost everywhere in France by the breakup of universities into institutions bringing together related disciplines, in general Humanities and Social Sciences, Science and Technology, Health, Law and Economics. As of 2009, and further to a law instigating independence for universities, this movement was reversed, with local universities merging on new grounds, often in order to ensure better visibility on the international scene, but also to access renewed public funding. 10 Pôle Lansad.

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or culture-civilization orientation. The other three systems of the IWLP cluster involve language centres that claim, to varying degrees, “empowering” approaches to pedagogy. Table 1 summarises the main similarities and differences of all these structures, in terms of size, target languages, organisation (duration and frequency of classes), how groups are formed, pedagogical approach and management (how they fit into the overall structure of the university).

3

University Language Centres and Pedagogies as Seen by Students

Partially to allow us to complement prior research done on the Online Informal Learning of English, our desire to get to know more about our IWLP students in all their complexity and diversity led us in 2014 to conduct a survey at the University of Strasbourg. In many ways, we understood that our students were neither the same as twentiethcentury learners, essentially confined to institutional language learning, nor were they (at least in our national context) the fully autonomous self-instructed learners (FASIL) studied by Cole (2015). The majority of them seem to be situated somewhere between these two extremes: enrolled in higher education, taking a foreign language course in some institutional form, sometimes against their will or better judgement, and concurrently engaging in autonomous and highly diversified practices with a foreign language (predominantly English). At the same time, we surmised that the pedagogy they were exposed to and the type of language training provided to them would have a significant effect on their attitudes towards language learning and perhaps even to the success of that endeavour. Therefore, in this section, I propose to look closely at these students’ perceptions of the institutional language arrangements in which their required learning takes place by detailing the results of the survey.

Course organisation

2-hour lessons per week, with the same teacher and the same group of students

2-hour lessons per week, with the same teacher and the same group of students (for credit) and/or language support programme, without credit

Identification

LRC • 6 centres • English/German • Created as of 1990 • 10,000 students/year

FLE Centre • Integrated into an LRC • Created in 2000 • 600 students/year

Based on individualised programmes and students’ self-determination (choice of objectives, resources, activities, etc.) Based on individualised programmes and students’ self-determination (choice of objectives, resources, activities, etc.)

Pedagogical approach

Table 1 Language teaching/learning structures at the University of Strasbourg

According to the year and field of study of the students (and not their language level) For credit: ad hoc groups at the time of registration (all years, all fields, levels B1 to C2) Not for credit: ad hoc groups for workshops (targeted by skills and levels) Individual work in LRC

Group formation

Joint management (with the LRCs) until 2016, then integrated into the IWLP cluster within the Faculty of Languages

Joint management until 2016, then grouped as part of the IWLP cluster within the Faculty of Languages

Management

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18 hours of classes per week, generally in 2-hour sessions, with different teachers for each 2-hour course

2 hours of lessons per week: one hour on a computer in a multimedia room and one hour in a workshop with the same teacher and the same group of students • Few “credit” courses (±100 students/year) • Ad hoc workshops (including conversation) led by instructors and student trainees • Tandem offer (pairing students of different L1s) • Open-access cultural and festive events

IIEF • Created in 1919 • 1000 students/year

CRAL • English/German • Created in 2003 • 2000 students/year

SPIRAL • 28 languages, excluding English/German • Created in 1992 and reoriented in 2007 • 1500 students/year

Course organisation

Identification

Based on self-instruction, individualised programmes and students’ self-determination (choice of objectives, resources, activities, etc.)

Communicative approach, with progressions by level; specific courses dedicated to speaking, grammar, civilization, preparation of certifications Based on blended learning (online/face-to-face workshops) pre-configured by the teachers, with a lock-step progression

Pedagogical approach

Ad hoc groups for workshops or special events

By language level, based on a placement test

By language level, based on an in-house placement test

Group formation

(continued)

Autonomous management within the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Cultures between 2007 and 2016

Semi-autonomous management within the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Cultures until 2016, then integrated into the IWLP Cluster

Autonomous management

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a Unité

Course organisation

Pedagogical approach

Group formation

Independent UFRa until 2016, then department of the Faculty of Languages UFR, then Faculty of Languages, merging with LEA and IWLP in 2016

Management

de Formation et de Recherche (Programme and Research Unit)—French terminology for Faculty

LLCE • 24 languages • 17 departments • 3000 students/year

LEA • 10 languages • 5 departments • 3000 students/year

Identification

Table 1 (continued)

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The survey11 aimed to identify our students’ perceptions of their language learning at university. The final version of the questionnaire is composed of five parts: “my profile”, “the languages I know”, “my language learning at the University of Strasbourg”, “what I think about my language learning at the University of Strasbourg” and “what I think about my language learning” (see Appendix: 2014 Questionnaire). It was distributed online using Limesurvey (V2.0)12 during the last two weeks of April 2014. We solicited student volunteers via email through their faculty or language teacher. The statistical processing was carried out using Sphinx 13 software. In all, responses to 1446 questionnaires were collected and processed, representing approximately 3% of the 46,627-strong student body at the time. With this data, we initially attempted some multivariate factorial analyses (Lebaron, 2015; Lebaron & Le Roux, 2015), in the hope that it would enable the identification of the principal agglomerates of variables deemed important by these students. Multivariate factor analysis is a statistical tool that enables visualisation of the interactions between multiple factors by positioning them on a multidimensional graph. The variables presented are positioned in a vector space according to the distances between them. Multivariate factorial analysis allows qualitative interpretation of the data in view of the positions of the points and the identification of the axes thus produced. It is considered to be a method that makes it possible to think in terms of relationships and under- and over-relative representations, as a generalisation of all χ 2 tests14 highlighting deviations from the mean. To my knowledge, the use of factorial analyses in applied linguistics is relatively rare, even in France (where it originated), although an article by Peter Prince (2009), also dealing with autonomy and motivation in a language centre, is a notable exception. In his case, from about twenty variables, the use of multivariate factorial analysis allows him to identify 3 areas affecting the autonomy of learners in a 11 I

would like to thank Dominique Dujardin (Research Associate), Monicá Fierro-Porto, Fatima Hamade, Samah El Khatib and Claude Bourhis (second-year Masters students) for their investment and involvement in this work. 12 LimeSurvey is open-source online statistical survey software. 13 Sphinx Plus2—(Lexica-V5 Edition) is more powerful statistical calculation software. 14 χ 2 is a test of the validity of the relationships between 2 or more factors. It determines to what extent the link between two factors is due to chance.

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language centre.15 With regard to my overall objective of profiling the contemporary language learner in higher education, it seemed that using this type of technique to identify the most salient elements or groups of variables in a large data set would make sense. Unfortunately, the results do not allow satisfactory generalisations to be presented here (the statistical tests are unreliable), and so we therefore opted for the presentation of a number of simple correlation studies, to provide some answers to our questions about the different language centres. This allowed us to avoid dispersion and to highlight what seemed to us to be the most relevant links between the various centres and students’ perceptions of them. χ 2 tests established a high level of significance, thus confirming the reliability of the relationship between these elements. We sorted our data to present only the opinions of students who actually attend the centres concerned. Three tables below summarise the information comparing their experiences with the structures detailed in Table 1. All three reveal significant statistical dependence (1–p = >99.99%16 ) between the centres and the aspects of learning about which we asked the students. It is therefore with regard to this information that I have compiled, at the end of this section, short descriptions of each language centre, identifying the aspects that bring together the largest number of responses or that stand out in a particular way. Table 1 shows students’ opinions concerning the language learning in their particular centre. Like the other tables, it only takes into account the opinions expressed by the students attending the centre concerned (e.g. 84% of SPIRAL students found that their language learning allowed them to meet other people). The majority of students agree with the various statements about their language learning, whether it has allowed them to progress, whether they find it pleasant and interesting or whether it has made them want to continue learning it. Opinions are more mixed when it comes to links with other courses. This is felt to be the case in structures that mainly cater to language specialists (IIEF and LCE/LEA), but much less so for those in other types of Arts and Sciences or Health and Engineering programmes. It is difficult to interpret the results regarding SPIRAL, as this centre 15These

are “control of processes”, “seeking feedback” and “seeking explanation” (Prince, 2009, p. 78). 16This indicates that there is only a 0.01% probability that these results be due to chance.

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Table 2 Appreciation of learning for the various language centres

Base 1446, IWLP 2014 survey The dependence is very significant. χ 2 = 84.53, ddl = 36, 1−p = >99.99% Blue/bold (pink/italic) figures are those for which the actual number is significantly higher (lower) than the theoretical number χ 2 is calculated on the citation table (marginal numbers equal to the sum of the number of rows/columns)

has the most diverse attendance, welcoming students from all disciplines as well as students who are language specialists or in foreign language courses specific to their discipline or department (Table 2). There is a significant differentiation between students in centres exclusively dedicated to IWLP and those catering to language specialists, in terms of their perception of the usefulness of their language learning

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Table 3 Fields of study and enrolment in language centres

for preparing a trip, for developing their beliefs or views about a language or its culture. Language specialists recognise themselves proportionately more and IWLP students proportionately less in these statements. It seems reasonable that language specialists would be much more concerned with culture and language than their counterparts registered exclusively in IWLP, and this seems to be confirmed when we correlate students’ fields of study with the structures. Table 3 shows that people in certain fields of study attend certain centres (e.g. 46% of LRC students study in the fields of science and technology17 ). This allows us to make some inferences between domains of study and other declarations. While we believe that general impressions of learning are important, those concerning the content of a lesson and teachers also shed more light on students’ views. Table 4 cross-references the centres with what students perceive to be the content of their language course.

17 Students in Arts, Literature, Languages are mainly enrolled in LCE/LEA or CRAL courses, those in Science and Technology or Health in LRCs and those in Human and Social Sciences in LRCs and CRAL. Students in the fields of law, economics, management, political and social sciences are under-represented in this sample because their compulsory language courses are provided in structures that are not part of the IWLP Cluster. They are over-represented at SPIRAL where they can study languages that are not offered in their own programmes.

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Table 4 Perception of content for the various language centres

The dependence is very significant. χ 2 = 322.83, ddl = 20, 1–p = >99.99% The blue/bold (pink/italic) boxes are those for which the actual number is significantly higher (lower) than the theoretical number χ 2 is calculated on the citation table (marginal numbers equal to the sum of the number of rows/columns) Table values are the online percentages established for 1446 observations

Here too, there are significant differences: teachings at SPIRAL, IIEF or LCE/LEA are perceived as following much more the content of a textbook than in LRCs. In relation to the philosophy advocated in the LRC, where the student is supposed to be able to choose what he or she is working on, that does correspond to the perception of the majority (for more than 72% of students) and especially in comparison with other structures, where less than 22% believe they can choose the themes of their course. Only 28% of CRAL and SPIRAL students believe that the themes addressed in language teaching are also those of their own disciplines.

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For SPIRAL, this could perhaps be explained by the fact that this centre caters to students from all disciplines or by the fact that many of its students are beginners. On the other hand, it is probably in contradiction with the wishes of the CRAL managers who are trying to integrate content related to the disciplines of the students hosted, coming in particular from the Arts, Sociology, Languages and Literature. It would appear that this objective is not being achieved. More students perceive the content of IIEF, LCE/LEA and CRAL as being relevant to current events than in other centres. There are also major differences between the attention paid to cultural aspects related to languages: while over three-quarters of students find this cultural orientation at IIEF, LCE/LEA or SPIRAL, this is the case for only half of CRAL students and a quarter of those attending LRCs. These findings could be pertinent for the various centres concerned, were they to consider redesigning certain aspects of their programmes. A final series of elements can provide us with information on students’ perceptions of these structures. Table 5 summarises the answers to questions concerning teachers and their ways of working with the L2, with content and with students. If teachers are perceived as having a good level in the L2, regardless of which structure they work for, this does not mean that the language taught is necessarily their mother tongue, nor that they use it exclusively in class. Nevertheless, in SPIRAL, IIEF and LCE/LEA, teachers are perceived more frequently as native speakers of the language they teach than in the LRCs or CRAL, which is probably the case, as we will see later, when looking more closely at how the LRCs function. Table 5 shows that the use of “another” language (neither the language studied, nor the mother tongue, nor the language of the university — often English) to provide explanations is more frequent in French language courses (IIEF). Teachers were generally perceived as being relatively available to students, although less so at CRAL, and little in demand of students’ opinions on content, except at SPIRAL. It is also at SPIRAL where teachers are most valued for diversifying their activities. Smallgroup work is perceived as being overwhelmingly present in LRCs (by almost 84% of students) and much less so in CRAL (although a 57.5% majority of respondents do consider it to be a feature of the pedagogy

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Table 5

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Students’ perceptions of teachers for the various language centres

Base 1446, IWLP 2014 survey Dependency is very significant. χ 2 = 97.62, ddl = 44, 1–p = >99.99% The blue/bold (pink/italic) boxes are those for which the actual number is significantly higher (lower) than the theoretical number χ 2 is calculated on the citation table (marginal numbers equal to the sum of the row/column numbers)

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they are exposed to). This is close to the figure for LCE/LEA (60%). It is also at CRAL where students least perceive the link between teaching and activities related to their discipline, but it is at CRAL, SPIRAL and in the LCE/LEA courses that the largest number of students feel called to participate (over 91% of them). If we integrate this information to create a profile of each language centre or structure, we see the following trends: Learning in LRCs is associated with themes chosen by the students themselves, related to their fields of study, current events and meeting their own needs. Teachers there are seen as having a good level in the L2, even if they are not perceived as native speakers (indeed, only half are, less than a third among the English teachers, but 8/9 of the German teachers). The other most striking features of the LRC teachers are that they are seen to have students work extensively in subgroups, on topics related to their disciplines and to be accessible and available for consultation. Learning at CRAL is perceived as focusing primarily on current events and, for half of the respondents, on cultural aspects of language. Teachers are seen as significantly involving students, but as relying less on work in subgroups than in other arrangements. Learning in LCE and LEA, as well as in IIEF, is perceived proportionally by more students as addressing the cultural aspects of language and current events, as well as the main discipline of students, which, for the most part, is the learning of one (or more) language(s). Concerning the teachers, they are perceived more as native speakers than in other structures. It is among LCE and LEA students that student participation, teacher availability and the use of translation are perceived as being more frequent than in other systems. SPIRAL students feel exposed to the greatest variety of activities and believe they are the most consulted about the content. Despite this, these same students indicate that their learning is not very focused on the subjects they choose, even though this is a centre totally dedicated to selfinstruction. This may indicate a poverty of choice of resources for each language or difficulties to access them, or refer to subjects presented in workshops, on which they are consulted, but which they do not choose.

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Content is also perceived as strongly linked to the cultural aspects of the language. This detour through the case history of the University of Strasbourg centres is not only an exercise in analysing a local situation, for while these details do provide information about specific centres in a particular context, they can also provide some useful points of reference for the instructional designer or researcher who is interested in these different types of language centre arrangements. A different reading of Table 2 could also lead to other conclusions: regardless of the structure in which they are enrolled, more than three-quarters of the students questioned find their course interesting and enjoyable, believe that it has enabled them to progress and encourages them to continue their L2 learning. In other words, these most fundamental aspects of learning, which affect both results and motivation, seem to have been attained for at least threequarters of the students consulted, regardless of what they think of other aspects of content, teachers, or the organisation of their courses. As manager of the system, this is reassuring, because students express a certain level of satisfaction and seem to perceive positive results. Nonetheless, the impossibility of establishing causality between these different elements is somewhat frustrating. From a researcher’s point of view, this is consistent with the framework of complex systems. Yet it also opens up a new field of questions: if all these educational structures seem similar to students, are particular set-ups, such as Language Resource Centres, relevant for contemporary language learners in higher education?

4

Relevance of Self-Access for Language Learning in Higher Education

From a causal perspective, many researchers (e.g. Prince, 2009) would like to be able to talk about the effects of individual differences on selfdirected instruction (in terms of trajectory or outcomes), or even the effects of self-directed training on individual differences, for example, an internalisation of intrinsic motivation (e.g. Toffoli, 2000). However, given the methodology used, the few cases detected and the impossibility

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of isolating variables, establishing such connexions remain a matter of conjecture. According to Prince (2009): it is not enough to give the learner the opportunity to become autonomous for his motivation to increase, or to change nature to become more intrinsic, and it is not because the learning environment becomes non controlling that all learners will discover autonomy. (para. 11)

From this point of view, as can be seen in the data presented in the previous section, it would appear that learning centres, academic structures, Language Resource Centres or other arrangements do not create learning. With regard to autonomy, this is partly the question Little, Dam and Legenhausen (2017) ask and which I explored with Lauren Speranza (Toffoli & Speranza, 2016) when postulating that empowering and relationally rich learning can be built into any classroom arrangement and is not the prerogative of Self-Access or Language Resource Centres. Candas and Poteaux (2011) remind us that one of the primary objectives of Language Resource Centres in the 1970s and 1980s was to provide (often “authentic”) resources to learners who did not have access to them. This provision was never intended to be the simple juxtaposition of multiple resources, but an attempt, through various means, to make them accessible, by reducing both the physical and psychological distances between the learner and these material and human resources (Candas & Poteaux, 2011). Although this may have been achieved in some contexts, Reinders and Lewis document many cases where the tools and resources made available are so lacking in support elements (instructions, answers to questions, feedback, etc.) that they cannot be used without help (Reinders, 2012). In fact, Hayo Reinders, in his short provocative article “The End of Self-Access? From Walled Garden to Public Park” (2012) states that “In fact, there is no single study on self-access that has passed the rigorous scientific quality control of the leading journals in language education” (p. 3) (at least in English) and notes that, worldwide, many Self-Access Centres have become nothing but glorified homework rooms for learners left to their own devices in order to charge them for hours of learning that do not

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cost in terms of teaching (Reinders, 2012, p. 2). He wonders whether there is still a place for these structures in the era of easy access to a plethora of online resources. This was the question we also asked (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012; Toffoli & Sockett, 2015) when reconsidering the place of Self-Access Centres (and even any language teaching) in relation to online language practices in informal contexts. In the preceding pages, after exploring the outlines of IWLP teaching, primarily in France, taking into consideration the different objectives of language learning (general, specialised, or disciplinary language) and the CLIL/EMI-type arrangements that can promote them, I have also examined Language Resource Centres, in general and through the case study of the University of Strasbourg, finally coming to the question of the relevance of these types of learning set-ups today, especially in view of the widespread and easy access to personal digital resources for language learners in higher education. The concept of a Language Resource Centre is appealing, directly in relation to the theoretical framework established in the first part of this book: it has an empowering aim and the integration of the “autonomy” factor seems essential both to the internalisation of motivation as well as to the implementation of appropriate reflexes for lifelong learning. In order to picture the complete language learning landscape of students in higher education today, my next step will be to move beyond the walls of the university and explore the “wilds” (Little & Thorne, 2017) of language development in an informal context, sometimes referred to as the Online Informal Learning of English (OILE). An initial objective will be to understand the articulation between formal and informal contexts, what Larsen-Freeman (2018) calls “porous classrooms” (p. 63), which can be very personal, composite and complex. The trajectory from one to the other (from Self-Access to OILE) seems obvious to me, as both types of arrangements are intended to be selfdirected, driven by the specific interests of the individual learner and conceptually based on the learning theories outlined in Part I of this book. In the next few pages, I will therefore address a notion that in some ways encompasses both Self-Access and OILE: out-of-classroom language learning (OCLL), also referred to as “extramural” or “extra-curricular” learning. This composite will provide the background to situating the

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practices of contemporary university language learners and modelling their L2 learning trajectories. As I consider such learners to be a complex and dynamic system in themselves, the environments in which they operate are also complex and dynamic systems, whether or not they be formalised.

References Abe, D. (1995). Organiser l’apprendre à apprendre en milieu industriel: Le Centre de ressources de l’entreprise E. Mélanges CRAPEL (Numéro spécial: Centre de Ressources) n° 22, 137–168. Albero, B., & Poteaux, N. (2010). Enjeux et dilemmes de l’autonomie: Une expérience d’autoformation à l’université. Paris: Les Éditions de la MSH. Candas, P., & Poteaux, N. (2011). De la nécessaire distance dans l’apprentissage d’une langue étrangère. Distances et savoirs, 8(4), 521–539. Cole, J. (2015). Foreign language learning in the age of the internet: A comparison of informal acquirers and traditional classroom learners in central Brazil (Doctoral thesis). University of Oxford, Oxford. Cotterall, S., & Reinders, H. (2001). Fortress or bridge? Learners’ perceptions and practice in self access languages learning. Tesolanz, 8, 23–38. Dickinson, L. (1987). Self-instruction in language learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Esch, E. (1994). Self-access and the adult language learner. London: CILT. Gardner, D., & Miller, L. (1999). Establishing self-access: From theory to practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gremmo, M.-J., & Riley, P. (1995). Autonomy, self-direction and self access in language teaching and learning: The history of an idea. System, 23(2), 151–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/0346-251X(95)00002-2. Holec, H. (1995). Mélanges CRAPEL n° 22 (Numéro spécial: Centre de Ressources). ATILF-CRAPEL. Kachru, B. B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In B. Quirk & H. G. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the world: Teaching and learning the language and literatures (pp. 11–30).

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Larsen-Freeman, D. (2018). Looking ahead: Future directions in, and future research into, second language acquisition. Foreign Language Annals, 51(1), 55–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12314. Lazaro, N., & Reinders, H. (2009). Language learning and teaching in the selfaccess centre. Innovation Press. Lebaron, F. (2015). L’espace social. Statistique et analyse géométrique des données dans l’œuvre de Pierre Bourdieu. In F. Lebaron & B. Le Roux (Éds.), La méthodologie de Pierre Bourdieu en action: Espace culturel, espace social et analyse des données (pp. 43–58). Paris: Dunod. Lebaron, F., & Le Roux, B. (Éds.). (2015). La méthodologie de Pierre Bourdieu en action: Espace culturel, espace social et analyse des données. Paris: Dunod. Little, D. (1991). Learner autonomy: Definitions, issues and problems (Vol. 1). Dublin: Authentik Language Learning Resources Limited. Little, D., Dam, L., & Legenhausen, L. (2017). Language learner autonomy: Theory, practice and research. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Little, D., & Thorne, S. L. (2017). From learner autonomy to rewilding: A discussion. In M. Cappellini, T. Lewis, & A. Rivens Mompean (Eds.), Learner autonomy and web 2.0 (pp. 12–35). Sheffield: Equinox. Poteaux, N. (2014). Les langues étrangères pour tous à l’université: Regard sur une expérience (1991–2013). Les dossiers des sciences de l’éducation, 32, 17– 32. Prince, P. (2009). Un ménage à trois fragile: Autonomie, Motivation et Apprentissage dans un Centre de Langues. Lidil Revue de linguistique et de didactique des langues, 40, 71–88. Reinders, H. (2012). The end of self-access? From Walled garden to public park. ELTWorldOnline.com, 4. http://blog.nus.edu.sg/eltwo/2012/06/13/ the-end-of-self-access-from-walled-garden-to-public-park-2/. Rivens Mompean, A. (2013). Le Centre de Ressources en Langues: Vers la modélisation du dispositif d’apprentissage. Lille: Éditions du Septentrion. http:// www.septentrion.com/en/livre/?GCOI=27574100883330. Rivens Mompean, A., & Scheer, R. C. (2003). Le Centre de Ressources en Langues: De l’outil satellite au dispositif intégré. ASp. la revue du GERAS, 41–42, 125–141. https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.1224. Sheerin, S. (1989). Self access. Oxford: OUP. Sockett, G., & Toffoli, D. (2012). Beyond learner autonomy: A dynamic systems view of the informal learning of English in virtual online communities. ReCALL, 24 (2), 138–151. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344012000031.

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Toffoli, D. (2000). Au coeur de la formation: L’apprenant. Une recherche-action sur l’apprentissage de l’anglais en milieu professionnel (Thèse de doctorat). Université de La Rochelle. Toffoli, D., El Khatib, S., Fierro-Porto, M., & Hamade, F. (2014). Rapport d’enquête sur les représentations étudiantes et l’apprentissage des langues à l’Université de Strasbourg (p. 41). Strasbourg: Université de Strasbourg. Toffoli, D., & Sockett, G. (2015). L’apprentissage informel de l’anglais en ligne (AIAL), qu’est-ce que ça change pour les centres de langues? Recherche et Pratiques Pédagogiques en Langues de Spécialité. Cahiers de l’Apliut, XXXIV (1). https://apliut.revues.org/5055. Toffoli, D., & Speranza, L. (2016). L’autonomie comme facteur déterminant dans la réussite d’un enseignement Lansad en sciences historiques. Recherche et Pratiques Pédagogiques en Langues de Spécialité. Cahiers de l’Apliut, 35 (spécial 1). https://doi.org/10.4000/apliut.5505. Working Party of European Language Centre Directors. (2009, 2012). The Wulkow memoranda on languages in higher education. Wulkow: Sprachenzentrum, Europa-Universität Viadrina. http://www.sz.europa-uni.de/de/ startsite_news/spalte_4_informationen/news4_wolkow_memorandum/ wulkow_memorandum.html.

6 Students Outside the System: Informal Learning

One of the most important contributions to L2 acquisition today is learning outside the classroom, what Benson and Reinders (2011) call out-of-classroom language learning (OCLL) and others (Brougère & Bézille, 2007; Schugurensky, 2000, 2007; Sockett, 2014) have called informal learning. This type of learning includes a wide variety of practices adopting many of the properties of the complex and dynamic systems described in Part I of this book. Studies devoted to informal language learning attest to its ubiquity as well as to the high level of autonomy of learners who engage in the types of activities identified (Benson, 2011; Lai & Gu, 2011; Toffoli & Perrot, 2017). Phil Benson (2009, 2011) provides examples of OCLL that include a very large variety of out-of-school and after-school learning that take place throughout life and that may or may not be linked to more formal education. He identifies five components to such learning: location, formality, pedagogy, locus of control and modes of practice (Benson, 2011). Having discussed at length the notion of autonomy (Chapter 2 in Sects. 1–3), which, to a large extent, concerns the locus of control and having discussed aspects of pedagogy (Chapters 4 and 5), I will pay some attention below to the notions of location, formality and modes of practice, in order to define © The Author(s) 2020 D. Toffoli, Informal Learning and Institution-wide Language Provision, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37876-9_6

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and more clearly identify the activities of contemporary language learners in higher education. I have been interested in informal English learning since 2009 and have participated in several studies (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012; Toffoli, 2016; Toffoli & Perrot, 2017; Toffoli & Sockett, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2015; Yibokou, Toffoli, & Vaxelaire, 2019) exploring this aspect of language learning based on well-established theories of the informal in learning. A history of the notion of informal learning dates back to 1947 (Malcolm, Hodkinson, & Colley, 2003). Malcolm et al. (2003) note that formal learning and informal learning are inextricably linked in the literature and find that the nature of the relationship between the two, as well as the way they are described, is consistently associated with the organisational, social, cultural, economic, historical and political contexts in which they take place. Brougère and Bézille (2007), in a similar historical approach, trace the notion of informal learning to three origins: (1) What they label as “southern” pedagogies — particularly in the traditions of Paolo Freire and Ivan Illich, (2) adult education linked to business and (3) out-of-school learning — often linked to IT (e.g. Sefton-Green, 2004). Daniel Schugurensky (2000, 2007) distinguishes three types of learning that integrate the root-word formal: formal, non-formal and informal learning. For him, formal education refers to different levels of institutional organisation from kindergarten to university (Schugurensky, 2007, p. 14) and non-formal learning to any organised educational activity taking place outside the formal school system (Schugurensky, 2007, p. 14). By defining these different categories in relation to each other, he concludes that “informal learning becomes a residual category of a residual category (everything that is neither formal nor non-formal)” (Schugurensky, 2000, p. 2), i.e. more or less educational, non-organised activities. This corresponds essentially to the definition of the European Commission, which appears in the prologue to this book (footnote 1): Informal learning is learning resulting from daily activities related to work, family or leisure. It is not organised or structured in terms of objectives, time or learning support. Informal learning may be unintentional from the learner’s perspective. Examples of learning outcomes

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acquired through informal learning are skills acquired through life and work experiences. Examples are […] languages learned and intercultural skills acquired during a stay in another country; [etc.]. (European Commission, 2012, p. 17)

What emerges from these definitions is the emphasis on the non-school context of learning: the workplace, leisure, community activities and so on. These definitions are consistent with those of Benson’s OCLL and with a certain current in the English-language literature in applied linguistics. However, where OCLL focuses on deliberate attempts to improve the L2 (Benson, 2006, p. 26), a second important area of research on informal learning focuses on its unintended, incidental and implicit aspects. Abraham Pain’s observations (1989, 1990) probably match those of many teachers or facilitators in cultural or sports contexts, where [some] activities cause effects in participants that could not be attributed to intentional intent. Without explicit educational purpose, formalised program, designated facilitator or teacher, behavioural changes and information acquisition are identifiable among [participants]. (Pain, 1990, p. 7)

Pain speaks of a “latent educational function in activities without an educational purpose, in other words an educational by-product alongside the main activity” (ibid., p. 77). In the context of informal language learning, Sockett (2011b) describes a process motivated by the intention to communicate, where language learning is a side effect of some other, primary activity. This is the type of informal learning that was studied in the publications mentioned above. In the francophone world, some terminological discussions have centred around the question of whether it is the learning itself that is informal or whether it is the context of the learning that is informal. Schugurensky argues that it is in this [informal] sphere, so disregarded and so under-researched, where most of the significant learnings that we apply to our everyday lives are learned. (2000, p. 2)

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For Brougère & Bézille, most of what we have learned does not result from attending school. […] This is not to deny the importance of school education, but to suggest that it constitutes only a small part of our knowledge. (Brougère & Bézille, 2007, p. 121)

While these definitions highlight both the places of learning and the degree of formality, they focus on the quantitative and qualitative importance of informal learning in relation to our overall learning. The fact that these learnings take place everywhere, from any resource or interaction, and that they represent the majority of what we learn largely justifies turning research attention to them and viewing them as essential sources of language acquisition today. As for the modes of practice and types of activity concerned, they are almost as diversified as they are widespread, particularly in the case of English. A major European study by Margie Berns, Kees de Bot and Uwe Hasebrink (2007) of 1570 school-age students in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and France found that English-language media are omnipresent among these teenagers and that they spend several hours a day listening to songs and spoken English (from various sources), but also reading print media and watching television or movies (pp. 112– 113). Robert Moncrief (2011) finds his Finnish students very involved in reading, television and film, speaking in various situations and writing emails or chats in English. Robert Vanderplank (2016) documents thirty years of research on the use of subtitles, particularly in the same language as the soundtrack (closed captions), on television by non-native listeners. Jack Richards (2015) identifies the use of chat rooms, openaccess language centres, language villages, digital games, social media, tandem e-learning, interviews, classroom projects and television series. All these activities are part of what has been defined as OCLL. Learning outside the classroom (OCLL) should therefore be considered as an essential part of contemporary language acquisition and development. I have mentioned that this concerns a wide range of activities, often accessed through digital technology, in a more informal than formal register and in contexts outside school environments. I will now

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explore this notion in more detail, focusing on some specific aspects of the Online Informal Learning of English (OILE).

1

Informal Digital Learning of English (from OILE to IDLE)

OILE is a particular form of OCLL that I began exploring with Geoff Sockett in 2009, gradually integrating other colleagues and students. Our first publication on this subject (Toffoli & Sockett, 2010) reported on the practices of 222 IWLP students in the arts, humanities and social sciences. The survey methodology used, based on self-report data concerning students’ perceptions of their own activities in English online, does present some challenges regarding reliability, largely counteracted by the sample size, as well as by a replication study 3 years later (Toffoli & Sockett, 2015). The results supplied us with initial insight into the diversity and extent of these practices with an IWLP audience at the University of Strasbourg, allowing us to confirm some of our intuitions about how we thought students were encountering and engaging with English and to challenge others. Our joint work then explored four other aspects of this field: teachers’ attitudes and perceptions about informal language learning (Toffoli & Sockett, 2013), possible effects of informal listening to music in English (Toffoli & Sockett, 2014), learning strategies and techniques used in OILE (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012) and links between OILE and Language Resource Centres (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017; Toffoli & Sockett, 2015). OILE research now includes studies investigating linguistic aspects of the cultural objects targeted by these learnings (e.g. an analysis of the frequency of 4-word clusters in American series — Sockett, 2011a), acquisition studies (the assimilation of these same clusters by large and small consumers of series — Kusyk & Sockett, 2012; Sockett & Kusyk, 2013), longitudinal case studies of the development of L2 competence (Kusyk, 2017), investigations of strategies used by students in their OILE practices — (Sockett, 2012a), possible links between OILE practices and adopted accents (Yibokou, 2019; Yibokou et al., 2019), OILE practices among high school adolescents (Perrot, in progress), access to an L2 through the use of smartphones (Masters theses by Alena Gurinova,

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2015, and Morgane Geyer, 2018) or practices in different geographical areas or relating to the learning of languages other than English (Masters theses by Rania Ayoub, 2012, or Mónica Fierro-Porto, 2014). All of these elements are beginning to provide a multi-dimensional picture of what OILE is in the French context.

2

Definitions and Terms

Sockett has defined OILE as “a complex range of internet-based activities” (Sockett, 2014), allowing non-English-speaking individuals to develop their skills in this language. By studying these phenomena, we seek to identify and describe the language acquired when learners engage in these activities in English, but also how exactly they are acquiring it and what that may say about them as learners. A specific feature of OILE, compared to other language learning outside the classroom (Benson, 2001; Pitkänen et al., 2011), is that it focuses specifically on online activities and seeks to identify language acquisition through these digital activities in particular (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017). The other specificity is that these are leisure activities or activities carried out for purposes other than learning the language (e.g. to obtain information or to learn more about another subject). Thus, social networking, downloading or streaming TV series or films, exchanging emails, writing or reading blogs, talking via Skype or other VOIP (voice over Internet protocol), participating in forums, listening to music on demand and surfing the Internet in English are the main activities explored in the studies I conducted with G. Sockett, L. Perrot or K. S. Yibokou. They leave aside (among others) participation in “real” tandems or language cafés, playing board games or life-size role-playing games in an L2, immersion or other visits to countries where the target language is spoken, film outings or “classic” telephone exchanges. One of the difficulties that fully justify the conceptualisation of this work in a complex and dynamic systems approach is the impossibility of effectively isolating variables, especially when they are based on the participants’ reported experiences. The distinction between the influences of different activities is impossible to establish, all the more so as each learner is generally involved in

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more than one activity in their L2. Several of our studies (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012; Toffoli & Perrot, 2017; Toffoli & Sockett, 2010, 2014, 2015) demonstrate the great variety of practices and resources engaged in by certain individuals and the diversity from one individual to the next. Thus, the working hypotheses put forward remain open in relation to the portion of observables that can be attributed to a particular origin. This is a hallmark of research in applied linguistics (Condamines & Narcy-Combes, 2015) as well as of the shifting terrain through which contemporary language learners in higher education must find their way. That being said, in the previous section, several common points between OCLL and OILE were identified: both develop outside of school contexts, both rely on the notion of informality, and both share a great diversity of digital and language activities. I also drew attention above to some discrepancies between the two terms: OCLL covers a broader range of activities than OILE, the latter being limited to online activities and, above all, OCLL explicitly targets learning, where OILE relies on incidental acquisition and development. Other researchers have adopted other terminology to explore phenomena similar to those we have examined. Lai and Gu study “extramural learning with technologies” (2011, p. 317) and Lee (2017) introduces the term “informal and digital learning of English” or IDLE, the acronym being particularly evocative for the subject.1 Cole (2015; Cole & Vanderplank, 2016) compares classroom-trained learners (CTL) with learners he considers to be totally autonomous, having learned by themselves (fully autonomous self-instructed learners — FASIL). While all these notions are similar, each one involves learners or users of an L2 in different contexts.

1I

am more and more tempted to abandon the acronym OILE, coined by Geoff Sockett and myself in 2010 for our first (and subsequent) publications on the topic, in favour of IDLE, created and initially used by Ju Seong (John) Lee (2017), as it so aptly embraces both the principle elements of OILE and exemplifies notions related to leisure and implicit acquisition, which are also central to the concept.

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Practices

Our initial understanding of OILE was gained through a survey of 250 students who attended the Centre de ressources et d’apprentissage en langues (CRAL) at the University of Strasbourg in 2009 (Toffoli & Sockett, 2010). Replicated in 2012 (Toffoli & Sockett, 2015) among a population equivalent in number and disciplinary orientation (arts, humanities, languages and social sciences), comparisons between the two studies and the processing of some previously untapped data will allow us here to paint a pretty clear picture of OILE-related practices and thus complete my description of contemporary language learners in higher education. The first conclusion to be drawn from these studies is certainly the ubiquity of OILE among IWLP students. Of the 450 responses collected in total (2009 and 2012), 97% of respondents reported that they engage, at least from time to time, in activities that fall within our definition of OILE. 60% of them do this type of activity at least once a week, and, for 54%, listening to English online is their prevalent passtime. Another even larger survey (n = 953) conducted by Meryl Kusyk (2017) among technology students at the University of Strasbourg, and a more general population at the University of Karlsruhe, attributes an even greater amplitude to these activities. We can surmise that the fact they are students of technology probably influences their choice of online as opposed to other types of activities. These surveys highlight three fundamental aspects of OILE. First, they indicate that these students purport to hear English regularly, mainly by listening to music or watching American movies and series. This massive verbal input, a necessary (although insufficient) factor for language learning (Ellis, 2002; Hilton, 2005; Krashen & Terrell, 1983), therefore seems to be present outside the classroom in the daily activities of this audience. The language to which they have access is authentic spoken language, often involving dialogues of native or near-native English speakers (Toffoli & Sockett, 2010, 2015). The second information concerns the status of the written word, where we find that these students are not only consumers and readers of written content online (e.g. on informative sites), but that they are also writers, in interaction with other users of the language (especially on social networks, but also through chats,

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forums, blogs or email). The third noteworthy phenomenon is the virtual absence of speaking or verbal interaction online, despite the quality of the various interfaces available (at the time, Skype, essentially). A more emic methodology, in the form of a logbook analysis of the daily activities of six OILE learners over an eight-week period (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012), allowed better quantification of the online activity in English of these students. The average of 5 hours per week pales in comparison with the extremes of one participant, who documented more than 32 hours of this type of activity per week.2 This study also makes it possible to better qualify the types of activities undertaken and the reasons why they are undertaken. Among the details provided are the precise time spent on different activities, their frequency and how they changed over the 8-week period concerned. According to their statements, these students undertake the activities described both for pragmatic purposes (e.g. consulting an online tutorial, preparing a trip or translating documents) and for fun and entertainment (TV series and music on demand). The example reproduced here (Table 1), which summarises the activity of one of the participants, indicates the type of information that was collected. Other significant examples of activities include frequent use of websites related to their fields of study (a design student consults Photoshop tutorials, a student of Japanese reads articles on Japanese literature and culture), texting with foreign friends online (often undertaken in conjunction with other online activities) and visiting news and information sites. The undertaking of the replicative survey in 2012 (Toffoli & Sockett, 2015) does show some differences between 2009 and 2012 (a slight decrease in film viewing, significant growth in series viewing, a small increase in visiting virtual worlds) but little change in strong trends. There is still a prevalence of listening among the language skills and within that a preference for listening to songs (often occupying several hours a day). The changes observed could be linked to technical developments: since most SHS students are not technophiles, ever simpler 2These results have been excluded from the average for reasons of credibility and generalisation, but are worth mentioning, as it is in the real, albeit sometimes marginal, examples that we can approach a better overall understanding of OILE phenomena.

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Table 1 An example of one student’s OILE activities over an 8-week period (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012, p. 142) Time spent using online English resources (over 6 weeks) Number of different events Periods of the day concerned Written interaction Video Listening to music Reading Learnings

37 hours 34 Evenings and weekends 16 uses of Facebook to exchange with friends met on vacation 8 sessions (45–120 minutes) of TV series viewing 3 uses of Deezer and lacoccinelle.net 6 uses of resources related to studies Indicates reading song lyrics for meaning comprehension when listening to on-demand music and incidental vocabulary acquisition

access to series in English (via Internet providers’ “boxes” or netflix subscriptions) could perhaps explain the sharp increase (42 people, almost 20% more) in watching series. In contrast to their numerous and time-consuming listening practices, students read and write relatively little in English online. Writing on social networks is the most common of these activities, far ahead of writing emails or comments on a forum or even short text interactions, but less than a third of them do it more than once a month. On the other hand, in both samples (2009 and 2012), written interaction is preferred to either reading or writing alone, which could be attributed to several factors. On the one hand, these are increasingly common modalities of interaction in the daily lives of students in their mother tongue (SMS, social networks, chat rooms, etc.). On the other hand, interactions via these media are short, relatively codified and repetitive. Errors are common and are not sanctioned. For students with an intermediate level in their L2 (close to B1), writing, unlike speaking, allows time for reflection and the formulation of thoughts into comprehensible discourse. It also makes it possible to better manage questions of “face”, which can quickly be lost in spoken dialogue with a foreigner and which perhaps explains the virtual absence of speaking activities by these same students.

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These facts, as well as other differences between the two studies, could also be explained by differences in the sample groups, in particular the difference in levels, as the 2012 population has more speakers of lower levels (A2 and B1) than the 2009 group. The preference for series over films might therefore also be explained by the shorter duration of episodes in series, as compared to a film, as well as other inherent elements, such as knowledge of characters and situations over the course of a season, allowing learners at these levels superior familiarity with voices, accents and context-specific discourse items. Several studies have continued to explore aspects of OILE involving American series (Kusyk & Sockett, 2012; Sockett, 2011a, 2011b; Sockett & Kusyk, 2013, 2015), to which I return in Sects. 5 and 7. The amplitude of the phenomenon of listening to music in English and the activities around songs are the subject of particular attention (see Sect. 9). Indeed, this activity is by far the most popular in all surveys, with fewer than 10% of respondents listening to less than one hour of music in English per week, all others listening to more, including up to several hours per day. The ubiquity of OILE practice and this overview of its main characteristics raises questions about the usefulness and even effectiveness of these activities for language acquisition and development, questions that have been addressed by researchers over the past 10 years. Thus, in the following sections, I pay particular attention to studies which conclude that real language and other acquisitions can be achieved from informal online activities.

4

Acquisitions

Half a dozen recent publications seem particularly significant in this field. Working mainly on data around the viewing of American series, Meryl Kusyk and Geoff Sockett (Kusyk & Sockett, 2012; Sockett, 2012b) have been able to link certain types of vocabulary acquisition to OILE. In a totally different context (Brazil), Jason Cole and Robert Vanderplank (2016) were able to demonstrate very significant performances in L2 development on several grammatical and lexical parameters, thanks to OILE-type practices, allowing some learners to attain

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skills close to those of native speakers. Other research that I have been personally involved in detects use of effective learning strategies and techniques (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012), the specific contributions of music to L2 development (Toffoli & Sockett, 2014) and the influence that OILE activities may have on accent (Yibokou et al., 2019).

5

The Lexicon from American Series

To test the integration of lexical elements heard in American series, Geoff Sockett (2011a) first analysed the frequency of 4-word chunks in a 500,000-word corpus (designated HHOLD), based on one season each of five series popular among students (House M.D., How I Met Your Mother, One Tree Hill, Lost and Desperate Housewives) and frequently cited in our 2009 survey (Toffoli & Sockett, 2010). About forty chunks appear more than twenty times, with the expression “what are you doing? ” in first place (158 iterations), followed by “I want you to” (65) and “you want me to” (63) and ending with “do you have a” and “I need to know” 20 times each (Sockett, 2014). In order to determine possible uptake, Kusyk and Sockett (2012) developed a test which was administered to 45 students in an institution for higher education in technology (Institut Universitaire de Technologie). The test provided recordings of 42 sentences, integrating the 42 most frequent agglomerates of the HHOLD corpus, pronounced by an American speaker. These recordings were heard (only once) by the study participants, who had 30 seconds after each sentence to indicate on a vocabulary knowledge scale whether they had ever heard a similar sentence or phrase before and whether they thought they knew what it meant. If so, they were to provide a translation. The incorrect translations were considered proof that their authors did not know the chunk in question. The results indicate a statistically significant difference between the recognition and translation accuracy of sentences by students who regularly watch American series and those who watch only sporadically. To go further, Sockett (2012b) interviewed 96 students to find out how often they watch English series, which titles are most watched and

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what type of captioning or subtitling they use. He then asked volunteers among them to write short fan fictions 3 and analysed them in order to detect the presence of chunks identified in the 2011 study. By comparing the frequency of these chunks in productions written by regular fans (who watch their favourite series in English) and those written by sporadic fans (who mostly watch their series in French), Sockett demonstrates that the number of reemployed chunks of regular fans is very close to that of the reference HHOLD corpus, while that of sporadic fans is much lower. The difference between the two groups is statistically significant (Sockett 2014). These studies (Kusyk & Sockett 2012; Sockett 2014) therefore seem to provide evidence of the effective integration or uptake of lexical elements from the viewing of television series.

6

Other Lexical and Grammatical Acquisitions

Other researchers have also documented lexical gains from informal online activities. James Milton (2008) studied vocabulary acquisition from informal tasks outside the classroom, using comics, films and songs and finds considerable gains, but doubts the effectiveness of purely incidental exposure and defends the need for a “focus on form” (p. 227). Ju Seong Lee (2017) assessed the “quality” of Informal Digital Learning of English (IDLE) activities and also concluded that those including some sort of focus on form are more effective than those based solely on the quantity of input. Cole and Vanderplank (2016) have pursued a very different approach in attempting to establish evidence of what they call “natural learning” (further to Krashen & Terrell, 1983) carried out exclusively or almost exclusively on the Internet. To do this, they selected a sample of 84 Brazilian students with very good levels of English. These were identified as belonging to one of two groups: the first had been taking English courses in a high-quality private language school for at least 4 years; these learners were designated CTL (classroom-trained learners). The second 3 Original

episodes proposed and written by fans of a series. Examples can be found at https:// www.fanfiction.net.

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group, called fully autonomous self-instructed learners (FASIL), included people who had never taken more than one year of (cumulative) Englishlanguage training, had never resided abroad, nor had ever lived with an English-speaking person. Both cohorts were subjected to six different language tests aimed at establishing benchmarks for mastery of a wide range of lexical and grammatical elements. The elements tested could concern subtle points, which often pose difficulties for Portuguese speakers, such as the use of “there is”. All items were pre-tested with native English speakers to establish their validity. The results for all these tests show a significant difference between the two groups, with significantly higher results for FASILs. The study also reveals that fossilisation phenomena are more pronounced among CTLs.

7

Effects on Pronunciation

In the light of the work cited above regarding the acquisition effects of OILE on vocabulary and grammar, we wanted to follow up on a number of teacher observations (Toffoli & Sockett, 2013) regarding changes to French students’ pronunciation of English over the past two decades. The theory of phonetic convergence (imitation) as developed by Markham (1997), Nguyen and Delvaux (2015) or Rizzolatti and Buccino (2005) as well as several studies showing a positive impact of television on accent (Mitterer & McQueen, 2009; Sanchez, Miller, & Rosenblum, 2010; Stuart-Smith, 2007; Stuart-Smith, Pryce, Timmins, & Gunter, 2013; Stuart-Smith, Smith, Rathcke, Li Santi, & Holmes, 2011) prompted the exploration of possible links between the accents adopted in English by 10 French students and their OILE activities. For his doctoral thesis, Kossi Seto Yibokou (2019) undertook acoustic analyses (extraction of target sounds, measurements of duration, intensity, fundamental frequency and formants) of recordings made with five female and five male native French speakers, again in the IWLP sector at the University of Strasbourg. The analyses were carried out for six significant phonetic-phonological differences (Brulard, Carr, Durand, & Navarro, 2015; Cruttenden, 2014; Wells, 2008) between the accents

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qualified as “General American” (GA) and British “Received Pronunciation” (RP).4 Initial findings are published in Yibokou et al. (2019). On all analyses, the characteristics of RP are in the majority (401 occurrences or 53%), but those of GA (315 occurrences or 42%) are close, with only 11% difference. This indicates that the pronunciation of these speakers contains an almost equal share of characteristics of both accents. Other productions (non-identifiable as belonging to one of the two target accents) represent 34 occurrences (or 5% of the total). The data by speaker reveal three people for whom the overall characteristics of GA are dominant (speakers 1, 2 and 6). The other seven produce more elements of the RP accent. Participants have a wide range of OILE practices, in terms of both quantity and quality. All watch online television series, the bulk of which (67 vs 18) are American, but for very different durations and using different modalities. An examination of the “subtitling” factor alone reveals as many variations between the quantities and types of subtitling (English or French or not) as there are participants. Nine of the ten students mention entertainment as the main reason for watching series and all designate “the story” as being what interests them most in the series, but they also mention other factors that attract them. These viewing modalities and habits are similar to those identified by Kusyk (2017). The five participants who felt they spoke English with an American accent thought it probably came from watching series. None of the participants think they speak with a British accent, and only one says they have a French accent when they speak English. Of all the English teachers they have had during their school years, they mention 5 Americans, 13 British, 1 Australian and 54 French, for whom the British accent was felt be predominant. None of these participants had ever lived in an Englishspeaking country, and their infrequent stays in such countries were only short (from a few days to two weeks). Of course, this is all purely declarative information that the researcher cannot verify, but that we have no reason to doubt.

4These are rhoticity, intervocalic /t/, vowel nasalisation, word-stress in certain two syllable words, word-stress and number of syllables, pronunciation of the spellings and in certain words.

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Two fundamental features stand out in the results of the acoustic analyses: on the one hand relative homogeneity in the productions of some participants and on the other hand considerable variability. Homogeneity concerns only each phenomenon taken in isolation. None of these speakers presented homogeneous productions of RP or GA for all the elements studied. The variability observed concerns both interindividual and intra-individual phenomena. All these speakers produced, at one time or another, the characteristics of both standards under study. Taken as a group, inter-individual variability (differences in pronunciation between individuals in the group) can be observed when, for the same sound, some produce RP, others GA pronunciation and others something altogether different. Intra-individual variability occurs when, in a given speaker, a word is pronounced sometimes in RP and sometimes in GA or when both standards are used within the same word. Cross-referencing the questionnaire data with the acoustic analyses allows some inferences to be made regarding the influence of OILE practices on pronunciation. Firstly, we find that most of the formal influences (courses, teachers) are British. Furthermore, the speakers under study state that they do not communicate with native English-speaking Americans (no or few stays in the United States, none of which totalled more than one month, no English-speaking friends or family with whom they regularly communicate). In addition, they say they listen to very little music in English. All these factors are cause for speculation on the origins of what are clearly identified as phonetic characteristics of American English in their pronunciation, and the temptation is great indeed to attribute it to the multiple hours they say they spend each week watching videos, films and series, where they hear a majority of characters with GA or near GA accents. According to the questionnaire results, American series represent a major leisure activity for these speakers, providing them with exposure to a large amount of authentic English. Thus, this study would seem to replicate the results of Stuart-Smith and colleagues (2007, 2011, 2013), concerning the impact of televised media on pronunciation. The responses to the questionnaire also indicate that unconscious imitation seems to occur through these activities. In his sample, Yibokou observes more variability than homogeneity, producing a kind of “mid-atlantic English” (Modiano, 1996). While the

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observed homogeneity would be an obvious sign of the appropriation of phonetic and phonological elements of a well-defined accent, Yibokou et al. (2019) associate variability (inter and intra) with the complexity and dynamism of the system of L2 development in which several factors are involved and interact. This variability illustrates the fact that each of these learners is at a different stage of a personal trajectory of Englishlanguage development, creating an idiosyncratic interlanguage, while at the same time being subject to influences that can also introduce a certain degree of predictability. Acoustic analyses (segmental and suprasegmental) indicate significant presence of phonetic and phonological phenomena typical of the GA accent. There is no claim that these students speak with an American accent, but the phenomena observed do indicate that their accent tends towards GA by adopting markers characteristic of this accent. Thus, what many English teachers in France intuitively feel, namely that students are increasingly adopting American pronunciation at the expense of British pronunciation (Toffoli & Sockett, 2013), seems to be supported by the results of this study. As Ulrikke Rindal (2010) points out: It is difficult to avoid the impression that learners’ pronunciation is influenced by spoken media, seeing as there is limited access to AmE elsewhere. More research is needed to investigate this suggested link between spoken media and L2 pronunciation. (p. 256)

The few studies described in this section, which focus on the acquisition of lexical, grammatical and accentual elements, argue in favour of the significant impact that OILE practices have on language skills. These approaches can be usefully complemented by more qualitative work to gain insight into the particularity of individual learning practices and the wealth of strategies, attitudes and resources deployed by an individual to develop their language skills.

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Strategies, Resource Use and Identity

Several studies provide clues as to how OILE users treat the language content to which they have been exposed, whether primarily as “additional sensory stimulation” (Wright, Sabin, Zhang, Marrone, & Fitzgerald, 2010) or as specific strategies identified as effective for language learners by authors such as O’Malley and Chamot (1990) or Oxford (1990). OILE involves many varied resources used in diverse and creative ways: some users combine song listening and online lyrics to improve their comprehension; some engage in forums where they receive informal feedback to build their written communication; many participate in social networks where they use cognates from their mother tongue along with fairly basic “functional” words in English (see Ellis, 2008) in a limited-risk context. These phenomena may well be more frequent, immediate and contextually relevant for informal L2 learners than similar information obtained in the classroom or in another formal learning context (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012). Five of the six learners who participated in a six-week diary study (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012) indicated their interest in television series. They find them particularly useful in improving listening comprehension and explain a process by which they begin to watch a series in French, then, faced with the difficulty of accessing the most recent seasons and episodes, begin to watch in English with subtitles in French, then, when possible, adopt captions in English, before finally moving on to viewing with no subtitles at all.5 All five of them expressed difficulty in returning later to a version where voices are dubbed, finding the versions artificial and missing the real voices of the actors. These learners also exploit the multiple technical affordances of online series, allowing themselves, for example, to watch the same episode several times, to stop or reverse to repeat portions that are difficult to understand, turning subtitles in different languages off and on, making extensive use of strategies to which we will return below in the section on music (Sect. 9). Sockett (2011b),

5This seems to be a progression that is documented by researchers time and again—see Kusyk (2017) and Vanderplank (2016).

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in his analysis of interactions on Facebook, lists 4 other cognitive strategies used specifically by learners communicating on that network: assessing, classifying, assigning status and commenting. These are classic strategies for any Facebook user, supporting the argument that OILE allows learners to act as normal users of the language and not as some sort of lower-status users, confined to “learning”, which could be qualified as of lesser importance. A further study by Sockett (2012a) suggests that OILE may have an effect on yet another parameter of L2 development: self-image. Some students, when they become involved in OILE, particularly through forums and social networks, actually develop a specific L2 identity in their adopted language. Based on the analysis of one student’s learning blog, he describes the trajectory of this fan of an Irish folk music singer. At the beginning of the blog, the student presents a forum she is starting to visit which is dedicated to this singer. After several weeks of observation or “lurking”,6 she gradually becomes a contributor, first sporadically, then more and more regularly, before being invited to become moderator of a specific discussion thread. At the end of her experience, she describes how she so befriended some of the participants that they left the forum to continue private conversations on MSN, all of course in English. Sockett interprets this experience in light of the writings of Zoltán Dörnyei and Ema Ushioda (2009) concerning “desired L2 self-image”. It would certainly seem that this case study (as well as others presented in the article) supports the idea that learners motivate themselves by building a new self-image in their L2, almost becoming someone new. These results can also be put into perspective as a complement to Cole’s work (Cole, 2015; Cole & Vanderplank, 2016), where data on participants’ behaviours, representations and attitudes showed that the “motivation” and “desire to communicate” factors are more pronounced among FASILs than among CTLs (see Sect. 6). In this section, I have reviewed various studies that suggest that OILE has a positive impact on language development, including lexical, grammatical and pronunciation skills. I was also able to infer, through 6 Jean

Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) speak of a latent phase of “legitimate peripheral participation” before further integrating a “community of practice”.

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a few case studies in blogs or learning journals, other possible effects of OILE on learning strategies and techniques and even on the self-image of some learners. In both cases, these developments are neither anticipated nor determined, according to an established programme or progression, but emerge in a largely unpredictable way.

9

The (Special) Place of Music

Among the OILE activities in which students are most involved, listening to songs is by far the most frequent and widespread. Listening to music is a favourite pastime for young people of all ages, cultures and disciplines. Used with a view to L2 language development since the era of vinyl records, or even as far back as the period of the phonograph, recent technologies, which make it increasingly easy to take and listen to music everywhere, also introduce new affordances in terms of access to and manipulation of songs and their lyrics. If, in the past, listeners could only hear what was playing on the radio or buy records (in limited numbers depending on budget), today they can actively choose, play and replay the songs they like almost without limit. In addition, anyone interested in the propositional content of a song can now find various online resources to access it. How do students use these resources and can the hours spent listening to songs in English actually help with uptake of the language, in much the same way as television series? These are some of the questions discussed in a study specifically dedicated to this activity (Toffoli & Sockett, 2014). The link between music and language has been the subject of all kinds of research. Some of the many perspectives examined include the similarity between the perceptual and cognitive processes involved in understanding music and language, syntactic similarities, effects on brain plasticity or the role of emotions in learning and using them (Arbib, 2013; Gregory Miras, 2013). Lowe (1998) documents more than 22 sources which trace similarities between foreign language learning and musical learning:

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… certain commonalities exist between the processing, structure, and properties of language and music […].7 Moreover, since auditory training is fundamental in second-language learning […] and that music, like language, is initially acquired through the aural sense […], researchers in second-language education […] suggest that the incorporation of music into the second-language is a viable teaching strategy and should be considered. (p. 34)

This quote is a reminder of the importance of listening for the development of foreign languages and suggests that the similarities between music and language could provide sufficient reasons to use music in language teaching and learning. This would make the dominance of OILE listening activities all the more relevant, despite significant differences between songs and ordinary speech, such as distortions in syntax and pronunciation, the choice of a particular lexicon or the interference of specific musical information: melody, rhythm, instrumentation, voice quality, etc. Some researchers suggest that music can help not only with comprehension of spoken language, as mentioned above, but also with pronunciation or vocabulary acquisition. Milovanov, Pietila, Tervaniemi, and Esquef (2010) find better pronunciation of English in young Finnish people with good musical ability than in their peers with little affinity for music. Boulton (1999) studied the knowledge of different lexical fields associated with music in a sample of French students and finds links between informal listening activities and vocabulary development. Li and Brand (2009) compared groups of students in English classes where songs in English were explicitly used for learning and observed higher scores of language performance in post-tests of vocabulary and usage among the group most exposed to music. These results correspond to a dominant perception among students that listening to music in English contributes to their development of this language.8 7 All

the ellipses in this quotation refer to Lowe’s references, which are too numerous (22 in all) to be included here. 8 In the blogs analysed for Toffoli (2016), Jatupon’s example is telling: “Accordingly, listening to the musics in English is one of the best ways to ameliorate our listening and speaking skills” (unmodified citation).

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While these studies about the benefits of exposure to music in English are encouraging, other researchers indicate how technological developments can influence the way learners perceive and handle recordings and thus how these developments can promote learning. Guichon (2011) considers that controls, such as pause and rewind keys, are real aids to listening comprehension and we have seen above that this seems to be confirmed by users in the context of video viewing. Roussel, Rieussec, Nespoulous, and Tricot (2008) filmed student computer interactions during a listening comprehension activity and analysed the use of control functions. They identified four dominant strategies: the most competent students (as determined by the post-tests) used global listening strategies initially and then implemented stops and reversals during second and third listenings, in order to check both sounds (what was heard) and meaning (what was understood). The authors consider that the simple fact of controlling input in this way has an effect on comprehension. It would therefore appear that this type of affordance in OILE practice (whether for music, recorded speech or video) would have a facilitating effect on comprehension. Of the 207 students we consulted on this subject (Toffoli & Sockett, 2014), 43% indicated that they sometimes or often use “pause” controls when listening to music in English. Other researchers (Guichon, 2011; Hamon, 2007) also address the importance of the availability of speech transcriptions as an important resource for L2 understanding. Sweller, Ayres, and Kalyuga (2011a) explain how cognitive load can be reduced by the “modality effect” to facilitate L2 comprehension: the use of text aids can produce superior information processing, as it is possible for two complementary channels of perception (auditory and visual) to operate together. This could increase short-term memory capacity, as not all information would be processed in the same way and in the same “place”. This effect would appear to be valid only for learners in the intermediate levels, with the “redundancy effect” likely to make such strategies detrimental to experts (Sweller, Ayres, & Kalyuga, 2011b). In the 207-strong sample mentioned above (Toffoli & Sockett, 2014), 46% of respondents declared they consulted lyrics sites.

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Anglophone music has been part of the French (and probably worldwide) musical landscape for a long time. On the other hand, understanding lyrics is difficult, even for native speakers. When we take into account the fact that 95% of the participants in the aforementioned study have a level of English below B2 and that 80% say they are interested in the meaning of the songs, but feel they understand only about half of what they listen to (Toffoli & Sockett, 2014), we get some idea of the tremendous efforts that they make to access meaning. The advent of Web 2.0 has seen the arrival of unofficial transcriptions of almost all songs, often with informal (fan) translations into several languages. In fact, today most Internet music providers include embedded lyrics. Recent technologies and equipment may also make it possible to hear the words themselves more clearly than in the past, by reducing bass, slowing tempo or using other technical procedures. These technologies have also increased learning mobility, rendering accessible very large quantities of recorded content while “on the move” and simultaneously providing the precise pausing and repetition possibilities described above. Listening and learning strategies identified in strategy research are also described by the six students whose blogs were analysed from this perspective (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012). They report choosing songs in English based on their personal (sometimes eclectic) tastes and an initial listening phase to grasp general (sometimes relatively impressionistic) meaning. These learners then report (sometimes) consulting a lyrics site and listening to the song again while reading the lyrics. It would seem that the large number of English/French cognates, as well as the often repetitive nature of songs, allows learners, even at a relatively elementary level, to access meaning. In short, compared to previous generations, today’s listeners can play a much more active role in choosing the music they listen to, controlling how they hear it and accessing the resources to understand the lyrics. We therefore hypothesise that it is the combination of these three elements: choice, control and additional resources that foster more active engagement with music, including its language content (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012). The vast majority of students today are in contact with a significant amount of musical lyrics in English. Extrapolating figures from our various studies (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012; Toffoli & Sockett, 2010, 2014,

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2015), we estimate that the average French student hears a minimum of several hundred hours (between 300 and 700) of music in English per year, while their exposure to English in language classes rarely exceeds 50 hours over the same period. We wondered if it would be possible, using methodologies similar to those presented for series, to infer language uptake from these practices. In a preparatory study for the 2014 publication (Toffoli & Sockett, 2014), we collected the list of the five singers or musical groups 122 learners9 listened to most in English. We wanted to identify the most popular artists in order to determine if it would be relevant to consider working on song lexes, as had been done for television series (Kusyk & Sockett, 2012). 299 different groups and singers were proposed, 199 of which were mentioned only once, thus asserting one of the principles of complex and dynamic systems by recognising the multiplicity of totally idiosyncratic trajectories in this type of language acquisition. Only 5 artists were cited by more than 10 people in the sample. These results seemed to rule out replication of the approach used for series, where researchers were able to identify a small number of titles watched by a large number of learners. In the case of music, the diversity was such that it seemed problematic to ask learners to identify specific words. Despite these concerns, we included an exercise asking for translation of extracts from the lyrics of the most popular songs of the five artists identified by more than 10 people (Coldplay, Rihanna, the Beatles, Muse and Adele) in order to determine if any effects of this listening could be detected in the students’ lexical repertoire. Participants were asked to translate four semantically coherent, clearly pronounced sentences or phrases from the targeted selection (the 5 artists identified above). The translations were rated by two independent evaluators, with a good objectivity coefficient, the standard deviation being 0.3 for 511 translations. The results were assigned to one of two groups: the frequent group, composed of 132 learners who reported listening to English informally more than once a week (from all sources), and the occasional group, composed of 94 learners who reported doing this type 9These are the same types of learners from the same Language Resource Centre (i.e. intermediate level Arts and Social Science students), but not necessarily the same individuals as in the main survey.

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of listening less than once a week. The frequent group scored higher on all four translations, in terms of both the number of translation attempts and the quality of the translation as scored by the two independent evaluators. Two-tailed t-tests were carried out on the four results concerning the quality of translations. The overall difference is significant at the 0.05 level (t = −2.55), indicating a link between listening frequency and translation quality with 95% reliability. Several conclusions can be retained from this study: on the one hand, the very great diversity and personalisation of approaches of each individual learner, both in terms of choice of music and of modalities for accessing and using it, thereby increasing the complexity of each individual learning trajectory. The language encountered is different for each user, as are the means used to understand and integrate it. The possibilities offered by online technologies and mobile devices seem to give music a renewed role in the acquisition and development of an L2. The results presented here indicate the ubiquity of English songs among the contemporary language learners in higher education and highlight the fact that these students are interested in understanding the lyrics of the songs they listen to, perhaps even in affirming a particular aspect of their identity in the L2. It would therefore be desirable to obtain more information on individual differences in the use of music and language acquisition in informal contexts — for example, how, why and when some of them sing with music or their perception of the usefulness and effectiveness of this practice. In a series of student blogs currently under study, some students have stated that listening and singing along with the music help to improve their pronunciation or even their command of the language in general.10 A study to test these perceptions, perhaps with respect to 10 “When

I am used to singing, to music, I usually sing at the same time, even if I don’t understand all the words. The melody helps me with pronunciation, especially when I have to focus on certain syllables” (Seçil, November 12, 2010, unmodified) or “I came across an amount of old songs that recalled me that singing in another language was probably the best way to maintain one’s oral skills because according to me it is the best way for oral productions. Singing is based on imitation of the singer’s voice, and reproduction of what is said in the most similar way. Even though you don’t pay a peculiar attention of what you are saying because words don’t matter. Singing is made in immediacy and without the thought to be ridiculous, because being ridiculous took part in the game, we are not doing a competition. I noticed that I make some mistakes when I am singing, but as it is a game, you don’t feel discouraged, you try again in order to do less mistakes until what you are saying suits

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changes over time, would provide a valuable complement to the results presented here. The study of students’ perception of these phenomena, through an in-depth discourse analysis of these blogs or other types of L2 reflexive documents, would provide more complete and qualitative information on these musical and linguistic practices. This would enlarge on the perspective presented in the 2014 study and provide a more solid understanding of the role that informal listening to songs can play in language acquisition over the long term, an important parameter for contemporary language learners in higher education.

10

Initial Conclusions Regarding the Online Informal Learning of English

The various studies presented above indicate that OILE is one of the main vehicles for the appropriation and development of English today in France (and probably in the world). Students are committed to the regular and frequent use of English, regardless of any institutional structure (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012). It is through these means that today’s learners, in a totally autonomous way, become users of the English language, in a process of development and appropriation that will presumably (hopefully?) last throughout their professional and personal lives. This is certainly easier for them than in the past, when their elders had to undertake long and extensive trips or intensive correspondence to obtain similar conditions for language acquisition. In order to conclude this section on OILE and integrate it into an overall portrait of contemporary language learners in higher education, Fig. 1 briefly recaps what OILE is and what can be expected from it. It outlines multiform areas, with indefinite contours, involving the practice of many online activities for personal or leisure needs, in a selfdetermined space, open to other systems (e.g. other OCLL activities) with the song. Another interesting aspect of singing is that the speed of the lyrics and what is said, here you get used to the stream of language, and thus have a better comprehension skills and production skills, because you sing more and more rapidly in English. The skill that you reach helps you to speak with more fluency when the stream of speech is slower” (Alida, 24 November 2012, unmodified).

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Fig. 1

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Key aspects of Online Informal Learning of English (OILE)

and in a constant state of change. Language acquisition and personal development result from this, often incidentally and in any case without being the primary focus of the activities. When assessing the potential for language acquisition from these informal contexts, quantitative data on the number of hours of exposure are a significant element. One of the results of all these studies is that most students are exposed to several hundred hours of English (music, videos—films, series, games or other) each year, with the use of mobile devices contributing significantly to this figure (Pegrum, 2014). In terms of music, it is likely that the hundreds of hours of declared listening also involve repeated listening to the same favourite songs, especially since mobile listening devices have features such as playlists and loop functions that facilitate these repetitions.

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As most of the learners involved in these studies were below the B2 level of the CEFR, their listening skills are likely to be limited; the B1 and A2 level descriptors highlight the need for clarity that is often absent in songs and present only in certain types of audio-visual documents: A2.1:

A2.2:

B1.1:

B1.2:

Can follow the headings of news or documentaries presented fairly slowly and clearly in standard language, even if all the details are not understood. Can identify the main element of television news about an event, accident, etc., if the commentary is accompanied by a visual medium. Can follow many films in which the story is largely based on action and image and in which the language is clear and direct. Can understand the main points of television programmes on familiar subjects if the language is clearly enough articulated. Can understand a large proportion of television programmes on subjects of personal interest, such as short interviews, conferences and news programmes, if the rate is relatively slow and the language fairly clearly articulated. (Council of Europe, 2018, p. 66, my italics)

These descriptors do not refer to series, tutorials or different types of docu-series, but in these, we can find some of the same well-encoded characteristics as news or action-based films: explicit visuals, clear and direct language with relatively slow articulation and above all potential personal interest in freely chosen content. Of course, each modification of one or the other of these parameters increases the difficulty of understanding.11 It can therefore be argued that, without the high levels of repetition and interaction reported in the music study (Toffoli & Sockett, 2014) or without the visuals and codified language found in many series, understanding the propositional content of these resources would be extremely difficult for learners at these levels. It can also be argued that all these activities, including playing an immersive video game, listening to music or watching series, play an 11 Robert

Vanderplank (2016) provides a detailed analysis of the uses and limitations of various video genres for language learners.

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additional role of sensory stimulation (Wright et al., 2010) for each user, contributing to their overall L2 development. Finally, we can affirm from this research that many learners are actively involved in music by taking explicit actions to understand lyrics, just as they are involved in series primarily to understand the storyline (Vanderplank, 2016; Yibokou et al., 2019) or in a game to participate in the underlying challenges or conflicts inherent to the plot.12 This often takes the form of consulting transcripts or subtitles or searching for terminology and translation while listening. If we refer again to cognitive load theory (Sweller et al., 2011a), it seems logical that students at A2-B1 levels in English use these resources as real-life scaffolding for their learning. Creating a unique musical universe or belonging to a community of video game players or fans of a series is also an expression of identity, and the fact that the L2 content plays a role in this identity is significant, as suggested by Norton (2014) or Dörnyei and Ushioda (2009). Listening to music, watching a series or playing at a console become both a shared experience (belonging to a community and satisfying the need for connection) and increasingly an individual identity, even if that may be behind an auditory or even visual barrier, created by noise-cancelling headphones or perhaps even specialised virtual reality (VR) glasses that separate users from their physical environment. The facts that students choose their own music, series or online games that they use various affordances and techniques to enable comprehension (pause, reverse, use of subtitles, speech or transcript sites) and communication (noticing differences, imitating other speakers) indicate that, far from being background noise or visuals, online activities in English are part of their identity and contribute to their incidental acquisition of English. These identity changes, as well as the development of language skills in an informal context through participation in online activities, can therefore be considered as a fundamental vector for L2 development, particularly in English, today.

12 Laurence

Schmoll’s (2016) thesis provides an in-depth epistemological reflection on the universe of video games and gaming in informal language learning.

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In the preceding pages, I have argued, backed up by numerous studies, that OILE is a true source of L2 language proficiency. Various assertions about L2 acquisition, such as Krashen’s natural approach (Krashen & Terrell, 1983) or Bialystock’s functional practice (1981), have, in the past, made similar claims. Cole (2015), on the basis of the 32 FASILs he studied in Brazil, affirms that “natural” learning leads to results that go far beyond learning that is accompanied and supervised by teachers (the 39 CTLs). Other researchers, such as Nick Ellis (2002, 2008, 2015), insist, on the contrary, that simple L2 immersion, however sophisticated it may be, is inadequate for extensive acquisition and that this type of L2 acquisition rarely exceeds a kind of pidgin (Ellis, 2008). In the context of more formal learning, Candas (2009) indicates that even in an empowering context, Language Resource Centre students have difficulty projecting beyond and outside of the school context. She too finds it illusory to suggest that learners can be their own teachers. The question of teaching and the teacher thus enters the equation in this discussion of the language development of contemporary learners in higher education. I therefore propose in the next chapter to return to formal contexts, this time focusing on the beliefs, place and role of the teacher, particularly with respect to OILE and OCLL.

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Sockett, G., & Toffoli, D. (2012). Beyond learner autonomy: A dynamic systems view of the informal learning of English in virtual online communities. ReCALL, 24 (2), 138–151. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344012000031. Stuart-Smith, J. (2007). The influence of the media. In The Routledge companion to sociolinguistics (pp. 140–148). London: Routledge. Stuart-Smith, J., Pryce, G., Timmins, C., & Gunter, B. (2013). Television can also be a factor in language change: Evidence from an urban dialect. Language, 89 (3), 501–536. Stuart-Smith, J., Smith, R., Rathcke, T., Li Santi, F., & Holmes, S. (2011). Responding to accents after experiencing interactive or mediated speech. ICPhS XVII, 1914–1917. Hong Kong. Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011a). Explorations in the learning sciences, instructional systems and performance technologies. Vol. 1: Cognitive load theory. Switzerland: Springer. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/9781-4419-8126-4_11. Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011b). The redundancy effect. In Explorations in the learning sciences, instructional systems and performance technologies. Vol. 1: Cognitive load theory (pp. 141–154). Switzerland: Springer. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4419-81264_11. Toffoli, D. (2016). Attachment theory: Insights into student postures in autonomous language learning. In C. Gkonou, D. Tatzl, & S. Mercer (Eds.), New directions in language learning psychology. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Toffoli, D., & Perrot, L. (2017). Autonomy, the online informal learning of english (OILE) and learning resource centers (LRCs): The relationships between learner autonomy, L2 proficiency, L2 autonomy and digital literacy. In M. Cappellini, T. Lewis, & A. Rivens Mompean (Eds.), Learner autonomy and web 2.0 (pp. 198–228). Sheffield: Equinox. Toffoli, D., & Sockett, G. (2010). How non-specialist students of English practice informal learning using web 2.0 tools. ASp. La Revue Du GERAS, 58, 125–144. https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.1851. Toffoli, D., & Sockett, G. (2013). University teachers’ perceptions of Online Informal Learning of English (OILE). Computer Assisted Language Learning, 28(1), 7–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2013.776970. Toffoli, D., & Sockett, G. (2014). English language music: Does it help with learning? Recherche et Pratiques Pédagogiques en Langues de Spécialité. Cahiers de l’Apliut, XXXIII (2), 192–209. Toffoli, D., & Sockett, G. (2015). L’apprentissage informel de l’anglais en ligne (AIAL), qu’est-ce que ça change pour les centres de langues? Recherche

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et Pratiques Pédagogiques en Langues de Spécialité. Cahiers de l’Apliut, XXXIV (1). https://apliut.revues.org/5055. Vanderplank, R. (2016). Captioned media in foreign language learning and teaching: Subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing as tools for language learning. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wells, J. (2008). Longman pronunciation dictionary. Harlow: Pearson Longman. Wright, B. A., Sabin, A. T., Zhang, Y., Marrone, N., & Fitzgerald, M. B. (2010). Enhancing perceptual learning by combining practice with periods of additional sensory stimulation. The Journal of Neuroscience, 30 (38), 12868–12877. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0487-10.2010. Yibokou, K. S. (2019). Apprentissage informel de l’anglais en ligne: Quelles conséquences sur la prononciation des étudiants français? (Thèse de Doctorat). Université de Strasbourg. Yibokou, K. S., Toffoli, D., & Vaxelaire, B. (2019). Variabilité interindividuelle et intra-individuelle dans la prononciation d’étudiants français qui pratiquent l’Apprentissage Informel de l’Anglais en Ligne. Lidil. Revue de linguistique et de didactique des langues (59).

7 Teaching Language to Contemporary Learners in Higher Education

When thinking of learning in higher education as a dynamic system where each and every participatory element, including context, contributes to the emergence and development of language to some extent, a teacher can have a significant role to play. A teacher can, in fact, act as both an attractor state and a repulsor state (see Chapter 1, Sect. 4), capable, perhaps, of either leading a student to, or pulling them out of an attractor state where they become stuck. As outside agents (within the formal learning system, but contextual elements in the personal system of the learner), they can have tactical influence on learners. Their privileged position with regard to both the language and the learner gives teachers the potential to help prod (or invite, or entice) learners along their learning path and sometimes out of what may have become a place of stagnation, where progress is no longer being made. Teachers can intervene so that learners don’t content themselves with a “basic variety of interlanguage” (Ellis, 2008), once they reach the first major stumbling blocks or the first “plateau” in their learning. In the specific context of Language Resource Centres, researchers such as Pia Acker (Acker, 2017; AckerKessler, 2015; Acker & Poteaux, 2011), Sophie Bailly (Bailly, 1995; © The Author(s) 2020 D. Toffoli, Informal Learning and Institution-wide Language Provision, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37876-9_7

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Bailly, Ciekanski, & Guély-Costa, 2013) or Marie-Josée Gremmo (2009) have worked to understand, train and guide the actions of teachers specifically in these set-ups that aim to focus on developing autonomy and self-directed learning. Acker’s work highlights ten pedagogical “gestures” that characterise teaching activity in support of autonomy. On the OILE side, it could be argued that discussing teaching is irrelevant, since OILE specifically concerns activities the learner chooses and carries out outside teachers’ sphere of influence. However, contemporary language learners in higher education learn language precisely in this space that covers both the university and OILE contexts. Thus, a teacher’s knowledge of extramural activities, his or her attitude towards them and the support he or she could provide to ensure that students get the most out of them may well be decisive. Knowing more about these teachers will therefore also provide a better understanding of contemporary language learners in higher education. Investigating teachers’ perceptions of OILE is important in this context, especially if we hope them to take a proactive approach to students’ language development. However, little research has been done on this issue to date. Borg (2006), in his review of the literature on what he calls “teacher cognition”,1 reviews more than 180 publications in this field and identifies only four that explicitly ask questions exploring the links between teachers and technology. The state of the art has grown considerably since then, and recently, Guichon (2011a, 2011b), Sundqvist and Wikström (2015), Sundqvist and Sylvén (2016) or Kitade (2015) among others have explored this area in some detail. While many of these studies on teachers’ technologies and cognitions indicate a global openness and desire to integrate contemporary technology-related resources into their practices (see Raith & Hegelheimer, 2010; Slaouti & Motteram, 2006; Wong & Benson, 2006), they do not explore possible links between teachers’ postures and students’ online practices, particularly in informal contexts. Lund (2006) provides one of the studies that address this issue and suggests that a first meeting point (or stumbling block) lies in language itself. He explains that the 1 Borg

defines “teacher cognitions” as “what teachers think, know and believe”, and the relationship between this and teaching practices (Borg, 2006, p. 1).

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English encountered in informal online activities is qualitatively different from the English most teachers use and teach in class: rich in non-standardised variants that could be considered innovative and functional outside the classroom but can be perceived as difficult or even harmful in the school context. Such variants may not be easily compatible with a traditional approach to language learning within the education system. (2006, p. 184)

Through a case study, he examines ways in which a teacher can help students negotiate the differences between academic or scholastic English and Englishes2 online or “in real life”. I will reiterate some of his conclusions as potential directions for teaching practice, after presenting the cognitions of 30 university teachers regarding OILE from a study conducted with Geoff Sockett in 2010 (Toffoli & Sockett, 2013). The most striking result of this survey was the teachers’ underestimation of the extent to which students were involved in OILE. While 2/3 of them declared they were aware that their students engage in online English activities in their free time, half of these (one-third of the group) thought that only a minority of students were concerned. Faced with student statements from the same period (where 97% said they participated in some form of OILE), these figures were surprising to say the least. Despite the fact that perceptions are likely to have changed since 2010 and the majority (23/30) belief that the number of students engaging in OILE was increasing, this does perhaps say something about us (academics and instructors in higher education in general) and the degree to which we may not be as tuned in as we think to how students interact with our subject area. On a more positive note, all but one of the teachers participating in this study find that OILE practices influence their students’ Englishlanguage skills favourably. Among the benefits cited were the perceptions that students

2 Lund

specifically addresses different variants and variations of English all over the world.

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have a better understanding of verbal communication, are less disturbed by rapid speech, use common idioms with appropriate pronunciation, have better overall pronunciation (less marked by a French accent), speak more fluently.

Many of these teachers stated that they take various aspects of OILE into account in their teaching. Four indicated that they integrate activities related to television series. One refers to OILE to encourage practice outside the classroom: she asks students to mention their use of OILEtype resources in learning journals, so that students be more conscious of the fact that they are in contact with English every day and that this promotes fluency. Twelve teachers stated that they wanted to integrate elements from OILE into their teaching and cited the following reasons: • improving student motivation, • interesting them in what is happening in class, • exposing students to the kind of English they will need throughout their lives. The analysis of the opinions of one of these teachers presents a more precise and nuanced picture. The teacher concerned was a 34-year-old French woman working in an Institut d’Études Politiques (IEP), an elite institution for Political Science studies in Paris. At the time, she believed that OILE affected only about 50% of her students, but felt that this number was increasing and that this had both positive and negative effects on English-language courses. She had noticed improvements in both her students’ listening and speaking skills, and she felt that this was due in part to watching series. She cited their use of “netspeak” as evidence of OILE and considered the Internet to be the major factor bringing English into the daily lives of her students. Although she considered Internet activities to be part of students’ private lives and therefore not really to have a place in the classroom, she did ask her students to keep a learning logbook and tried to encourage them to use these resources in a more “educational” and less “passive” way.

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The paradoxical position expressed here alerts us to several phenomena. Although young, this teacher demonstrated a generation gap with regard to her students and a certain ignorance of their practices (as her underestimation of OILE involvement indicates). Not wanting to intrude into the private life of her students, she nonetheless had a feeling for the learning potential of their leisure-time activities and would have liked to exploit it, yet she did not take their OILE into account in any systematic or targeted way. According to this teacher, there is an effective way to learn English (where cognitive processes such as “noticing” or “questioning content” play an important role) and a less effective way (which she qualified as passivity): these activities are not yet really, I believe, used for learning (not enough ‘conscious processing’). In the end they are really quite passive (ok, they watch a series, films in English, read forums, but haven’t yet developed the reflexes of a ‘specialist’ - questioning the vocabulary used, picking out structures or simply remarking language used).

I have wondered whether this was an unacknowledged wish to formalise the informal. This is symptomatic of the paradoxes in the grey area created when teachers encounter informal learning. OILE, as we have defined it, illustrates the complex and dynamic nature of language learning, putting the teacher in a position where he or she must manage learners with very diverse experiences and knowledge of English, with skills that develop at different rates and in different directions, often in relation to content that the teacher barely knows. My own work both as a teacher and with teachers has highlighted some of these difficulties. Among the comments of teachers encountered, several reveal a certain ambivalence about OILE: teachers perceive students’ new contacts with English or increased interest in the language as positive, but also comment on student passivity, lack of attention to linguistic elements and their coming to rapid and often incorrect conclusions about English. One is tempted to wonder whether this ambivalence is hiding a desire to preserve or strengthen teachers’ role as educational authorities, if it is symptomatic of a lack of confidence in students’ ability to learn independently and outside of teachers’ area of influence, if it betrays a feeling

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that only one model of learning is effective or appropriate? Such questions are common in research on teachers’ cognitions, and the answers tend to be very singular and personal (Borg, 2006; Kitade, 2015; Murphy, 2000). Nonetheless, in many cases in my own work with teachers, I have found that they are striving to change their representations and postures, to be more consistent with their students’ long-term learning objectives and to reflect a more constructive and constructivist approach to teaching (Toffoli & Sockett, 2013). It is likely that it is the very complexity teachers face that can guide them in how best to manage these new situations that arise in their work. Geoff Sockett and I have listed a number of possible directions for teachers who wish to integrate current knowledge about OILE, particularly in Language Resource Centres (Toffoli & Sockett, 2015). Thorne and Reinhardt (2008) propose “bridging activities” that teachers can create, integrating perspectives from extramural online activities, in order to increase the possibilities for students in the classroom. But ultimately, it is the needs and interests of students themselves, emerging from their interactions with new online content, that may well point the way forward for teachers to forge a new role for themselves. Three potential paths seem promising for redefining teachers roles in the face of OILE: the first draws on Acker-Kessler’s (2015) research on teaching postures in the Language Resource Centre, the second on Toffoli and Speranza’s (2016) work on experimenting with autonomy in an “ordinary classroom”, on relationship and attachment (Toffoli, 2016) as well as on research by Dewaele and McIntyre (2014) on emotions and the third from Lund’s (2006) proposals on speech mediation. The three are complementary, corresponding to “teacher presences” of different3 types. The first is the pedagogical presence itself and includes the ten gestures identified by Acker-Kessler: identifying, verbalising, suggesting, orienting, listening, staying behind, questioning, stimulating, observing and pointing (2015). The second concerns socio-affective presence and the levers that can be activated in this way. The last one concerns the linguistic and cultural presence (the one least identified in Acker-Kessler’s work) 3 According

to the typology proposed by Acker-Kessler, teachers demonstrate pedagogical, ecological, socio-affective and linguistic and cultural presence.

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and involves the identification and mediation between different discourse contexts: the (traditional) classroom and online contexts (Lund, 2006).

1

Pedagogical Presence

Acker-Kessler (2015) encouraged teachers in Language Resource Centres to explain their pedagogical actions in detail, using video for selfobservation and self-report. She analysed nearly 1600 professional “acts”, which she labelled with some sixty verbs. More than half of the acts fell into twelve categories, ten of which qualify as what she calls “pedagogical presence”. These acts are characteristic of an often discreet presence, which implies watching over students and the space in which they work. Teachers “introduce” themselves, “stay back” or decide to intervene in different ways, first by “listening” and “questioning”. Depending on the needs thus diagnosed, they “explain, have others demonstrate, verbalise, point, guide or suggest”. Their objective, according to the researcher, is to stimulate students, without directing them, by assuming an attentive, yet not prescriptive, posture (Acker, 2017). Although this work was carried out in the context of specific Language Resource Centres, it seems to me that the pedagogical presence Acker identified constitutes the core function of a Language Resource Centre and of a certain type of teacher. These teachers do not place themselves in the teaching paradigm as repositories and transmitters of knowledge, but rather in the learning paradigm as aids to the development of autonomy, both within and without dedicated institutions. I am thinking in particular of Leni Dam (2013), or Lauren Speranza (Toffoli & Speranza, 2016), and the teacher whom Little et al. (2017) associate with an “empowering” class. Such monitoring and support can take place in any learning context where teachers relax their control over orientation, curriculum and content, putting the reins of learning into the learners’ hands. For me, this is a first level of “added value” that can be obtained through formal learning, as opposed to solitary learning or learning undertaken exclusively in an informal context (such as OILE).

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Socio-Emotional Presence

A second contribution that the formal learning context can make to OILE is through the socio-emotional presence of the teacher, in the sphere of relatedness. This presence can be harmful or stimulating, as the case study proposed by Toffoli (2016) and numerous testimonies from blogs and learning journals attest.4 As we have seen above (Chapter 2, Sect. 4.1), this presence may involve the teacher as a representative of the L2 or as an intermediary between the learner and the language. The teacher’s emotional attitudes (caring, tolerance, approval and other positive emotions) can be essential motivational factors that can influence both the initiation, direction, intensity or persistence of learning (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014). More explicitly, a teacher can also facilitate a certain motivational pathway for learners, by working with them individually to diagnose their attributions of L2 success and failure and help them to identify the right ways to reinforce the former and mitigate the latter (e.g., by recognising experiences of mastery, attributing successes to stable and internal factors and failures to unstable and internal or stable and external factors5 ). Referral to self-efficacy theory could see the teacher encourage the learner to attempt difficult but attainable goals and to help them to de-dramatise failures. It could encourage them, if the learner does not have appropriate experience themselves, to observe others and ensure that they reduce stress and control negative emotions such as anxiety and lack of self-confidence during activities in the classroom or language centre. This emotional support can be particularly important for learners who may have had prior bad learning or bad L2 experiences. For me as a teacher, privileging autonomy and combining explicit and implicit approaches to learning lead to a commitment to teaching, along the lines mentioned in Chapter 2, Sect. 1 above, where priority is given to the individual and to pedagogical differentiation. On the teaching side, the priority must be to establish the relationship, the link with the 4I

base this statement on a personal corpus of student blogs and journal entries collected between 2012 and 2016. 5 I am referring to the theory of attribution.

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learner, which will favour beyond any other factor their investment and involvement in formal and explicit learning. The fact that the perception “my teacher likes me” is the main motivating factor in the school environment (Ryan, 2014) leads me to want to reintroduce the word “love” into my research. Of course, it is a platonic, cordial and benevolent love. Jérôme Eneau (2005), in a review of the literature on interdependence and reciprocity in education, examines terms related to love that have been the subject of studies in education, drawing inspiration from sociology and moral philosophy (e.g., eros, philia, agapè, but also reliance and otherness). It seems to me that this is also a relevant research area for applied linguistics. Contemporary language learners in higher education need to feel loved and recognised for who they are, accepted in the full reality of themselves as persons and not only as university students. In a study by Pavelescu and Petri´c, unlike enjoyment, love was found to be the driving force in the learning process, creating effective coping mechanisms when there was a lack of enjoyment in certain classroom situations and motivating learners to invest greater effort into language learning in and out of the classroom. (Pavelescu & Petri´c, 2018, p. 73)

Relationship is thus a basis that allows the other essential parameters of the learning process (autonomy and competence) to exist within the learner’s system. In a formal framework, the commitment of the teacher, tutor and adviser can enable them to know each student individually: their concerns, their interests and their investments in their L2 development. This leads to the recognition of each individual as a unique and valuable individual and creates a climate of trust. In return, this trust and credibility allow the learner to ask questions about both learning methodology and the technical aspects of language and communication, while pursuing the path that their individual autonomy indicates. Thus, relationship helps to create autonomous learning trajectories (for which the learner assumes responsibility) and the development of competence. It seems to me that as teachers, there are many levers that we can avail ourselves of to create or strengthen this relationship factor and much to gain by activating it wisely and benevolently with regard to our students.

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Mediators of Speech

A final stimulating and rewarding role for teachers may be that of mediation between learners and the language and culture itself, as suggested by Lund (2006). The latter explains that the teacher of contemporary English must prepare students to handle several different types of discourse. Given the expansion of world Englishes and ever-growing new media to disseminate them, students’ exposure to diverse and different discourses of English is multifaceted. Lund considers that, historically, teaching has always served the institutional context by using standardised English and that the variants of English encountered in OCLL contexts, such as on the Internet, diverge significantly from this norm. Since each context determines a specific kind of discourse, effective communication involves crossing the boundaries between genres and perceiving connections between contexts. At the same time, the perception of these connections is rarely easy. As in any complex system, the borders themselves are open and unstable and the elements surrounding them are constantly moving in non-linear directions. The contemporary student is rarely equipped to recognise the gap between these types of discourses, let alone detain the keys to cross from one to another. This is where the expertise and support of a teacher can be very useful and where a new role of mediation could open up for twenty-first-century teachers and learners. The Companion Volume to the CEFR (Council of Europe, 2018) develops the competency of mediation extensively. Lund sees teachers’ roles as being extended in this direction to help learners understand, distinguish, negotiate and master the differences between these multiple registers and dialects, by “didactising” the “boundary objects”6 that these new language contexts provide. I agree with Lund when he suggests that if educators in the system do not adapt to this new role as mediators of language, context and meaning, education will lose ground and may fail to prepare learners for the opportunities and obligations of the emerging communication of the twenty-first century (Toffoli & Sockett, 2013); I would go even further, as this posture with regard to language and cultural space alone seems 6The

term is Lund’s.

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insufficient to me. Indeed, if we as teachers really take on the mission and ambition of contributing to the preparation of tomorrow’s professionals, we must inhabit the pedagogical, linguistic and socio-emotional spaces that this implies. This would mean changing our professional postures, by integrating the opportunities provided by students’ personal and extra-institutional orientations and activities into our personal cognitions and practices (Toffoli & Sockett, 2013; Toffoli & Speranza, 2016), but also taking a deep interest in our students’ identity, which requires us to also take an interest in their behaviour outside of university, to understand how this relationship (between the intramural and the extramural) allows them to progress and to question how best to achieve an efficient and pleasurable articulation between the two. It would also mean accepting not to control their learning, respecting their fundamental autonomy with regard to learning and accepting that they may not want to learn a language or not want to learn it with or through us. In this way, along with all the other elements mentioned so far, we may be able to become part of the landscape of the contemporary language learner in higher education, meeting their fundamental needs for autonomy, relatedness and competence.

4

Drawing Together Research on Language Learning from Both LRC and OILE Contexts—Conclusion to Part II

In Part II of this book, we have looked at the various contexts of contemporary language learners in higher education. We first looked at IWLP, in Chapter 4, and the different ways in which institutions of higher education have attempted to both establish and implement policy measures for L2 development. This involved examining the notions of L2s for special purposes, specialised language and content and language integrated learning (CLIL). The different set-ups specifically designed for L2 development were presented, with particular attention paid to Language Resource Centres, in Chapter 5, where the example of those at the University of Strasbourg was brought to the fore. Although each of the Strasbourg centres is unique,

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in many ways they are similar to other language centres, both nationally and internationally. Highlighting critical factors of their success or failure from a users’ point of view, therefore, seems not only relevant, but necessary. On the other hand, my findings indicate that, for the majority of learners, the perceived differences between the different pedagogical systems are minimal and do not really impact their L2 development. This observation could be taken to be particularly upsetting, insofar as it calls into question the very principle of complex instructional design seeking to influence learning through the inherent qualities of a learning centre. Our research here seems to indicate that the bulk of language development lies elsewhere. Therefore, in Chapter 6, I looked in some detail at the practices of contemporary language learners who, although being enrolled in higher education, rely very little on that for their L2 development. This included a large section on the Online Informal Learning of English. I presented various student practices and their effects on language development in different forms, arguing that this type of learning can be as — if not more — important and effective for contemporary language learners in higher education than its formal counterparts. Finally, in Chapter 7, I returned to formal learning to examine the specific role played by teachers and to consider, through them, possible integration of the formal and informal contexts. To conclude, I will more explicitly compare these two contexts of contemporary language learners in higher education in order to draw the most realistic possible outlines of the composite landscape on which language development occurs today (in France). Figure 1 shows the overlaps between the institutional context (the classroom or Language Resource Centre), which is far from static, but itself evolving, and OILE. This diagram distinguishes the areas of influence specific to each context. At the centre of the diagram is the contemporary language learner in higher education (CLLHE), an L2 user, in all the complexity of their psychological, physical and social self. The examples (identity, motivation, etc.) are indicative and not exhaustive. The boundaries around the contemporary language learner in higher education are permeable, insofar as each student is a social self, interacting in many worlds. In this case, the contexts of contact with their L2s are both formal (in class or in an LRC)

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Fig. 1 Contemporary language learners in higher education in the different contexts in which they encounter their L2

and informal (outside the institution or OCLL). Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) or technology-enhanced language learning can be used in both contexts, in the region that specifically overlaps with OCLL as informal digital language learning (IDLL7 ). IDLL is also included as a subset of OCLL. In order to make the distinction between intramural and extramural clear, the boundaries of formal learning appear to be continuous, even if there is a perceived overlap between CALL and IDLL. All these open systems interact, influence and are influenced by each other, as well as by the broader context of “life outside of L2 development”, which I have simply called “life context”. Each block or patch takes on different dimensions depending on the moment and the learner who crosses these borders. These contexts, even if they can be visually schematised, are not and do not necessarily relate to physical spaces, affirming with Leena Kuure (2011) that the concept of space(s) is more a question of choice than

7I

substitute this new acronym here, because this type of learning could, of course, concern any language accessible on the Internet and not just English.

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of geographical constraint. The use of mobile technologies for language learning would tend to support this (Pegrum, 2014). Although learning in Language Resource Centres and through IDLL both depend on the learner’s self-determination and on different ways of assuming autonomy, the following list, detailing these differences, can help to better conceptualise them in both formal and informal contexts (Table 1). The postures of the actors in the system, as well as the ownership and choice of resources, are the most explicit elements in this table. In general, the “constraint” factors are more present (although in reality often Table 1 Comparison between IDLL/LRC Posture of the contemporary language learner in higher education Teacher’s posture

Material resources

Educational resources

IDLL

LRC

L2 user, player, blogger, fan, etc.

L2 learner, consumer, social agent

Possible contact person (contact, friend, expert, fan, etc.) Belong to the user (home computer, tablet, smartphone, other mobile devices, etc.) Individual: chosen by the users themselves

Tutor, advisor, expert, resource, teacher, resource Are located in a dedicated centre (computer, specialised equipment)

Education

Absent

Assessment

Success (or not) on “real” tasks Reactions from real people

Feedback

Learner self-direction Language autonomy Status of learning Language acquisitions

Chosen Imposed By-product of other activity Incidental and fortuitous

Individualised: recommended by the teacher or teaching team, then chosen by the learner Discreet, assumed or not Organised (in general) by the teaching team Provided by the teacher or learning product Imposed Negotiated Stated objective of presence Object of awareness

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hidden, denied or unperceived) on the LRC side. This is one of the paradoxes of Language Resource Centers, which are intended to be open and learner-centred. Constraint is largely absent on the IDLL side, although the tools and resources themselves may be restrictive, but to a lesser extent. On the informal side, language acquisition is not an initial choice, but an incidental consequence. Involvement in various language activities is a choice of leisure and often entertainment. In this context, individuals do not need to be provided with equipment or resources: the material belongs to them and they are the ones who find their own content, according to taste and often by chance, or subject to complex GAFAM8 algorithms that they are not aware of. Progression from one activity to another does not follow a previously established path or programme, but advances according to the “organizing circumstances” (Spear & Mocker, 1984) encountered. Evaluation is implicit and consists in success at a task that one has defined for oneself (e.g., understanding a film, accessing the next level of a game or expressing an opinion on a forum). The feedback that allows these users to adjust their representations of the language comes neither from educational specialists nor from linguists, but from other speakers of the L2, experts who are unconsciously competent in their perception of communicative effectiveness, but who often have difficulty to explain what is at work, whether on a pedagogical or linguistic level. Informal Digital Language Learning does have many characteristics of self-directed learning, including its randomness and dependence on chance, coincidence or serendipity, as outlined above. Focusing on the emergence of regularities from a system which seems random reminds us that IDLL is a complex and dynamic system (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012). Indeed, even if contemporary language learners in higher education do not intend to learn language through their L2 leisure activities, the frequency of exposure to certain constructions, the desire to understand a plot, a sung message or an online tutorial, vlog or chat about any subject of interest (often accompanied by the resources or support of other L1 or L2 speakers) are, among others, factors that promote language development in these contexts. If Self-Access Centres (or any other formal educational system) 8The

“Big Five”: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft.

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simply focus on their own resources and instructional design, they may miss unexpected opportunities to help their students make significant progress in the use of the L2. The use of a Language Resource Centre can help contemporary language learners in higher education to set about their L2 leisure activities in a different way or to imagine using them as a means to language acquisition. This is precisely where attending a Language Resource Centre might be an important stop along the path of contemporary language learners in higher education, as learning “tried and true” techniques, modalities and postures to ensure continued learning is one of the goals of Language Resource Centres (Albero, 2010; Candas, 2009; Poteaux, 2010). This can help to lay the foundations for lifelong language learning. While I have argued here that the phenomena of IDLL have developed with the increasing availability of resources and interactions on the Internet over the past two decades, it is important to study how this will continue in an ever-changing technological context. We must also consider how tutors and teachers in more formal settings, including Language Resource Centres, can integrate this information into their support of L2 learning.

References Acker, P. (2017). Posture enseignante et accompagnement du développement de l’autonomie d’apprentissage en centre de ressources de langues. Alsic. Apprentissage des Langues et Systèmes d’Information et de Communication, 20 (3), https://doi.org/10.4000/alsic.3209. Acker, P., & Poteaux, N. (2011). Students’ representations of the teacher’s role in the language resource centre of the Faculty of Medicine of Strasbourg. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 5 (2), 165–175. https://doi. org/10.1080/17501229.2011.577532. Acker-Kessler, P. (2015). Posture professionnelle enseignante et développement de l’autonomie dans l’apprentissage des langues: Une approche située (Thèse de doctorat). Université de Strasbourg. http://www.theses.fr/2015STRAG056. Albero, B. (2010). De l’idéal au vécu: Le dispositif confronté à ses pratiques. In B. Albero & N. Poteaux (Éds.), Enjeux et dilemmes de l’autonomie: Une

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expérience d’autoformation à l’université (pp. 67–94). Paris: Les Éditions de la MSH. Bailly, S. (1995). La formation de conseillers. Mélanges Crapel, 22, 63–83 (Spécial Centre de Ressources). Bailly, S., Ciekanski, M., & Guély-Costa, E. (2013). Training language teachers to sustain self-directed language learning: An exploration of advisers’ experiences on a web-based open virtual learning environment. EUROCALL Review, 21(1). http://www.eurocall-languages.org/review/21_1/index.html# bailly. Borg, S. (2006). Teacher cognition and language education: Research and practice. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Candas, P. (2009). Analyse de pratiques d’étudiants dans un centre de ressources de langues: Indicateurs d’autonomie dans l’apprentissage (Thèse de doctorat). Université de Strasbourg. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00943151. Council of Europe. (2018). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment—Companion volume with new descriptors. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Dam, L. (2013). How to engage learners in authentic target language use— Examples from an autonomy classroom. In A. Burkert, L. Dam, & C. Ludwig (Eds.), The answer is autonomy: Issues in language teaching and learning (pp. 76–94). Canterbury, Kent: IATEFL. Dewaele, J.-M., & MacIntyre, P. D. (2014). The two faces of Janus? Anxiety and enjoyment in the foreign language classroom. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 2, 237–274. https://doi.org/10.14746/ssllt. 2014.4.2.5. Ellis, N. C. (2008). The dynamics of second language emergence: Cycles of language use, language change, and language acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 92(2), 232–249. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008. 00716.x. Eneau, J. (2005). La part d’autrui dans la formation de soi; Autonomie, Autoformation et Réciprocité en Contexte Organisationnel. Paris: L’Harmattan. Gremmo, M.-J. (2009). Conseiller en langues: Proposition d’analyse de deux décennies de théorie et de pratique(s) pour une approche comparée du tutorat en FOAD. In Université Charles-de-Gaulle-Lille 3 (Éd.), Dispositifs médiatisés et accompagnement-tutorat (pp. 173–190). http://halshs.archivesouvertes.fr/halshs-00619819.

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Guichon, N. (2011a). Apprentissage des langues médiatisé par les technologies: Contribution à l’épistémologie de la didactique des langues (HDR, Université du Havre). http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00806418. Guichon, N. (2011b). Former les futurs enseignants de langue en ligne par le biais de la rétrospection. Alsic. Apprentissage des Langues et Systèmes d’Information et de Communication, 14. https://doi.org/10.4000/alsic.1983. Kitade, K. (2015). Second language teacher development through CALL practice: The emergence of teachers’ agency. CALICO Journal, 32(3), 396–425. 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). Basingstoke, UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Little, D., Dam, L., & Legenhausen, L. (2017). Language learner autonomy: Theory, practice and research. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Lund, A. (2006). The multiple contexts of online language teaching. Language Teaching Research, 10 (2), 181–204. Murphy, E. (2000). Strangers in a strange land: Teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning French as a second or foreign language in online learning environments (Doctoral Thesis). Université Laval. http://www.ucs.mun.ca/ ~emurphy/strangers/toc.html. Pavelescu, L. M., & Petri´c, B. (2018). Love and enjoyment in context: Four case studies of adolescent EFL learners. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 8(1), 73. https://doi.org/10.14746/ssllt.2018.8.1.4. Pegrum, M. (2014). Mobile learning—Languages, literacies and cultures. https:// www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137309792. Poteaux, N. (2010). Histoire d’une innovation et trajectoires d’acteurs. In B. Albero & N. Poteaux (Éds.), Enjeux et dilemmes de l’autonomie: Une expérience d’autoformation à l’université (pp. 41–65). Paris: Les Éditions de la MSH. Raith, T., & Hegelheimer, V. (2010). Teacher development, TBLT and technology. In M. Thomas & H. Reinders (Eds.), Task-based language learning and teaching with technology (pp. 154–175). New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Ryan, R. M. (2014, octobre). Les besoins psychologiques pour l’apprentissage, la motivation et le bien-être: Recherche et pratique du point de vue de la théorie de l’autodétermination. Plénière présenté au 8° colloque sur l’autoformation, Strasbourg. http://colloque-autoformation.unistra.fr/lecolloque/videos/#c74215.

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Slaouti, D., & Motteram, G. (2006). Reconstructing practice. In P. Hubbard & M. Levy (Eds.), Teacher education in CALL (pp. 81–97). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sockett, G., & Toffoli, D. (2012). Beyond learner autonomy: A dynamic systems view of the informal learning of English in virtual online communities. ReCALL, 24 (2), 138–151. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344012000031. Spear, G. E., & Mocker, D. W. (1984). The organizing circumstance: Environmental determinants in self-directed learning. Adult Education Quarterly, 35 (1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001848184035001001. Sundqvist, P., & Sylvén, L. K. (2016). Extramural English in teaching and learning—From theory and research to practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137460479. Sundqvist, P., & Wikström, P. (2015). Out-of-school digital gameplay and inschool L2 English vocabulary outcomes. System, 51, 65–76. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.system.2015.04.001. Thorne, S. L., & Reinhardt, J. (2008). Bridging activities, new media literacies, and advanced foreign language proficiency. Calico Journal, 25 (3), 558–572. Toffoli, D. (2016). Attachment theory: Insights into student postures in autonomous language learning. In C. Gkonou, D. Tatzl, & S. Mercer (Eds.), New directions in language learning psychology. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Toffoli, D., & Sockett, G. (2013). University teachers’ perceptions of Online Informal Learning of English (OILE). Computer Assisted Language Learning, 28(1), 7–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2013.776970. Toffoli, D., & Sockett, G. (2015). L’apprentissage informel de l’anglais en ligne (AIAL), qu’est-ce que ça change pour les centres de langues? Recherche et Pratiques Pédagogiques en Langues de Spécialité. Cahiers de l’Apliut, XXXIV (1). https://apliut.revues.org/5055. Toffoli, D., & Speranza, L. (2016). L’autonomie comme facteur déterminant dans la réussite d’un enseignement Lansad en sciences historiques. Recherche et pratiques pédagogiques en langues de spécialité. Cahiers de l’Apliut, 35 (spécial 1). https://doi.org/10.4000/apliut.5505. Wong, L., & Benson, P. (2006). In-service CALL education: What happens after the course is over? In P. Hubbard & M. Levy (Eds.), Teacher education in CALL (pp. 251–264). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Part III University Language Learners in the 21st Century

8 A Portrait of Contemporary Language Learners in Higher Education

In this final chapter, I will attempt to draw all of the prior discussions together into a new portrait of contemporary language learners in higher education. I will suggest new ways forward, in both learning and teaching, instructional design and research, starting from the composite terrain described above (Fig. 1 in Chapter 7). My attempt at profiling contemporary language learners in higher education will combine reflections on learning in an informal context with the learning in an institutional context that is the subject of Chapters 4 and 5. The following section will identify the junctions between the two, in order to take a more accurate look at the mechanisms that lead to the language development of contemporary learners in higher education.

1

From Modelling to Profiling

It is difficult, in view of the plural, “polytheistic” (Block, 1999; Narcy-Combes & Narcy-Combes, 2000) and complex positioning that I have invoked from the beginning of this book to profile contemporary language learners in higher education succinctly. In many ways, this © The Author(s) 2020 D. Toffoli, Informal Learning and Institution-wide Language Provision, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37876-9_8

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learner is nothing other than a normal student, L2 user in both formal and informal learning contexts, autonomous individual, capable of making decisions about their own learning, including the decision to stop. Visualising this profile, while respecting its multiplicity, multidimensionality and the set of interactions involved, would ideally render explicit the progressive emergence of language competence. On the other hand, we are faced with different types of learners: perhaps it is not the context that leads to the one becoming a FASIL and the other a CTL (or learner more or less dependent on an LRC), but rather the self-determination of the individual (their own competence, autonomy and relatedness) linked to chance (serendipity, as mentioned in the prologue) as well as the influence of the environment and trial and error-type processes (see Candas, 2009). This situation leads some students to engage in totally independent journeys, in entirely informal contexts and media, while others choose trajectories marked by institutional constraints, and still others pursue journeys somewhere between these two extremes. From this perspective and for modelling purposes, I tried to superimpose the different diagrams proposed throughout this book, as each represents one of the dimensions related to contemporary language learners in higher education. The results were highly unsatisfactory and almost unreadable on 2D paper or screen. I am of course not the first to encounter the problem of how to effectively illustrate several interacting dimensions. In some ways, this is also the problem of multifactorial analyses or of any design referring to complex and dynamic systems. The “time” dimension is of paramount importance, as it is time that makes change visible. As mentioned in Chapter 4, Sect. 2, learning a language is a long process, which goes through phases where everything readjusts itself. Bertin and Rivens Mompean, like others, have found elegant ways to model change and successfully integrate temporality into their diagrams of learning set-ups and resource centres, by reproducing the basic model and adjusting its size along a linear axis (see Rivens Mompean, 2013, pp. 393 and 412). However, these are not models of people or of learning itself. With regard to learning, I have referred here to the time factor several times, but all the systemic elements involve change over time: centres, teachers, institutions and individual learners. Time is not the only factor that imposes additional dimensions. In the end, each

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new perspective, each turn of the kaleidoscope mentioned in the prologue, adds a dimension that I would like to be able to integrate into a final figure. The other difficulty of modelling is that it is highly personal. Its principle objective is to explain through simplification (Trestini, 2016), but, at the same time, each model reflects the personal vision of its author and as such always remains somewhat abstruse for other readers. Rather than produce a finalised and fixed visual, I propose here a global framework with figures and descriptions described throughout this book and which can be rearranged according to the context, evolving through time and space. One of the specificities of language is its evocative power, which I would like to take advantage of, to describe the complexity of the contemporary language learner in higher education. In the long run, modelling does not appear to be an appropriate device, as the work presented here does not make it possible to predict either trajectories or results precisely. Nevertheless, it can serve to raise awareness of the issues and factors at work, as well as to conceptualise the relationships and interactions between them. An attempt at illustration through metaphor has led me to the following visual (Fig. 1), which pictures a learner on their individual path through the multifaceted landscape of contemporary language learning. I have attempted to provide a terrain that could be conceived

Fig. 1 One (fictional) contemporary language learner’s trajectory through the complex terrain of L2 development

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of as mobile and a learner who undertakes different paths at different times, sometimes coming to dead-ends, getting lost or looping back on their own previous experiences. In the title of this section, I indicate a desire to “profile” contemporary language learners in higher education. But criminological profiling, which targets the creation of a unique profile which would allow the identification of a specific individual, is the opposite of my own approach: in my case, I am aiming to create a “generic” user profile of fictitious L2 users, based on research data, in much the way early work on the Good Language Learner (Rubin, 1975; Stern, 1975) attempted to do. As Larsen-Freeman (2018) has indicated, such a composite profile will always be unsatisfactory because it does not correspond to any real person. As such, my final objective here will be to clarify, via a profile and not a model, the links between the preceding chapters: the selfdetermination of contemporary language learners in higher education and their progression through the contexts which bring them into contact with the L2 as a complex and dynamic system. This profile is a composite, based on data collected in the 2014 survey (Toffoli, 2015; Toffoli, El Khatib, Fierro-Porto, & Hamade, 2014) and supplemented by data from the various OILE studies (Toffoli & Perrot, 2017; Toffoli & Sockett, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2015; Toffoli & Speranza, 2016). This approach is not at all the one advocated by Larsen-Freeman for whom “research must focus on the individual learner in relation to social ecology” (Larsen-Freeman, 2018, p. 63). On the other hand, it does allow for some distance, giving substance without over-personalising, in order to better conceptualise a set of interacting factors. If, according to Morin (2005), “one of the axioms of complexity is the impossibility, even in theory, of omniscience”, trying to bring together scattered elements and give them shape remains an essential step if we want to overcome and transcend simple eclecticism.

2

Cllohé

The contemporary language learner I have chosen to profile is a 21-yearold French student enrolled in Life Sciences and taking her compulsory English course in an LRC. French is her mother tongue, and she has

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studied both English and German at school. She did not choose her language at university, because English is compulsory, but beyond that consideration, she is committed to it because she sees it as useful in her studies and for her future profession. In addition, she states that she has personal motivation for English. Neither the perceived facility of the language nor any family reason influenced her decision to study it. Our composite subject is enrolled in one English course. She comes to class assiduously, primarily in order to be able to validate her credits and because attendance is mandatory (or perceived as such), but also because she loves the language and considers it important for her professional future. She says she would take more English classes if she had the time. Cllohé (to name the contemporary language learner in higher education: CLLHE) believes that learning a language, attending class and reaching a certain level (or language certification) for her degree are mandatory. While learning a language is indeed compulsory, attendance is less so and reaching a certain level and certification are not. Cllohé must indeed take a test for certification, but she is not required to pass it to succeed in her course (and therefore obtain her diploma). She does not know whether there is an official language policy at the university or not. Cllohé believes she knows her CEFR level and estimates it somewhere between B1 and B2. She considers herself rather good in English. As we have seen in Chapter 5, Sect. 2, she finds that her current English course has allowed her to progress that it is enjoyable, interesting, makes her want to continue learning and lives up to her expectations. On the other hand, it has not particularly encouraged her to modify her opinion of the English language, nor to prepare a trip (she has no international mobility in sight). Her course did not really allow her to get to know the culture of the language, meet other people or help with her other courses. What she likes most about her language courses are the ease of access, the atmosphere, the advice and support of the teachers, the diversity of resources, the learning environment and above all the conversation workshops. She is less sensitive to the relevance and quantity of the resources, the time slots, the help provided by student monitors, although she does also find these aspects important. The pedagogical follow-up and tandem workshops leave her indifferent, even unsatisfied. She feels that

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her teacher has a good level of English, even if it is not their mother tongue and despite the fact that they do not speak it exclusively in class. She appreciates the fact that her teacher proposes work in sub-groups, involves students in classwork, is often available for consultation and also provides various activities related to her field of study and allows translation when necessary. From Cllohé’s point of view, her learning focuses on themes that she chooses herself and that are primarily those of her discipline and current events. Her learning is therefore rarely oriented towards the cultural aspects of the foreign language and almost never towards the content of a textbook. At the language centre, she works mainly on reading and listening and less on writing. Explicit work on speaking (presentation or interaction) is also rather rare. For Cllohé, learning a foreign language is first and foremost about being able to communicate, using good vocabulary and understanding everything she hears. On the other hand, it is much less about mastery of grammar, knowledge of culture or understanding what she reads. The notion of accent in L2 is also of no importance to her. Among the activities that help her progress most in English (whether in class or outside), watching videos (films, series or others) comes first. Reading articles and speaking with other students or with the teacher are also perceived as useful. On the other hand, she considers the use of language learning platforms, textbooks and other books to be ineffective in advancing her English. She prefers to manage her own learning as it allows her to progress according to her own skills, to choose the themes she likes and to better manage her time. We can already see the other side of Cllohé: this person is very autonomous in managing her activities in English, especially those outside the language class. Cllohé does spend time in contact with English almost every day, outside her university context. She listens to a lot of music in English and, depending on the moment, pays more or less attention to the lyrics, sometimes by getting a written version online to understand them well (Toffoli & Sockett, 2014). She sometimes learns the lyrics by heart, to sing along while listening (Sockett & Toffoli, 2012). She watches series, mostly American ones, several times a week. She finds it more and more pleasant to watch the original version, with

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the voices of the actors on the screen. If she is tired or if passages are difficult, she might use French subtitles rather than English captions, which she prefers most of the time (Kusyk, 2017; Toffoli & Perrot, 2017; Toffoli & Sockett, 2010; Vanderplank, 2016). Regularly, whether for her studies or for some other purpose, her Internet searches lead to written or audio-visual documents in English (Toffoli & Sockett, 2010, 2015). On her social networks, she has a number of English-speaking friends whose posts she reads and with whom she sometimes exchanges a few likes or comments. She has not ventured too far into online multiplayer games, but she has a few friends who have told her about it with enthusiasm. One of her friends writes fan fiction for a series he loves, and Cllohé may think about trying that one of these days. English has become a part of her daily life, as it has for most of her friends.

3

A Complex and Composite Profile

Cllohé’s profile reveals traces of most of the factors that I have explored throughout this book, both in the context of complex and dynamic systems and in that of self-determination, reflecting, through them, different theories of language acquisition. Although these have not been the focus of this book, we nevertheless find some traces of these theories, to which I return in this conclusion. Metaphorically, complex and dynamic systems theory allows us to consider language development not as the result of a few isolated variables, but rather as a cloud of perpetually changing vapour, permuting in both size and consistency, sometimes producing droplets. In this book, we have analysed some of these droplets, in the hope of understanding more about the cloud. Pragmatically, Cllohé’s portrait (previous section) also reflects the diversity of language learning contexts in the current era. Cllohé takes English for granted in many areas, both in and out of her classroom (or Language Resource Centre). She is involved in small communities of practice (whether it is a few friends on a social network, in her immediate classroom environment, in her degree programme or even friends and acquaintances beyond the university), and she is also a consumer of audio-visual and written media, most of the time online. Cllohé’s

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brain unconsciously and implicitly processes billions of bits of information related to the acquisition of her L2. All these elements push the boundaries of her language skills, by creating a specific language system: her own interlanguage. According to Ellis, “Language systems emerge, both diachronically and ontogenetically, from the statistical abstraction of patterns latent within and across form and function in language usage” (Ellis, 2015, p. 3). This means that the brain processes all this language-type information (morpho, phono, lexico, grapho, semantico, grammato, etc. — logic) according to criteria of salience, novelty and frequency to make almost instant choices of understanding or production. Linguistic researchers, neurologists, psycho-motricians, didacticians are beginning to be able to describe these acquisition phenomena more and more precisely. Depending on common starting points (e.g. a shared L1) or trajectories followed (scholastic curricula) or significant attractor states encountered (L1 or time spent learning), certain aspects of this acquisition can even be predicted (order of integration, estimated duration, etc.). On the other hand, the unpredictability of the precise conjunction of all these factors, compounded by mood, opportunities of the moment and so on, renders the evolution of each learner’s interlanguage largely idiosyncratic. For Cllohé, some of these acquisitional elements come from her informal environment, others from her mandatory language courses. One is no better than the other, and, for most learners, both are decisive and essential: “the complex adaptive system of interactions within AND across form and function is far richer than that emergent from implicit or explicit learning alone” (Ellis, 2015, p. 3). For contemporary language learners in higher education, promoting both implicit acquisition in conjunction with explicit learning (in a formal context) could be one of the important tasks of language teachers. Supporting the necessary complementarity of explicit and implicit approaches for optimal L2 ownership implies engaging in L2 leisure activities to ensure the necessary frequency effects and addressing questions and explanations that can help to raise awareness of linguistic subtleties. Bridges can certainly be found between academic (or professional) obligations and the extensive — even massive — personal practices of an

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L2 in an informal context, which alone can guarantee the tens of thousands of hours of exposure to the language necessary to integrate uses (Ellis, 2002). The simple quantitative aspect of these practices partially guarantees the development of the language aspect of the competence factor. The acceptance and possible encouragement of such practices by a teacher could reinforce their effects. But for her language skills to grow significantly, Cllohé must identify salient and relevant language phenomena, semantic complexity, morphophonological regularity, syntactic categories, locutory intentionality, etc. (Ellis, 2002). While some learners, such as FASILs, have developed these skills to a high level without assistance (Cole, 2015), others require support to notice those elements of language that deserve special attention or require reflection. Being able to turn to an expert who responds appropriately to their questions, who is present “at the point of need”,1 can be an invaluable resource for many learners. The classroom or Language Resource Centre teacher can take on this mission. Depending on the individual, assistance with other learning skills (e.g. technical and strategic) will also be beneficial. Candas (2009) points out the guidance and support needs of many Language Resource Centre students on these aspects, before they can become truly autonomous in their language learning. Jérôme Eneau (2005) refers to this “part of the other in education of the self ”. Like any individual who is involved in any human endeavour,contemporary language learners in higher education must feel responsible for their own choices, investment and commitment on this path. They must be assumed to be fully agent, initiating and endorsing their own autonomous choices, including those of stopping or abandoning an activity. This has implications for both teachers and institutional policy makers, who should perhaps let go of control over many decisions and allow learners to define their own future.

1 Marie

Wilson Nelson’s (1990) book of this title explains that until a learner has expressed a need, asked a question, she will not hear the answer and will not be ready to process the information provided. Differentiated pedagogy is therefore a necessity, because the information given to a group will only be learned by those who already had the underlying questions in mind.

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In this book, “profiling” contemporary language learners in higher education has produced what I hope is an accessible picture of the complexity of language learners today. The global framework of complex and dynamic systems makes it possible to integrate the many parameters that make up contemporary language learners in higher education. This framework has proven essential to understanding both the difficulties of apprehending these learners and their learning (their complexity), as well as the elusive aspect of this object of study, by its dynamic nature. I have not dwelt on the theories of L2 acquisition, retaining only a few essential elements from cognitivist and constructivist theories. This is due to the nature of my questions, which are more about learning and less about language. As such, the psychological framework of self-determination has allowed me to link many of the concerns of learning that go beyond language learning alone, but that have nevertheless been the subject of significant research in our discipline. While initially seeking to model, profiling seemed to be a more adequate method to deal with questions of human development and more accessible to readers. As regards the theoretical background mentioned above, profiling contemporary language learners in higher education has involved gaining a detailed understanding of the contexts of their learning: IWLP contexts at university, contexts involving specific teaching and learning designs, including Language Resource Centres and informal online contexts, constituted by each learner individually. Although Cllohé is French-speaking and interested in learning English in France, she could just as easily have another mother tongue and direct her learning towards another L22 or other L2s.

2 As

the theses cited in Chapter 6, Sect. 1 suggest.

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References Block, D. (1999). Who framed SLA research? Problem framing and metaphoric accounts of the SLA research process. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (pp. 135–148). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Candas, P. (2009). Analyse de pratiques d’étudiants dans un centre de ressources de langues: Indicateurs d’autonomie dans l’apprentissage (Thèse de doctorat). Université de Strasbourg. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00943151. Cole, J. (2015). Foreign language learning in the age of the internet: A comparison of informal acquirers and traditional classroom learners in central Brazil (Doctoral thesis). University of Oxford, Oxford. Ellis, N. C. (2002). Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24 (2), 143–188. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0272263102002024. Ellis, N. C. (2015). Implicit AND explicit learning: Their dynamic interface and complexity. In P. Rebuschat (Ed.), Implicit and explicit learning of languages (pp. 3–23). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Eneau, J. (2005). La part d’autrui dans la formation de soi; Autonomie, Autoformation et Réciprocité en Contexte Organisationnel. Paris: L’Harmattan. Kusyk, M. (2017). Les dynamiques du développement de l’anglais au travers d’activités informelles en ligne: Une étude exploratoire auprès d’étudiants français et allemands (Thèse de doctorat). Pädagogische Hochschule Karlsruhe and Université de Strasbourg. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2018). Looking ahead: Future directions in, and future research into, second language acquisition. Foreign Language Annals, 51(1), 55–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12314. Morin, E. (2005). Introduction à la pensée complexe. Paris: Seuil. Narcy-Combes, J.-P., & Narcy-Combes, M.-F. (2000). Épistémologie et méthodologie de la recherche dans le secteur LANSAD: Qu’apporterait une harmonisation des pratiques? ASp. la revue du GERAS, 27–30, 243–251. https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.2136. Rivens Mompean, A. (2013). Le Centre de Ressources en Langues: Vers la modélisation du dispositif d’apprentissage. Lille: Éditions du Septentrion. http:// www.septentrion.com/en/livre/?GCOI=27574100883330.

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Appendix: 2014 Questionnaire

APPRENTISSAGE DE LANGUES ETRANGÈRES A L'UNIVERSITÉ DE STRASBOURG (http://cpc.cx/9qQ) Ce questionnaire est strictement anonyme. L'enregistrement de vos réponses ne contient aucune information d'identification sur vous Toutes les réponses seront rassemblées. Seuls les résultats globaux seront connus. Il y a 34 questions dans ce questionnaire. MON PROFIL 1. Âge : _______ ans. 2. Sexe : F M 3. Nationalité : ______________________. 5. Composante :____________________________________________________________________________. 6. Discipline : ______________________________________________________________________________.

4. Année d’études :

Licence 1 Licence 2 Licence 3

Master 1 Master 2 Doctorat

LES LANGUES QUE JE CONNAIS 7. Quelle est ma langue maternelle ? (y compris les dialectes) __________________________________________________. 8. Quelle(s) langue(s) ai-je apprise(s) pendant mon cursus scolaire à part ma langue maternelle ? _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________. 9. Pendant mon cursus scolaire, dans quelle (s) langue(s) était donné l'enseignement des matières autres que les langues vivantes ? ________________________________. MON APPRENTISSAGE DES LANGUES À L'UNIVERSITÉ DE STRASBOURG 10. Langue (s) étudiée(s) dans le cadre de mes études à l'Université de Strasbourg : _____________________________________________________________________________________. 11. J'ai choisi cette/ces langue (s) car c'est obligatoire par défaut, (celle que je souhaitais apprendre n’est pas proposée)

parce que je l'ai déjà étudiée parce que c'est utile dans le cadre de mes études car elle me sera utile au niveau professionnel

12. Ce semestre, je suis inscrit(e) dans un enseignement de langue :

Oui

pour raison(s) familiale(s) par motivation personnelle pour la facilité/difficulté de la langue

Laquelle ? _______________________________________________________.

Non

13. Le CECRL* comporte six niveaux. Mon niveau pour la langue vivante 1 que j'étudie actuellement est (*CECRL : Cadre Européen Commun de Référence pour les Langues)

A1

A2

B1

B2

C1

C2

Je ne le connais pas

14. Concernant les langues étrangères que j'étudie actuellement, je me considère

Langue vivante (Indiquer la langue)

Nul

Pas très bon

Mettez une croix. Plutôt bon

Bon

Très bon

1. 2. 3. 4.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 D. Toffoli, Informal Learning and Institution-wide Language Provision, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37876-9

199

200

Appendix: 2014 Questionnaire

15. Est-ce que je connais/fréquente les structures institutionnelles suivantes ? Structure

je n'en ai jamais entendu parler.

j'en ai entendu parler.

j'y suis allé une fois

j'y vais fréquemment

j'y suis des cours

CRL (Centres de Ressources de Langues) CRAL (Centre de Ressources et d'Apprentissage des Langues) SPIRAL (Service Pédagogique Interuniversitaire de Ressources pour l’Apprentissage en Langues) École Européenne des Langues et des Cultures IIEF (Institut International d'Etudes Françaises) Département de langue à la Faculté des langues et cultures étrangères CAREL (Centre d'Apprentissages et de Ressources pour une Education aux langues) de l'ESPE Cours en LEA (Langues Étrangères Appliquées) 16. À l'Université de Strasbourg

17. Ce dernier semestre, l'apprentissage de ma première langue au sein de l'Université : Vrai

Faux

Je ne sais pas

Pas du tout

je dois atteindre un certain niveau de langue avant la fin de mon diplôme actuel on exige une certification en langue (TOEIC, CLES, etc.) pour l'obtention de certains diplômes on impose l'apprentissage d'une langue étrangère tout au long des études l’assiduité en cours de langues est obligatoire

Un peu

Assez

Beaucoup

m'a permis de progresser en langue a été agréable a été intéressant m'a aidé pour d'autres cours

il existe une politique des langues

m'a permis de préparer un voyage Oui 18. Mon apprentissage en langue

Non

Non, mais j'aimerais bien

Je ne sais pas

a changé l'image que j'avais de la langue m'a donné envie de continuer à l’apprendre a été à la hauteur de mes attentes

porte sur les thématiques de ma discipline

m'a aidé à rencontrer des personnes avec des intérêts en commun m'a permis de connaître la culture de la langue

porte sur les thématiques d'actualité suit le contenu d'un manuel contient des activités personnalisées répondant à mes propres besoins porte sur des thématiques choisies par les étudiants eux-mêmes porte sur différents aspects culturels de la langue que j'apprends

20. Les activités qui m’aident le plus à apprendre sont

21. J'aimerais faire d'autres activités.

la lecture d'articles (imprimés ou en ligne) le visionnage de vidéos les ateliers de conversation l'utilisation de plateformes d'apprentissage (Moodle, Netvibes, Tell me more…) les échanges avec d'autres étudiants les échanges avec l'enseignant l'utilisation de manuels / livres de langue Autre: _________________________________.

Oui Exemple : _________________________________________________. Non

CE QUE JE PENSE DE MON APPRENTISSAGE DES LANGUES À L'UNIVERSITÉ DE STRASBOURG 23. Dans mon apprentissage des langues

22. Mon enseignant/tuteur

Oui

Non

Non, mais j'aimerais bien

Je ne sais pas

a un bon niveau de langue a comme langue maternelle la langue qu'il m'enseigne a la même langue maternelle que moi parle exclusivement la langue qu'il m'enseigne en cours traduit les mots difficiles utilise une autre langue pour expliquer propose du travail en sous-groupes varie ses activités fait participer les étudiants en cours me propose des activités de langue en rapport avec ma discipline demande mon avis sur le contenu du cours (thématiques, déroulement, modalités de travail) est souvent disponible

J’apprécie

Je n’apprécie pas

l'ambiance les plages horaires la facilité d'accès la pertinence des outils pour mon apprentissage de langue la diversité des outils l’espace le confort du lieu le fait qu'il y a assez de matériels pour tout le monde l'aide des moniteurs le conseil des enseignants l’accompagnement des enseignants le suivi pédagogique l'échange avec d'autres étudiants y trouver les réponses à mes questions participer aux ateliers de conversation participer aux tandems Autre :

24. Est-ce que je vais assidument en cours / en atelier / au centre de langue ?

25. Si oui, j’y vais parce que c'est obligatoire cela m'aide à valider mon UE de langue cela m'aide à préparer une certification (TOEIC, DALF, CLES, TEOU,TRKI, TestDaF, TOPIK, etc.) c'est important pour mon avenir professionnel le cours est intéressant

Oui

cela m'aide dans d'autres cours j'aime bien la langue que j'apprends j'aime bien l'enseignant je peux parler en langue étrangère avec d'autres étudiants les horaires me conviennent Autre : _______________________________________________.

Non

Appendix: 2014 Questionnaire

26. Si non, je n’y vais pas parce que je n'en ai pas besoin pour valider mon UE de langue Je n’ai pas eu la possibilité de choisir une langue que j'aime ce n 'est pas utile pour mes autres cours ce n'est pas utile pour mon parcours professionnel les outils au Centre ne sont pas intéressants les horaires ne me conviennent pas je n'aime pas l'enseignant / le tuteur cela ne m'apporte rien.

201

27. Je suivrais plus d'heures de langue si : j'étais au courant de son offre les horaires d'ouverture-fermeture étaient plus flexibles j'avais le temps les outils étaient plus appropriés il y avait un enseignant prêt à m'aider dans la salle il y a avait plus de moniteurs j’avais la possibilité de fréquenter un centre de langues en libre accès

Autre: ________________________________.

CE QUE JE PENSE DE MON APPRENTISSAGE DES LANGUES

28. Avoir appris une langue c'est surtout (Seulement deux réponses possibles) parler sans accent connaître la culture de la langue apprise comprendre tout ce qu'on lit

maîtriser la grammaire avoir un vocabulaire vaste pouvoir communiquer

29. Quand j'apprends une langue, je préfère gérer mon propre apprentissage: (Par exemple, je gère le moment où j'étudie la langue, les manières dont je le fais, les activités qui m'aideront à apprendre, etc.) 30. Si oui, parce que cela m'aide à avancer selon mes propres facilités et compétences 31. Si non, parce que j'ai besoin d'encadrement j'ai besoin d'orientation je préfère un cours magistral

je gère mieux mon temps je travaille des thématiques qui me plaisent

je ne dispose pas des outils nécessaires pour apprendre la langue je suis peu motivé

32. J’envisage une mobilité internationale au cours de mes études universitaires Oui Non Je suis actuellement en mobilité internationale Je l’ai déjà fait Je ne sais pas 34. Pour m'aider à mieux apprendre une langue étrangère, je suggère

comprendre tout ce qu'on entend Autre: ________________________________________.

Oui

Non

c'est plus amusant Autre: ________________________________________.

je n'ai pas le temps cela ne m'aide pas vraiment à progresser Autre: ________________________________________.

33. J’ai eu/j’aimerais avoir une préparation spécifique en langue pour cette mobilité ? Oui Non

Merci de votre participation ! Ce questionnaire est anonyme. Si vous êtes d'accord pour répondre à d'autres questions sur votre apprentissage des langues à l'Université de Strasbourg, merci de nous laisser votre adresse mail : ________________________________________________________.

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225

Index

168–171, 173, 176, 186, 190, 193

A

Ability 26, 28, 33–35, 38, 40, 41, 51, 145, 167 Acquisition xiv–xvi, 5, 6, 13, 15–17, 24, 29, 37, 40, 50, 52, 67, 81, 87, 88, 125, 128–131, 134, 135, 137, 138, 141, 145, 148–151, 153, 154, 177, 178, 191, 192, 194 Agency xv, 26–28, 32, 36, 52–54 Applied linguistics x, xiv, xvii, 6, 9, 12, 15, 25, 32, 37, 47, 54, 68, 90, 91, 111, 127, 131, 171 Attachment xiv, xv, 23, 38, 46–48, 50–52, 54, 168 Autonomy xv, 10, 23, 25–32, 36–38, 40–48, 50–54, 65, 68, 84, 91, 99, 103, 107, 111, 120, 121, 125, 131, 150, 164,

C

Certification 81, 82, 189 Classroom-Trained Learners (CTL) 131, 137, 143, 154, 186 Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) 42, 88, 153 Collocation 17 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) xi, 32, 42, 53, 81, 82, 152, 172, 189 Competence 10, 23, 25, 27, 29–34, 38–43, 54, 67, 68, 91, 129, 171–173, 186, 193 Complex Dynamic System (CDS) 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 23, 54, 75,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 D. Toffoli, Informal Learning and Institution-wide Language Provision, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37876-9

227

228

Index

150, 163, 172, 177, 186, 188, 191, 194 Contemporary Language Learner(s) in Higher Education (CLLHE) xvii, 14, 15, 19, 25–28, 31–40, 42–46, 49, 52, 54, 55, 63, 69, 75, 92, 97, 106, 112, 119, 126, 131, 132, 149, 150, 154, 164, 171, 173–178, 185–189, 192–194 Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) 85–89, 92, 103, 121, 173 CREED 17, 18

D

Development x, xvi, xvii, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13–15, 17, 18, 23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 34, 37, 46, 47, 51–54, 67, 75, 103–105, 121, 128, 129, 131, 135, 136, 141, 143–145, 150, 151, 153, 154, 163, 164, 169, 171, 173, 174, 177, 185, 187, 191, 193 Digital literacy 10, 33, 39, 40, 43, 54, 65, 68 Digital technology 40, 42, 128 Discipline x, xiv, xvii, 7, 27, 30, 32, 77–81, 83, 84, 88–92, 106, 113, 115, 116, 118, 121, 132, 144, 190, 194

E

Emergence 6, 10–13, 18, 79, 91, 100, 163, 177, 186 Emotion(s) 34, 35, 45–47, 51, 92, 144, 168, 170

English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) 85, 103, 121 English for Special Purposes (ESP) 78, 79 F

Factor analysis 111 Feeling(s) 33, 35, 36, 45, 50, 51, 167 Film(s) 128, 130, 133, 135, 137, 140, 151, 152, 177, 190 Fully Autonomous Self-Instructed Learners (FASIL) 107, 131, 138, 143, 154, 186, 193 G

Game(s) xii, 8, 64, 65, 128, 130, 151–153, 177, 191 Grammar 8, 15–17, 65, 67, 90, 106, 138, 143, 190 H

Higher Education (HE) 2, 7, 8, 29, 71, 76, 77, 79, 83, 92, 102, 103, 105–107, 121, 136, 163, 165, 173, 174 I

Identity xii, 32, 42, 68, 76, 91, 142, 143, 149, 153, 173, 174 Informal Digital Learning of English (IDLE) 102, 131, 137 Informal learning 49, 67, 125–128, 167, 186 Institution-Wide Language Provision (IWLP) xiv, 76–81, 83, 84,

Index

89–92, 99, 105, 107, 109, 113, 114, 121, 129, 132, 138, 173, 194 Instructional design 13 Interlanguage 18, 65, 192 Internet 1, 7, 30, 66, 68, 98, 130, 134, 137, 147, 166, 172, 175, 178, 191 IWLP 7, 108

L

L1 (First language or Mother tongue) xi, 10, 15, 17, 18, 29, 87, 116, 177, 192 L2 (Second, other or foreign language) x, xiv–xvii, 6, 7, 9–13, 15–18, 23, 25, 28, 30, 31, 34, 37, 38, 40–44, 46, 49–54, 65, 68, 78–80, 85, 87, 90, 92, 116, 118, 122, 125, 127, 129, 131, 134, 135, 141–144, 146, 149, 150, 153, 154, 170, 171, 174, 176–178, 186, 188, 190, 192–194 Language autonomy 30, 31, 40, 43, 176 Language didactics x, 6, 13, 28, 33, 37, 40, 47, 51, 81 Language for Special Purposes (LSP) 79, 80, 88 Language Resource Centre (LRC) 28, 30, 47, 49, 52, 69, 98, 99, 102–104, 108, 114, 115, 118, 120, 121, 129, 154, 168, 169, 173, 174, 176–178, 186, 188, 191, 193, 194

229

Learner autonomy 28–31, 33, 37, 39, 47, 49, 51, 52, 54, 68, 86, 98, 102 Learning process xiii, 12, 33, 36, 38, 50, 171 Level xii, 41, 42, 65, 67, 77, 81–84, 90, 91, 100, 108, 109, 112, 116, 119, 134, 135, 147, 148, 152, 153, 169, 177, 189, 190, 193 Lexicon 8, 15, 17, 67, 78, 79, 136, 138, 143, 145, 190 Lifelong Learning 29, 105, 121, 125, 150, 178 Listening 64, 66, 67, 82, 134, 190 M

Massification 29, 89 Model(s) xiv, xv, 5, 15, 16, 18, 30, 46, 48, 49, 69, 97, 98, 168, 186–188, 194 Motivation xii, xiv, xv, 23–25, 27, 33–36, 51, 54, 86, 111, 119, 121, 143, 166, 170, 174, 189 Multilingual(ism) xiii, 64, 85 Music 64, 65, 129, 130, 132–136, 140, 142–149, 151–153, 190 N

Native speaker(s) 7, 10, 11, 89, 116, 118, 132, 136, 138, 147 O

Online Informal Language Learning (OILL) 25, 42, 125, 127, 129 Online Informal Learning of English (OILE) 105, 107, 121,

230

Index

129–136, 138–146, 150, 151, 154, 164–170, 174, 188 Out of Classroom Language Learning (OCLL) 7, 121, 125, 127–129, 131, 150, 154, 172, 175

P

Plurilingual(ism) 10, 64, 65, 67, 81 Profile 15, 32, 37, 105, 118, 185, 186, 188, 191 Pronunciation 8, 138–141, 143, 145, 149, 166

R

Reading 66, 82, 87, 190 Relatedness 23, 25, 27, 32, 38, 45, 46, 52–54, 68, 91, 170, 173, 186 Relationship(s) 11, 24, 25, 30, 31, 43, 45, 46, 48, 50–52, 54, 68, 86, 90, 103, 126, 164, 168, 170, 171, 173, 187

Self-access 37, 92, 97–100, 104, 120, 121 Self-Access Centre 28, 30, 100, 121, 177 Self-determination xiv, xv, 10, 24, 25, 27, 33, 42, 45, 54, 55, 68, 69, 91, 108, 109, 176, 186, 188, 191, 194 Self-Determination Theory (SDT) xv, 23–28, 30–34, 45, 46, 52, 55 Self-efficacy xv, 28, 33–36, 40, 43, 45, 54, 65, 68, 170 Series 8, 10, 48, 65, 66, 128–130, 132–137, 139, 142, 148, 149, 151–153, 166, 190, 191 Sociocognitive theory 26, 34 Song(s) 65, 128, 133–135, 137, 142, 144, 145, 147–152 Speaking 64, 67, 133, 190 Strategies 28, 37, 42, 67, 86, 89, 129, 136, 141–144, 146, 147

U

University student(s) 31, 47, 171

S

V

School xii, xiii, 7, 30, 82, 84, 126, 128, 129, 131, 137, 139, 154, 171, 189 Secondary school (teachers) 89, 90 Secondary skills 88 Second Language Acquisition (SLA) xv, 6, 28, 34

Video 67, 134, 140, 146, 151, 152, 169, 190 Vocabulary 65, 134–138, 145, 167

W

Writing 67, 68, 82, 132, 191