Written by: Rhonwen Bowen, Annika-Lantz Andersson and Sylvi Vigmo
Abstract: This paper presents a case study in which the implications of using social media as part of English as a second language learning are explored. More specifically two principle questions are embraced: how does the institutional setting of a shared blog co-determine the framing of the activity by the students? And what does this framing of the activity imply for the textual interaction and linguistic repertoires that the students use? The empirical material comprise of community documentation of a blog that was created in an international collaboration between two upper secondary classes in Sweden and Thailand. The study is grounded in a sociocultural perspective and the analysis of the blog postings was informed using the conceptual distinctions of frame analysis. The findings show that the students’ linguistic repertoires draw on both the language that is taught in school with rather cultured formulations corresponding to their imagined expectations of fulfilling a school task, but also to their out-of-school codemixing vernacular and jargon which are prevalent in social media. The challenge for education is how to embrace social networking sites without diminishing students’ digital vernacular yet encourage and inspire their parlance in ways that enhance second language learning that may be less present in their digital vernacular but useful in other communicative contexts.
Keywords: English as second language learning, Social networking sites, Blog, frame analysis, linguistic repertoire, digital vernacular