Adapting Social and New
Media Contexts for L2 Writing
Practice
Greg Kessler
Ohio University
Foundational Assumption
Pedagogical Shift
-Reconceptualization of
Classroom practices
Storch, N. (2005).
-New Purpose: To
Participate
Kessler, G. (2012)
Other Realities
Changing nature of how we
communicate, including contexts,
tools and purposes.
Emergence of Netspeak or
Textspeak (Crystal, 2001; 2008)
Why Use Social & New Media
& Associated Digital Artifacts
to Construct Collaborative
Learning Materials and
Practices?
• Social and New Media are Ubiquitous in Our
Lives Today
• The artifacts of Social and New Media are Rich
and Compelling
• Social and New Media Promote Collaborative
and Co-Constructive Participatory Culture
Kessler, G. (2013)
Social and New Media Cultivate
Contexts and Artifacts that are:
Linguistically Rich
Authentic
Diverse
Complex
Compelling
Evolving
Participatory
Collaborative Practices
Promote:
More Accuracy (Wigglesworth & Storch, 2009)
Ongoing Exchange of feedback (Storch, 2009)
Multi-modality (Vinogradova, 2011)
Improved Individuals’ skills (Elola & Oksoz,
2010)
Why Social Media?
Students are Writing Extensively in These Contexts
Increased Amount & Time (Purcell, K., et. al., 2013)
Public Text Promotes Higher Quality (Bloch, 2007)
Authentic Context, Task, Purpose, etc (Egbert et. al.,
2007)
More opportunities for practice and feedback (Kessler,
2012)
Cultivation of social media presence mirrors portfolio
practices (Kessler, 2014)
Perspective
Perspective
Perspective & Potential of
Authentic Contexts
Local Expertise
Metadiscussion
Access to Other
Metadiscussion
Opportunities for Student
Practice and Sharing of
Content
Student Authored Content
Simplified
Student Authored Content
Simplified
Rich Authentic Class
Contexts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpGRopPNWI
4
Rich Authentic Class
Contexts
Challenging Engagement
Crowd Sourced Feedback
Crowd Sourced Feedback
Aggregators and Content
another sample of social media
Mashups (Google Maps
and Student Authored
Content)
Hyper collaboration
http://call.ohio.edu/cj2013/gd.m4v
What is Writing?
Challenges For Academic
Writing
How can we use these new forms to construct writing
that resembles and supports more academic writing?
How can we draw connections between these
practices to make writing seem more familiar,
comfortable and natural to students who are already
inclined to write, but not within our formal contexts?
Thanks!
kessler@ohio.edu
Gregkesslerphd.com/sslw2014
/
References
Bloch, J. (2007b). Technologies in the second language composition classroom. Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan Press.
Crystal, D. (2001). Language and the Internet. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni- versity Press.
Crystal, D. (2008). Txtng: The Gr8 Db8. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Elola, I., & Oskoz, A. (2010). Collaborative writing: Fostering foreign language and writing
conventions development. Language Learning & Technol- ogy, 14(3), 51-71.
http://llt.msu.edu/issues/october2010/elolaoskoz.pdf
Kessler, G. (2013). Invited Essay: Teaching ESL/EFL in a world of social media, mash-ups and
hyper-collaboration. TESOL Journal, 4(4).
Kessler, G. (2013). Collaborative language learning in co-constructed participatory culture. CALICO
Journal, 30(3), 307-322.
Kessler, G., Bikowski, D, & Boggs, J. (2012). Collaborative Writing Among Second
Language Learners in Academic Web-Based Projects. Language Learning & Technology,
16(1), 91-109.
Kessler, G. (2012). Preparing tomorrow’s second language writing teachers. In G. Kessler,
A. Oskoz, & I. Elola, (Eds.), Technology Across Writing Contexts and Tasks. CALICO
Monograph.
Purcell, K., Buchanan, J., Friedrich, L. (2013). The impact of digital tools on student writing
and how writing is taught in schools [Internet & American Lift Project]. Washington, DC:
PewResearch Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/files/oldmedia/Files/Reports/2013/PIP_ NWP%20Writing%20and%20Tech.pdf
Storch, N. (2005). Collaborative writing: Product, process and students’ reflections. Journal
of Second Language Writing, 14, 153-173.
Wigglesworth, G., & Storch, N. (2009). Pairs versus individual writing: Effects on fluency,
complexity and accuracy. Language Testing, 26, 445-466.