Deoksoon Kim

This qualitative case study examined four undergraduates in anintermediate-level Chinese language class. We investigatedparticipants’ perceptions of Facebook as a pedagogical tool in Chineselanguage learning and their engagement in free posting and onlineChinese communication on Facebook. Data include all participants’Facebook posts and comments, a semi-structured survey questionnaire,semi-structured interviews, and researchers’ online observations andfield notes. Our analysis revealed that participants engaged in a freeFacebook posting activity mainly through (a) affective expression, (b)interactive communication, and (c) group-oriented salutations. TheseFacebook-supported social interactions offered many opportunities forlanguage-learners to use Chinese in a relatively authentic environmentwhile carrying out familiar on-line activities. Participants alsoreported that they favored both the concept of free writing in Chineseand its integration into Facebook posting. The study sugges...

Purpose This study investigates middle school students’ learning experiences through digital storytelling, applying a multimodal analytical framework to uncover patterns in digital stories. This study explores how participants engage in pedagogical activities, reflect on their learning experiences, and articulate their voices through digital stories. Design/Approach/Methods Employing qualitative case study methods, we purposefully selected three 12-year-old female students at an urban school in the northern US. Analyses of digital stories and other data sources (interviews, classroom observations, and reflective journals) show that the students were engaged in both teaching and reflection. Findings The findings describe (1) participants and their learning experiences, (2) students’ representational and interpersonal constructs as used in their digital stories, and (3) their participation as teachers as well as learners. Originality/Value Our multimodal analytical framework illuminates how students express themselves through digital stories. Our discussion focuses on students’ learning, their identity development, the effectiveness of the analytical framework, and pedagogical implications.

Abstract This qualitative case study explores an adolescent English learner’s (EL’s) expression of self and identity through multiliteracy practices on paper from an ecological perspective. The study follows Anni, a fourteen-year-old adolescent EL in an “Advancement via Individual Determination” elective class in a high school in the southeastern United States. Analysis of interviews, observations, researcher’s e-journals, and artifacts shows various aspects of the EL’s self that she chose to share with others, transformations related to the stage of adolescence and her status as an EL, and the role of a multiliteracy assignment in her expression of self and identity. The study makes suggestions for further research and describes implications for practice.

Discourse communities, their characteristic features and communicative routines, have long been a focus of research. The expansion of technology has changed discourse communities, however, because a much broader set of members can now participate in them. Contemporary research has begun to explore how technology-mediated discourse communities form and change, as well as how they serve educational and other social functions. In this chapter, we review research on discourse communities, focusing on the various changes D. Kim (*) Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction, Lynch School of Education, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA e-mail: deoksoon.kim@bc.edu O. Vorobel (*) Borough of Manhattan Community College, Department of Academic Literacy and Linguistics, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA e-mail: ovorobel@bmcc.cuny.edu # Springer International Publishing AG (outside the USA) 2015 S. Wortham et al. (eds.), Discourse and Education, Encyclope...

The affordances of Second Life provide a life-like environment for language learning. This study explores how college students learn Spanish as a foreign language in the Second Life environment. We investigated their perceptions of and experiences with Second Life in their foreign language learning, from a sociocultural perspective. Employing qualitative research methods, we collected chat logs, observations, reflective journals, and interviews. Findings include a) the advantages of authentic communication with native Spanish speakers, b) learners’ motivation and anxiety, c) opportunities to practice the target language, d) the nature of their language production, and e) the participatory culture. Our discussion highlights the various ways in which Second Life can provide a good environment for language learning. We describe benefits such as opportunities for authentic conversation, and to explore the target culture, as well as increased motivation for foreign language learning in S...

Reflection is essential for learning and development, especially among middle school students. In this paper, we describe how middle school students can engage in reflective learning by composing digital stories in a project-based learning environment employing virtual reality. Adopting multiple case study methods, we examined the digital stories of five students, together with classroom observations and interviews about their experiences, in order to explore how digital storytelling can allowed students to reflect upon their experiences in a year-end capstone program. Creating digital stories allowed students to 1) reflect on their learning experiences teaching younger students with virtual reality, 2) present their reflections in multiple modalities, and 3) make connections between their present experiences and the past and future. This study demonstrates how digital storytelling can enable multimodal reflection for middle school students, particularly within technology-focused pr...

This multiple case study investigated four university-level international students’ reading of digital texts on tablets. The study describes these students’ experiences with and strategies for mobile reading. The participants were four international students in the United States, and their first language (L1) was not English. The data were collected through observations, verbal reports, interviews, and field notes. The findings showed that participants had both positive and negative experiences using tablets for reading and that mobile reading facilitated their learning about their lives, language, culture, and technology. The study shows that the participants used six reading strategies: (a) setting up the purpose, (b) deciding what to read, (c) accessing a digital text, (d) dialoguing, (e) making a connection, and (f) using applications and digital literacy skills. The article discusses mobile reading, with a focus on strategies, affordances and processes, as well as cultural learning and empowerment.

Digital storytelling is a short form of multimedia production that can foster digital literacy and facilitate subject matter learning. This study describes how middle school students learned about mental health by composing digital stories, showing how this also influenced their attitudes toward mental health in their own lives. Using a qualitative multiple-case method, we explored three immigrant students’ digital storytelling in a psychology class. We use a visual grammar derived from systemic functional linguistics to analyze their digital stories, examining representational, relational, configurational, and social functions. Our analysis shows how students chose design elements to reflect their learning about and reactions to mental illness. We analyze how students projected relationships with the audience and how these projected relationships both reflected and influenced their learning and personal development. We conclude that digital storytelling can be an excellent pedagogi...

Purpose: This article develops a conceptualization of language pedagogy that engages the whole student. Instead of teaching language as if it were just a collection of grammar and vocabulary, we need to think about language as extending into many aspects of life and engaging whole people. Design/Approach/Methods: This article builds an original conceptualization of language learning and teaching that imagines language learning as a tool for developing whole people. It brings together research on learning culture through language, together with cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), to develop a vision for language learning and human development. Findings: When we teach language, we should be helping people participate in ways of life. This goes beyond knowledge of subject matter, and it goes beyond any simple type of well-being. Language learning can immerse students in others’ worlds, and it can foster empathy and understanding across social and political divides. But it can d...

This methodological review highlights trends in empirical studies where a methodological construct (i.e., verbal reports) intersects with content (i.e., literacy research). Specifically, we synthesize research on language learners' reading in which verbal reports/think-alouds were deployed as a methodological tool. Questioning the long-standing assumption that verbal-report methods validated in first language verbal report reading studies necessarily constitute a basis for validation of second language verbal report reading studies, we consider the broader educational frameworks within which studies are embedded. In our synthesis of language learners' verbal report literacy research published between 2000 and 2015, we attend to the social, demographic, and geographic realities characteristic of studies reviewed and of the participants involved. Our findings demonstrate the following: (a) tendency to report quantitative information regardless of the type of verbal reporting method and the component of reading explored; (b) predominance of independent concurrent methods that emphasized the reading product; (c) predominance of integrated verbal reports (i.e., concurrent and other forms of reporting) in sociocultural studies that reflected the reading process; (d) concerns about validity in studies premised on cognitivist models of verbal reports; (e) a tendency to use solely concurrent verbal reports in quantitative studies; (f) high reliance on integrated concurrent methods in qualitative studies; and (g) preponderance of qualitative-to-quantitative versus a qualitative-to-quantitative-to-qualitative verbal reporting paradigms across studies. Based on these findings, we make several recommendations to be considered when verbal reports are used to study language learners' reading processes.

Discourse communities, their characteristic features and communicative routines, have long been a focus of research. The expansion of technology has changed discourse communities, however, because a much broader set of members can now participate in them. Contemporary research has begun to explore how technology-mediated discourse communities form and change, as well as how they serve educational and other social functions. In this chapter, we review research on discourse communities, focusing on the various changes that mediated online environments such as social media have brought to contemporary discourse communities. We also describe advances in and the challenges of conducting research on discourse communities established through social media.

This study investigated four elementary-level English language learners' (ELLs') use of strategies for reading computer-based texts at home and in school. The ELLs in this study were in the fourth and fifth grades in a public elementary school. We identify the ELLs' strategies for reading computer-based texts in home and school environments. We present a taxonomy of five reading-strategy categories, which includes 15 total strategies that they pursued at home and in school. We describe the central role of dialogue in helping ELLs learn to read computer-based texts: The learners engaged in real and virtual dialogues with adults, peers, authors, and themselves, in ways that enhanced their development of effective reading strategies. We discuss pedagogical implications of our findings, describing how parents and teachers might work separately and together to facilitate ELLs' reading in today's learning contexts that include electronic literacies.

Digital storytelling is a short form of multimedia production that can foster digital literacy and facilitate subject matter learning. This study describes how middle school students learned about mental health by composing digital stories, showing how this also influenced their attitudes toward mental health in their own lives. Using a qualitative multiple-case method, we explored three immigrant students' digital storytelling in a psychology class. We use a visual grammar derived from systemic functional linguistics to analyze their digital stories, examining representational, relational, configurational, and social functions. Our analysis shows how students chose design elements to reflect their learning about and reactions to mental illness. We analyze how students projected relationships with the audience and how these projected relationships both reflected and influenced their learning and personal development. We conclude that digital storytelling can be an excellent pedagogical tool that allows students to engage both in subject matter learning and self-reflection.

Digital stories are powerful instructional tools that allow students to communicate complex concepts and emotions through both linguistic and nonlinguistic modes. A digital story is a 3-6 min multimodal video through which students can engage in critical reflection about their experiences , participate actively in the learning process, and give voice to their identities. This study analyzes two digital stories created by teacher education students in a graduate course; using a new framework that draws on Systemic Functional Linguistics, we demonstrate how these beginning teachers used digital storytelling to shape their professional identities. The results show how valuable digital stories can be in fostering reflection and teachers' development as professionals. The paper also introduces and illustrates an innovative systemic functional linguistic approach to analyzing digital stories as complex multimodal objects.

This qualitative case study examined four undergraduates in an intermediate-level Chinese language class. We investigated participants' perceptions of Facebook as a pedagogical tool in Chinese language learning and their engagement in free posting and online Chinese communication on Facebook. Data include all participants' Facebook posts and comments, a semi-structured survey questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and researchers' online observations and field notes. Our analysis revealed that participants engaged in a free Facebook posting activity mainly through (a) affective expression, (b) interactive communication, and (c) group-oriented salutations. These Facebook-supported social interactions offered many opportunities for language-learners to use Chinese in a relatively authentic environment while carrying out familiar on-line activities. Participants also reported that they favored both the concept of free writing in Chinese and its integration into Facebook posting. The study suggests that language-learning tasks should be authentic and that the use of technological tools such as Facebook can provide such tasks.

This multiple case study explores adolescent ELLs' collaborative writing practices in face-to-face and online contexts from an ecological perspective, focusing on adolescent ELLs' perceptions of collaborative writing and their development of writing through collaboration. The findings reveal both benefits and challenges adolescent ELLs face during collaborative writing activities as well as their perceptions of teacher and student feedback both face-to-face and online. The study examines in detail how adolescent ELLs changed their writing in response to feedback from and collaboration with their peers. These findings contribute to research on and practice in adolescent L2 writing by showing the adolescent ELLs' literacy development through collaboration in face-to-face and online contexts.

The affordances of Second Life provide a lifelike environment for language learning. This study explores how college students learn Spanish as a foreign language in the Second Life environment. We investigated their perceptions of and experiences with Second Life in their foreign language learning, from a sociocultural perspective. Employing qualitative research methods, we collected chat logs, observations, reflective journals, and interviews. Findings include a) the advantages of authentic communication with native Spanish speakers, b) learners' motivation and anxiety, c) opportunities to practice the target language, d) the nature of their language production, and e) the participatory culture. Our discussion highlights the various ways in which Second Life can provide a good environment for language learning. We describe benefits such as opportunities for authentic conversation, and to explore the target culture, as well as increased motivation for foreign language learning in Second Life. Students did encounter a few challenges, but in general Second Life provides an excellent platform to practice language skills.

The strength of English learners' second language reading is closely associated with academic success. Using qualitative research methods and verbal protocols, this study examines four elementary-level English learners' uses of reading strategies and describes how each English learner employs these strategies while reading both culturally relevant and culturally distant stories. The study describes two types of strategies: higher order thinking strategies and socio-contextual reading strategies. Together, the study draws on intensive ethno-graphic and verbal protocol research to map out a comprehensive set of 12 reading strategies and describes how English learners employ these strategies in context. This broad view of second language reading incorporates both the cognitive and linguistic skills required for decoding and comprehension, together with consideration of the non-cognitive factors and sociocultural contexts within which reading occurs. The study also shows how learners at different levels process culturally relevant and culturally distant stories differently. KEYWORDS Culturally relevant and distant materials; ESL; L2 reading strategies; narrative; second language acquisition and development; second language learning; second language reading