LI-nterChange: Towards a contextual- and social-mediated seamless language learning practice with multiple learning pathways

Abstract

This project aims to design and pilot 'LI-nterChange', a novel seamless language learning (SLL) environment that foregrounds the facilitation of contextual- and socio-mediated interactions as a means of idea/meaning development, the bridging of informal and formal learning settings, and multiple learning pathways, in learners' ongoing language learning journeys. The focus is on investigating how social media can be incorporated into a guided particilpatory SLL environment to form an informal-formal loop of language learning-application-reflection experience. We will work with 5 Chinese language teachers from the pilot school in co-designing the 'LI-nterChange' environment. In particular, we would like to design for the bridging of informal discourses (social media creation and online interactions) and formal writing (classroom compositions) as the socio-pedagogical means to develop students' competencies in self-expression and communication in Chinese, particularly in the four interactional types of narrative, descriptive, expository and argumentative. The online interactions will also be qualitatively analysed (which are likely to be the trajectories of social meaning development) and their relations with the authentic contexts, teacher intervention and the students' learning outcomes will be explicated. The proposed study will be the first time SLL practice being spread to the secondary school level in Singapore, which may result in more research and development projects in years to come which will consitute a new seamless learning program in secondary school context.