Instructional media and instructional methods in digital language learning: Are we asking the right questions?

Understanding the Interaction between Technology and the Learner: The Case of DLL

“…Indeed, the approach advocated by Mayer (2021) regarding instructional methods implies strongly that we must understand the learners, their characteristics, and their cognitive, affective, and neural differences that are brought to bear on the learning task. In our view, it is the understanding of both sides of digital learning and their interactions that will lead to the most productive and effective instructional design.…”

“…A number of scholars comment that 1) total self-exploratory or discovery learning may not be effective, at least not to some students (Lantolf, 2021; Mayer, 2021), and 2) exploratory and contextualized activities for learning are not uncommon in today's classrooms for learning L2 or other subjects. For example, Godwin-Jones (2021), Han (2021), and Lantolf (2021) all point out that today's language classrooms value interactive, sociocultural learning and are not necessarily based on teacher-centered, translation-focused learning pedagogies.…”

“…The two sides of digital learning Mayer's (2021) commentary hits on a critical point that we wish to use to anchor our responses herethat is, the interaction between the available technologies and the characteristics of the learner or user. He points out two different approaches toward digital learning and suggests that we put instructional methodologies before instructional technologiesthat is, to shift our focus from the specific media type (e.g., mobile phones, VR) to the design of digital learning environments based on our knowledge of how students learn.…”

“…This is an example of the technology's affordance to move from traditional teacher-centered to student-centered method, which brings the media-based and method-based approaches together. Of particular interest to note here is Mayer's (2021) point regarding the utility of guided/directed activity versus total self-exploration, where the understanding of enhanced joint social attention and deep cognitive processing will be crucial for the effective use of technology (see further discussion below).…”

Digital tools for learning new languages: Benefits and limitations

“…Han (2022) challenges this view and argues instead that L2 language teaching needs to acknowledge and implement the robust differences between child L1 and adult L2 acquisition that have been reported in much previous SLA research. Similar concerns with immersion-based language learning are raised by other commentators (Chien, Hung, Ku, Wu & Chan, 2022;Lantolf, 2022;Mayer, 2022;Spector, 2022). A second criticism concerns the opposition set out in the Keynote article between modern DLL and 'traditional' language teaching, which portrays language teaching as decontextualized, classroom-based, translation-based, and teacher-centred, which is an outdated of view of current language teaching according to some (Godwin-Jones, 2022; Han, 2022;Lantolf, 2022).…”