English Language Learners on Instagram: Translingual Practices and Activity-based Identities in Multimodal Social Networking

• Main Authors: Chun-Liang Liu, 劉俊良
• Other Authors: Yu-Feng Yang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/5a82j4

碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 外國語文學系研究所 === 107 === The goal of this study was to explore how English language learners (ELLs) orchestrate their multilingual and multimodal resources to craft IG posts, and how they perform their activity-based identities on Instagram (IG). This study adopted a case study approach focusing on two participants’ crafting experiences of IG posts. The participants, guided in three-stage task-based activities, constructed and shared IG posts for one month. This study collected IG posts, interviews, peer presentations, observational field notes and other data sources for triangulation, and employed content analysis and constant comparison methods for data analysis. Informed by Canagarajah’s (2013) translingual practice and Gee’s (2017) activity-based identity, this study further theorized how the participants crafted their IG posts translingually, and performed IG-mediated activity-based identities. In addition, the researcher took advantage of Engeström’s (1987) activity theory to examine how translingual practices relate to activity-based identities. This study reported the following results. First, this study found that the participants utilized their multilingual and multimodal resources to create IG posts. Their engagement in translingual practices involved structural and conceptual levels. Second, activity-based identities performed by both participants were dynamically diversified. Informed by Gee’s (2017) sub-type principle, the present study found the IG-mediated activity-based identities performed by the participants included (1) an experienced Instagrammer; (2) a sophisticated English writer; (3) an employee in a coffee shop; (4) an inspiration sharer; (5) a compact English writer and (6) a scientist. From the perspective of Engeström’s (1987) activity theory, it could be inferred that translingual practices and activity-based identities were inextricably interconnected. These findings revealed that ELLs would take into consideration (1) audience for their IG posts, (2) the visual-oriented multimodal nature of IG, and (3) the role of language-specific entities, when composing their IG posts multimodally and multilingually. In particular, the “latent others” highly influenced the formation of their activity-based identities. Future studies could focus on (1) how ELLs integrate other semiotic resources such as emoji to craft IG posts, (2) how activity-based identities can enhance ELL’s learning performance, and (3) how the perceptions or reactions of readers of participants’ IG posts can influence participants’ IG post crafting process to enrich the triangulation for data analysis. On the basis of this study, there are six pedagogical implications to enrich the usefulness of IG-mediated activities. First, in visual-oriented IG environments, ELLs highly took into consideration photos when crafting IG posts translingually. Hence, teachers are encouraged to take advantage of the role of photos and facilitate their students to relate their everyday experiences to photos when crafting IG posts. Second, ELLs might perform their fluid and dynamic IG-mediated activity-based identities when composing IG posts. These identities, developed when they engage in goal-oriented activities where they craft IG posts with English, encourage ELLs to relate their desire to interact with their social world. Therefore, teachers can take advantage of IG-mediated activities to motivate ELLs to transform their subject position from inferior English language learners to legitimate English language users. Third, IG-mediated tasks encourage ELLs to reflect their English writing performance, particularly during the task of a language focus phase (e.g., the use of English vocabulary or patterns). Therefore, during a language focus phase, teachers are encouraged to assist their students analyzing their language mistakes. Fourth, teachers could negotiate with the students about the duration of tasks, and guide for the tasks that require more professional knowledge (e.g., the steps of peer presentation) to enrich the participants’ performance in tasks. Fifth, participants somehow gradually regarded everyday sharing tasks as tedious routines after continuously sharing IG posts for one month. Therefore, this study suggests that the duration of IG-mediated task designed should be limited at most a month or be dependent on the teacher-student negotiations. Sixth, IG-mediated tasks encourage the participants to actively relate the information that they searched from the mobile devices to craft their IG posts. Hence, teachers can facilitate their students to relate their digital resources to English learning.