A Word from the Guest Editor

Abstract

Communication in today’s societies is increasingly digital. Twi er, texting, social networks, information and communication technologies (ICTs), augmented/virtual reality, and online gaming are transforming the way we use language, collaborate, and the way we teach and learn English (Chapelle & Sauro, 2017; Kessler, 2018). A decade ago, we may have sent 65 texts a month to close friends; now, the average mobile phone user sends a minimum of 65 texts every 2 days (Van Camp, 2017). ICTs are inherently participatory and social, aff ording teachers an increasing array of synchronous and asynchronous forms of communication to explore genre, registers, and situationally specifi c interactions (Kessler et al., 2012). These emerging literacy practices involve new forms of social interaction, critical thinking, and language use along with new understandings of agency and community (Gee & Hayes, 2011). In addition, ICTs are disrupting the boundaries between time and space (Jones, 2016), off ering distance, blended, fl ipped, and web-enhanced modalities that are transforming notions of the learning environment. Technology complexifi es the relationship between a teacher and learners. Learners can now coproduce learning with technology alongside the instructor where teaching and learning roles are becoming ambiguous. Online teaching disrupts notions of social, teaching, and cognitive presence and requires the conscious curation of a “human feel” in online environments that can, at times, feel quite unfamiliar (Lawrence, 2014). Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, Google docs, and social networks are intensely collaborative, transforming relationships between communicators and their interlocutors, between teachers and students (Davies, 2011; Luo, 2013). Corpora and digital databases of language use can build students’ collocational competence, genre awareness, reading skills, and vocabulary (Boulton & Cobb, 2017; Hadley & Charles, 2017; Li, 2017). Learning management systems provide analytics tracking individual performance, enabling teachers to specifi cally target learner needs (Kessler, 2018; Stockwell, 2012). These technologies allow teachers to adopt innovative approaches to pedagogy: creating authentic, multimodal, action-oriented tasks; immersive experiences and individualized pathways to deepen language learning (Kessler, 2018); and a focus on developing langua-technoculture competence that Chapelle and Sauro (2017, p. 461) have highlighted as an ideal outcome of today’s technology-mediated language learning landscapes: the intersection between technology, culture, and language that 21st century learners need to navigate on a daily basis.