Internet-mediated identities

Reinhardt and Thorne’s description of Black’s research into internet-mediated learner identities describes a phenomenon with paradigmatic and ontological novelty. Black’s focal subjects were L2 students of English participating in online fanfiction authorship communities, where they found success as language learners in a way that they could not in traditional classroom settings. The paradigmatic novelty of this phenomenon is located in the shift between traditional modes of teacher-directed learning in the classroom and the self-directed learning and goal-setting (whether explicit or implicit) of the learners’ actual practice. The ontological novelty is in the relatively recent emergence of communities of thousands of individuals sharing and critiquing writing on a highly focused fictional topic, where the community creates its own positive reinforcement (e.g. the possibility of becoming an “internet celebrity”).

In reading about the study I am reminded of one of my own previous students, Benoit, who, like the students in Black’s often fell short of being a “successful” language user in my classroom. Despite a keen and perceiving intellect, Benoit’s progress in French was hampered by an irrepressible urge to socialize in English, counter to my classroom French-only policy, and poor study habits. In 2013 Benoit, like a number of my students, was drawn into the League of Legends gaming community, numbering some 67 million people. Unlike most, however, Benoit had had a great deal of championship success in the strategy game, which I have heard described as a form of “high-speed, team-based virtual chess with exponentially more possible game outcomes.” I recall the day when Benoit came into class and told me offhandedly that he had begun to serve as an amateur interpreter for new French players on the server, helping to acquaint them to the dynamics of team play and serving as a link between the Anglo and French members during matches. Seizing the opportunity, I told Benoit that I would be happy to accept some form of written work from him about what he had learned from these experiences, and we agreed to a vocabulary list of new French words and phrases discovered during these encounters, which he would update every week. We had a deal.

Ultimately, Benoit ended up squeaking by with a B- in my class, and dropped French the following year. However, I am still sure that I was able to improve his negative relationship with the traditional work involved in language learning. At the very least, Benoit and I stopped our tug-of-war around French, and he had at least some work that was almost pure pleasure. And, unlike most of my other students, he was putting his knowledge to use in a practical way for a real community, a lofty goal even for very advanced students.