Ivan Banov Dongping Zheng University of Hawaii at Mnoa How do - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Ivan Banov Dongping Zheng University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

How do educational enskillment, event, and ecology converge to sustain human and community becoming?

– What is Reddit?

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™ Reddit is a “social bookmarking website”

1. Find content on the internet 2. Post and share it on reddit 3. Others can see it

• Upvote
• Downvote
• Comment

What is Reddit?

–

™ Reddit is a “social bookmarking website”

1. Find content on the internet 2. Post and share it on reddit 3. Others can see it

• Upvote
• Downvote
• Comment

™ Is currently the 5th most visited website in the US and the 8th most visited website in the world (Alexa, 2018)

– Over 330 M registered users from 217 countries – 14 B page views per month

What is Reddit?

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™ Reddit is composed of many different topics

– Subreddits – 853,824 alive subreddits as of this morning – ≈138,000 active subreddits – News, Funny, Videos, Aww, TIL, WritingPrompt – Invisible Bicycles, Jellybean Toes, Children’s Pictures of Dinosaurs, Home Servers, Crocheting, TOEFL, ESL, GetStudying, ChineseLanguage

What is Reddit?

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Examples of Reddit

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Examples of Reddit

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Examples of Reddit

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Examples of Reddit

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Examples of Reddit

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Examples of Reddit

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™ As I used Reddit, my attitudes and language began to change. ™ What influences the way we write in online settings? ™ Does this influence work the same in language learners? ™ Can social media have a positive impact on language learning? If so, how?

Background

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™ Distributed Language Theory

– Language goes beyond individual brains to co-construction via dialogue, manipulating objects, gesture, body movement (Järvilehto, 2009). – Language is a heterogeneous phenomenon, spread across diverse spatiotemporal and sociocultural scales, and requires complex interactions between phenomena in these scales (Thibault, 2011).

Theoretical Background

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™ Ecological Linguistics

– Language is a meaning-making activity that takes place in a complex network of complex systems that are interwoven amongst themselves as well as with all aspects of physical, social, and symbolic worlds (van Lier, 2004, p. 60, italics added). – Language is constrained by ecosystemic values (Hodges, 2007, 2009) and both virtual and historical structures (Steffensen, 2011). – It is co-authored through dialogue with others—animate agents, inanimate objects, and abstract concepts (Linell, 2009).

Theoretical Background

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™ Affinity Spaces (Gee, 2005)

– Communities built around content or common interest – Emergent external grammar – Emergent internal grammar – Portals

Theoretical Background

–

™ Affinity Spaces (Gee, 2005)

– Communities built around content or common interest – Emergent external grammar – Emergent internal grammar – Portals

Theoretical Background

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™ Affinity Spaces (Gee, 2005)

– Communities built around content or common interest – Emergent external grammar – Emergent internal grammar – Portals

™ External grammar impacts internal grammar and vice versa. Neither one of the two systems is independent of the other.

Theoretical Background

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• 1. What changes in internal grammar do language learners show after

participating on Reddit for an extended period of time?

• 2. What changes in external grammar do language learners show after

participating on Reddit for an extended period of time?

• 3. How does the interplay between Reddit’s internal and external grammars

connect to human and community becoming?

Research Questions

– Study Design

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™ Eight English Language Learners

– Learners of English – Lived abroad – Actively posted on Reddit for at least six months

Participants

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Participants

Participant Gender L1 Country of Residence Age Range Months as Registered Reddit User AwesomeFly Female German Germany 35–40 57 JimZoo Male Arabic Egypt 18–25 41 LeopardMan Male Polish Germany 20–25 9 RealAero N/A Spanish Spain 25–30 10 Southern Male Georgian Georgia 20–25 13 SwissKicks Male Mandarin China 20–25 22 TibrinCarlac Male Russian Russia N/A 32 ZhiWeiGao N/A Mandarin China N/A 14

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™ External Grammar

– Semi-structured interviews conducted through the Reddit interface – Public data on each profile gathered from the Reddit API

Data

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™ External Grammar

– Semi-structured interviews conducted through the Reddit interface – Public data on each profile gathered from the Reddit API

™ Internal Grammar

– All comments and posts made on Reddit (N = 3,197) – Public data on each profile gathered from the Reddit API

Data

– Results

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Posting Behavior (Previous Study)

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SwissKicks Interview: If I learned anything, I'd say it's more of a western cultural thing I grew more familiar with through [being an active member on Reddit]. However it's still undeniable that my English is far from perfect and I have learned something from this habit, and that is the way native English speakers comment on different things such as comedy posts and general suggestions or

• complaints. I have studied the word choices native speakers would use when

making comments or composing threads to improve my ability to speak English the way a native speaker would rather than as a non-native learner.

Coordinating External Grammar

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SwissKicks Interview: With the number of [upvotes and downvotes] visually displayed it was hard for me to not want to choose my words carefully in order to not make an unimpressive or even embarrassing comment. This led me to refrain from posting very often at the beginning due to how unfamiliar I was with western

• nline communities, and I tried to study what kind of content is most welcome

by reading a lot of reddit. So… I had been reading posts made by others for quite some time before feeling comfortable enough to make my own.

Coordinating External Grammar

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TibrinCarlac, February 12, 2017: Maybe we can help. [link to a person’s GoFundMe website] Sorry if I broke the rules of the sub. I don't even know her but I feel bad for her. I saw this request for help in the Stephen C. Smith's twitter. I'm also not so good with English and worried a little now, so please don't judge hard.

Coordinating External Grammar

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JimZoo, May 11, 2017: Start small maybe? Don't ask yourself for too much cause you'll eventually get disappointed, for example do 4 pomos reward yourself with a movie or something and after a week or so you'll develop the discipline , maybe study with a friend or join the study hall so that you waste less time on the Internet too..sorry if this is too generic :D

Coordinating External Grammar

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RealAero, March 27, 2017: Im a bit disappointed with monero. First I was like, wow, its the definitive cryptocoin, etc... However after some day of thinking, I think i was wrong investing 1000USD. We are in an altocin bubble (including monero), relative to that bitcoin "fork", i think nothing strange will happen with bitcoin, and after all the panic, everybody will return to bitcoin, leaving monero and all the other altcoins totally unworthy.

External Grammar Influence

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RealAero, April 28, 2017: So any idea of the motives behind yesterdays pump? Be aware that we havent even reached our max price yet. I think we still have good place to grow. In my

• pinion yesterday a whale with inside information bought to be prepared for

the future that is coming. My guess? 30USD 20-30 May

External Grammar Influence

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RealAero, June 26, 2017: Mcap falling to 60-80B levels IMO. That means 50% drops ore more. After that a huge bull will come, 10 times bigger than the last one. XMR will pump a lot, it has a lot of whales behind, the price is being manipulated (botnets) and doesnt let it pump properly. Just look longterm.... dont worry guys

External Grammar Influence

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SwissKicks, June 26, 2017: A more specific example (maybe) would be the thread I started 3 months ago in which I analyzed a glaring issue with the game design in an online game I play, and received lots of praises from the community. Though not the first time I've created something that went viral in online communities, it was the first time I did so fully in English, and I think that's all thanks to the time I spent on Reddit which has improved my writing skills in terms of the ability to make analysis and summaries, as well as the ability to utilize the western style

• f humor to blend in with western communities better, in real life even.

External Grammar Influence

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AwesomeFly Interview: Mostly I learnt very informal English, i. e. slang and swearwords, and "meme- English" (Ermagerd, Doge-speak, silly puns etc.) My favourite is most likely "cropdusting". … Funny enough, some of my "higher register" DID come from Reddit. I learnt that one "keeps their composure", not "contenance". I also learnt a few technical terms on DIY and Artisanvideos: Caulking. Deburr. Chuck and lathe. Also many "SJW" terms: Mansplaining, ableism etc.

Internal Grammar

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AwesomeFly Interview: It's quite unusual to learn "good" English in online communities, but the exception are many of the more specialized subreddits about art(isan) and scientific subjects, such as DIY, artisanvideos, science, and subreddits where people don't just comment for ze lulz, but explain more or less complex things to their fellow redditors or have discussions with a spoonful of depth. The odd askreddit post with a SERIOUS tag can be quite fruitful, too.

Internal Grammar

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Leonard Interview: I learned many vocabularies, watched videos posted here and my listening comprehension improved a lot. I feel more confident it talking in English.

Internal Grammar

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Southern Interview: I sometimes mess phrases and idioms up, such as "killing two rabbits with one stone" instead of "killing two birds with one stone" (the first thing I got off the top of my head, and another example would be the correct usage of "off the top of my head" itself, which I had to Google. At first, I wrote it as "on top of my head"), and, if I can't find anything on this on the web, I ask on Reddit. There are other questions that are too specific to find on Google (at least, for me), such as usage of commas and/or "had" in certain sentences (or the "a"/"the" articles, for instance, and so on), and that, too, I like to ask on Reddit.

Internal Grammar

– Conclusions

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™ The internal grammar of social media users changes over time to approximate

• r imitate the internal grammar found within the affinity space.

™ In the case of language learners, gains can be seen in the word, phrase, and discourse levels of the L2.

Internal Grammar

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™ One key part of lurking, or legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1999), is to align or coordinate external grammars. ™ The external grammar guiding any subreddit is shaped by previously encountered user posts, upvotes and downvotes, and community reactions (Linell, 2009). ™ This emergent external grammar then guides and constrains future action (i.e., composing future posts). ™ Organisms, societies, and ecosystems limit activities to uphold a sound and healthy existence for both human and non-human life on species, group, and population levels (Steffensen & Fill, 2014).

External Grammar

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™ Language form (e.g., grammar, vocab, etc.) is inseparable from the external grammar that constrains it.

– Cultural norms – Situational constraints – Previously established practices – Ways of perceiving and understanding the world

Therefore…

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™ Given that external grammar influences internal grammar (and vice versa), it is important for teachers to provide students both the opportunity and the freedom to experiment with the language. ™ Personal experience has a strong influence on external grammar, so encourage your students to try, possibly fail, and then try again (Zheng, Bischoff, & Gilliland, 2015).

Therefore…

– Questions?

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Alexa Information. (2018). Reddit.com site overview. Retrieved July 26, 2018 from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com Järvilehto, T. (2009). The theory of the organism-environment system as a basis of experimental work in

• psychology. Ecological Psychology, 21(2), 112–120.

Hodges, B. H. (2007). Values define fields: The intentional dynamics of driving, carrying, leading, negotiating, and conversing. Ecological Psychology, 19, 153–178. Hodges, B. H. (2009). Ecological pragmatics: Values, dialogical arrays, complexity, and caring. Pragmatics & Cognition, 17, 628–652. Linell, P. (2009). Rethinking language, mind, and world dialogically. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Smith, C. (2018). By the numbers: 50+ amazing Reddit statistics. Retrieved from http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/reddit-stats/

References

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Steffensen, S. V. (2011). Beyond mind: An extended ecology of languaging. In S. J. Cowley (Ed.), Distributed language (pp. 185–210). Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins. Steffensen, S. V., & Fill, A. (2014). Ecolinguistics: The state of the art and future horizons. Language Sciences, 41, 6–25. Thibault, P. J. (2011). First-order languaging dynamics and second-order language: the distributed language view. Ecological Psychology, 23(3), 210–245. van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Zheng, D., Bischoff, M., & Gilliland, B. (2015). Vocabulary learning in massively multiplayer online games: Context and action before words. Educational Technology Research and Development, 63(5), 771–790.

References

– Questions?

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Examples of First Posts

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Examples of First Posts

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Examples of Later Posts