Educationgenerally, and language education particularly, will need to accommodate emergingcommunication tools, their emergent and plastic cultures of use, as well as theirattendant communicative genres that are, and have been for some years, everydaydimensions of competent social and professional activity

performingcompetent identities in second and additional language(s) now involves Internetmediation as or more often than face-to-face and nondigital forms of communication

it is apparent that social as well as academic communication ismediated by participation in digital environments

The Internet has enabled multiple new opportunities for informationgathering, enhanced possibilities for producing and disseminating information toothers, and has provoked changes in the granularity of information sharing betweenspatially dispersed coworkers, friends, and family members

certain developmental trajectories occurring in informal learning environmentsmay only be possible in self-selected activity marked by the establishment ofrelatively egalitarian, and situationally plastic, participation structures

the desire to buildexpressive capacity was driven by its use value as a resource for creating andmaintaining social relationships that are meaningful in the participants’ lives

the socialorder assembled by this dyad illustrates significant opportunities for both producingnew knowledge and refining existing knowledge in the areas of language use

Jones (2004) described as polyfocality–theuse of multiple semiotic resources in near simultaneity.

exposure to the target language is always linked to carrying out tasks andsocial actions, which concomitantly embeds vocabulary and grammaticalconstructions in rich associative contexts

The Sims 2 as a foreign language learning tool, Purushotma(2005) found that the vocabulary and tasks the game comprises were highly alignedwith the content of conventional foreign language course content

online communities provide ELL youth with new forums for taking onpowerful authorial and social roles, even as they learn and develop fluency withmultiple textual forms, languages, and online registers

onlinefanfiction-related activity is aligned with school-sanctioned literacy and languagedevelopment practices, such as collaborative composition, peer-review, peer-editing,and mentoring (Black, 2007)

take on subtly different identity roles according tothe social and composing settings

challenges to theconventional goals and processes of language education, such as the rigidity of thegate-keeping mechanisms of high-stakes testing, the disconnect between theprescriptivist epistemology of schooling and language use that is appropriate in othercontexts (Internet-mediated and otherwise), and what should or could be done toleverage, and perhaps formally acknowledge, a plurality of communicative practicesthat are currently considered stigmatized linguistic varieties

the production of anime music videos (AMVs)(combining video and popular music), fan-produced translations and subtitling(combining video, image, and text), and creating amateur manga and/or fan art(combining image and text)

remixing or the “practice of taking cultural artifacts and combiningand manipulating them into a new kind of creative blend” (Lankshear & Knobel,2006, p. 106)

networked information and communication technologies enable globallydistributed individuals to connect using multiple languages and forms of semioticmediation. Many of these new literacy practices, such as text messaging, e-mail, chat,and communication via avatar, to name just a few, extend beyond traditionalprint-based text

multiple literacies, whereby learners develop literacy skills “throughmultiple experiences, in multiple contexts, with multiple text genres (both oral andwritten), for multiple purposes” (Kern, 1995, p. 67

Although access tocommunication and information technology remains unequally distributed acrossgeopolitical regions and social classes

ICL2E research reviewed here indicates that when personal relationships matter,academic treatments of grammar and pragmatics attain renewed relevance in the livesof speakers

ICL2Eemphasizes participation in intercultural dialogue and development of the linguisticand metacommunicative resources necessary for carrying out such processes

American students’ desire to maintain positive face with German andFrench age-peers was the impulse focusing their attention toward the role of linguisticform in the performance of pragmatically appropriate communication, a conditionthat otherwise would be difficult or impossible to create within a conventional L2classroom

The strength of meaningful intercultural partnerships also has had a hand toplay in linguistic and pragmatic learning outcomes reported in ICL2E research

Belz (2003) suggestedthat the pedagogical implication is not that students need necessarily change theirdiscourse preferences, but that intercultural communicators would benefit fromgreater awareness of their own interactional style(s) and the development ofheightened attunement to the communicative preferences of their interlocutors,perhaps even choosing to occupy positions of hybridity which may augment theirinterpretive capabilities as intercultural speakers who can navigate between multipleonline and offline speech communities

the teacher in telecollaboration must be educated to discern, identify,explain, and model culturally-contingent patterns of interaction in the absence ofparalinguistic meaning signals, otherwise it may be the case that civilizationsultimately do clash—in the empirical details of their computer-mediated talk”(pp. 92–93)

an increasingly important function of the L2 teacher is “to preparestudents to deal with global communicative practices that require far more than localcommunicative competence” (Kramsch & Thorne, 2002, p. 100)

calling for greater transparency at all levels of planning, more cross-site alignment interms of the orientation of students to the processes of ICL2E, and stronger teachermediation as an aid to interpreting and contributing messages (e.g., Belz &M ̈uller-Hartmann, 2003)

Bernstein (1996, p. 44) has termed a “potential discursivegap” that marks an opportunity for alternative possibilities and understandings

French and American students were operatingwithin, and thus expecting from the other, differing genres of communication

need to revise and expandconventional characterizations of face-to-face communicative competence (e.g.,Breen & Candlin, 1980) to account for the genres and interactional dynamics enabledby Internet-mediation

produce a diversity of social-psychological conditions including tension andfrustration

heightening of cultural awareness of bothone’s home culture(s) as well as that of one’s interlocutors, and direct experience withthe challenges and rewards of intercultural communication

aspiration forparticipants to develop meaningful relationships with one another

Internet-mediated intercultural second language education (hereafter ICL2E)is premised on the notion that transnational dialogue and other forms of interactioncan foster productive, and within the otherwise confined spaces of instructed foreignlanguage classrooms, perhaps even necessary, conditions for developing interculturalcommunicative competence. Rather than focusing narrowly on language in relativeisolation from its use in meaningful communication, ICL2E emphasizes the use ofInternet communication tools to support intercultural community building betweengeographically dispersed participants

reciprocal teaching,” where participants typically relegated to the discursivelyconstrained student role gain the opportunity to occupy the structural role of anexpert

Internet mediation decreased anxieties about negative appraisals of theirlinguistic performance, and correspondingly, that such “non-inhibiting” situationsmay tend to increase language output for both groups

An emerging class-to-class configuration is to link together local expertspeakers, such as diaspora, immigrant, and heritage language populations, withforeign language (FL) students in organized partnerships

need for instructors to becomeaware of the social identities and genres of language use that their students mayclosely associate with the appropriate cultures-of-use for particular Internetcommunication tools

acculturation processes associated with becoming acompetent member of nonacademic digital speech communities may significantlyinfluence the character, tone, and discourse styles of online discussions withineducational contexts

keenly aware of which students were not as sophisticated with current styles of digitalcommunication, going so far as to state that the face-to-face classroom was the moreegalitarian of the two settings

“less supervision” during chat sessions

transcripts of online communication showed high levels ofexperimentation with language and high participation levels for nearly all students,but also significant numbers of disruptive and occasionally aggressive speech acts

the opportunity to interact primarily with peers and within apeer-centered communication environment affords opportunities to perform identitiesnot traditionally associated with those of “student” in instructed institutional contexts

support more sophisticated dialogue, all ofwhich extended the discourse possibilities substantially beyond those available in theface-to-face classroom setting

computer-mediated discussion involvingmuch higher rates of peer-to-peer talk. Topically, the CMC session illustrated greatersharing of personal information and, of particular interest, a contribution to the chatchannel of an overt statement of solidarity with and promotion of ethnicidentity

Yet it is also the case that computer-mediatedcommunication (CMC) has the potential to transform what is often teacher-centeredcommunication in face-to-face settings into more multidirectional interaction incomputer-mediated contexts

greater opportunity for expression of ideas than in face-to-face discussions, morelinguistic production overall (Chun, 1994; Beauvois, 1992), the expansion ofoccasions for authentic and meaningful discourse (Kelm, 1996; Kern, 2000;Warschauer, 1997), and increased engagement by students who do not participate asfrequently in face-to-face classroom discussion (Sullivan & Pratt, 1996; Warschauer,1996)

language development through textually mediated, generally peer-focused,communication

how researchers and language educators could orientthemselves to the changing qualities

Massive sociological analyses have documented that the Internet hasqualitatively transformed, with variable consequences, everyday communication andinformation practices in commercial, financial, professional, educational,recreational, and interpersonal realms (e.g., Castells, 1996, 2004)

estrict this review to computer-mediatedlanguage and literacy research that explicitly references the developmental potentialof social and interactional aspects of online interaction

ntraclass and interclass communication, where e-mail, synchronouschat, or other technologies are used to mediate and expandopportunities for language use2. Organized transnational partnerships and structured participation innoninstitutional settings3. New media research examining engagements in Internet-mediatedenvironments that are not, or are only indirectly, linked to instructedsecond language (L2) contexts

proactive vision of educational practice, particularly in the areas of first and additionallanguage instruction

qualitative shifts in communicative contexts, purposes, andgenres of language use associated with new media necessitate a responsive and

All arenas of human interaction, from institutional contexts such asgovernment, commerce, and education, to interpersonal communication amongintimates, are mediated by tools and technologies

second language uses of Internet communication tools, Webenvironments, and online gaming, and critically reviews existing research andemerging technologies

Data analysis options are likewise diverse

New literacies research spans a wide range of design types

(a) approaches to researching new literaciesthat import theoretical perspectives developed within contexts of traditional literacy researchand (b) embryonic research approaches that make Internet and other digital technologiesand the social practices these enable central to research and build out from there.

They emphasize participants accessingand “developing” the distributed knowledge of communities of interests, where expertsand novices work together as peers to support and advance their individual and collectiveends (Benkler, 2006; Lankshear & Knobel, 2006

practices are characterized by use of digital tools and techniques in conjunction with adistinctive ethos or sensibility (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006)

In many digitally mediatedliteracy practices, however, the acts and roles of consuming and producing have becomeinseparable

using new technologies to decode and produce meaningsusing symbols involves an intense integrated relationship between the consumption (read-ing) and production (writing) dimensions

a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement,strong support for creating

using new media blurs “the boundaries between mass communication andinterpersonal communication, and between producers and consumers” (Buckingham, 2003,p. 310

a set of cultural competenciesand social skills that young people need in the new media landscape” (Jenkins, Clinton,Purushotma, Robison, & Weigel, 2006, p. 4)

“a rapid and continuous process of change in the ways in whichwe read, write, view, listen, compose and communicate information”

dissemination of even newer technologies of literacy to every personon the Internet by connecting to a single link on a screen” (Coiro et al., 2008a, p. 3)

critical media literacy that “teaches students to learnfrom media, to resist media manipulation, and to use media materials in constructiveways

new types of literacies to make education relevant to the demands of a globalpostindustrial and networked society that is multicultural and democratic—with aparticular emphasis on empowering individuals and groups traditionally excluded fromfull economic, political, social, and cultural life

it challenges “school-centric” literacy education that privileges forms ofdiscourse and approaches to vocabulary, grammar, and syntax that are increasingly outof touch

“literacy”can no longer be presumed to refer simply to interactions with conventional texts

changing communicativeorder in which a range of nonlinguistic semiotic systems “cut across reading, writing andspeech

The emphasis is on multiple media, formats, andsign systems at work in ways of communicating meaning. Communicative competencerequires mastering new literacies

“New literacies” mostly functions as an umbrella term for myriad everyday interactionswith digital texts.

Understanding and using new media andtechnologies competently is another conception of “new literacies

Diverse “new” literacies of this type include (critical) media literacy,print-based zines and fan fiction, strategy card games, analogue media remixing, graphicnovels, and certain forms of iconic and logo-based communications