Affiliation

Cape Breton University

Email

mgsweet@mun.ca

Abstract

Digital technologies can be used as effective pedagogical tools in second language instructional design to support meaningful instruction and augment student learning. Digital technologies can be used to promote collaborative, authentic, engaging, and creative second language learning environments. The integration of digital technologies into second language teaching and learning can help support a variety of instructional purposes while providing students with authentic learning environments that are supportive of their learning needs. Second language learning, the principles of the neurolinguistic approach, and the affordances of digital technologies align with prominent learning theories such as Vygotsky’s social development theory and Lave and Wenger’s situated learning theory. This literature review will examine digital technologies such as digital games, augmented reality, and multimedia tools for their affordances to second language learning. Digital educational games are pedagogical tools that can be used to supplement and strengthen the meaning of new second language structures. Augmented reality second language learning experiences can create engaging interactions with target language words and sentence structures to support students’ meaning making of the target language. Digital multimedia integration into learning design is often used and recommended for minimizing barriers to learning by providing multiple means of engaging learners and representing instructional content. The results of this literature review will provide second language instructional designers with valuable knowledge to consider in their own instructional design practices.

Keywords

instructional design, second language education, authentic learning, multimedia, technology, digital games, augmented reality, interaction, effective instruction, multimodality, engagement, instructional strategies, learning theories

Introduction

Effective technology-enhanced instructional design and the neurolinguistic approach (NLA) are important pillars of modern-day second language education. The NLA is a pedagogical method used in second language education developed by Netten and Germain (2012). The NLA uses interactive teaching strategies to motivate students by providing authentic scenarios for communicating. Netten and Germain (2012) stated that the contexts of learning should be similar to authentic contexts where the learned material will be used. The NLA and second language instruction is well-aligned with situated learning theory. Lave and Wenger (1991) declared that a central principle of situated learning theory is that knowledge needs to be presented in an authentic context. The creation of learning environments that are engaging and rooted in authentic learning contexts enable students to apply second language skills in real world scenarios. Developing second language skills based on authentic learning scenarios and drawing on students’ individual experiences help students connect second language communication to the real world around them. The NLA also aligns with Vygotsky’s social development theory. According to Vygotsky (1987), the sense of a word or new language structure evolves with the thinking/language system of which it is a part through activity in the social situation of development. Prominent levels of collaboration through student-teacher and student-student social interactions are necessary in second language development. Netten and Germain (2012) posited that a less formal and more social classroom atmosphere must be created to encourage target language use; high interaction between the students and the teacher and between the students themselves must be fostered. A variety of digital technologies can be effective at increasing student-student and student-teacher interaction in second language classrooms, thus increasing usage of the target language. Following the principles of the NLA, second language educators explicitly model new language structures using a variety of verbal and technology-enhanced visual methods. Educators then model the new language structures between themselves and their students. As students use new language structures by verbally interacting with their teacher and each other, they internalize the new knowledge and construct meaning of the new language structure. Digital technologies can be valuable tools to help students reinforce the meaning of newly learned second language structures. The learning of a second language must be based upon the use of interesting cognitive tasks that present an intellectual challenge to students (Netten & Germain, 2012), and digital technologies can help provide such tasks. Instructional designers in second language education should keep emerging digital technologies in mind when designing effective learning experiences. Digital technologies should be used to support collaboration in classrooms, promote active learning, and strengthen new concepts. Providing meaningful integration of modern technologies through the careful choice of quality tools aligning to best instructional practices can alter how learners and instructors engage with concepts and with each other to achieve powerful learning (Holland & Holland, 2014). To create effective second language instruction, it is important for instructional designers to select well-evaluated digital technologies that reinforce new knowledge, support learning outcomes, and increase interaction with the target language. This review of the literature will examine three types of digital technologies for potential integration into meaningful and effective second language instructional design.

Literature Review

Digital Games

In second language education, digital game-based learning is a tool with which student learning is supported with the use of digital educational games. According to Bawa (2019), digital games are technology-based systems within which players engage in game-generated competition that are guided by rules and have quantifiable outcomes. Such games seek to promote learning in an entertaining way by fusing educational content with gameplay and stories while giving learners the opportunity to strategize with higher-order thinking (Bawa, 2019). In second language education, digital games can be a valuable pedagogical tool. According to researchers van der Westhuizen and Hannaway (2021), a large segment of children today is immersed in a digital world and digital games have the potential to strongly enhance both second language education and second language instruction. Student engagement refers to the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in their education (The Glossary of Education Reform, 2016). van der Westhuizen and Hannaway (2021) described teachers’ beliefs that children would feel detached and disconnected without the use of digital games in their second language learning because using digital play as a pedagogical tool is a reality of the modern world. Bawa (2019) suggested that digital game-based learning is becoming increasingly possible due to the rise in variety and availability of digital educational games.

The integration of digital game-based learning into second language education is becoming increasingly popular in today’s ever-expanding digital society. There is a wide and continually growing amount of research that supports the integration of digital game-based learning to support second language acquisition. Sabirli and Coklar (2020) noted that digital educational games provide valuable reinforcement of second language learning done in the classroom. Reinders and Wattana (2015) posited that digital games are motivating to students and lower affective barriers in learning, such as anxiety and self-confidence, which in turn promotes and encourages second language interaction. In addition to promoting second language vocabulary acquisition, digital games are useful for increasing second language reading comprehension and game players experience higher levels of motivation, engagement, and are more often involved in active participation during class (Di Zou & Haoran, 2021).

Chen and Hsu (2020) observed that digital games offer high intrinsic motivation for learners, encourage positive learning attitudes, have rich textual inputs that require learners to engage in meaningful language use to complete in-game activities and tasks, and the interactive and immersive experiences that games supply can reduce learning anxiety, which increases interaction in the target language. Digital games can be an effective pedagogical tool to supplement instruction and increase student engagement. However, digital games should not be considered a stand-alone instructional practice in second language education. Becker and Sturm (2017) stressed upon the important supporting role that digital games can play in second language learning, saying that interactive audiovisual materials on their own cannot be effective unless they are incorporated into well-structured, pedagogically sound activities.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) is defined as a technology where computer-generated objects are augmented into the real-world environment to produce a new layer to the environment that users can interact with (Liu et al., 2007). In second language education, AR learning experiences can provide meaningful and engaging interactions with target language words and sentence structures to support students’ meaning making of the target language. AR, through applications and games, affords real-world annotation to display text and images on real-world objects and affords contextual visualization to display virtual content in a specific context (Santos et al., 2014). Santos et al. (2014) posited that aside from possibly improving student performance, AR learning experiences can be used to increase the motivation of students in educational settings and AR design strategies such as enabling exploration, promoting collaboration, and ensuring immersion can create compelling learning experiences. Punar Özçelik et al. (2022) expressed that through the medium of AR, second language learners have a chance to engage in meaningful learning tasks and learners can practice their second language skills within these learning tasks to learn more effectively. AR-based language materials can support second language learners to acquire, internalize, and construct meaning in the target language. AR activities can be integrated into existing instructional practices that follow the NLA to support effective second language instruction.

In their review, Fan et al. (2020) discovered that AR technologies can support language learning outcomes and increase motivation by leveraging the use of well-integrated augmented visuals and oral and aural clues that serve as learning guidance for students. Fan et al. (2020) noted that location-based AR applications usually require learners to explore a specific real-world context and construct the relation between the knowledge of words and sentences to the real world. The contextual visualization emphasizes learners’ active construction of meaning during the learning process when leveraging the use of the physical environment as ubiquitous informational cues (Santos et al., 2014). Fan et al. (2020) named five unique AR affordances in supporting language learning compared to other computational approaches:

• – Transforming abstract language symbols on physical learning materials (e.g., letters, flashcards, objects) to concrete and vivid 2D/3D augmented visual representations and auditory sounds.
• – Presenting language knowledge relating to everyday objects or real-world locations in an authentic learning environment.
• – Enabling a variety of hands-on interactions on virtual objects or physical learning materials with physical affordances (e.g., cubes with physical notches) while viewing real-time augmented feedback on actions through displays (e.g., seeing the word animation when certain cubes are placed in a sequential order).
• – Drawing learners’ attention to important phonological knowledge using augmented overlay.
• – Supporting word spelling or proposition word learning in both physical and digital space.

AR applications can be effective digital tools to supplement second language instruction. Fan et al. (2020) stressed that instructional designers should consider how to integrate AR instruction into traditional instructional practices and contexts to provide effective blended learning opportunities for students. The use of AR in second language instructional design is supported by the NLA as it encourages positive collaboration amongst students by promoting in-depth discussions and effective physical interaction to positively influence learning goals (Fan et al., 2020).

Multimedia Tools

Multimedia integration into learning design is often used and recommended for minimizing barriers to learning by providing multiple means of engaging learners and representing instructional content, along with allowing students multiple means of expressing what they have learned (Davis & Frederick, 2020). The integration of multimedia tools such as audio, video, and animations can address the learning needs of all students. Davis and Frederick (2020) proposed that the strength of multimedia in instructional design lies in its ability to reduce cognitive load and facilitate learner engagement. Cognitive load can be mitigated by the way instructional materials are designed and delivered (i.e., using multimodal input) by reducing working memory resources devoted to extraneous issues, thus increasing the capacity of students’ working memory (Rahimi & Allahyari, 2019).

Multimedia tools can be used by instructional designers to create engaging digital stories in the target second language. Cunningham and Redmond (2008) reported that digital storytelling with visuals is an effective way to develop listening comprehension for students who are emergent readers in a second language. According to Cunningham and Redmond (2008), the use of digital visual-contextual cues aids with comprehension and creates a more meaningful and enjoyable language experience. Al-Amri (2020) discovered that digital storytelling activities provided students with meaningful opportunities to use the target language. Digital storytelling supported students’ oral communicative abilities in the target language, such as pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation (Al-Amri, 2020). Following the principles of the NLA, instructional designers in second language instruction can use digital storytelling as an effective method to engage students in authentic learning contexts that are connected to students’ individual experiences.

Multimedia software enable instructional designers to create meaningful and engaging instructional activities such as slideshows, interactive game boards, and online games to support second language learning. Hung (2011) advocated that effective learning activities should be focused on learners’ exposure and participation in multimedia-rich contexts where multimedia is embedded to provide inherent scaffolding for learning. Hung (2011) further asserted that effective learning activities should require students to actively participate through social interaction with others and technology must be employed to support interactivity among learners (interpersonal interactivity), between learners and learning materials (informational interactivity), or between learners and computers (human–computer interactivity).

Multimedia creation platforms can allow students to create their own multimedia presentations in the target language. For example, second language learners can use multimedia creation platforms to record videos of themselves presenting self-created written texts in the target language. Hung (2011) discovered that students strongly endorsed the use of video recordings of their oral presentations as a meaningful way to reflect on their learning processes. From the students’ perspectives, the video recordings allowed them to observe the strengths and weaknesses of their own oral skills in the target language, which they might have otherwise overlooked (Hung, 2011). Students reported that this reflective practice focused their attention on specific aspects of their presentations and motivated them to better refine future communication (Hung, 2011).

Conclusions

The integration of digital technologies into second language teaching and learning can help support a variety of instructional purposes while providing students with authentic learning experiences that are supportive of their learning needs. Second language learning, the principles of the NLA, and the affordances of digital technologies align with learning theories such as Vygotsky’s social development theory and Lave and Wenger’s situated learning theory. Digital technologies can be used to create authentic opportunities for learners to collaborate and interact with the target language (Cunningham & Redmond, 2008). Digital technologies can be used as pedagogical tools in second language instructional design to support meaningful instruction and augment student learning. According to Burset et al. (2016), instructional digital materials have more potential to promote learning and second language acquisition than traditional materials may provide due to their high interactivity, which captures the attention of learners and motivates them to learn.

Digital technologies help to promote collaborative, authentic, engaging, and creative second language learning environments. Instructional designers can use digital technologies to develop instructional materials, support instruction, and reinforce new knowledge in a variety of engaging ways. Fan et al. (2020) found that multimedia and game design strategies combined with effective presentation strategies may support students’ learning gains. Khadimally (2020) stressed that all technologies that support students’ meaning making during the second language learning process should be included in the design in such a way that the development of each skill is supported with a particular technology and that content is delivered in highly authentic and engaging ways. In this literature review, digital technologies such as digital games, augmented reality, and multimedia tools have been evaluated for their affordances to second language learning. The results of this literature review will provide second language instructional designers with valuable knowledge to consider in their own instructional design practices.

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