Social Language Learning Spaces: Affordances in a Community of Learners

Abstract This paper reports on an ethnographic inquiry into the linguistic and sociocultural affordances available to English and Japanese foreign language learners through their engagement in a social learning space at a Japanese university. By social learning space we refer to a facility in which students come together in order to learn with and from each other in a non-formal setting. To explore the social learning dynamic in this environment, we carried out a longitudinal ethnographic inquiry. Data came primarily from interviews with learners and administrators, supported by participant-observations. A thematic analysis of the data, informed by ecological and community of practice perspectives, pointed to the emergence of a community of learners and revealed how closely the affordances were connected with the emergent community. In this paper we report on the findings related to the affordances which gave rise to language learning opportunities, the relationship of these affordances to the conditions which supported the development of a community of learners, and the role of learner autonomy in regard to these two interrelated phenomena.