A social and self-reflective approach to MALL

Abstract There is a growing recognition that learning is increasingly taking place on the move and located beyond educational environments, ‘in the gaps of daily life’ (Sharples et al ., 2007). And yet, language learners have mostly been perceived as being fixed in particular contexts, whether in the educational environment, abroad, or in their homes and communities. As several authors have pointed out (Castells et al ., 2007; Okabe Sharples et al ., 2007), mobile devices allow learners to capitalize on the multiple sites that they travel through, whether they be public or private spaces, formal or informal ones, and reflect on their social practices and their learner selves. This paper investigates whether such a context-sensitive and social-oriented approach to Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) can be applied to the language learning context and how it is manifested. In order to carry out this investigation, we will be drawing on literature on the development of identity in second language learning (Norton, 2000; Kramsch, 2006; Phipps, 2007) and the use of ethnographic approaches to data collection and interpretation. We will be reporting on two case studies, involving learners of Icelandic and Serbian/Croatian, conducted over two years at a UK university. The paper concludes that the use of mobile technology enables language learners to use these devices as ‘a prosthesis of the self’ (Kress & Pachler, 2007) which allows them to explore the perception of their L2 selves in a variety of day-to-day scenarios.