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Artificial Intelligence Knowledge Development

<p style="text-align:justify;">The notion of language learners as informed&nbsp;consumers developed by Cohen and White (2008) takes up the issue of how best to develop the knowledge, skills and awareness of language learners given the&nbsp;infinite variety of language learning opportunities. The informed consumer&nbsp;approach focused not only on developing awareness of both formal and informal learning environments, but also on enhancing the ability to critically appraise&nbsp;those opportunities and to optimise language learning within them. In this&nbsp;article we trace how the notion of language learners as informed consumers has been&nbsp;drawn on in innovative studies of technology-mediated language learning; a&nbsp;common focus of those studies has been on ways of fostering awareness of&nbsp;the potential of particular technology-mediated learning environments and the&nbsp;relevant knowledge and skills which would support the active and effective use&nbsp;of those environments. We show how strands of the informed consumer approach have been used to&nbsp;investigate expertise and affordances in electronic dictionary&nbsp;use (Levy &amp; Steel, 2015) and the trajectories of distance learners of&nbsp;Chinese (Tasker, 2010). In the latter part of the article we consider the&nbsp;experiences and reflections of learners of Arabic in a study abroad context in&nbsp;Jordan as part of Project&nbsp;Perseverance; findings from that project open up new dimensions&nbsp;of what it means to be an informed consumer of language instruction in relation to specific situational&nbsp;and cultural norms and constraints. To conclude the article identifies not only&nbsp;the distinctive contribution of the informed consumer approach but also how it&nbsp;sheds light on the ways in which individuals seek out and curate personally&nbsp;meaningful sites for language learning within their life worlds.</p>

Encouraging Learners to Become Better-informed Consumers of L2 Learning Opportunities

Original Research 

ltrq.2020.19.01.xml

Guest-editors: 
Christine Coombe, PhD, Higher Colleges of Technology, Dubai, UAE
Hassan Mohebbi, PhD, Independent Researcher, Turkey


Special Issue: Pathways to the Successful Teaching and Learning of an L2: In Honour of Andrew D. Cohen