The Smartphone as a Personal Cognitive Artifact Supporting Participation in Interaction

Abstract

This article uses multimodal conversation analysis to investigate how the smartphone as a personal cognitive artifact features in second language (L2) use and learning. The data come from a pedagogical intervention that was organized as part of an integration learning course for adult L2 students with emerging literacy. The purpose of the intervention was to guide the students to participate in everyday interactions outside the language classroom and to learn from them. The analysis concentrates on a focal student's smartphone use during different phases of the intervention and offers a detailed account of how the smartphone provides affordances for the student to formulate recognizable social actions and participate in different phases of the pedagogical activity. The analysis adds to our current understanding of the role of mobile technology in L2 learning and illustrates how experiential pedagogy supports language learning as social activity. The findings can be used in designing pedagogical practices that support L2 students to develop their interactional competences on the basis of their own needs and goals.