This dissertation investigated the perceptions and experiences of online adult language
learners in higher education. This was a qualitative study of thirteen women enrolled in
online Spanish courses at two south-central Texas institutions of higher education. Three
findings emerged.
Given the participants’ awareness of the social nature of language and their
collective appreciation that language must be practiced orally to be acquired, they took
responsibility for their learning by creating their own communities of practice with
native Spanish speakers at work and at home. They bore the primary responsibility for
their learning and shaped their acquisition contexts to include Spanish experts from their
offline communities. This allowed the students to contextualize and personalize their
new language knowledge and embody multiple learning roles.
Language learning anxiety for these students was not located in the actual online
learning tasks, but instead centered on socioculturally constructed understandings about
language and their own personal and cultural connections to Spanish. The participants’ revealed the importance they place on demonstrating respect for culture through correct
and precise language use. But instead of resulting in a barrier to their learning, the
anxiety they experienced may have acted as an impetus in their continued Spanish study.
Their insights into the sociocultural influences on language in formal and informal
acquisition practices deepen our current understanding of foreign language affect and
language learning anxiety.
Finally, an in-depth analysis was done on the subgroup of participants identified
as heritage language learners. Their belief in the cultural metanarrative of the “proper
Tejana” led this group of south-central Texas women to reject the Texas-Spanish dialect,
Tex-Mex. The need to acquire proper Spanish and to live linguistically and culturally in
two distinct worlds of English and Spanish significantly affected their acquisition
processes.
The findings offer insights into Spanish learners’ perceptions of online language
learning, their affective experiences learning Spanish as an adult, and the sociocultural
connections they make to the Spanish language. The implications for future pedagogical
design, online and off, are presented.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-1485 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Coryell, Joellen Elizabeth |
| Contributors | Clark, M. Carolyn |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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