Learning a Language in the Virtual Wild: Iwona Lech

Iwona Lech

Learning a new language is difficult. Especially if you are an adult.

Of course, you probably already knew that.

According to Dr. Iwona Lech, recipient of CISLL’s Outstanding Graduate Student Award (COSSA) in 2017, students are dropping out of college-level foreign language courses at an unprecedented rate.

“It’s a real problem, especially in the last five to ten years,” said Lech.

In part, this problem sparked Lech’s interest in how to increase learning and engagement in college-level foreign language courses.

“The majority of the FL programs use a “grammar + vocabulary lists” approach, in which students learn lists of words and practice grammar rules as separate systems. They are then expected to connect the two into actual speech instances,” said Lech. “Since such skills require hours and hours of practice and additional input, language learning becomes a long and tedious journey that does not fit into a culture that celebrates immediate results. Learners achieve poor results and quickly lose interest, with only few determined enough to persevere.”

She noted that in Europe, many students teach themselves English through exposure to authentic uses of the language in virtual spaces, which she refers to as the “virtual wild”.

“English learners in Europe immerse themselves in the language in virtual worlds through reading the Web, watching original movies and television shows, and listening to music and podcasts,” elaborated Lech. “They also chat with strangers who are native English speakers through games, forums, blogs, or vlogs.”

Researchers call this phenomenon OILE (online informal learning of English), and are increasingly interested in the outcomes of this type of language learning and the ways it can be implemented in classrooms. Many explain OILE’s success through its incidental character—learners decide to engage in the activities because of their interest in a show, music, or game, and are largely unaware that learning takes place. They feel relaxed, engaged, and motivated.

This positive facet of OILE appeals to Lech. She is a proponent of positive psychology, a movement within psychology that encourages researchers to focus on the more positive side of the human condition.

“If OILE is indeed able to foster positive emotions, they, in turn, have the potential to broaden and build invaluable resources for learning a language, as per Barbara Fredrickson’s ‘broad and build’ theory of positive emotions,” explained Lech. “Removing one of the most limiting experiences in learning a new language, foreign language anxiety, could be a key solution to addressing the lack of retention in FL classes. Moreover, with today’s affordances of technology we can create immersion experiences for every language learner, despite geographical borders.”

So, if OILE is effective for Europeans learning English, could a similar approach be used for Americans learning a language other than English?

Lech attempted to find out.

For her dissertation, Lech randomly placed intermediate- to advanced-level German learners in an online German “class,” in either a traditional instruction condition or one based on OILE. In the “OILL” (online informal learning of language) condition, students were asked to find, read, listen to and watch authentic German on the Web.

She gave all participants in the experiment a pre-test, and those who completed 10 hours of engagement in the study took a post-test. She also administered an ESM (Experience Sampling Method) survey during learning sessions to find out participants’ emotions in the moment.

Unfortunately, so many people dropped out of the study it is difficult to interpret the results with any confidence.

Interestingly, the dropout did not appear to be random. Of 16 participants who completed the full 10 hours of the study, 12 had been randomly assigned to the OILL condition, whereas only four had been assigned to the experimental condition.

This pattern suggests that the OILL condition was more engaging for students than the traditional method and could potentially keep three times as many learners persevering to the end of an FL class.

Lech, who left NIU in 2018, is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Language and Culture Learning Center of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

She is not done studying how to improve foreign language learning.

“I am continuing to analyze data that did not make it into my dissertation, such as measures of emotion that I collected during the duration of the study,” volunteered Lech. “I am confident we can teach languages better and increase interest in FL courses.”

A chapter by Lech that overviews her dissertation project appeared in the 2018 book, “Teaching Language and Teaching Literature in Virtual Environments,” edited by María Luisa Carrió-Pastor.