I created this meme using images taken from Feige, K. (Producer), Russo, A. (Director) & Russo, J. (Director). (2018). Infinity war [Motion picture]. USA: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

No, for educators the discussion about “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” should not be completely abandoned. It should be reworked, because historically, any reductive attempt to dichotomize will almost inevitably lead to new discourses and discoveries.

In his controversial article, Prensky (2001) used terms, such as “native speakers”, “digital language” and “accent”, that are clearly allusions to the native versus non-native speaker debate and the critical period hypothesis (CPH) in linguistics. Penfield and Roberts (1959), and subsequently Lenneberg (1967), suggest that there is an innate predisposition to acquire language in early childhood. In this view, having missed this window of acquisition opportunity, adult learners of a language have to thus rely on more general learning abilities, and this results in lifelong deficiencies in, among others, accent, grammar use and intuition about language use (Spada & Lightbown, 2013). In the same vein, Prensky (2001) boldly declared that older digital immigrants will never be able to achieve digital native levels of proficiency.

In my opinion, Presnky was looking in the right section of the library but at the wrong book. The manifesto (Bayne, 2020) provides a compelling counterargument to Prensky’s claims by raising the fact that “children are still born analogue” into a digital world that their parents have been inhabiting. In essence, no one is innately predisposed to learning this so-called digital language. Moreover, Vygotsky emphasised in his sociocultural theory that social interactions play a pivotal role in “meaning making” and that the development of higher order functions in children is therefore reliant on a child’s interactions with his or her caregivers, peers and the culture(s) in their environment (Vygotsky, 1978). In essence, everyone is a potential first language speaker of the digital tongue.

When thinking about “digital literacy”, the clue may be in the name. Instead of looking at the differences between first and second language learners, we should be looking at theories on literacy. Barton (2007) proposes that the ecological metaphor best describes literacy because:

“Originating in biology, ecology is the study of the interrelationship of an organism and its environment. When applied to humans, it is the interrelationship of an area of human activity and its environment. It is concerned with how the activity – literacy in this case – is part of the environment and at the same time influences, and is influenced by the environment (p. 28)”.

To illustrate my point, I will use a case study from my own teaching experience. Last semester, all of my lessons with a polytechnic, a pre-university institution, in Singapore were conducted online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Whilst most of my students found it relatively easy to make the switch from the traditional classroom setting to learning online, one of them, Sean (pseudonym), struggled to keep up with the rest. Sean was from an underprivileged family and had an extremely low level of digital literacy. His family had never owned a computer and he had not been exposed to much digital education in his formative schooling years. Essentially, digital literacy and the culture(s) surrounding it was largely absent in his environment.

From a sociocultural perspective, Sean was indeed in some sense an “immigrant”. Firstly, he did not have the same proficiency or understanding of the “digital language” that his classmates spoke. He did not know what some terms that are commonplace in social media such as DM (“direct message”), IKR (“I know right”) and OOTD (“outfit of the day”) meant. Secondly, he found it hard to grasp the cultural and (possibly linguistic) nuances behind many of the memes and gifs that were shared. There were stretches of conversation that had no words and the participants simply replied to one another using such visuals. This led to him being repeatedly excluded from conversations and jokes. I also noticed that Sean rarely initiated conversations and contributed to discussions about a meme and in our Whatsapp chat group.

More importantly, Sean faced problems of a more practical nature due to his low proficiency in using technology. The more technologically proficient students were able to dive straight into activities, but Sean had the added obstacle of learning the basic functions that were “intuitive” to the others. For example, Sean had to learn how to download files and save them. Yang and Chen (2007) found that slow typing is one reason for students lagging behind in writing tasks and this in turn can increase a student’s anxiety about the task. In a private conversation after our second lesson, Sean confessed to me that he wished that he could return to using his trusty pen and foolscap pad for his written assignments.

However, there was a Disney ending for Sean. I decided that Sean needed a support group and approached three other students for help. They created another chat group where Sean could ask them, without any fear of embarrassment, any question about the digital world. This chat group also allowed him to learn the social aspects of the digital environment. During his group’s final summative presentation, Sean surprised me by taking control of the laptop and managing the slide deck while his other were speaking.

Essentially, Sean’s case demonstrated that we should be talking about proficiency levels and at the very least evolve the native immigrant binary to a continuum.

References

Barton, D. (1994). Literacy : An introduction to the ecology of written language. Oxford: Blackwell.

Bayne, S. (2020). The manifesto for teaching online. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Lenneberg, E. (1967). Biological foundations of language. New York: Wiley.

Lightbown, Patsy M, & Spada, Nina. (2013). How Languages are Learned 4th edition (Oxford handbooks for language teachers). Oxford University Press.

Penfield, W., & Roberts, L. (1959). Speech and brain-mechanisms. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 1. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.

Yang, S. C., & Chen, Y. J. (2007). Technology-enhanced language learning: A case study. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(1), 860-879.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Lantolf, James P, & Poehner, Matthew E. (2014). Sociocultural Theory and the Pedagogical Imperative in L2 Education (1st ed., ESL & applied linguistics professional series). London: Routledge.

Planned Further Readings:

Bennett, S, & Maton, K. (2010). Beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate: Towards a more nuanced understanding of students’ technology experiences. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(5), 321-331.

Bennett, S., Maton, K., & Kervin, L. (2008). The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(5), 775-786.

Ng, W. (2012). Can we teach digital natives digital literacy? Computers and Education, 59(3), 1065-1078.

Selwyn, N. (2009). The digital native – myth and reality. Aslib Proceedings, 61(4), 364-379.

Week 1: Thoughts on “Can we stop talking about digital natives” / Illyas Lim Effandi / An introduction to digital environments for learning (2020/2021)[SEM1] by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0