| Researchers, professional organizations, educators, and students alike regard participation in multilingual communities as a primary goal for language learning; however, the extent to which alignment with communities-oriented goals relates to students' self-initiated behaviors is unclear. This study investigated these specific questions: (1) To what extent was involvement in a German-speaking community a learning goal for the beginner-level college students of German who participated in this study? (2) Which aspects of Communities were more or less important to these learners? (3) How did the learners who had a strong and those who had a weak orientation toward Communities compare in their self-reports across these variables: (a) the German-speaking communities with which they communicated in any language and in German, respectively; (b) the frequency with which they communicated with those German-speaking communities in any language and in German, respectively; and (c) the technologies they used to communicate with German-speaking communities outside of class, in any language and in German, respectively? The study had three components: (1) A baseline questionnaire that was completed by 23 learners in first-semester German classes to explore their learning goals, social networks, use of German beyond the classroom setting, and technology use behaviors; (2) daily and weekly technology use logs filled out by six of the learners who had completed the baseline questionnaire to keep track of whether, how, why, and with whom they had used various digital tools; and (3) individual and group interviews with the same six learners to elaborate on each of the topics from the baseline questionnaire. Results indicated that participants defined only native speakers (NSs) of the target language (TL) who live in a TL-speaking country as their aspirational (idealized) community and paid little attention to local communities of NSs or, most particularly, non-native speakers (i.e., their peers). The use of technology to maintain ties with members of students' aspirational community (i.e., NSs) was reported in very few instances and not a single participant reported using technology to establish contact with members of such a group. These findings are further discussed in light of pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research. |
