Bridging Activities: Social Media for Connecting Language Learners' in-School and Out-of-School Literacy Practices

Bridging-Activities Framework

Bridging activities, an instructional framework proposed by Thorne and Reinhardt (2008) derived from multiliteracies pedagogy (New London Group, 1996) and language awareness-based pedagogy (Carter, 1998), aims to foster technology-mediated second language (L2) teaching and learning. While language learners bridge their daily experiences and practices with their schooling, their language proficiency and awareness could increase by being exposed to more meaning-making practices through social and cultural interaction. Through these practices, language learners are able to develop their language awareness of the grammatical and lexical use in the target language and critically consider ways to use the language appropriately in various interpersonal, social, and cultural contexts (Halliday & Matthiesen, 2004). Further, raising L2 learners’ critical awareness fosters their cyberpragmatics (“the analysis of how information is produced and interpreted within the Internet environment;” Yus, 2011, p. 13) and allows them to analyze conventions to bridge in-class activities with their technology-mediated language use in the “real world” (Thorne & Reinhardt, 2008).