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Technology in Language Use, Language Teaching, and Language Learning
Technology in Language Use, Language Teaching, and Language Learning
RICHARD KERN
University of California, Berkeley
Department of French
4125 Dwinelle Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-2580
Email: rkern@berkeley.edu
This article offers a capacious view of technology to suggest broad principles relating technology and
language use, language teaching, and language learning. The first part of the article considers some of
the ways that technological media influence contexts and forms of expression and communication. In
the second part, a set of heuristic questions is proposed to help guide language teachers and researchers
in determining how to incorporate technology into their teaching practice or research agenda and eval-
uate its suitability and impact. These questions are based primarily on the goal of helping learners to
pay critical attention to the culturally encoded connections among forms, contexts, meanings, and ide-
ologies that they will encounter and produce in different mediums, both traditional and new.
Keywords: technology; multiliteracies; computer-assisted language learning; electronically mediated
communication; affordances