Chronotope, technology affordances, and task design: using WeChat to facilitate Chinese learning in the classroom

2.1 Task-based language teaching

While it is important to recognise that task-based language teaching is central to this study, it is beyond our scope to scrutinise its characteristics in full or compare it to other approaches. The nuanced definitions and tenets of the task-based approach to language teaching, as well as its advantages and shortcomings, have been addressed extensively elsewhere (e.g., Bygate, 2020; East, 2021, 2022; Ellis, 2003, 2018; Ellis et al., 2020; Jackson, 2022; Robinson, 2011). As Vandommele et al. (2018) remind us, the question of how real a task-based approach might be depends on the “task-in-process” in teaching practices, as much as the “task-on-paper” as a pre-set taxonomy or workplan. In this study, we regard the concepts of tasks and task-based approaches as part of the broad philosophical orientation to second language learning that engenders a particular kind of pedagogical belief and condition for exploring technology and its affordances for knowledge making in classroom settings.

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) has arguably been one of the most influential trends in second language education since its conception over four decades ago, fuelled largely by the global teaching of English. In simple terms, tasks are pedagogic activities designed to engage learners with primarily meaning-focused (rather than form-focused) language use. Samuda and Bygate (2008) described a task as “a holistic activity which engages language use in order to achieve some non-linguistic outcome while meeting a linguistic challenge, with the overall aim of promoting language learning, through process or product or both” (p. 69). The foundation of TBLT stems from the theories of communicative competence (Hymes, 1972) and systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1973), which posit that language is not just a set of formal structures but involves pieces of communication constructed for social purposes. This places TBLT firmly within the interactionalist paradigm and gives rise to what is now widely known as communicative language teaching (CLT).

CLT emphasises that language learning takes place beyond grammar translation through developing communicative competence and putting language knowledge and skills to use in a variety of authentic settings and situations. Based on these underpinnings, this study takes the perspective that a task can be understood as a process of holistic and collaborative development that “involves a number of distinct, though related processes such as social interaction, perception, ideational comprehension, motor control, contextual mapping and strategic control” (Samuda & Bygate, 2008, p. 15). More importantly, a task-based approach strives for authentic learning by arriving at “a genuinely applied linguistic activity, in which … TBLT [is rooted] in real world contexts with real world agents, and defines itself in terms shaped and ratified by real world stakeholders” (Bygate, 2020, p. 284, emphasis original).

Thus, the core of task-based instruction is essentially about creating opportunities for goal-oriented communication through meaningful tasks to solve problems, complete projects, and reach decisions that will enable learning to go above and beyond language itself (Pica, 2008). As a guiding principle, task design aims to maximise language learning by taking into account the holistic and collaborative nature of tasks that must be situated in real-world contexts. It has been argued that, in classroom practices, effective task design should enhance the accuracy, complexity and fluency of language by installing (1) communicative conditions that demand information or outcomes, (2) teacher interventions to assist learners to focus on the required performance, and (3) tasks sequenced in the syllabus according to increasing linguistic, cognitive and communicative complexity to promote global competence (Baralt et al., 2014; Ellis, 2018; Sheppard, 2019).

Authenticity, despite sparking off ongoing debates in the field of second language teaching (Pinner, 2016; Shomoossi & Ketabi, 2007; Tatsuki, 2006; Taylor, 1994), is considered central to all aspects of task design. Authentic task design is believed to ensure a learner-centric approach that aims to provide natural input through authentic texts and roles that stimulate the autonomous, meaningful engagement of learners to address real-life issues in a culturally appropriate manner (Ellis et al., 2020; Gilmore, 2007; Mishan, 2005). Its realisation depends largely on strategies of contextualising the classroom to constructively simulate authentic situations and foster genuine learning experiences and the development of language and cultural competence (Joy, 2011).

The question of authenticity in task design is equally important in technology-assisted language learning. In distance education and remote learning environments, authenticity is considered integral in creating synergy amongst learner, task and technology (in line with Latourian actor-network theory), and can be achieved by designing learning environments that make effective use of the communication capabilities of technologies to connect learners in meaningful ways and encourage learning activities that are relevant and/or authentic to the participants (Herrington et al., 2006, p. 234–235). The communication capabilities of technologies accentuated in this context are akin to what we address below in terms of technology affordances, which can be employed to “design authenticity into” the learning environment in terms of connecting learners across space and time to create networked learning (Mishan, 2005).

With regard to new technology and, increasingly, mobile technology, Kukulska-Hulme and Traxler (2019, p. 246) noted that “these technologies offer unique possibilities to support designs for learning where access, inclusion, opportunity and participation are priorities,” and their deployment ought to enable more personalised, mobile, situated and authentic educational experiences (Beetham & Sharpe, 2019; Morgana & Kukulska-Hulme, 2021). Further evidence suggests that mobile devices are valued by learners as an important and enjoyable resource that motivates self-initiated learning and engagement from a distance (Demouy et al., 2015). These viewpoints on the usefulness of technology are key to our task design in this study, which considers how WeChat can recontextualise the classroom chronotope and scale up authentic language learning substantially.

2.2 Chronotopes of learning

The concept of chronotopes originated from Bakhtin’s (1981) theorisation of the dialogic coordination and cultural representation of space–time in setting the historical context of literary narratives. Although well known in the field of literary studies, the chronotope has been overlooked in linguistics and educational studies until recently. One of the driving forces behind its rediscovery is the development of globalisation, which, as depicted by Appadurai (2000), is characterised by ethnoscapes, technoscapes, ideoscapes, financescapes and mediacapes: unprecedented flows and mobility of people, artefacts, ideas and resources across geographical, national and cultural boundaries. Concepts such as place, locality, language and community are seen as being fundamentally reshaped by these “scapes” (Blommaert, 2010; Pennycook, 2010), with technology being an indispensable facilitator (Castells, 1996). As part of this wave, new research is also prompted into how the concept of chronotopes may advance our insights into new linguistic and cultural phenomena (Blommaert & De Fina, 2015; Kroon & Swanenberg, 2020). For the purpose of this study, we focus on how chronotopes can help capture the space–time dynamics and mobility pertinent to learning, which has been undergoing significant changes due to technological innovations and educational reforms.

From an ecological perspective, educational practices can be broadly understood in terms of the space–time relations of learning in physical, social and virtual dimensions. This understanding is what Ritella (2018) and others proposed to theorise, following Bakhtin (1981), as chronotopes of learning. A chronotope, as such, refers to “an emergent configuration of the space–time relations during an intentional, collaborative learning activity” (Ritella, 2018, p. 3). The need to bring the theory of chronotope into learning and pedagogical research is motivated by “the introduction of continuously evolving virtual spaces and the implementation of pedagogical approaches such as the flipped classroom, connected learning, and place-based learning [that] entail the transformation of the space and time organisation of learning” (Ritella et al., 2016, p. 49). They assert that the chronotope offers a fruitful way of examining the interdependence between space and time, how space–time is socially constructed and negotiated, and how it is materially organised and semiotically and discursively framed in the classroom.

The chronotopic framework holds that learning is processual, entailing situated bodily and pragmatic actions in interaction with multiple representations and taking place over time and across locations. How space–time is organised affects learners’ sensemaking, and thus should be carefully considered in designing learning tasks (Ritella et al., 2016, 2021). This conceptualisation expands the ontological assumptions about language learning traditionally privileged in CLT, from linguistic structures to multimodal representations and interactional outcomes, and from language–teacher–learner triads confined to the classroom to spatially and temporally open, asynchronous, interconnected collaborative work. Through this lens, language learning is seen as organised and materialised not only with language items as the content of learning, but also chronotopically through the recontextualisation of resources, activities, discourses and practices of knowledge making surrounding language learning that both simulate and produce social realities in and beyond the classroom. Given the emergent nature of chronotopes, a task-based approach should attach great importance to the pedagogical design of space–time conducive to authentic language learning.

Existing research on the chronotopes of learning (see Ritella, 2018 for a review) has examined learners’ discursive production of space and time to facilitate participatory learning (Bloome et al., 2009; Brown & Renshaw, 2006), identity development in space and over time (Hirst & Vadeboncoeur, 2006; Ritella & Ligorio, 2016), and the organisation and movement of objects, bodies and technologies as well as meanings and ideas (Ritella & Hakkarainen, 2012; Rosborough, 2016; Wegerif, 2007). The scholarship shows that pedagogic space–time can be discursively constructed in such a way that a hybrid chronotope emerges in which formal learning and informal everyday experience enter into a dialogue (Silseth & Arnseth, 2022), and students’ past, present and future chronotopic relations come together in collaborative classroom work (Brown & Renshaw, 2006). Space–time can also be technologically mediated so that students are able to navigate in different time zones, spaces and places with diverse tools situated in their formal and informal lives to engage in a multimodal, multidimensional, collaborative learning practice (Kumpulainen et al., 2014).

Additionally, the classroom chronotope is seen as expanded by personal digital devices on school language projects, through which the relationship between the material, social and semiotic levels are reconstituted (Gilje, 2019). These findings highlight not only the designability of chronotopes but also their pedagogic potential to enable mobility and authenticity in a shared process of knowledge production. This inspired the present study, which draws attention to the technological dimension of chronotopes in the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). We describe the technology and its affordances in the next section before zooming in on its role in chronotopic task design in CFL.

2.3 Technology affordances

The potential of technology is often termed “technology affordances” (Hutchby, 2001). In contrast to the sociological emphasis on the social shaping of technology, affordance theory, derived from Gibson’s (1979) ecological approach to understanding human perception, explains the technological shaping of social action. This constructivist view argues for a complementary relationship between technological tools and human practices and “a recognition of the constraining, as well as enabling, materiality of artefacts” (Hutchby, 2001, p. 441). It lays the foundation for steadily growing discussions (see Parchoma, 2014, for a review) on the growing and diverse use of new technology to support learning.

Conole and Dyke (2004) attempted to develop a taxonomy of affordances of learning technologies that included “enabling” elements, such as accessibility, speed of change, diverse experiences, communication and collaboration, and multimodal and non-linear learning, as well as “constraining” elements, such as risk and fragility, monopolisation and surveillance. Their aim was to generate a checklist for practitioners to make informed choices about the ways in which different technologies could be used (see Boyle & Cook, 2004 for a critique). Kirschner et al. (2004) suggested using the concepts of “utility” and “usability” as two criteria for evaluating the usefulness of an educational system. Utility refers to technology providing users with the functionalities needed to perform a learning task and is associated with educational affordances and social affordances, whereas usability relates to the technology enabling users to understand and operate the tool and is measured by technological affordances. Others have further identified affective, motivational, connective, physical, cognitive, sensory, paralinguistic and digital affordances (Hartson, 2003; Hayes et al., 2016; Zhang, 2008)—all can perhaps be described as “multimodal affordances” (Jewitt, 2004)—as the use of technological tools extends rapidly to social media and other forms of new technology.

Recent observations arising from applied research on technology affordances are also noteworthy for interpreting social life and learning. Tagg and Lyon’s (2021) ethnographic analysis of mobile messaging micro-practices, for instance, shows that the affordances associated with digital devices play a critical part in language users’ meaning making and co-construction of a multimodal repertoire in networked communication. Their study indicates the interplay between technology affordances and language practices in that when taken from a learning perspective, language development is shaped by the pre-programmed technical and semiotic features of the digital platform. At the same time, it describes the collaborative, hybrid nature of communication in “phonespace” (Townsend, 2002) as a specific technologically afforded space–time within an emerging online-offline nexus. This latter feature resonates with Christiansen’s (2019) study of how digital media aids the co-creation of transnational chronotopes for migrants, enabling their maintenance of belongingness that transcends both place and time to enter the social spaces of a shared imagined experience and cultural practices. Thus, it is evident that technology affordances can contrive chronotopes and render them technologically designable, with the potential to add to or alter the offline lifeworld by creating translocal online connections and networked communities through which disparate individuals engage in shared events, sensemaking and learning.

In the context of technology-assisted learning—notwithstanding the competing discourses about positioning new technology as technology for learning (Wright & Parchoma, 2011)—it is conceivable that chronotopes can be technologically contrived and designed for pedagogical purposes. Kukulska-Hulme (2021) argues that educational institutions must appropriate personal technologies such as mobile phones due to student demand and that such tools facilitate interactions that support educational ends. Moreover, she emphasises that when considering the design principles of adapting the mobile “apps economy” (Genachowski, 2010) for learning, we must aspire to “design of learning” (design of content, activities, communities and communication) as well as “design for learning” (an intentional, systematic and creative approach to responding to learning in complex environments). These combined elements encourage us to identify and employ the kind of affordances mobile technology may uniquely offer to construct chronotopes of learning in ways that are personalised, situated, authentic and informal (Kukulska-Hulme & Traxler, 2019).

Specific to second language teaching, it has been argued in broad terms that technology and TBLT are mutually constitutive and enhancing, and technology-assisted TBLT can contribute to the equalisation of participation, the enhancement of noticing and self-monitoring, the facilitation of language play and social cohesiveness (Lai & Li, 2011). In parallel, and from the vantage point of technology, there is an emerging field of mobile-assisted language learning (MALL), which considers mobile devices instrumental to affording not only mobility of technology but also many other mobilities, including the dynamic nature of human communication and language development (see Kukulska-Hulme, 2016 for a review; see also Morgana & Kukulska, 2021). This subsumes what we emphasise in this study as the chronotopic affordances of technology, that is, of the space–time relations of learning (re)configurable by mobile applications. Such relations were previously described by Kukulska-Hulme and Wible (2008) as “context” and contextual learning. They contended that mobile learning in context is about creating an ecology of situated interactions of individuals and groups with their social contacts and aspects of their physical environments, which are generated by language learners and by technology:

From a technical perspective, context-enabled learning is a significant extension of current location-based approaches, integrating personalised interaction and adaptive content with context identification and detection technologies, including personal task and goal context, location context, object identification and tagging, time, and social context. (Kukulska-Hulme & Wible, 2008, p. 208, p. 208)

Kukulska-Hulme and Wible concluded that “one of the basic challenges to creating effective mobile language learning applications lies in how context is to be construed so that it can be exploited for the benefit of the mobile leaner” (2008, p. 210, our emphasis). These suppositions validate our attention to the potential ways in which language tasks can be chronotopically designed through mobile technology to construe and extend contextual learning.

As shown above, there is growing interest in exploring the role of technology in language education. Much has been developed for understanding MALL and, within that, the principles of technology design of and for learning (Thomas & Reinders, 2011). However, there is more to be learnt about how classroom chronotopes may be technologically afforded, modified and pedagogically incorporated into language task design to facilitate second language learning (see Gilje, 2019; Nocchi & Blin, 2013). Our particular educational take on chronotope is what this study probes into, as informed by theories and debates in the fields of second language teaching and technology affordance and design for learning. To this end, and taking stock of the review of relevant scholarship, the following assumptions form the basis for framing the chronotopic affordances of technology in language learning that inform the remainder of the paper:

1. TBLT centres on the development of communicative competence by engaging learners in meaningful language use in realistic contexts.

2. Task design should maximise language learning by situating classroom experiences in authentically contextualised activities.

3. Contextual learning constitutes spatio-temporal relations called chronotopes that are produced not only linguistically but also physically, socially and virtually via technology.

4. The chronotopic affordances of technology can be pedagogically designed and organised to facilitate and fulfil task authenticity in language learning.

In what follows, we demonstrate through a case study how the affordances of WeChat are pedagogically designed into task-based CFL teaching to expand and mix the chronotopes of learning and creatively enhance task authenticity. We concentrate on the interconnectedness and mutual productiveness of technology, chronotopes and task authenticity. We attempt to illustrate how careful, holistic configuration of these elements can lead learners into a sequence of distinct scenarios, roles and associated language repertoires that can chronotopically facilitate and amplify authentic learning.

3.1 WeChat

WeChat (or weixin) is a free mobile application developed by China’s technology giant Tencent in 2011. It offers a mixture of features similar to those of WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook, including multimodal instant messaging (of texts, images and files), online payment, and social media functions such as text tweets, group chats, photo sharing and short vlogs of “moments” (see Figure 1). Verified account users can also share blogs and official publicity for subscription and commercial purposes. It is estimated that in 2022, the total number of active WeChat users exceeded two billion globally (Tencent, 2022).

Figure 1:

The main interface and functions of WeChat (Tang & Hew, 2019, p. 132).

Aside from being an extremely popular app for social networking in Chinese-speaking markets, WeChat is widely used for professional and business communication (L. Huang, 2019; Tian, 2020). More recently, WeChat is increasingly used as an educational technology, notably for supporting the learning of CFL and facilitating mediated cultural exchange for learners of Chinese (X. Huang, 2019; Jin, 2017; Tong et al., 2020). Both X. Huang’s (2019) longitudinal observation of beginner learners of Chinese and Tong et al.’s (2020) analysis of teacher reflective journals reveal a positive reception of WeChat in mobile-assisted Chinese learning. Their studies indicate that WeChat can stimulate and support spontaneous, proactive learning that focuses students on authentic interactions with native speakers and connects classroom knowledge to life. However, WeChat also creates challenges for teachers regarding how to implement WeChat-supported tasks as holistic and dynamic processes and how to meet both the pedagogical and technological goals of technology-mediated tasks in MALL.

With regard to the space–time relations of learning, Jin’s (2017) examination of year-abroad students in China highlights the affordances of WeChat in creating a “virtual encountering space” with native speakers for authentic communication and providing students with valuable linguistic and literacy resources for doing so, thus fostering new learner identities. Building on these enquiries, this study focuses on the chronotopic affordances of WeChat from the perspective of language task design. It examines how the chronotopes of authentic language learning emerge from the reconstituting, crossing and rearranging of space–time frames as a result of the technological intervention of WeChat.

3.2 The CFL classroom

The idealised context of task design in our case study is an intermediate-level business Chinese course in a European university language programme (Wang & Wu, 2020). Its rationale is to integrate the teaching of both the language and the content—in this case, Chinese combined with a business project for higher-level European learners of CFL. The presumption is that the CFL students are already capable users of WeChat in terms of both linguistic and technical competence, although preparation for this can be provided prior to the project. In fact, the students’ technological skills, the content subject and even the target language can all be regarded as variables of task design that are adjustable or substitutable according to the nature and needs of specific language programmes and participants. The key is flexibly integrating WeChat into the classroom for the creation and repurposing of chronotopes to suit the stages of both language and content development, which are collectively defined by learners as they approach the project.

3.3 WeChat in chronotopic task design

The simulated Chinese business project presented by Wang and Wu (2020) can be briefly summarised as follows:

1. Students are required to work in groups of three or four to set up a Europe-based business company that promotes Sino-European tourism.

2. They act as core members of the company according to negotiated roles and responsibilities that match self-identified preferences and skills.

3. As company managers, students coordinate and conduct market research with the help of WeChat and collectively design a tourism product.

4. The managers pitch their draft business plan to potential “customers” (native speakers of Chinese selected by the teacher) in the Chinese market via WeChat.

5. The project team finalises the business plan according to the feedback received and publishes a tourism product online, if possible, via WeChat.

While this appears to be a feasible, meaningful and motivating simulation project, what makes its design particularly distinctive is the strategic involvement of WeChat. By strategic, we refer to WeChat’s chronotopic affordances, which are called upon as the business project progresses to technologically build and modify space–time at a particular phase, in a specific way, to enhance authentic, context-driven communication for each task or task cycle. This is outlined in Table 1.

A first observation is that the task design presented in this business project is especially conducive to self-guided collaborative learning through problem solving. It is made up of six progressively linked stages that simulate a real-life (albeit simplified) business operation, with each stage fulfilled by a cluster of pedagogic tasks that are either form focused or communication focused. Second, the use of technology (WeChat) is as crucial to learning as the content of the project in the task design, if not more so. WeChat is used to bring about and support each project stage and task cycle, both in and beyond the class. It facilitates formal learning as well as self-directed informal learning and integrates these two dimensions in the project. It is also a tool with a multifunctional role for communication and for learning, enabling the teacher to give instructions, set up pre-task activities and provide scaffolding feedback, and enabling the students to carry out group learning and team building while completing the simulated business communication (through role play) and outputs (such as business plan and publicity). Third, WeChat offers affordances that can be described not only as technological, but also as linguistic (language skills), cultural (Chinese), social (teamwork), affective (motivation) and pedagogic (teaching and learning). As shown in Table 1, the task design has scope for exploiting all these aspects to various extents and interweaving them into the developmental stages of teaching and project making.

The focus of this study is the chronotopic affordances of WeChat. Adding to research on the chronotopes of learning, which has examined various issues such as connected learning, student identity and intercultural communication, our analysis is from the viewpoint of task design in language classrooms, and we observe the chronotopic affordances of WeChat as applied in the aforementioned tutorial, primarily from three interconnected aspects.

3.3.3 Aspect 3: extending the local to the translocal

One of the unprecedented potentials afforded by digital technology is its global reach. In chronotopic terms, mobile applications such as WeChat and similar technological innovations create effects of what Harvey (1989) refers to as time–space compression—that is, the condensing or eliding of spatial and temporal distances as a constraint to physical and metaphorical mobility. For education, this affordance can be viewed positively as something that disrupts and liberates learning as solely local practices and facilitates translocal, transtemporal networks of communication and knowledge making.

In the language classroom, this affordance can be seen exemplified in the tutorial under question, notably in Tasks 2.3, 4.2 and 6.2 (see Table 1). A striking common feature in the design of these activities is the direct contact between the students and the “authentic” interlocutors and audiences mediated by WeChat. These are basically role plays involving native speakers from outside the class. Most of them are carefully selected and prepared by the teacher behind the scenes for their expertise in either Chinese teaching or business to support pedagogic tasks. Others are anonymous public users of WeChat in the real world when the business plan is published on WeChat. These native speakers are intended by task design to be (or act as) “colleagues”, “clients” or “consumers” in China. They participate in the task and fulfil these roles and capacities virtually from wherever they are located, representing an authentic sense of China for the European students and the people inhabiting the physical, cultural and economic chronotopes in that part of the world.

The use of WeChat in these activities, therefore, creates not only an alternative platform for role play but also genuine and critical intercultural encounters and authentic learning in which the Chinese language and culture are key. This is achieved through the technologically extended classroom chronotype, supporting the point made in the previous section about crossing formal and informal learning beyond the classroom and, more fundamentally, to an entirely different physical and sociocultural frame of space–time: to China and by extension, the Chinese-speaking world. In this sense, the chronotopic intervention is significant, maximising task authenticity as well as networked learning. Above and beyond this, it engenders substantial mobility of linguistic and embodied resources, cultural meanings and opportunities of translocal networks of learning, even if this is virtual and on a small scale. The chronotopic affordances of WeChat extend learning as local events and, by way of innovative technological task design, add an invaluable translocal dimension.

To summarise, using Wang and Wu’s (2020) tutorial as a brief case study, we have shown that digital technology such as WeChat can be innovatively applied to and integrated with the task-based communicative activities of language learning. As a thought-provoking example of the WeChat-based approach to task design, the tutorial analysed above illustrates that mobile technology affords the TBLT approach notable potential to create and rearrange the chronotopes of learning in specific ways. These can be visually imagined, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2:

Chronotopic affordances of WeChat in a Chinese language tutorial.

As Figure 2 illustrates, the chronotopic intervention of WeChat in the default environment of learning (represented in grey circles) can (1) create new virtual space–time and merge it with the physical environment to recontextualise tasks or foster differentiated learning, (2) cross the boundaries of and connect “formal” and “informal” learning to enhance networked, collaborative learning, and (3) extend and recontextualise learning from local (in class, here and now, in Europe) to translocal encountering and meaning making (beyond class, out there, in China). These affordances are facilitated by WeChat in accordance with task design, which simulates a business project in this tutorial, and authentic learning, which strives for personalised, situated and purpose-driven communicative skills firmly embedded in real-world contexts. Although these three aspects of chronotopic design are distinctly identified and visualised in Figure 2, they are by no means exhaustive or discrete. In fact, they are better seen as interconnected and dynamic, as they can be methodically applied in the process of learning and systematically integrated into appropriate simulation stages of task-based projects, as illustrated by Wang and Wu (2020).