Cultural Tasks for Digital Language Learning - (Advances in Digital Language Learning and Teaching) (Hardcover)

About the Book

Explains how the cultural practices of a community can be used as the vehicle for learning its language, showing how two apps have been developed to deliver language learning while users are carrying out real-life cultural activities.

Book Synopsis

Explaining how the cultural practices of a community can be used as the vehicle for learning its language, this book shows how two apps have been developed to deliver language learning while users are carrying out real-life cultural activities.

Many people are motivated to learn foreign languages by their interest in foreign cultures, cuisines and activities such as origami, Hallowe'en pumpkins or cooking a meal from the target culture. This book shows how these motivations can be integrated into the way we learn languages using the latest digital technology: the Linguacuisine and ENACT apps.

Written by experts in education, educational technology and applied linguistics, the book introduces the concept of the cultural task and provides a model, principles and procedures, enabling professionals in any area - including teachers and community workers - to adapt the apps to their own environment. Video tutorials on the accompanying website give users a hands-on introduction to using the apps and authoring their own cultural tasks in their own language for use by others. As such, the apps constitute a rich online repository of Open Educational Resources (OERs).

The chapters offer in-depth descriptions of how the apps were implemented in 5 different countries, with 9 different languages and cultures, and clear research evidence of the learning of cultural practices and languages through varied data sources including photographs of app use and cultural artefacts produced by users.

The editors won the 2025 ReCALL Annual Article Prize for their article Migrants' digital skills development: Engaging with and creating digital cultural activities on the ENACT web app.

Review Quotes

"A landmark contribution to task-based and technology-enhanced language education. Rooted in rigorous research and illustrated through innovative real-world applications such as Linguacuisine and ENACT, this volume demonstrates how digital tools can authentically integrate language, culture, and learner agency. The editors and contributors offer a coherent theoretical framework enriched by empirical studies across diverse contexts. This book will become an essential reference for language teachers and researchers seeking to design culturally grounded, task-based learning experiences that connect classrooms with communities in meaningful, creative and sustainable ways." --Ana Gimeno-Sanz, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain

About the Author

Müge Satar is Reader in Applied Linguistics and Director of ilab: learn at Newcastle University, UK.

Paul Seedhouse is Emeritus Professor in Human Spoken Interaction at Newcastle University, UK.