Abstract

Technology provides endless opportunities to engage in both informal and authentic language use with the click of a mouse, the swipe of a finger or even the view of a screen. While language teachers and educators often feel pressure to incorporate technology in an effort to engage students in formal and academic language use, they rarely do so through capitalizing on students’ acquisition of incidental language gained through voluntary technology use. This presentation will examine the opportunity to capitalize on students’ voluntary technology consumption and subsequent incidental language acquisition to engage learners in classroom practices that will encourage formal and authentic language use. It will offer examples of social technology trends that have become routine in students’ daily lives, and it will outline how teachers can redesign classroom practices to bring what students are voluntarily accessing into the classroom to meet language goals and objectives in more efficient and enjoyable ways. Additionally, it will outline limitations with current technology professional development and implementation, and it will offer alternative methods for improving technology education for instructors. It will provide practical examples of classroom instruction, activities, and assessments that will engage and assess learners in formal and authentic language use, with technology anchoring the lesson. Embracing informal and incidental learning as a catalyst for improving academic and classroom language can revolutionize the way we teach language. It allows for student choice in designing individualized procedures used to meet classroom goals and objectives, which boosts efficiency while simultaneously creating less work for the teacher to differentiate activities. This teaching methodology utilizes what students willingly participate in and enjoy on their own time as a catalyst for meeting language goals and objectives in an authentic, challenging, and meaningful way.