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Abstract

This chapter adopts Larsen-Freeman and Cameron’s ‘what if’ questions that they pose in their book Complex systems and applied linguistics and applies them to the context of this book. The proposed answers suggest that the new technologies have the potential to contribute to a new approach to language learning and teaching, an approach that challenges existing systems and beliefs, overcomes traditional dichotomies and simple causality, emphasizes change, creativity and the dialogic, and favours participation and the learner’s perspective. For the language learner, this means going beyond the narrow confines of the classroom to draw on the opportunities for social, interactive and multimodal meaning-making in both the real world and in virtual worlds, develop learner agency, become an effective communicator in the new digital spaces, and develop an identity as a speaker of the second language.

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Correspondence to Regine Hampel .

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Hampel, R. (2019). What If?. In: Disruptive Technologies and the Language Classroom. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31368-5_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31368-5_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31367-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31368-5

  • eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)

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