LINCing learners to digital literacy: supporting social integration and English language learning during COVID-19.

Many newcomers to Canada experience significant difficulties adjusting to life in their new community, with few more challenging than learning English. While Canada's Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program suggests a pathway to social integration, ideologies pertaining to language and diversity that inform the LINC program can lead to the assimilation and marginalization of immigrant and refugee newcomers. The disruptions that COVID-19 brought to LINC classes exacerbated these issues. Here, we explore these themes in an ethnographic study of one LINC site and suggest that the incorporation of digital technologies could offer a space for a translingual pedagogy to take root. With appropriate guidance, the adoption of a translingual pedagogy could work against the problematic discourses perpetuating within LINC and improve English learning outcomes by providing increased opportunities for digital literacy socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]