Context-Aware Writing Support for SNS: Connecting Formal and Informal Learning

This paper presents another stage in a series of research efforts by the authors to develop an experience-connected mobile language learning environment, bridging formal and informal learning. Building on a study in which the authors tried to connect classroom learning (of German in Japan) with learners' real life experiences abroad by having smartphones detect the learners' location and supply them with multimedia content matching their real-time communicative situation, the authors developed a hybrid language learning environment supporting different types of learning. Based on observations that learners tended to use resources rather for preparatory or retrospective learning, and on considerations about the potential of social media as a space for informal language learning, the authors added a feature that supports learners when writing a social networking service (SNS) post about their everyday experiences abroad. Help is offered based on the analysis of the learners' geolocational position--hinting to what situation they might want to write about--and on the text they already entered. Based on these data, they are provided with help in the form of vocabulary and/or model texts. [For full proceedings, see ED565087.]