The Key Importance of L2 Digital Literacy to Korean EFL Pedagogy: College Students Use L2 English to Make Campus Video Guides with Their Cell Phone Videocams, and to View and Respond to Their Videos on an L2 English Language Social Networking Site

Abstract

In East Asia, the high penetration of student cell phones, with built-in features that include bilingual dictionaries, SMS, Email, Internet access and videocams, already offers ubiquitous computing facilities for pedagogical applications. This paper describes an EFL task that required Korean freshmen of Hyejeon College in Chungnam to make L2 English video guides to their campus. Videos were made on their built-in cell phone videocams, and then emailed to their instructor. After file conversion, their videos were uploaded to the instructor’s vblog on his homepage on the English language social networking site US.Cyworld.com (a sister site to the Hangul social networking site Cyworld.com which most Korean students already use). Students were instructed by email to view the videos there, and to then post responses in his homepage guestbook. This required them to use English to set up a personal account and to navigate the social networking site, as well as to compose and post responses. The task illustrates the developing critical importance of L2 Digital Literacy within EFL pedagogy.