Towards a More Naturalistic CALL

Abstract

Recent social and technological developments are placing independent access to the Internet within the reach of more and more foreign language learners, who are increasingly using this access to pursue interests online through the languages they are learning. Conceptualized in this paper as “naturalistic CALL”, this phenomenon is described as a logical step in the evolution of CALL and, in particular, of its ‘communicative’ and ‘network-based’ phases. Following a brief review of early studies in this area, a framework for research is described based on dimensions of location, formality, pedagogy, and locus of control. Potential issues for future research within this framework are also identified with reference to data from a study of multilingual video-gaming practices among young people in Hong Kong.