“You focus, I’m talking”: A CHAT analysis of mobile dictionary use in an advanced EFL class

ABSTRACT

This article discusses how students and teachers in an Advanced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) class in Cape Town, South Africa, construct meaning through mobile phones. Drawing on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), mobile phones are viewed as cultural artefacts that learners and teachers engage in the construction of meaning-making practices resulting in contradictions that potentially lead to radical transformation in the object and subject positions offered in the classroom. The case study was located in a Cape Town EFL institution with 14 adult foreign language learners and two foreign language teachers as participants. The findings indicated potential primary contradictions in division of labour and object owing to the teachers’ uptake of communicative language teaching (CLT) practices and their institutional roles. As contradictions must necessarily lead to change in a system, the authors propose that the use of mobile technology has the capacity to shift pedagogy in this context.

Keywords:

• activity theory
• contradictions
• mobile-assisted language learning