TEO – The Role and Function of an Oral Text Editor in Language Learning in a Multilingual Context

In my thesis I describe and research the use of an oral text editor (TEO) in the language production process of a group of three children (two girls and one boy of 8 years). The children learn French as a target language in the context of a regular second grade multilingual Luxembourgish classroom. With TEO these children produce stories in French while relying on the Luxembourgish language for negotiating the contents of the story as well as the language forms needed. Through storying the children assign significance to objects and events by integrating their personal histories. The target language, its vocabulary and its grammar emerge from the communicative language produced in the process of storying with the TEO tool.

I study the impact of TEO as a nonhuman actor on the language learning process in the constantly changing collective or association of human and nonhuman actors constituting the TEO team. Concepts of Activity Theory and Actor-Network-Theory are used to explain and extend the tool metaphor underlying the use of electronic tools in language learning in a multilingual classroom.

The transcription and detailed analysis of about ten minutes of language production provides the main data of my thesis. The transcription follows the interplay of TEO as a nonhuman actor and of the bodies of the human actors instantiated in their particular utterances, gestures, gazes and voices. The collective language production process emerging from the transcription is described and interpreted by referring to the transcribed text which includes a substantial number of stills taken from the videotape, thus revealing the roles and functions of TEO in the collective oral French language learning process.