Informal Language Learning: A Case Study on English and German Informal Learning in a Middle School on the Mainland of Venice

Abstract

Despite informal learning being a topical issue, little research on it seems to have been done. A research gap appears to exist in the field of applied linguistics regarding middle school students’ informal language learning as far as the two different foreign languages they are taught at school are concerned. This case study attempted to explore the general aspects of the issue. A group of 45 third-year students from a middle school on the mainland of Venice were administered two questionnaires. Inspired by the triangulation design, we also interviewed 4 foreign language teachers from the same school. Following an exploratory-QUAL+quant-(mostly) interpretative paradigm, the study mainly revealed that the students: (a) engaged much more in English informal activities; (b) did informal activities related to technology for both languages; (c) were continuously exposed to English music; (d) seemed more aware of their English informal learning than of their German one. We finally put forth that the discrepancies between teachers’ and students’ viewpoints, albeit relatively few, might exist because none of the teachers would employ the European Language Portfolio (ELP) in class. As also recommended by the Common European Framework for Languages, we suggest that ELP be employed by teachers in order not only for students’ informal language learning awareness to be increased, but also for pluringual competences and lifelong learning strategies to be enabled.