Innovation in Language Learning

Thanks to the ever upgrading new media in the informational age, the e-learning of new languages becomes a daily practice for everyone: timely shifting one’s linguistic worldview from one’s mother tongue (L1) to acquire foreign language (L2) or the lingua franca  (say, English) to cope with one’s survival in a globalizing world. The new regime of e-learning for new languages is seemingly embedded in the ubiquitous information and communication technologies (ICT)-driven mediated (new and highly differentiated cyber-) communication: with the ever-increasingly opening-up -cum- deepening of cyber-experience for “inter-personalized” mediated communication, all facilitate the interactivity, timeliness, active participation, and cross-border / cultural encounters in/beyond virtual and real social communities. Yet the challenges for cross-(or multi-)cultural and temporal-spatial communication in both cyberspace and the real world quest for not just linguistic (text, semantic and phonetic) adaptation but also audio-visual interactive revolution with multiple re-presentations, towards the communicative capacity building for foreign language (L2) and/or Lingua Franca, beyond the linguistic spaces of one’s mother-tongue (L1): all re-shaping our linguistic adaptive ability and skills, say the least to acquire the basics of foreign language(s) as the core part of our new cross-cultural encounters in a new communicative borderless world. This paper critical examines the new regime of e-learning (the manifestations and underlying contradictions in particular) for new language acquisition; as cyber-activism and virtual linkages are revolutionary in changing the modi operandi of socio-cultural communicative actions and interactions, global and locally, behavioural repertoires among people in different geographical regions and time zones. Our discussions focus on the most salient aspect of the new experiential learning discoveries: not just of the multilingual, but also the cross-and-inter-cultural, communication, in both virtual and reality milieus. Critically examining the policy issues on (new) language for e-learning and cross-cultural communication in/beyond cyberspace, it highlights the challenges for multilingualism, and multiculturalism in 21^st Century, in a globalizing world.