Innovation in Language Learning

Nowadays in an increasingly demanding work market, the need for university students to equip themselves with the qualifications that will differentiate them from others in the professional “arena” is gradually becoming stronger.

A tool deemed extremely valuable for learners in the areas of Communication and the Media is the E-portfolio,  as it can be used to construct and project their digital identity. Norton and Wiburg (1998) define a portfolio as a “systematic and selective collection of student work that has been assembled to demonstrate the student’s motivation, academic growth, and level of achievement” (p. 237).The electronic counterpart of this or Electronic portfolio (EP) as referred to in the literature provides opportunities for such a collection to be available on the World Wide Web.

This paper investigates how technological affordances of E- portfolios in the hands of language learners,  supported by  teaching methodology in alignment with the ESP approach at University level could be used to develop critical literacy and other skills. It is proposed that this may be achieved through the creation of artifacts related to the kinds of tasks learners would be expected to perform as part of their future academic or professional engagement and its contextual, linguistic and communicative demands in our multimodal digital era.