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Reiko Kato, Kyushu Institute of Technology, JapanAbstract
This paper examines students’ multilingual experiences in Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) programs. In 2022–2023, the author, as a teacher-researcher, designed and facilitated two COIL programs involving 52 university students from Japan and Malaysia who engaged virtually in group discussions. Participants brought diverse linguistic backgrounds to the interaction, with English serving as the lingua franca. Drawing on three key notions—translingualism, the social construction of learning places, and multilingual identities—the study scrutinizes how learners negotiated their identities and evaluated their language practices, participation, and engagement. Data were collected through seven post-program interviews, complemented by activity logs, online whiteboards, and reflection papers. The interviews, audio-recorded and transcribed with participants’ consent, were analyzed using positioning theory (van Langenhove & Harré, 1999) as the analytic framework. The findings highlight the complexity involved in constructing multilingual learning places. Students reported varied evaluations of first-language use, differing levels of appreciation for each language, and a tendency to view competence in a single language as more advantageous for identity negotiation. These insights reveal persistent challenges posed by the monolingual habitus while underscoring the importance of recognizing multilingualism and translingualism as essential conditions for fostering collective autonomy in COIL contexts.
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Conference: ACE2025Stream: Learning Experiences
This paper is part of the ACE2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Kato R. (2026) From Lingua Franca to Multilingual Place-Making: Autonomy and Positioning in Online International Collaboration ISSN: 2186-5892 – The Asian Conference on Education 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 381-391) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2026.30
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2026.30
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