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AsiaCALL Online Journal Received: 15/07/2022 

ISSN 1936-9859; https://asiacall.info/acoj  Revision: 01/08/2022 

Vol. 13, No. 4, 2022  Accepted: 06/08/2022 

pp. 1-6  Online: 09/08/2022 

 

CITATION | Lian, A. (2022). Hidden impacts and stereotypes of technology in language learning? AsiaCALL 

Online Journal, 13(4), 7-34. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54855/acoj.221341 

Hidden impacts and stereotypes of technology in language learning 

2nd Presidential Keynote Address – 18th AsiaCALL International Conference 

Andrew Lian1* 

1 Suranaree University of Technology, Thailand 
1 Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam 
1 University of Canberra, Australia 
*Corresponding author’s email: andrew.lian@andrewlian.com 
*      https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5812-3017 

       https://doi.org/10.54855/acoj.221341 

 

Keywords: stereotype, language learning, technology, social networking 

 

This is a short reflective piece consisting of two parts. The first relates to the connection 

between society, technology and language learning and the second highlights a stereotype of 

the language teaching profession which is hidden and somewhat problematic especially in the 

context of technology use in language teaching. 

 

PART ONE 

Here, I will try to connect developments in society and the technological area with 

developments in the theory and practice of language learning at the level of mindset. These 

connections are often not visible. 

Typically, when we think of developments in language learning we tend to think that they 

emerge from research and that it is research that guides progress. In so doing, we fail to 

recognize that researchers are embedded in the community in which they live, not only their 

professional community of practice. 

Many of the developments that have occurred are just as much (if not more) a reflection of 

social expectancies as they are of theoretical developments in the fields of linguistics, applied 

linguistics, pedagogy, etc. Those expectancies apply both implicit and explicit pressure to 

research to develop along certain lines. In other words, the personal culture in which each 

researcher is embedded, and its accompanying collective unconscious, will guide the way that 

researchers think and dictate, at least to some extent, the shape of research in the field. 

In one of the PhD courses that I teach at Suranaree University of Technology students are meant 

to identify and critique the various issues purportedly influencing the field of English language 

studies. 

The very first trend that they identified was a trend toward technology. The primary emphasis 

on technology use as they saw it was in areas such as eLearning, biotechnology, artificial 

intelligence, neural networks, deep learning, augmented reality, virtual reality and big data. Of 

course, all of these are vitally important in the development of technology support for language 

learning but, when pressed, students had little idea of how technology would be of value. 

Other areas identified included collaborative learning and, of course, trendy areas (but less 

original than we might think) such as translanguaging and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), 

https://asiacall.info/acoj
https://doi.org/10.54855/acoj.221341
mailto:Andrew.lian@andrewlian.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5812-3017
https://doi.org/10.54855/acoj.221341


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together with English Medium Instruction (EMI), Blended Learning and Flipped Learning. 

While all of these trends can be seen as emerging from research in language education, this is 

not the only place where they exist. In fact, they are ubiquitous in society in general and are 

ingrained in the culture not only as a result of the widespread availability of technology but 

also, inter alia, as a result of social developments such as the social justice movement and 

related civil rights concerns e.g. ELF or, to some extent, translanguaging. 

In a nutshell, developments in language education today are not only the result of research in 

language teaching and learning but also come out of the fact that modern society unconsciously 

expects research to produce certain kinds of structures. They are something of a natural 

extension of views and practises held in the collective unconscious of societies with access to 

modern technology. 

Let me try to explain. In a study that I performed in 2011, and still relevant today, I identified 

eight features of educational life in the 21st century that are relevant to our conversation. They 

are largely technology-based and may well be partially responsible for the modern mindset. I 

will list them briefly (in slightly modified form). They are: 

1. An unprecedented rate of change 

2. An unprecedented richness of information 

3. An understanding that the universe is interdisciplinary in nature 

4. Research is of central importance to all 

5. A realization that knowledge-construction, perception and meaning-making are all 

individual and are key factors in building personal understandings 

6. The power of social networking 

7. The need for creativity and divergent thinking 

8. More power to the students 

(Lian, 2011) 

Let’s take a look at three of these. 

An unprecedented rate of change 

This is clearly due to technology and this change has placed a great deal of pressure on humanity 

to change and change quickly. Not everyone has been successful in this, but humans are good 

at adapting and, in general, are doing so successfully. 

We have now entered a “change” mindset. Nothing is stable, and nothing lasts long, especially 

technical information. So, in the minds of many there is no point in learning “stuff” that will be 

out of date soon. It’s better to look it up when you need it. This has given rise to the so-called 

Google effect (Sparrow et al., 2011). The Google effect states that there is no point in learning 

things in advance. You just need to know where to find the solution to a problem when you 

encounter it. It is not unlike the impact of the electronic calculator on maths classes decades 

ago: why learn your multiplication tables, when the calculator will do it for you? This attitude 

has given rise to a relatively new approach to the gathering of knowledge for the average person. 

We now tend to use a “just in time, just enough and just for me” (Riel, 2000) approach to 

learning instead of a “just in case” approach where we are taught lots of potentially useful (but 

often useless) things just in case we need them one day. We are becoming more focused and 

more selective in what we invest our time and energy. 

An unprecedented richness of information 

While we are becoming more selective in our points of focus and interest, we also have much 

more to choose from than ever before. Information is proliferating at an exponential rate, an 



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outrageous rate, and much of it, particularly technical information, is becoming outdated 

equally fast. This means that information is unstable, and we need to become much more 

selective and critical in deciding what is valuable and what is not and what generic skills need 

to be developed. This proliferation of information has weakened the position of the subject 

matter expert and turned us all into de facto experts. Well, perhaps not quite, but we feel much 

more in control of knowledge than ever before because we have more and better access to it 

and we can challenge or check the veracity of other people’s claims. 

This results in a democratisation of knowledge and emancipation, at least in principle, from the 

various social structures, including educational structures, which govern our lives. In other 

words, we are becoming more independent educationally as well as socially. And we are turning 

into researchers by virtue of the fact that we no longer depend, at least for many things, on the 

knowledge of others to succeed in our objectives. This is a form of freedom. 

Freedom is another word for autonomy. Those who have access to information are now able to 

develop an autonomous mindset. If we have a problem, then most of the time we solve it 

ourselves. It is much faster and more economical than relying on others to do it. This is a Do-

It-Yourself mentality (DIY), another characteristic of 21st century life. 

But whatever you call it, it is very much a case of autonomy in action and not just for the few 

but for everybody. An automatic, but critically important, side-effect of autonomy in today’s 

world is personalization. Because people are free to choose whatever they are interested in, 

whenever and wherever they are interested in it, the kind of information that they gather or the 

procedures that they learn are necessarily tailored to their perceptions of their needs. This is 

called personalization.  

An automatic, critically important, outcome of this is that people are becoming more sensitive 

to their personal needs and are now operating within what we might call a needs-based approach 

to the solution of their problems. They are looking for solutions to their problems as the need 

arises – and it is impossible to be entirely prepared for such needs as these are very often 

unpredicted and unpredictable. As a consequence, we have become accustomed to personalized 

solutions to our problems, we expect it in all aspects of life and this is consistent with modern 

educational approaches.  

In other words, people have acquired the power of education in their personal lives. They can 

now decide what, when, where, how and for how long they wish to study. In many ways, they 

are the masters of their own destinies, and this is no more visible than in the proliferation of 

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and the growth of nano learning, a phenomenon that 

reflects both an interest in education and the presentation and reinforcement of learning in 

small, bite-sized, manageable pieces that meet the “just in time, just enough and just for me” 

criteria. Significantly, because we expect solutions to be personal, we also expect, either 

implicitly or explicitly, our education to be personalized too. It is an expectation that is built-in 

to modern society. 

Social networking 

When we combine these developments with the huge growth of connectivity between people 

(social networks and the like), we now find ourselves caught in a galloping, somewhat out of 

control, development. In this context, collaboration is crucial for many reasons as solutions are 

often provided by other users including, perhaps, intellectual outliers who put forward new and 

unusual ideas. This is a critically important development that was simply not available when 

access to knowledge was possible only through the “approved” channels of the establishment 

press and other media. 



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Outlier impact is not as rare as we might think and is gaining in importance. For instance, we 

have had stunning examples of intellectual crowdsourcing such as the fold.it initiative, leading 

to what I call the growth of community intelligence. And remember that, most often, progress 

comes from the contributions of groups engaging in crazy actives such as the Focus on the 

Physical (FonPh) work (Cai et al., 2021; Lian et al., 2020) in neuroscience which focuses on 

the importance of the physical quality of the auditory input used in language-learning (but as 

Jack Ma said: we are crazy, but we are not stupid). Such craziness should be encouraged and 

initiatives such as this should help us to reduce the risk of stagnation and move the field forward. 

The resilience of dogma 

Yet the power and embeddedness of conservative forces, what we might call the dogma of the 

field, cannot be discounted. The fear of change is deeply anchored in the human psyche and is 

always greeted with suspicion (often in the guise of caution) rather than embraced with hope. 

Thus, the foundations for our modern educational language-learning systems and, indeed, our 

research are actually embedded, albeit hidden, in modern society and possibly even find their 

source in it. Society expects these things to happen, it requires them to happen and, as a 

consequence, society itself very much acts as a catalyst for change, although it may do so 

unwittingly – with the profession often lagging behind. In a sense, we now find ourselves 

engaged in a battle between unconscious, modern, society-based, approaches to learning and 

education on the one hand and more conservative, dogmatic, conservative approaches often 

based on outdated research of the past. This brings me to the end of the first part of my 

presentation. 

 

PART TWO 

I now briefly want to address an issue which has been bothering me for some time: a stereotype 

of technology enhanced language learning that is prevalent in the educational communities that 

we function in. This stereotype became glaringly obvious in the aftermath of the Covid-19 

pandemic. Suddenly and with no significant notice, schools, universities and other educational 

organisations were required to move from a face-to-face mode of teaching to an online mode 

of teaching, often with little preparation and support. Individual teachers were suddenly 

required to become experts in eLearning and, of course, many did not do very well. However, 

many others did do well, and schools, universities and other educational organisations realised 

that online activities could be as valuable or even better than activities prior to the Covid-19 

crisis. 

Yet, in the midst of this potential success teachers have been and in many cases are still faced 

with the reality that they are more or less alone in having to grapple with the challenges of 

technology enhanced language learning. Regrettably, all of this remains somewhat invisible, 

rather hidden and embedded in the prevalent culture of what it means to be a teacher. 

Teachers have been raised to be self-reliant. They are told that they are “in charge” of their 

classes, that they are the experts, that they are the masters of their own destinies. It’s up to them 

to “be teachers” and find solutions. That’s what they have been trained for. And teachers are 

generally proud of that role. But actually, underneath it all and despite a brave face, teachers 

are in trouble. They cannot do everything and are not all powerful. We are all limited in some 

way. Consequently, we need to get away from the image of the solitary teacher bravely and 

selflessly facing the challenges of the profession alone or with one or two local colleagues to 

support them. Administrators too need to change their understandings and be helpful rather than 

sending it all back to the teachers. Teachers deserve to be given proper support. Concomitantly, 



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teachers’ attitudes need to change – in a sense become more humble and more realistic about 

what they can achieve alone. 

On a related note, the Covid-19 crisis has surely generated countless good examples of 

technology-enhanced language-learning, yet they remain hidden, invisible, and beyond the 

reach of most. 

We have not crowdsourced online language education nor have we convinced public funding 

to invest in it. We still have no international TELL centres, we still have no consortia delivering 

TELL education and training in support of teachers. In fact, paradoxically, the number of formal 

TELL programs around the world seems to be reducing rather than increasing. 

And yet, in reality, we are not alone. In fact, we are all in this together. I therefore urge you to 

join with like-minded people, maybe at this conference maybe elsewhere, to reduce the 

loneliness and the fatigue, to share the knowledge, the ideas, the research and, most of all, the 

enthusiasm to the benefit of us all. 

 

CONCLUSION 

Both points that I have made are related and we have all the tools for success. Society is ready 

for progress in technology-related language education. It already contains the seeds for that 

success and in many ways is ahead of research. Society is already telling researchers what 

matters and what does not matter, and researchers need to understand that (and be humble about 

it). They need to understand that they too are part of that society, that they too are part of the 

social developments that are occurring and that inevitably must impact on our learning and 

teaching practices. We need to transfer to our teaching the things that we practice in normal 

life. 

We are now facing an interesting challenge. It will not be a smooth ride, but groups such as 

AsiaCALL offer hope for the future as they bring together people of good will. The 

AsiaCALL18 International conference is one such opportunity. Let’s make the most of it. 

 

References 

Cai, X., Lian, A.-P., Puakpong, N., Shi, Y., Chen, H., Zen, Y., Ou, J., Zheng, W., & Mo, Y. 

(2021). Optimizing Auditory Input for Foreign Language Learners through a 

Verbotonal-Based Dichotic Listening Approach. Asian-Pacific  Journal of Second and 

Foreign Language Education, 6(14). 

Lian, A.-P. (2011). Reflections on Language Learning in the 21st Century: The Rhizome at 

Work. Rangsit Journal of Arts and Sciences, 1(1), 3–15. 

http://www.rsu.ac.th/rjas/article.php?id=10 

Lian, A.-P., Cai, X., Chen, H., Ou, J., & Zheng, W. (2020). Cerebral Lateralization Induced by 

Dichotic Listening to Filtered and Unfiltered Stimuli: Optimizing Auditory Input for 

Foreign Language Learners. Journal of Critical Reviews, 7, 4608-4625. 

https://dx.doi.org/10.31838/jcr.07.19.541 

Riel, M. (2000). Education in the 21st Century: Just-in-Time Learning or Learning 

Communities in Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research. In Education and 

the Arab World: Challenges of the next millennium. (pp. 137–160). Abu Dhabi: 

Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research. 



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Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Google effects on memory: Cognitive 

consequences of having information at our fingertips. Science (New York, N.Y.), 

333(6043), 776–778. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1207745 

 

Biodata 

Professor Andrew P. Lian is Professor of Foreign Language Studies, Suranaree University of 

Technology, Thailand; Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam; Professor Emeritus, 

University of Canberra, Australia; President of AsiaCALL, the Asia Association of Computer-

Assisted Language-Learning, a research and professional association focusing on the uses of 

technology to enhance second/foreign language learning in Asian contexts. Previous to this 

appointment, he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and 

Literatures at Western Illinois University in the United States. Prior to that, he had been 

Professor of Humanities and Director of the Center for the Study of Languages at Rice 

University, Houston, TX, USA, and Professor and Head of the School of Languages and 

International Education at the University of Canberra in Australia. He has held further 

Professorial appointments and been Head of Department in two other universities in Australia 

(James Cook University and Bond University). 


