Family, friends, and learning beyond the classroom: Social networks and social capital in language learning

Language learning beyond the classroom is often seen as a pursuit of target language resources such as reading materials or native speakers, and these clearly have a role to play. However, this chapter focuses on another key element which mediates access to these other resources: patterns of interaction with other people, analysed here as social networks. Language learning beyond the classroom is not unstructured; on the contrary, it is structured by the contexts in which a learner uses and internalizes the language, and by the strategies which the learner uses to pursue her goals within particular contexts. In order to understand learning beyond the classroom, we need to consider how learners interact with ‘significant othersa’ (other people who are often more significant to them than their teachers are). For the female Arabic learners from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) described in this chapter, their family and friends play a key role in their learning outside the classroom.