SALC as a Community: Perspectives on Heavy-Recurrent Users

The purpose of this paper is first to develop a more complex understanding of students in the English Lounge, a self-access learning center (SALC) in northern Japan, by applying a sociological lens to their actions and experiences. The impetus for this project came from the desire, based on both personal experience and by analyzing sign-in data, to consider SALC users as a multiplicity rather than a monolith. While much energy has been expended at this institution toward addressing the needs of the broadest profile—that of the completely, or near-completely disengaged user—there is also potential for learning from the most extreme cases of heavy-recurrent users. Also, while the institution assumes that the primary beneficiaries of the SALC’s resources are Japanese undergraduates, the facility is a more complex organism with a variety of stakeholders. Thus, in addition to surveying heavy-recurrent users’ motivational histories, images of the SALC, and patterns of use, this paper also incorporates the results of a small-scale survey of international students hired to work as conversation partners. Keywords: student-led language learning community, autonomy-supportive leadership development, reflective practice