Distance Students of Less Commonly Taught Languages and Their Personal Learning Environments

This dissertation is an exploration of conditions that afford and constrain how adults undertake activities connected with learning less commonly taught languages (LCTLs), which are languages other than English, Spanish, French, and German. The overarching aim of this dissertation is to describe how different factors in the environments of adults learning LCTLs affect the ways that those learners engage with the target languages over time. The intended contribution of this dissertation is to provide insights to help educational policymakers, institutions, teachers, and learners make choices that better support the goal of plurilingualism. Among the findings of the four studies that comprise the empirical portion of this dissertation is the idea that learners actively and strategically choose a wide variety of tools for their personal learning environments, some of which afford new ways of conducting language learning operations. Digital tools do not replace the work of language learning but create opportunities to do the work in different ways. There is no single learning or teaching method that is best for all learners, and learners should always keep looking for different types of tools, human relationships, and courses that can help them meet their language learning goals. In a digital landscape with many opportunities for self-study, teachers continue to be valued for providing explanations, structure, benchmarks and feedback. The findings also indicate the importance of the availability of distance education for LCTLs. The personal learning environments of adult learners ofLCTLs depend on the kinds of tools, communities, and institutions available to them, and reducing structural barriers to different kinds ofadult education is crucial to achieving national and international goals for plurilingualism.