It has been argued that one of the impacts of the transition from predigital to digital language learning classrooms is the new opportunities that digital tools, including machine translation (MT) tools, provide for learners to develop and exercise their agency and autonomy (Lotherington & Ronda, 2014; Kern, 2021). However, the existence of these technologies does not automatically equate with increased agency and autonomy, particularly given that learners are also constrained and even shaped by the very tools that they use. At the core of this presentation is the question: what kinds of critical and functional digital literacy skills (Darvin & Hafner, 2022) do learners need to develop to be agentive and autonomous users of MT tools?
To answer this question, this talk draws on a computer tracking study that examined how 74 university-level students of French, Spanish, and Mandarin in the United States used MT and other online resources when completing writing tasks in the L2 using screen recording, stimulated recalls, and post-interviews. Findings highlight how students exercised their agency and autonomy in the selection of MT tools and their uses, specifically in the strategies they used at both the input and output levels, and the ways in which this agency and autonomy were constrained, by the tools themselves as well as by external factors. Implications focus on the possibilities of pedagogical interventions to further support learner agency and autonomy through the development of both functional and critical digital literacies.
