Fostering Learner Agency and 21st Century Skills through Linguistic Landscape in a Tertiary Context

Abstract

This study aims at exploring a change in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) education by means of transforming traditional teacher-centered methods into a more engaging and agentic approach utilizing the Linguistic Landscape (LL), defined as visible displays of language components in a context. This new framework can be viewed as a driver on the way to fostering learner agency and the 4Cs of skills. The study highlights the LL as a key tool for developing learner agency and important 21st-century skills in a university setting. It closely examines a 14-week project where 98 ELF preparatory students from two state universities in Türkiye acted as language detectives, investigating their semiotic environments. The study integrated collaboration, communication, and creativity through group fieldwork, LL content creation, and presentations. Designed as exploratory qualitative research, the data were gathered using an online survey, reflection journals, and informal interviews. The findings show positive results from this project in terms of students` points of view related to LL. Given that, the students started to recognize LL around them as valuable tools for effective learning instead of seeing these language manifestations as meaningless letters. The results also revealed that ELF learners became active participants in their own learning environments rather than being just passive receivers of information when they engaged with LL-based materials. Moreover, data explored that the intervention systematically promoted the 4Cs of 21st-century skills: critical thinking was encouraged as students deconstructed the functions and grammatical correctness of English across various contexts (e.g., commercial clothing vs. practical menus) and conveyed nuanced perspectives on its sociocultural impact as well as they were collaborating and communicating with their peers. These findings point to the fact that LL-based pedagogy should be considered a crucial component of a contemporary ELF curriculum, designed to empower students as active, critical, and collaborative communicators in the complex language environments surrounding them.