iTalki Impressions

iTalki presents an interesting hybrid of online teaching and language-learning-centered social networking.  In order to access the online teaching, an iTalki user must seek out a professional teacher, negotiate a time for the lesson, and pay for the lesson, of course.  In addition to the professional lessons, users can find fellow users interested in language exchanges.  Both the professional lessons and the language exchanges do not happen directly through the site; instead iTalki recommends Skype or similar services to facilitate the conversations.  The site also supports discussion threads and micro-blogging, similar to a Twitter or Facebook feed.  Where iTalki distinguishes itself from sites like Facebook is its Notebook feature.  In the notebook, users can diary their learning experiences or write about other topics and native speakers of the language can offer corrections.

Overall, iTalki's focus on interaction is promising for driven language learners.  There is little in the way of formal curriculum, as any structure depends entirely on each professional teacher.  For those not taking lessons from professional teachers, a lot of motivation and self-discipline would likely be required to make significant advances in language proficiency through the purely social, mutual language exchange experiences that the site facilitates.

My CALL Portfolio

The moment none of you have been eagerly awaiting is here:  Dan Isbell's CALL Portfolio has been completed over on LiveBinders!  Check it out here:  http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=867147

As an aside, this nice weather we're having almost wants to make me abandon CALL for the much more sun-friendly field of MALL...

Materials 3: Intercultural Reading and Discussion

Overview

     This lesson is situated in a university IEP integrated skills class, ideally at the highest or second highest level (high-intermediate to advanced proficiency). This particular class session requires at least one computer for every four students, unless perhaps students are equipped with fairly powerful/advanced tablet devices. Student phones/tablets can be utilized in some parts of the lesson. The class has 12-16 students, and the course is designed to prepare them for academic English use. The purpose of this lesson is to raise student awareness of complex cultural perspectives across the English speaking world, develop the ability to make connections between multiple texts and self, and share ideas in group discussions. It also seeks to develop vocabulary by directing focus to salient words and expressions in relation to a specific topic and encourages students to use those items in a writing assignment.

     The primary CALL tool used in this lesson is LiveBinders, a website that allows users to bundle a variety of web content (including multimedia) to their liking/for their own purposes. Within the LiveBinder, several current articles from a variety of websites are presented for students to read. This serves two purposes: building comfort with digital reading and exposing students to contemporary, nuanced cultural perspectives. Dooey (2008) notes that concerns have been raised regarding the differences between digital reading and paper reading in the field of language assessment, and to that end, this lesson provides experience with authentic digital reading to build student comfort with an increasingly popular mode of reading. With respect to culture, Guth and Helm (2012) note that culture is sometimes reduced to presentation of cultural/national products while often ignoring cultural perspectives, and this lesson seeks to provide students a chance to thoughtfully reflect on perspectives of a contemporary, contentious cultural issue, gay marriage, across several countries, including their own.  The lesson also utilizes Wiffiti for a walk-in brainstorm activity that activates background knowledge and offers an initial opportunity for students to share their own thoughts/knowledge on the issue.

Intercultural Reading and Discussion Lesson Plan

Pre-lesson Inventory

Ø  Things to bring/prepare:  wiffiti board, LiveBinder with collaboration permissions for Ss, Blog Entry Rubric

Ø  Equipment: computer w/ large TV or projector, Student phones/tablets/PMPs, PCs (enough for one per 4-5 students)

Warm-up activity (  10 min.): Walk-in with Wiffiti

Purpose:   activate student background knowledge, provide initial frame of reference for future comparison

Procedure: 

Ø  Key Vocabulary: gay marriage, civil rights, country names

Ø  Building/Activating Background Knowledge

-          Project a Wiffiti board with the following question:  What do you know about gay marriage?

-          As students enter the room, ask them to use their phones/tablets/PCs (via SMS or Twitter) to answer the question. 

Ø  Presentation of New Information

Ø  Practice

-          Allow Ss a few minutes to share their thoughts/knowledge on the topic and to read each other’s messages.

Ø  Apply

-          Briefly, ask if students learned anything new from their peers.  Also, ask what is the status of gay marriage in their countries.

Ø  Comprehension Check

-          Review important vocabulary from the brainstorm/responses

Transition:  This is a very sensitive topic, but what we’re going to do today is explore the issue of gay marriage in several English speaking countries.  This will help us understand how different people, which makes us better communicators, and we’ll also pick up some useful vocabulary along the way.

Activity 1 ( 25 min.):  Article Analysis

Purpose:    To develop intercultural knowledge related to a contemporary issue, to read for a purpose and identify sides of an issue

           

Procedure:

Ø  Key Vocabulary:  controversy/conflict, taboo

Ø  Building/Activating Background Knowledge

-          Relate what students offered during the Walk In activity and briefly ask what they know about the status of gay marriage in English speaking countries.

-          Tell Ss that now they will get a chance to read in-depth about the issue in a particular English speaking country and find out more.

-          Review key vocab controversy/conflict and taboo

Ø  Practice

-          Break Ss into 4 groups.  Each group should have a computer.

-          Direct groups to the following LiveBinder:  http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=868913

-          Assign each group one article (the most advanced readers should take Singapore article)

-          Designate one Scribe for each group, who will log in and take notes in the binder (Note:  set up collaborations with all students for this particular binder)

Ø  Presentation of New Information

-          Go over the questions in the notes section.  Show how Ss can add text, and model adding an important vocabulary word or expression for one of the articles.

Ø  Apply

-          Allow groups time to read, discuss, and take notes on their articles.

Ø  Comprehension Check

-          Have each group share the conflict/controversy in their article (one person) and a least one argument for (another person) and against (another person)

-          Ask if there were any vocab/expressions that seemed important but were confusing.  Clarify and direct Scribes to update that section of their notes

  

Transition:  Great job analyzing these articles and taking helpful notes.  You’ll be able to use the LiveBinder you all contributed to for a writing assignment later.  Now, I’d like to mix up the groups and give you all a chance to compare what you read, and think about the big, international picture of gay marriage.

Activity 2 ( 20 min.):  Jigsaw:  “Looking at the big picture” discussion task.

Purpose:   share knowledge, synthesize information, interact in group discussions.  Plan for writing task.

           

Procedure:

Ø  Key Vocabulary: “big picture”, popular opinion, taboo, acceptance

Ø  Building/Activating Background Knowledge

-          Place students into new groups composed of one member from each of the previous groups

-          Remind students that they have information their new group members don’t know (as well), so it’s their job to share it and contribute!

Ø  Presentation of New Information

-          Assign one member to be a Scribe.  Have Scribes log in to their GoogleDocs and create a document (to be shared with other group members)

-          Tell Ss that now they will be talking about the “big picture”- synthesizing information from all four countries (America, NZ, SA, and Singapore)

-          Project the following questions (via Word, Docs, PowerPoint- T preference):

·         Generally, across all 4 countries, what is the popular view on gay marriage?  How does it compare with your country?

·         Among the 4 countries, are there different levels of gay marriage acceptance?  Explain (and cite proof)

·         Across the 4 countries, what are common arguments FOR and AGAINST gay marriage?

·         From the articles, what are some appropriate and useful words and expressions for talking about the issue of gay marriage?  Can you contrast any of these with other words you know?

-          Clarify questions.  Review Key Vocabulary as needed.

Ø  Practice

-          Give groups time to discuss the questions.  Circulate and help facilitate discussion as needed.

Ø  Comprehension Check

-          Towards the end of the allotted time, make sure that the GoogleDoc for each group’s discussion questions has been filled out.

-          Ask Ss to share how views on gay marriage in the 4 countries compare to their countries.

-          Ask Ss for one thing they learned today that surprised them.

-          Remind Scribes to share the GoogleDoc with group members (and T, if desired)!

Transition:  Well, I think you all learned a lot about gay marriage in different countries.  Regardless of your personal feelings, it’s important to understand varying views on major issues.  Let’s spend the last few minutes of class talking about the Reflection you’ll write on your blogs for homework this weekend.

  

Summary/Cool-down/Homework ( 5 min):  Introduction to reflection writing assignment

Purpose (link to objective): provide clear directions and expectations for assignment, review resources for writing

           

Procedure:

-          Title for reflection:  “Gay Marriage:  Comparison Across Countries”

-          Remind Ss that this is part of their ongoing blog project and will be graded.  Briefly review Blog Entry Rubric (display or hand out, T preference)

-          Ss should use notes from their group discussions and the LiveBinder articles/notes to help their writing

-          Pay special attention to the vocabulary we found!  Try to use it!

Materials

Wiffiti Walk-In Board sample:  

Intercultural Readings Live Binder: http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=868913

Blog Entry Rubric:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-DXgxYVQ4UDO93vpNl_3RsRWG9RrTjOo9jC5coiJSYI/pub

Reflection: Computer-Based Language Testing

This week has been a nice refresher on language assessment.  Well, I mean, I work in assessment at the PIE, so it's always on my mind, but I don't always get to look at the bigger picture.  This week, I especially liked being able to take a step back and consider the kind of assessments that I don't currently work on.  I especially like the formative assessment described in the Teo (2012) article and I also thought the electronic portfolios in the Cummins and Davense (2009) article have a lot of potential.

The Teo article impressed me a lot with the design of her formative inference test used as a treatment over the course of 10 weeks.  Teo included a link to a sample from her test, which can be found here.  Creating this assessment, to me, feels worthwhile because Teo was able to reach a very large number of students with it and as a low-stakes, formative assessment it could easily be used in future iterations of the course.  The test sample was very usable and worked well, too.

The electronic language portfolios described by Cummins and Davense are really interesting.  You can check out an EP site used in Europe here.  At this point, I feel that work needs to be done on making them more presentable and easily sharable, but the basic components of the portfolios are strong.  I also think that they could be used to assist with decision making often left solely to large scale proficiency tests.  For example, many universities admit students with a TOEFL score of 70 or higher.  However, for a student with a 70 or 71, their true score could lie between, say, 66 and 75 due to the standard error of measurement.  For those borderline cases, electronic language portfolios could possibly help with making better admission decisions.  If a student is able to show a video of authentic English interaction at an acceptable level (something not represented on the TOEFL, by the way), perhaps that could allow an admissions officer to more confidently admit a student with a 71 whose speaking score was a bit on the low end.  Similarly, English medium teaching demonstrations could help with the decision making process for awarding TAships to international graduate students (again, TOEFL scores alone do not indicate someone's proficiency with classroom English).

Reflection: Teaching Culture

I found this week's topic to be one of the most interested we've covered in class.  Culture is one of those things that comes up a lot in ELT literature, but often it feels glossed over, like we're assumed to have a good grasp on such a pervasive (yet slippery) concept.  The Guth & Helm (2012) chapter was particularly elucidating for a couple reasons.  For one, it described a framework for describing culture: Perspectives, Practices, and Products.  It noted that Products were the most commonly treated in ESL/EFL materials, and based on my own language learning experiences, Products are commonly treated in other foreign language materials as well.  The chapter also discussed online cultures, and as someone who grew up during the early heyday of AOL and has interacted in various online communities since, I thought it was nice to see the intricacies and defining points of those cultures treated in ELT literature.

Another interesting point brought up this week was the notion of essentialist versus non-essentialist views of culture.  Like Products in the PPP model, essentialist views of culture are most often presented in EFL/ESL materials.  "All Americans eat/do/think this" sort of stuff.  My foreign language learning experiences have definitely tended to present the target culture along essentialist lines, and frankly, it got to be tiring.  In my experience learning Korean, for example, I don't know how many times I read about the same holidays, bowing, using 100% formal speech to talk to older people, drinking rituals, what time of year mothers get together to make kimchi, and how King Sejong invented the Korean alphabet, hangeul.  Most of these were things I read on Wikipedia before stepping foot in the country!  I felt like it was the equivalent of just hammering ESL/EFL students with stuff about George Washington.  While discussing the issue with Turkan, I asked if her English learning experience was ever like that, and lo and behold, it was! :(  I feel so sorry for learners who have to hear about American myths like George chopping down a cherry tree.  How useless!

I think there's a lot of potential for teaching non-essentialist culture, and doing so in a way that advances students' language ability.  Pragmatics, to me, is a natural crossroads for language and culture, and while on the surface it could sometimes appear essentialist (e.g., Americans say please a lot), but the key to pragmatics is using different approaches in different situations, often based on a lot of intertwining factors.  By comparing pragmatics between L1 and L2, students can also develop their intercultural competence.  Intercultural competence is a topic explored in the Guth & Helm chapter as well as the Liaw (2006) article that Kerry presented, and I came across another article, by Ishihara (2009) recently dealing with instructional treatment and teacher-assessment of pragmatics that also incorporated intercultural comparisons.  Students made some pretty deep realizations about the differences between English and Japanese pragmatics as well as increased their general understanding/competence in English pragmatics.  It's worth a read if you've got the time; here's the reference:

Ishihara, N. (2009).  Teacher-based assessment for foreign language pragmatics.  TESOL Quarterly, 43(3), 445-470.

Non-essentialist Culture Teaching Activity

Dueling American Perspectives

Purpose: students will understand and compare contemporary American political views.   This is important for student understanding of variety in the target culture.

Level: Advanced reading/writing class

Procedure:
1. Select some current event articles from a neutral source (e.g. Reuters)
2. Assign pairs an article and have them find the same story on FoxNews and MSNBC.
3. Ss should be directed to look at differences in how each source portrays the same story (word choice, etc) as well as the content found in the comment sections.
4. Ss will write a short comparison essay or blog post highlighting the different perspectives in the articles and different values they notice in the comments.

-By Turkan and Dan.

Reflection: Writing and Grammar

This week's topic retreads a lot of ground.  We talked mainly about using SCMC to enhance writing instruction.  Blogs have been found to increase writing output, wikis lead to thoughtful editing and collaborative writing, and video/screencasts can be used to effectively deliver feedback.  GoogleDocs are a very convenient way to pursue collaborative writing as well, and have features conducive to editing and providing feedback.

That's all well and good, but what kind of caught my imagination this week was an additional article that Alan presented: Emergin technologies focusing on form:  Tools and strategies by Godwin-Jones (2009).  Godwin-Jones presents the idea of an 'intelligent language tutor' (ILT) that abandons the traditional format of CALL grammar instruction.  The ILT doesn't have learners filling out forms or doing sentence scrambles, no sir, the ILT prompts students to produce language and then helps them focus on specific forms (targeted forms, forms with errors, overused forms, etc.).  I think one of the closest things we have to this right now in ELT is ETS's Criterion, in which learners respond to TOEFL-style prompts and receive some pretty good form-focused feedback from the program.

But what about more interactive, back-and-forth, possibly someday conversational focus on form via CALL?  What came to mind that exists now is Cleverbot- an interesting chat bot that's been found to be quite convincing (I think Erin S. mentioned that it passed the Turing test).  You may have seen images on the web of humorous exchanges with the Cleverbot, but I think technology like this has more potential than just providing reddit/9gag fodder.  Cleverbot is really open-ended, but I could see how more delimited interactions could yield more naturalistic responses- say, tasks asking for directions, or negotiating a movie choice.  While simultaneously referencing corpora/a grammar of English, the bot could ask for clarification or give recasts (Google Search style:  "Did you mean <something you didn't exactly type>?").  This sort of technology could potentially be beneficial for people without access to face-to-face interaction or lots of language classes, and could be used to train ESP students (tech support, etc.).

Materials 2: Current Events Podcast Task

Overview

            This lesson is situated in a university IEP integrated skills class, ideally at the highest or second highest level (high-intermediate to advanced proficiency).  This particular class session can take place in a standard, non-computer lab classroom provided that at least half of the students have access to a smartphone, laptop, or tablet.  The class has 12-16 students, and the course is designed to prepare them for academic English use.  The purpose of this lesson is to involve students in conveying information from reading in speech and adding their own thoughts and opinions, similar to university classroom discussions.  It also develops student knowledge of hedging appropriate for commenting on information and provides an opportunity for planned speech (similar to a presentation). 

            In this lesson, the primary technology used is Audioboo, a website that allows for the simple creation of short podcasts.  Podcasts are an increasingly popular media format (Nurmukhamedov & Sadler, 2011), and as a form of asynchronous CMC provide opportunities for planned speech production.  Listening to their own podcasts and re-recording provides opportunities for form-focused events, which are considered important in task-based language teaching (DuBravac, 2013).  Additionally, the lesson incorporates the web as a resource for reading materials, noted for providing a wealth of authentic readings and allowing students to access materials of high interest (Loucky, 2010).  Email is tertiarily used for assignment submission and a projector with GoogleDocs is presented as an option for brainstorming activities.

            This lesson also incorporates formative assessment.  During the classtime, students have a chance to reflect on their initial efforts in podcast creation.  They are also provided with the rubric used to grade the final version.  As homework, student pairs will self-evaluate their initial efforts based on the rubric and then create and submit a final version for the teacher to grade and provide feedback on.  Throughout the lesson, the teacher has opportunities to observe and provide feedback to dyads as they work on various stages of the task.

Lesson Plan

Pre-lesson Inventory

Ø  Things to bring/prepare:  Partner list for students (podcast creation), Cue sample news article (http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/30/17527380-north-korea-says-it-is-entering-state-of-war-with-south?lite, may want to email link to Ss) and sample podcast (http://audioboo.fm/boos/1299833-current-event-podcast).  Students should have Audioboo accounts already made and are familiar with using the site.  Bring sufficient number of notecards (# of students X 1.5).  Bring sufficient number of Rubric sheets

Ø  Equipment: Computer & Projector, computers/tablets/smartphones/laptops for students

Warm-up activity (  5 min.): Current Events classroom discussion/brainstorm

Purpose:   activate student background knowledge, begin generating ideas for subsequent activities

Procedure: 

Ø  Key Vocabulary: current events, news

Ø  Building/Activating Background Knowledge

-          Begin by asking students what current events are.  Try to elicit explanations like “news”, “important things happening these days”, etc.

-          Ask students to generate some current events (e.g., new pope, North Korea situation, banks in Cyprus, US budget cuts).  Record these on a whiteboard or display w/ projector in a GoogleDoc.

-          Now ask students where they can find information about current events.  Record their answers, and supplement with the following if needed:

news.google.com

voanews.com

Transition: Today we’ll be working with current events.  Talking about current issues is important in a variety of academic fields and jobs, and today we’ll practice this by creating a short podcast about a current event.  Let’s take a look at an example first.

Activity 1 ( 15 min.):  Introduce article and podcast

Purpose:    familiarize students with current events podcast task, provide a chance for noticing forms related to task and provide instruction on other vital forms

           

Procedure:

Ø  Key Vocabulary: threat/threaten, 5 W-Questions, opening, introductions, commentary, closing

Ø  Building/Activating Background Knowledge

-          Introduce/elicit the 5 W-Questions (Who, What, When, Where, Why/How) that are useful for talking about current events.

Ø  Practice

-          Put Ss into pairs (refer to pre-made pair list in Pre-lesson Inventory)

-          Direct students to the following link on their devices (T may want to email link beforehand, or post to a class blog/LMS/website):  http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/30/17527380-north-korea-says-it-is-entering-state-of-war-with-south?lite

-          Instruct students to scan the article for answers to the 5 W-Questions.

Ø  Comprehension Check

-          Review answers as a class

Where? Korea  Who? North Korea  What? Declared war When? March 30 Why?  Angry about US and South Korea

Ø  Presentation of New Information

-          Now, introduce students to the podcast.  Explain that this example podcast will summarize the current event (N. Korea declares war) and provides commentary (thoughts and opinions) about it.

Ø  Practice

-          Prior listening, assign partner A to listen for the organization of the podcast (what comes first, second, third- not information, but kinds of talk) and assign partner B to listen for words or phrases that the speakers use to express opinions or personal thoughts.

-          Play the podcast: http://audioboo.fm/boos/1299833-current-event-podcast (repeat if needed)

Ø  Comprehension Check

-          On the whiteboard or in a Google Doc, collect student input on podcast organization and language for expressing opinion.  Steer students toward completing a brainstorm, as a class, that looks like the following:

Organization	Language for Opinions
Greeting and speaker names (introductions) Topic and summary of event Commentary Closing and Parting	-I think that… -Personally, …. -I feel/don’t feel….

Transition:  Now that we’ve looked at a sample current event podcast and figured out how they’re organized and some good language to use, you will all try creating one of your own.

Activity 2 ( 15 min.):  Podcast Planning

Purpose:     To provide an opportunity for students to plan their podcast

           

Procedure:

Ø  Key Vocabulary:

Ø  Building/Activating Background Knowledge

-          Remind students of the current events, news sites, and 5 questions we talked about earlier

Ø  Apply

-          Distribute note cards (3 to each pair)

-          Direct students to quickly find a current event article and find answers to the 5 W-Questions.  This info should be written on the first notecard.

-          Now have each partner think about their thoughts, opinions, and/or feelings about the current event.  Tell students to write down 3 things on their own notecard.

Ø  Comprehension Check

-          T should circulate and check on each pair as they are filling out their notecards.  Help Ss fill in any gaps with their 5 Ws and answer any other questions.

Transition:  Your notes all look great.  Keeping in mind the Organization we talked about earlier, you and your partner will now make a first attempt at creating the podcast.

Activity 3 ( 10 min.):  Podcast First Draft

Purpose:     students will execute a podcast according to established organization.  Fluency practice.

        

Procedure:

Ø  Key Vocabulary:

Ø  Building/Activating Background Knowledge

-          Direct S attention to the previous brainstorm that included the Organization and Language for the podcast

Ø  Practice

-          Have on partner access Audioboo on their device. 

-          Tell Ss to attempt their podcast at least once.  Remind them the podcast has a 3 minute maximum, so they should focus on fitting all the important parts and information in during that time.  Ideally, their podcast will be about 1-2 minutes.

-          Make sure students save an Audioboo of the podcast

Ø  Comprehension Check

-          After about 8 or 9 minutes of practice, ask Ss how they feel about their podcasts.  Were they able to fit all of it in?  Did they include all key Organization parts? 

Transition:  From what I heard, your podcasts sound like they’re off to a good start.  Let’s talk about how you and your partner will polish them up and submit them to me for homework.

  

Summary/Cool-down/Homework ( 5 min):

Purpose (link to objective): clarify how task will be evaluated, get students to begin thinking about evaluating and improving their podcasts.

           

Procedure:

-          Distribute copies of the Rubric. 

-          Have students look it over.  Ask some basic comprehension questions, field any questions from students.

-          Explain that for HW, partners will need to listen to their first version of the podcast and decide, based on the rubric, what they need to fix.

-          Once they have recorded a better version, one partner needs to email a link to the teacher.

Materials

Rubric for Current Events Podcast Task
Rubric


Example Current Events Podcast on Audioboo

listen to ‘Current Event Podcast’ on Audioboo

Reflection: Listening and Speaking

CALL, to me, has special significance when it comes to listening and speaking.  Traditionally, it's always been easier to acquire authentic reading material and assign reading and writing tasks to be completed outside of class.  But CALL tools allow for more convenient location and use of aural channels outside of the classroom, and several of the articles this week have pointed out how much of a boon this is, especially for EFL contexts.

What I'd like to talk about today is podcasts.  I think there's a lot of potential here, both in terms of finding/utilizing authentic/semi-authentic input for listening and creating opportunities for controlled speaking practice (that hopefully involves lots of student-initiated form-focused events).  I've been using podcasts for my own language learning/practice (in Korean), and I'd like to show you all three interesting types of podcasts.  Before getting to the podcasts, here's a link to the Android app I've been using on my smartphone to find, download, and listen to podcasts:  Podkicker

You probably won't be able to understand these podcasts (they're in Korean!).  But that's okay- I'd like you to think about rate of speech, prosody (expressive intonation), and interactional features (pauses, hesitations, dysfluencies, repairs, backchannels).

#1  A Korean News Podcast - NHK (Japanese BBC) Korean News Program
This is a program intended for people fluent in Korean.

#2  A Korean as a Foreign Language Podcast


 This is intended for intermediate/advanced KFL learners.  Audio-only is available as well.

#3 A student created Korean podcast - UC Berkeley Korean Podcast
This is a student-made podcast, done by upper intermediate/advanced learners (including a heritage speaker).

I think these offer some very distinct forms of input to learners.  Ignoring the vocabulary (#1 is more demanding than 2 and 3, which are somewhat equal), there are obvious differences in rate of speech (#3 is noticeably slower), interactional features (#2 has a great deal of interaction, #3 is well-represented, and #1 is highly planned), and prosody (#2 has more expressive, or animated, prosodic features, #1 is highly authentic in prosody for its register/genre- even to non-Korean speakers, I'd guess it sounds news-like).

I'm particularly interested in #3.  Student-created podcasts weren't covered by the Robins article as potential sources of input, but I feel that they allow for some degree of vocabulary/rate of speed control while still being situated in somewhat authentic interaction, and could be suitable as listening passages for learners of a lower level.

I'd like to hear anyone's thoughts or impressions regarding these foreign language podcasts!

Reflection: Reading and Vocabulary

I found it interesting how both of this week's readings involved Grabe's implications for reading instruction in their overviews of how CALL interacts with reading and vocabulary instruction.  Grabe's implications provide some very good guidelines for reading teachers/program administrators, and I found them to be useful for highlighting some benefits and problems CALL materials have for reading/vocabulary instruction.

First of all, CALL has a lot of potential for extensive reading.  There's a wealth of free reading material available on the web, and I think we're getting to the point where investing in computers/mobile devices for students is more cost-effective than constantly buying new books.  CALL materials also provide for captivating pre-reading activities by utilizing video, audio, interactive data/sites, and collaboration for students to activate background schemata prior to reading.  On the vocabulary side, CALL resources have a lot of potential to provide information about words, including corpus driven teaching materials and interactive/multimedia glosses for reading, which according to the Chen (2011) article, aid reading comprehension and vocabulary learning.  One thing I felt was missing from the discussion on vocab was MALL-friendly flashcard resources.  Loucky (2012) did mention some web resources for flashcards, but I am thinking more of mobile apps like Anki which allow for customizable decks of flashcards and can incorporate some multimedia.

Despite these potential benefits, I feel CALL resources do present some problems.  Grabe's implications involve creating a strong reading curriculum.  This can be hard to do with CALL because more often than not, in my experience, reading material on the web that is topically/audience appropriate for adults is of an advanced reading level.  This makes it difficult to easily find suitable passages for intermediate and lower learners if they are adults (for children, on the other hand, it's quite easy- there are numerous kindergarten and elementary aimed web reading resources).  For vocabulary, CALL obviously has some very strong tools for providing definitions and translations, but I worry about a lack of direction when students leave the classroom leading to overly depending on translation or dictionary tools.

Overall, I remain optimistic about CALL in reading and vocabulary instruction.  I look forward to more principled and varied collections of reading resources appropriate for adults and a greater focus within the field of CALL to MALL vocabulary learning resources, which really let students cash in on commutes and small waits here and there (Anki made my subway rides in Seoul a lot more productive!).

Reflection: Asynchronous CMC

This week's reflection is going to stray from the usual blog format and uses a different mode of Asynchronous CMC:  recorded audio (sort of like a podcast, I suppose).  Check out the file below:

listen to ‘Asynchronous CMC ’ on Audioboo

Reflection: Synchronous CMC

Synchronous CMC can provide a lot of opportunities in language learning.  From a very practical perspective, CMC can allow real-time spoken or written communication with native (or highly proficient) speakers of the target language.  I've had this experience with sites like LiveMocha, which has a text chat function that you can use with friends who are learning your language (and vice-versa).  Another interesting avenue for SCMC is computer games.  Although many of them aren't very suitable for language teaching, I think lots of games have great potential for extensive conversing.  In games that have international servers, there is often a mix of languages present but during overlapping prime playtimes, English often emerges as lingua franca.  In my younger, nerdier, more enjoyable years, I remember playing cooperative games with players from Brazil, Costa Rica, Germany, and Japan.

As far as using CMC in a traditional classroom setting, I think a lot of careful considerations need to be made.  Choosing to use a text based SCMC over simply putting students in groups for f2f interaction should be a conscious, principled decision.  If you are aiming to develop fluency in CMC, which could be useful for students who might take an online course in university or work in tech support, then SCMC tasks would probably be appropriate in a traditional classroom, for example.  Text SCMC has also been shown to lead to more balanced output, so that may be another reason to occasionally use it- give your less outgoing or less confident students a chance to be heard.

One issue that came up during our in-class experiments with CMC is ease of use.  Some applications were very intuitive and weren't much trouble to get up and running.  Blackboard Collaborate and the suite of Google apps that offer CMC (chat, hangouts, drive) worked really well, and they are part of established, accessible suites of apps.  Tokbox, on the other hand, required fairly complicated embedding processes to get up and running.  Other sites like oovoo, while functioning well, still represent another app to register for and install.  I'm beginning to think that an important key for successfully using Web 2.0 tech and CALL tools in general is having a sort of base of operations- one main portal or hub that ties together most of the tools you use in your teaching setting.  If your students all have institutional Google mail accounts, it's incredibly easy to use a variety of Google apps that can function in a variety of learning tasks just about as well as an eclectic set of more specialized apps, and the former only requires one login and zero downloads/installs.

Materials 1: Academic Email Writing

Materials Development 1:  Academic Email Writing

            This lesson is situated in a university IEP class, ideally at the highest or second highest level.  This particular class session takes place in a room with plenty of computers for students to use as well as a computer and projector for the teacher.  The class has 12-16 students, and the course is designed to prepare them for writing in academic contexts.  The purpose of this lesson is to raise student awareness of how emails to professors are different than casual emails, and to develop students’ ability to write polite, properly formatted academic emails that meet the expectations of the genre. 

            In this lesson, two main technologies are used:  an email client (Google-powered) and GoogleDrive (specifically, a GoogleDocument).  Using an email client allows students to gain authentic experience with a necessary medium and genre of written communication (Levy, 2009).  GoogleDrive is a technology that allows for the shared construction of knowledge, and in some ways functions as computer mediated communication (CMC), which has been shown to elicit more balanced output from a class of students (DuBravac, 2013; Lai & Li, 2011).  When used with a projector, it also allows for effective use of a whiteboard/display that allows students easily visible reference while completing a writing task. 

            This lesson also employs formative assessment.  In the warm-up activity, the teacher receives short emails from the students, which allows the instructor to quickly assess student strengths and weaknesses in terms of formatting and use of appropriate language, which can inform the rest of the lesson.  The teacher shares some of these insights and then students get the opportunity to reflect on the various linguistic options they could use during the brainstorm activity.  Finally, after completing the main email writing tasks, students engage in an informal, email-based peer review, in which they provide feedback to a classmate.

View the Lesson Plan:  Academic Email Writing LP
Access the GoogleDocument: GoogleDoc Brainstorm

Reflection: Using Corpora for Instruction

Over the past week, our topic of discussion has been using corpora for second language instruction.  The Reppen chapter provided a general overview of corpus linguistics and corpus applications for teaching while the Flowerdew article addressed common critiques of corpus uses for language teaching.

One thing that really stuck out in my mind, especially when reading the Flowerdew article, was that all of the activities and courses being described in examples of corpus use in the classroom involved extremely high-level students.  Legal writing courses, business letters for prospective MBA students, biochemistry report writing- all of which are types of courses that typically won't be offered in a conventional IEP.  Flowerdew does address this, citing a nice Gardner quote about how just to be able to fully benefit from examining concordance lines, students will need to know every word on either side of the key word in context.  However, I feel that in teacher training, this disclaimer for using corpus-based instruction should be made a bit more forward.  Having beginner and intermediate students (and maybe even low-advanced students) interact with corpora would seem to largely be folly.

That being said, I do feel that the Flowerdew article did make compelling cases for the use of corpora in some of those very advanced, highly-specialized contexts.  I liked the idea of taking a more top down approach and then examining useful words, phrases, or features in specific parts of the discourse (e.g., methods section, invitation in a business letter, etc.).  Still, I have reservations about the time needed for learners to learn how to use the corpus tool and then to investigate and analyze.  As a native speaker graduate student who has had to investigate corpora as part of my coursework, I am confident in saying that it's not always quick, easy, or intuitive.

Flowerdew mentioned that certain resources may be more appropriate than others, noting that corpora may not be the most efficient or effect means for students to acquire specific types of knowledge about English.  Some well-crafted dictionaries can more quickly and directly highlight how words with similar meanings are used differently (Flowerdew used tall and high) as examples.  Additionally, learner errors might not show up in authentic corpora, so the use of reference grammars that highlight common learner errors may be more useful for some forms.  This brings me to the idea of corpus-driven instruction, that is, instructional materials or activities that are driven by corpus data (I suppose this is also referred to as Data Driven Learning (DDL)) rather than having students interface directly with corpus software.  I think this, largely, is the way to go with anything but those high-level, highly specialized courses described earlier, and in some cases may even be more efficient in those courses as well.