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.).