Blog post (4/15): Computer Mediated Collaborative Learning

According to Warschauer (1997), there are five features that distinguish Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) from other communication media:
1. text-based and computer-mediated interaction
2. many-to-many communication
3. time-and place-independence
4. long distance exchanges
5. hypermedia links

Considering these features, CMC has a lot of benefits. First, in text-based interaction, such as online chatting, learners can practice rapid interaction with opportunities for reflection, and many of them can be more expressive. Also, it can mediate writing to speaking in that learners can experience real conversation through writing. Second, CMC is free from time and place; it means that learners can have more time to reflect (in cases such as sending emails), and they can access to it as long as they have internet capability and computer accessibility. Third, learners can interact with people form any countries around the world, which broadens their possibility to learn the language. Finally, they can share links of materials with other learners so that they can easily look through it and reflect, and discuss it.
These are the potentials and realities of CMC, but some questions are remained, such as what is the new roll of teachers in CMC environment, or how to deal with ethnic, linguistic or cultural difference between the learners.
Although questions are still remained, it can be said that CMC is starting to change the way of collaborative learning. A well designed CMC will help learners learn from the new technology.

Above is the summary of the article, and as I read this, I came up a question which post a different view on the role of CMC in language learning.
Question is: is CMC (in writing) really helps learners enhance communication ability? Not only this article, but also other articles about CMC suggest that through CMC, learners tend to express their thoughts more than face-to-face communication, and they can have more time to reflect on what others say and what their responses are. As an opportunityu to practice their target language, CMC will work good with these points. I doubt, however, if it works as an opportunity to enhance communication ability, since in face-to-face communication, they don't have time to reflect or cannot have excuse to express their thoughts less. Of course, CMC will work good to enforce learners' ability, with providing chances for practice, but I don't think CMC (in writing) itself works to enhance their communication ability.

Mark Warschauer, 1997, Computer-Mediated Collaborative Learning: Theory and Practice

Blog post (3/18 #2). Using wikis as CALL material?

It seems that using wikis is one of the possibilities for a CALL material these days. One merit of using wikis is that students can collaborate in their work anytime, and anywhere. This is a strong point which other CALL materials does not seem to have, especially in terms of writing (we can say that voicethread can be a counterpart in speaking field). It sounds like an attractive material, but we still have to be careful how we use it in language classes. One of our reading shows that the engineering students did not feel comfortable with using wikis for their class. The reasons the researcher gave why it did not work good were: the students were not familiar using wikis; they needed to have extra work besides wiki writing; engineering majors may have a negative attitude towards collaborative writing tasks. This study shows that wikis are not almighty. However, if we use it in an appropriate way, it will work good for language acquisition. To use it appropriately, we first need to know the merits of using wikis. As I wrote at the beginning, one, and maybe the biggest merit is that students can collaborate in their work. So, wikis will be most appropriate when it is used for group works (in the research, it was not used for a well designed group work, and I think that is a reason why the students felt uncomfortable with wikis). Also, easy accessibility is another merit for wikis. In my opinion, I think it will be better to assign simple tasks for wiki tasks, not very complicated and hard tasks. This is because if the tasks are very hard, learners may feel reluctant to access wikis, which will spoil one of its merits.

Blogpost (3/18): Text-based chat? Face-to-face conversatioon?

The reading of this week "Noticeing and text-based chat" argues the possibilities of the effect of Computer-Mediated Communication (chatting) on Noticing. This article concludes that text-based chatting elicits learners' attention on what they typed on the chat, which is a necessary factor for second language acquisition according to the Noticing Hypothesis. Although I agree with the point that text-based chat can work good for noticing, I doubt if it really works for SLA. The reading shows that learners' self error correction occurs more in text-based chatting than face-to-face conversation, it does not show that this error corrections enhanced their language acquisition. Also, the article does not mention the negative aspect of the frequent error correction: it can interrupt the fluency of the communication. The data shows that the face-to-face conversation has less self correction than text-based chat, it does not mean that it is less efficient for SLA. I think that the face-to-face conversation does good for learners fluency (while text-based chat does good to their accuracy). Ann E. Chun et al's study (1982) shows that in native-nonnative conversations, native speakers correct nonnative speakers' errors in terms of vocabulary, not too frequently to keep the fluency of conversation. This projects another point of view on the article in that error correction from the face-to-face interlocutor can work good on SLA.

My question is that how Computer-Mediated Communication (text-based chat) should be used to enhance the learner's acquisition. Should it be used to improve their accuracy? Or should it be used for their fluency improvement?
My current answer is that since chatting is casual, not very academic, it will work better when the purpose is set on the improvement of the learner's fluency, not accuracy.
What do you think?

Reference:
Ann E. Chun, Richard R. Day, N. Ann Chenoweth, Stuart Luppescu (1982) "Errors, Interaction, and Correction: A Study of Native-Nonnative Conversations" TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 16, No. 4 December 1982.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3586471

Final Project Proposal

I would like to create a CALL activity which helps learners with connecting their listening to speaking, especially conversation. The CALL tools I will be using are listening website which provides real conversation-based listening, and discussion space where learners can chat not only with each other, but also with native English speakers in other countries.

elllo (http://www.elllo.org/english/0951/T999B-Todd-elllo.htm)
ESL listening lab (http://www.esl-lab.com/)
Nicenet (http://www.nicenet.org/)
The first two will be used for listening activity, and the third will be used for discussion about the listening.

The intended audience of this activity is intermediate to advanced level English learners who are interested in improving their conversation ability. The purpose of this activity is to connect what they learned from the listening to communication. In the class, learners first listen to the story from the website, and then do some listening exercises. At the same time, learners are encouraged to pick up words or expressions that they think will be helpful for English conversation. Each listening websites are designed based on real conversation, so learners will find many useful expressions. After the listening, discussion about the listening will be set on the Nicenet, and learners are guided to chat on it, using the expressions that they have learned from the listening. Also, native English speakers from other countries will be asked to join the discussion, so that learners will be able to communicate with them. The topics will be related to learners’ real life, so that they can make comments easily. This CALL lesson will enhance language acquisition, especially for convey meaning in conversation, since it provides many chances for both input and output conversational expressons in appropriate context.

I might also use this website to create chat space.

http://home.kanto-gakuin.ac.jp/~taoka/lecs/

Blogpost (3/11): Podcast Project 3

University Life in America 2

This podcast is for intermediate level English Learners. Click the title above, and you'll find the podcast.
Have a quick look at direction 1, and start playing.


~~

Direction 1
Before you listen, read the exercise 1, and try to get answer for each question from the listening.


Exercise 1:
1. What is Nacho's major?
2. What are the two main topics of the interview?



Direction 2
Listen to the interview again. This time, pay attention to the words below and try to figure out the meanings.

・military
・affect
・conflict
・strategy
・tactics


Exercise 2: Give the definitions to each word provided above. Answers are at the bottom of this page.



Direction 3
Read the exercise 3, and try to catch the answers from the listening.


Exercise 3: Answer the questions below. Choose the best answer if choices are given. Correct answers are at the bottom of this page.

1. In his class, what are some specific features tried to be understood from wars and conflicts?

2. What kind of job does he mention where military knowledge can be applied? Choose all the correct answers.
a. political career
b. solder in Air Force
c. FBI
d. business person

3. In his view, what is important to know for future jobs?



~~
Answers for the exercises
Exercise 1.
1. Military History
2. What he learns in his class, and how he will apply the knowledge to the real life the two topics.


Exercise 2. (click each word to see more definitions)
・military: related to members of the armed force
・affect: to produce an effect or change in something
・conflict: (noun) often prolonged fighting
・strategy: the science and art of using all the forces of a nation to execute approved plans as effectively as possible during war
・tactics: the art or science of disposing military or naval forces for battle and maneuvering them in battle

Exercise 3.
1. How would wars affect the future, and how the nations came to be what it is to be, and what impact wars and conflicts have on people.
2. a, c
3. What kind of strategy/tactics you can use, and how can we prevent mistakes that were done before. Also, he mentioned about the importance of applying what was learned to the future world.


podbean page: http://kazkuma.podbean.com/

Podcast Project 2

University Life in America 1


This is a podcast for English listening practice designed for beginning to intermediate level learners.
Click the title above, and you'll find the podcast.
Start playing the audio, with following the directions below.

~~

Direction 1
Listen to the interview, and try to figure out what is talked about. After the interview, go on to the exercise 1.

Exercise 1: Answer the questions about what is talked about. Answers are at the bottom of this page.

1. How many years do students usually spend in a university?
2. What is Paul's major?
3. What does Paul do during the summer break?



Direction 2
Listen to the interview again. This time, pay attention to the words below and guess the meanings.

・semester
・college
・commute
・break

Exercise 2: Explain the meaning of the words in this interview. Answers are at the bottom of this page.



Direction 3
Listen to the interview again. This time, try to catch more details of the interview.

Exercise 3: Answer the questions below. Choose the best answer if choices are given. Correct answers are at the bottom of this page.

1. When does each semester starts?

2. What subject did Paul mention for general required classes? Choose all the right answers.
a. Math
b. Architecture
c. Art
d. Science

3. How did Paul go to UIC when he was a junior student?

4. What does he want to do with his money?


Post Listening Activity
Think about how university students in your country spend their time. Are there any differences between your country and America? What are the differences? Talk about it with others, and share your thoughts.




~~
Answers for the exercises
Exercise 1.
1. Four years
2. Film (Moving Image)
3. He works

Exercise 2. (click each word to see more definitions)
・semester: a division constituting half of the regular academic year
・college: an undergraduate division or school of a university offering courses in a particular field.
・commute: (verb) to travel regularly over some distance
・break: (noun) a pause or an interval

Exercise 3.
1. From the end of August, and from January.
2. a, b
3. He drove a car to the UIC.
4. To buy ticket to go to Japan.


podbean page: http://kazkuma.podbean.com/

Podcast Project 1

Podcast: Everyday life in the US.

~Instruction~

This podcast is designed for English learners of intermediate level. The episode is about making an appointment for physical checkup.

Click the title above, and you will find our podcast.

Before you start listening to it, try to do the Pre-Listeining Task below.

~Pre-Listening Activity~

Choose the better definition for each words. The answer is at the end of this task.

clinic

1. a place or a hospital department where patients are given treatment or advice

2. a place where children or teenagers are taught

dental

1. relating or belonging to the teeth

2. a building where goods are manufactured

schedule an appointment

1. a published work of literature

2. arrange to meet somebody

check up

1. feeling or showing pleasure

2. to cary out detailed examination

medical

1. treatment given by doctors

2. used in education or by teachers

health insurance

1. financial protection for customers

2. medical expenses covered by employer

.. .. .. .. ..

Answer: [1 1 2 2 1 2]

.. .. .. .. ..

Now, let's listen to the podcast.

(Further tasks are listed below)

~Vocabulary~

Click each vocabulary to see the meaning.

clinic

schedule an appointment (schedule: verb)

check up

medical

dental

health insurance

copay

~Post-Listening Activity 1~

After you've listened to the podcast, take a look at the following sentences. You will notice that the sentences are put randomly. Please put them in order according to the episode you heard. The answer is at the end of this task.

A. The clinic appointment scheduler tells Mr. Kuma that they have a japanese Doctor on staff.

B. The clinic appointment scheduler asks Mr. Kuma to wait while she connects him to the medical department where he can schedule his appointment.

C. The clinic receptionist asks Mr. Kuma to state the purpose of his call.

D. The clinic appointment scheduler would like to know if Mr. Kuma has health insurance coverage.

E. The clinic scheduler tells Mr. Kuma when there is an opening in their calendar to schedule a checkup visit.

F. The clinic scheduler reminds Mr. kuma to bring his UIC ID and his copay to his physical checkup.

.. .. ..

[C B E D F A]

.. .. ..

~Post-Listening Activity 2~

Take a look at the questions below. Spend a couple of minutes brainstorming, and talk about the each question with your group.

1. There are many kinds of clinics, depending on their purpose. Name the kinds and purpose of a visit there.

(Ex. Dental: when you have to get your teeth cleaned, or have a tooth decay)

2. Imagine that you need to make a phone call to a hospital. What information will you prepare before you call? (Ex. your name)

3. Think about the hospital in your own country. How are they different from those in the US or other countries? Introduce the hospital system and admitting procedures in your own country to your group members, and discover the differences among other countries' systems.

Coworkers: Lisa, and Miglena.

Blogpost 2: Voicethread?

Using voicethread makes learners use their target language outside the classroom, in terms of listening and speaking. It is a new CALL speaking material, since students can have conversation on line, not just practicing pronunciation which has been the main purpose of many other CALL speaking websites. The second website shows us that voicethread makes more students participate in the task, which is less possible in class. It also shows that students feel less scary about speaking out because they can spend some time preparing what they will say before they make the thread. I would say voicethread is a good material for speaking, especially for communication.

However, I have a questions about voicethread: what is the purpose of using voicethread? It is clear that the main purpose of using voicethread is not to improve students' pronunciation accuracy. Since it is open to everybody, it is more important that more students post their threads and communicate through it, without caring too much about the accuracy. However, communicating on website is very different from communication in the real world. In many cases, we don't have much time to think what we say before we open our mouth and speak. Also, conversation floats in real life, so we cannot listen to the whole conversation again, even if we have problems understanding the topic.

Considering these things, I would say voicethread will work good with the purpose of reducing fears for making a speech and of practicing the basics of conversation (listen and answer) before students are exposed to real opportunities to use the target language. (It should be used more for speech fluency at first, and then speech accuracy at the next level.)

YouTube video for ESL study

I think this series of videos is very helpful for learners of English.

First of all, this website has many categories of videos, such as grammar, pronunciation, expressions for special topics, and even slangs. Also, in each category, they mention about nuance of English, more than simple explanations of grammar or usage, which I think are very important when we learn a language.

Although some of the dialogues are unnatural, they provide authentic English in general. So, as long as learners want to learn English for the purpose of use English, I think this website is very beneficial for them.

This is more for intermediate to advanced level learners of ESL.

http://www.youtube.com/user/JenniferESL

Vocabulary Study

After I searched some vocabulary website, I concluded that vocabulary.com will be the most effective website for students' indivisual vocabulary leaning.

This website has mainly four parts for vocabulary enrichment: Root Word lesson part, Thematic puzzles part, Word list, and Test part. The part I like the most is the Root Word lesson part where students can get ideas of meanings of many affixes and roots. Using affixes and roots as a clue is an efficient way to learn vocabulary. Since other websites I searched do not have categories for roots or affix, I like this website the best.
In the thematic puzzles part, students can learn words which are categorized based on their theme, so if students want to learn many words in a specific topic, it will be useful. The problem this part has is that they do not have level category, so it may be inconvenient for students who want to build up certain level of vocabulary, not theme-categorized vocabulary.

The word list part does not have any quiz, so it may be very boring if students want to learn vocabulary form this list, but it'll be a good review list for learnt vocabulary. And in the test part, students can have various kinds of tests that will help them check the vocabulary they've learned.

Although this website does not have passages to see in which context each word is used, it will be an effective source to build vocabulary, especially for students' own independent study.

http://www.vocabulary.com/

CALL Reading Source #2

For CALL reading, I think a University Homepage can be a good material.
First, the teacher tell students what kind of information they are expected to get on the Internet. Then, they search on the Internet and find the page that has the information, read, and get the proper information.
At the beginning, the webpage should be designated so that students do not spend most of their time finding the proper page. Then, instruction to find the page gradually lessen, so that students can finally find the information by themselves.

I think this reading study provides not just an authentic materials, but also real life situation. Students can improve both their reading skills and skills of getting proper information.

I guess this is for high-intermediate students.


Example: find UIC OIS page for international orientation and find what you need to prepare for it.
http://www.ois.uic.edu/students/new/orientation/

CALL Reading Source #1

I chose "Breaking News English" as a material for CALL reading. Each article has Warm-up, Before-Reading task, While-Reading task, and Post-Reading task, which are all well constructed for classroom activity. I think this material can be used for either prep homework or in-class material, since it has a lot of tasks for classroom discution.

First, students collect the background information of the topic through the Before-Reading task. Then, they read the article for the first time, and get the idea of the article. The reading should be repeated if necessary. After reading, they do the While-Reading task, and read the article again to check the answer. (The listening task will follow this task) Finally, they do the Post-Reading task and prepare for class discussion.

If the students are motivated to get wide knowledge about the world, this material will be a very good material because, through each tasks, we need to search and get general background information about the article. However, some students may feel that these tasks are hard for them or less meaningful for their English study, so teacher should be careful of those students when using this kind of material.
Each articles has mp3, so it can also be used for listening. I think it will work better when used for both reading and listening lessons.

I think this is for advanced learners.
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/index.html

My Previous CALL experience (listening)

I took a CALL English class in my home country 2 years ago.
It was especially for listening, and it was called 'Three Round CALL system". As the name tells us, there are three rounds in the system.

In the first round, we watch a video (news, interviews, etc.) and catch what is talked in it. We first watch the whole video, and then we watch it again, with the video being cut into some parts. After that, we learn vocabulary and expressions used in it, and get general knowledge about the topic.

In the second round, we watch the video again, and catch the details of the topic. We watch it with small parts, too. After that, we review the vocabulary and expressions, and have small quiz about the topic.

In the last round, we watch the whole video and try to catch more details. Finally we have a quiz and measre how deeply we understand the video.

For many of us, this system worked effectively to improve our listening skills, and most of them liked the system.


Qestion: Can CALL be effective for all the four skills: reading, listening, writing, and speaking? (I'm wondering if CALL can be more effective than other materials, especially in reading and writing.)