Week 10

Part 1

“Trends in Computer-Based Second Language Assessment” (Jamieson 2005)

Jamieson’s article provided a broad overview of how language assessment has integrated various technological forms of assessment. For the most part, the format of computer based language assessment exams has proven to be efficient since it allows learners to pace themselves when taking a test, can be more economical and ecologically resourceful, and can also automatically provide evaluation results, other times we might have to question the authenticity of the activities and the accuracy provided in terms of expressive abilities. Often times, computer-adaptive tests can accurately assess receptive abilities (regarding vocabulary, grammar, reading/ listening comprehension), but “computer-adaptive tests are not [always] currently possible, such as speaking tests in which oral discourse is scored by human raters” (232). Additionally, written discourse may also need to be analyzed for lexical and syntactic characteristics by human raters. The new TOEFL uses research in corpus as a “baseline for language used in different registers and genres” (234). The use of a corpus would definitely seem to make the most sense in terms of evaluating language based on authentic contexts as a reference point.

Part 2

Reflections on Social Networking, Gaming and CALL

This week’s discussion led by Torrey was probably one of the most abstract concepts to me as a language instructor, not in terms of the social networking tools available for educational means, but because of the gaming aspects that were discussed. Social Networking (especially such as tuenti.com) I feel is an excellent choice for giving students the opportunity to chat/ interact with Native Speakers of the L2 language they are learning. Gaming on the other hand, has other elements that also appeal to education, in terms of their goal structure and motivational aspects.

 As a former gamer, I really admired Jane McGonigal’s TED talk, which we watched in class about gaming, and how we can apply these  problem solving skills to the “real world” instead of solely restricting ourselves to  operating within these “virtual worlds.” While this does seem a bit farfetched, I definitely see how these qualities of gaming do indeed force us to develop certain social skills/ strategies that we can apply to learning as well. Her talk goes into the anthropology of gaming in Lydia, and how this ancient civilization could have possibly used gaming as a means of overcoming a famine (which is just incredible if indeed true!)  Also, an “epic win” can represent a significant accomplishment in gaming, but we achieve success in sequences by meeting certain goals (or learning objectives) just as we do in the classroom. Perhaps the most motivating aspects of gaming, just as Jane mentioned, are the positive feedback, along with the collaborative nature that engages gamers in amicable social learning environments. 

Week 9

Part 1

“You’re Not Studying, You’re Just…” (Purushotma 2005)

This article gave several examples of how CALL tools can be integrated into other less seemingly explicit methods of language learning. For instance, one particular example described modifications that allow users to integrate different language contexts in Strategy/ MMOGs. While there are many “Mods” that are easy to use as far as customization of a game, it never would have occurred to me to use such a string to change the language to the L2, and still have some glosses in the student’s L1 so that it isn’t completely overwhelming for them. In this sense, “modifying commercial games offer a quick way to develop rich content for examining student motivation, task based learning, context effects, incidental learning, and simulated immersion” (Prushotma 87) While this might be useful for targeting a younger group of L2 learners, I feel certain games only cater to the particular interests of certain groups of learners. Furthermore, if a learner is already familiar with the game and the strategies necessary to complete tasks, they might be able to complete these tasks and make significant progress without particularly having to focus so much on the content of the language. While there are benefits to learning new vocabulary through association, some tasks in the game do not explicitly require it , especially since the Sims speak “simlish” there isn’t any authentic dialogue in relation to the language version of the game. I've included a video and link that explain how different recording artist have been asked to sing their songs in Simlish for the game's soundtrack

Part 2

This week we looked at different CALL resources for intercultural exchanges between universities, one of which our group found particularly useful was http://www.unicollaboration.eu/. What I really thought was fantastic about this site, was the fact that it included tasks that were collaborative for student exchanges. For example, the following link describes the activities/ sequencing for creating an online newsletter as a collaborative writing project between L2 learners of English and Spanish. These activities could serve as models that other instructors can use/ modify according to their objectives. The task definitely seems like it would have been a very engaging project for the students, because it explains that it allowed students the opportunity to express their professional interests through this task. http://www.unicollaboration.eu/?q=node/473

Week 8

Part 1
“Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence through Online Exchanges” (Chun 2011)

In this article, ICC is studied through the use of CMM with American students who are L2 learners of German, and German students who are L2 learners of English.  One of the observations reinforced in the introduction is that successful ICC, “involves an understanding not only of the culture and language being studied, but also the readiness to suspend disbelief and judgment about the other culture and the willingness to reflect on one’s own culture…” (Chun 393). In this case, both synchronous and asynchronous CMC were the means of communication (a forum, then chat session). While the latter form of communication led to very brief responses (by both groups of L2 learners), it seems as if the immediacy of communicating via chat also allowed students to express a number of speech acts more freely (when successful). I suppose some of these more unsuccessful chats could be due to several factors (perhaps their chat partner may not find the topic/ questions to be of high interest to them).  Regardless, it was very interesting to see how other more successful attempts reflected curiosity of face work with much more varied comments. I would be interested to see if the same speech acts would have resulted if they students had skyped (just as one student had suggested), or if it would have resulted in different speech acts since body language might be a factor involved in ICC as well.

Part 2

This week, we learned about many extremely interesting CALL tools that were completely new to me. Since I am not a linguist, I have not been previously exposed to the use of a corpus as a writing tool for L2 learners. I was immediately intrigued after reading the assigned article, but I was still completely baffled as to how to go about actually using one. However, Erika’s demonstration was wonderful—her walkthrough really allowed us to explore its usage, and also revealed how some variations can lead to different results.  I definitely feel that the use of a corpus would benefit both Heritage learners and NNS L2 learners, especially for calling attention to form/ context in relation to writing.

Week 7

Part 1 
Díez-Bedmar & Pérez-Paredes (2012)

This study revealed the use of CMC ( wikis, forums) in an intercultural collaborative exchange project involving students in England learning Spanish as their L2 and Spanish students learning English as an L2. Since this project provided ample opportunities for communication via CMC with native speakers, since it allowed both groups of students to collaborate on a final project, which in this case happened to be a tourism brochure. LREs were analyzed since the project was divided up into smaller subtasks, which allowed students to gradually research background information and also familiarize themselves with their dyads.  What made this project even more rewarding for the L2 learners, was that the project targeted the tourist brochure as an applicable project in their professional field of interest.
The study revealed that when analyzing the LREs most of the feedback attended to morphosyntactic and lexical errors, in some cases “the Spanish peers in this experience seemed to only accept it when their perceived it as correct and without further follow-up or discussion” (Díez-Bedmar & Pérez-Paredes 84). In some instances where feedback was incorrect, it also demonstrates that the students were able to focus on form and accurately identify the correct response.

Part 2
Approaches to teaching Vocab/ Grammar in CALL

This week we were introduced to various websites for studying vocabulary and having students self-create their own flashcards. What I found the most useful about this discussion is that we were all given an opportunity to review these websites as available sources for vocabulary and L2 learners. The website we reviewed was studystack.com. This website provided very basic tools that offered little to no multilingual support, which was disappointing to say the least. Also, many of this website’s features fell short of what other tools such as quizlet have to offer. It was a great idea to have us review each website, since it does save instructors time in terms of analyzing what each CALL tool provides, and also since it allows us to consider which tools might be more appealing to particular L2 learners’ needs.

Week 6

Part 1

“Prompting in CALL: A Longitudinal Study of Learner Uptake” (Heift 2010)

This study analyzed error feedback correction in two forms ME (Metalinguistic Explanations) and MC (Metalinguistic Clues) in relation to CALL applications. One aspect that was observed explicitly was the lack of available studies in the area of CALL that attended specifically to these forms of feedback correction and their success in learner uptake. In this case, Heift's study demonstrated that, “the results indicate that there is more learner uptake for the MC feedback type in German 102, whereas the ME feedback type shows greater learner uptake for German 103 and for German 201 (Heift 208). This study shows that while spelling and grammar were both in question, students were more prone to correct spelling errors for the MC group, while for the ME group, there is, “very little distinction in feedback specificity between the two types of error cases” (Heift 211).

After reading this article, I realized that this was very relevant to CENTRO, the electronic workbook that accompanies our Intermediate Spanish textbook, Más. The automated feedback provides L2 learners with MC error handling, yet it is up to the instructor to provide additional ME comments since the program itself only marks the entire response as incorrect. Since these automated responses are so ambiguous, L2 learners can only attend to their mistakes with the appropriate error-specific feedback from their instructors. However, what I do not know is whether this can be said for 1^st year learners, given that the electronic textbook was implemented after I had taught these courses.

Part 2

Prof. Chun’s demonstrations last week were extremely helpful in terms of providing various tools/ references to use for L2 learners in relation to listening and reading activitites. I found that many of the links provided on Gauchospace  (one of my favorites being the link to El cantar de mio Cid) were very inspirational. I loved how the website for El cantar de mio Cid contextualized the poem and how it explains to learners that it was originally communicated via oral performance before it was ever documented. The manuscripts, transcriptions, and audio are beyond impressive! I can say that this project must have been time consuming, since I myself have transcribed medieval manuscripts and can only imagine how adding media must have been a meticulous process itself (students can be trained to this as well though, just as we learned about using Glossaries in Gauchospace as a collaborative project). If I were to teach a course where this text was a part of the syllabus, I would love to show students this site among other resources that would make Medieval texts in Spanish more accessible particularly to the Net Generation.

As far as listening comprehension is concerned, since we were paired with partners in order to work on creating a listening assignment with Vocaroo/ GoogleForms, it made me reflect on past oral comprehension activities that could be converted into CALL centered activities. Vocaroo was extremely easy to use, and to save as different file formats. After recording a monologue where I acted as a tour guide and incorporated vocabulary/ input from the textbook (architecture, art movements, etc.), I coincidentally stumbled across a YouTube video by the Secretariat of Tourism in Mexico that almost mirrored the same descriptions I had included of this particular historical site (el Zócalo). I like the idea of using the YouTube video because it allows learners to toggle captions on/ off, however, many of the captions were incorrect (“Diego Rivera” was captioned as “de pie Rivera”). 

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1gHsmg0XqI9

Audio recording >>

Week 5

Part 1

“Adventures in the blogosphere: from blog readers to blog writers” (Ducate & Lomicka 2008)

While reading this article, many of the topics discussed in it really made me self-reflect on my own personal use of blogs (as a student in ED 259), but also the potential incorporation of a blog for instructional purposes in my L2 classroom. Several scholars made excellent observations highlighting the personal/ creative aspects that highlight students’ individual expression, but also the collaborative nature of blogs since they encourage a sense of community for readers who are also given the opportunity to provide feedback.   I really liked the way this study or “action research” was set up by giving students time to read blogs during the 1^st semester of the study. That way, receptively the students were able to engage in and also present cultural material as a follow-up activity. It makes it much more beneficial for the L2 learners to immerse themselves in this  authentic “input” via blogs as readers, before actually taking part in creating their own learning spaces as they did in the second half of the study.

However, I was intrigued to find that the students were more apt to notice similarities between intercultural forms of communication via blogs, rather than focusing on the contrasts between cultures. Not forming a sense of community with their own classmates was a second unforeseen expectation since the blogs “functioned more as a private space for students to describe, explore and express their own ideas and feelings in the TL” (Ducate & Lomicka 24). In this sense, each blog becomes more of a personalized tool, and while it gives students a sense of ownership, this is probably why it leads to their direct interests in the  TL culture as opposed to interacting with classmates (since they do this already in face-to-face instruction). Regardless, I do feel that this study proved its effectiveness in using blogs over both phases, first as a receptive tool, and later as a more expressive means of language production in the TL. Ideally, it would then lead to students consistently participating in other means of communication with NS in the TL.

Part 2

Many of the tools we saw in class regarding teaching L2 pronunciation were completely foreign to me, given that I have never been trained to actually incorporate pronunciation as an in-class learning objective. However, it was great to see that PRAAT is easily accessible and is great for visually comparing and assessing L2 pronunciation.  I can see how novice L2 learners could benefit greatly from this software, instead of solely relying on NS feedback & transcriptions. I do recall that before these tools were available, as an undergrad for my Spanish phonetics course (a requirement for the Spanish BA), native speakers were given extra credit for transcribing the non-native speakers’ recordings and giving feedback on pronunciation. If only PRAAT had existed back then, it would have been much easier for everyone to visually track the phonetic articulation of words and short segments.