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.