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 >>