R.Blake, 2011 Topic Online language learning: web-facilitated courses, blended or hybrid courses, fully virtual or online courses Structure 1. Comparability of online and traditional learning 2. Tutorial CALL 3. iCALL 4. Social Computing CALL 5. Games for Language Learning
Comparability: online and traditional
learning Huge variability within online courses and traditional courses -> comparing them is difficult Meta-analysis of reports concerning online learning (US Dept. of Ed, 2009) Students who some or all of their course online did better than those who did not Results were highly sensitive to the amount of time on task OLL is conducive to the expansion of learning time -> more time spent on L2 materials (particularly suited to language-learning?)
Tutorial CALL: overview
Often associated with drill-and-kill which have minimal interactivity or opportunity for construction of meaning (there is more to it than that though) Availability: language teachers can create their own exercises (e.g. hot potatoes) commercial publishers increasingly providing grammar exercises as part of textbook package
Tutorial CALL different aspects of language-learning 1. Vocabulary Learning: native texts can be adapted, or used in tandem with external resources (e.g. glosses) 2. Reading Comprehension 3. Dictionary access/pronunciation while reading on web e.g. Wordchamp, Ultralingua 4. Pronunciation 1. Effectiveness of ASR system to give feedback on Dutch pronunciation (Cucchiarini, Neri, & Strik, 2008) 2. Tell Me More from Auralog: speech waveforms and pitch contours to allow comparison with native speakers + 3D animation
5. Pragmatics: Sykes and Cohen created CALL materials for Spanish
pragmatics + Croquelandia
iCALL: Uses NLP and AI to improve feedback to users, individualising instruction based on their record of input Learner corpora can be used to direct curriculumplanning by focussing on difficulties (Heift has large learner corpus 5yrs, 5000 learners) Only 3 iCALL systems (at time of pub.) E-tutor for German (Heift, 2010) Tagarela for Portuguese (Amaral & Meurers, 2009) Robo-Sensei for Japanese (Nagata, 2010)
Social Computing CALL
textual-based chat, asynchronous and synchronous CMC
Benefits: Learner agency Meaningful negotiation of meaning
Has been analysed in Interactionist and Sociocultural
perspectives
Interactionist and Sociocultural perspectives
(both have roots in Vygotskys (1962) notion of scaffolding)
Interactionist How learners negotiate meaning while carrying out meaningful exchanges Coding system: scaffolding
Sociocultural Theory
Trigger -> indication -> reaction ->
response to reaction
Emphasis on construction of L2 identity
Result: negotiation of meaning
happens in similar way to faceto-face negation of meaning and with similar success
How L2 learners participate in
new communities of practice: language use & culture
Telecollaborations and tandem
learning e.g. Cultura in MIT
Games for Language Learning
Thorne, Black and Sykes (2009) classification of games: 1. Social virtualities e.g. Second Life 2. Commercial Massive Multiplayer Online roleplaying games (MMOs) e.g. World of Warcraft 3. Made-for-education immersive environments e.g. Croquelandia
Games are always task-oriented or focused on play
Games for LL: principles
Games are not free from structure; they are designed experiences (Squire, 2006) with defined goals and rules Learners submit to these goals and rules providing they can still be playful (Klopfer, Osterweil and Salen, 2009) Verisimiltude is integral to play; the game must seem real or allow us to pretend its real in order to suspend disbelief. Role-playing in these games has parallels in traditional learning where learners are required to take on new identities. Purushotma,Thorne, and Wheatley (2008) insisted that game design must dedicate at least as much thought about failure states as to success states i.e. practice and feedback on errors are paramount.
Games for LL: advantages and
Limitations Advantages: Games also foster agency. Learners feel that they are independently problem-solving through constructing meaning. Games allow users to attempt and fail with low risk, to take on new identities and negotiate meaning
Limitations: Lack of meaningful learning e.g. Second Life being used as a doll house just to dress up Intolerance of unsophisticated graphics Programming games is time-consuming and expensive
Conclusion Blake concludes that the importance of all of these CALL activities may lie in maintaining learners motivation: These learning environments and tools help students maintain their interest in learning a language over a long period of time. And like it or not, learning another language to a minimal professional level (i.e., level 3 on the Interagency Linguistic Roundtable scale) is a very time-consumingactivity (Blake, 2008).
