Language Learner Behaviour in a Virtual Environment - A Reflective Summary

Roed (2003) investigated the behaviour of university students of Danish while they were engaged in a communicative language task within a synchronous virtual learning environment (i.e. chat room). She found that the task resulted in changes in behaviour; students who were normally very quiet in class, for example, behaved differently in the chat room, playing a considerably more active role. She observes that this kind of environment helps to reduce language anxiety and attributes this to the fact that computer-mediated communication (CMC) creates a rather anonymous environment where the computer serves as a shield from being onstage. The benefit of CMC, she notes, is its ability to function as scaffolding: 'gradually giving anxious students more confidence to embark on conversation in the target language'.

The author also stresses the fact that when operating in virtual environments, not only does learners' behaviour changes, but also the perception of learners' behaviour. Thus, it is possible for normally reserved students, for example, to appear to behave in a brash manner in the eyes of other chat room users. Online language learning certainly has its fair share of disadvantages as well as advantages.

Roed's findings do seem to support the view that online chatting facilitates language learners to communicate as a result of lowered self awareness while engaging in public discourse. However, in my own teaching context (Chinese ESL students, many of whom are shy, passive learners with low English proficiency - in a small primary school in the New Territories) a significant number of students would have to face the double handicap of having only limited vocabularies and limited keyboard skills. I would imagine that such students would go off task easily. Therefore, if I were to set up an online communicative task for my students to complete, in a similar manner to that described in Roed's (2003) article, it would have to be well-planned with clear and achievable goals laid out. Appropriate scaffolding according to my students' linguistic and technical needs would also be necessary. Yet, despite taking these measures, I would still need to address the issue of catering for learner diversity. How, as a teacher, would I be able to keep students of a wide range of abilities happy and ensure that they participate in equal amounts without constantly intervening and interfering? I suppose that for the latter I could always tell my students at the beginning of the task that every one of them has to at least post a certain number of posts (either questions, answers or comments) to their peers. But in terms of keeping everybody happy, no matter what the lag time is between hitting the enter key and the appearance of text on the screen, there will always be those students who become easily frustrated by a sluggish system or the failure of others to respond promptly to their posts. On the other hand, there will be other students who become overwhelmed by the pace of it all.

Nevertheless, I do think that, given their greater linguistic and technical experience, my older students (say at P6 level) would gain more from the experience of being immersed in virtual environments than the younger ones. I would certainly not rule out the possibility of trying out online chatting in English with my older students now that I am aware of some of the drawbacks of the approach. [Update: for a different slant on the issue of using online communication tasks with primary students, click here.]

Dotsub - alternative to Yappr

Aha, I've just found out from Nik Peachey's blog that Dotsub is similar to Yappr but you don't need to pay a subscription fee in order to input subtitles beneath video clips i.e. students can transcribe video clips for free! One idea of Nik's is really fab - you can ask students to create their own video clips (with digital cameras or webcams), upload them to Dotsub and then get other classmates to transcribe them.
I would add that you could then get students to embed these transcribed videos to their own blogs and then evaluate each other's contributions through the commenting feature.
Nik's idea could easily translate into a group project which has enormous potential for developing students' all-round English skills. Just think of the possibilities! The video clips could be based on a topic or based around a target language structure that is currently being covered in the syllabus, thus reinforcing what they learn (if indeed, they do learn!) from their (may I dare say, mundane) textbooks. I think my P6 class could handle this project as long as I put them into mixed-ability groups (interestingly enough, those that I consider to be tech-geeks also happen to be above-average in English - I know who they are because I did a survey with my class when they were in P5 last year). However, one problem that would most likely occur in this scenario would be the unequal contribution by individual members of a particular group. Or, even if the students did take equal turns to transcribe a video clip, how would you deal with the technologically or linguistically inept? One would have to figure this out in advance but for starters teachers running this project would no doubt need tonnes and tonnes of patience!

Yappr - Transcribed Videos for ESL

Just found this link via Nik Peachey's quickshout blog which may be of interest to some of you (if you haven't visited the link already, that is). Useful albeit small selection of free video clips of different genres to suit students of all ages and abilities. Every clip has an accompanying script which appears in a window alongside, to enable students to listen AND read while watching the clip. Have a look at http://en.yappr.com/welcome/Video.action?videoGuid=10CEB2F8-8FB4-4225-8F06-54713BB83B7C to see exactly how it works. A lot more clips are available upon paying a subscription fee. I can't wait to try Yappr out myself!

Internet for English Teaching (Warschauer, Shetzer & Meloni)

This article introduces a set of pedagogy-related principles which Warscauer et. al. believe can help educators to effectively incorporate the Internet into the language classroom. The authors classify these principles under 'Learning Goals', 'Teaching Guidelines' and 'Planning Tips'. In terms of Learning Goals, they say that teachers should help students

• master new technologies in active and creative ways
• develop autonomous learning strategies
• learn collaborative communication and teamwork skills
• learn in a variety of cultural contexts
• develop critical thinking skills

The Teaching Guidelines are intended to facilitate the achievement of the above Learning Goals and the authors classify them under five headings, namely

• Dual Immersion (where students are immersed in learning the skills of language AND technology simultaneously)
• Integration (where computers are fully integrated into the curriculum)
• Project-Based Learning
• Student-Centred Learning
• Learning With a Purpose

The list of planning tips is extensive but not exhaustive. Perhaps the most useful and relevant tip for me is the one about creating a friendly home page to provide low-ability ESL students a secure platform from which to begin their Web-browsing activities. Other useful tips include having students work in groups in a one-computer classroom and focussing on e-mail when students are conducting Internet projects in low-tech environments.

Warschauer et. al. end their article with an informative selection of sample web projects. The Primary School Webfolios seems to be a great idea and the tasks would appear to be perfectly achievable for my average P6 student. However, I would like to know how the teacher (Rachel Arenstein) actually handled her low-ability students who had a variety of learning needs such as those who had difficulties with spelling, little knowledge of reading/writing skills and strategies, etc. The E-mail Cultural Exchange Project is something that I have always wanted to set up and try out with my class, but I have been thwarted by my futile attempts at trying to find willing and suitable partners. In the past I have set up pen-based exchange projects in my school only to find that the correspondence dried up soon after set-up. The crux of the problem was that there had often been a mismatch between my students' levels of English and those of their pen-friends. Quite simply, you're not going to reply to somebody's letter if they appear to put less effort than you or if what they write intimidates you because of its scale and undecipherable meaning. Nonetheless, I can see from the example that the teacher has a crucial facilitative role to play which can make or break such a challenging project. Certainly provides some food for thought.

Somewhat unfortunately for me, the majority of the sample web projects provided by the authors are based on secondary or tertiary educational contexts which, in my opinion, seems to suggest that (at the time of writing at least) Internet-based teaching and learning in the English classroom could only be fully exploited if the students had at least several years of studying English. In other words, there is a threshold level of English beyond which students can truly benefit from Dual Immersion. Anybody would like to challenge me on this?

A recap of what I said in my mini-presentation on 18-01-10

My school: Local aided primary school in New Territories East

My students: from working-class families, virtually zero exposure to English outside of school

My classes: 4 altogether (2 in P1, 1 in P2 and 1 in P6)

My experiences in using technology:

I use PC a lot during lessons, but mainly to present lesson content in a visually appealing manner - target language structures/vocabulary, task instructions, worksheets for consolidation, etc.

With the P1s and P2s, I quite often...
• display lyrics to popular children's songs such as 'I can sing a rainbow.', which I copy and paste from internet (http://bussongs.com/ is good because it includes video clips, sometimes animated)
• present high frequency words using powerpoint (which appear one by one as you click the mouse button)
• display images (searched using google), as a stimulus for discussion

With the P6s, I use powerpoint even more to deliver lesson content.

Some software/websites I have found useful in my teaching include:
• YouTube Downloader (http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/) - download any YouTube video and convert to a format that allows the video to be burned to a DVD (Useful for when I have to broadcast the video to the whole school during Lunchtime English Show.) Some YouTube videos clips I have used in my lessons include those of Mr. Bean e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljo6gtufSng (to develop listening and speaking skills through quizzing students on what they just saw) as well as Michael Jackson's 'Heal the World' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpz5eD9L4dA (to stimulate discussion and critical thinking)

• audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) - powerful software for recording and editing sound. Useful for when you want to blend children's voices with background music or simply edit any sound file you have (make it shorter, slower, louder, etc.). A few years back I recorded students singing songs from "The Sound of Music" (e.g. Do Re Mi, Edelweiss, So Long, Farewell...) and mixed their vocals with music from a karaoke CD of the same title. These were converted to mp3 and later used during their stage performance. (It fixes the problem of live singing where students can't sing loudly enough and dance at the same time.)

• Reading A-Z Kids (http://www.raz-kids.com/) - one of the best online reading resources you will find on the web, I think. There are tonnes of books to choose from and they are levelled from from beginner to fluent so they are suitable for ESL students. They can listen to and read the books at the same time, as well as record their own voices as they read before comparing them with the original recordings. A consolidation task is provided in the form of a comprehension quiz at the end of the each reading. When students have completed all the tasks for each one of the books offered at their level, they can move up to the next level and start reading all the books from that level.

One plus point of using the service is that teachers can set up and have full control over individual accounts for each student as well as keep track of his or her reading progress over time. However, one drawback is that the service comes at a cost (roughly US$80 annually)

I want to do MUCH more in terms of using technology in my classes, like for example, introduce podcasting or blogging to my students but somewhere in the back of my mind I have this feeling that my some of them might not be able to cope, especially those who can't even say or write the letters of the alphabet correctly let alone type up a blog. Nonetheless, I can consider myself fortunate that I have the time and space to freely experiment with technology in my lessons as I'm not restricted by curriculum constraints in the way my local teaching colleagues are. For them, there is simply no room for trial and error.

My experiences of technology

My experiences of technology in the language learning context is rather limited when compared to what my students can do with computers. I must admit I rely too much on powerpoint to deliver lesson content and I seldom assign students to work with the computer as much as I ought to. Some of my classes, however, have regular online reading sessions where they log in to raz-kids.com and select and read online readers based on their own reading levels.

Nonetheless, I do use google for images and clipart, YouTube for videos (I've used Michael Jackson's 'Heal the World' song/video to stimulate discussion about the need to protect the environment from man-made destruction), starfall.com for animated stories, hkedcity & Daves ESL Cafe for lesson activity ideas. Audacity is a great audio editing software which I have been using a lot (downloadable from www.audacity.com) in my teaching.

I'm teaching and there appears to be an elearning system at my school but it's all in Chinese and all i know is it allows students to post messages to teachers and to each other but besides this that's all i know so far.

I hope to learn how to make full use of blogs and set up my own class blog to use with my 6A students.

Kiat