A reflective summary of the article 'Can learners use concordance feedback for writing errors?' (Gaskell and Cobb, 2004)

In Gaskell and Cobb’s (2004) study, 20 low-intermediate level students enrolled in a 15-week English writing course at a university in Canada learnt how to use and practiced using an online concordancer to make corrections to the errors they made in their own written assignments. These errors, which were of a grammatical and collocational nature, were made explicit by the instructor during the initial period of training and students simply had to click the HTML links for the concordance before revising the errors. Following the training, the instructor stopped providing online concordance links.

The researchers aimed to answer the following questions:
i. Will learners consider the concordancing activity useful?
ii. Can learners use concordances to correct their errors?
iii. Will correcting with concordances reduce errors in free production?
iv. Will learners use concordances independently following training?

Several sources of data were collected, including pre-test and post-test writing samples, weekly error analysis forms, results of a student survey regarding attitudes toward the concordancing activity and network records of issuing IP addresses for concordance searches.

The main findings were that
- all the students felt that their writing skills had improved, although only 8 students attributed the improvement in their ability to use the grammar points targeted in the course to the corpus consultation work itself;
- students could independently work from concordance to correction even though this process did not necessarily help reduce the number of errors they made in their post-test writing samples.

Gaskell and Cobb’s (2004) study shows that using concordancing in writing classes can help provide feedback to students on word-level and sentence-level errors. This is especially important for second language learners, who do not have opportunities nor time to learn, as the authors put it, "through enormous amounts of brute practice in mapping meanings and situations to words and structures". They argue that such learners need to explore language through data-driven learning, which essentially means learning from exposure to examples containing repeated patterns which are made salient, as it provides opportunities for substantial amounts of practice on target errors which otherwise would only be met once in a while.

Although the participants in Gaskell and Cobb's (2004) study were adult literacy learners, the article that they have written inspires me to consider trying out a similar concordancing activity with my primary six students sometime in the near future. Nine times out of ten I would prefer to have students correct their own errors rather than do the corrections for them myself and online concordancers offer a gateway for me to achieve this. Many of my students are already actively blogging in English on a regular basis so it would be simply be a matter of having them copy and paste their writing into a Word Document and send them to me (or can I add precast links next to erroneous sentences in their blog postings??? - I don't think this is possible myself). I would imagine, however, that they would require more support, especially in terms of the amount of training and practice that they would need to master retrieving and interpreting concordance information. I would imagine also that pre-cast links would have to be provided indefinitely because many of my students have not reached the stage where they can easily locate and point out mistakes in their written compositions.

Ugliest / Worst Web Pages of the Decade

Let's hope that all our soon-to-be-created web pages turn out to be better or at least better-looking than these, hey?

My thoughts on the 'Check My Words' toolbar

Earlier today I downloaded the 'Check My Words' toolbar to my computer with no problems. Once you have opened up Microsoft Word (2007 version) you can find it by clicking the Add-ins tab at the top of the screen.

To put 'Check My Words' to the test, I first typed up one of my students' pieces of writing which he had done recently, using Microsoft Word. In his writing task, the student (primary six level) was asked to respond to the question, "What would you do with HK$500 if it were given to you for your birthday?" with an essay of at least thirty words. This is what he came up with:

If I have HK$50 I think I will buy the mp3 give my friend Louis because he like listen music. I with buy the Harry Potter because I have Harry Potter one, two, three, four, five but I not have Harry Potter six so i buy it.

Imagining that I were in my student's shoes, I highlighted certain words which I felt I would need help on and clicked on the 'check' tool. For example, when I highlighted 'like' and clicked on 'check', a comprehensive list of common and potential errors pertaining to the use of this word appeared on the left hand side of the information screen. The only trouble is, if I did not know (and my student would definitely not know) the grammatical terms 'subject-verb agreement'. 'infinitives and gerunds' then I would have to wade through all this and other information, spending a huge amount of time to pick out what was necessary in order for me to be able to correct my written phrase 'he like listen music'.

The 'Say It!' tool is much more useful for primary level students. When I highlighted the whole essay and clicked 'Say It!', an American-sounding speaker accurately reproduced the words remarkably smoothly. I suppose it would be useful to use the tool during occasions where students have to read aloud essays, poems and so forth and need to know the exact pronunciation of certain words, phrases or even sentences in some cases. Just a minor point - I like the way the speaker pauses each time there is a comma in the text (contrast 'Mum said I am clever.' with 'Mum said, "I am clever.") Pity it doesn't work so well with exclamation marks.

The 'Definitions' tool provides a list of all the possible meanings of a highlighted word, drawn from various online dictionaries (you can choose which one). A link to an online bilingual dictionary would be more useful for primary six students in my opinion.

The 'Similar Meanings' tool is like a thesaurus - great for providing students with lists of alternatives to words that they have written (synonyms). It displays the opposites of those words (antonyms) as well.

The 'Word Family' tool tells you the parts of speech of a highlighted word and its related family of words (e.g. like has likes, liked, unlike, liking, etc.) as well as a rating that indicates its importance or how common it appears in writing or speech.

The 'Word combinations' tool can benefit students' writing immensely because it tells them whether a string of words can be used together. After highlighting 'like listen' in the essay above and clicking the tool, I was presented with eight example sentences containing 'like listening' on the Word Neighbors webpage. This is more than enough to convince me that my written combination of words needs correcting. A useful link on the webpage is an embedded English-Chinese translation tool.

I have nothing to say about the 'Example Sentences' tool as it is self-explanatory.

It appears, then, that the 'Check My Words' toolbar has been developed with university-level students in mind, though I can see that some of the inbuilt tools can be used even with upper primary level students. It goes without saying that if you are going to introduce your students to the various resources available in the 'Check My Words' toolbar, you'd better make sure that they can use Microsoft Word comfortably. In my case, I very much doubt that my primary six students have any typing experience whatsoever (in English, that is), let alone have experience of using Microsoft Word.

I can, however, imagine how the tools can be of enormous benefit to advance level students at college or university level, particularly those who are enthusiastic about grammar!

My response to the article 'Practical considerations for multimedia courseware development: An EFL IVD experience' by Hsien-Chin Liou

One thing that stood out for me after reading this article is where the author stresses the importance of knowing

• the media (particularly its merits)
• the institutional needs or constraints (which includes the learners), and
• the design principles (which include the knowledge of teaching pedagogy and language learning theories)

when making design considerations for her multimedia courseware development project.

Put it simply, the three main factors that need to be considered in CALL development projects are the learner, the technology and the language learning theory. Thus, in contrast to what we read in another article written by Levy (1997) a few weeks back, there are, in fact, not only two choices to consider for the point of departure for CALL development (namely, theory and technology) but three (learners' needs as well). It makes sense to begin by analyzing the needs of our learners and this analysis should be both informed by our knowledge of what the technology do for the learners and grounded in second language acquisition theories.

Another point I'd like to mention, or rather, question about is that if courseware development involving multimedia is so labour intensive and time consuming, where does that leave us in our web projects? Liou's article was published in 1994; I'd like to know whether, sixteen years down the line, there exists an authoring package which takes far less time for novice programmers to master than IconAuthor takes. And what about those pre-manufactured 'templates' that help language teachers to implement their courseware materials easily? Are they more readily available nowadays?

Evaluating CALL courseware: My thoughts on Hubbard's (1988) framework

Just as I was getting to grips with the some of the ideas presented in Levy's (1997) article regarding the CALL courseware development process that we read about in Week 5, I came across the word 'evaluation' in the title of this week's reading article and the first thing that came to mind was "Oh no, not now, please." (lol) You see, up until a little while ago, I still hadn't decided which piece of technology or courseware would form the focus of my EN6482 assignment let alone think about how I would develop and implement it. So, to think about 'evaluation' seemed like, at first, a step ahead too far for me. Later I realized, however, that I had misinterpreted 'evaluation' as meaning the evaluation of students' learning as result of CALL courseware implementation instead of the courseware itself. (Obviously I should have read the title of Hubbard's article more carefully!).

Let's be honest, when it comes to evaluating CALL courseware, no evaluation scheme can possibly be more comprehensive and more flexible than the evaluation framework that was put forward by a linguistics expert from Stanford University named Philip Hubbard (1988) more than two decades ago. It is comprehensive in that it contains sections that cover every possible angle as far as the evaluation of computer-assisted language learning and teaching is concerned, including 'operational description', 'learner fit' and 'teacher fit', all of which themselves have a number of distinct components which need to be looked at in any courseware evaluation procedure. The evaluation framework is also flexible because, as Hubbard explains, it provides the tool through which the courseware evaluator can create his or her own questions or build some other evaluation scheme according to the evaluator's needs.

Some courseware evaluators may be put off by the apparent complexity of Hubbard's evaluation framework (with all those arrows and boxes drawn in) and may also harbour worries about the the length of time it takes to evaluate a single courseware package. "Fear not," I would say to them, for the author provides the reassurance that it is only those that need to compose reviews of a package that doesn't appear to be suitable who need to go through the full evaluation procedure. Ordinary teachers like you and me just need to use the framework as a guiding tool to quickly weed out courseware packages that do not fit the bill. As Hubbard's mentions, even if we just address the question of whether the courseware fits our students' needs and interests, it will go a long way toward making an informed decision. Flexible it is indeed.

Second Life

I was one of the unfortunate few who could not get Second Life to run properly on the computer last Monday, so I am not in the best of positions to comment on its suitability for use in the language classroom. However, having witnessed it running smoothly on Rubi's PC, my first impression was that this kind of virtual world is nothing short of amazing in terms of its scale and the vast array of things that your avatar can explore and do in it. If I were to use Second Life with my upper primary students, whose English proficiencies are well below the territory average, I would introduce its different elements sloooowly over a period of time, perhaps in my literacy workshops during the post-examination period.

For starters, I would assist my in creating a single avatar representative of the whole class because it would be easier in terms of classroom management than allowing every student to have their own. Of course, my students would very much prefer to have their own avatar given the choice but I am little concerned about the steep learning curve they would have to go through individually and the fact that some (especially the boys) might choose to meander off task. Creating an avatar can be an English learning opportunity itself - you could get students to verbalize the reasons for wanting to choose a particular last name or starting look (using adjectives to describe appearance or quality), for example. Once the avatar is co-created, the students, with expert guidance from the teacher, could begin exploring one of islands. As we discovered last Monday you can easily lose track of what you're supposed to be doing in this virtual world so there needs to be a concrete task for the students to complete and it needs to be explicitly stated in both spoken and written form.

There has to be a million and one ways to exploit the Second Life virtual world for language learning but my brain is obviously nowhere near operating on all four cylinders on this Chinese New Year's day (by the way, Kung Hei Fat Choi to you all!) I guess the first thing that comes to mind is to have the students explore together an island that you have already taken the time to explore yourself and then get them to provide a running commentary of what they are seeing or write about what they have seen. Or set them the task of finding certain things in certain places e.g. find three things that you would like to see in real life in the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and describe them. (I think somebody else might have already mentioned this.) It goes without saying that Second Life provides a natural and engaging stimulus for students to speak and write. I think I'm sold.

Theory-driven CALL and the development process by Levy (1997) - a reflective summary

In his article, Levy (1997) draws from a number of theoretical frameworks underlying CALL projects as well as the findings of an international CALL survey to explore the nature of theory-driven CALL.

According to the writer, there are two main and distinct groups of CALL practitioners. Those who believe that completed research is necessary for successful CALL development belong to the group known as formalists and they tend to make theory the starting point of any project. Those who believe that research need not be completed right before the start of the development process but can be integrated into that process belong to the group known as proceduralists and they tend to make discoveries as they go along.

One problem with the formalist view is that, since there exists a plethora of CALL theories influenced by a diverse range of disciplines, seldom do we find that research based on a particular theory is complete. In fact, theories can and do undergo constant revision during the course of CALL development, often because they haven't yet fully encompassed the CALL context at hand. Thus, one has to question the need for any CALL development project to be driven by theory.

On the other hand, proceduralists, whose CALL development projects are mainly technology-driven, need to be careful not to become totally fixated on the capabilities of a particular technology and neglect research altogether, because the latter can play a vital role in their projects by providing new theoretical insights into their own work.

In a nutshell, the best CALL development approach for CALL practitioners to adopt is one that proceeds in a circular, rather than linear fashion but places equal significance on theory (of instructional design, teaching or learning) and application (of a particular technology). CALL practitioners should strive towards the desirable goal of establishing a successful fit between the two.

Despite the fact that both the current capabilities of technology and language pedagogy have evolved considerably since the publication of Levy's article thirteen years ago, I believe his notion of 'fit' is relevant more so now than ever. Although I am not an avid CALL practitioner by any means, judging from my previous experiences of using IT in language teaching (e.g. creating word puzzles from online puzzle generators) I would consider myself to be a proceduralist with very little consideration for theories of language pedagogy. The essay written by Levy (1997) serves as a timely wake-up CALL (excuse the pun), because it has already increased my awareness of the need to consider both theory and application in equal measures when I am developing CALL materials for my students.

I end this post by posing a question for the writer. If the international CALL survey were to be conducted again today (almost two decades after it was conducted the first time) how do you think the results would turn out? I just thought this might be interesting.