Blogging from 317

Today, I have re-entered the world of blogging. I am currently writing this from the computer lab in Room 317, housed in the Liberal Arts building. With any luck, this blog will successfully link to my ESL website- English with Ms. Amber. It is a phenomenal work in progress, and can be found at http://arkschoolofenglish.weebly.com.

As I ponder the meaning of life as it relates to CALL, I've found incorporating technology in the classroom to be quite challenging. Unfortunately, most of the software is not that difficult to use... it is getting students to navigate and engage with the sites that has proven to be a struggle. Even if you provide in-class tutorials and have the students follow along, many of them will forget how to use the technologies before they get home. As such, it is necessary to create and provide students with written handouts to help refresh their memory and inform their learning.

Kibbitzer Kalamity ;)

      The information presented in Tim John's Kibbitzers offers an incredibly in-depth look at the target language and its correct usage. Using the first Kibbitzer as an example, it was interesting to see how the data set presented both the original and revised sentences, in which the word "incessant" was replaced by the suggested word, "steadfast" (Kibbitzer 1). The fact that the data is provided below the comparison sentences for each term helps to illustrate the differing connotations between the two terms. This type of Kibbitzer usage could be very useful in the classroom. The various Kibbitzers could be employed to help illustrate how one word could be a better choice than another, which would be helpful for English Language Learners because it would explain and provide examples in context as to what words could work better. 

The MICASE Kibbitzers were fairly interesting to read through; however, some appeared to be more difficult for ESL students. Using the "Among or Between" Kibbitzer (MICASE Kibbitzer 2), a teacher could use this to gradually introduce students to the differences between the two words. It starts out by introducing the simple rules that apply to both words, then slowly progresses into describing the more complex rules, and finally concludes by showing the language usage in the data. While these Kibbitzers explore each data point thoroughly, I think John's Kibbitzers appear to be more student-friendly and accessible. If a teacher was to use these in the classroom, I would recommend John's Kibbitzers because the target language lesson is more approachable (and there are 81 available vs. MICASE's 14).  

Corpora Critique

Evaluation criteria: 

1. Design must be principled, "the texts in a corpus need to represent the type of language that the corpus is intending to capture" (Reppen 3)
2. Corpus must consist of "a large collection of texts" (Reppen 3)

American National Corpus (ANC)

     This corpus is made up of over 20 million words, with ~15 million words being available for free download, of which 3,217,772 words are spoken and 11,406,555 are written. It appears that the types of sources are fairly limited, with spoken words coming from some face to face, but a majority from phone switchboard conversations. The written texts are more varied; however, they too are much more limited than the sources offered by other corpora. The texts appear to come from more with a majority of the texts coming from more formal sources, being from domains such as "technical," "journal," and "government" (ANC 2009). While this corpus would be useful for tasks requiring the use of more technical data, it would not be appropriate for lessons aimed at introducing students to conversational spoken data or other more colloquial data. 

     The corpus home page does not seem very user-friendly, and I did not like the interface. Another element of it that was that users would have to pay or download the free part onto their computers, which is not ideal. 

 Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)

     COCA is an amazing source of data. It is "composed of over 425 million words in more than 175,000 texts" (COCA 2011). Because COCA's data is broken down into various registers, the data can be used to teach multiple types of lessons. Such registers include spoken, fiction, magazine, newspaper, and academic (COCA 2011). Compared the the ANC, this corpus offers a much wider variety of data. Additionally, the easy-to-navigate interface opens up the opportunity for student interaction using the corpus in classroom lessons. 

Cambridge English Corpus (CEC)

     Dang! The CEC consists of over 1.5 billion words throughout all of the CEC corpora resources. The reason that it is so much bigger than the aforementioned corpora is because it pulls texts from multiple resources, ultimately gathering information that covers British English, American English and Learner English (CEC 2012). I am thoroughly impressed by the extremely large range of resources that the CEC offers, and think that the Learner English corpora resources would be an incredibly useful tool for ESL classes. Because the Learner English resources include texts from the Learners' written English and Error coded learner written English corpora, one could choose to incorporate error coded or non-coded texts in the classroom. These examples could help students identify types of grammatical points and could supplement lessons on various topics. 

Online Video Projects

     I love the idea of engaging students in learning through the use of student-produced audio. I think that by giving the students a chance to be creative, it enhances student motivation and increases their interest in the assignments. Personally, I love assignments that allow me to be creative and interpret them individually. The idea of using student-produced videos would be an incredible option, as long as it was feasible, i.e. sufficient/available technology, relevant to coursework, etc. Some issues I noticed with the Phrasal Verb Video Dictionary was that some of the videos were lower quality due to the recording devices, while others were difficult to hear. Another issue that I noticed was that some of the definitions were not correctly used in the videos. For example, in the "on the ball" definition video, one student says, "On the ball, the teacher is coming." Another example where the students mixed up the definitions was "touch on." The students said, " touch on, I need to study," and in response, another student said, "Okay, I will touch on- it was great." I think the students confused the meaning of "touch on" with summarize in the video, whereas they could have used it in a clearer manner.  

     Despite the shortcomings, the Phrasal Verb Video Dictionary is a great idea! Since the class I observed is an ESL Low-Intermediate Reading course, this type of idea could be incorporated into a lesson and assignment to help introduce students to vocabulary that could come up in future readings. If I were to teach this type of class, I would try to incorporate a variety of activities to engage and hold the students' interest. Rather than simply holding class everyday where the students had to sit still and read, I would try to encourage the development of skills necessary to successfully read through interactive and entertaining activities. One way of incorporating video in the classroom with the students would be to have them complete various activities relating to course texts, such as conducting "author interviews," where the students would be in charge of researching the author to ensure a realistic interview. Additionally, the students could conduct interviews similar to the one in the Mexican Immigration to the U.S. YouTube video. In order to add authenticity to the assignments, students could interview real authors (if possible) or peers, random people, etc. to get opinions on a certain text, topics, etc. Another assignment could include students recreating or rewriting/changing the ending to a story and acting it out on video. 

Group Project 1: Reflections

1.  How did your group use technology to work collaboratively? 

     Our group used technology as a tool to help us stay on the same page. We utilized Google Docs to share our brainstorming notes and then also to compile each person's individual part of our Rationale. Using these tools allowed us to read and  peer-edit our work in a time efficient manner, which allowed us to expedite the editing process. Once we had all finished our individual parts of the Rationale, we uploaded them to the Google Docs for editing prior to publishing it to our wiki. Additionally, we used technology such as PowerPoint and Word to create our lesson plans and scaffolding presentations. 

2. How could you have used technology in additional ways to help your work?

     We could have incorporated more Internet-based activities in order to encourage the students to become more technologically-savvy and familiar using various modes of technology available today. We could have researched various websites similar to the site we used during the problem-solving workshop.

3. What did you learn about technology, collaborative work, problem-solving, and/or interaction by doing the group project? 
     I found that creating and publishing a group project required a lot more communication than most group projects. At first, I was nervous about the project because we didn't communicate about the project during the weekend, but started working on the project during the first in-class work session. However, I was really happy that our group was able to effectively brainstorm and we were all able to complete our designated project for Thursday's class. This allowed us to determine what else needed to be done before the due date, and when we met on Saturday, we were able to finish the remaining elements of the project in just a few hours. Using technology definitely allowed us to communicate more effectively, as it allowed us to work on our components when it was the most convenient for us individually.

4. How can what you learned inform your own teaching (either in the second language classroom, or elsewhere)?

     This experience will definitely help me remember to plan ahead of time and more efficiently as a teacher. I was so happy with the final outcome of our group project because of the positive communication, and will definitely strive to replicate the experience with future collaborations. As for future teaching, I will also strive to include technology-enhanced activities in order to challenge my students and introduce them to varied types of learning and lessons/activities. 

Computer-Mediated Communication in Language Learning

Computer-mediated Communication (CMC): incorporation of online communication technologies into a learning setting (Egbert & Hanson-Smith, p. 21) 

Synchronous CMC: possible simultaneous interaction, through tools such as instant messaging, text and voice chat rooms, and videoconferencing (Egbert & Hanson-Smith, p. 21) 

Asynchronous CMC: delayed communication through tools such as email, discussion boards, blogs, podcasting and webcasting (Egbert & Hanson-Smith, p. 21) 

Both synchronous and asynchronous CMC are invaluable in the classroom, as they offer many language learning opportunities that would not be accessible otherwise. Synchronous CMC offers students the ability to interact with other students in real-time, from any location. An advantage of this interaction type is the multitude of available communication opportunities. Teachers can establish connections with fellow teachers in schools across town, or even across the world, and can schedule student chat opportunities with the students from other schools via chat, Skype, etc. This type of partnership lends authenticity to the communication activities, and students would be excited to interact in a new modality and even more, with students from different locations and cultures. A disadvantage of this type of communication could be the potential negative side effects that could stem from having such an instant, real-time interaction. Students engaging in chat could be offended due to a lack of facial cues and a more-relaxed diction, which could result in a student accidentally saying something they didn't intend to be offensive. Otherwise, synchronous CMC can be a valuable tool for encouraging real-time student interaction. 

While synchronous interaction tends to rely more on informal writing exchanges, asynchronous communication modalities give learners time to review and edit their work (Egbert & Hanson-Smith, p. 21). An advantage of asynchronous CMC is that students have time to think about what they are saying. This provides language learners with an adequate amount of time needed to develop their ideas. This is supports Condition 5 for Optimal Language Learning (Egbert & Hanson-Smith, p. 21). If students have an adequate amount of time to work, then they won't be stressed, and will be able to engage in a better higher-level learning than under other circumstances. Unfortunately, one of the disadvantages of asynchronous CMC is that the students may become frustrated with waiting for other students to respond because the communication is not instantaneous. Ultimately, both types of interaction have their strengths and weaknesses, but should be incorporated into the classroom to enhance language learning and students' interaction. 

Developing Critical Thinking: Rationale for Rationale Software

The software for Rationale appears to be pretty useful for teachers' use in promoting critical thinking. The concept-mapping options would be incredibly useful for helping SS to grasp the idea of logically organizing their thinking into clear pathways, and the fact that the software allows teachers to provide feedback & comments is invaluable. I really enjoyed seeing the Jumble Jigsaw activity and reading about its use--this would be a fun way to challenge students to develop their critical thinking skills, and since the Jumble activities are random, students would constantly be challenged.

The problem that may arise in a classroom is how to incorporate this software. Firstly, teachers would have to consider the technology available to them during class time, and available to students at home. If the availability of technology is an issue, this software would be too difficult to incorporate into a class, and the teacher should just approach critical thinking strategies by introducing mapping by hand. As for the $64,000 question: if a school has the available resources and can afford the software programs, then by all means-- invest in the software. However, if the software programs will negatively impact the schools and won't be used often enough to justify spending the money to buy the software, then the teachers should be creative enough to find alternate approaches to teaching critical thinking strategies.