Wikis--a source of good or evil?

First a personal note: when I am researching a topic on the internet and stumble across a wiki-site that was obviously done for a class, I find student created wikis to be fun to look at for about 6 seconds before I close it and look for something more reliable. I find that wikis that are open to the public and were not put together by a tech-saavy person to be clutter on the internet. Is this harsh? Possibly, but it is a personal thing--I would rather find a good link to an academic (or reliable) article or data source than find a wiki that quotes this data source and have to mine the wiki to find the link. I also really dislike having to work in not astheticaly-pleasing online resources, like wikis created by people like me with limited tech experience, that have my name on them for all the world to see.

My personal opinions aside, I found these articles interesting. The annoyance and the bitterness displayed for wikis in the Klunder article is nicely juxtaposed by the great writing experience in the Krueger blog. I did ask myself if the annoyance at wikis displayed in the Klunder article came more from poor teaching strategies. Did the instructor spend enough time introducing wikis and having students work on a small collaborative project before introducing the larger assignment? It doesn't appear so. Was it really necessary to use a wiki to prove that all students were contributing equally? Maybe, but I question this because because when students can sit down and physically talk to each other, is it really necessary to write collaborative papers? Although students in the Klueger blog also did not appear to have a lot of training, it seemed that the distance learning format of the course might have made wikis more from the students' lack of ability to sit down and talk together. The key to his success may have been that the wikis literally provided a space for the community to happen, and students were eager participants.

Given these two scenarios, perhaps it is best to state that we, as instructors, should consider both the good and bad aspects of using a wiki.

LING487 CALL Final Project Proposal

LING487 CALL Final Project

A collaborative group effort between Jessina Branyan and Christina Indovina.

1. The CALL tool you'll be using

We will be using the free written American English online corpora for guiding students through concordance searches.

2. The purpose of the instructional activity

The activity would be designed for students to "discover" in groups how to correct their problem areas concerning use of prepositions and articles.

3. The intended audience of the instructional activity

Advanced ESL academic students of reading/writing class. We envision this activity taking place after students' first draft of their paper has been returned.

4. A brief description of the activity/lesson itself

-Receive feedback about their "problem" areas--preposition and article usage being the two areas that we are having the students focus on

-First individually and then in groups, students will use the concordance generator to tease out the subtler uses of their focus area.

-Students work in their groups to peer teach what they have learned to the rest of the class by giving a mini-presentation.

5. A brief explanation of how the CALL tool or interface enhances language acquisition in this activity

In the context that we will be using it, the concordance generator will serve as a conciousness-raising tool. As students use the generator to find patterns, they will also be reading authentic material that will repeatedly expose them to the many different ways that articles and prepositions are used in writing. Because concordance generators are free and readily accessible on the internet, we are also hopeful that this activity will demonstrate to students how they are able to independently use the tool when they have future grammar questions.

6. Links to any online sites you think you'll be using

Free spoken American English online corpora:

http://micase.elicorpora.info/
http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx
http://www.americancorpus.org/

Wh-quesitons in context AND exciting movie vocabulary!

"Jessina and Christina Go to the Movies!"
This podcast is designed to give upper intermediate level students a chance to hear a situation where wh-questions are used in everyday life. It is also designed to give students a chance to learn some movie vocabulary!

Link to our podcast

Before you listen:
Look at the movie vocabulary list below and see if you can identify any of the words before you listen to the podcast. As you listen to the recording, see how many of the words you can guess based on what is being said during the phone call.

Vocabulary list:
online
theatre
The Chicago Reader (website)
genre
romance
documentary
horror
film
lead actor/actress
suspense
action movie (see action-packed)
(to) star
director
romantic-comedy
animation
3-D
CGI
IMAX
CTA
3-D glasses
chick flick

While you are listening:
Attention to details: What do you think "what about" and "how about" mean in these questions?

Post-Listening Activities:

Practice using wh- questions
Wh-questions are used A LOT when we are trying to make decisions about things to do or places to go! Below is an activity that will help you practice using wh- questions and practice your new movie vocabulary!

What do YOU want to see?
Download Partner A and Partner B below.

Partner A

Partner B


Learning New Ways of Saying the Same Thing:
In conversational English, we often cut words out of sentences to make them shorter, or more informal. Look over section 2 of this transcript (on pages 1 and 2) and see if you can find four examples of questions that do not start with wh- words. When you find the three examples, see if you can re-write the same questions into the more traditional longer, or more formal, forms. Click the link below that says "Check your answers!" When you are finished, try and figure out with a partner when you would use informal questions versus when you would use formal questions.

Check your answers!


Transcript for our podcast:
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3

Useful Links

Chicago Reader Website

Learn more about IMAX Chicago

Database of movies in English

Chicago CTA

Writing/editing using computers

Gaskell's article about how to use online concordances was really interesting to me. One thing that they said was that their research did not conclusively prove anything--of the 20 students who participated in the project, only 8 self-reported feeling better about their writing (and their skills actually increased), whereas 11 students actually showed MORE errors in their writing. It seems to have helped those 8 students, and when I put myself into their shoes as a language learner, I think I would fall into the category of the 8 successful students for several reasons.

I like being able to understand a pattern myself. When a teacher gives me a rule to follow and uses a lot of meta-language, it is like having to remember the original rule PLUS all the other rules associated with it. I once conducted a classroom observation of a volunteer instructor where I used to work and watched a class took a drastic turn towards confusion as a teacher was trying to review the differences between "because" and "because of." She wrote the word "adverb clause" on the board and told students that they were to use what they had learned the week before--because is always followed by an adverb clause and because of is always followed by a noun, common or proper.

Students were supposed to be focusing on when they used the different types of "because," and instead spent most of their time trying to recall the definition of an adverb clause and bickering over the differences between common and proper nouns. There were MANY other issues associated with this, but I could see where if students would write a couple of sentences in a computer program attempting to use because/because of and used Gaskell's concordance generator, I think they would have been able to *see* the rule (without it being told to them) and realize, "when because is followed by a complete sentence, its one type; when it is followed by a person, place or thing, its another type."

Gaskell also pointed out that this is a time consuming process because the student is responsible for figuring out *which* of the generated uses matches what they are trying to say, and then how exactly to fix what they were trying to say to make it correct. In many ways, its moving the learning from a passive paper-correcting mode to an active grammar and syntax learning mode. Overall, I would give it a try--it seems like with more time, most students would really benefit.

American Football: Gameday!

Interested in learning about American Football in Special English?

Look no further! Also, includes a short vocab list. Follow the link to learn about NFL football:

http://ling487indomay.podbean.com

Exercise 1 - Before listening, review the vocabulary words listed below. If you don't already know the word, click on it and read the definition provided. Do you know other sports where some of these words might be use to describe the sport? If so, which sports and how are these words used? Write or say to a partner at least one sentence using 5 words from the list.
New Vocabulary

(words not found in the VOA Special English Word List)


1. regular season
2. playoffs
3. depend
4. schedule
5. tournament
6. "I get it." "I see."
7. take place
8. advance
9. quarter
10. offense
11. defense
12. touchdown
13. field goal
14. quarterback
15. weekend
16. make it
17. unfortunately
18. awesome

(For questions about words that do not appear on the new vocabulary list, check the Voice of America Special English Word Book at http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/wordbook-a.cfm )

Exercise 2 - While listening to the podcast try to listen to the words or phrases that aren't linked to definitions (1, 2, 6, 12, 13) and write your own definitions of the words as you understand them from the explanations provided or the context in which the words are used.

Exercise 3 - Think about the New Orleans Saints and their success in the NFL this last season. Can you think of other sports that have similar process of elimination for determining the best team? Can you explain how it's similar or different than the process the NFL uses?

Created by Christina Indovina and Nicolas May

Voice Threads

In many ways, this software provides a way for students to collaborate in groups to produce an authentic task, something that Robinson found to be highly effective in language production. The students in Brazil who put together the slide show for the Brazilian EFL teacher's voice thread worked on an authentic task to produce an item that was then publicly posted for the world to comment on. This also looks like it would be fairly straight forward to put together, so students would potentially not be met with an overly complex task that would produce anxiety.

Using Chapelle's criteria for evaluating a good CALL speaking tool, it does seem to provide a "good fit" for the learner since it is all recorded externally, so students would be exposed to whatever range of dialects that teachers see fit. The voice threads that I watched all appeared to be based around photos, so there is not really any explicit teaching happening. I could see this working if there were photos of people working on how your mouth should look when producing a certain sound and then having students record their own attempts at doing this. There is certainly a lot of interaction with the computer, and potentially with other students via a computer, so these all seem to play in favor of using voice threads. Also, the voice recordings that students leave would allow the instructor to evaluate student performance. As for feedback, I am not sure how successful that would be in such a public forum. However, the program definitely allows students to explore outside the classroom.

My personal opinion about Voice Threads is that they could have many different uses in a classroom. I could see them functioning very well in a setting where distance-learning was an issue, or if a teacher wanted to ask students to work collaboratively on a project (similar to responding to a post in Blackboard or in a Wiki). It seems like the instructor would have to plan this out very carefully for it to work effectively. Also, it seems like students would have to become more familiar with the software--several participants were having obvious issues understanding if they were being recorded or holding the mic close enough to their faces. Overall, I think that this has the potential of being a very successful outside of classroom tool.

Sign language and Air Force One

I reviewed two videos using YouTube.

The first one is in a language I am not very familiar with--ASL, or American Sign Language.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cayMkVidpc&sns=em

ASL is great for video since it is 100 percent visual. I thought that I couldn't go wrong with any video that I watched since it's visual, right? I found that the answer wasn't as simple as I had thought. First off, all of the expertvillage ASL videos are incorrectly--I was excited to learn the word for mother and father, and instead learned how to say I stopped the clock yesterday, sorry. I found the woman to be easy to follow, If I were a student, I would have felt good about everything this woman was telling me. She was slow, clear, and even though I questioned her methods (or lack thereof) of chunking relevant materials, I felt success at the end of several 2 minute sements. And then I read user comments like this lady doesn't know what she's doing, her As and Gs are all wrong, go back to school, etc. It made me realize that as a student, this is a GREAT medium...as long as you have someone to guide you toward high quality material. Perhaps this is the use of teacher playlists?

The second video I watched was clearly marked: Listening, vocab with quiz! English meeting lesson-Air Force One.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzSMvNjit5I&sns=em

Since the video first starts with this guy pretending to be the president of the USA, my first thought was, oh man this guy is cheesy! But I figured he had 9 minutes to get more interesting, so I kept watching. The intro ended up fitting well with the theme of a visit to the Ronald Reagan Library. After the cheesiness and before the footage of the library, he introduced a few vocabulary words that he thought might be useful for students. Once the footage of the library started, he used natural (non-ESL) speech to talk about interesting things that he saw at the library. He followed this segment up with a series of questions that seemed to be geared towards students taking notes on what they thought were the main ideas. I really liked the first 7 minutes of this video--I thought that even though the intro was silly, it kept my attention and made me have some fun with it. I could not see using the whole 9 minutes of this, but I thought that the visit to the library might provide good footage for intermediate students who are in an EAP class learning how to take notes.

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