Final Reflection

I have always thought computers were useful. When I was 11 and 12, I went to computer sleep away camp. I said it--computer sleep away camp, also known as "geek camp." I played soccer with my counselors from Trinidad at night and learned how to program in BASIC and played with Midi systems during the day. As geeky as it was, it made using computers in high school much less intimidating. It also made me more willing to sign up for jobs that involved some basic level of computer skills as I got older. Geek camp lead me to apply to be trained to be a faculty technology worker at my first university. I mostly plugged in cables and taught older instructors how to turn the LCD project "ON" instead of "OFF," but it gave me a taste of how fast technology would change in the future and caused me to stay at least aware of what was going on in the tech world.

Considering how far computers have come over the past 20 years, the idea that I ever learned BASIC is funny now, but my simple understanding of how computer languages work has made me less fearful of HTML. My ability to at least comprehend HTML lead me to my current position. In a lot of ways, I feel the same about this class. Second Life will grow and change, and may someday go away completely. It may be replaced with something more revolutionary and cutting edge, and this new thing will seem inaccessible to anyone who is unfamiliar with Second Life. Classes like CALL keep me literate both in things that I find interesting and things that I find annoying. No employer will care what my personal opinion of Wikis is in the future, but they will care that I can sit down and build one so that students and/or instructors can communicate. Truthfully, if I am still working in ESL in 10 years, I will probably seek out another class like this to update me on the things that I missed in my world. I know I missed Delicious, Voicethreads, and blogs the first time around. My career is just starting and I have no clue where it will lead me, but I know that computers, like them or not, will always be involved, so I am grateful for any chance I get to learn more.

Video Conferencing Tools

Using a video conferencing tools in a language classroom could have many useful applications. One possible application might be having students do group work outside of the classroom. Many students in ESL classes who have been in the United States for awhile work odd hours and/or have transportation problems. Teaching students how to use video conferencing tools might make arranging time for group work easier. Another interesting possibility might be doing a conversation exchanges with students studying English in EFL settings, making "video" pals. Also, instructors who are amenable to having students contact them outside of the classroom could use video tools when students are working on a large project and have questions. If the instructor was online, asking questions via video chat may clear up more in 2 minutes of chat time than a back and forth via email that could take significantly longer. One way that Meebo would be a good choice for this last option would be that the application allows you to sign into more than one account simultaneously. Why is this important? Instructors who have multiple IDs in email programs like gmail (one for professional use and one for personal use) could be signed into multiple accounts at the same time.

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/

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 of America, not just American propaganda

http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/index.cfm

Voice of America

This is a site that I found a long time ago, but I only just explored it last night in any great detail. This site is a daily news site that is an offshoot of the radio station broadcast into many regions of the world (admittedly as propaganda, but still a good English source). The stories contained would be good for reading for comprehension. With graded English like this, students would have a good handle on most of the content words and be able to read, answer questions, and have group discussions. This website is good because it allows for a decent daily selection of articles on relevant news topics that are written in a version of graded English. Written in the same format as the radio broadcasts, these articles have some length, so they allow for depth of idea, but they also seem to use higher frequency words so as to be understood by a large audience. This seems as though it might be good for an intermediate class to use before transitioning them to non-graded VOA website (the regular English edition).

Another good reason to use this is that the website features the ability to listen to many of the posted stories so there is an added audio component.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone