Digital Technology for L2 Learning and Teaching

The article that I read this week was “Engaging Study Abroad Students in Intercultural Learning Through Blogging and Ethnographic Interviews” by Lina Lee. Based on this article, I can see that for college students that are studying abroad, technology can be a great asset. Through Lee’s study, the students had the opportunity to express themselves based on free writing and assignment based topics at their own weekly pace and free of the stress of critique. Along with these assignments, students were to conduct interviews face to face with native speakers. Lee found that a majority of the students believed this assignment was helpful to their understanding of the target culture. As cultural understanding is one of the five C’s from the Standards of Foreign Language Learning, these assignments helped to progress the cultural understanding for the students who were studying aboard in their target language’s culture. I definitely think that technology is an asset in the classroom, especially with homework assignments. I believe that if all students have access to Internet, this can be used at any age level to communicate back and forth using the target language. Although it is not practicing oral communication, blogging requires quicker responses than essays take and allow the students to analyze their grammar usage. I think it is important that, as Lee mentions, “Carney (2007) argued that the post-comment structure of blogs results in brief exchange and lack of continuity. Thus, instructors should find ways, such as using guided questions, to engage students in reflective thinking in order to develop a deeper cultural exchange” (3) in order to maintain conversation through more than just a thread or two.

As well as blogging, I think that other forms of social media that incorporate a chat function, such as Facebook, can be helpful to students. Again, they do not have to worry as much about their oral skills, but rather their responses need to be quick and timed, but it still allows the students to visually see what they are saying and correct any grammar mistakes before sending it. Skype can also be a great tool because it can help students practice both chat functions and face to face functions. This can be particularly helpful to classrooms that do not have access to native speakers due to their geographical location. Both of these would be really helpful with classrooms that have a partner classroom in the target language. It would give both sets of L2 students a chance to practice their language. I believe that because Twitter offers such sort exchanges, it would not be as great a tool for communication, especially if students were using it to get more cultural awareness. As well, I think that Wiki is more used as a student to teacher basis. For example, in our class right now, while I read everyone else’s blogs and comment on them, I do not go and read the assignments in other people’s Wikis because I feel like that is more of a student/teacher resource than students/student.

Second Life for Language Learner looks to be a good tool because it creates people into characters that can then interact with other characters from around the world. It puts these characters in real life situations that allow them to use conversational and situational oral communication. Right now it seems that the program is only for speakers of other languages to learn English, but there must be other ones like it for L2 learners of other languages. It seems like a good idea because real teachers are also characters that lead the “students” in what to say and how to act. There is a person right there who is able to quickly help fix their grammar and pronunciation. It is very much like a phone call in that there is an immediate oral response, but you do not have to deal with the stressed of face to face interaction, like the usage of Skype might create. Although, seeing someones face as well as hearing their voice may be useful to some students because they are able to pick up on visual cues that the speaker may be presenting.