Digital Technology for L2 Learning and Teaching

The technology article that I read was "Situated Learning through Social Networking Communities: The Development of Joint Enterprise, Mutual Engagement, and a Shared Repertoire" by Nicole Mills. This article described a study in which students in an intermediate French college course agreed to use Facebook as part of their course; the students were required to create fake Facebook profiles, assuming the identity of a character that they had created. All these characters "lived" in the same apartment building in Paris and interacted with each other through Facebook updates, notes, chats, etc. Personally, I would not like it if a Facebook assignment like this one was used in one of my foreign language courses but I see how it helped the students a great deal in this study. The students were able to interact with each other in a less stressful setting, focusing on using the grammar skills they had learned in class online while interacting with their peers. They also learned a great deal about the French culture, which was a great benefit of using Facebook; since the characters the students created all lived in Paris, it was necessary for the students to recognize film, music, artwork, etc. that was important to the French culture in order to interact and carry on conversations with each other. The students all learned to communicate in a rapid manner with each other, and assumed the roles of their characters in a way that both enhanced their skills in writing conversational French and writing descriptive French (i.e., the "notes" or "memoirs" the students would have their characters post on Facebook).

With what Mills calls the iGeneration becoming more and more involved with technology, it is important for education to incorporate this into the classroom in order to better engage students. Using Facebook as a part of the course curriculum also proved to be beneficial; 12 out of the 17 students who took part in this class said that the Facebook profiles made them pay more attention to grammar as they were posting in a public place that all the other students could see. This project also seemed to be beneficial in that it caused the students to engage with each other in the target language in different scenarios; some of the characters were a bit meaner than the others, some were apathetic, some were cheery, some were artistic and it was the role of the students to write on their Facebook profiles incorporating the "voice" of their character as best that they could. After reading this article, I think that Facebook is a good tool to use in learning a foreign language. Blogs and Wiki are also great tools because it allows students to collaborate and post information together, and then share ideas as a class. Skype could be a beneficial tool if a professor must travel and can't be in class so that the student can practice their speaking skills in a face to face setting with their professor or classmates. In my opinion, Twitter would not be a good way to supplement or support foreign language teaching simply because it does not allow its users to post an unlimited number of characters. It could be a good way to quickly remind students when an assignment is due, but I do not see the benefit of using it to supplement foreign language teaching.

I think that Second Life for Language Learning is a good tool for people trying to learn their L2 because it allows people from all over the world to interact with each other. It's great how teachers from the U.S., England and Australia can interact with students whom they might not otherwise have had the opportunity to instruct and they can give immediate feedback to the people who are participating in their activities. The only hinderance I can see to using this tool for L2 learners is that they can only see the cartoon characters on the screen - I think it is helpful to see the actual teacher and how they pronounce their words so that the student can imitate them in order to successfully pronounce words in the language that they are learning. Other than that, I think Second Life for Language Learning is a great method for learning a language on your own time and at your own pace and I think it is really beneficial because it places students in conversational settings with other students.

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.

Discussion #4: Digital Technology for L2 Learning and Teaching

Based on the technology article you have read, do you feel that technology is an asset to teaching foreign languages or do you prefer not to use it? Why? How do you feel about using social networking tools, such as Blog, Wiki, Facebook, Twitter or Skype to supplement and support language teaching? Use examples to justify your answers. 

View this YouTube video and comment on the use of Second Life for Language Learning.

I think to be effective in teaching a language, the teacher must be, first and foremost, enthusiastic.  I have had a variety of teachers from different backgrounds and with different levels of proficiency and focuses.  In my experience, the classes in which I learned the most were the classes taught by teachers who enjoyed teaching and speaking the language.  I can honestly say that i only had one teacher who was not interested in the subject matter, and seemed only to work for the paycheck.  This class being a lower level university class, I don't think it slowed me down as much as it could have, but I still believe I did not learn as much as I should have in that class.

As far as the type of learning instruction, I think the cognitive-code method is the most useful for new speakers to learn as it focuses on what the student knows and applies it to new vocabulary, grammar, and concepts.  One characteristic of this method mentioned in the book is the teacher's ability to promote "creative use of the language."  I think this is vital to new language learning because it provides the student with an outlet for the knowledge they have gained through studying and reading, and allows them to apply their understanding in a new and potentially helpful way: creatively.  This creative approach will broaden the students grasp on the new language, and will also give more opportunities to learn by introducing new concepts and also applying new structure and vocabulary.

I believe that the amount of time spent speaking in the target language by the teacher should correlate greatly to the level of the class.  In my SPAN 401 class, for instance, I think that speaking to my students only in Spanish would not be beneficial to them this early on.  That is why I usually speak to them in Spanish and then translate my own words to English, so that they can hear the English they are familiar with and apply it to the Spanish they are learning.  As a student progresses, however, I think it becomes more and more important for the teacher to speak in the target language more exclusively.  At the higher levels of language learning, I think the teacher should speak exclusively in the target language, and also speak less, encouraging the students to speak more. 

effectiveness of language teaching

In my opinion, there is not one, single language teaching approach or method that will work 100% of the time for every student. After reading Chapter 3, however, I realized that several of the methods discussed could possibly be the most effective language teaching lessons but it is evident that there needs to be a variety of methods used in a classroom in order to reach all kinds of learners. Personally, I particularly enjoyed reading about the Grammar-Translation Method. This is most likely how I learned Spanish during the past ten years. Learning vocabulary lists, grammar rules, and constant repetition is how the language has really stuck with me but I know that this isn’t the case with everyone. I know that this works best for me because I am aware that I am a visual learner – I need to see the words and grammar rules written down in front of my face in order to retain their meanings and rules. I have a feeling that the majority of my future lesson plans will be presented using this method of teaching because that is what makes the most sense to me. Of course, this method isn’t perfect because I still believe that it is important to hear the language from a native speaker even if you may not understand what is being said, a lot of people just pick up the language from hearing words and phrases in context that isn’t necessarily the same as reading a textbook full of lists and rules.

            One of the methods that I consider to be weaker than the rest is the Direct Method. I don’t understand how this method could work as well because there doesn’t seem to be any logical fluency to the learning of a language according to this method. How does one avoid the use of translation and still understand everything? I believe that a student needs to be aware of what they are learning with some more explanation other than miming actions or using objects. I am trying to comprehend that the central tactic with the Direct Method is to use simple discourse when teaching the language but that is not very realistic because you would have to perform that flawlessly in an ideal environment using systematic structures constantly. Even for many highly qualified teachers, this seems idea seems very hard to monitor day to day.

            Ideally, I believe that the type of language instruction that should produce the highest levels of success is one that encompasses hearing the language constantly, written interpretation, visual aids, repetition, drills to practice new vocabulary, and analytic explanations of grammar functions. All of these methods mentioned in Chapter 3 have their strengths (and weaknesses) but if there was a tactful way to include all of these essential factors of language learning that would probably be the most effective and efficient language learning setting.

Effective Teaching Methods

There is no perfect method to teaching a foreign language. After reading chapter three and analyzing nine different methods, this cannot be more evident. A lot of the methods are logical on paper, such as the Audiolingual Method, but are not practical. I believe that not only would it be difficult for the teacher, but also super frustrating to a student if they were in a classroom where everything was taught in Spanish and there were no explanations. Yes, the student would come out of the classroom with paragraphs upon paragraphs of conversation that they can spew out to you, but do they actually know enough Spanish to hold a conversation or survive somewhere where they are surrounded by the target language? I believe that in order to effectively teach a second language, the teacher needs to be flexible and take guidelines and principles from a vast number of methods. I think that most methods explained have something good in them.

Grammar-Translation Method:

                Appreciate literature from the target language and teach culture

                Organic examples of grammar rather than produced

Direct Method:

                Learn to speak by speaking, starting with current situations

Cognitive Code Method:

                Meaningful learning, always understanding what they are being taught

Communicative Language Teaching

                Communication encouraged from the beginning

                Syllabus is based on students’ needs rather than a books order

Total Physical Response

                Listening comprehension is developed fully before intense speech

Natural Approach

                For survival

These are some of the guidelines or principles that I believe are important in foreign language teaching. I think that the vast majority of the instruction should be taught in the target language, but no exclusively. When something needs to be translated or explained, it can be done so in the L1 when it is beneficial for students. I think that speech should be encouraged early on. Although I also believe that grammar has its importance in becoming understandable, the basics for survival are what should be taught first, so common phrases and extensive vocabulary. I definitely believe that students should have a say in why they are taking the subject and what they intend to get out of everything. I believe that there would be a great difference in teaching to someone who wants to carry on the language and eventually become fluent as opposed to a student who just wants the basic survival knowledge. The former would need to be taught structure and the latter would need to be taught mainly vocabulary and common phrases. Curriculum that is tailored to the students’ needs is best, although extraneous for the teacher who would constantly need to be changing the course of the semester and how/when material is presented. Student feedback is definitely important to how best a class is going to learn. No class should really be taught in the same way because there are always going to be different sets of students with different needs and aspirations.

                

Effective Teaching

In my opinion, an effective language teacher uses both the Total Physical Response and the Grammar-Translation Methods in order to effectively teach his/her students and combines it with parts of the Audiolingual Method. In every single beginning language class I have ever taken, the teacher has always used the Total Physical Response method. Not only is it the most helpful by actually showing students and imitating what the word being taught means with your actions, but I have always found that I remember it much easier - when a teacher has acted out the verb or word being taught, it is usually easiest for the students to decipher the meaning and learn it without the teacher actually telling them the meaning in English. One of the  elementary level Spanish teachers that I observed in Education 500 would use this method in every class; she would play Simon Says in Spanish with the kids in order to teach them different verbs and commands, and even to teach them vocabulary. The students would remember these commands, and then the teacher would occasionally let a student lead the game and say the commands on their own. This not only taught the students words, verbs, and phrases without telling them the meaning in English, but the students were confident in their abilities to use commands in Spanish on their own. This method is one of my favorites and one of the most important because it encourages the students to think about what a word could mean rather than the teacher simply giving them the definitions.

As important as the Total Physical Response method is, I also think that it is important to teach students grammar (Grammar-Translation method). The second teacher that I observed in Education 500 loved to use this method - she would often print out a short, paragraph version of a famous story (such as The Boy Who Cried Wolf or The Three Little Pigs) and would tell the students certain keywords and verb definitions, such as comer/comio and lobo for The Boy Who Cried Wolf. After reading the story once or twice with the students (in complete Spanish), she would then have the students translate the entire paragraph into English, or would have the students write a summary of the story in Spanish in their own words. At first, I was skeptical of this method and did not think that the students would learn much, but I was wrong - some of the elementary students had learned to conjugate ER verbs in the preterite tense just from one lesson and continued to do so whenever they would have to write a summary! I thought that was a great way to subconsciously teach students how to conjugate and get them reading - it enabled them to learn words and phrases that they probably would not have learned for a few more years taking language courses. The Grammar-Translation method can seem a bit boring at times, but I believe that in any foreign language class it is completely necessary to learn the grammatical rules of a language in order to fully learn it. The one part where I disagree with the Grammar-Translation Method is that I believe speaking, not just reading and translating the language, is the most important part.

This teacher also combined the Grammar-Translation Method at times with the Audiolingual Method - she rarely spoke in English except to give the students the few definitions they needed before reading the stories she gave them. Although they were very confused at first, after a few classes they soon learned at least the basic meanings of what she was saying. I don't completely agree with banning the students' native language from the class, particularly if they are in a beginning language class; I believe that English should be used when explaining words or definitions and that as the students progress in their knowledge of the language, the native language should be used less and less and the teacher should increase the amount that they speak in the language being taught. It is so important for a teacher to teach most of the time in the target language - whether the teacher says something in the target language and repeats it in English for the students to understand or just teaches the lesson completely in the target language. Jumping into the language and not being afraid to completely immerse the students in it is important, though it does depend on the level that the students are at for it to be the most effective.

Effective Teaching

I believe that there are a variety of methods that teachers need to use to really get through to all their students.  The most effective foreign language teaching is

Total Physical Response is so important in the foreign language classroom, but I am not saying that it is the most important.  This has an emphasis on listening comprehension, which emulates the way that we all learned our first language.  I believe that the way we learned our primary language is the best and most effective way to learn a language.  It’s not very practical, however, to be immersed in the target language 24 hours a day, 7 days a week unless you are abroad.  That being said, it is best for teachers to emulate this kind situation as best that they can.  Completely immersing a first year student, however, can create stress and not accomplish much at all.  Based on appropriate level, the teacher speaking in the target language as much as possible helps that students become accustom to hearing and understanding it. 

            I believe that in addition to the Total Physical Response method, the Grammar- Translation Method is very useful.  In this method, students learn the vocabulary and grammar before really getting into the fluency of the language.  I believe that this is the way that most foreign language teachers teach now.  This is good for students to learn because then they can understand why they must use that word instead of another or the actual purpose behind the words and language that they are using. 

            I am currently in a literacy class and we learned something that relates to this topic.  When children learn their primary language, they memorize the language, rather than actually learning it.  This is similar to the Total Physical Response method of teaching.  Children who are about three years old are capable of conjugating correctly and using the right words.  At this age, children are able to say, “I ran there” or “I woke up”.  Then, when children are about 6 years old, they seem to regress and will begin to say things like, “I runned there” or “I waked up”.  This is because they are now actually learning the rules of conjugation and grammar.  They are beginning to understand that the rule, for instance, that past tense uses “ed”.  Although they do not understand the exceptions to the rules yet, they are learning the rules behind the language that they are speaking.  I believe that this example represents the need for both methods in the classroom. 

         Teaching in the target language as much as possible is important so that students can adapt to using all the skills that they have gained, both in foreign language classrooms, other classrooms and throughout life.  I think it makes them become better aware of their goal of being able to speak, listen and understand.

Effective Teaching

As can be seen in chapter 3, no single teaching method is completely useful or effective.  This is why I think a combination of many methods makes for the most effective teaching.  A foreign language is much like any other subject in that you will have a wide variety of students in your class.  Some may be visual learners, others auditory, and still others kinesthetic.  That being said, you will have to vary your teaching methods and approaches no matter what.  Automatically I would say that the audiolingual method would not work for visual learners who need to see the written form of what they are learning.  It would also seem that the grammar-translation method would not benefit auditory learners.  A happy medium between the two would be the best option.  Even better than that however would be to incorporate elements from many of the other theories as well so that you as a teacher could discover the most effective teaching method for a particular class.  This may take a bit of time, but through a trial and error process you will eventually be providing students with the best way to learn a language for their individual needs. 

 

As for specific types of language instruction that will augment language learning, I would recommend strategies that encourage some grammar and vocabulary instruction, some creative thinking, and some listening and speaking practice.  Generally, I would advocate for the more traditional methods.  I only say this because many of them offer a variety of entry points to a foreign language.  I do not think that at all levels of learning another language that the target language should be spoken 100% of the time.  I think that this would be excellent for students in upper levels once they have some background knowledge OR if students are fully committed to learning the target language.  In many high schools some students are enthusiastic about foreign language while others do not really want to learn it.  Speaking in the target language 100% of the time could possibly frustrate reluctant learners and alienate them completely from future studies.  Using the target language 100% of the time in upper levels however should be expected.  As for explicit teaching of grammar rules and vocabulary, I think that this definitely has to be mixed into language instruction.  Some students are not able to simply “pick up” a language.  They need to have the building blocks to even consider actually learning the language.  Many students are concrete thinkers and it will be necessary for them to understand grammar rules in order to conjugate verbs or even pick the appropriate article to go with an adjective.  I do not think that teachers can assume that students do not need explicit instruction.  Furthermore, as stated in chapter 3, there has been no evidence that explicit teaching of rules, grammar, etc. has negatively impacted language acquisition.  That being said, I do think that students need to practice speaking and listening to the target language after they learn the grammar.  They will never be able to apply it after they learn it on paper if they do not practice in real life situations.  Overall, I think that effective language instruction pulls from all methods to take into account the different learning styles of students.  One method followed in its entirety cannot possible reach all students and many methods must be attempted.

Effective Teaching

The question “what makes effective language teaching” is so difficult to answer because language learners and teachers alike all have different personalities, preferences and learning styles. Some language learners may find that the Total Physical Response method to be most effective for them, while others may feel that the Total Physical Response method did not help them at all, but they really learned a lot with the Grammar-Translation method. As we saw in the reading, there are many different methods of foreign language teaching, all with their own advantages and drawbacks. I think effective foreign language teachers should take all of these methods into account in order to create the sort of hybrid teaching method that they feel works best for their students and for themselves.

While reading chapter three, I came across several aspects of the different teaching methods that I personally found to be very important and effective; these would be the different aspects that I would combine into my hybrid teaching method. First, from the Audiolingual Method, I think it is very effective (if age appropriate) for the native language to be almost completely banned from the classroom. Obviously if you have a class of kindergarteners you will probably speak a little English and allow your students to do so as well, but for the most part, I think the target language should be spoken about 95% of the time in any class above a low-novice level. I think the ideas that students should not be given time to think about their answers and that grammar discussions should be very brief are also very effective because, although this may sound backwards, I think implementing those practices can actually give students more confidence. I feel that by not discussing many grammar rules and by not making speaking seem like such a big deal, students will come to lose their anxiety about speaking in the target language during class. Of course I would never force any student to speak if they really did not feel comfortable doing so, but I think sometimes producing the language yourself through speaking is built up to be such a big, scary thing while really the only way to get better at it is to practice, and once you start practicing more and more, you start to become more used to the feeling.

I also think this idea works very nicely with the ideas of the Total Physical Response teaching method which emphasizes listening and understanding the target language and producing a complete physical response with your body. The elementary school Spanish teacher that I observed for my Education 500 class used the Total Physical Response method with her students, and I only saw good results from it. Although the first through fifth graders that she taught were not speaking much in Spanish, they were all producing complete physical responses which indicated to us that they were understanding the Spanish we were saying to them. If we told the students (in Spanish) to “color the picture of the duck yellow and then put it on your heads,” all of the students, without talking to each other, would follow the directions perfectly. I think that the Total Physical Response method is very effective for lower level language classes, and for students of any level that do not feel very comfortable with speaking because while it emphasizes listening and comprehension, it does not require the students to produce much of the target language on their own.

I think recording your own voice speaking in the target language is very effective for pronunciation (from the Community Language Learning method) and I think the idea of periodically using breathing/relaxation techniques could also be very effective in helping the students think about and internalize new information (from the Suggestopedia method). Like I said before, I think that all of the different teaching methods have their own advantages and disadvantages, and all language learners and teachers will find different aspects of these methods to be effective or not, depending on their own personalities, preferences, and learning styles. I think it’s very important that language teachers don’t feel that they have to choose one teaching method and stick to it; the teacher can take the aspects of each method that they feel are most effective and use them in their classroom when and how they see fit.