Studies on games and language learning
Online games have been so popular with a wide age range from children to middle-age adults. Recent studies have even explored the role of online games in English language learning. Liberman (2006), for example, gives a thorough review of the literature regarding learning through playing computer games. The author categorizes the literature from nine perspectives: motivation to learn, perception and coordination, thinking and problem solving, knowledge, skills and behaviours, self-regulation and therapy, self-concepts, social relationships, and attitudes and values. Under each category, he gives a detailed review of relevant studies and articles.
A closer look at online games reveals that online games have a significant influence on players’ thinking and problem-solving abilities. Prensky (Liberman, 2006, p.384) suggests that ‘games with puzzles and complex questions may improve player’s ability to think logically and tactically. Simulation games can enhance scientific thinking,…and adventure games may increase…skills in observation, analysis of systems, and coaching of others’. Studies also found the effects of games on self-directed learning. Players pay attention, monitor and evaluate their own actions. Besides, games also have the backwash of self-monitoring, pattern recognizing, and so on.
An experience with a virtual community
As relatively new areas of research, online games for language learning purposes have a promising future in the TESL profession. One example is my experience with the online virtual society Second Life that has broadened my exposure to authentic English language when I visited the Texas A&M University (Aggieland). This is a virtual campus (Landmark: ‘Texas A&M University Second Life, 12th Man (157, 227, 26)’) built up by a group of faculty members, which functions a welcome venue for perspective students and their parents. Aggieland is actually a real place on the A&M University campus, serving with the same purpose. So, netizens can have a special experience with the university by visiting its virtual Aggieland.
My visit to Aggieland on Second Life was informative and exciting, as I talked through the Public Voice function with someone called Jim on the venue. He is one of the founders of this virtual campus, which took his team several months’ leisure time to have built up the basic facilities. Jim was friendly and kind to greet me and introduced an interesting thing on the far corner of the campus, the pyramid of Bloom’s taxonomy! Flying after Jim, I was lead to the model block pile that has three colourful dimensions of learning, teaching and assessing. While listening to Jim’s introduction, I moved my avatar around to have a clear view of the model.
I had a clear view of how knowledge and cognitive progress accumulate in our mind. Jim told me that knowledge could be divided into four levels: factual, conceptual, procedural and meta-cognitive. The cognitive progress is composed with six stages of remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. Then, Jim moved to the knowledge dimension of the pyramid, and explained that remembering a fact was exemplified with listing primary and secondary colours, and as the tiers go higher, evaluating a fact could be interpreted as checking the consistency of sources, so on. Jim further recounted that they usually used this model to elicit discussion among advanced learners, who would reflect upon their own learning experience and identify at which stages of the model they are. ‘Most importantly’, Jim said, ‘the students may want to analyze why their knowledge or cognitive process stays at that level; and how, if possible, can they upgrade their knowledge to a higher level.’
Jim has given me a lively tutorial of learning methodology in English, and has introduced several resources of Bloom’s taxonomy available online. For example, two resources at the Wikipedia websites are for further reading.
http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_Taxonomy.
Briefly, learning language could be contextualised in, say, a task on the online games that require effective communication between the players. Language teachers could also play a role in such virtual communities to put themselves in a less dominant position that they used to be in a classroom. The students could thus enjoy more autonomy in the task. But the point is that the tasks assigned to the students should be closely related to language learning and practicing. Otherwise, games could easily be a distraction from the learning purposes.
Reference
Lieberman, D. (2006) What can we learn from playing interactive games? In Vorderer & Bryant(eds.) Playing video games: Motives, responses and consequences. p.379-397. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,Inc.,Publishers.
Wednesday 21 April 2010
Tuesday 23 March 2010
Farewell to Google.cn
Google.cn has said goodbye to everyone this morning. For the millions of netizens in the mainland, 'google it' has to be used in past tense form. How long do we need to wait till the next ray of hope come?
Sunday 21 March 2010
Mark My Words
The Mark My Words toolbar installed on MS Word is convenient for teachers to comment on students' work. One of the merits is that lists of comments and explanations are ready for selection, and thus saving a lot of time for teachers. Another handy function is the resources links, which provides Google and other useful links for the learners. A third advantage is that the teachers can give marks on the grammar of the writing by clicking the 'comment summary' link, which shows all categories of grammar errors with frequencies.
But there are some points to be aware of. First, weaker students may probably need training in how to make use of the resources in a quick and efficient way, because these students tend to copy the sample sentences word by word, they would in an attempt to memorise its usage. This is not recommended since it is too time-consuming and inefficient. So, when using the resource links, the students need to know quick referencing skills.
But there are some points to be aware of. First, weaker students may probably need training in how to make use of the resources in a quick and efficient way, because these students tend to copy the sample sentences word by word, they would in an attempt to memorise its usage. This is not recommended since it is too time-consuming and inefficient. So, when using the resource links, the students need to know quick referencing skills.
Monday 15 March 2010
Three model lessons
Three model lessons of English language are presented on TVB education channel this morning, which are quite inspirational for teachers of English to consider integrating images, video clips, Windows Movie Maker and films in their classroom.
Lesson one: teach English with films (S 3 students)
The teacher plays a film to the class and let the students work on the PLOT and CHARACTERS analyses. The plot of the film is described in separate sentences, and jumbled up. All the students have to do is to work within groups, sorting out the correct order of the sentences. For the character analysis, students are given a matching exercise (maybe, did not understand clearly) to match the description of characters with their names. Another exercise of this part is to describe the characters with three words. The teacher also gives explanation to the film and the characters in order to help the students understand better.
Lesson two: vocabulary building with light and color (S 6 students)
The first section of the class is devoted to the description of facial expressions. The teacher shows a few photos of real people with various facial expressions, and asks the students to work out the emotions of these people. For example, the turned-down mouth corners suggest the person’s unhappiness. After the short discussion, the teacher moves on to putting a single light source on different positions around a volunteer’s face, so as to generate various effects of the person’s emotions.
This lesson teaches vocabulary of facial expressions and emotions in a straightforward way. By seeing the photos and the model student, the class has a better understanding of the meanings of the words. The teacher writes down the new vocabulary on the white board after the students learned them.
Lesson three: a project-based English language lesson (S 6 students)
The students do a project on one of a list of topics that include environmental pollution, work pressure, people’s health, and so on. The project requires the learners to collect a wide variety of resources such as photos, video clips, research reports, and statistics. After all information is collected, the students trim and edit the resources with Windows Movie Maker, integrating the materials into a project digital presentation. In the creation of the digital presentation, the learners are encouraged to use resources such as music, pictures, to make the presentation attractive to the audience.
The strength of this project is that it consolidates the learner’s English language in a practical way. The learners acquire English naturally in the process of doing their group work.
Lesson one: teach English with films (S 3 students)
The teacher plays a film to the class and let the students work on the PLOT and CHARACTERS analyses. The plot of the film is described in separate sentences, and jumbled up. All the students have to do is to work within groups, sorting out the correct order of the sentences. For the character analysis, students are given a matching exercise (maybe, did not understand clearly) to match the description of characters with their names. Another exercise of this part is to describe the characters with three words. The teacher also gives explanation to the film and the characters in order to help the students understand better.
Lesson two: vocabulary building with light and color (S 6 students)
The first section of the class is devoted to the description of facial expressions. The teacher shows a few photos of real people with various facial expressions, and asks the students to work out the emotions of these people. For example, the turned-down mouth corners suggest the person’s unhappiness. After the short discussion, the teacher moves on to putting a single light source on different positions around a volunteer’s face, so as to generate various effects of the person’s emotions.
This lesson teaches vocabulary of facial expressions and emotions in a straightforward way. By seeing the photos and the model student, the class has a better understanding of the meanings of the words. The teacher writes down the new vocabulary on the white board after the students learned them.
Lesson three: a project-based English language lesson (S 6 students)
The students do a project on one of a list of topics that include environmental pollution, work pressure, people’s health, and so on. The project requires the learners to collect a wide variety of resources such as photos, video clips, research reports, and statistics. After all information is collected, the students trim and edit the resources with Windows Movie Maker, integrating the materials into a project digital presentation. In the creation of the digital presentation, the learners are encouraged to use resources such as music, pictures, to make the presentation attractive to the audience.
The strength of this project is that it consolidates the learner’s English language in a practical way. The learners acquire English naturally in the process of doing their group work.
Wednesday 3 March 2010
Liou's (1994) IVD-based model and application : From a non-courseware supported perspective
Generally speaking, Liou’s IVD project has good implementation for CALL in classroom. This project is suitable for individual learning in front of a PC workstation, which provides a language learning courseware particularly designed for a movie. This IVD-based learning project weighs a lot because it gives students sufficient exposure to authentic English used in daily life. In her experiment, Liou has developed a four-unit teaching model to explore a movie. Admittedly, it is highly efficient to have readily available software assisting the learning, yet a more common fact is that many IVD resources are ‘original’, with no readily made learning software embedded in them. Then, how do we English language teachers make use of good movies for our teaching?
First, the plot of the movie should be made clear to the students. Instead of the embedded questions as shown in Figure 4 of Liou’s paper (p. 60), the teacher can show the students with prepared questions on a separate PowerPoint slide or Word document, to give the learners contextual hints or guidance for understanding the synopsis. It is worth mentioning that, as the movie is played to the whole class, each student should also be able to play the movie on their workstations. Wherever the teacher stops the movie and raises relevant questions, the students are going to rewind the film and look for the answers.
Second, the content of the movie needs to be ‘comprehensible’ to the students. By 'comprehensible' I mean that learners need to know the intended meaning of the speaker not only by consulting a dictionary, but more importantly, by reflecting how the learners themselves would have expressed the same meaning. For example, the students may hear a movie character say ‘Tom has been capped for his school rugby team for twice’. They’ve got to understand the past participle ‘capped’ in this utterance, and come up with their own interpretation like ‘Tom played for his school rugby team for twice’. Then the students are going to look at the context in which the word ‘capped’ is employed. At this point, the teacher can provide as much supporting information as possible, such as asking questions like ‘Is it used in a dialogue or a monologue? ’, ‘Is it a formal speech or a casual talk?’, or ‘What is the social identity of the speaker?’ and so on.
Last but not least, the students should be given access to online resources such as google.com, Google Dictionary, Wikipedia, and so on, whenever they have difficulty understanding the movie.
First, the plot of the movie should be made clear to the students. Instead of the embedded questions as shown in Figure 4 of Liou’s paper (p. 60), the teacher can show the students with prepared questions on a separate PowerPoint slide or Word document, to give the learners contextual hints or guidance for understanding the synopsis. It is worth mentioning that, as the movie is played to the whole class, each student should also be able to play the movie on their workstations. Wherever the teacher stops the movie and raises relevant questions, the students are going to rewind the film and look for the answers.
Second, the content of the movie needs to be ‘comprehensible’ to the students. By 'comprehensible' I mean that learners need to know the intended meaning of the speaker not only by consulting a dictionary, but more importantly, by reflecting how the learners themselves would have expressed the same meaning. For example, the students may hear a movie character say ‘Tom has been capped for his school rugby team for twice’. They’ve got to understand the past participle ‘capped’ in this utterance, and come up with their own interpretation like ‘Tom played for his school rugby team for twice’. Then the students are going to look at the context in which the word ‘capped’ is employed. At this point, the teacher can provide as much supporting information as possible, such as asking questions like ‘Is it used in a dialogue or a monologue? ’, ‘Is it a formal speech or a casual talk?’, or ‘What is the social identity of the speaker?’ and so on.
Last but not least, the students should be given access to online resources such as google.com, Google Dictionary, Wikipedia, and so on, whenever they have difficulty understanding the movie.
Monday 1 March 2010
Victory of the England rugby team, 2003: A listening comprehension activity
Clive Woodward and his brilliant team won the world cup in 2003, after a fierce ‘battle’ against Australia. The dramatic, fluent deliver of the ball in the last minute, or the deadly minute for the Australians, brought England to the world champion. Woodward’s brilliant young men did have the correct and cool mind in pressure: when 17 points drawn even, the players finished the smooth zigzag delivery and a final beautiful kick to beat Australians. Back in England, the heroes were warmly welcomed by tens of thousands of people as they sat on the bus parading down the streets. This was the glory for the whole country!
This topic can be used as a listening comprehension activity of 20 minutes, which starts with a brief introduction to the background of the match. Then the teacher plays the BBC radio programme to the whole class, based on which a few questions can be raised to facilitate the learners’ understanding of the radio interview. After that, the Youtube video clip of England rugby team’s playing the game in the last minute and their victory parade can be played to the class. The cooperation between the players in the match is elaborated in the radio programme. Video clip here facilitates learners’ comprehension of the radio interview.
For the radio programme, please see 'Sir Clive Woodward' section on
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr Only listen to from 6.20 to 10.20
Video clip on Youtube
This topic can be used as a listening comprehension activity of 20 minutes, which starts with a brief introduction to the background of the match. Then the teacher plays the BBC radio programme to the whole class, based on which a few questions can be raised to facilitate the learners’ understanding of the radio interview. After that, the Youtube video clip of England rugby team’s playing the game in the last minute and their victory parade can be played to the class. The cooperation between the players in the match is elaborated in the radio programme. Video clip here facilitates learners’ comprehension of the radio interview.
For the radio programme, please see 'Sir Clive Woodward' section on
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr Only listen to from 6.20 to 10.20
Video clip on Youtube
Sunday 28 February 2010
An interesting visit and English language learning
A visit to the Hong Kong Museum of History has been so informative to me and made me think about some task-based approaches of teaching English through this visit. Let me give a brief account of my visiting experience before moving on to the teaching reflection.
The tour to the museum was quite pressed with time as I had not finished all parts of exhibition on the two floors. Yet I did focused on some bits of the items such as the wedding costumes of the early 20th century, the fishermen’s life on boats, and the downtown life of people in between the 1930’s and 1970’s, and so on.
We can actually do an exercise of recounting a story with photos and text support. The students select one favorite historical event or object, recounting the history presented on the photos or in the instructions. Also, we can connect the history with our present life by comparing similar places, objects and the like. For example, the old tram presented in the museum is an early model of those still in service on the Hong Kong Island. They have similarity in the double-deck structure, and enormous differences in the internal design.
Another example is the bank notes issued in the old days. See the 500-dollar bill by HSBC in the 1930’s and the one used today, how are they different from each other?
Students can also work in groups to make a presentation of their discovery in the museum. Of course, the novel things they found and the ways they presented their findings will be marked.
The tour to the museum was quite pressed with time as I had not finished all parts of exhibition on the two floors. Yet I did focused on some bits of the items such as the wedding costumes of the early 20th century, the fishermen’s life on boats, and the downtown life of people in between the 1930’s and 1970’s, and so on.
We can actually do an exercise of recounting a story with photos and text support. The students select one favorite historical event or object, recounting the history presented on the photos or in the instructions. Also, we can connect the history with our present life by comparing similar places, objects and the like. For example, the old tram presented in the museum is an early model of those still in service on the Hong Kong Island. They have similarity in the double-deck structure, and enormous differences in the internal design.
Another example is the bank notes issued in the old days. See the 500-dollar bill by HSBC in the 1930’s and the one used today, how are they different from each other?
Students can also work in groups to make a presentation of their discovery in the museum. Of course, the novel things they found and the ways they presented their findings will be marked.
Monday 22 February 2010
The Risky Sports in the Winter Olympics
This is another good topic for learning English. I myself watched all video clips about the total 15 sports on http://www.vancouver2010.com/. What I can do with the video clips is to introduce one sport to my classmates in my own words. For example, skeleton, as well as luge and bobsleigh, are dangerous sports in which the racers ride at a speed as high as 140 km/h! This speed can cause fatal accident! And as I know, the young Georgian athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili died in a luge crash as a result of just a slightly late action. So I believe that the whole track should be equipped with protective facilities to protect the participants.
Why not Both
The dichotomy of proceduralist’s and formalist’s views of CALL evaluated in Levy’s article should be carefully applied to practice. The fact is that while many ESL/EFL classrooms in China or in Hong Kong are poorly supported by computers, and students may spend plenty of time in front of computer screens at home or elsewhere. Obviously, computer games have a special charm to the youths, but also take away a lot of their precious time. Both proceduralists and formalists should take into account the fact that no single theory or programme can cope with the needs of the diversified characteristics of the learners. Some students, for example, can be easily distracted by sounds, images and so on, because they have more interest in receiving information from the computer screens than in producing information. These students can easily get adapted to tasks that require less productive skills than receptive tactics.
I would encourage a flexible way of language learning by both productive and receptive tasks, given that the latter can be more important for the students’ future development. By assigning a task of playing second life, for example, I would like to keep a travel journal, narrating the places I visited in the virtual world. The narration, together with screen prints, can be uploaded onto my blog, or Voicethread where all students in my class share their own experiences. I can also evaluate the work of my classmates on the Voicethread, and give comments to their work. That can be a lot fun! In a word, theories are indispensible for CALL practice, while new technologies should also be tried in ESL/EFL teaching plans.
I would encourage a flexible way of language learning by both productive and receptive tasks, given that the latter can be more important for the students’ future development. By assigning a task of playing second life, for example, I would like to keep a travel journal, narrating the places I visited in the virtual world. The narration, together with screen prints, can be uploaded onto my blog, or Voicethread where all students in my class share their own experiences. I can also evaluate the work of my classmates on the Voicethread, and give comments to their work. That can be a lot fun! In a word, theories are indispensible for CALL practice, while new technologies should also be tried in ESL/EFL teaching plans.
Wednesday 10 February 2010
A thorough literature review on computer games
Liberman (2006) is a thorough review of the literature regarding the effects of playing computer games. The author categorizes the literature from nine perspectives: motivation to learn, perception and coordination, thinking and problem solving, knowledge, skills and behaviours, self-regulation and therapy, self-concepts, social relationships, and attitudes and values. Under each category, he gives a detailed review of relevant studies and articles.
I would like to take a closer look at what have been done on analysing how games influence players’ thinking and problem-solving abilities. Prensky suggests that ‘games with puzzles and complex questions may improve player’s ability to think logically and tactically. Simulation games can enhance scientific thinking,…and adventure games may increase…skills in observation, analysis of systems, and coaching of others’ (Liberman, 2006, p.384) Studies also found the effects of games on self-directed learning. Players pay attention, monitor and evaluate their own actions. Besides, games also have the backwash of self-monitoring, pattern recognizing, and so on.
All these studies seem to have pointed to the promising future of games as a new revolution of learning and teaching. But is it computer games facilitate learning and self-development, or those available people just demonstrate their various abilities through playing games? It is not uncommon that clever boys and girls are more skilful in not only school performance, but also a good variety of off-curriculum activities. Games are a platform for those youngsters to show off their talent. There are still so many students underperformed in school study because of their addiction to computer games. This means that, although games are potential means of education, more efforts should be made by researchers and educators on how and when to use games for teaching purposes.
Reference
Lieberman, D. (2006) What can we learn from playing interactive games? In Vorderer & Bryant(eds.) Playing video games: Motives, responses and consequences. p.379-397. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,Inc.,Publishers.
Liberman (2006) is a thorough review of the literature regarding the effects of playing computer games. The author categorizes the literature from nine perspectives: motivation to learn, perception and coordination, thinking and problem solving, knowledge, skills and behaviours, self-regulation and therapy, self-concepts, social relationships, and attitudes and values. Under each category, he gives a detailed review of relevant studies and articles.
I would like to take a closer look at what have been done on analysing how games influence players’ thinking and problem-solving abilities. Prensky suggests that ‘games with puzzles and complex questions may improve player’s ability to think logically and tactically. Simulation games can enhance scientific thinking,…and adventure games may increase…skills in observation, analysis of systems, and coaching of others’ (Liberman, 2006, p.384) Studies also found the effects of games on self-directed learning. Players pay attention, monitor and evaluate their own actions. Besides, games also have the backwash of self-monitoring, pattern recognizing, and so on.
All these studies seem to have pointed to the promising future of games as a new revolution of learning and teaching. But is it computer games facilitate learning and self-development, or those available people just demonstrate their various abilities through playing games? It is not uncommon that clever boys and girls are more skilful in not only school performance, but also a good variety of off-curriculum activities. Games are a platform for those youngsters to show off their talent. There are still so many students underperformed in school study because of their addiction to computer games. This means that, although games are potential means of education, more efforts should be made by researchers and educators on how and when to use games for teaching purposes.
Reference
Lieberman, D. (2006) What can we learn from playing interactive games? In Vorderer & Bryant(eds.) Playing video games: Motives, responses and consequences. p.379-397. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,Inc.,Publishers.
Tuesday 9 February 2010
Bloom’s taxonomy model at Texas A&M University
A short visit to the Second Life Virtual Texas A&M University (Aggieland) last night was quite informative and exciting to me, as I encountered a model block pile of the Bloom’s taxonomy of learning, teaching and assessing. This block was located in the northeast corner of the virtual campus. It demonstrates clearly how knowledge and cognitive progress accumulate in our mind. Knowledge can be divided into four levels: factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive, while the cognitive progress is composed with the six stages of remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. A view from the knowledge dimension shows that remembering a fact can be exemplified with listing primary and secondary colors, and as the tier goes higher, evaluating a fact can be interpreted as checking the consistency of sources, so on so forth.
This model, including the examples for each block piece, can be used as an elicitation of further discussion by more advanced ESL learning students. They can be given a task of reflecting upon their own experience of learning, based on which they will identify the stages corresponding to those of the Bloom’s taxonomy model. Most important of all, the students may want to analyze why their knowledge or cognitive process stays at that level, and how, if possible, can they upgrade this knowledge to a higher level. This is very much a class of learning reflection taught in English, for which more possible resources can be found online for the students. For example, two resources at the Wikipedia websites are for further reading.
http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_Taxonomy
More wonderful experience
In my second visit to this place, I saw the person called Jim. He is in real life a faculty member and administrator at A&M. He and his friend spent more than two months creating the two islands of A&M campuses. He talked with me via ‘public voice’, and showed me how to add a landmark for a place. So, I learned that the landmark for Bloom’s taxonomy model is ‘Texas A&M University Second Life, 12th Man (157, 227, 26)’. And you are most welcome to visit this amazing model.
A short visit to the Second Life Virtual Texas A&M University (Aggieland) last night was quite informative and exciting to me, as I encountered a model block pile of the Bloom’s taxonomy of learning, teaching and assessing. This block was located in the northeast corner of the virtual campus. It demonstrates clearly how knowledge and cognitive progress accumulate in our mind. Knowledge can be divided into four levels: factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive, while the cognitive progress is composed with the six stages of remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. A view from the knowledge dimension shows that remembering a fact can be exemplified with listing primary and secondary colors, and as the tier goes higher, evaluating a fact can be interpreted as checking the consistency of sources, so on so forth.
This model, including the examples for each block piece, can be used as an elicitation of further discussion by more advanced ESL learning students. They can be given a task of reflecting upon their own experience of learning, based on which they will identify the stages corresponding to those of the Bloom’s taxonomy model. Most important of all, the students may want to analyze why their knowledge or cognitive process stays at that level, and how, if possible, can they upgrade this knowledge to a higher level. This is very much a class of learning reflection taught in English, for which more possible resources can be found online for the students. For example, two resources at the Wikipedia websites are for further reading.
http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_Taxonomy
More wonderful experience
In my second visit to this place, I saw the person called Jim. He is in real life a faculty member and administrator at A&M. He and his friend spent more than two months creating the two islands of A&M campuses. He talked with me via ‘public voice’, and showed me how to add a landmark for a place. So, I learned that the landmark for Bloom’s taxonomy model is ‘Texas A&M University Second Life, 12th Man (157, 227, 26)’. And you are most welcome to visit this amazing model.
Tuesday 2 February 2010
Review of Liang (2010)
The advantage of ‘prewriting and drafting’ (p.48) is that group members can discuss over their topic of writing and search resources online. With the immediate access to the Internet, brainstormed ideas can be further analysed or developed without delaying. Also, the group members are able to evaluate their peers’ idea lists, as well as the outlines of their issue paper. This activity is effective in the way that peer feedback and evaluation provide an opportunity for each student to think more deeply about their issue paper.
A phenomenon with synchronic computer mediated communication (SCMC) is that the students went off the topic of their task when talking online, as the three tables in Liang’s study (2010, p.51-53) show that the amount of exchanges on social talk and technical action is high across all groups of students. This means that a significant proportion of online communication is used for non-task purposes. For the purpose of revision teaching, the teacher should pull the students back onto the tasks by observing their communication, setting specific objectives for the discussion, and imposing time limits on their tasks. Another useful method for facilitating efficient communication is provided in the check list of questions (p.49-50). But the teacher should present different questions for checking at different stages. For example, questions on paper topic, titling, keywords, etc. can be given for prewriting checking, while questions about the content and language of the paper should be provided later.
The course in Liang’s study can also be simplified as a group project for advanced students. The target of the project is basically to strengthen the students’ writing ability through online collaboration. While the communicative tool can be chosen by different groups, the students’ revision-related and non-revision related discourse should be kept as records by the teacher. The teacher can evaluate the extent to which the students internalised the peers’ good use of language into their writing. Also, the peer students can share with each other their paper proposals or outlines so as to exchange ideas.
Reference
Liang,(2010),USING SYNCHRONOUS ONLINE PEER RESPONSE GROUPS IN EFL WRITING: REVISION-RELATED DISCOURSE. in Language Learning and Technology, 14(1), p45-64.
A phenomenon with synchronic computer mediated communication (SCMC) is that the students went off the topic of their task when talking online, as the three tables in Liang’s study (2010, p.51-53) show that the amount of exchanges on social talk and technical action is high across all groups of students. This means that a significant proportion of online communication is used for non-task purposes. For the purpose of revision teaching, the teacher should pull the students back onto the tasks by observing their communication, setting specific objectives for the discussion, and imposing time limits on their tasks. Another useful method for facilitating efficient communication is provided in the check list of questions (p.49-50). But the teacher should present different questions for checking at different stages. For example, questions on paper topic, titling, keywords, etc. can be given for prewriting checking, while questions about the content and language of the paper should be provided later.
The course in Liang’s study can also be simplified as a group project for advanced students. The target of the project is basically to strengthen the students’ writing ability through online collaboration. While the communicative tool can be chosen by different groups, the students’ revision-related and non-revision related discourse should be kept as records by the teacher. The teacher can evaluate the extent to which the students internalised the peers’ good use of language into their writing. Also, the peer students can share with each other their paper proposals or outlines so as to exchange ideas.
Reference
Liang,(2010),USING SYNCHRONOUS ONLINE PEER RESPONSE GROUPS IN EFL WRITING: REVISION-RELATED DISCOURSE. in Language Learning and Technology, 14(1), p45-64.
Monday 1 February 2010
Roed's (2003) study and imporvement
Roed’s (2003) exploratory study on the text-based online communication is informative because a lot of merits can be found with such new approach of teaching English. One of the strength with virtual communication is obviously its absence of accents of the speakers. I well remember my fellow students in high school told me that they felt their accented English ‘unpleasant’ to the listeners, and thus unconfident to speak. Also, they felt that grammatical errors in their speech can be mocked at by their classmates. That is why many Chinese EFL learners spend most of the time listening in a spoken English training session.
While traditional classroom teaching may offer little help with this respect, Roed’s online communication treatment may be effective in eliciting more response from introvert students. What we can learn from Roed’s experiment is that teachers can provide the students with tasks that require information gap filling by text-based online communication.
However, several points need to be considered in the conducting of such activities. First, the students might easily go off the topic and talk about something irrelevant. Although a slight deviation from the task may be acceptable, this should not last for too long. The teacher should set a proper time limit to the task in this respect. Second, it is uncertain from Roed’s study as to whether more advanced students would try to focus the communication on form, that is, pointing out grammatical errors in the responses by the peers. Corrective feedback on forms can be helpful for the slower students to learn grammar, but it can also be a frustrating impediment to the smooth interaction. What the teacher can do before hand is to establish the rule that grammar errors may not be treated as long as they do not impede the meaning. Third, there will certainly be some freeloaders who simply read but not engage in the activity. It might be practical to make it compulsory for all students to participate by telling them that a minimal level of engagement is required.
Reference:
Roed, J. (2003) Language learner behaviour in a virtual environment. in Computer Assisted Language Learning, 16(2), 155-172.
While traditional classroom teaching may offer little help with this respect, Roed’s online communication treatment may be effective in eliciting more response from introvert students. What we can learn from Roed’s experiment is that teachers can provide the students with tasks that require information gap filling by text-based online communication.
However, several points need to be considered in the conducting of such activities. First, the students might easily go off the topic and talk about something irrelevant. Although a slight deviation from the task may be acceptable, this should not last for too long. The teacher should set a proper time limit to the task in this respect. Second, it is uncertain from Roed’s study as to whether more advanced students would try to focus the communication on form, that is, pointing out grammatical errors in the responses by the peers. Corrective feedback on forms can be helpful for the slower students to learn grammar, but it can also be a frustrating impediment to the smooth interaction. What the teacher can do before hand is to establish the rule that grammar errors may not be treated as long as they do not impede the meaning. Third, there will certainly be some freeloaders who simply read but not engage in the activity. It might be practical to make it compulsory for all students to participate by telling them that a minimal level of engagement is required.
Reference:
Roed, J. (2003) Language learner behaviour in a virtual environment. in Computer Assisted Language Learning, 16(2), 155-172.
About Siemens's (2004) suggestion on CALL
Seimens’ suggestion of the factors necessary for creating a virtual learning environment provides us with a guideline of how to establish quality virtual learning communities. In the current educational system, the problem with classroom instruction include a lack of opportunities of information source. Teachers, textbooks and other printed materials are still the major source of information input. Students work on a position that passively receive information. However, new tools for interaction like webquest, wikis or RSS feed readers provide a wider network of information sharing, with which students can get access easily to peers’ discussion or comments. Another question is how the students receive the feedback that is beneficiary for their language learning. The virtual community of poetry archive and children’s poetry archive, for example, are what the students need in learning authentic English through poems. An example of poem, A Room in the Past read by the poet Ted Kooser himself can be heard on this website: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=8689 A lecture by the poet can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuoWarhWFXw
For younger learners, the Children’s Poetry Archive at
http://www.poetryarchive.org/childrensarchive/home.do is more suitable. Besides the audio recording of the poem, some questions answered by the poets are also accessible on the web pages (e.g. http://www.poetryarchive.org/childrensarchive/singleInterview.do?interviewId=761# ) If I were teaching a poem to the students, I would ask them to ask some questions first, and try to find answers on the website.
For younger learners, the Children’s Poetry Archive at
http://www.poetryarchive.org/childrensarchive/home.do is more suitable. Besides the audio recording of the poem, some questions answered by the poets are also accessible on the web pages (e.g. http://www.poetryarchive.org/childrensarchive/singleInterview.do?interviewId=761# ) If I were teaching a poem to the students, I would ask them to ask some questions first, and try to find answers on the website.
Saturday 23 January 2010
Reflection on Chapter 7 (Planning Tips)
Chapter 7 (Planning Tips) of Warschauer et al.suggests a list of teacher tips for their coordinating of online projects. These tips are helpful for both one-class projects and multi-class projects. The access to computer and the Internet provide means of communication for the group members and the teachers as well. E-mail accounts and web-based groups can be established for communication. In the one-class projects, given that the IT resources available are limited, students can still do the projects by spending more time on off-line preparation. As for multi-class projects, teachers can establish teaching teams, and find partners with similar approaches, and help students with the online communication.
Although these tips are proved to be beneficial by some studies, it may cause problems if put in another context. One of the main problems with the communication is that the students may not have sufficient time for their individual communication. Most ESL/EFL students in Hong Kong or in the Mainland are occupied with other in-class activities and homework, and thus may not be able to do the project at home. In this regard, I believe that it could be a solution to have the students discuss over the project on a separate session. Project groups are formed and tasks are assigned to each group member. After the session, these students can work independently on information collection and website designing.
Another problem may occur when the students encounter difficulties in the correct use of English language. The challenge for the students would be the difficulties to express themselves clearly and correctly in English. Thus, the projects they prepare would turn out to be either the copying of readily available articles online, or their own writing with a lot of errors. This will impede the whole project as teachers have to deal with grammatical errors in the first place. Therefore, I suggest that the challenging project can be replaced with the less difficult online discussion over a certain easy topics. The students post their threads on a forum, for example, will provide the learners a chance for exchanging ideas and learn language. The teacher’s role in this activity will be the coordinating and facilitating of communication.
Link to Warschauer(2003) Chapter 7
http://web.archive.org/web/20080304005803/exchanges.state.gov/education/engteaching/ifettips.htm
Although these tips are proved to be beneficial by some studies, it may cause problems if put in another context. One of the main problems with the communication is that the students may not have sufficient time for their individual communication. Most ESL/EFL students in Hong Kong or in the Mainland are occupied with other in-class activities and homework, and thus may not be able to do the project at home. In this regard, I believe that it could be a solution to have the students discuss over the project on a separate session. Project groups are formed and tasks are assigned to each group member. After the session, these students can work independently on information collection and website designing.
Another problem may occur when the students encounter difficulties in the correct use of English language. The challenge for the students would be the difficulties to express themselves clearly and correctly in English. Thus, the projects they prepare would turn out to be either the copying of readily available articles online, or their own writing with a lot of errors. This will impede the whole project as teachers have to deal with grammatical errors in the first place. Therefore, I suggest that the challenging project can be replaced with the less difficult online discussion over a certain easy topics. The students post their threads on a forum, for example, will provide the learners a chance for exchanging ideas and learn language. The teacher’s role in this activity will be the coordinating and facilitating of communication.
Link to Warschauer(2003) Chapter 7
http://web.archive.org/web/20080304005803/exchanges.state.gov/education/engteaching/ifettips.htm
Saturday 16 January 2010
Learning English pronunciation with a video clip
I’d like to introduce my experience of learning English pronunciation with a downloaded video clip of academic presentation training. The instructions on making academic presentation is presented by Ms Rosemary, senior tutor with the University of Portsmouth. I chose the video clip because the presenter speaks clear and good English. In her speech, there are identifiable patterns of rhythm and intonation contour. Following is the elaboration of how I made use of this video clip to learn English pronunciation.
I transcribed Ms. Rosemary’s speech and printed it out. By rewinding and listening to her speech thoroughly, I identified the rhythmic features of her speech and marked them out on the transcript. For example, the weak forms are regularly realised on function words and words of given information. The syllables are stressed in the words that are emphasised. Together with the stress shifts, intonation contour is also presented on the weak and strong syllables. The stressed, end-of-tone-unit syllables within an utterance usually have a rising or even tone, while the unstressed words at the end of an utterance are often realised in a falling tone. These features are so distinctive that I found my imitation noticeably closer to a British accent in terms of intonation when I imitated them.
Apart from these prosodic features I have identified in the video clip, Ms Rosemary’s speech also has the feature that most of the plosive and fricative consonantal sounds within, or at the end of, the words are realised. This feature is so noticeable that I pick it up in my imitation in my formal, prepared speech with much ease.
Above all, I believe that the most important point of learning English pronunciation from online resources on a computer is that we carefully digest the materials, extract from them the rules and the nature, and do much practice on the features identified. It is more valuable to analyse and practice with a small number of good materials than viewing a large amount of websites, roughly.
I transcribed Ms. Rosemary’s speech and printed it out. By rewinding and listening to her speech thoroughly, I identified the rhythmic features of her speech and marked them out on the transcript. For example, the weak forms are regularly realised on function words and words of given information. The syllables are stressed in the words that are emphasised. Together with the stress shifts, intonation contour is also presented on the weak and strong syllables. The stressed, end-of-tone-unit syllables within an utterance usually have a rising or even tone, while the unstressed words at the end of an utterance are often realised in a falling tone. These features are so distinctive that I found my imitation noticeably closer to a British accent in terms of intonation when I imitated them.
Apart from these prosodic features I have identified in the video clip, Ms Rosemary’s speech also has the feature that most of the plosive and fricative consonantal sounds within, or at the end of, the words are realised. This feature is so noticeable that I pick it up in my imitation in my formal, prepared speech with much ease.
Above all, I believe that the most important point of learning English pronunciation from online resources on a computer is that we carefully digest the materials, extract from them the rules and the nature, and do much practice on the features identified. It is more valuable to analyse and practice with a small number of good materials than viewing a large amount of websites, roughly.
Tuesday 12 January 2010
Learning English online is fun
Hi, everyone,
Welcome to visit my blog. Learning English through the Internet is of great fun and shed lights on a new way of TESOL, because the enormous amount of online resources bring us to an interesting world. They can always brush up our English and enlighten our mind. To begin your first tour of online learning with Robbie, please try an interesting online game at http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/mihigh/games
I will normally give you some fifteen minutes to have a try on playing the game. Let's work together in understanding the tasks.
Welcome to visit my blog. Learning English through the Internet is of great fun and shed lights on a new way of TESOL, because the enormous amount of online resources bring us to an interesting world. They can always brush up our English and enlighten our mind. To begin your first tour of online learning with Robbie, please try an interesting online game at http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/mihigh/games
I will normally give you some fifteen minutes to have a try on playing the game. Let's work together in understanding the tasks.
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