EC CALL Journal

EC-CALL Journal

An Electronic Colombian Computer-Assisted Language Learning Journal
From The Language Center UPB

Web & Technology Enhanced Language Learning for Flexibility in the EFL Classroom

Web and Technology Enhanced Language Learning
(WELL & TELL) for Flexibility in the EFL Classroom

Introduction

The use of online resources in the EFL classrooms is a great tool for teachers. TELL, WELL, C&IT, CMC are some acronyms which summarize what teachers have been doing around the world since computers appeared in the field of Language Teaching. Now there are more chances to give flexibility to our static curricula in schools and thus we teach our students to learn and to be more autonomous and responsible of their learning. Due to different learning styles, the use of technology might not be effective for every one, but it is worth trying. Technology can help both teachers and students in their classes. Teachers can put together a set of resources through different means, such as a collection of bookmarks organized in a Web page, or through an e-group in an online platform (Moodle, Yahoo Groups, and others).

From the appearance of the first computers, they have been used somehow for education, either as testing tools, development of material, record keeping or as a means of communication. Thus, we talk of CALL, Computer-Assisted Language Learning. From the 1950’s, some behaviorist characteristics are still present in our 21st century software and online language teaching resources. There have been attempts to create “communicative” software or “integrative” platforms which sum up in “virtual communities”. At the beginning, these platforms were quite expensive and only colleges and universities could afford them. However, at present there are many alternatives available for teachers and students and other acronyms appear in the scene, Web-Enhanced Language Learning (WELL), Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (TELL), Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), all possible because of Communication and Information Technologies (CITs).

To start with, there are many online indexes with free resources on grammar, reading, listening and vocabulary exercises. Also, there many virtual communities or “e-groups” where teachers and students join for discussion lists, get and exchange files, follow suggested links or even a course outline parallel to a class in a traditional classroom, also known as blended courses. This environment is also useful to carry out portfolio projects. Another possibility is for writing. Teachers and students can create journals or diaries for free where people can read and add comments. They are also known as “Blogs”. These blogs are also useful for collaborative projects and exchanges with keypals. For teachers, there are some special interest groups that carry out for free some training on Information Technology each year. An example of these groups is WebHeads in Action which teach teachers how to use all of the possibilities just mentioned above.

At the end of this paper, there is an appendix with a list of links with resources for teachers and students.

Online Free Resources

The widespread use of “search engines” is common knowledge nowadays in schools and homes. However, there are some techniques to get more accurate results. As language a teacher, one could search for specific information on a grammatical topic such as comparatives. The simplest action is saving the results of the search to an HTML file or adding them to bookmarks or favorites in the web browser. Some sites offer free web hosting and some simple design tools where one could paste the results of the search.

Virtual Communities

Traditional free mail services nowadays also offer communities for sharing files, exchanging comments and have asynchronous discussions. There are other possibilities for synchronous communication based not only in text, but also in audio and video. Yahoo and Hotmail for example, offer additionally to these communities, instant messaging programs known as “Messenger” which allow having a traditional chat, voice and webcam conferences with the contacts from a personal list of emails. In the language center of the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, there have been some experiences with blended courses. That is, a traditional course with some sessions in a multimedia computer laboratory and “electronic” assignments through a Yahoo Group. The role of this platform was as a mediator and a means for delivering papers and assignments outside the classroom. The results were really promising and encouraging for students. For that experience, a case study was followed through a semester with beginner students from two groups. Due to the amount of data and lack of team work to do further and appropriate analysis of the data, the study focused on one subject who manifested from the beginning that he was not good at English and that the teacher would need to have a lot of patience. The process started and at the end, this subject became one of the best students in the course, one of the most active and participative. A thesis was written on this experience and is available online at http://www.upb.edu.co/cdelenguas/ourprojects.html

Online Courses

There many language courses on line. Some are expensive and some are just free. In the indexes available on language resources any person can learn a language, especially English, because there are plenty of possibilities to create an own environment with all kinds of resources. Such task requires discipline and some previous knowledge on the mother tongue (L1) in order to understand some basic principles. In that sense, that is why there are at present so many language institutions; people are not that disciplined to follow a schedule or they are simply too busy to arrange such resources in a course outline. You can try an online course at Global English and see the difference between a pay site and a free site. On the other hand, there is no guarantee that pronunciation and speaking abilities are being well developed by the autonomous work. There is no one ad honorem in the WWW waiting for people to join in a voice chat for correction and pronunciation advice. However, there are communities of teachers where many interesting things are shared. For students, it might not be paramount speaking English, but they do need it for reading and getting to know what they have to do with a machine or keeping commercial correspondence with people abroad. In that sense, there is a course to be tested based on a YahooGroup for Reading Strategies which might be of interest to speakers of Spanish http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ReadingStrategies/ . In this place, students will find an eight-week plan, expandable to sixteen or more weeks depending on the links that students might like to explore and submit tasks about. It covers from the recognition of parts of speech and the role of Latin and Greek roots, prefixes and suffixes to the recognition of an outline for a whole text, through the use of mind mapping and rewriting paragraphs from an outline.

Portfolio projects

For portfolio projects there are many free resources on the WWW. Teachers and students can start writing and essay projects in “blogs” or “web journals” where other people can read and add their comments. Students can do some research in a specific topic and get partners and keypals from all over the world. With a virtual community, a teacher can arrange folders for each student to upload his/her assignments on an individual basis, or on a public basis inviting other students to access their folders and read or see what they have done. At the end this portfolios could be arranged in web pages and for that there are lots of free web hosting services in the Internet.

Web Journals

Keeping a diary is a good tool for improving writing skills and as great tool for data collection for research. Students can keep a free web journal, also known as blog, where they type everyday or as often as needed. This allows for the exchange of ideas between people from different cultures who might read these “blogs” and help our students with their researches, projects, or portfolios.

Chats, Meetings and other fun stuff

Besides all these possibilities above, perhaps the chats and electronic meetings are the most realistic and communicative tasks on the web. People from all over the world and all cultures speak openly about their thoughts and feelings in such sites. The prime objective of our foreign language courses are achieved here. There are no grammatical rules but people try to understand others and make themselves understood. With the advances of technology in communications and data transmission, people can now have voice chat and webcams in real time. Unfortunately, the wrong use of this technology has forced universities and schools to filter these tools and most of them are not available in computer rooms at most campuses around the world. They are available just from homes, out of the reach of meaningful teaching/learning situations.

Teachers Communities

For teachers there are nowadays great possibilities in the Internet. EFL journals are available for low costs or for free. There are some associations, some of them free that provide training, tricks and ideas for teaching. Every year, the Electronic Village Online offers language teachers the chance to become a WebHead. That is an association of language teachers around the world who exchange ideas on technology and computer mediated communication in a Yahoo group.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/ each year they promote Becoming A Web Head where they offer a virtual course on computer tools for communicating through the WWW. This year they offered it in January and the group can be accessed at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/baw2005/

Also, teachers can set up a virtual office at Tapped in, a place with text chat for discussing different topics with colleagues or students. Similarly, LearningTimes offers opportunities to interact with other teachers around the globe.

To summarize, teachers and students have many things at hand in order to become good teachers/learners of a foreign language and the WWW provides everything they need, from training in the use of CITs to lesson plans ready for downloading. There’s no need to say that the teacher and students’ roles have to change. However, there’s a pair of quotes that all teachers nowadays have to bear in mind when facing the challenges of technology:

When a teacher becomes aware of new developments in pedagogical theory or technology, the first reaction is frequently “Sounds great!”, and the second “but?” There is almost invariably conflict between the ideals stimulated by the linguistic theory, the pedagogical approach or the technological innovation, and the practical matters which must be taken into consideration for effective implementation of those ideals.
Brian McCarthy, 1992

“Technology will not replace teachers, but teachers who use technology will replace teachers who don't."
Ray Clifford, keynote address at CALICO, 1987

Glossary
(Some definitions are taken from http://whatis.techtarget.com/ )

Ad Honorem: Without payment

Blog: (short for weblog) is a personal journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or reflect the purpose of the Web site that hosts the blog. Topics sometimes include brief philosophical musings, commentary on Internet and other social issues, and links to other sites the author favors. The essential characteristics of the blog are its journal form, typically a new entry each day, and its informal style.

Bookmark: Traditionally a bookmark is a piece of paper inserted within a book to mark the page where one has stopped reading for further reference. A bookmark is a saved link to a Web page that has been added to a list of saved links. When you are looking at a particular Web site or home page and want to be able to quickly get back to it later, you can create a bookmark for it.

CALL: Computer-Assisted Language Learning.

ICT: or I&CT, Information and Communications Technologies

CMC: Computer Mediated Communication

CMS: Course Management System

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

E-Group: Electronic group or Virtual Community

HTML: (HyperText Markup Language) is the set of markup symbols or codes inserted in a file intended for display on a World Wide Web browser page.

Keypal: Pen pal or person to exchange email with.

MOODLE: A free course management system for creating quality online courses.

Search Engine: On the Internet, a search engine is a coordinated set of programs that includes:

A spider (also called a "crawler" or a "bot") that goes to every page or representative pages on every Web site that wants to be searchable and reads it, using hypertext links on each page to discover and read a site's other pages

A program that creates a huge index (sometimes called a "catalog") from the pages that have been read

A program that receives your search request, compares it to the entries in the index, and returns results to you

TELL: Technology Enhanced Language Learning

VLE: Virtual Learning Environment

WELL: Web Enhanced Language Learning

WWW: World Wide Web

REFERENCES

From the WWW

Britain, Sandy & Liber, Oleg. (1999-2000) A framework for pedagogical evaluation of Virtual Learning Environments. University of Wales-Bangor. Taken from the URL: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00001237.htm. on October 20/2003.

Mason, R. (1998) Models of Online courses. ALN Magazine 2. In: http://www.aln.org/alnweb/Magazine/vol2_issue2/Masonfinal.htm

Matas, Cristina P. and Birch, Gary. (2000). Web-based second language grammar development: Researching the options. In: CALL-EJ Online vol 1, N 3. Retrieved in 2000 from http://www.lerc.ritsumei.ac.jp/callej/4-3/matas_birch.html

Unesco, Information and Communication Technologies in Teacher Education, A Planning Guide. Taken from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001295/129533e.pdf, 2004.

Villegas A. Jorge H. (2004) Computer Mediated Communication and Writing: A case study at the Language Center-UPB. Graduate thesis for the Specialization in English Teaching, Faculty of Education, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana. Also available at the URL: http://www.upb.edu.co/cdelenguas/tesisCMCwriting/VersionHipertextual/TesisCMCwriting.html

______.(2004) CALL, A comprehensive reading guide. Available at the URL: http://www.upb.edu.co/cdelenguas/call_read_guide.html A broader version of the present essay with references to CALL History, Computer Mediated Communication and links collected since 1997.

Warschauer, Mark. (1996c). Motivational aspects of using computers for writing and communication. In M. Warschauer (Ed.), Telecollaboration in foreign language learning (pp. 29-46). Honolulu, HI: Second Language Teaching & Curriculum Center (University of Hawai'i Press). Retrieved June, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/NetWorks/NW01/NW01.html

——— (1996a). Comparing face-to- face and electronic communication in the second language classroom. CALICO Journal, 13(2), 7-26. Retrieved June, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/comparing.html

——— (1997).Computer-mediated collaborative learning: Theory and practice. Modern Language Journal, 81(3), p. 470-481. Retrieved June, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/cmcl.html

——— (1997) The Internet for English Teaching: Guidelines for Teachers. University of Hawaii at Manoa. Brigham Young University – Hawaii. TESL Reporter 30,1, pp. 27-33. Retrieved June, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Articles/Warschauer-Internet.html / http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/markw

______. (1998). Interaction, negotiation, and computer-mediated learning. In M. Clay (Ed.), Practical applications of educational technology in language learning. Lyon, France: National Institute of Applied Sciences Retrieved June, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/papers.html

——— (1999b, March). Turning technology into teaching: Needs analysis for CALL. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, New York. Retrieved June, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/

______. (1997) The Internet for English Teaching: Guidelines for Teachers. markw@hawaii.edu   University of Hawaii at Manoa. P. Fawn Whittaker whittakf@byuh.edu Brigham Young University – Hawaii. TESL Reporter 30,1, pp. 27-33. http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Articles/Warschauer-Internet.html / http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/markw.

——— (2000). Online learning in second language classrooms: An ethnographic study. In M. Warschauer & R. Kern (Eds.), Network-based language teaching: Concepts and practice . New York: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved January, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/online-learning.html

——— (2001). Singapore's dilemma: Control vs. autonomy in IT-led development. The Information Society, 17(4), 305-311. Retrieved December, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/

Warschauer, M., Turbee, L., & Roberts, B. (1996). Computer learning networks and student empowerment. System, 14(1), 1-14. Retrieved June, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/

Warschauer, M., & Healey, D. (1998). Computers and language learning: An overview. Language Teaching, 31, 57-71. Retrieved December, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/CompLangLearnoverview.htm

Warschauer, M., & Kern, R (2000). Theory and practice of network-based language teaching. In M. Warschauer & R. Kern (Eds.), Network-based language teaching: Concepts and practice . New York: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved December, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/nblt-intro.html

Warschauer, M., & Meskill, C. (2000). Technology and second language learning. In J. Rosenthal (Ed.), Handbook of undergraduate second language education (pp. 303-318). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Retrieved January, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/tslt.html.

Appendix A.
Resources for Teachers and students

Online grammar:

·    http://convena.upb.edu.co/cdelenguas/englishexer/
·    http://www.mansioningles.com
·    http://www.eslcafe.com
·    http://esl.about.com/library/courses/blcourses_beginner_grammar.htm
·    http://www.comenius.com
·    http://www.english-zone.com
·    http://www.englishclub.com
·    http://www.englishpage.com
·    http://www.world-english.org/
·    http://www.englishspace.ort.org
·    http://www.esl-lounge.com/
·    http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/
·    http://www.shared-visions.com/explore/english/english.html
·    http://www.lc.itb.ac.id/selfstudy.htm
·    http://www.english-at-home.com/index2.php
·    http://www.myenglishzone.com/
·    http://folk.uio.no/hhasselg/terms.html
·    http://www.impact-english.com/members/Grammar_Explanations/Maps/VerbFamilies-Map.htm
·    http://www.james.rtsq.qc.ca/Virtgram/
·    http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
·    http://www.learnenglish.de/Level1/GrammarText/TENSETEXT.htm
·    http://eleaston.com/
·    http://www.smccd.net/accounts/sevas/esl/gramcheck/index.html
·    http://www.englishgrammartutor.com/Grammar%20Book.htm
·    http://slc.berkeley.edu/nns/l2writing/gramstyle/grammar.htm
·    http://www.geocities.com/ericsquire/gramindx.htm
·    http://www.iei.uiuc.edu/structure/structure1/salzmann_index.html
·    http://www.better-english.com/grammar.htm
·    http://www.dailygrammar.com/archive.shtml
·    And many more at the first link of this page

Free web journals