What if TOEFL had video listening test?

Wagner's (2007) article "Are they watching? Test-taker viewing behavior during an L2 video listening test" investigated into how L2 listening test-takers interacted with video listening texts, and the extent to which test-takers oriented to the video texts. One of the most interesting findings of this study was that the test-takers did not find the video "distracting", which was contradictory to the assumption of some researchers. It reminded me of the listening section in the TOEFL (internet-based test) I took two years ago, and I believe the format is still the same today. During the listening test, there was only one static picture shown on the computer monitor throughout each task. Although I did not give much thought about it at that time, because the test itself was too important for someone who wanted to be enrolled in graduate school in an English-spoken country, I now start to wonder, what if we had video listening test in TOEFL? Was that kind of static picture display in TOEFL based on the conjecture that video would be distracting for test-takers? Would videos make the listening tasks easier or more difficult? The author has suggested that the correlation between test scores and test-takers' orientation to the video monitor would be something worth looking into. I agree with him, and I hope that future researches would help to make massive-scale English tests like TOEFL more "taker-friendly" and effective. After all, language is used and understood in real-life situations, videos might indeed help to put test takers into a more life-like environment and get more reliable test results. 

Wagner, E. (2007). Are they watching? Test-taker viewing behavior during an L2 video listening test. Language Learning and Technology, 11(1), 67-86.

Praat

Going to the Technology and SLA class has always been an eye-opening experience for me. For example, Praat, which was introduced in class this week, was one of the most sophisticated computer programs on phonetics I have ever known for analyzing, synthesizing, and manipulating speech. What amazed me most was the demonstration and practice we had in class about how it could be used to help students with tones and intonation in language class with its high quality pictures showing spectrograms, pitch contours, formant contours, and intensity contours. Praat further convinced me that, if used appropriately, professional computer programs like this could really make language learning and teaching easier and more efficient. However, like what has been pointed out by Dr. Chun, everything has its limitations, and computer program is no exception. Besides the inability in accurately recognizing and displaying voiceless sounds, I think this program is mostly useful for practicing decontextualized single sound, words, or short phrases. The change of tones and intonations in more complicated expressions and language in use would still require more explicit instructions and complementary materials.

Picture from http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/cartoon1.jpg

Sometimes a NNS can be more helpful than a NS in our second language learning!

One of the most interesting findings in this week's readings is the one in "Synchronous-Voice Computer-Mediated Communication: Effects on Pronunciation" (Alastuey, 2010) about different levels of improvement in pronunciation across various kinds of dyad (NNS sharing- L1, NNS different-L1, and NS). The researchers found that, instead of the NNS-NS dyads which would be the most natural assumption of many of us, NNS-NNS different-L1 dyads seemed to be the most beneficial for pronunciation development. Such a finding was both surprising and intriguing for me, mainly because I had never thought of the possibility and potential of learning a foreign language through collaboration between NNS with different L1s. However, the reasons given in the article, including reduced anxiety levels and more opportunities for self-repair did make sense to me. In addition, according to my own experience as an L2 learner, I believe communication between NNS with different L1s would indeed require more "standardized" pronunciation to ensure mutual intelligibility than the one between NNS and NS, because native speakers usually have higher level of tolerance and comprehension ability towards deviation in pronunciation.

Finally, I agree with the author that other kinds of modified output between different types of dyads would be an interesting and promising area for future research. Thanks to the development of modern educational technology like SVCMC, researches on language learning involving diverse learner groups have become more workable and productive.

Picture from http://tr.toonpool.com/cartoons/foreign%20language_123073#

Cool tech tools!

Today we learned about Google apps such as Google-docs and Google form. Because I have already used Google-docs before, I was particularly excited about what I could do with the Google form, and it was the first time in my life that I had actually created an online survey form(see below) with questions which allowed different types of input including text, checkboxes, scale, etc..In the past, I was always amazed by those beautifully laid out and formatted online surveys, and I had no idea how easily it could be done until today, thanks to our capable TA.

In addition, the student response system, Socrative, introduced by Zack today in class was also a really neat way to engage students into classroom activities and help teacher gain instant feedback from the class. What I like most about the system is that it is simple and focused, hence easy to use and efficient. Because I think one of the most common problems with language learning and classroom management systems is that too many resources cram together in a complicated structure which would sometimes scare potential users away.

About quiz feature on Moodle

Like many other fellow students, I was impressed most by the quiz feature on Gauchospace demonstrated by the capable assistant of the language technology team of UCSB. Thanks to this course and Dr. Chun, I got to know about the existence of such an excellent resource on this campus. Back to the quiz feature, what made me excited was not the way how a quiz with different types of questions and multi-media formats could be put online, because an online version of quiz was the same as a traditional one in essence in terms of its content and what students are tested on, it was the instant feedback enabled by automatic grading function in most cases that had made it different. This kind of timely feedback is exactly what language learners need, and it could serve as valuable supplements to instructor and peer feedback as well as helpful references for instructors to make well-informed adjustment in and outside classrooms. Besides, I would love to see that in the near future, technology would also help with the progress in "testing the untestable" in language education, such as knowledge of the pragmatics and intercultural communicative competence, etc. At last, I keep wondering if all these powerful tools such as the Moodle course management system, wiki, and Classroom 2.0 could work well in China, just like I really doubt that I could use Google-docs there as Google has already partially retreated from China in 2010.

Picture from https://gauchospace.ucsb.edu/courses/course/view.php?id=8140

About Nielson's article on language learning software

Self-study or group study?
Picture from http://www.trulygraphics.com/tg/baby/page/50/

In his article "Self-study with language learning software in the workplace: what happens?", Nielson (2011)presented to us a fact that, despite the enthusiasm of learners and promises given by commercial companies about the effectiveness of their self-study language products, "severe attrition" turned out to be one major finding of an investigation of the use of self-study CALL materials by motivated USG employees in the workplace. I could not agree with him more in saying "learning a language is far from simple, especially for adult learners". 

I had taught for several semesters adult students who went to night school to study English. Most of them were highly motivated students, considering the fact that they were willing to pay for tuition and come to school after a whole day's hard work. One of the most important reasons for them coming to night school, according to their own words, they "want more systematic training, consistent instruction, constant encouragement, moderate pressure from instructors and peers, and opportunities to interact with others", which, I believe, echoes with what Nielson believed that self-study materials should be taken as supplements to instructor-mediated training and human support and interaction was indispensable in language learning.  From the first day I started to learn English, I was told that there was no short cut in language learning, just as there is no one "complete", "stand-alone", or "simple" solution to it even in this information explosion era.

PPT overload, etc.

In terms of the tools and related articles introduced in Week 1, I found "Reducing PPT Overload" (Atkinson & Mayer, 2004) and "Visual Design for Presentations" (Michaels, 2012) particularly helpful. Powerpoint is one of the most frequently used technological tools in language classrooms. Thinking back, I have produced so many highly overloaded slides for my students in class but have never thought that it might sometimes be the very reason for making students bored, tired, or distracted.

We were also given a chance to create a blog in Week 1's class for this course. Although it was not the first time I had created a blog, I did learn more about various options we had in terms of the layout and personal settings. What I do not like about the Blogger is the banner ads automatically added to my blog, and what make things worse is that those ads could be completely irrelevant to my blog content and some of them are even disgusting. Yes, I can remove the ads by not allowing the "blog feed", but then it says, by doing so, "your blog will not be syndicated and its content will not be indexed by Google Blog Search". No free lunch. I see.

About teachers' role in technology integration

In Blake's (2008) discussion of the new trend in using technology in language curriculum, he drew people's attention to the fact that more and more CALL researchers had identified teachers' lack of experience with using technology as one of the most serious barriers to the successful integration of technology into the language curriculum. Although, I agree that, insufficient knowledge of newly-developed technology and the worry of being displaced or forced to make drastic change are important factors in explaining teachers' acceptance and implementation of technology in their language classrooms, there are still other more complicated reasons at work in this issue.

The problem reminds me of one of the articles we had from another class last quarter, "Why hasn't technology disrupted academics' teaching practices? Understanding resistance to change through the lens of activity theory" (Blin & Munro, 2007), whose discussion focuses on current resistance and difficulty in technology implementation in education system. The authors have proposed that the activity of designing educational technological tools can "be conceptualized as unfolding in two different yet interconnected spaces: the designer ‘semiotic’ space, which is the social and cultural context in which the design activity is taking place, and the technological space, which affords the actual realization of the object of the design activity", and then whoever is trying to implement the technology "enters two distinct, yet overlapping, communities, both shaped by a partially shared object, governed by their own rules and division of labor". Therefore, to look at technology implementation issue with such a perspective, we could easily see that, to have sufficient technological tools available for use is one thing, but how to make it work across communities and systems is a completely different story. While issues within the technological space might be relatively easy to address with technology development and adequate training, what happens within the semiotic space as well as between these two spaces is much more complicated and challenging.

Finally, I find the concern above-mentioned resonates with what Egbert, Huff, McNeil, Preuss, and Sellen (2009) (as cited in Arnold & Ducate, 2011) have advocated for future direction of CALL researches. After all, the perspective and the role of the teacher are indispensable in the process of integrating technology into language education. However, considering the intricacy and complexity of everything involved, when things do not turn out to be what have been expected, the teacher should not be the only we blame.

About the blog and thoughts from Week 1

This blog is created for the course Technology and Second Language Acquisition (ED 259)given by Professor Dorothy M. Chun. The future posts would mainly be my reflection on weekly reading assignment, classroom discussion and activities, and technology tools which I find particularly exciting or relevant. I look forward to learning more about related technological tools and their application in SLE, and more importantly, researches on technology and SLA. Comments would be very much appreciated.

This week, we talked about terms like "digital native", "digital immigrant", and "net generation", as well as the changes coming along to second language classrooms. Besides those mentioned in class, I could still think of many more changes like roles of teachers and students, the types of collaborative assignment students could now finish more easily after class, and students' perception towards textbooks and what is in them. In retrospect, in the late twentieth century when I started to learn a foreign language, with such limited access to authentic language material, we were told to take every single word in a textbook seriously and to believe what was in it was what had been using in real life. However, now with the Internet and other new technologies as well as the development of digital corpora, students are no longer easily "fooled" by any poorly compiled textbook. Therefore, what material to be used in language classrooms might be the first decision language teachers should make before they could move ahead towards: how it could be used.