About Qikpad and UNI-collaboration

In this week's class, we have again done some exciting experiment in lab, including embedding in our blogs an online collaboration tool called Qikpad, which works very much like Google-docs but with a more concise layout. What I also like about it is its easiness in creating a pad with an embedded window allowing instant chatting with partners, and I think it might be able to serve as a nice alternative for intercultural exchanges involving countries like China where Google tools are not that readily accessible. However, I encountered a technological breakdown with Qikpad just the day after the class when I discovered the pad I had embedded was gone, and so was the website (http://qikpad.org). Therefore, I think, like many other technological tools, Qikpad is not 100% reliable, and we had better get prepared for unexpected breakdown like this in future projects.

Besides collaboration tools, we have also explored online platforms for intercultural exchanges like Uni-collaboration (http://www.unicollaboration.eu/), which provide valuable databank to help instructors and coordinators who want to establish cultural exchange projects find partner teachers and classes in other countries, learn about successful projects and evaluation tools, and communicative with other practitioners. However, quite similar as what I have found from another renown model and platform Cultura, most projects are confined to exchanges between institutions in the U.S. and European countries, and the languages involved are usually English, Spanish, French, German, and occasionally Japanese and Korean. Although there are several participating institutions from Taiwan in UNI-collaboration, there is so far none from mainland China. Considering the fact that mainland China has the biggest number of English learners in the world and Chinese language itself is gaining popularity in recent years, there seems to be a huge gap between what should be done and what has been done in terms of exploration of online intercultural exchange in a language learning context.

About "collective intelligence"



Picture from
 http://ldele087.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/collective-intelligence/ 

The report called "Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of human groups" (Woolley, et al., 2010) demonstrated to us statistical evidence of the existence of "collective intelligence", and its exploratory power over a group's performance on a wide variety of tasks. The two studies presented in the report showed that while individual intelligence was a significant predictor of performance on tasks which were completed by individuals, average individual intelligence was not as significantly associated with performance on group tasks as collective intelligence. What was more interesting was that, instead of factors such as group cohesion, motivation, and satisfaction which one might have expected to have strong correlation with group performance, average social sensitivity, the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group turned out to be some of the best predictors for collective intelligence which could be used to account for a big proportion of variance across group performances. Although the studies reported were not directly related to second language teaching and learning, I think their results could still be beneficial and valuable for language instructors in the process of designing classroom activities, intercultural exchanges, assigning tasks and roles, as well as administering and monitoring any student activities which involve group work. However, as language learning could be a very different cognitive and social process, and the meaning negotiation and construction as well as information processing and internalization in language acquisition might differ immensely across learners of different levels, ages, cultures, and languages, more evidence would be needed to help with a better configuration and implementation of group projects in a language learning context for achieving better results.

Qikpad

Practicing second language without really trying!

Hanna and de Nooy (2003) have made a very important point in their article "A funny thing happened on the way to the forum: electronic discussion and foreign language learning" that it might be advisable to change "practicing French" to "practicing Frenchness" in instructions given to students engaged in online fora for the purpose of second language learning. The authors presented a very interesting study of the online forum exchanges and discussed about the importance of prefacing language learners of what successful participation would mean for a particular forum in order to optimize the expected effect and improve their "cultural knowledge" should forum debates be used for second language learning. In addition, as "neither culture nor genre is seen as firmly entrenched", negotiation of cultural and generic rules would be a great way for language students to improve their language competence, to be more specific, intercultural communicative competence, "through participation in a cultural practice". In this sense, it seems that we could practice second language without really trying, which sounds exciting. However, given the cultural focus of a practice like the forum debate in the article, I believe it is better to be taken as a supplementary part for a second language curriculum. In addition, this type of practice might only be beneficial to language learners who are at least at the intermediate level.

About corpora for language learning

What impressed me most in today's class was the demonstration and discussion about corpora for language learning. I was amazed not only by the sheer amount of information available in a corpus but also how easy it was in fact for people to use. Besides vocabulary learning demonstrated in class, I could instantly think of so many other ways to utilize a corpus for language learning. With the "context" providing source discourses, students could practice their reading skills; the "collocation" search would definitely be helpful for grammar learning and writing practice; corpora covering or dedicated to spoken language not only could be used for researches but also may come in handy in students' oral language production; and the display of different usages of a particular word could be such a valuable resource for translation practice. However, as what we have been reminded time after time, we should never lose sight of the characteristics of language learners at a particular level. I was wondering, besides corpora created for different languages, genres, or geographical locations, is there any corpus designed for language learners of a specific level?

Thoughts about flashcard tools

In this week's lab section, we have tried out different websites for making flashcards. Just as what we have reported as various collaborative groups, although different flashcard tools might have their unique features, they share two primary functions. One is enabling learners to create their own sets of flashcards, and the other one is a common database accessible to the public, which is composed by previously generated flashcards shared by learners across the world. I find both functions, the second one in particular, helpful for language learners in terms of making their own learning material for spaced repetition and saving time by using others' when necessary. In addition, I also found the "quiz" in flashcardmachine (flashcardmachine.com) interesting. After learners have created a set of flashcards, the website would automatically generate a quiz by mingling the content of the flashcards, and the learners can then take the interactive test with instant feedback and grading. Like the flashcard database, the "quiz" demonstrates what technology could help to add to our traditional way of learning and teaching. However, as using flashcards is usually regarded as a type of mechanical drilling, I wonder if someday in the near future, developers of flashcard tools and websites would be able to help compiling and creating more meaningful and communicative drills by making even better use of the databases and embedding more user-friendly multi-media tools, so that flashcards would be used to help second language learners to learn in a collaborative environment more effectively.

About essay-grading software

The article "Essay-grading software offers professors a break" written by John Markoff (2013) in The New York Times left me with mixed feelings. On one hand, I was excited by the prospect brought by artificial intelligence whose speed of development really seemed to go beyond my power of imagination. On the other hand, what had been magnified by the adoption of the instant-grading software and the main argument of its developers and advocators made me remain skeptical about its value and effect. For me, essay writing involves the highest level of linguistic complexities and deepest level of human thinking, and I have no idea how they could be put down objectively and reasonably by writing instructors in the scoring system with a form of letter grading or numerical ranking, which would then be used by the software to give students instant feedback and free instructors from manually grading essays, the biggest selling point of this software. In addition, people write to express their inner thoughts to the outside world, I highly doubt that they would stay as motivated as they had been before if they knew they would be communicating merely with a machine, which would be fooled into giving high marks by nonsense essays, not to mention whether it could ever "help kids learn how to think critically". Moreover, it is troubling to know that one of the major objectives of developing software like this is to deal with the increased demand of essay grading in online courses. In my opinion, rash implementation of automatic grading software would only make things worse, considering people's common concern about the quality of online courses compared with the off-line ones. At last, I do not see how this type of software could be used to address the inequality issue existing between "the real world" and those "prestigious institutions", and I find the logic of argument not acceptable. After all, could anyone ever say that essays written by students in less prestigious institutions do not deserve human appreciation?

Markoff, J.(2013). Essay-grading software offers professors a break. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com

The beauty of scientific research

Sauro's (2009) paper "Computer-mediated corrective feedback and the development of L2 grammar" is regarded as one of the representatives in the growing body of research illustrating the potential that intercultural telecollaborative exchanges entail for language development through the use of corrective feedback from collaborating partners (Vinagre & Muñoz, 2011). The study reported in the article examined the relative effectiveness of two different types of computer-mediated corrective feedback on the immediate and sustained development of L2 target form knowledge. Despite the significant immediate gains of the matalinguistic group compared with the control condition, which conformed more or less to our preconceived ideas towards the effects of feedback based on positive results found on corrective feedbacks in traditional face-to-face interaction, the study showed no significant advantage for either feedback type on immediate or sustained gains in target form knowledge, which led to the author's suggestion for future studies.

Besides the language issue discussed about, this article has also made me think of the challenges and merits of academic studies. It is never easy to find significant results, and it is even more difficult to claim causality. However, it is the researchers' responsibility to report a study as it is. By doing this, they are making no less contribution than those who are fortunate enough to get more "desirable" results; and by doing this, they are demonstrating to us more vividly the beauty of scientific research-- we never know what we would end up with. 

Sauro, S. (2009). Computer-mediated corrective feedback and the development of L2 grammar. Language Learning & Technology, 13(1), 96–120. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/vol13num1/sauro.pdf

Vinagre, M., & Muñoz, B. (2011). Computer-mediated corrective feedback and language accuracy in telecollaborative exchanges. Language Learning & Technology, 15(1), 96–120. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/february2011/vinagremunoz.pdf

Cognitive principles vs. learner styles

Today's class was informative and interesting as usual, and we also got hands-on experience of creating online listening test in lab by using really neat and handy tools like tubechop and Google-forms. In addition, during the lecture, we had discussion focusing on the use of technology in improving reading and listening skills. One of my fellow classmates mentioned about the effect of different combination of multi-media input on L2 reading comprehension, which reminded me of an article I had read before about a study on cognitive principles of multi-media learning. The study found that students learned better when visual and verbal materials were physically close and when verbal input was presented auditorily as speech rather than visually as text ( Moreno & Mayer, 1999). Although the article was written more than a decade ago and the study did not target L2 learning, I believe it is still relevant to today's discussion. However, I was wondering whether the findings would still be the same if learners' different learning styles had been taken into account. After all, we know that the effect of the same material might vary greatly among learners with auditory, visual, or kinesthetic styles.

Moreno, R., & Mayer, R. E. (1999). Cognitive principles of multimedia learning: the role of modality and contiguity. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(2), 358-368.