Mini Project #2

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddx83npd_222mhp25zc

Intercultural Learning

I think that the best circumstances for intercultural learning are those where individuals are able to have personal interactions with several "others." I think that the interactions have to be somewhat personal (including personal opinions, beliefs, etc.) because otherwise instead of understanding nuanced details about the "other", the "other" may be seen as more of a flat caricature which will be more likely to inforce general stereotypes.

That being said, I do think that CMC can lead to this type of intercultural learning, but I am not sure that it can be as powerful as being submersed in the world of the other (like traveling/studying abroad). One of the activities from the articles that seemed to be especially condusive to examining what constitutes "self" vs. what constitutes "other" (the idea of recul) was the textual chats with video conferencing that centered around real (one that are likely applicable to the student) discussion topics. This seemed to promote intercultural learning since students could express and react to each other's idea in real time and focus on better understanding an aspect of their partner's worldview (in relation to their own and other people that they know).

However, one question that I have about engaging in such activities in a classroom vs. outside a classroom is how much does the fact that transcripts will be seen by a teacher affect/censor the type of conversations that students will feel comfortable engaging? I would imagine, at least from my own experience, that there is a sort of distance that is maintained so as not to share one's personal beliefs or ideas to too great a degree when a teacher will be reading the transcript. I wonder if studies have looked at this and how it has been addressed...

Video Ideas

So far I have three ideas for the final video project. My target audiance will be an ESL classroom--the proficiency level is yet to be determined. The first idea is recording a few short speeches (those with "good" and "bad" traits) and having students both make outlines of the given speeches by noting what the intro, transitions, main points, and conclusions were and then talking about strengths and weaknesses of the speeches. This idea would be good for a higher English proficiency group and would help to prepare students for giving their own speeches--which they will likely do if they continue on an enter the university.

My second idea is doing a jigsaw video were I show one half of the class the video without sound and the other half only get the audio without the picture. Then the students would be paired with someone who had heard/seen the opposite version and would be asked to reconstruct the scene. The video could be a scene that encouraged the use of certain vocabulary, such as cooking terms for a video that takes place in the kitchen. Also, students would have to negotiate meaning to reconstruct the scene--and much of the research has shown that jigsaw activities with such negotiation are beneficial to language acquisition.

Finally, a third idea is taping two couples (seperately) who are discussing something from different points of view. For example, one couple is speaking about the benefits of traveling abroad, and the other is speaking about why they would rather travel in the U.S. The students would be asked to find areas of agreement and disagreement between the two discussions and would then be divided into two groups to continue the debate/ discussion in class. This would also include target vocabulary (so it would have to be a discussion related to something being taught in class) and would encourage meaning negotiation as the students participated in the debate. It would also encourage comparing and contrasting skills which are important in academia.

Please feel free to give suggestions and/or specific ideas of topics for the second and third ideas :-)

Flickr in the Language Classroom

I think that Flickr has some promising capabilities for the language classroom. It is a primarily a social networking site that focuses on searching for and sharing photos. However, it also has a map organizer where the user can choose a map to work with and then upload pictures for the different locations on the map. So, when learning directions or studying culturally significant places in the the classroom, students could create their own maps and present them to the class. Also, if previous students are studying abroad, they could create photo maps detailing where they have already visited and embed their photo map into a blog or even post comments on their photo map to share with the current students who may be planning to study abroad in the future.

Mini Project #1

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddx83npd_3gm59mmdg

CMC: Classroom and Research

CMC can be motivating for students, beneficial for learning, and adaptable to different classrooms. For these reasons (and more) CMC can be a good investment of time for teachers and students. Many of the articles that we have read this semester indicate that CMC can motivate students since it involves meaningful interaction with real people. Also, it can be very beneficial to learning since students can proceed at their own pace and learn from the interactions that CMC affords. The adaptability of CMC is also one of its strengths because teachers can choose things like emailing, blogging, Blackboard discussions, text chats, or voice chats, depending on the learning objectives and the dynamics of a particular class.

Regarding future research, I am particularly interested in seeing more articles about how CMC can be used in ESL classrooms. For example, is blogging, emailing, or synchronous chat more likely to lead to vocabulary acquisition? I imagine that this is highly context dependant, but it seems that synchronous chat might be more conducive to vocabulary acquisition it involves negotiating of meaning, and input from another person.

Also, I am interested in virtual reality contexts for language learning. I think that ideas like role playing games in other languages could motivate students to learn and help them to improve their language skills. However, I think that these would be the best with voice recognition and it seems like there is still some technological difficulty with perfecting voice recognition software (at least from what I have read so far).

Possible Research Topic and Questions

I am leaning towards a topic related to how CMC and network environments can aid the development of reading skills for English as a Second Language (ESL) students. Specifically, what got me started thinking about this topic was working with ESL students who either have a gap between their production skills (speaking and writing) or those who have a gap between their comprehension skills (listening and reading). It seems, at least intuitively, that using CMC and using the internet for extensive reading could be a way to motive such students to connect their speaking to writing (since chatting has been viewed as more of a conversation than a writing assignment in several of the articles that we have read). Also, it seems that CMC would be a good way for students to focus on form while receiving a written message on the computer. This could both help students to connect form to meaning and give them practice integrating the words on the page into a comprehensible message in a real-time and real-life context.

All of that being said, what does the research say? I have been finding some (not a lot) of articles that specifically focus on CMC and reading. I have posted two of them onto citeulike and have ordered several from ILL. There is one chapter in a book that focuses on how chatting can help students develop low-level reading skills such as word recognition and a better understanding of grapheme-to-phoneme processes. I am very interested in this idea since I believe that low-level and high level skills are necessary for becoming a fluent and skilled reader and that usually one form of instruction is used in exclusion to the other (but chatting could maybe help bring those two levels of reading together by integrating form and meaning).

So, two possible research questions are:

1) Can synchronous computer communication aid the development of low-level and high-level reading skills for English as a Second Language (ESL) students?

2) In what ways can synchronous computer communication and internet-based activities lead to increased reading automaticity for ESL learners? (I am specifically thinking about reduced anxiety leading to more comprehension, increased word recognition skills, and vocabulary acquisition with the uses of such tools as glosses)

I welcome any suggestions and thoughts...