Blog 4
What happens when 40 “pre-service Non-Native (NNS) English teachers” (p. 79) studying at a “large Mexican university” are given a semester long assignment to collaboratively create and develop a wiki on the meaning of culture and are not given any other guidance or teacher instruction other than four reminders to contribute to the wiki? From reading Kessler’s Student-initiated attention to form in wiki based collaborative writing, it seems that a lot of attention will be placed on the wiki’s content and not much on the accuracy of its grammar, or as it’s known in the linguistics world, form. Faced with this information, I have questions such as, if wikis administered with little teacher supervision promote a lack of form focus, is this a problem? What are the advantages of wikis as a collaborative technology enriched tool for teaching a foreign language?
My teaching philosophy leans toward the promotion of language use and less toward an overt focus on the formalities of a grammar, but I was startled by the following quote regarding the student participants: “In many cases they were willing to devote a great deal of time altering font and adding links to support the content of sentences that contained numerous grammatical errors. When asked about this observation, some responded that they had no problem understanding the meaning of the sentences in question and, thus, they did not bother to correct these errors” (p. 84). Given that the participants are studying to become English teachers, their lack of concern about the level of their grammatical accuracy was, well, concerning. However, it must be noted that students were more willing to correct the grammar of other students. Leaving me to wonder if students did not correct their own grammatical errors, simply because they did not recognize that they made errors.
Despite some concern regarding the English students laissez faire attitude toward grammar, I agree with Kessler’s conclusions that a greater focus on grammar, if that is desired, could likely be produced by defining grammatical accuracy as a condition for project completion. What I am more interested in is the collaborative nature of wikis and the associated benefits.
Kessler cites research regarding the benefits of wikis and other collaborative writing projects such as, “an increased complexity in writing and willingness to utilize feedback … as well as increased grammatical accuracy and overall quality of writing” and “more opportunity for practice” (p. 80). Kessler notes that unlike past collaborative projects that utilize pairs or small groups, wiki technology “supports a many-to-many form of collaboration”. This type of collaboration is timely because today’s youth have been primed for collaborative use of technology. Ito et al.’s report on youth and work in technology fields, Hanging out, messing around, geeking out: living and learning with new media ,details how this age cohort is using technology in collaborative ways such as, massively multiplayer online role playing (MMORP) games, fansubbing, video production, etc. Considering that young people are a significant percentage of the students studying a foreign language, their familiarity with using technology collaboratively makes wikis a good base on which to build technology enriched learning activities. If teachers want to exploit the benefits provided by wikis’ collaborative format, then identifying the preferred focus, i.e., content production or form, would be an important aspect in implementing this technology enriched learning activity.
Kessler, G. (February 2009). Student-initiated attention to form in wiki-based collaborative writing. Language Learning & Technology, 13 (1), 79-95. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/vol13num1/kessler.pdf
Ito, M. et al. Hanging out, messing around, geeking out: living and learning with new media, final report: work, digital youth research, kid’s informal learning with digital media. Retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/5jvyof
I wonder at the eventual degradation of written language as generations learn and become dependent upon the IM shorthand. As long as they understand the meaning, poor grammer etc does appear to be accepted. Although this change has helped me, spelling and grammer never being strong suits, I do fear for the destruction of clear communications. It reminds me of “Casual Fridays” which morphed into the “Business Casual” workplace where wearing pantyhose will brand you as “old”.
Good summary Susan. I must be old school by also expecting my students to actually use grammar when they write – most do not, even in “formal” writing assignments. The author’s lack of guidance and guidelines for the course seems to me to be a continuing theme when technology is employed, which can result in ineffective teaching and learning. I am surprised the author concluded that research showed that wikis resulted in an increased complexity in writing, when she observed in person a failure to do something as basic as follow the rules of grammar.