Teaching with Technology

Picking up new words was always a primary concern while I was attending ESL classes, and I, as an ESL teacher, am very interested in how to teach vocabulary in a way that the targeted words are stick to students’ mind.  It is widely believed that reading is a great way to increase one’s vocabulary.  I do believe that reading has a profound impact on L1 vocabulary growth, but I doubt whether people can pick up new words through L2 reading as they do through L1 reading.  Let me explain why I am so skeptical. A couple of days ago I read a novel entitled October Sky, which was a textbook in my ESL reading class seven years ago. While reading the book, I found that some words (such as hunker down, insidious, and mortify) and their definitions were written down in the margin.  I had written these definitions during an earlier reading of the book.   I am disappointed that I still don’t know the definitions of these words, which I probably had made significant efforts to memorize.  In “What Lexical Information Do L2 Learners Select in a Call Dictionary and How Does It Affect Word Retention?” the authors Batia Laufer and Monica Hill suggest that technology can help ESL students to learn vocabularies incidentally as a by-product of reading.

One of the research questions addressed by this study, and my focus in this journal, is the percentage of words that are remembered by students after they look them up in an electronic dictionary during a reading task.  A research tool used in this study was a computer program called Words in Your Year which consists of four parts: (1) a pre-test of the words for investigation, (2) a text in which these words are highlighted, (3) a dictionary entry for each word with five items of information (a recording of a speaker pronouncing the word, a definition of the word (in English), a translation of the word into the student’s L1, a brief discussion of the word root, and “extra” information), and (4) files that record each student’s use of the dictionary.  During the reading task, the student had the option of hearing the recording of the text that they were reading.  The text was a short extract of 120 words from an academic text of fairly general interest.  The study focused on the 12 target words in the text that were most frequently marked by 30 other ESL students as being unfamiliar.

Initially, 97 subjects participated in the study.  However, through a pre-test, 25 students who were familiar with more than one of the target words were eliminated from the sample.  Thus, 72 was the final number of subjects in the study.  Those students who knew only one of the 12 words were later not credited with learning that word.  The subjects included 32 college students from the University of Haifa in Israel and 40 first year ESL students from the University of Hong Kong.  On completion of the reading task, the subjects were given an unexpected vocabulary test in which they were asked to write the meanings of the 12 words in L1 or L2 on paper.  The results of the test showed that the Hebrew students recalled an average of 4 out of 12 target words while the Chinese students recalled an average of 7.  The maximum number of words recalled by one Hebrew student was 10, while the maximum number of words recalled by a Chinese student was 12.

Although the learning outcomes of the two groups were significantly different, the use of a CALL methodology seems to have a positive effect on incidental vocabulary learning.  The study concluded that the novelty of the methodology comes from several options that allow L2 learners to select the lookup strategy that may be most compatible with their learning style, and I agree with it.

by: Judy Strauss (Southern Illinios) & Donna Hill (Indiana University)

Marketing Education Review 2007

Blog: Lynn Barnsback

 “Nearly one half of marketing students do not embrace Web-based instructional (WBI) tools.” This article was published in 2007, so hopefully this is no longer as big a gap, however, these students, the 50% not embracing technology have probably just graduated so it is interesting to see what the state of Teaching with Technology was just 3 short years ago.

 The authors indicated many times that “many college students do not use the Internet for their education” and often don’t recognize the value in Web tools. They refer to them as “Laggards” and set forth to do a category based classification of WBI tools and their use by students. Often, a student will identify a tool as beneficial but use them rarely. This gap was  a concern. They define WBI as teaching supported by the attributes and resources of the internet to browser equipped learners

Strauss & Hill discuss the differences in WBI work of students due to learning styles. Visual Style learners seem to prefer technology-based learning. Above average learners might also benefit from the self-paced nature of internet assignments. Asian students were more comfortable speaking in a Web format & that “non-traditional students had more positive attitudes toward computers.” Unless motivated, independent learners, students prefer traditional instructional modes. Their conclusion to all their research on prior studies is that “there are some competing positions regarding student satisfaction with WBI tools, and further research is needed.”

 The authors chose to question students in Principles of Marketing at two mid-sized Midwestern schools; one private, one public. The sample size was 444. Obviously, the it was primarily “traditional students” surveyed. Students completed a questionnaire with 16 internet tools listed. They were asked about use, perceived benefit and competency levels.    

 Short List:

• Most used tools:
  • e-mail – 1. Instructor 2. students
  • Research on the Web (class work and seeking company information
• Half never use:
• •  bulletin boards; chat rooms; online tests; videos; create own web pages; e-mail to businesses
• Largest Gaps between Perceived Benefit and  Actual Use:
  • Practice Tests
  • Online Class Readings
  •  Actual Test
  • class e-mail newsletter
  • electronic bulletin board (online forum)
• Lowest scoring items
  • Post e-mail to electronic bulletin board
  • Chat room for class work

The study was exhausting, moving items in and out of the calculations and attempting to find a variety of correlations. The authors note that information was only gathered at two schools and the students were fairly traditional “present high face validity.” They also did not include some “newer” tools like texting & social network sights.

 Summary/Conclusions:

• Half of students in Principles of Marketing classes are “light” users of Web-based instructional tools
• Light Users tend to be female
• Students can see something as beneficial (on line test/ bulletin board) yet not use it
• Faculty does not require usage of these technologies so students don’t use them
• Heavy e-mail users take up most of faculty e-mail time (over a quarter e-mail weekly to daily)
• Research tools were considered beneficial and used by both heavy and light WBI users
• Group communication tools are used the least and felt to have the least benefit.

 The recommendations were, after much sorting of information, fairly obvious- faculty should provide and require more of the desired tools for students. Move light users to heavier usage this way and allow marketing graduates to have higher internet skill levels. This is a trend in higher education anyway so this study, however robustly done, was not ground breaking.  The results, although tainted by the limited demographic, were interesting to see and it is always good to have data to back up what we “know” or can guess about  student perceptions and behavior;  like children and vegetables, you need to make the web required  for students to use it and gain the benefit.

You might enjoy this article in last week’s The Economist:

http://www.economist.com/science-technology/technology-quarterly/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15582279

This article analyzes two cases of computer-mediated language leaning.  In the first case, the researchers examined learning outcomes in a Spanish language course.  The American undergraduate students taking this course were given the project of constructing a multimedia CD-ROM on Latin American culture.  This was a semester-long project. The students were told that their CD-ROMs would be preserved for use by future students in this Spanish course.  While they were working on their projects, the students kept journals in Spanish “to describe or to vent their frustrations when the technology failed them.” In the beginning part of the project, the students’ journals showed that they were all thrilled by the fact that they were making a durable and public product which could be used by future undergraduates and their instructors.  The students’ journals also revealed that the students viewed the computer in a very positive light, which liberated them from “the “burden” of writing “normal,” “traditional,” or “conventional” end-of-term papers.”  In their journals, many of the students noted that the “clickability” of their computer texts and images made them added to their “credibility.”  The students did not simply copy the texts, images, and video that they found on the web.  They actively recontextualized and recreated texts, images, and video to create new and quite personalized effects.  In the process, the students learned not only how to communicate in Spanish, but also “how to create and manipulate hypertexts and various representations of Spanish speaking cultures.”

The second case discussed in this article was an analysis of the use of the World Wide Web by a Chinese ESL student.  The student was a young Hong Kong immigrant attending a California high school.  At the time of the study, the student had been in the United States for six years.  An interview conducted in Cantonese showed that the student was frustrated over the fact that his English was not fluent enough to catch up in school, and he felt discriminated against in school because of his Chinese accent.  He was also deeply pessimistic about his future life, thinking that his inability to speak English like a native would prevent him from getting a decent job.  In his senior year, this student became actively engaged in various internet activities, including the creation of a personal page on a Japanese pop singer, and met chatmates in several countries around the world.  He also wrote regularly to a few e-mail pen pals.  The analysis of his chatting and e-mails showed that his writing ability in English was improving dramatically, leading him to discover his ability to express himself in writing via the electronic media.  It needs to be mentioned that the kind of English that he acquired through his internet-mediated communication was “the “global English” of adolescent pop culture,” which differs from the standard English taught in ESL classrooms.  His Internet involvement also brought about a change in his view of himself and the world.  In an interview, he said, “I have kind of changed my determination.  I’m not as fearful, or afraid of the future, that I won’t have a future. . . But now I feel there’s nothing much to be afraid of.  It’s not like the word has power over you. . . . If I hadn’t known them (his chatmates and e-mail pen pals), perhaps I wouldn’t have changed so much.  Maybe the  Internet has changed me.”  It is interesting that the English he acquired on the Internet enabled him to develop a sense of belonging and connectedness with the World Wide Web community of which he had sought to become a part.

This article, which attempted to reframe the notions of authenticity and authorship in communicative language learning, allowed me to realize the potential of the electronic medium in L2 education.  At the same time, it gave me a challenge; how to adapt the electronic medium into my teaching in the future.  I know that the first step in meeting this formidable challenge will be to open my eyes to the opportunities that have been brought about by new technology in the teaching of second languages.