Technologies for Teaching and Learning L2 Speaking (Cognitive perspectives on speaking proficiency: Accuracy, complexity, and fluency)

One of the primary worries that language teachers voice with respect to using technology to teach a second language (L2) has to do with speaking. How can the use of the computer replace the face‐to‐face oral production that occurs in the classroom, along with all of the live interactions with the instructor, who represents the students’ best model for correct usage?2 In the context of a fully virtual language course, this issue often becomes an impediment to having the faculty grant online class credit. On the one hand, these doubts often arise because of lack of knowledge about the many speaking options offered by computer‐assisted language learning (CALL). On the other hand, many teachers simply refuse to relinquish their traditional role as the sage on the stage in favor of a more up‐to‐date function as the guide on the side. The language teaching profession is resistant in recognizing that speaking practice that does not directly involve the instructor is no less valuable to the student´s long‐term L2 development. Clearly, the curricular activities for any given language course will depend not only on the degree of agency that teachers permit their students to exercise, but also on the instructor’s appropriate choices of CALL activities that are performed outside of the classroom.

Cognitive perspectives on speaking proficiency: Accuracy, complexity, and fluency

A cognitive perspective on speaking proficiency is useful for understanding the intended outcomes of speaking pedagogy. Cognitivists see it as consisting of three separate but interrelated constructs (Housen and Kuiken 2009):

1. Accuracy (i.e., the lack of phonological,lexical, or grammatical errors)

2.    Complexity (i.e., the number of words or clauses per T‐units or sentences; see Bardovi‐Harlig 2012)

3.      Fluency

For instance, the concept of L2 fluency depends on a series of relative time measures such as the delivery speed and length of the utterances, the number of pauses, repetitions, lexical lapses, or discontinuities/ interruptions in spontaneous speech. Clearly, not all native speakers would score well with respect to these factors, let alone L2 learners, making these constructs difficult to pin down in absolute terms when assessing L2 speaking proficiency.

Reference :

A Chapelle, Carol and Sauro, Shannon. (2017). The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning: Technologies for Teaching and Learning L2 Speaking. India: Willey backwell

Technologies for Teaching and Learning L2 Listening

Listening as a second language skill area is taught in many language programs, sometimes as a separate course and sometimes in a form integrated with speaking or even reading and writing. Listening activities and tasks typically have two purposes: (1) to help students improve aural processing and comprehension and (2) through that comprehension, to support acquisition of new language forms or to aid in the development of sociocultural and pragmatic understanding of how those forms are used. Technology can play an important role in both. As noted in Otto (this volume), throughout the 20th century there were technological

developments that allowed the human voice to be captured and then replayed across time or broadcast through the airwaves. Vinyl records, film, and audio and video tapes brought native speaker voices, visages, and culture into the foreign language classroom. Radio and television also played a role, often in conjunction with recording tools.

 For second language listening, a qualitative shift can be traced back to two technologies from the 1980s: the laser videodisc and the appearance of digitized sound on PCs and early Macintosh computers. In both cases, the key transformation was the enhanced control these technologies allowed. No longer were teachers and learners forced to rely on time‐consuming search, fast forwarding, and rewinding through unwanted material to get to what was desired. The computer programs allowed teachers, for example, to jump to any desired portion of an audio or video recording instantly to support their teaching activities or to toggle L1 and L2 subtitles off and on at will. Similarly, learners could get an immediate repetition of a segment that was not fully understood. Beginning in the 1990s, CD‐ROMs and the World Wide Web made such controllable digital video and multimedia mainstream. Podcasts, YouTube, and other streaming media, and the mobility of mp3 players, smartphones, and tablets have placed listening materials within the reach of language learners across a large and growing portion of the globe. Modern digital tools have permanently changed the ways in which we interact with recorded media.

Reference :

A Chapelle, Carol and Sauro, Shannon. (2017). The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning: Technologies for Teaching and Learning L2 Listening. India: Willey backwell

Technology and L2 Writing

 

New information and communication technologies are altering writing practices in important ways. As Relles and Tierney (2013) put it, “the integration of communication technologies with academic culture suggests that the writing habits of tomorrow’s students will be navigational across myriad discourse situations that do and will yet exist” (501). Students in fourth grade, for example, while still working on writing sentences, may be Routinely asked to go beyond traditional writing tasks to put together PowerPoint slides, collages, or contribute text to blogs. High school students, while drafting persuasive essays, may be tasked with writing Facebook or Twitter posts. College students continue to write lab reports but also need to construct multimodal compositions that include both text and visuals. Successful business people must be able to write communications to be disseminated through a variety of social media.

All teachers, schools, and colleges are challenged to respond to the changing nature of writing (Herrington and Moran 2009). Fortunately, the same wave of technologies affecting writing practices provides a wealth of tools for the teaching of second or foreign language writing. Such tools have been adopted by business and education to improve the teaching and learning of writing. In this chapter, we describe technologies developed to aid in the writing process, which are also used for teaching. Following the description, we

provide a critical analysis of the empirical research on the effectiveness of software and web‐based technologies in teaching L2 writing.

A.    Technologies for L2 writing

·         Web 2.0 applications

Web 2.0 tools include the variety of social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as blogs.

·         Automated writing evaluation

Automated writing evaluation (AWE) systems have been developed to assist both native speakers and L2 learners to write more accurately by providing them with automated corrective feedback.

·         Corpus‐based tools

Like AWE systems, a number of corpus‐based tools have been developed as resources for L2 writers to gain access to examples of authentic language use in collections of electronic texts.

B.     Empirical research on L2 writing technologies

·         L2 writing with Web 2.0 applications

Social networking sites (SNS) and wiki‐type tools as representative Web 2.0 platforms have allowed the researchers to investigate L2 writers’ engagement in meaningful social interaction as well as collaborative writing (Lee 2010). For example, Kessler, Bikowski, and Boggs (2012) investigated the use of Google Docs in a team‐based project‐oriented writing activity in an English for academic purposes training program with 38 L2 writers.

·         L2 writing and AWE

In the past decade, research has examined the use of AWE tools for helping learners with their writing, that in some cases these promising tools can be challenging to implement with the intended effects. For example, in a critical analysis, Stevenson and Phakiti (2014) evaluated outcomes from research encompassing AWE systems specifically designed as tools for providing corrective feedback in the writing classroom.

·       L2 writing and corpus‐based technologies Empirical studies of corpus use for data‐driven learning have yielded positive findings (Flowerdew 2012). For example, Garner (2013) examined the effects of a data‐driven learning approach on ESL undergraduate students’ use of linking adverbials.

Reference :

A Chapelle, Carol and Sauro, Shannon. (2017). The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning: Technology and L2 Writing. India: Willey backwell

Technologies in Use for Teaching and Learning of L2 Reading (Self‐Developed Courseware and Commercial Courseware)

Courseware is a term that combines the words “course” with “software.” It is software containing educational content, instruction, and instructional strategies. Its meaning originally was used to describe additional educational material intended as kits for teachers or trainers or as tutorials for students, usually packaged for use with a computer.

Courseware can include:

·         Material for instructor-led classes

·         Material for self-directed computer-based training (CBT)

·         Web sites that offer interactive tutorials

·         Material that is coordinated with distance learning, such as live classes conducted over the Internet

·         Videos for use individually or as part of classes

The CD-ROM is the most common means of delivering courseware that is not offered online. For teachers and trainers, courseware content may include set-up information, a course plan, teaching notes, and exercises.

A.    Self‐Developed Courseware

Self‐developed courseware is usually designed by collaborative teams to create language learning tools to suit a specific group of learners. Different modes of vocabulary annotation and multimedia glosses are often built‐in to help learners increase vocabulary size and improve comprehension of text. A growing incorporation of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) into self‐developed courseware has been due to technological breakthroughs from the fields of computational linguistics, information retrieval, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and discourse processing. ITSs are designed to simulate a human tutor’s behavior and guidance.

B.     Commercial Courseware

Commercial courseware is ready‐made, licensed, and sold by companies. It usually consists of a combination of lessons, activities, tests, and other relevant materials. One popular commercial courseware that was studied for its effectiveness for L2 learning of listening and reading is Longman English Online. Jamieson, Chapelle, and Preiss (2004) evaluated its design and showed that it met most of their criteria. A newer version, Longman

English Interactive (LEI), was again examined and compared to another commercially available online courseware, Quartet Online (Quartet Scholar) by Dincer and Parmaksız (2013).

While some educators are able to develop their own courseware to meet the specific needs their students, most of them have neither the time nor the technical support. The market

for commercial language learning courseware is vast and expanding. More studies on evaluating commercial courseware would help teachers to choose those most appropriate so institutional investment is not wasted.

Reference :

A Chapelle, Carol and Sauro, Shannon. (2017). The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning: Technologies for Teaching and Learning L2 Reading. India: Willey backwell

https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1-4419-1428-6_535

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