Graduating on the Installment Plan

Researcher Heather Smith analyzes interactions between students learning English as a second language as they play a board game designed to encourage pupil-to-pupil interactions. Smith situates her research within a linguistic sociocultural theory and posits that students learn about the world primarily through speaking, being listened to, and interpreting the speech of others (416). Likewise, Smith suggests that “play” holds an important place in language acquisition because it allows learners to experiment with new structures in an environment that reduces consequences while promoting creativity (417).  This being the case, games that facilitate playful use of the target language between peers may be useful tools for language instruction.

During her observations of four mixed-language classes that participated in her board game, Smith noted the following interesting developments:

• Students were more willing to take risks with peers with language structures that they had not yet mastered than with instructors. This was likely because cultural expectations of mastery related to novice-expert interactions in the target language are not as present during pupil-to-pupil interactions (416). However, normal social pressures (teasing) felt by some students did prevent interactions in some cases (431).
• Experimentation with the target language seems much more likely with relaxed pupil-to-pupil interactions than with instructor-student interactions (433).
• Observing the play of students is useful to instructors because it reveals the process by which students acquire language skills (433).

Games in the L2 Composition Classroom
Although one might question the use of board games for teaching L2 composition, I see value in the incorporation of “play” into the composition classroom. Many researchers comment on the angst L2 learners feel when confronting the daunting task of composing in a non-native language; it seems that recreation, common to all students regardless of linguistic or cultural background, is a good tool for mitigating such anxiety. Many social games (Dungeons and Dragons, for example), incorporate interactions between reading, speech, and writing, and can be developed to facilitate the sorts of tasks that L2 learners are required to accomplish while simultaneously reducing emphasis on immediate mastery and the monolithic instructor.

Citation: Smith, Heather. “Playing to Learn: A Qualitative Analysis of Bilingual Pupil-Pupil Talk During Board Game Play.” Language and Education. Vol. 20, No. 5, 2006: 415-37.

Because Internet technologies allow for increased access to information, translating tools, and search capabilities, researcher Paul Stapleton observes that Web-based research and composition are essentially different than traditional methods of writing. Stapleton, a professor who studies academic writing at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, analyzed questionnaire responses related to Web-based research and the resultant composition from Japanese undergraduates studying English as a foreign language.

Stapleton found that because nearly 70% of Web content is in English (Japanese is a distant second at about 6%), L2 writers studying English are encouraged to interact with concepts and doctrines that are distinct from those in their native languages (178). L2 writers may therefore have difficulty in assessing a source’s appropriateness for use in research. The study found that Web-based research affected student writing in the following ways:

• Despite the lack of rigorous review that traditional library-based sources require in order to prevent bias, most respondents believed that Web-based sources were adequate for research and composition. This may be because respondents had faith in their own abilities to evaluate Web sources for reliability (183). Unfortunately, students still selected sources for their composition assignments that were deemed unacceptable or inadequate for academic writing.

• Respondents often preferred researching online and frequently through sites that presented information in their native language. Many students preferred researching on bilingual sites maintained by native Japanese speakers who composed in English and Japanese (184).

• Although most students reported that they did not plagiarize text from online sources, the researcher’s cross-reference of composition assignments and sources revealed that some students “did succumb to the temptation” to easily transplant text from online sources into their own composition (185).

The findings point to some interesting issues surrounding L2 composition in context of modern writing and research technologies. Although L2 students are now able to access a wide variety of sources online, they may not have the proper tools to determine the credibility and bias of Web sources. Furthermore, Stapleton remarks that Web-based sources give L2 writers access to English ideologies that are not necessarily coincident with those prevalent in their native languages, and keyword searchers have a tendency to produce sources that support writers’ pre-existing agendas (187). As a result, L2 writers’ positions may be affected by the amount and type of research that they perform online. This notion certainly deserves further research.


A note on genre
Stapleton defines domain designations such as .com, .gov, and .edu as genres with “various underlying motivations ranging from the simple dispersal of information…to the promotion of commercial and ideological agendas” (177). Framing domains as specific genres is interesting, and, if Stapleton’s assertion that L2 writers are at increased risk of falling victim to biased sources due to language barriers is true, it may be a useful taxonomy for helping L2 (and L1!) writers to assess the nature of their sources. Here’s a quick example of how the same idea is represented in three different Web genres:

Search Term: Language Acquisition

• .gov: Office of English Language Acquisition

• .edu: Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition

• .com: Dr. Goodword’s Alpha-Dictionary

Citation:
Paul Stapleton. “Using the Web as a Research Source: Implications for L2 Academic Writing.” The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 89, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 177-189

Before you read my summary
Here’s some praxis…a great, fun video that is (tangentially) related to the use of technology in the L2 classroom. In this case, the tech element is instructor-facing…the teacher posted a video of his English activities on YouTube so that the lesson content could be viewed and responded to at a distance. The video subtly depicts an L2 model that isn’t really about F2F learning or about distance education; it’s a mix of teacher, student, and tech participation in and out of the classroom.

It’s great what the Interwebs can do for teachers in any field. This video gives you a little snapshot of an English classroom in Hong Kong in a way that traditional text simply could not.





And now: Article Overview
Distance learning courses are becoming a prevalent feature of the educational landscape, and, in part because of increased access to the Internet and the resulting proliferation of global English, online programs that train TESOL instructors are seeing a coincident rise in popularity (63). However, the increase in TESOL certifications earned online brings with it concern over the experience and quality of distance learning degrees relative to traditional degrees earned at brick-and-mortar institutions (67).


Interesting Findings
Through analysis of the results of an international survey of participants in language teacher education by distance (LTED) programs, the researchers surmised the following characteristics of distance L2 pedagogy programs:

• There are few international standards for distance programs, so instructors who are largely supportive of their own particular LTED program are often suspicious of other LTED programs. This general level of apprehension over the quality of competing LTED programs has the effect of diminishing the integrity of the field in general.
• The practice of maintaining large numbers of off-site faculty negatively impacts staff cohesion. Also, off-site staff have less access to institutional funds.
• Off-site students in LTED programs frequently feel isolated, and instructors feel less rewarded by teaching because they “miss their students.”
• The communicative language teaching model (CLT), the prevalent model in formal language instruction that holds that language acquisition is based on use of the target language in communicative activities, doesn’t hold up online the same way as it does in f2f instruction because students, teachers, and buildings are replaced with text and computer images.
• The technology component in LTED programs does, however, allow for the incorporation into the foreign language classroom visual/audio technologies that are increasingly part of modern multimodal communications, and students are eager to engage in computer mediated learning exercises.

Although there seem to be both troublesome and worthwhile elements to LTED programs, the researchers found that instructors and students agree that sound pedagogy, not the technology’s capabilities, is the important factor in designing effective distance learning curricula (74).

Connections between Technology and TESOL
The article connects the recent phenomena of online education to the millennia-old practice of learning by correspondence and, in so doing, draws parallels between the “social practices” of studying a foreign language in face-to-face (f2f) and computer-mediated environments. Because the community of students and teachers studying foreign languages are traditionally mobile, accustomed to learning by correspondence, and able to benefit from rapidly improving pedagogical technologies, technology becomes an attractive component of foreign language instruction.

Interestingly, the authors don’t define TESOL education in terms of conflict between f2f and online models. Rather, they describe foreign language education as a mixture of practices in which teacher-student interactions fluctuate between different degrees of physical presence and technological mediation (see image below). Because of the good and useful expansion of online media into nearly all aspects of education, I am pleased to read research that moves beyond an either/or view of technology to reflect accurately the presence of distance components in traditional classes as well.

Citation:
Hall, D., & Knox, J. (2009). Issues in the Education of TESOL Teachers by Distance Education. Distance Education, 30(1), 63-85. Retrieved from ERIC database.

Researcher Raquel Oxford suggests that utilizing writing technologies may aid instructors and students in incorporating successful composition exercises into the L2 classroom while simultaneously developing desirable computer skills. In designing her study, Oxford notes that despite research pointing to the benefits of using technology in L2 classrooms, many instructors don’t incorporate it because of a lack of familiarity or expertise (shame on them!).

Even though the study showed that the incorporation of technology-enhanced language-learning (TELL) software was responsible for only minor improvements in student learning, Oxford believes this is likely because language improvement is difficult to measure over one course. Furthermore, the study did not attempt to measure the likely improvement of student competency with the technology. Either way, more and more research is drawing a link between writing exercises and language acquisition, and technologically mediated spaces provide a genuine context for language practice. Based on this, Oxford exhorts language teachers to consider using composition and technology exercises in their language curricula as platforms for enduring education.

Moreover, giving L2 students opportunities to write with and be assessed by TELL software provides students with the experience of composing for an audience that is not concerned with the students’ L2 status. Oxford comments that L2 instructors are frequently “sympathetic” to their students’ linguistic endeavors and may assess writing differently than audiences that are not experienced with second language composition. I see this use of technology particularly salient. Even as a beginning student of L2 pedagogy, I anticipate challenges finding a balance between empathizing with students’ struggles toward language competency and creating a realistic classroom environment that demands the same linguistic proficiency as the really real world.

I also find this article compelling because it recognizes overlap between the development of second language competency and comfort with technology. Not only are both skill sets assessed similarly (certifications, rote drills), but they are described similarly (think: computer language, the rigidity of grammar inherent in both coding and composition). Furthermore, it seems too often the case that cross-curricular instruction isn’t applied to L2 language courses. This article demonstrates tools that can be incorporated into the L2 curriculum that enhance student skills beyond the target language alone. What a good idea, I think, for instructors to treat second language coursework as a component of the larger curriculum and not simply a barrier to be breached on the path to “the rest” of one’s studies.

For further reading, check out this syllabus from Washington University for a course that explores the interface of L2 composition and technology.

Citation: Oxford, Raquel.  “Effects of Technology-Enhanced Language Learning on Second Language.” Hispania, Vol. 89, No. 2 (May, 2006): 358-361. Read it here.

Natsuki Fukunaga’s examination of a group of English-speaking American students’ interest in developing Japanese language proficiency illustrates the roles that social and cultural motivations play in L2 language acquisition.

The author points out that for some L2 learners, the acquired language can serve as a “tool…to acquire agency” within social groups that value that language. In such cases, classroom exercises may not account for the lion’s share of the students’ language acquisition, and linguistic experiences gained through voluntary exposure to L2 media inform in-class grammar and writing practice. This being the case, instructors should consider students’ out-of-class activities when developing exercises for in-class use or when ascertaining students’ progress toward mastery.

Furthermore, acknowledging (or encouraging) students’ engagement with cultural artifacts that are relevant to L2 language study fosters an environment that allows “active learners” to facilitate their studies with more resources than a single classroom can hope to provide.

Fukunaga distills four core recommendations for L2 teachers from her research:

1. Get to know the tools: consider new media, popular media, food…whatever artifacts learners are building culture around




2. Appreciate authentic aspects of other cultures: contextualize the language




3. Have a critical discussion: create active learners that engage the L2 culture




4. Be aware of the power of popular culture: by being aware of student interests, L2 instructors are better able to maintain active classrooms as well as tailor instruction to specific student needs

Interestingly, the article depicts L2 learners (in this case, American students of Japanese) as a group united foremost “through shared practices and a common endeavor, and only secondarily through shared culture, gender, ethnicity, or face-to-face relationships” (Gee 2001, qtd. in Fukunaga 2006). This is interesting in that it parallels the experiences of graduate students taking their first, computer-mediated steps toward joining the L2 pedagogy community itself. Although we as students of L2 composition studies are not (nor need not) be implicitly aware of shared cultural vocabularies or offline acquaintance, we nonetheless come together around our common interest in advancing the state of instruction for second-language learners. In this way, we build a new and shared culture that is enhanced by our diverse linguistic experience. Remaining cognizant of this parallel may give us perspective as we begin engaging the field, and perhaps more importantly, our own classrooms.

Citation: Fukunaga, Natsuki. “Those Anime Students: Foreign Language Literacy Development through Japanese Popular Culture.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Vol. 50, No. 3. (Nov. 2006): 206-22.

Japan requires English study as part of their compulsory education curriculum and regularly “imports” native speakers from all over the world to assist in classroom instruction. Many of these teachers (I count myself among this number) are not trained linguists or educators by trade and soon discover that teaching a second language involves a good deal more than grammar and vocabulary; there are some serious shifts in cognitive processes and cultural practices that accompany L-2 language acquisition. As a result, a lot of instructors (and students!) are frustrated by attempts to recreate “standard” grammatical constructions. I’m not so sure it need be this way.

A couple of years ago, a very clever English teacher working in Japan decided to scrub the text from some Penny Arcade comics and allow his students to fill them in as part of an in-class activity (the blog posting can be found here; strongly encourage you to click through it!). This exercise and the resulting comics are an interesting example of Lo Bianco’s argument that globalization is crafting a multilingual milieu in which “personal bilingualism and societal multilingualism are the inevitable and insistent consequences.” The cartoons that the Japanese students produced are ludic illustrations of L-2 learners’ struggle to express their culture in a linguistic environment that is foreign to them as well as evidence of global English communicated through visual media (see New London Group).

Taking into account Lippi-Green’s assertion that language change is a linguistic fact of life, the sometimes non-standard constructions that the Japanese students employ when writing in English may be viewed as adding to the language rather than detracting from “standard” grammatical convention. In fact, it seems likely that Lippi-Green would recognize that, although in many of the examples the constructions used mark the writers as non-native speakers of American English, the efficacy of many messages are unaffected. Put another way, these exercises demonstrate the subjective qualities of language efficacy that are not fastened as neatly to standard syntactic rules as some proponents of mono-lingual pedagogies would have us believe. Students’ attempts at humor and narrative are easily decipherable and not a factor of such prescriptive rules as article usage or standard punctuation.

As Lippi-Green states, the “variety of language spoken cannot predict the effectiveness of the message,” and some constructions are more apt in some varieties than others. The instructor who designed the exercise that resulted in these comics praised his students for “their attempts at humor, their intentional non-sequiturs, and their offbeat cultural references,” all components of the language that were enriched by the students’ L-2 status.

Citation:

Goviolet. (2010, January 23). Penny Arcade Remix Project. Message posted to http://goviolet.com/?page_id=633

Stine Gotved is a sociologist specializing in cyberculture. She received a PhD from UCLA and was a visiting scholar at MIT, and she currently resides in her native Denmark. Originally an academic , she has since left the field for consulting, citing the state of academic research as “gone from bad to worse.”

Her research focuses on ”the interplay between humans, new communication technology, and workplace culture,” and it includes investigations of on online fan communities built around J.R.R. Tolkien’s fiction.

Her LinkedIn profile can be found here.

Gotved contends that, despite the robust corpus of qualitative research on online communities, there is still a long way to go toward wrapping our heads around the ways that we behave in cyberspace.  In response, she attempts to fill the vacuum with a triangular model of cybersocial reality that incorporates dimensions of actor-network theory, time, and space.

Similar to Turkle, Gotved sees little need for a distinction between on- and offline realities; the one informs the other. In fact, Gotved notes that, “although the design takes its departure from the need to know more about the online part in particular, all the categories could be use in a systematic approach to offline life as well.”


Basic Triangle

The first iteration of Gotved’s triangle is formed by combining the following three influences:

• Culture:  This element represents the values that individuals and groups bring to their interactions in cyberspace; it symbolizes the “fluid processes of meaning and commonality.” Culture plays a role in the unity we feel online (think music message boards) as well as the tensions (think the flames directed at this post pointed out by Nancy Baym).
• Structure: The shape of the technology, the interface, and the hierarchies embodied online are elements of structure. Netiquette and protocol arises at the intersection with culture.
• Interaction: Gotved uses this feature of cybersocial reality as the base of her triangle, and it includes interactions between humans and machines in any combination. Gotved grants computers in the network the same agency as human users.

Adding Time to the Triangle

The next iteration of Gotved’s triangle adds the dimension of time, situating the basic categories within the following temporal categories:

• Meaning: This section is layered over culture, and it represents the “processes and memories of those processes.” The way that we interact online has a lot to do with our history with the medium (newbies, oldies).
• Orientation: This section is layered over structure, and it represents the way that time’s influence changes in cyberspace. Communication travels immediately across the “flattened” landscape online. The technology we use changes how we experience time in online spaces (archives, IM, Skype all may relay the same message, but at different rates).
• Regulation: This section is layered over interaction, and it represents “time’s primary role in interaction.”  Just as time is a fundamental factor in how we communicate (Good morning!) offline, so it is online. Everything from the speeds of our connections to the length of time between responses in online communications influences our interactions.

Adding Space to the Triangle

The three original categories are once more extended into the dimension of space:

• Re/construction: This is “the spatial dimension of culture,” and it manifests in the metaphors that we use to communicate in and about cyberspace. We think about cyberspace as if it were a physical space, and we use spatial metaphors to describe it.
• Visibility:  This section is layered over structure and orientation, and it represents the actual space of the interface, software, and screen. The way we experience an online environment is impacted by the real estate through which we interact with and view it. This blog looks different on an iPhone browser than it does on a laptop, and it “feels” different with a mouse than with a keypad.
• Practice: This section describes the spatial considerations that impact online interactions, including notions of proximity and hierarchy. Cyberspace collapses the physical spaces between participants, but we can still experience distance (see that building waaaay over there?).

The complete triangle looks like this:

This just in: Great slidedeck from Gotved’s presentation on this material can be downloaded from this page.

Morville examines the challenges of maintaining accessible design in the miasma of ambient advertising on the Web, giving special attention to the “push and pull” that accompany designing for the competing needs of consumers and marketers.

• Push describes the efforts of advertisers to propel their goods, ideas, and services into the consumer’s focus. This can be done tastefully, as in the sponsored advertisements that Google generates and discretely displays among results based on the user’s keyword searches, or it can manifest as ultra-pushy spam and pop-ups.

• Pull, conversely, describes the consumer’s ability to choose the information that occupies their focus . It might be accomplished through product search on Amazon.com or via proactively following breadcrumb-like links toward desired offerings.

“In the absence of push, we lose our inspiration for pull”

Although the dichotomy of push/pull seems to imply opposition, Moreville argues that they are interdependent concepts that accentuate the user experience when they work in concert. When we subscribe to the push of RSS feeds or mailing lists, we “assume the cost of noise in return for the value of signal” and use the same filtering skills that we use in daily offline conversation to pull the relevant bits to the forefront.

So, even if we shrink from the pushiest calls for our attention, we need a bit of unsolicited motivation to guide us toward interesting content in the nearly infinite marketplace made possible by the Web. Moreville points out that modern consumers have increased buying power, information, and variety online, and successful sellers must respond to the new shape of the market by making their offerings more usable (pull!), not just more visible (push!).

“Today’s attention economy requires a…new balance between push and pull”

Moreville describes the tension between marketers and designers in the “attention economy” of the Web. Efforts to push an idea forward can hit a point where they frustrate users and drive them away from the message. Regardless of how attractive the image, the experience is ultimately responsible for the user’s impressions; in fact, Moreville says that “the only time [the users] really notice our site is when they become lost or stuck.”

This being the case, usability is a fundamental component of an effective push for consumer attention. Users are going to beat feet if they don’t have a way to pull what they already want from your site. A successful application of the push/pull dynamic means that the offering is made easy to find when the user reaches for it and easy to use when they’ve grabbed it.

“Findability isn’t limited to pull”

Though making the content easy to find when users go looking for it is important, Moreville says that it’s no good to sit quietly and wait for your offerings to be found. Personalizing your messages can be an effective way to snag consumer attention by tailoring the message to target their interests and needs. Personalized push is most successful when it targets needs that are static and shallow, as in weather reports aimed at the user’s Zip Code, or when it is based on metrics derived from longstanding relationships with the user, as in product suggestions based on rental histories on Netflix.

In other instances, it can be challenging due to factors such as ambiguities of behavior, time, and language. If I search for MMA, should I be targeted with ads for kickboxing gyms, fight tickets, or the Massachusetts Municipal Association?

Moreville comments that “we are increasingly able to control our experiences and focus our attention.” This is to say that we are learning to pull more effectively and better filter the push, thereby giving the most findable resources on the Web, those resources that come to us most ably when we pull for them, the advantage.