Posts Tagged ‘out-of-class’
Friday, September 2nd, 2011
We are proud to say that our new book is now out!
Benson, P. & Reinders, H. (2011) (Eds), Beyond the Language Classroom. The Theory and Practice of Informal Language Learning and Teaching. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. You can read more about this book by clicking on the link ‘beyond the classroom’ in the menu on the right.
An estimated 80% of adult learning takes place outside of formal education (Cross 1981). For language learning, it is likely that out-of-class experiences play an equally important role (cf. de Bot 2007). It is therefore surprising that the role of informal language learning has received very little attention over the years, with the vast majority of research instead focusing on classroom methods, materials and interaction.
Researchers from a range of backgrounds, however, have started to realise the important contribution of informal language learning, both in its own right, and in its relationship with classroom learning. Studies in the areas of learner autonomy, learning strategies, study abroad, language support, learners’ voices, computer-mediated communication, mobile-assisted language learning, and many others, all add to our understanding of the complex and intersecting ways in which learners construct their own language learning experiences, drawing from a wide range of resources, including materials, teachers, self-study, technology, other learners, and native speakers.
Because of the predominance of informal language learning, it is important that the existing body of research is solidified and that the various disciplines that have looked at this area are brought together to present the current state of knowledge in one, accessible volume. For this reason, the researchers below have been invited from different backgrounds to contribute individual chapters that together cover all the relevant areas.
Table of contents
Introduction
Phil Benson and Hayo Reinders
1. Language learning and teaching beyond the classroom: An introduction to the field
Phil Benson
2. Family, friends and learning beyond the classroom: Social networks and social capital in language learning
David Palfreyman
3. Places for learning: Technology-mediated language learning practices beyond the classroom
Leena Kuure
4. From milk cartons to English roommates: Context and agency in L2 learning beyond the classroom
Paula Kalaja, Riikka Alanen, Åsa Palviainen, and Hannele Dufva.
5. Affordances for language learning beyond the classroom
Vera Menezes
6. Becoming multilingual: An ethnographic approach to SLA beyond the classroom
David Divita
7. Talk about language use: I know a little about your language
Erica Zimmerman
8. A possible path to progress: Out-of-school English language learners in Sweden
Pia Sundqvist
9. Teenagers learning languages out of school: What, why and how do they learn? How can school help them?
Sophie Bailly
10. Older language learners, social learning spaces, and community
Garold Murray
11. Tandem learning in virtual spaces: Supporting non-formal and informal learning in adults
Ursula Stickler and Martina Emke
12. Home tutor cognitions and the nature of tutor-learner relationships
Gary Barkhuizen
13. Materials development for language learning beyond the classroom
Hayo Reinders
Introduction to the book
Introduction: Phil Benson and Hayo Reinders
This volume brings together 13 chapters that have been especially written for this collection in response to an international call for contributions to a book devoted to research on language learning and teaching beyond the classroom. In one sense, the common factor among the papers lies in what they are not; there are no studies of classroom language learning or teaching in this volume. This is a significant point, because so many studies are based on research carried out in classrooms or with classroom learners and quite possibly informed by hidden assumptions related to the classroom setting. Studies of language learning and teaching in settings beyond the classroom are valuable, therefore, because they provide alternative perspectives on the meaning of, and social and cognitive processes involved in, language learning and teaching.
At the same time, we are aware of the risks involved in describing this volume in terms of what it is not – risks that are highlighted by the difficulty of avoiding terms such as informal, out-of-class, non-instructed, and so on, which appear to take this way of describing our object of inquiry for granted. We are also aware of the risk of treating the world beyond the classroom as an alternative to the classroom, as if classrooms were the natural place for language learning to take place and the world beyond the classroom a strange and hostile territory in which languages are learned with difficulty, if at all. With the rise of mass education over the past 50 years or so, there has certainly been a tendency for language learning to migrate into educational institutions, to the point where research often views language learning as an ‘effect’ produced by the ‘cause’ of classroom language teaching, which is likely to be stronger or weaker according to the teaching method or style and a variety of social and individual difference variables among the learners. Yet is also common knowledge among teachers that the progress made by students who learn languages only in the classroom tends to be limited, especially in their ability to use the language for spoken or written communication. Well-rounded communicative proficiency, it seems, depends to a large extent on the learner’s efforts to use and learn the language beyond the walls of the classroom. For this reason alone, settings for language learning beyond the classroom deserves much more attention in research than they have received hitherto.
The balance of published research suggests that language learners spend more time learning languages in classrooms than outside them. Whether this is an accurate reflection of current patterns of language learning worldwide is open to question. We suspect that it is not and that vast swathes of the territory for language learning beyond the classroom remain undiscovered by research. One of the interesting features to emerge from this volume, therefore, is the range of settings investigated, several of which, such as those that deal with language learning in the learner’s homes, have not been the subject of research to date. A second interesting feature to emerge has been the significance of teaching in settings beyond the classroom. The dichotomy between classroom and out-of-class learning is often paired with a dichotomy between instructed and non-instructed, or ‘naturalistic’ learning, which can also lead to an assumption that the classroom is a place for teaching and learning, while the world beyond the classroom is only a place for learning. The contributions to this volume suggest that this is a false assumption, and that much of the interest in language learning beyond the classroom lies in the distinctive modes of pedagogy that are found in different settings. These issues are addressed at a theoretical level in Benson’s opening chapter (Chapter 1), which offers an analytical framework for investigating language learning beyond the classroom, involving dimensions of location, formality, pedagogy and locus of control, and a distinction between settings and the modes of practice in learning and teaching that they support.
The chapters that follow report data-based studies of learning and teaching in a variety of settings, using a variety of theoretical perspectives and research methodologies. Chapters 2 to 5 each explore patterns of language learning beyond the classroom from four different, but related, theoretical perspectives. In an interview study of female English learners and their families in the United Arab Emirates, Palfreyman (Chapter 2) uses Social Networking theory to focus on the role of relationships with family and friends, arguing that interaction with ‘significant others’ is a crucial element in language learning beyond the classroom. Palfreyman’s study is particularly valuable in showing how access to target language resources,such as reading materials or native speakers, is likely to be mediated through learners’ family and friendship networks. Kuure (Chapter 3) uses Mediated Discourse Analysis to analyze case study data of a Finnish English learner’s out-of-school, technology-mediated language learning. Here the setting is both the home and the virtual gaming environments in which the learner spends much of his spare time. Kuure shows how online games and the activities around them provide important affordances for language learning, although language learning is not necessarily the objective, as a means of nurturing social relationships through collaborative problem-solving and networking among online peers. Kalaja an her research team (Chapter 4) report a study based on Vygotskyan theory and using qualitative analysis of open-ended questionnaire responses, which compares the different ways in which young Finns learn English and Swedish in and out of school. They find that while their school-based experiences are similar, their out-of-school experiences are very different, with students being much more active in exercising their agency in learning English – an illustration of how different modes of practice can develop in very similar settings, in this case for the learning of different languages. Menezes (Chapter 5) uses narrative data from a collection of written language learning histories, to explore the concept of ‘affordances’ in Ecological theory as a metaphor for understanding how Brazilian learners of English seek out opportunities for learning beyond the classroom. Arguing that affordances do not simply exist in the environment, but are constructed within the learners relationship with it, she examines how learners exercise their agency to find their own particular ‘niches’ and reconstruct their learning environments.
Chapters 6 to 8 look more closely at what is actually learned in language learning beyond the classroom. In an ethnographic study of two Spanish women who arrived in France refugees from the Spanish Civil War and learned French largely ‘naturalistically’, Divita (Chapter 6) makes the important point that, in non-institutional settings, ‘language acquisition’ might be better conceived as a process of becoming multilingual that unfolds in idiosyncratic ways and is shaped by experiences of the sociohistorical conditions in which it occurs. Adopting an approach that pays close attention to language data, Divita seeks evidence for this process in the two women’s use of language and, in particular, their use of code switching. Zimmerman’s (Chapter 7) study is also based on close analysis of language data, using Conversation Analysis techniques, consisting of interactions between Korean learners of Japanese and their homestay hosts. Zimmerman provides important evidence of ‘teaching and learning’ episodes in these interactions, which illustrate the sense in which pedagogy may always be present in language learning beyond the classroom. Sundqvist’s (Chapter 8) quantitative study directly tackles the question of whether Swedish students who engage in English learning language learning beyond the classroom actually learn more than those whose learning is limited to school. The results are interesting, if not entirely, predictable: she finds a strong correlation between time spent on out-of-class learning and oral proficiency/vocabulary size, as well as correlation between these factors and gender patterns in the types of activities, which meant that learning beyond the classroom had a greater impact on boys than girls.
Chapters 9-12 examine issues arising from institutional initiatives to provide opportunities for language learning beyond the classroom: a self-directed language learning programme for young people in France, a self-access English project for elderly people in Japan, a tandem learning project involving participants in Germany, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom, and home tutoring in English for migrants to New Zealand. Bailly’s (Chapter 9) project provided learners in a vocational high school in France with the opportunity to learn a language of their choice outside school, supported by advisory sessions, web-based learning materials and opportunities to talk with native speakers of the target languages. Evaluation of the project identified continuities between out-of-school language learning and the learners’ school, personal and social lives and three important conditions for success in self-directed language learning: motivation, learning resources and learning skills. Murray’s project (Chapter 10) was also designed to provide language learning opportunities to people who would not otherwise receive them, in this case elderly Japanese attending a university self-access language learning centre designed for use by the general public. His evaluation suggests that older language learners can especially benefit from the creation of social learning spaces offering possibilities for participation in a community of learners and pedagogical support. Stickler & Emke (Chapter 11) report on a tandem learning project for adult learners involving partners in four European countries. Using language data from the project, they investigate how formal, non-formal and informal learning processes support the acquisition of key competences, arguing that non-formal learning plays an important role in adult language learning. Lastly, Barkhuizen’s (Chapter 12) narrative interview study with home tutors of New Zealand migrants deals directly with language teaching beyond the classroom and in the homes of the learners. Focusing on the interpersonal, emotional dimensions of teaching, which come to the fore in one-to-one teaching in the learner’s home, he argues that the nature of the tutor-learner relationship is a major factor in the decision-making processes and practices of tutors and ultimately in the success of their learners.
A number of chapters highlight the role of teaching and, indeed, teachers in language learning beyond the classroom, which suggests that the distinction between classroom and out-of-class learning is a fuzzy one at best. In particular, language learning beyond the classroom is often initiated by teachers who work in educational institutions, and may even take place in these institutions or in off-campus locations. The important role that teachers often play is highlighted in Reinders’ concluding chapter (Chapter 13) which offers principles and practical advice on the design of language learning materials for use in a range of out-of-class settings.
Language learning and teaching beyond the classroom is not a new area of research, in the sense that studies have appeared in the literature from time to time over the years. This volume is timely, however, because the number of studies is increasing and, indeed, it is unlikely that our call for contributions would have received such a positive response 20 or even 10 years ago. In our view, this opens up the possibility of exploring language learning beyond the classroom as an area of inquiry with its own theoretical assumptions and issues of particular concern. Increased interest in out-of-class learning is prompted, in part, by a shift in the basic assumptions of second language acquisition research among many researchers, who no longer see acquisition in purely cognitive terms, but in terms of participation in communities and contexts of various kinds. This view has led to interest in qualitative studies of learners’ lives and often to the use of ethnographic or retrospective self-report data to investigate learning in out-of-class settings. The studies in this volume illustrate this trend, but are also diverse in their use of research methods, especially in the use of quantitative methods and close analysis of language data.
The key issues to emerge from the volume, which readers may wish to keep in mind as they read, include (1) how we might develop a more comprehensive view of the shared and distinctive features of diverse settings for language learning beyond the classroom, (2) the distinctive characteristics of learning processes and what learners actually learn in these settings, and (3) the roles and distinctive forms of teaching and pedagogy. These issues are likely to be most of interest to the growing number of educators who work with learners in non-conventional settings for language teaching and learning, but the possibility of developing a more general understanding of relationships between settings (including classroom settings), learning and pedagogy means that they are equally relevant to teachers who do most of their work in classrooms.
Tags: advising, autonomy, home tutoring, informal, materials development, non-formal, out-of-class, self-access
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Saturday, February 26th, 2011
This was published in Tesl-ej a few months ago. You can read the pdf here, or the text below.
Happy reading!
Extensive Listening Practice and Input Enhancement on the Mobile Phone
Hayo Reinders – Middlesex University, London
Min Young Cho – University of Hawaii
Encouraging Out-of-class Learning with Mobile Phones
The use of mobile phones and other mobile devices for educational purposes has received increasing attention in recent years (Chinnery, 2006). Teachers and materials designers are starting to explore the potential of ubiquitous, relatively cheap and increasingly powerful devices as potential sources for (supporting) learning and teaching. This is partly in response to learner expectations: already in 2003 a study (Thornton & Houser, 2003) found that young Japanese learners preferred to use their cellphone for almost everything, from emailing to reading books and this trend has continued, also outside Japan. A recent study in Taiwan showed that language learners enjoyed learning with their mobile phones, largely because they could learn when and where they wanted but also, interestingly, because they felt that the ‘bite-sized chunks’ of learning content (due to limitations such as screen size) were actually helping them to manage their learning (Chen, Hsieh & Kinshuk, 2008). There are other potential pedagogical advantages too. Mobile phones are taken everywhere and can therefore support situated learning (Kukulska-Hulme & Traxler 2005). For example, a second language speaker who needs to see a doctor could access relevant vocabulary and expressions while actually at the clinic. Situated learning theory holds that learning is more likely to take place when the information is contextually relevant to the learner and when it can be put to use immediately (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Related to this is the obvious fact that phones are social tools; they facilitate all forms of communication and collaboration between peers. In this way they support social and constructive activities, as supported by sociocultural theories of learning.
Another advantage of mobile devices is that they can help minimise the separation between the classroom and the out-of-school environment (Reinders & Lewis 2009). Applied linguistics agree on little when it comes to theories for explaining language learning but one thing seems clear; more exposure to the target language and more practice (‘time on task’) generally explain most of the variation in students’ success. Any tool then that can help increase students’ access to the language will be helpful for long-term success.
In Korea, as in most EFL settings, many students do not seem to take up opportunities for practice such as those afforded by the internet, TV, or magazines and there is a general reluctance to seek out ways of engaging with the English language outside the classroom. We were keen to encourage our learners to feel comfortable to be exposed to English and to feel in control of their independent learning experience. Using mobile phones to give students access to English, in particular for extensive listening practice, seemed a logical choice.
Extensive Listening through Audiobooks
Extensive listening is in many ways similar to extensive reading; students primarily focus on meaning rather than form, and are exposed to texts for relatively long stretches at a time. The purpose is to provide students with as much input to the target language as possible. Extensive listening has been shown to have considerable benefits for vocabulary development, accent recognition, and also students’ productive skills, in particular pronunciation and speaking (cf. Renandya & Farrell, 2010). There are also benefits to developing motivation. Many students report great satisfaction when they are fist able to understand a news broadcast or a TV programme, for example (Ryan, 1998). However, extensive listening practice is difficult to do in class for practical reasons, and the classroom may not be the best place if the aim is to get students into the habit of engaging with the language on their own and to encourage them to take ownership of their practice. It is therefore important to find ways for students to listen to music, presentations, radio programmes, or other spoken text, as frequently as possible.
One type of spoken text that has become very popular in recent years is the audiobook. These are books that are read out loud, usually by professional speakers. There are both abridged and unabridged books, and there are also many graded readers that come with cassettes or CDs (surprisingly, not (yet) as downloadable audiofiles). They have the obvious advantage that they encourage students to listen for meaning, over extended periods of time, and therefore have the same benefits that extensive reading of printed books brings. Books can be bought from vendors (Audible is the most popular site for authentic materials and most publishers that sell graded readers also have audiobooks available), but there is also an increasing number of sites that offer free audiobooks, notably Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org). Audiobooks are offered in thousands of different titles, both fiction and non-fiction, recent popular books and classics. It is therefore relatively easy to find titles that are interesting to learners, or relevant in the context of a particular course.
Input Enhancement
As important as it is to encourage extensive listening and listening for meaning, previous research has shown that drawing learners’ attention to more formal aspects of the language, such as a certain grammar point, in an otherwise meaning-oriented activity (such as a classroom activity, or when reading a book), can help learners to remember the grammar point better (see Norris & Ortega 2000 for a meta study). We were therefore interested to encourage our learners to pay attention to both form and meaning, without interrupting their listening, for example by giving them specific grammar instruction. One way to do this is through input enhancement. This is a technique that simply involves manipulating the L2 input in some way that makes it more likely that learners will notice certain parts of it. For example, in a written text, each occurrence of the past perfect could be underlined, or each indefinite article bolded. There are many studies of input enhancement that show that it has the potential to get learners to pay attention to form while keeping their main focus on the meaning of the input.
Input enhancement is almost always done in writing. In our case we used it for listening by digitally manipulating the audiobook and by slightly raising the volume of each occurrence of the passive and adverb placement in the book. Below we describe how we did this.
How We Did It
Participants in this project were 79 freshman students enrolled on a business administration programme at a University in Korea. All of them were taking a compulsory course in ‘Academic English for Business Majors’, which focuses on the development of communicative skills. Most of the students in the class were at the intermediate level. Their main areas of weakness were in listening and speaking.
Step 1 - Selection of the Listening Materials
We chose listening materials based on the level of the recording and the interests of our students. Extensive listening is quite demanding as learners cannot (or at least are not supposed to) control the speed of the recording, nor go back to a previous section. Also, for most of our Korean learners, listening to an entire book would be a new experience. Our priority was thus to select a title that was somewhat challenging but easy and interesting enough to encourage learners to persist and enjoy listening to it. After examining vocabulary levels, average sentence complexity, and book length, we selected a popular story book title called ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley, a relatively short mystery book about a monster created by a man and how destructive it can be without being loved . The text consists of both narration and conversations, and is only two hours long. Also, it was level 3 and thus considered low-intermediate. This seemed ideal for our purposes.
Step 2 – Identifying a Target Grammar Structure
Once we had selected the book we decided on one grammatical structure that we wanted to highlight. We decided on passives because we knew these to be somewhat familiar to our students, but not fully developed. Most students are aware of passives but because of a lack of exposure to authentic input, are not familiar with recognising them in longer stretches of text, or in spoken contexts. We were interested in the students noticing and learning the difference between:
The young man was exhausted by the events of the week.
*The young man exhausted by the events of the week.
There were a total of 55 passives in the text.
Step 3 - Digital Input Enhancement
Next, we had to make the grammatical feature stand out from the surrounding text in some way. We decided to artificially either slow down each occurrence of our target structure by about 25 % or put pauses before and after each occurence. This made the target items noticeably salient but not so much so that it would not interrupt their listening experience.
We extracted the files and converted them to mp3 files using a free programme called CDex. Then, the mp3 files were imported into Audacity, a free audio editing programme, and target items were enhanced (either slowed down or surrounded/inserted by pauses).
Step 4 – Transferring the Listening Materials
We uploaded the files to the University’s course management system and asked students to download the materials to their mobile phones. For language teachers who do not have access to an institutional course management system, a free alternative is Moodle, or free web services such as Google apps for education.
Step 5 – Instructions to the Students
Extensive listening is not familiar practice for most EFL learners, certainly not in Korea, so it was important for us to explain to students what the purpose and benefits of the exercise were. We told students to ‘simply enjoy the story’ and not to worry about understanding every word or expression, and to ‘just keep listening’. We told them not to use dictionaries or grammar books, but to listen to the story as they would listen to a story in Korean. We also told them not to listen to the book more than once or to rewind while listening. To help them get started we gave them some background information to the story and some information about the author. We told students that the book would be discussed in class and that therefore everyone had to listen to it. We gave students one week to complete the book. They were also told that the book would be talked about in class and that they would be asked about the content of the book on their final exam. We did not tell them about the grammar points we had enhanced. These grammar points were not covered in class in that week (or in the weeks prior).
How Did It Go?
One important goal for us was to motivate students to engage in extensive listening and to give them more exposure to English outside the classroom. In this we were generally successful. Most students were enthusiastic about using their mobile phones for learning and were excited about being given practice materials that they could use in their own time and outside the classroom. Some students specifically mentioned that they did not feel the same pressure as they often experienced in class, or the same expectations as with ‘regular’ homework. The fact that they were told to simply listen to the story and did not have to memorise vocabulary or study the content for a test increased their enjoyment. Others said that it was an exciting experience as they felt like they could easily access to English materials while waiting for friends or travelling on the bus; time that would otherwise have been lost. Students also liked having materials available to them on their mobile phones, as they carry these with them at all times and are able to control when and for how long to listen to the materials. As a result, we suspect that this type of activity can have longer-term positive benefits, both by increasing the chances of students accessing English materials, and also by lowering students’ affective filter and increasing their motivation.
Not all students were positive though. Some said that they found the changes in tempo distracting and one student even thought there was a technical problem with the recording. Unlike more common forms of input enhancement, such as bolding or underlining, perhaps students need to be told to pay attention to those parts of the text that are slower or separated by pauses.
Our second purpose was to encourage students to focus not only on meaning but also on form, in our case passives. Our intention was to empirically investigate whether they had noticed and acquired these features simply by listening to the story. However, we encountered several problems. Firstly, it was clear that some students had in fact listened to the book more than once. Although we were pleased with their enthusiasm, this did make it impossible to make comparisons between student as they had not received the same amount of exposure as other students. Finally, some students had already read the book before , making it difficult to determine the effect of listening to the book. As a result, we are unable at this point to say whether the input enhancement had any effect. We intend to conduct a more controlled study in the next course.
Lessons Learned
The use of mobile phones for extensive listening practice, seems to hold promise, as does the use of input enhancement in spoken texts. However, there are some points to keep in mind when considering the use of either the tool or the technique. In our first attempt at using audiobooks we made a number of mistakes, the most important of which was that we did not link the listening activity closely enough with what happened in class. Therefore, some students did not complete listening to the books. Perhaps they saw the activity as less important, because it was not clearly tied in with the rest of the curriculum. It is important to, at least initially, treat the listening activity as any other type of learning task: it needs clear instructions, a purpose, and a feedback mechanism. Students will need to understand what the purpose of the activity is (sometimes students stop and look up every word they don’t know) and perhaps show them some strategies for extensive listening first. You could ask students to do something after listening to the book, such as post a review on a publisher’s website, or (if their writing skills are not yet advanced), a rating on a site like Amazon. You could build on the story in class and ask students to tell each other what they thought of it. Most importantly, students probably will need to feel that they are supported in some way. This also applied to the use of input enhancement; without instructions on, or at least familiarity with, the use of volume to make certain grammar points stand out in the spoken text, some students were confused, or even distracted.
There are some other potential downsides to using mobile technology. Although this does not apply in Korea, in many countries not everyone has a mobile phone and even where students do, they may not want to use it for school purposes. It is important to consider issues of access to the technology, ease of use and privacy before requiring students to use their phones for educational purposes.
Conclusion: Using Mobile Phones for Language Teaching
Activities such as the one we outlined above are based on research in second language acquisition and, we believe, are pedagogically sound, but have the added benefit of using a tool that our learners are intimately familiar with. Mobile technology has real potential to extend learning opportunities outside the classroom and give learners more control. In the next course we aim to create more extensive activities around the books. We also aim to investigate empirically the effects of the extensive listening and the input enhancement technique, and to study other types of input enhancement, such as for example increasing the volume. For now, we are excited about the possibility of mobile learning and plan to include it in our teaching more often. Based on our first experiences, we are convinced our students will appreciate this.
Referenes
Chen, N., Hsieh, S., & Kinshuk. (2008). Effects of short-term memory and content representation type on mobile language learning. Language learning & technology, 12(3), 93-113.
Chinnery, G. (2006). Going to the MALL: Mobile Assisted Language Learning. Language learning & technology, 10(1), 9-16.
Kukulska-Hulme, A., & Traxler, J. (2005). Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Educators and Trainers (1st Ed.). Routledge.
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
Norris, J. M., & Ortega, L. (2000). Effectiveness of L2 instruction: A research synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis. Language Learning, 50, 417-528.
Reinders, H. and Lewis, M. 2009 ‘Podquests. Language games on the go.’ In: Andreade, M. (Ed.), Language Games. Alexandria: TESOL. (Series: Classroom Practice).
Ryan, S. (1998). The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. IV, No. 11.
Thornton P. & Houser C. (2003) Using mobile web and video phones in English language teaching: projects with Japanese college students. In Directions in CALL: Experience, Experiments & Evaluation, B. Morrison, C. Green & G. Motteram (Eds.), pp. 207–224. English Language Centre, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong.
Renandya. W. & Farrell. T. (2010) ‘Teacher, the tape is too fast!’ Extensive listening in ELT, ELT journal (forthcoming)
Useful Sites
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
Free audio editing software
www.gutenberg.org
Thousands of free e-books and an increasing number of free audiobooks.
www.audible.com
A commercial site offering thousands of audibooks read by professional readers.
www.moodle.org
Free course management software
Tags: articles, autonomy, extensive listening, mall, mobile, out-of-class
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Wednesday, February 9th, 2011
Digital Education: Opportunities for Social Collaboration (2011) published this week.
Edited by Michael Thomas, University of Central Lancashire, UK
Palgrave Macmillan
A volume in the Palgrave Macmillan series, “Digital Education and Learning” (series editors, Michael Thomas, James Paul Gee, Marc Prensky)
Webpage: http://us.macmillan.com/digitaleducation
“This volume is at once a wake-up call to 21st-century educators and an intriguing glimpse at possible futures for teaching and learning with digital technologies.” –Kenneth Reeder, Professor, Department of Language and Literacy Education, the University of British Columbia
“Digital Education introduces a healthy corrective to exaggerated techno-optimism or techno-pessimism. The thought-provoking edited collection represents one of the first serious attempts to examine how Web 2.0 may not only improve but also help transform education. Contributors to the book bring a wide range of social theory to the task … And they apply this theory to examining incipient efforts to deploy Web 2.0 tools in a broad range of formal educational settings, especially at the tertiary and adult level. Chapters from and about Australia, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, the UK, the US, and Venezuela result in a diverse international discussion that is not common in educational research, and this breadth helps us to better understand the relationship of theory to practice. … The contributions in this book represent an especially broad and thoughtful overview of where we have come on these issues and where we stand today.” –Professor Mark Warschauer, University of California, Irvine
Tags: call, collaboration, interaction, literacy, out-of-class
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Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010
Learning through tasks, especially in an authentic environment, such as the workplace, is good practice, right? A recent article by Karin Sandwall from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden challenges this assumption through a case study of a recent immigrant placed in a preschool for the purpose of learning Swedish while in a work environment. ‘The question is whether [she] actually perceived the affordances and interactiosn at hand [in the workplace] as learning potentials and whether the preschool work placement actually promotes language acquisistion’ (p. 558). Her article shows that, although the workplace was a place for practice and for meaning-making, it was not sufficient to encourage and sustain language acquisition. One reason was the limited range of input (which proved to be very repetitive) and another the lack of feedback. There was also a mismatch between the workplace and the participant’s personal goals, further reducing the perceived benefit of the placement. Sandwall draws a number of important implications from these results, in particular her suggestions for linking the workplace affordances with explicit language learning goals (see figure below). For anyone interested in out-of-class-learning and work-based learning, I recommend this article.
Sandwell, K. (2010). ‘‘I Learn More at School’’: A Critical Perspective on Workplace-Related Second Language Learning In and Out of School. TESOL QUARTERLY, 44(3), p. 542-574.
This article presents a case study of a student involved in language learning
at a work placement, as part of the basic Swedish language programme for
adult immigrants, Svenska fo ¨r invandrare (Sfi), in Gothenburg, Sweden.
In accordance with the predominant economic agenda, this system is
assumed to accelerate labour market entrance as well as language
acquisition for the newcomer. The article describes some macrolevel
aspects important for the outcome of the work placement and discusses
some tensions in the system, before exploring an ecological framework
and the concept of affordances as a tool for analysing the agents’ situated
interactions at the work placement. The analysis shows that affordances
offered by the environment at the work placement were explored as
meaning-making material and as action potentials but not as learning
opportunities, because the student’s activities were limited to tasks and she
had insufficient support for evaluating her work placement interactions.
The article suggests some basic ecological principles for the reframing of
the Sfi programme, built on affordance-focusing tasks that enable students
to learn from discourse practices that they come across at workplaces and
other out-of-classroom contexts.
Tags: out-of-class, work-based learning
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Friday, October 15th, 2010
I just came across this report on the role of technology in non-formal education. This brings together two of my interest: the ubiquity and importance of learning outside the classroom, and the role of technology in supporting this. You can download the report here, from the excellent Zunia website.
Here is an abstract of the report:
This publication investigates and analyzes examples of how governments and individuals leverage ICTs when planning for and providing Non Formal Education (NFE). This style of learning offers previously excluded adults and children the opportunity to reach educational goals outside of a traditional classroom setting. This essay examines current practices as a way to realize the ambition of truly living in a “knowledge society.”
Tags: informal, non-formal, out-of-class, publications
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Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
I am very excited to announce a new book series for Palgrave Macmillan on ‘New Language Learning and Teaching Environments’, dedicated to recent developments in learner-centred approaches and the impact of technology on learning and teaching inside and outside the language classroom I am inviting submissions for full-length manuscripts and edited books.
New Language Language Learning and Teaching Environments offers a multidisciplinary forum for presenting and investigating the latest developments in language education, taking a pedagogic approach with a clear focus on the learner, and with clear implications for both researchers and language practitioners.
Aims and scope:
• To publish cutting-edge research into current developments and innovation in language learning and teaching practice.
• To publish applied accounts of the ways in which these developments impact on current and future language education.
• To encourage dissemination and cross-fertilisation of policies and practice relating to learner-centred pedagogies for language learning and teaching in new learning environments.
• To disseminate research and best practice in out-of-class and informal language learning.
Work on New Language Environments encompasses research (both theoretical and applied) and development in areas as diverse as (and not limited to):
Virtual learning environments
Learner Autonomy
Self-access centres
Blended learning
Distance learning
Self-directed learning
Content and Language Integrated Learning
Work-based learning
Community initiatives
Self-study
Mobile learning
New Literacies
Situated learning
Language Support
Language Advising and Counselling
You can find out more about the series or learn how to submit a proposal here.
Tags: autonomy, informal, lifelong, mobile, mobile learning, out-of-class, publications, self-access
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Thursday, May 6th, 2010
Chen, Hsieh & Kinshuk’s study (2008) on the use of mobile phones for vocabulary learning is an example of an increasing (but still relatively small) number of studies that investigate mobile learning. I sometimes use it in my MA classes as an example of research that does not actually investigate defining aspects of the core constructs of the study; in this case, participants were given exercises to complete on their mobile phones in a lab (therefore completely obviating the potential benefits of mobility that phones bring) that did not in any way take advantage of the medium (the exercises could have been presented on a computer, or even in a book). However, this does not mean that the study is not interesting. One of the pedagogically relevant findings of the study was that participants themselves said they enjoyed using their phones. This may have simply been a novelty effect (which was not controlled for), but one of the reasons they gave was that they felt they learned better with the ‘bite-sized chunks’ of learning content that a cellphone necessarily is limited to presenting (due to limitations such as screen size).
Learners felt phones were useful because they could be used anywhere and anytime (as one would expect) but also because the ‘mini-lessons’ fitted in better with their own preferred ways of learning. I am very interested in out-of-class learning, and it seems to me that this is an important finding for materials developers and those interested in supporting learning outside the classroom; the presentation (including amount, format, portability) of learning materials is likely to have a big impact on its actual use. As much as applied linguists debate the various benefits or otherwise of various types of instruction, surely anything that increases (or decreases) the amount of exposure to input or amount of practice learners get should be a prime consideration. A lot has been written about the supposedly different ways in which young learners now interact with information. Without entering that discussion, it is clear to me that mobile technologies offer, at the very least, alternative, or perhaps more accurately, complementary means of engaging with learning content. The nature of out-of-class learning is that it is less structured and less consistent, and mobile technologies seem promising in supporting the type of incremental learning that this entails. We need more research investigating how learners interact with and - crucually - learn from this.
Chen, N., Hsieh, S., & Kinshuk. (2008). Effects of short-term memory and content representation type on mobile language learning. Language learning & technology, 12(3), 93-113.
Tags: informal learning, mall, methodology, mobile learning, out-of-class
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Thursday, February 25th, 2010
Pia Sundqvist recently completed her PhD study on how learners acquire a foreign (not second!) language outside the school. As one of the few evidence-based of such studies, I highly recommend anyone interested in learner autonomy, strategies and motivation to read this. It is available for free download here.
The abstract:
he present study examines possible effects of extramural English (EE) on oral proficiency (OP) and vocabulary (VOC). The study is based on data collected from Swedish learners of ESL in grade 9 (aged 15-16; N=80; 36 boys, 44 girls) over a period of one year. EE was defined as linguistic activities that learners engage in outside the classroom in their spare time. EE was measured with the help of a questionnaire and two language diaries, each covering one week. In the diaries, the learners recorded how much time they had spent on seven given EE activities (reading books, reading newspapers/magazines, watching TV, watching films, surfing the Internet, playing video games, listening to music). There was also an open category. Speech data were collected with the help of five interactional speaking tests; learners were in random dyads on each occasion. Each student performance was assessed by three raters with the help of a profile scheme, resulting in an overall grade. Based on these grades from the tests, a mean grade for OP (the OP grade) was calculated for each student. OP was defined as the learner’s ability to speak and use the target language in actual communication with an interlocutor. Learners’ VOC was measured with an index variable based on the scores on two written vocabulary tests. For a selection of ten learners, additional analyses were made of oral fluency and the use of advanced vocabulary in speech. A mixed methods research design was used, but the lion’s share of data was analyzed using inferential statistics.
Results showed that the total amount of time spent on EE correlated positively and significantly (p < .01) both with learners’ level of OP and size of VOC, but that the correlation between EE and VOC was stronger and more straightforward than the one between EE and OP. The conclusion drawn was that although EE impacts both OP and VOC, the causal relationship is more salient in the case of VOC. Results also showed that some activities were more important than others for OP and VOC respectively; i.e., the type of EE activity mattered. EE activities that required learners to be more productive and rely on their language skills (video games, the Internet, reading) had a greater impact on OP and VOC than activities where learners could remain fairly passive (music, TV, films). An important gender difference was identified. Boys spent significantly more time on productive EE activities than girls; therefore, EE had a greater impact on OP and VOC for boys than for girls. Four background variables were also studied. The conclusion was that EE is an independent variable and a possible path to progress in English for any learner, regardless of his or her socioeconomic background.
Tags: autonomy, motivation, out-of-class, publications, strategies
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Saturday, February 13th, 2010
Beyond the Classroom by Rosalyn Black is an interesting book published by the Australian Council for Educational Research in 2008. It talks about the ways in which education can be extended beyond the school and into the community, and how the community itself plays a crucial role in its children’s education. ‘…tinkering around the edges of schooling will not provide solutions to the widening gaps in education and life outcomes that limit opportunities…we need new models of schooling that recognise the future of children and young people is the responsibility of the whole community, and which form the basis of a social alliance for all young people to tak an active – if not a leading- role in their community’ (p. 2). Wise words indeed. The book then goes on to describe different types of community networks and ways of making them work. An interesting read, especially for those involved in education at the primary and secondary school levels.
Tags: informal learning, out-of-class
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Thursday, September 24th, 2009
A very neat application was just realised by Ipadio for use with any cellphone. Essentially this lets you dial a number in the UK (or if you have an Iphone or Android phone you can use a dedicated app) and record yourself, a call or a presentation (if you have a mic). It then automatically uploads that to an audioblog, so it’s ‘live-to-web’. It also includes voice-to-text transcription and it will geo-tag your post so that people can see where the recording was made. Needless to say this would be wonderful for a range of uses, such as data collection (interviews, recordings of classroom interactions, personal reflections/portolios), and also teaching (get students to do interviews or be ‘journalists’ and report on events outside the classroom; they then read or listen to eachother’s posts and comment on them). Has anyone usd this yet for language teaching or research purposes?
Tags: blogging, informal, mall, mobile, out-of-class, phlogs
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