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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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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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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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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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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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August 29th, 2009
The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills in the UK commissioned and published (in March this year) a white paper on ‘The Learning Revolution’. The paper is about the importance of informal learning in the UK and suggests ways in which the government, local bodies, institutions and individuals can support access to and make better use of informal learning opportunities. For anyone interested in learning outside the classroom, this is compulsory reading. It is frank in saying it is intended as the ’start of the journey’ and I do not find as much ground-breaking ideas in it as I would have liked (anyone care to join its suggested ‘Festival of Learning’?), but there are certainly very many excellent suggestions. At least in the Uk there is an awereness of the importance of the issues and a commitment to spending GBP210 million on it (although unfortunately ‘only’ 20 million of that goes to its ‘transformation fund’ which is where one would hope to find the potential for real change).
You can download the paper here.
Tags: informal learning, out-of-class
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August 5th, 2009
As someone who emphases the benefits of ‘out-of-class learning’ I have a great interest in studies on the effects of study abroad programmes. Common sense would say that such programmes cannot but be beneficial. It was interesting then to attend Robert de Keyser’s presentation last year at AILA as part of a symposium led by Jim Coleman where he reported on a study that showed no benefit. At the time I had some issues with the study, one of them being that the study abroad stay was rather short. To my mind, and in my own experience, there is a considerable ‘gestation period’ before a cascade of progress is set in motion. I vividly remember my study abroad stay in Cairo in the 90s. I had been studying up to 15 hours a day trying to develop my Arabic proficiency with not entirely convincing results. I had made progress at the grammatical and vocabulary level but the different pieces of the puzzle just hadn’t fallen in place; it was all discrete bits. Then one night as I was half-asleep I physically felt something happening inside me, not just in my head but in my whole body, and I knew that something important had changed. To say that the next morning I was able to speak Arabic would be a grave exaggeration but from that day the language (insofar as I had learned about it up to that point) had become internalised and I made tremendous progress.
It was interesting then to read a recent study by Àngels Llanes and Carmen Muñoz who, in contrast to de Keyser, did find a benefit of short-term study abroad programmes. This debate has not been settled yet, but it is certainly an interesting additional data point.
Here is the abstract of the study:
Given that summer abroad programs are becoming more and more popular, the aim of the present study is to find out whether foreign language proficiency can be significantly improved during a summer stay of 3–4 weeks. The present study examines learners’ linguistic gains through oral fluency and accuracy measures as well as a listening comprehension task. Learners’ oral fluency is examined in terms of syllables per minute, other language word ratio, filled pauses per minute, silent pauses per minute, articulation rate, and length of the longest fluent run. The accuracy of learners’ oral production is measured by means of the ratio of error free clauses and the average number of errors per clause. In addition, learners’ errors are classified into 4 categories: morphological errors, syntactic errors, lexical errors and covered errors. Results reveal that these short stays do indeed producfe significant gains on most measures, and that proficiency level strongly affects the intensity of learners’ progress.
System 37, 3. (2009).
doi:10.1016/j.system.2009.03.001
Tags: out-of-class, study abroad
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June 30th, 2009
Mobile phones are widely used by people, so why are researchers not making more use of them to collect data? In an upcoming project in Hong Kong I hope to get participants to record language learning experiences outside the classroom - and what better way to do this than by using a tool that each of them carries around all the time anyway?
This article talks about the technical aspects of mobile data collection and is a good read if you think you may be interested in this area. Recommended!
Please drop me a line if you are using mobile data collection - I’d love to hear about your experiences. Maybe we can exchange tips.
Tags: data collection, informal learning, mall, methodology, mobile, out-of-class, research
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May 23rd, 2009
In a recent interview published on the Association for Learning Technology website, Sugata Mitra tells about of some of his work in education, especially with poor children in India. Here are some of the amazing conclusions from his research - which just goes to show the power of children to learn, and the power of learning outside the classroom with technology:
“We needed to know how far does it go? We could not understand how this happened. It took us five years of measurements across the Indian subcontinent to verify the results amongst 40,000 of the world’s poorest children. We found that children given unsupervised access to computers mainly located in a government school playground or in similar safe, public areas, would become:
1. computer literate – in their own way, with their own vocabulary, but highly effective nevertheless;
2. better at maths and English – I do not know why, maybe because they learn to analyze and solve problems in groups;
3. more social and cooperative – because they learn that knowledge, unlike material objects, grows with sharing;
4. more interested in school – if the computer is near or in the school premises;
5. less likely to drop out of school – because they want access to their computer;
6. less interested in petty crime – mostly because all their free time is spent at the computer;
7. viewed with more local goodwill – parents and others like the idea that the child is learning something and not creating trouble at home.
The measured outcomes showed:
* acquisition of functional computer literacy;
* improvement in academic performance;
* increase in confidence and self esteem;
* increased collaborative behaviour.
amazing, isn’t it?
Tags: call, informal learning, out-of-class, self-directed learning
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April 13th, 2009
Every once in a while I like to pick up a copy of Ivan Illich his book ‘Deschooling Society’, first published in 1970. as someone who advocates learning outside the educational system, there is a lots of inspiration to be found in this seminal work (if you ignore the 1970s ‘engaged’ lingo). If you don’t know this book, I recommend you have a look at it. Here is a quote I’d like to share with you that and I like:
‘A second major illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning as a result of teaching. Teaching, it is true, may contribute to certain kinds of learning under certain circumstances. But most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in school only in so far as the school, and a few rich countries, has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives. M Most learning happens casually, and even most intentional learning is not the result of programmed instruction. Normal children learn their first language casualty, although faster if their parents pay attention to them. Most people who learn a second Lang which well do so as a result of all circumstances and not all sequential teaching. They go to live with their grandparents, they travel, or they fall in love with a foreigner. Fluency in reading is also more often than not a result of such extracurricular activities. Most people who read widely, and with pleasure, merely believe that have learned to do so in school; when challenged, they easily discard this illusion’ (p. 20).
Here’s another one: ‘the very existence of obligatory schools divides any society into two realms: some time spans and processes and treatments and professions are ‘academic’ or ‘pedagogic’, and others are not. The power of school thus to divide social reality has no boundaries: education becomes unworldly and the world becomes non-educational.’ (p.31)
Tags: informal learning, out-of-class, quotes
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