Readings, March 9th

Re. Levy, Chapter 4.

In learning about all of the different forms of CMC interaction, it often occurs to me that it is easy to think of ways in which it can provide learning opportunites for language learners who are already highly-motivated and highly-independent learners. It is a lot harder to think of ways that the forms of CMC discussed in this chapter (synchornous and asynchronous text communication) could actually be used effectively for normal students in normal classroom environments.

If students can be motivated to keep up with it regularly, I think that chat can be a good way to practice for students at any level of proficiency. E-mail can work best for students wanting to improve formal writing skills.

But I think the bigger question is how students can be motivated to actually use these forms of CMC regularly enough to get meaningful practice.

I text-chat in my 3rd language (Mandarin) now and then, but not specifically for the purpose of practicing reading and writing. However, I can definitely see how it could be a very helpful language-learning activity if done regularly enough.

One thing I like about the text-chat format is that it is easy to save a copy of the text for later reference (like checking unfamiliar words or phrases in the dictionary). Also, the usage is much more like spoken language than other things I might try to use for reading practice.

But I think for it to effective and enjoyable in the long-term, one would have to be pretty lucky in finding a language-learner who is at a similar level of proficiency, and who has a similar level of motivation, so that both people are willing to make a regular thing of it.

Re. Sauro, (2009).

This study undertook to find out whether recasting or metalinguistic prompting was the more effective form of corrective feedback given via synchronous text chat (SCMC).

The relative effectiveness of these two forms of corrective feedback on students' production of grammatical writing was evaluated indirectly, by measuring the students’ (receptive) skills on “acceptability judgement” tests.

The article also suggests that corrective feedback given via SCMC is substantially different in a number of ways than feedback given face-to-face, and refers to previous comparison studies involving face-to-face and CMC feedback. Some of the limitations identified with face-to-face feedback are: more time stress, more ambiguity, and more dependence on short-term memory capability. Text chat gives learners more time to consider their response, and even to look back several times at the textual corrective feedback. For these reasons, it is suggested that SCMC feedback can be more effective than face-to-face feedback in terms of “elicted uptake”: "It is these limitations of what are otherwise effective properties of recasts delivered during face-to-face interaction that put SCMC in the form of text chat at an advantage for encoding recats in ways that facilitate cognitive comparison." (page 100)

Re. Implications:

I suppose these findings can have some practical value for designers of CALL software, but I am having trouble envisioning just what sort of interactive activities that might involve.

That’s because in this study, a single student is interacting with a single instructor. And I think we already know that one-on-one tutoring can be an effective means of language learning, whether that is done face-to-face or via CMC.

The study shows that corrective feedback which includes metalinguistic prompts is more effective that recasts, but I don't see what significance that finding might have in conventional ESL/EFL educational settings, beyond the significance for instructors who actually engage in one-on-one syncronous text chat with their students. I don't know, but I doubt that there are very many ESL/EFL instructors who are able to spend much time doing that.

I guess what I don’t see is how this interaction model (and the finding from this particular study) could be adapted to something on a larger scale than just one-on-one.

Could a software program be written to give this kind of feedback automatically, so that a student is interacting with a computer instead of with a real person? Or could one instructor give this kind of feedback to a dozen students simultaneously?