I thought the Pelletieri article was interesting on the synchronous NBC software used for L2 learning. I have "chatted" several times, but never with a program like YTalk, which has a split screen and the student can see the other person typing. I think this is more beneficial than the average "chat" program, because it allows for students to see the mistakes that their peers make and how they correct them. For instance, I always re-write what I am typing during a chatroom conversation. I begin to type a thought out, but then realize that there is a better way to say it that will communicate my message. I think it would be beneficial for students to see this process as they watch each other type.
I definitely think that synchronous NBC task-based activities should be used in the classroom if students have access to computers; however, I did not like examples that the article provided. I felt that they were not very authentic and meaningful to the student. For example, how many times do we each have a set of pictures and have to determine which pictures are similar. In fact, I think I would find this hard and tedious. Instead, I think the task should be relevant to the students' interest and needs.
There are 2 issues that need be addressed in Pellettieri's article.
#1 - if the teacher is going to move conversation to an online chat environment, the teacher really needs to ensure that there is a genuine purpose for discussion and not some busy-work classroom exercise (as in some tasks). The teacher needs to brainstorm on what topics might actual arise in the environment, thereby making the experience more realistic and practical.
#2 - I like how the teacher has integrated SCMC into the classroom, but I'm wondering if the teacher isn't using it in its natural form. Meaning, the conversation that was produced was very formal for chat. Chat has evolved into a much more laxed and abbreviated form of communication. So, in trying to converse in the chatroom as these studies indicated, are we not using chat in an authentic way? Just a thought. I guess if one was to implement into the classroom, it would need to be made real clear in the beginning - what types of expectations the teacher has and how they want the students to converse in - formal / informal.
I found the Pelletieri article to be quite interesting and I too have used synchronous chat programs to converse with international friends who are English learners. Until taking CALL 487 and reading this article, I had never considered using chat clients as a tool for English instruction; although, in retrospect of my conversations with my friends in Korea, I can totally see how useful of a tool it can be if goals and tasks are implemented. Ytalk seemed like quite a useful chat program for students to use since it enabled the students/teachers to view all keyed items including backstrokes and deleted items. This would allow teachers (and students) to see when and how errors were corrected or not corrected. In the upcoming months I hope to search and find a similar up-to-date chat program which has similar functions to the dated Ytalk program. When utilizing chat programs, as determined in class, a specific task with clear goals is essential in order for that task to be meaningful and focused. As Pelletieri article illustrated, this is not always an easy task; the teacher has to display creativity in order to make the task meaningful, authentic, and interesting. For instance, comparing pictures via google talk does not constitute as interesting, meaningful, nor authentic. Conversely, talking about potential roommates may be more of an enriching activity. Another possibility that crossed my mind calls for students to enter various chat rooms where they have to find out information about some of the participants in the chat room by asking and answering questions. Obviously, this type of task needs further defining and more specific goals, but this may be an activity that enables NNS to engage with NS online within chat environments.
I think that a lot of the CALL programs we have talked about this semester raise questions on how they can be appropriately assigned as tasks, especially those that allow for limited instructor involvement. Something that Pelletieri's article made me think of was that if these programs can be properly introduced as interesting, authentic, and interactive activities, that even if the tasks themselves cannot be as closely monitored as we might like, that some of these things will be used by students independently outside of class. If students felt that improving their chatting ability could connect them to chatting with native speakers, they might be motivated to work hard at it together. One possible suggestion for higher instructor involvement while they used the programs would be to inform students that their chatting with classmates would be in preparation for a scheduled chat with the instructor. Of course, this would be time-consuming and require a bit of planning, but if this was something that teachers felt students could use in a relevant and meaningful way on their own, it may be worth looking into. The scheduled chats could be set up like conferences or oral interviews. Informing students of the resources available to aid in their language learning and equipping them with the tools to effectively use them is, in a way, a task in itself.
In response to the readings, I feel that task complexity is an important consideration for my students as I use CMC in the classroom. I want to ensure that students are being challenged, and that tasks should be convergent. The information gap helps the students to communicate, and negotiate meaning. However, if the task is too difficult, students will spend too much time negotiating meaning, and they may not achieve the goal of the task. As an instructor, it is important to provide students with pre-exercise activities that provide vocabulary, and useful phrases, so the students will have some preparation before being required to complete a task-based activity.
CMC is also a great tool to use because it induces "noticing" of grammatical forms, and lexicon. When students communicate using CMC, and negotiate meaning in a task-based activity, they, in essence, are peer editing. Pelletieri's study highlighted that there was a significant achievement of target forms, through corrective feedback, even in the absence of a native speaker. I feel that CMC is important in providing implicit and explicit corrective feedback, as they are important compenents of SLA.
Heidi, first of all, props for doing the Robinson article. I like your idea about more teacher involvement by making the chatting preparation for a "test" chat session with the instructor. Overall, I really like the tasks used in the Pellitieri article. As we mentioned in class, they didn't really resemble authentic "chatting" material but they were decent activities. Any activity where you are able to take away almost all non-verbal elements of communication is (probably) worthwhile. The lack of non-verbal (and verbal, I guess) signals really puts pressure, hopefully positively, on their language. Also, if your students have different native languages, then any chat between them in and out of class would have to be in the target language. I have seen very positive results from the chat function on Facebook. (I'll put this on that page as well.) Last year, I taught an oral skills class based on American Pop Culture. We had a group on facebook and everyone was required to join. Now, over a year later, classmates are still writing on each other's walls in English (and some German) and they make use of the chat function whenever we are both on facebook. Some of their friends have even friended me which has made for some interesting chatting. This brings me to my one concern with chatting. If we want students to be motivated to communicate with native speakers via chatting, how are they going to find these native speakers? I'm sure there are people out there who would be willing but do we feel safe as teachers encouraging students to enter that possibly frightening scene? Otherwise, I'm all for chatting being used in class for tasks such as those used by Pelletieri.
Pellettieri’s article raises several issues about what kind of tasks should be used in network-based communication and how to actually implement these tasks. Even in our class, heated discussion was generated over the nature and effectiveness of the types of activities used in the study. The tasks were geared towards eliciting students to generate oral-like negotiation that is beneficial to overall language learning and the results seemed to be more or less positive. I could see all of the activities used in this study performed orally in the classroom, and this leads me to wonder if the classroom is a better place for them to stay and if bringing them into an online environment is not entirely productive. Personally, I believe NBC exercises and communication need not try to emulate oral exercises and communication. Online textual interaction is a genre within itself these days, and students may benefit from practicing the types of tasks that are actually performed online in their social lives and in the business world. For instance, scheduling a date/meeting, describing a website and sharing a link, engaging in brief discussions, and exchanging different varieties of personal information are all very REAL social activities people participate in online. Describing a process, troubleshooting a problem, acquiring personal and professional information, and making transactions are all tasks that all occur in everyday business interactions. Perhaps designing tasks around these sorts of activities that are already situated in an online environment will make them more relevant and ultimately more beneficial to students. Also, requiring students to research on the web and use external websites in their interactions may be a way to merge skills and generate richer classroom activities.
Ryan brings up a good point, and though I hadn't really considered it before reading the articles, I agree with him that class NBC activities should embrace the sorts of online tasks that students might be required to do in their everyday lives rather than attempting to emulate oral communication, which is best practiced as actual oral communication.
One of the interesting aspects of synchronous NBC is that in a sense it falls somewhere in between oral and written communication, encompassing aspects of both. Learners (or anyone communicating with synchronous NBC) have a little more time to respond than if they were actually speaking, which normally requires an immediate response, and, in many cases, can compose, revise, and self-correct what they want to say before their communication partner sees it.
Programs like Ytalk, which seem very useful, allow the communication partner to see what the other is typing as he types. The partner can see part of the actual thought process of the composer, particularly the parts of the communication that the composer revises or self-corrects, and this may prompt the reader to consider reasons for the changes being made or to assist in negotiating meaning.
I agree with many of the class members that some of the tasks used in Pellitieri's study (particularly the ones dealing with pictures) seemed tedious and inauthentic. Designing tasks to reflect actual everyday activities would make learning more meaningful.
I appreciated the tasks that Pellitieri uses -- so often it seems like CMC is being "shoe-horned" into areas where pen and paper would cause less hassle. There must be teacher involvement and clear stakes involved in CMC. I wish I had read this article earlier -- I was often wondering how to tap into students natural ability to sit and type-chat for hours. These same students have trouble sitting down to write a paragraph. (Also there's a PhD somewhere for someone who wants to study how Micronesian students mix their L1s with English and how they choose to write their largely "unwritten" L1s.)
I disagree with my class mates on the tediousness of the activities offered in Pellitieri's article. We are always taught that the tasks students should face in class should be as close as they can be to real world tasks (like planning to go out for dinner with some friends). On the other hand, students in a language classroom may not be "friends", they are not enemies either, just classmates who see each other for some hours per week and struggle together learning a language very often just to fulfill a requirement. Having to chat with a "stranger" (or to skype, or to YackPack ...) I think is already weird enough for some people, let alone having to plan a dinner out with the "stranger"! That is why I am very much in favour of offering some activities of the type Pelletieri mentioned, where an agreement on the different picture has to be reached ... something as unpersonal as to talk about the 5 pictures given to the student by the instructor.
Both the Pellettieri and Robinson articles explore CMC use and task complexity and arrive at the conclusion that successful implementation of both of these includes: *Having a goal-oriented task *Structuring tasks to have the minimum possible outcomes *Have students obtain and request information *Negotiate in order to obtain meaning I found that Pallettieri was not entirely clean in his/her difference between “development” and fostering of grammatical competence. I agree with the research that possible CMC interaction could lead to problems with grammatical accuracy (defective language). In practical terms, CMC and tasks need to be employed only after learners have had the opportunity to practice the needed language. I like Pattieteri’s claim that CMC/tasks should be considered along with difficulty. This type of language instruction could very well provide the (i+1) model and gap-filling activities when properly used.
Pellettiere points out that synchronous NBC, such as chatting, “bears a striking resemblance to oral interaction”, which, in turn, is considered to be beneficial for second language development. One of the reasons why oral interaction is believed to be important to language development is the fact that it “fosters negotiation of meaning”. Pellettiere claims that “negotiation provides enhanced target-language (TL) input, as messages become more comprehensible” and that “negotiation fosters modified TL output, as learners push their L2 abilities to their linguistic limits in trying to more precisely convey their messages” (p.61). I think chatting is a useful tool to achieve the goal of “negotiating meaning”. As I said before, in one of my previous posts, this may be the only opportunity for students in an EFL context to interact with native speakers. An example of a task I would use would be to ask students to interview native speakers in a chatroom and find out about american holidays (Thanksgiving, Independence Day, etc), for instance. They would have to ask questions to get as many details as possible, and, by doing that, they would be, like Pellettiere said, “pushing” their L2 abilities to communicate. A follow-up activity would be to have them present their findings to class and have a discussion.
When reading through Pelletieri’s article I noticed that on the Tasks he mentions to the students components of negotiation routines, but he does not include certain rules that I believe are essential to follow in any kind of activity. Even though some of his tasks have multiple outcomes possible, all of them are very objective, and he should have been more specific on what rules (what NOT to do), and its consequences. I also noticed that some of you did not like the type of tasks Pelletieri uses. However, I will agree with Bicho when he’s in favor of activities where students have to agree in impersonal issues. I believe that if students had to agree on real life issues the consequences for not thinking the same way could go beyond the classroom, especially for high school students.
I thought the Pelletieri article was interesting on the synchronous NBC software used for L2 learning. I have "chatted" several times, but never with a program like YTalk, which has a split screen and the student can see the other person typing. I think this is more beneficial than the average "chat" program, because it allows for students to see the mistakes that their peers make and how they correct them. For instance, I always re-write what I am typing during a chatroom conversation. I begin to type a thought out, but then realize that there is a better way to say it that will communicate my message. I think it would be beneficial for students to see this process as they watch each other type.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that synchronous NBC task-based activities should be used in the classroom if students have access to computers; however, I did not like examples that the article provided. I felt that they were not very authentic and meaningful to the student. For example, how many times do we each have a set of pictures and have to determine which pictures are similar. In fact, I think I would find this hard and tedious. Instead, I think the task should be relevant to the students' interest and needs.
There are 2 issues that need be addressed in Pellettieri's article.
ReplyDelete#1 - if the teacher is going to move conversation to an online chat environment, the teacher really needs to ensure that there is a genuine purpose for discussion and not some busy-work classroom exercise (as in some tasks). The teacher needs to brainstorm on what topics might actual arise in the environment, thereby making the experience more realistic and practical.
#2 - I like how the teacher has integrated SCMC into the classroom, but I'm wondering if the teacher isn't using it in its natural form. Meaning, the conversation that was produced was very formal for chat. Chat has evolved into a much more laxed and abbreviated form of communication. So, in trying to converse in the chatroom as these studies indicated, are we not using chat in an authentic way? Just a thought. I guess if one was to implement into the classroom, it would need to be made real clear in the beginning - what types of expectations the teacher has and how they want the students to converse in - formal / informal.
I found the Pelletieri article to be quite interesting and I too have used synchronous chat programs to converse with international friends who are English learners. Until taking CALL 487 and reading this article, I had never considered using chat clients as a tool for English instruction; although, in retrospect of my conversations with my friends in Korea, I can totally see how useful of a tool it can be if goals and tasks are implemented.
ReplyDeleteYtalk seemed like quite a useful chat program for students to use since it enabled the students/teachers to view all keyed items including backstrokes and deleted items. This would allow teachers (and students) to see when and how errors were corrected or not corrected.
In the upcoming months I hope to search and find a similar up-to-date chat program which has similar functions to the dated Ytalk program.
When utilizing chat programs, as determined in class, a specific task with clear goals is essential in order for that task to be meaningful and focused. As Pelletieri article illustrated, this is not always an easy task; the teacher has to display creativity in order to make the task meaningful, authentic, and interesting. For instance, comparing pictures via google talk does not constitute as interesting, meaningful, nor authentic. Conversely, talking about potential roommates may be more of an enriching activity. Another possibility that crossed my mind calls for students to enter various chat rooms where they have to find out information about some of the participants in the chat room by asking and answering questions. Obviously, this type of task needs further defining and more specific goals, but this may be an activity that enables NNS to engage with NS online within chat environments.
I think that a lot of the CALL programs we have talked about this semester raise questions on how they can be appropriately assigned as tasks, especially those that allow for limited instructor involvement. Something that Pelletieri's article made me think of was that if these programs can be properly introduced as interesting, authentic, and interactive activities, that even if the tasks themselves cannot be as closely monitored as we might like, that some of these things will be used by students independently outside of class. If students felt that improving their chatting ability could connect them to chatting with native speakers, they might be motivated to work hard at it together.
ReplyDeleteOne possible suggestion for higher instructor involvement while they used the programs would be to inform students that their chatting with classmates would be in preparation for a scheduled chat with the instructor. Of course, this would be time-consuming and require a bit of planning, but if this was something that teachers felt students could use in a relevant and meaningful way on their own, it may be worth looking into. The scheduled chats could be set up like conferences or oral interviews. Informing students of the resources available to aid in their language learning and equipping them with the tools to effectively use them is, in a way, a task in itself.
In response to the readings, I feel that task complexity is an important consideration for my students as I use CMC in the classroom. I want to ensure that students are being challenged, and that tasks should be convergent. The information gap helps the students to communicate, and negotiate meaning. However, if the task is too difficult, students will spend too much time negotiating meaning, and they may not achieve the goal of the task. As an instructor, it is important to provide students with pre-exercise activities that provide vocabulary, and useful phrases, so the students will have some preparation before being required to complete a task-based activity.
ReplyDeleteCMC is also a great tool to use because it induces "noticing" of grammatical forms, and lexicon. When students communicate using CMC, and negotiate meaning in a task-based activity, they, in essence, are peer editing. Pelletieri's study highlighted that there was a significant achievement of target forms, through corrective feedback, even in the absence of a native speaker. I feel that CMC is important in providing implicit and explicit corrective feedback, as they are important compenents of SLA.
Heidi, first of all, props for doing the Robinson article. I like your idea about more teacher involvement by making the chatting preparation for a "test" chat session with the instructor. Overall, I really like the tasks used in the Pellitieri article. As we mentioned in class, they didn't really resemble authentic "chatting" material but they were decent activities. Any activity where you are able to take away almost all non-verbal elements of communication is (probably) worthwhile. The lack of non-verbal (and verbal, I guess) signals really puts pressure, hopefully positively, on their language. Also, if your students have different native languages, then any chat between them in and out of class would have to be in the target language. I have seen very positive results from the chat function on Facebook. (I'll put this on that page as well.) Last year, I taught an oral skills class based on American Pop Culture. We had a group on facebook and everyone was required to join. Now, over a year later, classmates are still writing on each other's walls in English (and some German) and they make use of the chat function whenever we are both on facebook. Some of their friends have even friended me which has made for some interesting chatting. This brings me to my one concern with chatting. If we want students to be motivated to communicate with native speakers via chatting, how are they going to find these native speakers? I'm sure there are people out there who would be willing but do we feel safe as teachers encouraging students to enter that possibly frightening scene? Otherwise, I'm all for chatting being used in class for tasks such as those used by Pelletieri.
ReplyDeletePellettieri’s article raises several issues about what kind of tasks should be used in network-based communication and how to actually implement these tasks. Even in our class, heated discussion was generated over the nature and effectiveness of the types of activities used in the study. The tasks were geared towards eliciting students to generate oral-like negotiation that is beneficial to overall language learning and the results seemed to be more or less positive. I could see all of the activities used in this study performed orally in the classroom, and this leads me to wonder if the classroom is a better place for them to stay and if bringing them into an online environment is not entirely productive. Personally, I believe NBC exercises and communication need not try to emulate oral exercises and communication. Online textual interaction is a genre within itself these days, and students may benefit from practicing the types of tasks that are actually performed online in their social lives and in the business world. For instance, scheduling a date/meeting, describing a website and sharing a link, engaging in brief discussions, and exchanging different varieties of personal information are all very REAL social activities people participate in online. Describing a process, troubleshooting a problem, acquiring personal and professional information, and making transactions are all tasks that all occur in everyday business interactions. Perhaps designing tasks around these sorts of activities that are already situated in an online environment will make them more relevant and ultimately more beneficial to students. Also, requiring students to research on the web and use external websites in their interactions may be a way to merge skills and generate richer classroom activities.
ReplyDeleteRyan brings up a good point, and though I hadn't really considered it before reading the articles, I agree with him that class NBC activities should embrace the sorts of online tasks that students might be required to do in their everyday lives rather than attempting to emulate oral communication, which is best practiced as actual oral communication.
ReplyDeleteOne of the interesting aspects of synchronous NBC is that in a sense it falls somewhere in between oral and written communication, encompassing aspects of both. Learners (or anyone communicating with synchronous NBC) have a little more time to respond than if they were actually speaking, which normally requires an immediate response, and, in many cases, can compose, revise, and self-correct what they want to say before their communication partner sees it.
Programs like Ytalk, which seem very useful, allow the communication partner to see what the other is typing as he types. The partner can see part of the actual thought process of the composer, particularly the parts of the communication that the composer revises or self-corrects, and this may prompt the reader to consider reasons for the changes being made or to assist in negotiating meaning.
I agree with many of the class members that some of the tasks used in Pellitieri's study (particularly the ones dealing with pictures) seemed tedious and inauthentic. Designing tasks to reflect actual everyday activities would make learning more meaningful.
trischa
I appreciated the tasks that Pellitieri uses -- so often it seems like CMC is being "shoe-horned" into areas where pen and paper would cause less hassle. There must be teacher involvement and clear stakes involved in CMC. I wish I had read this article earlier -- I was often wondering how to tap into students natural ability to sit and type-chat for hours. These same students have trouble sitting down to write a paragraph. (Also there's a PhD somewhere for someone who wants to study how Micronesian students mix their L1s with English and how they choose to write their largely "unwritten" L1s.)
ReplyDeleteI disagree with my class mates on the tediousness of the activities offered in Pellitieri's article. We are always taught that the tasks students should face in class should be as close as they can be to real world tasks (like planning to go out for dinner with some friends). On the other hand, students in a language classroom may not be "friends", they are not enemies either, just classmates who see each other for some hours per week and struggle together learning a language very often just to fulfill a requirement. Having to chat with a "stranger" (or to skype, or to YackPack ...) I think is already weird enough for some people, let alone having to plan a dinner out with the "stranger"! That is why I am very much in favour of offering some activities of the type Pelletieri mentioned, where an agreement on the different picture has to be reached ... something as unpersonal as to talk about the 5 pictures given to the student by the instructor.
ReplyDeleteBoth the Pellettieri and Robinson articles explore CMC use and task complexity and arrive at the conclusion that successful implementation of both of these includes:
ReplyDelete*Having a goal-oriented task
*Structuring tasks to have the minimum possible outcomes
*Have students obtain and request information
*Negotiate in order to obtain meaning
I found that Pallettieri was not entirely clean in his/her difference between “development” and fostering of grammatical competence. I agree with the research that possible CMC interaction could lead to problems with grammatical accuracy (defective language).
In practical terms, CMC and tasks need to be employed only after learners have had the opportunity to practice the needed language. I like Pattieteri’s claim that CMC/tasks should be considered along with difficulty. This type of language instruction could very well provide the (i+1) model and gap-filling activities when properly used.
Pellettiere points out that synchronous NBC, such as chatting, “bears a striking resemblance to oral interaction”, which, in turn, is considered to be beneficial for second language development. One of the reasons why oral interaction is believed to be important to language development is the fact that it “fosters negotiation of meaning”. Pellettiere claims that “negotiation provides enhanced target-language (TL) input, as messages become more comprehensible” and that “negotiation fosters modified TL output, as learners push their L2 abilities to their linguistic limits in trying to more precisely convey their messages” (p.61).
ReplyDeleteI think chatting is a useful tool to achieve the goal of “negotiating meaning”. As I said before, in one of my previous posts, this may be the only opportunity for students in an EFL context to interact with native speakers.
An example of a task I would use would be to ask students to interview native speakers in a chatroom and find out about american holidays (Thanksgiving, Independence Day, etc), for instance. They would have to ask questions to get as many details as possible, and, by doing that, they would be, like Pellettiere said, “pushing” their L2 abilities to communicate.
A follow-up activity would be to have them present their findings to class and have a discussion.
When reading through Pelletieri’s article I noticed that on the Tasks he mentions to the students components of negotiation routines, but he does not include certain rules that I believe are essential to follow in any kind of activity. Even though some of his tasks have multiple outcomes possible, all of them are very objective, and he should have been more specific on what rules (what NOT to do), and its consequences.
ReplyDeleteI also noticed that some of you did not like the type of tasks Pelletieri uses. However, I will agree with Bicho when he’s in favor of activities where students have to agree in impersonal issues. I believe that if students had to agree on real life issues the consequences for not thinking the same way could go beyond the classroom, especially for high school students.