Insights into Technology Enhanced Language Pedagogy

← 6 | 7 → Preface

Placing the word insights in the title of a book about new technology in language learning and teaching is liable to turn against the authors. Change is so rapid in this area of research and pedagogy that, once published, the collection of chapters is likely to be more about hindsight than actual insight. This is why our volume, while still paying due attention to the contemporary technological solutions, is primarily focused on modern pedagogy; or, at least, such was our intention.

Insights into Technology Enhanced Language Pedagogy opens with Melinda Dooly’s chapter, in which the author goes beyond individual practices new technologies make possible into the realm of critical teacher reflection. Melinda is looking at how language teaching approaches can “really integrate technology and language learning as part of a continual social process of shared knowledge-building” (Dooly, this volume). In doing this, she examines what the past teaches us and what the future, potentially, holds.

What follows is a series of three chapters on building, maintaining and managing the dynamics of groups working collaboratively online, frequently in intercultural contexts.

Małgorzata Kurek examines the chronology, a typical task sequence and interaction patterns of telecollaborative exchanges. She argues for the potential of this participatory pedagogy in the training of prospective language teachers. Given such experience, these teachers, once in-service, may find it easier to mentally shift from the traditional, teacher-fronted instruction towards the new socio-constructivist paradigm of schooling the new times are in need of.

In her description of a course designed as pro-telecollaboration training, Anna Turula concentrates on e-group dynamics. She analyses the attitudes to collaboration the affiliation levels experienced by course participants vis à vis the personality measures of the course participants. Anna argues that generally beneficial as the collaborative learning mode is normally perceived, its practicability should always be considered in the context of learner individual differences.

Basing on his first-hand experience of Second Life language pedagogy, Włodzimierz Sobkowiak gives an insight into the educational activities in Virtlantis. He shows how such virtual world education can be scaffolded – cognitively, socially and affectively – through social networking. This, as Włodzimierz argues, is “an important condition for virtual world communities of (educational) practice ← 7 | 8 → to thrive in both worlds: the three-dimensional environment of the virtual world, where the main activities are going on, and the ‘flat’ environment of Web2, which functions as additional community support” (Sobkowiak, this volume).

Another series of three chapters is devoted to the role and application of computer-assisted games in language learning.

The first of the three authors, Mariusz Kruk presents his quasi-experimental study into the use of virtual worlds in teaching and learning the English past simple tense. In noting the positive effects of such treatment, Mariusz ascribes them, among others, to the fact that his students had a chance to exercise more freedom in learning and were offered more learner autonomy.

Looking at the potential of games from a slightly different perspective, Krzysztof Kotuła considers enriching the typically bi-polar, teacher-student in-class interaction by including video games in the process. In addition to presenting a number of practical ideas on how to integrate computer-enhanced ludic techniques into language teaching, Krzysztof presents his analysis of learner discourse excerpts in an attempt to determine the extent to which video games influence the quality of classroom interaction.

Edward Gillian examines the employment of the Game Based Learning (GBL) approach combined with Vygotsky’s idea of scaffolding. Departing from the Adaptive and Reusable Educational Game (AREG) model, Edward presents and analyses the development of his own e-learning tool for teaching the English articles a, an, and the in written sentences to teenage Polish students.

The following three chapters explore the potential of language corpora and corpus-based research in language skill evaluation and course design.

Marek Molenda and Piotr Pęzik investigate the notion of confluence, based on the video recordings from a recently compiled examination learner corpus. They analyse the use of the non-linguistic devices in the co-construction of meaning and argue that such devices should be paid more attention to in the context of testing and assessing oral proficiency in foreign language learning.

Written from the pragmatic perspective of a Business English teacher, Elżbieta Jendrych’s chapter focuses on the importance of corpus studies in e-BEC material development. In particular, Elżbieta looks at the utility of the parametric text analysis as a basis for making informed choices in the area of material selection and development, with special regard to the learner’s language level.

Agnieszka Leńsko-Szymańska, whose chapter closes the language-corpus series, describes a semester-long teacher-training course on the use of corpora in language education she authored and offered to graduate students. Based on a post-course student-satisfaction survey she concludes that while the use of corpus-based materials and tools in language education is generally perceived as ← 8 | 9 → beneficial by prospective language teachers, individual learner differences need to be taken into account while planning Data-Driven lessons.

The last four chapters of this volume are devoted to technology enhanced development of different language skills.

Agnieszka Gadomska and Jarosław Krajka describe the demanding task of developing key language competences, with special regard to vocabulary learning strategies. In doing this, they present the process of multimedia-supported language material design in which they partook over the period of three years, when involved in a project called e-Academy of the Future, whose aim was to improve the quality of education in the Polish middle school.

Hanna Karlikowska-Dziczek and Beata Mikołajewska look at EFL students’ phonological awareness when faced with pronunciation errors made in English-originating phrases in Polish TV commercials. They describe a computer-aided Moodle-based pilot study they carried out in order to investigate the respondents’ sensitivity to the erroneous pronunciation and emphasise the importance of Moodle self-study as beneficial for eliminating L1 interferences in pronunciation of English words.

Devoted to computer-assisted pronunciation training is also the following chapter, by Agnieszka Wagner. Agnieszka presents and analyses the development of the application of CAPT software called AzAR. Then she goes on to discuss the application of AzAR to individual pronunciation training, and proposes a critical evaluation of the system.

Finally, Kamila Burzyńska and Jarosław Krajka present an overview of a pilot study aiming at developing student writing skills with the use of the EAPQuest. The authors pay special attention to the strategies used by the students when on quest, examine these strategies vis à vis those used in traditional pedagogical settings and tasks as well as propose the amendments to known strategy taxonomies that follow from their analysis.

The new media have long become an essential part of the foreign language classroom, and computer enhanced language pedagogy is now becoming a standard in schools. What follows is a growing interest in the research into the effectiveness of such practice as well as building bridges between the new media and traditional methodology. This volume is an attempt to do that by bringing together the results of a number of recent studies, most of which have been carried out in Poland; an attempt, we hope, that will be of interest to the reader.

Anna Turula
Beata Mikołajewska
Danuta Stanulewicz

Warsaw, March 2014← 9 | 10 →

← 10 | 11 → Learning to e-function in a brave new world: Language teachers’ roles in educating for the future

Melinda Dooly, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain