2009 Saturday Sessions

CALICO 2009

Conference Presentations Day Three

March 14

8:00 – 8:45

Ethical Issues in CALL: How They Affect Both Teachers and Students
Shudong Wang
Neil Heffernan
Ethical issues, such as digital copyright, online privacy and security, nonbiased language knowledge delivery, and equity of online instruction are important issues in CALL. This paper aims to delineate the major issues of CALL ethics in current foreign language e-learning settings based on data collected from surveys among CALL teachers and students in Japan. The main issues of CALL ethics are discussed, along with teacher and student ethics self-assessments, perceptions, and ideals of ethical issues in CALL. The paper also proposes possible solutions to these ethical problems.

Recording of this session

Developing Intelligent Online Web Exercises for Russian
Markus Dickinson
Joshua Herring
Chris Riley
Building from the TAGARELA system for Portuguese, we develop an ICALL system for learners of Russian with the goal of providing exercises in the healthcare domain to beginning and advanced learners. Offering general exercises in this specific context requires the activity model to separate exercise content from domain and cultural content. A more general web framework allows the system to scale up to more exercises and potentially other languages. The richer morphology and freer word order of Russian requires the expert model to integrate morphological analysis and develop parsing methods to diagnose ill-formed input, which we do with limited resources.
Recording of this session

The Electronic Portfolio as Assessment Tool and More: The Drake University Model
Marc Cadd
The Drake University Language Acquisition Program provides a unique learning environment for its students. Because of its emphasis on oral proficiency, culture, and the development within students of a sense of responsibility for their own language-learning experience, the electronic portfolio is a central and indispensable feature of the program. Audio samples, writing samples, projects completed with Web 2.0 technologies, and an assessment of cultural proficiency are all vital artifacts placed in ePortfolios by students. This presentation will describe how Drake uses these portfolios, how they are assessed, and their applicability for a wide variety of programs.
Recording of this session

Practice Makes Perfect: Promises and Pitfalls of Online Workbooks for Skills Development and Speaking Proficiency
Eduardo García Villada
Online workbooks offer meaningful activities and instant scoring of student performance, but what do these performance data tell us about student language proficiency? Participants will learn about a study that compares student speaking proficiency with their perceptions of skills improvement in three language programs and two delivery systems. The presenter will discuss advantages and disadvantages of online workbook use, along with directions for integration of online materials in different curriculum contexts.

Online Collaborative Writing and Peer Editing
Frances Matos-Schultz
Pablo Viedma
Taking the lead from learners in a student-driven hybrid course environment at the University of Minnesota, we have moved the focus of writing from an instructor’s mandate to an online learner community of collaboration. In this community the writers/learners take ownership over the text and share the task with other writers exposing them to the process of writing from a brand new standpoint, that of collaborators and critics. The software focuses mainly on collaborative writing and peer editing. The presenters will briefly demonstrate the tool and discuss experiences and findings.
Recording of this session

The Flashcard Evolution: An Old-School Learning Technology Gets a Digital Makeover
Jim Ranalli
Flashcards have been around for a long time, but with the advent of the personal computer and the internet, they have become more powerful than ever. They retain their original benefits: portability, ideal quizzing potential, and the ability to prioritize among items. But today’s digital versions offer so much more: multimedia annotation; tagging to allow categorizing, sorting, and searching; alternative review modes featuring games and puzzles; and algorithms that facilitate optimized scheduling of reviews according to psychological principles. This presentation will summarize the cognitive benefits of flashcards and then profile several of the most innovative and powerful tools that represent this new generation.

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Creating an Authentic Online Learning Community: Facebook Use in Beginning-Level Chinese Classes
Li Jin
Beginning-level students are very often disoriented about the ultimate purposes of learning a foreign language, especially a difficult language such as Chinese. This presentation discusses an empirical study investigating the effectiveness and caveats of integrating Facebook projects in university-level beginning Chinese language classes with a purpose of promoting authentic learning and using Chinese as a foreign language. Student interaction patterns, perceptions about using Facebook in the class projects, language acquisition as well as language instructor evaluation of the integration of Facebook will be presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating Facebook in beginning-level Chinese language teaching.
Recording of this session

9:00am – 10:30am
Extended Panel Presentation

The Role of Language Resource Centers in the Era of Ubiquitous Computing
Mary Beth Barth
Cindy Evans
Michael Jones
This panel will consider the mission of the language resource center and role of the center director vis-à-vis the college-wide IT organization. The panelists, Mary Beth Barth (Hamilton College), Cindy Evans (Skidmore College), and Michael Jones (Swarthmore College) direct language centers at small liberal arts colleges. While our institutions share many similarities, our positions and our centers present different profiles with unique advantages and challenges. The panel will address a variety of questions from our different perspectives and invite active participation from the audience.

9:00 – 9:45

Less is More? A Comparison of the Effects of a Hybrid and a Traditional Language Class
Fernando Rubio
Tim Cannon
This presentation reports on the results of 2 years of research on the effects of a hybrid course on the level of oral and written proficiency of first-year university students of Spanish. The students were enrolled in a course that met face-to-face for 2 hours a week with an additional 2 virtual days of online work. The study looks at a variety of measures of proficiency and fluency and compares the results to those obtained by a group of students enrolled in the same class taught in a traditional format (4 hours of face-to-face instruction per week).
Recording of this session

Collaborative Writing in Wikis: Insights from Culture Projects in Intermediate German Classes
Claudia Kost
Nike Arnold
Lara Ducate
This presentation reports the findings of a study designed to investigate the collaborative writing and revision processes of foreign language learners in a wiki environment. Specifically, it is based on a comparison of two wiki projects in intermediate German classes in which small groups of students used wikis to collaborate on a project based on cultural and historical topics related to a novel. The archived versions of the wiki were analyzed for the amount, type, and quality of revisions. In addition, an end-of-semester survey was administered to assess learner attitudes towards the project and perceptions of the writing process.

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The Role of Computer-Mediated Scaffolding in Academic Literacy Development
Wei Zhu
This presentation discusses a case study which examined the role of computer-mediated scaffolding in nonnative English speaking students’ development of academic literacy in university content classrooms. Six primary participants demonstrated their understanding and negotiation of task requirements, completion of individual writing activities, and comprehension and appreciation of academic literacy conventions through two-way peer-to-peer scaffolding via online discussion boards. The findings indicated that computermediated collective scaffolding enabled students to rehearse and refine academic writing and understand literacy requirements and conventions. The presenters will also describe the research methodology and discuss the implications of the study for both research and classroom instruction.

First-Year Spanish and Italian projects: Calm Technology Design and Integration of Digital Media in Second Language Learning
Antonio Gragera
Moira DiMauro-Jackson
This session presents two linguistic initiatives being shaped in the Department of Modern Languages at Texas State University. These two projects combine their developers’ personal stands on second language learnability and on the role of intercultural collaboration in learning a foreign language. Each project represents one distinctive end of the continuum between technology integration and calm technology that the term “ubiquitous computing” evokes. On one hand, the project for first-year Italian integrates different sources of digital media and technology to facilitate individual learning by connecting second language learners with native speakers of the target language. On the other hand, the project for first-year Spanish addresses principles of attention, from the fields of developmental psychology and neurosciences, and multimodal-aural and visuallearning by “centering the periphery” through an online meaning negotiator.

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What Happens When Technology Isn’t Ubiquitous: Teaching Distance Language Teacher Education Classes in Rural Alaska
Marilee Coles-Ritchie
Sabine Siekmann
In this presentation, we will present data collected over the past 2 years while delivering distance language education courses for K-12 teachers in immersion and ELL settings. The presenters share challenges and solutions in a situation in which computing is by no means ubiquitous due to physical, social, and technological distance. Data are organized in four themes: (a) course preparation, (b) course delivery options, (c) student feedback, and (d) our own reflections on the process. By sharing our successes and challenges in creating a hybrid multimodal delivery model, we hope to contribute to the effectiveness of distance education.

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From Media to Hypermedia: Increasing the Pedagogical Value of Foreign Language Audio and Video Materials through Hypermedia Conversion
Thom Thibeault
Hind Rmail
This session focuses on the pedagogical advantages of converting audio and video materials accompanying language textbooks into hypermedia transcripts. Hypermedia allows students to click on unfamiliar words in a foreign language text in order to access relevant media that expands understanding. Words can be linked to text, images, video, audio, animations, and Web links. The presentation highlights the software program, Hypermedia Editor. This program allows instructors to create their own hypermedia units. After discussing the theory behind Hypermedia Editor, the presenters will demonstrate how the program works. A free download of Hypermedia Editor is available for Macintosh and Windows.
Recording of this session

10:00 – 10:45

Learner Training in CALL
Alan Bessette
CALL offers language learners many potentially beneficial possibilities for improving their language skills, but, to make full use of those possibilities, learners must be trained in how to use CALL. This presentation reports the results of an action research project in learner training. The presentation reports on initial surveys and interviews about student attitudes towards the CALL materials and their ideas about how the materials could be more fully exploited. It will also report on the training program in which students were taught goal setting, exploitation, and review strategies. Finally, the presentation will report on student attitudes and reactions.

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National Foreign Language Instructional Technology Survey
Greg Kessler
Senta Goertler
Jack Burston
Though the volume of articles written about CALL during the past 25 years gives the impression of high levels of integration of technology into the foreign language curriculum, very little is actually known about how, or even whether, teachers really use technology in their classrooms. The aim of our presentation is to (a) draw attention to our lack of knowledge about foreign language instructional technology usage in American colleges and universities, (b) describe the design of a survey that seeks to fill this gap in our knowledge, and (c) present the preliminary results of the pilot testing of this survey.
Recording of this session

Timing Repetition to Enhance Listening Comprehension
Anne O’Bryan
This presentation will detail a primarily qualitative investigation into the impact two forms of repeated input, whole-text and individual semantic units (i.e., episodes), have on helping English as a second language (ESL) students remedy common problems encountered while listening to an academic lecture and continue to move fluently through the three recognized phases of listening comprehension. ESL learners at the low, intermediate, and advanced listening proficiency levels participate in verbal protocol sessions, semi-structured interviews, and take notes in order to answer the proposed research questions. This study will have implications for materials developers, teachers, and learners.

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From CALL to MALL: Portable Device Applications for Language Texts and Digital Media
Mary Ann Lyman-Hager
John Vitaglione
Cellular technology offers high-speed data transfer affording users multimedia access on their personal digital assistants and smart phones. LARC’s Mobile Assisted Language Learning applications enable language learners to read glossed texts and play digital resources on their mobile devices. Web Gloss is a dynamic glossing tool for adding hot-word links that play multimedia annotations on a mobile device. The Mobile Media Archive permits users to select course modules from LARC’s web-based Digital Media Archive via their cell phones and play them anywhere. This presentation discusses Everyware and how teachers and learners can use these free applications for accessing resources and contributing new content.
Recording of this session

Blended Learning, Self-Managed Learning, and CALL: A Report on Student and Teacher Attitudes and Experiences
Jacob E. Larsen
Suzanne van der Valk
Blended learning is becoming increasingly popular at colleges across the US due to its perceived benefits for both students and educational institutions. Likewise, it has been argued that in today’s
college environment student abilities to self-manage their learning has a great impact on their academic success. This presentation will focus on an on-going study in which blended learning and self managed learning are used in conjunction with authentic, online CALL materials to teach an advanced level course in an intensive English program. Preliminary data on student and teacher attitudes and experiences will be shared.

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Glossing and Annotation Tools: Past, Present, and Future
Lathrop P. Johnson
It is not such a long stretch from the interlinear and marginal glosses of Antiquity and the Middle Ages to the multimedia annotations for foreign language text possible with today’s technology. This presentation will briefly summarize research with electronic annotations. It will then describe and demonstrate the capabilities of some of the earlier electronic annotation tools and present a variety of viable options available today. Finally, it will sketch desirable directions for annotation tools of the future, emphasizing ease of use for the teacher and usefulness for the student.

11:00 – 11:20

A Corpus-Based Analysis of Spoken Features and Epistemic Devices in L2 Writing
Lingxia Jin
This study uses corpus data (including both learner corpus and native English speaker corpora) in order to examine the characteristics of Chinese learner written English. It aims to test the hypothesis whether Chinese English learners will use more spoken-like features, in particular, spoken-like epistemic devices to express certainty and doubts in their English academic writing and how this compares with native English academic writing. Pedagogical implications will be discussed.
Recording of this session

Producing Digital Videos: A Sociocultural Approach
Luba Iskold
Students frequently experience problems utilizing their listening and communicative skills acquired via formal learning in everyday contexts. The presenter will discuss sociocultural approaches to language acquisition and the pros and cons associated with the Legacy Project in her conversation and composition class. Students conducted and videotaped interviews with representatives of the local Russian community and produced DVDs with video, full interview transcripts in the target language and in English, as well as glossaries and cultural glosses. A template to organize, deliver, and use student-produced materials will be presented and discussed. The template may be used for any language.

Recording of this session Presentation slides and examples
(note large file download)

CALL and Perceptual Training for the ESL Classroom
Lisa R. Pierce
Su-Youn Yoon
This research reports on a web-based application designed to be a delivery system for perceptual category training in the context of pronunciation instruction in ESL classrooms. Exemplar training has been successfully used in laboratory settings for perception research and in clinical environments for the remediation of expressive phonological impairment. The increasing use of computerassisted language learning (CALL) in second language classrooms suggests a natural extension of this methodology; however, with only one exception [6], such methods have made few inroads into language teaching programs. This work reports on a pilot study in which ESL students were trained to perceive [l] and [r]. Students in the experimental group who underwent exemplar training made statistically significant gains in perceiving nonnative phonemic categories in comparison to those ESL students who did not undergo training.
Recording of this session

Integrating Student-Centered Video into the Classroom
Olaf Böhlke
The use of video in the classroom has become a lot easier with the recent advances in technology. Teachers in smart classrooms at the presenter’s institution have at a minimum access to a ceiling projector, a DVD/VHS player, and the internet. While the presentation of videos has become less of a challenge within these classrooms, it appears to be still challenging for many instructors to plan, schedule, create, edit, and eventually publish student-centered videos. This presentation will explore the rationale for doing such projects and guide teachers through this multistep process.
Presentation video and Links

Facebook in the Language Classroom: Perspectives on Sociopragmatic Development
Melissa Fiori
Geraldine Blattner
Many college students are members of the well known social network Facebook, which offers a variety of opportunities for language learners to develop L2 sociopragmatic competence, an aspect that is often limited in textbooks. This study examines whether interaction in Facebook groups heightened awareness of language variety. The results of self-assessment questionnaires and analysis of student participation on various discussion forums suggest that such social networking facilitates the development of sociopragmatic awareness through authentic target-language input and occasion to engage with native speakers about topics of personal interest to the learners.

11:30 – 11:50

The Development of Materials for Hybrid Spanish Courses
Julio C. Rodriguez
Cristina Pardo-Ballester
The application of design-based research guidelines to the design and development of materials for language learning affords excellent opportunities to implement a principled approach to produce materials that integrate relevant SLA findings. In this presentation, we will describe a design-based research approach to the development of materials for hybrid elementary and intermediate Spanish courses. Relevant SLA hypotheses as well as principles of blended learning will be addressed in relation to their impact on the design of the materials and the learning experiences envisioned by the designers. We will report preliminary data from three pilots.
Recording of this presentation

EFL Bloggers’ Language-Learning Identity
Nathaniel Carney
Identity’s relationship with language learning has received significant attention within the last decade, but most such studies focus on learners in second language contexts or study abroad. Studies of identity and foreign language learners remain uncommon. This study examines language learner identity through a number of Japanese university English language learners’ individually maintained blogs written weekly over a period of 21 months as class assignments for required English classes. The study specifically looks at participants’ development of identities as “English users” and as a community of bloggers in the language classroom.
Recording of this presentation

Automatic Profiling of Learner Corpora
Ekaterina Arshavskaya
This study was designed to find out whether ESL students of various L1s lack knowledge of academic vocabulary and instead opt for informal doublets. Part-of-speech profiles in the BAWE database (native speaker corpus) and MELD (ESL corpus) were compared. In the second part of the study, POS profiles of more advanced ESL learners (BAWE ESL corpus) and the same native speaker corpus (BAWE) were compared. The first study re-confirmed the speechlike nature of learner writing of upper-level ESL students (Granger & Rayson, 1998) of different L1s. Upper level ESL learners lack knowledge of academic vocabulary. However, the second part of this study showed that with longer exposure to the L2, writing skills of L2 learners may approach those of native speakers.
Recording of this presentation

Scaffolding Telecollaboration to Bridge the North-South Divide
Jonathan Haddad
This paper explores issues for designing telecollaboration projects in the context of differentials in human development and the resulting digital divide. It examines the assumptions of traditional native speaker (NS) to nonnative speaker (NNS) exchanges and NS-NS tandems, and uses Algeria as an example of a country of medium human development where neither model would apply. In the context of teaching US secondary students of French about Algerian culture, the paper discusses how existing social networking platforms and partner-country discussion boards may be used not only to facilitate computer-mediated communication among partners but also to model intercultural communicative competence.
Recording of this presentation

Use of Wikis in Developing Intercultural Competence
Rose Spicher
The current literature in CALL contains extensive documentation of the use of telecollaboration to increase language students’ intercultural competence. Wikis, a relatively new online resource for collaborative writing projects (McDonald, 2007; Mac & Coniam, 2008; Kessler, 2007), provide an original way for students to collaboratively negotiate a shared understanding of each other’s cultures, but they are, as yet, largely unexplored by CALL researchers. This presentation reports on an initial exploration of the nature of language use within a cultural glossary wiki shared by American and Indonesian university students.
Recording of this presentation

Comparative Analysis of Learning Management Systems in Malaysia
Supyan Hussin
Ismie Roha
This paper presents a comparative analysis of two LMSs from two different institutions in Malaysia emphasizing the challenges in developing the LMSs for ODL program, the level of readiness among teachers and students, and the international standards from a language pedagogy perspective.
Recording of this presentation

1:30 – 3:00
Extended Panel Presentation

The Best of CALICO for Teachers: Online Tools that are Hot, New, and Free
Gillian Lord
Lara Lomicka Anderson
This session offers language teachers, particularly those teaching at the K-12 level, an overview of current (and free) tools in technology. We will briefly present the latest tools for blogs, wikis, podcasting, social networking, and so on and discuss their pros and cons, benefits and challenges. Participants will learn how each technological tool can be used to its fullest potential in a language class.

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1:30 – 2:15

Beyond Motivation: How Self is Self? An Exercise in Theoretical Validation of Empirical Findings in CALL
Jozef Colpaert
This presentation reports on an exercise in theoretical validation of experimental findings in educational engineering. I will provide an overview of relevant theories and concepts in literature such as self-determination theory, goal-setting theory, attribution theory, expectancy-value theory, VIE (valence, instrumentality, expectancy) theory, self-efficacy, and the technology acceptance model, next to related concepts such as affordances, volition, and praxeology and show to what extent they confirm, contradict, or enrich the findings. I will discuss problems associated with detection and elicitation of relevant information about the learner and other actors and how to reformulate this as indicators of positive assertive will.

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L2 Address Behavior Development through SCMC
Marta Gonzalez-Lloret
This paper presents the potential of synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) to promote pragmatic competence among language learners in a higher education context: specifically, the development of their L2 address system and their interactive resources to display closeness when engaged in communication with L1 speakers. Through conversation analysis (CA), the sequential organization of SCMC between Spanish L1 speakers and L2 learners was analyzed to discover what type of address behavior they exhibited, as well as documenting change in their pragmalinguistic resources and patterns of interaction. The findings suggest that SCMC can be a valuable tool for the development of the Spanish address system.

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Bringing Together Error Correction and Learner Corpus Analysis: A New Look at Written Corrective Feedback in Teaching Beginning German
Nina Vyatkina
Joseph Cunningham
This paper reports on the short-term and long-term effects of computer-mediated written corrective feedback (WCF) in comparison with other feedback types in an elementary German course. Electronic error tagging serves as an instrument for achieving both pedagogical and research purposes of the study.

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Multimedia Exams: Computerized Testing at BYU
Russell Hansen
The College of Humanities at Brigham Young University initially established a multimedia examination lab to give computerized exams for lower level Spanish and German courses. This lab has now expanded to provides services to a broader spectrum of courses and languages. The use of computers to administer exams has not only avoided encumbering valuable language class instruction and interaction, but it has also enabled instructors to employ several different types of media in their exams in a seamless fashion while collecting student responses in a more agreeable format.
Recording of this presentation

Building a $50 Interactive Whiteboard for the Language Classroom
Christopher S. Hill
Interactive whiteboards, sometimes called by one brand name, Smartboards, put an interactive computer display on a classroom wall. High cost can keep this technology out of teachers’ hands. But freely available software can be used to create interactive whiteboards for under $50. Instructions will be provided and successful application of this technology in a variety of classroom environments will be discussed and demonstrated.
Recording of this presentation

2:30 – 3:15

Improving Pronunciation with Podcasts
Hajime Kumahata
Peggy Patterson
Podcasts can be an important instructional asset for improving student pronunciation in any language. Because beginning students are overwhelmed with the amount of information they have to process in class, we often neglect pronunciation. We created two podcasts that can be accessed by language learners outside of the classroom. One podcast focuses on regional variations of Spanish. The second podcast discusses different English sounds that are commonly heard in the Spanish of beginning language learners. With this podcast students learn how these English sounds influence their pronunciation giving them an American accent and how to improve their Spanish pronunciation.

Recording of this session

Turning Language Learners into Linguists? First Experiences of Learners with a New Corpus-Driven Language-Learning Tool
Peter Wood
While electronic dictionaries have been used in CALL applications for some time, the question of whether they have any advantages for the learning of vocabulary and word formation rules is still a matter of debate (cf. e.g., De Ridder, 2002; Laufer, 2000). Providing learners with a convenient way to look up translations of unknown words certainly helps them understand a text faster than with a conventional dictionary, but CALL applications, I argue, have to provide more than that. Can we, by providing sophisticated features like corpus access and concordances, enable students to carry out independent research, encourage them to focus on various aspects of the new vocabulary, and to retain it?

Improving Language Programs through Online Assessment, Data Collection, and Analysis
Susan Cefola
The School District of Pittsburgh created and currently implements district-wide online assessments and practice activities with funding from three FLAP grants. This session will demonstrate the online assessments and activities and provide information about the world language program from the data that have been collected and analyzed.
Recording of this session

Attention to Feedback in Multimedia Applications: The Role of the Complexity of the L2 Forms
Jesus Izquierdo
This study investigated whether the complexity of L2 past tense forms in a multimedia application would have an impact on learners’ attention to L2 past tense feedback provided in the form of metalinguistic clues. The findings suggest that the complexity of the L2 forms present in the environment and the manner of feedback delivery mediated learners’ attention to feedback. Based on these results, implications for the integration of feedback in L2 multimedia applications and the use of these applications in language classrooms will be discussed.

Technology for French Learning: A Mismatch Between Expectations and Reality
Kimberly LeVelle
Jinrong Li
Aliye Karabulut-Ilgu
Ruslan Suvorov
The presentation reports a multiple-case study of technology use by students enrolled in a third-year university French language class that integrates technology-based language learning activities involving the internet, movies, wikis, WebCT, and “clickers.” Interviews with the teacher and students throughout the semester show how and to what extent students use the technologies suggested by the teacher both in class and outside of class for French learning purposes.

Recording of this session

SCMC Environment from the Socioconstructivist Point of View: Topic Coherence and Interactional Features of Text-Only Chat Versus Virtual Chat in Second Life
Min Jung Jee
This study explores topic coherence and interactional patterns of synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) based on the socioconstructivist point of view. The main purpose of the study is to compare interaction patterns of text-only chat on the Teach- Net to virtual chat in Second Life. With topic coherence, specific interaction patterns examined are greetings, leave takings, off-task discussion, and intersubjectivity. The overall research question is to examine the difference between the text-only chat and virtual chat in terms of topic coherence and interactional patterns.
Recording of this session

3:30 – 4:15

The Motivational Trajectory and Learning Strategies of ESL Learners in an Entirely Web-Based Writing Environment
Jie Zhang
Online learning constitutes a new community of practice, in which learners establish new routines and negotiate different meanings through the mediation of computers. In this study, I looked at an entirely web-based ESL writing course in a northwestern university and conducted an analysis of two students to find out what makes a strategic learner in an online environment. Data from different sources were collected. The data indicated that learners who have good self-regulatory skills and integrative motivation tend to benefit more, whereas those who have difficulties in regulating themselves through computers with an instrumental motivation are more likely to be frustrated.

Recording of this session

Letter-by-Letter: Can the Chat Interface and Display Impact L2 Learning?
Jill Pellettieri
Bryan Smith
This presentation reports on a study comparing L2 learner interaction mediated by two types of text-based SCMC interfaces (a standard compose-and-post vs. a shared-screen, immediate transmission interface we have developed) to examine how features unique to each impact noticing and attention to form. We analyze and compare keystroke logs of L2 learner dyads engaged in two similar information-gap tasks, each mediated by a different interface. We discuss this shared-screen software and the implications of our findings for pedagogy and future SCMC research of SLA oriented hypotheses.

Wiki as a Collaborative Language- Learning Tool
Linda Bradley
The purpose of this presentation is to present an investigation of language-learning activities that students are engaged in when using a wiki as a collaborative tool in a language course in higher education. Environments that support peer work are interesting from both a communicative and a language-learning perspective. Methods used for this study were observations of the wiki where the contents were analyzed and categorized into activities that could be distinguished. The results suggest that wikis have a potential to support collaborative language learning in which peer work and feedback play an important role.

Recording of this session

Building Learner Fluency and Accuracy in Chinese via CMC
Dongdong Chen
This study explores the effectiveness of ITALKI-based CMC. Thirty college beginners of Chinese practiced Chinese 2 hours weekly with educated native speakers for 12 weeks using ITALKI, a language exchange system applying Web 2.0 technology. Learners were later interviewed by a native speaker and also submitted written work. The same tests were administered to another group of 20 beginners of Chinese who had the same learning conditions except that they did not receive any online communication with native speakers. Results indicated that the experimental group showed better fluency and accuracy as compared to the control group.

Français interactif: A Case Study in Open Educational Publishing
Karen W. Kelton
Nancy Guilloteau
This presentation will discuss the development and evolution of the web-based, beginning French curriculum at the University of Texas. The flexibility of digital technology allows adaptation of the content in response to a continuing cycle of formative evaluation, a process not possible in traditional textbooks. Tex’s French Grammar and Français interactif are open access websites, that is, no passwords or fees are required. This French curriculum has gone global and is increasingly used by students, teachers, and institutions throughout the world. As a result, developers are faced with the challenges and opportunities of producing open educational resources for a worldwide community.

Recording of this session

Cutting the Apron Strings with CALL: Turning ESL Students into Self-Sufficient College Writers
Paul Sundberg
Sarah Jarboe
John Leidenheimer
ESL writing courses typically offer learners valuable textbook-based presentation and practice but too often leave them dependent and ill-equipped for actual college writing. This presentation describes a multi-class research project to train advanced ESL students (a) to use computer-based writing resources and (b) to develop a variety of writing strategies for using them in order to become autonomous university-level writers. CALL resources used included online dictionaries, thesauri, grammar and spelling checkers, grammar and style references, and web-based corpora for collocation testing. Learning outcomes among classes receiving the CALL treatment are compared with control group classes using primarily textbookbased methodologies.

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Conducting Experimental Studies of L2 Instruction on the Web: Requirements and Solutions
Fenfang Hwu
Ching-yeh Tzseng
Researchers recognize that large amounts of data can lead to much stronger conclusions. Computers are advantageous in this regard because they are capable of delivering learning activities to a large number of learners and maintaining consistency in the delivery. Nevertheless, because of the availability of computer labs and students’ schedules, it may be impossible to conduct such a study on campus during or outside class. Conducting such a study on the web seems to be a solution to these problems. However, in such an environment special considerations need to be taken and solutions need to be reached. In this presentation we will share our experience in designing and implementing a web-based research study with about 500 potential participants.
Recording of this session

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