1998 Thursday Sessions

CALICO 1998

Conference Presentations
Day One: July 8, 1998

 

10:00 – 10:45

Computer Assisted Studies–Arabic Grammar
Kiril Boyadjieff, Rashad Wanis, and Charles Cole
The Arabic Grammar Computer Assisted Studies (CAS) program offers the student an opportunity to practice and polish grammatical features and vocabulary introduced in the corresponding textbook. It is organized around the structure of the Arabic Basic Course currently used at the Defense Language Institute. The program uses available computer technology to enhance the language acquisition process in our students’ quest to achieve maximum proficiency. In addition, users can utilize the program as an independent grammar reference. This second venue can also be used for the maintenance and enhancement of previously acquired language skills. The presentation will review methodological and programming issues related to the development of grammar-oriented supplemental CAS to meet the needs of foreign language education.

Extend Your Writing Classroom by Publishing on the Web
Chad Green
Second language learners need opportunities for meaningful application of skills taught in the classroom. In the case of instruction in writing, learners can apply their acquired knowledge and skills in the design, organization, and publication of their own on-line newspaper. The presenter will describe step by step how he motivated a class of 14 lower intermediate learners to model his instruction as section editors of an on-line publication. Each week, learners wrote articles and submitted them to pairs of section editors. The editors then used their own set of guidelines to select articles and provide feedback for revision.


Teaching First-Year Spanish On-Line
Danielle Cahill
This paper will serve as a framework and model for teaching a first-year Spanish course completely on-line through an electronic messaging client/server system and CD-ROM software.

Interinstitutional Task Based Collaborative Language Learning
David Ashworth and Yoko Koike
This paper presents and discusses the implementation of a scheme for interinstitutional, task based collaborative language learning and communication supported in two areas: (1) group interaction in cyberspace and (2) individual study tools. Interinstitutional project teams were created involving: (1) socialization among all the members of a three-school group as well as socialization among members of each team, (2) group work, partly by all members collectively but mainly in teams, and (3) project presentation and evaluation. In the presentation, we will explain how technology supported each of these areas as well as individual study. We will end with a proposal for CALICO members to join in a similar project across languages, the results of which would be presented at CALICO ’99.

Human-Machine Symbiosis: Bringing It Right into the Classroom for Translation Work
Jesus Soria-Nuñez
Word processing was introduced in teacher-led Spanish Translation seminars at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle to deal with a widening student ability spectrum. Used by the lecturer, it supports a methodology aiming at integrating disenfranchised students by boosting their confidence and encouraging risk taking. Word processing techniques that aid grammatical transparency, foster participation, and increase language exposure will be demonstrated. Net effects are: improved concentration, class performance, and feedback; less anxiety about one’s own errors; permanence of whole class records–invaluable as a research corpus and as student revision material. Word processors reveal themselves as powerful natural tools in language teaching. Some knowledge of Spanish will be helpful, but not essential.


Building a Curriculum Based Intranet in the Russian Language
Jack Franke
The geometric increase in computer power and the ubiquitous availability of network connectivity are revolutionizing computing. A foreign language curriculum based on old teaching techniques may seem dull and irrelevant to the modem student. Some instruction does not make active use of new technology. The difference between passive and active use of technology is similar to the difference between watching a conversation between two native speakers and participating in the conversation. Aside from making the learning experience more interesting, a well-designed curriculum can challenge the student and encourage creativity. A user controlled exercise can have a similar effect and provide the student with an excellent environment for proficiency advances. I will discuss a curriculum for the asynchronous homework project (AHP) for the first three modules of the Russian Basic Course and for additional materials in which students perform their homework in a virtual setting.

11:00 – 11:45

Developing a Hybrid Multimedia CD-ROM: Portes Ouvertes
Christopher Jones
Portes Ouvertes is a new method for first-year French published by Holt, Rinehart. It is a fully integrated multimedia method, including a textbook, authentic video (shot in Besançon, France), and a hybrid CD-ROM incorporating 20 templates, over 200 exercises, and 3,000 pieces of media. The CD-ROM was designed and programmed in Macromedia Director by the presenter. The presentation will include a demonstration of the CD-ROM content, followed by an overview of the courseware creation process, including: media creation, digitizing and storage issues, content and pedagogical assumptions, design and interface issues, CD-ROM limitations, cross platform implications, and cost considerations. 

Adding Interactivity to the Web
Gary Smith
Although World Wide Web documents have always offered interactivity through hypertext links, users’ interaction with the information presented in web documents has generally consisted only of jumps from one static document to another. However, with tools like JavaScript and Dynamic HTML, web documents can be made interactive within themselves, changing individual components on the display in response to user input. This interactivity enables instructors to create, for example, exercises that correct themselves. This presentation will discuss some of the new possibilities for interactivity and demonstrate a template developed by the presenter for creating web based fill-in-the-blanks exercises.


Autonomy for Learners in Difficulty: Self-Teaching Computer Lessons in Advanced Reading Comprehension
Isabelle Kreindler
This presentation will describe our newly initiated CALL remedial lessons for students repeatedly failing our English as a foreign language reading comprehension courses. Mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds, these students are usually overwhelmed and left behind in their regular classes. Self-pacing and self-learning computer lessons which provide constant gentle guidance and encouragement appear to be the ideal solution. The aim of such lessons is not only to have students pass the regular course exams but also to help them become more effective, sophisticated readers. In this presentation, we will outline our principles in designing the remedial CALL lessons and show how they differ from regular courseware, with illustrations from sample lessons using the WinCALIS authoring system. Though our lessons are geared for university level students, they can be adapted for other levels of instruction.


Involving your Whole Department in CALL: A Decade Later
Lathrop Johnson
Ten years ago, at the 1988 CALICO Symposium in Salt Lake City, I presented a model of faculty development with the double-edged title: “By Hook and by Crook.” The problems faced then included teaching faculty how to turn on a computer in the first place or how to begin basic word processing, as well as conceptualizing technological applications for the enhancement of learning. How do things appear now, a decade later? This presentation will discuss important changes in hardware, software, and infrastructure over the last ten years which affect faculty development in positive and also negative ways. It will also look at problem areas which have not changed since 1988 and conclude by proposing guidelines for the next decade.

Maximizing the Potential of your Course Web Site
Barbara Nelson and Jackie Tanner
This presentation will demonstrate a model for an innovative pilot web site for introductory Spanish classes using new directions in technology to enhance student participation using a traditional textbook. Pedagogical successes, failures, and challenges will be evaluated from the perspective of the student, the teacher, and the director of the Mellon Project. Examples of on-line journals, class albums, interactive grammar exercises with feedback, and internet activities to stimulate creative communication will be shown.


2:30 – 3:15

Teaching Phonetics and Vocabulary with “Le Visuel”
Charles Dockery
“Le Visuel” is a dual-platform, multimedia dictionary of 3,500 illustrations and 25,000 words pronounced in English, French, and Spanish contained on a single CD-ROM. I will demonstrate how this software can be used as an electronic textbook in a course which focuses on phonetics, translation, and/or contrastive analysis. I am presently using “Le Visuel” in a third-year course entitled “French Phonetics and Translation.” Each student has his/her own CD-ROM. I have devised exercises for in-lab and out-of-class exercises. Although I am using this software to teach French, it is perfectly adaptable to providing instruction in Spanish or English as a Second Language.

Learners Create Collaborative Multimedia Presentations
Dvora Ben Meir
The presenter will demonstrate a multimedia project for English as a Foreign Language and English as a Second Language intermediate learners developed by Israel Educational Television. The goal of the project is to enable mixed ability groups to produce interactive multimedia presentations. The program provides content based tasks, sample types of presentations, a data library with text, picture, video and sound banks, a friendly graphic authoring system, and templates for the input of data. Learners view and choose sample presentations, do research, and prepare presentations in the Production Studio. The presenter will report on the research and future plans to use the program on the Internet.

Collaboration on Digital Interactive Software Templates
Jacqueline Kaminski
This demonstration addresses materials created collaboratively by faculty and the Modern Languages Computing Specialist for use in second language instruction at Wabash College, a small liberal arts college located in Crawfordsville, Indiana. The software templates and details of the evolution patterns and pedagogical foundations/concerns will be discussed in the presentation. This collaboration was necessitated by the decision of Wabash faculty to create a custom digital language lab, rather than use a traditional console lab. Faculty, staff, and students worked collaboratively and successfully, using HyperCard and Authorware, to create, modify, and utilize custom multimedia templates which address oral/aural skills.


From CD-ROM to the World Wide Web: Coming Full Circle
Jack Burston
This paper describes the challenges faced and solutions adopted in producing a multimedia web-managed CD-ROM program, Les Variétés de Français-WWW. While conversion of the original CD-ROM application to full web functionality offered the promise of extended computer platform compatibility and centralized network delivery, it also had to confront the intrinsic limitations of web-based delivery systems. To exploit the networked distributional potential of the World Wide Web while at the same time maintaining sophisticated programming capability and a rich, immediately accessible, multimedia environment, the approach taken in the development of Les Variétés de Français-WWW is to wed the technologies through the creation of a web managed CD-ROM program.

3:30 – 4:15

Fundamental Internet Literacy Management (FILM)
Heidi Shetzer and Leslie Hammersmith
This presentation will discuss the idea of teaching basic, intermediate, and advanced Internet literacy skills to teachers and students. The presenters will first define and describe their framework, Fundamental Internet Literacy Management (FILM). Second, they will discuss how FILM applies to instructor professional development and training. Third, the presenters will discuss how teachers might integrate FILM into the design, implementation, and evaluation of computer assisted language learning courses.


Feedback in Pronunciation Programs
Zheng-Sheng Zhang
In most CALL programs, feedback has not been very helpful, due to the lack of linguistic and pedagogical sophistication. Based on simplistic matching, learner input is judged according to the total identity or non-identity of the answer. While simple to implement, this kind of feedback can be misleading, discouraging, and unhelpful, the degree of negative effect/affect being directly proportional to the complexity of test items. This paper demonstrates that while still using the simple matching algorithm, the use of linguistic analysis can be employed to enable detailed error analysis, which in turn can provide more helpful and intelligent feedback.


Multimedia Courseware Development: From Faculty Training to Integration of Homemade Software in Syllabi
John Pearce and Lubov Iskold
The presenters will describe a three-year project to train faculty in authoring multimedia software for use in foreign language teaching and learning. The project took place at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA, 1995-97, with the support of a grant from the Mellon Foundation. All full time faculty in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures participated in design and development of interactive, multimedia courseware. As a result of this team effort, 22 new software titles now enrich the language learning resources in six languages: French, German, Italian, Latin, Russian and Spanish. Integration of the software into syllabi and qualitative and quantitative assessment of the project’s effectiveness began in fall 1997. The presenters will discuss in detail all stages of the project. 


The Art and Science of Captioning Authentic Video
Helen Guillory and A. Allen Rowe
This presentation discusses options for titling authentic video in second language instruction, with an emphasis on the benefits of second language titling. Listening and reading strategies, as well as video context, define the task of video viewing that second language learners face. In authentic video, neither the rate of speech nor the vocabulary level of the material is adjusted, so that if comprehension of the linguistic message is the goal, the choice of the amount of text, (i.e., subtitles or verbatim rendering of the script), as well as language, is important. Captions should always be optional for optimum learner control. The presentation includes examples of video titling.

Network Computing: Is It a Viable Alternative for CALL?
Timothy Pope
Using live demonstrations from the Web, I will illustrate the way in which the University of Lethbridge has initiated a move away from IBM- or Mac-specific computing to network based computing using Java Stations and Java capable browsers. Network computing is a new paradigm that allows software interfaces and hardware platforms to be greatly simplified and standardized. While conversion to network computing demands much creative and original programming, the basic needs of foreign language instruction are few and can already be met by the new breed of Java-powered word processors, dictionaries, and multimedia exercise authoring systems.


4:30 – 5:15

Software for Testing Oral Language Skills
Jerry Larson and Kim Smith
The presenters will describe and demonstrate the use of software developed at Brigham Young University for testing oral language skills. The software includes modules for creating, administering, and evaluating oral tests. The oral testing software has been designed to operate on individual or networked computer stations and incorporates a variety of response elicitation prompts, including audio, graphics, animations, and full motion video. As part of the presentation, the presenters will demonstrate how each of the software modules functions and will discuss the software’s potential application in university foreign- and second-language programs.


“So We’re Surfing the Net. ¿Y qué?” Integrating Web Portfolios in a Second-Year Spanish Course
William Childers
Use of the World Wide Web in language teaching requires a structure which gives coherence to the sheer volume of material without sacrificing the richness which makes it so attractive in the first place. In the model being developed for second-year Spanish at Southwestern University, students create web sites on different countries. They gather information on their country and share it with the class through oral presentations on cultural topics and news items and an end-of-semester ‘open house.’ In effect, each student becomes the ‘ambassador’ to the class from another country, and each has some new knowledge to impart to the others.

Multimedia Approach to Language Learning through the Internet
W. Mary Kim and Herbert Chang
The application of internet and HTML technology, in conjunction with other software such as Oshaberi-mate or Speech-mate, Reader, and ToolBook has revolutionized the learning of Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese at the Foreign Service for learners of all levels and aptitudes. Multimedia applications for reinforcing listening, reading, and grammar comprehension skills will be described and illustrated. The Korean Section is currently developing multimedia courseware using HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and Toolbook technologies. Lessons have been developed through the creation of multimedia HTML files for the World Wide Web. The Korean lessons are situation based and focus on functional language skills. The details of the course objectives, design, lesson contents (e.g., dialogues and exercises), and fonts will be discussed and illustrated for all three languages.

The Effectiveness of CALL in Grammar Teaching: An Evaluation Using Error Analysis
Christopher Hall
A quirk of modularisation divided first-year students of German at Leicester University into two groups. The students have identical entry requirements, they follow the same German language programme and sit the same end-of-year examination. The only difference is that approximately one half attend a regular CALL class and the other half does not. Over a period of three years, data were collected on these students, and the written German produced in the end-of-year examinations has been subjected to a detailed error analysis. That analysis concentrated on four points of German grammar which receive substantial treatment in the CALL exercises. The results show the extent to which the CALL exercises have helped in the learning of German grammar.