[michael thomas, hayo reinders] task-based languag(bookfi.org)

Task-Based Language Learning and Teaching with Technology

Also available from Continuum

Online Second Language Acquisition, Vincenza TudiniTeacher Cognition and Language Education, Simon Borg

Task-Based Language Learning and Teaching with

Technology

Edited by Michael Thomas and

Hayo Reinders

Continuum International Publishing GroupThe Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038

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© Michael Thomas, Hayo Reinders and contributors 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Michael Thomas and Hayo Reinders have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as Authors of this work.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4411-0153-2 (hardcover)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataTask-based language learning and teaching with technology / edited by Michael Thomas and Hayo Reinders. p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-4411-0153-2 (hardback)1. Language and languages--Computer-assisted instruction. I. Thomas, Michael, 1969- II. Reinders, Hayo. III. Title.P53.28.T38 2010418.0078'5--dc22 2009051951

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Contents

List of Figures and Tables viiNotes on Contributors xForeword by Rod Ellis xviList of Abbreviations xix

Chapter 1: Deconstructing Tasks and Technology 1 Michael Thomas and Hayo Reinders

Part I: Research on Tasks in CALL

Chapter 2: Research on the Use of Technology in Task-Based Language Teaching 17

Andreas Müller-Hartmann and Marita Schocker-v. Ditfurth

Chapter 3: Task-Based Language Teaching in Network-Based CALL: An Analysis of Research on Learner Interaction in Synchronous CMC 41

Mark Peterson

Chapter 4: Taking Intelligent CALL to Task 63 Mathias Schulze

Chapter 5: Effects of Multimodality in Computer-Mediated Communication Tasks 83

Glenn Stockwell

vi Contents

Chapter 6: Measuring Complexity in Task-Based Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication 105

Karina Collentine

Part II: Applying Technology-Mediated Tasks

Chapter 7: Task Design for a Virtual Learning Environment in a Distance Language Course 131

Regine Hampel

Chapter 8: Teacher Development, TBLT and Technology 154 Thomas Raith and Volker Hegelheimer

Chapter 9: Edubba: Real-World Writing Tasks in a Virtual World 176

Kenneth Reeder

Chapter 10: The Enactment of Task Design in Telecollaboration 2.0 197 Mirjam Hauck

Chapter 11: Afterword: Future Directions for Technology-Mediated Tasks 218

Gary Motteram and Michael Thomas

Index 239

List of Figures and Tables

Figures

Figure 2.1 Activity system (based on Engeström et al., 1999) 22Figure 6.1 Sample treatment screen 114Figure 6.2 Nominal cluster: Descriptive statistics of summed

z-scores by task and learner level 117Figure 6.3 Narrative cluster: Descriptive statistics of summed

z-scores by task and learner level 119Figure 6.4 Propositional complexity cluster: Descriptive

statistics of summed z-scores by task and learner level 121

Figure 6.5 Overlay of screens with timer bar and iChatdirections 123

Figure 9.1 Edubba’s virtual characters 178Figure 9.2 Edubba’s conceptual design 179Figure 9.3 The virtual city 180Figure 9.4 The pedagogical model of writing in Edubba 191Figure 10.1 Project Task 1 208Figure 10.2 Project Task 1, Part 3 new 211Figure 10.3 2009 exchange – Task 2, Part 3 213Figure 11.1 Needs analysis viewed through an activity

theory lens 223Figure 11.2 The hexagon model of synchronous teaching

methodology 224Figure 11.3 A model for implementing tasks in Second Life

from Deutschmann (2009) 227

viii List of Figures and Tables

Tables

Table 3.1 Potential advantages and limitations of interaction in text-based real-time CMC for language learners 47

Table 3.2 Key fi ndings of studies on learner interaction in LAN-based CMC 50

Table 3.3 Key fi ndings of studies on learner interaction in chat-based CMC 53

Table 3.4 Key fi ndings of studies on learner interaction in chat-based CMC 56

Table 5.1 Students participating in the classes according to year 91

Table 5.2 Mean number of words per chat session/forum post 93

Table 5.3 Mean TTR for each chat session/forum post 94Table 5.4 Percentage of correctly spelt words in each

chat session/forum post 94Table 5.5 Mean length of c-unit for each chat session/

forum post 95Table 5.6 Percentage of error-free c-units for each

chat session/forum post 95Table 6.1 Nominal cluster: descriptive statistics of

summed z-scores by task and learner level 117Table 6.2 Nominal cluster: signifi cance tests of summed

z-scores 118Table 6.3 Narrative cluster: descriptive statistics of summed

z-scores by task and learner level 119Table 6.4 Narrative cluster: signifi cance tests of summed

z-scores 119Table 6.5 Propositional complexity cluster: descriptive

statistics of summed z-scores by task andlearner level 121

Table 6.6 Propositional complexity cluster: Signifi cance tests of summed z-scores 121

Table 7.1 Task framework 140Table 7.2 Additional dimensions of the task framework 141Table 7.3 Realization of Ellis’s and Oxford’s task features

in online design 142

List of Figures and Tables ix

Table 8.1 Standards-based model of task-based teaching competencies 162

Table 8.2 Levels of task refl ection 165Table 9.1 Genres and thinking skills in Edubba 184Table 9.2 ‘To-Do’ list for student interns’ orientation 186Table 9.3 ‘Task vs. Exercise’ learning activities 187Table 9.4 ‘To-Do’ list for staff reporters’ story 1 188Table 10.1 Participant groups 202Table 10.2 Project plan 203

Notes on Contributors

Karina Collentine is an Assistant Professor of Spanish and Spanish Secondary Education at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, US. She is the departmental student teaching coordinator and the university supervisor and advisor for secondary education under-graduate majors, working with students to get certifi ed to teach Spanish, French and German in the state of Arizona. She is also the departmental NCATE coordinator, ensuring that education majors meet the requirements for NCATE accreditation. She teaches undergraduate and graduate-level Spanish linguistics and pedagogy courses. Her research interests include TB-SCMC, task-based syn-chronous computer-mediated communication and second language acquisition.

Regine Hampel is a Senior Lecturer in Modern Languages (German) at the Open University in the United Kingdom, where she heads the research group in independent and technology-enhanced language learning in the Department of Languages. Her own research explores theoretical and practical issues around the use of digital technologies in language learning and teaching. She is particularly interested in the impact of mediation on learning in new multimodal environments. Her publications focus on the affordances of new media, task design, learner interaction and col-laboration, teacher training and literacies, and include a book on Online Communication in Language Learning and Teaching co-authored with Marie-Noëlle Lamy (2008).

Notes on Contributors xi

Mirjam Hauck is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Head of the Depart-ment of Languages (Faculty of Education and Language Studies) at the Open University in the United Kingdom. She has written numerous articles and book chapters on the use of technologies for the learning and teaching of languages and cultures covering aspects such as task design, tutor role and training, the affordances of the new media and e-literacy skills. Her current research and publications explore the impact of mediation and the relevance of multimodal communicative competence on the development of intercultural communicative competence in online environments.

Volker Hegelheimer is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of English and the Ph.D. Program in Applied Lin-guistics & Technology at Iowa State University. He teaches graduate courses on technology in second language teaching and research, language testing and research methods as well as technology-enhanced undergraduate English as a Second Language (ESL) courses. His research interests include applications of the web and emerging technologies in language learning and language testing and his publications have appeared in refereed international jour-nals such as CALICO Journal, Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, Language Learning & Technology, Language Testing, System and ReCALL. He has also contributed to several edited volumes on CALL and teacher training. Most recently, he worked on the TESOL Technology Standards with a team of CALL researchers.

Gary Motteram is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Manchester where he has worked for over 20 years. He has an M.Ed. in Teaching English Overseas and an Ed.D. in e-learning. He set up and still runs a Master’s in Educational Technology and TESOL, which is taught both on-site in Manchester and by e-learning. He has presented at conferences and published regularly in the fi elds of technology in language learning and technology supported distance education. He has recently managed a number of international

xii Notes on Contributors

projects for the University of Manchester including: eChinaUK (www.echinauk.org) and AVALON (avalonlearning.eu) and ran a two-year research project for Cambridge University Press exploring what teachers do with technology. A new book based on the project will be available from 2010.

Andreas Müller-Hartmann is Professor of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and the Director of the Institute for Foreign Languages at the University of Education, Heidelberg, Germany. He holds an MA in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi, United States and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Osnabrück, Germany. His research interests include task-supported language learning (TSLL), the development of inter-cultural communicative competence, the use of technology in the EFL classroom, and teacher education. He has co-written books on TEFL in the secondary classroom (2004) and TSLL (appears 2010) (with Marita Schocker-v. Ditfurth) and TEFL in the primary class-room (2009) (with Michael Legutke & Marita Schocker-v. Ditfurth). He has co-edited books on qualitative research in foreign language learning and teaching (2001) and task-based language learning with technology (2008). He teaches TEFL, TSLL, CALL and American Cultural Studies.

Mark Peterson received his M.Sc. degree in TESOL and CALL from the University of Stirling, and his Ph.D. in linguistics (CALL specialization) from the University of Edinburgh. He is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies at Kyoto University in Japan, where he teaches courses on CALL and CMC in the applied linguistics programme. His main research interests focus on the relationship between SLA and net-work-based CALL. At present, he is conducting a number of learner-based studies that investigate the use of virtual worlds and gaming environments in language learning.

Thomas Raith is a Lecturer at the University of Education in Heidelberg, Germany. His main fi elds of interest are new media in the language classroom, task-based language learning and standards

www.echinauk.org

www.echinauk.org

Notes on Contributors xiii

in language teacher education. He teaches graduate courses on the use of technology in foreign language teaching, task-based language teaching, classroom research and standards in language teaching. He is currently researching task-based models of teacher training with a team of researchers.

Kenneth Reeder is Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia, Canada. An applied linguist, he teaches in the areas of Applied Linguistics for Teachers, and Child Language in Education. His research spans studies of first and second language acquisition, biliterate development in immersion education, appropriate uses of language learning software and assess-ment, and intercultural dimensions of online learning. Currently he is concluding a three-year educational assessment of advanced voice recognition software for novice ESL readers in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute of Robotics.

Hayo Reinders (www.innovationinteaching.org) is Head of Language and Learning Support at Middlesex University in London and editor of the journal Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching. A fre-quent keynote speaker at international events, he was previously founding Director of the English Language Self-Access Centre at the University of Auckland and Visiting Professor at Meiji University in Japan. Hayo is the author or editor of over ten books with his most recent projects including books on teaching methodologies, Trans-form your Teaching: Strategies for Multicultural Education and an edited book on Learner and Teacher Autonomy. His interests are in Teacher Education, CALL and Learner Autonomy. He has designed virtual learning environments for language learners and teachers and has developed institutional language support systems at several universit-ies around the world.

Mathias Schulze is an Associate Professor of German and the Director of the Centre for German Studies at Waterloo University in Canada. His research interests include Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL), online language learning and bilingualism. He has co-written a book (with Trude Heift) on

www.innovationinteaching.org

xiv Notes on Contributors

ICALL, Errors and Intelligence in CALL (2007), edited a special issue of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (2008) on ICALL and co-edited a book, German Diasporic Experiences (2008), with chapters on linguistic, historic and cultural facets of migration and acculturation of German speakers. He teaches German language, CALL, second language acquisition theories and bilingualism.

Marita Schocker-v. Ditfurth is a Professor of Applied Linguistics and TEFL at the University of Education in Freiburg, Germany. She has researched and published in the areas of technology-supported lan-guage learning, task-based approaches to language learning, Primary EFL and teacher education development. She has developed various course materials for secondary and primary teachers of English. In collaboration with Andreas Müller-Hartmann she has developed a Blended Learning MA course (E-LINGO) that teaches primary EFL teachers worldwide. She directs two state-funded classroom research projects that investigate the potential of tasks for secondary EFL fol-lowing an action-research approach. Having been a secondary EFL teacher for 13 years, she is involved with research on challenges faced by classroom teachers in their daily lives.

Glenn Stockwell is Professor in Applied Linguistics at Waseda Univer-sity, Tokyo, Japan. He teaches a range of English language subjects and several applied linguistics subjects, including second language acquisition, second language teaching methodology and computer-assisted language learning. His research interests include computer-mediated communication, mobile learning and the role of technology in the language learning process. He is co-author of CALL Dimensions (2006) with Mike Levy, and has published widely in international journals in the fi eld of CALL. He is the general editor of The JALT CALL Journal, and member of the academic advisory boards and review boards of the ReCALL Journal, Computer Assisted Language Learn-ing and the CALICO Journal.

Michael Thomas is Professor of English at Nagoya University of Com-merce and Business in Japan. His research interests are in ICT in education, language learning and technology and the philosophy of

Notes on Contributors xv

language. Among his publications are Handbook of Research on Web 2.0 and Second Language Learning (2009), Interactive Whiteboards for Educa-tion: Theory, Research and Practice (2010) (with Euline Cutrim Schmid), Social Media in Education: Applying the New Digital Literacies (forthcoming), and The Reception of Derrida: Translation and Transformation (2006). He is editor of the International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments and organizer of an international symposium series on digital technologies and language education in Japan.

Foreword

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is currently attracting enormous interest as refl ected in the number of books published on this topic in the last few years. An obvious question, then, is ‘Why do we need another book on TBLT?’ In fact, there is a very good answer to this question. The current literature deals almost exclusively with TBLT as practised in face-to-face (FTF) classrooms. There is still relatively little published about TBLT in technology-mediated contexts. This book, therefore, fi lls a clear gap. I personally welcome this book because my own knowledge of how technology can be used in TBLT is very limited.

One line of research that I do have some familiarity with is the study of synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) and its role in second language acquisition (SLA). Much of this work has been informed by interactionist theories of SLA. These hypo-thesize that negotiation-of-meaning sequences support learning by providing comprehensible input, feedback and opportunities for learners to self-correct. Smith’s (2003, 2005) studies investigated whether negotiation in a CMC context resulted in the same pattern of interaction as that reported to occur in FTF task-based interac-tions. Smith found that they differed. He identifi ed what he called ‘split negotiation routines’, where the response to an indication of a communication problem only occurred after one or more repeat indications of the problem. He also reported that there was no rela-tionship between learners’ uptake of feedback (with or without repair) and the acquisition of second language (L2) vocabulary items. Loewen and Erlam (2006) investigated the effect of corrective feedback on acquisition in L2 learners’ performance of a task in a synchronous learning environment. They reported that the feedback

Foreword xvii

had no effect on the learning of regular past tense. This result differs from that of Ellis, Loewen and Erlam (2006) who found signifi cant effects for corrective feedback on the acquisition of the same gram-matical feature in a classroom-based study. These studies suggest that interaction in a synchronous computer-mediated environment may not afford the same learning opportunities as a FTF environment. Clearly, though, there is a need for further studies.

There are theoretical perspectives on tasks other than that afforded by the Interaction Hypothesis. Skehan (1998), for example, proposed a theory based on a dual-mode model of linguistic representation. This states ‘two systems co-exist, the rule-based analytic, on the one hand, and the formulaic, exemplar-based on the other’ (p. 54). The rule-based system consists of powerful ‘generative’ rules and is required to compute well-formed sentences. The exemplar-based system is capacious, with the contents organized in accordance with the ‘idiom principle’ (Sinclair, 1991), and is required for fast, fl uent language use. Skehan argued that ‘language users can move between these systems, and do so quite naturally’ (1998, p. 54). Skehan draws on this theory in his own work on tasks to investigate how various design features of tasks (e.g. whether the task is tightly or loosely structured) and implementation features (e.g. whether learners have the opportunity to plan before they perform the task) impact on three aspects of language production – fl uency, complexity and accur acy. In a similar mode, Robinson (2001) has advanced his Cognition Hypothesis to explain how task complexity affects L2 production. To date, these theories have been tested on tasks performed in FTF interaction so there is a clear need for studies that investigate their claims in relation to technology-mediated L2 production.

Increasingly, tasks are also being investigated from the perspective of sociocultural theory. This views tasks as artefacts that can mediate language learning through interaction. Accordingly, a distinction is made between ‘task’ and ‘activity’, with the former referring to the workplan that is given to learners (i.e. the artefact) and the latter to the communication that results from the performance of the task. The point is made that learners inevitably interpret the workplan in terms of their own needs, motives and histories, and thus the same task can result in very different kinds of activity when performed by

xviii Foreword

different learners or even by the same learners on different occasions and in different contexts. This is clearly fertile ground for the study of how learners construct tasks in technological environments. Some work has already been undertaken here (see, for example, Thorne & Black, 2007) but much more is needed.

We cannot assume that tasks work the same way in FTF classrooms and in technology-mediated environments. Nor can we assume that they work in the same way in the highly varied environments that technology now affords. Given the current advocacy of TBLT and the increasing use of technology in language teaching it is important that we develop a fuller understanding of how to design tasks for use with different technologies and how best to implement them in ways that will foster language learning. This book makes a notable contribu-tion to this agenda and is very welcome.

Professor Rod EllisUniversity of Auckland, New Zealand

References

Ellis, R., Loewen, S., & Erlam, R. (2006). Implicit and explicit corrective feed-back and the acquisition of L2 grammar. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 28, 339–368.

Loewen, S., & Erlam, R. (2006). Corrective feedback in the chatroom: An experi-mental study. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 19(1), 1–14.

Robinson, P. (2001). Task complexity, cognitive resources, and syllabus design: A triadic framework for examining task infl uences on SLA. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press.

Skehan, P. (1998). A cognitive approach to language learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Smith, B. (2003). The use of communication strategies in computer-mediated communication. System, 31, 29–53.

—(2005). The relationship between negotiated interaction, learner uptake and lexical acquisition in task-based computer-mediated communication. TESOL Quarterly, 39, 33–58.

Thorne, S., & Black, R. (2007). Language and literacy development in computer-mediated contexts and communities. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 27, 1–28.

List of Abbreviations

ACMC Asynchronous Computer-Mediated CommunicationAI Artifi cial IntelligenceAS Activity SystemASR Automated Speech RecognitionAT Activity TheoryAVALON Access to Virtual and Action Learning live ONlineCALL Computer-Assisted Language LearningCASLA Computer Applications in Second Language

AcquisitionCBI Computer-Based InstructionCBL Computer-Based LearningCEFR Common European Framework of Reference for

LanguagesCH Cognition HypothesisCLT Communicative Language TeachingCMC Computer-Mediated CommunicationCMS Course Management SystemDTVC Desktop Video ConferencingEAL English as an Additional LanguageEFL English as a Foreign LanguageESL English as a Second LanguageFTF Face-to-FaceGPS Global Positioning SystemsHCI Human-Computer InteractionICALL Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language LearningICT Information and Communication TechnologiesIELTS International English Language Testing SystemIH Interaction Hypothesis

xx List of Abbreviations

IL InterlanguageIREF Initiate/Response/Follow-upITCA Interrupted Task Chatting ActivityL1 Mother Tongue or First LanguageL2 Second LanguageLAN Local Area NetworksLANCELOT LANguage learning with CErtifi ed Live Online

TrainersLMS Learning Management SystemMOO Multiuser, Object-Oriented EnvironmentMUVE Multi-User Virtual EnvironmentsNBLT Network-Based Language TeachingNLP Natural Language ProcessingPTCA Post-task Chatting ActivitySCMC Synchronous Computer-Mediated CommunicationSLA Second Language AcquisitionTBL Task-Based LearningTBLT Task-Based Language TeachingTB-SCMC Task-Based Synchronous Computer Mediated

CommunicationTESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other LanguagesTSLL Task-Supported Language LearningTSLT Task-Supported Language TeachingVLE Virtual Learning EnvironmentVR Virtual RealityVW Virtual WorldZPD Zone of Proximal Development

Chapter 1

Deconstructing Tasks and Technology

Michael Thomas and Hayo Reinders

In Computer Applications in Second Language Acquisition (2001), Chapelle explores the interface between computer assisted-language learning (CALL), task-based learning (TBL) and second language acquisition (SLA):

. . . anyone concerned with second language teaching and learning in the 21st century needs to grasp the nature of the unique technology-mediated tasks learners can engage in for language acquisition and how such tasks can be used for assessment. . . . To meet the chal-lenge, the study of the features of computer-based tasks that promote learning should be a concern for teachers as well as for SLA researchers who wish to contribute to knowledge about instructed SLA. (p. 2; italics added)

In responding to Chapelle’s focus on ‘technology-mediated tasks’, this book is the fi rst collection of international research to consider the synergies between second language (L2) task-based approaches and CALL. The book is an attempt to initiate a closer dialogue between these areas of theory, research and practice in order to explore synergies and differences as well as potential future directions (Ortega, 2009). It is hoped that such a dialogue will be research-based, interdisciplinary and inclusive. At the same time, it ought to be analytical in orientation, and resist succumbing – as is so often the case – to uniformed scepticism or uncritical idealism, in relation to either technology or task-based language teaching (TBLT). One of the strengths of the collection is that it includes international perspectives, and includes contributions from researchers and learners in Canada

2 Task-Based Language Learning and Teaching with Technology

(Reeder; Schulze), Germany (Müller-Hartmann & Schocker-v. Ditfurth; Raith & Hegelheimer), Japan (Peterson; Stockwell), the United Kingdom (Hampel; Hauck; Motteram) and the United States (Collentine). These international contributions are important in that they all take into account one of the main criticisms targeted at a task-based approach, namely, that it is a methodology that is unresponsive to different cultural and pedagogical contexts. More-over, these contributions offer perspectives on a wide range of areas of central importance to language learners and teachers in a variety of contexts, as they grapple with the new literacies of digital education (Pegrum, 2009), including the virtualization of language teacher pro-fessional development, the use of electronic portfolios, synchronous and asynchronous communication, telecollaboration, Web 2.0 tech-nologies, online discussion forums and 3-D virtual worlds (VWs). The international perspectives in this book confi rm the dual importance of task-based approaches to language education around the world (Stewart, 2009; Willis & Willis, 2009), as well as of the increasing centrality of technology-mediated tasks to the process of language learning and teaching in general.

We would therefore agree with Levy and Stockwell (2006, p. 249) who argue, ‘There is no one single TBLT methodology’, while also emphasizing that one of the strengths of CALL is that it is both ‘interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary’ (p. 253) in orientation. Two of the advantages that CALL technologies have made possible is the opportunity to engage in language learning and teaching across national boundaries and to consider other educational contexts, as well as the multi-dimensional nature of task design as a consequence (Levy & Stockwell, 2006; Reinders & White, 2010). Though there have been varying interpretations of what constitutes a ‘task’ in lan-guage education over the last three decades, we take as our starting point the six ‘criterial features’ suggested by Ellis (2003, pp. 9–10): tasks involve a plan for learner activity; they have a primary focus on making meaning; they engage with real-world authentic language use; they focus on any or all of the four language skills; they engage learners in cognitive skills in order to accomplish them; and they have a defi ned communication-based learning outcome. As the title of the collection suggests, however, in order to contribute to a fuller

Deconstructing Tasks and Technology 3

understanding of technology-mediated tasks, we prefer ‘task-based language learning and teaching (Ellis, 2003) to TBLT (Van den Branden, Bygate & Norris, 2009). This dual focus emphasizes the importance of learner interpretation and engagement vis-à-vis tasks, as well as recognizing that both CALL and task-based approaches deconstruct the traditional roles typically ascribed to teachers and learners in the language learning process.

It is clear, however, that the potential synergies between TBLT and CALL have not always been recognized. Published in the same year as Chapelle’s study, the Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (Carter & Nunan, 2001) includes separate entries for ‘computer-assisted language learning’ and ‘task-based language learning’. Although Hanson-Smith’s discussion of CALL includes a section entitled, ‘Authenticity, Tasks, Content and Strategies’, in which she describes the potential provided by computers to aid ‘authentic tasks for ESL students of all ages’ (p. 112), no cross-reference to Willis and Willis’ chapter or TBLT research literature is included or vice versa. With a few notable exceptions since then (Doughty & Long, 2003; González-Lloret, 2003, 2007; Skehan, 2003), the separation between research that deals specifi cally with TBLT and CALL has generally continued up until the present day. Just as SLA theory has typically marginalized CALL, (Chapelle, 2003, p. 128), TBLT research has typically concentrated more on face-to-face (FTF) classroom research. Evidence of this separation can be found in Van den Branden, Bygate & Norris’ (2009) recent 512 page TBLT reader, which, although concluding by briefl y considering ‘cross-pollination with other L2 pedagogy domains’ such as ‘technology’ (p. 495), does not include a chapter on the subject. Given the acknowledged ascen-dency of task-based approaches, this is an interesting omission, in that TBLT is based on promoting real-world authentic tasks in the target language at a time when 1.5 billion people in the world have access to global forms of technology-mediated communication, from laptop computers to mobile phones, from Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to social networking sites.

In this context, the omission refl ects a ‘strong’ reading of TBLT, which as the editors explain, in its ‘fullest sense transcends the scope of a teaching methodology, by articulating a variety of principles to


the design of language educational courses and programs’ (Norris, Bygate & Van den Branden, 2009, p. 131; italics added). The so-called ‘weaker’ varieties of TBLT such as ‘task-supported language teaching’ (Ellis, 2003) and ‘task-referenced teaching’, are less concerned in contrast with advancing tasks as the ‘unit of operation for both con-structing the syllabus and for teaching’ (p. 9). In its ‘fullest sense’ according to this reading, TBLT involves both macro processes (needs analysis and integrated task, syllabus and curriculum design) as well as micro-level strategies (practical teaching, task framework, design and evaluation decisions based on particular learning contexts). CALL remains on the periphery in this context due to a research agenda that has focused on the ‘precept that task-based teaching involves . . . simply having learners do tasks’ (Norris et al., 2009, p. 133; italics added).

To a certain extent Levy and Stockwell (2006) agree with this perspective, arguing that although research about tasks in language teaching has been a ‘pivotal component in [CALL] design’ (p. 14) since the mid-1980s (Breen, 1986; Candlin & Murphy, 1986; Long & Crookes, 1991; Nunan, 1989), much CALL research has dealt merely with small-scale research projects at the micro-level. Nevertheless, a lot of benefi cial research has been going on for quite some time in this context, as researchers have identifi ed principles for the pedagogical design of language learning tasks in environments that utilize technology, and where signifi cantly different task affor-dances exist to those in ‘low-tech’ or ‘no-tech’ contexts (Chapelle, 1999; Meskill, 1999; Mills, 1999; Salaberry, 1996). Understanding the design and behaviour of tasks in multimodal e-learning environ-ments, where a variety of FTF, distance or blended models are used, has been an especially prominent area of CALL research in recent years (Collentine, 2009; González-Lloret, 2003). To this extent, the less restrictive and diversifi ed approach to task design and sequenc-ing that lies at the heart of CALL contrasts favourably with much TBLT research, which is often based on traditional classroom tasks (Chapelle, 2003, p. 135; Ellis, 2003).

The marginalization of technology within TBLT research is inter-esting, then, on a number of fronts. Both TBLT and CALL emerged at approximately the same time during the early to mid-1980s, have


passed through a number of stages, and now share a series of theoretical antecedents, including project-based, content-based and experiential learning, as well as constructivist and social constructiv-ist thought. Secondly, TBLT’s strong interest in presenting learners with meaningful, real-world, functional tasks based on access to authentic materials has also been evident in more recent CALL research. Whereas TBLT can be seen as a reaction to the ‘form-focused learning cycle’ of communicative language teaching (CLT) (Samuda & Bygate, 2008), CALL research in particular responds to the dramatic changes that have been taking place in the evolution of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and learning methodologies. Over the last twenty years, CALL has moved from an earlier ‘structural’ or ‘behaviourist’ phase, through ‘communicative’ CALL to a third ‘integrative’ stage (Gruba, 2004; Warschauer, 1996).

During the more recent phase of communicative CALL, ‘peda-gogically controlled tasks’ (Evans, 2009, p. 22) have been used in computer-mediated communication (CMC) to explore a series of research issues typically found in TBLT studies, such as complexity of student output (Sotillo, 2000), the Interaction Hypothesis (Toyoda & Harrison, 2002), implicit corrective feedback (Pellettieri, 2000), L2 pragmatic competence (Belz & Kinginger, 2002), and learner anxiety (Arnold, 2007), as well as cross-cultural communication (Müller-Hartmann, 2000).

Integrative CALL, as Evans (2009) suggests, is based on blending ‘multiple language skills’ with multiple types of on- and offl ine language learning resources. This multimodal focus ‘make[s] full use of networked computers as a means to engage learners in meaningful, large-scale collaborative activities’ (Gruba, 2004, p. 629). CALL research therefore has emerged from a narrower behaviour-istic focus, to one that is concerned with a ‘more holistic or synthetic perspective’ (Evans, 2009, p. 27).

Although they do not include contributions on technology-mediated tasks in their TBLT reader, Van den Branden et al. (2009), acknow-ledge that changes in language education are often ‘responses to new technologies’, citing ‘tape recorders’ and ‘language laboratories’ as the necessary infrastructure for the ‘audio-lingual and audio-visual methods’ (p. 495) prominent in the 1970s and early 1980s. In the


decades since the popularity of the dedicated language laboratory, however, we have seen the transition from mainframe to micro-computers, from analogue to digital technologies, the birth of the World Wide Web, and latterly web-based social media, all of them bringing fresh and more potent challenges to language use as well as learning and teaching practices.

Since 2001, digital technologies have been increasingly used in language learning and teaching, both in and outside the classroom, in FTF, distance and now in hybrid forms of blended learning. Though there is still some way to go before such technologies have achieved a ‘normalised’ state, as Bax (2003) argues, language stu-dents and teachers are progressively using new technologies for writing on a word-processor, communicating via electronic mail, reading and searching for information on the web, doing language tests, and meeting with native and non-native speaking peers and collaborators with the aid of text, audio and latterly video.

Chapelle’s (2001) vision of CALL at the beginning of the new Millennium was reacting to changes in ICT that have had far-reaching and potentially radical implications for educational as well as social practices. While signifi cant digital divides of access still exist, many of today’s university students have grown up in a world in which they assume they are always connected to the internet and can communicate with their peers (and perhaps even teachers) via Web-based social networking applications. Set against the landscape of an increasingly mobile, wireless and networked society (Castells, 2000), these new technologies are bringing with them new forms of electronic literacies (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Warschauer, 1999), in which today’s language learners are expected to be able to develop multimodal communicative and task competencies above and beyond the reading and writing skills required by previous generations.

If we examine the history of CALL from the formal adoption of the acronym in the teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) convention in 1983, to the implications and potential of the internet, we see the centrality rather than the marginality of task-based authentic learning moving increasingly into the foreground, thus refl ecting the importance of sociocultural learning theories. This trend strikes a chord with the origins of task-based approaches,


whose provenance can be traced to a number of educational theories in the twentieth century, including in particular the work of the American philosopher of education, John Dewey. In opposition to the knowledge ‘learned in isolation’ or in the ‘water-tight com-partment’ (Dewey, 1938, pp. 47–48) of the school classroom, Dewey argued for a type of authentic learning that would connect learners with their experience of the real world. This was not to be a passive form of learning but one in which the learners became active participants and researchers, motivated by increased opportunities for interaction, rather than the disengaged ‘acquisition’ of ‘static’ knowledge (p. 19). There are clear lines of affi liation between Dewey’s vision of an experiential theory of learning, Bruner’s emphasis on learning as ‘discovery’ (1960, 1962), and later constructivist and social constructivist (Vygotsky, 1978) theories of knowledge and agency. In computer-aided task-based instruction, this lineage can also be seen in the path from Seymour Papert’s logo programming language to the recent task-based approaches in CALL based on Web 2.0 applications (Thomas, 2009). The affordances of the Web 2.0 classroom provides educators with perhaps their best opportunity to date to better realize Dewey’s vision of bursting through the walls of the ‘watertight’ classroom.

In the attempt to initiate a productive dialogue between TBL and CALL research, this book views TBLT as a continuum, stretching from concerns with the design and adoption of tasks in classroom practice, to the development of task-based language syllabi and curricula. The aim of this collection, then, is to address the marginalization of CALL research on tasks because it rarely measures up to the ‘holistic’ approach to curriculum and syllabus design. By so doing, the book builds on the work of Chapelle (2001, 2003) to examine the interface between L2 task-based research and CALL, in order to ask not only how research on classroom-based L2 tasks can help understand technology-mediated tasks, but how the use of technology-mediated tasks can advance task theory and research (Chapelle, 2003, p 135). In pursuing the latter question, the book also acknowledges some of the criticisms and potential dangers implied by an overly holistic vision of task-based language learning and teaching (Ellis, 2003, pp. 328–338), by underlining the lessons that can be learned


from CALL’s eclectic approach to tasks, which has been fi nely tuned to theoretical, disciplinary, cultural, linguistic and, above all, learner differences.

The Structure of This Book

The book is divided into two parts. The fi ve chapters in Part I entitled, ‘Research on Tasks in CALL’, map the broader theoretical questions shared by L2 task-based research and their infl uence on computer-mediated communication (Chapters 2–6). Part II, ‘Apply-ing Technology-Mediated Tasks’, consists of four empirical studies engaging with the design, development and application of task-based approaches with learners from different disciplines, levels of language profi ciency and skills, as well as highlighting differences in contexts (Chapters 7–10).

In Chapter 2, Müller-Hartmann and Schocker-v. Ditfurth provide an overview of recent research studies on the use of computer-mediated communication in task-based language teaching focusing on the fi eld of telecollaboration. Examining task-based language learning using the double lens of sociocultural theory and the pedagogical approach to TBLT, they foreground the theoretical framework of activity theory (AT) to explore research in the fi eld over the last ten years utilizing interdisciplinary perspectives.

In the third chapter Peterson examines research on task design in network-based CALL, critically exploring nine studies relating to research on computer-mediated communication. Focusing on the infl uence of psycholinguistic and sociocultural interactionist approaches in SLA, Peterson discusses research on synchronous text-based communication to explore the debate about focus on form and negotiation of meaning.

Chapter 4 foregrounds the marginal area of Intelligent CALL (ICALL), identifying how over the last 30 years it has incorporated task-based design approaches. Schulze views this as a potentially two-way process, indicating that ICALL can learn from research on L2 task research and vice versa as the technology becomes increasingly sophisticated. ICALL is shown to draw on research from artifi cial


intelligence (AI) as well as natural language processing (NLP), and though it has often emphasized this at the expense of SLA theory, there is clear potential for developing task-based design approaches.

Chapter 5 discusses a study of multimodal text chat incorporating both synchronous and asynchronous aspects with Japanese learners of English. Based on an analysis of accuracy, complexity and discourse in CMC, Stockwell argues that teachers need to be aware of how the mode can affect the message when learners undertake tasks through CMC. Moreover, it is then necessary for teachers to consider the most effective way to exploit the individual features of the mode for suc-cessful implementation of task-based language learning.

In Chapter 6 Collentine highlights a number of important issues at the interface of TBLT and CALL by focusing on the knowledge required by materials designers in order to promote the task condi-tions that foster linguistic complexity. Highlighting an empirical study using tasks in synchronous computer mediated-communication in the United States, Collentine attempts to add to the general TBLT research about the types of tasks that yield learner linguistic complexity.

Hampel’s discussion of task design for virtual learning environ-ments (VLE) in the context of distance learning courses is the subject of Chapter 7. As an under-researched area, Hampel examines a num-ber of questions concerned with the motivational and interactive potential of tasks in distance learning environments. Drawing on a model from Richards and Rogers (1986/2001), fi ndings are pre-sented from two studies involving the UK Open University that show that online environments have signifi cant implications for the pro-cess of task design not envisaged by L2 classroom-based studies.

Raith and Hegelheimer consider the important role of technology in supporting language teacher development in Chapter 8. Present-ing data from a large-scale qualitative research study on student teachers in Germany, the chapter explores how TBLT competencies can be improved through the use of refl ective e-portfolios. Findings suggest that e-portfolios can be used to aid refl ective practice when guided by specifi c criteria founded on standard-based questions, thus offering student teachers the ability to engage in a community of practice and to enhance the development of competencies through mutual asynchronous feedback.


Reeder’s case study of an ICALL prototype called Edubba in Chapter 9 draws on research in NLP to create authentic language learning tasks related to professional journalism. The chapter con-siders Ellis’ (2003) useful ‘task vs. exercise’ distinction, testing it along with Long’s notions of focus on form and content by critically examining learner activities within a VW simulation.

The under-researched factors that shape task design, choice and implementation in TBLT, principally in relation to a study on tele-collaboration, lie at the centre of Chapter 10. Hauck’s discussions derives from a study of learners’ e-literacy skills during a four-way telecollaborative encounter in 2008 between pre- and in-service teacher trainees from the United States and Germany, and language learners (German and English) from the United Kingdom and Poland. Based on a sequence of tasks using digital technologies, the study examined the interrelationship between multimodal liter-acy and online communication by offering an analysis of online resources and environments and their communication modes.

In the Afterword to the collection, Motteram and Thomas examine the past, present and future of TBLT in relation to CALL research. Presenting two vignettes arising from the MA in Educational Tech-nology and TESOL at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, they adopt a more inclusive approach to task-based research in CALL, arguing that though TBLT has not been overtly used as a context for such work, a lot of CALL research on tasks can provide a foundation for future work. In considering a number of critical objections to TBLT (Ellis, 2003), they identify ways in which digital technologies have the potential to help overcome them.

The need to use technology in language learning is frequently made in English-speaking countries, particularly by higher education administrators, often for reasons unrelated to pedagogy. Many teach-ers and learners remain unconvinced or unaware of their value and the technology is often underutilized. While task-based approaches seem to be gaining in popularity, few full-scale programmes have been implemented. In order for CALL to be more central to language learning pedagogy and for task-based approaches to make the leap from theory to practice, both approaches need to learn from each other. The aim remains to ground technology-mediated language


learning tasks in research on SLA, and to examine how L2 learners react to pedagogical tasks in the diverse digital environments in which they now fi nd themselves. It is hoped this collection will make a contribution to this process.

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Part I

Research on Tasks in CALL

Chapter 2

Research on the Use of Technology in Task-Based Language Teaching

Andreas Müller-Hartmann and Marita Schocker-v. Ditfurth

Introduction

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) has been established for some time now as one of the main approaches to language learning and teaching worldwide (Ellis, 2003; Nunan, 2004; Samuda & Bygate 2008; Van den Branden, 2006). For a long time, research on lan-guage learning and teaching has followed two different research paradigms, the psycholinguistic approach and the sociocultural approach (see Ellis, 2003, pp. 1–35). During the last few years, how-ever, research on second language acquisition (SLA), TBLT and tasks in language pedagogy have become more integrated (Ellis, 2003; Samuda & Bygate, 2008), as ‘both teachers and researchers’ have been concerned with fi nding those ‘tasks that work best for learning’ (Ellis, 2003, p. 34). TBLT research in computer-mediated commun-ication (CMC) is characterized by similar developments. We see a clear need though to learn more about the many factors that infl u-ence TBLT in CMC, both on the classroom level as well as in relation to the larger contextual factors concerned with where classrooms are situated. This is why we have decided to look at TBLT research in CMC environments through the double lens of the sociocultural approach of activity theory (AT) (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006) and the pedagogical approach to TBLT (e.g. Samuda & Bygate, 2008; Van den Branden, 2006). Samuda and Bygate (2008, p. 219) affi rm that ‘broader understandings of the ways that tasks can contribute to language learning and teaching . . . must be grounded in [an] under-standing of “task” as a pedagogic tool in different contexts of use.’


This is also true for the use of technology. In our overview we will discuss how this research fi eld has developed during the last ten years by focusing on telecollaborative learning environments. We also include contributions from other fi elds, such as general distance learning, since research on technology use can profi t from such an interdisciplinary approach. After having outlined general develop-ments in TBLT and CMC, we will present the sociocultural concept of AT as a theoretical framework to structure the research fi ndings.

Developments in TBLT and CMC

Task defi nition and the development of general TBLT research

There has been a plethora of task defi nitions over the last 30 years (for an overview see Ellis 2003, pp. 1–21; Samuda & Bygate, 2008, pp. 62–70). Van den Branden (2006, p. 4) defi nes a task as ‘an activity in which a person engages in order to attain an objective, and which necessitates the use of language.’ We subscribe to this defi nition, as it contains the relevant qualifying features of a pedagogical task (i.e. activity, involvement, purpose and language use). It is also related to two of the central concepts of AT, activity and agency. Samuda and Bygate (2008, pp. 69–70) also subscribe to a pedagogical perspective on TBLT, pointing out that in TBLT research, the pedagogical dimen-sion is often missing. For too long ‘perceptions of task-based language teaching (TBLT)’ have been seen ‘as a top-down initiative . . . imposed on teachers by researchers with limited understanding of the demands of everyday pedagogy’ (pp. 192–193). They conclude that we need to study ‘teachers’ uses of tasks’ (p. 124) to be able to make ‘informed decisions about task design, selection and sequencing over extended periods of instruction and for guiding decisions about the timing of teacher interventions’ (p. 203). This includes looking at learners’ perceptions of tasks.

Samuda and Bygate’s analysis of general TBLT research shows many parallels to the research on technology and TBLT. Before we look at this development though, we need to ground the research agenda in the prevailing model of multi-literacies, since it has an impact on how

Research on the Use of Technology in TBLT 19

technology is put to use in the language classroom, necessitating an integration of sociocultural and pedagogical research perspectives.

From computer literacy to multi-literacies

During the last decade we have moved from a conception of computer literacy to electronic literacy and latterly multi-literacies (Pegrum, 2009). While computer literacy merely considered the mastery of the machine, ‘an electronic literacy framework considers how people use computers to interpret and express meaning’ (Shetzer & Warschauer, 2000, p. 173). TBLT supports meaning production through techno-logy use. This leads us to the concept of multi-literacies which is the most comprehensive literacy model to date, because it integrates individual human agency with larger societal structures (The New London Group, 1996). In this concept there is a constant interplay between individual agency and social, economic, historical and polit-ical structures that determine the various discourses and hence, human agency, but which are also changed through human activity. The New London Group argues that the development of literacy needs to consider the multifaceted discourses that globalization enables learners to engage in. The texts which learners have access to on the internet are culturally grounded. When learners connect with other learners worldwide, they need to develop an inter-cultural communicative competence (ICC) (Byram, 1997) to negotiate mean-ing and cultural differences. The task of the teacher is to help learners navigate these intertextual environments and support them in developing ICC through a task-based approach that is learner- and problem-oriented. Task-based research in CMC thus needs to consider these shifts in literacy development, leading to a broader, that is sociocultural and pedagogical approach to research TBLT and CMC.

The development of TBLT research in CMC

The changing concept of literacy has had an impact on the develop-ment of CMC research paradigms. Chapelle’s work is a case in point,


since she has developed from an interactionist SLA perspective (Chapelle, 1997) to a more integrated approach that also considers sociocultural and pedagogical aspects (Chapelle, 2000, 2003). In this context, she considers the pedagogical use of tasks in the CMC class-room as a basis for developing task theory, instead of relying on cognitive approaches that apply theory from the outside to processes in the classroom. This leads her to a wider research approach which looks at ‘the role the computer plays within the larger culture of the classroom’, that is ‘the sociocultural and classroom contexts of CALL’ (Chapelle, 2000, p. 217).

This development goes hand in hand with a broader concept of technology use in the language classroom, relating it to the concept of multi-literacies through network-based language teaching (NBLT) (Chapelle, 2000). Today CMC is the prevalent concept of technology use in the language classroom. Depending on the teaching context, computers can be put to different uses, ranging from a language drill tool to one that fosters net-based inter-cultural discussions, a fact that necessitates different research paradigms. In his seminal contribution to TESOL Quarterly in 1998, Warschauer demanded a comprehensive research approach which integrates the micro level of the classroom context and the macro-level of institutional and societal affordances and constraints, that is ‘the broader ecological context that affects language learning and use in today’s society’ (Warschauer, 1998, p. 760). Warschauer differentiated between deterministic, instrumental and critical approaches to guide research on technology and language learning. In the early deterministic paradigm the computer was seen as almighty, bringing about results. But the computer is not a method; it is a tool that needs to be used. This is refl ected in the instrumental research paradigm. Here the computer tool serves the purpose of the user. This approach though downplayed ‘how new technologies affect the broader ecology of the language learning environment’ (p. 758). Consequently, Warschauer, quite in line with the multi-literacies’ critical approach, calls for a critical theory of technology which asks questions such as: ‘What new literacies does multimedia computer technology demand, both inside and outside the classroom? . . . How does the sociocultural context of particular educational institutions or communities affect


the learning and practice of electronic literacies?’ (pp. 758–759). Consequently there is a need for interpretive qualitative research ‘to explore sociocultural contexts through long-term participant observation’, facilitating ‘the examination of crucial but hidden factors, such as underlying power relations in the classroom and community . . . from the point of view of the local actors’ (p. 759). In 2006, Chambers and Bax supported this analysis. Calling for a normalization in CALL research, they argued for a broader research paradigm, stating that we ‘need more description of the learners, settings, and events in [CALL] contexts’ (Huh & Hu, 2005, cited in Chambers & Bax, 2006, p. 467), and we ‘need a better understanding of how exactly all of these factors interact and operate in real ped-agogical contexts’.

These demands dovetail nicely with a pedagogic research approach to TBLT and CMC. It is closely linked to a growing awareness of the centrality of tasks in CMC environments. Levy and Stockwell (2006, p. 248) have stressed that ‘in established CALL, language-learning task design is very much at the heart of the matter’ (see also Chapelle, 2003). Already in 1997 Furstenberg (1997, p. 24) wrote, ‘our main role, then, is to design tasks. . . . since the task is what gives meaning to the learners’ explorations.’ Hence we need appropriate tasks to facilitate collaborative interaction. While the task-as-workplan is central, we also need to consider the task-as-process and with that learners’ perceptions of the process, because learners perceive tasks differently. Before we look at the extent to which Warschauer’s call from a decade ago has produced research results in telecollabora-tion, we discuss modern AT as a suitable theoretical framework to structure the research.

AT and the CMC Classroom

In search of a socioculturally oriented research paradigm

In our understanding, language learning is set in a sociocultural context and develops through interaction between teacher and learners as well as among learners on the basis of pedagogical tasks (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006). In sociocultural terms, on the micro-level


the language classroom is a community of practice, which is charac-terized by the personal motives of its participants and their relations (Levy & Stockwell, 2006, pp. 28–31). Tasks are designed by the teacher or negotiated between teacher and learners. On the macro-level, this community is infl uenced by institutional (e.g. school, curriculum) and societal affordances and constraints, such as computer access (see Belz, 2002).

The theoretical framework of AT

AT is a modern development of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of learning (Engeström, Miettinen & Punamäki, 1999). It encompasses all the above mentioned facets and levels and facilitates a compre-hensive research framework for the pedagogical implications of TBLT in the CMC classroom.

Human activity is the central unit of analysis in AT. As can be seen in Figure 2.1, all aspects of AT are interrelated and infl uence each other. It thus represents one activity system (AS). AT differentiates between ASs in the fi elds of play, education, and work which infl u-ence each other. The language classroom is an AS in the fi eld of education. In an AS, activity can be viewed from three different perspectives, hence the three different levels which infl uence human behaviour in different ways. At the same time the different

Figure 2.1 Activity system (based on Engeström et al., 1999)

Mediational means:symbolic and material artifacts

Level I

Level II Subject,subject

collective

Community Rules Division of labour

Object Outcome

Level III


perspectives focus on one event. In our case this is constituted by the activities learners engage in as a result of tasks which are mediated through tools and artefacts (Level I), such as the foreign language, materials or tools.

The learners form part of a community (Level III), that is the language classroom and an educational institution. The rules and norms in this community have developed historically and impact on the classroom level. When setting up a telecollaborative project based on problem-oriented tasks which learners negotiate themselves, rules of traditional classroom interaction (e.g. the Initiate, Response, Follow-up or IREF pattern) will not facilitate collaborative interaction. Therefore, a task-based approach to teaching is more appropriate in this collaborative setting. Rules also function on the societal level such as pragmatic rules of politeness in inter-cultural task negotiation. If not adhered to, inter-cultural misunderstanding and the breakdown of commun-ication can ensue (O’Dowd, 2006; Ware, 2005). Finally, the division of labour concerns ‘the actions and interactions among the members of the community’ (Thorne, 2004, p. 58), and division of power and status. This, then, comprises the social roles and cultural identit-ies of learners and teachers as well as the hierarchical relationships between them.

Level II is particularly important because it represents the processes in the classroom. The subject is the teacher and the subject collective the learners. Learners possibly share the same object, in our case, learning the language via CMC. However, they may do this for different reasons. Teachers design tasks with the help of computers to engage learners in the process of language learning, the outcome of which, as intended by teacher and curriculum (rules), would be the inter-cultural speaker (Byram, 1997, p. 38). Research looks at the pedagogical approach to tasks in detail, as it is here that learning is organized. Consequently, we research the classroom from the inside or emic perspective of its participants and their behaviour or agency (Thorne, 2004, p. 57).

Distinguishing activity from task

In AT, an activity represents a more comprehensive category which only includes language learning tasks as one factor. As Coughlan and


Duff (1994, p. 175) clarify, ‘an activity . . . comprises the behaviour that is actually produced when an individual (or group) performs a task. It is the process, as well as the outcome, of a task, examined in its sociocultural context.’ This distinction is important, since it describes the role of pedagogic tasks in the larger frame of an activity. If we consider the classroom and its processes as an AS, the particip-ants in this community, the subject (teacher), the subject collective (learners), the process of language learning through TBLT (object) and the inter-cultural speaker as outcome comprise the activity in the sense of AT.

Three levels of human activity: activity, action, operation

When looking at the object of the AS we can distinguish three levels of human activity that represent different analytical perspectives on one event. As Lantolf and Thorne (2006, p. 216) explain, activity (1) asks why something is done (and therefore refers to what motiv-ates involvement in an activity); action (2) describes what takes place (and therefore refers to the goal or product of an activity); and operations (3) say how it is carried out (and therefore refers to the process and the conditions under which something is done).

Teacher and learners may have different motives in their activities of developing/becoming language speakers. While the teacher might want learners to develop language accuracy when interacting in a telecollaborative project, learners might have different motives. Some learners might focus on task completion, ignoring their partners’ attempts at further socializing (O’Dowd, 2006). In AT parlance different objects thus orient learners’ behaviour in the classroom. Consequently activities can be distinguished from each other by their objects.

The level of action comprises the relationship between task-as-workplan and task-as-process (Ellis, 2003, pp. 5–6). The teacher will design a task sequence which engages learners in a process of negotiation. In the process, the teacher might realize that s/he should have provided more task structure, as learners are unable to complete the task, or s/he might realize that learners have changed the task depending on their motives. Hence, in the task-as-process


phase learners might interpret the task-as-workplan differently, result-ing in their goal-oriented behaviour being different from that of other learners and/or the teacher.

Due to the social-material conditions and learners’ automatized or habitual behaviour, the task-as-process might also involve changes on the operational level. Learners who already possess multi-literate competences may display expertise in synchronous communication (chat) while other learners may not. This will have an impact on their task completion on the operational level, due to their habitualized writing competence in chat environments. Also, social-material conditions might hinder the negotiation of tasks on the operational level, as access to the computer might be restricted for one group of learners. Consequently the task outcome may be different for different learners, that is, they may be more or less satisfi ed with the outcome. This, in turn, will have an impact on future motives when participating in such learning environments.

On the centrality of the concept of activity

As the above discussion shows, it is important to realize that from an AT perspective, the concept of activity or human agency is central. In CMC environments, teachers and learners are active subjects or agents who infl uence the process and the outcomes due to their personal histories, their goals and their language profi ciency levels. Learner agency also has an impact on the learning process, since the learners negotiate the task-as-workplan with their teacher and among themselves. Learner agency is also related to questions of power (Level III) since the object of the activity

. . . is also a nexus of power and resistance in language educational contexts. . . . who decides what the object of activity is? How will the outcome be evaluated, and by whom, and with what effects? How tightly are the actions and operations monitored? (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p. 223)

As we will see in the following sections, research on CMC in TBLT has examined such questions and has produced a number of inter-esting results.


Research Findings

We will focus on research studies that deal with issues on Level II of the AS (the classroom) because we are particularly interested in the processes on the level of actions as it is here that pedagogical decisions are made. Since the different levels of the AS infl uence each other, research fi ndings in terms of the mediational means (Level I), the wider institutional/societal infl uences (Level III) and cross-references to the other parts of Level II will be integrated into the discussion by referring to the respective part of the AS (e.g. rules III) or one of the respective chapter headings below.

Subject collective (learners)

Group member roles

Learner roles in groups and online dyads

Pair and group work are decisive to initiate and sustain interaction and to come to terms with technology. The processes of social cohe-sion (see later) facilitate the development of a group ‘culture’, but groups additionally develop explicit and implicit roles. Stockwell and Levy (2001, pp. 432–433) have researched six different online learner profi les (e.g. the low-motivation, daunted, struggling, technophobic student, and the inconsistent and ideal high responder). As to group patterns they differentiate fi ve kinds of dyads: dyads with nothing in common, the mismatched dyad, ‘let’s stick to the topics’ dyads, dyads with lots in common, and developing friendship dyads. Role assign-ments led to higher levels of interconnected messages and a shared collective understanding and deep processing of tasks (Rose, 2004). Such heightened structured cooperation and close monitoring of group interaction leads to greater consistent levels of interaction, more cohesion and increased learning effi ciency. Roles are also important in reducing the burden of managing and coordinating group activities.

Groups with leaders handled collaborative group tasks more effi -ciently. Strong leaders make more social, product, process, and task-based utterances, and they also received more mails from other team


members, leading to more task-related communication than in weak leadership teams (Heckman & Misiolek, 2005). But strong leadership did not necessarily lead to better performance. Weaker leadership seems to lead to more participation in the substantive task work of the group. Hence the group can profi t from this weaker leadership, where members are considered more equal (rules III).

The infl uence of task features on effective virtual teamwork

Dundis and Benson (2003) list task variables such as members’ individual subject matter knowledge, group members’ knowledge of multimodal tools and the experience with problem-solving, virtual teamwork skills, as well as personality variables (e.g. the ability to work with others, understanding different points of view) that help form more effective virtual teams. Getting-to-know and other non-routine tasks create a perceived need for more group structure fl exibility, while procedural guidelines and specifying group roles can support performance. They also describe the form of swift trust which develops ‘around high levels of action in performance of the task’ (p. 35) which necessitates clear actions and clear indicators of progress. Task complexity is another issue. The more demanding the task, the more interaction is required. Research has shown that most learner groups tend to split up the task among them (pp. 30–31 for a task typology).

Social presence and group cohesion

Presence refers to ‘a student’s sense of being in and belonging in a course and the ability to interact with other students and an instructor although physical contact is not available’ (Picciano, 2002, p. 22). Presence includes cognitive (task-related work), social (off-task social-izing or initiated by tasks) and teaching presence (the degree of the teacher’s presence, teaching presence). The relationship between social presence and cognitive presence has an effect on learners’ motives and task completion (activity/motives). If we want learners to establish and maintain social relationships so that multi-literacies can develop, social presence (Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005) and the


development of group cohesion play important roles (Reffay & Chanier, 2003, p. 1). Dundis and Benson (2003, p. 35) defi ne group cohesion this way: ‘groups perform better when they sense them-selves as a unifi ed team with a shared sense of responsibility, if for no other reason than the task at hand.’ Everybody’s commitment, trust and participation are necessary to achieve a sense of community and a high level of social presence when completing tasks. An initial face-to-face (FTF) phase, consistent but fl exible cohort structure, continuous building of ongoing relationships, group support and ongoing collaboration support this. On the affective level, the aware-ness of being connected to others helps learners not to feel alone.

In her study of synchronous communication Lamy (2007) calls for a reduction of learners’ anxiety (establishing trust), thus making task performance more effi cient (Dooly’s, 2007; Müller-Hartmann, 2000). Lamy (2007, p. 260) concludes that ‘the more time is allowed for social induction and the establishing of group membership, the higher the number of refl ective interactions’ (see also, Fuchs, 2006, pp. 282–290; Furstenberg, Lewet, English & Maillet, 2001). Knoll and Jarvenpaa (1998) present a list of functional and dysfunctional behaviours as to collaboration and conclude that ‘there may be real value in forcing people to socialize’ (p. 20). Since engaging in social comments helps learners develop trust, teachers should enhance socializing through tasks (action/goal-orientation; see O’Dowd, 2003). On Level (I) voice chat or video help establish social presence, since it is facilitated through the interlocutor’s image (Yamada & Akahori, 2007). At the same time, learners consider text-based chat to be more relaxed than audio/video conferencing, because it provides more time on task to express opinions and to focus on accuracy.

Subject (teacher)

Teacher roles

Dimensions of teacher roles

In CMC contexts the number of teacher or tutor roles increases. S/he must help learners engage with the tools and facilitate ICC pro-cesses to a larger extent than in FTF classrooms. Berge (1995) found four teacher roles: the pedagogical (the educational facilitators


set tasks), social (the teacher is responsible for group cohesion), managerial (the teacher sets the agenda as to objectives and rules) and the technical role. Research in school-based studies produced three pedagogical teacher roles – the moderator, the monitor and the facilitator, varying as to their decreasing control and monitoring of the group interaction in relation to the task at hand (Ahern, 1998, pp. 229–230). In inter-cultural telecollaboration the teacher’s role is still more complex because they need to become inter-cultural speakers before they can facilitate ICC (Belz & Müller-Hartmann, 2002, 2003). Kern, Ware and Warschauer (2004) point out that teachers have to develop from an omniscient informant role to one that focuses on structure, interpretation and refl ection of the inter-cultural experience, to question, conform to, and contradict learners’ understandings; which also has an impact on task design and negoti-ation (O’Dowd, 2006, pp. 139–140; activity/goal-orientation).

Teaching presence

Teaching presence is the most promising mechanism for developing online learning communities, because it represents the link between the learners’ sense of a learning community and the fact that this community has been designed through effective instructions, that is, tasks (Shea, Swan, Chun & Pickett, 2005). It comprises the design, facilitation and direction of tasks in the CMC environment, as well as in the classroom (Garrison & Anderson, 2003, p. 145). Encouraging participation and interaction over time, teaching presence is quite different from a teacher-centred approach to teaching. Teachers and learners share the responsibility of promoting interactive learn-ing. When learners exhibit diffi culties, teachers monitor the task-as-process more closely, providing more task support. Teaching presence is more pronounced in these situations (Appel & Gilabert, 2002; see also action/goal orientation).

Object: activity – action – operations

With the object level, we move to the central level of TBLT where task-as-workplan and task-as-process are negotiated between teacher (subject) and learners (subject collective).


Activity: what motivates learners to engage in tasks?

Learners have different motives for engaging in tasks, among them intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, risk-taking, anxiety and sociability. Learners’ anxiety depends a lot on personality, as teaching styles affect learners’ attitude and motives. Ortega (1997, pp. 90–91) points out that there was lower motivation with tighter teacher control of tasks or with little integration of CMC tasks into the overall course (teaching presence). The more the learners personally get out of a task, the higher their motivation to become involved (Appel & Gilabert, 2002). The perception of tasks can also have an impact on motives. When non-experts are confronted with tasks which do not work for them, they can have a discouraging effect. Dooly (2007) concludes that early and consistent collaboration ensures high motiva-tion. After the collaborative experience, her learners were convinced that tasks can be negotiated between learners and teachers and need not simply be set by the teacher (action/goal orientation).

The effect of cultural heterogeneity on learner motivation

Telecollaborative environments are particularly prone to divergent goals or motives, because more learners with different cultural identit-ies participate. Belz and Müller-Hartmann (2002) have shown that American learners of German primarily pursue language-learning goals, whereas German learners of English focus on the development on ICC, having a direct effect on task negotiation between learners. Novelty of the CMC environment can lead to higher motivation, but if this is one-sided it can have a negative effect on the social cohesion of inter-institutional teams (Belz & Müller-Hartmann, 2002; O’Dowd, 2003, 2006; O’Dowd & Ritter, 2006; Ware, 2005, see group cohesion). Kern (2006, p. 200) concludes that American learners seem to be more task-oriented than German learners, focusing on task completion more than on socializing. O’Dowd (2003) reports from Spanish-American dyads that intrinsic motivation is lost, when the personal goals for the project are rejected. Ware and Kramsch (2005) therefore suggest that learners take a decentred perspective during the interaction, which allows them to understand each others’ cultural groundings and different motives.


The role of tools for learner motivation

Research has conclusively shown that new tools (Level I) have a moti-vational impact on learners (Appel & Gilabert, 2002; Kiernan & Aizawa, 2004). Jarrell and Freiermuth (2005) affi rm that chats were preferred by learners because of their affective aspect, more equitable learner participation, and the function of turn-taking. The higher learners’ competence in using different tools, the more they are able to function as autonomous learners or even change agents (Parks, Huot, Hamers & Lemonnier, 2003, pp. 39–40). Learner motivation is also enhanced through the visibility and diffusion of the task outcome when published on the internet (Appel & Gilabert, 2002).

Action: what is the goal of the activity?

In this chapter we look at research that describes what learners negotiate to reach the goal or product of an activity. This involves the question of how learners’ task-as-process relates to the teacher’s task-as-workplan.

Task-as-workplan – designing tasks in CMC

Research shows that learners prefer task variety, that is, different task types, task structures and task sequencing. Task type is related to the kind of group work learners engage in. Paulus (2005) differentiates between collaborative and cooperative task types. In collaborative tasks learners engage in constructive dialogue to develop a shared concept of a product. Cooperation, on the other hand, focuses on how to organize the interaction, specifi cally by using role assignment to divide up the work (group member roles).

Appel and Gilabert (2002) have shown that if tasks are asked for interaction with partners, language production is increased in asynchronous environments. In telecollaboration, task design, which has to be negotiated in detail between partners (community III), is especially pertinent to successful interaction. It should allow learners to develop cultural knowledge about partners (Furstenberg et al.


2001; Müller-Hartmann, 2000). According to Hauck (2007), when assessing risks of misunderstandings in collaborative projects, task design is considered to be a high-risk area. This is because teachers need to fi nd a compromise in task design that includes the needs, goals and constraints of both contexts. O’Dowd and Ritter (2006) describe how the teachers’ choice of topics hindered the develop-ment of relationships, and learners expected language correction they did not receive. They come to the conclusion that tasks should be negotiated with learners at the outset.

Hampel (2006) clarifi es that the affordances of tools need to be considered in task design. She shows that the multimodal approach in an audiographic environment supports written, graphic and oral modes, but without suffi cient training this can have a negative effect on task negotiation. Structured environments with a clear task sequence which provide opportunities for dialogic interaction, led to high levels of critical thinking, and cohesive group structure (group cohesion), whereas non-structured environments turned learners into teacher-followers and few cohesive groups developed.

Consequently the quality of interaction must be a clearly designed goal (Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005). Suffi cient social interaction is necessary to establish a relationship, which will then facilitate negotiation on the content level (social presence). Although the quantity of interactive moves plays a role in establishing social pres-ence, the quality is more important. This is also linked to the degree of teaching presence, hence questions of structuring and monitoring arise (teaching presence). Weasenforth, Biesenbach-Lucas and Meloni (2002) have shown that increased guidance using prompts led to longer e-mails and the increased goal-orientation of learners’ con-tributions, as there were clearer expectations on the teacher’s side. Wu and Hiltz (2004) want to see this quality improved through a clearly structured design and guidance through suffi cient task sup-port (teaching presence). This means that teachers must defi ne clear expectations, select manageable content and structure appropriate tasks with a focus on meaning (Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005).

In terms of task sequencing, learners need carefully sequenced tasks to be able to build on previous interaction (Ware & O’Dowd,


2008). In this regard, Levy and Stockwell (2006) show that FTF phases usually preceded online task phases. Stockwell and Levy (2001) also affi rm that TBLT can be enhanced on a macro-level through a project-based framework. Stockwell (2003) found that longer interaction sequences depend on topic choice, which learn-ers should decide together with their partners (Stockwell & Levy, 2001, p. 435).

Whether learners are able to do so, however, depends on the level of their technical profi ciency. Beginners need more stimuli and more structured tasks. While topics always need to be relevant to the learners’ life, the choice of introductory tasks plays an important role. Wang (2007) suggests starting with short tasks about social issues in chats so that learners can get used to the tool, followed by more complicated tasks. Belz and Müller-Hartmann (2002) also demand an extended introductory phase, with social tasks to develop group cohesion (group cohesion), laying the foundation for a positive working relationship between international teams (see also Liaw, 1998; Müller-Hartmann, 2000). To prepare learners for CMC in inter-cultural contexts, O’Dowd & Eberbach (2004), Fuchs (2006) and O’Dowd (2006) have used ethnographic examples of learner exchanges which demonstrate misunderstandings, to develop learn-ers’ awareness of this issue at the beginning of the exchange. Gener-ally learning is best organized in a blended learning environment, where teachers integrate online-tasks in FTF lessons to be able to provide instructions and guidance for learners to help them move from cultural monologue to inter-cultural dialogue.

Task-as-process – negotiating tasks in CMC

Offering learners the opportunity to negotiate tasks has a positive effect on motivation and consequently performance. If learners do not have any experience in negotiation from their FTF classroom (rules III), teachers can monitor the task-as-process more closely to provide addi-tional structure and task support (Appel & Gilabert, 2002). The role of the tutor is to encourage refl ection, to develop a multi-perspective view on the negotiated topic, but also to allow individual learners to


pursue their trajectories of participation, that is giving learners suffi -cient choice in task negotiation and task completion.

In telecollaborative settings the choice of topic is important, as this facilitates negotiation (O’Dowd, 2006, p. 121). Fuchs (2006, p. 272) affi rms that task negotiation in CMC is much more complex than it might initially appear. In her German-American dyads only one group discussed the goals and expectations of the project with their partners (group cohesion).

Time is another infl uential factor in task performance. The degree of refl ective interaction depends on the time allocated for social interaction and the establishment of group membership (Lamy, 2007; group cohesion).

Scaffolding task support

In TBLT online environments scaffolding is a central issue since structure is more important than in FTF contexts (Hampel, 2006). Beatty and Nunan (2004) affi rm that learners are not always able to deal with open learning environments and thus need more scaffold-ing in terms of task support, because they cannot always manage to develop mutual support through collaboration (see also Appel & Gilabert, 2002). Liaw (1998) has shown how assigned discussion topics for social chat sessions are helpful for learners, triggering and supporting learner interaction. The teacher mainly provides technical (and topic) support and helps revive failing communica-tion. Learners also scaffold each other in chats (Shekary & Tahririan, 2006) enabling the teacher to monitor less (see Parks et al. 2003) for different forms of scaffolding.

Operations: how is the activity carried out?

This level is infl uenced by the tools (Level I) learners use. They facilitate interaction and negotiation for different learner types, supporting the task-as-process on the operational level. The teacher plays an important role in enhancing learners’ use of technical tools. Goodell and Yusko (2005) point out that teachers need to minimize


learners’ frustrations with technical problems because learners’ com-petence in handling tools, and their perception of the tools, has an impact on their learning process (Levy & Stockwell, 2006).

Conclusion

As this overview of research studies has shown, researchers have progressed in response to Warschauer’s 1998 call for more socio-cultural and pedagogical studies. The number of research studies is impressive. Together with Kern and Ware, Warschauer (2004) has acknowledged this recent shift in research from single classrooms to long-distance collaboration, expanding the focus beyond language to culture, inter-cultural communication, the notion of context beyond the local setting and to a broader social discourse (see also Hauck & Stickler, 2006).

We are still lacking classroom-based research, however, in primary and secondary schools (Samuda & Bygate, 2008; Zhao, 2003). We especially need classroom action research projects, because con-textual factors vary tremendously and heterogeneous groups of learners bring different motives to these learning environments (for exceptions, see Müller-Hartmann, 1999, 2000; Savignon & Roithmeier, 2004).

The complexity of factors involved in these learning environments need a mixed methods approach which integrates both qualitative and quantitative research. The number of such studies is on the rise (e.g. Appel & Gilabert, 2002; Belz & Müller-Hartmann, 2003; Dooly, 2007). Some of the studies are based on the AT paradigm, such as Thorne (2003, 2004) and Parks et al. (2003). Research has also been extended to new areas, such as wireless tools (Kiernan & Aizawa, 2004) or monitoring tools to assist tutors in following collaborative group processes (Reffay & Chanier, 2003).

We have tried to show in our overview that AT provides a viable theoretical framework that allows the integration of sociocultural and pedagogical aspects of research on CMC in TBLT. We would like to close with Samuda and Bygate’s (2008) view of future direc-tions in general task-based research in the language classroom, which


is also true of CMC. They conclude that the pedagogical practice of tasks

seems to be an area where insights from task pedagogy and insights from task research could be usefully brought together, and existing pedagogic frameworks that have grown out of sustained task use in real classrooms over time . . . offer a promising context for develop-ing pedagogically oriented research shaped by and responsive to the kinds of practitioner concerns. (Samuda & Bygate, 2008, p. 229)

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Chapter 3

Task-Based Language Teaching in Network-Based CALL: An Analysis

of Research on Learner Interaction in Synchronous CMC

Mark Peterson

Introduction

This chapter explores the expanding use of tasks in network-based computer-assisted language learning (CALL). The infl uence of both psycholinguistic and sociocultural interactionist accounts of second language acquisition (SLA) on task design is explored. The discus-sion then provides an overview of rationales proposed for the use of tasks in network-based CALL, and examines the hypothesized advantages and limitations of synchronous text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) as an environment for language learning. As there has been little research that has considered the effectiveness of this approach from a holistic perspective, this is followed by a critical review of infl uential studies in the literature on learner-based projects involving real-time interaction in types of CMC where the interaction is carried out through the medium of typed text. A total of nine studies involving the major types of net-work-based environments currently utilized in CALL are investigated. The analysis reveals that although the majority of studies indicate that task-based interaction may be benefi cial with regard to aspects of second language (L2) learning such as negotiation of meaning, this body of research has, at the same time, produced contradictory fi ndings and is subject to limitations. The discussion further draws attention to fi ndings, which suggest that the predominant approach to task-based learning (TBL) currently utilized in CMC-based CALL


fails to provide suffi cient focus on form and does not fully maximize the potential of the affordances provided by computer-based interac-tion. This chapter concludes by identifying a number of areas with potential in future research.

Over the past several decades, developments in task-based language teaching (TBLT) have been greatly infl uenced by the psycholinguis-tic and sociolinguistic strands of SLA research (Hampel, 2006; Van den Branden, Bygate & Norris, 2009). These accounts differ in their attempts to comprehend the nature of cognition; however, they have increasingly focused on exploring the potential of interaction in facilitating the process of SLA (Gass, 2000). This emphasis on the role played by interaction in language development has also been a focus in research on network-based CALL and will be examined at a later stage of this chapter. The following discussion will examine the above accounts and explore the infl uence of interactionist SLA on the design and use of tasks in language education.

Psycholinguistic Research and its Infl uence on TBLT

Researchers who propose the psycholinguistic account of SLA per-ceive interaction as an important infl uence on L2 development. From this perspective, during face-to-face (FTF) interaction tasks which facilitate the transfer of information (in an effort to achieve a goal) are valuable, as they push learners to employ strategies that facilitate the restructuring of their interlanguage (Long, 1996). Two particular types of interaction are discussed in the literature. The fi rst kind of interaction occurs when learners have to overcome a communication problem. In this context, the use of repair strategies such as, for example, comprehension checks, confi rmation checks and clarifi cation requests, provide feedback in order to maintain the fl ow of communication and overcome the problem. This process, known as negotiation of meaning, frequently results in the production of comprehensible input and also modifi ed target language output, facilitating SLA (Pica, 1994; Varonis & Gass, 1985).

Psycholinguistic research further highlights the importance of engaging learners in a second type of interaction that involves the

TBLT in Network-Based CALL 43

use of tasks which enable learners to not only negotiate meaning, but also focus on form (Long, 1991). In the context of TBL, it is claimed that learners can be encouraged to attend to form through an intens-ive focus on particular linguistic forms and also through the provi-sion of corrective feedback (Ellis, 2005). From a psycholinguistic perspective, focus on form is necessary for sustained L2 development (Skehan, 2003a). These types of interaction are viewed as important, as during problems in comprehension or production they enable learners to engage in the process of conscious noticing of linguistic elements. The process of noticing enables learners to compare their interlanguage with a target form and promotes a conscious ability to ‘notice the gap’ (Schmidt, 2001, p. 5).

Research has explored the potential effects of task characteristics and conditions on the above types of interaction. A study conducted by Pica and Doughty (1985), found that tasks involving information exchange between learners provided a higher incidence of interac-tional modifi cations than those found in a teacher-fronted classroom. Porter (1986) reported that non-native speaker task-based interaction produced instances of repair involving the strategies that are associ-ated with the negotiation of meaning. Foster (1998) explored the implementation of information exchange tasks (where the exchange was either optional or required) with learners working in dyads and groups. The analysis indicated that negotiation of meaning was more frequent in the tasks that required the exchange of information.

Furthermore, more negotiation occurred in the pairs than in the groups. Gass and Varonis (1994) investigated the interaction of 16 non-native speaker dyads and found that task-based interaction may foster noticing. Ellis and Takashima (1999) reported in a study based on classroom interaction that the use of tasks appeared to support the acquisition of past tense forms. Research involving non-native speaker learners based in Japan and undertaken by Fotos (1993) showed that noticing and a focus on form related to grammar may be facilitated by the application of problem-solving tasks. The above fi ndings though not conclusive, nonetheless suggest that utilizing tasks in language classrooms can promote processes identifi ed in the psycholinguistic account of L2 development such as noticing, focus on form and negotiation.


Sociocultural Research and Its Infl uence on TBLT

As is the case with the psycholinguistic account of L2 learning, socio-cultural theory shares a concern with the role of interaction in L2 learning. However, sociocultural approaches to learning focus on how social, rather than linguistic variables, affect communication and L2 development (Lantolf, 2000). In contrast to the psycholinguistic con-ception of SLA, the sociocultural view of language learning places emphasis not on negotiation of meaning or constraints on cognitive processing but on the process described by Vygotsky (1978) as medi-ation. Mediation is the process whereby higher mental activities are developed through social interaction involving the use of tools (Donato & McCormick, 1994). In the context of L2 development, language is perceived as a mediating tool which enables ‘learners to co-construct meaning while engaging in interaction’ (Skehan, 2003b, p. 5). Sociocultural theory provides a number of constructs that have been utilized to conceptualize the role of tasks in supporting L2 development. One of the most well known of these concepts is the zone of proximal development (ZPD), a term used to describe ‘a learner’s potential as opposed to actual level of development’ (Ellis, 2003, p. 353). This construct is utilized to explain how learners engaged in task-based interaction undertake functions they could not carry out independently. The sociocultural view of learning links this concept to the role of collaborative interaction in task accomplishment, a pro-cess known as scaffolding. Through scaffolding, learners create zones of proximal development involving collaborative dialogue in which a more knowledgeable interlocutor assists a learner in performing an activity they could not complete unaided (Swain, 2000). This process creates the conditions where L2 development can occur. Another related concept emphasized in the sociocultural literature is intersub-jectivity. This describes the situation where task participants come to a shared perspective over the nature of a task facilitating comprehension and completion (Rommetveit, 1985).

Researchers have examined the use of tasks from a sociocultural perspective in a number of studies. Anton and DiCamilla (1998) found that the subjects in their study utilized intersubjectivity in order to come to a shared perspective on the task. Donato (1994)


reported that learners appeared to engage in scaffolding in order to jointly complete a task that they may not have been able to complete individually. Nassaji and Swain (2000) discovered evidence that dur-ing task-based interaction, the feedback that is a characteristic of scaffolding may support aspects of L2 development. Ohta (2001) reported on the fi ndings of a longitudinal study involving learners of Japanese, in which he analysed classroom transcripts and found evidence that the subjects utilized collaborative dialogues involving corrective feedback. This feedback played an important role in main-taining the interaction and facilitated the production of accurate target language forms related to the tasks.

This section draws attention to the potential of both psycholinguistic and sociocultural interactionist accounts of SLA as a sound theoretical basis for implementing TBL. However, the discussion also emphas-izes the need for further research into the relationship between tasks, interaction and L2 development.

Use of TBLT in Network-Based CALL

A number of rationales for the use of tasks in CMC-based CALL have been proposed. For example, Chapelle (2001) drawing on psycholin-guistic research, claims that as in other learning environments, learning in CMC-based CALL will be most effective when tasks incorporate the following features. These include a focus on form, a close fi t to learner needs, focus on meaning and active participation on the part of learners. Moreover, proposals for TBLT in network-based CALL based on the fi ndings of sociocultural research have also been made, most notably by Meskill (1999).

The literature on network-based CALL has witnessed an active debate on the nature of online interaction and suitability of current approaches to the use of tasks in online environments. Psycholinguistic researchers appear, for the most part, to support the view articulated by Chapelle (2000, 2001), that the above task features are effective regardless of the context and that the emergence of network-based learning does not appear to require a signifi cant reconceptualization of CALL. This view would appear to imply that CMC-based CALL


does not require a departure from conventional approaches to task design. However, this view has been challenged, most notably by Harrington and Levy (2001, p. 16) who argue that as conventional approaches towards TBLT are heavily infl uenced by psycholinguistic interactionist research they fail to ‘acknowledge suffi ciently the effects of media on L2 learning and its use. This results in an overly narrow view of CALL and the L2 learning processes that take place within it.’ This view is echoed by other researchers most notably Salaberry (1999). This debate shows that CALL theorists view inter-action in CMC environments as potentially benefi cial for learners.A number of advantages (and limitations) of real-time CMC-based interaction have been indentifi ed, and it is to a description of these that this discussion will now turn.

Hypothesized Advantages and Limitations of Real-Time Text-Based CMC as an Environment for

Language Learning

Researchers have identifi ed a number of potential advantages and drawbacks, of using CMC in learner-based CALL projects. Studies have produced evidence that the use of text may be benefi cial as although some types of simultaneous feedback are reduced, concerns over pronunciation are removed thus reducing anxiety (Hudson & Bruckman, 2002). Although the presence of multiple threads may cause confusion, the availability of scrolling enables learners to revisit problematic utterances (Kötter, 2003). Moreover, learners can view their writing on-screen in real-time and edit their messages in private. These aspects of network-based interaction increase participation and motivation particularly among more reticent learners who are fre-quently disadvantaged in traditional language classrooms (Warschauer, Turbee & Roberts, 1996). Another advantage of CMC may lie in the additional time it provides learners, as in most types of CMC that utilize typed text the delays that frequently occur between turns can support metalinguistic awareness and the noticing of errors (Swaffar, 1998). This aspect may increase the quantity and quality of target lan-guage output. CMC further creates an environment which is diffi cult


to replicate in alternative educational settings. The anonymity afforded by online interaction raises the risk of anti-social behaviour, however research suggests that this aspect of CMC may reduce inhibi-tion, leading to experimentation and risk-taking, activities that are seen as playing an important role in language development (Ortega, 1997). The use of CMC further opens up new potentially benefi cial forms of interaction that are not found in non-CMC classrooms. For example, the use of pseudonyms enables learners to engage in identity and language play in a low stress environment where social context cues are greatly reduced (Warner, 2004). Studies have further shown that the anonymity provided by text-only CMC environments may support the development of cooperative interpersonal relationships based on the exchange of personal information (Bays, 1998).

This discussion has shown that real-time text-based CMC is consid-ered as an environment with potential for language learning. As may be observed in Table 3.1, the literature, while acknowledging possible

Table 3.1 Potential advantages and limitations of interaction in text-based real-time CMC for language learners

Potential limitations Potential advantages

One channel text-only medium Presence of text supports monitoring and noticing.

Learners can also edit messages.Increased and higher quality target language

output

Delays Learners are provided with additional time

Disrupted turn adjacency probable and presence of multiple threads

Learners can make use of scrolling

Absence of prosodic cues Anxiety over pronunciation removed reducing stress and inhibition leading to enhanced motivation

Reduced paralinguistic cues.Social constraints reduced raising the

possibility of anti-social behaviour.

Opportunities to experiment.Anonymity may encourage risk-taking.

Text-only medium presents a barrier to the formation of interpersonal relationships.

Anonymity supports identity manipulation, language play and exchange of personal information.

This may facilitate the development of collaborative interpersonal relationships.


limitations, indicates that CMC represents a potentially valuable tool. In recent years, CALL researchers have conducted learner-based studies in order to explore this potential. However, to date, there have been only limited efforts to evaluate current research on the use of tasks in real-time CMC.

The following discussion will provide a critical analysis of signifi -cant research on the use of various types of text-based synchronous CMC in CALL, with a view to establishing if current approaches to TBLT are maximizing the apparent potential of this particular medium of communication. Due to space limitations, this discussion will focus on infl uential studies that are representative of develop-ments in research as a whole. Background information on the sub-jects and the key fi ndings of the studies analysed in the following discussion are summarized in Tables 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4.

Analysis of Research on Learner Interaction in Types of Real-Time CMC

Early studies on the use of tasks in LAN-based CMC

Research on the use of tasks in CMC-based CALL fi rst focused on communication tools run on local area networks (LANs) (see Table 3.2). Experimental research conducted by Kelm (1992) explored the interaction of Portuguese language learners during open discussion tasks. This study draws attention to possible advan-tages of computer-based interaction. Kelm observed (1992, p. 433) that participation increased across the whole group as the project progressed. This was refl ected in the student-centred nature of the interaction where 92 per cent of all messages were produced by the subjects (Kelm, 1992, p. 444). The use of pseudonyms reduced anxiety leading to increased confi dence and more candid expres-sion. In their feedback the subjects reported that they appreciated the opportunities provided to contribute at their own pace. Kelm noted that the presence of text on-screen supported the identifi cation of errors and this was frequently accompanied by self-correction. This study also identifi ed a number of potential drawbacks. The frequent use of cutting and pasting raised the possibility of the incorporation


of incorrect forms. A further possible limitation was that in the absence of active instructor guidance during the open discussion tasks, there was a tendency to avoid challenging vocabulary.

An infl uential study by Chun (1994) investigated the LAN-based interaction of learners of German. This study focused on open-ended discussion tasks, and was unusual as it represented one of the few studies to focus on lower level learners. Chun found that the number of entries made by the students ranged from 2.8 to a high of 17.8 (Chun, 1994, p. 21). The interaction was student-centred, with the subjects on occasion, producing surprisingly lengthy and syntactically

Table 3.2 Key fi ndings of studies on learner interaction in LAN-based CMC

Researcher Kelm (1992) Chun (1994)

Task types utilized Open-ended discussiontasks

Open-ended discussion tasks

Features of learner interaction investigated

Quantity and characteristics of target language output in CMC

Number and length of turns. Syntactic complexity of messages. Nature of student responses.

Number and background of subjects

15 undergraduate learners

14 fi rst year students

Profi ciency level Intermediate Beginner

Length of sessions and project duration

15, 1-hour sessions over a semester

14, 25-minute sessions over 2 semesters

Analysis technique(s) Researcher observation Analysis of transcripts and questionnaires

Analysis of student transcripts observation

Key fi ndings Increased participation from all members of the project group. High degree of learner-centred inaction, with 92% of all messages produced by the subjects. The use of pseudonyms appeared to reduce anxiety, encourage candid expression and enhance self-confi dence. Thevisual saliency of text facilitated the identifi cation of target language errors.

The interaction was highly learner-centred and conducted entirely in the target language. The subjects (including normally reticent learners) actively managed their interaction to a higher degree than would be the case in many conventional classrooms. Subjects initiated and expanded on topics, engaged in repairs and made extensive use of discourse management strategies associated with the development of communicative competence.


complex utterances. A striking fi nding was that the students actively managed their own interaction. Most messages were questions or responses made to other students rather than the teacher. In another noteworthy fi nding, the interaction was conducted entirely in the tar-get language. The learners frequently made appropriate use of dis-course management strategies associated with the development of communicative competence such as greetings and leave-takings, apologies and expressions of agreement (Chun, 1994, p. 17). In a further positive fi nding, when a communication problem occurred during the tasks, the students used strategies involved in the negoti-ation of meaning including clarifi cation and confi rmation checks (Chun, 1994, p. 27).

There were however a number of limitations in the study. The dura-tion of the sessions was rather brief. Moreover, by the second semester, the number of participants fell from 22 to 8. Only one task type was administered, and the lack of a follow-up study left the potential of other task types unexplored. Although these issues limit generaliz-ability, this study echoed fi ndings reported by Kelm that established the viability of real-time CMC as a platform in CALL and identifi ed advantages of the online medium. These studies further suggest that open-ended tasks appear to provide a means to elicit benefi cial forms of target language interaction. Encouraged by these largely positive fi ndings, researchers explored interaction in newer types of CMC provided by web-based chat tools. This research sought to investigate how variations in task type and treatment infl uence learner behaviour.

Studies on the use of tasks in chat-based CMC

Blake (2000) examined the interaction of Spanish learners in a longitudinal study that ran over two semesters. A total of four task types were administered and analysis revealed that negotiation occurred and was largely incidental in nature (Blake, 2000, p. 127). Negotiation appeared to be task sensitive, with jigsaw tasks eliciting the highest number of negotiations (accounting for 93% and 78% of total negotiations), followed by decision-making, and two-way and one-way information gap tasks. Blake noted that these fi ndings confi rm research by Pica, Kanagy and Falodun (1993), which claims that as jigsaw tasks require information exchange and focus on


achieving a single outcome they are more likely to raise metalinguistic awareness and elicit more negotiation than other task types. The analysis showed that negotiation was infrequent, accounting for a total of 3.8 per cent to 0.3 per cent of all turns, and focused heavily on unknown lexis. Syntactic negotiations were rare. In contrast to the fi ndings reported by Kelm (1992), there was no evidence for the incorporation of incorrect forms (Blake, 2000, p.133). A positive feature of this study was that the subjects appeared aware of their errors and worked to correct them. The subjects claimed that they enjoyed the interaction and Blake observed a high degree of focus on task completion.

A study conducted by Lee (2001) examined the use of open-ended discussion tasks in a chat room. Intermediate level learners of Spanish participated in the project over the course of one semester. In a positive fi nding, the subjects actively managed their interaction. Furthermore, a total of 298 communication strategies involved in the negotiation of meaning were identifi ed (Lee, 2001, p. 238). The most frequent were requests for meaning (20% of total strategies), fol-lowed by clarifi cation (19%), comprehension checks (13%) and self-corrections (16%). These strategies facilitated the production of modifi ed target language input and output. In a fi nding that mirrored Blake’s study, analysis revealed that these strategies focused on unknown lexis. Lee also noted some potential drawbacks of the CMC interaction. Although the subjects engaged in negotiation of meaning, there was little focus on form. The subjects frequently ignored linguistic errors, preferring instead to focus on meaning. Lee claimed that the real-time nature of the interaction and absence of many feedback cues led to avoidance strategies (Lee, 2001, p. 241).

In an effort to follow up on her earlier study Lee (2002), explored the interaction of another group of intermediate level learners of Spanish. As in her previous research, Lee administered open-ended discussion tasks. Analysis of the transcripts confi rmed fi ndings reported in her previous research. The tasks were successful in elicit-ing negotiation of meaning focusing on new lexis. A total of eight communication strategies were identifi ed (Lee, 2002, p. 280). The most frequent of these were requests for help (63) followed by clarifi cation requests (280). There were also signifi cant differences between the fi ndings of this research and her earlier study. Lee noted


that although the number of participants was lower, they made use of a higher total number of strategies than in her previous study (Lee, 2002, p. 86). She speculated that this difference was due to the nature of the discussion tasks that were broad enough to encourage participation. Lee also observed the emergence of adaptive strategies appropriate to the online environment such as the use of emoticons to signal feedback (Lee, 2002, p. 281). A number of negative fi ndings were also identifi ed. Echoing concerns expressed in her 2001 study, she noted the presence of numerous errors in linguistic output. For example, many responses were brief and contained no verbs (Lee, 2002, p. 282). Errors in usage and spelling frequently went uncor-rected. Although negotiation of meaning occurred, negotiation of form was infrequent. Lee claimed that the pressure to respond promptly during the real-time interaction contributed to the above fi ndings. This study was also subject to a number of limitations, the most prominent of which, were the defi nitions used in coding. As Kötter (2003, p.157) has pointed out, there is overlap between the defi nitions used for clarifi cation checks and requests making these coding categories somewhat problematic.

Darhower (2002) investigated the interaction of Spanish learners in four chat rooms. The learners were requested to exchange opinions in open-ended discussion tasks. The analysis confi rmed the presence of constructs proposed in sociocultural accounts of SLA. The subjects were able to establish states of intersubjectivity (Darhower, 2002, p. 256) and engaged in collaborative target language dialogue that supported in-depth discussion of the tasks (Darhower, 2002, p. 259). The participants further made use of pseudonyms to experiment with new online identities. The use of pseudonyms appeared to support enjoyment and risk-taking in the form of language play. Darhower also reported some negative results. The subjects engaged in instances of fl aming and frequently went off-topic when the instructor was absent. Moreover, the avoidance strategies identifi ed by Lee (2001, 2002) appeared in the data. These were accompanied by mother tongue or fi rst language (L1) use. The subjects resorted to this strategy in an apparent effort to quickly overcome a communica-tion problem and keep up with the interaction.

T

BLT

in Netw

ork-Based C

AL

L

53Table 3.3 Key fi ndings of studies on learner interaction in chat-based CMC

Researcher Blake (2000) Lee (2001) Lee (2002) Darhower (2002)

Task types utilized Jigsaw, decision-making, one and two-way information gap

Open-ended discussion Open-ended discussion Open-ended discussion


50 undergraduate students (drawn from 2 classes)

40 university students divided into 12 groups

34 undergraduate learners from 2 classes

33 undergraduate learners divided into 4 groups

Profi ciency level Intermediate Intermediate Intermediate Intermediate


One, 50-minute chat session per week over two semesters

One-hour session held weekly over a semester

One weekly 50-minute session held over a semester

Nine, 50-minute chat sessions

Analysis technique(s) Analysis of transcripts informed by psycholinguistic research

Post-project attitude survey Observation

Analysis of chat transcripts

Analysis of chat transcripts Analysis of transcripts informed by Vygotskian sociocultural theory

Key fi ndings Jigsaw tasks produced more negotiations than the other task types.

Negotiations were infrequent mostly incidental in nature, and focused heavily on unknown lexis.

Few syntactic negotiations occurred.

High degree of focus on task.

The subjects engaged in negotiation focusing on lexis, negotiation of form was infrequent.

The most common strategies were requests and clarifi cation checks.

Errors frequently ignored and avoidance strategies were observed.

The learners negotiated meaning focusing on lexis by utilizing strategies similar to those identifi ed in her 2001 study.

Due to time pressures usage and spelling errors frequently uncorrected. Limited use of complex target language constructions.

The subjects established and maintained intersubjectivity and engaged in collaborative dialogue focused on the tasks. Identity exploration led to enjoyment and risk-taking involving language play. Instances of fl aming, off-task discussion and L1 use occurred.


Fernández-García and Martínez-Arbelaiz (2002) examined the interaction of Spanish learners divided into four groups, in two chat sessions held 20 days apart (see Table 3.4). This study confi rmed fi ndings reported by Blake (2000) and Lee (2001, 2002) that open-ended discussion tasks facilitate negotiation of meaning focusing on lexis (Fernández-García & Martínez-Arbelaiz, 2002, p. 286). These researchers claimed that the negotiation structures were similar to those proposed for oral interaction (Varonis & Gass, 1985). However,

Table 3.4 Key fi ndings of studies on learner interaction in chat-based CMC

Researcher Fernández-García & Martínez-Arbelaiz (2002)

Smith (2003a) Smith (2003b)

Task types utilized

Open-ended discussion

Jigsaw and decision-making

Jigsaw and decision-making


28 undergraduates divided into 4 groups



Profi ciency level Not specifi ed Intermediate level Low & intermediate level


2, 35-minute sessions held 20 days apart

5, 30-minute sessions 5, 30-minute sessions

Analysis technique (s)

Analysis of transcripts Analysis of transcripts

Analysis of transcripts

Key fi ndings The subjects engaged in negotiation of meaning focusing primarily on unknown lexis. Their negotiation broadly followed the model proposed for oral interaction. However, there where differences. Due to reduced visual cues the subjects almost exclusively relied on explicit appeals for assistance. The extensive use of L1 was identifi ed.

Subjects engaged in frequent negotiation of meaning accounting for approximately one third of all turns focusing on low frequency lexical items embedded in the tasks. There were delays between turns during negotiations however this did not result in communication breakdowns as the subjects utilized scrolling. Highest incidence of negotiation in the decision-making tasks.

Learners utilized 26 different strategies to maintain the interaction. The most frequent were substitution, framing, fi llers and politeness. These were used to provide feedback, extra time and signal turn transitions. The above strategies were more frequent than other types. Limited evidence that task type infl uences strategy use with more strategy use recorded in the decision-making tasks than in the jigsaw tasks.


in contrast to fi ndings reported by Lee (2001), the subjects did not use a wide range of communication strategies. Instead they utilized explicit statements of non-understanding and occasional appeals for assistance (Fernández-García & Martínez-Arbelaiz, 2002, p. 286). The researchers speculated that this was caused by the online nature of the interaction where in the absence of paralinguistic cues, the participants had few other means to signal that non-understanding had occurred.

The limitations of this study were also signifi cant. Only one task type was investigated, and the researchers noted that self-correction and the production of target language output was limited (Fernández-García & Martínez-Arbelaiz, 2002, p. 290). Moreover, no information was given on profi ciency levels and the duration of the sessions was limited, raising questions of the generalizability of the fi ndings. In another less positive fi nding, extensive L1 use was identifi ed across all the subject groups.

Research carried out by Smith (2003b) focused on the task-based interaction of 18 low and intermediate level English as a second lan-guage (ESL) learners during fi ve, thirty-minute sessions. This study was motivated by research (Pica et al., 1993), which claims that tasks that require information exchange (jigsaw tasks) will produce higher levels of negotiation and communication strategy use than tasks where such exchange is optional (decision-making tasks). The data showed that the subjects used a wider range of what Smith described as communication strategies than has been reported in previous research (Fernández-García & Martínez-Arbelaiz, 2002; Lee, 2001, 2002). A total of 26 strategies were identifi ed (Smith, 2003b, pp. 46–47) and they appeared to be of two main types. One type included strat-egies relating to general discourse maintenance. Smith argued that these strategies were used in part because of the limited profi ciency of the subjects. They were also an adaption to the online real-time nature of the interaction in text chat where messages are intermixed. The most frequent were fi llers (utterances such as ‘well’ and ‘actually’), used as a means to supply feedback and provide extra time. Framing (‘good’, ‘OK’) was used to signal turn transitions in an explicit manner in the absence of intonation. Politeness was utilized to overcome the sensory limitations faced by users of CMC. The other type were


compensatory communication strategies utilized during negotiation of meaning focusing on new lexis. These functioned in a manner broadly similar to that found in FTF interaction. Smith found that decision-making tasks elicited more instances of negotiation than the decision-making tasks. This was an interesting fi nding that contradicts Blake’s claim (2000) that due to their convergent nature, jigsaw tasks would elicit more negotiation in CMC than other task types.

Smith (2003a) investigated the use of the above task types with a larger subject group (28) in a study involving intermediate level ESL students conducted over the same period as his earlier research. Smith found that as in his previous study, the subjects engaged in negotiation of meaning in a manner similar to that reported for FTF interaction. However, he observed some differences. As has been indicated in other research (Fernández-García & Martínez-Arbelaiz, 2002), the use of explicit expressions of non-understanding and clos-ure were frequent. Smith speculated (Smith, 2003a, p. 47) that this fi nding was due to the absence of the paralinguistic cues that fulfi l these functions in FTF communication. He observed that there were occasions when there were long delays during exchanges involving negotiation of new lexis. However, these delays did not result in communication failure, as the subjects appeared to make use of scrolling. This study also revealed the infl uence of task-induced effects. Negotiated turns focusing on low-frequency lexical items (that were embedded in the tasks) accounted for approximately one-third of the total turns produced. This fi nding contrasts with Blake’s (2000) research where negotiation was incidental and the number of negotiated turns was low. In a further interesting fi nding that contradicts a result reported by Blake (2000), the decision-making tasks elicited higher levels of negotiation than the jigsaw tasks. Smith claimed (2003a, p. 46), that this was because in contrast to the decision-making tasks, interaction focusing on the lexical items in the jigsaw tasks was not central to task completion. However, Smith’s research is subject to a number of limitations. Both of his studies were only conducted over a short period and therefore pro-vide only limited support for his claim that decision-making tasks elicit higher levels of negotiation than jigsaw tasks. Moreover, his research focused on only two task types. Despite these shortcomings,


these studies suggest that implementation of tasks in CALL projects involving the use of real-time CMC supports collaborative interaction involving negotiation of meaning focusing on new lexis and the development of target language discourse management skills.

Conclusions and Directions for Future Research

The studies analysed in this chapter have shown the potential of synchronous text-based CMC as a venue for TBLT. Research by Kelm (1992) and Chun (1994) confi rms that this type of CMC represents a valuable tool in CALL. These researchers showed that the anonymity afforded by CMC provides an effective means to facilitate learner-centred target language interaction. Their studies provide evidence for enhanced participation, reduced anxiety and types of strategy use associated with language acquisition. Following on this early work, the other studies examined here (Blake, 2000; Darhower, 2002; Fernández-García & Martínez-Arbelaiz, 2002; Lee, 2001, 2002; Smith, 2003a, 2003b) have demonstrated that the use of tasks in CMC pro-vides a means to promote benefi cial types of interaction hypothesized in psycholinguistic and sociocultural SLA research. Taken as whole, this research has been consistent in showing that the use of tasks in real-time CMC environments presents an effective means to elicit negotiation of meaning focusing on new lexis. The evidence is less conclusive regarding the infl uence of task-induced effects on the frequency of negotiation. The studies conducted by Lee (2001, 2002), Fernández-García and Martínez-Arbelaiz (2002), indicate that nego-tiation of meaning occurs during open-ended discussion tasks. How-ever, the generalizability of their results is limited as they did not quantify the incidence of negotiation in detail nor investigate other task types. Although both Blake (2000) and Smith (2003a, 2003b) attempted to overcome these limitations by investigating additional task types, their research produced contradictory fi ndings. Blake claimed that jigsaw tasks produced the highest incidence of negoti-ation. In contrast, Smith’s studies found that decision-making tasks consistently produced the highest frequency of negotiation. These fi ndings show the need for further research that will clarify the precise


relationship between task-type and negotiation during interaction in real-time CMC. Although these studies have produced contradictory fi ndings, they nonetheless demonstrate the collaborative nature of learner interaction in CMC, and the high degree of focus on task (Blake, 2000; Smith, 2003a).

The analysis in this chapter has identifi ed a number of potential limitations in current approaches to the use of tasks in CMC-based CALL projects. The use of avoidance strategies such as L1 use has been noted in several studies (Fernández-García & Martínez-Arbelaiz, 2002; Lee, 2001) and this may, in part, be the result of the communication context provided by real-time CMC where learners must track turns and respond quickly when messages are scrolling rapidly (Lee, 2002). Additional areas for concern include the high frequency of errors (Lee, 2001) and the limited evidence for self-correction. In the absence of teacher feedback, the incorpora-tion of incorrect forms remains a risk. The main implication of these fi ndings is that although participation in text chat apparently pro-vides ample opportunities for the development of fl uency there may be a trade-off in accuracy. In this context, the lack of evidence for focus on form highlights a major limitation of current approaches to TBLT in CMC. While the studies reviewed here provide extensive evidence for negotiation of meaning there is little evidence for the focus on form that is hypothesized as necessary for SLA to occur (Skehan, 2003a). Although there is a clear need to achieve a balance between meaning and form in tasks (Strambi & Bouvet, 2003), the predominant approach represents the transfer of tasks developed for conventional language classrooms. A major limitation of this is the absence of real-time teacher feedback and the focus on form which is necessary for language development. What is needed, is an approach to TBLT that takes account of the online medium and maximizes the specifi c affordances provided by CMC to both focus on meaning and form (Hampel, 2006). For example, the use of transcripts presents valuable opportunities for learners to focus on form. Moreover, the role of the teacher remains vital in the design of tasks appropriate to the online medium that not only meet learner needs, but also, stimu-late active participation in the learning process. Future research on TBLT in CMC-based CALL is required in a number of areas. The


studies examined in this discussion emphasize the need to investigate the role of learner training in the new context provided by CMC. The effectiveness of specifi c task types in eliciting benefi cial forms of interaction represents another area that would benefi t from addi-tional research conducted from a longitudinal perspective. Finally, there remains a need to explore how tasks can be designed to fully maximize the potential of interaction in the online medium.

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Chapter 4

Taking Intelligent CALL to Task

Mathias Schulze

Introduction

The title of this chapter gives rise to a two-part question: What is Intelligent CALL (ICALL) and what does it have to do with task-based language teaching (TBLT)? I will address this main question and focus on a number of subordinate and related issues such as: What kind of ICALL projects have relied on a task-based design? How was this done? What kinds of task processes have been considered in ICALL systems? What contributions has TBLT made to ICALL, which ones could it make? Which contributions could ICALL make to TBLT?

After a brief sketch of TBLT in the context of computer-assisted language learning (CALL), the central goals and approaches of ICALL – a subfi eld of CALL which utilizes artifi cial intelligence (AI) techniques – will be described in broad strokes. The main part of the chapter discusses a number of ICALL projects, evaluates trends critically from a TBLT perspective to ascertain what contributions ICALL can make and has made to TBLT, and how TBLT can and should inform and/or has informed research and development in ICALL. Doughty and Long (2003, p. 50) argue that:

Task-Based Language Teaching . . . constitutes a coherent, theor-etically motivated approach to all six components of the design, implementation, and evaluation of a genuinely task-based teach-ing program: (a) needs and means analysis, (b) syllabus design, (c) material design, (d) methodology and pedagogy, (e) testing and (f) evaluation.


Arguably, Doughty and Long’s claim for teaching programmes in general can be transferred to the analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation (Colpaert, 2006) of ICALL systems. In this context, a task is seen as a ‘goal-oriented communicative activity with a specifi c outcome, where the emphasis is on exchan-ging meanings, not producing specifi c language forms’ (Willis, 1996, p. 36). This defi nition appears to be widely accepted (see e.g. Bygate, Skehan & Swain, 2001, p. 11).

In contexts with a more practical focus, however, a task is under-stood more broadly as a ‘classroom event that has coherence and unity, with a clear beginning and an end, in which learners take an active role’ (Cameron, 1997, p. 346). I will bear both Willis’ meaning-focused and Cameron’s broader, activity-focused defi nition in mind, when it comes to the discussion of ICALL design. The process of task performance, including pre-task (Willis, 1996, p. 42) and post-task activities (Skehan, 1998, p. 149), is seen as an activity system (AS) (Engeström, 1987; Mwanza & Engeström, 2005). With its multitude of interdependent and interacting variables, its context sensitivity, and its dependence on initial conditions, the ‘inner workings’ of such a system can best be described with complexity science (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008). Of course, in a review of research and development work in ICALL, it is often diffi cult if not impossible to glean information about the teaching and learning contexts of individual systems. They are frequently discussed from a purely com-putational, linguistic or only marginally second language acquisition (SLA)-related empirical perspective. In such cases, I will have to extrapolate from sometimes limited information, in order to situate these, at least hypothetically, in a practical pedagogic context.

When it comes to identifying language-learning tasks in ICALL systems, we see them as ‘a vital part of language teaching’ (Skehan, 1996, p. 39), but not as the sole unit of instruction and we accept both tasks which have some relevance for learners (Eckerth, 2003) and tasks in completely fi ctitious contexts (e.g. Skehan, 1998, p. 143). Given our understanding of a learning process as an AS, a task can also be described as the collaborative, social construction of knowledge (Edwards & Willis, 2005, p. 24). Of course, when techno-logy is used as one major mediating artefact in a language-learning

Taking Intelligent CALL to Task 65

activity, it introduces a number of new facets that will have to be considered.

Intelligent CALL

ICALL – Intelligent CALL – is a fi eld within CALL which applies concepts, techniques, algorithms and technologies from AI to CALL (Gamper & Knapp, 2002; Heift & Schulze, 2007; Nerbonne, 2003; Schulze, 2008a). AI describes ‘the science and engineering of mak-ing intelligent machines’ (McCarthy, 2007). This includes work in robotics, intelligent agents and computer vision. Most relevant to CALL is research in four branches of AI: (1) natural language pro-cessing, (2) user modelling, (3) expert systems and (4) intelligent tutoring systems. Natural language processing deals with both natural language understanding and generation. Natural language understand-ing takes written or spoken language input and turns it into a formal representation which captures the textual input’s phonological/graphological, grammatical, semantic and pragmatic features in a computational data structure. For example, when a written sentence is submitted to a natural language understanding system, often a parser, a tree describing the grammatical structure of this sentence with details about immediate dominance (phrase structure) and lin-ear precedence (word order) could be the output. Natural language generation describes the reverse process. A formal representation, which could have been stored in a database for example, is rendered in written or spoken human language. For instance, if the relevant syntactic, semantic and pragmatic rules of certain utterance types and a lexicon are given, the information from a database on a coun-try’s geography can be provided in adequate prose.

Within natural language processing, software that turns utterances into written text is subsumed under speech recognition or speech-to-text systems; the reverse process is called speech synthesis or text-to-speech. User modelling can also be described as a sub-area of human-computer interaction (HCI) research – in addition to being an area of research in AI – because it strives to adapt computational systems to their users. Of the different research domains in user modelling, student modelling


is, of course, of particular relevance to CALL. A student model ‘observes’ the student’s actions, maintains a data structure with this information and infers beliefs about the student’s knowledge based on these data. If an ICALL system comprises a student model, it is possible to adapt feedback messages, instructional sequences, and learning objects to the individual student. Expert systems, on the other hand, capture relevant knowledge about a particular domain. Most ICALL software will have expert information about the grammatical system of the learnt language (a parser grammar). This is the module that enables the programme to process the student input and turn it into a formal representation that contains detailed information about the form (phonological/graphological, morphological, syntactic fea-tures) and the meaning (semantic, discoursal, pragmatic features). This representation can then in turn be used to maintain a more detailed record of the grammatical knowledge the learner applied and/or to be able to locate and describe linguistic errors made by the learner. Both the student model and the expert model are essential modules of intelligent tutoring systems. Such systems are tutors in the context of Levy’s (1997) tutor-tool distinction in CALL. They are used in the teaching of various instructional settings and for various subjects and domains.

It is these areas of AI which are commonly applied in ICALL. How-ever, ICALL is not only about computers as tutors. In other ICALL projects language-learning tools such as grammar or spell checkers for language learners (Gamon et al. 2009; Rimrott & Heift, 2008), specialized and corpus-enriched learner dictionaries and reading aids for foreign language readers (Roosmaa & Prószéky, 1998) have been developed. ICALL systems which support language instructors (e.g. in the semi-automatic generation of exercises) and researchers (e.g. measuring task complexity, accuracy, and fl uency [Schulze, Wood, Pokorny, forthcoming]) can act as general tools in language learning; however, these are beyond the scope of this current chapter.

Heift and Schulze (2007, pp. 55–82) identifi ed 119 ICALL projects, which were documented in English and German publications between 1978 and 2004/5. In this chapter, I will mention and sketch some of these by selecting almost exclusively systems for written language input and output. I will also refer to selected ICALL projects of recent


years, in order to investigate the relationship of TBLT and ICALL. Given the interdisciplinarity of ICALL, it is not surprising that many publications appeared outside the mainstream journals of CALL and very few in other journals of applied linguistics (for a literature sur-vey, see Heift & Schulze, 2007, pp. 52–55). Although two more special issues on ICALL (Meurers, 2009; Schulze, 2008b) appeared in CALL journals recently, a strong connection of SLA in general and TBLT in particular with ICALL is still not immediately obvious. In the mid-1990s and after attending a conference on ICALL (Holland, Kaplan & Sams, 1995), Oxford (1993) summarized the mutual relationship of ICALL and SLA from an applied linguistics perspective:

It was somewhat surprising to me to discover that most of the papers . . . contained only outdated language learning and teach-ing references . . . ICALL must devote as much attention to its language learning/teaching principles as it does to its exciting technology. (p. 174)

Oxford (1993) is correct in stating that ICALL research has all too often relied on homespun notions of language learning or borrowed from discourses in SLA, which had long been criticized severely and/or superseded by theoretical approaches with improved explan-atory power (Schulze, 2008a). On the other hand, as you will see in the discussion of projects below, many researchers in ICALL have shown considerable awareness of current discussions in SLA research and have been successful in applying relevant SLA research fi ndings to ICALL.

Task Design in ICALL

Designing tasks for a computer environment means that general pedagogic and SLA principles as well as software engineering and HCI opportunities and constraints have to be considered. The applied linguist Johnson (2003) identifi es a list of characteristics of good task designers based on an observation study of experienced and less experienced creators of language-learning materials. He argues that


among other traits good task designers spend time analysing the design problem they face by also carefully reviewing what is required of them; are sensitive to task logistics, learners and context; show maximum control of task variables; identify procedures and highlight important decisions early on; use a breadth-fi rst strategy when con-sidering design possibilities; at times design cyclically; create choices; and stimulate input and output a lot (Johnson, 2003, pp. 128–137). Some of the procedural stages identifi ed by him are reminiscent of the stages in iterative software development, which also has to go through a cycle of analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation (for CALL, see Colpaert, 2006). In both cases only a complete cycle, which often has to be repeated, increases the like-lihood of a successful development outcome. It is important to note at this stage that in ICALL the main interaction can take place between learner and machine. I would not describe this as social interaction in the Vygotskian sense, but we will have to con-sider the HCIs (Shneiderman & Plaisant, 2005) carefully in the context of learning processes. Using activity theory terminology, designers of ICALL tasks need to be aware that in HCI learners act on their intentions, the object of the activity.

The computer programme on the other hand performs certain operations which are obviously not intentional, but are triggered by conditions such as the reception of a string of characters, a mouse click or a single key stroke. Most computer users, when interacting with the machine, interpret these operations as an action and ascribe it an intention, about which they reason and then react accordingly. For example, if a grammar checking algorithm of a computer pro-gramme parses the input string and generates a message of canned text (associated with the rule used for the successful parse), then the learner might interpret this as a grammar checking action, conclude that the text contains a certain error, and that it can be corrected in the suggested way.

Now, this may or may not be the case depending on the quality of the parsing algorithm and the coverage of the grammar, but it certainly was not the computer’s intention. This means that ICALL systems, in addition to the requirements of the pedagogic principles guiding the design of language tasks, also need to consider the


computational robustness of their systems and the linguistic validity of the underlying human language technology (e.g. parser grammar and algorithm, information of the expert system, disambiguation and selection procedures). Thus, meaningful tasks in ICALL are not only one prerequisite for successful language learning, but task design can also be used to restrict the linguistic domain, the con-structions necessary for task completion, to facilitate robust natural language processing, since processing qualitatively limited and hence more predictable input yields outcomes of higher quality. In other words, processing more predictable input – the tasks restrict the vocabulary and the syntactic constructions the student can and will use – results in more precise and contingent feedback or a meaning-ful response in a dialogue system, which the student can successfully interpret and act on accordingly.

Even in this HCI, learning is an ‘inherently socially situated activity’ (Storch, 2005, p. 153) in the Vygotskian sense. Essentially students conduct an activity mediated by computational artefacts that were created by a community of ICALL researchers and developers. And of course, ICALL activities are not only for the lone learner in front of a computer. Many ICALL systems can be used as a trigger for a language-learning activity conducted through discussion or other communicative activities by a small group of students who all work with the same system.

Examples of TBLT in ICALL

These design principles and considerations will become clearer once they are seen in relation to some concrete examples of ICALL systems. In the 30 years of ICALL to date, we have seen a rather heterogeneous set of projects – heterogeneous in almost every aspect of their design, implementation and employment. In the following sections, we will encounter programmes that set students a genuine task and provide the necessary scaffolding and support (see the section on communicative tasks in ICALL below). Such tasks have a clearly identifi able language learning object. They are set in a relevant communicative situation and are sometimes situated in a vir-tual world (VW), which could be represented graphically or textually.


The latter are often dialogue systems, in which the learner engages in a (written) second language (L2) discourse with the ‘intelligent’ machine. Students using machine translation software are supported in their translation or textual analysis tasks.

Other ICALL systems can only be used during certain phases of the task process. They facilitate and support task performance (see the section on during-task and post-task support below) by providing linguistic and knowledge resources, scaffolding and textual analysis tools as well as helping to increase the students’ language awareness. Facets of the learners’ interaction and task outcomes are easily recorded on a computer, so that the programme can maintain a detailed, information-rich record of an individual’s learning pro-cesses and outcomes in a student model (see section on measuring task performance). This model is a prerequisite for the system to be able to adapt automatically to individual learner differences and the individual learning process. This way a programme can keep the learner aware and informed about progress and the necessary next steps. Also during pre-task activities such as priming the students for a particular language task and reviewing task-relevant linguistic material, ICALL systems can be employed usefully (see section on pre-task activities).

Communicative Tasks in ICALL

A number of ICALL projects focused on the development of communicative competence of language learners. In early CALL projects, relatively simple text processing techniques, such as key-word searches and regular expressions were used to process sentences submitted by students, for instance, during a dialogue task, in which the student interacts with the system. Underwood’s (1984) programme, FAMILIA, resembles the ELIZA programme (see Weizenbaum, 1976). In FAMILIA, the system recognizes certain keywords, mainly family terms, and searches for verb complement combinations that are erroneous in Spanish. The entire lexicon as well as the sophisticated pattern-matching technique are geared towards the discussion of family relations.


Other projects embedded the language-learning software with its tasks and technology in a virtual context and designed a genuine task environment. Spion (Sanders & Sanders, 1995), for instance, was a spy game for students of German. Its main character, Robotky, is placed in Berlin and students have to give him advice in a variety of situations. If students respond in a complete and well-formed sentence, the recommended action will be performed by the screen character. Spion offered the students a motivating, fun and commun-icative task which used familiar traits from computer games of the time. Another project, Herr Kommissar (DeSmedt, 1995), also relies on a crime story scenario to engage students of German in a written exchange and uses natural language processing. Students assume the role of the detective (Herr Kommissar) and formulate questions for the suspect during an interrogation. The limited domain and the fi nite set of syntactic structures for questions result in adequate linguistic coverage for this engaging language game.

Menzel and Schröder (1999) have their students communicate about a market place scenario that is represented graphically. They are able to check input utterances for their semantic truth value by comparing what the student said to what is actually displayed in the graphic representation of the market scene. FLUENT I (Hamburger & Hashim, 1992) asks students to move objects in a bathroom per request. Hamburger and his team also developed an interface for teachers to create exercises which utilize the natural language processing tools of FLUENT-2, both written and spoken. The teacher can use the tutorial schema tool to design interactive exercises, the language tool to infl uence the language generated by FLUENT-2 and the drawing tool to manipulate the graphical microworlds (Schoelles & Hamburger, 1996).

As can be seen from these examples, embedding natural language processing technologies in CALL environments that provide a whole task scenario have meant that these systems have been able to pro-vide students with a stimulating language-learning task. Although the linguistic input can be described as rich in the relevant scenario, it has usually meant that the system could function adequately although it was based on a small (but contextually relevant) dictionary and a fragment of the L2 grammar. Such programmes, however, require


a huge development effort and considerable time. This is often coupled with a short life span of such software since the transfer to other computer environments and teaching contexts can be fraught with diffi culties. Such diffi culties arose because the often-monolithic programmes were tailored to a particular group of students or a very specifi c language-learning situation and/or components such as the interface or the human language technology lacked the robustness necessary for a straightforward implementation in another educa-tional setting. Many such ICALL programmes were developed as part of a research or a dissertation project and thus were dependent on the project’s funding and other resources. Diffi culties with distribut-ing, marketing, maintaining and supporting ICALL software from within a university system often prevented their widespread use by other language instructors and students. These and other research prototypes clearly show, however, that TBLT in ICALL can be done (at a cost) and high-quality task designs are a fruitful avenue of further research and development in ICALL.

Given the cost of development in ICALL, a number of projects re-used parsers and grammars that had been developed for different purposes and with different goals in mind, for example, for machine translation. Anderson (1995) evaluates a machine translation system, Targumatik, regarding its usefulness for teaching Hebrew and con-cludes ‘that MT [machine translation] with a properly constructed and applied learning algorithm can defi nitely be used to enhance language learning’ (p. 90). Somers (2001), a specialist in machine translation, is more cautious and warns that ‘MT software is generally not designed with language learners in mind, so one should be a little wary of using it for this purpose’ (p. 28). In addition to the utilitarian value of introducing university students of a foreign language to state-of-the-art translation tools and aids, he sees a role for machine translation software in task settings in which learners are asked to pre-edit source texts iteratively to make a subsequent automatic trans-lation more successful or to post-edit texts translated into their L1 and to comment on the L2 constructions which were necessary to edit. Similar to a comparison of various translations of varying quality (which could also come from different machine translation systems and/or human translators), such editing activities increase the lan-guage awareness of learners and facilitate their noticing of structural


alignments and misalignments of L1 and L2. He warns, however, that the approach ‘to use MT’s weaknesses and mistakes to bring out subtle aspects of language differences or to reinforce learners’ appre-ciation of both L1 and L2 grammar and style’ (ibid.) is controversial because he sees the danger of ‘reinforcing or even introducing incor-rect language habits on the part of the learner’ (ibid.). That a foreign language is learned through habit formation and directly infl uenced by erroneous input is, of course, highly questionable. On the other hand, Somers is correct in assuming that a machine translation into the students’ L1 is preferable in a language-learning task because the task diffi culty of analysing or editing a machine-translated text can be and often is enormous. If it is really just the goal of such a task to increase students’ awareness of the two overlapping and diverging language systems and sets of linguistic conventions, then the likeli-hood of an appropriate and successful task design is much greater if students are working with a comprehensible, error-free source text in their L2 and a machine-translated L1 target text full of errors, inad-equacies and infelicities. However, Niño (2008), who also provides a comprehensive overview of projects which discussed and investigated the use of machine translation in L2 learning, concludes from her quasi-experimental study with students of Spanish in England, that her ‘results advocate that for advanced students . . . the target lan-guage MT post-editing was especially good for creating opportunities for producing comprehensible and acceptable output and for raising language awareness through error detection and correction’ (p. 44).

When it comes to task designs which involve translation, text cri-tiquing and commenting, language awareness, error analysis and correction, or similar activities, machine translation has a role to play because it facilitates language learning and increases students’ awareness of and familiarity with modern language technologies which many of them use anyway, but might not always do so in the most appropriate way (Williams, 2006).

During-Task and Post-Task Support

With regard to during-task support, error detection and diagnosis resulting in corrective feedback have been the main focus of ICALL


and thus form the backbone of the language help which is provided by such systems. ICALL has made great strides towards the successful integration of language engineering resources in CALL. In a number of systems, students have contextualized access to online dictionaries, infl ectional paradigms of words are generated on the fl y and can be displayed for the student. For example, the GLOSSER RuG system provides students with access to a morphological analyser and an online dictionary. Students can extract morpho-syntactic information on any word from a reading text chosen by the learner or the instructor and thus support language students’ reading of a foreign-language text. Knapp (2004) describes ELDIT, an electronic learner dictionary for German and Italian intended for reading activities and vocabu-lary acquisition. The system supports a number of reading tasks which aim to prepare students for bilingual profi ciency examinations. After their research and development projects were completed, both systems, ELDIT and Glosser RuG, appear to be frozen in time. Glosser RuG was clearly designed as a research prototype to prove the usefulness of natural language processing resources in CALL – which it did very successfully – however its use by language learners appeared to be limited. Due to the fact that ELDIT relied on manual annotation for some more complex features in the reading texts, its material was not easily scalable.

More recently, Wood (2009) developed QuickAssist as part of his doctoral dissertation project. This ICALL tool supports reading and vocabulary acquisition for students of German through the automatic annotation and lemmatization of texts selected by the students or their instructor. Students have one-click access to an online diction-ary in which the lemma of the word in context will be looked up, can retrieve further collocations of the word from a German corpus, are provided with a morphological deconstruction of the word and the whole paradigm of relevant word forms, and have direct access to the German version of Wikipedia to look up proper nouns and concepts. Thus, the system re-uses proven, reliable and robust human language resources which are freely available.

In addition to the systems that support foreign-language learners in their reading tasks, there are ICALL projects which support writ-ing activities, usually through the provision of feedback on erroneous


constructions. McCoy and her colleagues (Michaud & McCoy, 2006) developed ICICLE, a system for learning written English as an L2 for students with American Sign Language as L1. The system mainly supports post-task refl ection on the written text: ‘The interface allows the user to type in or load a text fi le, request an analysis, and view the results. Sentences containing problems are highlighted in colors corresponding to the type of error and canned one-sentence explana-tions of the error can be accessed’ (ICICLE, 2008).

Such support with proof-reading learner texts can be offered in different phases of the task process – during the main task and for post-task activities – to encourage students to refl ect on their own writing, to notice errors and gaps or simply selected lexical, morpho-logical or syntactic phenomena. Natural language processing is well suited to preparing texts for such refl ective activities automatically (Amaral, Metcalf & Meurers, 2006). Amaral et al. (2006) argue for a task design for ICALL systems which incorporates a sequence of receptive presentation, productive presentation and controlled practice. On the basis of an automatic annotation of the text in ques-tion through part-of-speech tagging and shallow parsing, the system colour-codes relevant linguistic constructions and makes them more salient, so that students notice them more easily (receptive presenta-tion). In a second step, learners are asked to identify the same constructions in context, for example by clicking on them. Third, they are required to re-order automatically scrambled sentences or to fi ll in automatically created and evaluated blanks. These little activ-ities are, of course, well known in language teaching, what is new here is the automatic preparation of the text, which means that a learner can freely choose a text for these activities because it will be submitted to a robust linguistic analysis.

It is particularly the provision of additional linguistic information and the increased saliency of constructions with certain features where ICALL can provide support in a variety of different task set-tings. Scaffolding – the provision of assistance that enables learners to reach communicative goals they would have not reached other-wise – and input enhancement – often extra-linguistic features that enable the learner to comprehend the input better – were shown to have a positive infl uence on language acquisition success. Both


processes are normally carried out with linguistically well-formed texts as (computational) input for the natural language processing analysis and can thus rely on a more consistent, reliable analysis out-come than in the traditional ICALL domain of error correction.

Pre-Task Activities

As Willis (1996, p. 42) suggests, tasks can be preceded by pre-task activities. Pre-task activities fall into two broad categories: (1) lin-guistic priming and review and (2) pre-task planning activities. ICALL plays a role in the former, but is hardly suitable to the latter. Its sys-tems can be used to introduce or review task-relevant grammatical constructions and semantic fi elds. I would not deny that the sequence of pre-task activities with language practice exercises followed by the main communicative task is reminiscent of the so-called 3Ps approach to language teaching methodology – present, practice, produce (PPP) (see Skehan, 1998, pp. 94–95). However, this sequence is supporting student learning, if the form-focused exercises are relevant and subordinate to the task at hand. The task still needs to be central and emphasis is on cognitive processes and not skill-oriented training (see Bruton, 2002).

Some ICALL systems in use concentrate on feedback on and help with morpho-syntactic errors made by learners: The E-Tutor (Heift & Nicholson, 2001) accepts input from a variety of beginner to inter-mediate exercises for German and provides error diagnosis and feedback. The embedding of these form-oriented practice activities as pre-task activities in a task-based design is supported by the system which provides instructions for a variety of tasks and is based on the decision of individual instructors when using the E-Tutor with their students. The system consists of fi fteen chapters with a variety of learner activities, covers the main grammar concepts of German, and provides learning content for three semesters of university German. In addition to the grammar and vocabulary practice, a number of language learning resources, including pictures, audio and cultural information, are contained in the web-based learning environment.

For Japanese, there is one commercial web-based system, Robo-Sensei, developed by Nagata (2009). Robo-Sensei analyses student input


for selected exercises, performs an itemization (separating tokens for later linguistic analysis), performs a morphological analysis, and parses the sentential input syntactically using a context free grammar. The version currently released works for the constructions and the lexicon required by the associated textbook. A web-based version with its own Japanese textbook is in preparation and is able to analyse all grammatical structures taught in the fi rst two years of Japanese instruction (Nagata, 2009).

A system for Portuguese – Tagarela – which is similar to the E-Tutor and Robo-Sensei, uses the metaphor of an electronic textbook, and has been developed by Amaral and Meurers (2008). The system provides re-writing exercises, vocabulary practice and listening comprehension for which students receive feedback on spelling, morphological, syntactic and semantic errors. Feedback is contextu-alized through the information of a student model that contains performance information of individual learners and an instructor model that contains information about activity and error types.

Other ICALL developments focus on one or more specifi c gram-matical constructions. Bailin (1990), for example, in his VERBCON project concentrates only on analysing English verbs. Given the base form of the verb, students have to insert the infl ected forms into blanks using auxiliaries and infl ectional suffi xes appropriately. Such an activity with its pure focus on form can only be used in a pre-task activity. How a successful balance of focus on meaning and focus on form can be achieved has been shown in the SWIM (See What I Mean) project. The centre of attention for Zock and his colleagues (Zock, 1992) were French clitics. Students choose certain concepts and ideas and answer questions posed by the system. Depending on their answers, the system generates the French sentence with the appropriate clitics, thus making students aware of the positioning and formation of anaphoric references in a French sentence. Such an activity can be easily pictured as a pre-task activity of a task that requires the written use of clitics.

Examples of ICALL systems whose natural language understanding capabilities are employed to focus students’ attention on particular constructions include a programme which helps learners to practice zero pronouns in Japanese (Yamura-Takei, Fujiwara, Yoshie & Aizawa,


2002), the TDTDT project (Pijls, Daelemans & Kempen, 1987), which checks the conjugation of Dutch verbs for morphotactic errors, and the ALICE system which specializes in the analysis of temporal conjunctions in Italian, French and English (Cerri, 1989). Although none of these systems was developed based on a TBLT design, with their very specifi c focus on a particular set of forms, they would lend themselves to an integration in the preparatory phase of a task process, in which the students are introduced to, sensitized for, or simply review a particular, task-relevant construction. Given their very limited domain, such systems are usually very robust in their linguistic analysis or felicitous in their generation. The effectiveness of such systems in the pre-task activities, however, can only be determined if one has information about the particular learning environment and communicative learning task, of which the check-ing or practice activity is only one small part. High development costs and issues of portability and technology transfer have meant that systems which concentrate on specifi c linguistic phenomena and only function within a certain set of exercises often remain at the research prototype stage.

It is simply not very effi cient to build a relatively complex ICALL system that can then only be incorporated in the preparatory phase of a specifi c task design. Systems such as E-Tutor and Robo-Sensei with a wider coverage of parser and grammar as well as a substantial set of different exercise types such as build-a-sentence, fi ll-in-the-blank, dictation, and translation and which are linked to one or more course curricula and textbooks, are the only intelligent language tutors which have been and still are in use by a large number of students over a number of years. Such systems with larger coverage and suffi -cient instructional material are very costly in terms of time and effort. Nagata’s software, for example, has been under development since the early 1990s, while Heift has been working on her system since the mid-90s.

Future Avenues for TBLT-ICALL

During the 30 years of its existence, ICALL has become a major impetus for tutorial CALL (Hubbard & Bradin-Siskin, 2004) – CALL


in a structured, operationalized instructional environment. A turn towards more applied research questions in computational linguistics (ten Hacken, 2003) and a sustained interest in CALL in both modern language technology and tutorial CALL coupled with the improved availability of robust linguistic and computational resources for natural language processing should mean that this positive trend will continue.

As could be seen from the examples given in this chapter, progress in terms of widespread and sustained use of ICALL applications in real language-learning situations has been slow and sketchy. This is mainly due to the immense complexities of the computational processing of human language and of the nature of language itself coupled with the complexity of foreign language learning processes. However, the examples, even if some of them have just been proof-of-concept systems, also indicate strongly that ICALL has added and will continue to add innovative and interesting facets to TBLT through its challenging task designs and even more so through its capability to analyse student input and observe and support student behaviour during task processing. And the benefi ts are mutual as successful ICALL projects have profi ted from a well-motivated task design in two main ways. First, from a computational perspective, a well-defi ned task design with its clear set of relevant language constructions facilitates the restriction to a linguistic domain which is ‘manageable’ for a system’s natural language processing modules. Secondly, suc-cessful projects from the last 30 years of ICALL show that it is po ssible to reproduce the positive impact of TBLT in student class-room interactions with an intelligent computer as tool and/or tutor. When such a system uses or is embedded in an appropriate tasks design, it can facilitate successful task completion and thus support language learning.

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Chapter 5

Effects of Multimodality in Computer-Mediated Communication Tasks

Glenn Stockwell

Introduction

Research in the fi eld of task-based language teaching (TBLT) is extremely varied, and researchers have focused their attention on a range of different aspects, such as the effect of task complexity on learner interaction (Kim, 2009), task type and noticing of syntactical features (Song & Suh, 2008). With improved accessibility to technolo-gies that allow communication to occur between learners and teachers regardless of distance or time, communication tasks featuring tech-nology are starting to appear in the literature (e.g. Lamy & Hampel, 2007). These studies are also varied in their focus and approach, and examine virtually all language skills and areas, including speaking, writing, grammar and vocabulary (Stockwell, 2007). In recent years, communication tasks have to a large degree become synonymous with computer-mediated communication (CMC). CMC tasks provide not only a means through which learners may engage in authentic interaction with others, but also a method where learner output can be monitored easily and relatively non-intrusively by teachers and researchers alike (Levy & Stockwell, 2006).

Despite the attention that TBLT has started to attract (Samuda & Bygate, 2008), our understanding of the effect of the technology on the tasks remains relatively limited. There is no doubt that technology can and does indeed make a difference to language learning environ-ments (Levy, 1997), but what this difference is with regard to TBLT – particularly in communication tasks that occur through technology – is an area much in need of further investigation. The role of this


chapter, then, is to give a deeper insight into the use of multiple modes of CMC-based communication tasks founded on empirical data, and to provide a discussion of the effects of these modes and how they may be used both independently and in conjunction with one another in designing and implementing technology-based tasks.

Synchronicity in CMC

Synchronous CMC (SCMC) refers to situations where participants involved in the communication are online at the same time and communication takes place virtually in real-time, while asynchronous CMC (ACMC) refers to communication where participants do not need to be online at the same time, and can read and respond to messages in their own time. SCMC includes chat, MOOs, audio conferencing and videoconferencing, while ACMC includes email, bulletin board systems and blogs, and mailing lists.

Different modes of CMC place different time burdens on the participants. SCMC is generally considered to place a greater load on learners in that they have less time to react and respond to input. Time pressure thus gives learners less time to focus on form (see Peterson, this volume), and this often results in less complex and less accurate output (Skehan, 1998). ACMC allows a greater amount of time for learners to read and compose messages, and because there is no requirement to send an immediate response, learners are able to consult other resources such as grammar references or dic-tionaries during the reading and composing of their responses.

It should be noted, however, that the distinction between synchron-ous and asynchronous modes of communication is not necessarily as clear cut as it may at fi rst seem. Most textual forms of SCMC, for example, allow some degree of editing before messages are sent to the interlocutor. This type of SCMC has an extra buffer before sending the message when compared to video- or audio conferenc-ing, and thus has been referred to as ‘delayed synchronous’ (Hoven, 2004). Delayed SCMC obviously places a smaller time burden on the learners in responding than audio- and video-conferencing. Similarly, depending on the type of ACMC, expectations of response

Effects of Multimodality in CMC Tasks 85

speed may vary greatly. It may be quite normal to take as much as a few days to respond to messages on a bulletin board or even through desktop computer-based email, but this expectation may be much shorter in the case of mobile phone-based email or text-messaging, where a response may be expected in a few hours or even a few minutes.

Selection of the appropriate mode for language learning environ-ments will depend largely on the ability of the learners, and there is evidence to suggest that learners need to achieve a certain level of language profi ciency to deal with synchronous communication (Levy & Stockwell, 2006). Learners of a lower profi ciency may fi nd CMC modes that allow some time for processing such as delayed synchronous or asynchronous tools less daunting, particularly those with less experience in using CMC both for language learning and general uses.

Multimodality

As stated above, CMC in language-learning contexts most commonly occurs through a single mode of communication, such as through chat, email or audio-conferencing, and there are to date very few examples of research which seeks to explore the effects of using more than one CMC mode. There has been a recent interest in the concept of multimodality, where participants are able to interact using more than one form of communication (Hampel & Hauck, 2004; Kress, 2000; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). While this is still consid-ered relatively new in computer-mediated contexts, the concept of using multiple modes of communication is well established. Norris (2004), for example, argues that all face-to-face (FTF) interactions are multimodal, and that in addition to the words it is also possible to perceive meaning from posture, gesture and body movement, facial expression and so forth. In many cases we are not even aware of the different modes or how we interpret the variety of messages that we receive in order to construct the meaning of a communication act.

Multimodality remains, however, a rather underdeveloped theoret-ical area (Jewitt, 2009), but it is gaining momentum in technological contexts, with the term being used quite broadly within CALL research


(e.g. Collentine, 2009; Hampel & Hauck, 2004). This is not surprising given that the development of new technologies means that it is quite easy to have images, sound-effects, and text all together in a single space, such as a computer or other device like a mobile phone. It is important to note, however, as Kress (2003) argues, that communica-tion through technology brings with it a range of semiotic losses and gains, so it is natural that different modes will also have varying losses and gains. In computer-based language learning environments, the use of multiple modes has the potential to affect the ways in which learners engage in learning activities, and CALL practitioners have the responsibility of choosing whether to use text only, text and audio, audio and graphics, or any combination of what is available in order to achieve their pedagogical goals. The modes that are used may be completely synchronous, completely asynchronous, or of course, a combination of the two.

Multimodality can be incorporated in two different ways: at the task or curriculum level. At the task level, multiple modes may be adopted in order to accomplish a specifi c task. For example, if learn-ers are required to complete an information-gap task, they may be given the option to use two more modes of CMC in order to do this. They may be able to communicate with one another through audio-conferencing at the same time as accessing text chat, and this may allow learners to choose what is comfortable for them in order to exchange information.

At the curriculum level, however, learners may be assigned different tasks with each requiring a different mode of CMC. This might include, for example, an information-gap task such as the one men-tioned earlier, but in this case, the learners may be required to use only text-chat in order to accomplish this. Within the same curriculum, learners may be required to write an online newspaper article, about which they must communicate only through email. In this case, learn-ers no longer have the option of choosing a particular mode of CMC in order to complete the assigned tasks, but are required to use a specifi c mode in order to accomplish each task.

Each of these ways carries with it different pedagogical implications, and suffi cient consideration must be given to the range of factors involved. As Ligorio (2001) suggests, different learners prefer different


modes, thus having multiple modes within a single task allows learn-ers to choose according to their own specifi c needs and preferences. On the downside, however, is the potential to confuse learners when information is presented through different channels, especially as those learners who are less familiar with technology might fi nd this overwhelming. Coupled with this is the danger that learners may avoid linguistic communication in favour of non-linguistic means such as symbols, pictures or other non-verbal cues should other altern atives be available. Lee (2002, p. 285) cites examples where learners opted for the use of emoticons to express a meaning rather than text, such as the use of a happy face ‘ ’ to confi rm agreement and a sad face ‘ ’ to indicate incomprehensibility, confusion or dislike of an idea.

As the example above demonstrates, how multiple modes of CMC are used can have signifi cant pedagogical implications in terms of how communication takes place (or is avoided), and teachers will need to bear in mind exactly what is to be achieved in implementing a specifi c task, and how the use of different modes can have an effect on the way in which the task is approached and completed.

Multimodality and CMC-Based Learning Tasks

There has been a great deal of discussion over the last two decades in an attempt to defi ne tasks. As Bygate, Skehan and Swain (2001) argue, the defi nition has evolved quite dramatically over this time. They point out that many defi nitions, such as those by Crookes (1986), Prabhu (1987) and Carroll (1993), describe tasks as ‘pieces of work’, ‘activities’ or ‘exercises’, which are designed to guide learners towards specifi ed objectives within the larger goal of facilitating language learning. Other defi nitions, however, argue that the focus should be more on meaning than on form (Nunan, 1989) or that the target language should be used for a communicative purpose (Willis, 1996). Combining this range of perspectives, Bygate et al. (2001) provide a working defi nition of a task based on these multiple views, describing it as ‘an activity which requires learners to use language, with emphasis on meaning, to attain an objective’ (p. 11). Tasks can be open or


closed (see Ellis, 2003, pp. 89–91), where open tasks have no pre-determined outcome, such as in a debate or general discussion, and closed tasks require students to fi nd a solution from a fi nite number of choices.

While the aspects being investigated have varied greatly, tasks described in CMC research most commonly fi t into the category of open tasks, and often include discussions of prescribed topics with no fi xed outcome or responses. Examples include free chat sessions (i.e. no topics were decided in advance) of Australian students of Italian with Italian native speakers (Tudini, 2003), and email discussions with native speakers of English by EFL students in Hong Kong on topics decided by the students in class (Greenfi eld, 2003). CMC-based open tasks with more specifi c outcomes are far less common in the CMC literature, and one example is a study by Kitade (2006), who describes learners of Japanese in the United States who were required to make travel plans through discussions with other students using email. Closed tasks have received even less attention, with one of the few studies being conducted by Kiernan and Aizawa (2004), where Japanese learners of English were required to complete information-gap tasks using email either on mobile phones or desktop computers.

As described in the previous section, there have been suggestions that providing multiple modes of CMC may be benefi cial to learners (Hampel, 2003). In saying this, however, studies that investigate the use of more than one form of CMC have to date remained relatively limited. One exception is a study by Pérez (2003), who examined Spanish learners’ output in both synchronous interactions (text chat) and in asynchronous interactions (email assignments) to determine learner preferences between ACMC and SCMC, as well as which was more effective in facilitating usage of new vocabulary. She found that there were no signifi cant differences in either aspect, but that learn-ers produced slightly more language through the text chat compared to the email assignments. Another study by Abrams (2003) found that learners who were engaged in open communication tasks through synchronous text chat and asynchronous BBS (bulletin boards systems) were more likely to produce signifi cantly more language in the chat than the BBS postings. Thus, research has


suggested that there is a slight quantitative difference between SCMC and ACMC, in favour of SCMC.

Research on qualitative differences was undertaken by Sotillo (2000) in her study of English as a second language (ESL) learners using synchronous text chat and asynchronous BBS for discussions. She found that learners engaged in SCMC interactions produced language that was more meaning-focused but with lower accuracy, whereas learners involved in ACMC produced language with fewer malformed sentences or errors in spelling and punctuation (although these errors were still present in the ACMC interactions). Similar results were found by Hwang (2008) in her study of Korean English as a foreign language (EFL) learners engaged in synchronous text-chat and an asynchronous bulletin board. The cause of these dif-ferences may be found in part in the expected norms for SCMC interactions when compared with ACMC. While the language in SCMC has been shown to approach that of oral interaction (e.g. Condon & Cech, 1996), it also tends to be more fragmented and contains abbreviations and emoticons which are not generally pres-ent in other written forms of communication. In contrast, ACMC is generally considered as being more like other forms of written com-munication such as a personal letter, where the accepted practice is to write more formally, possibly resulting in output that is more syntactically well-formed. Another likely reason is the point raised above that greater time pressure gives less time to attend to the accur-acy and complexity of the language they produce, resulting in less accurate output.

These comparative studies suggest that SCMC is more likely to lead to a greater amount of output than ACMC, but that ACMC is gener-ally more syntactically accurate. The only studies that look specifi cally at learner output, however, are those by Sotillo (2000) and Hwang (2008), but both look at two different groups of learners where one uses SCMC and the other ACMC, making it diffi cult to identify if the differences were due to the mode of communication or simply the learners themselves. Thus, we still have little evidence of the qual-itative effect of the mode on the language produced by individual language learners engaged in communication tasks, which is what this study sought to identify.


Purpose of the Current Study

The current study provides an example of multimodal CMC where the language produced by learners during SCMC and ACMC com-munication tasks is examined in terms of lexical density, grammatical accuracy and complexity, and the discourse features used. Advanced learners of English participated in communication tasks in SCMC (in-class text chat discussions) and ACMC (BBS-type discussion forums) over the course of a semester. In the context of the current study, tasks were defi ned as activities requiring learners to achieve an objective (Bygate et al., 2001). Both the synchronous and asynchron-ous tasks required learners to actively use the target language in order to achieve specifi c objectives. The SCMC task required learn-ers to collaboratively write a short article about the topic assigned each week that was to be posted on the class website, while the ACMC task required students to work together to plan and prepare short pre sentations that were to be given periodically throughout the semester.

The following research questions were posed:

1. How do interactions in tasks carried out in SCMC and ACMC compare in terms of lexical density and spelling accuracy?

2. How do interactions in tasks carried out in SCMC and ACMC com-pare in terms of syntactic complexity and accuracy (c.f., Sotillo, 2000)?

3. What other features are there in the discourse when completing tasks through SCMC and ACMC?

Method

The participants were 24 advanced learners of English at a Japanese university, and the communication tasks used in the semester included SCMC (in-class chat discussions) and ACMC (BBS-type discussion forums). The subject was an elective course taken in the students’ second year, in which various social issues were taught in English. Topics taught in the semester included group pressure, balancing home and work, the infl uence of the media, controlling crime and


cultural change. As the number of students in each class was quite small, data were collected over a fi ve-year period, from 2005 through to 2009, as shown in Table 5.1.

Two classes were held per week and while both were based primar-ily around the textbook, one class per week included a chat session for around 20 minutes. In addition to this, learners were also required to write a forum posting at least once a week, and it was suggested to students that they spend no more than 20 minutes on each forum posting.

Both chat and forums occurred through Moodle. Chat sessions took place with all the students in a single group together with the teacher as facilitator of the discussion. In collaboration with group members the objective of the chat tasks was to write a short article of around 250–300 words about the weekly topic. Topics were posted on a class wiki and made available via Moodle pages at the conclusion of the discussion. For the forums, students posted messages to the Moodle site where online records were kept, while at the same time messages were sent out to each student’s email address. Students worked together to plan and prepare fi ve-minute presentations that were to be given four times during the semester, and the discussions mainly focused on exchanges of opinions of what should and should not be included in the presentation. Chats were not assessed inde-pendently from the normal class participation mark, and students were given a mark for the forums if they made a signifi cant contribu-tion to the discussion. Time was spent in class demonstrating and practicing both chat and forums at the beginning of the semester.

The content of the chat sessions varied depending on the content of discussion of the classes for that week, while the forums continued for three to four weeks on the theme that was selected for the pre-sentation during class. A typical chat topic was ‘How men and women are represented differently in the Japanese media’, while one of the presentation topics discussed in the forum was ‘Diffi culties faced by

Table 5.1 Students participating in the classes according to year

Year 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 TOTALStudents 3 3 7 4 7 24


boys and girls at school’. Even though the topics were not the same in the chat and the forums, because they were largely based on the materials covered in the textbook, there were times when there was some overlap between them. Only the chat sessions and forum post-ings from the second week through to the seventh week were included in the study as some students were absent for other classes.

The objective of the study was to investigate vocabulary, syntax and to identify any specifi c feature of the discourse. Vocabulary was exam-ined by looking at the range of vocabulary used (lexical density) in relation to type-token ratios (TTRs), and at spelling accuracy. Syntax was measured in terms of complexity and accuracy, utilizing the mean length of c-units and the percentage of error-free c-units. C-units were used as the unit of measurement of syntax rather than the more commonly used t-unit, given the fact that the c-unit also includes ‘non-clausal structures which have communicative value’ (Johnson & Johnson, 1999, p. 360), and hence may be a more accurate measure of the type of language used in chat. Note that while c-units have received some criticism regarding their sensitivity (see Collentine, this volume), it was felt that they were suffi cient for comparative pur-poses within the context of the study. On completion of the analysis, 10 per cent of the data were reanalysed by an experienced English native speaker, attaining a reliability of r = 0.91.

Discourse features were investigated holistically by examining each of the interactions to identify if there were any specifi c features that might distinguish each of the modes of CMC communication that occurred while undertaking the tasks. This was approached without any pre-conceived ideas as to what type of results would be achieved, and trends found while analysing the data were noted and later fol-lowed up with a more thorough examination.

Results

Before looking specifi cally at the features described in the research questions above, the results of an examination of the data in terms of the total amount of language produced by learners in the chat sessions and forum postings are presented. Table 5.2 shows that


the amount of language produced in each CMC mode varied slightly, with a marginally higher amount being produced in the chat-based tasks (128.9 words) when compared to the forum-based ones (121.9 words).

Investigation of the standard deviations did reveal, however, that there was a greater variety in the amount of language produced by each student in the chat sessions, and many students wrote very small amounts in the chat while others wrote substantially more. Moodle logs were consulted to determine how long students took to write the forum postings so that they could be compared against the chat data, but this did not prove useful as many learners indicated in an informal survey taken at the end of the semester that they drafted their mess-ages in Microsoft Word and cut and pasted these into Moodle.

Vocabulary

Learner output was examined specifi cally for lexical density in terms of TTRs and for spelling accuracy. The overall means for the TTR measures for the chat and forum sessions were the same at 0.64 (see Table 5.3), although an examination of each of the sessions and postings revealed that there was slightly more variation in the mean TTRs in the forums when compared with the chat.

Spelling was generally very accurate during both the chat and forum-based tasks, as can be seen in Table 5.4. In chat, the overall mean for spelling accuracy was 97.2 per cent for the chat sessions, while the forums were even more accurate at 99.1 per cent. The errors in the

Table 5.2 Mean number of words per chat session/forum post

Chat Forum

Week M SD M SD

Number 1 90.0 86.6 103.6 82.6Number 2 125.2 97.5 95.2 62.9Number 3 175.2 146.3 121.8 90.6Number 4 117.2 91.0 105.8 66.6Number 5 151.2 128.1 153.8 84.1Number 6 114.8 89.9 151.0 92.2

Overall 128.9 106.6 121.9 79.8


interactions mainly occurred in the content words, and there were very few errors in the function words (such as ‘when’, ‘because’, ‘however’ etc.) in both the chats and the forums.

Syntax

Although little difference was noted between the tasks in the two modes with regards to vocabulary, there were some differences that were evident in syntax. The mean length of c-unit shows that there were markedly longer utterances produced in the forums (12.44) than in the chats (9.67), as can be seen in Table 5.5. A similar standard deviation for both the chats and forums indicates that the variation between the learners was relatively consistent in both modes.

In contrast, the data revealed a higher accuracy rate in the chat sessions when compared to the forums in terms of the percentage

Table 5.3 Mean TTR for each chat session/forum post

Chat Forum

Week M SD M SD


Overall 0.64 0.12 0.64 0.09

Table 5.4 Percentage of correctly spelt words in each chat session/forum post

Chat Forum

Week M SD M SD


Overall 97.2 1.44 99.1 1.15


of error-free c-units. Accuracy was relatively low in both cases, and compared to the accuracy rate of 51.1 per cent in the chat sessions, the accuracy rate in the forums was only 40.9 per cent (see Table 5.6).

The mean accuracy rates varied substantially for both modes, ran-ging between 40.1 per cent and 57.7 per cent for the chats, and 32.1 per cent and 48.5 per cent for the forums, although there was a markedly bigger range in the standard deviations for the forum postings compared to the chat sessions.

Discourse features

There were a number of features that were evident in the synchron-ous and asynchronous modes. Some of these suggested there were

Table 5.5 Mean length of c-unit for each chat session/forum post

Chat Forum

Week M SD M SD


Overall 9.67 2.35 12.44 2.03

Table 5.6 Percentage of error-free c-units for each chat session/forum post

Chat Forum

Week M SD M SD


Overall 51.1 25.9 40.9 22.1


differences between the two modes, while others provided evidence of how discourse in each of the modes was carried out.

One of the most notable differences was that a number of learners chose to include Romanized Japanese words in chat, but these did not appear in the forums. The following example illustrates this. Note that the student names have been changed in all of the examples below.

Junko: well, some girls want to become a joshi ana beause [sic] they get to meet celebirities [sic].

Here Junko uses the words ‘joshi ana’ which is Japanese for a female newscaster. As the discussion is held in English, Junko chooses to try to make the Japanese word more like English by putting it into Romanized script rather than trying to use English, or to paraphrase it using English words that she knew if she was unsure of how to say it in English. It is interesting to note that there were no examples of this type of Romanization in the forums.

Another feature that was specifi c to the chat sessions was the use of abbreviations and non-capitalized forms of words. There were several instances of both of these, such as ‘wanna’, ‘do u think’, ‘i agree’ and so forth. These were used by only a small number of the learners in the chat, however, and did not occur at all in the forum postings. This would suggest that some of the learners may have had experience in chat previously, perhaps with native speakers, and had come across this type of language use beforehand.

There were also cases where learners directly copied spelling errors in the chat sessions, as can be seen in the following discussion between Tarou and Junko when talking about the paparazzi:

Tarou: It’s hard to choose limit, but I think we can decide some rule, like don’t sneeking [sic] into homes.

Junko: well, sneeking [sic] into homes is already against the law isn’t it?

Tarou misspells the word ‘sneaking’, and this is immediately followed up in the next interaction from Junko. It was very interesting to note


that Junko produced the correct form ‘sneaking’ in a later forum posting. There were no examples of copying of misspelling by learners in the forum data in the current study.

Regarding how the discourse was carried out, there was evidence in the forums that learners made reference to earlier postings by other learners as they performed the task, as can be seen by the following post:

Yumiko: I agree with Yuusuke and Keiko. The basic principals [sic] of development and attitudes are probably nature, from your parents. However, as Keiko mentioned, not all children grow up to have similar personalities as their parents. Also, refering [sic] to what Yuusuke said, peer groups have an enormous infl uence over us.

Yumiko makes it clear here that she has read and understood the messages posted by two of the other learners, by not only showing her agreement to both Yuusuke and Keiko, but by going beyond this and responding to specifi c points in the postings by these learners. In chat, there is a greater sense of the existence of other participants, so it is relatively easy to respond quickly to what others write, but asynchronous communication has a tendency to become a string of monologues where learners are largely concerned with what they want to write and pay little attention to the postings or messages from others. The above example indicates that focused communication where learners are conscious of the content of postings from others is also possible through ACMC modes such as forums, and it is not limited to SCMC.

Discussion

Lexical density and spelling

With regard to lexical density, the results suggested that there was very little difference between the ACMC and SCMC-based interactions, reaching the same mean TTR score (0.64) for both the chat and the forums. Language produced by the learners yielded a marginally


higher percentage of correctly spelt words in the asynchronous inter-actions when compared to the synchronous, but in each case the accuracy rate was very high, at 97.2 per cent for the chat compared to 99.1 per cent for the forums. Spelling accuracy is not a point that has received much attention in earlier studies of CMC, so comparisons are relatively diffi cult. Examination of the output which is published in articles on text chat reveals almost no spelling errors, but it is not possible to determine whether this is because there were no errors in the original, or alternatively because the errors were removed for readability of the article.

In the current study, errors in spelling generally appeared in two forms in the data collected. The fi rst of these was misspellings that appeared to have occurred as a result of mistyping. One learner, for example, during one of the chat sessions wrote ‘intersting’ instead of ‘interesting’, which, based on the way in which the word was misspelled, was likely a typing mistake rather than not knowing how the word should be spelt. Another type of error appeared to be caused by lack of knowledge of how the word was spelt, as can be seen by the typing of the word ‘viecles’ instead of ‘vehicles’, again during the chat sessions.

There were examples of where these words were spelt incorrectly in the chat but correctly in the forums (see the example of ‘sneaking’ in the results above). In many cases, it was diffi cult to tell with cer-tainty whether misspelling was caused by a typing mistake or lack of knowledge of spelling of the word, but generally errors appeared to be more of a typing error nature in the forums (but there were also examples like ‘pranning’ instead of ‘planning’), and a combination of lack of knowledge of the word and typing error in the chats. As many of the learners indicated that they fi rst drafted their messages on a word processor before cutting and pasting them into the forums, it is likely that they employed the spell checker to remove most errors before posting them.

Observing learners participating in the chat in class revealed that most referred to electronic dictionaries, and as a result were likely to have been able to quickly check the spelling of any unknown words before typing them. This was an obvious advantage of the delayed synchronous nature of the text chat, meaning that despite the


conversations occurring in real-time, learners still found that they had suffi cient time to access other resources. This is obviously much more diffi cult to achieve in completely synchronous modes such as audio-conferencing. It was also evident that the learners were quite willing to wait for a while for responses to come from other learners in regard to something that they wrote in the chats, but it may have been due to the fact that the discussions were held entirely between non-native speakers and as such there was a common understanding that writing messages may take some time.

Syntactic complexity and accuracy

The results regarding syntactic complexity and accuracy revealed slightly different results from those presented in earlier studies. In the current study, the language produced by the learners was gener-ally more complex in ACMC, which agrees with the results from both Sotillo (2000) and Hwang (2008). The language produced by the learners was, however, more accurate in SCMC, which contrasts with the results cited by both Sotillo and Hwang.

There are a number of possible explanations for this. First, while one might expect that planning for writing in ACMC would contrib-ute to greater accuracy, there is still the assumption that learners have achieved a certain level of profi ciency in order to look critically at their own writing and determine the accuracy of what they have writ-ten. In many cases, learners may review their work before posting it to the forums, but lacked the skills to determine the accuracy with any degree of reliability. Secondly, the shorter time-frame of the SCMC could result in keeping learners within their grammatical comfort zone. That is to say, rather than attempting to create the more complex structures that were seen in the forums, learners chose to use grammatical forms that they felt confi dent with, and avoided those that they were less certain of. A third but related explanation may have been the presence of the teacher in the chats. In this context, the presence of the teacher was very real, and this may have led learners to avoid taking risks in writing messages, opting instead to take care in writing to avoid embarrassment in front of the teacher. Regardless of the causes, however, the higher accuracy in SCMC is


not that surprising when considering that learners used less complex grammar when compared to ACMC.

It was interesting to note that the syntactical accuracy ratings were rather low for both the chat and the forums. This may have been to a certain degree a limitation of the measurement tool, the c-unit. While thought to be slightly more fl exible than the t-unit, there is still the problem that the degree of error is not taken into consideration. Regardless of whether there is a single error within a clause or if the clause is virtually incomprehensible due to errors, the clause is still marked as being grammatically inaccurate. It would be useful, then, to adopt a tool that allows measurement of the degree of inaccuracy of clauses rather than simply rating them as accurate or inaccurate in black and white terms.

Implications of CMC modes for TBLT

The use of multiple modes of CMC with language-learning tasks has the potential to train learners to develop different aspects of their second language (L2). Through the use of synchronous modes, for example, and because of the time pressures placed on them, learners can be forced to work with the vocabulary and syntax which they feel confi dent with. Learners of a higher profi ciency may be capable of using purely synchronous modes such as audio- or video-conferencing, whereas learners of a slightly lower level may fi nd the added buffer that the delayed synchronous text-chat provides them with suffi cient time to consult some resources, at least as far as checking unknown words are concerned. This is not to say that all learners will do this, however, as was seen in the examples shown above where some learn-ers chose to use Romanized versions of their mother tongue or fi rst language (L1) during the chat. Examples of using the L1 have been seen in other studies on chat, such as Hwang (2008) where learners occasionally used Korean (written in Korean script) for unknown words. Although some may see it as detrimental if learners opt touse their L1 rather than attempting to identify the appropriate word in the target language, there may be greater pedagogical value in allowing learners to express their ideas to enable a task to be com-pleted rather than in forcing them to break the fl ow of conversation


to locate a single word. Obviously, arguments between language teachers would be divided on this point, but suffi ce to say that even in synchronous modes, having a delay can give learners the option to use resources that can assist them in writing their messages.

In contrast, ACMC has the potential to push learners outside of their safety zone to use more complex grammar in their output. Because learners are more likely to string together a series of sen-tences in a single message in ACMC rather than the typically shorter messages of SCMC, learners tend to write with more structure and cohesion and thus along the lines of language that is associated with written communication such as essays. Given this different expecta-tion, learners will often aim to construct longer sentences which they may feel less confi dent in attempting in SCMC. Another advantage of ACMC is that it may be easier to require learners to post or send mess ages when they feel that they have the time to plan and draft their messages in advance. One notable point in many of the chat sessions in the current study was that there were learners who did not contribute greatly to the chat sessions, and spent most of the time simply reading the messages of the other learners. These same learn-ers often wrote quite substantial messages in the forums, which would indicate that they likely felt more comfortable with the asynchronous mode than the synchronous one.

We can say, then, that plurality provides learners with opportun-ities to develop different areas of their L2. SCMC puts pressure on learners to produce language quickly whereas ACMC may promote output that is more syntactically complex. This has obvious implica-tions with regard to the selection and design of tasks that occur through CMC. As Sotillo (2000) argues, different CMC modes have different pedagogical applications, and being aware of these applications can help teachers to make better decisions about what mode of CMC is appropriate in accomplishing tasks given the profi ciency levels of the learners and the specifi c learning environ-ment. Teachers can also make informed decisions about whether to provide multiple modes of CMC for a single task to allow forindividual learner preferences, or rather, to require all learners to use specifi ed modes of CMC to accomplish different tasks through-out a given course.


Conclusion

TBLT is an emerging but rapidly expanding area, and developments in technology have naturally seen this teaching approach being adopted in computer-based environments as well. There is a need, then, to investigate how task-based learning (TBL) may be conducted in such environments, and how the medium has the potential to affect the way in which learners interact, the language they produce and the strategies they use.

Interactions in synchronous and ACMC were examined both quantitatively and qualitatively, and revealed that while there was no signifi cant difference in vocabulary in terms of lexical density or spelling accuracy, the language used was generally syntactically more complex in the forums but markedly more accurate in syn-chronous text-chat. In addition, there were other features that also distinguished the two modes, in that learners were more likely to use abbreviations, non-capitalization and Romanized versions of Japanese words rather than the appropriate English words in the chat. Learn-ers were also more likely to copy spelling errors in the chat compared with the forums. It is clear from the study that the different modes of CMC had a direct infl uence on how the learners expressed their ideas and the processes behind communicating these ideas to others. With the shorter periods of time available to them in SCMC, learners chose to produce shorter messages, but maintained a higher level of accuracy. When given the time to draft messages as was seen in ACMC, learners attempted to use more complex structures, but at times this was done at the expense of accuracy.

We can conclude, then, that the use of multiple modes of CMC has the potential to provide learners with ways to develop different aspects of their L2, and that the choice of CMC is likely to have a direct impact on what tasks are more appropriate. Teachers need to be aware of how the mode of CMC can affect the message when learners undertake tasks through CMC, and to considerthe best way to capitalize on the individual features of the mode for successful implementation of task-based language learning and teaching.


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Hoven, D. (2004). Methods in our madness? Re-examining the methodological frameworks of our fi eld. Paper presented at the Eleventh International CALL Conference, University of Antwerp, Belgium, 5–9 September.

Hwang, P.-A. (2008). Linguistic characteristics in synchronous and asynchronous CMC. English Language & Literature Teaching, 14(2), 47–66.

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Kiernan, P., & Aizawa, K. (2004). Cell phones in task based learning: Are cell phones useful language learning tools? ReCALL, 16(1), 71–84.

Kim, Y. (2009). The effects of task complexity on learner-learner interaction. System, 37(2), 254–268.

Kitade, K. (2006). The negotiation model in asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC): Negotiation in task-based email exchanges. CALICO Journal, 23(2), 319–348.

Kress, G. (2000). Multimodality. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds), Multiliteracies: literacy learning and the design of social futures (pp. 182–202). London: Routledge.


—(2003). Literacy in the new media age. London: Routledge.Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of

contemporary communication. London: Arnold.Lamy, M-N., & Hampel, R. (2007). Online communication in language learning and

teaching. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.Lee, L. (2002). Synchronous online exchanges: A study of modification devices

on non-native discourse. System, 30, 275–288.Levy, M. (1997). Computer assisted language learning: Context and conceptualization.

Oxford: Pergamon Press.Levy, M., & Stockwell, G. (2006). CALL dimensions: Options and issues in computer

assisted language learning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Ligorio, M. B. (2001). Integrating communication formats: Synchronous versus

asynchronous and text based versus visual. Computers and Education, 37(2), 103–125.

Norris, S. (2004). Analyzing multimodal interaction: A methodological framework. London & New York: Routledge.


Pérez, L. (2003). Foreign language productivity in synchronous versus asynchron ous computer-mediated communication. CALICO Journal, 21(1), 89–104.

Prabhu, N. S. (1987). Second language pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Samuda, V., & Bygate, M. (2008). Tasks in second language learning. London:

Palgrave Macmillan.Skehan, P. (1998). A cognitive approach to language learning. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.Song, M.-J., & Suh, B.-R. (2008). The effects of output task types on noticing and

learning of the English past counterfactual conditional. System, 36(2), 295–312.

Sotillo, S. (2000). Discourse functions and syntactic complexity in synchronous and asynchronous communication. Language Learning & Technology, 4(1), 82–119.

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Willis, J. (1996). A framework for task-based learning. London: Longman.

Chapter 6

Measuring Complexity in Task-Based Synchronous Computer-Mediated

Communication

Karina Collentine

Introduction

Second-language acquisition (SLA) research attempts to describe the types of tasks that affect language learning:

The impact of task type on task performance is a topic of consider-able interest to second language task researchers. This should not be surprising: if tasks are a pedagogical tool for generating language work, then the kind of language that arises as a result of their use is bound to be of central interest to teachers, learners, designers, and others who consider their use to promote language development. (Samuda & Bygate, 2008, p. 47)

Tasks involve holistic language use, have a meaningful, non-linguistic outcome (e.g. fi nd the lost keys), are based on input, can be used at different stages of learning, and involve various phases (Samuda & Bygate, 2008). Tasks can be the core of a curriculum as in task-based language teaching (TBLT) or they can be integrated as in task-supported learning and teaching (TSLT) (Van den Branden, Bygate & Norris, 2009). Robinson (2001) and Yuan and Ellis (2003) argue that tasks provide design principles encouraging learners to produce discourse with lexico-grammatical complexity. Such tasks can push output, moving learners from pragmatic processing, which is char-acterized by single-clause sentences and simple word formation, to


syntactic processing, such as complex sentences and complex word formations (Foster & Skehan, 1996). Language learners need the linguistic complexity resulting from syntactic processing if they are to operate in an academic or professional setting in the second language (L2) culture.

Task-based researchers are developing design principles to increase the meaningfulness of language use and the amount of communicative interaction learners experience. For example, Samuda and Bygate (2008) challenge researchers to investigate the relationship between task design and how learners interact linguistically towards a shared goal because little is understood about the discourse learners create under various task conditions. This chapter explores these issues by focusing on the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC), with one important goal being the attempt to provide materials designers with insights into the task conditions that foster linguistic complexity.

Tasks and Linguistic Complexity

Several researchers have studied task-based research relating to linguistic complexity. Yuan and Ellis (2003) examine the effects of planning time in a study designed to identify the task conditions that promote accuracy, fl uency and complexity (i.e. ratio of clauses to T-units, number of different verb forms, type-token ratio [TTR]). Three groups of learners, differing in terms of planning time, retold a story. One group enjoyed no planning time and a time limit to complete the task; another enjoyed pre-task planning time and a time limit. A third group had no planning time, but unlimited task-completion time, and was expected to plan during the task. The third group produced the most complexity, suggesting that not all planning facilitates the production of complexity. However, another plausible conclusion is that when learners are not pressured with a limited time frame, they are more likely to produce complexity. Foster and Skehan (1999) investigate the effects of planning time on fl uency, accuracy and complexity (i.e. number of C-units) by four groups of intermediate-level English as a foreign language (EFL) learners, each

Measuring Complexity in TB-SCMC 107

varying in terms of the degree of planning. The task involved watch-ing and orally retelling two silent videos. The learners with the most time to plan produced signifi cantly more complexity. Foster and Skehan (1999) suggested that, because the other conditions required learners to watch and talk, they were forced to sacrifi ce complexity for communication. Thus, it seems that when learners are not pres-sured for time to produce (whether they enjoy pre-task planning or not), they are more likely to produce complexity.

These studies examined the effects of planning for learners at just one level of instruction. Samuda and Bygate (2008) wonder about the relationship between the role of planning and levels of profi -ciency on language use. One study that addresses this gap is Ortega’s (2005) examination of the gains of intermediate-low and advanced-level learners’ pre-task planning on their fl uency, accuracy, lexical complexity and syntactic complexity (i.e. number of words and propositions per utterance, mean-length of utterance, use of articles) in a narrative-based retelling task. Advanced-level learners showed greater complexity, fl uency and accuracy, while the intermediate-low group only showed greater complexity and fl uency but not greater accuracy. Ortega (2005) concludes that the advanced-level learners optimized planning time, producing discourse that was more fl uent and accurate, as well as lexically and syntactically complex. Thus, in addition to how much time learners have to produce, it also seems that learners need to be at a certain developmental level to generate complexity in tasks.

In their Limited Attentional Capacity model, Foster and Skehan (1999) predict that the generation of morphosyntactic complexity is compromised when attentional resources are devoted to a proposi-tion’s meaning. In a competing model, Robinson (2005) presents his Cognition Hypothesis (CH), based on Givón’s (1985) work on dia-chrony and on Perdue’s (1993) untutored SLA research. He proposes that learners generate linguistic complexity when communication is ‘resource directing’ (i.e. when communication requires reasoning) rather than ‘resource depleting’ (i.e. when the communication task overtaxes short-term memory) because attention is focused on form. These models appear to be contradictory (cf. Ellis 2005). Foster and Skehan (1999) suggest that, when processing resources are limited,


linguistic complexity will occur if processing meaning is not taxing. Yet, Robinson’s (2005) model predicts that learners will generate complexity when processing requires a certain degree of reasoning such as when it taxes working memory. Yet, these predictions are compatible if the assumption is that complexity increases when processing form is either possible or necessary for effective commun-ication. All told, when learners have generous amounts of time to produce utterances, they may be able to focus on the more formal properties of their messages and thus produce more complexity.

Kuiken and Vedder (2006) compared Foster and Skehan’s (1999) Limited Capacity Model and Robinson’s (2005) CH, concluding that tasks that place more demands on the discursive coherence that learners must produce tend to lead to greater complexity. Under what conditions might learners generate such discourse? Givón (1985) argues that situationally bound discourse is typically spon-taneous because referents reside in the immediate surroundings, reducing the need to cohere. However, when one cannot depend on the situation for meaning, coherence is necessary, which occurs when one reports on events after the fact and away from the context. This displaced discourse is generally produced when learners have signifi cantly reduced time pressure.

One way to create the task conditions which allow learners a generous amount of time to produce individual utterances and which may also promote complexity is a condition that entails displaced discourse, such as writing a report of some event(s). It nevertheless needs to be kept in mind that a learner’s developmental level may be an important mitigating factor.

SCMC and Tasks

Much SLA research seeks to understand whether and how students learn in computer-mediated interactions, which can occur in real-time, over computer networks or with instant messaging tools such as iChat (Chapelle, 1998; Collentine, 2009; Payne & Whitney, 2002; Smith, 2003; Thorne, 2008). SLA researchers are attempting to learn whether the types of interactions and opportunities for acquisition in


this synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) are parallel or are different in important ways from face-to-face (FTF) learner interactions (Chapelle, 1998; Smith, 2005). There is some evidence that learners’ production may contain more complex language in SCMC than in oral, FTF tasks (Blake, 2000; Kern, 1995; Salaberry, 2000; Warschauer, 1996). SCMC is similar to the spontaneity of FTF interactions, where complexity is generally lacking. Yet, SCMC does not normally pressure participants to fi ll pauses like FTF interactions do, thus providing opportunities to generate lexico-grammatical com-plexity (Keller-Lally, 2006; Sotillo, 2000). Because it seems to lessen the impact of short-term memory on learner production, SCMC is an ideal venue in which to examine how task conditions promote the generation of complexity.

Nevertheless, not all SCMC leads to linguistic complexity. Students may consider SCMC an informal mode of communication where fl uency is a priority (Lee, 2002; Sotillo, 2000). Furthermore, complex structures may not always be the focus of negotiated interactions in TB-SCMC. In a study using jigsaw and information gap tasks, Blake (2000) reports that the amount of ‘syntactic negotiations’ was few compared to those involving individual words. Smith (2005) conjec-tures that, because the chat log is available at any time, TB-SCMC may not lead to morphosyntactically sophisticated negotiations. With the log available, coherence and thus complexity may not be imper-ative to communicate.

Yet, little research on TB-SCMC attempts to identify the design features that promote linguistic complexity (Collentine, 2009; Salaberry, 2000; Smith, 2005). While general TBLT research exam-ines the effects of task planning on complexity to identify the sort of tasks that lead learners to generate complexity (Foster & Skehan, 1999; Ortega, 2005; Yuan & Ellis, 2003), this sort of research has not, to my knowledge, been undertaken in TB-SCMC. Nor has TB-SCMC considered the interaction of task conditions like planning and level of development on complexity (cf. Samuda & Bygate, 2008).

The limited TB-SCMC research on learners’ use of complexity employs metrics that have a longstanding tradition in studies of L2 complexity, such as the amount of subordination (e.g. T-units) that occurs in these tasks. Robinson (2001) wonders whether interlanguage


(IL) appropriate measurements of complexity might better show whether linguistic complexity occurs in tasks because studies in which a task’s complexity is elevated have not had their intended effect (Robinson, 2005). The most commonly used metrics in TBLT or TB-SCMC research may not be sensitive to when learners – especially those at less advanced levels of instruction – push their syntactic and morphological abilities beyond what they have mastered. The follow-ing sections address this notion in detail.

Operationalizing Complexity

Recent research suggests that complexity might more precisely be operationalized with lexical and morphological features and not just syntactic ones, especially in highly infl ected languages such as Spanish. For the most part, structural complexity in task-based activ-ities has been operationalized on rather narrow grounds, normally in a measure that tabulates propositional nodes (e.g. S-nodes per T-Unit, clauses per T-Unit/C-Unit; cf. Kuiken & Vedder, 2006; Ishikawa, 2006). Yet, when we study acquisition in the context of highly infl ec-tional languages like Spanish, we fi nd reason to suspect that learners focused on the production of meaning might have no option but to process lexical, morphological and syntactic properties in a continu-ous, recursive loop (DeKeyser, Salaberry, Robinson & Harrington, 2002; Ortega, 1995, 2005). Ortega (2005) and DeKeyser et al. (2002) theorize that L2 learners of Spanish often process in a middle ground, focusing on both form and meaning because, in so doing, they can better communicate their messages. Their work suggests that learn-ers of Spanish understand the importance of processing both lexical and morphosyntactic information. Thus, methodologies that only use T-Units or C-Units may not be sensitive enough to when learners are engaging in the production of greater than normal linguistic complexity. Expecting relatively high levels of T-Units or C-Units may be unreasonable. Also, examining so-called lexical complexity (e.g. the number of long-words, TTRs, the number of derivationally rich nouns; cf. Biber, Davies, Jones & Tracy-Ventura, 2006) may also be necessary to understand when learners are employing linguistic complexity.


Is lexical and morphosyntactic production associated with com-plexity within native speaker speech? Corpus linguistics research has demonstrated that native speakers use both the lexicon and grammar to generate complex discourse. Biber and Conrad (2001) show that grammatical and lexical properties reliably co-occur, forming clusters of linguistic features thought to work in tandem to affect different types of discourse or levels of formality. Biber (1988) as well as Biber and Conrad’s (2001) multidimensional studies of English show that past-tense verbs, third-person pronouns, perfect tenses, present participle clauses and synthetic negation as well as lexical phenomena such as verbs of communication (e.g. to say, to tell, to shout) reliably co-occur in English narratives, a type of relatively complex discourse.

In response to Robinson’s (2001) call for level-appropriate measures of complexity, Asención-Delaney and Collentine (2009) present a multidimensional, principal-factor analysis of a 200,000-word corpus from samples of intermediate (second year, university level) and advanced (third year, university level) foreign-language learners of Spanish. They show how learner clusters of complex lexical and grammatical features differ from native-speaker clusters. Their data reveal that, like native speakers, learners use clusters of lexical and grammatical features to generate relatively sophisticated and com-plex discourse. Yet, learners’ clusters are fewer in number and consist of fewer features. The nominal cluster entails six lexical and gramma-ical features: descriptive, preposed and post-posed adjectives, nouns (general), derived nouns or cognates and article + noun segments. The narrative cluster is characterized by eight features: verbs in the preterit, imperfect, subjunctive, conditional, or progressive; third-person pronouns, clitics, and the verbs ‘saber’ and ‘conocer’. Finally, Asención-Delaney and Collentine (2009) identifi ed a complexity cluster that was fi ltered for only those features classically used to defi ne complexity, such as subordinate clauses and passives. In other words, while the nominal and narrative clusters were identifi ed with relatively no prior bias as to what features would constitute complex-ity, this third analysis only considered features traditionally associated with complexity. This cluster does not so much describe the core characteristics of particular discursive types like the nominal and


narrative modes do. Instead, it represents the structural features used to interconnect propositions. This propositional complexity cluster is characterized by seven features: high TTR, por passives, noun clauses following verb, noun clauses following adjective, prepositions, nouns and non-restrictive clauses.

The Study

The extent to which the discourse learners produce in TB-SCMC is displaced in nature was varied to understand the amount of lexico-grammatical complexity learners produce in both unplanned and planned communication. Intermediate and advanced level learners of Spanish participated in two TB-SCMC conditions that required within-task planning and which differed in terms of whether produc-tion occurred at intervals during the task – called the Interrupted task chatting activity (ITCA) – or as the fi nal step of the task – called the post-task chatting activity (PTCA). To accomplish this goal, the present study asks:

1. Do learners produce more displaced discourse and lexico-grammatical complexity in the ITCA or in the PTCA?

2. Is there a stronger effect for intermediate or advanced level learners?

Method

Participants

Eighteen advanced (third-year) university-level learners and twelve intermediate-level (second-year), university-level learners from intact classes participated in the study (N = 30). The advanced learners were enrolled in a composition course at a medium-sized university in the United States, a course in which they wrote narratives, descrip-tions, and expositions. The intermediate learners were students in fourth-semester Spanish classes at the university and at a community college whose courses are articulated with those of the university. The classes were traditional, FTF, TSLT classes that employed a variety of


multimedia activities (e.g. watching videos, internet exploration/research) and writing activities. Nevertheless, no activities involved instant messaging or chatting. The tasks, which conform to Samuda and Bygate’s (2008) criteria for tasks, were completed on a single day and lasted an entire class period.

Tasks

Two Adobe Flash-based opinion-exchange tasks (http://london-underground.modlang.nau.edu/collenti/juegos2/) were created for the experiment. Learners viewed a short, Flash-based introduction describing the tasks and the accompanying technologies after being randomly assigned a partner. Learners discussed what they had discovered in a local area network via a synchronous confer-ence application (iChat).

Interrupted-task chatting activity (ITCA)

In the fi rst task, dyads engaged in a convergent task, imagining that they were detectives hired to solve a murder, where the information and numerous details were not pre-arranged (Foster & Skehan, 1999; Robinson, 2001). The interactive Flash piece presented them with residents of an apartment building where a murder had occurred and allowed them to navigate through scenes to interview the resid-ents. To ask residents questions (e.g. about alibis, the time of events), learners clicked any of fi ve questions – written in Spanish – in a text-box, after which they received a text-based answer.

Pieces of information were phrased in different ways to ensure that the learners explored each resident’s information carefully. For example (see Figure 6.1), to ask about a character’s alibi, the follow-ing questions were randomized throughout the two tasks:

(1) ¿Alguien lo/la vio? Did someone see you?¿Quién estuvo con usted? Who was with you?¿Estuvo sólo/sóla? Were you alone?

http://londonunderground.modlang.nau.edu/collenti/juegos2/

http://londonunderground.modlang.nau.edu/collenti/juegos2/


To encourage discovery learning, participants could ask each charac-ter three questions before the fi ve visible questions and the character disappeared; at this point, students would exit the room to interview a different character; they could later return to a room to pose any unanswered questions or even reread answers. At three intervals, the Flash programme directed the learners to pause their interviewing and move to iChat where the pre-assigned dyads chatted about the information they had gathered and hypothesized about the murderer. Each of the three exploratory intervals lasted seven minutes, for a total of 21 minutes. The three chatting phases lasted fi ve minutes, for a total of 15 minutes.

Post-task chatting activity (PTCA)

In the second task, dyads pretended to be upscale apartment tenants attempting to locate their lost safety deposit box keys by interviewing various personnel (e.g. a repairperson, a dog groomer) who had

Figure 6.1 Sample treatment screen

Haga clickpara ver unarespuesta

Click hereto see ananswer

¿Cómo pasó usted la noche?

How did you spend the evening?

Osvaldo

What time was it?Who was there with you?Did someone see you?Is there anything else?

¿Qué hora era?

¿Quién estuvo alli con usted?

¿Alguien lo vio a usted?

¿Hay algo más?


been to the apartment during the day. Again, to encourage explora-tion, the learners were limited to asking personnel only three of the fi ve questions during any single visit to a room. The students interviewed the personnel for 21 minutes and then moved to iChat to discuss their hypotheses for 15 minutes. For technical reasons, one of the six intermediate-level dyads did not complete this task, which is refl ected in the numerical analysis.

Although both tasks allowed learners the same amount of time to interview characters and chat about their hypotheses, the fi rst task effectively forced learners to chat in 3 fi ve-minute long intervals, and the second effectively eased that pressure by giving participants 1 fi fteen-minute chat interval. The fi rst task required learners to chat at predetermined intervals; the second had learners fi rst gather all relevant information then chat.

Analysis

The analysis involves a three-step corpus-based process, where every participant’s word in the iChat transcript in each task was tagged for lexical and part-of-speech information. The tagger employed a training set from the Corpus del español (Biber et al., 2006) and a part-of-speech dictionary with words tagged for various lexical and infl ectional properties. The tagger also used probabilistic routines from the tagging routines of the python-based Natural Language Toolkit (http://nltk.sourceforge.net/index.php/Main_Page), as well as routines specifi cally designed for tagging L2 corpora. Once tagged, the chat corpus was queried with concordance software for every instance of the targeted features identifi ed by Asención-Delaney and Collentine (2009) as characteristic of one of three feature sets of learner models of Spanish complexity: the nominal cluster, the narrative cluster and the propositional complexity cluster.

Once the counts of each feature per individual transcript had been tabulated, two transformations were made on the data set that are standard practice in corpus-based research. First, an assessment of whether learner language is complex along the lines of a learner model does not simply entail counting tokens of the elements of any

http://nltk.sourceforge.net/index.php/Main_Page


given set of features and summing their frequencies. Such a methodo-logy would introduce two biases: the text-length bias is that longer texts (e.g. learners that produce more during a task) would contribute more to the counts; the feature-concentration bias is that features which are naturally more common would (also) have an undue infl uence on the counts. To account for the text-length bias, the counts of all frequencies tabulated per chat were normed to tokens per 1000 words. Understanding and taking into account the feature-concentration bias requires an understanding of the power of z-score normalizing (or standardizing) frequency counts. Taking the narrative cluster as an example, verbs in the preterit and the imperfect are likely to be much more frequent than clitics or instances of saber/conocer. Any chat can have a greater or lesser concentration of any one of these features. If, for instance, the PTCA had more ‘relative’ tokens of the verbal features than the ITCA condition, then the former task was mathematically more narrative-like. By summing the z-scores for a particular learner in a particular condition on, for example, the set of narrative features, we can determine the extent to which the learner used narrative-like features. Thus, for each of the three clusters, the z-scores from each cluster’s features were summed for each participant in each condi-tion. Once calculated, standard analyses on measurements of (z-score) central tendencies tested the effects of the two conditions between the two levels of learners. Still, since the z-scores do not provide a sense of scale (e.g. they give no indication of the average number of infi ni-tives not preceded by a verb or article in some condition), an additional perspective is provided by including descriptive statistics of the scaled occurrences of the features studied here. In addition, a measurement of whether the average number of tokens of each feature within a given condition or learner level occurred at a rate greater than chance is provided. Technically speaking, it is reported whether an average’s 95 per cent and 99 per cent confi dence intervals excluded 0.0, essen-tially meaning that there was a greater than chance probability that there were a ‘signifi cant’ number of tokens of that feature.1

Results

Before proceeding to the complexity analysis, although all analyses presented below are derived from scaled counts, it is apposite to


provide some sense of perspective on how much each level of learn-ers produced in the tasks. This analysis showed an effect for task and for learner level, but no interaction. The ITCA led to a greater num-ber of turns, producing 17.3 (sd = 7.8) turns per learner while the PTCA led to 12.2 (sd = 9.4) turns per learner (F = 6.58 [1,62]; p = 0.01). The advanced-level learners produced signifi cantly more turns per learner, at an average of 18.1 (sd = 9.2) while the intermediate learners averaged 10.3 (sd = 6.4) (F = 14.68 [1,62]; p < 0.000). Regard-ing the experimental condition, the results show that more overall complexity was produced by advanced-level learners and that there was a trend towards the production of more complexity in the ITCA.

Regarding the nominal cluster measurement (see Table 6.1 and Figure 6.2), the results indicated a main effect for level, where the intermediate-level learners produced higher concentrations of

Table 6.1 Nominal cluster: descriptive statistics of summed z-scores by task and learner level

Intermediate Advanced Task

ITCA −0.84 (sd = 3.75; n = 14) −0.41 (sd = 3.7; n = 18) −0.60 (sd = 3.67; n = 32)PTCA 3.1 (sd = 4.83; n = 14) −1.22 (sd = 3.65; n = 20) 0.56 (sd = 4.64; n = 34)Level 1.13 (sd = 4.69; n = 28) −0.83 (sd = 3.65; n = 38)

3.53.1

3

2.5

1.5

0.5

–0.5

–0.84

–0.41

–1.22

Intermediate Advanced

ITCA

PTCA

–1

–1.5

0

1

2

Figure 6.2 Nominal cluster: Descriptive statistics of summed z-scores by task and learner level


nominal features than the advanced-level learners. In addition, the results showed that there was a signifi cant interaction between level and task, due to the intermediate-level learners’ production of higher concentrations of nominal features in the PTCA (see Table 6.2).

In the PTCA, the learners produced arguably long sentences, sen-tences with numerous nouns and article + noun segments to complete the task, for example, the use of cognates (e.g. reparador ‘repairman’, minuto ‘minute’, referencia ‘reference’), nouns with two or more morphemes (e.g. refrigeradores ‘refrigerators’, señorita ‘young woman’, cocinero ‘cook’), and article + noun segments (e.g. el muchacho ‘the guy’, las llaves ‘they keys’, la cocinero ‘the cook’). The complexity comes in the chaining together of nouns, for example, pedro a las 9 dio las llaves a la senora (las ventanas) ‘pedro at nine gave the keys to the woman (the windows)’. Indeed, of the features clustered in the nominal discourse, the intermediate learners seldom used adjectives, employing instead nouns and article + noun segments. Only the advanced-level learners employed a signifi cant amount of adjectives, mostly to evaluate characters and their motives (e.g. es sospechoso ‘he is suspicious’).

The intermediate learners’ nominal strategy may have involved using nouns and article + nouns to mention as many characters and details remembered. The nouns make concrete references to people and things in the task to create situationally bound discourse (Givón, 1985), discourse focused on the here-and now. There is a marked absence of verbs in the past and a heavy dependence of verbs in the present (e.g. raquel dice que el muchacho tiene las llaves a las diez ‘raquel says that the guy has the keys at ten’), despite this task lending itself to communications about events in the past, the there-and-then. While it is true that the use of numerous nominal features produces a semant-ically dense discourse, the role of the L1 needs to be investigated

Table 6.2 Nominal cluster: signifi cance tests of summed z-scores

Df Sum Sq Mean Sq F p

Task 1 22.23 22.23 1.418 0.238Level 1 64.16 64.16 4.093 0.047Task × Level 1 90.99 90.99 5.805 0.019Residuals 62 1084.06 15.68


further. Perhaps because Spanish and English share many noun cog-nates and derivational suffi xes, the L1 is helping the intermediate learners to produce this semantically dense discourse.

Concerning the narrative cluster (see Table 6.3 and Figure 6.3), the analysis indicated that there was no interaction between level and task but that there was a main effect for task, with higher concentra-tions of narrative behaviours in the ITCA (see Table 6.4).

Table 6.3 Narrative cluster: descriptive statistics of summed z-scores by task and learner level


ITCA 1.18 (sd = 3.26; n = 14) 1.3 (sd = 5.36; n = 18) 1.25 (sd = 4.5; n = 32)PTCA −1.94 (sd = 3.63; n = 14) −0.64 (sd = 3.87; n = 20) −1.18 (sd = 3.78; n = 34)Level −0.38 (sd = 3.74; n = 28) 0.28 (sd = 4.68; n = 38)

1.5

0.5

1.18

Intermediate AdvancedITCA

PTCA–0.64

–1.94

1.3

–0.5

–1.5

–1

–2

–2.5

0

1

Figure 6.3 Narrative cluster: Descriptive statistics of summed z-scores by task and learner level

Table 6.4 Narrative cluster: signifi cance tests of summed z-scores




With the narrative cluster, there is a predominance of verbs in the preterit and imperfect tenses, Spanish’s two primary past tenses. Across the board the learners in both groups employ the features of the narrative cluster in the ITCA, where communication is most pres-sured. It may be that, in the PTCA (where they had more time), the intermediate-level learners used nominal features to affect complex-ity while the advanced-level learners tended to use propositional complexity. However, in the time pressure condition of the ITCA, both groups produced numerous past tense verbs, perhaps a product of the heavy verbal training of their curriculum which emphasizes that Spanish verbs encode information about person, number, tense and mood. The narrative features of this cluster allow them to report on the events of the storyline, for example, pero tina dijo que ella mire la tele con paco a las once ‘but tina said that she watch(ed) TV with Paco at eleven’, instead of on characters and things, as evidenced in the nominal cluster. Reporting on events (versus listing characters and things) helps all learners accomplish the task because, after all events have been reported, the murderer can more easily be identifi ed from among the group of characters because we know who did what. Like in the detective game ‘Clue’, identifying both a character and his/her actions or alibi (or lack thereof) gets a player closer to winning the game by eliminating potential causes for certain effects, the nar-rative cluster provides learners with the linguistic means to complete this task. All of the following account for residents, their alibis and what they were doing: el doctor estaba con su esposa anoche ‘the doctor was with his wife last night’; Paco estaba con su groupo de musica ‘Paco was with his musical group’; tina dijo que ella mire la tele con paco a las once ‘Tina said that she watched TV with Paco at eleven.’

Finally, with respect to the propositional complexity cluster, the analysis indicated that there was no interaction between level and task but that there was a signifi cant main effect for level (see Table 6.5 and Figure 6.4); the advanced-level learners produced higher concentra-tions of the propositional complexity features (see Table 6.6).

The advanced-level learners used nouns and verb + noun clauses (e.g. dijo que . . . ‘he/she said that . . .’, creo que . . . ‘I believe that . . .’) as well as prepositions not only to state the events (like the narrative cluster) but also to provide details. These learners have the linguistic


resources and the time to identify who reported the events by pro-ducing nouns (the ‘who’), to explain the events with verbs and verb + noun clauses (the ‘what’), to give details about the events (the ‘when’), and to state their beliefs about events (the ‘why’). To support their ideas, the advanced-level learners use prepositions

Table 6.5 Propositional complexity cluster: descriptive statistics of summed z-scores by task and learner level


ITCA −0.16 (sd = 1.05; n = 14) 0.39 (sd = 0.88; n = 18) 0.15 (sd = 0.98; n = 32)PTCA −0.42 (sd = 1.03; n = 14) 0.06 (sd = 0.97; n = 20) −0.14 (sd = 1.01; n = 34)Level −0.29 (sd = 1.03; n = 28) 0.22 (sd = 0.93; n = 38)

Table 6.6 Propositional complexity cluster: Signifi cance tests of summed z-scores



0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

–0.1

–0.2 –0.16

Intermediate Advanced

0.39

0.06

ITCA

PTCA

–0.42

–0.3

–0.4

–0.5

0

Figure 6.4 Propositional complexity cluster: Descriptive statistics of summed z-scores by task and learner level


to express the time of events (a las diez y media ‘at ten thirty’) and to express with whom events occurred (con Paco ‘with Paco’).

The Study’s Use of Technology and TBLT

There were a number of features in iChat and the Flash software that promoted TBLT. In the fi rst place, the local area network connectiv-ity allowed the learners to communicate almost simultaneously, as they experimented almost no latency effects (i.e. lag time) between their communications. The students were not allowed to use iChat’s video conferencing services so that all communication took place in the form of text messages. At the time of the experiment screen shar-ing services were not available, although future projects will need to control their use. The primary advantage of iChat for TBLT purposes is that it allows for synchronous textual communication. This SCMC technology also allows learners to plan utterances much more than FTF situations, and so learners rarely need to produce utterances while keeping in the back of their minds that they may lose a turn, which decreases the need to produce fi llers (e.g. este . . . ‘Uhm . . .’). In addition, there is less pressure to backchannel (e.g. ¿De veras? ‘Really?’) while reading or waiting for an interlocutor’s messages, which may allow learners to attend more to the incoming message’s meaning and the form than in FTF situations.

The Flash software allowed for a high level of control over the tasks’ features and for exploration of the task’s relevant ‘content’. The Flash pieces had a timer mechanism that controlled the amount of time that the participants worked with software and that continuously conveyed whether there was much time remaining during any given exploration period. This took the form of a black graphic bar at the bottom of the screen that slowly expanded from left to right, and it was explained to students that once the bar reached the right side of the screen they would stop exploring the content. Once a given time period expired the Flash video revealed a screen that directed the participant to begin communicating with his/her partner in iChat.

In the Flash pieces every scenario (e.g. room, outdoors place) had 2–3 exits to allow the user to move to another seemingly random


location. For the participants this technology was meant to serve much like moving from room to room in a house, allowing learners to explore the content and interview different people. This also per-mitted partners to have different experiences so that they might feel compelled to ‘compare notes’ in iChat.

In each Flash scenario the participants could ask questions of whomever was present, as in Figure 6.5. The possible questions appearing in list boxes and the limitations that the software imposed on the number of questions that could be asked allowed individual participants to essentially pose different questions to the different characters. Again, this design feature was intended to promote note comparing in iChat since partners most likely gathered different pieces of information to solve different parts of the puzzle during the limited time each had to explore the scenarios.

Finally, the Flash software was designed so that no text could be copied or pasted into a digital scratchpad or into iChat. This forced the learners to rely on their memory about what was said and so they

Figure 6.5 Overlay of screens with timer bar and iChat directions


were more likely to produce unique messages that were often pre-ceded by qualifi cations of belief (e.g. creo que ‘I believe that’) or reports (e.g. dijo que. ‘S/he said that’).

Discussion and Conclusions

If one considers learner models of complexity (as opposed to native speaker ones), different types of complexity result based on task and learner level. The learner models of complexity used in this study are taken from learners at the same levels of instruction and thus are arguably developmentally appropriate models of complexity. They are types of complexity that reliably occur in this population since they are the result of multidimensional, factor analyses of these types of learners (Asención-Delaney & Collentine, 2009). Robinson (2001) appears to be correct in suggesting that IL appropriate measures of complexity show that intermediate and advanced-level learners do generate complexity in tasks. The difference between this and other studies is that the complexity is not native-speaker referenced but is the complexity that learners at this level are able to generate. Complexity can be defi ned by different learner models of complex-ity. Defi ning complexity by the number of C-units alone may not provide useful insights into how and when this level of learner gen-erates complexity. The results also indicate that time pressure – or the lack thereof – determines the type of complexity that learners generate.

The PTCA was designed to create the conditions ripe for the generation of complexity. It was thought that, with less pressure to communicate, learners would be more apt to engage in complexity, as suggested by Foster and Skehan (1999). The results show this to be partially true. When intermediate-level learners enjoyed less pres-sure, they used a higher concentration of the nominal cluster than the advanced-level learners. They devoted their time to hypothesiz-ing about the lost keys, combining many article + noun segments and simply using numerous nouns in general. When the intermediate-level learners have more time, they generate one type of complexity: nominal features. When pressured to communicate (as in the ITCA),


these results show that it is diffi cult for these learners to generate discourse with an abundance of the nominal cluster features.

Producing the cluster of features associated with the narrative cluster seems to be the preferred strategy for both levels of learners when faced with time pressure to communicate. All of the learners in this study produced higher concentrations of this cluster’s features in the ITCA task condition, which was designed to burden the learners’ cognitive processing during their communications.

The advanced-level learners produced higher concentrations of the propositional complexity cluster, using a high degree of nouns, verb + noun clauses, and prepositions in both tasks. Indeed this is the only measure of complexity that was not sensitive to task conditions. That is, for both the ITCA and the PTCA, the advanced-level learners generated a higher concentration of the features of propositional complexity than the intermediate-level learners, suggesting that, for propositional complexity, instructional level makes a difference.

How do these results guide practitioners and materials designers in their selection and design of tasks? The present study shows that, by using IL appropriate measures of complexity, instructors can better predict the types of language behaviour their students will produce in various tasks and/or conditions. Indeed, when attempting to delin-eate the tasks that affect language learning, materials designers and practitioners would do well to include open-ended, opinion-exchange tasks using SCMC such as the ones described in this study because, as Duff (1986) notes, opinion-exchange tasks yield learner production containing greater complexity.

Skehan (1998) claims that complex language may be more important to language development than accuracy or fl uency and that tasks that give learners opportunities to develop complexity should be used. Samuda and Bygate (2008) note that task selection should be made with the sequence of the entire curriculum in mind instead of based on one particular activity, although teachers are often at a loss as to the pedagogical reasons for selecting one task over another (Samuda & Bygate, 2008). SCMC tasks containing the features described earlier will indeed provide intermediate- and advanced-level learners with opportunities to generate complexity. Advanced-level learners will ben-efi t because these tasks help them generate propositional complexity.


To help intermediate learners develop their abilities to produce com-plexity along the nominal cluster, a task in which learners are not pressured to communicate (like the PTCA) is in order. When the goal is for either intermediate-level or advanced-level learners to practice the development of the narrative cluster of complexity, then a task in which learners are pressured to express their ideas (like the ITCA) should be chosen. Duffi cy (2004) laments the lack of an ‘inventory describing the relationship between task types and the varied language work that accompanies them’ (2004, p. 259). This study provides a fi rst step towards such an inventory, adding to the general TBLT research about the types of tasks that yield learner linguistic complexity and providing new knowledge about how TB-SCMC in particular fosters linguistic complexity.

Note

1 A confi dence interval to check whether a mean is greater than zero at a prob-ability greater than chance entails: Mean – (sd/sqrt*1.96) for 95 per cent and Mean – (sd/sqrt*2.5) for 99 per cent confi dence. If the resulting number is greater than zero, then zero is said to be excluded from the interval.

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Part II

Applying Technology-Mediated Tasks

Chapter 7

Task Design for a Virtual Learning Environment in a Distance Language

Course

Regine Hampel

Introduction

The rapid development of information and communication technolo-gies (ICTs) has had a profound impact on language education where interaction has been a central concept since the 1980s, both in socio-cultural and cognitive approaches to learning (Lamy & Hampel, 2007). Today, institutional virtual learning environments (VLEs, also known in American contexts as Learning Management Systems [LMSs] or Content Management Systems [CMSs]) are increasingly used not only for making resources available to learners but also for offering students and teachers a choice of online communication tools. This fi ts in with Weller’s (2007, p. 5) defi nition of a VLE as ‘a software system that combines a number of different tools that are used to systematically deliver content online and facilitate the learn-ing experience around that content’. With an array of electronic communication and collaboration tools, making increasing use of social software (Sclater, 2008), online interaction between learners is becoming easier. Such tools range from relatively simple written environments (e.g. synchronous chat or asynchronous forums) to complex virtual worlds that offer graphics, text and audio; activities include discussions between learners in distance settings, intercul-tural activities with students of other languages, and communication with other users of technology, for example, in Second Life.


Meskill (1999, p. 143), pointing to the importance of interaction, links it with task design:

The oral/aural negotiational aspect of teacher and task supported student–student confi guration is seen as a powerful venue for sec-ond language acquisition to occur. Such confi gurations, in com-bination with well designed and orchestrated language learning tasks, represent opportunities for learners to manipulate inter-dependent chunks of the target language in complex ways that see immediate, contextual effect.

Although Meskill concentrates on spoken communication, it has been shown that negotiation of meaning can also occur in written interaction (e.g. in online chat), thus promoting language learning (Sotillo, 2000).

While it is clear that tasks play a crucial role in successful language learning (Ellis, 2003; Klapper, 2003; Samuda & Bygate, 2008), work on task-based language learning and teaching in online settings has been limited (e.g. Doughty & Long, 2003; Hampel, 2006; Wang, 2007) and not enough is known about how such tasks need to be designed for complex virtual learning environments. How can tasks best motivate and support learners, foster interaction and dialogue, and thus support language acquisition, while using the possibilities of the medium and taking account of its challenges? And how does the educational context affect this design?

After outlining the approach to task-based language teaching (TBLT) used here, the remainder of this introductory section is taken up with a brief overview of the background to the research. I then introduce a model for task development (Hampel, 2006) which informs the study at the centre of this chapter, with later sections exploring how this model was realized in a particular educational context using a specifi c virtual learning environment. After examining how the theoretical approach informed the development of tasks, I present the fi ndings from two studies that informed the development of the online materials of the course. I then focus on a second aspect of the model, namely task design, using Ellis’s (2003) and Oxford’s (2006) task frameworks to describe in detail the task features of the

Task Design for a VLE in a Distance Language Course 133

Open University course. The fi nal section gives a brief summary of the task development process, points to some issues that merit further research, and tries to pinpoint some essential features of online task design.

The approach to TBLT in this chapter is informed by Klapper (2003) and Ellis (2003) who follow what could be called a weak version of TBLT. Following Klapper (2003, p. 35), a number of char-acteristics can be listed:

‘[I]t believes the communicative interaction characteristic of task-

based work provides suffi cient comprehensible input to “trigger” acquisitional processes.’It is an offshoot from the strong version of communicative lan-

guage teaching (CLT), ‘asserting that language learning depends on learners being involved in real communication in which they use language in a meaningful way’.However, ‘unlike the strong version of CLT, it crucially insists that

acquisition needs to be supported by instruction that ensures a certain attention to linguistic form, that initial fl uency work should lead gradually to accuracy-focussed activities.’Tasks are seen as ‘meaning-based activities closely related to

learners’ actual communicative needs and with some real-world relationship, in which learners have to achieve a genuine outcome (solve a problem, reach a consensus, complete a puzzle, play a game, etc.) and in which effective completion of the task is accorded priority’.

The context of the present chapter is a blended language course, that is, one which combines more traditional modes of delivery (e.g. printed books, DVDs with audio and visual materials and face-to-face tutorials) and e-learning (e.g. through the use of a VLE or of a mix of individual tools) (for an explanation of the term blended learning, see Mason & Rennie [2006], pp. 11–14). The course takes a task-based approach to designing activities for a vir-tual learning environment based on Moodle (a free open source virtual learning environment which allows users to adapt it to their own requirements; see http://moodle.org/). The Open University

http://moodle.org/


German course (CEFR entry level B1/exit level B2) – taught over nine months at a distance to students across the UK, Ireland and continental Western Europe – consists of the following materials which learners study on their own:

printed course books developed in-house by a course team made

up of academics and academic-related members of staff;DVD-ROMs with interactive activities (based on text as well as

audio and video clips), also produced in-house;a Moodle course website with course resources (e.g. course

books as e-books, assessment materials, links), online tasks and quizzes.

Students – who require no formal qualifi cations and come from a variety of age groups and backgrounds – are allocated to tutor groups led by Open University Associate Lecturers whose responsibilities include marking assignments and giving tutorials. This tuition includes face-to-face or telephone tutorials (depending on the specifi c requirements of the region where the student is based); synchronous online tutorials via Elluminate (a multipoint desktop videoconferencing system that includes a range of tools such as a whiteboard or a web tour); and asynchronous input and support on the course website.

While the Open University has extensive expertise in designing conventional distance language courses and developing teaching materials for synchronous audio conferencing, asynchronous tools for language learning and teaching were introduced only recently and the course at the centre of this chapter was one of the fi rst to be offered in this new blended mode. In order to explore the use of tools such as forums, blogs and wikis – tools with which many students are not familiar – two pilot studies (described below) were set up specifi cally to inform the design of the online materials of the new course. With tasks being our main focus in this chapter, we will examine in what ways these foster learning and how the tech-nologies used support the process and potentially transform the nature of task-based learning.


Framework

For the purposes of this chapter, Ellis’s (2003, p. 16) defi nition of task provides a useful starting point:

A task is a workplan that requires learners to process language pragmatically in order to achieve an outcome that can be evaluated in terms of whether the correct or appropriate propositional content has been conveyed. To this end, it requires them to give primary attention to meaning and to make use of their own lin-guistic resources, although the design of the task may predispose them to choose particular forms. A task is intended to result in language use that bears a resemblance, direct or indirect, to the way language is used in the real world. Like other language activ-ities, a task can engage productive or receptive, and oral or written skills, and also various cognitive processes.

This defi nition refl ects current theories of second language learning which focus on meaning (while not neglecting form, see e.g. Nunan’s (2006, p. 17) defi nition), on language use (rather than language acquisition), on a range of skills (relating to language as well as con-tent), and on processes (as well as outcomes and products).

In Hampel (2006) a three-level model of task development was proposed, consisting of approach, design and procedure. Based on Richards and Rogers (1986/2001), it has also been applied by Hubbard (1992) and Levy (1999) to their methodological thinking about CALL. In this model, approach refers to theories about the nature of language and language learning as well as the possibilities (and constraints) that the technology in question affords; design includes the syllabus, functions and types of tasks, and learner and teacher roles; and procedure encompasses the actual implementation of the tasks and their use by the learners – what Oxford (2006, p. 97) calls ‘activity’ or ‘behavior that occurs when students perform a task that has been presented to them’, or what Breen (1987, pp. 24–25) labels ‘task-in-process’. While the context of the 2006 article was an audiographic conferencing application, this chapter concerns itself


with a more complex Moodle-based virtual learning environment. However, as the fi rst year of the course in question is still on-going, with almost 170 students across ten tutor groups, the third level of the model (procedure) will not be considered here; instead, we will focus on the fi rst two levels of approach and design.

Approach

The course team’s approach to the development of tasks was under-pinned by different theories of learning and included cognitive as well as sociocultural theories about the nature of language and language learning and the affordances of the virtual learning environment in question (in our case Moodle).

Cognitive or psycholinguistic second language acquisition theories go back to Krashen (1981), who stresses the importance of input, interaction and output. Interaction is seen as the locus for negoti-ation of meaning, where speakers are concerned with the message as well as with the form of what they say – especially when breakdowns in communication occur (Canale & Swain, 1980). However, there is more to language learning than cognitive processes in the brain of the learner, and it has been recognized that social, cultural, insti-tutional and historical factors also play a crucial role. Based on Vygotsky’s (1978) and Leontiev’s (1981) sociocultural theories which were developed in the early twentieth century, cognition has meta-morphosed into a ‘social phenomenon’ (Resnick (1991, p. 1) and we now talk about shared cognition and understand thinking and learning as situated social practice. Thus the notion of learning has been rethought, and ‘mind, culture, history, and the social world [are being seen] as interrelated processes that constitute each other’ (Lave 1991, p. 63), a view which ‘intentionally blurs social scientists’ divisions among component parts of persons, their activities, and the world’ (Lave 1991, pp. 63–64). These theories have had a profound impact on language teaching where communicative activities have become more central, thanks to the shared belief that they lead to higher forms of learning. As Ellis (2003, p. 177) points out, ‘acquisition occurs in rather than as a result of interaction.’


Sociocultural theories have also introduced the concept of medi-ation – with other people through interaction as well as through language and other tools or artefacts (such as technology or tasks). As Wertsch (1991, p. 12) points out, ‘these mediational means shape the action in essential ways.’ When learning is mediated through other people the notion of scaffolding becomes central – defi ned as ‘the dialogic process by which one speaker assists another in per-forming a function that he or she cannot perform alone’ (Ellis, 2003, pp. 180–181). In the course presented here the question was how to build this form of mediation into the tasks in an institutional context where learners are mostly studying at a distance and where tutor input is relatively small.

Communication tools are another mediating factor. It has been shown that their use in language learning is not neutral but infl u-ences language development (Thorne, 2003; Hampel & Hauck, 2006). So what is the impact of this technological mediation in a context where those learners who are unfamiliar with the use of Web 2.0 tech-nologies greatly outnumber the more experienced ones?

Findings from the Pilot Studies

The design and implementation of the online activities was greatly informed by the fi ndings of the two preceding pilot studies. The fi rst one – entitled CyberDeutsch – took place in 2006 in the form of a fi ve-week intensive German course with two groups of 25 volunteer students overall (at CEFR levels B1 and B2). Aimed at trialling some of the online tools available at the time, the course included a Moodle-based course website with resources, a study calendar, quizzes and asynchronous tasks – including web searches and communicative activities using the forum, the wiki and blogs – as well as synchronous tutor-led sessions using the videoconferencing software FlashMeet-ing (Hampel, 2009; Stickler & Hampel, in press).

CyberDeutsch project

In terms of the use of Moodle tools, our main fi ndings related to the following areas: collaborative learning, learning objectives, learner


preferences, tutor role and problems with the technology. The initial aim of CyberDeutsch had been learner-centred, collaborative language learning. However, providing students with a collaborative environ-ment and giving them scope in organizing their own learning did not prove to be suffi cient. Students were not used to working with one another and a fi ve-week course proved to be insuffi cient to prepare students to co-construct knowledge and learn collaboratively. Instead of working together, students tended to divide up the tasks and pre-pare input individually, and rather than communicating with their peers directly they used the tutor as an intermediary. Furthermore, contributions from the learners were very unequal, both in terms of the quantity and quality of language produced as well as those relating to meaningful interaction. Another issue that arose was that students were not always clear why they were doing particular tasks. While these objectives had been clear in the team’s thinking when they were developing the activities, they did not seem to be transpar-ent to students.

The study showed that there is a potential correlation between different tools and learning preferences and that each tool can be combined with the right task to further a particular style of learning (Stickler & Hampel, in press). We found that it can be more conducive to students’ learning to combine online tools and learning aspects and to allow different learners to choose those tools and activities to suit their learning style(s) and objectives. However, students need to be comfortable with the technology as well as motivated to use it; in our study, this applied to only a small number of students.

The project also showed how crucial tutor support is – even in con-texts where students are expected to take control of at least some of their own learning. Issues that arose included the following:

a clash between student expectations regarding feedback and

error correction and what the teachers were able to do;tutors getting the balance right in supporting the online activities

(between being too ‘hands off’ and too controlling);student and teacher workload.

Finally, there were issues related to the use of technology. These concerned actual technical problems such as insuffi cient bandwidth


and server downtime as well as students’ lack of familiarity with the tools. The latter in particular has to be taken into account when designing technology-mediated tasks, and highlights the importance of developing learners’ digital literacy skills (see Hauck, this volume).

Collaborative teacher training project

The rationale for this second project was to explore further what had proved to be the lynchpin in the previous study: collaborative learning. It was carried out jointly with the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) in 2008, with the two institutions bringing together their expertise in online learning, namely the Open University’s experience in teaching via synchronous audio confer-encing and delivering tutor training in that context, and the UOC’s expertise with asynchronous teaching and with training tutors in supporting students asynchronously. In their feedback, participat-ing teachers summarized what was most crucial for them in terms of using the Moodle tools successfully (Ernest et al., 2009):

Instructions/guidelines/time managementground rules for synchronous participation

specify timescale for activities

signposts to key aspects of reading material

responses to individual postings

clearly signalled closing stage

Forums and other toolsclear guidance on (minimum) expected frequency of participation

separate forums for each task and separate strands for technical

help and general issues not related to specifi c tasksopportunities for individual to individual communication

easy access to instructions for use of less familiar tools (e.g. the

wiki)opportunity to experiment with new tools before beginning

required task


Collaboration and sense of communityintroductory activity should allow participants to introduce them-

selves in a non-threatening wayexplicit guidance for effective group formation

working together with common goals (especially via asynchronous

tools)synchronous sessions to build a sense of community and move

decision-making forward.

When setting up both projects, we tried to give learners a certain amount of control in deciding how to approach the tasks, where to fi nd information, and how to communicate with one another. How-ever, in both studies the subjects stressed the importance of ground rules, signposts, guidance and feedback.

Design

In terms of individual tasks, Ellis’s (2003, p. 21) task framework (see Table 7.1) provides a useful starting point for identifying different task features and describing how these were realized in the Open University course.

Table 7.1 Task framework

Design feature Description

1 Goal The general purpose of the task, e.g. to practise the ability to describe objects concisely; to provide an opportunity for the use of relative clauses.

2 Input The verbal or non-verbal information supplied by the task, e.g. pictures; a map; written text.

3 Conditions The way in which the information is presented, e.g. split vs. shared information, or the way in which it is to be used, e.g. converging vs. diverging.

4 Procedures The methodological procedures to be followed in performing the task, e.g. group vs. pair work; planning time vs. no planning time.

5 Predicted outcomes:

Product

The ‘product’ that results from completing the task, e.g. a completed table; a route drawn in on a map; a list of differences between two pictures. The predicted product can be ‘open’, i.e. allow for several possibilities, or ‘closed’, i.e. allow for only one ‘correct’ solution.

Process The linguistic and cognitive processes the task is hypothesized to generate.

Source: Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 21.


In addition, some of Oxford’s (2006) dimensions for analysing tasks complement Ellis’s list: task types, importance of task (low or high stake), complexity (linguistic and cognitive), and teacher and learner factors (see Table 7.2).

We included a wide range of tasks in order to focus on meaning but not neglect form, to cover all areas of the syllabus, to include social and cultural dimensions by focusing on communication and refl ec-tion, to encourage as many learners as possible to engage with the tasks, to appeal to different learning preferences, and to foster digital literacy. It was also decided that the online tasks that focus on meaning and interaction between learners should be comple-mented by quizzes which cover grammar, vocabulary and the basic subject matter taught in the course and which students can do on their own. They are cognitively relatively simple, yet they allow students to assess their own learning.

Based on our experience with distance education in general and the fi ndings from the pilot projects in particular, it was clear that the task instructions would have to include some of the functions that the teacher and peers have in face-to-face settings, thus giving extra support in scaffolding the learning. In addition to this, commun-ication between learners in the interactive tasks would provide

Table 7.2 Additional dimensions of the task framework

Design feature Description

1 Task types These range from simple information-gaps to complex role-plays and simulations, from puzzles and games to everyday service encounters. They can involve simple skills as well as multiple skills.

2 Importance of task

Tasks can be perceived as a low- or high-stakes requirement.

3 Complexity: Linguistic Linguistic complexity depends, e.g. on frequency and saliency, as well

as on vocabulary, phonology, morphosyntax, discourse, pragmatics, sociolinguistics.

Cognitive Cognitive complexity involves a person component (use of cognitively simple or complex constructs), a task component (e.g. number of input sources used), and – in the case of CALL and CMC – an interactive system component.

4 Teacher factors These include different task roles for teachers as well as the support teachers give to learners.

5 Learner factors These include different task roles for learners as well as individual learning styles.


scaffolding in a more conventional way – albeit in an environment that is less familiar to many students. The idea is to gradually develop learner autonomy (alongside technical literacy), and to move from highly structured activities to more open ones where learners would take control, that is, from individual tasks (e.g. web searches, surveys, blog postings), tasks where students comment on each other’s writing (e.g. in the blogs) and discussions (e.g. in the forum) to more collaborative ones where students would co-construct their own knowledge (e.g. through wikis).

Table 7.3 gives an overview of how Ellis’s and Oxford’s features were realized in the design of our online tasks.

Table 7.3 Realization of Ellis’s and Oxford’s task features in online design

Design feature Online realization of task features

1 Goal • multifold• development of communicative skills (language use,

interaction)• collaboration• building a sense of community• refl ection• development of electronic literacy (use of tools, web

searches)• adding topicality to printed course materials• preparation for assignments

2 Task types • mixed, involving simple skills as well as multiple skills• individual tasks (e.g. information gathering via web

searches)• interactive tasks (e.g. sharing of information or

experience, discussions, interviews)• often, tasks were linked throughout a study week, with

individual tasks leading to interactive tasks• games

3 Importance of task • mostly low-stake tasks• some activities feed into the assessment and are therefore

higher-stake tasks

4 Input • mix of input genres (websites, articles, discussion questions, survey questions, tables for information gathering, presentation, other students’ contributions e.g. in forums, blogs and wikis)

• variation in modality (mainly written but also images (e.g. maps, photos) and audio

• move from tasks with more specifi c input to tasks that rely more on learner input

(Continued)


Table 7.3 Continued

Design feature Online realization of task features

5 Conditions • shared information• split, distributed activities for cooperation and

collaboration

6 Linguistic Complexity: • linguistic complexity appropriate to B1–B2 level• language varieties as spoken in Germany, Austria and

Switzerland• various forms of discourse

Cognitive • varied cognitive complexity in terms of task component (e.g. lower complexity in web searches to higher complexity in discussions and collaborative knowledge-building activities)

• high cognitive complexity in terms of system component (Moodle, World Wide Web)

7 Procedures • individual activities• group activities (mainly within tutor groups; but some

activities, e.g. surveys, across all ten tutor groups)• linear progression, following the course calendar• timing: specifi c week is recommended (to fi t in with

course) but activities are usually open-ended

8 Predicted outcomes:Product

• new information and knowledge (individual or shared via forums, blogs, surveys or wikis)

Process • discussions (forum)• use of language (for discussing, describing, commenting

etc.)• higher order mental processes, e.g. evaluation of

information available on the World Wide Web• sharing of information and experience• developing a sense of community

9 Teacher factors • teacher task roles limited (e.g. giving encouragement and some support)

• in some tasks (e.g. assessment-related) more detailed and structured feedback required

10 Learner factors • mix of task roles, including group participant, researcher, self-evaluator and task-analyser

• range of tasks aimed at catering for individual learning styles

Goal

Naturally, the design of the online tasks was predetermined by the course of which they formed part – a course at CEFR exit level B2 that is taught at a distance and combines language and content (cov-ering the topics of society, the world of work, media, art, religion and


philosophy, and recent history). So the goals combine the develop-ment of linguistic skills (with an emphasis on communication and collaboration – something the other parts of the course cannot provide) with the construction of knowledge (thus also adding top-icality to the printed course materials and the DVD-ROMs that have a life span of up to 10 years). The tasks also have socio-affective goals, aiming to bridge the physical distance between students and contrib-ute to group building. In order to encourage students to participate in the online activities – which like all other parts of the course apart from the summative assessments are voluntary – some tasks prepare students for individual assignments.

Finally, the tasks are designed to promote electronic literacy, a crucial goal in twenty-fi rst century education (see also Lankshear, Gee, Knobel & Searle, 1997; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Solomon & Schrum, 2007; Warschauer, 1999).

Specifi c goals also relate to the use of individual tools. Forums, for example, are designed for writing practice and asynchronous group discussions (mainly about academic issues related to the course content but leaving space for social interaction as well), also giving students the chance to refl ect before communicating and ‘rehearsing’ oral communication. Blogs too aim at writing practice but with students adopting a more refl ective and personal stance, the idea is that blogs will contribute to creating a community amongst students. Wiki tasks are designed to get students to collaborate and construct knowledge together.

Task types

In terms of skills development, the online tasks aim at compensating for what is diffi cult to achieve in distance learning, namely interaction with other students. So while individual tasks around content and language are included, interactive tasks predominate. The task types used are varied and include sharing of information or experience, discussions of course topics, and interviews. Role-plays have generally been avoided in order to give the learners the opportunity to voice their own opinions and build on their own experience, thus giving the


tasks a greater personal relevance. Often, individual tasks (e.g. informa-tion gathering online) feed into interactive tasks (e.g. discussion of information in a forum or Elluminate, or collation in a wiki), and make up a set of tasks around one topic. As these tasks are quite closely related, the smaller sub-tasks can combine to form one or two larger tasks per study week.

In terms of linguistic skills and content knowledge, tasks need to fi t into the larger course of which they form part. For this reason, the online activities were part of the course design right from the begin-ning, and the syllabus was developed to include information on content, functions, text types, and skills for all elements of the course. Since the online tasks are integrated closely with the materials that the students study in the rest of the course, students have the oppor-tunity to discuss issues arising from the course materials with one another in the forums; blogs give students the chance to share more personal information in connection with the course topics, collate materials in their own online space and refl ect on the course; and wikis allow them to collate further and perhaps more up-to-date information on topics covered elsewhere.

Importance of tasks

As the online activities make up quite a substantial part of the course, it was decided to link some of them to the assessment to make them higher-stake tasks and give students another incentive to participate. Students are, for example, encouraged to research an aspect of an assignment topic and can then share and discuss this information in a forum or in a synchronous meeting via video/audio conference. Some such tasks are given the status of formative parts of the assign-ments and tutors are asked to give individual and/or group feedback on these formative tasks.

Input

The input that the tasks have been designed to provide is varied and combines verbal and visual modalities. It ranges from links to websites


that offer either content information (thus expanding the other course materials) or language support (e.g. online dictionaries or tools such as WordChamp) to preset discussion questions in forums, survey questions and task instructions for blogs and wikis. In turn, student contributions then provide input for other learners. The instructions that are provided for every task follow a consistent pattern and – based on the results from one of the pilot studies – include information about the learning objectives.

Conditions

Task conditions are simple: most tasks are based on shared input (in the case of forum or blog activities), only some of the wiki tasks require students to choose one aspect and cooperatively share out the work. The task instructions include some quantitative informa-tion about the expected output, thus giving the students an idea of what was expected of them. For example, when students work with their blogs, they are asked not only to post a contribution on their own blog but also to comment on some of the other learners’ blogs.

Linguistic complexity

In terms of linguistic complexity, the vocabulary, phonology, morpho-syntax, discourse, and pragmatics in the online activities are aligned with the syllabus of the overall course which refl ects the linguistic skills required at CEFR B1–B2 level. The online tasks also cover a range of regional language varieties and discourse genres. They therefore include materials from different German-speaking countries and combine inputs and outputs of different complexity (oral, writ-ten, colloquial, academic, literary etc.). On top of this, students are exposed to instructional language that includes computer and internet-related vocabulary. In order to support students, instructions in German are kept simple, and similar wordings tend to be used across the course. Students are also provided with an online glossary which explains computer terminology in English and they are encouraged to collaboratively generate their own course glossary.


Cognitive complexity

The cognitive complexity of the tasks varies depending on the task type. They range from web searches which are characterized by rela-tively low complexity to discussions and knowledge-building activities with higher complexity. In terms of the system (computers, Moodle, WWW), the cognitive complexity is again varied: while it partly depends on the tools, it is also affected by the learners’ level of elec-tronic literacy. In order to help students, the design of the tasks aims at gradually increasing the cognitive complexity, starting with tasks in the earlier units which feature simpler vocabulary and syntax, and more basic input and output genres. Tasks move from single to multiple inputs and from shorter and easier outputs (e.g. a forum message) to more complex products (e.g. a wiki page), thus gradu-ally increasing in cognitive complexity. Also, tools are introduced one at a time (starting with forums and choice surveys in unit 1, blogs in unit 2, and wikis in unit 3) to allow learners to familiarize themselves with each tool before moving on to the next one. The idea of scaf-folding – crucial in the fi ndings of the pilot projects – is thus not only applied to the content and the language, but also to the tools.

In order to avoid overloading students in terms of cognitive com-plexity, it was decided to give students a less demanding introduction into working online by including preparatory activities in English prior to the start of the course. These consist of a brief introduction to the website and its tools and resources as well as a forum activity which involves students in each tutor group introducing themselves in order to get to know one another and start developing a sense of community. Easy navigation via the study planner is also deemed cru-cial for students who are not familiar with Moodle (and who are in the majority) and activities and resources are labelled clearly and consistently.

Procedures

The procedures include a range of methodological options for implementing the tasks, from individual activities to group activities. The activities are linear, following the progression of the course, and


are located in specifi c weeks so a critical number of students will engage with them (particularly important for group activities). How-ever, by keeping the activities open for the duration of the course, learners are given maximum fl exibility to engage with them when-ever it suits them.

Predicted outcomes: product and process

Predicted outcomes in terms of the product include the construction of new knowledge, either individually or jointly though forum dis-cussions or in the form of blog postings and comments, completed surveys, and information collated in the wikis. In terms of the pro-cess, predicted outcomes include the use of language (for discussing, describing, questioning, commenting), sharing of information and experience, and the development of higher order thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The interactive and collabor-ative tasks are also intended to contribute to students developing a sense of community.

Teacher factors

Because the university’s tutor contracts only allocate a limited num-ber of hours to tuition beyond giving feedback on assignments and running tutorials, the teachers’ input into the online tasks is rela-tively minor. In order to manage tutors’ workload, all activities on the Moodle website are pre-prepared by the course team, including forum and wiki instructions. It is envisaged therefore that the tutors’ role consists of providing more general encouragement and support. Only in some tasks – including all those relating to assessment or when a new tool is introduced – are tutors required to give more detailed and structured feedback. For example, they are given advice as to how to moderate these activities and provide feedback in the form of tutor notes.

Learner factors

The design of the online activities aims to give learners a range of task roles. The main roles are as follows: group participant in


discussions, researcher on the World Wide Web, collator of know-ledge, and self-evaluator of their own learning. One of the roles that is crucial for distance learners is that of the autonomous learner. In order to develop this kind of autonomy, students are provided with more scaffolding initially (with the help of instructions and other input); this is then gradually reduced so students can work more independently – both by themselves and with others. Student control is developed further through student-created content with-out course team or tutor input (the above-mentioned course glossary for German words and expressions, a learning strategies forum). In addition, student expectations are managed by highlighting the importance of learner–learner communication and of focus on meaning over form.

The range of tools and the multimodal environment also lends itself to catering for individual learning styles (see above). Thus the tasks include interactive ones for students with a more extroverted learning style; self-refl ective and independent activities for those who are more introverted; and closed tasks with more focus on form for learners with a more analytic learning style.

Conclusion

This chapter has shown how a theoretical approach focusing on the importance of three factors, namely, interaction in language learning, learner support through scaffolding, and mediation by the computer, can feed into the pedagogical design of online tasks in a blended distance language course. The design was informed by several pilot studies that pointed out the value of scaffolding activities in terms of content, interaction and collaboration, and tools; the potential of specifi c tools appealing to particular learning styles; and the importance of allowing students to develop a sense of com-munity. At the same time, the development of the online tasks has illustrated the limitations of academic course design and the impact of institutional regulations and circumstances. Both pilot studies that preceded the course at the centre of this chapter had shown the importance of tutor support (see also Belz, 2003). Yet limited


resources in terms of tutor hours meant that tutor support had to be heavily complemented by certain task features such as precise instructions and linear navigation. It also shows the impact of the environment used – as De Graaf, De Laat and Scheltinga (2004) point out, current VLEs tend to support cooperative rather than collaborative learning goals and are more aligned to a guided learning approach than an approach based on action learning or experiential learning.

The focus in this chapter has been on the approach and design of online tasks only, but further research is being carried out on the third level of the task development model, that of procedure, which means examining the implementation of the tasks in the virtual learn-ing environment, that is, the use of the tasks by students.

While the online tasks at the centre of this chapter are located in a particular context, that of one higher education provider specializ-ing in distance learning, the development principles described here can be applied to other settings. The number of distance courses is growing and an increasing number of institutions are introducing online courses or blending more conventional courses with online elements. The chapter has also raised some interesting questions around task-based language learning and teaching using a VLE that need further discussion. These include the apparent confl ict between adopting a centralized approach to task design that presupposes a linear format, while also using Web 2.0 tools that are based on a decentralized and anti-linear style of teaching and learning. Experience in a distance education context and with a student population that is hugely diverse in terms of age, backgrounds, electronic literacy, and learning skills, has shown how crucial student support is. The ques-tion is how we provide this support while at the same time making use of the potential of Web 2.0 more extensively, thus creating greater learner autonomy.

Considering the fact that the starting point for this chapter was a defi nition of tasks and a task framework that were developed in conventional face-to-face classrooms, it seems appropriate to end by considering the question whether the fact that these tasks are online has a fundamental impact on task design. The suggested answer is ‘yes’ for a number of reasons. First, there is the additional mediation


by the electronic medium. This means that greater cognitive effort is required of the learners and that they have to be technologically more literate than in a face-to-face classroom context. Secondly (as in the design of conventional distance materials), tasks have to be developed in a way that incorporates into the materials much of what the teacher does in the face-to-face classroom in terms of support to provide the necessary scaffolding. Thirdly, there is a greater necessity to focus on socio-affective aspects of learning when students com-municate solely or mainly online and when much of this inter action takes place using asynchronous tools. At the same time, new tech-nologies have the potential to transform task-based language learning and teaching, especially in distance settings, by bringing students together to communicate and collaborate, to co-construct knowledge and focus on the process of learning rather than the product.

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Chapter 8

Teacher Development, TBLT and Technology

Thomas Raith and Volker Hegelheimer

Introduction

Ellis (2003) argues that the ‘case for including an introduction to the principles and techniques of task-based teaching in initial teacher-training programmes is a strong one’ (p. 337). In a similar vein, Bygate, Norris and Van den Branden (2009) identify teacher devel-opment as the ‘lynchpin for progress of the TBLT enterprise’ (p. 498). In responding to these claims, this chapter explores the role of technology in supporting teaching development – in this case, using electronic or e-portfolios to develop the task-based language teach-ing (TBLT) competencies of student teachers. First, we will discuss the role of e-portfolios in foreign language teacher education. We will argue that standards-based refl ective practice in e-portfolios can enhance the development of teaching competencies. Furthermore, we will explore what competencies a teacher needs to put TBLT into practice by introducing a process which has been developed in the context of a large-scale qualitative research study. In this research project, the task-based teaching competence development of in-service student teachers has been analysed on the basis of their own refl ections on their classroom teaching. We will present the results of this analysis to identify how the development of TBLT competencies can be improved through the use of e-portfolios. In the last section of the chapter we will concentrate on how to put TBLT refl ective practice using e-portfolios into practice.

Teacher Development, TBLT and Technology 155

The Role of E-Portfolios in Teacher Education

Educational portfolios and hypertext

Portfolios are widely used in teacher education. A survey of schools, colleges and departments of education in the United States found that 89 per cent reported that they used portfolios for some type of assessment (Strudler & Wetzel, 2005, p. 412). The new opportunities of computer-mediated communication (CMC) resulted in a shift from hard copy to electronic portfolios (Bartlett, 2002; Williams, Wetzel & Wilhelm, 2004). An educational portfolio can be defi ned as a ‘structured documentary history of a set of coached or mentored acts of teaching, substantiated by samples of student portfolios, and fully realized only through refl ective writing, deliberation, and conversation’ (Shulman, 1998, p. 37). In portfolios, student teachers take responsibility for their own learning process and share their learning experiences, often with a community of peers (Strudler & Wetzel, 2005, p. 412). One typical feature of portfolios is that learners collect different kinds of artefacts to document their learning pro-cess. In teacher education, this can be lesson plans, refl ections on teaching, videos, audio fi les or learner products. Those texts are then interpreted by the learner or cooperatively with an instructor or other peers. Student teachers connect their portfolios to teaching standards and evaluate their own professional development (Strudler & Wetzel, 2005, p. 412). Because portfolios consist of different text modes and because the collected artefacts are connected to each other in a net-work, they can be seen as a sort of hypertext (Purves, 1996, p. 135). For this reason, using web-based e-portfolios seems to be a natural way of implementing educational portfolios. Purves (1996) discussed this in detail and came to the conclusion that using e-portfolios seems to be ideal to put the idea of refl ective learning into practice, but he still saw logistical, technical and theoretical limitations (Purves, 1996, p. 142). With the rapid change of the internet and the advent of Web 2.0, those limitations (i.e. internet access and the integration of multiple types of media) today seem to have diminished in at least some parts of the world. While there continues to be disenfranchised


groups, high-speed access to the internet is relatively common. With such access, user-generated content is easy to create with internet-based, free software. Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, weblogs and online communities make it easy to publish multi-modal texts (Barrett, 2008). These tools can be used individually or combined in an online learning community with integrated weblogs and discussion boards (Herrington, Herrington, Kervin & Ferry, 2006).

E-portfolios and refl ective practice

According to research in the fi eld of teacher education, refl ective practice is a central aspect in the professional development of teachers (Gilpin, 1999, p. 13; Richards & Farrell, 2005, p. 114). Such develop-ment can either happen as refl ection in action during the teaching, or as refl ection on action when teachers refl ect on their practice in retrospect. Only a refl ective analysis of critical incidents can change classroom practice and lead to professional development (Bailey, Curtis & Nunan, 2001, p. 44). Therefore, the ability to analyse critical incidents in teaching and to understand them in relation to relevant theory can be seen as a core competence of a teacher as a refl ective practitioner. Using educational portfolios helps to initiate and guide such processes of informed refl ective practice. To make the most of refl ection on action, it is important to base refl ections in a portfolio on more than just subjective data from self-observation. The integra-tion of video and feedback from a mentor or peer can help to base refl ections on a more complete and objective database. Furthermore, the use of standards to guide the refl ective process makes sure that professional development is consistent with the requirements of the given educational context. Video creates a separation between our teaching and viewing selves and allows us to ‘watch ourselves teach-ing with the kind of objectivity that is usually possible only when we are viewing someone else’ (Bailey et al., 2001, p. 118). Analysing videotaped lessons therefore enhances the refl ective process and can support the professional development of teachers. But although video helps to refl ect on lessons in a more objective perspective, it cannot be a substitute for refl ective conversations and refl ective feed-back from a supervisor. Gwyn-Paquette and Tochon (2002) showed


in a qualitative study that student teachers who have had the oppor-tunity to refl ect on their lessons with the help of a mentor were more likely to develop teaching skills than student teachers who refl ected on their lessons only on the basis of their own observation. However, with the aid of digital technologies the role of a third perspective can also be introduced via an online community. Makinster, Barab, Harwood and Andersen (2006) compared refl ective processes between private journals, asynchronous discussion forums and a web-supported community of teachers. One of the results was that the student teach-ers saw the most effective support for professional development in the web-supported community because it created a shared identity which helped teachers to engage in refl ection and feedback (Makinster et al., 2006).

An advantage of e-portfolios can be seen in the possibility of integrating video, self-refl ection, a web-based community of peers and the feedback of a supervisor (Herrington et al., 2006). However, those components alone are not enough to develop competencies in specifi c areas of teaching practice. What is needed is a theoretical knowledge base for refl ection which helps teachers to defi ne the fi elds of development and to make decisions about how to change their teaching practice.

Standards and refl ective practice in TBLT contexts

Several studies have shown how refl ective practice can be put into prac-tice in foreign language teacher education (Farrell, 2007; Freeman, 1991, 1998; Johnson, 2002; Richards, 1998). However, refl ective practice does not automatically occur when teachers refl ect on their classroom behaviour. A change of teaching practice is likely to happen only if the analytical refl ection has reference to a theoretical knowledge base about relevant theories of foreign language teaching (Freeman & Johnson, 1998; Richards, 2000). This reference to a theoretical knowledge base can be supported by introducing standards of lan-guage teaching, which describes competent teacher action using ‘can-do-statements’. They offer the opportunity to ground refl ections in relevant theory and to make sure that all relevant fi elds of develop-ment are considered in the refl ective process.


Luke and Britten (2007) researched how standards-based e-portfolios could enhance a teacher education programme. They explored the role of technology in a teacher-training course. Novice teachers had to keep e-portfolios to refl ect on their teaching practice. The refl ec-tions were based on required national standards, and the student teachers were asked to what extent e-portfolios helped them put the standards into practice. One of the fi ndings was that most teachers (16 out of 17) said that working with standards-based e-portfolios ‘had helped them in their preparation to become a foreign language teacher’ (Luke & Britten, 2007, p. 262).

Standards-based refl ection on teaching, embedded in an online community of practice, is particularly helpful in a school context in which novice teachers are confronted with resistance to reform-based teaching approaches (Gwyn-Paquette & Tochon, 2002). In such envir-onments it is diffi cult to change classroom practice if there is a lack of best practice examples. Electronic standards-based portfolios offer the opportunity to establish online teacher support groups as they are not limited to forms of spatial presence and can support the development of competencies in defi ned fi elds of practice (Kayler & Weller, 2007; Lord & Lomicka, 2004). In contexts where TBLT is introduced as a new teaching approach, this is often done in an envir-onment where other, more traditional teaching methods are already in place. Although the curriculum might favour this new method, the implementation process is a different matter. Online communities of practice that use e-portfolios with video-based refl ections can be particularly helpful for developing TBLT competencies in novice teachers. However, as Luke and Britten (2007) pointed out, it is important to base such refl ections on standards which describe the expected outcome of language teaching. Those standards are the core element for online communities of practice, because they defi ne the role of the teacher and help participants in the process to focus on relevant issues of the targeted competencies.

TBLT Standards for Refl ective Practice

E-portfolios can help teachers to refl ect on strategies for putting TBLT into practice and to identify fi elds of development. In the


following sections we will show what such standards for TBLT can look like and how they can support the development of teaching competencies in e-portfolios. The standards have been developed in the context of a qualitative study on the TBLT competencies of student teachers during an internship in Germany (Raith, 2010).

The role of the teacher in the task as process

When describing what teachers are able to do when they put TBLT into practice, we fi rst need to look at the role of the teacher. For suc-cessful language learning to occur, teachers should be able to design tasks that engage learners in the language-learning process. However, although task design is essential, there is no guarantee that simply using the right tasks will trigger language-learning processes. Breen (1987) distinguishes between designing a task for the classroom (task as work-plan) and the process of working with tasks in the classroom (task as process), suggesting that both aspects need specifi c consideration when tasks are supposed to result in language learning. In this section, we will explore the role of the teacher during the task as process.

Van den Branden (2006, p. 175) divides this teacher’s role during the task as process into two central aspects:

(a) motivating the learner to invest intensive mental energy in task completion; and

(b) interactionally supporting task performance in such a way as to trigger processes such as the negotiation of meaning and con-tent, the comprehension of rich input, the production of output and focus on form, which are believed to be central to (second) language learning.

Both aspects, one dealing with the teacher playing the role of motiva-tor and the other with supporting a task so as to trigger necessary com-ponents for language learning, will be discussed in greater detail.

Motivating the language learner

During the task as process, one way the teacher can motivate the lan-guage learner is to function as a facilitator who helps the learners to


interpret task instructions and to work on the task (Willis, 1996, p. 40). Furthermore, this role includes encouraging learners towards task completion. Real negotiation of meaning, which is necessary for language acquisition, only takes place if the task engagement of the learners is leading to task completion (Avermaet, Colpin, Gorp, Bogaert & Branden, 2006, p.175). Referring to Breen (1987), Avermaet et al. (2006) describe two general attitudes of learners: the survival orientation, for learners who try to avoid being engaged in the task process, and the achievement orientation, for learners who are actively involved and set goals for themselves. The students’ atti-tudes towards the task as process are however central for the success of language learning in the classroom. As Long (1996) puts it, ‘success or failure to learn can rarely if ever be attributed to the environment alone. Part of the explanation lies inside the learner, most important in the areas of attention, awareness, and cognitive processing’ (Long, 1996, p. 425). Therefore the teacher in a role as facilitator needs to motivate learners to actively engage in the task process and to develop an achievement orientation since this will most likely lead to language development (Avermaet et al., 2006, p. 178).

The duty of the teacher is to awaken an interest in the task and to give the learner enough choices to negotiate ways of accomplishing the task and to set themselves goals which are relevant for them. Dur-ing the pre-task phase, the teacher introduces the context of a task and motivates the learners to actively engage in the task process. Only if learners see the relevance of being engaged in the task from the start, will they be motivated to negotiate meaning and to produce language output which will lead to language acquisition (Dörnyei, 2002, p. 62; Willis, 1996, p. 40). In this phase, the ability of the teacher to interact with the learners and to negotiate ways of solving the task will increase student motivation. Dörnyei (2001) suggests that only by including the learners in decision-making and goal orientation will the success of the learners improve (Dörnyei, 2001, p. 125).

However, motivating learners to engage actively in working on tasks is not suffi cient. Maintaining motivation and helping them to over-come obstacles in the task process is another central role a teacher as facilitator has. Dörnyei (2001) suggests that sustaining learner


motivation until task completion is one of the most important roles a teacher plays during the task as process (Dörnyei, 2001, p. 127).

Giving interactive task support

Although a good task as workplan and motivating the language learners for task completion are essential, those ingredients are not suffi cient for the success of language-learning tasks. Several research studies have shown that the learner’s interpretations of a task infl uence the task as process signifi cantly (Coughlan & Duff, 1994; Harris, 2005; Kumaravadivelu, 1991). Learners construct their own version of a task during the task as process and set their own goals, which might not be identical with the goals set by the teacher. Eckerth (2008) emphasizes that it is not the task as workplan which determines the achievement of language-learning goals, but how the learners interpret and put a task into action (Eckerth, 2008, p. 26). During the task process learners face problems which cannot be foreseen. An important function of the teacher’s role is to support learners in overcoming such cognitive and linguistic obstacles (Avermaet et al., 2006, p. 182; Cameron, 2001, p. 26; Willis, 1996, p. 41).

In order for the language-learning process to be successful it is essential that the teacher provides interactional task support during the task process. In this way, the teacher can guide the process of task interpretation and give the support needed by the learners. In her task-based framework, Cameron (2001, p. 27) underlines the import-ance of task support on the one hand and task demand on the other hand according to Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD):

A task that is going to help the learner learn more language is one that is demanding but not too demanding, that provides support but not too much support. The difference between demands and support creates the space for growth and produces opportunities for learning.

Several studies have shown how interactive support by teachers during the task process improves the language-learning outcome


(Avermaet et al., 2006, p. 190; Van den Branden, 1997, p. 618; 2000, p. 437).

Model for task-based teaching competencies

The standard model of task-based teaching competencies in Table 8.1 is meant to give a framework of what task-based teaching entails. In particular, the task in process is the focus of interest, since the goal is

Table 8.1 Standards-based model of task-based teaching competencies

A Introducing tasks: Motivating the language learner

A1 . . . Can pose tasks in such a way that students can set goals for themselves and actively participate during the task.

A2 . . . Can introduce the task in such a way that task demand and task support are balanced and that students actively participate during the task.

A3 . . . Can explain tasks so that the purpose, expected result and the steps towards task completion are clear and understandable for the students.

B Interactionally supporting task performance

B1 . . . Can support the task process so that processes of negotiation of meaning and content can be supported.

B2 . . . Can support the task process in such a way that processes leading to comprehension of meaningful content are supported.

B3 . . . Can support task processes to encourage relevant processes of language production.

B4 . . . Can support task processes so that formal aspects are noticed.

B5 . . . Can motivate learners through positive feedback during the task in process.

B6 . . . Can motivate learners to work intensively towards task completion and provide necessary task support.

C Evaluating task as process

C1 . . . Can judge learners’ participation in meaningful language interactions.

C2 . . . Can judge using subjective or objective data if the task leads to accomplishment of planned or unplanned language learning goals.

C3 . . . Can judge to what extent goals of intercultural learning were reached.

C4 . . . Can judge to what extent the selection of content (including texts and materials) supported interaction (processes).

C5 . . . Can judge to what extent a methodology of social interaction was appropriate.

C6 . . . Can judge if the time allotment was appropriate.


to refl ect tasks in real classroom contexts. For online communities of practice, the model can serve as a basis of refl ection and discussion. The competence model is based on three sources of validation: the theory of TBLT, the evaluation of experts and the fi ndings of the research process.

Researching Student Teachers’ Refl ections on Tasks

As mentioned earlier, the standards for TBLT have been developed in the context of a teacher-training programme in Germany. In what follows, we will present how student teachers’ video-based refl ections on the use of tasks in their classrooms were researched. A deeper understanding of their refl ection processes can help to analyse how e-portfolios can enhance their professional development.

Purpose of the research study and research design

In a qualitative research study, student teachers’ refl ections on work-ing with tasks were analysed on the basis of the standards model. The study is situated in the context of two teacher education institutions, the University of Education Heidelberg and the teacher training insti-tution in Karlsruhe, both located in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Teacher training in Germany consists of two phases: the fi rst phase is based at a university while the second involves two internships, one completed at a school and one at an internship training institution. Working in close cooperation, the two institutions developed a joint pilot curriculum for TBLT, under which the fi rst cohort of students completed phase one with a university degree in 2006. From February 2007 to July 2008, the student teachers completed the internship in Karlsruhe. During the internship, the students had to teach at their training school and attended weekly courses in classroom meth-odology. The purpose of the study was to fi nd out how the student teachers developed TBLT competencies at the classroom level during the internship. In this context, competence is defi ned as ‘The ability to successfully meet complex demands in a particular context. Competent performance or effective action implies the mobilization


of knowledge, cognitive and practical skills, as well as social and behavioural components such as attitudes, emotions, and values and motivations’ (Rychen & Salganik, 2003, p. 41). The development of competence is seen in the context of a refl ective training model in which a teacher’s refl ection on his/her own classroom practice is central to professional development (Bartlett, 1990; Gilpin, 1999; Richards & Farrell, 2005; Zeichner & Liston, 1996). Therefore, the student teachers’ refl ections on their own lessons through video-stimulated recall were the main focus of the analysis. This multiple case study consisted of fi ve student teachers. For each student teacher, two lessons were video-taped and three days after taping the lesson they were interviewed about the lessons while watching it. In addition to video-stimulated recall, the student teachers had to keep a teach-ing diary by refl ecting on lessons on a regular basis. Those teaching diaries were used to triangulate the results of the interview analyses. In the interviews and teaching diaries, the student teachers were asked to refl ect on their role as a teacher in the task process, particu-larly in terms of what they thought went well and what they would improve if they taught the lesson again. The central question for this chapter is how the results of the analysis of the teachers’ refl ections can contribute to a model of developing TBLT competencies through e-portfolios.

During the coding process of the interviews, the central question was how the student teachers’ refl ections showed aspects of the standards in the model. The categories of the competence model were used as codes in the analysis process. The coded data was clustered according to those categories, and new categories were generated from the data. In a second cycle, the interviews were analysed with the new codes (Raith, 2010).

First, we will present the results of the coding process and a summary of the conclusion. Then we will discuss how the use of technology can support the teacher in developing language-teaching competencies.

Levels of refl ection on tasks

The patterns of the student teachers’ refl ections, which could be identifi ed in the coding process, can be summarized using four


different competence levels. The underlying assumption is that a refl ective teacher can analyse the task as process according to task-based principles and point out alternatives by identifying critical incidents and how those aspects could be improved. In this respect, the student teachers showed different levels of refl ection, which are displayed in Table 8.2.

Findings of the data analysis

The results of the data analysis consist of two central data sets, the content of the student teachers’ refl ections and the level of refl ection they achieved. The fi rst set refers to the standards of task-based teach-ing competencies as they are described in the competence model (Table 8.2). The second set refers to the four competence levels which could be identifi ed in the student teachers’ refl ections. The combination of these two sets can indicate which aspects of the task-based teaching competencies occur and to what extent in the student teachers’ refl ections.

Table 8.2 Levels of task refl ection

Competence Level IV:Judges the (sub-) task as accomplished under consideration of criteria for partial

competencies based on standards, and suggests alternatives.

Competence Level III:Judges a (sub-)task as partially accomplished while taking into account the criteria for

the sub-competence as described in the standards and suggests alternatives to better meet the criteria.

Competence Level II:Judges a (sub-)task as not accomplished while taking into account the criteria for the

sub-competence as described in the standards and suggests alternatives to better meet the criteria.

Competence Level I:Judges a (sub-)task as not accomplished while taking into account the criteria for the

sub-competence as described in the standards but does not suggest alternatives to better meet the criteria.

Competence Level 0:Judges a (sub-)task as not accomplished without taking into account the criteria for the

sub-competence as described in the standards.


Frequent competence categories

The most frequently occurring competence category in the student teachers’ refl ections was introducing the task in the classroom so that the learners understand the purpose and procedure of the task (A3). The second most refl ected category was the ability to support lan-guage production (B3). Category B6, motivating learners for task completion, and C4, selection of input, follow with some distance, but in these categories the students’ refl ections were still on level II. The fi ndings in category B4 (focus on form) show that many student teachers paid attention to the refl ection of focus on form, but were not able to analyse it critically according to TBLT criteria and therefore did not even reach level I. This fi nding makes a positive development in the fi eld improbable.

Infrequent competence categories

Balancing task demand and task support (A2) was indicated infre-quently by the students, as was ‘Supporting processes of interaction and negotiation of meaning’ (B1), which is an essential task-based teaching competence. To evaluate whether a lesson has been success-ful or not, the occurrence of interaction has to be analysed, because interaction has been linked to language acquisition. The least refl ected category was positive feedback (B5). Noticeably, the student teacher who refl ected positive feedback mostly did so when s/he was able to give positive feedback, and therefore could be classifi ed as level III. This indicates that an awareness of positive feedback has to be encouraged externally, because the student teachers tended not to realize an absence of positive feedback.

Summary of the study

The study participants placed a high value on communicating in the target language and were able to refl ect on this aspect so that further development in this area can be expected. Unfortunately, fewer participants refl ected on whether interaction in which meaning gen-eration occurred took place in the classroom. Clearly, it is important to create an awareness of the importance of processes of interaction


for the learning of a second language (L2) during the student teach-ers’ pre- and in-service training. Furthermore, it is this occurrence of interaction which serves as an important criterion for the evaluation and development of one’s teaching in a task-based way. What is largely missing in the refl ections is the process that occurs between the explanation of the task and the execution of the task, or task as process, such as task demand and task support. Furthermore, the realization of formal aspects of the task-based approach was practic-ally absent. Those fi ndings suggest that professional development in important areas of TBLT only occurs if the task-as process is refl ected systematically. Hence, targeted further development of TBLT competencies for the task as process requires targeted refl ec-tions which cover all areas of competencies. E-portfolios, embedded in an online community of practice, can play an important role in this process (Raith, 2010).

Task-Based Teaching Standards and E-Portfolios

The role of feedback in the refl ective process

As the fi ndings of the study have shown, some aspects of the task as process have been considered more thoroughly than others by the student teachers. Moreover, in some categories the refl ections showed that even if they analysed critical incidents, they were not based on sound knowledge of TBLT theory. This does not necessarily mean that those student teachers do not know the theory, but it shows that they are not able to apply it to their classroom practice. When they do not refl ect on some categories, or the refl ections are not grounded in relevant theory, a development of task-based competencies remains unlikely. What is needed here is a strategy of guided refl ection on the educational process. In the research process of the study, the cat-egories of refl ection were not given to the student teachers when they were asked to analyse their lessons. The results show that a more guided refl ection process is needed to support the development of TBLT competencies.

In teacher education, we can identify two basic concepts of profes-sional learning: training and development (Richards & Farrell, 2005, p. 3).


Training is a top-down process of learning how to teach and is trans-mitted through lectures and a curriculum covering major aspects of teaching. Development refers to a bottom-up process and it ‘serves a longer-term goal and seeks to facilitate growth of teachers’ under-standing of teaching and of themselves as teachers’ (Richards & Farrell, 2005, p. 4). Teacher development normally includes features of refl ective practice and sees this refl ection as the core element for change and improvement (Bailey et al., 2001, p. 44). Nevertheless, refl ection on an individual level is not enough:

. . . although many things can be learned about teaching through self-observation and critical refl ection, many cannot, such as sub-ject-matter knowledge, pedagogical expertise, and understanding of curriculum and materials. Professional development, therefore, should go beyond personal and individual refl ection. For example, it can include exploration of new trends and theories in language teaching. (Richards & Farrell, 2005, p. 4)

This statement supports the fi ndings of the study that individual refl ection does not necessarily lead to professional development in every competence fi eld. What is needed is the combination of train-ing and development, a link between top-down teaching of relevant knowledge on TBLT and individual refl ection – a process that is grounded in a knowledge of task-based theory. E-portfolios can help to implement such an approach, however, as we will discuss below.

How e-portfolios can improve task-based teaching competencies

E-portfolios have the potential to integrate video-based self-refl ection, a web-based community of peers, and the feedback of a supervisor (Herrington et al., 2006). The implication is that e-portfolios enhance educational programmes. Although the teacher education institution researched in the study follows an approach of training and develop-ment through refl ective practice, the possibilities to put this into practice are limited. The main limitations are spatial and temporal.


The teacher education system of the state government only provides two visits of the teacher trainers at the training schools of the student teachers during the internship. This means, teacher trainers have limited opportunities to support refl ection on lessons through inter-views. Trainers meet in a weekly course with the student teachers, but this time is dedicated to teaching a group of student teachers, and time for individual interviews is not provided.

Online learning environments offer ways of enhancing refl ective practice on a more practical level in teacher education programmes (Barnett, 2006; Kayler & Weller, 2007; Romano & Schwartz, 2005). Online communities of practice provide the possibility to connect learners beyond spatial and temporal limitations (Scherff & Paulus, 2006). However, those components alone are not suffi cient to develop competencies in specifi c areas of teaching practice. What is needed as a central component is a theoretical knowledge base for refl ection that helps teachers to defi ne fi elds of development and make decisions about how to change their teaching practice.

Open refl ection on tasks without set criteria to refl ect on can be problematic when looking at a development of TBLT competencies. In an e-portfolio the teachers’ refl ections might not include aspects that are central to task-based learning, such as interaction and negotiation of meaning between the learners. Here a checklist or questionnaire with criteria to refl ect on can help to guide the refl ective cycle of the teacher. However, another problem is that refl ections which are based on the teacher’s memory will focus on the teacher’s perception during the lesson. The teacher might simply not remember some aspects which are the focus of refl ection, because she did not pay attention to it while teaching. For this problem, video can be of great help.

Video recording for refl ective practice offers opportunities for self-directed and collaborative learning. Video enables teachers to create a distance between themselves and their teaching and therefore cre-ates a greater degree of objectivity needed for critical refl ection. The video-enhanced critical distance also helps to refl ect on aspects of the lesson which have not been the focus of observation during the lesson. In addition, video can be used to provide basic data for


collaborative refl ection. The obvious advantages are that video gives a detailed documentation of a lesson and can be watched by different people at different times in different places. Integrating video in e-portfolios provides opportunities to collaboratively refl ect on teach-ing practice, without having to participate at the same time or in the same place. This opens options, particularly for educational contexts where spatial and temporal limitations might exist.

In summary, we can say that using video-stimulated refl ections in e-portfolios can enhance professional development through refl ective practice, because video helps to create a space for critical and com-prehensive refl ection. What we also found is that those refl ections should be based on clear criteria of refl ection.

Standards-based refl ection on tasks in e-portfolios

One important feature of e-portfolios in teacher education is that student teachers refl ect on defi ned areas of their teaching practice. Often this is done with criteria-referenced questions (Barnett, 2006; Kayler & Weller, 2007; Luke & Britten, 2007). On the basis of the fi ndings of the research study, we will identify a scenario describing how TBLT competencies can be developed through refl ective practice based on standards in e-portfolios. We will use the institutional context of the research study as an example and will show how in this context e-portfolios help to enhance TBLT competencies.

The student teachers participate in a weekly class at the teacher-training seminar. The seminar provides theory about how to teach, but also time to refl ect on the practice of the student teachers in study groups. Standards-based refl ection using e-portfolios can enhance this process. On the basis of the competence model, criteria for TBLT are introduced to the class. For each competence fi eld (A, B, C), the students are supposed to videotape a lesson and analyse it according to a questionnaire which helps them to refl ect on how the students managed the task as process. Each student teacher publishes a video sequence and the written refl ection of a critical incident on a weblog, and invites other student teachers and the supervisor to provide feedback. In concluding this chapter, we will


show what a workplan for such a refl ection cycle could look like for competence fi eld A of the competence model:

1. Analysing your task introduction and student motivation (A1, A2 and A3)While watching the videotaped lesson, ask yourself the following questions:

(A1) To what extent did the introduction of the task motivate the learners to set themselves relevant goals and actively engage in working on the tasks?

(A2) To what extent was task demand and task support of the task balanced so that learners faced a motivating challenge?

(A3) To what extent was I able to make the task clear to the learners so that they could understand the purpose, product and pro cedure of the task.

Find incidents in the video that help you to answer the questions above and write a refl ective entry in which you analyse them. You can follow these steps:

a) Which incidents in the lesson provide information to answer the questions?

b) Describe the incidents and evaluate what happened.c) Choose one incident you consider critical. Write about what the

meaning and signifi cance of this incident is.d) To what extent does this incident help you to improve your

teaching practice? What is the fi rst step you could take in order to change?

2. Videography of the critical incident on a weblogChoose a video sequence of 10 to 15 minutes that shows your critical incident in context. Upload the video clip to your weblog and post it together with your complete refl ection on the lesson. Include key words as well so that it will be easier to archive and search for your entry.

3. Giving feedback on other refl ectionsWatch the video sequences of the other student teachers and read their refl ections. Give feedback on their analyses and note down your thoughts and ideas.


4. Writing a post about what you have learnedWrite a post on your weblog about new insights you gained on the topic. What typical pattern of critical incidents do you see? What makes it diffi cult to introduce tasks and motivate students? What further steps do you want to take to improve your teaching?

This example illustrates how e-portfolios can enhance criteria-refer-enced refl ections on the task process. The student teachers are lead to systematically refl ect on their teaching on the basis of task-based criteria. Analysing videotaped lessons helps them to see their teaching practice from some distance and observe aspects they would not pay attention to during the lesson. According to the fi ndings of the research study, this aspect is important to develop TBLT competen-cies in every competence fi eld. From this perspective, the student teachers can identify critical incidents and point out alternatives for future development. Writing their refl ection in the context of a community of practice (Wenger, 1999) can increase their level of refl ection (Raith, 2009). Working in such a support group is ‘usually more effective than working on one’s own’ (Richards & Farrell, 2005, p. 51). All of this can be achieved even in contexts where spatial and temporal institutional restraints are a problem. The role of the super-visor is to set the tasks for the student teachers and to be a facilitator of the refl ective process. It is important to make clear from the begin-ning, how the analyses of the weblogs will be evaluated and graded.

Conclusion

As can be seen from the results of the qualitative study by Raith (2010), teachers do not acquire task-based competencies solely through theoretical approaches. Even individual refl ective practice using videos of teachers does not provide a guarantee that teachers acquire competencies in all areas of TBLT. The refl ections of the student teachers have shown that if important aspects of TBLT are not included in suffi cient detail, further independent development in those aspects remains unlikely. However, it appears that refl ective prac-tice guided by specifi c criteria, which are based on standards-based


questions, is one suitable approach to ensure development in all aspects of TBLT. Standards-based questions help teachers consider the refl ective processes across all aspects of TBLT and thus encourage the comprehensive development of task-based teaching competen-cies. Electronic portfolios may play an important role in the develop-ment of this process. They offer the opportunity to share refl ective processes with a community of practice and to enhance the development of competencies through mutual asynchronous feedback.

References

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Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Chapter 9

Edubba: Real-World Writing Tasks in a Virtual World

Kenneth Reeder

Introduction

Visitors open a CD-ROM to be offered a short helicopter ride onto the rooftop landing pad of a city’s offi ce tower. Clicking on a door leads them inside for a hurried meeting with Eddie Chang, City Editor of The Edubba Sun, an electronic news organization, who offers the user a position as an intern reporter, requests a little personal information by way of logging users into the programme and issues an intern’s ‘press card’. Before taking one of an endless stream of phone calls, Eddie points to a story lead sitting on his desk. This invites interns to jump into a waiting taxi and take a wryly narrated tour of places and characters in a virtual city that will be part of their daily English language learning experience for the next four to six weeks.

This chapter presents a case study of an intelligent CALL (ICALL) prototype entitled Edubba. The research prototype has not been commercialized, but rather, was developed to the point where it could be studied comprehensively in the fi eld. The chapter draws its observations in part from that implementation, describing our effort to create authentic tasks drawn from professional journalism rather than from language pedagogy. While the research we report was con-ducted in 2000–2001, Edubba not only continues to provide a fully implemented model of virtual reality (VR) and virtual world (VW) approaches (Kingsley & Wankel, 2009) to creating authentic content for language learning, but also demonstrates the feasibility and educational promise of employing natural language processing to mediate authentic pedagogical tasks. Edubba therefore continues to be of signifi cance to VR/VW and ICALL developers alike.

Edubba: Real-World Writing Tasks in a VW 177

A question guiding this chapter is whether, and to what extent, Edubba can be thought of as an example of task-based language teach-ing (TBLT). In describing Edubba’s instructional design, we consider Ellis’ (2003) useful ‘task vs. exercise’ distinction, testing it along with Long’s notions of focus on form and content by critically examining the learner activities within the simulation. The chapter concludes with two general considerations: fi rst, can simulation software of this sort meet the standards set out in the growing literature on TBLT, and second, is natural language processing (NLP) a promising approach to supporting authentic tasks within the TBLT framework?

Edubba: Simulation Software in a TBLT Framework

Edubba was designed and developed by a university-industry collab-oration with these goals:

This program supports the development of content-based writing and reading skills for 13–16 year old ESL/EAL learners who are at the interme-diate level of English profi ciency and above. This program meets Goal 2, Standard 2 of the TESOL Pre K-12 Standards: ‘To use English to achieve academically in all content areas: Students will use English to obtain, process, construct, and provide subject matter informa-tion in spoken and written form . . . .’ (TESOL Inc., 1997)

Edubba’s aims conclude with this curricular claim:

. . . It also supports learning outcomes from English, Social Studies and Science in the British Columbia Curriculum. (Hooper & Reeder, 1998, p. 1)

We return below to the programme’s dual aims to support both the development of (non-linguistic) subject matter content and academic writing and reading. This curricular claim, alongside the TESOL Standards’ mention of ‘all content areas’ has theoretical implications for understanding the multiple potential for learning inherent in TBLT materials and programmes.

The title Edubba is a Sumerian noun referring to the buildings in which cuneiform tablets were stored, or more generally, a ‘house of


learning’. Edubba is also the eponymous simulated small city located on the west coast of North America, set in the near future, whose development is constrained by limited water resources. The city’s leaders will hold a referendum in a month’s time to poll views about the preferred approach to ensuring a sustainable water supply. Four approaches are being advocated by their proponents, who are cast as characters in the programme: a conservation programme, drilling of artesian wells, construction of a desalination plant and construction of a dam on the region’s only river. The proponents are listed in Figure 9.1,

Figure 9.1 Edubba’s virtual characters


along with additional characters who provide users with further information and opinions. Each solution carries with it costs and benefi ts. In the simulation, users are cast in the role of intern reporters for The Edubba Sun to investigate each proposal, and report to the Sun’s readers. Its editorial board hopes thereby that Edubba’s citizens will make informed choices in the referendum. Thus the virtual city of Edubba becomes a place where writing – and critical thinking – take place for its users.

The programme design of Edubba involves three main elements (Figure 9.2): a virtual city that serves as a context for the student reporter’s research; a distributed database of selected content; and, in what is the most innovative element of Edubba, an NLP engine (what we called ‘The Learning Engine’) which enables interaction in English between learners and the programme. The fi rst two elements are referred to as ‘The Two Realms of Edubba’ in the programme’s Teacher’s Guide since they are visible to users, while the third ele-ment, NLP functionality, remains transparent.

Figure 9.2 Edubba’s conceptual design


NLP functionality, while implemented only in prototype form, warrants our claim that Edubba is an early example of ICALL, to which we return below in our exposition of how users interact with the programme’s assigned writing and thinking tasks. Farrington (1989) offers one of the earliest defi nitions of ICALL:

‘Intelligent CALL’ can be fairly applied to any exercise in which an attempt is made to get the system to process language in a way that approximates, or appears to approximate, to that used by human beings. (p. 69)

while the emergence of an ICALL special interest group for the CAL-ICO organization (http://purl.org/calico/icall) and the NLP SIG for the EUROCALL organization (http://siglp.eurocall-languages.org/) places ICALL and NLP implementations for language teaching and learning solidly in the applied linguistic research and development mainstream, particularly as a means of enhancing the authenticity of language-learning tasks. For a critical review of ICALL which asserts the need for theory-driven applications of NLP in support of TBLT, see Schulze (this volume).

The construction of an easily navigable virtual city (Figure 9.3) was part of a strategy to design an ICALL programme which served as a

Figure 9.3 The virtual city

http://purl.org/calico/icall

http://siglp.eurocall-languages.org/


simulation of the learner’s actual or possible world: a space in which practical problems might be addressed, a virtual city for learning. The game-like quality of the graphic interface also served an import-ant motivational purpose for this young user group: it resembled simulation games that already engaged and involved the users like the SimCity series, and to a lesser extent, VW networking environ-ments like Second Life.

VWs for Language Learning, and the Place of Context in Language Acquisition

Ellis (2003) distinguishes between language use and practice inside and outside the classroom in TBLT. The instructional design in Edubba is intended to simulate something like earlier ‘survival’ tasks employed in L2 pedagogy in immigrant language training contexts, in which learners are challenged to open a bank account or visit a housing offi cial in the context of settlement in a host culture. To that extent, it eschews classroom-oriented tasks and simulates (but obviously does not actually realize) a set of experiences in which language – in this case writing, reading and listening – could fairly be expected to support academic and, to an extent, vocational experi-ence. An object-oriented VW, coupled with a robust NLP function-ality holds promise for importing a sample of world experiences into educational settings, doing this with a greater degree of plan-ning and coordination than is typically found in free exploration by means of web browsers. An intentionally designed, hence selective, set of experiences offers educators the opportunity to create learning tasks that embody agreed-upon sets of goals not only in terms of community survival or settlement, but also in terms of linguistic and cognitive-academic growth.

The question of how much context should actually support lan-guage and thinking tasks has been explored by Shortreed (1993) and Samuda and Rounds (1993) who suggest that lower context induces more sustained interaction. Reeder and Wakefi eld (1987) in their studies of young children demonstrate that literate environ-ments determine the extent to which learners use contextual support for linguistic comprehension tasks, and showed that the need for


contextual support can be located on a developmental continuum. Edubba’s designers allowed for extensive exploration of the VW while linking tasks to classroom processes such as writing conferences with peers and teachers, and linking assessment processes to an approach where teachers continued to review and assess students’ written out-put in the form of news stories, providing individualized and incidental focus on form as needed. At the same time, progress was easily monitored by the programme’s logging functionality, so that the tasks deployed by way of ‘To-Do’ lists for each writing assignment were checked off and reported to users and teachers in a cumulative ‘staff report’ ostensibly by the electronic newspaper’s supervisory staff.

NLP and Language-Learning Tasks

As noted in our description of Edubba’s design, users interacted with characters, locales and tasks either by means of free exploration in an object-oriented, easily navigable city environment, or via their role as student interns charged with completing graded story research and reporting assignments. In either mode, however, the primary point of engagement with the programme was through its natural language interface, in which users could query characters to obtain task-oriented as well as personal information about the character and their relation-ships with others in the VW. The active role afforded by the programme in the research process was motivated in part by research by Swain (1995) on the effi cacy of what she termed ‘pushed’ output. The central role we assigned to learner production in our programme is exempli-fi ed by the following dialogue between one of our users and a key character in the programme, Janet Singh, a young civil engineer whose consulting fi rm is promoting a dam project as the solution to the city’s water supply:

User: Hi, what’s your name? Janet: I’m Janet Singh. User: What do you do? Janet: I’m not sure I understand. Can you say that again in a different

way? User: What is your job?


Janet: I’m an engineer specializing in the design of dams. User: Tell me about this water crisis. Janet: There defi nitely is a water crisis. We could actually run out of water

in two years. User: Why we run out of water? Janet: The city of Edubba is growing and needs to fi nd at least 50 million

cubic feet or 40,000 acre-feet of water. You can look in my briefcase to see how much water that is. (The user can click on a graphic in Janet’s briefcase that illustrates this concept, or can con-tinue the dialogue.)

Two queries and their responses in this exchange are of particular interest to Swain’s output hypothesis. First, the user’s well-formed but idiomatic ‘What do you do?’ is apparently not handled by the programme’s keyword-driven search strategy, and it returns a null response calling for a paraphrase of the original query from the user. The fact that our user successfully created just such a paraphrase is an illustration, we think, of pushed output, where semantically vague input strings are replaced by more informative and referentially explicit queries, with the result that the discourse continues with repairs in place. This exchange is also an example of Long’s interac-tion hypothesis (Long, 1996, pp. 451–452) in which negotiation of meaning occurs, of a sort that triggers interactional adjustment by interlocutors, the NLP engine and users alike. Finally, this sort of null response can be conceived of as a form of negative feedback, shown to be a necessary condition of second language acquisition (SLA) at more advanced levels of mastery and for specifi c language forms (Spada, 1997).

Second, the user’s fi nal query in the excerpt (‘Why we run . . . ?’) illustrates one of the virtues of employing a form of NLP which is lexically driven: because the NLP engine cannot parse its input gram-matically, it appears to ‘hear through’ the grammatical noise to the intent of the query, in much the same way that caregivers of young children have been shown to interact (Brown & Hanlon, 1970). More generally, the active role afforded Edubba’s users is supported by Polio and Gass’ (1998) work on the effectiveness of assigning learners an active role in ‘describe and do’ tasks. While an ICALL programme


that limits user production to written rather than spoken output is far from ideal, Edubba nonetheless represents a starting point to demonstrate the affordances of VWs, autonomous exploration and technologically mediated linguistic interaction tools. At the time of Edubba’s development, there were few demonstrations of automated speech recognition (ASR) being used to promote language learning, and even now, the best exemplars of ASR in ICALL applications such as Project LISTEN’s (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~listen/) The Reading Tutor (Mostow & Beck, 2007, fi eld tested with L2 learners by Reeder, Shapiro, Early & Kendrick, 2008) are similarly constrained both lin-guistically and pedagogically.

Functions, Genre and Task Design in Edubba

The design team took a functional perspective on the nature and acquisition of language, following Slobin (1973) who demonstrated that language learners acquired new forms in the service of prelin-guistic functions, and Halliday’s research (1975) that explicated how children’s linguistic forms emerged to serve pragmatic functions. We designed fi ve linguistic functions or genres (Martin, 1997) for learn-ers in Edubba: description, analysis, evaluation, persuasion and argument. Rather than conducting an ad hoc user needs analysis, these genres were derived from mandated local curricular goals for secondary English and social sciences, because the programme was initially designed for public secondary schools. Following Mohan’s (1986) theoretical work on the relationships among language, thinking and task design, we conducted a conceptual analysis of the genres, gener-ating the relationships shown in Table 9.1.

Our design drew upon theoretical relationships among language demands, thinking skills and tasks to make good on our goal which

Table 9.1 Genres and thinking skills in Edubba

Genre Thinking skills

Description Observational skills; attention to specifi c detailAnalysis Classifi cation, taxonomyEvaluation Comparison and contrast of elements against equivalent criteriaPersuasion All of the above skills, plus ability to assemble and weigh evidence in

support of claims or propositionsArgument

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~listen/


linked the development of writing and reading skills to academic suc-cess, particularly beyond the language area into other areas of the curriculum. In this sense, our instructional design exemplifi ed a con-tent-based instruction (CBI) approach to L2 teaching and learning (Snow & Brinton, 1997) and its earlier analogue in fi rst-language (L1) pedagogy, the ‘Language Across the Curriculum’ research of Barnes (1976) who examined in detail the ways in which language-mediated instruction in science, mathematics and social studies curricula.

This leads us back to Ellis’ (2003) distinction that goes to the heart of L2 programme and course design, at least at the level of learning activity: task vs. exercise. It is instructive to examine a sequence of the learning activities assigned to the student intern writers in Edubba to refl ect upon the extent to which the activities exemplify character-istics of either tasks as currently understood in the TBLT discourse, or language learning exercises as might appear in traditional ‘PPP’ pedagogical approaches.

Ellis was one of the earliest to enumerate some specifi c criteria for what constitutes a task, as understood within the emerging TBLT framework of the day. These features were:

1. A task is a workplan2. A task involves a primary focus on meaning3. A task involves real-world processes of language use4. A task can involve any of the four language skills5. A task engages cognitive processes6. A task has a clearly defi ned communicative outcome. (Ellis, 2003,

pp. 9–10)

While others (Doughty & Long, 2003; Long, 2007; Van den Branden, 2006) offer alternative sets of criteria, we use Ellis’ formulation as a start-ing point from which to assess the extent to which Edubba’s learning activities possess the attributes of language-learning tasks. We take as an example the fi rst ‘Story Assignment’ handed to users by Eddie Chang, the hyperactive and harried Editor at The Edubba Sun (Table 9.2).

How does each of these learning activities in the introductory sequence in Edubba measure up against Ellis’ criteria? Table 9.3 pro-vides a brief, if informal, commentary on each learning activity in turn.


Table 9.2 ‘To-Do’ list for student interns’ orientation

Activity Help notes provided

Meet my Editor

You’ll learn about your new job as a student intern at The Edubba Sun. Your job is to fi nd out about the water crisis in the city, the different proposals to solve it and the people who are promoting the different plans.

Read my story leads

There have been some strange events in Edubba since plans were announced for a referendum on the different proposals to solve the water problems in the city. Keep these strange events in mind when you interview different people in the city.

Get my employee ID card

This is your offi cial identifi cation, and signifi es that you are a member of the Edubba Sun reporting team. If you are working with a writing partner, be sure that both of you enter your names.

Get my reporter’s notebook

This is where you’ll gather information for the feature stories that your Editor will assign you to write. You can keep all your notes there, using the Notes tab. In your Story tab you will fi nd key questions to guide you in your research and writing. That’s where you will compose your features stories. Copy and paste notes to your story. You’ll fi nd lots of help if you need it under the Help tab.

‘To-Do’ List and Contact List

It looks as if you’ve found this ‘To-Do’ List by clicking the icon showing your Editor’s photo. Here’s where your step-by-step tasks are found. Check off each task as you complete it. Your Editor will update these lists as you are promoted on the staff.

Taxi Tour of the City

You can jump out at different locations shown on your map be clicking the taxi’s Exit button. You can also click on the taxi’s map to visit a specifi c location. To return to your taxi, return to the street by clicking your Back arrow, then click on the taxi.

Try the map A quick way of getting around the city to do interviews and research your story is to click on the map button and choose a location.

Try interviewing some peoplein Edubba

Write a short question on the top line of the conversation area of your Writer’s Notebook. You’ll see and hear an answer right below. Learn at least one fact about each person you meet. Not sure of a word that someone uses when they answer your question? Click on a highlighted word to get a quick defi nition, or use a longer dictionary for more complete information.

Progress Report A: Contact List

For each person you meet on your tour, enter a Name and Location under the correct heading. Enter a fact about each person under the Fact heading. Send your completed report in to your Editor for checking. If it’s incomplete, your Editor will return it for more work.

Get my fi rst promotion

Now that you know your way around Edubba, this is your chance to get to work on your fi rst story. It will give readers an overview of the problems with water in Edubba and the different solutions that citizens will vote for in the coming referendum. You’ll follow a four-step process to develop your story: pre-writing and research, drafting, revising, proofreading and publishing.

Take the afternoon off

Wander around the city at your leisure. TIP: feeling stuck in one location and can’t move? Click on the Back button in the Tools section of your screen for easy navigation.


Table 9.3 ‘Task vs. Exercise’ learning activities

Activity Task or Exercise?

Meet my Editor

Learning about a job assignment requires the user to attend to requirements of a simulated job assignment. Language requirements focus upon job-specifi c vocabulary: research, write, interview, fi eld-specifi c vocabulary in conservation, sustainability and urban development, as well as generic vocabulary involved in orienting to a new workplace and an urban environment.

Read my story leads

A relatively simple reading task that requires users to comprehend short narrative accounts of recent events in the city that might have some bearing upon the theme of sustainable water supply. Content-oriented language forms.

Get my employee ID card

The user has supplied simple personal identifi cation information to the logging system in the programme as a means of progress tracking, and receives in turn an entertainingly designed Press Card as way of engaging young writers in the programme and its activities. No linguistic forms apart from personal information.

Get my reporter’s notebook

All language forms here are job-specifi c or related to generic word processing functions embedded in the notebook tool: notes, tabs, questions, research, feature story, copy, paste and help.

‘To-Do’ List and Contact List

This activity informs the user of the sequencing system that will be used in the programme throughout the writing experience, as well the promotion system as tasks are completed. This is conceptual material rather than form-focused, dealing primarily with the concepts of sequence and motivational matters of learners’ progress through the writing process and the programme.

Taxi Tour of the City

Very context-linked navigational instructions, involving spatial and interface language: click, get around.

Try the map As with the previous activity, this provides navigation instructions for using the map utility in the programme in order to get access to characters to meet and interview to fulfi l the job goals set out in the successive story assignments.

Try interviewing some people in Edubba

The user encounters specifi c language of story research: question, conversation, Writer’s Notebook, answer, fact, highlighted word, defi nition, dictionary and information. In effect, the metalanguage of the reporting task is embedded in specifi c instructions for interviewing sources.

Progress Report A: Contact List

Again, metalinguistic terms such as name, heading, fact, report, Editor, are embedded in the broader context of research and fi ling working stories. In addition, the accountability system, mobilized by the Editor’s ability to vet and return incomplete reports, is introduced.

Get my fi rst promotion

This activity simply previews the next fuller writing assignment’s scope, and introduces the sequenced writing process that underlies each story assignment to follow: pre-writing and research, drafting, revising, proofreading and publishing.

Take the afternoon off

Additional navigation instructions use locative terms in the context of leisure exploration rather than linguistic mastery.


It follows of course that an elaborate programme involving naviga-tion and interaction with objects will require orientation instructions, and Edubba is no exception. Thus a great proportion of the language entailed in this fi rst intern reporter’s ‘To-Do’ list involves navigation instruction and suggestions. It is the case that subsequent assignments involve less instruction and more vocationally demanding language that will focus upon the thinking, research and writing steps required for successful reporting (Ellis’ ‘engagement of cognitive processes’ and ‘real-world language processes’). Metalinguistic and computer interface scaffolding is removed gradually as writers grow familiar with the NLP interface and the tools in the Writer’s Notebook and Help fi les.

An example of the reduced scaffolding and focus upon task require-ments appears in the ‘To-Do’ List for the newly promoted Staff Reporters’ Story 1, shown in its full form in Table 9.4.

Table 9.4 ‘To-Do’ list for staff reporters’ story 1


Plan Story 1 Click on the Story 1 tab to open the story template in your Writer’s Notebook. Click on all its different sections. Skim-read the story starter questions. Think about who your audience is. Think about what your purpose is for writing this story. Try to state your topic in a few words. Talk to a writing partner or teacher about these questions. Now’s the time to plan your approach.

Do my story research Visit locations and interview people about the water crisis. You’re looking for the big picture, or an overview of Edubba’s water crisis in this story. Be sure to get a variety of points of view.

Gather facts from documents and objects

Click on different objects and learn more about the facts behind the water crisis. There are lots of documents about the water crisis in different locations: click around the screen to see what you can fi nd to help you gather facts. Are the facts always reliable?

Good reporters and writers often crosscheck facts with other people and other documents. Compare your fi ndings with a writing partner.

Make notes Use your Notes tab in your Writer’s Notebook to record what you are learning about the water crisis and the different solutions that have been proposed. You can select notes with your mouse, copy and paste them into your story whenever you wish. Don’t forget to edit these notes if you move them straight into your story, though!

(Continued)


Table 9.4 Continued


Story examples Click this button in the tools area and look at examples of news stories like the one you are writing. View these stories several different ways by using their tabs. Learn how paragraphs are constructed, and whole stories are put together. Learn how to choose the types of words and phrases that express your purpose.

Write a draft for Story 1

Under the Story 1 tab, use each main section in the story template to guide you. You don’t have to use every guiding question, but if you’re stuck, they will give you lots of ideas to investigate.

Confer with a partner or teacher

Confer with a writing partner or teacher, or both. Ask them to tell you one strong point and give you one suggestion for improving your draft. Listen to these ideas carefully and ask your partner or teacher if they can clarify any suggestions you’re not sure you understand.

Revise your draft Use suggestions and your own ideas for improvement. Good writers go through several revisions before they submit their work for publication or review. Ask yourself if you’ve given your readers enough information in your draft. Can any material be moved to a more effective place in your story? Use the copy and paste tools to handle this.

Use Help pages Click the Help tab in your Writer’s notebook for tips on revising your work. Check out the Process tab for advice on how professional writers and reporters develop and revise their reports.

Use Grammar reference

Click the Help tab, then the Grammar tab. Review your draft and see if you can spot any of the 20 most common errors made by writers who are learning English. Correct these now. Ask a writing partner or your teacher for advice if you’re stuck.

Spell check Find the spell check button. Careful! Spell checkers can’t catch the wrong choice of wording, and will often let a correctly spelled word that’s not the best choice go by without questioning it. Ask a partner to look at your copy if you’re in doubt.

Print revised draft This is it! You’ve submitted your fi rst feature story for The Edubba Sun. If it’s got enough detail for the Editor, you’ll be asked to fi ll out your next Progress Report to be sure you’ve got the big picture on Edubba’s water supply problems.

File Progress Report B

Click on this tab after you print your story. When you are fi nished, click the send button (it looks like an envelope). Your Editor will check your report and return it to you if it needs more work. Keep working on this until your report is complete and accurate.

Receive your promotion

When your Progress Report is complete and accurate, you’ve made the grade to Senior Staff Reporter. Congratulations!

Take a day off Why not visit the beach or go hiking up the river? You deserve a break.


Notice that the only explicit form(s)-focused activities are the requirements to consult the Grammar Reference and Spell Check tools embedded in the programme. All activities focus upon taking writers through the research, pre-writing, drafting, revision and fi nal publication steps inherent in professional writing, the target of the simulation.

Academic Writing in Edubba

Reeder and Hart (2001), in their fi eld implementation of Edubba with college-age international students, make the point that writing in Edubba is conceived of as a collaborative process, as argued by Doughty and Long’s (2003) methodological principles for TBLT. The realities of public education in North America, particularly in urban centres’ where immigrant populations congregate, is that technology will of necessity be a shared resource. Hart’s thesis research noted that L1 writing pedagogy and current thinking in L2 pedagogy urged collaborative approaches at all stages of the writing process (Hart, 2000). Edubba’s design team was infl uenced heavily by the research of Graves (1983), who studied process variables in writing, deriving pedagogical proposals in part from classical rhetorical theory, prin-cipally Aristotle’s The Rhetoric, but also from ‘writing biographies’ published systematically over many years in the Paris Review. In addi-tion, the work of Calkins (1986) with younger learners, and Atwell (1998) with adolescent writers helped us fashion our design for writing within Edubba. They demonstrated that writing was as much a social construction as an isolated intellectual act. We bore in mind Farrington’s (1989) defi ning characteristic of ICALL whereby ‘an attempt is made . . . to process language in a way that approximates, or appears to approximate, to that used by human beings’ (p. 69). Reeder and Hart (2001, p. 8) summarize a dual design incorporating writing process and collaborative creation:

1. The provision of writing tasks in a rough developmental sequence following the various steps of the process of writing, from explor-atory pre-writing experience and thinking, through drafting, revision and polishing for publication for realistic audiences;


2. The incorporation of a design that encourages composing in partners and editing in small groups and in conference with instructors. (p. 8)

They conceptualized the writing tasks involved in Edubba in the model illustrated in Figure 9.4.

The arrows represent the possibility of an iterative revisiting of any stage for rethinking and consequent reworking. As the ‘ “To-Do” List for Staff Reporters’ Story #1’ listed above makes clear, most tasks are keyed to this conception of writing as a process best undertaken in collaboration with both peers and experts or mentors/coaches. Pre-writing, for instance, is promoted by exploration of the town, navigating by taxi or map, visiting specifi c locations and interviewing characters about the water proposals, fact-gathering from embedded objects in scenes (users have a virtual ‘search warrant’ to click any object depicted), and cross-checking discoveries with writing part-ners, in short, exercising the cognitive processes noted by Ellis in his criteria. Drafting entails consultation with models of the target genre, templates for story structure that are provided and questions to gen-erate thinking about the topic. Revision is explicitly preceded by a writing conference with a partner or a coach, so that revision is under-taken with specifi c suggestions. The ‘To-Do’ list makes it clear that

Pre-writingIn collaboration with peer editor, writingpartner, teacher as mentor and coach.

Drafting

Editing /revising

Proofing,Publishing

Figure 9.4 The pedagogical model of writing in Edubba


professional writers undertake several revisions before fi ling a story, and offers additional suggestions for global revisions. Only then is the writer moved towards the polishing steps required to meet the requirements of a critical audience, be it the generalized public in the town simulation, or a teacher charged with assessing the progress of the writer. Finally, the writer is required to fi le the fi nal revision to ‘The Editor’ of The Sun, usually a proxy for the teacher. With the fi ling of Story #1, an introductory overview article, comes promo-tion to Senior Staff Reporter, and access to additional navigational opportunities in order to complete articles on each of the four main proposals for water supply. In every case, the simulation ensured that attention to language forms (in Long’s sense) was motivated by the needs of the newspaper’s audience for clear, informative and bal-anced reporting, not by curricular imperatives or teacher admonition. Note that only prior to fi ling the story did grammatical and spelling considerations enter: prior to that, the emphasis was upon the quality of content. Thus, different standards and criteria for success pre-vailed at different phases of the writing process in Edubba. Finally, it is probably evident from the language employed in the ‘To-Do’ list that the role of the teacher in the simulation is that of senior editor, coach and mentor. Rather than teacher-fronted pedagogy, a working rela-tionship is established by means of which tasks are undertaken with strong support both from the technological resources embedded in Edubba, but also from a professional educator who is freed to inter-vene on a more incidental, as-needed, basis, and able to customize help for learners.

Summary and Conclusion

This case study has considered three elements of the Edubba language learning software:

1. Natural language processing enables interactive practice and development of writing. The chapter demonstrated the usefulness of robust but imperfect, hence forgiving, natural language pro-cessing routines that push learners to produce increasingly


precise, useful and better-informed questions as they research, draft, edit and fi le their feature stories.

2. A real-world database is intentionally distributed across characters in a virtual world. Specialist knowledge about water supply can be queried by means of written expressions that even beginning EAL learners are capable of creating. A proxy for a virtually unlim-ited network of knowledge about water, this more constrained (but scalable) knowledge base is diffi cult to gain comprehensive accounts from, both by virtue of its fi nite size, but also because of its distribution across virtual characters. It requires learners to take independent initiative, access multiple sources, and compare and contrast the points of view and biases inherent in responses from contending sources. Hence critical thinking skills in addition to questioning skills are promoted for these virtual reporters.

3. Instructional design links cognitive processes with real-world linguistic processes, genres and forms. While Edubba refl ects its content based instruction (CBI) and genre theory pedigree, we argue that the programme is more than a knowledge base. Rather, Edubba challenges learners to acquire cognitive-academic skills including information-gathering, problem-solving, critical think-ing and evaluation of sources, and promotes collaborative writing, autonomous learning, and other important intellectual abilities that underpin overtly-taught ‘skills’ of expository academic writing assigned to novice writers. Hence it embodies a TBLT instructional design that drives its CBI/genre theory design elements in order to promote English language learning and academic success concur-rently. Writing process theory was shown to motivate the choice of a sequence of tasks expected of learners in the programme (cf. Pennington, 1996, 2004).

A useful question concerning simulation software like Edubba is whether such simulations allow language educators to realize more fully the principles and standards that are articulated for TBLT (Van den Branden, Bygate & Norris, 2009). We argue, on the basis of our examination of the specifi c tasks embedded in Edubba’s activities, that simulations offer unique affordances whereby the ‘world’ is indeed imported into the language learning setting in ways that free


exploration in cyberspace, or even fi eld experiences in the commun-ity, cannot provide effi ciently. And it is the availability of the VW, scaffolded with carefully designed tasks, in which working skills can be practiced in an enjoyable, exploratory way that allows good simu-lation software to meet many of the standards of high-quality TBLT. The incorporation of NLP features offer additional interactivity which moves CALL software from its earlier reliance on receptive skills, or at best, productive skills that are atomized and at worst, reduced to mouse-clicked multiple choice items, to fl uent production opportunities in convincing contexts of language use for extralin-guistic ends. Advanced speech recognition technology will in turn open up the opportunity to mobilize equally compelling tasks for the development of spoken language.

We conclude with two claims, one curricular, and the other, user-based. First, the Teacher’s Guide links TBLT to the simulation of an authentic vocational challenge to English language learners in this way:

The design for learning in Edubba emphasizes writing for academic success by means of engaging in practical, content-based problems, balanced with a set of ‘reporter’s training’ tasks that focus on task-based language functions and forms.

But the fi nal word concerning authenticity of learning activities in this case study comes from Pablo, a Chilean engineering student, after four weeks’ writing in Edubba in Hart’s trial:

I liked the realisticness of Edubba compared to my town, where there isn’t enough water to power the dam. Private companies turn off our power every day. The time of day is infl uenced by the upper society. The characters represent real life, where there are solutions, and everyone will have an option. (Hart, 2000)

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http://www.spz.tu-darmstadt.de/projekt_ejournal/jg_06_2/beitrag/edubba2.htm

http://www.spz.tu-darmstadt.de/projekt_ejournal/jg_06_2/beitrag/edubba2.htm

Chapter 10

The Enactment of Task Design in Telecollaboration 2.0

Mirjam Hauck

Introduction

The factors that shape task design and implementation in task-based language teaching (TBLT) have received little attention in published research to date and thus remain under-explored. Samuda and Bygate (2008, p. 97) posit that studies about task-based learning (TBL) ‘fail to refl ect explicitly the qualitative thinking of the designer or teacher about what the tasks are intended to do, why they are structured the way they are and why the implementation followed the pattern it did’. Similarly, O’Dowd and Ware (2009, p. 174) observe in relation to published research on online intercultural exchanges, or telecollaboration, that ‘the actual process of task design is rarely referred to . . . and that the choice of tasks is generally presented as an unproblematic fait accompli.’ In response to the call by an emerging body of research for a greater focus on the factors which infl uence task choice in TBL (see, for example, Müller-Hartmann & Schocker-v. Ditfurth, 2008; Samuda & Bygate, 2008), O’Dowd and Ware (ibid.) explore how decisions about task design for telecollaboration are reached and what happens during the actual implementation of a task, focusing on ‘how that task design is negotiated throughout the exchange with different consequences on the learning outcomes’. This is also the backdrop for the present chapter which draws on insights gained from a four-way telecollaborative encounter in autumn 2008 between pre- and in-service trainee teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) from the United States and Germany,


and language learners (German) from the United Kingdom and Poland.

Among the various foci of telecollaboration – such as development of linguistic accuracy and fl uency, learner autonomy, intercultural communication skills and electronic literacy which is also referred to as new media literacy (Guth & Helm, 2010) – the 2008 exchange centred on the enhancement of the participants’ electronic or e-literacy skills, their multimodal literacy in particular, which Pegrum (2009) defi nes as understanding and interpreting the relationship and interaction between different formats of digital media. The fi nd-ings which are reported here therefore also contribute to the equally under-researched relationship of TBLT and technology in general (exceptions are Doughty & Long, 2003; Hampel, 2006; Skehan, 2003). The exchange evolved around a sequence of tasks consisting of an introductory task followed by two main tasks (Task 1 and Task 2). Task 1 had been designed to raise participants’ multimodal awareness, namely, their ability to identify the communication modes available online and how they support or constrain meaning making and communication (Hampel & Hauck, 2006). One of the aims of the exchange was to shed light on the interrelationship between multi-modal literacy and online communication. The design of Task 1 was informed by Halliday’s (1989) social-semiotic framework and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2001) conceptualization of multimodality. Halliday’s framework takes into account three major features of context: what is happening (context of situation: FIELD), who is taking part (context of situation: TENOR), and the role language is playing and which other semiotic features are present (context of situation: MODE). Today, however, a greater variety of media offer different modes for making meaning and the computer also allows us to combine these modes in an ‘orchestration of meaning’ (Kress, Jewitt, Ogborne & Tsatsarelis, 2001, p. 25). As a result, Kress (2000) and others have further developed Halliday’s ideas about making meaning and adapted them to computer-mediated communication (CMC), conceiving language as a complex system made up of written, spoken and visual modalities, each with their own modes and affordances. They have defi ned multimodality as ‘the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event,

The Enactment of Task Design in Telecollaboration 2.0 199

together with the particular way in which these modes are combined –they may for instance reinforce each other . . . fulfi l complementary roles . . . or be hierarchically ordered’ (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001, p. 20).

Section 1 of this chapter argues that among the various forms of computer-supported collaborative learning telecollaboration is par-ticularly well suited to raise awareness of online modes and meaning making and to foster the development of multimodal literacy. In section 2, the 2008 telecollaborative pilot project is presented, with information provided on the project framework, the participants and the methodological approach. Section 3 is dedicated to the description of project Task 1, in particular the approach to task design and the outcome. Next, the main issues that arose during the implementa-tion of Task 1 are discussed. And fi nally section 5 draws this chapter to a conclusion with a summary of the insights gained and the amend-ments made for the current iteration of the project (2009).

Telecollaboration 2.0 and Electronic Literacy Skills Development

With regard to task-based language instruction Skehan (2003, p. 403) summarizes the advantages offered by developments in technology as follows:

What is really exciting about the use of technology is its potential as a source of language learning materials and input. . . . In addition to these opportunities to receive input, there are many opportunities to engage in interaction. A few years ago, this was restricted to typed communication, whether synchronous or asynchronous. Now it is likely that groups of learners can engage in real-time communica-tion, so that the feasibility of exchange arrangements will grow exponentially, and ‘twinning’ of learners and native speakers will become common place.

Such exchange arrangements or ‘twinning’ of learners facilitate collab-orative learning which has been acknowledged as a defi ning element of new media literacy (see, for example, Richardson, 2006), and has


been shown to support learners in developing linguistic and critical inquiry skills – a pre-condition for awareness raising – as well as a sense of community (Hopkins, Gibson, Ros i Solé & Starkey, 2008). Telecollaboration is one form of computer-supported collaborative learning and was originally defi ned as the use of ‘Internet commun-ication tools such as e-mail, synchronous chat, threaded discussion, and MOOs (as well as other forms of electronically mediated com-munication), in order to support social interaction, dialogue, debate, and intercultural exchange’ (Belz, 2003, p. 2) among language learners from different parts of the globe through structured tasks. Recently, however, the scope of these online encounters has been extended to include exchanges based on the use of a lingua franca (e.g. Basharina, 2007; Guth, 2008), between participants who are not all language learners (e.g. Belz & Müller-Hartmann, 2003; Hauck & Lewis, 2007), and who might not even be far away from each other (e.g. Fratter, Helm & Whigham, 2005).

In this chapter we refer to this wider understanding of telecollabo-ration which is probably best captured by Guth and Helm’s (2010) concept of ‘telecollaboration 2.0’. Derived from O’Reilly’s (2005) use of the term ‘Web 2.0’ to describe changes in the way people use and interact via the internet, telecollaboration 2.0 identifi es the shift of focus to dialogue building and social networking tools that are now commonly available. Telecollaboration 2.0 encompasses the development of language profi ciency, intercultural communicative competence and new media literacies. In line with Guth and Helm (2010), we further conceptualize telecollaboration 2.0 based on what networked technologies such as forums, blogs, wikis and video-sharing websites allow learners to do; namely, generating and sharing content and becoming part of online communities. This view is complemented by an understanding of knowledge as being collab-orative, that is the property of the social networks that created it, and of culture as participatory (see also Pegrum, 2009).

Yet, in order to participate, learners have to be e-literate, or as Pegrum (2009) asserts, possess the ‘skillsets necessary to engage effec-tively in contemporary communication’ (p. 36). In his overview of the requisite literacy skills, Pegrum highlights participatory literacy – the ability to contribute to blogs, wikis, social networking and sharing


sites, virtual worlds (VWs) and gaming environments – and multimodal literacy. Following the New London Group and the New Literacy Studies’ understanding of multi-literacies, he subdivides multimodal literacy into visual literacy, audio and video literacy, and media liter-acy, concluding that ‘Most commonly, what’s needed is multimodal literacy, with digital technologies typically demanding competence in a range of the above literacies’ (p. 40).

Focusing on the participatory aspect of the aforementioned skills, Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robison and Weigel (2006, p.4) describe new media literacies as ‘a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people [sic!] need in the new media land-scape’ and which are developed through collaboration and network-ing. Consequently, it could be argued, collaborative online learning emerges as the means and the end of the educational challenge highlighted by Pegrum (2009). Telecollaboration 2.0 then, seems to provide the ideal set-up to meet the challenge and acquire the skills and competencies in question as it is per defi nitionem based on the use of networked technologies and thus affords exchange partners ‘on-the-job’ training, or as Blewitt (2009, p. 3) referring to Hartley, McWilliam, Burgess and Banks (2008, p. 61) puts it:

In its fresh democratic, participatory, sustainable and socially cre-ative state, digital media provides a space where: . . . learning by doing is the norm. . . . Digital literacy is generated by its uses, not by a body of knowledge or ‘critical’ values. It is demand-led literacy.

The Project

The 2008 telecollaborative exchange attempted to emulate such ‘learning by doing’ in relation to the development of multimodal awareness among the participants. It was also inspired by Hoven’s (2006, p. 339) experiential modelling approach, that is fi nding out about online collaborative teaching and learning by being engaged in such collaborative activity in the fi rst place, or in relation to the project, fi nding out about modes available online and their impact on meaning making and communication by engaging in hands-on analysis of web resources.


The participants

The set-up of this pilot project differed from more traditional two- or even three-way telecollaboration projects in several aspects: it brought together four groups of participants, two groups of teacher trainees and two groups of language learners. The pre-service teacher train-ees in the United States took part mainly to explore the use of online tools and resources for tutoring, while their counterparts in Germany were also interested in the intercultural dimension of the exchange and in practising their foreign language skills. The language learners were primarily motivated by the opportunity to practise their German, and saw the interaction with learners from different cultural back-grounds as an added bonus. Table 10.1 provides an overview of the participants. The remainder of this chapter will focus on the relev-ance of the encounter and the chosen approach to task design for the teacher trainees who took part in the exchange. Further fi ndings from the pilot project such as an analysis of participants’ contribu-tions to the project forums are presented in Hauck (2010).

Project framework and methodological approach

Table 10.2 summarizes the project plan.

Table 10.1 Participant groups

Country United States Germany Poland United Kingdom

Number of participants

27 17 14 8

Type of participant

Pre-serviceteacher trainee

Pre-serviceteacher trainee

Language learner (German B1/B2)

Language learner (German B2)

Course they were enrolled in

TESOL – classroom practices

Task-based language learning and the development of media literacy

German language course

In gap period between the end of one language course (German) and the beginning of the next

L1 Various (majority native speakers of English/American English)

Various (majority native speakers of German)

Polish English

Table 10.2 Project plan

2008 Teacher trainees US, Germany Language learners UK, Poland Platform / Tools Critical periods

SeptemberPre-treatment15–28

Receive and return pre-treatment questionnaires e-mail (dedicated e-mail account; hosted and administered by Open University (OU)/Department of Languages)

September/October 29–05

Names, dates of birth, e-mail addresses to be collected to arrange for IDs and passwords for Moodle project site

password protected site hosted and administered by OU

October 06–12 IDs and passwords and URL of project site sent out13–19 – fi nd out about each other

– exchange information about each others’ educational context

– refl ect on quote(s) from MLA report toget into the ‘spirit’ of the exchange

http://www.mla.org/fl report

– fi nd out about each other– exchange information about

each others’ educational context

Moodle forummoderated by members of project teamFlashMeeting (optional) moderated by

members of project teamhttp://fl ashmeeting.open.ac.uk/

20–26 – read literature about the integration of technology into the foreign language classroom

– start work on Task 1 (part 1)

– continue getting-to-know phase with focus on participants’ interest in / experience with learning German

Moodle forums,social bookmarking tool(fOUndithttp://foundit.open.ac.uk)

Oct/Nov 27–02 – continue work on Task 1 (part 2) – starting work on Task 1 (part 1)Nov 03–09 – continue work on Task 1 (part 3) – continue work on Task 1

(part 2)All Saints(religious

holiday in Poland)

10–16 – carry out Task 2 (design of task for language learners)

– continue work on Task 1 (part 3)

17–23 – exchange experience in project so far – carry out task designed by teacher trainees

Moodle forums (teacher trainees) and wiki (language learners)

24–30 – exchange experience with Task 1 from a tutor/learner point of view FlashMeetingDec 01–07 – evaluation of overall project experience (teacher trainees Germany, language

learners UK and Poland)FlashMeeting Thanksgiving

week USA8–14 – presentation of main project outcomes in

class (teacher trainees US)15–21Post- treatment

– receive and return post-treatment questionnaire

http://www.mla.org/flreport

http://foundit.open.ac.uk

http://flashmeeting.open.ac.uk/


The teacher trainees were a week ahead of the language learners so that they had time to design a task (Task 2) for the language learners. The language of the exchange was English. The teacher trainees from the German university participating in the project selected some of the tasks they had designed in their telecollaborative teams (Task 2) and translated them for the language learners. The teacher trainees worked both in local and in telecollaborative groups while the language learners worked in telecollaborative groups only. For the teacher trainees the project design refl ected the approach increas-ingly advocated by CALL professionals, that is, to combine pedago-gical and technical training (Hampel, 2009; Hubbard & Levy, 2006), or, more specifi cally, online tutoring skills and e-literacy skills devel-opment (Hampel & Hauck, 2006). Yet, in order to be able to consider the affordances of multimodal technologies, that is the constraints and possibilities for meaning making and communication offered by the available modes (Hampel, 2006), and to harness their potential for their teaching, tutors need to be aware of the above in the fi rst place; namely, the fact that varying affordances require varying e-literacy skills. Task 1 of the 2008 exchange was designed to foster such awareness. Data were collected through pre- and post-treatment questionnaires and student exchanges in the group forums. Informed consent regarding data collection, analysis and publication was obtained from all participants.

The Approach to Task Design

In their 2006 article, Hampel and Hauck suggest that learner and tutor training as well as task design for online environments should be fundamentally reconsidered and take account of the mediating effect of digital and multimodal tools and applications. The mediat-ing role of technology has been highlighted not only in the context of online language learning and teaching (e.g. Lamy & Hampel, 2007; Lantolf, 2000) but also in relation to our daily life:

. . . the growth of user generated content, social networking, online games, online distance learning and 3-D virtual worlds suggests our


relationship with the physical world . . . is increasingly mediated. (Blewitt, 2009, p. 2)

However, networked technologies not only mediate but also re-mediate existing modes of meaning making and communication. If we want online learners to become agentive in the meaning-making process, Hampel and Hauck (2006) contend, we should raise their awareness of the communication modes at their disposal and of their respective affordances, that is, their potential for making meaning and commun-icating. This view is echoed by Kramsch (2006, p. 251) who stresses that it is no longer ‘suffi cient for learners to know how to commun-icate meanings; they have to understand the practice of meaning making itself.’ In line with Stein’s (2000) call for ‘multimodal pedagogies’, Hampel and Hauck (2006) advocate the systematic development of electronic literacy skills which enable (language) learners to use the new online spaces with multimodal competence as defi ned by Kress 2003, that is being able to express ideas across a wide range of representational systems or modes including ‘words, spoken or written; image, still and moving; musical . . . 3D model’ (p. 21). In this way they could become ‘fl uent’ in new com-munication modes such as online speech and writing and images and their simultaneous realization. Hampel and Hauck (2006, p. 14) argue further that tutors require training in activity development based on multimodal awareness:

Tutors will also need to be trained in the design of activities that make effi cient use of multiple modalities to ensure that learners stretch, change, adapt and modify all elements available. In doing so they will gradually turn into skilled ‘semantic traders’ – experienced in the realisation of the affordances of a variety of modes – and thus systematically develop their electronic literacy skills.

A similar view of e-literacy skills development through TBL is refl ected in O’Dowd’s and Ware’s (2009, p. 175) defi nition of tasks for telecol-laborative activity:

Telecollaborative tasks generally involve different linguistic and cultural communities and thereby have a strong possibility of


producing negotiation of meaning and providing opportunities for the exploration of different cultural perspectives. This makes them particularly suited to recent approaches to task-based learning which include a focus on issues related to intercultural commun-ication . . . and . . . a focus on the skills of electronic literacy. (Shetzer and Warschauer, 2000)

Therefore online (language) tutors should be offered training in the design of activities that make appropriate use of multiple modal-ities so that they can fulfi l their ‘technical’ responsibility beyond ‘introducing tools to the less knowledgeable learners, [and] familia-rising participants with both systems and software’ (Legutke, Müller-Hartmann & Schocker-v. Ditfurth, 2006 cited in Müller-Hartmann, 2007, p. 169). We hypothesize that such training would also contrib-ute to what Fuchs (2006) drawing on Willis (2001) calls the tutors’ professional literacy and would allow them to systematically work up their way on Hampel and Stickler’s (2005) ‘pyramid of skills’ for tutoring online. With enhanced levels of multimodal commun-icative competence tutors are more likely to be in a position where areas of confl ict and misunderstanding in online encounters can be turned into key moments of (intercultural) learning and thus also assume their social responsibility ‘to avoid unnecessary friction among partners’ (Müller-Hartmann, 2007, p. 170). Findings from a previous project suggest that ‘the extent to which telecollaborative partners can draw benefi t from the aforementioned key moments of cultural learning also depends on their ability to make effi cient use of the meaning-making resources available to them online in order to engage in interculturally rich interaction’ (Hauck, 2007, p. 220). Ideally, then, those learners able ‘to choose, not merely with full competence within one mode . . . but with full awareness of the affordances of many modes and of the media and their sites of appearance’ (Kress, 2003, p. 49), would also experience comparatively higher levels of intercultural knowledge gain in telecollaboration.

On the basis of a review of over 40 reports in the literature on tele-collaborative exchanges O’Dowd and Ware (2009) have synthesized


the variety of tasks used into 12 general types. However, none of the tasks in their typology relates explicitly to

(a) teacher training in the context of telecollaborative encounters;(b) e-literacy skills training for tutors and learners.

The approach to task design chosen for this pilot project bridgesthis gap.

The task

The introductory activity fell into category 1 of O’Dowd and Ware’s (2009) typology, that is, an Information Exchange Task where particip-ants provide their telecollaborative partners with information about their personal backgrounds and their home cultures. The subsequent Task 1 was inspired by Lamy and Hampel (2007) who suggest that fi rst the modes involved in making up a multimodal environment should be identifi ed and then the meaning-making and communication possibilities they afford the learner – both as single and as combined modes – should be considered. This approach corroborates Kress’s (2003) observation that it is vital ‘to understand the meaning-potentials of the resources as precisely and as explicitly as we can’ (p. 24) and to do so ‘we need to attend to the materiality of the resources, the mater-ial stuff that we use for making meaning’ (p. 32).

Furthermore, Task 1 was informed by Halliday’s social-semiotic framework (Halliday, 1989) expanded by Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2001) understanding of multimodality to include the modes for making meaning offered by the new media. Broadly speaking it falls into category 2 of O’Dowd and Ware’s (2009) typology, that is Comparison and Analysis Tasks requiring learners to exchange informa-tion, but also to go a step further and carry out comparisons or critical analyses of cultural products (e.g. books, surveys, fi lms and newspaper articles). In the 2008 exchange, participants were asked to focus on the modes featuring on a web resource of their choice and on how these modes convey information. The aim was to encour-age them to fi nd out about their learning partners’ various cultural


TASK 1Analysis of a website with information on one of the cultures/countries represented in each participant group.

TASK 1, PART 1In your local teams (‘local’ refers to your institution), please choose an educational website (i.e. a site which a school, college, university or an organization has put up) which informs you about one of the cultures/countries represented in your partner group. The idea is to trigger a stimulating cross-cultural discussion among cooperative teams (‘cooperative’ refers to your team plus your partners overseas).

Examine and evaluate the website in terms of its goals and content:

1. What is the site about?2. What can you say in terms of reliability of the website?3. What activities are provided?4. Are there any cultural values and beliefs embedded in the materials presented?

Post the link to the site you have chosen

– to ‘fOUndit’ (a social bookmarking site which you fi nd in the ‘tool’ box on the right hand side of the Moodle project site). Don’t forget to annotate your link in fOUndit.– to your group forum on the Moodle project site. Please post the answers to the questions above to your group forum.

Now look at what your group members have found and said about their site.Post at least one comment/reply to the link your group members have sent to your group forum and – if you have enough time – also look at what others who participate in this project have posted and comment on their sites and observations using the commenting facility in fOUndit.

TASK 1, PART 2Please compare the two websites that your cooperative group has found by answering the following questions:

1. Who are the intended participants/users of the site(s)?2. Are the sites intended for individual use, pairs or groups of people?3. How interactive are the sites? Do they mainly provide information, or, is there an opportunity to contribute to the site(s) (e.g. rate the sites, leave a comment, upload images or pictures)?4. What is the user’s status (e.g. passive viewer/reader, actively engaging in an activity, a mix of both)?

Please post your answers to the questions to your group forum.

TASK 1, PART 3You will continue comparing the sites your group members have found by answering the following questions:

1. What channels of communication are available on the site you have chosen (written language, spoken language, images/pictures, gestures, etc.)?2. What role does spoken/written language play on the site you have chosen?3. How do these features (spoken/written language, images/pictures and their colours, etc.) infl uence what we learn about the culture/the country?

Please post your answers to the questions to your group forum.

Figure 10.1 Project Task 1


backgrounds – independent of the country where they were currently studying while at the same time becoming increasingly aware of how the information they are evaluating was communicated to them. Figure 10.1 illustrates the three parts of Task 1.

Work on the three parts of Task 1 was followed by the second main task of the pilot project which falls into category 3 of O’Dowd and Ware’s (2009) typology, that is Collaborative Tasks requiring particip-ants not only to exchange and compare information but also to work together to produce a joint product or conclusion. The product created by the teacher trainees was a task designed to develop multi-modal awareness in learners mapped onto the approach they had experimented with during Task 1.

Task Implementation: The Ongoing Enactment of the Tasks

The rationale for the sequence of tasks chosen for this telecollabo-rative encounter is best explained by looking at the degree of interactivity and sense of community required in each phase of the exchange. Moreover, task sequencing allows tutors to cater for various learning objects – one at a time – in one single exchange. Most commonly, three stages can be identifi ed in telecollaboration. In the introductory phase participants use a coffee shop or virtual pub/bar type forum to introduce themselves and fi nd out about each others’ backgrounds including their educational and institutional context, their expectations and their motivation for taking part in the exchange. During this phase they usually interact once or twice with one another and primarily on a social level. This is often fol-lowed by a comparative phase where they start engaging with each other more closely, and fi nally a collaborative task which requires intensive exchanges among the learning partners to come up with a product such as an essay or a bilingual website. The encounter is often rounded off with a brief individual or joint refl ection on the experience as a whole and an evaluation of the insights gained – also carried out either collaboratively or by each individual participant (see, for example, Belz 2002; Hauck & Lewis, 2007; Müller-Hartmann


2007; Wilden, 2007). The project team for the 2008 exchange – one tutor-researcher from each of the participating institutions – also agreed relatively quickly to follow this sequence of tasks.

Yet, as O’Dowd and Ware (2009) point out, task choice and sequenc-ing are only part of what infl uences the interaction and collaboration among participants and the outcome of an exchange. Equally, if not even more important, are the interactions among the instructors as they negotiate ‘the ongoing enactment of the tasks’ (p. 179).

The crucial role of the collaborating teacher-researchers during task implementation in relation to the outcome of telecollaborative project has been mentioned before (see, for example, Hauck, 2007; Müller-Hartmann, 2007; O’Dowd & Ritter, 2006). In addition, cross-cultural differences in various institutional settings often play a sig-nifi cant role in terms of restrictions or enhancements of the tutors’ role in telecollaboration (Belz & Müller-Hartmann, 2003). All of these factors came into play during the task execution in the current pilot project. One of the two groups of participating teacher trainees was already quite diverse in terms of their linguistic and cultural back-grounds. As a result, the tutor-researcher who had volunteered to participate in the project found it quite challenging to convince the students of the added benefi t of online collaboration with learning partners from different countries. Furthermore, s/he worked under considerable institutional constraints – in contrast to the other project team members who had more fl exibility and more homogenous groups of participants – and had to set out the details of each phase of the exchange in a contract-type document for the learners. S/he also had to respond when the students expressed dissatisfaction with the duration of Task 1, which consisted of three parts stretching over three weeks. The resulting tension was aggravated by the fact that the initiator of the exchange had seemingly failed to articulate the learning objectives and pedagogical beliefs to the teaching partners during the preparatory stages of the project.

Thus part 3 of Task 1 – which originally had an explicit focus on online modes and how they facilitate meaning making and communication – had to be amended midway through the project as there was a perceived risk that some of the dissatisfi ed participants would drop out early. This decision had to be accommodated by the


remaining project team members and had a considerable impact on the outcome of the project which had originally been conceived to address the following issue (Hauck, 2010):

The increasing convergence of technologies encapsulated in twenty-fi rst century online tools does make new and different cognitive demands on users, and thus also on tutors and (language) learners. Varying degrees of embeddedness of modes in the new media . . . and the ensuing modal complexity turn . . . telecollabora-tion into a new challenge.

One of the intended outcomes of the pilot project, namely to raise the participants’ awareness of online modes, meaning making and communication had thus been marginalized during the ‘ongoing enactment of the tasks’. Once again it became obvious as Müller-Hartmann (2007, p. 169) concludes, that the concept of the tutor as a mere facilitator who sets up, supports, guides and monitors the interaction among learners ignores the local institutional constraints. The colleague who asked for the amendment to the task was under considerable pressure as s/he knew that there was going to be an offi cial end-of-term evaluation of his/her course by the students including the project experience. This feedback in some higher education contexts has an impact on the individual’s professional standing and even career.

Eventually the following version of Task 1, part 3 (see Figure 10.2) was posted on the project site.

TASK 1, PART 3

Step 1 Based on your prior research (Task 1, Parts 1 & 2), choose one site together with your local partner that you would both like to use with your ESL/EFL students. Provide a brief rationale for why you chose the site, including the issue of multimodal-ity (different channels of communication for language learning written/spoken language, images/pictures, etc). Please, include a sample activity if you have time.

Step 2 Post Step 1 in your Group Forum. Step 3 Comment on your cooperative partners’ website choice: Are there any additional suggestions you have with regard to using the site? Any further comments?

Figure 10.2 Project Task 1, Part 3 new


It was therefore not surprising that the number of forum postings which make explicit references to modes and meaning was much smaller than anticipated. As a result, the project team re-visited the task design for the current iteration of the exchange which at the time of writing of this chapter is still ongoing.

Conclusion

The experience of the 2008 telecollaboration outlined earlier has shown yet again, as Bygate, Norris and Van den Branden (2009, p. 498) point out, ‘teacher development . . . [is the] lynchpin for progress of the TBLT enterprise’ (see also Raith & Hegelheimer, this volume). It further confi rms O’Dowd and Ware’s (2009) claim that beyond decisions on the nature and sequencing of tasks, the teaching partners of the project team must consider how they will negotiate the enactment of tasks throughout the exchange. As they need to agree and reach joint decisions about task design, implementa-tion fl exibility and openness to alternative views and approaches are crucial for the positive outcome of such encounters.

The main decisions taken for the second iteration of the project in 2009 were to provide participants with:

– A list of literacy skills based on Pegrum (2009) and to ask them which of those were required to use networked technologies (forum, social bookmarking, wiki, chat, Ning and blog) and which could be used to help develop them (Task 1).

– An example analysis of a web resource with an even more detailed set of questions with regard to modes and meaning making (Task 2). Figure 10.3 illustrates the amendments made to part 3 of the original Task 1 (2008 pilot project).

The incentive for implementing the changes went beyond the level of detail refl ected in the 2008 questions on communication modes and meaning making, and happened as a result of the following mail message during the project team’s evaluation of the exchange:

I think, if we work with the websites again, we need to pre-structure the task more than last time. I think based on the participant’s


cultural background in the classes we should put together a list of possible websites that conform to our requirements of multimodal-ity and ICC [intercultural communicative competence] and then have the students possibly choose if we fi nd a suffi cient number of sites. This is what I meant earlier with the teacher’s role in designing/initiating tasks. We have a clear aim if we want our learners to develop awareness of MM [multimodality]. To achieve this and not get them lost on sites that are not helpful we pre-select and then set them loose. This is what I understand by ‘guiding’. That way, they are focussed right away, and don’t lose valuable time which can be used for analysis and negotiation.

The fact that the team is still together and has decided to implement another iteration of the project also shows that despite relatively different institutional settings and pedagogical convictions, tutors can make telecollaborative exchanges work by ‘carefully combining

Task 2 / Part 3 MODE

Introduction

This part should be fi nished by Friday, November 20th

Please, take a closer look at the various communication modes/channels available on the website you have chosen:

• spoken mode (code – including languages and language varieties, vocabulary, syntax, voice and pronunciation, non-verbal signals)

• written mode (code – including languages and language varieties vocabulary, syntax, paragraphing, i.e. rhetorical structure, punctuation, etc.)

• image mode (photo, drawing, diagram, graph, logo, layout, colour three-dimensional representations, etc.)

• gestural mode (gestures, sign language, dance)

Which modes are represented on your chosen site and which functions do they have?

Further instructions Post the answers to the questions above to your respective group Forum.

Commenting/givingfeedback

Look at what the other groups have found about the sites they have chosen. Post at least one comment/reply to one of the other forums for each of the three parts of the task.

Figure 10.3 2009 exchange – Task 2, Part 3


interaction procedures in order to refl ect their own beliefs and teaching objectives as well as those of their teaching partners’ (O’Dowd & Ware, 2009, p. 182). It is true, however, that setting up and running such exchanges is and will probably remain – as O’Dowd and Ware so pointedly summarise – ‘a gargantuan task’ (p. 183) in itself.

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Chapter 11

Afterword: Future Directions for Technology-Mediated Tasks

Gary Motteram and Michael Thomas

The Future and the Past

Trying to predict the future is a rather dangerous pastime. This has always been true where the future of technology is concerned. In 1943 the chairman of IBM predicted that it was unlikely that the world market could sustain more than fi ve computers. Three decades later in 1977, the CEO of a prominent digital technology company predicted that it was unlikely that anyone would ever need a com-puter in their own home. Being unable to predict the future, even when major transformations are only a short time away, is equally true of language education, where methodologies rarely seem to ful-fi l their potential or live up to their advocates’ ambitions in precisely the ways they once envisaged. Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is currently being advocated as the replacement for communicative language teaching. As the chapters in this book indicate, however, advocates must be careful not to overestimate its potential and adopt a fl exible rather than exclusive approach that is open to other research traditions – one that in emphasizing the negotiation of meaning does not exclude linguistic input, or in emphasizing authentic tasks does not neglect the way information and communication technologies (ICTs) are reshaping patterns of communicative activity.

In considering the future of technology-mediated tasks, previous research on TBLT and computer-assisted language learning (CALL) appears to have been rather limited. At fi rst glance, this seems rather anomalous, as there is an obvious link between learning technologies and the use of tasks. Indeed, Levy and Stockwell (2006) identifi ed

Future Directions for Technology-Mediated Tasks 219

‘task’ as the seventh most frequently used keyword identifi er in their corpus of major CALL research between 1999 and 2005. As this statistic suggests, in our increasingly networked world, technology provides signifi cant opportunities for learners to engage in exactly the kinds of authentic task-based activities focused on developing communicative fl uency, accuracy and complexity which are so often missing from conventional language curricula.

Teachers who use technology have not just discovered TBLT then; it is perhaps more accurate to argue that their work with tasks has not fallen within the specifi c parameters of the ‘stronger’ version of TBLT suggested by Norris, Bygate and Van den Branden (2009) and described in Chapter 1. As there have been few examples of extensive TBLT-designed programmes, there are fewer if any CALL-based cur-ricula that adhere to a rigorous TBLT foundation. This tendency has been conditioned by a number of factors, not least by the way CALL researchers frame their teaching practice, principally because they have an interest in the eclectic array of disciplines that have infl u-enced CALL since its formal beginnings in 1983 (Chapelle, 2001). As Levy (1997) pointed out over 10 years ago, CALL research draws on a mixed array of disciplinary and interdisciplinary infl uences from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Psychology, Instructional Technology and Design, Applied Linguistics, Computational Lin-guistics and Artifi cial Intelligence (AI). However, if we take the ‘weaker’ defi nition of TBLT suggested by Thomas and Reinders in Chapter 1, it is possible to identify an already existing and developing body of CALL research relating to task design, sequencing and implementation, to name but three areas of concern, which will be valuable signposts for the future.

Chapelle (2001, p. 41), for example, utilizing a similar set of infl u-ences to Levy, examined how CALL and a task-based framework might be established. She presented a series of questions through which she asked readers to consider how a future research agenda might be conducted in the area of task-based CALL. The questions that Chapelle asked almost a decade ago, particularly the fi rst four, are still relevant to a number of ideas and issues that are raised by contributors in this book vis-à-vis second language (L2) ability. In Chapelle’s fi rst question the emphasis is on asking how computers


can be used to enhance communicative development. In the second question Chapelle focuses on how collaborative CALL activities can be used to develop communication. The third question is concerned with how AI and Intelligent CALL (ICALL) applications can foster communicative competence and improve assessment. In the fourth question we are asked about the role of software which recognizes and produces language. All of Chapelle’s questions have been addressed in this book and while Chapelle and Levy are not necessar-ily using the same terminology, their concerns and the concerns of other users of technology in language classrooms are very similar. As far as tasks and CALL are concerned then, the past is not another country; tasks have been an integral and structural component of CALL research for over two decades (Levy & Stockwell, 2006). While the future remains diffi cult to predict, that leaves us with the present state of task-based learning (TBL) and the potential of CALL.

The Present

The world of language learning and teaching has entered a phase that Johnson (2006, p. 235) has called the ‘sociocultural turn’. Socio-cultural theory is also referred to by Rod Ellis in the Foreword to this volume and has been a key feature of a number of the chapters on computer-mediated communication (CMC). The particular aspect of sociocultural theory that has been presented most overtly in this book is Activity Theory (AT), most notably in Chapter 2 by Müller-Hartmann and Schocker-v. Ditfurth, but also in other chapters through references to Lantolf and Thorne, or Vygotsky.

At the same time as sociocultural theory and the web have emerged, TBLT has become one of the most potentially signifi cant methodo-logical discourses following criticisms of ‘communicative’ language teaching. Indeed, it would not be diffi cult to reframe Chapelle’s ori-ginal questions with similar ones about TBLT. One other development in the fi eld of language teaching is the use of case studies (Edge & Richards, 1998) to refl ect on the ‘situated’ nature of teaching and learning (Slaouti, Motteram & Onat-Stelma, 2010). The idea that language educators should theorize from and about their practice


has been well rehearsed by Kumaravadivelu (2001) in his references to the particular, ‘based on a true understanding of local linguistic, social, cultural, and political particularities’ (p. 544); the practical ‘which encourages teachers to theorize from their practice and to practice what they theorize’ (p. 545); and the possible which emphas-izes the relationship between language learning and sociocultural reality, and the need to recognize the social needs and identities which come with each individual learner. Indeed, in this volume we have seen a series of cases that in applying a task-based framework do precisely that. At this point, two vignettes can be used to illustrate how many of the concerns of TBLT identifi ed in the preceding chap-ters can be used to create synergies with CALL research on tasks.

Two Vignettes

Vignette 1: language teaching in virtual classrooms or via Skype

The LANCELOT project,1 funded by the European Commission, is concerned with the growth of desktop videoconferencing (DTVC) to deliver language learning across the world. A second project, AVALON, focuses on twenty-fi rst century Multi-User Virtual Envir-onments (MUVEs), in particular Second Life, as a site for task-based language learning. These two technology-mediated learning envir-onments offer the possibility of synchronous audio communication, in the fi rst case with video and in the second case as an avatar inter-acting within a virtual world (VW) that can be made to appear and act like the real world, if this is what is required. These environments are both described by various contributors to this volume as techno-logy-mediated multimodal spaces (e.g. Hauck, Chapter 10).

Synchronous communication has come a long way in the past few years, particularly with developments in audio communication, but increasingly video is also a distinct possibility. However, we need to use such tools with caution as Stockwell reminds us in Chapter 5, which compares synchronous and asynchronous text-based tools, and to understand how learners respond to TBL in these online medi-ated contexts. We can easily fi nd ourselves in what is often termed


a virtual classroom (see Hiltz, 1994 for some seminal discussion of these tools) many of which are now freely available on the web. In fact, a good deal of online teaching via synchronous audio communication tools is conducted via Skype with a number of articles starting to appear from 2005 (Godwin-Jones, 2005; Kukulska-Hulme & Shield, 2008; Telles & Vassallo, 2006). What does this trend refl ect?

For the teachers who are creating these lessons this technology has been normalized; this is increasingly the case for their learners too. People are becoming more familiar with Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) tools like Skype, and are using them in their everyday lives; they are also increasingly possible in education institutions. However, it is often the case that many of these lessons are being conducted by people who have set up and run their own internet-based businesses. One example is provided by English Lab (http://www.englishlab.net) run by Anastasia Andros who uses a combination of web-based technologies (Moodle, Skype & WizIQ) for her distance-based teach-ing. Her choice is partly conditioned by her circumstances, but also relates to the needs of her students. Anastasia’s learners are mainly interested in gaining qualifi cations which enable them to study abroad. This leads her to make certain choices in the tasks which she asks her students to engage in. One of her assignments from the MA in Educational Technology and TESOL completed at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom was to produce some web pages that were built around a WordPress blog being used as a Content Management System (CMS). She chose to design pages which focused on developing her students’ skills on Part 2 of the IELTS speaking test (a short talk). Her decision-making process was based on an analysis of her students’ needs. This can be seen in AT terms as represented in Figure 11.1.

We can see that Anastasia is engaging in the fi rst of Long and Norris’ (2000) six-step process. In AT terms she is performing an action (see the discussion of Level II by Müller-Hartmann and Schocker-v. Ditfurth in Chapter 2). Anastasia is doing this in order to inform herself about the choices she needs to make to provide her learners with effective tasks. The action of engaging in a needs analysis helps her to make decisions about what she should do with her learners, but not necessarily about the tools. She may well have

http://www.englishlab.net

http://www.englishlab.net


certain beliefs about the tools herself (Slaouti, Motteram & Onat-Stelma, 2010); however, in this case she makes use of a blog to achieve her ends, partly as the result of the assignment that she was expected to produce. What this illustrates is that she is engaged in two actions as a teacher. The fi rst is concerned with someone who is making a choice about which technology to use in order to mediate this par-ticular task. In the second she addresses what the task will need to be like in order for it to achieve its aims, and how the particular task design will mediate the process.

In Chapter 10 Hauck describes how a particular set of tasks being used to develop e-literacy skills were negotiated in a team of tutors and how much work this might take. Hauck’s chapter invokes Halliday’s socio-semiotic framework to discuss this particular task and it would be possible to frame what Anastasia is doing in a similar way. Anastasia is helped in that she is working on her own with a group of learners and the choices that she makes are not being dictated by a particular organization or by other people. They are clearly mediated by her desire to meet the needs of her students and the beliefs that she has about methodology which could be described as task-based. Hauck is working with a team of tutors in different pedagogical con-texts who have to reach agreement about how to construct a task – a process which proves to be much more diffi cult than was originally

Interview

Teacher Improvinglanguageteaching

How toconduct

interviews

Current andformer language

learners

Teachers ask questions;students answer;

teacher processes data

Moresatisfiedlearners

Figure 11.1 Needs analysis viewed through an activity theory lens


envisaged. The local conditions, the sociocultural reality, dictate the construction of tasks in both cases. Moreover, Collentine (Chapter 6) also provides an example of the complexity associated with construct-ing TBLT in a synchronous task environment.

Teachers who took part in the LANCELOT project also established a small business to teach languages online using various Web 2.0 tools, but particularly focused around different forms of DTVC. The course they took made them refl ect on how tasks might relate to technology. A heuristic called the Hexagon model was used in the course to help them do this. In Figure 11.2 we can see how this worked.

This model, constructed by Armellini, McLoughlin and Motteram (2006) as a part of the LANCELOT project, used different elements that a teacher needs to consider when making choices about how to

Figure 11.2 The hexagon model of synchronous teaching methodology


design a technology-mediated task. It was used as a course tool to get the teachers to manage task construction in a complex multimodal space. When you look at the model you need to start from the centre and make choices according to the characteristics of the lesson. As you move from the centre, it becomes more diffi cult to manage the tasks. For example, working with an advanced learner, one-to-one, with text-based exchanges where you are focusing on access and familiarization, produces an easier working environment. So if you are a novice teacher you may start from this point, and as you add complexity (see Collentine, Chapter 6), the tasks become increas-ingly more diffi cult both for learners and teachers.

Vignette 2: language learning in Second Life

In the second European project (AVALON), researchers have been making use of Second Life as an exemplar for a MUVE. Second Life is a complex learning space, but as Reeder points out in Chapter 9, learners will be increasingly expected to develop appropriate tasks in these technology-mediated environments in the future. At the moment, AVALON project members are working with a team of people who are doing a variety of teaching in Second Life. Two of the courses include Debating and Business English. There is even more of a need in a MUVE to prepare learners for the technological infrastructure needed to function in the environment (Dudeney & Ramsey, 2009). Throughout any teaching period there is a good chance that technological problems may arise, despite the fact that both teachers and learners are becoming increasingly familiar with technology in the classroom. The use of technology-mediated tasks in instructed environments must also acknowledge the potential for technical problems such as lag-time when using the web; if such issues become a major concern, the focus on tasks may be obscured.

Although the Hexagon model was established for use in the DTVC world, we can see that it is applicable for the use of tasks in Second Life as well. In Second Life it is diffi cult to start simply with text, as from the very beginning instructors need to be able to negotiate their way around the environment. However, if the students are fi nding access to the virtual environment problematic, they can be supported


with more familiar tools, such as Skype for example. Teachers and learners could still meet one-to-one and deliver a course; however, the affordances of Second Life would encourage them to move away from these more basic tasks quite quickly. These are some of the challenges that teachers and learners face as they move into more complex technology-mediated digital environments to conduct task-based language learning and teaching.

In a document constructed for the AVALON project wiki, Deutschmann (2009) points out that it is necessary to have a decision-making process which starts at an appropriate time before teachers begin integrating tasks in the classroom (see Figure 11.3). This understanding reinforces the notion that TBLT has to be pre-pared for well in advance and that teacher training is an essential component of the process (see Raith & Hegelheimer, Chapter 8).

Deutschmann’s model implies that in order to make effective decisions instructors need to start from an appropriate philosophical standpoint; they need to be tuned in to the needs of TBLT as well as those of the learners. In a paper with Molka-Danielsen (2009), Deutschmann describes the realization of his ideas in relation to a Debating course. He discusses in detail the nature of his learner group and how he adjusts his curriculum to suit the tasks that he asks them to do in Second Life. He factors in different learning outcomes to satisfy the needs of the diverse student groups on the course because, as he shows in his data, the learners orient themselves differ-ently to the learning outcomes for the course. Deutschmann also makes use of AT to support teachers’ understanding of what is going on this context. In any activity system it is never clear whether the different parts of the community have the same idea about the anticipated outcomes. In this context, Deutschmann is emphasizing that teachers need to be more aware of the different expectations of the learners in the group in order to achieve appropriate learning outcomes arising from the task.

In adjusting tasks for CMC contexts, as Deutschmann suggests, teachers will become increasingly aware of the ‘situated’ nature of tasks, particularly in relation to different curricula and types of learner, as well as different institutional and cultural assumptions. The integration of tasks in CMC therefore can be used to shed fresh

Future D

irections for Technology-Mediated Tasks

227

1. LearningPhilosophicalStarting Point

2. Affordances:What motivates theuse of SL?

3. General DesignIssues

4. Specific TaskDesign Issues

5. Implemention,evaluation andredesign

Figure 11.3 A model for implementing tasks in Second Life from Deutschmann (2009)


light on criticisms which have emerged about task-based approaches, reinforcing that while TBLT has much to recommend it, there is no ‘one’ single best method of language learning and teaching.

Three Current Criticisms of TBLT

Although tasks have been advanced as a way of producing learning conditions conducive for second language acquisition (SLA), three main critiques of the task-based approach have emerged over the last decade, as Ellis (2003, pp. 328–338) suggests:

1. The focus on tasks leads to a too restrictive and functional approach;2. The argument that TBLT is an Anglo-American methodology;3. The impossibility of using a task-based approach to develop

communicative competence.

Criticism 1: a focus on tasks is restrictive

The focus of the fi rst critique is the claim that by implementing a purely task-based approach, this restricts many of the creative features often associated with language education. Ellis (2003, p. 330) draws atten-tion to Cook’s (2000) formulation of current pedagogical approaches (by which he means TBL) alongside ‘features of language play’. TBLT is identifi ed with a functional emphasis on ‘information’, ‘exactitude’, ‘mundane subject matter’, ‘usefulness’ and ‘one-off activities’ rather than creativity, ‘indeterminate meanings’ and ‘pleasure’.

Such an emphasis on functional rather than creative task-based activities is at odds with the much-vaunted ‘digital natives’ – a new generation of learners who are typically identifi ed with the need to move to new types of creative pedagogy. There have been various attempts to categorize this new generation of learners, and in addi-tion to Prensky’s term (2001), some of the prominent labels include ‘cyberkids’ (Holloway & Valentine, 2003), and ‘net generation’ (Oxford & Oxford, 2009; Tapscott, 1998). All of these labels attempt to defi ne a new generation of young people, predominantly in terms of age, who have grown up with the World Wide Web and the every-day use of CMC, both inside and perhaps more importantly outside


of formal learning contexts. It is a common assumption of this con-cept that there is a resultant ‘digital divide’ between this generation of net-savy students and their parents and teachers, the so-called ‘digital immigrants’, who speak the language of digital technologies with a ‘thicker accent’. According to this argument, in addition to being strongly infl uenced by Web-based technologies for commun-icating, this ‘generation’ is developing multi-tasking and creative higher order critical thinking skills based on easier access to informa-tion via search engines and the on-demand video and photo-sharing offered by today’s networked-based society.

The effects of out-of-class electronic literacies are also impacting in a signifi cant fashion on their in-class skills and expectations. Tapscott’s (1998) discussion of the net generation, argued that they bring with them a truly transformative power to supplant the trans-mission model of pedagogy with one based on more interactivity and collaboration. The transmission model of pedagogy is predicated on a ‘one size fi ts all’ mentality, in which knowledge can be disseminated to all learners regardless of individual differences or learning styles. Pre-empting a signifi cant amount of later research connected with social constructivism, Tapscott (1998, 2009) outlined the proximity between the digital natives and the principles of an interactionist pedagogy closely aligned with the opportunities afforded to learners by digital technologies. This interactionist type of pedagogy is identi-fi ed with a movement from:

1. Linear to hypermedia learning2. Instruction to construction and discovery3. Teacher centred to learner-centred education4. Absorbing material to learning how to navigate and how to learn5. School to lifelong learning6. One-size fi ts all to customized or personalized learning7. Learning as torture to learning as fun8. The teacher as transmitter to the teacher as facilitator.

Tapscott’s work on interactivity also looks forward to the recent interest in the use of digital games for learning, viewing them more as an opportunity for today’s net generation to experiment with


interactivity and associated skills rather than as a threat due to their popular image of violence and distraction (Gee, 2003).

On the basis of these principles of learning, the net generation exhibits ten clear criteria which distinguish them from previous generations. The net generation demonstrates a strong propensity for independence, being able to search for and access information which is required by them. Through the use of blogs and other com-munication tools, they demonstrate an emotional and intellectual openness to others. This spirit of openness is refl ected in the net generation’s focus on social inclusion evident in their interest in online communities. In addition they demonstrate ‘free expression and strong views’, ‘innovation’, and in contrast to the ‘baby boomer’ generation, net generation members emphasize their mature attitude to life and learning. Unlike their predecessors they are ‘investigators’ by nature, and enjoy exploring the myriad of opportunities available on the Web. An investigative spirit is coupled with a great sense of ‘immediacy’ and the need to do everything at a high speed.

While recent research suggests that the discourse of ‘digital natives’ is an overly simplistic picture, in that the ability to use digital technolo-gies is mediated by a range of variables including race, socioeconomic class, gender, as well as location (Bayne & Ross, 2007; Bennett, Maton & Kervin, 2008; Pegrum, 2009), it is nevertheless valuable in identify-ing the importance of new forms of digital literacy. In deconstructing the binary oppositions Cook (2000) established between TBLT and creative approaches to language pedagogy, the development of technology-mediated tasks in language education will have to remain cognisant of the changing patterns of communicative competence used by today’s learners.

Criticism 2: cultural relativity

From the ‘critical pedagogy’ perspective, task-based approaches may also conceal a number of attitudes that far from being naturalized assumptions merely refl ect those of the western educators involved (Pennycook, 1994). This can relate to the content of task-based activ-ities where assumptions about norms and values can infl uence the underlying socio-political message of a task. Secondly, and perhaps


more importantly, it can also relate to the inherent methodological assumptions underpinning the task-based approach itself. These include TBL’s emphasis on an anti-hierarchical and fl exible relation-ship between teachers and students; its conversational methods; and its focus on learner collaboration and participation.

Resistances also occur in contexts in which the L2 is being taught as a ‘second language’ and as a ‘foreign language’. In a foreign language situation, for example, such as Japanese learners of English in Japan, learners have less time exposure to the language both inside and outside of the class. Due to a lack of perceived class-room time, resistance to TBL’s emphasis on ‘a slow, gradual process requiring extensive opportunities for using the language’ may occur (Ellis, 2003, p. 333). Moreover, whereas in English as a second language (ESL) contexts instructors are likely to be native speakers, in English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers are likely to be non-native speakers and therefore perhaps less confi dent about implementing a new methodology in the language classroom. More-over, when viewed as an innovative and new methodology in an EFL context, TBL will require a large-scale change by classroom teachers in different cultures.

As Hauck has argued (Chapter 10), the use of technology-mediated tasks within a telecollaborative framework can help to alleviate some of these claims by promoting close links between learners and edu-cators in different cultural contexts. Digital technologies can also be used to great effect, as Raith and Hegelheimer contend (Chapter 8), to improve teacher education in relation to TBLT by fostering improved access to training and professional development.

Criticism 3: the impossibility of communication

The third and perhaps most serious critique focuses on the inability of tasks to be the most effective method for encouraging SLA in class-room environments. The typical prevalence of meaning focused as opposed to form focused tasks leads to the criticism that learners do not have suffi cient opportunities or motivation to develop their interlanguage adequately (Breen, 2001) such that fossilization may occur (Skehan, 1998).


A second aspect of this critique examines the central claim that TBL can create truly authentic situations for learners in instructed classroom contexts. The notion that TBL can create authentic environments raises questions about the protocols which govern the way classrooms function, in that while they provide opportunities for communication they cannot be said to refl ect real-world commun-icative interaction (Widdowson, 2001).

Ellis (2003) mounts a response to this argument, suggesting that Widdowson overstates the issue: ‘The central claim is that, through tasks, we can engage learners in the kinds of cognitive processes that arise in communication outside the classroom’ (2003, p. 336). Tasks in a classroom environment thus encourage learners to engage in processes such as ‘top-down and bottom-up processing, noticing, negotiating meaning, lexicalized and rule-based production, scaffolded production, private speech, and negotiating form’ (ibid). Such processes can be encouraged, as we saw with Reeder’s discussion of the VW of Edubba (Chapter 9) and Collentine (Chapter 6) and Stockwell’s (Chapter 5) discussion of multimodal online discourse, by using CMC to present learners with increased access to truly authentic L2 communicative opportunities with native speakers, whether they are inside or outside the classroom.

Back to the Future

The increasing prominence of task-based approaches in language education over the past 10–15 years has occurred at the same time as the emergence of digital technologies. Like TBL, digital technologies have been advocated as inherently ‘innovative’ and ‘transformative’, particularly in the sphere of educational practice and classroom methodology (Thomas, 2009). The application of digital technologies in education has been most closely identifi ed with a social construct-ivist approach to learning, a methodology that has clear parallels with TBL. If TBLT is to move from theory to practice, it has to become more cognisant of the ways that technology is increasingly mediating many forms of L1 and L2 communication, as well as of the signifi -cance of changing pedagogy both within and outside of classrooms. Few studies to date have explored the pedagogical challenges


accompanying the integration of technology-mediated TBL in non-western contexts, where resistances and obstacles to new pedagogies are likely to occur, and this is surely one rich vein of research to pur-sue in the future.

In Japan, to identify one example, TBLT is still a relatively new approach, and until recently communicative language teaching has been central to government policy making in the area of English language education (MEXT, 1989, 2008; Stewart, 2009). In Japan as elsewhere, however, and regardless of its name, communicative language teaching has been seen as too restrictively focused on form during the ‘present’ and ‘practice’ phases of the traditional PPP cycle, therefore limiting actual learner communication during ‘production’. In the recently revised curriculum guidelines pro-duced by the Japanese government’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT, 1989), the focus is on moving away from the grammar-translation method which has typic-ally characterized English language education in Japan, and towards communication and higher order thinking skills (MEXT, 2008); a move that provides fresh opportunities for TBLT in non-western contexts. As Stewart (2009) argues in this respect:

This change aligns the new curriculum guidelines with the current trend . . . towards using tasks requiring an integrated skills approach . . . . Underlying the new MEXT curriculum is the belief that grammat-ical knowledge is not the ultimate goal of language study. . . . In other words, structure cannot be separated from meaningful usage. (p. 11; italics added)

While this trend may seem to present TBLT practitioners and research-ers with an opportunity, a word of caution from the fi eld of ICT is instructive. As the history of learning technologies indicates (Cuban, 1986), new methodologies and technologies frequently emerge and are tagged with the label, ‘revolutionary’ or ‘transformative’. Equally as frequently, these innovations stem from origins outside of a learning context, sometimes driven by commercial rather than pedagogical interests, and pass through a well-trodden cycle from excitement to disappointment, from anticipated use to underuse and abandonment,


as the next ‘new’ learning technology emerges. Consequently, increas-ing access to technology in learning contexts has often done little to promote a fundamental change in classroom pedagogy (Cuban, 2001). As Kenning (2007) argues in this respect in relation to language learning, ‘while technological progress has affected the way in which languages are learnt and taught, it has not initiated paradigm shifts’ (p. 195). Laurillard (2008) also confi rms this view, arguing that while now more than ever digital technologies provide the opportunity to transform teaching, institutional factors resist the types of changes which are necessary. Laurillard lists fi ve key factors concerning why educational institutions have not been able to incorporate the opportunities offered by learning technologies with greater success. To a certain extent these factors are also applic-able to the types of resistance found towards new pedagogies such as TBL:

1. Education systems are essentially conservative networks that do not change or adapt quickly.

2. Educational leaders and administrators are often not knowledge-able about innovative advances in methodology or technology.

3. Being a national and international political area determined by government policy, education is therefore less open to the com-mercialism that drives successful innovation in other industries.

4. Due to this political context, the management structures of educa-tional institutions tend to be more hierarchical, less entrepreneur-ial and less able to adapt to change.

5. Instructors are rarely in positions of authority vis-à-vis policy decisions and therefore less able to innovate transformations in the processes of teaching and learning demanded by new technologies and new methodologies. (pp. 323–324)

Given such a context, it is important that when confronted with choices about the future direction of technology-mediated tasks, teachers make choices that are based on the particular, the practical and the possible (Kumaravadivelu, 2001). As the chapters in this volume indicate, teachers are faced with increasingly complex decisions about the tasks they are expected to use in today’s


networked classrooms. The landscape of technology is constantly changing, and it is important that as language-teaching professionals with particular interests in technology we also take into consideration the methodological developments which are available to us and to explore them through our own lenses.

With the publication of this volume, it is no longer possible to see how the future of TBLT can proceed without greater consideration of technology-mediated tasks. At the same time CALL researchers also need to consider carefully the core characteristics of TBLT described in Chapter 1 and to ground their research in SLA. This volume has clearly shown that both fi elds have much to gain from the joint activity this dialogue assumes. As task-based language learning and teaching orients itself increasingly towards the import-ance of technology-mediated communication, the frameworks that have been proposed in this chapter and elsewhere in this volume, should provide a foundation for research in these combined fi elds in the future.

Note

1 The LANCELOT and AVALON projects have both been funded by the European Commission. This chapter refl ects the views of the authors only and has no relationship to those of the Commission or any other member of these projects.

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academic writing 190–2Access to Virtual and Action

Learning live ONline (AVALON) 221, 225

Activity System (AS) 22–4, 64Activity Theory (AT) 17, 22–3,

35, 68Applied Linguistics 67, 219Artifi cial Intelligence (AI) 219Asynchronous Computer-Mediated

Communication (ACMC) 84, 89, 102, 151

audiolingual 5audiovisual 5Automated Speech Recognition

(ASR) 184

blended learning 6, 133Bulletin Board Systems 86, 88,

89, 90

CD-ROM 176classroom-based CALL 35, 45Cognition Hypothesis (CH) 107cognitive complexity 147collaboration 140collaborative teacher training 139Common European Framework of

Reference for Languages (CEFR) 134, 137

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) 5, 19, 21

community 21–4, 28–9, 31, 155–8, 167, 172, 173

Community of Practice 173comprehensible input 42, 52Computational Linguistics 79, 219

Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) 1, 7, 41–6, 57, 58, 63, 68, 71, 78–9, 85, 86, 204, 218

behavioural 5communicative 5network-based 41structural 5

Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) 5, 18–19, 21, 28, 35, 48–9, 83, 84–9, 93, 101, 141, 155, 198

Activity Theory 21chat-based 50, 56CMC-based CALL 45LAN-based 48TBLT 18, 25, 35, 47, 100

constructivism 5, 7Content-based Instruction (CBI) 185Corpus Linguistics 111Course Management System

(CMS) 222cross-cultural communication 5cultural relativity 230C-units 124CyberDeutsch 137

Desktop Video Conferencing (DTVC) 224

digital divide 6digital technologies 157, 232discourse features 95discovery learning 114Distance Learning 131–51, 204

ecological approach 20Edubba 184, 232ELDIT 74

Index

240 Index

electronic literacy skills development 199

e-mail 88, 200emoticons 87enactment 197–214English as an Additional Language

(EAL) 177English as a Foreign Language

(EFL) 88, 197English as a Second Language

(ESL) 55, 89e-Portfolio 2, 154, 167e-Tutor 76–8EuroCALL 180expert systems 65

Face-to-Face (FTF) 3, 4, 28, 33, 56, 109, 122

feedback 66, 69, 73, 74, 76, 77, 134, 141, 150, 156

fl aming 52Flash video 122FLUENT I 71FLUENT-2 71focus on form 43, 51, 84, 107, 177

Global Positioning Systems (GPS) 3GLOSSER 74

Herr Kommissar 71Hexagonal Model of Synchronous

Teaching Methodology 225Human-Computer Interaction

(HCI) 65, 68–9, 219

IBM 218iChat 113, 122ICICLE 75implicit corrective feedback 5Information and Communication

Technologies (ICT) 131information exchange task 43, 50, 55Initiate, Response, Follow-up (IREF) 23instructional design 193, 219Intelligent Computer-Assisted

Language Learning (ICALL) 63–78, 176, 220

intelligent tutoring systems 65, 66interaction 41, 43–9, 58, 65, 70,

76, 79, 96–9, 102, 159, 161–2, 166–7, 169

Interaction Hypothesis (IH) 5,183

Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) 19, 28, 29, 30, 213

intercultural exchange 213intercultural learning 206Interlanguage (IL) 124interpersonal relationships 47Interrupted Task Chatting Activity

(ITCA) 112–13, 116–17, 119–24, 125, 126

jigsaw tasks 50, 55, 56

L2 pragmatic competence 5LANguage learning with CErtifi ed

Live Online Trainers (LANCELOT) 221, 224

learneranxiety 5, 28, 48behaviour 31collaboration 30interaction 34, 50,learner–learner communication 149motivation 31

learning community 29Learning Management Systems

(LMS) 131lexical density 90, 92, 97, 102Limited Attentional Capacity

model 107linguistic complexity 106, 107, 108–9,

110, 126, 146literacy 2Logo 7

Machine Translation (MT) 72–3metalinguistic awareness 46, 51MEXT 233mobile phone 85MOODLE 91, 139, 222multiliteracies 18–20

Index 241

multimodality 85–7, 89–102, 205–13Multiuser, Object-Oriented

environment (MOO) 200Multi-User Virtual Environments

(MUVE) 221, 225

Natural Language Processing (NLP) 65, 176, 177, 179, 180, 182, 188, 192

Natural Language Toolkit 115negotiation of meaning 23–5, 29–33,

42, 51network-based CALL 41networked technologies 205New London Group 19, 201new media literacies 18–21, 27, 200

online chat 132online communication 198online learning communities 29Open University (OU) 133oral interaction 54output hypothesis 183

pedagogic approach 23–9, 35Post-task Chatting Activity

(PTCA) 112, 114, 125pragmatic processing 105profi ciency levels 55project-based work 33psycholinguistic 17, 41–3, 45, 57, 136Psychology 219

QuickAssist 74

Refl ective Practice 154–73TBLT 158video 155–72

RoboSensei 76, 78Robotky 71

scaffolding 34, 44, 70, 75, 151Second Language Acquisition

(SLA) 1, 17, 20, 42, 67, 105Second Life 131, 181, 226SIM City 181Skype 222, 226

social constructivism 5social media 6sociocultural 17, 18, 21, 35, 44, 45,

57, 58, 137, 220speech recognition 65speech synthesis 65Spion 71SWIM 77Synchronous Computer-Mediated

Communication (SCMC) 28, 41, 84, 88–99, 101, 108, 109, 111–12, 125–6, 134, 137, 144, 151, 200

syntactic complexity 99syntactic negotiation 109syntactical features 83syntax 94

Tagarela 77Targumatik 72Task

collaboration 28, 30, 34, 209completion 24–5, 51defi nition 17, 105, 133, 219design 2, 18, 21, 29, 31–2,

40, 63, 67, 135, 140, 184, 204–7

during-task 73goal orientation 25, 28, 29,

30–2input 145motivation 26, 30, 31pedagogical 17, 19, 21, 28,

35, 36post-task support 73pre-task activities 76, 107sequence 24, 29, 32task-as-process 24, 29, 31,

133–4, 159task-as-workplan 21, 25, 29, 31, 135,

159, 185task-referenced teaching 4task-related work 27Task-Supported Language Learning

(TSLL) 4, 29, 34, 161task-versus-exercise 177types 31, 50, 144

242 Index

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) 1, 2, 7, 17, 18, 29, 33–5, 45, 58, 83, 110, 112, 122–6, 132, 177, 193, 197–9, 218

criticisms 228–32curriculum and syllabus design 7, 23

Task-Based Learning (TBL) 1, 41, 102, 205

Task-Based Synchronous Computer Mediated Communication (TB-SCMC) 109–12

task-based teaching competences 162task-based teaching standards 167Task-Supported Language Teaching

(TSLT) 132TDTDT 78teacher development 154Teaching English to Speakers of

Other Languages (TESOL) 6, 20, 202

telecollaboration 2, 10, 21, 197–214text messaging 85type-token ratios (TTR) 92

Universitat Oberta de Catalunya 139University of Education

Heidelberg 163user modelling 65

VERBCON 77video-conferencing 28, 84Virtual Learning Environment

(VLE) 9, 131, 133, 150Virtual Reality (VR) 2, 9, 176Virtual World (VW) 2, 69,

176, 193vocabulary 93Voice over Internet Protocol

(VOIP) 222

Web 2.0 1, 2, 7, 155, 156weblog 171wikis 139WizIQ 222

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) 44

[michael thomas, hayo reinders] task-based languag(bookfi.org)

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