Pub Date : 2020-06-12DOI: 10.1017/S0958344020000129
Muhammad M. M. Abdel Latif
Abstract With the increasing recognition of the pedagogical applications of corpus linguistics, there has been a growing interest in developing teachers’ corpus literacy to popularize the use of corpora in language education. This longitudinal study investigated Arab Gulf EFL student teachers’ immediate and long-term responses to corpus literacy instruction. After teaching a corpus literacy component to two classes of student teachers in a graduate computer-assisted language learning course they attended, the author collected focus group data about their views on this instruction and their own expected future uses of corpora in language learning, teaching and research. Two years later, a group of these student teachers (n = 19) responded to a follow-up questionnaire exploring their beliefs about corpus literacy integration and their multiple uses of corpora. The student teachers reported very positive immediate and long-term perceptions of corpus literacy instruction, but it was found that such instruction has not brought about all the desired changes in their long-term uses of online corpora as a linguistic and pedagogical resource, or their attitudes towards doing corpus-based TESOL research. However, it is expected that the popularization benefits gained from corpus literacy integration could lead to better future developments in using corpora for language education and research purposes in the target context.
{"title":"Corpus literacy instruction in language teacher education: Investigating Arab EFL student teachers’ immediate beliefs and long-term practices","authors":"Muhammad M. M. Abdel Latif","doi":"10.1017/S0958344020000129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344020000129","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract With the increasing recognition of the pedagogical applications of corpus linguistics, there has been a growing interest in developing teachers’ corpus literacy to popularize the use of corpora in language education. This longitudinal study investigated Arab Gulf EFL student teachers’ immediate and long-term responses to corpus literacy instruction. After teaching a corpus literacy component to two classes of student teachers in a graduate computer-assisted language learning course they attended, the author collected focus group data about their views on this instruction and their own expected future uses of corpora in language learning, teaching and research. Two years later, a group of these student teachers (n = 19) responded to a follow-up questionnaire exploring their beliefs about corpus literacy integration and their multiple uses of corpora. The student teachers reported very positive immediate and long-term perceptions of corpus literacy instruction, but it was found that such instruction has not brought about all the desired changes in their long-term uses of online corpora as a linguistic and pedagogical resource, or their attitudes towards doing corpus-based TESOL research. However, it is expected that the popularization benefits gained from corpus literacy integration could lead to better future developments in using corpora for language education and research purposes in the target context.","PeriodicalId":47046,"journal":{"name":"Recall","volume":"33 1","pages":"34 - 48"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2020-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0958344020000129","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41343909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-11DOI: 10.1017/S0958344020000142
Chuan Gao, H. Shen
Abstract This article reports on findings regarding the learning strategies used by a group of Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in a mobile-technology-assisted environment. The research design is a context-specific case study using Dörnyei’s (2005) categories of learning strategies as the conceptual and analytical framework to guide data collection and analysis. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through a questionnaire from a sample of 75 Chinese EFL learners and a small-scale follow-up interview of five participants who completed the questionnaire. Data showed that a mobile-technology-assisted environment effected changes in Chinese EFL learners’ ways of adopting a particular set of learning strategies, which differed in type and frequency from those typical of a teacher-led and examination-oriented language classroom. Metacognitive and commitment control strategies were most frequently used by the respondents in this study. The frequency of student use of metacognitive strategies moved ahead of commitment and environmental control strategies. Satiation and emotion control strategies, rarely used by Chinese students in a teacher-fronted language classroom, were also observable. These findings have implications for the understanding and designing of mobile-technology-assisted learning for EFL learners to develop appropriate strategies for autonomous learning.
{"title":"Mobile-technology-induced learning strategies: Chinese university EFL students learning English in an emerging context","authors":"Chuan Gao, H. Shen","doi":"10.1017/S0958344020000142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344020000142","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article reports on findings regarding the learning strategies used by a group of Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in a mobile-technology-assisted environment. The research design is a context-specific case study using Dörnyei’s (2005) categories of learning strategies as the conceptual and analytical framework to guide data collection and analysis. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through a questionnaire from a sample of 75 Chinese EFL learners and a small-scale follow-up interview of five participants who completed the questionnaire. Data showed that a mobile-technology-assisted environment effected changes in Chinese EFL learners’ ways of adopting a particular set of learning strategies, which differed in type and frequency from those typical of a teacher-led and examination-oriented language classroom. Metacognitive and commitment control strategies were most frequently used by the respondents in this study. The frequency of student use of metacognitive strategies moved ahead of commitment and environmental control strategies. Satiation and emotion control strategies, rarely used by Chinese students in a teacher-fronted language classroom, were also observable. These findings have implications for the understanding and designing of mobile-technology-assisted learning for EFL learners to develop appropriate strategies for autonomous learning.","PeriodicalId":47046,"journal":{"name":"Recall","volume":"33 1","pages":"88 - 105"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2020-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0958344020000142","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45192235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-10DOI: 10.1017/S0958344020000130
Liam Murray, Marta Giralt, Silvia Benini
Abstract In a poll (ReImagineEdu, 2016) looking at the digital profile of nearly 1,000 learners, it was reported that 78% of students worry about digital technologies distracting them from study. In attempting to contribute to this emerging debate (Aaron & Lipton, 2018), this article investigates the experiences, perceptions and awareness of undergraduate language learners (n = 215, over a 3-year period) of the distractive nature of technology and the discerned impact upon their own student language learning and performance. The study is based on data gathered from university language students engaged in a specific language technology module. The module, interalia, sought to develop awareness of the time spent online by participants while using a number of resources. A mixed-methods approach was employed to conduct this research where qualitative and quantitative data emerged respectively from individual student blogs, reflective reports of their blogging experiences, group interviews and questionnaires. Our outcomes reveal a severe lack of student awareness on the final amount of time they spent online, this being due to a number of factors. However, there is some awareness and perception on their part of how heavily disruptive technology can be for their language learning. Our final conclusions include several recommendations and propose a deictic critical digital literacy for dealing with such distractions – we are calling this a strategic agentive literacy.
{"title":"Extending digital literacies: Proposing an agentive literacy to tackle the problems of distractive technologies in language learning","authors":"Liam Murray, Marta Giralt, Silvia Benini","doi":"10.1017/S0958344020000130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344020000130","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In a poll (ReImagineEdu, 2016) looking at the digital profile of nearly 1,000 learners, it was reported that 78% of students worry about digital technologies distracting them from study. In attempting to contribute to this emerging debate (Aaron & Lipton, 2018), this article investigates the experiences, perceptions and awareness of undergraduate language learners (n = 215, over a 3-year period) of the distractive nature of technology and the discerned impact upon their own student language learning and performance. The study is based on data gathered from university language students engaged in a specific language technology module. The module, interalia, sought to develop awareness of the time spent online by participants while using a number of resources. A mixed-methods approach was employed to conduct this research where qualitative and quantitative data emerged respectively from individual student blogs, reflective reports of their blogging experiences, group interviews and questionnaires. Our outcomes reveal a severe lack of student awareness on the final amount of time they spent online, this being due to a number of factors. However, there is some awareness and perception on their part of how heavily disruptive technology can be for their language learning. Our final conclusions include several recommendations and propose a deictic critical digital literacy for dealing with such distractions – we are calling this a strategic agentive literacy.","PeriodicalId":47046,"journal":{"name":"Recall","volume":"32 1","pages":"250 - 271"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2020-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0958344020000130","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43467803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-11DOI: 10.1017/S0958344020000105
Shu-Li Lai, Jason J. S. Chang
Abstract In this process-based study, we introduced a collocation tool with a new interface and advanced search features and examined how a class of EFL college students interacted with it. To elicit their tool consultation behaviors, a vocabulary test with collocation questions was designed. The students’ use of the tool to answer the vocabulary questions was screen-recorded for further analysis, serving as the major data source. One-on-one interviews with selected students were then conducted to clarify issues related to the study and their experience in using the tool. The findings indicated that the pattern-based tool was efficient in helping students solve collocation problems. This paper concludes with some pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research.
{"title":"Toward a pattern-based referencing tool: Learner interactions and perceptions","authors":"Shu-Li Lai, Jason J. S. Chang","doi":"10.1017/S0958344020000105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344020000105","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this process-based study, we introduced a collocation tool with a new interface and advanced search features and examined how a class of EFL college students interacted with it. To elicit their tool consultation behaviors, a vocabulary test with collocation questions was designed. The students’ use of the tool to answer the vocabulary questions was screen-recorded for further analysis, serving as the major data source. One-on-one interviews with selected students were then conducted to clarify issues related to the study and their experience in using the tool. The findings indicated that the pattern-based tool was efficient in helping students solve collocation problems. This paper concludes with some pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research.","PeriodicalId":47046,"journal":{"name":"Recall","volume":"32 1","pages":"272 - 290"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2020-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0958344020000105","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43855543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-01DOI: 10.1017/S0958344020000063
A. Boulton
The May issue of ReCALL last year opened with the sentence, “Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has reached a stage of maturity where it is no longer necessary to try to prove that it is ‘better’ than traditional teaching”. John Gillespie comes to a similar conclusion based on a survey of research articles in three major CALL journals (including, of course, ReCALL) over an 11-year period. The aim is to identify strengths and weaknesses in methodology, as well as topics that are on the rise or falling out of favour, extensively investigated or seriously understudied. It is as well to remember that science is a human endeavour, and that research is subject to trends and local constraints such that many studies are small, one-off and relatively local affairs based on the teacher-researcher’s observations, and may thus lack ambition. As other surveys, editorials and books have mooted in the past, there are grounds for encouraging a broader, longer-term perspective with collaborative studies that are prompted by our knowledge (or lack of it) in a particular area rather than just by immediate teaching and learning concerns – in other words, in conceiving a collective research agenda for the field. What do we really want to explore in CALL? Early use of computing in language teaching for automating selection, presentation and question formats were somewhat disappointing. Maria Chinkina, Simón Ruiz and Detmar Meurers revisit that untapped potential, as demonstrated via crowdsourced human judgements. Computer-generated questions were comparable to those produced by teachers in terms of well-formedness and answerability; further, participants guessed that 74% of teacher-written and 67% of computer-written questions were produced by humans. Language learning is not just about learning language, but is multidimensional and includes, among other things, intercultural communicative competence, the focus of the study by Babürhan Üzüm, Sedat Akayoglu and Bedrettin Yazan. The tools and tasks adopted over six weeks for trainee teachers in Turkey and the USA were indeed found to lead to curiosity and greater awareness of cultural diversity, which are likely to be of benefit for any intercultural interaction. The tremendous potential of everyday mobile technologies for CALL are explored in the paper by Alberto Andujar in a relatively large-scale, longitudinal, ecological study. Feedback, varying from implicit to explicit, was provided by WhatsApp for grammar and vocabulary in writing. The experimental group made significantly better progress, but the study goes beyond this to look at dynamic assessment at four points in time, including the number and type of feedback prompts. Though the system was no doubt quite complex to set up, the groundwork has been laid for others to use similar approaches quite easily and quickly. In another example of appropriating everyday tools, Google Images was used to help elementary school learners generate labels automatically
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"A. Boulton","doi":"10.1017/S0958344020000063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344020000063","url":null,"abstract":"The May issue of ReCALL last year opened with the sentence, “Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has reached a stage of maturity where it is no longer necessary to try to prove that it is ‘better’ than traditional teaching”. John Gillespie comes to a similar conclusion based on a survey of research articles in three major CALL journals (including, of course, ReCALL) over an 11-year period. The aim is to identify strengths and weaknesses in methodology, as well as topics that are on the rise or falling out of favour, extensively investigated or seriously understudied. It is as well to remember that science is a human endeavour, and that research is subject to trends and local constraints such that many studies are small, one-off and relatively local affairs based on the teacher-researcher’s observations, and may thus lack ambition. As other surveys, editorials and books have mooted in the past, there are grounds for encouraging a broader, longer-term perspective with collaborative studies that are prompted by our knowledge (or lack of it) in a particular area rather than just by immediate teaching and learning concerns – in other words, in conceiving a collective research agenda for the field. What do we really want to explore in CALL? Early use of computing in language teaching for automating selection, presentation and question formats were somewhat disappointing. Maria Chinkina, Simón Ruiz and Detmar Meurers revisit that untapped potential, as demonstrated via crowdsourced human judgements. Computer-generated questions were comparable to those produced by teachers in terms of well-formedness and answerability; further, participants guessed that 74% of teacher-written and 67% of computer-written questions were produced by humans. Language learning is not just about learning language, but is multidimensional and includes, among other things, intercultural communicative competence, the focus of the study by Babürhan Üzüm, Sedat Akayoglu and Bedrettin Yazan. The tools and tasks adopted over six weeks for trainee teachers in Turkey and the USA were indeed found to lead to curiosity and greater awareness of cultural diversity, which are likely to be of benefit for any intercultural interaction. The tremendous potential of everyday mobile technologies for CALL are explored in the paper by Alberto Andujar in a relatively large-scale, longitudinal, ecological study. Feedback, varying from implicit to explicit, was provided by WhatsApp for grammar and vocabulary in writing. The experimental group made significantly better progress, but the study goes beyond this to look at dynamic assessment at four points in time, including the number and type of feedback prompts. Though the system was no doubt quite complex to set up, the groundwork has been laid for others to use similar approaches quite easily and quickly. In another example of appropriating everyday tools, Google Images was used to help elementary school learners generate labels automatically","PeriodicalId":47046,"journal":{"name":"Recall","volume":"32 1","pages":"126 - 126"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2020-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0958344020000063","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41592696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-07DOI: 10.1017/S0958344020000099
Ward Peeters, Marilize Pretorius
Abstract Creating collaborative working and learning experiences has long been at the forefront of computer-assisted language learning research. It is in this context that, in recent years, the integration of social networking sites and Web 2.0 in learning settings has surged, generating new opportunities to establish and explore virtual communities of practice (VCoPs). However, despite the number of studies on the concept, research remains inconclusive on how learners develop a sense of community in a VCoP, and what effect this may have on interaction and learning. This research project proposes to use social network analysis, part of graph theory, to explore the configuration of a set of VCoPs, and presents an empirical approach to determine how interaction in such communities takes shape. The present paper studies the concept of “community” in two VCoPs on Facebook. Participants (Group 1: N = 123, Group 2: N = 34) in both VCoPs are enrolled in English as a foreign language courses at two Belgian institutions of higher education. Social network analysis is used to show how both learner groups establish and develop a network of peers, and how different participants in those groups adopt different roles. Participation matrices reveal that interaction mainly revolves around a number of active key figures and that certain factors such as the incorporation of online and offline assignments and the inclusion of a teacher online result in varying levels of success when establishing collaborative dialogue within the VCoPs. Recommendations are formulated to inform and improve future practice.
{"title":"Facebook or fail-book: Exploring “community” in a virtual community of practice","authors":"Ward Peeters, Marilize Pretorius","doi":"10.1017/S0958344020000099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344020000099","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Creating collaborative working and learning experiences has long been at the forefront of computer-assisted language learning research. It is in this context that, in recent years, the integration of social networking sites and Web 2.0 in learning settings has surged, generating new opportunities to establish and explore virtual communities of practice (VCoPs). However, despite the number of studies on the concept, research remains inconclusive on how learners develop a sense of community in a VCoP, and what effect this may have on interaction and learning. This research project proposes to use social network analysis, part of graph theory, to explore the configuration of a set of VCoPs, and presents an empirical approach to determine how interaction in such communities takes shape. The present paper studies the concept of “community” in two VCoPs on Facebook. Participants (Group 1: N = 123, Group 2: N = 34) in both VCoPs are enrolled in English as a foreign language courses at two Belgian institutions of higher education. Social network analysis is used to show how both learner groups establish and develop a network of peers, and how different participants in those groups adopt different roles. Participation matrices reveal that interaction mainly revolves around a number of active key figures and that certain factors such as the incorporation of online and offline assignments and the inclusion of a teacher online result in varying levels of success when establishing collaborative dialogue within the VCoPs. Recommendations are formulated to inform and improve future practice.","PeriodicalId":47046,"journal":{"name":"Recall","volume":"32 1","pages":"291 - 306"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2020-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0958344020000099","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46152628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-20DOI: 10.1017/S095834402000004X
Judith Buendgens-Kosten
This paper sets out to discuss the monolingual problem within computer-assisted language learning (CALL) research and CALL product development, namely a lack of knowledge about how CALL products and projects can support learners in using all their linguistic resources to achieve language-learning- and language-using-related goals, and a lack of CALL products and projects that realize this potential, or that support specific plurilingual skill development. It uses an analysis of CALL-related papers to demonstrate how far CALL is impacted by a monolingual bias that it inherited from language learning pedagogy. An analysis of articles from four CALL journals across 10 years shows that although the words bilingual and multilingual appear in these journals fairly regularly, terms such as plurilingual, third language, tertiary language, L3, translanguaging, and translingual are extremely rare. Also, only eight articles could be identified that use any of these eight keywords in their title. Trends across those papers are identified. In a discussion of existing CALL products and projects that incorporate more than one language, it is argued that while commercial products often include more than one language, this is frequently in a behaviorist or grammar-translation tradition, while innovative plurilingual products and projects tend to be non-commercial and often EU/EC-funded initiatives. The article argues that CALL research and product development can not only avoid this monolingual bias, but also actively contribute to our knowledge of how all linguistic resources can be used for language learning. It makes suggestions for relevant future research areas related to multilingual computer-assisted language learning (MCALL).
{"title":"The monolingual problem of computer-assisted language learning","authors":"Judith Buendgens-Kosten","doi":"10.1017/S095834402000004X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S095834402000004X","url":null,"abstract":"This paper sets out to discuss the monolingual problem within computer-assisted language learning (CALL) research and CALL product development, namely a lack of knowledge about how CALL products and projects can support learners in using all their linguistic resources to achieve language-learning- and language-using-related goals, and a lack of CALL products and projects that realize this potential, or that support specific plurilingual skill development. It uses an analysis of CALL-related papers to demonstrate how far CALL is impacted by a monolingual bias that it inherited from language learning pedagogy. An analysis of articles from four CALL journals across 10 years shows that although the words bilingual and multilingual appear in these journals fairly regularly, terms such as plurilingual, third language, tertiary language, L3, translanguaging, and translingual are extremely rare. Also, only eight articles could be identified that use any of these eight keywords in their title. Trends across those papers are identified. In a discussion of existing CALL products and projects that incorporate more than one language, it is argued that while commercial products often include more than one language, this is frequently in a behaviorist or grammar-translation tradition, while innovative plurilingual products and projects tend to be non-commercial and often EU/EC-funded initiatives. The article argues that CALL research and product development can not only avoid this monolingual bias, but also actively contribute to our knowledge of how all linguistic resources can be used for language learning. It makes suggestions for relevant future research areas related to multilingual computer-assisted language learning (MCALL).","PeriodicalId":47046,"journal":{"name":"Recall","volume":"32 1","pages":"307 - 322"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S095834402000004X","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45138269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-18DOI: 10.1017/S0958344020000026
J. Chen
Abstract Prior research on pre-task planning examines its effects on the quality of second language (L2) learners’ planned output. Planning mitigates the cognitive overload placed upon L2 learners’ oral performance, thus improving language production. Despite the pedagogical benefits, studies on pre-task planning on L2 learners’ oral output are conducted mostly in a lab or class setting. Whether or not similar effects of pre-task planning can be evidenced in three-dimensional (3D) multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs), such as Second Life (SL), is still less explored. Hence, this study investigates whether pre-task planning could enhance the quality and quantity of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ task-oriented, voice-based outcomes in SL. Nine EFL learners worldwide participated in this 10-session virtual class. Data were collected through students’ oral presentations in performing real-life simulated tasks related to their home cultures and interests. Yuan and Ellis’s (2003) framework of T-units measures was adopted to analyze their linguistic performance measured by complexity and accuracy. Results indicated that EFL learners showed statistically significant improvement on grammatical complexity on the levels of syntactic complexity and variety (but not on lexical variety) and on linguistic accuracy across all measured levels (error-free clauses/T-units/verb forms). It is suggested that pre-task planning can be seeded in task-based instruction either in a classroom-based or 3D MUVE setting to optimize the quality of learners’ linguistic performance. Tasks that are real-world oriented and targeting learners’ cultural repertoires and world knowledge also positively impact their virtual learning experiences. These significant implications add new research and pedagogical dimensions to the field of computer-assisted language learning.
{"title":"The effects of pre-task planning on EFL learners’ oral performance in a 3D multi-user virtual environment","authors":"J. Chen","doi":"10.1017/S0958344020000026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344020000026","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Prior research on pre-task planning examines its effects on the quality of second language (L2) learners’ planned output. Planning mitigates the cognitive overload placed upon L2 learners’ oral performance, thus improving language production. Despite the pedagogical benefits, studies on pre-task planning on L2 learners’ oral output are conducted mostly in a lab or class setting. Whether or not similar effects of pre-task planning can be evidenced in three-dimensional (3D) multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs), such as Second Life (SL), is still less explored. Hence, this study investigates whether pre-task planning could enhance the quality and quantity of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ task-oriented, voice-based outcomes in SL. Nine EFL learners worldwide participated in this 10-session virtual class. Data were collected through students’ oral presentations in performing real-life simulated tasks related to their home cultures and interests. Yuan and Ellis’s (2003) framework of T-units measures was adopted to analyze their linguistic performance measured by complexity and accuracy. Results indicated that EFL learners showed statistically significant improvement on grammatical complexity on the levels of syntactic complexity and variety (but not on lexical variety) and on linguistic accuracy across all measured levels (error-free clauses/T-units/verb forms). It is suggested that pre-task planning can be seeded in task-based instruction either in a classroom-based or 3D MUVE setting to optimize the quality of learners’ linguistic performance. Tasks that are real-world oriented and targeting learners’ cultural repertoires and world knowledge also positively impact their virtual learning experiences. These significant implications add new research and pedagogical dimensions to the field of computer-assisted language learning.","PeriodicalId":47046,"journal":{"name":"Recall","volume":"32 1","pages":"232 - 249"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2020-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0958344020000026","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42652291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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