–Where in the World is Susana? (draft 1)?

Technology Integrated Curricular Unit Development Project

Project Description (1^st draft)

Description of Course:

This project is created for Spanish 003 at The Pennsylvania State University (UP). Spanish 003 is the last level of the Spanish Basic Language Program. It is a 4 credit computer enhanced one semester course in which classes are held twice a week for 50 minutes, and students are responsible for completing assignments on online (ANGEL) which account for the other two class periods. Students are also responsible for written compositions, written exams, and an oral exam. There are 22 students enrolled in this section of the course. The purpose of this course is to develop and improve communication skills when listening, reading, speaking, and writing in Spanish. The course follows a communicative information-based task approach.

Description of Unit:

This unit is comprised of learning the future tense in Spanish which includes three subunits: future tense, vocabulary (technology and environment), and probability in the future tense.

Description of Activities:

1. Future Tense – What’s Happening in 2025? As students have already been presented with and used the future tense on their ANGEL assignments, this activity will be a continuation of the lesson. Students will work individually to create a round robin story. Students will be assignment a date and time when they are to write their section of the story. They will comprise this story about the future on a Wiki, which the instructor will start. The instructor will have access the Wiki to give enhanced recasts/feedback on the story.

2. Vocabulary (technology and environment) – Scavenger Hunt! Class is divided up into groups and each group is given a different set of vocabulary words. They are asked to take pictures of these vocabulary words using a digital camera. They will post these pictures onto the class Wiki including a clue to their vocabulary word. The other class members must give the word and write a sentence using that new word.

3. Probability in the future tense – Where in the World is Susana (Instructor)? Class will be divided into groups of 2-3 students. Susana will email different clues to each group about where she will be and what she will be doing in the future (for example, in the year 2025). Students must meet via Skype chat and SCMC chat to discuss the clues they were given, and then post on a blog their answers and their steps in finding Susana.

Second Life -First Thoughts

Second Life - First thoughts

Here, I will present some thoughts about Second Life.

1. Police vs. Mediator

How to keep students on task

How do you keep people close?

It is easy to get off task

2. SL provides an authentic communicative context

Where people communicate in language

Native speakers

Could it be unnatural?

Same problems as IM chat may exist

Provides more context than IM

Can present yourself however you wish (with physical form, etc)

People are reacting to physical appearance

3. What would entice a SL user to chat with a learner???

Could pay with game money, but this might make it less authentic

Here you have some Webs about Second Life… ENJOY!!

http://secondlife.com/

http://secondslog.blogspot.com/2006/06/understanding-sl-two-takes.html

A very good video introduction to Second Life: http://blip.tv/file/74378/

Second Life Video: http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/12/smashing_second.html

Here, you have an example how Second Life looks like:

Source: http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6440/1193/1600/immersive.jpg

The SIMS as a educational tool

Ravi Purushotma (MIT) comments in an article how games and technology can help learners, specifically adolescents, to improve their foreign language skills. He starts his commentary expounding his own experience in learning German in high school. He explains how tedious and frustrating it was to learn German and he relates the horrible experience he went through while he was learning German as a second language.

Purushotma explains how entertainment games can be modified for language learning purposes without sacrificing the entertainment value. Because of this marriage of education and entertainment he brings up the new term edutainment, which is a merge between education and entertainment. However, we have to be cautious and do not fall in the error of doing something that does not achieve the goal in education, focusing only in the entertainment part. Both terms must be balanced in order to attain pedagogical goals through entertainment.

This paper provides examples of embedding language instruction into games, Web browsing, and music. The author gives some examples and their pedagogical implications.

Purushotma starts with a commentary of the famous game The Sims®. The Sims® is a game designed to emulate normal everyday life. You can have a look in the official Web page at The SIMS and judge yourself about the visual and pedagogical implications. The author explains that the possibility of editing the language data in the game allows learners to use the target language. According to Hulstijn (1992) the modification of video games can result on incidental learning. Furthermore, pop-up explanations available for player and the software can be programmed to show two meanings for the same word therefore, the player (learner) has to choose which is appropriate for the context.

Purushotma gives an example of incidental learning when browsing the Web. He suggests that he replaced his ‘throbber’ with German vocabulary, as online flash cards. Hence, instead of seeing a commercial or corporate logo he could see a German word (with the corresponding translation) and an image while loading the web. Furthermore, if the learner makes his own flash cards for the ‘throbber’ s/he will retain that vocabulary better (Nikolova, 2002).

Who did not look for the lyrics of a song in another language? A very well known activity when learning a second language is looking up the lyrics of a song. It is great when learners can follow a song through synchronized lyrics and uses translator to look up unfamiliar words. Learners can use OCR-capable translator and with some programs as Winamp you are able to synchronize your lyrics. Please have a look in an intelligent file made by Purushotma here:

http://llt.msu.edu/vol9num1/purushotma/creating_synced_lyrics.wmv

Their pedagogical implications are quite clear, namely, exposition to oral input which heightens their listening proficiency, learning new lexical items, as well as cultural aspects of the new language.

To conclude this commentary of the commentary of Purushotma, we have to take into account that technology is an integral part of our everyday life. Because of this, it must also be incorporated into everyday educational life as “edutainment” which ultimately allows the world’s worst foreign language learner to enjoy learning a foreign language.

References:

• Purushotma, R. (2005). Commentary: You're not studying, you're just…, Language Learning & Technology 9, 80-96. http://llt.msu.edu/vol9num1/pdf/purushotma.pdf

• Nikolova, O. R. (2002). Effects of students' participation in authoring of multimedia materials on student acquisition of vocabulary. Language Learning & Technology, 6(1), 100-122. Retrieved October 4, 2003, from http://llt.msu.edu/vol6num1/NIKOLOVA/

• Hulstijn, J. H. (1992). Retention of inferred and given meanings: Experiments in incidental vocabulary learning. In P. J. L. Arnaud & H. Béjoint (Eds.), Vocabulary and applied linguistics (pp. 113-125). London: Macmillan.

• The Sims® http://thesims2.ea.com/

• A replacement of your ‘throbber’: http://www.langwidge.com/langwidge_while_you_browse.html

EDUCAWEB

***250 becas para estudiantes universitarios españoles***

Fechas:
Hasta el 15 de junio de 2007
Descripción:
Están dirigidas a titulados que deseen ampliar sus estudios en España o en el extranjero.
Más información:
250 becas para cursar estudios en España, Estados Unidos, Alemania, Francia, Canadá, China e India.
Organiza:
Obra Social 'la Caixa'
Correo del evento:
becas.fundacion@lacaixa.es
Teléfono:
93 404 6735

Correo:
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***25 becas Fulbright***

Fechas:
Hasta 1 de marzo de 2007
Más información:
Convoca de 20 a 25 becas Fulbright destinadas a titulados superiores que estén interesados en programas de Master's, Ph.D. o, excepcionalmente, en proyectos de investigación predoctoral en una universidad estadounidense durante el curso académico 2008-2009.
Organiza:
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Mas información sobre becas congresos e información interesante en:
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SCMC and Pragmatic Development

I read an article of Julie M. Sykes about how pragmatic and development on Synchronous communication affects the pragmatics of a language. I think that it is very interesting to look the effects of oral and written chat environments on pragmatic acquisition. Sykes (2005) investigates this phenomenon using Spanish as a target language, although her quantitative findings did not accompany her as she would wish. However, in my opinion, she made an attractive qualitative study in this new field. There are not many studies that account for pragmatic acquisition in SCMC (Synchronous Computer-mediated Communication).

Sykes study looks at the connections between pragmatic instruction and SCMC by measuring the effects of written chat, oral chat, and face to face interaction in the target language –Spanish. Previous research indicates that there is a positive connection between the use of written chat and oral production (Payne and Whitney, 2002). Sykes goes beyond that and she looks at if students can perceive the pragmatic connotations within a language investigating the connections between synchronous CMC and pragmatic instruction. Her quantitative and qualitative results suggest that synchronous discussion have an effect on pragmatic development. Therefore, we can infer that the use of this technological tool and how the effectiveness of this instructional tool can be use in any classroom setting.

Sykes posts a nice literature review of previous SCMC research, specifically written chat discussions. She describes how current research supports the idea those similarities between SCMC and face to face discussions.

It is well-known that pragmatic discourse is not included very often in the foreign language curriculum, giving priority to linguistic features of the language. Sykes points out some factors to account for this lack of pragmatic in the classroom setting such as limited time, and inappropriate textbooks, among others. However, according to Sykes students must have available the pragmaticlinguistic abilities and sociopragmatic skills. For the development of her study, she borrows the definition of interlanguage pragmatic ‘the study of development and use of the strategies for linguistic action by nonnative speaker” defined by Kasper and Schmidt (1996).

The author concludes that SCMC is a great tool for pragmatic instruction and she recommend it for foreign language setting, giving more importance to written chat over the other means of communication.

Maybe, Sykes’s methodology was not very appropriate; the study design and the procedure was not very well described, therefore replications are difficult to reproduce, and sample size was small, consequently the statistical procedures fail, hindering the generalization of her results to the target population. Nevertheless, it is a good piece to start with and we have to consider that there are not many research studies that account for this type of pragmatic research. I believe that Sykes is in the right path, and her study might be seen as a pilot study in pragmatic acquisition through SCMC. Moreover, the author asks to researchers, instructors and publishers not to ignore the “possible uses of chat rooms for the inclusion of pragmatic information in the classroom” (Sykes, 2005:422).

References

• Sykes, J. (2005). Synchronous CMC and pragmatic development: Effects of oral and written chat. CALICO Journal, 22(3): 399-431.
• Payne, J. S. and P. J. Whitney (2002). Developing L2 oral proficiency through synchronous CMC: Output, working memory, and interlanguage development. CALICO Journal 20.1: 7-32.
• Kasper, G. & Schmidt, R. (1996). Developmental issues in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 149-169.