Using the Web to promote students’ motivation and interaction in English

Jesuit Schools’ Teacher Training Day University of Namur, 18 May 2007 Using the Web to promote students’ motivation and interaction in English Lieven VandelanotteEnglish Unit, University of Namur

On the programme for this hour preliminary remarks on teenagers and the web what they do and don’t use it for what are the dangers and opportunities examples of three ways in which the English unit has been using the web in language teaching (with the main focus on the third) referring students to useful sites on the internet using online forums to promote discussion among peers and/or communication with the teacher ongoing experiment with our own “germ@namur” blog conclusions and outlook

Preliminary remarks: teenagers and the web in some respects, the internet is by now a perfectly familiar medium to many or even most teenagers what they mainly use it for, however, is communication and entertainment, e.g. chatting on Windows Messenger or similar messaging services downloading music onto their iPods watching funny videos on YouTube creating their own profile pages on sites like MySpace publishing pictures online on sites like Picasa Web

Preliminary remarks: teenagers and the web much of what is popular online these days concerns the so-called “Web 2.0” or the ‘collaborative’ web, where users contribute the content (e.g. Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace, etc.) cf. Time magazine’s ‘person of the year’ 2006: ‘community and collaboration on a scale never seen before’; ‘the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing’

Preliminary remarks: teenagers and the web even though many interesting things are happening on the internet, it is not often spontaneously used for pedagogical purposes by pupils and students, except perhaps looking up information and pictures online to prepare for and illustrate presentations (Wikipedia, Google) finding summaries and analyses of novels finding ready-made homework (…problem of plagiarism) … rarely (if ever) used to actively practise linguistic skills

Preliminary remarks: teenagers and the web there are in fact some concerns with teachers and parents regarding the use of the internet, e.g. ‘standards and manners’ – also recognized by Time magazine as one of the downsides of all of this web activity: ‘Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.’ danger of plagiarism can only be curbed by giving clear instructions to students and by ‘promising’ severe penalization: ‘zero tolerance’ language the language of text messaging and internet messaging (MSN etc.) is indeed rather different from ‘academic’ language this does not in itself mean that students’ linguistic skills are on the decline what is important is to clearly distinguish different registers (what is appropriate in one context may not be so in another)

Preliminary remarks: teenagers and the web note that very similar concerns exist in the ‘offline’ world more importantly for our present purposes, intelligent use of the internet creates interesting opportunities that can help to motivate our students and to practise their linguistic skills ‘if it’s on the computer it must be fun’ – not a reasoning that works for everyone of course, but certainly for some however, the aim is never to use the web just for its own sake or just to ‘please’ the students; rather the idea is to use it wherever it can add something useful to normal classroom experience > the web doesn’t replace tried and tested methods of teaching but it can expand on them

Preliminary remarks: teenagers and the web so far I’ve been tacitly assuming that most students have easy access to the internet there may of course be considerable inequality as regards students’ ease of access to the internet as well as their interest and/or technical skill in using it this is not an argument against using the internet in the classroom on the contrary, for these students it is even more important to become acquainted with useful websites and basic online publishing techniques similarly, those students who take a strong dislike to online fads will have to be persuaded in their own best interest in this day and age no one can afford to remain an internet ignoramus

Useful sites at the beginning of BA1, students are introduced to the English unit’s ‘useful links’ site in class Part 1 of the Proficiency syllabus is devoted to ‘Printed and electronic reference works’ this website includes useful pointers to resources that can complement (again, not replace) their printed reference works and ‘offline’ exercises, including e.g. online dictionaries and encyclopedias audio and video material available online (e.g. ‘podcasts’ and ‘vodcasts’) online grammar and reading comprehension exercises interesting websites to read about music, films, current affairs, etc.

Useful sites students are also encouraged to use samplers of ‘real’ online corpora such as Cobuild or the British National Corpus, or even just Google to determine whether expressions they’ve used in their writing are idiomatically/collocationally acceptable ‘collocation’: frequent co-occurrence of words; e.g. ‘strong coffee’ and ‘powerful car’, not ‘strong car’ and ‘powerful coffee’ e.g. ‘a period of big stress’  compare the number of Google hits for “big stress” vs. “great stress” or “great percentage” vs. “high/large percentage” > if there is considerable discrepancy in the number of hits, choose the clearly more frequent one [this is not infallible of course, but it is usually more reliable than students’ intuitions] Cobuild concordance and collocation sampler

Useful sites some examples of sites that are actually used frequently in the classroom: online dictionaries (especially the Cambridge website which features several dictionaries) urbandictionary.com (user-submitted definition of slang words often not found in ordinary dictionaries) [cf. ‘Grumpy old women’: grolly] phrases.org.uk: the meaning and origin of many English phrases and sayings Wikipedia (encyclopedic background, pictures, etc.) YouTube (video illustrations)

Online forums in an online forum, students can send messages not to individual e-mail addresses but to a website, where teachers and students can read and react to each other’s messages different electronic environments are available within which such online interaction can take place, e.g. commercial (and often expensive) software such as Blackboard or FirstClass (perhaps some schools use one of these) non-commercial educational ‘freeware’: Claroline (developed at the UCL) free website services such as Google Groups or Yahoo groups

Online forums the University of Namur’s ‘WebCampus’ is based on UCL’s freely available Claroline not just online forums: there is, for instance, the possibility of making course documents (text files, audio files, video excerpts, etc.) available online, as well as that of offering multiple choice or fill-in exercises Claroline is very easy to use for both students and teachers, but in order to install the system locally on your school’s server you will want to enlist the help of the informatics teacher ;-) Google Groups or Yahoo Groups offer interesting ‘ready-made’ alternatives if you’re interested (only) in online forums these websites’ guided tours and registration procedures are entirely self-explanatory

Online forums topics used in our forums so far: opinion on a film or documentary (from our “Version originale” video programme) (BA1/BA2) biography (‘likes and dislikes’) of a fellow student (BA1): combined oral-written assignment other possible uses include discussing and interpreting short stories with fellow students (and teachers) in preparation for a lesson submitting questions about assigned texts to the teacher in advance > system used for my course in general linguistics (conceived of as a ‘reading seminar’; groups of students are assigned one of the texts in the syllabus and have to submit their questions before the lesson dealing with this text)

Online forums method of correcting contributions online: putting deleted material in square brackets adding corrective material in capitals this allows the author as well as other readers to ‘reconstrue’ the original mistake and to see the corrected version in one and the same linear text (although admittedly it is cumbersome) an alternative could be to use Word documents and the ‘track changes’ function, but WebCampus in its current form does not allow students to post Word documents to anyone other than the teacher another alternative could be to correct draft contributions offline, have students post these corrected versions, and keep only a ‘collective’ feedback moment (featuring ‘the best of the worst’)

Online forums example of original and corrected version: original:Sunset Boulevard is, according to me, a captivating, beautiful and pleasant film. it is never boring nor monotonous since it alternates the sometimes more "tragic" passages with the funny ones. This has also the effect that even if the end is already known (Joe's death), some form of suspense (or at least, of dynamism) is kept until the film finishes. The actors (let us not forget them) interpret their roles perfectly with, as background, a typical classical soundtrack of the fifties. Finally, I discovered a period in the history of the cinema which (I have to admit) I wasn't really familiarised with and it was a very interesting and pleasant discovery.

Online forums example of original and corrected version: corrected version:Sunset Boulevard is, IN MY VIEW [according to me -- 'according to' is rarely used with a first person - LV], a captivating, beautiful and pleasant film. I[i]t is never boring nor monotonous since [it alternates] the sometimes more "tragic" passages ALTERNATE with the funny ones. This ALSO HAS [has also] the effect [perhaps rather: 'this has the added effect...' - LV] that even if the end is already known (Joe's death), some form of suspense (or at least, of dynamism) is kept until the END OF THE film [finishes]. The actors (let us not forget them) PERFORM REALLY WELL [interpret their roles perfectly -- interpréter un rôle = French - LV] with, as background, a typical classical soundtrack of the fifties. Finally, I discovered a period in the history of the cinema which (I have to admit) I wasn't really familiarised with and THIS [it] was a very interesting and pleasant discovery.

Online forums importance of the combination of individual and collective feedback > ‘sentence correction exercises’ focusing on recurrent mistakes and using authentic examples from students’ writing – see examples on the companion website it is of course important to point out to students that “we’re in this together”: students initially tend to dislike having their mistakes ‘exposed’ to fellow students but this is the whole point of this type of setting: to learn from one’s own and each other’s mistakes so as to improve one’s skills

Online forums alternative approach (Carlon & Schneider 2003): promoting ‘conversational writing’ no individual corrections, but encouraging students to write, even if initially with very many mistakes, just to overcome their fear of writing and to show that they can communicate (even if at a very basic level) in English offering only collective feedback on recurrent mistakes: multiple choice exercises based on authentic sentences, e.g. (Carlon and Schneider 2003) I think that it’s more … than learning a normal text.fun / funny … the Church continues like that (and soon there won’t be any priests) … it accepts the world is changing and accepts marriageeither…or / or…or Carlon, Keith and Susan Schneider (2003) Beyond the classroom. Belgian Journal of English Language and Literatures New Series 1: 205-216.

Publishing online: the germ@namur blog a ‘blog’ or ‘weblog’ is a website on which the author provides commentary or news about a particular subject with reference to other websites (cf. Wikipedia entry and Economist article); blog ‘entries’ or ‘contributions’ can further include pictures, audio files, videos, etc. what is thus essential about blog entries is that they contain links to other websites part of a series of ‘social networking’ concepts (cf. MySpace): ‘here’s what I think is good, you should take a look at this’ some bloggers (the more ‘romantic’ or less ‘nerdy’ ones perhaps) use their weblog more as a kind of personal online diary interesting example: ‘Blogging pedagogy’, a blog about pedagogy and English studies

Publishing online: the germ@namur blog aims of the ‘blog writing’ exercises in BA2 and BA3: offering a ‘different’ kind of writing exercise which is hoped to provide additional ‘intrinsic’ motivation: writing ‘online’ not on a typical ‘essay writing topic’, but on a topic of their own choice (in the first term) or on a keyword or icon from an anglophone culture (in the second term) another explicit aim is to invite (or perhaps force) students to acquire some basic technical skills in the domain of ‘online publishing’ some students have their own blogs (used for little else than publishing pictures of themselves and their friends) others are not interested in or even afraid of using the internet for anything beyond the usual (e-mail, Google) as there is no separate course on computer skills in our programme, we see it as our duty to teach students a number of computer skills across different courses

Publishing online: the germ@namur blog the technical side of starting up a blog is not difficult; in the case of the germ@namur blog I’ve opted for Blogger.com (like so much of what is popular on the internet Blogger.com is owned by Google) cf. ‘take a quick tour’ ‘create a blog in three easy steps’ ‘managing’ the blog: mainly a matter of inviting other contributors to join (by sending invitation e-mails within the Blogger interface) posting messages onto the blog (including pictures and YouTube videos): see the ‘how to’ sections at [http://perso.fundp.ac.be/~lvdlanot/blog/]

Publishing online: the germ@namur blog first assignment (first term): students’ own choice of topic: inviting them to reveal something about their likes and dislikes, and perhaps even their personality examples of topics chosen include: experiences abroad (Erasmus [Cork, Berlin, Brussels, Maastricht] or other [Salamanca]) ‘favourite somethings’: films (Casino Royale, 300, Borat, Bowling for Columbine, World Trade Center), television series (EastEnders, Desperate Housewives, Prison Break, Dawson’s Creek, Neighbours, Newport Beach, 21 Jump Street) or shows (The Weakest Link), cartoons (Family Guy), comedians (Weird Al Yankovic, Jim Carey, Mr Bean), games (Wii), websites (DeviantArt), books (Harry Potter, Northern Lights, Sword of Truth novels) famous people (Lady Di) recommending places or events (charity concerts, Scott’s Pub in Luxembourg, Chocolate Museum in Berlin) more ‘intellectual’/cultural topics: World War 2, global warming, the Enlightenment, the true story of St Nicholas, Thanksgiving

Publishing online: the germ@namur blog first assignment (first term) corrections: students were urged to have their text read over by at least one fellow student in advance, but they published their texts without prior corrections all contributions were corrected on print-outs and handed back to students (= individual feedback) collective feedback: recurrent or striking mistakes were incorporated into a ‘sentence correction exercise’ (separately for BA2 and BA3) – see files on companion website from students’ evaluations of course modules it has appeared that students really like this sort of feedback (unlike exercises in a book, this is really their language)

Publishing online: the germ@namur blog first assignment (first term) some conclusions from this first experience: students made a serious effort (to varying degrees, as suggested by varying length of contributions) apart from general proficiency errors, there were a few more specific problems: not enough links to other websites ‘explicit’ links instead of the ‘implicit’ ones recommended in the instructions slightly too informal language at times (use of abbreviations ‘btw’ and of the pronoun ‘I’ in lower case ‘i’) more explicit instruction about the use of sources required some entries were based too narrowly or exclusively on a single website (usually the Wikipedia entry for the topic) one or two cases bordering on plagiarism (cf. scan ‘blog2.gif’ on companion website)

Publishing online: the germ@namur blog second assignment (second term) assigned topic: keywords and icons of anglophone cultures other differences with first assignment: working in pairs (reducing the work load for students and teachers) explicit length requirements: between 200 and 500 words students were invited to (but not obliged to) have their draft read over by a teacher before posting it on the blog (in BA2) blog contribution linked to a short oral presentation (6 to 8 minutes per group of two students) > ‘student conference’ alongside the ‘online conference’ (cf. poster on companion website) [not in BA3 because they already had a substantial oral presentation in the second term]

Publishing online: the germ@namur blog second assignment (second term) some conclusions: not all students made use of the possibility of having their draft read over in advance, but those that did clearly benefitted from it (in the final post-publication corrections the difference between proofread and non-proofread contributions was very clear – compare the two ‘keywords’ scans on the companion website) from students’ evaluation of the use of the blog it appears that around two thirds of students prefer this system (draft corrections first, then publishing online) (62 / 76 %) overall very interesting contributions and good oral presentations final corrected versions were collated into a single file and distributed among students (as part of the study material for the oral exam)

Publishing online: the germ@namur blog other results from students’ evaluation: they find the technical side of it rather demanding, but were very happy with teachers’ technical assistance an overwhelming majority of students (86.4 / 92 %) thought the ‘keywords and icons’ topic was a good one even though reading other people’s contributions was in no way required, students did generally read ‘quite a few’ or ‘not that many’ contributions rather than ‘none’ ‘on the whole, do you think the blog is a good idea?’ BA2: 81.8% yes; 4.5% no; 13.6% no opinion BA3: 65.4% yes; 11.5% no; 23.1% no opinion

Publishing online: the germ@namur blog aren’t the teacher’s writing efforts wasted on an unappreciative audience? see results above: not as one might hope perhaps, but in realistic terms not that bad at any rate the teacher has to set an example to show what kinds of messages can be posted on a blog and what is possible technically and there are ways of using what the teacher has written in the classroom cf. overview of types of teacher’s blog contributions some of these were used in class in BA1 and are part of the study material, e.g. contributions on ‘Remembrance day’, on Tony Blair (with video excerpts that tied in nicely with the lessons about the London bombings), and on the ‘noughties’

Conclusions and outlook motivation for some students at least, writing ‘online’ and about their own topics or topics to do with popular culture (rather than the usual serious, highbrow academic subjects) increases the intrinsic motivation for written assignments students who are less enthusiastic about the internet should still be encouraged to take an interest – they will have to use it sooner or later, whether they like it or not…

Conclusions and outlook heterogeneity there are considerable differences among students in terms of computer skills, so sufficient technical assistance will have to be provided with often a lot of patience being required on the part of the teacher … … but this is rewarded in terms of students’ appreciation, as in one of the comments in the blog evaluation: “Thanks for allowing us to feel a bit less stupid!” part of a broader effort to teach students computer skills (e.g. revising texts in Word, using Excel sheets, doing oral presentations with the help of Powerpoint, etc.) the level of technical expertise required of students is not exaggerated

Conclusions and outlook heterogeneity obviously similar remarks apply to teachers, not all of whom (thankfully!) are nerds like I am which is fine; the greater the variety of teaching styles and personalities students are confronted with, the better the general principle should be that teachers needn’t desperately seek for online extensions of their teaching methods just for their own sake; only where it is feasible and where it can add a useful dimension may they want to take action ‘beyond the classroom’, online

Conclusions and outlook oral skills informal writing in online forums with collective feedback only (‘conversational writing’, see above) can indirectly help develop oral skills by helping students overcome their inhibitions about communicating in a foreign language by gradually removing (through repeated feedback exercises) a number of basic proficiency stumbling blocks

Conclusions and outlook outlook God only knows what other innovations the internet will bring… clearly there is no need for teachers to be at the forefront of such new developments in fact, teachers can learn about interesting online material from students, who are sometimes more knowledgeable in this domain example: blog contribution explaining how to download videos from YouTube and view them ‘offline’ this is nice for the teacher, who learns something new, and for the student, who gains in self-confidence

Contact information lieven.vandelanotte@fundp.ac.be English Unit, University of Namur http://www.fundp.ac.be/facultes/lettres/departements/germaniques/anglais/ Companion website to this talk http://perso.fundp.ac.be/~lvdlanot/journee/ Personal website http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/fll/lvandelanotte

Using the Web to promote students’ motivation and interaction in English

Using the Web to promote students’ motivation and interaction in English

Presentation Transcript

ENHANCING STUDENTS MOTIVATION TO LEARN

English Placement Testing

State Accountability Results

Motivation

Erica Frischkorn Has Teaching Exp. In French And English

The MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation

Weblogs: a tool for EFL interaction, expression, and self-evaluation

Objective:

Reclassification of English Learner Students in California

Any Questions?: How Asking the Right Questions Can Promote Critical Thinking

2 6 ML condition Experimental group

“PROMOTI

English classes online | Break Into English

Could content-based instruction help students learn English?

Labanotation for Design of Movement-Based Interaction

English Immersion Program for Korean Students

Staff Motivation

English for emails

English Language Arts

HND – 4. Motivation

Interaction

ACTION PLAN