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An Introduction to "Spotlight on the Profession"

In keeping with McGraw-Hill's leadership role and ongoing dedication to professional development in world languages, we are delighted to unveil Spotlight on the Profession: A Web-Based Forum for Language Researchers and Instructors.

In 1999, McGraw-Hill’s commitment to the academic community continues with "Spotlight on the Profession," an innovative online forum for instructors, available exclusively through this website. Our first spotlight topic is technology and language instruction, written by Dr. Robert Blake of the University of California, Davis.

Future articles featured in "Spotlight on the Profession" will address topics such as "the role of grammatical instruction," "content-based instruction," and "evaluation and assessment". All articles are written by experts in their field and have a strong classroom application. These articles will post on our website. In addition, you will be able to participate in a threaded web discussion to further explore the given topic. This online discussion will allow you to share perspectives and ideas with your colleagues across the country-and engage in interesting debate!--over the course of an entire semester.

All of our "Spotlights" will focus on key topics similar in scope to issues discussed during the Satellite Teleconference sponsored annually by McGraw-Hill since 1994. We are also delighted to inform you about the latest news regarding our highly successful Satellite Teleconference on Topics in Second Language Acquisition. We will be continuing our teleconference tradition on a biannual basis, with our next teleconference scheduled for October of 2000.

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We invite you to participate in a "threaded discussion" with other language researchers and practitioners, and to share your thoughts and comments about the article presented here. Below are some questions to prompt discussion, though you are welcome to comment on other issues raised in the article as well.

1. The author states that "there are three important technological platforms that provide tools to assist language learning, in order of increasing interactivity: the Web, CD-ROM applications, and network-based communication". Have you implemented any of these into your language curriculum? Have you witnessed any sort of effect on students’ language learning that you believe can be attributed to these technologies?

2. In the closing section of the article the author raises the caveat that "the profession must maintain realistic expectations for what technology might do for the nation's second language curriculum." He then goes on to state that "Language teachers who wish to remain competitive in the profession should observe and contemplate instances where technology can assist good teaching practices; today's language professionals must educate themselves to adapt these techniques to the needs of their own respective classrooms." Do you agree that an understanding of technology will be critical for language instructors to remain competitive? Why or why not?

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Introduction: Why Technology belongs in the Language Curriculum

Learning a second language (L2) is both an intensive and time-consuming activity. After years of experience in training field agents, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) estimates that anywhere from 600 to 1,320 hours of full-time instruction are needed to reach a level of high fluency, depending on the language (Bialystok and Hakuta 1994: 34). Most university students only spend on average 150 hours per academic year studying a second language (10 weeks @ 5 hours/week for three quarters = 150 total hours). What this means is that students are hard-pressed in the course of a normal four-year college career to reach the FSI's minimal conditions for learning a second language.

Increasing contact with the target language, then, appears to be one of the most critical factors for successful second language learning. No one doubts that going to the region(s) where the target language is spoken and immersing oneself in the society and culture clearly remains a preferred (but expensive) method for acquiring linguistic competence in another language. But what about those students who are unable or unwilling to take advantage of study abroad opportunities? Here is where technology can be of some help. Most second language acquisition (SLA) theorists would agree--in some basic formulation of the issues--that formal L2 instruction is often unsuccessful because learners receive impoverished or insufficient input in the target language (Cummins 1998:19). Technology, if used wisely, can play a major role in enhancing all L2 learners' contact with the target language, regardless of their study abroad experiences. But for students who cannot go abroad, technology may provide a crucial avenue of for contact with the target language. Whether or not technology fulfills this promise, however, depends on how it is used in the curriculum.

At first blush, it might appear counterintuitive, ironic, or even futile to think that computers can be of any assistance with an activity as socially grounded as is that of learning a second language. After all, computers aren't human and can't interact with anyone in the sense that two human beings can. Nevertheless, Reeves and Nass (1996: 5) have argued convincingly that "people's interactions with computers, television, and new media are fundamentally social and natural, just like interactions in real life." Their research has revealed that users are polite to computers and respond to the "personality" of both the interface and whatever computer agents or computer-animated guides are present (also Hubbard). In other words, computers are social actors as well, at least from the students' perspective, which is all that really matters (28). Reeves and Nass' research further reinforces the notion that computers can make a significant contribution to the language learning process because the students themselves have the sense they are interacting with the computer in an authentic social manner.

Which tools? What advantages?

Before discussing the advantages of using technology for learning languages, it is important not to refer to technology as if we were dealing with a single, homogeneous tool, as if all technology were the same. Different technologically based tools render different advantages for learning a second language. There isn't one technology best suited for language study, but rather an array of technological tools that can be harnessed to that end, although the tools themselves will continue to change very rapidly. More specifically, there are three important technological platforms that provide tools to assist language learning, in order of increasing interactivity: the Web, CD-ROM applications, and network-based communication (i.e., e-mail, listservs, user groups, chat rooms, and MOOs [i.e., multi-user domain, object-oriented]).

The Web offers a variety of authentic target-language resources: a virtual trip to Peru, a guided bicycle trip to Santiago de Compostela, a wine guide for La Rioja, or images of the murals of Orozco, to name only a few examples for Spanish. Materials for French, Italian, German, Japanese, and Russian also abound, along with an ever-increasingly sophisticated array of Web-based courses and self-tests. Non-English Web pages account for 45% of the postings on the Web. More importantly, the Web gives all peoples of the world a channel to express their own voice and promote their own notions of self, which is reason alone for why language students should be reading these Web pages. This sense of authenticity on the Web provides endless topics for cross-cultural analysis and discussions in a content-based classroom.

Teachers are beginning to use Web pages, both original and adapted, to serve as the students' primary-source materials, especially in content-based language courses. In this type of course, students work through the tasks and activities presented them and only gradually have recourse to learn the grammar (for a technologically supported, content-based approach, see Barson 1991 and Debski 1997). The Web pages serve to provide content stimulation and a means for further inquiry. Given the richness of non-English Web materials, the class can move in new directions at any point or deepen their knowledge of any particular topic. For the experienced teacher who knows how to take advantage of these obvious communicative opportunities, a Web-based, content-driven, approach is a dream come true--and the students respond in kind. Something like this type of Web-based course might eventually displace the notion of a static textbook, Web copyright problems notwithstanding.

CD-ROMs offer an ideal medium for the delivery of specific applications that take advantage of large audio, graphics, and video files. The publishing industry is increasingly involved in producing high-quality CD-ROMs because the marketplace is demanding it (for good survey of some of the latest CD-ROM foreign language programs, see the special issue of The CALICO Journal [Fall 1999], Volume 17.1). One of the jobs of today's language faculty and lab personnel is to keep track of this new generation of language CD-ROMs being produced and to know how to review them, which entails its own Catch-22: language professionals need to know something about interface design in order to be able to review software in the first place. Teachers must be educated in recognizing well-grounded pedagogy when they see it, hear it, and read it on the screen. Many of today's CD-ROMs have sophisticated visual interfaces, but care must be exercised so that the medium doesn't overshadow the message, to borrow a metaphor from Marshall McLuhan (1964).

Finally, computer mediated communication (CMC) provides a third platform where L2 students can transcend the spatial and temporal confines of the classroom via the Internet. E-mail or asynchronous ('deferred time') communication and chat or synchronous ('real time') communication offer students the highest level of interactivity because they permit one-on-one, personal exchanges. SLA research has clearly demonstrated the importance of learning language through personal exchanges that require the learners to negotiate meaning with other learners and/or native speakers (Pica 1994, Long 1981 and 1991, Gass 1997, Gass & Varonis 1994, Doughty 1998). This negotiation of meaning appears to be one of the principled ways in which students gradually liberate themselves from the seemingly interminable stages of interlanguage and achieve higher proficiency in the target language.

Students can obviously negotiate one on one during regularly scheduled class time or lab sessions, but the benefits of negotiating meaning also obtain for synchronous network-based communication as well (Pellettieri in press, Blake et al. in press). This means students can engage in negotiating meaning at any time from home or the lab at their mutual convenience. This use of technology opens the door to a wealth of untapped potential for L2 language use. Again, all theorists agree that increasing the amount and quality of the students' L2 input is crucially necessary to SLA success. CMC has an enormous contribution to make to the L2 curriculum, if teachers are willing to become familiar enough with the technology to be able to incorporate it into the students' out-of-class assignments.

The advantages of online discussions over face-to-face exchanges have been well documented in the research literature. Among its greatest virtues, researchers frequently cite the computer's usefulness as: (1) a text-based medium that amplifies students' attention to linguistic form (Warschauer 1997); (2) a stimulus for increased written L2 production (Kern 1995); (3) a less stressful environment for L2 practice (Chun 1998); (4) a more equitable and non-threatening forum for L2 discussions, especially for women, minorities, and nonassertive personalities (Warschauer 1995 and 1997); and (5) an expanded access channel with possibilities for creating global learning networks (Cummins 1995). Swaffar (1998: 1) has succinctly summarized the benefits derived from computer mediated communication (CMC) as compared to classroom oral exchanges:

Ironically, telling students that their responses will also be saved by the computer for research purposes doesn't seem to diminish their level of participation or their sense that the computer still affords them a relatively anonymous, or at least protected, environment for their discussions (Pellettieri 1999).

Final Comments

Despite the advantages discussed above, the profession must maintain realistic expectations for what technology might do for the nation's second language curriculum. Nothing is achieved by promising the language profession a "one size fits all" technological panacea for its financial and curricular woes, although some administrators would dearly like to downsize the number of full-time language faculty, using technology as a replacement. Negative reactions from certain corners of our profession to the introduction of technology into the L2 classroom naturally feed off the failed promises of the audiolingual lab of the sixties. Dashed expectations from that era have created a residual distrust of technology and account for many language teachers' reluctance to plunge into the implementation of yet another round of new technologies in the face of few demonstrable results (Roblyer 1988) and even fewer tangible career paybacks (Quinn 1990:300). To compound these initial suspicions further, many people have less than a clear notion of what technology means for L2 learning. Very few language professionals are ready to conceive of technology as consisting of a concerted and coordinated ensemble of supporting tools--Web pages, CD-ROMs, and CMC--all in service of stimulating interest in learning the target language. That type of vision would require language teachers to know how to use Web pages, CD-ROMs, and chat programs, a thoroughly scary proposition to many.

Resistance aside, computer technology will remain a key component to most everything we do in the 21st century, the so-called "information age". Language professionals need to capitalize on its advantages and strengths wherever consistent with best teaching practices which, in turn, should also be informed by SLA theory. Language teachers who wish to remain competitive in the profession should observe and contemplate instances where technology can assist good teaching practices; today's language professionals must educate themselves to adapt these techniques to the needs of their own respective classrooms.

References

Barson, John. 1991. The virtual classroom is born: What now? In Barbara F. Freed (ed.), Foreign Language Acquisition Research and the Classroom. Lexington, D.C.: Heath and Company.

Bialystok, Ellen and Kenji Hakuta. 1994. In Other Words. New York: BasicBooks.

Blake, Robert, David Fahy and Dick Walters. [June] 1999. Implementing chat software in the foreign-language curriculum: The case of RTA". In David Brown (ed.), Interactive Learning: Vignettes from America's Most Wired Campuses. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Co.

CALICO Journal 17(1). 1999. Special Issue: Language Courseware Design.

Chun, Dorothy. 1998. Using computer-assisted class discussion to facilitate the acquisition of interactive competence. In Swaffar et al., (eds.), 57-80.

Cummins, Jim. 1998. e-Lective language learning: Design of a computer-assisted text-based ESL/EFL learning system. TESOL Journal, Spring: 18-21.

Debski, Robert. 1997. Support of creativity and collaboration in the language classroom: A new role for technology. In Robert Debski, June Gassin, Mike Smith (eds.), Language Learning Through Social Computing: ALAA's Occasional Papers Number 16. Melbourne: Applied Linguistics Association of Australia.

Doughty, Catherine. 1998. Acquiring competence in a second language: Form and function. In Heidi Byrnes (ed.), Learning Foreign and Second Languages. New York: The Modern Language Association. 128-156.

Gass, Susan, 1997. Input, Interaction, and the Second Language Learner. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Gass, Susan and Evangeline Varonis. 1994. Input, interaction and second language production. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 16: 283-302.

Hubbard, Philip. Teaching Agents in Tutorial CALL. Talk given at CALICO '99, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. June 3-6, 1999.

Kern, Richard. 1995. Restructuring classroom interaction with networked computers: Effects on quantity and characteristics of language production. Modern Language Journal, 79: 457-476.

Long, Michael. 1981. Input, interaction and second language acquisition. In Winitz (ed.), Native Language and Foreign Language Acquisition. New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Science. 259-278.

Long, Michael. 1991. Focus on form: A design feature in language teaching methodology. In Claire Kramsch and Ralph Ginsberg (eds.), Foreign Language Research in Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 39-52.

McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extension of Man. New York: Signet.

Pellettieri, Jill. In press. Negotiation in cyberspace: The role of chatting in the development of grammatical competence. In Warschauer and Kern (eds.). Network-Based Language Teaching: Concepts and Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Pica, Teresa. 1994. Research on negotiation: What does it reveal about second-language learning conditions, processes, and outcomes? Language Learning, 44: 493-527.

Quinn, Robert. 1990. Our progress in integrating modern methods and computer-controlled learning for successful language study. Hispania 73: 297-311.

Reeves, Byron and Clifford Nass. 1996. The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications and Cambridge University Press.

Reporte Delta #61: http://delta.hypermart.net/ERD.html?tx.

Roblyer, Margaret D. 1988. The effectiveness of microcomputers in education: A review of research from 1980-87. T.H.E. Journal 16.2: 85-89.

Swaffar, Janet. 1998. Networking language learning: Introduction. In Swaffar et al. (eds.). 1-15.

Warschauer, M. 1995. Comparing face to face and electronic discussion in the second language classroom. CALICO Journal 13(2&3): 7-26.

Warschauer, M. 1997. Computer-mediated collaborative learning. Modern Language Journal. 81(4): 470-481.

About the Author

Robert J. Blake (Ph.D. University of Texas, Austin) is professor of Spanish linguistics and Director of the University of California at Davis Second Language Acquisition Institute (http://slai.ucdavis.edu). He has published widely in Spanish linguistics on topics dealing with historical phonology and syntax, modern syntax, and second-language learning. Professor Blake is also a leader in the development of computer-assisted materials for the teaching of Spanish, and served as the chief academic consultant on the development of the task-based CD-ROM to accompany Nuevos Destinos, jointly produced by the Annenberg CPB/Project, WGBH, and McGraw-Hill, Inc. Currently, he is working on a distance learning project, Remote Technical Assistance, which will run over the Internet across hardware platforms (http://escher.cs.ucdavis.edu). Professor Blake is also co-author of Al corriente (3rd ed.), an intermediate level Spanish textbook based on authentic reading materials and online Internet activities (McGraw-Hill).