Will you offer friendly CALL advice?

Dear CALLers,

next Tue night we will have a visitor – Emily C. who is a graduate student in our program.

She is interested in exploring how innovative and emerging technologies (esp. Second Life) contribute to affect and motivational strategies that can facilitate and even enhance effective second language learning.

Now that you have all designed your Second Life Tasks (btw do email me an electronic copy if you haven’t yet), I am sure you will be happy to share your opinions and suggestions with Emily!

Feeling critical? pessimistic? hopeful?

Bowers (2000) argues that CMC should be viewed as a degraded form of symbolic interaction and pretty much calls computer-based education a delusion. What is your take on this perspective? Based on the CALL studies that we have seen so far and the many problems we identified with the current state of the field, are you as pessimistic as Bowers???

ACTFL Podcasts

Have a look (and a listen) at the 2007 ACTFL convention podcasts on CALL-related topics:

http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=4805

Enjoy,

Viktoria.

workshop on funding your research

I thought that this might be of interest to you:

Finding Funding: A workshop for grant seekers (for faculty and graduate students)
The presenter: Grace Thornton, Grant Development Specialist
Dates: April 14th OR April 25th 2008
Time 2:30-4:30
Location: Aderhold 227/228
You have to contact Grace to reserve a seat: gthorn@uga.edu

Learner Corpus Analysis

Hello CALLers,

Satomi will be posting her questions for us shortly. In the meanwhile, here is a question from me as well.

Some critics of learner corpus analysis maintain that it focuses too much on learner ERRORS, and, therefore, is in essence a disempowering approach.  Based on our readings for this week (+ Belz & Vyatkina, Belz & Kinginger & , as well as articles on the Grim and iWrite tools) , would you agree with this evaluation? What else is learner corpus analysis good for beyond error analysis?

Computer tools: looking ahead

Well, let’s take a step away from our traditional approach to blogging as based entirely on the readings and let our imagination soar wildly.

During the last week I might have put a damper on our discussion of the value of computers as tools (as opposed to computers as tutors and mediums). Do you agree with my take on the usefulness of computers in this role for FL education? What computer tool that you are familiar with are you excited about? Or, better yet, think about a concept computer tool for teaching FL that has not been implemented yet but would have the potential for having a beneficial impact on the field.

Soar away!

Innovations in Technology

There was an interesting article on MSN about the breakthroughs in technology. While some tools are not relevant to CALL, the article discusses the future of Web 2.0 and Second Life:

http://www.fastcompany.com/multimedia/slideshows/content/entertainment-tech.html?page=1

as well as yet another social network service Twitter which helps you stay hyper-connected:

http://twitter.com

A piece of work… I mean legislature

Dear class,

Here is an issue worth blogging about (separate from the questions on readings that Jonathan is posting for us).
http://www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/2007_08/pdf/sb497.pdf

Several GA Senators are proposing that all high school FL teachers be moved to elementary schools and then all high school FL classes be taught online. That would land many students in my CALL class But, apart from my egoistic thoughts, I find this piece of legislature ahead of its time- April 1^st is not here yet… What do you think?

Teens and Social Media

Jonathan shared with me a link to the 2007 report on teens and social media by Pew Internet and American Life Project:

http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Social_Media_Final.pdf

We discussed their earlier report in Jan.

Thanks, Jonathan!

Asynchronous approaches to CMC

Dear CALL-ers,

here is a couple of questions for everybody from David and one from me.  Enjoy!

1) Hegelheimer gives us an example of a NS corpus-based project and B & V give us an example of a NNS and NS corpus-based project. What do you think are the benefits or drawbacks of both. Does using the student’s own errors make for better instruction?

2) What are some ways you can use web 2.0 (second generation) applications in your classes?

3) We have read many CMC studies which are IA-driven and focus on turn-taking. How is Belz & Vyatkina’s study different in this respect (i.e. what’s their analytical focus)? We’ve also read studies which voiced a belief that metalinguistic explanations have no direct bearing on learners’ interlanguage development. What’s B&V’s take on the issue?