Literature & CALL

Using Internet-Based Children's Literature to Teach EFL

Larry J. Mikulecky
Mikuleck(at)Indiana.edu
Indiana University, Bloomington (Bloomington, IN, USA)

Introduction

Even though it has been nearly twenty-five years since scholars began exhorting EFL and ESL teachers to use children’s and young adult literature to teach adult learners (Flickinger, 1984), the practice has never become wide-spread. During the past two decades, research has continued to document the benefits of extensive L2 reading within one’s proficiency range (e.g. children's and young adult literature).

One likely explanation for this puzzling situation of documented benefits but little actual use is the problem of access (i.e. locating a sufficient range of simple literature in English in a form that is economically feasible). Goshen (1997), an EFL teacher with experience teaching in Lebanon, Syria and the United Arab Emirates, has noted that expense is a major hurdle. This is especially true if a teacher must order multiple copies of several different titles needed to address a range of student interests and language ability levels. Shipping costs can double the already high cost of books.

While this was clearly a problem in 1997, when Goshen first wrote of it, a growing wealth of children's and young adult literature available over the Internet can help overcome the problems of access and expense. Free and inexpensive Internet resources can now allow teachers to more easily use children’s and young adult literature to gain the benefits of extensive L2 reading for their students.

Evidence Supporting the Extensive Reading of Comprehensible Material

If the only time one uses English is during English class, it is very difficult to secure the practice time and develop the vocabulary needed for rapid growth in English proficiency. During the past two decades, research has consistently documented the benefits of extensive reading in L2 to the development of second language mastery. Waring and Nation (2004) summarize and synthesize nearly three dozen studies that demonstrate and examine the benefits of extensive reading in L2 to improvement of vocabulary, grammar, reading comprehension and writing.

In order for benefits to occur, the reader must already understand the majority of vocabulary on a page. For beginning and intermediate level students, this means relatively simple language such as that found in children's and young adult literature. Laufer (1989) and Liu and Nation (1985) demonstrated that unless a reader has control of at least 95% of words on a page, it is unlikely that he or she will be able to use context to guess the meaning of unknown words. Subsequent research (Hsueh-Chao and Nation, 2000), indicates that previous mastery of even higher percentages of vocabulary (i.e. 98% or more) is associated with the most benefit in new vocabulary growth.

These percentages correspond with similar percentages presented in the 1940’s by Betts (1946) for mastery levels in L1 reading of English. Betts suggested using vocabulary mastery as one indicator of a reader's independent, instructional or frustrational reading level.
Independent: 99% of words already known for fluent, enjoyable reading.
Instructional: 98%-95% of words known and some instructional support such as teacher suggestions, vocabulary explanations, illustrations etc. needed for benefit.
Frustrational: Below 95% of words known can damage fluency and lead to disruptions in comprehension strategies.

These suggested levels tend to match most of our experiences as readers. Few of us willingly continue reading books if we need to use a dictionary to understand 15-20 new words on every page (i.e. 5% of the words of a paperback book page with 300-400 words), though we can usually continue to read fluently if we encounter only three to four new words per page. In American elementary schools, teachers show children how to use the "five-finger method" when selecting books from the library. For each unknown word a child finds on a page (usually containing about 100 words of print), the child raises a finger. If five fingers are raised before completing the page, the book is probably too difficult and the child should select another.

Depending upon the difficulty of material to be read and the technical complexity of academic and professional material, scholars differ on the number of words and word families a reader needs to master before benefiting from extensive reading (Waring and Nation, 2004). To benefit in vocabulary growth from extensive reading of simple, non-graded text, previous mastery of 2000-3000 L2 words is suggested as a minimal level. This is roughly comparable to the vocabulary level of an average 9-10 year-old L1 speaker. It also corresponds to the vocabulary level of many high school and beginning college level EFL learners.

Finding Simple, Accessible and Inexpensive Readings in English

As has been mentioned above, children's and young adult literature in English has been recommended for more than two decades as a potential source of reading material for extensive reading. It is only relatively recently, however, that the Internet has helped to overcome problems of access and expense.

There are four web-sites that are particularly rich in extensive and accessible children's and young adult literature and which have demonstrated a stable existence (as much as anything on the Internet can be called stable). These sites (described in the attached Appendix in more detail with URL’s current in October 2007) provide a wide range of materials, topics, difficulty levels and sophisticated illustrations--sometimes accompanied by oral readings with animations. Even if one's EFL students don't have easy access to the Internet, it is possible for teachers with Internet access to download and print out materials for student use.

Ways to Use the Resources

The main point of using these resources to increase student practice time with English outside the classroom. Though some class time might be used to show web-sites to EFL students and model how to use the stories, the majority of time should be spent by students doing assigned or volunteer reading on their own.

There are some things the teacher can do to make the reading experience more productive for students. For example, the teacher can either match students to books at appropriate difficulty level or teach EFL students to use their own version of the five-finger method. The research cited earlier in this article indicates the most benefit is gained when students already know 98% or more of the words on a page. In addition, the teacher can produce questions to guide readers' attention and focus while reading. These same questions can be used by groups of two to three students for oral discussion after reading the same story.

Below are some assignment ideas and choices that can foster extensive reading by EFL students. These assignments might be spread over several weeks.

Ask students with access to younger relatives to read and teach the English stories to their younger relatives.
Ask future teachers of English to read simple stories and then design lessons for younger students.
Ask students to keep a list of what they have read, brief summaries of stories or chapters, and new vocabulary learned.
Have students do presentations on stories to "sell" them to other students.
Have students create their own simple stories in English, possibly with illustrations.

The key elements here are fostering more practice reading English outside the classroom and finding enough variety of materials so all students can read something they can understand. In the last few years, the availability of children’s and young adult literature on the Internet has exploded and these resources will continue to grow. In many places, access to Internet technology has become easier than access to resources for purchasing printed books. For teachers and students with Internet access, it is time to reconsider how English reading practice might be expanded through the use of online children's and young adult literature.

References

Betts, E. A. (1946). Foundations of reading instructions with emphasis on differentiated guidance. American Book Company.
Flickinger, G. G. (1984). Language, Literacy, Children’s Literature: The Link to Communicative Competency for ESOL Adults. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Texas State Council of the International Reading Association (12th, Corpus Christi, TX, March 1-3, 1984). (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED268504).
Goshen, I. (1997). ESL with Children's Literature, English Teaching Forum Online Vol 35 No 3, July - September 1997 http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol35/no3/p14.htm
Hsueh-chao, M and Nation, P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language vol 13, No. 1 pp. 403-430.
Laufer, B. (1989) What percentage of text-lexis is essential for comprehension? In C. Lauren and M. Nordman (eds) Special Language: From Humans Thinking to Thinking Machines Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Liu Na and Nation, I.S.P. (1985) Factors affecting guessing vocabulary in context. RELC Journal 16(1): 33-42.
Waring, R. & Nation, I.S.P. (2004). Second Language Reading and Incidental Vocabulary Learning. Angles on the English-speaking World. Vol.4, pp. 11-22.

Appendix

Examples and Discussion of Useful Web-Sites Containing Children’s and Young Adult Literature in English

(All links current as of October 26, 2007)

1. Magic Keys: The Magic Keys web-site (http://www.magickeys.com/books) contains more than thirty illustrated stories at a wide range of difficulty levels. At the beginning reader level, a good example is Rolando Merino’s illustrated and animated Alphabet book (http://www.magickeys.com/books/alphabet/index.html ). For low intermediate level readers (i.e. 1000-2000 word or about 3rd grade for L1) an interesting example is Valerie Hardin's Grow Your Own Gargoyle (http://www.magickeys.com/books/gargoyle/index.html) story about a girl ordering strange things from comic book advertisements. High intermediate readers (i.e. 3000+ words or about 6th grade for L1) might try Carol Moore's science fiction story Second Thoughts (http://www.magickeys.com/books/alien/index.html).

2. ByGosh: Classic illustrated short stories, poems and short novels can be found at the Bygosh web-site (http://www.bygosh.com/index.html). There are more than 100 selections ranging from short, simple folktales like The Fox and the Crow (http://www.bygosh.com/Features/092000/foxandcrow.html) written at the low intermediate level to Jack London’s classic young adult novel Call of the Wild (http://www.bygosh.com/cotw/index.htm ) written at the high intermediate level to several classic adult novels written at still higher levels. Though many of the readings will be too difficult for beginning and intermediate readers, the variety of free materials available from this site is impressive.

3. Children’s Digital Library: For the widest selection of materials in English, a useful site is the Children's Digital Library (http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SearchWorld). This site has illustrated children’s books in many languages and more than 1000 illustrated children’s books in English. Books on the site can be searched by continent, length, topic, reader age and several other useful descriptors. One of the advantages is that it is sometimes possible to find material in English about topics with which EFL readers might already be culturally familiar. For example, Vivian Tan’s Sights and Sounds of Singapore and Feasts and Festivals deal with topics and places that may already be familiar to many Asian EFL students. When a student already knows a good deal about a subject, it is easier to learn related English vocabulary for that subject. Renee Villaneuva's Lola’s Extraordinary Hair or Why Pinay's Are Strong Women is a folk-tale-like story about the courage and hope of a young girl in the face of repeated typhoons. This is a bilingual novel (i.e. written in both English and Filipino).   There are many bilingual and trilingual novels on this site such Rose Shomali Mulseh’s Sawa Sawa bilingual Arabic/English story of a boy trying to decide if doing housework is just "women’s work."

One of the more useful features of this site is the extensive search capacity. Though it doesn't categorize books by language difficulty level, it does categorize them by age. Books in the 3-5 age category tend to be aimed at beginning readers and deal with the English alphabet and very simple vocabulary. Books in the 6-10 age category are also mainly aimed at children, but there are still some titles that are both useful and acceptable for adolescent and adult English learners.   For example, Dorothy Whitfield's Carib Breeze (http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SimpleSearchCategory?ids=&langid=&pnum=1&cnum=1&text=Carib&lang=English&search=Search) is a collection of poetry with subject matter appropriate for both children and adults. The stanza, below, from "The Wind and I" is a wonderful example of straight-forward poetic language accessible to low intermediate level adults and adolescents.

I have been talking with the wind
The flying wind,
The crying wind.
He told of fishermen far from home
On treacherous seas that sigh and moan.
Of a lone bird’s call in the empty air
Of darkening waves—of chilling fear—
The flying wind
The crying wind
I have been talking to the wind. (p. 5)

Francine Haskins' I Remember 121 and Things I Like about Grandma (http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SimpleSearchCategory?ids=&langid=&pnum=1&cnum=1&text=Haskins&lang=English&search=Search) are narratives that use illustrations and simple language to portray family relationships, daily life, and a solid sense of culture.   These books use basic vocabulary related to families and growing up and clear illustrations to support much of the language being used. Other titles, like Sooriyarachchi’s The Witches Daughter (http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/BookPreview?bookid=soowitc_00840002&summary=true&categories=false&route=simple_0_0_Witch's%20daughter) or Hurd’s Axel the Freeway Cat (http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SimpleSearchCategory?ids=&langid=&pnum=1&cnum=1&text=Freeway&lang=English&search=Search) are written with a sense of humor that appeals to both children and adults.
There are 117 books in English in the 10-13-age category. Several are biographies, histories and moderate length novels that are appropriate for adolescents and adults, though the language might be challenging for some low intermediate students. Harriet Cheever’s Lord Dolphin (http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SimpleSearchCategory?ids=&pnum=1&cnum=1&text=dolphin&lang=English&langid=11), for example, is a 97 page novel written from the point of view of a dolphin. It is an engaging story written at the average reading level of an 11-12 year-old L1 English reader (i.e. 3000+ words). A sample passage from Lord Dolphin follows below.
"As the storm went crashing on, I kept thrusting myself downward in hopes to plunge lower than the storm circle. No use. I was upborne every time and after many attempts knew it would be best to simply float as I must. I had drifted far from the sailing vessel, when as I floated high on the crest of a wave, I looked upon a pleasure craft of some kind, riding high upon the breakers."(p. 25)

Not all students would benefit from reading this particular novel, but it would be of use to some and it has the benefit of being both accessible and free.

4. Tumblebooks: The most technologically sophisticated site described in this article is Tumblebooks (http://www.tumblebooks.com/ ). This is a subscription service with access to more than 100 children's books ranging from the beginning to intermediate range of difficulty. Books are labeled with both age and difficulty level ratings.   In the "Storybook" section of the web-site, one can find several dozen widely recognized titles in children’s literature like Robert Munsch's Paper Bag Princess (http://www.tumblebooks.com/library/asp/full_book.asp?ProductID=85 )and Darlene Cronin’s humorous Diary of a Worm (http://www.tumblebooks.com/library/asp/full_book.asp?ProductID=2253) . These online stories take the illustrations of the books and animate the action. The stories are read orally while visually highlighting phrases and vocabulary words being read. This provides both a guide to pronunciation and a sense of the rhythm of the English language. Clicking on a particular word or phrase can repeat the pronunciation.

I've shown several of these stories to college level EFL students who found them highly entertaining and asked to see more when I wanted to move on. They seemed genuinely pleased to be able to use the English they had learned to easily follow the stories.   They also enjoyed the adult humor many contemporary children's authors have embedded into books designed to appeal to both children and their parents, who buy and re-read the books to their children countless times.

The Tumblebooks site also has more difficult material in the section labeled "Tumble Readables".   Here on can find more difficult young adult novels that can be read online without the illustrations or audio support. Though these are less current than the children"s picture books in the "Storybook" section, Tumblebooks does present in a very readable format popular classics like Barrie’s Peter Pan and Kipling's Junglebook.

It is possible to get a free 30-day trail subscription from Tumblebooks. In addition, several public libraries like the Illinois Network of Libraries (http://www.ilkidszone.info/) and the St. Helena Public Library (http://www.shpl.org/pages/tumblebooks.html) as well as the Halifax Regional Library in Canada (http://www.halifaxpubliclibraries.ca/kids/tumblebooks.html) have made Tumblebooks available online. I'm almost reluctant to point this out since I don’t know how long this open access is likely to last.

The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 11, November 2007
http://iteslj.org/

http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Mikulecky-OnlineChildrensLit.html

Introduction: technology in teaching literature and culture: some reflections

Sarah Porter,
Humanities Computing Development Team, University of Oxford
sarah.porter@oucs.ox.ac.uk

Abstract

In March 1998 the CTI Centre for Textual Studies hosted a one-day conference entitled 'Teaching European Literature and Culture with Communication and Information Technology'. The lengthy title is justified by the specific focus of the conference: to consider those aspects of current teaching in European languages with C& IT which broaden the view beyond language learning to consider the cultural, historical and literary elements which complement and inform the learning of a language. There is a general perception in higher education that technology has little to contribute to the study of literature and culture. This conference aimed to redress the balance by giving practitioners the opportunity to share their experiences with using technology to teach literary and cultural studies, and to provide a platform for discussion. This paper will first explore some of the reasons for the lack of research into the use of technology in teaching literature and culture within modern languages, and will then explore three basic questions: how can technology make a valuable contribution to the teaching of literature and cultural studies? How does technology affect the relationships between subject matter and teaching methodology? Are there implications for the traditional boundaries between subject areas?

CALL’s poor relation?

Computer-assisted Language Learning is highly successful both as an area of research, and as a practical methodology for the enhancement of traditional teaching methods. This great success has led to a situation where the use of technology in teaching aspects of language studies other than language acquisition has frequently been overlooked. As a discipline, modern languages has constantly fought the perception that undergraduate study of modern languages is little more than a vocational qualification in which a skill is taught and rehearsed, with limited emphasis upon critical thinking and understanding of issues relating to literature, philosophy, politics and culture. This perception is confirmed by the huge amount of literature that is available to guide students and teachers in the field of language acquisition, with strategies for imparting and developing expertise in languages discussed in depth. Similarly, this is an extremely active area of research in many universities, schools, and colleges around the world, and language learning is one of the must fruitful and successful areas of pedagogic research at all levels.

The situation is not helped by the different camps which exist within language studies, where teaching and research staff often specialise in either language acquisition, linguistics, contemporary culture or literature, with at times little exchange of ideas between these fields. As computers have so clearly proved their value for language teaching, fuel is added to the anti-technology stance common to some of the other areas of specialisation. Also, language teaching by nature has a greater tendency to reflect upon and describe pedagogic methodologies, which is not the case with literary and cultural studies.

For some or all of the reasons given above, the non-language components of higher level language teaching are barely visible in the pedagogic literature. This clearly does not reflect the status of many taught university courses where the study of literature and culture has played a central role (and held considerable academic status) in modern language departments for many years. Indeed, some of the more traditional higher education institutions have in the past been accused of placing more emphasis on the study of the literature of a culture than on the acquisition of spoken fluency in a language. Literature's privileged place in language studies has now been challenged and other cultural forms such as film and television, for example, are frequently taking its place. This provides new challenges to teachers of languages and to pedagogic approaches and for the discipline as a whole. It is argued that the new emphases which we are seeing in the syllabi of language study, with inter-disciplinary components such as Area Studies, are leading to new developments in the discipline itself (Polezzi, 1997). New subject areas could profitably lead to new and innovative teaching methodologies: these changes provide us with a judicious point at which to give consideration to teaching methods. Where the media employed may be changing, the message is still the same: it is essential that language studies should include core components that require critical thinking and depth of understanding. So how can teaching of these areas best be achieved?

Technology in teaching literature

In technology-assisted learning, there is little literature outside that which describes methodologies to harness technology for language acquisition: the acquisition of specific vocabulary, testing and improving grammar competency, aural and written comprehension of the second language. In general, literary or cultural resources are used only as materials for the practice of particular language competencies. The papers given at the ‘Teaching Literature and Culture with C&IT’ conference focussed instead upon examples where the teaching of literature and culture are coming together with technology to enrich the learning process.

This collection does not attempt to present the examples discussed during the conference as perfect examples of teaching practice with C&IT, because we do not yet know enough about what is required to make that judgement. However, they are interesting examples which present varied perspectives and which can thus be used to discuss some important issues. The reader will note that the collection also describes examples of practice drawn from the teaching of literature in its own language, primarily within English studies. This was a deliberate decision, as the teaching methodology used in these subjects has many areas of commonality with the teaching of European literature and culture, for obvious, though frequently overlooked, reasons. It is interesting to note that as the emphasis upon literature is lessened in some language courses, language studies components are increasingly included within English studies courses in the UK. Projects such as the 'Read-Write' project at the University of East Anglia are looking at the way that the study of literature is used as a basis for increasing general literacy skills, which is interestingly similar to the traditional model used as a part of second language teaching.

The following section will describe some of the papers given from a common analytic perspective: to examine the teaching methodology was used and how the technology influenced the success of that methodology.

Using C&IT to teach literary and cultural studies

The Digital Variants project grew out of the development of a research archive, and this has no doubt helped its application to teaching in an innovative and challenging way. Working with writers such as Antonio Millán, Roberto Vacca, and Francesca Sanvitale, the Project’s website makes available a number of drafts of each author’s work, with the variants in the text highlighted and linked by hypertext, as well as sound recordings of interviews with the authors; we can also compare the text transcriptions with the manuscripts in digital format. The resources allow a user access to otherwise inaccessible materials, and, most importantly, we can follow the author’s decisions made during the authoring process. The resources thus have the potential to allow a user to learn on a number of different levels, and this was exploited within the University of Edinburgh’s department of Italian, where the Digital Variants archive has been used to teach language learners skills in literary analysis, and in particular analysis of the authorial process, with the refinement of language skills as an educational ‘by-product’. An important part of the teaching strategy was that the IT resources were extremely well integrated into the regular face-to-face sessions. Many implementations of technology involve its use as a support tool or as an additional source of resources, but in this case the IT resources were an essential part of the course, and were given substantial amounts of class time. The tutors’ attitudes towards the technology were also influential; for example, IT training sessions on the use of the WWW and using word-processing packages for research activities were carried out in parallel with introductions to new research skills, such as the analysis of a critical edition. It was thus made clear to the students that the tutor perceived IT research skills to be as important and relevant to their studies as the more traditional research skills which they were also taught.

Examples of the exercises which the students completed and all the project materials are available from the Digital Variants web site at <http://www.ed.ac.uk/~esit04/digitalv.htm> and from reading Fiormonte et al. (1999).

Benito Pérez Galdós is one of Spain’s most celebrated realist authors and is thus widely studied at undergraduate level. The Pérez Galdós Editions Project is combining two complementary aims: to publish a new scholarly edition of Galdós’s works in traditional format complete with apparatus; and also to make available an electronic collection of scholarly materials which will complement the paper edition. The electronic collection, to be published on CD-ROM, will include full, searchable editions of all of the texts and also draw together otherwise inaccessible materials such as the manuscripts, galley proofs, serialised versions and first editions, with other research tools such as indexes and concordances. There will also be some multimedia background materials such as maps and other relevant images. The electronic collection will thus contain more material in more varied formats than the scholarly print edition.

The electronic collection is openly aimed at an academic rather than popular use, which is reflected in its selection of serious, scholarly content. It is hoped that students may find that the use of digital search tools and editions can give them an easier route into the text, particularly where language may be something of a barrier to understanding.

Whilst the project clearly has a strong research orientation, it also has interesting implications for teaching and learning at undergraduate level. By collecting together into a single source the type of resources which would normally only be accessible to a determined researcher, the project developers are opening up scholarly research to a far wider community. This raises a number of issues for a tutor who is considering directing students towards these types of sophisticated research resources: undergraduates cannot be presumed to have the skills needed to work with this type of material, as it makes new demands upon them. In addition, it is not yet clear whether the new information interrogation techniques afforded by automatic indexing and searching help or hinder the development of independent research skills. We need to think carefully about the implications for the future of scholarship and the special relationship which a scholar builds with resources that can be accessed by only a select few. The use of complex research tools by undergraduates requires careful introduction and ongoing support. ⁽¹⁾

A web page for the Pérez Galdós Editions Project is located at <http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/gep/>.

The resources at the Communiqué web site are centred around specific taught courses in literature, language and culture, and the structure of the site reflects this focus. The site was developed through a collaboration between academic and an educational technologist, and this has led to a reflective and thoughtful approach to the development of the resources. Some of the more complex sections to the Communiqué site include the ‘Introduction to Contemporary France II’, where frames and hyperlinks have been used to allow students guided access to poetry written in verlan, or slang; poems are re-produced in full and additional frames are used to give access to an online glossary of terms. Also included is ‘Les chemins du savoir’, a collection of over a hundred short texts or ‘textèmes’ which have been selected to relate to the themes of the course. Students can perform word or phrase searches and explore themes across a number of different texts but in a non-linear fashion.

The teaching strategy for this implementation of technology was carefully thought-out and implemented. In brief, the aims were ‘to improve the quality of student participation in both lectures and seminars, to encourage wider reading of secondary sources, and to develop essay writing skills’ (McNeill, 1999). The tutor felt that IT could help to meet these aims by offering more stimulating ways of delivering content and supporting learning.

The tutor explored several different methods of delivering materials in different formats as he believed that web resources hold advantages in terms of access, easy updating, offering flexibility for the student, easier administration, and the opportunity to use multimedia. The most successful uses of the resources were in two areas: where they were integrated into the teaching schedule in seminars, and where the resources offered additional possibilities beyond the traditional teaching paradigm, for example by offering better supporting materials, the possibility for students and tutors to communicate between lectures and seminars, with a consequent expansion of the teaching situation to create ‘more space’ beyond the few contact sessions per week. In addition, the use of web resources will allow the student to share more of the responsibility for their learning with the lecturer. Communiqué can be accessed at <http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/~us0cma/comm.html>.

The Virtual Seminars for Teaching Literature project has produced four online tutorials for teaching the poetry of the First World War. The project has been developed with a dual purpose: firstly, to provide high-quality teaching materials for use by teachers all over the world, and secondly, to explore issues of using technology in teaching, by giving concrete examples of ways in which technology can enhance teaching methods. This is seen most clearly in the third of the four tutorials, ‘An Introduction to Manuscript Study’ which uses digital versions of Wilfred Owen’s manuscripts for ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ to introduce the student to the academic skills used in the close study of manuscripts. Students study four different manuscripts for the poem, and then use decisions which they make about the chronology of the manuscripts to create their own edition of the poem. Using methods which are coincidentally similar to the ‘Digital Variants’ project, this tutorial gives step-by-step instructions for the development of skills, accompanied by practical exercises. Like a number of other projects, the tutorial gives the student access to research resources of which they would probably not ever have been aware, and certainly would not have had the opportunity to study in depth. Access to these resources allows students to create their own digital copy and to compare it with other rare resources. The carefully structured introduction to the study of manuscript resources helps the student to overcome some of the problems described with the Pérez Galdós project; students are guided through the activity in a precise and detailed manner, with new tasks carefully explained.

The project has particular teaching aims: to open access to the resources to students outside traditional University courses and offer more flexible modes of delivery; to offer better learning situations for large seminar groups with more communication tools; to offer possibilities which are interesting to the teacher and not just the IT designer. To help the teacher to take advantage of resources in a teaching situation which may be unfamiliar, the resources include detailed teachers’ notes, which give advice about the best methods of using the resources, and give some suggestions for specific classroom activities.

Three simple rules for applying technology to teaching have been developed following the project’s experiences, namely: ‘Technology should not be used to replace teachers or teaching; ...Technology should only be used where a noticeable gain to the teaching quality is evident; ..., Technology should only be applied in appropriate stages. (Lee, 1999).

The project can be found at <http://info.ox.ac.uk/jtap/>.

How can technology contribute to the teaching of literature and culture in language studies?

Drawing from the experiences described above, this section draws together some remarks about how technology might make a valuable contribution to teaching literary and cultural studies. There can be no doubt that technology can make a contribution to the teaching of literary and cultural studies, given sufficient time and resources, but what is less clear is pinpointing the most appropriate ways in which this can happen.

Before moving on to more specific examples of particular practice, it is useful to first consider some of the wider implications of using technology to learn about literature and culture. The verb ‘learn’ is used advisedly because it is in benefiting the student and developing the learning process that the advantages of technology are most apparent. In general, in the arts and humanities disciplines, there is little evidence of technology saving academic staff hours of teaching and preparation time when it is used for teaching and learning. The most striking advantages are in offering benefits to the learners above and beyond the quantity and quality of contact in the usual teaching situation.

At a general level, there are a number of claims made for the advantages which the appropriate use of technology can offer to the learner. The most relevant issues are summarised below.

Technology can give students a greater degree of control over the delivery of their learning: by using technology, students can access information, learning spaces, and other resources at times which suit their lifestyle and their other commitments. Increasing numbers of students either follow part-time degrees or, where they study full-time, hold additional responsibilities, such as those of part-time jobs and families, which mean that they have many pressures outside their studies, and their learning has to take place at appropriate times. Technology can allow students to choose when to access resources, and it supports methods which have a far greater potential than those of traditional distance-learning, particularly in the degree of interaction which it affords. Technology-based resources can be integrated into a course of study and used to complement classroom contact, library resources, and standard methods of sharing insights.

Technology can enable the student to feel that they have control of their own learning: it can allow students to shape their learning by encouraging the perception that a culture's varied media is a collection of resources which the student can be guided through, and that they have choices about the route which they take.

Students can communicate and discuss ideas together, even when they are not physically (or temporally) together: as student numbers grow in relation to staff numbers, student-to-student and student-to-teacher contact time is put under increasing pressure. The use of technology such as email, conferencing systems and other computer-mediated communication tools provides a rich environment in which communication can continue outside the classroom.

Technology can provide a gateway to better research methods and analytic approaches: For several of the projects described in this collection, technology has provided a method for sharing specialist research materials and research techniques with undergraduates to an unprecedented degree. Technology offers advanced research tools, and it can also provide the interface which helps the teacher to guide the student through the implementation of new techniques.

Technology can help to provide the motivation to learn and experiment: new teaching methods will often provide a student with added interest in the course, and impetus to develop their own learning. Technology is only one method which can be adopted and is not guaranteed to be successful by any means, but with carefully thought-out uses and proper integration into courses, there can be significant benefits to both teacher and student.

There are certain specific ways in which the quantity of teaching and learning activity, and the quality of teaching and learning can be enhanced. With proper, well-considered planning, technology has the opportunity to enhance the learner's experience in some key areas.

Implications for the relationship between content and teaching methodology

A successful use of technology in teaching must imply some assessment of the teaching strategy, therefore. In order to do this, we need to try to take an objective view of the real relationship between the subject-based content of a taught course, and the methodology which is employed to teach it. It is interesting to note that the most successful uses of C&IT resources have clear parallels in traditional learning situations - the library, the coursebook and the seminar - and a brief assessment of these parallels can provide a useful starting point towards examining what methodology is being used when technology is used in teaching.

The library parallel: Technology can open up access to rare resources such as manuscripts, rare printed works, books which are out-of-print, works of art, and other media. Whilst the main resource for students of literature is usually a book and a collection of critical works, for students of cultural studies this is not the case.

The seminar parallel: Literary and cultural studies are centred around the tutorial or seminar, where ideas are proposed and discussed, and communication is essential. Tools such as email discussion lists and conferencing systems are already being successfully used for teaching literary and cultural studies (see for example McBride and Dickstein, 1996). There is also an additional positive factor for second language learners who are communicating in the second language.

The lecture parallel: Directed learning is perhaps the most highly valued part of the traditional learning situation from a student's point-of-view. Technology allows the tutor to use their expert knowledge to provide a path for the student through digital resources which they believe are the most interesting, important or relevant.

The coursebook parallel: It is increasingly common to furnish undergraduates with custom-written secondary materials in a 'coursebook' format. In a similar method to the lecture, the tutor can use the coursebook to direct students through complex materials. Technology allows the easy inclusion of other media within a single framework and the development of a guided 'path' through the materials (for example adding film, links to works, of art, multimedia learning materials).

In addition to these obvious parallels to traditional learning resources, technology offers possibilities for innovation in delivery .Examples of innovation on a traditional theme include:

The student-led seminar parallel: Digital presentation of information by the student; students are now able to present their own materials in many media, by using digital tools, thus lessening the emphasis upon oral presentation which is disadvantageous for the less confident students (Litvack and Dunlop, 1999).

The most useful way to address this question is, in the view of this author, to compare the methodologies which are enabled by the use of technology with those which are traditionally used to teach literary and cultural studies.

We can see how the four possibilities described above - the digital library, lecture and coursebook, and seminar - can map onto each of the three traditional learning paradigms. To take each of the three teaching methods in turn, we can explore the difference that technology can make in each case. Naturally, this difference will by no means be entirely positive; in each case, technology can clearly play a part and will influence the student's learning experience, for good or ill.

Lecturing

The lecture paradigm can be mirrored in a technology-based situation, with varying degrees of complexity. At a simple level, the lecturer can present the transcription of the lecture which he or she plans to give in advance of the lecture. Unlike in the lecturing situation, the student can have unlimited access to the digital version and the lecturer has the option to incorporate additional, more complex text than he or she could explain during a fifty minute lecture. There is a further advantage offered by technology in facilitating the use of additional resources of any media which may be referred to during the lecture, or used in addition to the lecture notes. For example, colour images of artworks which are held in virtual galleries around the world can be referred to and linked to directly. Tony McNeill has used this method successfully; by making his lecture notes available to students on the Web in advance of each lecture, he finds that students still attend the 'real' lecture, but do so with prior understanding of the issues which he plans to discuss, and having had the opportunity to do further reading or prepare questions in advance.

The possible danger with digital equivalents of the lecture is that the material can lack its own 'voice'; research has shown that students are motivated to learn when lecturers impart their information enthusiastically and knowledgably. This is clearly more difficult to achieve when dealing with computer-based resources which will be used independently.

In this case, materials need to be carefully structured; they need to guide the student but also to invite them along the way. Lee and Fiormonte have provided good examples of this; they have developed courses built around the resources made available; the technology is enabling them to accomplish actions which would otherwise be difficult or impossible, and they are directing students through these resources in a structured way with a combination of online and traditional teaching materials and methods. For example, the four tutorials which Lee describes take resources which are rare and inaccessible and, instead of simply exposing the student to these by listing the contents and saying 'here you are' (the equivalent of a traditional reading list), the tutorials use hyperlinking, clear labelling, and careful presentation of information to guide the student through the resources.

The importance of the content must be made sufficiently clear to the student in order for them to be motivated to navigate their way through a web of seemingly identical hyperlinks to the resources which lie beyond. It is therefore essential that clear goals are given to the student as they move; what could be more over-awing (and thus discouraging) than to be confronted by a web page of sixty identical hyperlinks to sixty different resources? The student needs to be given a sense that they are accomplishing something if their interest is to be held, and blindly choosing from a collection of non-annotated links is not going to do this, just as a student is less likely to read a text which is recommended on a reading list if they have no idea of the content of that text. Free-standing hypertext is a fine model for the creative sharing of information but it is unlikely that many undergraduates will make time to 'explore a web' without some indication of what they are following and why.

Small-group teaching

The equivalents to small-group teaching sessions in the digital environment are provided by email discussion lists and conferencing systems. These resources have been widely implemented into a variety of teaching and research situations, to the extent that their use has been given the specific title of 'Computer-Mediated Communication' (CMC). Much of the research into CMC has centred upon aspects of the social interaction which is seen within groups of CMC users, for example research into concepts of identity which a user experiences (and may manipulate) within a CMC (see for example Marvin, 1996). This research has been popular since the early 1990s as technologies such as Internet Relay Chat and Multi-User Dimensions have been in widespread use since this time. Beyond these more theoretical areas the tools have also seen use in teaching. Language learning is one area in which these tools have been particularly popular, as the level of communication which these resources allow will constitute some of their purpose. ⁽²⁾

Background reading and independent research

Technology has already had a tremendous impact with the widespread establishment of computerised library catalogues which can be searched by users with relatively little IT experience on their own keywords, and thus immediately broaden their awareness of library resources beyond those recommended by their tutor on a reading list or bibliography. Added to this is the fast growing number of important resources which are now being published in digital format, some of the most obvious being fully searchable CD-ROM versions of many international newspapers, encyclopaedias and other reference tools, and even journals and research papers. At a simple level, technology is working to provide far better access to resources. At a more complex level, the type of access which is provided will allow students to make more complex and thoughtful use of resources than was previously possible. For example, where a student would previously locate a copy of a daily newspaper in the native language in order to keep up to date with events, the student can now use complex tools to perform keyword or phrase searches across an entire year's issues of the paper, and thus look for changes in reporting patterns across time or build up a corpus of articles on a particular theme. In the past, this level of research would have been the provenance of the postgraduate researcher or specialist, far beyond the time restraints and difficulties of access experienced by most undergraduates. This state of affairs has been dramatically changed in the digital world.

This increase in possibilities for independent research raises one essential question: are students equipped to use resources in this way, and to interpret the results of their investigations? More resources do not necessarily bring abetter depth of understanding or better analytic skills. Use of the new technologies requires equally thoughtful direction by teachers and other teaching support staff such as library and IT staff, if they are to inform rather than to confuse.

Teaching style

All of the projects described in the following papers have come to the same conclusion: that the latest technology, in itself, is not sufficient to create a 'learning environment'. Content is crucial to the successful uptake and use of digital resources, just as with traditional resources such as journals and other publications. It is frequently claimed by educational technologists and enthusiasts of the Web alike that the use of accessible delivery mechanisms such as the Web will increase the scholarly use of resources, simply because the Web facilitates the delivery of resources straight to the desktop.

Clearly, lack of access to resources is a distinct barrier to their usage. While it would be foolish to argue that making texts, images, and video accessible by the Web will not lead to greater use of these resources by students, it is the opinion of this author that it is not enough to simply make resources available and that the role of the teacher is crucial in ensuring that real learning happens when students interrogate web resources.

The influences of technology upon teaching and learning radiate beyond the role of the teacher and draw upon other staff such as library and IT staff. These staff have a growing importance in supporting and delivering learning resources and have fast developing roles in additional areas such as teaching students the techniques needed to make use of the resources. Thus support and teaching roles are increasingly blurred and interdependencies and cooperative working practices are becoming more crucial.

In general, the above points can work together to give the student a more enjoyable learning experience. However, this is not without some cost to the teacher in terms of development of their own IT skills, the need to research teaching methodologies which use IT and to think about how best to apply it to their area, and the need to invest time in the development of IT resources either directly or in partnership.

Changing subject boundaries

It is fascinating to note the blurring of subject boundaries which occurs when digital methods are applied to teaching and research. The seven papers given during the conference came from a range of language areas and backgrounds, including a commercial publisher, but the emphasis throughout was upon resources which, whilst retaining a strong subject focus, nevertheless had resonance for many other subject areas.

Technology encourages and facilitates a multidisciplinary perspective on learning and on research. Hyperlinks in multimedia documents or authoring tools make it easy (and attractive) to hop between different subject areas at a whim, and thus arrive in areas into which one would not usually stray. The internet, bringing increased levels of dissemination and sharing of information and knowledge, also has an important role to play. A web search on a particular writer's name such as Louis Aragon will return the predictable 'hits' on the Club des Poètes site but will also highlight sites based in Finland, in Canada, in Germany and so on, with a different perspective on the study of his work. A student can used computer-based software such as quantitative text analysis tools to manipulate and dissect a digital text, regardless of its source languages; as with the Pérez Galdós project, this provides the opportunity to control and manipulate a resource in an unknown language. Finally, the interface between technology and learning impacts directly upon the way in which teachers of different languages communicate and cooperate; software such as TransIT-Tiger is used by teachers of many different languages, but with common pedagogic and technical practices, and these methodologies are frequently shared by teachers who can appreciate each other's efforts. The use of specialist resources thus encourages the crossing of subject boundaries between and within languages. Cross-discipline collaboration is one of the interesting issues which is raised in many digital projects. In areas such as translation studies and comparative literature, where the use of resources across standard discipline boundaries is essential to research, this is immediately obvious.

Perhaps the new possibilities which technology offers to the teaching of literary and cultural studies will have a doubly beneficial effect by providing the impetus for further educational research to take place in this fascinating (but relatively unexplored) area.

Conclusion: towards a model for teaching literary and cultural studies with C&IT

As discussed above, something which is frequently overlooked is the interface between highlighting content and the appropriate use of technology which leads to successful implementations of digital learning resources. The projects which were demonstrated at the conference are not successful because they are technically complex, graphically stunning, or pedagogically different in their approach. They have succeeded, however, in focusing upon interesting and relevant content, and applying technology to it with methods which are appropriate to a learning aim.

We need to look beyond the immediate focus of content which is specific to a single subject area to consider at a higher level the methodologies which are being used for successful teaching, and thus be able to make informed decisions about whether technology will enhance or dilute the teaching situation.

References

See, for example, the article by Neil Rhodes, St. Andrews University (1999), in which he describes the issues involved in teaching undergraduates how to make use of a substantial research-oriented textbase.
See the excellent annotated bibliography by Coski and Kininger (1999), for many examples of literature in this area.

Bibliography

Coski, C. & Kinginger, C. Computer-mediated Communication in Foreign Language Education: An Annotated Bibliography (NetWork #3) (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, Second Language Teaching & Curriculum Center, 1996). <http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/nflrc/NetWorks/NW3/>

Lee, S.D. Online Tutorials and Digital Archives or ‘Digitising Wilfred’. (Bristol: JISC Technology Applications Programme, 1999). <http://www.jtap.ac.uk/reports/htm/jtap-027-1.html>.

Litvack, L. and Dunlop, N. ‘The Imperial Archive: Creating Online Research Resources.’ Computers and Texts 16/17 (1998). <http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/publish/comtxt/ct16-17/litvack.html>.

Marvin, L.E. ‘Spoof, Spam, Lurk and Lag: the Aesthetics of Text-based Virtual Realities.’ Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 1.2 (1996). < http://jcmc.huji.ac.il/>.

McBride, K.B. and Dickstein, R.. ‘Making Connections with a Listserv.’ Computers and Texts 12 (1996). <http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/publish/comtxt/ct12/mcbride.html>.

Polezzi, L. ‘A Partnership Looking for Recognition: The case of modern languages teaching and research.’ HAN Conference 1996: Quality & Creativity. (Milton Keynes: Institute of Educational Technology, Open University, 1996).

Rhodes, N. ‘Teaching with the Chadwyck-Healey Literature Databases.’ Computers and Texts 16/17 (1998). <http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/publish/comtxt/ct16-17/rhodes.html>.

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Teaching European Literature and Culture with Communication and Information Technologies
Not to be republished in any form without the author's prior permission.

HTML Authors: Sarah Porter, Stuart Sutherland
Document Created: 25 May 1999
Document Last Modified: 7 June 1999

The URL of this document is http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/publish/occas/eurolit/porter.html

Using Internet-Based Children's Literature to Teach EFL

Larry J. Mikulecky
Mikuleck(at)Indiana.edu
Indiana University, Bloomington (Bloomington, IN, USA)

Introduction

Evidence Supporting the Extensive Reading of Comprehensible Material

Finding Simple, Accessible and Inexpensive Readings in English

Ways to Use the Resources

Ask students with access to younger relatives to read and teach the English stories to their younger relatives.
Ask future teachers of English to read simple stories and then design lessons for younger students.
Ask students to keep a list of what they have read, brief summaries of stories or chapters, and new vocabulary learned.
Have students do presentations on stories to "sell" them to other students.
Have students create their own simple stories in English, possibly with illustrations.

References

Betts, E. A. (1946). Foundations of reading instructions with emphasis on differentiated guidance. American Book Company.
Flickinger, G. G. (1984). Language, Literacy, Children’s Literature: The Link to Communicative Competency for ESOL Adults. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Texas State Council of the International Reading Association (12th, Corpus Christi, TX, March 1-3, 1984). (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED268504).
Goshen, I. (1997). ESL with Children's Literature, English Teaching Forum Online Vol 35 No 3, July - September 1997 http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol35/no3/p14.htm
Hsueh-chao, M and Nation, P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language vol 13, No. 1 pp. 403-430.
Laufer, B. (1989) What percentage of text-lexis is essential for comprehension? In C. Lauren and M. Nordman (eds) Special Language: From Humans Thinking to Thinking Machines Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Liu Na and Nation, I.S.P. (1985) Factors affecting guessing vocabulary in context. RELC Journal 16(1): 33-42.
Waring, R. & Nation, I.S.P. (2004). Second Language Reading and Incidental Vocabulary Learning. Angles on the English-speaking World. Vol.4, pp. 11-22.

Appendix

Examples and Discussion of Useful Web-Sites Containing Children’s and Young Adult Literature in English

(All links current as of October 26, 2007)

The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 11, November 2007
http://iteslj.org/

http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Mikulecky-OnlineChildrensLit.htm

Teaching & CALL

CALL and Vocabulary Learning: A Review

Jeong-Bae Son
The University of Southern Queensland

Abstract

This article explores CALL research on vocabulary learning. It discusses the use of the computer for lexical skill development in terms of linking CALL with vocabulary acquisition and searching for effective ways to use CALL in vocabulary instruction. For the discussion, it takes up findings from studies of lexical CALL. Through the literature review, it is suggested that more research is needed to find out the effects of lexical CALL on manifold aspects such as implicit and explicit learning of vocabulary and comprehension.

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I. Introduction

Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has been actively applied to second language (L2) and foreign language (FL) reading with courseware which provides a range of on-screen activities. Along with this, researchers have tried to examine the usefulness of computer-assisted reading activities in various ways. Related to research on reading skill development, considerable attention has been given to vocabulary learning in CALL (Conrad, 1996; Ellis, 1995; Goodfellow, 1995). While giving an overview of previous research on vocabulary learning in CALL environments, this article discusses the use of the computer for vocabulary learning in terms of linking CALL with vocabulary acquisition and searching for effective ways to use CALL in vocabulary instruction. For the discussion, it highlights two main topics of CALL research on vocabulary learning: the development of lexical CALL programs and the use of on-line lexical resources.

II. Development of Lexical CALL Programs

Through surveys of vocabulary acquisition theories, researchers have suggested guidelines for the design of CALL programs for vocabulary or described programs they developed for vocabulary learning. For instance, Goodfellow (1994) proposes that lexical CALL programs need to address the learner's need to build a sizeable L2 mental lexicon; to maximize interactivity in the selection, processing and practice of target words; to promote a deep learning; to support learning processes which focus on structure in the target-word list; to diagnose and help modify surface learning approaches; and to generate and record data on learning approaches and outcomes. Röllinghoff (1993) describes a lexical program developed by using HyperCard and adapted to several languages including French, English, German, and Spanish. Nara (1992, 1994) presents the design of an on-line Kanji dictionary and its search functions, and reports on the development of a collocational dictionary for Japanese, emphasising improved monitoring facilities.

There are also empirical vocabulary studies related to the development of lexical CALL programs. In a study observing L2 learners' use of a software system connected with an on-line dictionary, Bland, Noblitt, Armington and Gay (1990) interpret the form of students' queries as an indication of their stage of lexical development. From the results of two experiments with English as a second language (ESL) readers, Coady, Magoto, Hubbard,

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Graney and Mokhtari (1993) suggest that practice with high-frequency vocabulary through computer-assisted learning does benefit reading.

To examine the effect of a context-embedded approach to second language vocabulary instruction, Kang (1995) conducted a study with elementary school students who had basic knowledge of the English alphabet and sentence structure. The instructional methods used for vocabulary learning were: "Paper and Pencil (P&P), Computer-based Word-for-word (CW), Computer-based word-for-word plus Picture (CP), and Computer-based Context (CC)" (p. 46). The P&P condition represented a conventional method of vocabulary learning guided by a human instructor. The CW condition incorporated the same definition-based approach used in the P&P, but employed a computer instead of a human instructor. In the CP condition, pictures were additionally used with the features included in the CW. The CC condition provided students with a situational context first in which the target English vocabulary occurred and then the meaning of the word and an example sentence. The results showed that the group treated by the computer-based context method performed significantly better than any other group in a retention test. This suggests that the presentation of vocabulary with visual, aural and sentence contexts in computer-assisted learning environments would enhance vocabulary learning and teaching.

III. Use of On-line Lexical Resources

In FL learning, dictionary use is one of the key skills and strategies suggested by reading researchers (Hosenfeld, Arnold, Kirchofer, Laciura & Wilson, 1981; Nuttall, 1982). Barnett (1989) states, "Efficient dictionary use is a strategy in itself and crucial to reading with understanding. Students need to know when to use a dictionary (and which kind) and how to use it" (p. 133). Hence, FL readers are required to know how to locate the meaning of an unfamiliar word by using a dictionary.

The significant difference between paper dictionaries (conventional dictionaries) and computerised dictionaries (electronic dictionaries) is in presentation modality. Paper dictionaries provide printed information in sequence from beginning to end. Computerised dictionaries allow learners to get auditory and visual information presented by text, sound or graphics through diverse exploration paths. Zähner, Gupta and Olohan (1994) note that electronic dictionaries can "start with essential data only and then allow users to progress from there to explore the lexical information in as much detail as they require and the lexicon can offer" (p. 77). As stated by Aust, Kelley, and Roby (1993), electronic references such as on-line

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dictionaries and glossaries represent "one of the most rapidly growing forms of electronic text" (p. 63).

There are many design issues for electronic text and on-line lexical resources. Key considerations in the design of on-line lexical resources include the number of words, the length of definitions, the amount of information and the presentation method of information. To look at one of these issues, Cumming, Cropp and Sussex (1994) compared four word definition formats in a paper-pencil experiment. The experimental formats were (1) phrasal definition alone, (2) sentence definition alone, (3) phrasal definition plus a usage example, and (4) sentence definition plus a usage example. They found that most ESL learners preferred having the sentence format definition plus a usage example.

To investigate the effects of dictionary use and look-up behaviour of readers on vocabulary learning or reading comprehension, several researchers used computerised dictionaries in their studies (e.g., Chun & Plass, 1996a, 1996b; Hulstijn, 1993; Knight, 1994). With the aid of the computer, Hulstijn (1993) conducted two experiments on the behaviour of FL readers, particularly Dutch high school students, in looking up the meaning of unfamiliar words. To look up the meaning of a difficult word in an English text on the screen of a personal computer, the students moved the cursor to the desired word and pressed the Enter key. A window then opened showing the translation of the word in the students' first language and disappeared by pressing the Enter key again. From the results of tests and the students' log files registered to the computer, Hulstijn found, not surprisingly, that students with greater vocabulary knowledge looked up fewer words than students with smaller vocabulary knowledge. However, no significant difference in the number of words looked up was found between students with high inferring ability and students with low inferring ability. There was also no significant difference in English vocabulary knowledge and inferring ability between students who used "maximal" strategy (i.e., those who looked up a large number of words) and students who used "minimal" strategy (i.e., those who looked up fewer words).

Knight (1994) also used a computerised dictionary in a study on incidental vocabulary learning from context and the effect of dictionary access on reading comprehension. The computer was programmed to record the number of words each student looked up and the amount of time each student spent reading an article. College intermediate-level Spanish learners were randomly assigned to one of two reading conditions: dictionary access and no dictionary access. In order to look up a word, students in the access condition first pressed the designated lookup key on the computer and then typed the root form of the Spanish word in the box. When the correct root was supplied, the dictionary definitions appeared in the centre of the screen. From the results of vocabulary tests and recall tests, Knight found that high verbal ability students learnt more words than low verbal ability students, and students who used a dictionary learnt more than those who did not. She concluded that low verbal ability students are more dependent on vocabulary knowledge than high verbal ability

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students.

Chun and Plass (1996a) reported three studies of the effectiveness of multimedia annotations on vocabulary acquisition. Participants were second-year students of German at three universities. The students watched a video preview that gave an overview of a German short story and then read the story and looked up the meaning of individual words by freely selecting any of the different types of annotations available in the form of text, pictures, and video. They subsequently took a vocabulary test and wrote a recall protocol. In all three studies, the students were able to look up words that had been annotated in a multimedia program called CyberBush. For this, they clicked on the word and held the mouse button down, and then dragged the word to icons indicating the types of annotations available (text definition, picture, and video) and dropped it on the icon representing the desired annotation. All types of annotations accompanied by an audio component appeared on the left side of the screen. The results showed a higher rate of incidental learning of vocabulary and significantly higher scores for words that were annotated with pictures and text than for those with video and text or text only.

Based on the same studies but with a different focus, Chun and Plass (1996b) also indicated that a dynamic visual advance organizer aided in overall comprehension and that annotations of individual vocabulary items consisting of both verbal and visual information helped more than verbal information only. They also found a moderate correlation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension.

Several studies using computer-mediated texts with glossaries demonstrated the positive effects of electronic glossaries on vocabulary learning or reading comprehension. In L1 research, for example, Reinking and Rickman (1990) investigated whether intermediate-grade readers' vocabulary learning and comprehension would be affected by displaying texts on a computer screen that provided the meanings of difficult words. After being randomly assigned to four treatment conditions, the subjects read two informational passages containing several difficult words identified by teachers. In two of the conditions, they read the passages on printed pages accompanied by either a dictionary or a glossary comprised of the difficult words. In the other two conditions, they read the passages on a computer screen that provided either optional or mandatory assistance with the meanings of the difficult words. The results indicated that subjects who read passages with computer assistance scored significantly higher on a vocabulary test, and subjects who read passages on the computer screen with mandatory assistance also outperformed other subjects on a comprehension test. Reinking and Rickman concluded that reading comprehension can be increased when computer-mediated texts are used to expand or to control options for acquiring information.

In an English as a foreign language (EFL) study assessing the effects of an electronic glossary on reading comprehension of authentic texts, Leffa (1992) also found that a computer-mediated electronic glossary was more efficient than a traditional bilingual

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dictionary, allowing beginning level students to understand 38% more of the passages, using 50% less time. In another study on the capability of instantaneous look-ups in on-line dictionaries, Lyman-Hager, Davis, Burnett, and Chennault (1993) compared two groups of L2 learners of French, one that received assistance with computerised dictionaries and one that had assistance with printed pages of glosses. The results showed that students who worked on-line had significantly better scores on the vocabulary quiz containing 20 words considered crucial to the story they read than those who did not.

On the other hand, Aust et al.'s study (1993) shows no significant differences in comprehension. They conducted a comparative study of hyper-reference and conventional paper dictionary use on the measures of consultation frequency, study time, efficiency, and comprehension. In their terms, a hyper-reference meant "an electronic reference aid that offers immediate access to supportive information with a clear and direct return path to the target information" (p. 64). Hyper-reference users could consult definitions for any word in an electronic book, and after clicking on a word, the definition window immediately appeared on the page opposite to the selected word. The results indicated that, with higher efficiency (consultations per minute), hyper-reference users consulted over two times as many definitions as conventional dictionary users. The study also found that, in another comparison of the use of bilingual (Spanish/English) and monolingual (Spanish/simplified Spanish) dictionaries, bilingual dictionary users consulted 25% more definitions and completed reading in 20% less time than did monolingual dictionary users. However, there were no significant differences between hyper-reference and paper media and between bilingual and monolingual dictionary use in comprehension measured by a proposition recall protocol. Aust et al. recommend that future research needs to re-examine these results in different settings with various text types, longer periods and more conventional or computer-based comprehension measures such as multiple-choice questions or sentence-completion tasks.

IV. Summary and Conclusion

Recent CALL research in reading has tried to examine various factors of computer-assisted reading instruction, and to suggest ways in which CALL can improve students' reading abilities. One of the reading components in which CALL researchers have shown great interest is the role of computers in lexical skill development. Research on computer-assisted vocabulary learning has significant implications for CALL software design such as the presentation methods of on-line lexical resources and the effective use of verbal

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and visual information in reading instruction. From studies of computer-mediated texts and glossaries, however, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the effects of electronic glossaries on vocabulary learning and reading comprehension because the computer-based assistance for delivering the meanings of words in each study was accompanied by different presentation methods.

Although there have been some studies of the effectiveness of computer dictionaries for vocabulary acquisition or reading comprehension, necessary comparative and evaluative studies are apparently lacking. For instance, research needs to address the effects of on-line and off-line texts and glossaries presented in different types of text formats on reading comprehension as well as vocabulary learning, particularly in FL classroom situations where reading materials need to be integrated into the existing curriculum of the language course. Therefore, it is suggested that more research is needed to find out the effects of lexical CALL on manifold aspects such as implicit and explicit learning of vocabulary and comprehension. These research activities would provide better understanding of how software can be developed and used best in CALL environments and of what students learn from computer-assisted vocabulary activities.

References

Aust, R., Kelley, M. J., & Roby, W. (1993). The use of hyper-reference and conventional dictionaries. Educational Technology Research and Development, 41 (4), 63-73.

Barnett, M. A. (1989). More than meets the eye: Foreign language reading: Theory and Practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Bland, S. K., Noblitt, J. S., Armington, S., & Gay, G. (1990). The naive lexical hypothesis: Evidence from computer-assisted language learning. Modern Language Journal, 74, 440-450.

Chun, D. M., & Plass, J. L. (1996a). Effects of multimedia annotations on vocabulary acquisition. Modern Language Journal, 80, 183-198.

Chun, D. M., & Plass, J. L. (1996b). Facilitating reading comprehension with multimedia. System, 24, 503-519.

Coady, J., Magoto, J., Hubbard, P., Graney, J., & Mokhtari, K. (1993). High frequency vocabulary and reading proficiency in ESL readers. In T. Huckin, M. Haynes, & J. Coady (Eds.), Second language reading and vocabulary

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learning (pp. 217-228). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Conrad, K. B. (1996). CALL-Non-English L2 instruction. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 16, 158-181.

Cumming, G., Cropp, S., & Sussex, R. (1994). On-line lexical resources for language learners: Assessment of some approaches to word definition. System, 22, 369-377.

Ellis, N. C. (1995). The psychology of foreign language vocabulary acquisition: Implications for CALL. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 8, 103-128.

Goodfellow, R. (1994). Design principles for computer-aided vocabulary learning. Computers & Education, 23, 53-62.

Goodfellow, R. (1995). A review of the types of CALL programs for vocabulary instruction. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 8, 205-226.

Hosenfeld, C., Arnold, V., Kirchofer, J., Laciura, J., & Wilson, L. (1981). Second language reading: A curricular sequence for teaching reading strategies. Foreign Language Annals, 14, 415-422.

Hulstijn, J. H. (1993). When do foreign-language readers look up the meaning of unfamiliar words? The influence of task and learner variables. Modern Language Journal, 77, 139-147.

Kang, S. -H. (1995). The effects of a context-embedded approach to second-language vocabulary learning. System, 23, 43-55.

Knight, S. (1994). Dictionary use while reading: The effects on comprehension and vocabulary acquisition for students of different verbal abilities. Modern Language Journal, 78, 285-299.

Leffa, V. J. (1992). Making foreign language texts comprehensible for beginners: An experiment with an electronic glossary. System, 20, 63-73.

Lyman-Hager, M. A., Davis, J. N., Burnett, J., & Chennault, R. (1993). Une vie de boy: Interactive reading in French. In F. L. Borchardt, & E. M. T. Johnson (Eds.), Proceedings of the CALICO 1993 annual symposium on "Assessment" (pp. 93-97). Durham, NC: Duke University.

Nara, H. (1992). Visual salience as a search category in a Kanji dictionary in Interactive Japanese: Understanding written Japanese. System, 20, 75-91.

Nara, H. (1994). Improved delivery of lexical information in a computer-assisted reading instruction program. CALICO Journal, 12 (1), 19-36.

Nuttall, C. (1982). Teaching reading skills in a foreign language. London: Heinemann Educational Books.

Reinking, D. (1992). Differences between electronic and printed texts: An agenda for research. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 1, 11-24.

Reinking, D., & Rickman, S. S. (1990). The effects of computer-mediated texts on the vocabulary learning and comprehension of intermediate-grade readers.

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Journal of Reading Behavior, 22, 395-411.

Röllinghoff, A. (1993). Implementing word learning strategies into an interactive learning environment. CALICO Journal, 11 (2), 21-44.

Zähner, C., Gupta, G., & Olohan, M. (1994). Lexical resources in CALL. Computers & Education, 23, 75-80.

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| Dr. Son's Home Page |

Using Free Hi-Tech Online Communication Tools to Train EFL in ESP Students to Think Critically and Independently

By Buthaina Al-Othman, e-mail: buthaina_3@yahoo.com

Opportunities and Challenges

Teaching intermediate to high-intermediate English for specific purposes (ESP) science English classes in the English as a foreign language (EFL) environment in Kuwait has provided the class instructor with opportunities to learn more about the ways of thinking and strategies of learning used by Kuwaiti students who have completed their previous education in Kuwaiti public schools.
Despite the fact that many of these students have good speaking and listening skills acquired from watching American-English movies, most of them lacked the skills of independent and critical thinking, particularly when practicing reading and writing activities online.
With the growing industry and development of educational Internet communication technologies (ICTs) resulting in effective teaching and learning in the EFL/ESL classrooms worldwide, a number of online task-based activities that supported and encouraged independent learning and critical thinking through online searching, reading, and writing were designed for an English for Science (EfS) female sophomore class taught in the English Language Unit at the College of Science. These online activities were planned and created to help students complete a required final project of writing and presenting a short term paper.
The main activity of the final project required students to present their final term papers either in a face-to-face traditional classroom or online before a remote group of international ESL/EFL teachers from Webheads in Action, an online community of practice (CoP) formed in 2002. This audience included ESL/EFL professionals and experts in the field of education from all over the world. For this purpose an online chat portal, which supported text and voice and had a facility to project PowerPoint or html files as web pages, was used. The Alado voice-chat portal was provided free to the Webheads CoP courtesy of Alado.net. The Webheads in Action portal page can be viewed at http://www.geocities.com/vance_stevens/papers/evonline2002/webheads.htm The Alado voice-chat portal can be viewed at http://www.alado.net/webheads
Nine students volunteered to do online presentations at the Webhead’s Alado.net webcast portal. The multiple-venue presentations (MVPs) were delivered before the local audience composed of the 13 in-class student presenters and the class instructor who were physically at the Kuwait University Distance Learning Center and the remote audience of eight ESL/EFL Webheads teachers from Denmark, Spain, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Portugal, Germany, Greece, and Brazil.
The purpose of this project was to show that using instructional technology is feasible and effective in an all-female class at the university level in an EFL environment characterized by a conservative culture. In addition, it demonstrated that e-learning can encourage a student-centered learning environment on the basis of critical thinking and independent learning.
The project required the class teacher to practice learning and teaching approaches and concepts on the basis of constructivist theories of learning and techniques learned through participation in Webheads in Action. She led her class as the “guide on the side” rather than as a “sage on the stage,” facilitating learning processes in her face-to-face classroom and online. To do this she used several free synchronous and asynchronous tools (ICTs), including e-mail, a message board, weblogs, web pages, and MSN and Yahoo instant messaging, to provide the necessary instructions and conditions for scaffolding to the group of students presenting online.
The project resulted in a positive, desirable outcome for both students and the instructor. It positively influenced and motivated the class, increasing various language, computer, and Internet skills. In addition, it created constructive academic competition among students. The in-class presenters reported being motivated to present online if they are given the opportunity in the future. The project offers concrete suggestions for ESP teachers in EFL/ESL around the globe to try this type of online activity. Results showed that it can help students enhance their English academic reading and writing skills with critical thinking, as well as assist them in developing e-learning strategies and techniques that are one of the main ways to learn in the information technology age.

Final Notes

The class instructor offers the following reflections on the students’ oral presentations, final general notes, and comments:

The nine students who presented online were very observant and focused on one another’s presentations. They asked intelligent and interesting questions in a very efficient and professional way during the discussions that followed each presentation.
The students were at all presentations and arrived on time, showing respect, interest, and enthusiasm toward presenters. They exhibited an awareness regarding the important role of the audience during presentation events, whether online or in-class.
Most students performed very well in the final exam. The table shows the overall grades for all students.

Midterm	A	B	C	D	F
	1	6	5	3	7

Final	A	B	C	D	F
	2	6	10	3	1

Students were motivated in general to continue their learning. The following semester one of them registered in an advanced elective science English course that teaches the skill of writing a critical analysis. Others requested information about distance-learning English courses to improve their speaking and listening skills.
Although it was some students’ first experience with creating PowerPoint slides, they managed to produce very creative slides for their presentations, some of which included images and sound.
The students who preferred to present in a face-to-face classroom tried to compete with those who presented online. This competition resulted in very good oral presentations by first-time presenters; they spoke good English in loud and clear voices and maintained good eye contact that reflected knowledge and confidence. They used professional expressions such as “I’m sorry I don’t know the answer” and “I’m sorry I didn’t research this point but I promise to further research it and bring you the answer as soon as I can.” This was beyond my expectations.

This web-based project, which used several synchronous and asynchronous online writing tools, integrating the webcasting technology of Alado.net/Webheads, was effective and resulted in a positive, desirable outcome for both the students and the instructor. It motivated students to look for new ways to improve their English, which means they are taking the first step toward independent learning, an essential approach toward learning in the 21st century.
Note: This student Web project was presented in the Internet Fair at the TESOL Convention 2004, Long Beach, CA, USA; visit http://www.ilc.cuhk.edu.hk/english/tesol/2004/wed.html

Project URLs

Students’ Final Project, Portal Page: http://alothman-b.tripod.com/wia_162finalproj.htm
Live Sessions Schedule of Students’ Online Presentations: http://alothman-b.tripod.com/present_162.htm
Photo Album of EfS162 Students and Class Instructor: ttp://alothman-b.tripod.com/index4.htm
Students’ feedback on the new learning experience and using ICTs to search, read, write, and present online: http://alothman-b.tripod.com/162_stdtsfeedback.htm
Webhead teachers’ feedback on the learning and teaching experience: http://alothman-b.tripod.com/162finalpro_wia_feedback.htm

Buthaina Al-Othman teaches EFL and ESP in the Faculty of Science at Kuwait University. She has been using a blended teaching and learning approach in her ESP/English for science and EFL remedial classes since she started her teaching career in 2001. She completed her master’s degree in TESOL at the State University of New York, Albany, New York, in 2000. She has been an executive board representative of TESOL’s ESP IS since 2004 and a Webhead in actionsince the CoP was founded by Vance Stevens in 2002.
ESP News March 2005 Volume 12 Number 1: Table of Contents

COMPUTER ASSISTED SECOND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY ACQUISITION

Peter J. M. Groot
Utrecht University

ABSTRACT

During the initial stages of instructed L2 acquisition students learn a couple thousand, mainly high frequency words. Functional language proficiency, however, requires mastery of a considerably larger number of words. It is therefore necessary at the intermediate and advanced stages of language acquisition to learn a large vocabulary in a short period of time. There is not enough time to copy the natural (largely incidental) L1 word acquisition process. Incidental acquisition of the words is only possible up to a point, because, on account of their low frequency, they do not occur often enough in the L2 learning material. Acquisition of new words from authentic L2 reading texts by means of strategies such as contextual deduction is also not a solution for a number of reasons. There appears to be no alternative to intentional learning of a great many new words in a relatively short period of time. The words to be learned may be presented in isolation or in context. Presentation in bilingual word lists seems an attractive shortcut because it takes less time than contextual presentation and yields excellent short term results. Long term retention, however, is often disappointing so contextual presentation seems advisable. Any suggestions how to implement this in pedagogic contexts should be based on a systematic analysis of the two most important aspects of the L2 word learning problem, that is to say, selecting the relevant vocabulary (which and how many words) and creating optimal conditions for the acquisition process. This article sets out to describe a computer assisted word acquisition programme (CAVOCA) which tries to do precisely this: the programme operationalises current theoretical thinking about word acquisition, and its contents are based on a systematic inventory of the vocabulary relevant for the target group. To establish its efficiency, the programme was contrasted in a number of experimental settings with a paired associates method of learning new words. The experimental results suggest that an approach combining the two methods is most advisable.

INTRODUCTION

The naive view that the vocabulary of a language should be seen as a "set of basic irregularities" impervious to systematic study, and its acquisition as a haphazard process of learning largely unrelated elements is long outdated. Furthermore, the language teaching profession has come to realise that in foreign language teaching, a grammar-oriented approach is not, to understate the case, the most efficient way to achieve communicative competence. An integrated approach combining systematic attention to the acquisition of both grammar and vocabulary is considered much more effective. This fuller appreciation of the importance of vocabulary teaching gives rise to a number of questions concerning the way in which it should be selected and presented for learning. These questions will be addressed below.

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In the early stages of instructed foreign language acquisition¹ students learn a few thousand mainly high frequency words. Such words occur so frequently in the teaching materials to which they are exposed that many are easily acquired. However, a vocabulary of that size, say 2,000 words, is not sufficient for functional language proficiency. To take reading as an example, estimates of the number of words required for understanding non-specialised texts vary (dependent, among others, on what is meant by "words" and "adequate comprehension") but there is general consensus that 5,000 base words is a minimal requirement (Laufer, 1997; Nation 1990) while for non-specialised, academic reading a considerable larger vocabulary is needed (Groot, 1994; Hazenberg & Hulstijn, 1996). It is therefore necessary that a large number of words be learned in a short period of time at the intermediate and advanced stages of language acquisition. Incidental acquisition of these words is only possible to a point, because they do not occur often enough in the foreign language learning material. Learning new words from authentic L2 reading texts by means of strategies such as contextual deduction is not the answer either, for reasons to be given later. Although there is evidence that retention is better with L1 glosses than without (Hulstijn, Hollander, & Greidanus, 1996; Watanabe, 1997), isolated presentation of the numerous words to be learned in bilingual word lists results in long-term retention that is widely felt to be disappointing. Since the time available for the learning of the large number of new words is limited, it is essential to tackle this problem systematically, both in selecting the relevant vocabulary and in creating optimal conditions for the acquisition process. This article sets out to describe a computer assisted word acquisition programme which intends to do precisely this: the programme tries to systematically operationalise current theoretical thinking about word acquisition, and its contents are based on a systematic inventory of the vocabulary relevant for the target group. The programme (called CAVOCA, an acronym for Computer Assisted VOCabulary Acquisition) was developed over a trial period of several years. Its present database was constructed with the help of a government grant and contains some 500 words specially selected for their difficulty and relevance to the academic reading needs of Dutch university students. In the following paragraphs the theoretical and practical considerations involved in the construction of the programme will be dealt with.

HOW MANY WORDS?

Obviously, a detailed answer to this general question is impossible without a detailed description of the language activity and level intended. Therefore I shall confine myself to a specific example, namely, the vocabulary required for an adequate comprehension of academic reading texts of the type used in the foreign language reading comprehension tests annually constructed by the CITO (the Dutch central educational testing body) for the final exams of Dutch "vwo," an upper level secondary type of school preparing for university studies. These tests comprise a selection of authentic, argumentative and/or popular-scientific L2 texts on a variety of non-specialist topics. They specifically measure L2 reading skills, and comprehension does not depend primarily on textual features such as conceptual or structural complexity, or on reader characteristics such as familiarity with the topic.

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To the extent that reading comprehension is dependent on word knowledge, there is empirical evidence (Groot, 1994) that for an adequate understanding of academic texts of this kind, a vocabulary of at least 7,000 words is required (Hazenberg & Hulstijn, 1996 mention an even higher number--10,000). Nation (1993) and Laufer (1997) suggest a target vocabulary of 5,000 as the minimum lexical requirement for understanding general, non-specialised texts. The rationale for these numbers is that only a vocabulary this size will result in a sufficiently dense lexical coverage of texts of this kind. Various studies (Groot, 1994; Hazenberg & Hulstijn, 1996; Hirsh & Nation, 1992; Laufer, 1989) have demonstrated that for adequate comprehension of texts at this level, readers must be familiar with more than 90% of the words used. With such a dense lexical coverage of a text, the percentage of unknown words is so low that, generally speaking, they will either not be essential for an understanding of the text or their meaning may be deduced from the context.

WHICH WORDS?

Apart from the most frequently used 2,000 words there are, a further 3,000 words that should be learned. It is not possible to indicate accurately which words, partly because beyond the first 1,200 words, the frequency of words rapidly decreases and depends greatly on the corpus. Additional selection criteria such as usefulness and valency do not solve the problem either. Every selection will therefore contain a certain degree of arbitrariness as far as inclusion or omission of certain words is concerned. A partial solution to this problem may be compiling a much longer list of words of which only a portion must be mastered (Groot, 1994). The advantage of a list of this length is that difficult choices as to whether or not to include a particular word can be largely avoided. The feasibility of this idea has been studied in relation to English (de Jong, 1998). For this purpose, the subdivision into six frequency levels of the head words listed in the Collins Cobuild Dictionary (1995) was used. Allocation of a particular frequency level to a word is based on an analysis of the 200 million-word "The Bank of England Corpus." Level 1 includes the 700 most frequent words, level 2 the next 1,200 words, level 3 the next 1,500 words, level 4 the next 3,200, level 5 the next 8,100 and level 6 all remaining words. It turned out that the application of a number of qualitative criteria such as relevance and difficulty, and quantitative criteria such as frequency resulted in a list of approximately 8,000 words drawn from levels 3, 4 and 5. Familiarity with any 3,000 words from this list added to the first 2,000 would result in a lexical repertoire of 5,000 words considered sufficient for general reading while command of any 5,000, again in addition to the first 2,000, would suffice for academic reading. Complementary to this approach, various other word lists relevant to reading at this level may also be used in the compilation of such a list (Nation, 1990).

HOW TO TEACH/LEARN THE WORDS?

In connection with word learning, a distinction is commonly drawn between incidental and intentional learning. Unless one narrowly defines incidental learning as excluding any conscious attention to the words being learned (cf. Singleton 1999, p. 274), the two learning modes are not always easy to differentiate and show a considerable overlap, not unlike the acquisition/learning dichotomy suggested by Krashen. In this paper, intentional learning will be used to refer to any learning activity the learner undertakes with the intention of gaining new knowledge. As such it differs from incidental learning where there is no such intention (Anderson, 1990). From a pedagogic perspective, however, the distinction is still useful in a discussion on the optimal way of presenting new L2 words in instructional contexts.

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Most words in first language acquisition are learned incidentally in an incremental way because the language learner comes across them frequently in a wide range of contexts (De Bot, Paribakht, & Wesche, 1997; Nagy & Herman, 1987). In a short space of time, a large number of words are thus learned and this lexical repertoire then forms the basis for learning other new words. In the case of foreign language acquisition in instructional contexts, this process is virtually impossible to simulate. The exposure to new words is considerably less intensive and varied.² Undoubtedly, a limited number of high frequency words can be learned incidentally but that will certainly not be possible for the much larger number of less frequent words that must subsequently be learned if one wishes to speak of functional proficiency.

To solve this problem it has been suggested that learners be exposed to authentic L2 material and trained in communicative strategies such as contextual deduction of the meaning of new words so that incidental acquisition can take place, thus partially copying the L1 acquisition process (Krashen, 1989). Attractive though this idea may seem, it is not very realistic. Authentic language material is generally not produced with the intention of illustrating to learners the meaning or usage of certain words but rather to convey information to other native speakers who are already familiar with these words. More often than not, it is therefore largely unsuitable for the learning of new words for a number of reasons.

First, because of their relatively low frequency, the words to be learned will occur rarely in the inevitably small authentic L2 input. This means there is not enough repetition for an incremental learning process in which the various features of the words are picked up from the contexts, resulting in a solid embedding in the mental lexicon, as in L1 acquisition.

Second, in authentic use of language, it is frequently not the immediate context of an unknown word that contains the clues to its meaning but wider contexts that cumulatively illustrate its semantic properties. In most instructed L2 learning situations, however, the learner is only exposed to selected passages, which in themselves may not aptly illustrate meaning and use of the particular word at all.

But probably the most important reason why authentic L2 language is inadequate for incidental acquisition (except at highly advanced levels) is that it contains too many other unknown words. Of course, some of these may not be essential for understanding the context. Function words are generally less relevant for comprehension than content words and the same goes for adjectives compared to nouns. But others will be essential and not knowing them will make contextual deduction of the word to be learned problematic. Contextual deduction and, in its wake, incidental acquisition of an unknown word is only possible if the context is well understood and clearly illustrates its meaning. One might say that in such cases, for a proficient reader, the new word is redundant; in other words, it might as well have been left out (as, indeed, it is in cloze tests to measure comprehension of the context). But to the extent that the context contains other unknown words for the learner, there arises what one might call a cumulative reduction of the redundancy of the word in question. The number of possible meanings of the unknown word increases proportionally to the number of other unknown words in the context; the new word may mean "x" if another unknown word means "y," but if this is not the case, "x" must have a different meaning and this puzzle of semantic permutations gets more and more complex with each additional unknown word. The learner must form ever more hypotheses as to the possible meaning and systematically utilise previous and subsequent information to corroborate or refute these. This process will take so much attention and working memory capacity that higher reading processes, which are essential for understanding the context (such as recognition of suprasentential links and discourse markers), are seriously impeded.

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The above line of reasoning may be summarised as follows. A thorough understanding of the context is essential for deducing the meaning of an unknown word. For any context to be well understood a dense coverage is required. This means the reader must have "foreknowledge" of most other words in the particular context, which in turn presupposes a large vocabulary. There is a certain irony to this phenomenon (sometimes referred to as the Matthew effect) in the sense that a learner can only pick up new words from authentic contexts if s/he already has a large vocabulary (Horst, Cobb, & Meara, 1998). The above arguments may serve to illustrate the principle that in the limited time available in an L2 teaching context such a large vocabulary cannot be incidentally acquired by dint of sheer exposure to authentic L2 material.

If in instructional L2 situations incidental acquisition of a large vocabulary of lower frequency words through exposure to authentic L2 texts is hardly possible, it follows that efficient acquisition of new vocabulary requires a conscious effort from the learner (Prince, 1996; Sternberg, 1987). There seems to be no viable alternative to intentional learning of a large number of words with the help of authentic L2 material that has been selected (or edited) specifically for this purpose. The limited time available for this huge learning effort makes it imperative that the acquisition process be, as it were, accelerated. This requires a careful analysis of what should be learned and how it should be learned or, in other words, which words should be selected for learning (cf. "Contents of the Programme") and how they should be presented (cf. "Theoretical Background"). A computer assisted word learning programme which intends to do this is described below.

CAVOCA
Theoretical Background

CAVOCA (Computer Assisted VOCabulary Acquisition) is a computer programme for vocabulary acquisition in a foreign language. It has been designed on the basis of generally accepted theories about the way the mental lexicon is structured and operates. Allowing for certain differences between the various theories on how words are learned, stored in, and retrieved from the internal lexicon (cf. Aitchison, 1995), there is general agreement that in a natural (L1) word acquisition process several stages may be recognised. They cannot always be clearly distinguished because learning a word is an incremental process that gradually develops with repeated exposure and because there is constant interaction between the various stages. However, for clarity’s sake, they will be briefly described as if they were separate stages independent of one another.

Notice of the various properties of the new word: morphological and phonological, syntactic , semantic, stylistic, collocational, and so forth.
Storage in the internal lexicon in networks of relationships that correspond to the properties described in (1).
Consolidation of the storage described in (2) by means of further exposure to the word in a variety of contexts which illustrate its various properties. This results in a firmer embedding in the memory needed for long term retention.

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Adequate implementation of the stages described above will result in a solid embedding of the word in the mental lexicon, which is necessary for efficient receptive and productive use. If one of the stages is neglected, the word will not properly fix itself in the internal lexicon and will be stored only superficially without the many associations and links with other words needed for efficient lexical retrieval. The learner will not or barely recognise the word in a reading or listening text and will certainly be unable to use it in speaking or writing. These ideas about the importance of an intensive processing of the new word were first presented in a systematic fashion in Craik and Lockhart's (1972) "levels of processing" theory. It postulated that "rates of forgetting are a function of the type and depth of encoding" information and distinguished between various levels of processing. Thus, in their view, processing semantic properties of a word represented a deeper level than just processing its phonological features. Certain aspects of their theory have been criticised (especially its inability to clearly define the differences between levels in operational terms) but it has since led to a general consensus among researchers that there is a stringent relationship between retention and intensity or elaborateness (Anderson, 1990) of processing lexical information about a new word (i.e., paying close attention to its various features such as spelling, pronunciation, semantic and syntactic attributes, relationships with other words, etc.). Important elements in this intensive processing are the variability (Anderson,1990) and specificity (Tulving & Thomson, 1973) of the encoding activity. This theoretical position appears to have several important pedagogic implications for the teaching/learning of new words.

The first is that exposure to words in context is preferable to exposure to words in isolation. Only contexts will fully demonstrate the semantic, syntactic, and collocational features of a word the learner has to process in order to establish the numerous links and associations with other words necessary for easy accessibility and retrieval (see also Nation, 1990, and Singleton, 1999, for a summary of the arguments and evidence supporting this position).

Another implication, although more controversial than the first, appears to be that having learners infer the meaning of new words from the context is a better way to safeguard elaborate, intensive processing than giving the meaning because of the greater cognitive effort required.

Mondria (1996) presents evidence that seems to refute this theoretical stance. He interprets his finding that vocabulary test scores for the two conditions (given vs. inferred meaning) indicated that there is no difference in long term retention effects between the two presentation methods and that, in teaching new words, giving the meaning is a more efficient method than having learners contextually infer it, because it takes less time. His conclusions, however, are based on scores of tests of receptive knowledge only (a multiple choice and an open ended test) in which subjects were asked to recognise the target words. Whether tests of productive use (in which subjects have to recall the word themselves) would have yielded the same results leading to the same conclusions is doubtful (cf. the first remark in "Discussion").

The natural word acquisition process (as this occurs in first language acquisition) consists of gradual acquisition of the various properties of a word through repeated exposures in a wide range of authentic contexts illustrative of its various features. Bearing this in mind, we are faced with a dilemma in an instructed L-2 learning situation. On the one hand, there is not enough time for exposure to new words of the same intensity as in L1 acquisition. On the other hand, superficial exposure leads to shallow processing which fails to establish enough associations and links with other words for solid storage and efficient retrieval. Obviously, there is no easy solution to this dilemma. The most realistic approach seems to be to create an environment that is maximally conducive to learning new words by striking a balance between the two contradictory demands. The CAVOCA programme intends to do just that by speeding up the acquisition process; it takes the learners systematically through the various stages by exposing them to carefully selected L2 material which illustrates the salient features of the new L2 word and/or the differences between the L2 word and its nearest L1 equivalent or counterpart.

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The Programme

The stages of the vocabulary acquisition process described above are operationalised in the various sections of the CAVOCA programme. The programme takes the learner systematically through the sequence of mental operations which make up the acquisition process. The word to be acquired is presented in contexts selected in such a way as to ensure an efficient and, as it were, condensed acquisition process. To secure learner involvement, the programme is interactive: at certain points the learner has to make choices ("What do you think the word means?" "Is the word correct/appropriate in this context?" "What is the word that is missing in this context?") and is given feedback by the computer. The current CAVOCA programme presents the words in modules, each consisting of 25 words and taking about 50 minutes to complete. The programme covers each word in four sections which embody the various stages of the word acquisition process.

The first two stages of the vocabulary acquisition process, learning the word's various properties (among which, most importantly in a L2 acquisition context, is its semantic properties, see Singleton, 1999, p. 189) and storing the word in the memory are operationalised in the first section of the programme, called "Deduction." The word to be learned appears on the screen for a few seconds. Next, it is used in three sentences, presented in order of contextual richness. The first sentence contains only a few clues as to the meaning of the word and mainly serves to draw the learner's attention to its morphological composition, spelling, syntactic function, and so forth. The second sentence contains more clues as to the meaning, and the third is so contextually rich that the meaning becomes entirely clear. Every sentence is followed by a multiple choice question to be answered by the learner with four options as to the possible meaning, the correct alternative being a (near) synonym. After each sentence the learner is given immediate feedback (whether the meaning s/he inferred was right or wrong) to avoid the wrong meaning from being retained. After the third presentation of the word, the key to the multiple choice item is given as final feedback for the learner. To a certain extent, this way of presenting new words may seem unnatural since in natural word acquisition first contexts need not but may very well contain clues to the meaning of an unknown word. It was nevertheless opted for to make learners process the word intensively by forcing them to form and test hypotheses as to its meaning. The word is presented three times in sentences containing ever more semantic clues and the learner has to deduce the meaning in stages. This method of presenting the new word is meant to trigger off a cognitive process of what might be called "graded contextual disambiguation"; step by step the learner reduces the uncertainty about the meaning of the word by making use of the contextual clues increasingly present in the three consecutive sentences. It should yield better long term retention results than simply giving the meaning because it enforces a deeper level of processing (Mondria & Wit-de Boer, 1991). Here is an example. The word to be learned is "abrasive."

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Figure 1. "Deduction"

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The second and third context sentences in this example are:

2. He was offended by her abrasive tone of voice.
3. His abrasive criticism undermined her confidence and made her doubt herself.

The second section of the programme ("Usage") is geared to the second stage of the word acquisition process, consolidation. To further secure the word's position in the mental lexicon and to further illustrate its exact meaning, two sentences are presented in which the word is either used correctly/appropriately or not. The learner chooses and the computer gives feedback, explaining why the use of the word in question in that particular context was correct or incorrect. Also, whenever relevant, additional information about the word is given: other meanings (or, as in the example given here, the original, literal meaning of the word), derivatives, similar or misleadingly similar words, idiomatic usage, and so forth. In this section the learner is also requested to type the word in order to reinforce storage of the word's morphological properties. The computer points out and corrects any mistakes. An alternative version of the programme on CD-ROM gives the pronunciation of the word. The learner is then asked to repeat it and his/her pronunciation is recorded so that it can be listened to and compared to the correct pronunciation. The theoretical rationale for this multi-modal presentation is its supposed positive effect on the retrievability of a word. A diversity of operations to be performed vis a vis a word is likely to lead to better storage of a word and ,as a result, more (efficient) retrieval routes (Chun & Plass, 1996; Gathercole & Conway, 1988).

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Figures 2 and 3. "Usage"

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The third section of the programme, "Examples," is likewise designed to reinforce consolidation and thus ensure long term retention. The learner is presented with a number of authentic L2 passages selected from large databases containing the word just learned. These passages have been specially selected to clearly illustrate both meaning and use of the word in question. An additional objective of this section of the programme is to increase the learner's motivation for learning words (or, to put it more realistically, to motivate them at all). The learner recognises that he/she (better) understands the authentic L2 passage thanks to the recently acquired knowledge of the word learned. Hopefully, in the learner’s mind, this experience will serve as a specific illustration of the general principle of the importance of vocabulary for understanding authentic L2 reading texts.

Figure 4. "Examples"

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Once the learner has dealt with each of the 25 words in the module in the manner described above, he/she comes to the fourth and final section of the CAVOCA programme, called "Lexical Retrieval." In this section, which also serves as a self-assessment test, the learner's active knowledge of the word is elicited. The learner is presented with 25 sentences, each with one word missing. These sentences have been selected specially so that the blank can be filled by one word only (i.e., one of the words covered in the module). To help the learner and to elicit specifically the word recently acquired, the first letter of the word belonging in the sentence is given. Once the 25 sentences have been completed, the learner's score appears on the screen and any mistakes are pointed out. Print-outs enable the teacher to check the student's performance in each module.

Figure 5. "Lexical Retrieval"

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Contents of the Programme

The words in the current CAVOCA database have been selected to fulfil two criteria: relevance and difficulty for the target group (Wijbenga, 1997).

To select a body of words relevant to first year university language proficiency courses, a preliminary list of several thousand words judged relevant to "academic reading" was put together based on frequency and a number of other considerations of a contrastive/linguistic and didactic nature. Seven experienced teachers of English from Dutch universities were presented with this list and were requested to put each word into one of five categories according to relevance. Subsequently, a list of 1,500 words with the highest mean score and the lowest standard deviation was made, in other words, all the words which were judged relevant and suitable by all or most of the teachers. From these 1,500 words a selection of about 500 difficult words was made, based on a contrastive analysis. This selection encompassed words which lack a Dutch equivalent or a one-to-one relationship with their Dutch counterparts in terms of usage or meaning. Examples are acknowledge, encroach, fumble, enhance, oblivious, and anxious, words for which there is no direct (context-independent) translation in Dutch. However, words like abduct (which denotes the exact same concept as the Dutch ontvoeren and which is used in the same way syntactically, stylistically, etc.) were not selected for the CAVOCA treatment. Such words receive a less intensive treatment (what we named the EDIT treatment: Extended DIctionary Treatment) on the assumption that words of this kind are easier to learn. In the EDIT treatment, the word is presented in one or two contextually rich sentences followed by a definition, derivatives, words related in form but not in meaning, and so forth. A database of words from the higher frequency band width described in "Which Words?" relevant for intermediate stages of L2 acquisition, is under construction.

THE EFFICIENCY OF THE PROGRAMME

The CAVOCA programme is based on a theoretical analysis of the L1 word acquisition process and, in a sense, tries to replicate the various stages of this process, albeit in a condensed form to save time. It sets out to speed up the word acquisition process by means of intensified exposure to carefully selected L2 material. Thus, it fulfils the theoretical and practical conditions for efficient word learning. There are, however, a number of differences between L1 and L2 word acquisition. In L1 acquisition, the new word and its meaning are learned simultaneously, while in L2 learning the concept covered by the L2 label is either familiar to the learner (when the two labels cover semantic equivalents) or can be integrated into his/her conceptual framework. This difference alone justifies the question as to whether an intensive method of word learning like CAVOCA is efficient compared to less time-consuming methods such as "paired associates" learning (e.g., via bilingual word lists), efficiency being defined here as the ratio between the number of words learned and the time needed to learn them. One might argue that because the learner is already familiar with the concepts covered by the new L2 labels, the conceptual learning load in L2 word acquisition is lighter than in L1 acquisition so that intensive processing of the new L2 words is not essential for retention, even in the case of L2 words lacking one-to-one relationships with L1 counterparts such as those selected for the CAVOCA database. Another ground for comparing the two methods is that the CAVOCA method represents a way of learning new words which is very unlike what most students are used to. It takes more time per word than a bilingual list, students are not given a translation but have to work out the meaning for themselves, and all of the context material and the feedback is in the L2. In short, it is a much more difficult method than the familiar paired associates learning methods that they are used to.

In order to collect evidence relevant to this question, the CAVOCA approach was compared with the more orthodox approach of L2 word learning by means of bilingual word lists in a number of experimental settings. A detailed report of the experimental procedure and data would exceed the scope of this article and has appeared elsewhere (Groot, 1999) but the results most relevant to an evaluation of the efficiency of the CAVOCA approach will be discussed.

Experimental Procedure

The experimental (CAVOCA) and the control condition (bilingual lists) were compared in four experiments (Bonte, 1997; Dufour, 1997; Janssen, 1996; Nep, 1998). These experiments had a quasi-experimental, pre-test/post-test, differential treatment design, with the learning method as the independent variable and the scores on the post tests as the dependent variable. Subjects, ranging from upper level secondary school (vwo) pupils (aged 16 to 18) to first year university students (aged 19-20), were presented with two equivalent sets of words, one in the experimental and the other in the control condition, in two separate learning sessions of the same length. The words were selected according to the contrastive linguistic criteria described in "Contents of the Programme" and assignment of the words to either of the two conditions was random. In all experiments the effect of the two methods was measured twice: immediately after the learning session and two to three weeks later to determine the long-term retention effect. Subjects had not been told about the delayed test to prevent them from paying more than usual attention to the words after the learning session, which might invalidate the results. Due to their relatively low frequency, the chances that they would come across the test words in the period between the immediate and the delayed test were slim. Prior to the learning session, a pre-test was administered containing more words than the final set used in the experiments to check whether subjects were familiar with any of the words. This turned out to be the case in a few instances and these words were not used in the experiment.

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In experiments 1 and 2, carried out by Janssen and Dufour (the second being a replica of the first in order to establish the generalisibility of the results), the effect of the two methods was measured by means of a test of receptive knowledge. The subjects were shown the two sets of words learned and asked to give a translation or definition. Obviously, this testing method favours the control condition since the method used in the testing session is the same as the one followed in the learning session (see Schneider, Healy, & Bourne, 1999, p. 89, and the observation in "Theoretical Background" about encoding specificity). Subjects need only remember the translation of the control condition words to achieve a high score. For the words used in the experimental condition, this direct association was not possible since no translation was provided.

Two follow-up experiments (3 and 4), carried out by Bonte and Nep (again, the second replicating the first to determine the generalisibility of the results), were set up in the same way in all other respects as the first two, except for the testing technique used to measure the effect of the two methods of word learning. To establish to what extent the scores obtained were the result of the particular testing method used in these experiments (or, in other words, to determine the constraints on their validity), a different testing technique was used, namely a cloze test. This testing format obviously measures more than just receptive knowledge of words since the word itself is not given but has to be provided by the testees themselves. This form of lexical retrieval clearly requires a deeper knowledge of a word than receptive knowledge. The context sentences used in the cloze tests were not the same as those used in the "Lexical Retrieval" part of the CAVOCA programme so that subjects could not come up with the target words because they recognised the sentences. Since pre-tests showed that subjects found this way of testing much more difficult than the receptive tests and to preclude them from filling in a semantically acceptable alternative word, the first letter of the word was given.

Results

The following abbreviations are used in the tables of results.

C	control method
X	experimental method
test 1	immediate test
test 2	delayed test
1-2	decrease in scores on immediate and delayed tests
mean	mean score
SD	standard deviation
ss	number of subjects
R	reliability (Cronbach alpha)
max	maximum score

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Table 1. Experiment 1: First year university students

	C test 1	C test 2	C 1-2	X test 1	X test 2	X 1-2
mean	74.67	49.96	24.85	55.46	36.42	19.03
SD	0.86	15.56		18.17	15.24
ss.	14	14		14	14
R	0.198	0.999		0.982	0.974
max.	75	75		75	75

Table 2. Experiment 2: vwo students

	C test 1	C test 2	C 1-2	X test 1	X test 2	X 1-2
mean	39.04	23.16	15.87	26.76	18.35	8.41
SD	1.94	8.36		7.19	7.33
ss.	24	24		24	24
R	0.219	0.974		0.913	0.916
max.	40	40		40	40

Table 3. Experiment 3: vwo students

	C test 1	C test 2	C 1-2	X test 1	X test2	X 1- 2
mean	12.65	5.00	7.65	9.60	7.00	2.60
SD	2.3	2.5		2.4	2.6
ss.	15	15		15	15
R	0.93	0.84		0.90	0.88
max.	24	24		24	24

Table 4. Experiment 4: vwo students

	C test 1	C test 2	C 1-2	X test 1	X test 2	X 1-2
mean	15.3	11.3	4	17.5	15.3	2.3
SD	1.8	2.1		2.1	2.4
ss.	29	29		29	29
R	0.87	0.85		0.83	0.86
max.	25	25		25	25

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The reliability coefficients of nearly all the tests used were satisfactory (>0.80), which is not surprising for discrete point tests. The immediate receptive knowledge tests in the first two experiments were an exception: these showed a low reliability due to a clear ceiling effect in the scores resulting in a low standard deviation.

Significance levels were calculated for the following two most relevant results of the four experiments: a) the difference between the mean scores for both conditions on the delayed tests and b) the difference between the decrease in the mean scores on the immediate and delayed tests for both conditions.

The two-tailed t-tests for independent means resulted in levels never higher than p< .05. There was one exception for a ) in experiment 3 (n=15), which was only significant at a level of p< 0.10

The experimental results consistently show certain patterns, independent of the subjects or the words used in the experiments.

In the first two experiments the scores on the immediate tests of receptive knowledge were considerably higher for the control condition. Recall of the fresh association between the words and their translation, as established by the bilingual word list, was sufficient for a high score. In fact, in both experiments the mean scores on the immediate tests of receptive knowledge of the words learned by means of bilingual lists were extremely high (> 95%). As observed above, this strategy of pairing associates resulting in high scores could not be applied in the case of the words learned through the CAVOCA programme, since in this condition no translation was provided and the meaning had to be worked out by the subjects themselves. Of course, subjects may have tagged their own L1 labels onto these (L2) concepts but, since no feedback in the form of the correct translation was given, it is unlikely that these individual L2-L1 associations were always wholly correct or, if they were, as firmly established as those in the control condition.

As was expected, the scores on the delayed tests in these two first experiments were considerably lower for both conditions. Retention loss as manifested in the decrease in scores on the delayed test was larger for the bilingual word list method than for the CAVOCA condition: 24.85 versus 19.03 (= 33% vs. 25%) and 15.87 versus. 8.41 (= 39% vs.21%) in experiments 1 and 2, respectively, but the mean scores on the delayed tests of receptive knowledge were still higher for the word list condition than for the CAVOCA method.

In the last two experiments, where the effect of both methods was measured with cloze tests, the mean scores for both conditions on the immediate tests did not show the large differences observed in the first two experiments. However, as in the first two experiments, the decrease in the scores on the delayed tests was larger for the bilingual word list condition than for the CAVOCA condition: 7.65 vs. 2.60 (=31% vs.10%) in experiment 3 and 4 vs. 2.2 (=16% vs. 9%) in experiment 4, resulting in higher scores for the experimental condition.

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If the figures found in the four experiments for the decrease in scores on the immediate and the delayed tests mentioned above in (2) and (3) are converted into forgetting rate percentages (i.e., the percentage of the words learned that was forgotten during the period of time between the immediate and the delayed tests), we get the following results for the control and the experimental condition in the four experiments: 33% versus 34% in the first experiment , 40% versus. 31% in the second , 60% versus 27% in the third, and 26% versus 13% in the fourth. With the exception of the first experiment, these figures confirm the retention loss pattern observed above in (2) and (3).

Discussion

For a correct interpretation of the above data three preliminary remarks are called for.

1. The experiments were carried out to determine which of the two methods of learning new words is more efficient in the sense of yielding the best long term retention results. The crucial question is then "When has a word been learned?" or, in other words, "What does it mean to know a word?" Clearly, as observed before, there are various levels of or dimensions to word knowledge (Nagy & Herman, 1987). Knowing a word may be seen in operational terms as a continuum ranging from vague recognition of its spelling to (semantically, syntactically, stylistically) correct and contextually appropriate productive use. Retrieval of a word from the mental lexicon for productive use requires a higher degree of accessibility or, in other words, a more solid integration in various networks than is needed for receptive use. For measuring this higher level of mastery, a test which asks testees to simply recognise a word and give its meaning is unsuitable; a test using the cloze technique, which measures testees’ ability to produce the word themselves, is much more valid for that purpose. The experimental results reported in "Results" clearly demonstrate that for a meaningful interpretation of the data, it is essential to give an accurate description of what one understands by the trait "knowing a word" and of what trait is intended to be measured by what testing method.

2. The scores on the tests administered after the experimental learning session do not pretend to show the learningeffect of each separate part of the CAVOCA programme but rather the overall effect of the CAVOCA induced learning process as a whole. As observed in "Theoretical Background" in the description of the theoretical background of the programme, it is difficult, from a psycholinguistic perspective, to discriminate between the various stages in the word acquisition process. All one can logically say is that there must be a temporal order: noticing a word’s properties must of necessity precede any storage and consolidation can only follow when something has been stored. But even if it were desirable from a theoretical point of view, it is practically hardly possible to determine the relative contribution to the learning effect of the various stages in the learning process.

3. It is not unlikely that a lack of familiarity with the CAVOCA method of word learning negatively influenced the scores in the experimental condition. This way of learning was completely new to the subjects. It was intuitively felt to be useful but also much more difficult than the more orthodox approach with its facile association between the L2 word and its L1 translation. Experimenters observed again and again that subjects are, as it were, conditioned for superficial learning and find it difficult to switch to a different style.

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If long-term retention is the ultimate goal of learning new words, little significance should be attached to the extremely high scores for the control condition on the immediate receptive tests in the first two experiments. Considering the sizable fall in the scores on the delayed tests, these high scores possess no predictive value whatsoever with regard to long term retention of the words. The immediate tests measured superficial recognition of the words that had been presented in the bilingual list, automatically triggering fresh associations between the L2 and the L1 words. It is common knowledge that high ability learners in these age groups possess an admirable memorising capacity (Hulstijn, 1997; Knight, 1994). This enabled the subjects to achieve extremely high scores on the immediate tests. The associations, however, are not firmly established and two weeks later most of them are beyond recall.

It is not unlikely that the higher scores on the delayed tests in the first two experiments for the control condition should be attributed for a substantial part to the fact that for the control condition the method of learning and testing were identical (cf. the observation in "Experimental Procedure").

The higher scores on the delayed cloze tests and the smaller loss of retention for the experimental condition in all four experiments may be regarded as corroborative evidence for the theory that there is a strong relationship between retention rates and depth of processing. They appear to indicate that intensive processing of new words leads to a more solid embedding and better long term retention which is needed for active use of the words, than does superficial processing of the words out of context with the translation given, as in bilingual lists.

On the other hand, the higher scores on the delayed receptive tests for the control condition in the first two experiments point to the conclusion that, even where L2 word learning cannot be equated to just relabeling familiar L1 concepts (as was the case in the experiments described above where the L2 target words did not have a direct L1 equivalent), high ability learners at high L2 proficiency levels achieve receptive command more efficiently with the help of bilingual lists than with the CAVOCA method. Whether this also holds for L2 word learning at lower levels in lower age groups is a moot point. One might argue that high level learners have meta-cognitive strategies at their disposal which make their acquisition of new vocabulary much less dependent on externally imposed learning conditions (such as the intensive CAVOCA presentation that tries to copy the L1 word acquisition process in a condensed form) than is the case for younger, low level learners whose less developed cognitive maturity makes their L2 acquisition process more similar to L1 acquisition. The data reported here do not warrant any conclusions regarding this issue.

As to the significance of the above results from a pedagogic L2 teaching perspective, they strongly suggest that a combined approach, making use of the two methods simultaneously, is probably the most efficient. On the one hand, using bilingual word lists would fully profit from the L1 conceptual framework, especially where the L1 and L2 labels are near equivalents in meaning and use, the effect being enhanced if these lists take a form such that they stimulate the learner to establish more than the superficial, minimalist associations between the L2 and L1 labels often attributed to this way of presenting new words. On the other hand, such an approach would yield better chances for long term retention due to the intensive processing of the words in the form of the various mental actions to be performed on them such as those offered by the CAVOCA programme.

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In what order, proportion and form the two methods should be incorporated in the dual approach is an open question. One possibility would be to present the new words first in the CAVOCA programme immediately followed by a bilingual word list presentation. Further experimentation will have to provide data as to the efficiency of this particular way of combining the two methods. Of course, whatever the outcome of our endeavours to find the optimal mode of presenting new words, repeated exposure at certain intervals is essential for long-term retention. It is highly improbable that one learning session, however intensive, is sufficient. Modern technology offers unique possibilities for rehearsal practice that will ensure further consolidation. Using a concordance programme for finding the word in question, learners may be instructed to search in large electronic databases of authentic L2 texts for examples of the words just learned which best illustrate their meaning and usage. An exercise such as this refreshes the learner's awareness of the word, its meaning and how it is used. It is a useful exercise which also enables the teacher to assess whether the learner has retained the words in question. Also, repeated exposure to the recently learned words in short texts, in combination with words that frequently co-occur with them in authentic L2 material (either because they belong to the same semantic field or because they are linked up in standard phrases, collocations or idiomatic expressions), will stimulate further consolidation.

CONCLUSION

The CAVOCA computer programme is an attempt to operationalise theoretical ideas about word acquisition. As such, it is an instrument which enables us to empirically verify the theory on word acquisition in general and its validity for L2 word acquisition in particular. If it yields data incompatible with what the theory predicts, either the theory is partially incorrect (e.g., where it claims a basic similarity between L1 and L2 word acquisition), or there is something wrong with the way it has been operationalised in the CAVOCA programme. If the data collected with CAVOCA are in accordance with the theoretical predictions, they may be regarded as a confirmation of the theory. The evidence reported above may be regarded as a first indication that theories about word learning are correct in the importance they attribute to intensive processing for long term retention. But the data also indicate that there are marked differences between the L1 and the L2 word learning process. In particular, the fact that the L2 learner already has a system of conceptual categories at his disposal to accommodate the new L2 labels may imply that L2 word learning represents a simpler cognitive task than L1 word acquisition where new concepts and labels have to be learned simultaneously. To the extent that this is indeed the case the question arises whether attempts such as the CAVOCA programme to make L2 word learning a condensed copy of the L1 word acquisition process are cost effective, especially in the case of L2 words that have equivalent L1 counterparts. In such cases a simple bilingual presentation followed by some rehearsal practice may be more efficient. The overall conclusion must be that there is no simple answer to the key question what form the most efficient method of L2 word learning should take. It depends very much on variables like degree of L1-L2 equivalence of the words to be learned, the intensity (both qualitative and quantitative) of processing, the age and cognitive level of the learner, the quantity and quality of rehearsal practice etc. More experimentation systematically controlling these variables is needed to gather data that will provide more insight into their relative importance. Instruments like CAVOCA may help provide such data.

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NOTES

In this paper, the acronym L2 will be used to include second and foreign language learnings as opposed to L1 learning. [RETURN]
Singleton (1999, 236) estimates one year of natural exposure to be the equivalent of 18 years of classroom exposure. [RETURN]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Groot is senior lecturer at the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands) and currently teaches and supervises research in second language acquisition. His research interests are: L2 testing, word acquisition and reading.

For a demo version of the programme, please e-mail the author at Peter.Groot@let.uu.nl

REFERENCES

Aitchison, J. (1995). Words in the Mind. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Anderson, J. R. (1990). Cognitive psychology and its implications. New York: Freeman.

Bonte, W.F.W. (1997). Vocabulaire Verwerving. Een vergelijking van twee methoden [Vocabulary learning. A comparison of two methods]. Unpublished master's thesis, Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands.

Chun, D. M., & Plass, J.L. (1996). Effects of multimedia annotations on vocabulary acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 80, 183-197.

Collins Cobuild English Dictionary. (1995). London: Harper Collins.

Craik, F., & Lockhart, R.S., (1972). Levels of Processing. A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 11 671-684.

De Bot, K., Paribakht, T.S., & Wesche, M.B. (1997). Toward a lexical processing model for the study of second language vocabulary acquisition: Evidence from ESL reading. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19, 309-329.

Dufour, M.J. (1997). Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition: Two Methods Compared. Unpublished master's thesis, Universiteit Utrecht, Faculty of Letters, The Netherlands.

Groot, P.J.M. (1994). Tekstdekking, tekstbegrip en woordselectie voor het vreemde-taalonderwijs (with a summary in English) [Lexical coverage, reading comprehension and wordselection in foreign language teaching]. Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in artikelen, 3, 111-121.

Groot, P.J.M. (1999). Computer ondersteunde vreemde-taalverwerving op de hogere niveaus (with a summary in English) [Computer assisted foreign language learning at higher levels]. Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen, 1, 111-126.

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Hazenberg, S.,& Hulstijn, J.H. (1996). Defining a minimal receptive second language vocabulary for non-native university students: an empirical investigation. Applied Linguistics, 7, 145-163.

Hirsch, D., & Nation, P. (1992). What vocabulary size is needed to read unsimplified texts for pleasure? Reading in a Foreign Language, 8, 689-696.

Horst, M., Cobb, T., & Meara, P. (1998). Beyond a Clockwork Orange: Acquiring second language vocabulary through reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 11, 207-223.

Hulstijn, J. (1997). Mnemonic methods in foreign language vocabulary learning: Theoretical considerations and pedagogical implications. In J. Coady & T. Huckin, Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition ( pp. 203-224). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hulstijn, J., Hollander, M., & Greidanus, T. (1996). Incidental vocabulary learning by advanced foreign language students: The influence of marginal glosses, dictionary use, and reoccurrence of unknown words. Modern Language Journal, 80,(3), 327-340.

Janssen, A.E.P. (1996). CAVOCA. Computer-assisted Vocabulary Acquisition. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Utrecht, Faculty of Arts, The Netherlands.

Jong, A.P.H. de (1998). Between Abandon and Zoom. A Quantitative Study of Required VWO Vocabulary. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Utrecht, Faculty of Arts, The Netherlands.

Knight, S. (1994). Dictionary: The tool of last resort in foreign language reading? A new perspective. Modern Language Journal, 78, 285-299.

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Mondria, J.A. (1996). Vocabulaireverwerving in het vreemde-talenonderwijs. De effecten van context en raden op de retentie [Vocabulary acquisition in foreign language teaching. The effects of context and guessing on retention]. Doctoral dissertation. The Netherlands: Groningen University Press.

Mondria, J.A., & Wit-de Boer, M. (1991). The effects of contextual richness on the guessability and the retention of words in a foreign language. Applied Linguistics 12, 249-267.

Nagy, W.E., & Herman, P.A. (1987). Breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge: Implications for acquisition and instruction. In M.G. McKeown & M. Curtis (Eds.), The nature of vocabulary acquisitio (pp. 19-35). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Nation, I.S.P. (1990). Teaching & Learning Vocabulary. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

Nation, P. (1993). Vocabulary size, growth and use. In R. Schreuder & B. Weltens (Eds.), The Bilingual Lexicon (pp. 115-134). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Nep, W. (1998). Computer ondersteunde woordverwerving in de tweede fase [Computer assisted vocabulary acquisition at higher levels]. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Utrecht, IVLOS [Teacher training department], The Netherlands.

Prince, P. (1996). Second language vocabulary learning: the role of context versus translations as a function of proficiency. The Modern Language Journal, 80, 478-493.

Schneider, V.I., Healy, A.F., & Bourne, L.E. (1999). Contextual Interference Effects in Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention. In A.F. Healy & L.E. Bourne (Eds.), Foreign Language Learning (p. 89). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Singleton, D. (1999). Exploring the Second Language Mental Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sternberg, R.J. (1987). Most vocabulary is learned from context. In M.G. McKeown & M. Curtis (Eds.), The nature of vocabulary acquisition (pp. 89-105). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Tulving, E., & Thomson, D.M. (1973). Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psychological Review, 80, 352-373.

Watanabe, Y. (1997). Input, intake and retention: effects of increased processing on incidental learning of foreign language vocabulary. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19, 287-307.

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Word Processors' Grammar and Spelling Assistance: Consequences for Second Language Learning and Teaching

Ingrid Fandrych
im.fandrych [at] nul.ls
National University of Lesotho (Roma, Lesotho)

Abstract

Modern word processors do not only include spell checks and dictionaries but also grammar checks. Do these facilities help second language students to compose correct sentences and texts? Will they even make the grammar component that has traditionally been part of Academic Writing courses redundant? This paper sets out to determine the usefulness of modern word processors in terms of their grammar and spelling assistance and discuss the consequences for second language learning and teaching. For this purpose, the most common word processors on the market at present (Word, WordPerfect) will be tested on a variety of texts ranging from students' essays to newspaper articles and literary and academic texts.

Introduction

With the use of computers and word processors becoming more and more common among both academics and university students, a closer look at the grammar and spell check facilities of widely used word processors is called for in order to determine whether, indeed, the 'blind faith' that many people put in modern software is justified. After a brief look at the place of grammar in Academic Writing courses at university level, the following study attempts to test the most frequently used word processors - Word and WordPerfect - on a variety of text types. Some of the texts analysed in this context undoubtedly represent what is commonly called 'good English style' (e.g., the literary text by Nadine Gordimer, the non-fiction text by Noam Chomsky), but we will also look at less sophisticated texts like newspaper articles, and finally we will look at some examples of authentic students' essays in order to determine the usefulness of the suggestions made by the word processors.

Grammar in Academic Writing Courses at Tertiary Level

The National University of Lesotho (NUL) admits students with the equivalent of 'O' Level Exams (COSC), and therefore, they have to take certain bridging courses to help them to cope with tertiary education. Central to this bridging programme is a "Communication and Study Skills Course". The grammar component of this Academic Writing course consists of the following main areas:

Sentence Structures;
Paragraph Structures;
Subject-verb Agreement;
Tense;
Modal Auxiliaries;
Conjunctions;
Articles;
Prepositions;
Punctuation.

Furthermore, we teach 'Academic Style', i.e. no contractions, no colloquialisms, no idioms, and the avoidance of impersonal constructions, as far as possible.

According to previous research carried out at NUL (c.f. Fandrych 1999, in print), some of the problem areas for students at tertiary level are:

quantity instead of quality: unnecessary repetition and a general tendency to produce long-winded explanations;
errors in style (contractions, colloquialisms etc.);
problems with sentence structures;
problems with punctuation;
no editing/proof-reading;
students are not used to looking up spellings, collocations, usages; instead, they 'improvise', and they often confuse words, e.g. conflict - convict, conduct - consult;
sentences starting with again, also etc. ;
problems with tenses, modes;
problems with articles;
wrong use of whereby;
spelling errors, partly due to lack of phonetic distinction: tend/turn, this/these, hash/harsh; mader (for 'murder'); penulty, pinishment, lithal, nagetive; crimminals, limmit;
redundancy, e.g. all the remaining others, can be able to, convincingly argue and convince us, decreases or diminishes;
omission of 'to be' in attributive phrases.

Settings of Word Used in This Study

The relevant settings can be selected in the Edit and Tools menus of Word 97. For the purposes of this study, 'English (South African)' was chosen. Furthermore, the options 'Check spelling as you type', 'Check grammar as you type', and 'Always suggest corrections' were switched on, and, finally, in terms of style, 'standard' was selected, including all the options offered, namely:

Capitalization
Commonly confused words
Hyphenated and split words
Negation
Numbers
Passive sentences
Phrases
Possessives and plurals
Punctuation
Relative Clauses
Sentence structures
Subject-verb agreement
Style:
- Cliches
- Colloquialisms
- Contractions
- Gender-specific words
- Jargon
- Sentences beginning with And, But, Hopefully
- Unclear phrasing
- Wordiness

The 'don't check' option was selected for the following features:

Comma before last item
Punctuation with quotes
Spaces between sentences

At first glance, the above list of features Word attempts to rectify looks quite impressive and a number of items in the list definitely try to address some of the problems experienced by students, e.g. confusing words, punctuation, sentence structures, agreement, colloquialisms, contractions, conjunctions in sentence-initial position, and wordiness.

Grammar and Spell Check Options in WordPerfect

WordPerfect is in many respects more flexible than Word. There are a number of 'checking styles' from which the user can choose, e.g. 'Very Strict', 'Formal Memo or Letter', Technical or Scientific', Advertising'. In addition to these options, computer users can create their own styles, change the formality of the styles, and predefine the number of elements to be allowed in noun phrases, consecutive prepositional phrases, sentence length and the maximum number of elements allowed in a split infinitive.

'British English' was chosen (South African English is not offered as an option), and the standard settings in terms of style were applied, as the author wanted to be able to compare the different reactions of WordPerfect towards the range of texts under discussion. Similarly, and especially in the light of the mechanistic treatment of 'long sentences' and 'wordiness' in Word 97 (c.f. below), no restrictions were stipulated in terms of sentence length etc.

Analysis of the Texts with Word 97

Apart from some unfamiliar names and the term back-tracking, Word 97 only criticises the two newspaper articles for the use of contractions.

The extract from Nadine Gordimer's novel (literary text) is criticised for lack of commas (for example after morning in the second paragraph), 'wordiness' (absolutely no), the use of the passive voice (are said to be - no suggestions), long sentences (In the marble foyer …; I would hand the key …), the 'plural' (sic) of so-and-so's, and the use of and in sentence-initial position in the last sentence of the second paragraph. In the last two paragraphs, the contractions are criticised.

Chomsky's text (non-fiction) also shows signs of 'wordiness' (drawing to a close - suggestion: ending), long sentences (first sentence, second paragraph and the sentence beginning with The factors … in the third paragraph). Furthermore, Word finds irregular sentence structures (first sentence, third paragraph and first sentence, last paragraph), lack of punctuation (suggestion: comma after declined in the last sentence of the third paragraph).

Machobane (academic/historical text) is in good company with his long sentences (third sentences in the first and the second paragraphs, last sentence in the third paragraph, first and last sentences in the fourth paragraph), his comma use (Yet in the beginning of the second paragraph), and his 'wordiness' (at the moment, third paragraph).

Finally, Reagan (academic/linguistics) also produces some long sentences and, obviously, his American spelling is commented on.

Let us now turn to our examples of students' writings. The only problem Word has with Student A's text is the subject-verb agreement in the last sentence. Word suggests either to replace are with is, or to pluralise speech.

Student B: Word suggests replacing inorder with one of the following: ignored, ironed, ironware, intruder, inured - all of which would, obviously, be syntactically inappropriate. Instead of recognising the problematic sentence structures and lacking full stops (e.g. in the first line, third paragraph and second line, fourth paragraph), Word only comments on the "Extra Space between Words". Neither the really problematic sentence structures in the first and last paragraphs, nor the abbreviation and the use of need, the comma after also in the third paragraph, or the repeated use of some in the fourth paragraph are criticised.

Student C: Several wrongly spelled words are indicated. Several long sentences (first paragraph; second sentence, second paragraph; third paragraph; first sentence, fourth paragraph; last sentence, fifth paragraph; last paragraph) are discovered, but no suggestions are made. Furthermore, Word comments on the "Extra Space between Words" (line 2, fourth paragraph), suggests commas after problem and Thus (fourth paragraph), and after Law (fifth paragraph). In the latter case, Word suggests replacing which with that as an alternative. Finally, 'wordiness' is noted in the first sentence of the fifth paragraph, and it's should be replaced with it is (sic).

Student C's essay is rather problematic, but Word neither comments on the use of would (line 2), nor this offices (second paragraph), and ignores the syntactic structure of the third paragraph (apart from its length), the pronoun redundancy in the same paragraph, the position of also (second sentence, fourth paragraph), the use of where (last sentence, fourth paragraph), the spelling of can not (fifth paragraph), and the semicolon and the possessive in the first sentence of the fifth paragraph.

Finally, Student D is criticised for the contraction in line 1, and Word suggests replacing serve with serves in the second sentence. However, neither under (for undergo) nor the sentence structure of the sentence beginning with Also … (first paragraph) are commented upon.

Unfortunately, Word 97 cannot keep all its promises. This is not entirely surprising, as some grammatical features are rather too complex and context-sensitive for a computer programme to discover. In terms of the spell check, Word certainly has its - limited - usefulness, depending on the dictionary used. In terms of its grammar check facilities, Word is rather mechanical: whether something counts as a 'long sentence', even if it is correct (c.f. the analysis of literary, non-fiction and academic texts), seems to depend on word counts performed by the software; 'wordiness' apparently depends on certain phrases in the dictionary. Finally, the fact that some wrong suggestions are made is more regrettable than the mere oversight of certain problems Word claims to be able to solve.

We can conclude that the grammar component of EAP courses cannot be reduced or even done away with as far as Word 97 is concerned. What the software can do, is draw the attention of its users to certain problem areas, e.g. long sentences (which, however, do not necessarily constitute a problem per se, especially in academic texts), as syntactical errors might be lurking there.

Users who intend to make extensive use of the spell check facilities are well advised to establish their own, customised dictionaries. Academics who intend to rely on Word's grammar and spell check facilities must be warned that Word 97 can be extremely stubborn as far as the arrangement of lists or sectioned passages (e.g. legal articles) is concerned, and Word's constant criticism of 'fragments' in the references section can be irritating, too.

Analysis of the Texts with WordPerfect 8

Like Word 97, WordPerfect 8 does not have any serious problems with the two Mail & Guardian articles, apart from the use of the number 12 000, the spelling of ARs in the second article, and the unfamiliar word Accessline (all in the second article).

Nadine Gordimer's text is criticised for the use of words like wormholes, sun-set, bell-hop, show-cases (all of these in the second paragraph). Furthermore, WordPerfect informs us that but (second paragraph, middle) "is usually awkward" after a semicolon.

Chomsky's text is criticised for the use of the hyphen in post-industrial (first paragraph), a comma is suggested after Meanwhile (last sentence, second paragraph), and his American spellings are noted and commented upon.

In Machobane's historical writings there are, of course a number of unfamiliar names, some leading to rather amusing suggestions, such as Muchachas for Moshoeshoe, and dulcification for dutchification. Apart from these, the spelling of south-westerly is corrected to southwesterly or south westerly.

In Reagan's language, the use of the semicolon is explained as usually joining "two independent clauses", and, as an alternative, the use of a comma is suggested.

As far as the students' texts are concerned, WordPerfect also has less to say than Word 97. In Student A's first line, WordPerfect suggests a comma after performance, to make the sentence clearer. Otherwise, no comments. In Student B's text, the spelling of Inorder is criticised, and the lack of full stops between people and And (third paragraph) and between project and It (fourth paragraph) is corrected. However, the insertion of a comma after Language (fourth paragraph) does not clarify matters, as suggested by the programme. Student C is criticised for spelling errors (e.g. dicided, decesion, imformation, diffent, thier, interpretors, can not, stylisticans, diskets), and a full stop is suggested between meaning and This (fourth paragraph). In addition, the mistake in it's (fifth paragraph) is recognised and corrected to its. No other comments are made to improve the texts.

Comparing the analyses of the grammar checks of a variety of texts by Word 97 and WordPerfect 8, we can conclude that WordPerfect seems to be rather more flexible than Word 97, in particular as it gives the user several options to choose from in terms of the more mechanistic counting processes (which seem, at this stage at least, the best word processors have to offer as far as syntax is concerned). Another useful option for (advanced?) computer users is the choice between a range of styles, from 'very formal' to rather informal.

Word 2000

Word 2000 offers improved spelling and grammar checkers. For example, the spelling checker now recognizes a much broader range of names for people, organizations and companies, cities and countries, Internet and file addresses, and more. The grammar checker now flags mistakes and offers more effective user-friendly grammar, and rewrite suggestions. ("What's new with proofing tools", Word 2000 Help Function).

Word 2000 further announces that it can now "automatically correct spelling and grammar", and that the thesaurus offers synonyms; it can also check texts written in other languages, and detect hyphenation language-specifically.

Indeed, a fresh analysis of our sample texts shows a number of changes from Word 97 to Word 2000:

No more comments on 'long sentences' or 'wordiness'. So, apparently the mechanistic approach was abandoned as not very helpful.
Frequent reminders and instructions about hyphenation (as expected after the announcement summarised above), and concerning capitalisation.
The suggestion that not only should always be followed by but also.
In the first text about Chomsky, the sentence fragment in paragraph 10 is criticised.
In Student C's text the wrong number agreement this offices (second paragraph) is noted and explained, and the wrong spelling of can not is noted.

However, many of the other errors discussed above still remain uncorrected.

WordPerfect 9 (2000)

The most recent version of WordPerfect is more critical than its predecessor, but this also entails a number of problematic suggestions and wrong analyses, especially in the area of agreement and word classes.

In "Measuring the Collective Mind", the software identifies incidences of "Comma Splice of Fused Sentence" and suggests the addition of conjunctions or changes in punctuation in the second paragraph and in the second sentence of the 20th paragraph. Wrongly analysing the noun phrase one way mirrors, it suggests the singular form for mirror. Similarly, tracks (8th paragraph) is identified as a noun, which leads to the criticism of the adverb consequently, and the reverse for possible (same paragraph), sees (9th paragraph) is pluralised, miss (19th paragraph) is changed into misses, and so on. On the other hand, WordPerfect 9 reasonably warns of the homonymy of it's and its and finds the typo is for its (both in the 12th paragraph) - but wrongly suggests are instead.

In addition to the suggestions made by its predecessor concerning Nadine Gordimer's text, WordPerfect 9 suggests a comma after morning, the indefinite article before coloured beadwork (!), and, even more worryingly, was in there were two crossed assegais (all in the second paragraph). In the third paragraph, brassy and brand should be replaced by their adverbial forms, according the WordPerfect, and the position of the two prepositional phrases, with their lips and in the place, is criticised for "separating the verb from its direct object". Finally, the penultimate sentence of the passage "may not be complete".

Checking Chomsky's text, we are given more suggestions to replace "adjectives" with adverbs, for example in the first paragraph, power centered. An abstruse comment concerns the third paragraph: we are asked to consider replacing the "American spelling" (sic) of plead with British lead. Furthermore, the indefinite article is inserted before public subsidy (third paragraph), and in the final paragraph, we are told that "much of is usually followed by an uncountable noun. Check for agreement error."

Machobane's text is also subject to several incorrect subject-verb agreement suggestions, WordPerfect 9 cannot parse the complex noun phrase in line 2 of the opening paragraph, and in Reagan's passage most in most important (third paragraph) is wrongly analysed, which leads to the inappropriate suggestion to pluralise event.

Student A's text gets a comma after performance (first sentence). In "B's text, the indefinite article is criticised, as it should not precede the uncountable noun work (second sentence in the third paragraph), and a comma is suggested wrongly after Language in the fourth paragraph. The most worrying comment, however, concerns the third paragraph of B's text: "Normally an adjective like people doesn't modify a verb. Try the adverb form (usually - ly), or check for missing words."

In Student C's text, this offices is corrected to these offices (second paragraph), and can not and it's (both in the fifth paragraph) are corrected - but then which is deleted from the same sentence. Even more alarming are the changes from is to are after imformation (sic) in the second paragraph, and the suggested possessive for people in the last sentence of the fourth paragraph. Finally, in D's writings, one another (in the second sentence of the first paragraph) gets the comment: "One is not usually used with a pronoun", and WordPerfect concludes its proofreading process with another subject-verb misanalysis of crime rate (second paragraph).

Conclusion

It becomes clear from the above analyses that word processors cannot yet solve all the problems many users face when composing texts, especially if English is not their first language. It would certainly be premature to reduce the grammar component of Academic Writing courses and to rely instead on the grammar and spell checks of modern software. Furthermore, it comes as no surprise that many first language users even switch off the grammar and spell check options of their word-processors because they do not want to be bothered by the numerous less helpful - and frequently even wrong - suggestions and/or corrections made by the programmes. Personally, I consider any comments made by my software, but I do not always follow its advice.

Finally, we can conclude that the various products on the market all have their particular strengths and weaknesses - it would be impossible to recommend the use of one particular brand or even a certain version of that name. However, even if we cannot state any preferences, one valuable outcome of the above study is the realisation that there is no perfect grammar checker at present, and it is to be hoped that users of word processors are forewarned and will be aware of the individual shortcomings of the particular software they work with.

References

Fandrych, Ingrid, 1999 (in print), 'Socio-Pragmatic and Cultural Aspects of Teaching English for Academic Purposes in Lesotho', Southern African Journal of Applied Language Studies.

Analysed Texts

Chomsky, Noam, 1992, Deterring Democracy, London: Vintage, pp. 1-2.
Gordimer, Nadine, 1962, A World of Strangers, Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 37 - 39.
Le Page, David, "Measuring the collective mind", Mail and Guardian, 9 - 15 April 1999.
Machobane, LBBJ, 1990, Government and Change in Lesotho, 1800 - 1966: A Study of Political Institutions, London: Macmillan, pp. 1 - 2.
Reagan, Timothy, "The role of language policy in South African Education", LPLP.
Vulliami, Ed, "Chomsky takes language theory back to basic ABCs", Mail and Guardian, 11 - 17 December 1998.
Students' Essays (unedited): Student A on language acquisition;
Student B;
Student C: "Why Sesotho Usage in official business cannot be implemented quickly";
Student D: A First Year Education Student on the Death Penalty (extract from questions on a lecture).

Appendix

Students' Texts

(Year IV, intermediate level, unedited)

Student A on language acquisition (extract):

In this regard therefore when the students have improved in their performance this will ultimately lead into their competence which is their ability on their own to engage in a language and using it this time socially during interaction and being able to play around with the language. This means that their speech has come into at least required standard and therefore are able to engage in what is called a language.

Student B:

The decision of writing legal documents in Sesotho will not be implemented with immediate effect because the government will have to formulated new rules that should be first be known inorder for Sesotho to be in use. Those norms and rules for usage will have to be accepted and be assimilated by the whole people first so that everyone in the country especially those who are going to implement in offices including non-Basotho are perfect on usage. This will take the years.

The people who are to Implement Sesotho should be taught its new writing System Incorporating the changes and Innovations that government has made. This will also take quite a long time.

The new lg. will need the translators and teachers so that they can teach other people And those teachers will have to be trained first before they teach others and also, a translation work is not an overnight job, it will take some Years.

Legalizing a Language will need money to hold some workshops. It always takes time for the government to divert its moneys to a new project It needs some planning and some budgets which also take time from one ministry to another.

Moreover, the new language to most of the workers especially those who write the documents and keep them is new and when it has to be applied in all the fields it lacks the appropriate technical terms. This means that new books will have to be printed but before them words that will apply appropriately to the fields such as Law and Science which usually use their own terminology hence there one different fields and therefore different jargons will have to created and be known first. This will delay the Implementation of Sesotho as a legalized Language on documents not by just a year but for ages.

Student C: Why Sesotho Usage in official business cannot be implemented quickly

If the government of Lesotho dicided that all official business (courts of law, parliamentary debates and press releases etc.) will be conducted in Sesotho, this decision would not be implemented with immediate effect because all the above official business has some laws written on them on how the different offices are run.

All the written imformation on the running of this offices are written in English and only a few if at all there are any have a few rules in Sesotho. Firstly the government would have to look for lawyers who know the definitions of the various Latin words which are terms used in law to give an appropriate and adequate meaning to the term in Sesotho and this will take a lot of time as different languages have diffent meaning for words for example in the Setswana language 'ke lapile' means 'I am tired' and in the Sesotho language it means 'I'm hungry'.

As offices are places of different people where they go to get thier affairs established for example in court they go to query some defaults they would have to look for interpretors to help some of the people who do not speak Sesotho in interpreting for them, this point, besides wasting time, it would also cost Lesotho a lot in terms of economy because they would have to pay the interpretors.

Linguists and translators, and stylisticans would also be hired to help the lawyers with the writing of New Court Cases and books in Sesotho, with the same meaning This also would need more money because of the workers and the machinery needed for example computers, diskets and more offices where the work will be constructed. Researchers would also have to be hired to find the meanings of words in Sesotho, infact this whole implementation would pose a problem as the Sesotho spoken in the urban areas is different from that spoken in the rural areas. Thus a common ground where both people form different language varieties will have to be found so that both parties are fully satisfied.

Furthermore this decesion can not be implemented with immediate effect as most of Lesotho's lagalities; it's law rises from the Common Law which is from Whites. This would cause them to import white lawyers from the Overseas Countries such as Britain or U.S.A to come and stay here in Lesotho until they have acquired and learned the language so that they can serve as inspectors of the new textbooks and legal contracts which whill be drawn up if they are the same.

This decesion also has to be checked with the foreigners who bring business to Lesotho, because if it occurs in their minds that they are being discriminated against by Basotho they might decide to leave the country and the Basotho nation depends on them to create jobs and even to educate the Basotho children.

Student D: A First Year Education Student on the Death Penalty (extract from questions on a lecture, unedited):

I agree with Mr Koch because of the several reasons that I will give. In the bible we've been told not to kill one another, and that is the commandment and we all have to obey it. Therefore one who kills has to under the same process, and serve the capital punishment. Also every one has the right to live, and this shows us that no one is to kill, so one who kills is also to be killed as he is guilty of murdering the other human being which has to right to be in this world. When one has been killed as a capital punishment, other criminals will be aware that if ever they kill they will undergo capital punishment too, so they will never try to murder.

I also agree with Mr Koch that capital punishment decreases or diminshes crime rate because no other

criminals will continue killing because they already know the consequences of murdering the other person.

The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. VII, No. 6, June 2001
http://teslj.org/

http://iteslj.org/Articles/Fandrych-WordPro.html

Listening & CALL

August 8, 2007

Easy ESL Listening with Podcasts and iTunes

With the incredible expansion of audio and video available on the internet in the last couple of years, it is easier than ever to find good quality audio of native speakers in natural contexts.

There are literally dozens of places where you can access audio, but I'd like to quickly discuss the use of Apple's iTunes Podcasting section as a source of quality audio.

If you aren't familiar with podcasts or iTunes, you'll have to do a bit of reading or wait until Iget time to write more fully about them. However in simple terms a podcast is simply an audio file syndicated on the web (with differing levels of copyright restrictions depending on the producer), and iTunes is a free audio management software provided by Apple that has a very simple to use Podcast directory.

There are literally thousands of possible audio files that you can choose from ranging from very professionaly produced content from major providers (think CBC, NBC, BBC, ESPN, NPR etc.) to stuff produced by your average Joe in his basement.

The nice thing about these podcasts is that they are intended to be syndicated and rebroadcast, so you are in most cases free to use them in your classes (in most cases). This means that you can have an essentially never ending supply of real, topic based audio on just about any topic you'd like.

One that I enjoy using is a program produced by CBC radio called "This I believe". It is a series of short (under 4 minutes) essays by prominant Canadians explaining the beliefs that drive their lives. They are all very good and in most cases very good for intermediate and higher English learners.

So, now that you know that there is an easy to access source of quality audio on just about any topic you'd like, what will you do with it? Drop a comment and let everyone know.

Cheers,

Eric

August 9, 2007

Five easy CALL Listening Activities

Getting up and running with computers in your language classroom doesn't need to be a chore or even really require lots of technical ability. Below I've quickly listed 5 ways that you can do listening practice and review with a language class.

All of them require very little preparation or technical knowledge to put into use. #5 is the one exception, but it too isn't overly difficult to get up and running.

use audio or video on a large website (e.g. nationalgeographic.com) as a source of extra thematic content for your language lesson
listen to radio broadcasts from major internet radio providers (cbc.ca, npr.org, bbc.co.uk) and have students take notes
listen for differences in accent and vocabulary between native speakers from a variety of English speaking areas (England, Canada, India, Australia)+
go to any of the many ESL/EFL listening sites and work on provided exercises (Randall's ESL Listening Lab for example)
get students to record their own voice using free software like audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) and…

compare to native speaker sample
review for 'trouble' spots and attempt improvements
develop narations

There are many more ways you can include computer based activities in your listening classes, these are just a few I that I use with my classes from time to time.

Got other ideas? Add them in a comment for all to benefit.

Cheers,

Eric

Kamis, 16 Desember 2010

CALL Articles

Literature & CALL

Using Internet-Based Children's Literature to Teach EFL

Introduction

Evidence Supporting the Extensive Reading of Comprehensible Material

Finding Simple, Accessible and Inexpensive Readings in English

Ways to Use the Resources

References

Appendix

Examples and Discussion of Useful Web-Sites Containing Children’s and Young Adult Literature in English

(All links current as of October 26, 2007)

Using Internet-Based Children's Literature to Teach EFL

Introduction

Evidence Supporting the Extensive Reading of Comprehensible Material

Finding Simple, Accessible and Inexpensive Readings in English

Ways to Use the Resources

References

Appendix

Examples and Discussion of Useful Web-Sites Containing Children’s and Young Adult Literature in English

(All links current as of October 26, 2007)

Using Free Hi-Tech Online Communication Tools to Train EFL in ESP Students to Think Critically and Independently

Opportunities and Challenges

Final Notes

Project URLs

Word Processors' Grammar and Spelling Assistance: Consequences for Second Language Learning and Teaching

Abstract

Introduction

Grammar in Academic Writing Courses at Tertiary Level

Settings of Word Used in This Study

Grammar and Spell Check Options in WordPerfect

Analysis of the Texts with Word 97

Analysis of the Texts with WordPerfect 8

Word 2000

WordPerfect 9 (2000)

Conclusion

References

Analysed Texts

Appendix

Students' Texts

August 8, 2007

Easy ESL Listening with Podcasts and iTunes

August 9, 2007

Five easy CALL Listening Activities