How can you go beyond the course book?

Raquel RodriguesTeachers’ seminar2009.2

Why go beyond the course book?

We, speakers of other languages have relied on our course books as students and teachers to tell us how English is used. Not always have we seen those patterns of language in context, as discourse, or have we had the opportunity to talk to or listen to English outside the classroom.

Authentic Discourse and social learning

“The satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices” (Murray, 1997, p. 126).

Agency has also been defined as “the power to construct a representation of reality, a writing of history, and to ‘impose reception of it’ by others”.(Kramsch, A’Ness, & Lam, 2000, p. 97, quoting Bourdieu).

Agency

The use of certain technologies can provide learners with more opportunities for:• meeting the target language in authentic

sociodiscursive contexts; • using it in authentic sociocultural practices; and • exercising their agency.

To bridge the gap between the classroom and the world outside.

Why technology?

Many language students around the world spend an immense amount of time online, often in their target language (especially in the case of English learners). Much more research is needed on the language and literacy practices students engage in out-of-school, and how school-based activities can be structured to maximize the benefits of out-of-school learning.” (Warschauer, 2005)

“Much of students’ use of new technologies takes place outside the classroom. A sociocultural approach, which attempts to address rather than factor out the broader social context, is especially helpful for examining these types of informal learning experiences.

Discuss

“Yes, technology is just a tool, but, like all tools, it mediates and transforms human activity.”(Warschauer, 2005)

“It is the rise of computer-mediated communication and the Internet, more than anything else, which has reshaped the uses of computers for language learning

(...) with the World Wide Web, learners of many languages have access to an unprecedented amount of authentic target-language information, as well as possibilities to publish and distribute their own multimedia information for an international audience.” (Warschauer & Healey, 1998)

The Three Stages of CALLStage 1970s-1980s:

Structural CALL

1980s-1990s:Communicative

CALL

21st Century:

Integrative CALL

Technology Mainframe PCs Multimedia and

Internet

English-Teaching

Paradigm

Grammar-Translation & Audio-

Lingual

Communicate

Language Teaching

Content-Based,

ESP/EAP

View of Language Structural(a formal structural

system)

Cognitive(a mentally constructed

system)

Socio-cognitive(developed in social

interaction)Principal Use of

ComputersDrill and Practice Communicative

ExercisesAuthentic

Discourse

Principal

Objective

Accuracy Fluency Agency

“Incorporating the objective of agency in CALL activities enables the computer to provide students with a powerful means to make their mark on the world.

In the latter, students are involved in creatively bringing together several media to share with a wide international audience—and perhaps even helping to author the very rules by which multimedia is created, given the current creative explosion of new forms of online expression.

As an example, we should consider the difference between authoring a paper (i.e., writing a text for the teacher), and authoring a multimedia document which will be displayed on the Internet.

By assisting their students to carry out such authoring—fulfilling a meaningful purpose for a real audience—teachers are helping them exercise their agency. The purpose of studying English thus becomes not just to acquire it as an internal system, but to be able to use English to have a real impact on the world.” (Warschauer, 2004)

‘2.o’ = a ‘second generation’ of web-based interactions, applications and communities.

Nowadays the latest and most fertile soil for language learning possibilities in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) seems to be the so-called Web 2.0, a term coined by O’Reilly (O’Reilly, 2005) .

YouTube and Blogs among other ‘services’ provided through the internet that gained popularity in the recent years are typical of the Web 2.0.

Web 1.0 x Web 2.0

•Microsoft Office•Windows•Internet Explorer•Encarta•Proprietary

software•Company -

customer

•Open Office / Br Office

•Linux•Opera/ Mozilla

Firefox...•Wikipedia•Free software•Mass collaboration

This has changed and what we see are collaborative and interactive forms of producing and sharing knowledge as much as receiving it.

In the beginning the internet used to host websites, software and applications that have been referred to as ‘read-only’.

“The Web is evolving to become more like an area for social and idea networking. Students negotiate meanings and connections within the Web 2.0 social spaces or idea networks, exchange bits of content, create new content, and collaborate in new ways” (Duffy, 2007).

“Moving away from a replication of the print media (and the book metaphors), the Web begins to develop its own identity, less product focused (as print was) and more process oriented (as life is)” (Alm, 2006)

The Classroom 2.0

1. Opportunity to make writing tasks more meaningful, communicative and authentic.

2. The media might encourage spontaneity.3. On the other hand, they may be more self-

conscious as what they write will become public on the internet.

4. They can also benefit from having each other’s output as input.

5. Sharing their ideas with their peers and the world may enhance motivation and engage the students.

6. Promoting agency.

Why blogs? What could be the benefits?

http://peetwo.blogspot.com/

http://trufasx9.blogspot.com/

Students’ participation:

•Plus 2: 7 out of 8 posted something.•Plus 3: 13 out of 17.

Why do you use YouTube? When? What for?

• To set the context of a lesson, contextualizing their learning and engaging students.

• As a rich source of authentic discourses that allows for observation, hypothesizing and critically analyzing form, meaning and use.

• Students can access it from home as well, after class or before and suggest a video suitable for a lesson.

Master 1 Unit 3

•Suggested video: storyofstuff.org (Intro, Consumption and Another Way)

•How? Why?When asked about the use of YouTube to complement the course book some sts said:“It improves the participation”; “I see as a improvement of the classes. They make the book a little less boring to study.” One student said she only became interested in English after YouTube.

•Opportunity for: creativity, experimentation, autonomy, constructing knowledge through social interaction and exercising their agency.

•Students might construct knowledge in interaction through scaffolding and languaging*.

•Works as a sort of pushed output.• If uploaded to YouTube it can be accessed by

anyone in the world in the same way as blogs. But this time using a different media with visual appeal and developing other skills that are very relevant in the 21st century.

Home-made videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47lJaV1zIko

Plus 4 – Unit 1

•Speaking activity in the book related to Weather News. – Perfect for a video project.

•Suggestions: Have sts tell you who the members of their groups are (from 2 to 5 people). Tell them to be creative and that all the people in the group must participate. Challenge them. Set a deadline and say the project will earn them points for global performance.