509U10 - MOOC Revisted

In my first blog post, I read about and discussed MOOC. The conclusion from that article was that it is difficult for online language learners to be identified and, therefore, have lessons/assignments be tailored to their specific language needs. But, what if the professor/instructor is new to teaching a course? Being a new teacher is always difficult - the article for this week's post discussed the hurdles new online language teachers must overcome and is titled, "The perceptions of a situated learning experience mediated by novice teachers’ autonomy" by Paul Booth and Isabelle Gunimard and published in the journal Universitat Politecnica de Valencia.
The study compared tutors and teachers from London, English with those from Lyon, France. Tutors and teachers alike were given pre- and post-tests about their experiences leading an online language course and the results lead to three commonalities: "self-directed learning as a teacher, which focused on areas such as creativity and task design; teacher-learner experience in relation to professional development, which focused on areas such as learner and teacher autonomy, time-management, experience, roles and misunderstandings; freedom to self-direct one’s teaching, which focused on areas such as expectations and complexity" (Booth & Guinmard, 2017). All these components boiled down to the understanding that for an online course to be meaningful, both instructors and students must be thoroughly engaged, ask for and provide concise clarification, and for course goals and participant expectations to be clearly defined.

Overall, I've found the online TESOL Master's program to meet those qualifications.
Question: For the professor/instructors at Wilkes in charge of leading online courses, was there some sort of mentorship program for new teachers like there are in the elementary and secondary levels?

509U9 - In a class about teaching/technology, reading an article about teaching/technology

This week's article supported all that we've been learning in ESL 509. Titled Digital Literacies in Teacher Preparation by Mirjam Hauck and Malgorzata Kurek, published in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Due to the nature that most of the publication reiterated what we've been discussing together in the course, I'll pick out just a couple of highlights: "teachers and educators need to become key players in shaping their students’ attitudes and practices through purposeful selection and use of technology-based tools, tasks, and environments" and because of this "first, be digitally literate themselves and, second, be professionally prepared to assist learners in developing the multiple literacies needed to engage with others online in an informed and meaningful way". This can seem like a very difficult task because technology is constantly changing and students (unless given a laptop from the district) can have a wide variety of devices with different processors etc. The best we can do is to be as informed as possible and seek out additional help when we don't have the answers.
Question: is there an area in CALL, MALL, or technology in general in which you feel you are competent or excel?

509U8 - A Pop of Culture

One of the most important aspect of bring an L2 educator is how to appropriately incorporate culture into the classroom that is authentic and based on stereotypes and cultural appropriation. The reading for this week's blog was a journal article but a chapter titled "Popular Culture as Content-Based Instruction in the Second Language Classroom to Enhance Critical Engagement" by Anne Peirson-Smith in the book Faces of English Education: Students, Teachers, and Pedagogy. What she suggests is regardless of the L2 and the people who speak it, there are six ways of thinking about culture to elicit respectful and engaging conversations in the classroom setting. 

-culture that is like by many people
-"inferior culture" that is left over from "high culture"
-mass produced commercial culture
-culture which originates from the people
-culture which results in change - the intersection of culture and power
-everyday life, from a postmodern perspective, where there is no distinction between high and low culture

These discussions help push L2 learners beyond stereotypes and preconceived notions. They require students to be patient in their research, listening to others, and how they speak. In the chapter, discussions took place in the classroom setting itself and also in Facebook discussions where students could directly share articles, websites, and links to help answer the above-mentioned directives and prove their point.

Question: are there any other cultural questions or concerns to be addressed in a language class that were not mentioned here?

509U7 - Eenie, Meenie, Mieny, Read! Selecting Reading Texts

How do teachers and professors select appropriate reading texts for their students? There are a multitude of factors which influence whether or not an individual will want to read a text for fun, let alone for a class: subject matter, ability, outside interests, etc. The article, Selecting Reading Texts for University Iranian EFL Students, written by Maryam Rezaei Ghahroudi and Ebrahim Sheikhzadeh sought to answer that question. While the article didn't provide any specific website with listings of reliable texts to share with students, criteria about how to begin the process of searching for meaningful texts were given and they were divided into 2 categories.
Directly related to the students
- students' level                             -students' background knowledge
-students' need                              -students' interest
-students' purpose for reading

Aspects related to the texts
-relevance                                     -organization
-content of the passage                 -discourse phenomena
-exploitability                               -length of passage
-suitability                                    -topic
-readability                                   -political correctness
-lexical knowledge                       -cultural familiarization
-syntactic appropriateness            -appearance

Now, even though it may take a while to filter through that information, once momentum has been achieved, finding appropriate articles, storing them (on something like a PLE), and finding similar material based on what you already have, will be much easier. I also found this article to ring true to the assignments required for this course. I enjoy reading about material that interests me and reflecting upon it more than I do just completing the assigned paperwork.

509U6 - Are wikis <, >, or = to face-to-face interaction?

I have to admit that over the duration of this course (CALL), I've been struggling with the seeming preference of technology over people. So, when I found this article Collaborative Composing an Argumentative Essay: Wiki versus Face-to-Face Interactions by

Shokoufeh Ansarimodgaddam from the Islamic Azad University of Tehran, I immediately started reading. The research was conducted by splitting a class in two groups (face-to-face groups and wiki-groups). Each group was to work on the three steps of writing an argumentative essay (planning, drafting, revising) through their assigned medium. Below are the main points of the results concerning how each group fared at each step of the writing process. 

Planning

Face-to-Face:

-group had more flexibility about how they wanted to collaborate with one another

-more specific usage of time (generate ideas together, alone, regroup)

Wiki:   

-never met together in person and therefore had to generate their ideas on an idea page in their wiki

Drafting

Face-to-Face:

-members interrupted each other which led to some forgetfulness/distractedness

-group members could met and discuss ideas with greater ease and in real time

-being able to read body language and facial gestures led to greater understanding between group members

Wiki:

-could generate more ideas more quickly since they were online anyway

-members had more time to think and experienced less interruption

-time consuming because it was difficult to set a specific "chat/collaboration" time

-to compensate for lack of gestures, emogis/underlining/etc. were used but understanding was lost

Revising

Face-to-Face:

-many different people were able to look at the document and point out a variety of errors, this occasionally led to disagreements

Wiki: 

-most editing comments were limited to word choice or grammatical concerns

The article ended with this quote.

"These findings do not degrade the benefits and advantages of face-to- face collaborative writing but rather show that wiki can be used as a continuation of face-to- face collaborative writing that makes interaction and collaboration easier and more effective" (Ansarimodgaddam, pg. 17). 
I'm relieved to find that professionals in the ESL/EFL community found substantial evidence that wikis (and I would extend that to technology as a whole) is = to face-to-face interaction. Technology has it's place and it is imperative that we as educators understand what its strengths and weaknesses are so we can use it properly. 

Final question: Does anyone else have a similar experience with incorporating technology in the classroom?

 

509U5 - BlogAssignment: Movies, Media, and Metacognition

          This week I read the article "Watching English Movies Helps Me!" Language Exposure and Metacognitive Awareness on TOEFL by Fata and Ismail. While the title initially captured my attention, the content retained my intrigue. The study was conducted at the University of Syiah Kuala in Indonesia which measured ESL student performance on the TOEFL exam - particularly the reading section. I kept reading and asking myself, "What does reading proficiency have to do with movies?"  The article went on to discuss the difficulty of being and ESL student in Indonesia because English is not a primary language so there is little, if any, home exposure. Students opportunities to use English in a face-to-face environment are limited to conversations with professors and dorm-mates.
          In order to compensate for the lack of input, many students turned to media - music, tv shows, and movies in English. The results of the study found "technology of internet or media (e.g. watching English movies and listening to English songs) takes higher impacts on student reading ability of TOEFL...and teaching students metacognitive awareness, how to employ their metacognitive regulations/skills is considered prominently important for late secondary and university students" (Fata & Ismail, 2017).
          I found this article very encouraging and consistent with the material we've been talking about in class. This unit focused on how to develop the 4 language skills using technology and the data from this article confirm our content. I would want to have a discussion with the researchers about the application of certain technologies like Zaption and Abode Captivate to subtitle the movies in English and add comprehension or discussion questions.

Fata, I. A., & Ismail, N. M. (2017, May). "Watching English Movies Helps Me!" Language Exposure and Metacognitive Awareness on TOEFL. Lingua Cultura, 11(1), 7-12. doi:10.21512/lc.v11i1.1624

509U4Assignment - What is a MOOC?

            Currently, I have my GoogleScholar Alert set to ESL AND technology. This week the article that caught my eye was Challenges of Identifying Second Language English Speakers in MOOCs (the article was published in the Digital Education: Out to the World and Back to the Campus journal at a European conference). The title is what caught my eye because I wondered, "What in the world is a MOOC?" I discovered the acronym stands for Massive Open Online Courses.  
           Immediately, I was intrigued because I have been a an online graduate student for almost 2 years and the quantity of advanced information would be daunting to an advanced learner. The data suggested the only indicator that an online student may be an ESL learner was the length of the discussion posts and a few instances of awkward/unnatural phrasing. 
           Last summer, two of my practicum placements were at Penn State University; one class was a graduate writing class and the other was a TA/adjunct professorship preparation class. Each catered to the need of the students, their particular field of interest, while focusing on the skills needed to be successful in the class itself. After reading the article, it seems to me that there is a need for a similar mentoring-teaching program for ESL students enrolled in online courses. If they are not fully engaged in the learning community, how are they to extract all they need from the course? 

I'm very interested to read what people have to think!