Recall: Volume 11 Number 2 September 1999

ReCALL
Volume 11 Number 2 September 1999
CONTENTS
Introduction William Haworth Second language acquisition through email interaction Farid Aitsiselmi Juggling hot potatoes: decisions and compromises in creating authoring tools for the Web Stewart Arneil and Martin Holmes Creating a virtual language lab: an EFL experience at National Taiwan Ocean University Hao-Jan Howard Chen Web support for distance learning in the field of translation Tim Connell Proposal for an online language course Susan A Curtis, Joanne Duchastel and Nebojsa Radic Adding a new perspective to distance (language) learning and teaching the tutors perspective Mirjam Hauck and Bernard Haezewindt Real-time audio and email for fluency: promoting distance language learners aural and oral skills via the Internet Markus Ktter, Lesley Shield and Anne Stevens Implementing institutional change for languages: online collaborative learning environments at Coventry University Marina Orsini-Jones 3
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Vol 11 No 2 September 1999
Contents
Concordancing with students using an off-the-Web corpus Jeremy Whistle Conference Report IALL 99 Conference
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CTI Centre for Modern Languages

Director: Professor Graham Chesters Centre Manager: June Thompson Information Officer: Jenny Parsons CTI Centre for Modern Languages, The Language Institute, The University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK. Tel: +44 (01)482 466373/465872 Fax: +44 (01)482 473816. Email: CTI.Lang@hull.ac.uk Internet: http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti
Introduction
Welcome to the first web issue of the ReCALL Journal. At a time when many journals are starting to appear in on-line form, it seems appropriate that the ReCALL Journal should take this step. Is this not indeed the natural medium for a publication whose subject is so closely associated with it? However, it would be premature to announce the demise of the paper-based journal. In the case of ReCALL, this is an experiment to see whether the medium has come of age, or rather the first phase of an experiment that is going to run over a long period. The format chosen for the on-line version is a close match of the paper version. The use of pdf enables the familiar look to be retained, but the feel is very different. While this version is going to be read on-line, it is significant that the format of submissions has remained largely the same as for the traditional paper-based medium. It will take us time to learn to write for this medium, to play to its strengths and avoid its pitfalls. The potential it offers for cross-referencing, for embedded multimedia and for involvement of the reader in a dynamic and interactive role will take us a long time to realise. For extensive reading, the screen interface falls well short of the paper page. In other words, I am pleading for some patience with a new medium at an early stage in its development. My own feeling is that paper and online versions will co-exist, with each meeting different needs. The paper version is far from dead vive the web version anyhow, and time will tell.* The topics covered by the papers cover a broad range, with a telematic thread running through all of them. They are characterised by the innovative and fast-evolving nature of the medium that underpins the work they describe. I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to act as Guest Editor on this issue. I must make clear the largely honorific nature of this title, as the bulk of the hard work has been carried out as ever by June Thompson. Many thanks are due to her, and also to the ReCALL referees and to my partners in the WELL consortium for their contribution to the refereeing process. William Haworth WELL Project Director, http://www.well.ac.uk
*The next stage is likely to be that, from the year 2000, all articles in ReCALL will be published online as html files as soon as they have progressed through the refereeing and editing process. They will then be collected together and typeset in the normal way for printed publication. We hope that this approach will thus give our subscribers the best of both worlds. June Thompson
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ReCALL 11:2 (1999) 411
Second language acquisition through email interaction

Farid Aitsiselmi
University of Bradford, UK
This paper deals with the analysis of a communicative activity involving English learners of French, its advantages and drawbacks as well as the outcome that teachers can expect of such an activity. The first part examines some reasons, both theoretical and practical for using communication technology, particularly electronic mail, for promoting language acquisition and developing learner autonomy. The second part of the paper deals with the theoretical framework within which the activity was carried out, that is, Stephen Krashens language acquisition theory which establishes a distinction between language acquisition and language learning. Email interaction offers the possibility of addressing both processes.
1.
Introduction
The literature on language teaching offers a wide range of suggestions concerning oral communicative activities or interactive exercises using computer programs, but it is always difficult to find authentic communicative writing activities to supplement classroom work. Modern technology has brought drastic changes to the activities that teachers can use for stimulating language teaching work in or outside the classroom. Modern information technology and more specifically email provides us with an ideal tool to engage learners in genuine written activities. A few students are computer literate when they arrive at university and those who are not
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learn the basic skills very quickly in order to use the Internet. Their motivation seems to stem from the fact that they can access freely all sorts of information available on the World Wide Web, but also from the possibility offered to them to communicate for free with their families or their friends in other universities. Therefore the computer quickly becomes a familiar tool with which students seem to be perfectly comfortable.
2.
Email interaction
In an effort to capitalise on the potentialities offered by the equipment available at Bradford and probably now in most British universities,
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Second language acquisition through email interaction: F Aitsiselmi
a group of students were encouraged to participate in an activity called Email Correspondence. The main objective was to promote communicative writing in the target language in a non-evaluative context. Fifteen first year students at Bradford were asked to send me an email message in French every week. However, instead of writing to me, their teacher, they would be writing to a virtual reader who is interested in what they are saying rather than in how they say it. In this activity, no value judgement would be made concerning either the ideas that they wanted to share or the grammatical correctness of their messages. The former has never been an issue and the latter is reserved for classroom exercises or assignments done at home. So the students knew that I was reading their messages not to assess them but to understand their content and react to their observations or reflections. The students were told that their messages could be similar to an entry in a personal diary or a message to a friend. They could be a description of their thoughts and feelings about an event that happened to them during the week or a commentary on what they felt they had learnt in that week. It was emphasised that their writing had a genuine purpose, that is, to get my responses to their ideas but also to reflect about the language learning process that they were undergoing. It was also made clear that this was a voluntary activity which would not be assessed and would not count towards their final evaluation. In other words, this was not homework in disguise. The participants were all post A-level students with grade C or above in French. Their competence in written French enabled them to write and understand texts on topics of general interest concerning their everyday life. So the interaction was well within their linguistic abilities. The activity took place in the second semester after the students had become familiar with their new environment of studies and also to allow enough time for them to develop a greater level of confidence in the target language as well as their information technology skills. Most importantly, in the first semester the students were able to establish a certain
relationship of trust with their tutor. This activity cannot work efficiently if the students feel that their tutor is not an approachable person with whom they can share their feelings and sometimes personal details of their everyday lives. In addition to teaching the students every week in my seminar classes called Written Expression in French, I met twelve out of the fifteen on an individual basis at the beginning, half-way through and at the end of the semester in my capacity as their personal tutor. The purpose of these meetings, which need not be very long, is to monitor their progress and guide them through any difficulty they may encounter in the process of settling into their new life as students. Therefore I can say that the participants knew me quite well both in my academic and pastoral roles and I was confident that they would not be reluctant to enter into this type of correspondence with me. The group consisted of fifteen students to start with but one of them withdrew from the course before Easter. As a result, I received approximately Fourteen email messages every week with the exception of the first week and the occasional absence. I spent up to ten minutes reading and answering each message, which meant an additional two-hour working period in my timetable. Since it is easier to find ten-minute slots than a two-hour period, I tended to reply to the messages as I received them at the end of each day rather than wait until I had received them all and then reply to them in one single session.
3.
The theoretical framework
The model on which this experiment is based is the second language acquisition model known as the Monitor Model developed by Krashen (1985). It is based on five main hypotheses.
3.1 The acquisition-learning hypothesis

Krashen posits a difference between two independent compartmentalised processes acquisition and learning through which we develop competence in a second language.
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Acquisition is subconscious and is similar to the way children develop ability in their first language. In other words, acquisition is picking up a language naturally in informal situations; in doing so we are not aware of the rules of the language that is being acquired. Instead, we develop a feel for grammatical correctness. The second process is language learning. It refers to the formal explicit knowledge of a language that we learn by consciously attending to rules as in formal classroom situations. The model is also based on the assumption that there is a natural predictable order in the acquisition of grammatical structures whether the language acquisition process takes place in the foreign language environment or in the natural setting. This hypothesis is of limited relevance to the argument presented in this paper which is concerned with the development of communicative competence in a foreign language.
low, there is no barrier to acquisition. Thus learners are more receptive to the language input that they receive and also they are encouraged to interact with confidence with speakers of the target language. Imparting this confidence to learners is the one of the main goals of language teaching.
3.4 The input hypothesis

This hypothesis states that we acquire language by going for meaning rather than focusing on form and that when we are primarily concerned with understanding oral or written input, we consequently acquire the structure of the language. It also states that the input must be comprehensible and provided in sufficient quantities. It should be at a level a little more advanced than the learners current level. According to this hypothesis, second language acquisition depends on comprehensible input. It should be interesting, relevant and used in a genuinely communicative way. As Krashen puts it: The speaker should be so involved in the message that he temporarily forgets he is hearing or reading another language (Krashen 1985: 25).
3.2 The monitor hypothesis

Acquisition and learning in this model play different roles in second language performance: acquisition is responsible for fluency whereas learning is relegated to the role of a monitor of conscious rules about language. In other words, for the purpose of normal fluent speech we draw on what we have acquired, and refer to conscious rules only later when we may use them to correct the output of the acquired system. Certain conditions need to be met in order for the monitor to be used effectively. Firstly the performers must be focusing on the form, not on the content of the message. They also need time to think about and use the conscious rules in order to correct their output. Thirdly they must know the grammar rules of the language in which they are communicating.
4.
Controversial aspects
3.3 The affective filter

According to Krashen success in second language acquisition depends on a number of attitudinal variables. He mentions low anxiety, high motivation and self-confidence as being determining factors in promoting second language acquisition. When the filter is high, acquisition may be blocked. When the filter is
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There has been much controversy about some aspects of Krashens model, particularly about the order in which grammatical structures are acquired (Sharwood Smith 1994:94) or whether learned competence does or does not turn into acquired competence. Krashens claim that there is no connection or no interface between conscious learning and unconscious acquisition has also been criticised. His position is characterised as the dual competence model(Cook 1991: 165) or the noninterface position (Ellis 1993: 100). Also Krashens model concentrates on comprehensible input, ignoring the role of learners output in language acquisition. In a recent study, Swain (1995) argued that comprehensible output too plays a part in second language acquisition and suggested a number of ways in which it can foster acquisition. However, in spite of these criticisms
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there seems to be an agreement on the fundamental ideas underlying the model. The core ideas of the monitor model continue to be highly influential in applied linguistics and researchers continue to explore Krashens ideas (Ritchie 1996: 58). For example Gregg (1984) concludes his critical article by agreeing with Krashen that: most learning is unconscious, that comprehensible input is vital for learning and that the teachers job is to provide that input, that affective barriers can prevent successful acquisition of second language and that a teacher has a duty to try to lower those barriers wherever possible (Gregg 1984: 99). More recently, in his article, Zobl (1995) presents converging evidence for the acquisition-learning distinction which enhances the theorys explanatory power and he concludes that Krashens model deserves a more sympathetic assessment and that his ideas should be further developed and the debate they have inspired will hopefully continue (Zobl 1995: 56). If we accept the validity of this theory in which acquisition is central and learning secondary, it follows that the fundamental objective of pedagogical programmes should be to foster acquisition by placing learners in a low anxiety situation of genuine communication in the target language. The language to which they are exposed should be globally comprehensible and the topics so interesting that the learners attention is focused on content rather than on form. Email exchanges allow us to engage learners in this type of interaction. Several factors seem to indicate that email interaction has an impact on affective factors.
tions to provoke the student to respond. Bonjour X, Je viens de finir de rpondre Stephen, Kelly et Anna et jai pens tenvoyer ce message pour te demander si tout va bien pour toi. Ma journe sachve et je vais rentrer chez moi me dtendre en regardant un film. Est-ce que tu regardes beaucoup la tlvision? Quels sont tes programmes prfrs? Que fais-tu en gnral pour te dtendre? A bientt. For students to send a first email to a tutor is certainly not an easy task, especially if they feel that they are disturbing them. It has been suggested that among students there is: a reluctance to email staff because of a sense of interrupting or disturbing them (Crook 1997:50). However, once the first step was taken and contact had been established, students seemed to participate quite enthusiastically in the activity.
5.2
Authenticity and motivation
5.
Positive factors
5.1 Participation
All students could and did participate regularly in the activity, even the more passive ones in class, although with the latter I had to initiate the dialogue myself. Here is a typical first message in which I draw the students attention to the fact that his/her peers have started emailing me, followed by a personal comment about myself and a few simple quesVol 11 No 2 September 1999
Email exchanges offer genuine interpersonal communication and provide access to authentic language input. Engaged in a genuine act of communication in the target language, the learners seem to be more motivated to carry on with the activity. This type of exchange cannot be said to be a dialogue because it is asynchronous. However, unlike paper correspondence, email technology offers the possibility to replace a deferred exchange in the present time. The original message or the sections that require a response can be included in the tutors reply in such a way that each response is inserted immediately after the relevant section. Thus it produces a question/answer format which is close to synchronous exchanges, and much more interesting to read than any reply written on paper.
5.3 Comprehensible input

Tutors feedback constitutes the input to which students are exposed. Krashen (1985: 34) argues that acquisition occurs when we understand input that contains structures a little beyond our current level of competence. So,
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while my replies were always genuine responses to their ideas, I took special care to include corrections of their most common mistakes in my messages. As a rule, in my feedback correct forms were not highlighted or underlined. This would defeat the objective of focusing the students attention on content. They simply appeared as constituents of the sentences that the students were reading. This, according to the theory, should be sufficient to make a positive impact on their subconscious acquisition processes. However, since it is difficult to prove whether the impact was effective or not, occasionally I would use capital letters to draw a students attention to a recurrent grammatical error. For example: Student: Ce week-end je vais chez moi car cest lanniversaire de ma mre. Francisca va venir avec moi. Je vais la montrer Nottingham. Reply: La rgion de Nottingham est trs belle. Vastu aussi LUI montrer la fort de Robin des Bois?
output since it was written. So their messages did not give the impression that they were written carelessly or in sloppy French.
5.5 Confidence building and learner autonomy

Knowing that form is not the aim of the activity, learners are focused on the semantic content of their messages. This switches the students main interest from being evaluated all the time and obtaining marks to becoming successful users of the target language and achieving authentic communication. This I think is one of our main aims as language teachers. Teachers can ensure that motivation is maintained by constant encouragement. This, it appeared, could simply take the form of an expression of interest in what the students are saying or rather in what they are writing. The students queries or observations on their own language learning experience such as, what classes they found useful and why, seem to help them understand how they were learning the target language and how they could do it more adequately. Being aware of their learning styles, students may develop a more autonomous way of learning together with their ability to work independently of the teacher. From the teachers point of view this awareness of students learning strategies as well as their weak points will allow better organisation of their classes in a way that will address the students linguistic weaknesses more effectively. In this activity, in addition to reflective skills, students seem to acquire communicative skills in the target language such as explaining and presenting opinions, arguing and discussing viewpoints, etc. which are useful on their way to becoming autonomous learners. In this respect the role of the teacher as a facilitator, advisor or mentor is crucial to ensure that learners are encouraged to pursue their learning in the appropriate direction.
5.4 Focus on meaning

Acquisition occurs when comprehensible input is available and focus is on meaning. In this activity learners are placed in a realistic situation in conditions that appear to be optimal for the acquisition process to be fully operational. The affective filter should be at its lowest since this is a voluntary activity in which the learners are not evaluated on the formal correctness of their output. Moreover, in their feedback at the end of the semester some students commented that writing to a screen is much less inhibiting than writing to a person. This may be due to the fact that they seem to consider email a tool for pleasure rather than for work (see 6.3 below). Some students felt that writing on paper was formal, and always took them longer to complete because they had to make sure that their writing was totally accurate. Email writing was felt to be more like speech and therefore grammatical correctness was less important than communication. But while they were engaged in genuine communication learners had also plenty of time to draw on their learned grammatical knowledge in order to proof-read their
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6.
Students feedback
At the end of the semester the participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire which
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concerned the reasons why they liked or disliked this activity and whether they felt it had been useful in their learning of the target language. The majority of replies were positive, mentioning the excitement of being able to share ideas in French and getting meaningful responses which valued their ideas rather than feedback on which every mistake was underlined. The only negative reply originated from a mature student who said that spending a lot of time watching a screen could be bad for your eyesight. Therefore she preferred to use pen and paper for long messages and email for very short ones. The students commented that they enjoyed writing on the computer because they found they had more things to say than when they write on paper. The length of their messages varied (between 150 and 250 words, some being rather short and concise) but their ideas appeared to be organised in a more logical and structured way than most of their paper assignments done for homework (first year students do not have to word-process their homework). A number of reasons may explain why they felt email technology more conducive to communication.
needsand must actively take on mentoring and counselling (Fox 1997:47).
6.2 Word-processing and proof-reading

The possibility of word-processing their messages enables students to let their ideas flow and to write them as they come without having to worry about structure or language errors. Ideas can easily be organised coherently in the end without having to type whole paragraphs again. Similarly, language mistakes can easily be corrected and words added or deleted without having to rewrite whole words or sentences. At the same time students were more relaxed about syntax and were able to concentrate on developing their writing skills since, unlike class activities and homework, they know that the reader will be interested in the content, not in the form of the message. Some students commented that proof-reading was easier on email because their errors appeared more clearly on the screen. This may be explained by the fact that the younger generation is to a large extent more exposed to visual stimulus on screen through television, video games, Internet, etc. Teachers, in departments where the equipment is readily available for all students to use, seem to neglect the exploitation of this ability in selecting their teaching activities in favour of the more traditional pen and paper.
6.1
Learner-driven activity
Unlike classroom activities where the teacher sets the agenda, email interaction is a one-toone activity where the students themselves choose the topics they wish to share or discuss. As in genuine conversations, students can choose to answer the teachers queries in one word and move on to another topic which they think is more interesting, or they can write long messages if they are really inspired by the topic. In the same way the teachers replies can develop a topic, request information or an explanation, present a point of view, agree or disagree, etc. exactly as in natural exchanges. Teachers replies should not be of the classroom type comment, for example: this is an interesting idea but you used the wrong tense in this sentence. Just as the topics are negotiated with the learners rather than dictated by the teacher, the feedback is highly individualised. This activity changes the emphasis of the role of the teacher who must focus more intensively on the individuals
6.3 Enjoyment
Students seem to associate email with informal chat with family and friends, i.e. pleasure and pastime. In their study of spontaneous email use by undergraduate students Crook and Webster (1997) found that on average 12% of the total of email traffic was sent to staff by students and of the traffic that involved mailing to other students only 16% was work related. They suggest that electronic mail is not readily appropriated by undergraduates for informal study-related exchanges with either peers or tutors (Crook and Webster 1997: 48). Students may be reluctant to use email for work but they seem to have no hesitation in using it for informal exchanges, leaving study-related matters for discussion in other circles.
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7.
Some drawbacks
Email exchanges do not require complex knowledge of communication technology but they will inevitably place an additional burden on the shoulders of already overworked tutors. The activity can be done more easily with smaller numbers of students but it is certainly time-consuming if carried out with large groups. In this situation it may be useful to involve the language assistants or lecteurs to be the students correspondent. The teachers role is thus limited to that of supervisor with periodical checks to ensure that the activity is running smoothly and to keep informed of linguistic difficulties that need to be addressed in class. The time that teachers will spend on answering messages depends obviously on their typing skills but also on their ability to come up with stimulating ideas on topics of interest for teenagers or young adults. The topics must be different from the ones used in class to make a clear distinction between formal language work and the communicative activity. A useful tip is to use the topics brought up by one student in the exchanges with the other students: these topics are bound to be closer to the interests of that age group than most of the ideas that the teacher can think of. Another aspect that can be embarrassing in this type of tutor/student exchange is the obligation that I felt to contribute genuinely in this activity. Tutors should be prepared to answer students about matters that can be personal and that they do not necessarily want to make publicly known, even if it is only the answer to a simple question such as what did you do this weekend? The involvement of language assistants may be necessary where teachers are apprehensive that the hierarchies of tutor-student relationships may be broken by such an informal interaction. I have not found any significant changes in students attitudes towards me. They seem to have accepted the fact that I was one person with two roles: one as their tutor and one as a correspondent at the other end of a computer line. In terms of language learning, this activity
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will not teach the students formal writing. It will not teach them to write a business letter, an administrative report or an academic essay. Since it is important to place the students in a low anxiety situation of communication, they are mainly practising the informal and familiar. But the feel for the structure of the target language that they seem to be acquiring will be useful in all types of writing, and the communicative skills that they are developing may be transferred to all styles and registers.
Conclusion
As a language learning tool, email communication in the target language seems to fit perfectly with the generally accepted principles of second language acquisition theory which emphasise the importance of subconscious processes. It is now a standard assumption in second language research that subconscious processes are very important and that many of them may well be impervious to outside intervention either by the learners themselves attempting to apply rules consciously or by teachers attempting to explain, demonstrate and drill rules (Sharwood-Smith 1994: 68). Communication technology does not make classroom work redundant since, as future linguists, students will always need to learn the linguistic system of the foreign language that they are studying. But it clearly provides a good possibility for improving the students learning experience by providing a useful supplement to foster language acquisition. It can also promote student autonomy in the field of language studies. Moreover, it enables students to develop their communicative competence in the target language and to improve their knowledge of the language structure without being aware of it, simply by taking part actively in a genuine act of communication in the target language. For autonomous learners email seems to be an ideal tool which enhances their self-confidence in the foreign language. Some particiReCALL
pants in the activity reported joining Internet discussion groups in French, a step that they may otherwise have taken much later in their linguistic development. This transition from the language classroom to real life situations is one of the ultimate objectives of language teachers and email seems to provide a powerful tool to make this transition effective.
References
Cook V. (1991) Second language learning and language teaching, Sevenoaks: Edward Arnold Crook C. and Webster D. (1997) Designing for informal undergraduate computer mediated communication, Active Learning 7, 4750 Ellis R. (1993) The structural syllabus and second language acquisition, TESOL Quarterly 27, 91113, Fox M. (1997) The teacher is dead! Long live the teacher, Active Learning 7, 3540
Gregg K.R. (1984) Krashens monitor and Occamss razor, Applied Linguistics 5 (2), 79100 Krashen S. (1985) The Input Hypothesis: issues and implications, London: Longman . Ritchie W.C. and Bhatia T.K. (1996) Acquisition: introduction, foundation and overview, New York: Academic Press Inc. Sharwood Smith M. (1994) Second language learning: theoretical foundations, London: Longman. Swain M. (1995) Three functions of output in second language learning. In Cook G. and Seihofer B. (eds.), Principle and practice in applied linguistics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zobl H. (1995) Converging evidence for the acquisition-learning distinction, Applied Linguistics 16 (1), 3556 Farid Aitsiselmi is a Lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages of the University of Bradford where he teaches French and applied linguistics. Email: F.Aitsiselmi@bradford.ac.uk
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ReCALL 11:2 (1999) 1219
Juggling hot potatoes: decisions and compromises in creating authoring tools for the Web
Stewart Arneil and Martin Holmes
University of Victoria, Canada
This discussion paper outlines some of the decisions and issues involved in creating and using authoring tools for language learning through the World Wide Web. In it, we outline the development of Hot Potatoes, our suite of authoring tools, and attempt to draw conclusions from our experience that will be valuable not only to other developers but also to evaluators and users of authoring software. Areas addressed include exercise design, ability to customise and control the output, support for different browser versions, user-interface design, ancillary technology and technical support.
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the development of our software suite Hot Potatoes, a set of authoring tools for creating interactive exercises for the World Wide Web. We hope that by presenting some of the issues we faced and the decisions we made in the process of developing the tools, we can provide useful information not only to developers working on similar tools, but also to educators who find themselves using and evaluating tools for online education. Hot Potatoes arose initially out of our own needs. By 1997, the use of Web pages in support of educational courses was already wide12
spread, and we found ourselves with the need to create a wide range of interactive exercises for the Web, in support of various language programs. At the time, JavaScript was the only practical and reliable method of doing this, so we evolved a set of template scripts for simple exercise types (multiple-choice, short-answer, gap-fill and so on) which enabled us to create exercises more consistently and quickly. However, creating exercises manually based on the templates proved very time-consuming, and it was not long before a Windows-based authoring tool (the first version of JQuiz, the shortanswer quiz generator in Hot Potatoes) was written to automate the process. It was first created to make our own work quicker and
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Decisions in creating authoring tools for the web: S Arneil and M Holmes
simpler, but it occurred to us that it might be useful for others working in the same field, so it was packaged up with an installation routine and a Help file, and issued as freeware. Further applications followed, with JBC (the multiple-choice quiz generator) issued under the invented name Half-Baked Software. The name derived from a picture created by our graphics expert, based on a scanned image of someones lunchtime potato, and this became the splash screen for the product. At this point, interest was growing in our authoring tools, and more specific demands were beginning to arise in terms of support for foreign language characters, different operating systems, and browsers. In April 1998, we decided to create an integrated authoring suite bringing together new versions of five applications, and make it available for Windows and Macintosh. This became Hot Potatoes, which is now in version 3, and has nearly four thousand registered users. In creating and developing the tools, we have faced a number of crucial decisions, which are the main focus of this paper.
1. Exercise design: sophistication versus programming feasibility

Our experience of other interactive Web exercises showed that the vast majority tend to be of the one-click right/wrong variety. They are typically multiple choice exercises, and rarely provide useful feedback in the event of a wrong answer, or any additional information in response to a correct answer. Those which require a student to type input rarely allow much flexibility; often, an answer typed in capitals will be wrong, or a minor but grammatically acceptable variation on a target phrase or sentence will simply be marked as wrong. The reason that so many exercises are like this is quite simply that this kind of response is very easy to do with computers. To compare one thing to another and decide whether they are the same or not is computing at its most primitive. In addition, creating these types of exercises involves less work on the part of the
instructor; there is no need to think carefully about alternative correct answers, or to write meaningful explanations for distractors in multiple-choice questions. The knee-jerk style of exercise is easy for everyone less code, less content, and less thought. However, when we worked out our early plans for Hot Potatoes exercises, we resolved to try to do something slightly more sophisticated. A multiple-choice exercise can have specific responses to each student choice; in fact it probably should, in most cases, in order to best promote learning. We reasoned that if we provided the capability to do this easily, and integrated it into the main interface, then the instructor or materials creator would be more likely to take advantage of it. With exercises where students enter text from the keyboard, we tried to be a little more ambitious: in the short-answer exercises, for example, the students guess can be checked against four possible correct answers (which, along with a case-sensitivity switch, allows for eight possible variants to be deemed acceptable). Where the guess is not correct, the JavaScript parses the guess and the nearest answer, and tells the student how much of the guess is right, and where the first error is. The student can then ask for a hint, and be given the next correct letter in the answer. In this way, we hope to provide the opportunity for instructors to create exercises from which a student can actively learn, by working his or her way towards a correct answer, with enough flexibility to allow for a certain number of acceptable variations in response. Nevertheless, this is still computer code. What if there are nine possible correct answers to your question? In fact, we were contacted by a professor in Germany who wanted to create exercises allowing more than eighty correct answers for each question. This amounts to an attempt to mimic, by means of the sheer quantity of data, the sophisticated parsing and semantics brought to bear by a human instructor interacting with a student. Quite clearly, with the current state of the technology, it is impractical especially using client-side JavaScript in a Web page. In addition, the burden of data-entry faced by an instructor
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designing exercises with this level of flexibility would be discouraging to say the least. Thus we have tried to arrive at a balance between flexibility and practicality. We can certainly provide much more in the way of interactivity than the one-click right-wrong paradigm; at the same time, we have to recognise the limitations of the medium, and trust instructors and materials designers to be aware of these limitations and design their material accordingly. If there are more possible correct answers than the current machinery will allow for, then it will probably be possible to rewrite the question to avoid this.
2.
Data in, exercises out: configurability versus simplicity
The most important objective of Hot Potatoes was to provide an authoring tool that anyone with basic computer skills could use. Much of our own work involves moving data (in the form of quizzes, for example) from paper or word-processor documents to the Web essentially data-entry. It made little sense for us to do this ourselves if it were possible for us to create interfaces enabling faculty members and their work-study students to do it for themselves. We therefore needed the tools to be simple enough so that the average user could get started without help, and become productive very quickly, for the very practical reason that we could not afford to offer a lot of training or technical support time to many users. This had a number of implications in terms of interface design. We felt that the most intuitive interface for this type of user would be one focused on the data questions, answers, responses etc. rather than the end appearance of the page (as can be seen in figure 1). The user would not be editing in some kind of WYSIWYG environment, trying to format the page at the same time as enter the data; this would have led to a complicated and potentially confusing interface (on the Web, WYSIWYG is not really WYSIWYG), and distracted users from the most important task, which is (presumably) writing good content.
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We therefore made a clear division between the main screen, where data is entered, and data files are saved and loaded, and the other areas of the program where the configuration of the output (instructions to the student, background graphics, and so on) is handled. The next priority was to make it as easy as possible for the user to see what he or she had created in Web page form. We decided that we wanted this to be a one-button procedure click on a button, choose a filename for the Web page, and then see the output. After creating the Web pages, the applications offer to start the users browser and show the page created. A message also appears showing the names of the files created (since there is usually a set of files, using frames) and explaining their relationship. If a user can create something useful almost instantly, then the initial response to the software will tend to be very positive, and the user will be more willing to invest a little time in reading the documentation and exploring other options as the need arises to use more complex features. At the same time as making the initial experience simple and straightforward, of course, we needed to allow users to have as much control as possible over their pages as they became more competent at using the programs. To allow this, we first created a Configuration Screen, where users could set a number of variables (strings of instructions, button captions, navigation URLs and so on). These configurable items, representing display elements rather than data, are likely to be consistent over more than one exercise, so they are saved in a special file. In fact, we now provide configuration files in different languages along with the software, and allow users to create their own. This makes it easier to work on Web sites in different languages, as we do regularly in our own work, without having to reconfigure all these variables each time you switch to another project. This system provides enough flexibility for many users to produce pages that are effectively customised for their language, target audience and environment, without needing to know any HTML or JavaScript. However, it
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does not leave much room for more ambitious customisation. Without further options available for sophisticated users, we anticipated receiving many requests for control over hundreds of features of the output pages, from font face and heading style to the operation of scoring functions. This presented a dilemma: how could we provide sophisticated users with the kind of low-level control over output that would enable them to change anything relating to the appearance or behaviour of the pages, without creating a hopelessly complex interface? Our solution to this problem was to create a mechanism allowing the sophisticated user complete access to, and complete control over, the underlying templates used to create the Web pages. Source files, as we call them, are templates used by the programs to create each Web page; these are installed in a sub-folder of the main applications. When creating Web pages, the programs read in the relevant template files, and add the data to them by replacing various placeholder strings in the files. We created an interface to allow users to see and edit these files (although it is also possible to edit them in any standard text editor, of course). As a result, almost anything in the behaviour or appearance of the pages can be customised by someone who knows HTML and JavaScript. We thus have several levels of configurability, allowing each user to operate at the level he or she is most comfortable with. In the out-of-the-box phase, any user can enter some data, press a button, and get Web pages. At the next level, the basic interface of the Web pages (captions, instructions, background and so on) can be configured without any special knowledge. Finally, the ambitious user has unrestricted control over the Web page output and as a by-product, we are able to fend off users demands to incorporate specific behaviours or features by pointing out that they can add these things themselves, with a little work. We can also issue bug-fixes and improvements relating to browsers, HTML and JavaScript by issuing new source files, rather than having to create new versions of the applications.
3.
Target computers: legacy support versus cutting-edge features
Another important issue facing us when we began the design of these applications was what browser versions to support. When we began putting together the Hot Potatoes suite, version 3 browsers were current, and version 4 browsers were beginning to penetrate the market. At our own institution, the majority of computers available for student access were running version 3 browsers. We therefore decided that we would support versions 3 and 4 of the two major browsers, Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. This practical need to support older browsers meant that we had to forego the exciting DHTML capabilities newly offered by the version 4 browsers. However, a little research and testing revealed that the implementation of DHTML was so inconsistent between the two browser programs that there would be few features we could take advantage of reliably anyway. We therefore opted to limit ourselves to the capabilities of JavaScript as implemented in version 3.01 and above of Internet Explorer, and version 3.0 and above of Navigator. This in itself was no small task. Version 3 of Navigator is of course not one version; there are several versions 3, with significant differences in the way they handle HTML, JavaScript and character strings. Additionally, we were (and are) committed to supporting both the Macintosh and Windows platforms, and this raised new implications with regard to text. For our own university community, it was important that we support the use of accented characters used in French, German and other Roman-script languages. While the standard English characters are handled identically on Windows and Macintosh, the so-called upperASCII set of characters (which includes all the accented variants) are in different places in the Windows and Macintosh character maps. This meant that a page created on a Windows machine would show odd character substitutions when viewed on a Macintosh. For ordinary HTML pages, this is not usually a problem, since there are escape codes which can
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be used to ensure that characters are displayed properly. However, when handling text strings in JavaScript code, and checking studententered guesses against correct answers, HTML codes cannot be used. We were forced to devise a highly complex system, which involves special JavaScript code for testing the platform and browser version when the page is loaded, and translating characters between their Macintosh and Windows equivalents. For the end user (both the materials author and the student) all of this has to be invisible, and it has to work reliably on a wide range of browser/platform combinations. Thus, the testing of Web pages on multiple machines and configurations became one of the most timeconsuming aspects of our work. In our reviews of other authoring environments and tools, we have found few which give much thought to this. Many avoid the problem, either by declining to support users with Macintosh computers, or assuming that anyone working with accented characters is using a Windows machine; others simplify the issue by insisting on a limited range of browsers, or even a specific version; most seem to be unaware that the problem even exists. This is possibly one reason why there is a wealth of interactive material available for English on the Web, but very little for languages that use accented characters. While the Macintosh has relatively little market penetration in many regions of the world, it retains a large segment of the North American market, and is strong in the field of education elsewhere, so we feel that continued support for the Macintosh is essential, and wrestling with this problem is worthwhile. We did not find ourselves able to support Cyrillic, Greek and other single-byte character sets, nor double-byte sets such as those used in Japanese or Chinese. The problems involved here are so complex that we concluded that it would be impractical to attempt this; like many other developers, we are waiting anxiously for Unicode to solve this problem for us. One final decision with regard to browsers was to forego the use of any plug-ins. Since our students tend to access pages either from university machines (which have plain config16
urations, as a rule, and do not allow users to install software), or from home via modem line (making them unwilling to spend much time downloading and installing special software), it seemed prudent to avoid plug-ins completely. In summary, we elected to support legacy browsers on both operating systems, to avoid plug-ins, and to support accented characters in the Roman (i.e. Latin-1 encoding) set. In doing so, we made Hot Potatoes useful to a larger number of instructors working in languages other than English, and the exercises accessible to a wider target audience. However, this functionality entails a substantial amount of extra testing, and the addition of significant amounts of extra JavaScript code to the exercise pages.
4.
Multi-platform user interface design: consistency versus efficiency
In designing a suite of programs for two operating systems, we were of course concerned to create consistent interfaces so that users would find it easy to move from one application to another. Implementing very similar toolbars, menu commands and dialog boxes in each application proved relatively easy, and also helped to enforce a degree of discipline on us as developers in terms of writing portable and reusable code. We believe we have been quite successful in making all the Windows Hot Potatoes, and all the Mac Hot Potatoes, resemble each other and behave similarly. However, matters are a little more complex when it comes to interface consistency between Windows and Macintosh. The tools used to develop the applications are very different; the Supercard authoring environment on the Macintosh produces what are essentially interpreted scripts, and allows relatively limited access to the lower-level features of the operating system. Delphi, which was used to develop the Windows suite, produces native executable code, and allows virtually any call to the Windows operating system to be made relatively easily. In addition, the human interReCALL
face guidelines and the standard look-and-feel of applications on the two operating systems differ considerably. We decided that it would be counter-productive to limit ourselves to a subset of features and capabilities that we could implement on both systems. We elected instead to develop the Macintosh and Windows versions separately, maintaining compatibility where possible, but each exploiting any capabilities provided either by the OS or the development environment that would enhance the applications. One example of this is in terms of the way application state information is stored. Supercard applications are actually like documents; state information (such as the current window size, user registration information and so on) can thus be stored inside the application file itself. This means that there is no need for some external mechanism for storing and retrieving it. Delphi, on the other hand, produces executable files; any state information needs to be stored externally in special files, and Windows9x conventions suggest that it should be stored in the system registry. The Windows version of Hot Potatoes, therefore, maintains a relatively large collection of information in the system registry, whereas the Macintosh version stores all it needs within the application directory. As a by-product of this, installing the Macintosh version is simply a matter of copying a folder onto the disk; on the other hand, the Windows version has a standard installation program (as Windows users tend to expect), which puts an icon on the Start Menu and sets up the system registry entries. In a further example, components within Delphi allow the easy creation of a tree-structure diagram in which nodes can be dragged and dropped into new positions; some of the Windows applications therefore have a dialog box through which questions in a quiz can be dragged and dropped into new sequences. The version of Supercard used to write the Macintosh applications did not provide this capability, and so it was not included in the Macintosh applications. In this way, we hoped to take advantage of the capabilities of each operating system to provide applications which are effective, and
conform largely to the user-interface guidelines and expected behaviours of each OS. In doing this, we have sacrificed some consistency across platforms; if you move from using the Macintosh version of Hot Potatoes to using the Windows version, you will probably find enough differences to frustrate you for a little while. However, we reason that the vast majority of users work mainly on one OS, and thus this inconsistency is not too damaging. There were some unfortunate consequences of our diverging in this way. Since we were not in the habit of keeping our applications strictly in line, we finished up with substantial differences not only between the applications but also between the source file, data file, and configuration file structures. This means that users cannot move data files (exercise content), configuration files or source files (exercise templates) from one platform to the other. Thus, an institution or department with a mixed Mac/Win user group could not easily create one set of data and files which could be shared amongst several people working on the same project. Since the vast majority of our users are individuals working largely alone, we have had few complaints about this as yet, but it does embarrass us, and we are working to remedy it for the next release of the applications. Our choices here, then, were to maintain as much consistency of appearance and functionality as possible within the suite on one operating system, but to forego consistency between Windows and Macintosh in the interests of taking advantage of the strengths of each operating system and development environment. In doing so, we hope we have produced better and more integrated application suites, but we have sacrificed some portability of data and set up obstacles to users who want to author simultaneously on both platforms.
5.
Dependency on other Technology or Staff: Power versus Practicality
As Website developers, we create material to support university courses. Our work is gener17
ally served from the main university UNIX machine, which has a large-capacity highspeed Web server and provides standard HTTP capabilities. In our early work on interactive Web materials, we investigated the possibility of using server-based CGI scripts to process student input and give responses. There are many advantages to this; quiz answers can be made relatively secure, and results can be tracked and recorded. However, we found that our system administrators were (understandably and rightly) unwilling to allow us to write, upload, tweak and otherwise experiment with CGI scripts on a server whose reliability is essential to the entire university community. It is possible to install and run CGI scripts on smaller machines, but there are security and reliability issues involved in this. Guessing that most ordinary instructors our target audience would be in a situation similar to ourselves, we designed our basic interactive exercises using client-side JavaScript. This means that anyone who can post a page to the Web can also post our quizzes; they will even work on standalone machines with no Internet connection, running from a floppy disk if necessary. In this way, we hoped to provide the largest number of users with the capability to produce and deploy exercises with the minimum of trouble and technical knowledge. There are drawbacks to this. It means, for example, that there is no easy way to track the scores of students, or to record whether a student has done a particular exercise or not. In addition, any student can view the source code of an exercise in order to determine what the correct answers are. However, since our main objective was to provide interactive self-access materials in support of language courses not some kind of secure testing system we felt that these drawbacks were minor compared to the advantages of the client-side system.1 In other words, we have given up security and tracking capabilities in the interests of allowing a larger number of people, with less control over server technology and less technical knowledge, to be productive. Other authoring systems which depend on CGI scripts, server configurations and plug-ins can take advantage of many extra capabilities; on the
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other hand, such systems (such as Macromedia products, for example) tend to be more complex to use, and require work at the serveradministrator level to make them operate properly, so they tend to be the province of a small elite of technologically adept individuals at any given institution. Hot Potatoes, on the other hand, is generally used by ordinary instructors who would not otherwise be able to build interactivity into their sites, and we believe this is a valuable community to serve and nurture.
Conclusions
This complex mix of decisions and balancing acts underlies the design of all authoring tools, and it may be useful for those involved in choosing and deploying tools for the use of individuals or an academic community to be aware of the issues involved. These are some questions to think about when evaluating authoring software for the Web: Do the tools make intelligent use of the medium (i.e. do they make best use of the capabilities of Web technology, or do they encourage the creation of one-click rightwrong exercises)? Can both novices and experts do what they need to do without help? Do the languages, character sets and data types (pictures, sound etc.) that you need to use work reliably on an acceptable range of browsers and/or operating systems? Are there versions of the tools which will run on all the platforms your institution would like to support? If you need to use versions on more than one platform, how easy will it be for staff to move from one to the other, and how easy is it to move data between them? Will your materials creators need the support of experts and/or specialised plug-ins or software to create, maintain or deliver the exercises?
Further information on Hot Potatoes

Hot Potatoes is available free for non-comReCALL
mercial uses from: http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked/ As of March 1999, over 3600 people and institutions in 76 countries are registered users of Hot Potatoes. In addition to language teaching, the programs have been used for a wide range of different subject areas, among them philosophy, chemistry, biology, radio communications, and musical instruction, at levels from elementary school to university.
is unfortunate. Even if a secure testing solution is implemented, there is no way to know who is sitting at the client computer taking a particular test, unless someone is present to verify identity. This also implies that online education is perhaps too frequently equated with testing. One result of this may be the prevalence of interactive quiz exercises available on the Web in which feedback consists merely of Correct! or Wrong! responses, rather than useful hints or diagnostic help. Stewart Arneil is the coordinator of research and development at the University of Victoria Language Centre. He holds an MA in the philosophy of computationalism and certification as an instructional designer. He provides Macintosh and web-based programming services to support language teaching and research at the university. Martin Holmes is currently a programmer/consultant in the University of Victoria Language Centre. He holds a BA in English, an M.Phil, and the RSA DipTEFLA. He previously taught EFL for 15 years in several countries. He provides Windows and web-based programming services to support university language teaching and research.
Note
1. We state very clearly in our documentation that Hot Potatoes is not a testing tool. In our user feedback, though, we have been consistently surprised by the number of people who request some kind of secure testing, password protection, or the encryption of answers in source code. It has become clear that a large segment of users cannot or do not distinguish between testing and self-access learning materials. This
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ReCALL 11:2 (1999) 2030
Creating a virtual language lab: an EFL experience at National Taiwan Ocean University
Hao-Jan Howard Chen
National Taiwan Ocean University
English listening ability has become increasingly important. Traditionally, the training of listening skills is mainly provided via tape-based language laboratories. However, the tape-based laboratory cannot cope with the rapid development of digital learning media. In addition, it fails to provide students with convenient access because of its limited space and opening hours. The faculty at National Taiwan Ocean University takes advantage of new Web technologies such as RealMedia and JavaScript to create a virtual language lab in the hope of helping students develop listening skills. This paper will discuss various problems and solutions in setting up a virtual language lab. It is expected that our experience will be useful for other language professionals.
1.
Introduction
1.1. Tape-based language lab

Foreign language skills have become more and more important in todays world. The importance of listening skills in second language development is widely accepted by second language acquisition researchers. Nevertheless, as pointed out by several EFL researchers (Chang, Chang & Kuo 1992), the listening competence of many Taiwanese EFL students remains poor. There is an urgent need for students to develop a good command of English listening skills. Traditionally, the training of foreign language listening skills is provided via tapebased language laboratories. High schools and
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universities in Taiwan often have several large rooms dedicated to carrels in which students sit in a class. During the class, language teachers use the main console to play audio tapes and students therefore have few chances to control their own learning pace. Some institutes have tried to offer after-class lab hours for individual language learners. But given the fact that the language lab is often occupied by a large number of classes, students can only come to duplicate tapes after class and listen to the tapes at home. As more and more students want to improve their foreign language skills, it seems difficult for tape-based language labs with limited space and opening hours to serve hundreds or thousands of foreign language students.
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Creating a virtual language lab: H-J Howard Chen
With the rapid development of audio technology, Compact Disks (CDs) which produce much better audio quality became very popular several years ago. Many newer foreign language textbooks are increasingly augmented by materials on CDs or even multimedia CDROMs. However, the traditional type of tapebased language labs does not allow teachers or students to use these newer media. It seems clear that the traditional language laboratory can no longer satisfy foreign language learners needs not only because it cannot provide enough space and hours but also because it fails to provide an up-to-date language learning environment. David Herren (1997) further pointed out that traditional analog audio and video tapes are linear media. To get from one place to another on a tape entails passing all points in between. While this can be done reasonably quickly, such linear media will never approach the near instantaneous access afforded by CDROM or CD-audio played on multimedia personal computers. As the interface of multimedia personal computers becomes more and more friendly, computerised language labs have gradually become strong competitors with traditional reel-to-reel language laboratories. Recently, a few universities have begun to replace the old tape-based language labs with new multimedia computer language labs. Multimedia personal computers are able to create a much richer learning environment (Holland, Kaplan, & Sams 1995). Students sitting in the multimedia language labs can use all kinds of interactive CD-ROM or VCD (Video Compact Disk) titles including tutorials, exercises, games, encyclopedia, movies, and so forth. They can learn the target languages from various kinds of authentic input including texts, graphics, animation, sound, and videos. In particular, learners can explore these extremely rich learning materials in a non-linear fashion. Even though multimedia computer technology has provided such a marvellous foreign language learning environment, it is still not convenient for students to gain access to multimedia computer language labs since they
have to go a specific location on campus only during after-class hours. Students are also not allowed to copy any CD-ROM since this option clearly violates copyrights. The new type of multimedia learning lab/center still cannot accommodate many visitors since the opening hours and space remain limited.
1. 2. Distributed learning and the virtual language laboratory

The explosion and the success of the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) across the world suggest clearly that computer networking is an extremely powerful way to deliver learning materials. As the power of computer networking becomes evident, the number of distance learning or asynchronous learning courses has been steadily increasing. Numerous Web-based courses in various academic disciplines have been created around the world. There are thousands of colleges and universities offering on-line courses to their students. Some of them even offer extensive degree programs. Some commonly asserted advantages of distributed learning were summarised by Godwin-Jones (1996a). On-demand access to learning materials Integration of local and global resources Collaborative learning Up-to-date information Multimedia presentation of content
The idea of creating virtual multimedia language labs in fact was proposed at a very early stage of Internet development. For instance, the University of Pennsylvanias virtual language lab is one of the earliest projects (Hiester and Abercrombie 1994). As can be seen from the excerpt below, Hiester and Abercrombie had planned to use Mosaic, the earliest Web browser, in creating their virtual language lab: Moreover with the development of Internet tools accessible over phone lines students off campus would have easy access to material distributed through a gopher or even Mosaic. They could listen to their audio lessons on a computer, and
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with appropriate public-domain software even record responses that could be shipped back to the instructor using Internet tools. Distributed material would be more than just audio clips. With QuickTime and other viewing systems we could actually deliver video clips from a central location to remote sites on and off campus. The idea of putting learning materials online is indeed a very powerful idea which can transform foreign language learning and language teaching. Similar ideas were implemented and tested in several universities (Bush 1996; Lyman-Hager 1996; Zhao 1996; Allodi, Doktor, & Kuipers 1998; Burston 1998; Yang 1998). The projects mentioned above mainly responded to the needs of learners of French, German and Spanish. However, few project reports on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners are available. This paper will describe how faculty at National Taiwan Ocean University (NTOU) takes advantage of new Web technologies to create a virtual language lab and how college students react to this type of learning environment by improving their listening skills. Taiwanese students reaction toward this type of learning environment is also reported. It is hoped that this detailed description of how the virtual language lab was created will lead to more innovative creation of online language learning resources. In the following sections, the problems of early projects will be discussed first. Next, RealMedia will be briefly introduced. After that, the plan, problems, and solutions for creating the NTOU virtual language lab will be discussed. Lastly, the direction of future development will be outlined.
(e.g., AVI, QuickTime) take up a lot of hard disk space and cannot be delivered to learners quickly. According to Bush (1996), In one example, one clicks on an earphone icon next to the vowel a only to wait 40 seconds to hear the pronunciation that lasts a fraction of a second. Though students can get connected to the Internet easily, they soon realise that they have to wait for a long while before they can actually listen to audio files, not to mention huge video files. The course material writers therefore have to keep the audio and video files small so that these files can be kept on the server and loaded quickly. An audio example (wav. file format) from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is given in figure 1 (very short paragraphs). The storage and delivery of multimedia files have discouraged many foreign language instructors who attempted to distribute audio and video files over computer networking. Because of the limitations, most early Web courses were largely text-based and few Web sites provided digital audio and video files.
2.2. Audio/video streaming technology

Recently, Web multimedia technology has evolved to the point that this kind of real-time delivery (called streaming) of audio files is a reality, even over a modem connection. Initial audio quality was that of a cheap AM radio, but the latest players feature near CD-quality stereo over a fast connection. With the rapid development of audio and video streaming technology, foreign language students no
2.
Pioneering virtual labs and the streaming technology
2.1. The problems of file storage and delivery

Digital audio and video files evidently play an essential role in a virtual foreign language lab. Nevertheless, the old audio file formats (e.g. WAV. AIFF. SND) and video formats such as
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Figure 1 Dialogue from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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longer need to wait for a long time and audio/video files can be accessed almost spontaneously (Li & Hart 1996; Godwin-Jones 1997) A number of radio and TV stations around the world are now Web-casting their programs. Many special events are being delivered live over the Web in streaming format. An example of RealVideo streaming is shown in figure 2. Streaming technology is a real breakthrough since it is much easier for language lab managers and teachers to put audio and video files on a computer server since digital files can be compressed into a very compact size (a 20 MB AVI video file can be compressed into a 200 KB RealVideo files). It is more convenient to store multimedia files on the hard disk of a server. Godwin-Jones (1998) suggested that language teachers should take advantage of the power of new streaming technologies and use them to serve more foreign language students. Gaton (1998) even contended that with new technologies we perhaps can kiss CD-ROMs good-bye and replace them with networked courseware. To sum up, with the rapid development of Web multimedia streaming technology, it is much more convenient for foreign language instructors or material writers to construct a virtual multimedia language lab on the Internet and it is also appropriate for language learners to use audio and video files over the computer network.
3. Creating the NTOU virtual language lab

There are two traditional tape-based language labs at National Taiwan Ocean University (NTOU). Each one can accommodate about 56 students, but one main console broke down last year and the damages were beyond repair. Given that there are about 1,000 NTOU students each year who need to receive training in listening skills, the laboratory is overcrowded. As computer networking became more and more important, the whole NTOU community, including students dormitories, was already connected via Ethernet. Because the price of computers continues to fall rapidly and the web becomes so popular on campus, more and more students have their own personal computers. The hardware requirement for an asynchronous online learning environment has largely been met (cf. Polyson, Saltzberg & Godwin-Jones 1996). With a Web browser and necessary plug-ins (e.g. Progressive Network RealPlayer and Microsoft Windows Media Player) on a personal computer, students can access multimedia audio and video materials via the Web. Because the hardware and software for Web-based learning have become more and more mature, language faculty at NTOU decided to experiment with the idea of a virtual language lab and expect that the virtual language lab can serve as a solid basis for the future implementation of a virtual multimedia language center.
3.1. Problems in using Internet resources

Our original plan for creating a virtual language laboratory was to create an indexing Web page which collects local and global URLs (Universal Resource Locators) of English learning on the Internet. Students can then be guided to use the web resources directly from their networked personal computers via modems or Ethernet connections. However, the plan did not work as we expected. There were at least three problems in using Internet as the main learning resource for Taiwanese EFL students. We have to deal with the prob23
Figure 2 Tiger Woods in a CBS Sports news session
lems of content selection, media delivery, and limited bandwidth. Let us discuss each of these problems in detail.
3.1.i. The problem of Web content

Web sites encoded in English increase exponentially because English is the dominant language on the Internet. The content of these Web sites becomes richer and richer each day. For EFL students, it seems more than perfect that they can have easy access to numerous texts, graphics, audio and video files on the Internet. Roughly speaking, the Web titles/sites can be further classified as General and ESL types. With regard to the general type of Web sites, several NTOU instructors have visited many Web sites and compiled a useful list, including Audionet, CNN, ABC, National Public Radio (NPR), and so on. Taking the Audionet as an example, shown in figure 3, its content is extremely rich for EFL students with various backgrounds: audioBooks, business, CD jukebox, education, entertainment, live radio, live TV, music, news, public affairs, special interests, spiritual, sports, and technology. Students therefore can choose whatever interests them from these links. Language teachers all know that to learn a foreign language, one has to go there (i.e., the target language country). There are quite a few Web sites like AudioNet available. Visiting these Web sites, students can experience the foreign cultures in a virtual world. However, these general type Web sites are not specifically adapted to the needs of EFL
students. Even though the materials are very interesting and authentic, many EFL students simply do not have the ability to explore them. The need to select Web titles/sites is similar to the needs to evaluate CD-ROM titles for second language learning. Some English CDROM titles (e.g. encyclopedias) can be very engaging and have extremely rich content; nevertheless, they are not suitable for beginning and intermediate EFL students. The better option seems to be the Web sites which are specifically created for ESL/EFL students. There are quite a few Web sites, one good example is Randal Daviss ESL Cyber Listening Lab, as shown in figure 4. There are also several local Taiwan Web sites providing RealAudio and RealVideo lessons for EFL students (i.e. English Digest, WebEnglish, English on the Net, etc.). For instance, one of the most popular and well-designed Web sites is Classroom Studio, as shown in figure 5.
Figure 4 Randal Daviss Cyber Listening Lab
Figure 3 AudioNet Home
Figure 5 Classroom Studio Web Site
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NTOU students are encouraged to explore these local sites since they all contain some free learning materials. However, users have to pay a fee before they can gain full access to these on-line courses. Even though the Web sites specifically address the needs of ESL and EFL students, it seems that their content and exercises cannot be easily integrated with the textbooks or materials used by NTOU faculty because each is targeted at different groups of learners. Moreover, not many students can afford the fees charged by the local commercial Web sites. At most, these local Web courses can only serve as extra learning resources outside the classroom.
in sequence. It would be fairly difficult, if not impossible, for EFL students to comprehend the continuous mode since they have no way of interrupting the delivery or asking for repetitions. For instance, CNN Audioselect, as shown in figure 7, provides live streaming all day long. Since there are so many Web sites available, it is not too difficult to avoid this problem. One simple solution is to look for the Web sites which provide interactive audio/video files (for example, NPR). Although we might miss some good non-interactive programs, a non-stoppable radio program is clearly not suitable for pedagogical purposes.
3.1.ii. The problem of continuous delivery mode

The second problem mentioned above is closely related to the first problem. Hiester and Abercrombie (1994) pointed out that an audio control application will have two modes, interactive and continuous. Interactive mode will play items such as pronunciation drills and vocabulary lists one utterance at a time. After the utterance stops, the student decides if s/he wants to hear the utterance again or move on to the next or go back, or choose another option, like going to another part of the lesson. Figure 6 shows the homepage of NPR. The students can replay or stop the audio files as many times as they like. Continuous mode, like many live radio stations on the net, will simply play the program
3.1.iii. The problem of bandwidth

The last problem concerning the Web bandwidth is the most serious problem for Webbased teaching in Taiwan. Although there are rich learning materials available in the US or the UK, the audio/video files often cannot be delivered smoothly to Taiwan because of Web traffic congestion. There are some solutions to this dilemma, but they are not very cost-effective and popular. For instance, some NTOU students who do not live in dormitories are willing to use commercial ISPs (Internet Service Provider). In addition, some students have reported good results with offline browsers such as Teleport Pro. However, they cannot fetch the multimedia content smoothly in many cases. For these students, though they can have access to Inter-
Figure 6 The interactive mode of audio delivery
Figure 7 The continuous mode of audio delivery
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net resources, they need to pay expensive fees to both ISPs and the telephone company. It is hoped that in the near future, the connection speed between Taiwan Academic Network (TANet) and the US and other countries will be significantly enhanced to resolve this problem.
3.2 Intranet as an alternative solution

Because of the three major problems discussed above, Internet multimedia resources can only be used as supplementary resources for developing listening skills. To avoid the Internet traffic jam, NTOU faculty tried the option of setting up a local intranet server. Although the intranet resolves some problems, nevertheless the content problem remains unresolved. Three different proposals regarding the intranet content were considered. Create some new learning materials to avoid the problem of violating copyright. Download some materials from the Internet which are not copyrighted and put them on the server. Digitise the audio tapes currently used by NTOU faculty.
the publishers. Luckily, based on a valuable document Digitizing Publishers Cassettes and Permissions authored by Curtis Broderick and Cindy Bravo, cited in a review by Claire Bradin in the Agora Newsletter, May 1998, we were able to contact the publisher of the textbooks currently used at NTOU, the McGrawHill company who gave us permission to digitise two popular ESL listening/speaking textbooks, Interaction I and Interaction II. This solution at least has the following advantages: There is no copyright problem. The learning material is well-designed, so teachers do not need to worry about the quality of learning materials. It fits perfectly with current teaching at NTOU since the textbooks were carefully selected by NTOU faculty. Online follow-up practices can be created based on the exercises in the textbooks.
3.2.i. Digitising and serving RealAudio

Digitising RealAudio files and making them available online are not difficult tasks. The techniques and processes of creating the virtual audio lab will be described in the following sections. Two student assistants were asked to digitise the analog audio-tape. They used Real Encoder, a free authoring tool provided by the Progressive Network. This powerful tool can convert the traditional wav. files into RealAudio format. Moreover, one can also input sounds direct and save the files as RealAudio files. All the audio tapes of Interaction I and Interaction II were converted into digital RealAudio ra. files. After digitising all the tapes, we needed to install RealServer on our Windows NT server before delivering the digital audio files to students. In fact, the regular HTTP mechanism can still be used but the rate of delivery is too slow. Thus we have to use RealServer from the Progressive Network. The price of the professional version of Realserver (RealServer 5.0 Intranet Edition) goes far beyond what we can afford. Fortunately, a free Basic RealServer was also available and it works well if there
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The first option will avoid the copyright problem completely; however, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to create a whole set of new learning materials by a small group of language faculty. For the second option, it appears to be a good idea to first download files to a local server; however, it is a pity that many audio and video materials on the Internet are copyrighted, and we cannot copy audio and video files without permissions. VOA (Voice of America) is the only Web site which provides free news audio files encoded in RealAudio format. VOA even provides scripts for some of its programs. Though downloading VOA files seemed to be a feasible option, VOA recently changed its Web sites and this makes downloading their RealAudio files impossible. The last option seems to be the only path we can follow. To digitise the analog audio tapes or video tapes is not difficult if one uses the right tools, but it seems difficult to obtain permission from
26
are not many students logging to the virtual language lab at the same time. All the RealAudio files were loaded onto the Windows NT server and Microsoft FrontPage was used to administer a web site that holds all the files together. When the students link to the URL www.dge.ntou.edu.tw/english, as shown in figure 8, they will first be guided to download the plug-in software, RealPlayer, and then enter the virtual language lab. Because the materials are copyrighted, students need to input their user name and password before using the materials as shown in figure 9. After students have successfully logged into the language lab, they can then choose from any chapter they need from a pull-down menu as shown in figure10. After that, they can choose which exercise they would like to work on, as shown in figure 11 below. The page number of a given exercise is also given.
Figure 10 Selecting a chapter from a book
Figure 11 Selecting a unit from a chapter
3.2.ii. Adding Interactivity

In addition to putting multimedia audio or video files on a Web server, Godwin-Jones (1996b, 1998) introduced several ways in which foreign language teachers can make Web sites more interactive/dynamic. Through the feedback generated by the computer, foreign language learners will know if they have successfully completed a task. There are different ways of making a Web site interactive. Our first step was to prepare some interactive quizzes. After listening to a passage or a short story, students are asked to answer questions to check their comprehension. The Web page that is coded with the JavaScript will judge students answers. One very simple example is given below. The students first click on the RealAudio icon, and the RealPlayer will pop up and play the selected file as shown in figure 12. Then they
27
Figure 8 The NTOU virtual language lab
Figure 9 Log into the virtual language lab
can answer the questions by clicking the possible answers as shown in figure 13. Their answer will be checked and the feedback will be sent back to students immediately as shown in figure 14. With the help of JavaScript, students can receive proper online feedback and learn a foreign language on their own.
3.3 Students reactions to the virtual language lab

Since the virtual language laboratory has created a brand new language learning environment, it is necessary to further investigate NTOU students reactions toward the virtual language lab. Students feedback will assist project managers and teachers to improve both the content and organisation of the virtual lab. Questionnaires were used to survey how students feel about the lab and how they use the lab materials. Students were asked to answer
Figure14 Feedback from the computer
Figure 12 Playing the RealAudio files
Figure 13 Listening quizzes created in JavaScript
two types of questions, one about their opinions on asynchronous learning in general, the other asking for specific comments regarding the virtual language lab. With regard to the first question, students indicated that they were very interested in learning more about the Internet and Web resources which might help them to improve their command of English. They feel that the virtual language lab is very convenient. They no longer need to go to the physical lab and they can gain access to the lab anytime they like. As for the experience with the virtual language lab, many also reported that using the RealPlayer is much more convenient than using a traditional audio cassette player where they need to rewind the tapes. Quite a few pointed out that they like the online quizzes because they can immediately confirm whether they have understood a task (i.e. dialogue, speech, and so forth) correctly. Some students also pointed out that they can learn the materials at their own pace without worrying about lagging far behind their classmates. However, a few students complained that there were not enough public computer labs, so they could not have easy access to computers on the campus. Many indicated that if there were more computers available, they would spend more time using the language lab. Also, to our surprise, teachers who were not involved in the creation of the virtual language lab also expressed their interest in contributing more materials to the virtual lab. Moreover, many other universities in Taiwan also expressed strong interest in getting more
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28
information about the NTOU virtual language lab after attending our presentation at a national multimedia conference. Despite having experienced some technological difficulties in setting up the virtual language lab, it is quite rewarding that many students at NTOU like the concept of asynchronous learning and enjoy using the virtual language lab. Though the reactions from students and teachers were largely positive, there was an unexpected problem. Some students began to cut classes, and in the questionnaire they indicated that they could get connected to the virtual language lab anytime they like, so they did not need to attend classes regularly. The original intention of creating a virtual lab was to give students better access to learning materials after class; however, some students seemed to believe that what they learn in regular classrooms where teachers still control the audio cassette player is no better than what they can gain from working in the virtual language lab by themselves. This phenomenon leads us to reconsider the effectiveness of different types of learning contexts. The possible impact of the virtual language lab on the design of the foreign language curriculum should be an important issue for us to contemplate.
Figure 15 RealVideo of students interaction
activities and exercises such as on-line language quizzes, tests, and tutorials will be added to our virtual lab. When multimedia content (e.g., streaming audio and video) and interactive teaching/learning/testing can be properly integrated, we believe that the virtual language laboratory will make significant contributions to the performance of EFL students.
References
Allodi A. Doktor D. and Kuipers E (1998) WELLS: Web-enhanced language learning. In Jager S., Nerbonne J. and van Essen A. (eds.), Language teaching and language technology, Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger, 12335. Bradin C. (1998) A review of digitizing publishers cassettes and permissions. http://agoralang.com/agora/agoranews/agoranews4.3 Burston J. (1998) From CD-ROM to the WWW: coming full circle, CALICO Journal 15 (13), 6774. Bush M. D. (1996) Language learning via the web. In Borchardt F. L. et al (eds.), Proceedings of the 1996 CALICO annual symposium: Distance learning. Durham, NC: CALICO, 6672. Bush M. D. and Terry R. M. (eds.) (1997) Technology-enhanced language learning, Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. Chang Y. L., Chang T. S. and Kuo C. H. (1992) Listening difficulties and learner strategies of non-native speakers. In Proceedings of the 9th conference on English teaching and learning in the Republic of China, Taiwan normal university, Taipei, Taiwan: Crane publishing company. 29
4. Perspectives
Based on the positive feedback from users, we will continue to build a better language learning environment for Taiwanese EFL students. We expect to build up a Web site which provides effective local and global multimedia learning resources. As multimedia on the Web becomes more and more popular, it is no longer difficult to author Web titles with multimedia content. Currently, we are beginning to work on the possibility of serving RealVideo on the NTOU intranet, as shown in figure 15. It is clear that serving multimedia content via the Web is not enough for pedagogical purposes. The key to a successful virtual language lab lies in the integration of multimedia and interactivity. More interactive Web-based
Creating a virtual language lab: H-J Howard Chen Gaton W. (1998) Networked courseware: kissing CD-ROMs good-bye. http://langue.hyper.chubu.jp/c@ll/gaton5_98.htm. Godwin-Jones R. (1994) Language learning and the WorldWideWeb. www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/IT94/Agenda/Papersreceived.html. Godwin-Jones R. (1996a) A practical guide to teaching with World Wide Web. www.umac.edu/iuc/cmc96/papers/poly-p2.html. Godwin-Jones R. (1996b) Interactive webbing: CGI scripts, JavaScript, and linked programs for language learning. In Borchardt F. L., Bradin C., Johnson E. and Rhodes L. (eds.), op.cit., 12731. Godwin-Jones R. (1997) Emerging technologies: real-time audio and video playback on the Web, Technology and Language Learning 1 (1), 58. Godwin-Jones R. (1998) dynamic web page creation, Language Learning & Technology 1 (2), 713. Herren D. (1997) Computing in the language learning center. www.cet.middlebury.edu/herren/pages/labPlanning.html Hiester C. and Abercrombie J. (1994) Penns virtual language lab on the Internet. wwwphilae.sas.upenn.edu/VLLab.html Holland V. M., Kaplan J. D. and Sams M. R. (eds.) (1995) Intelligent language tutors: theory shaping technology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Li R-C. and Hart R. (1996) What can the World Wide Web offer ESL teachers?, TESOL Journal 6 (2), 510. Lyman-Hager M. A. (1996) From courseware to networkware: the evolution of a software title in multimedia. In Borchardt et al (eds.) op. cit., 30210. Polyson S., Saltzberg S. and Godwin-Jones R. (1996) A practical guide to teaching with the World Wide Web. www.umuc.edu/iuc/cmc96/papers/poly-p2.html Yang P. J. (1998) Networked multimedia and foreign language education, CALICO Journal 15 (13), 7588. Zhao Y. (1996) Language learning on the World Wide Web: toward a framework of network based CALL, CALICO Journal 14 (1), 3751. Hao-Jan Howard Chen (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is an associate professor at National Taiwan Ocean University. He teaches Freshman English, English Writing, and Computer-Assisted Language Learning. His research interests include Second Language Acquisition, Computerassisted Language Learning, and Corpus Linguistics.
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ReCALL
ReCALL 11:2 (1999) 3137
Web support for distance learning in the field of translation

Tim Connell
City University, London, UK
1. The development of distance learning at City University

Distance learning courses have been developed at City University over the last eight years. Language Plus, a semi-distance scheme was designed around the MBA programmes, which have little timetable space to spare (Connell & Pollard 1993). At the request of the Institute of Linguists, special syllabuses and examinations were devised for the Background Studies module of the Institutes ELIC Diploma in 1991. It was also a means of satisfying demand from students located elsewhere in Britain or abroad wishing to prepare for this particular module, but for whom no local course was available. The present article will focus on the experience of developing distance modes for the translation courses. The programmes mentioned above did, however, provide useful experience in the development of delivering courses at a distance, and still constitute a significant part of our overall activities. The distance element of the Diploma in Translation of the Institute of Linguists (Dip Trans) grew in 1991 in response to
enquiries arising from two needs: students who were unable to attend even part-time classes on a regular basis, and those who were planning to sit examinations in minority-interest languages. There is always a regular demand for them, but too small for conventional classes to be economical, always supposing that sufficient takers can be found within reasonable travelling distance and who are free on the same evening. Fifteen language combinations are now on offer into and out of English, with modules ranging from introductory to revision cycles (Connell 1992). CATS ratings have been in place since the start of the current academic year in order to give students credit for work completed and an alternative route for accreditation if they are unable (or not yet ready) to take the examination.1 The Postgraduate Certificate in Translation Skills (alias the Argentinian course) has grown from a number of short intensive courses which have been held in recent years for groups of students from Argentina. There are practical limitations on travel, and so an on-line course was devised in conjunction with the Colegio de Traductores Pblicos de Buenos Aires, one of the
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Web support for distance learners: T Connell
main professional bodies for linguists in Argentina, and which under federal law provides sworn translators who are able to work with government documents. The pilot module has run successfully, and the full six-module course is now running (THES 1998). The increase in the number of our translation students who are on the Internet, and the development of the Argentinian course which is taught almost exclusively over the Internet, has led to the development of CityTrans, a learning support system based on the Canadian WebCT electronic classroom (see section 3.3 below). This is actually the third initiative in Webbased learning to be developed by the Division of Languages at City University: SENAC (Student Electronic Newspaper at City) was developed out of classroom contact with both journalism and informatics students at City University. The London Markets Language Exchange is made up of a series of language learning clubs based on the International Underwriting Association and Lloyds of London. Web pages have been developed in support of the membership in seven languages and talks are now being held with the appropriate professional training bodies on the Continent with a view to extending the system.2
2.
A student-based approach
Access to the Dip Trans and Argentinian courses is quite different: the former is an open examination organised by the Institute with its own set of criteria for candidates which we also look for when enrolling students, but their level of practical experience of translation can vary. The Argentinian students are screened by their own professional body, which by its very nature is dealing with practitioners. We do not currently use any kind of aptitude test for our own Dip Trans candidates, although applications are scrutinised to ensure that they meet the Institutes criteria mentioned above. Our experience in extensive screening of applicants to interpreting courses has simply served to reinforce the view that it is difficult to build up a comprehensive picture of a students current levels of skill and knowl32
edge before the outset of the course. For the Dip Trans there is an introductory course in translation which has half the normal number of assignments and tutorials and time built in for reading and reflection, which students can take before moving on to the preparatory course. The use of a translator log is valuable as a means of measuring developing skills: the Dip Trans examination contains a task on Paper 1 which requires students to analyse their thought processes in carrying out the translation. These annotations have a fearsome reputation but should be viewed almost as a written viva, whereby the students note down what they found difficult, and what they did to resolve the problem. The translator log serves a similar purpose in the learning phase of the distance course: students are encouraged to be self-critical, and to use the log as a means of raising doubts and queries with the tutor. These queries over a period of time create a shifting diagnosis of the students weak points, develop the concept of reflective learning and establish the agenda for future tutorials. Students in the translation class are also required to keep the log as part of their work for credit, but they have the advantage of raising such queries within classroom discussion, something which is lacking in the one-to-one circumstances of the distance route. The log allows the tutor a greater level of insight into the individual students needs and interests and also serves a useful secondary function of creating an interchange at personal level between the tutor and the student; this develops a more congenial working atmosphere, which in turn boosts motivation for both parties (to judge by the range of questions that arise and the level of dialogue and debate that ensues). However, the pace of feedback is important in this context, as an item may crop up in one assignment which ought to be rectified before the next one comes in. The problem with paper-based communication (which includes fax) is the lack of immediacy, with a turnaround time of at least a week for queries. A lot of students are unable to telephone during the day, and the evenings may not be convenient for either party. A lot of the tutors are
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already working in the evenings, at City or elsewhere and some are registered for parttime higher degrees which involve evening commitments. Until now, we have used e-mail for tutorials over a day or half-day to allow for transmission time, but this can be difficult with students in other time zones, which is quite a common phenomenon. Buenos Aires is only three to four hours behind London, so mid to late afternoon is a good time for establishing contact.
3.
Course management issues
Working through distance is different in many ways from attendance mode, and the use of electronic communications adds a further dimension to staff input, student response and systems of administration.
3.1 Maintaining proper communication

The key aspect here is to establish and maintain contact by different means and to ensure that frequent and smooth informal communication is possible. This is not just between tutor and tutee, as the programme manager and course administrator also need to be involved. Contact needs to be maintained between all four points of reference, as it is important for all people involved to be able to contact each other smoothly when the need arises. Students like to get the enrolment procedure out of the way quickly, while for the office it is important to maintain a consistent flow of information, especially in the run-up to enrolment deadlines. For both sides it is important to keep procedures to a minimum, as duplicate or routine queries arising from unclear instructions can slow down the enrolment of one individual and hinder the smooth working of the system for the rest. Electronic-based application forms will speed up the registration process; the fax is almost as fast for this purpose but it lacks the scope of the immediate response which facilitates the processing of enquiries, unblocks in-trays and allows quite trivial matters to be cleared up quickly. It should be noted, however, that
this can create an additional burden for office staff, as a flood of enquiries can disrupt other activities and some rather too conscientious students can come back with too many questions, ranging from course enquiries to worries about finding jobs. An electronic admissions officer has therefore been appointed who has a City University e-mail address, but who actually lives in the Midlands, and may only come in to the university once or twice a month. His role is to handle the growing number of enrolment queries, to process applications and field the routine questions, then pass anything else straight on to the right person, be that the administrator, coordinator or tutor. Dependence on any system increases the problem of what will happen when anything goes wrong. In the case of the Argentinian course over 250 messages were received in one term, which shows how large the information flow on even a medium-sized course can be. Equally, administration and tutoring become very dependent on good system support, so any downtime can cause quite disproportionate harm, as we found when there was a major glitch between the university server and the one in Buenos Aires. This was very disruptive as it cropped up (inevitably) at the busiest time of the term, but it proved possible to send messages via a third party in Buenos Aires, who could communicate with both sides. The only solution in the end was to change server.
3.2 More flexible working

Few of our staff (academic or admin) work exclusively on the distance programmes, and although enrolment is flexible it tends to coincide with the full range of activities that the start of the term or the academic year normally entail. Inevitably, once the course has started, pressures build up on both staff and students and there can be conflicting demands on their time. Distance students are faced with a wider range of constraints than full-time or even regular part-time students: most of them are working and have often chosen the distance route because it can be organised around work commitments, which explains the occa33
sional curiosity of having a distance student whose postcode is almost identical to our own! A significant number of students have young families and are using the course during extended maternity leave to update their qualifications and stay in contact with the outside world. Our target is to turn individual assignments round within seven days. Postal delays need to be taken into account, especially with certain countries or even (as experience shows) particular cities or regions. Cost can be a factor in the use of the phone; the student has to ring in at an agreed time, thereby paying for the call, but this could be prohibitively expensive when calling from abroad and the line may not be clear. It was agreed with Buenos Aires that greater control could be had over the course if all work was sent in and returned as a single batch, using a provider like DHL. This has proved to be difficult in practice, as one or two students send their work in very early, and then have to wait a long time for their feedback, whilst the tutors tend to keep back the items they have marked pending the arrival of the odd late items. We are now moving towards a system whereby the students (who are all on e-mail) transmit their work direct to the tutor, with a copy to both the Colegio and University as proof of transmission, and for the sake of security in case of computer failure or the loss of a disk. Fax has always been an essential part of the service, especially for students who wait until the last moment before enrolling in order to delay or spread actual payment by using credit cards. Our homepage is now being revamped to include on-line enrolment forms which can be returned by e-mail or, if need be, faxed. We do not currently encourage payment over the Internet, though, as secure systems are not yet in place at university level for this to happen and so we still request payment by post or fax. Plain-paper fax machines are more than a convenience or status symbol as standard fax paper is clumsy to store and unpleasant to write on. The increasing availability of the email and its general level of reliability have led to the fax being seen as a piece of rather irritating intermediate technology.3
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3.3. The Web as a source of learning material

Advice sheets are provided for students about useful websites, and these are now being channelled into a separate web page, with links to our other pages. Categories include country profiles, language learning, sources of reference and oddities (like weather forecasts around the world, which can be a key factor for people in the insurance business.) Sources are not added automatically to the core collection; they are added as tutors and students recommend them. There is no shortage of sites available, and it saves everyones time if they have been explored and checked in advance. It is hoped that students will interact informally with each other via CityTrans, an electronic classroom based on the facilities provided by WebCT.4 This was the culmination of a long search to find an existing system which was reliable, accessible and reasonable in price. It offers administrative facilities ranging from class lists to course questionnaires as well as teaching and learning resources which include chat rooms, external references and e-mail for one-to-one or group tutorials. Access is via an individual student code as the system runs on the basis of a user licence for a given period of time which is just beginning, so it is too soon to comment yet on its effectiveness. It is not intended to make the service public anyway, as open discussion groups tend to suffer from large dollops of spam, ranging from unwanted advertising to pornography. There may also be copyright implications to making background notes and other learning materials generally available. CityTrans is designed to have a publicly accessible frontpage and noticeboard so that casual visitors can see what the system has to offer, but the rest will be accessible to registered users holding the code and their own password. The intention is to provide a value-added element to the course programme to offset the fact that distance students have hitherto suffered from isolation, both from the university and each other. They will now be given informal support by being linked to each other and the tutors, and will be able to take advantage of the immediacy of the
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Internet to receive course information through the bulletin board as well as supplementary materials. It is also hoped to maintain ongoing discussion and debate on themes of general interest, such as dictionaries, learning resources and methods of technique.
3.4 The position of the tutor

Despite the emphasis on learner-based activities, the role of the tutor is still crucial: student response to assignments and study packs needs to be anticipated, and the students own background and current levels of expertise need to be projected into the response. Working relationships have to be established by using mainly the written word, as background information on the students prior study is not always detailed or complete; individual circumstances are not as immediately apparent as they are when dealing with students in a departmental environment on a regular basis, and there is less opportunity to build up a picture of the students working background, study style or individual requirements. This is sometimes apparent when staff and distance tutors meet at the Plenary Lecture which brings all the students together once a term and some of them travel enormous distances to be there. A side effect of working at a distance is how curious people are to meet someone that they feel they know very well, and yet have no idea what they look like. At the Plenary Lecture we have a special corner set up for students and staff to meet at the reception, as they need to identify each other in a crowd of 80100 people. The move towards working on the Internet for staff has been steady but informal. All staff (visiting, external or full-time) are encouraged to sign onto the university network, which gives them access to the full range of standard computer packages, the Internet and the Web. Over 30% are registered on the network, though they tend to be the ones who teach more than 812 hours a week and who therefore spend some time in the tutors room which has two PCs for general staff use, or the Languages workshop which has four. About 15% of the tutors are on-line at home. Nearly all the tutors use Word 6; one uses a MacinVol 11 No 2 September 1999
tosh and a few renegades are still using WordPerfect 6 or even 5.1. The university offers fairly basic introductory courses to newcomers, though it is increasingly rare for tutors not to be computer-literate, and they may in fact have considerable expertise. E-mail is increasingly used for matters of general departmental administration; handy discussion groups and websites are surfed by different tutors, who then forward matters of interest to individuals or the whole departmental staff list. It has been unusual for more than one tutor to be involved with the same distance group, but we have found in the case of the Argentinian course that it is important for everyone to be connected, to allow for all-way traffic. Those tutors are now being encouraged to get connected at home if they are not already for easier communication and faster turnaround. In fact, one of the reasons for setting up CityTrans is the amount of informal communication taking place in vacation as well as termtime, and the number of queries raised that are of general interest, like reporting on useful works of reference or new websites. There has been little difficulty with compatibility, though the package used for attachments is the subject of early negotiation, with Text Only or Rich Text Format used as a compromise if Word 6 cannot be read for any reason (Text Only is irritating as it inevitably needs some tidying up before it can be downloaded). Diacritics are largely ignored, though interest in this feature is shown in particular among the tutors whose students are translating out of English. Student work sent over the Internet tends to arrive in good condition, and it is customary to check and send an acknowledgement straightaway. There is little difficulty in using attachments, but as the texts are not long it is sometimes better to send them cut and pasted into the body of the message. Students are asked to send everything together covering letters, queries etc, as it is timewasting to open and print out separately several items that really belong together, and it is easier to store like that as well. Some concern has been expressed about introducing viruses through attachments, but existing virus traps have proved to be effective to date.
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Additional support needs to be given to tutors who themselves are working at a distance and do not have the advantage of the back-up to be derived from daily contact with colleagues working on the same programme and the facilities available to staff on campus. This has become a growing issue within the context of Teaching Quality Assurance and the employment trend towards viewing part-time and sessional tutors in the same light as fulltimers, and has led to a closer examination into the possible use of mentors in future as well as the existing coordinator for liaison purposes.
4.
Concluding points
3.5 Student support

It is important in the context of a distance course for students to feel that they are as much part of the organisation as those regularly on site. Advice needs to be given on the use of inter-library loan facilities, and on suitable libraries in the students locality who may be willing at least to provide reader access. They should not feel disadvantaged by not having easy access, for example, to standard university facilities such as the main campus library. Even in relatively accessible parts of Britain students can experience difficulty in obtaining copies of standard works. (One student in Huddersfield complained in January 1999 that the local library had given two months as the likely time for getting one item on our reading list through inter-library loan). It is usually possible to provide distance students with a letter for the local university requesting access for consultation only, though the response from different institutions varies from those which impose limits ranging from evenings only to vacation only, and some (such as Senate House in the University of London) which now make a daily charge for non-members. For the Argentinian students, there is the library at the Colegio, a full range of representatives covering UK publishers, and one of the worlds largest book fairs that runs for three weeks every year in April. An increasing number are looking to Amazon.com as a book supplier, which has the advantage over European suppliers of charging in dollars, which is quoted at par with the Argentine peso5.
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The distance activities at City University constitute a significant proportion of the work carried out by the Division of Languages. These courses have been devised for very specific types of student who are all at post-experience level, and it may therefore not be appropriate to apply our experience to a broader range of distance learners or distance learning programmes. However, the influence of the Internet has been growing steadily, and it is increasingly limiting to have to work with students who are not accessible on-line. What is even more irritating, it must be said, is the number of employers who will still not allow their staff to have access to the Internet, inside or outside working hours. Others, as a major concession, will allow our students to transmit tutorial material, but will not allow them to receive anything for fear of contamination from web-borne contaminants such as cookies, spam, or even trojans. But that surely should not impede the use of the computer as one of the most powerful learning tools that a training officer could wish for. Any self-respecting organisation nowadays ought to be protected by a firewall and other electronic defences against malicious users. Access to learning systems should be seen not just as a bonus for the conscientious worker, but as an important factor in upskilling and staff training.
Notes
1. City University won the Institutes Schlapp Oliver Shield for the best joint entry in the 1998 examination. 2. SENACs web page is located at www.city.ac.uk/linguanews. Support from the Adult Education Providers Forum of the City of London Corporation in the development of the London Market Language Exchange initiative is gratefully acknowledged. On-line activities are likely to increase with the recent inauguration of the Open Learning Centre at City, with funding which includes an IT for Excellence award from the Department for Education and Employment and a generous donation from Sir Murray Fox, a former Lord Mayor and Chancellor of the University. ReCALL
Web support for distance learners: T Connell 3. Languages was the first department in the University to include the e-mail address on its headed paper. The Universitys e-mail address book is accessible from outside, unless individual staff prefer to be ex-directory. 4. Educational Technologies Corporation, 4238 West 14th Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6R 2X8. www.webct.com 5. Amazon claims to stock 1.5 million titles and to supply customers in 160 countries: www.amazon.co.uk
References
Connell T. and Pollard G. (1993), Languages for tomorrows graduates, Language International 5 (3). Connell T. J. (1992), What makes perfect in professional practice, The Linguist, May 1992. THES 98, Distance learning in Argentina, Times Higher Education Supplement 17, July 1998, p. 12. Connell T. J. (1998), CPD training for Argentinian translators. University Association for Continuing Education conference, University of Glasgow, September 1998. (Publication of proceedings pending.) Tim Connell is Professor in Languages for the Professions at City University in London. Division of Languages, City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB. Tel: 0171 477 8265 Fax: 0171 477 8266. e-mail: tjc@city.ac.uk
Acknowledgements
With thanks to my webwise collegues Isabelle Marcoul, Cristina Mateo and Peter Holl for their ongoing support.
37
ReCALL 11:2 (1999) 3845
Proposal for an online language course
Susan A Curtis1, Joanne Duchastel2 and Nebojsa Radic2

1University
of British Columbia, 2University of Auckland
This paper takes the form of a proposal for a computer mediated language course delivered at a distance and administered jointly by two different institutions, the universities of British Columbia (UBC) and Auckland (UA). It examines the possible institutional context(s), the target group, gives a course description with a list of learning objectives, curriculum topics, a description of the courses epistemology, design, development plan, delivery methods and student support, and offers a justification for the development of the course. In conclusion, the paper looks into the possible strengths of such a course as well as the challenges of implementation.
Introduction
Universitas 21 (an organisation comprising 21 universities around the Pacific rim) Department Heads of Continuing Studies met recently to discuss possible projects to further their goals of increased internationalisation. As a result of this meeting, The University of Aucklands English Language Centre and UBCs English Language Institute saw a number of areas in which they could collaborate. This is a proposal for the design and delivery of one such project, a distributed course in International Business English (IBE).
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Institutional Context
The University of Auckland is the largest tertiary institution in New Zealand. At present it is developing several language and culture computer mediated courses (Italian, French, Dutch) that will be delivered at a distance starting in July 1999. The establishment of Universitas 21 in 1997 (http://www.universitas.edu.au) moved UA closer to this goal by fostering closer ties with the University of British Columbia. UBC is the largest university in British Columbia, Canada, and is a well-established dual mode institution. The
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Proposal for an online language course: A Curtis et al
English Language Institution (ELI), a division of the Faculty of Continuing Studies at UBC, through its sister division, Distance Education & Technology (DET), has access to media services and project management teams to assist with course design and delivery. The University of Auckland has established its own TeleLearning Division within the Faculty of Arts that is responsible for the development of this project. UBC will provide a consultant from the DET division as well as an ELI instructor who will assist in the design of the course. Funding for the project will be provided jointly by both universities.
mum skills. Guidance with CD-ROM and Internet technology will be provided during the course of the programme and explored in the context of changing business communications. It is anticipated that few students will have taken a technology-based distributed learning course before; most students will have experienced the teacher-centred approaches to learning characteristic of the traditional classroom. While attention will be paid to preparing and guiding students through the more collaborative, constructivist elements of the course, care has also been taken to satisfy a variety of learning styles.
Target group
The IBE course is designed for students who wish to study business at the undergraduate or graduate level at an English speaking university but do not meet the language requirements for acceptance in regular programmes. Some of the applicants for the programme may be already in the workforce, but will not have experience in the business world (business professionals are advised to take our English for Executives programme). The target group is therefore relatively heterogeneous; there is likely to be an even mix of men and women, and while the majority of students will be in their early 20s, some may be older individuals who are considering a change of career. The course is expected to attract students from all over the world. However, an attempt will also be made to serve the large immigrant populations in both countries. Ideally, the course participants would represent a wide variety of cultures; the more multi-cultural the group, the richer the cross-cultural exchanges will be. As it is an upper-intermediate / advanced course, it is recommended that students have a minimum score of 550 (TOEFL) or 6.0 (IELTS) to enroll. All students will need to have access to a computer with a CD-ROM and have basic computer skills, i.e. a familiarity with Windows, simple Word Processing, and Web browsers. Since the course will be advertised primarily on the Internet, it is safe to say that most applicants will indeed have these miniVol 11 No 2 September 1999
Course description
IBE is a non-credit, upper intermediateadvanced level course that aims to teach English and cross-cultural awareness in the context of the business world. It is twelve weeks long and is designed to build students confidence and enhance their communication, problemsolving and team building skills. The following are key words in describing this course: distance students who do not have access or time to attend campus classes are able to enroll; flexible students can study at the time and pace that best suits them; multi-media video and audio clips and CMC text from a variety of sources provide students with examples of authentic material; interactive course material is interactive and students also have the opportunity to interact with peers, tutors and special guest tutors; personalised students will be in constant touch with their tutor via e-mail and the feedback will therefore be prompt (subject to time-zone constraints); integrative each unit builds on the previously learned language and communication skills.
Course objectives
The course objectives are as follows:
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1 To build fluency and confidence in using English as a medium of communication within the business context. 2 To develop skills in: writing business correspondence (letter, fax, e-mail) and reports; expressing opinions and presenting arguments on business issues in a clear and efficient manner; acquisition of vocabulary specific to the business environment; use of appropriate social English formulas for business; use of appropriate gambits and strategies for participation in meetings and negotiations; use of appropriate technology (Internet, email) to retrieve, select, process and integrate information relevant to the business context. 3 To foster awareness and understanding of cross-cultural and gender issues in the business world.
Course topics
The curriculum is theme-based and is organised around topics relevant to different career streams in business. Topics include: Company Organisation and Administration Personnel Issues Business Travel and Entertaining Sales and Marketing Economic Issues and International Trade Business Ethics and Gender Issues International Finance
Epistemology
Language teaching must take an eclectic approach to learning; no single approach or perspective is sufficient if we wish to enable our students to gain mastery of the subject. Pratt identifies five different perspectives on teaching: transmission, apprenticeship, developmental, nurturing and social reform (Pratt 1997). Language teaching borrows a little from each of at least the first four of these
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perspectives. We teach grammar, syntax, vocabulary and so on; we both model correct use of the language and try to provide authentic contexts wherein students can learn by doing. And we encourage students to build on prior knowledge so that, particularly in English for Special Purposes (ESP) courses such as this, students improve their language skills through problem solving in areas where they are able to bring their background knowledge to bear on the content. Finally, we try to give our students the confidence and the tools they need to continue learning beyond the classroom. In an English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom, an instructor may change the dynamics of the classroom so that it moves from being teacher centred to learner centred within any given unit/class. The focus shifts from delivery of language content to developing ways of thinking in English. Once given the rules , the students then attempt to use the language in contexts that are relevant to them. Communicative competence, however, involves more than just a knowledge of rules. Students must also learn to negotiate meaning. This they learn to do through interacting with each other as much as through correction by the teacher. In addition to all of this, a key goal in an ESL classroom, particularly when students have lower levels of proficiency, is to build students confidence so that they can move from the safe environment of the classroom to the unpredictable world beyond. This is no less true in the context of a virtual classroom in a distributed learning course. Underlying the design of this course is the belief that, as in a campus based programme, a number of different approaches need to be combined in order to maximise the effectiveness of the course. A combination of teacher and student centred approaches must be used in order to be effective. Although these approaches stem from two very different views regarding the nature of knowledge, it is not necessary to choose one epistemology to the exclusion of the other. Bednar et al. argue that it is inconceivable to mix epistemologies in an instructional program (Bednar et al. 1992) because to do so is to suggest an impossibility: i.e. that two contradictory views of
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reality are both true. We would argue, however, that there are different kinds of knowledge structures, and by suggesting that some knowledge has an objective reality, we do not necessarily deny that other kinds of knowledge are indeed constructed and dependent on the interpretation of the individual. In teaching languages, we are dealing with both the objective and subjective realms. Grammar rules, although subject to change over time, are objective in the sense that they present a body of rules through which practitioners of the language have established a common understanding of good practice and a sense of what is right or wrong. Without these rules, we would be back in the Tower of Babel. Grammatical rules give us a framework, a starting place from which to make sense of the language. Whether we learn these rules by memorising them or by a process of inductive reasoning, they nevertheless remain an objective constant to all users of the standard form of the language which students wish to learn. In other words, we can teach these rules from either a behaviourist or a constructivist perspective: the teacher can simply transmit the rules or the students can be guided to work them out for themselves. Both types of exercise have value. Learning from cognitive constructivist principles goes beyond the assimilation of facts and implies the construction of meaningful and useful knowledge structures (Garrison 1993:202). However, to recognise this does not necessarily mean that we must discount the value of behaviourist drills. Although behaviourism seems to have fallen into disrepute in recent years, it is clear that behavioural or instructional objectives and measurable language competencies still form an important part of language curricula. This is particularly true at lower levels of proficiency where drills and positive reinforcement of correct answers are an important part of the language class. It is important, however, that teaching should not remain only at the level of behaviourist drills, and that it moves toward a more engaging use of the language. Since language and culture are so intimately entwined, it is not enough to simply memorise rules; students must become sensitive to the cultural relativity
of metalinguistic communication strategies and discourse markers, as well as be alert to regional varieties of English. Moreover, students need to acquire learning strategies that will assist them to continue learning beyond the end of the course. The concept of the learner centred curriculum (Nunan 1987) and the notion that students learn more readily when personally engaged in the material has emerged to take centre stage in language learning theory. Rather than working from set exercises and texts that may or may not have relevance to the lives of the students, instructors are encouraged to include students in decisions regarding materials and give them the opportunity to use language in meaningful contexts. The teacher, as Warschauer points out in discussing networkbased teaching, should become less of a sage on the stage and more of a facilitator, coordinating group planning, focusing students attention on linguistic aspects of computer mediated texts, helping students gain meta-linguistic awareness of genres and discourses, and assisting students in developing appropriate learning strategies. (Warschauer 1997:31). It is a delicate balancing act. The teacher as sage can give a right/wrong answer to an incorrectly conjugated present perfect verb, but in situations where there is no right answer, the teacher must act as a guide, providing students with strategies for deciding their own answers to semantic or stylistic questions.
Course design
Although the course is designed for maximum flexibility, students will be strongly advised to follow a timetable that will help them meet the deadlines for the submission of assignments and tests. Students should cover four 60-minute lessons weekly. The first two of these lessons will be on CD-ROM and will feature language reinforcement exercises in a multimedia environment (video, audio, graphics). Some of the exercises will take the form of right/wrong drill exercises and others will involve student interpretation and problem solving. The CD41
ROM has a similar look to the one published by the University of Victoria: (www.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/elc/bus-eng/). For the first two lessons of the week, the student will be required to do the prescribed prior reading for the unit. All of the readings will be available on the course web site so the students will have the option of either reading from the screen or printing the material. Some readings will be posted by the instructor; others will be researched on the Internet and selected by the students. The third and the fourth lessons of each week will be designed so as to integrate the grammar and vocabulary components within a business context activity for the topic/theme particular for that week. These lessons will be Internet based and will require the students to follow a given link, select, retrieve a specific piece of information that in order to complete the task should be processed and integrated into a wider business context. A typical problem solving activity on the Internet might look like the Business Meetings Maze created at The University of Stirling (www.stir.ac.uk/ epd/celt/staff/higdox/Vallance/Diss/fp.htm). The first two lessons of each week will be the same for all of the students while for the third and fourth, students will be divided into three groups. Each of the groups will be assigned a different task. These tasks are designed to provide students with the opportunity to use language in authentic situations. To complete the tasks students will be required to negotiate meaning among themselves and attempt to arrive at a consensus on the solution to the problem. Some tasks will involve contacting an entity (company, other university, school, ministry, bank, tourist agency...), retrieving pertinent information and integrating it into a report. In preparation for lessons three and four of each week students will participate in an online, course-related discussion, Wall Street Discussion Forum, that will be facilitated by a tutor.
opment of the course. The team will be composed of: a Project Manager from the Distance Education Department; an English Language Instructor/tutors; an Advisor from the Faculty of Commerce who will assist in the development of the course curriculum; an Internet expert (putting the web page on the net and maintenance); a Graphics Designer for the web page and the CD-ROMs; an AV team and a computer programmer; a market researcher; an advertising agent; an evaluator from the Centre for Professional Development.
The course will be monitored and facilitated by the course tutors who will use a Tutors Manual, to be produced by the course coordinator. Prior to the beginning of the course, the tutors will undergo special training that will help them deal with online teaching issues. The ideal student-tutor ratio for this course is estimated to be 15:1. As this is a non-credit course, assessment will be informal. Feedback will be given on quizzes and assignments, but students will not be assigned a global grade at the end of the course. Students will be asked to evaluate the course to assist in the ongoing course development.
Delivery methods
The course will rely on delivery methods that permit asynchronous learning. Since students are potentially enrolling from all parts of the globe, it would not be practical to attempt synchronous discussion groups. Students will be encouraged, however, to utilise synchronous chat software such as ICQ on small group projects where possible. The course will make use of printed matter, CD-ROM and the Internet. The long-term goal of the programme developers is to deliver the complete programme online via the Internet. However, due to techReCALL
Development
A systems approach will be taken to the devel42
nical constraints (bandwidth) it is currently safer to deliver the multimedia components via CD-ROMs, and due to the learning background and experience of our students, which is generally based on classroom teaching and printed materials, we will deliver the introductory parts as printed matter. Two weeks prior to the commencement of the course, the student will receive a study guide which will include two CD-ROMs, each featuring 24 lessons, an outline of the course, important dates (tests, assignments), relevant web, email and postal addresses, and names of tutors. The study guide will contain the booklet Web Skills for Language Learners that is designed to introduce the non-initiated to the world of the Internet and is also available on www.well.ac.uk/teacher/wellproj/wellbook.htm. The course web site contains all the information relevant to the course, links to on-line databases, and provides for the time-framed tests that the students will write. The web site will also have links to two discussion rooms (course related and informal). Periodically throughout the course, the discussion group will host a guest speaker from the business community or the Faculty of Commerce, providing authentic interaction. Students will also use the discussion groups to prepare group presentations, and will correspond with their tutor and peers by email.
al.:139). Students will be encouraged to create personal web pages on the course site and participate in ice-breaking activities in the Cyber Caf during the first week. Administrative support will be set in place to provide students with technical assistance. Prior to the formal start of the course, students will receive printed materials with the names, phone numbers, and email addresses of contact people to call should they encounter any difficulties in accessing any of the course materials. Students will also receive a Web Skills for Language Learners document. A variety of support resources will be available on the Internet site: an FAQ page, a technical help desk, and links to library resources. There will also be a Students Liaison on-line centre (International Student Union, Student Travel, etc.). Students will be able to contact their tutors via email, ICQ and, if they are local, by telephone.
Justification for course development

New Zealand is not a densely populated country. Many students live in areas not covered by any tertiary education institutions. Our proposal allows people living at a geographic distance from the university, people who for professional, family or other reasons have difficulty travelling to campus, access to training which may have been previously denied. In a real way, this solution permits the University of Auckland to fulfil one of their goals, which is to cater to the needs of students living in a broader Australasian area for an Advanced Business English course. Similarly UBC hopes to attract students who for reasons of geography, transportation, work schedules, and so on find it inconvenient or too costly to travel to the UBC campus. Both UA and UBC are committed to internationalisation and hope to extend their programmes beyond the borders of their countries to those who cannot afford to travel abroad to study. This course gives prospective students the flexibility of learning when and where they
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Student support
Student support is extremely important in ensuring that students continue to feel connected to the programme in which they are enrolled; this is especially the case since students are physically isolated from each other and from the tutors. Students must receive clear guidance regarding the administration of the course as well as on matters related to the course content. It will be critical to establish ways in which students can establish good working relationships with peers and tutors at the beginning of the course. It is important to establish a sense of cohesion among course members early on, otherwise students will feel isolated rather than part of a class (Harasim et
want. This possibility cannot be matched by the traditional on-campus lectures. Such a mode of delivery is expected to be attractive to potential students who are currently both part of the workforce and part of the academic community.
Strengths of the proposed course

accessibility to anyone with postal service, a telephone line and basic Internet services (hardly universality, but feasible in North America, New Zealand and Australia); time and place independent (no classes to attend, but a limited number of timetables to respect); access to a large number of learners; structured course materials which form a knowledge base and can be improved with each session and student; relatively low cost (in the long run, though!): limited amount of technology needed; learners drive discussion even if the discussion topics and subjects are determined in advance; accumulation of wisdom through the discussion of each group of learners (even though the subject matter is to a large extent predefined); accumulation of subject matter independent of the teacher: broad based, ownership of intellectual property; ideal for competency knowledge and skills such as grammar and writing; a systematic approach to teaching and learning.
Challenges to Implementation
There are a number of challenges to implementing the IBE course using this model. Our approach places a large onus on learners to organise and discipline themselves. In addition, students often experience isolation due to little social interaction. This can affect student motivation and drive. However, measures have been taken to account for this possibility.
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Though distance learning is less time driven than classroom learning, it is still time driven (see our comments on delivery) and this may create problems for some students who would actually prefer to set their own pace entirely. Although we believe that the majority of students studying on this type of course would like to feel that they are part of a community, albeit a virtual one, there will be some who are not particularly interested in communicating with anyone other than the tutor. In the campus classroom there are often some students who, perhaps being accustomed to teacher centred approaches in their home countries, believe they cannot learn from their peers. These same students will need special encouragement in order to win them over to a more collaborative style of learning. Body language is very important in any kind of communication and forms an important part of cross-cultural awareness. In this language course, observation of body language is limited to the scenarios found in the video clips and there is no opportunity for live interaction. Ideally a language course should integrate the four skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening; in this approach it is not possible to focus on speaking skills. It is possible that in the future, as video-phones and desktop video-conferencing software become more commonplace, a speaking skills component could be built into the course. Computer mediated distance learning can be both intimidating and confusing as well as isolating. It may be a challenge to ensure that all participants remain engaged and motivated to participate. Tutors will be vigilant in the first weeks of the course in contacting all students to make sure they are comfortable with the technology and are able to access the materials properly. This course is highly dependent on software and hardware reliability. Without the tools, the student is stranded and unable to continue learning. Students may become frustrated and disenchanted with the course, for example, if they frequently encounter problems accessing the course materials or discusReCALL
sion groups on the Internet. In addition in some countries, access to the Internet is still very expensive. In the long run, however, Internet technology will become more widespread and cheaper. Eventually we envisage being able to do away with the CD-ROMs and exploit the multimedia possibilities of the Internet. One of the biggest challenges to implementation of this course is the fact that it requires a high capital investment; the systems approach to course design and development is very expensive and there is no guarantee of return on that investment. However, research indicates that there is indeed a large market for a course such as this one, so in the long run, we would argue that the risk is worth taking.
Education 14 (2), 199211. Harasim L., Hiltz S.R., Teles L. and Turoff M. (1997) Learning Networks, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press Nunan D. (1987) The Learner-Centred Curriculum, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pratt D.D. (1997) Five Perspectives on Teaching in Adult and Higher Education, Malabar, Florida: Kreiger, 3952. Warschauer M. and Whittaker P. F. (1997) The Internet for English Teaching: Guidelines for Teachers, TESOL Reporter 30 (1) 27-33.
Susan A. Curtis (University of British Columbia) has been teaching English for over 12 years and has been CALL Head Teacher at UBC's English Language Institute since 1997. She is exploring the multi-media possibilities offered by the Internet for language teaching in both distance and campus-based courses. Joanne Duchastel lives in Montreal where she runs a business in custom course design and development working with instructional designers, authors, translators and project managers. Nebojsa Radic (University of Auckland) is Senior Tutor in the Italian department of the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is interested in the methodology of computer mediated language instruction at a distance and is currently working on the design and development of a Computer-mediated course in Italian for beginners at a distance (www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/tele/italianI/italian1.html)
References
Bednar A.K., Cunningham D., Duffy T.M. and Perry J.D. (1992) Theory into Practice: How Do We Link. In Duffy T.M. and Jonassen D.H. (eds.), Constructivism and the Technology of Instruction, Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates, 1834. Garrison D.R. (1993) A Cognitive Constructivist View of Distance Education: An Analysis of Teaching-Learning Assumptions, Distance
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ReCALL 11:2 (1999) 4654
Adding a new perspective to distance (language) learning and teaching the tutors perspective
Mirjam Hauck and Bernard Haezewindt
The Open University, UK
To respond to students need for more speaking practice, the Open Universitys Centre for Modern Languages is currently investigating the benefits of using an Internet-based, real-time audio application in distance learning/teaching. During a four-month trial period, French and German students met at weekly intervals to use the target language and participated in role-plays or other pre-arranged learning tasks requiring collaborative interaction. This paper describes the FLUENT (Framework for Language Use in Environments Embedded in New Technology) project from the tutors point of view, focusing on how learner autonomy and the tutor role were affected by the new learning environment.
1. The challenge
Open University students study at home, at a distance both from each other and from their tutors. For this reason they depend primarily on traditional distance learning methods of delivery such as print material, video tapes, audio cassettes and occasional (up to 18 hours per year) face-to-face tutorials in one of the Open Universitys 13 regional centres. Apart from one week of total immersion in the target language at residential Schools in Caen (France) and Jena (Germany), these face-toface tutorials usually provide the only opportunity for learners to practise their oral skills in authentic communicative settings. Moreover, access to a summer course in the target
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culture is limited to second and third year students for whom they are a compulsory part of their studies.
2. A potential solution
To respond to the needs of all students for more speaking practice, the Centre for Modern Languages is currently investigating the benefits of using an Internet-based, real-time audio conferencing application. The increased robustness of Internet audio technology allows us not only to use voice conferencing in a genuinely interactive and synchronous way but also offers the kind of access and flexibility which is vital for the promotion of
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A new perspective to distance learning: M Hauck and B Haezewindt
autonomous learning: A feature which is notably absent from most distance language learning settings is the option for learners to collaborate with each other outside inflexible, scheduled meeting times. While the use of telephone conferencing and e-mail addressed this problem to some extent [], there was still no affordable way for them to participate in synchronous interactions which were flexible as to time, fluency and the number and composition of participating groups. (Ktter et al.: forthcoming) Johnston (1999:86) claims that on-line learning has appropriated notions such as flexibility and efficiency and skewed their meanings so as to make it appear that on-line learning is the panacea for all our ills. In his view the only flexibility offered by online courses is that of time-asynchronicity and self-pacing. Internetbased audio conferencing however, introduces synchronicity. This novelty not only enables the students to collaborate in a totally flexible environment, it also provides the tutors with tools to change from sage on the stage to guide on the side or, as Johnston (1999:86) puts it: The kind of flexibility that teachers seek is that of matching the individual needs of students and in particular of making the timely intervention and the time!y non-intervention.
in ways which are difficult to achieve otherwise (Kearsley et al. 1998:20). In this paper then, we examine, in the light of Kearsleys and Shneidermans suggestions, the results of recent trials with first level Open University German learners as well as second level French learners using Internet-based, synchronous voice conferencing, and discuss how learner autonomy and the tutor role are affected by such a learning environment. At the same time we wish to emphasise that our main objective was to facilitate students learning through the use of technology rather than to see how useful technology could be to support learning languages at a distance in other words, the enterprise was led by pedagogical rather than technological considerations.
4. The teaching/learning environment

The Internet-based learning environment used for the FLUENT Project (see figure 1) includes three main components: an audio-conferencing client (with a text chat facility) a website e-mail
3. The conceptual framework

Shneiderman (1993b) stresses that computing and communication technologies have opened up new possibilities in the educational environment by empowering students in remarkable ways. The fundamental idea underlying his Relate-Create-Donate theory is that students must be meaningfully engaged in learning activities through interaction with others and worthwhile tasks (Kearsley et al.1998:20). While this kind of engagement, of course, does not necessarily depend on the use of technology, it is probably true to say that technology can facilitate engagement
Most of our learners have found it to be relatively simple to set up the software. Those few who did encounter difficulties were supported via telephone and e-mail by the technical specialists on the research team. They were also able to seek additional advice during the weekly clinics offered throughout the lifecycle of the project. The website contained technical information in the form of a list of Frequently Asked Questions. Apart from that, it provided information about the content of the learning activities. While the German students were given a complete outline of each activity beforehand, the information for the linguistically more advanced French learners was updated on a need to know basis. E-mail was used extensively. More than 1000 messages were exchanged between the
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members of the research team, the research team and the students, and between the students themselves. E-mail served various purposes: The research team used this tool to send and receive feedback questionnaires as well as the students logs or diaries of project-related activities; The tutors provided feedback and/or answered questions via e-mail; The learners used e-mail to arrange meetings outside the scheduled, tutor-facilitated online events and to send each other material to prepare for these events.
The many ways in which e-mail was used during the course of the FLUENT project illustrate that it is [] one of the most important collaborative tools, and [that] it usually serves as the communication backbone for all activities (Kearsley et al. 1998: 21).
5.
The learners
The initial project trials were carried out between October 1998 and February 1999 and involved students who had successfully completed the final year of the three-year French diploma or the first year of the three-year German diploma programme. Approximately 20 students from the French and 30 from the Ger-
man programme volunteered to participate in the trials. Having completed the diploma programme, the French learners simply wished to continue studying French. The German learners found themselves in the interim phase between the end of one German course and the beginning of the next and welcomed the opportunity for speaking and listening practice. All students received training in using the software before the task-based sessions proper began. The software allowed the students to create their own spaces (virtual rooms) where they met in pairs or small groups to engage in real-time interaction. Thus, the learners were empowered to study in collaboration with others and to make the transition from learning in isolation to taking on responsibility for their own learning experience. As with other networked environments, students could access the audio conferencing client on a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week-basis and were thus able to catch up with their peers if they had missed a scheduled session. We noticed that online provision of language courses to adults suffers from the same problems of occasional absenteeism which befall traditional face-to-face tuition in evening classes. This led us to review our methodology in order to minimise the disruptions caused by the absence of some students at particular times during course delivery, as witnessed by the following learner:
Figure 1 The FLUENT learning environment
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I have to go to a business meeting tonight so I will not be able to take part in the second activity. I am disappointed about this and hope that I will be able to be filled in on what transpires this evening and that I will be able to conference with some of the participants during the coming week please let me know what can be arranged.
someone could not attend a session); (re-) confirm that everyone was familiar with the task; pull activities together (either each student or a speaker nominated by a group presented the outcome of the activity or the current state of affairs).
6.
The online events
6.1. The German sessions

Two groups of 15 learners met at weekly intervals to use the target language. As students are not strongly motivated by the goals of acquiring facts, accessing information, drill & practice , but rather prefer to create, communicate, plan, explore, build, discover, participate, initiate, and collaborate (Shneiderman 1994) they participated in role plays or other pre-arranged learning tasks requiring collaborative interaction. They were engaged in problem-solving activities designed in such a way that they had to arrange additional online meetings outside the official tutorials to exchange ideas, negotiate solutions, and prepare a joint presentation of their work. Plenary sessions took place at the beginning and at the end of online events and served to: sort out organisational issues (e.g., rearrangements of pairs or groups when

The most exciting aspect of the project for our learners was, however, participating in intense interactions with fellow students as well as in collaborative tasks. As the examples contained in figure 2 illustrate, feedback from students supports Shneidermans (1994) findings: The intense interactions [] have created a greater sense of interaction and intimacy among the students than many face-to-face courses.
6.2. The French sessions

Eighteen learners met regularly on Wednesday evenings for the French FLUENT course to work in the main room. To provide smoothly running activities and to prevent a minority of very eager students from completing the whole task beforehand on their own, a minimal amount of instructions was published on the projects website for the French sessions. There was just enough information to supply a sufficient framework for a weeks work, and to create an element of surprise at the beginning of each week. Students worked in groups they organised themselves. Those who had to be absent at any
It [the project] gave me the opportunity to talk to a group of people most of whom I had never met before, in a purposeful way It encouraged us to interact with each other [the project] gave individuals & groups the opportunity to develop it [interaction] as they wished and encouraged discussion before the session I particularly enjoyed communicating with other people whom I have not ever met especially through the medium of German Allowed me to get to know people I have noticed an improvement in my oral German already I liked the immediacy of the project, that we are straight into the German language, as the facial expressions and body language are lost it is not as easy as when in a real German situation, but better than any other class situation I like the contact with other students, and the growing companionship with them, the feeling of support
Figure 2 Learner feedback from the FLUENT project (German students)
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time used extra curricular sessions to pass on their prepared work to fellow learners or to be briefed on the work in hand. These sessions took place at the students convenience, most of the time at weekends, and were completely outside the tutors control. After one or two sessions where some students found themselves to be the only representatives of their groups, it was decided that, for the tutor-facilitated sessions, groups should be arranged on an ad hoc basis once everyone had logged on. This had, of course, some repercussions on community building during extra-curricular sessions.
larly careful approach with regard to error correction (see below). develop strategies that require students to take a more active role in the learning process, e.g. to stay deliberately out of the students rooms so that they have to work on their own. In this way we tried to help the students to progress towards autonomous learning by encouraging them to take risks in using the target language in the tutors absence.
7.
The tutor/facilitator
During the initial phase of the project, it was also crucial that the tutors kept encouraging students. However, as the project progressed, learners became increasingly independent. One German student wrote: During the last session we met and talked amongst ourselves without a tutor for the first 15 minutes and it struck me how much we had advanced since the first hesitant sessions. Thus the tutor turned gradually into a manager of learning resources and an organiser of learning events and students sense of engagement in shaping the course increased dramatically: The learning environment changes the role of the tutor to that of a facilitator, co-learner, and activity co-ordinator and allows learners and tutors to participate equally in the design process. (Ktter et al.: forthcoming)
With Shneiderman (1993a) we argue that [] imaginative teachers can find ways in every discipline and at every grade to create an atmosphere of exploration, novelty and challenge, and so designed activities that would not only create such a learning experience for the participants, but would also serve our main aim of fostering fluency via a real language in real time experience. During online events, the tutors visited the virtual rooms created by learners offering support when and where required/appropriate. They could also be called at any time to any of the rooms via the softwares Extend Invitation facility. The tutors turned out to be the key figures in the success of the whole project. They needed to feel 100% confident in the use of the online tools since this has a direct impact on the overall learner confidence, e.g., not to freeze when a students computer screen freezes or when a student can hear but not speak or vice versa. These problems were rare, but could turn into a serious obstacle if a tutor were not appropriately trained. adapt their teaching style to suit the environment, e.g. to learn to cope with long pauses, very often caused by learners who were too polite to answer before their peers took a turn. We also had to take a particu-
7.1 Error correction the German approach

Some of the German students, however, expressed a need for more feedback on their linguistic performance. One wrote that the facilitator seemed to be busy sorting out the organisation of the evening rather than our German and several learners asked for overt correction. It was therefore decided to offer anonymous feedback (via e-mail) on recurring errors during the last phase of the trial period and, additionally, German learners were referred to the relevant units (grammar explanations and activities) in their Open University
ReCALL
50
course material. The examples contained in figure 3 show that most learners welcomed this type of feedback whereas others seemed to be less satisfied with this method.
7.2 Error correction the French approach

At the outset of the French sessions the students were told that the tutor would not correct them. This decision was taken in order to allow them to work without any interruptions. They were reminded that the main focus of the project was to foster fluency. During a discussion centred around evaluation of the project, one student stressed that this approach helped her gain confidence in her command of French. However, she added that individualised feedback sent to the students after each session, so that they could confront their weaknesses outside the scheduled sessions, would be very welcome. Our experience proves that facilitators of online courses have to be extremely alert and very open to student feedback, be it from specific debriefing activities, or by sensing students reactions to a particular task in order to cut it short or to expand it in a previously unforeseen direction.
ting, and project. Moreover, the tutors roles are not static but in a constant state of flux. They change with the stages of the project and are, in a sense, defined by them. The roles are not always ones the teacher (or student) envisions, or even desires, at the outset. (Dias 1998:26): As confidant we tried to give the students an insight into the rationale behind the project so that they would be prepared to take on more initiative in the learning process. As nervous parents we had to cope with the possibility that computer-mediated communication, particularly in synchronous settings, is free from censure and therefore open to misuse of any kind. As trouble-shooters we were called upon to provide technical advice and sometimes found ourselves at the receiving end of Help! messages. But, as Dias (1998:24) puts it, the range of things that can go wrong [] is not endless and, eventually, even the most technically inept teacher can learn to diagnose problems and give appropriate advice. Some may even enjoy being seen as technical Messiahs. From a pedagogical point of view it increases the students immediate sense of success if the target language can be used to solve technical problems. As students we benefited from the learners readiness to co-operate, the team spirit they developed and, of course, their imagination. As human beings the flexibility provided by the audio client enabled us to exchange ideas with the other participants beyond the limits of the scheduled events and
7.3 Changing roles

With regard to the ten teacher-roles identified by Dias (1998) in projects based on computer-mediated communication, we mainly experienced the teacher as confidant, teacher as nervous parent, teacher as trouble-shooter, teacher as student and teacher as human being stages. Those phases do not, however, occur in a specific order and Dias (1998:17) points out that the character and order of the stages will vary with teacher, set
I found [the tutors] feedback very helpful I found the feedback useful. I have written out all the corrections. I feel I need to read through them several times more and/or put them on to tape so that I can get them into my head There were useful learning points in the written feedback but its value was limited by coming separately from the session Corrections to vocabulary and grammar are better given immediately rather than afterwards It is especially good to be corrected when speaking spontaneously as there would not have been any preparation and sometimes one isnt aware of the mistakes one makes
Figure 3 Learner feedback on error correction (German students)
51
allowed us to get to know each other better. We also found that computer-mediated communication creates an atmosphere where, thanks to the immediate feedback, students and tutors can permanently gauge their understanding of the situation.
ten minutes to make a list of words describing the town of Caen in France where you spent your Residential School last summer. After ten minutes you should present your list to your fellow learners and compare and discuss it with their lists. To our complete surprise, some of the students even ventured to engage in room-hopping during this activity to pinch ideas from their peers.
8. The warm-up activities

During the training sessions we used warm-up activities. These were linguistically undemanding tasks specifically designed to help students to overcome their initial inhibitions get to know each other become familiar with the various features of the audio-conferencing client and foster collaboration
9. The main teaching activities

After the initial trial period of three weeks, activities were spread over one, two and eventually even over four weeks in order gradually to develop and increase learners ability to take responsibility for their own learning and thus to increase their autonomy. These longer periods were broken down into smaller chunks during which learners were invited to report back to their facilitator about the progress they had made. They could seek advice, obtain feedback and, in the case of the French students, were provided with new stimuli, such as additional information relevant to their work. This procedure served two main purposes: to preserve the momentum of the activity to maintain the students interest in the project
Since the aim of using audio-conferencing was to increase learners opportunities to practise both speaking in and listening to the target language in real time, activities concentrated on oral/aural skills.
8.1 The German warmers

The German tutor asked learners to practise German tongue-twisters or to identify famous German folk songs and provide the words in response to hearing the tunes hummed. Working in small groups and filling the dustbin of a famous person with at least ten items not only turned out to be a particularly popular activity but also required the students to break out and create their own rooms. Then the groups had to return to the plenary room, threw their items in the air and the others had to guess whose dustbin was being described.
9.1 The German activities (see figure 4)

Learners were referred to specific units in their Open University course material where they could find structures and vocabulary relevant to the topic they were addressing. During one activity, for example, they worked in groups of three to four to design a questionnaire to find out how health conscious their colleagues were. They then met with a colleague from another group to test their questionnaire. During the third phase of the activity, learners met with their original partners to evaluate their findings and finally a spokesperson from each sub-group presented the outcome to the whole group. In this way, students gained confidence in using the audio-conferencReCALL
8.2 The French warmers

The following is an example of a warm-up activity which combined students familiarising themselves with the client and producing an outcome. The instructions were given in the target language after the group had been divided into several sub-groups: One of you should create a room and invite the other members of his/her group. You then have
52
ing client and were able to talk about quite personal topics in the target language in a non-threatening environment, recycling language they had already come across during their course.
9.2 The French activities

A very popular activity with the French learners was one where they had to create a timesaving device. During the first week, students had to invent the object. The following week, they were asked to carry out a mock market research exercise to prove that their objects were marketable. During the third week, they mounted a publicity campaign to launch their products and finally, at the end of the fourth week, each group presented their object as well as the outcome of their research and campaign activities.
potential to re-centre control in the educational experience from the teacher to the student. However, in his view, the transfer of power from tutor to student requires a raft of support and attention from the one and a willingness to risk failure and a determination to succeed from the other. We tried to illustrate some of the fundamental strategies needed for such student empowerment. The increased flexibility provided by Internet-based voice conferencing will continue to play a decisive role in this context and will add a new dimension to on-line teaching and learning.
Acknowledgement
With thanks to Lesley Shield for her contribution.
10. The road ahead

Teaching in electronic and distance learning environments opens up a whole new range of roles and relationships. It will continue to revolutionise language learning in particular and education in general. Johnston (1999:87) rightly argues that on-line education has the
References
Dias J. (1998) The teacher as Chameleon: Computer-mediated Communication and Role Transformation. In Lewis P. (ed.) Teachers, Learners, and Computers: Exploring relationships in CALL , Tokyo: JALT, 1726. Johnston W. (1999) Teaching styles and on-line courses Can we teach old dogs new tricks?,
Figure 4 FLUENT website with information about German activity
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A new perspective to distance learning: M Hauck and B Haezewindt Proceedings of 1998 Humanities and Arts higher education Networks Conference, Information technology in the arts and humanities: Present applications and future perspectives 99 (1), 8591. Available from http://www-iet. open.ac.uk/iet/herg/WilliamJohnston-HANconf98.html Kearsley G. & Shneiderman B. (1998) Engagement Theory: A Framework for TechnologyBased Teaching and Learning, Educational Technology, September-October 1998, 203. Ktter M., Shield L. & Rodine C. (1999) Voice conferencing on the Internet: creating richer online communities for instance learning. In Proceedings of Ed-Media, Seattle, 105760. Shneiderman B. (1993a) Engagement and Construction: Education strategies for the Post-TV era. ftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/hcil// Reports-Abstracts-Bibliography/93-05html/9305.html [accessed November 1998]. Shneiderman B. (1993b) Education by Engagement and Construction: Experiences in the AT&T Teaching Theatre. ftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/hcil/Reports-AbstractsBibliography/93-07/html/93-07.html [accessed November 1998]. Shneiderman B. (1994) Education by Engagement and Construction: Can Distance Learning be Better than Face-to-Face. www.hitl.washington.edu/scivw/EVE/distance.html [accessed November 1998]. Shneiderman B. (1997) Relate-Create-Donate: A teaching/learning philosophy for the cyber-generation. www.cs.umd.edu/projects/hcil/People/bend/rcd.htm [accessed November 1998]. Shneiderman B. (1998) Emergent Patterns of Teaching/Learning in Electronic Classrooms. Available from: ftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/hcil/Reports-AbstractsBibliography/98-04HTML/98-04.html [accessed November 1998]. Mirjam Hauck is a lecturer in German at the Open Universitys Centre for Modern Languages in the United Kingdom. Her research interests are in technology based teaching and learning of foreign languages. Email: m.huack@open.ac.uk, mch9@tutor.open.ac.uk Dr. Bernard Haezewindt joined the Open University in 1996. He is a lecturer in French at the Centre for Modern Languages. His research interests are in French language and literature teaching and the use of ICT as means to improve students learning. Email: bph4@tutor.open.ac.uk
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ReCALL
ReCALL 11:2 (1999) 5560
Real-time audio and email for fluency: promoting distance language learners aural and oral skills via the Internet
Markus Ktter, Lesley Shield and Anne Stevens
The Open University, UK
Introduction
The Open University (OU) is the UKs largest modern foreign language learning provider with a current enrolment of approximately 8000 students, all of whom study individually at home, at a distance from each other and their tutors. However, while most OU students work with traditional course material such as books, video- and audio-cassettes and face-toface tutorials, research at the Centre for Modern Languages (CML) has also investigated alternative methods in order to account for those learners who might be unable to attend face-to-face tutorials. The study described in this paper outlines work in progress that is part of a larger, long-term project seeking to establish a framework for the use of networking technologies in distance language learning with a particular emphasis on the development of scenarios that is task design and learning environments which will enable participants to improve their spoken and communication skills in the target language. Following a closely monitored analysis of the potential of telephone tuition in 1995 and in 1996, it was decided to broaden the range of
tools available to the student and to supplement audio conferencing with e-mail and with a text-based conferencing tool (cf. Stevens & Hewer 1998). Since then, the quality of Internet-based real-time audio software has improved to the extent that it is feasible to use it with language learners and, in 1998, learners of French and German were invited to participate in a trial project to assess the impact of this new learning environment on their oral and aural performance in the foreign language. In this article, we describe the pedagogic approach adopted for this study, the learning environment and the Internet-based tools offered to learners and tutors and, through analysis of a series of questionnaire responses from participants, we reflect on some of the outcomes in terms of learner perception of and reaction to the combination of media used for the project.
Background
In summer 1998, OU students enrolled in the first German course (L 130) and in the final French course (L 210) were invited to take
55
Real-time audio and email for fluency: M Ktter et al.
part in a project aiming to investigate the extent to which online activities are helpful in promoting interaction between home-based learners. Specifically, it was predicted that learners would develop greater fluency as opposed to accuracy in the use of the target language. The project, which was based at the CML, consisted of three course-related activities involving both synchronous and asynchronous communications and ran from September 1998 until January 1999. Prior to the activities, there was a number of trial sessions, specifically designed to help students familiarise themselves with their learning environment through carefully selected bonding activities. Sixteen students of German and fourteen students of French participated in the project. Given that the OUs academic year ends in October and the new one begins in February, the project provided an ideal bridge for learners to keep in touch with the foreign language. This was reflected in students responses to a pre-activity questionnaire. As might be expected, their main reason for taking part in the study was the opportunity to improve their speaking and listening skills, while additional motivation came from the option to study from home and the availability of what one learner described as free tutorials; the project was offered at no additional charge. In addition, quite a number of learners expected the activities to have a beneficial effect on their vocabulary, and the parallel opportunity for gaining a better understanding of the computer and of information technology was also frequently cited as a reason for participation.
the opportunity to enjoy any formal strategy training in terms of awareness-raising or of language learning techniques. In other words, while distance learners are obliged to act autonomously by the very nature of their enterprise and while all of us are autonomous as a result of developmental and experimental learning (Little 1996:25), these learners will often still have a long way to go to acquire the specific strategies required for success in L2 learning. Appreciating the gap between the participants ideal level of strategic competence and their present concurrent needs, we chose an approach that combined the availability and the guidance of a tutor with a set of tasks which were specifically designed to increasingly liberate the learner from overt tutor dependence. (For a more in-depth discussion of the tasks and of the tutor role, cf. Hauck & Haezewindt, this volume.) Students were involved in a variety of role-plays and other task-based learning activities. All of these took place in the foreign language which therefore became the medium as well as the content of learning. (Little 1994:438). The learners and their tutor met for weekly one-hour online sessions. In addition, we ensured that there was at least one additional team member present during these plenary meetings who would be ready to help if students ran into technical problems. S/he would also observe the ongoing interactions and record any issues that might be worth following up in the ensuing indepth analysis of the data obtained during the project.
Pedagogy adopted for the study

The very nature of distance education requires that students involved in this type of learning master a certain set of strategies that will enable them to learn without the daily or even weekly guidance of a teacher or tutor. Yet it takes time to develop these skills, and learning at a distance is at first a rather unfamiliar and possibly even alienating experience for many adult learners. More often than not, beginners will have forgotten or will never have had
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Learning environment
The learning environment we used for the study comprised four elements: the audio conferencing software, e-mail, and web pages where participants could find information about both the activities and technical guidelines via an extensive FAQ (frequently asked questions). Beginning with the ancillary tools, e-mail was included in the learning environment in order to help students circulate information
ReCALL
such as texts they had prepared in response to a specific task and to arrange dates and times at which they could meet with one another. The web pages, on the other hand, were used to give students access to technical help outside scheduled events and to provide them with regularly updated information about the outline of any given activity. In the case of the activity-related web pages, a brief summary of the task was included, as well as hints about where to find and to prepare specific structures and selected vocabulary which learners might want to use for their current work. The core of the project, however, was the audio tool (see figure 1). Students linked up with each other through a server based on the OU campus. Using a headset with an in-built microphone and speakers, they could talk and listen to each other in real-time in the same way as via a telephone connection but without having to hold a receiver to their ears all the time. The software we used included features such as a window where students could see who else was in the room they were currently using. Moreover, an icon representing a microphone appeared next to a speakers name, enabling participants to verify to whom they were lis-
tening and a 256 character text chat facility, which was visible to all in the room, gave everyone the opportunity to exchange brief text messages. Further, students could break out into small groups by creating a new room, and they could use the clients Extend invitation facility to check for new arrivals or to invite others, e.g., their tutor, to their room. One of the factors that makes this learning environment unique is that, unlike a design using web pages and the Plain Old Telephone System (Marsh et al. 1997: 52), the approach adopted by the MERLIN project (ibid.), students were able to link a voice to a name. They could see who was talking and an icon in the form of a raised hand which appeared whenever a student tried to make a contribution while another person was still speaking provided additional information about who wished to talk next. The software allowed both for plenary sessions and for small group work and the text chat function gave learners the opportunity to write and thus to clarify unknown vocabulary whenever this was required or necessary. A final difference between our approach and the environment chosen by the MERLIN project is that we did not include photographs
Figure 1 The audio conferencing client
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or students self-descriptions in our web pages. Even though this might have supported student bonding, we believed that this kind of information could also have had intimidating effects on the students. So, while students were free to volunteer some personal data during the warm-up activities, we left it up to the participants to decide what and how much information about themselves they wanted to share with their peers.
Findings
Stevens and Hewer (1998) summarise their findings from a learning environment comprising telephone conferencing and e-mail as follows: The synchronous nature of the medium, along with the lack of eye contact and visual cues resulted in the need for tutors to manage the audio conference carefully and sometimes caused students to over-prepare to the extent that they read out prepared answers. The knockon effect of this tended to be a lack of spontaneity by students and a distinct unwillingness to avoid risk-taking which is acknowledged to be a characteristic of successful language learners. The very public nature of the conference provided tutors with difficult decisions about how to cope with error correction. Many of these factors were also prominent in our current study. For instance, there were, at times, considerable pauses between students utterances because, as one of the participants wrote, no one knows who should speak. Given that visual cues such as nods and gestures were unavailable, the only way in which students could determine whether someone had finished a turn was from the speakers intonation. However, another factor that seemed to affect turn-taking routines was the many-to-many constellation. This made it difficult to anticipate when the speaker will finish which in turn rendered conversations less fluid or more stilted and unnatural than in a face-to-face situation. Only gradually did these gaps decrease as learners slowly became used to the absence of social context cues
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(Sproull & Kiesler 1986: 1492) which are used in a face-to-face setting to indicate the end of a turn. This was more noticeable with the German students than with the more proficient French subjects who, in their groups, readily embraced the opportunity to communicate with each other even if their messages were not always perfectly well-formed. All participants in the project, however, seemed to allow between three and four seconds after the end of one turn before beginning their own. While the alienating effects of reduced cues thus persisted, another finding cited by Sproull and Kiesler from their investigation into the effects of e-mail, namely that students talk more freely than they would in person (Sproull & Kiesler 1991: 84) was noticeably absent from our data (note the use of talk with regard to e-mail!). Even after they got over their initial apprehension about having to talk to disembodied voices the learners more often than not stepped back and left the floor to others rather than tread on anyones toes. Students expressly appreciated that, in this anonymous environment it was harder to actively contribute and much easier to hide making the whole process much less fluid. Our subjects remained reserved and did not try to compensate for their insecurity by giving away a higher amount of personal information than they would do in a comparable face-to-face situation. However, further research is required to ascertain whether this was a direct effect of the learning environment or whether other factors such as individual preferences/variables or cultural factors played a part in this finding. Students widely hailed the potential of the audio conferencing tool because it gave them the opportunity to talk formally and informally. They felt that having been given a subject to provoke chat the rest came very easily and they appreciated that the underlying mood was light-hearted. Still, as in the telephone conferencing project, students were rather reluctant to take risks. In fact, one effect that seems to be directly related to the use of the audio conferencing client was that students became more aware of the pitfalls of the foreign language and of the errors they made.
ReCALL
This was especially apparent during the early stages of the project; participants from both groups felt that their speech in the foreign language was less fluent than normal and that they heard themselves making mistakes they would not usually make in a more natural environment. One advanced student of French linked this to the pressure the environment puts on the students to speak. She ventured that I was afraid I might have talked too much at times, as I didnt hear every one in the chat room and I was more aware of making loads of linguistic errors than usual, because my mouth seemed to be functioning faster than my brain. One of the positive aspects of the project was that students became increasingly aware of the gaps in their current level of competence in the foreign language. However, a distinct advantage of the project lay in the fact that, without overtly stating their needs, students received a substantial amount of exactly this kind of input from their peers; in other words, learners collaborated both consciously and unconsciously on creating an arsenal of phrases, some of which they already knew and some of which were supplied by their peers. They were cautious, but as a student of German put it: I liked discussing with other students in German because I think I need this. I still feel that I am hesitant when doing this, especially if I have to compose sentences without any preparation. I have also enjoyed sending e-mails in German.
anticipated that they would use e-mail in particular for three purposes: to arrange dates and times for meetings held outside the weekly plenary sessions to exchange notes taken from previous audio sessions jointly to prepare drafts for oral presentations in a later online meeting.
The role of e-mail

Having outlined students initial reactions to the audio conferencing tool, we will now move on to discuss their use of e-mail, the other major tool available to them during the study. Focusing on the use by a project manager and his colleagues of media like telephone, text chat facilities, e-mail and bulletin boards, Murray (1991: 52) concluded that her subjects choose from the available options of communication according to the nature of the task, the role of the participants, and access to the medium. We expected that the same would be true for our students. Yet, we also
Moreover, we hypothesised that learners would utilise the written medium to rehearse their oral contributions and that e-mail would help them to practice [their] communicative proficiency (Chun 1994: 17). While it is too early to verify this last assumption and to assess the influence of email on learner performance in the foreign language or to decide whether this improved as a result of the option to exchange e-mail messages and to collaborate with each other in speech and in writing between scheduled events, it is clearly the case that the overwhelming majority of the participants used e-mail in the way we had predicted. Students employed it for sending a draft to each other for appraisal, as a tool to arrange further meeting especially if someone could not be present in the room, and to back-up and clarify audio sessions. Summarising the role e-mail played in the project, a twofold picture emerges. While many learners employed it as a supplementary tool to organise their spoken encounters, others also overused e-mail in that they not only recycled chunks but whole passages from their notes for their oral presentations as the following quotation illustrates: The use of E-mail was vital. My partner was able to send information I needed and we were able to each write our own ideas and exchange them. The audio system was then a great way to communicate so we could finalise what I would ultimately read out.
Conclusion
The purpose of this article has been to provide an outline and a flavour of how distance lan59
guage learners used the opportunity to interact with each other using e-mail and an Internetbased real-time audio conferencing tool. Having just come to the end of the current phase of the project, we have tried to describe how students responded to the tools with a view to initiating a discussion about the feasibility of using these for distance learning purposes. We have, however, consciously avoided incorporating conclusions about the learning outcomes at this stage as they require a more thorough analysis of the data than has so far been possible. Focusing, then, on students responses to their learning environment, we have to begin by reiterating that many students were very enthusiastic about the projects potential to allow for group work and for meeting outside the plenary sessions. They appreciated the chance to practise their speech, to receive rapid feedback from their peers and listen to other students. However, at the same time, they were also quite aware of the absence of contextual cues of the type one would find in a face-to-face setting. They were cautious about taking risks and they needed time to accommodate to their new learning environment. Once they had overcome these initial hurdles, however, most of the learners thoroughly enjoyed the experience and many of them have decided to continue to meet on-line on a regular basis even without the once-so-crucial presence of a tutor.
Neueren Sprachen, 93 (5), 43042. Little D. (1996) Learner autonomy and learner counselling. In Little D. and Brammerts H. (eds.), A guide to language learning in tandem via the Internet, Dublin: CLCS, 2334. Marsh D. et al. (1997) Project MERLIN: A learning environment of the future, ReCALL 9 (1), 524. Murray D. (1991) The composing process for computer conversation, Written Communication 8 (1), 3555. Sproull L. & Kiesler S. (1986) Reducing social context cues: Electronic mail in organizational communication, Management Science 32, 1942512. Sproull, L. & Kiesler, S. (1991) Computers, networks and work, Scientific American 265 (3), 8491. Stevens A. & Hewer S. (1998) From policy to practice and back, Proceedings of 1st LEVERAGE conference, Cambridge, 78 January 1998 http://greco.dit.upm.es/~leverage/conf1/hewer.htm
Markus Ktter is a research assistant at the Centre for Modern Languages where he coordinates the FLUENT project. He graduated from the University of Mnster in 1996 and is currently preparing his PhD. paper about Language Learning and Language Acquisition in the MOO. Email: m.koetter@open.ac.uk Lesley Shield advises in using new technologies in distance (language) learning in the Centre for Modern Languages at the Open University, UK. Her area of interest lies in distributed learning systems. Email: l.e.shield @open.ac.uk Anne Stevens has been a teacher of languages for many years, specialising in the use of languages in the workplace and in vocational contexts. She has developed and taught language training programmes both in companies and within further and higher education courses. As Director of the Centre for Modern Languages she has been responsible for the direction and management of the developments of the Centre since its foundation. Email: a.stevens @open.ac.uk
References
Chun D. M. (1994) Using computer networking to facilitate the acquisition of interactive competence, System 22 (1), 1731. Little D. (1994) Learner autonomy: A theoretical construct and its practical application, Die
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ReCALL
ReCALL 11:2 (1999) 6173
Implementing institutional change for languages: online collaborative learning environments at Coventry University
Marina Orsini-Jones
Coventry University, UK
This paper stems out of the authors work developed thanks to her secondment as the representative for Languages to the Task Force for Teaching, Learning and Assessment at Coventry University. The aim of the secondment is to disseminate a recognised model of good CALL practice, the FREE - Fluid RoleExchange Environment (Orsini-Jones and Jones 1996, Orsini-Jones 1999), to other areas of Italian Studies, to languages other than Italian and to the rest of the university. This paper will show how the model was disseminated to the teaching of EFL and Italian translation studies via the use of the Web. The paper will finally consider a few issues relating to the impact of the implementation of C&IT change in Languages.
Introduction
The theme of institutional change has been on the agenda for quite a few years in UK Higher Education, particularly in former Polytechnics. Furthermore, the pace of change is not showing any signs of slowing down (Curran 1998). The engine driving the present change wave is C&IT and Coventry University is moving fast towards the implementation of the virtual campus. A team of lecturers from different disciplines is engaged in piloting change and disseminating good practice in teaching, learning and assessment across the university. This paper will illustrate the work of the lanVol 11 No 2 September 1999
guages representative within the above group and present three case-studies of on-line collaborative learning environments created with and for languages students.
1.
The Task Force for Teaching, Learning and Assessment at Coventry University
A Task Force for Teaching Learning and Assessment was set up at Coventry University in the academic year 1997/8. Twenty-five members of staff were selected to work as a team and share good practice on a regular basis.
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Implementing institutional change for languages: M Orsini-Jones
The setting up of the Task Force reflects the on-going debate which has preceded and followed the publication of the Dearing report (Dearing 1997) in Great Britain and particularly its recommendations about maximising the benefits of Communications and Information Technology (recommendations 8, 9, 14, 15, 44 and 46). The Task Force Team works in three ways: as a whole team (monthly meetings), as subteams (fortnightly meetings) and as individuals. It follows a pattern of education actionlearning and action-research as described in Carr and Kemmis (1986). The Task Force Team is formed by a university-wide group of people who come from disciplines as disparate as Engineering and Languages but work together towards common aims. A key aspect of the Task Force Team work is transferability of good practice. Therefore it is paramount that the members of the Task Force Team are aware of the context provided by their own discipline, but also of how their work is transferable to others (see also http://home.edu.coventry.ac.uk/Taskforce).
suitable for self-learning and open-learning which would benefit a considerable number of undergraduates and fit in with the Schools strategic plan for the next five years. To create CALL environments which are multidisciplinary and stimulate not only the acquisition of new language skills in a strong socio-cultural context, but also the acquisition of vocational and transferable skills (in particular C&IT). To promote dialogue about good practice in teaching, learning and assessment among the different language sections within the School and outside it. Objectives: Development of five CALL environments all based upon the Hypermedia Italian Teams project, for English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Integration of the above-mentioned CALL environments within the undergraduate curriculum for Languages via the creation of new modules and/or reshaping of existing ones in terms of teaching/learning and assessment. Systematic testing and evaluation of all phases of production/development. Tailormade evaluation questionnaires for students. Dissemination of outcomes to the rest of the university, promotion of dialogue amongst partners, meetings, conferences both national and international, articles in journals, home pages on the Internet.
2. The project selected for the Languages Group (School of International Studies and Law)
The project selected for the Languages Group started as a continuation project to disseminate the work carried out by the Hypermedia Italian Team (Jones and Orsini-Jones 1996, OrsiniJones and Tandy 1998). Its initial aims and objectives were the following: Aims: To disseminate within the School of International Studies and Law the innovative teaching/learning/assessment CALL integration model the Fluid Role Exchange Environment underlying the implementation and use of the Hypermedia Italian Teams project La neve nel bicchiere and extend it to teaching, learning and assessment within other languages. To create flexible CALL environments
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The starting point was to focus upon what had to be disseminated: i.e. the FREE Fluid Role Exchange Environment (see below) CALL model which had stemmed out of the integration of La neve nel bicchiere: a CD-ROM for students of Italian (figures 1, 2 and 3) into the Italian curriculum. The aim of the Task Force project is to test whether this model could also work with other languages and/or different delivery platforms moving from Toolbook to the Web (for further information refer to http://home.edu.coventry.ac.uk/Italian).
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Figure 1 Screen shot of the vocabulary page for the first of the 18 chapters of the electronic version of the historical novel La neve nel bicchiere by Nerino Rossi upon which the multimedia CD-ROM is based
Figure 3 Description of the town in which Mussolini was born, with references to the chapters in which it is mentioned in the novel
ment which is three-dimensional by nature enables the three actants to amplify and multiply their various roles in a fluid web of cognitive relationships (represented by the arrows in figure 4). The only way in which the model above can be implemented is through collaborative team work taken in stages: A. Texts, in hard copy, are analysed together by lecturers and students during classroom contact hours. Students select the elements which they feel are of relevance to them and about which they would like to know more. B. The texts are then transformed into a hypertextual version (which used to be in Toolbook but since 1997 is implemented using Web tools, such as Frontpage 97&98 and WebCT) following discussions between the lecturers involved and the technical expert who can implement the project in its technical aspects and using students data about the initial texts. C. The students test and assess the material in its hypertextual version. D. The team (which includes students too) assesses the students learning experience and decides what changes to make to the draft electronic version. E. The new version is tested again, the feedback incorporated again, and the cycle continues with each new cohort of students. The paradigm described above is meant to be constructivist with reference to the permanent
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Figure 2 Map of the region in which the historical novel is set
2.1 The FREE Fluid Role Exchange Environment model

The cognitive model represented in the FREE (Orsini-Jones and Jones 1996, Orsini-Jones 1999), see figure 4, is a fluid and interactive pool where the three main actors or actants, i.e. the learner, the lecturer and the computer, exchange roles. The choice of the word actants instead of actors was deliberate. Actants is widely used in Italian linguistics attanti and originated in French linguistics: actants. In etymological terms it is a noun which derives from a participle, an indefinite mood which better embodies the dynamism of the interchangeable roles the actants can assume in a hypermedia environment. Actors would convey the idea of a more passive role. The hypermedia environVol 11 No 2 September 1999
FREE: FLUID ROLE-EXCHANGE ENVIRONMENT
Figure 4 The FREE (Fluid Role Exchange Environment) model
contribution to both design and learning process which students feedback brings in. This is felt to be quite threatening by some colleagues as, due to the fluid interactivity between the role of the tutor and that of the learner, it is perceived to undermine the established order of power within a language classroom.
2.2 Strategic decisions about how to disseminate the FREE

It is a fact that resistance to change can be harboured by present-day languages lecturers, who live in a reality of cuts in which their jobs are at stake and in which they have to prioritise job security over staff development. On the other hand, it is also true that, although there will always be resistance to change, the latter must not be overestimated. As Eccles (1994:69) puts it, the notion that colleagues
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will not accept change tout-court is insulting: what is important is that fruitful change which works is suggested as opposed to change which is perceived as unnecessarily disruptive. I identified immediately various factors which could hinder the implementation of my dissemination aims and objectives. First of all there was already considerable CALL expertise within some areas of the Languages Group (Corness et al. 1992; Smith et al. 1997), and therefore some suspicion about why the FREE Fluid Role Exchange Environment should be disseminated, as opposed to other existing models. Secondly, many colleagues have negative attitudes to CALL which could be partially explained by the following points: 1. They have experienced exposure to the
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wrong kind of CALL materials, appropriately described as anathemagenic i.e. giving birth to loathing, by Laurillard (1993:204); 2. They perceive the Task Force as a form of pressure exerted by management on lecturers to increase the use and integration of C&IT into the curriculum in the hope of cutting staffing costs and jobs in the long term; 3. They have done it all before: some colleagues invested a lot of time and effort in the preparation of CALL materials in the past, only to see them lost in the change from one type of hardware to another. The challenge was therefore to convince colleagues in languages that the teaching, learning and assessment model being disseminated was not meant to be: technology driven; a technological threat to job security (i.e. a substitute for language classes); a better alternative to existing CALL models; a source of extra stress and work for overworked lecturers; impossible to implement without extra technical support.
useful for all the students taking Italian, disseminate the philosophy underlying La neve nel bicchiere, show colleagues how simple it would be to create web-supported materials; disseminate outcomes only when there was tangible evidence that the C&IT strategy was bearing fruit; focus on staff training which was not always C&IT based: we moved gradually from essay marking criteria seminars to IT sessions with hands-on to learn how to create web pages.
3.1 Case-study 1: the EFL web-based materials.

The English Language Unit at Coventry University is relatively new, it was a creation of the 90s and for this reason the staff within it are still very enthusiastic and interested in change. There were also other reasons why it was felt that it would be appropriate to start by disseminating the FREE model to English. The first one was that the BA Modern Language students on the direct entry route taking a compulsory English language double module are felt to have the skills and motivation to do a significant amount of independent study in languages and are likely to include ergative learners (Roe 1994) who can provide useful feedback to materials developers (Jones and Hassett 1998). Furthermore, the two members of staff who expressed an interest in participating in the Task Force activities are seriously interested in developing CALL materials. A small team which mirrored closely the Hypermedia Italian Team (lecturers plus a technical designer in collaboration with students) was set up to create courseware based upon La neve nel bicchiere. The team first of all discussed the issue of the platform which should be adopted to develop the new CALL materials: should we carry on with Toolbook or adopt HTML? We were concerned about the fact that the Web to date does not support multimedia as well as Toolbook. On the other hand, having the teaching materials available online could open new horizons of flexible routes within each hypertextual environment. Another consideration was to take into
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It was therefore decided that in view of the diffidence which existed towards change, it would be necessary to adopt a subtle strategy of conversion.
3. The first year of dissemination: 1997/8

In view of the above-mentioned points it was decided that in the first year (1997/8) I would: not put any pressure on Languages colleagues to embrace change and only take on board willing volunteers, after having demonstrated La neve nel bicchiere to those interested in seeing it; create a home-page for Italian which would serve the triple purpose of being
account the technical support available. The latter made us finally opt for HTML and FrontPage as opposed to Toolbook, both because the designer who was helping us had more web expertise than Toolbook knowledge, and because developing La neve nel bicchiere had taught us a lesson about the difficulty involved in sorting out Toolbooks bugs. The procedure followed by David Jones and Don Hassett, the two different lecturers involved in the presentation of the material, was slightly different in each case. David Jones chose an article from The Sun (figure 5: main menu on the English Homepage; figures 6 and 7: screenshots of the hypertext version of the article about Blair from the Sun newspaper) (we are in the process of clearing copyright for both this article and the one mentioned below from the Observers Life Magazine). The article has a political content,
Figure 7 Web version of the editorial about Tony Blairs speech at the Labour conference. From The Sun, 1st September 1997
Figure 5 The English Language Unit home-page
Figure 6 Web version of the editorial about Tony Blairs speech at the Labour conference. From The Sun, 1st September 1997
it is the editorial reporting about the speech Tony Blair made at the Labour Conference in September 1997. David Jones asked students to highlight, on paper, items of vocabulary and background knowledge that they felt needed explanation. After an analysis of their feedback, he chose the three buttons Vocabulary, Phrasal Verbs and Background Information and asked the designer to create a further button which could bring students back to the plain text. He felt it would be better to be able to read the text without any words highlighted to show active hypertextual links. The article was then inputted into the computer in a format similar to that of La neve nel bicchiere (see figure 1) and tested with the same students who had worked on it on paper. The outcome was positive: all students out of the 15 involved were very happy to work on the text on computer and all commented it made their reading easier. However, they all said that they still preferred to have it on paper first and on computer at a later date. This can possibly be explained by the fact that they were mainly French and Spanish students who, in our experience at Coventry University, do not always adapt easily to using computers. The second lecturer involved, Don Hassett, adopted another approach: he chose a difficult text, Girl Overboard, taken from the Observers Life Magazine, and decided to present it to students in a format completely different from the other one (figure 8). Also, rather than ask the students to identify the
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items they had difficulty with, he presented them with a ready-made commentary on the text and asked them for their feedback on its usefulness. He did this mainly because he felt that they would not necessarily be aware of the most interesting areas which needed explanation. The two categories adopted by him were: Meaning/Register and Usage. In his texts the hot-words were active all the time (it was not possible to go back to the plain text). In the paper feedback session, students were divided about the usefulness and interest of the text itself, but all found the comments helpful in making the text accessible. A number said that they found the text worth reading because of the comments in the glossary, which showed them what the author was doing with the language. However, when the students compared the format of this text on computer, to that prepared by David Jones, they unanimously preferred the one which had clearly marked categories represented by buttons, which made the understanding of the text easier. They also commented that the article about Blair was visually pleasant and that they would have liked to see the background information included in Girl Overboard. The latter would seem to prove that the easy and pleasant interface created for La neve nel bicchiere and transferred to HTML has been successfully disseminated and with similar outcomes. On the other hand, despite having given preference to the possibility of switching the hot-words on and off in the evaluation questionnaires a choice available with the Blair
article in use, the latter students were effectively switching from one set of hot-words to another during our classroom observations. This has both design and learning implications. From the point of view of the design it was decided that it did not matter at all to have the option of the plain text without marked hot-words. As for the learning process, these findings would seem to confirm those of Landow (1992), i.e. that present-day students find it natural to move within a hypertextual environment. Students, therefore, while consciously saying that they preferred to have the text available without marked-up hot words, the same as it would be on paper, in effect were subconsciously opting for the hypertextual choice of moving from one set of hotwords to another directly. For the reason above, the evidence was conclusively in favour of the use of web compatible materials to maximise the wealth of possible links which could be incorporated free of charge into the teaching/learning materials: Don Hassett managed in fact to find both a concordancing program and a dictionary online, which he connected via links to another of his articles about the Birmingham accent, found in the Whats on magazine, which the editor gave us kind permission to use (figures 910). As a result of the EFL experimentation, the web-based articles, which students can view within a password controlled Intranet, are now available and have been successfully used for two academic years.
Figure 8 Web version of the article Girl Overboard, from the Observers Magazine Supplement
Figure 9 Web versions of Talk of the Devil, from the Whats On in Birmingham Guide
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Figure 11 Web versions of Talk of the Devil, from the Whats On in Birmingham Guide
3.2 Case study 2: the Italian home-page

While the English sub-team was working on the materials for EFL, the Italian members of staff developed a multi-functional home-page for Italian which initially was only used on Intranet for the benefit of staff and students on campus. It was decided that the home-page (figure 11) should contain the following: a list of Italian modules e-mail connection to the Italian section information about Italian topics relevant to the programme of Italian studies at Coventry information about the Task Force information about the on-going project La neve nel bicchiere with full details about the CD-ROM The most successful area is Lezioni di
Italiano, a gateway for information about Italy and Italians. This was implemented with help from the students of Italian and is up-dated on a continuous basis (figure 12) The students reaction to the home-page was overwhelmingly positive. Due to the time involved in Internet browsing, it is vital that lecturers guide their students navigation and select pedagogically sound links for the homepage. It is also important to use the online material for guided study time or open learning, as the time required to link up with sites in Italy is still too long to allow for in-class use. Another area of interest for the linguist is the language found in online Italian newspaper articles, as it differs considerably in register from the language normally found in the same Italian newspaper articles in their paper version. The italianeseon the web could be an interesting field of study for our future students. Due to its popularity with our students, we asked for permission from the university to open the home-page to the world (see: http://home.edu.coventry.ac.uk/Italian). The latter was granted and we have already received positive feedback from teachers of Italian around the UK who have accessed and used it.
3.3 Dissemination to languages other than Italian and English

By February 1998, following the stage 1 evaluation of the Task Force project and the students positive feedback, it was felt it was time to disseminate to other languages the findings of the work done for Italian and English in the
Figure 11 Italian home-page main menu
Figure 12 Lezioni di italiano
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format of a staff training seminar with a handson session. The German colleagues, who have a very sound track record in CALL development (with projects such as TIGER (Corness et al., 1992), TransIt-TIGER and ASTCOVEA2 successfully completed), expressed an interest in developing their own materials in Frontpage after they viewed the English pages and the Italian home page. The experimentation with German is still in its infancy and no evaluation has been carried out yet; however, the staff in German were very pleased with the relative speed with which it was possible to proceed with Webbased materials, as opposed to Toolbook-based ones. In the meantime both the French and Spanish sections started developing their own home-pages. Obviously the Task Force work was beginning to bear fruit in terms of effective dissemination to the Languages Group, but the major revolution had yet to come in the second year of the secondment: the introduction of WebCT.
Figure 13 WebCT screen-shot of main menu for module 103LAI Italian double language module
4. The second year of secondment: the WebCT revolution.

WebCT World Wide Web Course Tools (further information at www.webct.com) is the web-supported learning environment the Task Force opted for after an evaluation of the various alternatives available on the market. As from September 1999, each module offered within our university will have its own web area on WebCT. The Task Force members, myself included, have been piloting the prototype since October 1998, tested it with our students and explored the various ways in which it can be integrated with our teaching, learning and assessment strategies in our different disciplines. The WebCT standard template for the university was finalised only in July 1999. I customised the initial template for two different modules: one about Italian history delivered in English (see figure 13), and one about advanced translation studies in Italian where I translated the icons from English into Italian.
The two main areas which I have used are the bulletin board (posta di gruppo in Italian) and the contents area (informazioni). The way I perceive WebCT is that of a virtual private club for members only: where the club is available world-wide via a personalised pass-word to each student and the members are: the developer/instructor (who decides how to design and build the environment), the grader(s) (who is/are the lecturers for the module and interact(s) with the students in a special way) and the students themselves, each of whom has his/her own area for presentations, e-mail, viewing of progress on the module, tracking of progress within the environment. In my particular case the instructor and the grader are the same person (i.e.myself) but it does not have to be so. WebCT is a bit like a train: the lecturer can populate it with as many passengers as he/she likes, including endless Web links. It requires Netscape rather than Explorer and despite its rather cumbersome initial login routine, it is relatively easy to use and to build. There are still unresolved issues relating to the partial lack of infrastructure necessary to support the implementation of the WebCT revolution within Coventry University; however, it is undeniable that it is an attractive learning environment and students like it. I am heavily indebted to some colleagues in the Task Force, Anne Davidson of the School of Health in particular, for the description of the two WebCT modes of use provided below:
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Overall Mode: Outside class contact time Inner Modes admin: module guide, notices (Bulletin Board); added value page turner: expanded lecture notes (Course Contents); extra resources on demand: links to additional on-line resources to support both individual needs and the module as a whole. Overall Mode: As teaching aid in class Inner modes admin: announcements (Calendar, Bulletin Board, Private Mail, Information); seminar discussions, online feedback (Bulletin Board, Private Mail); contents: access to relevant resources/ready made on-line transparencies for teaching (Course Contents, Glossary); skill consolidation and assessment: acquisition and consolidation of Italian vocabulary, and of electronic information handling and C&IT skills (Notepad, Students Presentation, Quiz area). The challenge for me was: would it be possible to transfer the FREE model to WebCT? I decided to try and test the model with the Advanced Translation group, which is formed by final year British students who all started at ab initio level in year one and some Socrates and direct entry students who have been studying Italian for longer than three years.
students could make use of a resource area with direct links to the previously mentioned Italian and English home-pages and to two online dictionaries, which were studied and evaluated on the bulletin board by students (see figures 1416) as part of the course. The minutes for the discussion during the seminars about translation, in Italian, were typed directly onto the WebCT bulletin board by each group of students, so that both lecturers and students could have a record of what had been said (see figure 17). The initial task given to the students was to identify categories of translation issues relating to a an extract from a literary text, the cult novel Jack Frusciante uscito dal gruppo by Brizzi (1994), which is also available in its English translation (Brizzi 1998). Each group came up with their suggestions and in the end we agreed on our model of translation template which would be used by students for
4.1 Case study 3: a web-based collaborative learning environment for translation theory and practice.
The final year double module on the BA Modern Languages degree focusses on the contrastive analysis of Italian and English through the medium of translation, both unseen and prose. As with La neve nel bicchiere and with the EFL articles, staff and students started the work in class, on paper, discussing issues relating to the translation of texts from Italian into English and vice-versa. Such discussion was underpinned by the study of extracts from theoretical books about translation (Ulrich 1991; Newmark 1982) and translation practice/seminars. In addition,
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Figure 14 Example of an online dictionary link suggested by students: EurodicAutom
Figure 15 Content page for module 304LAI
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Figure 16 O-line evaluation of online dictionaries
Figure 18 Hypertextual environment created via the FREE model
Figure 17 Online discussions about translation issues
their assessed presentations (which count for 12% of the final mark for this double module) to be delivered via WebCT. The students work was subsequently transferred to WebCT in hypertextual format (see figure 18), therefore applying the same actionlearning paradigm represented in the FREE model. In the second stage students started working on their own group presentations following the model agreed. They were helped by a designer, but they were in full charge of their file-management. They also had to present all the files on disk and send them to the designer in Italy as an e-mail attachment. The designer is Giovanni Manisi, a former language assistant who is still collaborating with us from Italy. The final results for two of the four presentations for the academic year 1998/9 can be seen in figures 19 (text about the Euro) and 20
(extract from Pasolinis Mignotta). Needless to say, all students are benefitting from having each groups work fixed into WebCT and so is the lecturer who can now start building a WebCT-based bank of translation studies for future cohorts of students. It is a bit early to say whether, as with La neve nel bicchiere, the students exposure to written Italian on screen has enhanced their proficiency in Italian. It is undoubtedly true that they are making extensive use of the learning environment. This is demonstrated by the analysis of the students progress tracking device within WebCT, which registers every hit for every WebCT area for students, instructor(s) and grader(s). In this way the lecturer can also see who is doing the assignments and who is not and identify individual students weaknesses.
Figure 19 Example of students assessed presentation about translation issues
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WebCT and German, Italian and Russian environments have already been activated.
Conclusion
The experience of being part of the Task Force is very fulfilling in terms of staff development. Personally, I have acquired many new IT tricks, and have learnt that I can be more positive about change within the Languages Group than I thought I could. The reflection about change and modes of carrying it out stimulated by the Task Force Team have helped me in tackling very thorny issues, and although there still is a lot to do, quite a lot has been achieved in two years. On the other hand the projects aims and objectives proved to be too ambitious: it is unlikely that web pages will be created for all the languages taught at Coventry University by the end of my second year of secondment. Furthermore there have been unexpected outcomes: e.g. the Russian section, not included in the original plan, is now embracing change faster than other languages. Some adjustments have therefore become necessary for the effective implementation of change and the original plan has been modified accordingly. The introduction of WebCT has proved to be challenging and time-consuming, but the feedback from students at languages course consultative committees is positive and this has been of encouragement to those who, like myself, can at times become very frustrated with computers. Web authoring/editing is a very fluid and fast developing area. Initiatives like the WELL project are of vital importance in supporting change and we have to try and make the most of them both for ourselves and our colleagues. Needless to say, they can also help in understanding the potential of the Web in terms of the globalisation of teaching, learning and assessment for languages. The C&IT learning curve is getting steeper every year: however, if there is evidence that change can bear good fruits which in my opinion means effective learning environments for our students then it is worthwhile
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Figure 20 Example of students assessed presentation about translation issues
4.3 Some considerations about disseminating WebCT

As I am still experimenting myself with WebCT, I decided not to try and make converts too early in academic year 1998/9, which is why the dissemination of the new learning environment has been more theoretical than practical. A WELL2/WebCT seminar was organised jointly with William Haworth in Coventry in February 1999, which attracted nearly all colleagues in languages, plus a few teachers from local schools. The success of the event proves the level of interest in the Web within the Languages Subject Group at Coventry University and makes the dissemination of web-related issues easier. As for the question: Is it helping students learning? the evidence is still too anecdotal to support any conclusive evaluation. Nevertheless, I must admit that the readymade WebCT interface enabled me to implement the FREE on the web with ease and with an interactivity which is missing from La neve nel bicchiere, as the latter is now fixed in its present Toolbook CD-ROM format. On the other hand, the Toolbook interface is still much faster than the WebCT one: perhaps in an ideal world it should be possible to run CDROMs and web pages from the same learning environment. WebCT offers this theoretical possibility, but we have not had time to test it yet. Colleagues in languages are now all interested in developing their own modules in
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because, as we all know, CALL development is not suitable for the faint-hearted.
Notes
1. TransIt-TIGER and ASTCOVEA were both funded under TLTP Phase 1. See: http://www.ncteam.ac.uk/tltp/ 2. The WELL project is one of ten languages projects under the UK Higher Education Funding Councils Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning (FDTL).
References
Brizzi E. (1994) Jack Frusciante uscito dal gruppo, Milano: Mondadori. Brizzi E. (1998) Jack Frusciante has left the band, London: HarperCollins (Flamingo). Carr W. & Kemmis S. (1986) Becoming Critical, London/Brighton: Falmer. Corness P. et al. (1992) TIGER (Translating Industrial German): Computer-aided learning package for German. Modules: Introductory, Intermediate and Advanced, Coventry: Coventry University. Curran C. (1998) Technology and universities: context, cost and culture, ReCALL 10 (1), 1320. Dearing R. (1997) Higher Education in the Learning Society, The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, http://leeds.ac.uk/educol/ncihe/ Eccles T. (1994) Succeeding with Change: Implementing Action-Driven Strategies, London: McGraw Hill. Jones D. & Hassett D. (1998) CALL materials design for EFL degree students, unpublished paper read at the Multimedia and Foreign Language Training International Conference, University of Varna, Bulgaria, June 79.
Landow G.P. (1992) Hypertext: The convergence of contemporary critical theory and technology, Baltimore & London: The John Hopkins University Press. Laurillard D. (1993) Rethinking University Teaching: a framework for the effective use of educational technology, London: Routledge. Newmark P. (1982) Approaches to Translation, Oxford: Pergamon Press. Orsini-Jones M. & Jones D. (1996), Hypermedia for language learning: the FREE model at Coventry University, Association for Learning Technology Journal, 4 (2), 2839. Orsini-Jones M. & Tandy V. (1998) La neve nel bicchiere: a multimedia CD-ROM for students of Italian, Coventry: Coventry University/Camsoft. Orsini-Jones M. (1999) Post-Dearing IT based teaching and learning in modern languages: mission impossible? A case study of the Task Force at Coventry University, Proceedings of the Humanities and Arts in Higher Education Annual Conference Information Technology in the arts and humanities: Present applications and future perspectives, 10 October 1998, Milton Keynes: Open University, 7284. Roe P. (1994) User modelling in CALL: some fundamental issues, Computers and Education 23 (1/2), 4151. Smith G. et. al. (1997) CALL at Coventry University, in Cameron K. (ed.) Computer Assisted Language Learning 10 (3). Ulrich M. (1992) Translating Texts, Rapallo: CIDEB
Marina Orsini-Jones is the Task Force for Teaching, Learning and Assessment Languages representative for the School of International Studies and Law at Coventry University. She has been involved in CALL since 1986, has published articles about the integration of C&IT into the curriculum and the multimedia CD-ROM La neve nel bicchiere (1998). She is at present engaged in developing web-supported collaborative language learning environments.
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ReCALL 11:2 (1999) 7480
Concordancing with students using an off-the-Web corpus

Jeremy Whistle
University College Northampton, UK
Much has been published on the subject of the role of concordancing in foreign language teaching, most of it in the field of EFL. Of crucial importance is the corpus on which concordances are based. This article describes how a pedagogic corpus can be downloaded from the Web as well as its experimental exploitation with first and second year undergraduates.
Introduction
There is a widespread consensus among foreign language teachers in Higher Education in the UK that students arrive at university with a grammar deficit (Metcalfe 1992, Goodfellow & Metcalfe 1997). Most foreign language degree courses now contain a substantial grammar revision/development component. The grammar sessions are, however, often perceived even by students who are successful as being boring, and receive relatively low popularity ratings in the half-yearly feedback returns. This is in spite of the fact that students generally want grammar teaching and recognise its usefulness1. The low popularity ratings, combined with the perception that teaching grammar seems to have little effect with certain students, led to a re-examination of existing practice and a search for new methods.
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There are those who for a long time have insisted that grammar is something that students best learn for themselves through cognitive processing of language input (Krashen 1981 and 1982, Corness et al.1997). I myself put forward a similar view several years ago (Whistle 1986). As ever the question is essentially one of how we, the teachers, can create conditions in which students can learn. Johns (1991a and 1991b) with his theory of datadriven learning provides a clear rationale for the use of the concordancer in this context. More recently, other authors have emphasised the value of concordancing in grammar teaching (Fligelstone 1993, Flowerdew 1993, Kettemann 1997, McEnery et al. 1997). However, most of the published work describing classroom practice focuses on teaching English as a foreign language. There is relatively little on teaching foreign languages (Dodd 1997, Polezzi 1993, Wichmann 1995) and here, as in
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Concordancing using an off-the-web corpus: J Whistle
most of the EFL examples (Tribble 1990, Davidson 1990, Ilse 1991, Wu 1992, Flowerdew 1993, Goodfellow 1994, Gavioli 1997), the emphasis is mainly on lexis (often linked to syllabus design) and semantics rather than grammar. It was decided to introduce concordancing into the teaching of grammar to groups of first and second year students of French at University College Northampton, supplementing other CALL materials already in use. It was also decided to involve the students in the creation of the concordances by getting them to perform the searches and extract the raw data before proceeding to the analysis and rule formulation stages. It was hoped that the less intellectual students would benefit the most from being actively involved in the data-gathering stage. The choice of student groups was ultimately determined by the availability of the only computer room which had the language software installed. All students involved were post A level entrants.
The texts were varied in subject but had an essentially French focus. They were largely aimed at a foreign audience and so the language had none of the stylistic tricks that one often finds in journalism. The relatively conservative nature of the French is an advantage when related to our students needs. Another important factor was that copyright clearance was readily given by the French Embassy, on the understanding that texts would be used exclusively for pedagogic purposes and the source acknowledged. Without this, it would have been impossible to persuade the Colleges IT Services to allow storage of texts on the central server. For a different purpose it would have been equally possible to build a corpus of literary texts (cf. Inkster 1997). A good starting point for texts is http://www.lib.virginia.edu/wess/etexts.html.
Integrating the concordancer into the curriculum

A corpus requires a concordancer.2 An important consideration was cost. There were no funds available to buy in software, especially as a multiple licence would have been necessary. Micro-Concord can now be downloaded free from the Web (http://www. ndirect.co.uk/~lexical/homepage.html) but has certain disadvantages. Having been written to run under MS-DOS, the interface makes it awkward for use with undergraduates used to Windows. In addition, it does not correctly recognise ANSI accented characters and replaces them by their ASCII equivalents, displaying lower-case e acute as upper case u acute, which is potentially confusing. It was therefore decided to develop a program, KWIC-CONCORD, originally written for research purposes by improving the interface and porting it from MS-DOS to Windows 3.1. Materials developed by the TELL Consortium3 were already being used in the Year 1 and Year 2 French language elements of the Colleges Combined Honours degree. These were GramDef and GramEx French, which are essentially suites of grammar exercises and explanations, and TransIt-Tiger, which pro75
Construction of the corpus

Before the experiment could start, it was necessary to find or construct a corpus. The primary need of students studying a foreign language is to acquire a lexical and grammatical competence that has wide applicability and, just as important, wide acceptability. The need was therefore for a didactic language corpus (Polezzi 1993) which could provide examples of accepted and acceptable use. Nowadays, the Internet has made it much easier to construct an ad hoc machine-readable corpus. For various reasons, it was decided to base the corpus on Label France published by the French Ministre des Affaires trangres and now accessible on the Web at http://www.france.diplomatie.fr/label_france/. The resulting corpus contained 232 texts (since increased) which were felt to satisfy Polezzis three parameters: it must be based on the learners needs; its size should be determined by the nature of the course and the level of the learners; it must be flexible allowing addition and modification.
vides practice in translation, in this case from French into English. Student reaction had been positive and so it seemed a logical step to add to the range of activities. GramDef and GramEx French were felt to be useful but largely duplicated what was available in books, but with the added advantage of interactivity. Nevertheless, the programs still present rules to students in traditional pre-packaged form. Since the intention was to get students to formulate rules for themselves, it was necessary to present them with the raw data, through use of the concordancer. Certain advocates of concordancing use the software as a way of resolving student uncertainties and queries (Higgins 1991, Johns 1991a). The concordance is created as a result of a problem identified in class and the results used in a subsequent class as a basis for analysis and discussion. The linguistic items that are the object of the concordances are not chosen by the teacher in advance. Conversely, there are instances where grammatical points have been identified in advance (Ching & Wong 1994, Wong et al. 1992) and then successfully exploited in class, even if student responses were mixed. Because the main aim of the experiment was to make grammar learning more learner-centred, ideally the former procedure should have been adopted. However, the Combined Honours course requires detailed syllabuses and schemes of work to be in place at the beginning of the academic year. I am also not convinced that the majority of students, certainly in the first year, are grammatically aware enough spontaneously to identify problems and needs. Therefore linguistic points were identified in advance and slotted into the grammar scheme of work in order to fit into the scheduled fortnightly computer session (one hour duration). As a result, there was a high level of teacher direction. The specific points chosen to begin with were: Year 1: Determiners and noun phrase structure; Position of adjectives, noun gender. Year 2: Third person clitic and disjunctive pronouns; Demonstrative pronouns, relative pronouns, subjunctive mood.
76
Worksheets were prepared in advance and handed out at the beginning of the lesson. These had two main purposes: (i) to identify the grammatical point to be investigated and the specific lexical items to be searched for and (ii) to guide students through the search process, taking into account the fact that some would have little or no experience of computers while none would have used a concordancer. As a result the worksheets for the first few sessions were quite detailed. To make the concordances manageable, searches were restricted to specific directories and these were indicated on the sheets. Instructions for each stage of the process were provided. At the end of each sheet there were two boxes: the first asked students to draw conclusions from their observations while the second asked them to formulate a rule. In order to investigate noun phrase structure and the role of determiners, Year 1 students were asked to produce a concordance on the keyword France and then to (i) list the words that immediately preceded it, (ii) translate examples into English and (iii) compare French and English usage. The second phase was to repeat the process with Paris, carrying out the three stages of analysis and then comparing the structures surrounding the two keywords. The intention was to repeat the exercise, but without translating into English, based on the keyword pays but this time with the focus on the accompanying adjectives. Because the first two phases took longer than expected, the third phase (pays) had to be carried out in class using a prepared concordance. The aim was to make students more aware of the necessity of the determiner and to think about the position of adjectives. The latter point was followed up with a new session, once again based on a worksheet, in which students worked as groups on three sets of adjectives: the first set, franais, rouge, blanc, they were supposed to identify as coming after the noun, the second set, bon, mauvais, petit, grand, as coming before and the third set, certain, dernier, long, ancien, curieux, vif/vive, as coming both before and after. The precise choice of keywords was determined by what was present in the corpus. The last session on
ReCALL
the noun phrase focused on noun gender, with groups of students being given sets of mixed masculine and feminine noun suffixes to search for and asked to identify regularities and classify them. From the teacher point of view, the sessions seemed to proceed well with the students active all the time and without any major hardware or software failures. In the follow up discussions, there was a gap between students who had a reasonably good grasp of grammatical concepts and could therefore identify patterns and those, admittedly a minority, who failed to see anything. Having students discuss results first as a group can help with this latter category. There were some problems with noun gender, usually caused by the possessive adjective mon, and even more with the third set of adjectives where the student-formulated rule was at times the reverse of the normally accepted one. This was even after some vetting as certain adjectives, especially ancien and dernier, can generate concordances which are contradictory and do not conform to accepted rule formulations. Generally, however, students reached conclusions that were rational and in accordance with linguistic reality. Year 2 students were asked to begin by focusing on elle and lui in order to (i) revise the notion of direct and indirect objects, (ii) highlight the fact that the indirect object lui is both masculine and feminine and (iii) extend the revision of pronouns begun in Year 1 to include the disjunctive pronouns. The computer session was preceded by a classroom session on subject pronouns and a detailed worksheet was prepared. Once again it became clear that students with a sound conceptual base could perceive patterns and formulate rules, while the few who still had no clear idea of the difference between subject and object still saw pronoun use as something arbitrary. Revision of demonstrative pronouns required students to search for celui and celle and while the search produced potentially useful results, the students failed to formulate any clear rules for themselves. Work on relative pronouns focused on dont and lequel/laquelle. Students seem to remember the basic rule for dont quite well, without necessarily being able to use it
properly, and so it is questionable whether the concordance added to their knowledge. The lequel/laquelle concordance did however highlight the use of the pronouns after prepositions and was thus valuable although, interestingly for me but less so for the students, it threw up certain other uses, some of which I was not fully aware of. Ideally, as part of a total revision of the relative pronouns, one should include qui and que but these highlight the limits of a non-tagged corpus. Any concordance based on these, especially on que, and intended for teaching purposes, requires extensive editing to remove all the non-relative uses. Pronouns were followed by revision of the subjunctive. Once again, this raises the question of the limits of a non-tagged corpus. The forms ait, soient, puisse, sache, fasse* were selected as keywords, since prior investigation had shown that these would produce sufficient examples to work on. Soit was excluded because it produced 230 examples, relatively few of which were examples of its use as a verb in opposition to est. Students were able to identify examples conforming to the rules that they already knew but were not very good at deducing any new rules from the linguistic data. The rules that they did advance were all too often based on a false interpretation of the data. For both Years 1 and 2, the above activities all took place in the Autumn Term. The intention was to continue into the Spring Term but feedback at the end of the first term suggested that the activity was fairly unpopular with a majority of students. The main reason given was that it took too long to gather the information. Students could not see why the concordances could not be prepared in advance and handed out in class. This would allow more time for what they saw as more useful activities, essentially practice of translation and summary. This highlights the potential for different perceptions between teachers and students. Their attitude is in many respects logical but disappointing, as they seemed not to accept the premise that constructing the concordances themselves was intended to make them more involved in and thus more conscious of the process. The students frustration can in part
77
be explained by teething problems with the software (this was the first time it had been used) and inadequate printing facilities (10 to 15 minutes at the end of a lesson could be spent waiting for print-out). Given the student responses, it was important to take stock and decide what lessons could be learned.
Conclusion
What can be concluded from the experiment? The first seems to be that for discovery methods to work, at least in the area of grammar acquisition, students need a good conceptual base to start from. Students who do not have this appear unable to benefit. In their case, careful presentation and structured practice still seem the best approach, as recommended by Manning (1997). This may in part be explained by the fact that, at least in the UK, students have little experience of formulating their own rules and tend to be passive as opposed to active learners. One must therefore prepare them gently. In the light of this, what role should the concordancer play? The experiment will continue next year. The software has already been modified to make its procedures more transparent. Classes will be scheduled every three weeks to enable more advance discussion and the time allocated to concordancing will be no more than 30 minutes, leaving time for another activity. Prepared concordances will be used in the early stages in order to initiate students into the methodology. Learners will be asked to formulate simple rules from an edited concordance and then perform follow-up activities such as gap-filling exercises derived from the same concordance. With more complex areas such as pronouns and subjunctives, it will probably be better to present an outline rule and then use concordances for reinforcement and practice again in the form of exercises requiring gap-filling or recombination. Changes to assessment patterns will make it possible to ask students to perform concordances and hand them in as part of their assessed homework, something which was not possible this year. Another potential role of the concor78
dance which will be investigated is as a corrective, providing examples of lexis or grammatical constructions in response to students errors. This has already been done but only infrequently and would reflect more closely the methodology described by Higgins (1991) and Johns (1991a & 1991b). Work has already begun on building up a bank of concordances. Individual work using the concordancer will also be encouraged as part of self-access provision and left to the more independentminded student or to final year students more familiar with research based methods. The latter were excluded from the present experiment by timetable constraints. The shift of emphasis from a learnerdirected to a teacher-directed approach does not however reduce the value of the concordance as a classroom resource. The value and usefulness of the concordance will be largely determined by the corpus. For specialist linguistic items, medicine or engineering for example, a specialist corpus will be necessary. However, for many linguistic items, even in specialist courses, a general-purpose corpus will produce sufficient examples, especially in areas of language that specialists often want, but which lie outside specialist corpora. Most foreign language teaching is not however so highly specialised and is in fact designed to give students as broad a range of linguistic and informational exposure as possible, encompassing the social, cultural, political, historical and economic dimensions of the language. Nowadays an appropriate corpus can quickly and cheaply be built up thanks to the Web. It needs minimal computing skills to download files and edit them where necessary. With modern computers, storage is rarely a problem. It is important to think through the pedagogic purpose of the corpus both in terms of language and content. It is also essential to think through the copyright implications, especially as there seems to be a general hardening of attitude among publishers. One advantage of the teacher directed approach is that, at least at present, it should not lay the teacher or institution open to prosecution, especially if the teacher stores the files at home. If, however, the intention is to give students access to
ReCALL
a central corpus, then it is essential to gain clearance. Sites such as the France.Diplomatie one are therefore singularly promising as the French government does not have the same financial imperatives as commercial publishers and is above all keen to promote knowledge of France and use of the French language. Teachers of other languages will need to look for equivalent sites.
Notes
1. In a survey carried out in October 1998, 74% of Y1 students and 95% of Y2 students thought grammar was important. 73% of Y1 and 88.5% of Y2 thought grammar teaching was helpful although only 33% of Y1 and 46% of Y2 thought it interesting. Slightly fewer, 20% of Y1 and 39% of Y2, thought it enjoyable. When asked how they thought they learned best, 27% of Y1 students and 35% of Y2 thought it was by working things out for themselves, 87% of Y1 and 85% of Y2 thought it was by having things explained by the teacher, 87% of Y1 and 92% of Y2 thought it was by doing exercises and only 60% of Y1 and 50% of Y2 thought it was by talking to other students. 2. For information on corpora and concordancing see: www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/monkey/ihe/linguistics/contents.htm; www.georgetown.edu/cball/ corpora/tutorial.html 3. The TELL Consortium (Technology Enhanced Language Learning) funded by the UK Higher Education funding bodies. Materials are available at special low prices to UK HE institutions and also commercially from Hodder & Stoughton. See http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/tell.htm.
References
Ching L. P & Wong I. F. H. (1994) Using Concordance-based Material for Teaching Verb Inflections, TESL Reporter 27 (2), 504. Corness P., Courtney K. & Matthews S. (1997) Astcovea: grammar in context, ReCALL 9 (2), 3342. Davidson T. (1990) Teaching with the Oxford Concordance Program, Literary and Linguistic Computing 5 (1), 815. Dodd B. (1997) Exploiting a Corpus of Written German for Advanced language Learning. In Wichmann A., Fligelstone S., McEnery T. & Vol 11 No 2 September 1999
Knowles G. (eds), Teaching and Language Corpora, London: Longman, 13145. Fligelstone S. (1993) Some reflections on the question of teaching, from a corpus linguistics perspective, ICAME Journal 17, 97109. Flowerdew J. (1993) Concordancing in Language Learning, Perspectives 5 (2), 87101. Gavioli L. (1997) Exploring Texts through the Concordancer: Guiding the Learner. In Wichmann A., Fligelstone S., McEnery T. and Knowles G. (eds), op. cit., 8399. Goodfellow R. (1994) Design principles for computer-aided vocabulary learning. In Thompson J. & Chesters G. (eds.), Emancipation through Learning Technology, Selected papers from the Eurocall 93 Conference, Computers and Education 23 (1/2), 5362. Goodfellow R. & Metcalfe P. (1997) The challenge back to basics or brave new world?, ReCALL 9 (2), 47. Higgins J. (1991) Fuel for Learning: the neglected elements of textbooks and CALL, CAELL (Computer Assisted English Language Learning) 2 (2), 37. Ilse W-R (1991) Concordancing in vocational training. In Johns T. & King P.(eds), Classroom Concordancing: ELR Journal 4 (1), 10313. Inkster G. (1997) First Catch Your Corpus: Building a French Undergraduate Corpus from Readily Available Textual Resources. In Wichmann A., Fligelstone S., McEnery T. and Knowles G. (eds), Teaching and Language Corpora, London: Longman. Johns T. (1991a) Should you be persuaded two samples of data driven learning materials, In Johns T. & King P. (eds), op. cit., 116. Johns T. (1991b) From printout to handout: grammar and vocabulary teaching in the context of data-driven learning. In Johns T. & King P. (eds), op. cit., 2745. Kettemann B. (1997) Concordancing as input enhancement in ELT. In LewandowskaTomaszczyk B. & Melia P. J. (eds), Practical Applications in Language Corpora, Lodz, 6373. Krashen S. (1981) Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning, Oxford: Pergamon. Krashen S. (1982) Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition, Oxford: Pergamon. Manning P. (1995) Exploratory teaching of grammar rules and CALL, ReCALL 8 (1), 2430. McEnery T., Wilson A. & Baker P. (1997) Teaching grammar again after twenty years: corpusbased help for teaching grammar, ReCALL 9 79
Concordancing using an off-the-web corpus: J Whistle (2), 816. Metcalfe P. (1992) CALL, the foreign-language undergraduate and the teaching of grammar: a linguistic and political battlefield, ReCALL no. 7, 35. Polezzi L. (1993) Concordancing and the Teaching of ab initio Italian Language for Specific Purposes, ReCALL no. 9, 1419. Tribble C. (1990) Computers, Corpora, Language Teaching: a practical introduction to the use of concordancing in language teaching and learning, Die neueren Sprachen 89 (5), 46575. Whistle J. (1986) Ends and Means: the shift from an exercise-based approach to a task-based approach. In Bate M. & Hare G. (eds), Communicative Approaches in French in Higher Education, Association for French language Studies, Occasional Papers 1, 12741. Wichmann A. (1995), Using concordances for the teaching of modern languages in higher education, Language Learning Journal 11, 613. Wong F. H., Cheung D. & Ching L. P. (1992) Concordancing in the Language Classroom, Cross Currents, XIX (1), 416. Wu M. (1992) Towards a Contextual Lexicogrammar: An Application of Concordance Analysis in EST Teaching, RELC Journal 23 (2), 1834. Jeremy Whistle has been Senior Lecturer in French at University College Northampton (formerly Nene College) since 1976. His teaching responsibilities include French language, literature, linguistics, economy and history. His primary research interest is corpus linguistics
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ReCALL
Conference report
IALL 99 Conference
University of Maryland, Washington June 2226 1999 This very well-attended conference was organised by IALL on the pleasant campus of the University of Maryland We all sweltered in the heat and praised the air conditioning, as the campus lies in the pocket of humidity which affects Washington. The variety of papers, workshops and plenary sessions on offer, as well as the impressive suppliers exhibition, also helped to distract us from the temperature. Plus a range of formal and informal activities on the social programme, including a baseball game (very noisy), a pub crawl (quieter than a British one!) and a tour of the monuments. Washington really is a great place to visit. Before travelling, my expectations were that the USA would be far in advance of the UK in its use of CALL, CMC and the Internet. To my pleasant surprise this was not the case. One especially interesting workshop was a tour of labs at other Washington universities. Here I found the labs being used very much in the way that open access centres in university language centres in this country are used. A wide range of course material is available on the Web, often related to a textbook, in addition satellite technology is used for the collection of authentic material and published materials in all forms provides additional stimulus. One difference was the way video and
audio are increasingly used in digitised form, by using for example a Cheetah digitiser. This was also true of the use of Powerpoint, with audio and video clips incorporated for the majority of presentations. When I commented on the use of Fusion on the Mac for digitising audio and video (in another workshop), I was asked Well, what do you use for digitising video? This is not a question I frequently encounter in the UK or in other European countries! Another frequent topic of conversation was the change from analogue to digital labs. The emphasis on the lab was, however in contrast to the emphasis in Britain on selfaccess and open learning. I saw many interesting presentations about the varied uses of all the technologies to assist language learning. Some were available for student use for homework, but within a structured framework. Many presentations referred to work done in class in the lab. As Tim Johns pointed out in his summary of the BALEAP conference in April 1999, twenty-five years ago we were all discussing how to put the language lab to best use, in the way that we now discuss the use of information and communication technologies. We take the lab, in its restricted meaning as a piece of hardware, so much for granted as a tool to assist us as language teachers or learners that we do not so often discuss its use. The distinctions between types of technology are becoming more blurred, so that we can concentrate on the process rather than the hardware.
81
Conference Report
Another theme which arose from the sessions and the conversations at the conference was the promise of technology, which is always going to be wonderful in the future. Nina Garrett gave an especially interesting presentation on this topic. However, I did not find very much awareness of what was hap-
pening or available in Europe. Links between organisations such as EUROCALL, CALICO and IALL should help to redress this imbalance. Tricia Coverdale-Jones University of Lincolnshire and Humberside
82
ReCALL
Language Processing in CALL

Proceedings of a one-day conference
NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING IN COMPUTER-ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING

held at UMIST, 9 May 1998 organised by the Centre for Computational Linguistics, UMIST, in association with EUROCALL
a special ReCALL publication
edited by Mathias Schulze, Marie-Jose Hamel and June Thompson
Available, price 10 sterling (cheque or credit card only please) from the CTI Centre for Modern Languages, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK. Order form available at
http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti
83
Diary
For the latest calendar of CALL-related events, go to http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/resources/calendar.htm
84
ReCALL
ReCALL: Notes for Contributors

ReCALL, the journal of CTI Modern Languages in association with EUROCALL, seeks to fulfil the stated aims of EUROCALL as a whole, which are to advance education by:
(a) (b) promoting the use of foreign languages within Europe; providing a European focus for the promulgation of innovative research, development and practice in the area of computer-assisted language learning and technology enhanced language learning in education and training; enhancing the quality, diffusion and cost-effectiveness of relevant language learning materials.
(c)
All articles are refereed. They are accepted for consideration on the assumption that they have not been previously published and are not currently being submitted to any other journal. Typical subjects for submissions include theoretical debate on language learning strategies and their influence on courseware design, practical applications at developmental stage, evaluative studies of courseware use in the teaching and learning process, assessment of the potential of technological advances in the delivery of language learning materials, exploitation of on-line information systems, and discussions of policy and strategy at institutional and discipline levels. Survey papers are welcome provided that they are timely, up-to-date and well-structured. The language of ReCALL is normally English. However, papers in French or German will be considered. Authors should be aware that editorial licence may be taken to improve the readability of an article. Three free copies of the journal are sent to contributors of articles in lieu of offprints. One free copy is sent to contributors of reviews. Copyright is assigned to the publisher, but the right to reproduce the contribution is granted to author(s), provided that the contribution is not offered for sale. Submission of documents: q Hard copy: preferably laser-printer output. q On 3.5 disk in Word for Windows 2.0 format or higher (please state version). q On 3.5 disk in ASCII format. q On 3.5 disk in Rich-Text-Format (RTF). Please label your disk with your name, date, the titles of files stored on the disk and the name of the word-processor you have used. Papers may also be submitted in MIME-encoded format by email. Texts for articles should not exceed 5,000 words: texts for reviews should not exceed 1000 words. Line spacing 1.5 with a point size of 12 (please indicate word-count at the end of your text). The text should be left-aligned only. Make sure that graphics and screen dumps are also available on disk and are of sufficient size and quality to be reproduced in a reduced format. Please indicate which graphics package you have used to produce them. For articles your text should be laid out as follows: Title of article: Do not use capital letters, except at the beginning of the title and for proper names. In languages other than English, use standard conventions. Author: First name, last name, institution. Biographical information: Brief, no more than 50 words. Abstract: No more than 100 words. Text of article References If your article/review includes numbered sections and paragraphs, use the following system: 1. 1.1.
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1.2. 1.3. 2. 2.1. 2.2. etc. Use bulleted lists within above system or i., ii., iii. then a., b., c. No brackets. Abbreviations Dont use full stops in abbreviations: ICI, OBE not I.C.I., O.B.E. When referring to the title of an organisation by its initials, first spell out the title in full followed by the abbreviation in brackets, thus: Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). Thereafter refer to ICI. Underlining Dont underline. Use italics or bold for emphasis. Bibliographical referencing within the article/review ... as was stated in a recent study (Davies 1995:65) ... ... see also Ahmad et al. (1985:123127) ... ... quotation ... (Davies 1985:15) Please avoid using footnotes. References at end of the article/review Please pay particular attention to the use of full-stops after initials and the use of commas, colons, brackets. Above all, be consistent. Your text will be returned for re-editing if you do not adhere to the prescribed system.
i. Single-author books Davies G. D. (1985) Talking BASIC: an introduction to BASIC programming for users of language, Eastbourne: Cassell. ii. Dual-author books Davies G. D. & Higgins J. J. (1985) Using computers in language learning: a teachers guide, London: CILT. iii. Multiple-author books Eck A., Legenhausen L. & Wolff D. (1995) Telekommunikation im Fremdsprachenunterricht, Bochum: AKS-Verlag. iv. Edited books Rschoff B. & Wolff D. (eds.) (1996) Technology-enhanced language learning in theory and practice: EUROCALL 94: Proceedings, Szombathely: Berzsenyi Dniel College. v. Articles in journals, magazines, etc. Little D. (1994) Learner autonomy: a theoretical construct and its practical application, Die neueren Sprachen 93 (5), 430-442. vi. Articles in books Johns T. (1991) Data-driven learning and the revival of grammar. In Savolainen H. & Telenius J. (eds.), EUROCALL 91: Proceedings, Helsinki: Helsinki School of Economics, 12-22.
Contact address Please address your manuscript, and any queries, to: June Thompson Editor, ReCALL CTI Centre for Modern Languages, University of Hull Hull HU6 7RX, UK. Email: cti.lang@hull.ac.uk or eurocall@hull.ac.uk 86 ReCALL

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ReCALL

Volume 11 Number 2 September 1999

Vol 11 No 2 September 1999

CTI Centre for Modern Languages

The CTI Centre for Modern Languages, University of Hull, UK

Vol 11 No 2 September 1999

ReCALL 11:2 (1999) 411

Second language acquisition through email interaction

Second language acquisition through email interaction: F Aitsiselmi

The theoretical framework

3.1 The acquisition-learning hypothesis

Second language acquisition through email interaction: F Aitsiselmi

3.4 The input hypothesis

3.2 The monitor hypothesis

3.3 The affective filter

Second language acquisition through email interaction: F Aitsiselmi

Authenticity and motivation

5.3 Comprehensible input

Second language acquisition through email interaction: F Aitsiselmi

5.5 Confidence building and learner autonomy

5.4 Focus on meaning

Second language acquisition through email interaction: F Aitsiselmi

needsand must actively take on mentoring and counselling (Fox 1997:47).

6.2 Word-processing and proof-reading

Second language acquisition through email interaction: F Aitsiselmi

Second language acquisition through email interaction: F Aitsiselmi

Vol 11 No 2 September 1999

ReCALL 11:2 (1999) 1219

1. Exercise design: sophistication versus programming feasibility

Data in, exercises out: configurability versus simplicity

Target computers: legacy support versus cutting-edge features

Multi-platform user interface design: consistency versus efficiency

Dependency on other Technology or Staff: Power versus Practicality

Further information on Hot Potatoes

Vol 11 No 2 September 1999

ReCALL 11:2 (1999) 2030

1.1. Tape-based language lab

Creating a virtual language lab: H-J Howard Chen

1. 2. Distributed learning and the virtual language laboratory

Creating a virtual language lab: H-J Howard Chen

2.2. Audio/video streaming technology

Pioneering virtual labs and the streaming technology

2.1. The problems of file storage and delivery

Figure 1 Dialogue from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Creating a virtual language lab: H-J Howard Chen

3. Creating the NTOU virtual language lab

3.1. Problems in using Internet resources

Figure 2 Tiger Woods in a CBS Sports news session

Vol 11 No 2 September 1999

Creating a virtual language lab: H-J Howard Chen

3.1.i. The problem of Web content

Figure 4 Randal Daviss Cyber Listening Lab

Figure 3 AudioNet Home

Figure 5 Classroom Studio Web Site

Creating a virtual language lab: H-J Howard Chen

3.1.ii. The problem of continuous delivery mode

3.1.iii. The problem of bandwidth

Figure 6 The interactive mode of audio delivery

Figure 7 The continuous mode of audio delivery

Vol 11 No 2 September 1999

Creating a virtual language lab: H-J Howard Chen

3.2 Intranet as an alternative solution