Afterword

Without doubt, the digital technology allows SLA learners the best learning environment and at the same time thrusts its teachers the most challenging task in the history. The rich L2 language environment offers learners “the third space” in which real communication is possible to occur. Tools like YouTube and Podcast make task/problem-based output of L2 more attractive to learners. But to digital immigrant teachers like me, especially those who regard themselves as the “master of knowledge”, teaching digital natives is a job to invite embarrassment and nervousness. As a digital immigrant, I have fear to touch the digital technology. And what’s worse, I escaped to face the problem.

Through this course, I saw how far I fell behind this society and realized how important it is for a ESL teacher to face the reality and catch up with the step.

Staggering to finish to tasks for the class, I myself began to build up my own digital literacies, from knowing and using the tools, to making some trail digital works, from guessing the owner/writer of the website to figuring out the reliability, from download the software to handing on them. I was pushed to be involved in the huge tornado.

This course pushed me to see a big picture of digital reading and writing, or digital literacies in both theoretical and practical sense. I appreciate the instructor’s guidance and the design of the tasks. The reading materials for this course lead me to see skeleton of the big whole. Whenever I lost myself in the ocean of technology and information, the reading materials and the instructors comments allowed me to see something solid and all of a sudden, figuring out my position (by the way, I am a holistic learner).

Further from here, I probed for a new direction in my research, which I never dared to give a single glimpse. Out of my own experiences, I realized the significance of the design of the task in the pedagogy of L2 teaching. This is going to be the focus of my later research.

Also there are some questions remained that will engage more of my effort. I still have difficulty in seeing the overlapping relationship among L1 digital literacies, L2 digital literacy and L2 digital literacies.

The effects of guided careful online planning

Ahmadian, M. J. (2012). The effects of guided careful online planning on complexity, accuracy and fluency in intermediate EFL learners’ oral production: The case of English articles. Language Teaching Research, 16

(1) 129–149. doi: 10.1177/1362168811425433

This is a big article to read. From the theoretical frame to the methodology, from the research design to the data analysis, this article is a serious report of a carefully designed experiment which proved that the variable of guided careful online planning had had positive effects upon the accurate production of English articles as well as the global complexity of language in learners’ speech.

Thought what this article reported is the positive function of the guided careful online planning, I saw the significance, from the oral side, of the process of the output procedure of the second language acquisition.

But to be honest, the guidance here introduced is not very special, as I expected.

What’s more, this article did a thorough and thoughtful literature review.

Just-in-Time Edcucation and Second Language

Ragoonaden, K. (2011, June), Bonjour/Hello: Just-in-Time Education and Second Language. 6th International Conference on e-Learning ICEL-2011, Canada.

This article is presented in the 6^th International Conference on e-Learning ICEL-2011 held in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.

By introducing the problems met in the practice of the French Immersion pedagogy, the Just-in-Time Education theory, interactive multimedia environment and participatory cultures theory, this article proposes that an increased exposure to French language can occur through electronic networking and interactive media by exposing second language students to authentic contexts and more importantly to authentic communications with Francophones on a wide array of subjects.

This article reinforces the significance of multimedia environment and the output of the target language, to the second language acquisition. What sounds impossible right now in my teaching context is the authentic communications with the native speakers, which finishes the second language learning half way.

Language distance learning

Durán-Cerda, D. (2010). Language distance learning for the digital generation, Hispania, 93(1).  

The author sees language distance learning as the trend of future education.

I got many interesting suggestions for the distance learning course design and some recommended practices.

Experiences from Korea

Meurant, R. C. (2010, April). How Computer-Based Internet-Hosted Learning Management Systems such as Moodle Can Help Develop L2 Digital Literacy, International Journal of Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering 5(2).

 

The author reported the employment of Computer-based Internet-hosted Learning Management Systems (LMS), for example Moodle applied in the research here. By setting the LMS to force English to be used exclusively throughout a course website, the author found that students developed the ability to use English to navigate the internet, access and contribute to online resources, and engage in computer-mediated communication. Students’ significant improvement made in L2 Digital Literacy was observed.   

 

This article draws back my confusion again with the L1 digital literacies, L2 digital literacy, and L2 digital literacies.

What do “L2 digital literacies” include? What is the deficit between a person’s L1 digital litercies and his L2 digital literacies if he is absolutely L1 literate? Is it a second language only?

What is the difference between L2 digital literacy and L2 digital literacies?

Does anyone have any explanation? Thanks.

"podcast time"

Symthe, S. & Neufeld, P. (2010, March). “Podcast Time”: Negotiating Digital Literacies and Communities of Learning in a Middle Years ELL Classroom. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 53(6). doi:10.1598/JAAL.53.6.5

I chose this article because of the pedagogy discussed. A project called “podcast time” created classroom learning communities (“the third space”) where students negotiated the digital literacies. The authors concluded that the invisibility of English language learners’ semiotic resources prevented “boundary crossing” between the pedagogic spaces of podcast time and the usual organization of classroom learning. Therefore, the authors regarded the podcast time as an example of pedagogic enrichment rather than the pedagogic transformation.

To me, the illumination of this article is that by accomplishing a task, students expanded their repertoires and began to write or read with and for an invested audience.

Report of a U.S.-China E-Language Project

Green, P.J., Sha, M. & Liu, L.(2011). The U.S.-China E-Language Project: A Study of a Gaming Approach to English Language Learning for Middle School Students. Washington D. C. Traced from: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html.

     

      This is a report prepared for the U.S. Department of Education on the result of a case study of an U.S.-China E-Language project upon a game approach to English language learning for middle school students.

The project found out that those students in treatment schools with relatively low levels of initial proficiency gained more in reading and listening than similar students in comparison schools. But there were no evidence of differences in performance between treatment and comparison groups among students with higher levels of initial proficiency. More interestingly, the proficiency of students in both treatment schools and comparison schools performed similarly tested at the beginning and the end of the treatment remained the same.

Students in the treatment group reported higher levels of motivation to learn English than those in the comparison schools.

95% of teachers reported that participating this project changed the way they thought about teaching because the teaching approach involving game-playing was learner-centered and interactive by offering students problem-based tasks and immediate feedbacks.

With findings of this project, I interviewed my students who are studying in a university that ranks somewhere from top 20 to 25. Two out of their points attracted my attention. One is that they played games but didn’t feel their English proficiency was thereby improved, which is in correspondence with the finding in this report. The second is, contrasting to the relationship between playing game and the increase of their motivation to learn English, as was reported in this material, my students said that playing games didn’t motivate them to learn English once they grasped the rules to play the game.

If the first phenomenon is the fact, how would theorists explain that? The games were not well designed to assist language learning? Or playing games absolutely doesn’t change players’ language proficiency?

The second point of my students’ indicates that motivation increases learning efficiency but with the fulfillment of players needs on different levels, their motivation level decreases and hereby learning efficiency decreases or simply disappears.