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Weekly UpdatesABSTRACT
This paper describes an experimental study aimed at investigating the learning effectiveness of a Web-based course called Academic English (EAP) for Japanese learners of English. The main focus of the study was to examine the form, function, and impact of interaction in the course. Twenty university-level EFL students participated in this experiment. They were randomly assigned to two treatment groups: a controlled group with inter-personal task treatment and an experiment group with intra-personal task treatment. Regarding effectiveness of the interactivity dimension in language acquisition, there was one independent variable, type of treatments, and two dependent variables, achievement and attitude measurements. The achievement variable was used to address the extent of learning due to the two treatment conditions. The attitude variable was used to address the degree of motivation towards a Web-based communication platform as well as the enforced interaction functions. Statistical analyses revealed no significant effect of treatment on either comprehension or general L2 development, but significant differences were found with respect to language interaction for task completion under different task treatments. Therefore, it was concluded that this Web-based course was well designed to maximize the students' language learning experience as well as to improve their language abilities in English. Further research is needed to examine the notion of self-repair in students' production in the target language.
INTRODUCTION
The advent of information communication technology has improved the quality of many scientific disciplines, including language education (Chapelle, 2001; Farretti, 2001; Gonzalez-Lloret, 2003; Tsou, Wang, & Li, 2002). Language learning through technology has become a fact of life with important implications for second language acquisition (SLA; Chapelle, 2001). New theories and applications of language learning and teaching are exploring the benefits of information communication technology to facilitate SLA (Chapelle, 1998; Chen, Inoue, & Okamoto, 2001; Chen, Cristea, & Okamoto, 2003; Gonzalez-Lloret, 2003; Okamoto, Kayama, Inoue, & Cristea, 2002). In these activities, instructional design based on the communicative language teaching paradigm has shifted language teaching and learning practices in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) environments (Box, 2003; Chapelle, 2001).
Educational research findings suggest that the success of any educational process should be based on sound pedagogical principles and interactions (Box, 2003; Chapelle, 1998; Day & Shapson, 2001; Ellis, 1999; Gonzalez-Lloret, 2003). During communication, students draw on their abilities to anticipate new information, notice insufficient knowledge, and relate the new information to pre-existing information. Therefore, communicative language use is a successful and powerful approach to language learning (Batstone, 2002; Gonzalez-Lloret, 2003; Izumi, 2002; Pica, 1991; Schollaert, 1998; Skehan, 1998).
The concept of communicative task (i.e., a meaning-focus activity), based predominately on the notion of communicative language use, creates situations that encourage the production of comprehensible output (e.g., a modified speech, written text) from the students. In support of communicative tasks, Nunan (2000) posits that tasks promoting linguistic/conversational adjustments promote comprehensible input (i.e., elaborated learning routines). Similarly, Long (1996) found that learners are most likely to notice linguistic form during interaction. According to Hegelheimer and Chapelle (2000), the most useful interactions are those which help learners comprehend the semantics and syntax of input and improve the comprehensibility of their own linguistic output. As stated by Gonzalez-Lloret (2003), interaction facilitates comprehension better than learning conditions without interactions. Moreover, the discourse produced through a task is given its identifiable shape and structure by the communicative purpose of the task (Newton & Kennedy, 1996).
There are a number of experimental studies within the communicative language teaching paradigm that have shown positive evidence of such interactions in CALL environments. For instance, using a taskbased course in a CALL environment, Gonzalez-Lloret (2003) showed that second language (L2) interactions between students resulted in considerable high-quality output, although not as rich as the interaction between native speakers and non-native speakers. However, her task-based CALL is more similar to traditional face-to-face interactions: The computer served not as a medium of communication, but as a presenter of materials meant to engage students in conversation.
Tsou et al. (2002) developed an individualized teaching tool for vocabulary learning that employs concept map-mediated interactions based on the idea of linking students' prior knowledge with their new knowledge. The learning tool is designed to help the learner acquire abstract vocabulary. However, this learning tool cannot dynamically adapt the learning path (i.e., the sequence of the course) based on the student-user's learning needs and task results. Therefore, it is easy to stray from the optimal learning path. It was not clear from the authors' findings whether this communication pattern could help learners to transfer their knowledge of the language into their academic lives.
In keeping with these findings, we proposed a communication-oriented framework, a combination of the task-based approach common to communicative language teaching. This framework was adopted to formulate a comprehensive instructional design that provides guidelines for instructional developers to structure learning materials so as to accommodate sufficient situational exposures to language learning in non-English speaking areas.
The main assumption underlying this research is that L2 interaction is necessary for language construction and reconstruction. Each form of instructional interaction is assumed to play a role in the entire educational process. Negotiation of meaning is also assumed to happen either in inter-personal or intrapersonal activities. The distinction between required and optional information exchange is operationalized as a distinction between inter-personal (e.g., two-way information gap) and intra-personal tasks (e.g., oneway note-taking). This distinction will be the key factor determining the optionality of interaction in our experimental study.
As an illustration of our approach, we developed a Web-based course called Academic English aimed at upgrading students' language ability in English for academic purposes (EAP). The prototype of Academic English was designed to support distance learning as well as to supplement traditional classroom-based activities. Various kinds of learning materials and information are stored as digital multimedia in the form of pictures, videos, and sound tracks. Accessing the course from remote sites, students can select their preferred video clips, participate in question/answer sessions, and receive feedback after each interaction. In addition, opportunities for student-student and student-teacher interaction are also available via communication tools (e.g., a chat tool). The Web-based course was built with the purpose of maximizing their language-learning experience.
The main focus of our experimental study was to examine the effectiveness of different forms of interactivity on language acquisition in the Web-based listening environment. In particular, we aimed to examine how the form of interaction was defined by specific course modes (i.e., student-content interaction) in which students' background knowledge of the subject is involved in the communication/interaction processes. The following research questions guided our study:
1. What mode of interaction (i.e., negotiation of meaning in inter-personal versus intra-personal activities) facilitates comprehension better and could lead to more effective language acquisition?
2. Does negotiation of meaning facilitate greater comprehension and production?
The remaining parts of this paper are structured as follows: (a) description of the Web-based Academic English course; (b) experimental study of the Web-based course; and (c) results, discussion, and suggestions for future research.
DESCRIPTION OF THE WEB-BASED ACADEMIC ENGLISH COURSE
The Web-based environment was designed to provide students with an outline of the course content (i.e., Artificial Intelligence, in the case of our pilot version), direct access to additional learning resources, and system functionality. This environment included two types of user interfaces: a student interface and a teacher interface. The student interface is divided into a frameset (i.e., five frames), as shown in Figure 1.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
The functions of the framesets are as follows:
1. The upper left frame displays a video-on-demand (VOD) presentation.
2. The lower left frame displays the learning path (i.e., the structure of the lesson, which allows students to control the sequence and pacing of learning).
3. The upper right frame displays the question/ answer function and instructions for each task.
4. The middle right frame displays feedback from the teachers or other students.
5. The bottom right frame displays other tutorial functions including video script and learning history of a student.
In the following section, we will explain how learning content is specified and structured to support interactivity.
Instructional Strategies
Two instructional strategies (i.e., course strategies and dialogue strategies) were defined for the course as a whole. Course strategy represents a method based on the theory of learning styles (i.e., student preferences in learning) and is used to determine an appropriate dialogue strategy for a given instructional goal (e.g., listening comprehension). For instance, a student with a sequential learning style prefers to learning step by step. For such a student, a step-by-step course strategy would be selected to optimize the learning process. A dialogue strategy, which is based on a specific teaching objective (e.g., defining a concept), is used to determine the basic video input and the corresponding response modes to be used so as to best situate the learning task. A single teaching objective may be achieved via one or several dialogue strategies. The dialogue strategies in Academic English are categorized into three dimensions:
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