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A WEB - BASED RESOURCE FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
School of Lifelong Education and Development University of Bradford December 2006 |
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In this project, I have set out to create a web-based activity to teach simple spelling rules to learners who are nevertheless proficient speakers and readers of English. I should perhaps, start out by explaining how such a situation may arise. For some time, I have been intrigued by the fact, that many of my Chinese students, though their spoken English was of a good standard, experienced great difficulty when trying to write. Indeed, very often the written work produced by competent speakers bore some resemblance to that produced by native speakers with the form of dyslexia that Coltheart (1981) describes as Phonological.
Rollings (2004) describes the Chinese system as logographic. That is to say, each character represents one monosyllabic morpheme. It is a single unit of meaning and exists independently of phonology. In contrast with this, he describes English as glottographic. Essentially, the alphabet represents the sounds of the language. Cook (2001) asserts that, “…students’difficulties with reading may have more to do with the basic characteristics of the L1 writing system than with grammar or vocabulary” (p76) And specifically that ” … the Chinese meaning based system handicaps reading in English” (p76), However, despite the difficulty encountered when using a glottographic system to represent English, these same students have mastered Pinyin, which is a glottographic system of writing Chinese using Romanised spelling. Furthermore, when the situation was reversed, native English speaking children, who had problems with reading, easily learned to read English when it was represented by Chinese characters. (Rozin et al 1971). Clearly, the use of a different system is not the sole root of the problem. It is worth noting, that in Chinese Pinyin, each letter or combination of letters represents a single discrete sound in the language in the same way that in English the orthographic form /cat/ is a direct representation of the phonetic form [kæt]. This simple one to one correspondence between phonemes and letters of the alphabet (/cat/sat/mat/) poses few if any problems to the learner regardless of the script used in their native language. However,
although there are only 26 English
characters, the number of sounds that they need to represent is far
greater. It is necessary when writing English to use combinations of
two or more letters in order to represent 40 or more individual speech
sounds. Cook mentions only consonant pairs as examples of this.
However, it is equally true in the case of longer vowel sounds such as
[i:] and diphthongs. Unfortunately, for learners of English, these
combinations are not orthographically divisible. For example, the
letters /a/ and /i/ when combined as /ai/ are used not to represent the
diphthong [ai] but rather the seemingly unlikely diphthong [ei].
Similarly, the combination /oa/ represents not [oa] but [ Rollings reminds us that not only Chinese, but other Europeans, regardless of their own script, also find it difficult to use these letter combinations and Cook (op cit) concedes that the complexity of English spelling compared with the comparative simplicity of say, Italian is a major problem. Cook even refers to a study where native English-speaking learners of German made fewer spelling mistakes in German than in their native English! He concludes, that writing in English is especially difficult for all learners because of its own “… complex rules that govern the way the letters are arranged in words” ( Cook op cit p76). The
first task was to decide how to approach the teaching of these
simple spelling rules. The obvious answer seemed at first, to be by the
use of
homophones/homonyms. A search of the internet revealed a glut of
existing materials
using word-matching exercises and made-up sentences with multiple
choice
(usually two) answers but I failed to discover anything that could be
described
as authentic native–speaker models of English.
My own first attempts were not entirely satisfactory. A pair of web pages were created using authoring software, Hot Potatoes. Both of these were authentic-looking texts; a letter to an overseas pen pal and a short passage about a family holiday. Each was simply a cloze procedure where, in each gap, there was a drop-down menu containing variant spellings of the same sequence of phonemes (e.g. their/there). The task was simply to select the appropriate word. There were a number of problems with this. The
first and perhaps obvious objection was the
fact that almost every multiple choice required one of only two
possible
answers. Students would probably be able to achieve a score of 50% by
chance
alone.
Secondly, although the texts were intended to simulate real world language, they were nevertheless contrived. The texts were purpose-built for the exercise and little more than a selection of sentences that happened to relate to each other in a meaningful way. Finally, since the task entailed only the recognition of words, there was no requirement for students to produce language. It has already been pointed out that for the target group; recognition of the written forms tends to be far less of a problem than producing them. Specification Schrumm
(2000) suggests
that in devising a computer –based task;
“One way to begin might
include taking an assignment that has proven useful
and authentic in
traditional classroom use.”(p97).
With this in
mind, the
task I chose was neither new nor (unfortunately) of my own devising,
but one
that I have previously used successfully in a traditional classroom,
albeit for
a different purpose. The material consists of two partly completed
crosswords.
Each “half crossword” contains half of the total
solutions and no clues. The solutions
on each “half crossword” correspond with the
unfilled spaces on the other.
Working in pairs or collaboratively in two small groups, the students
are
required to complete the entire crossword by requesting and receiving
clues
from the other partner or group. Ideally, the
activity would be carried out by
means of a virtual classroom. In this way, the image would be presented
on the
screen and the participants could communicate in real time via voice or
text.
As an alternative, communication between students may be face to face
in the
classroom or by any synchronous communication system including MSN
Messenger, a
chat room, audio-visually via webcam, or simply by telephone. However,
the
latter would be recommended with some form of hands-free equipment such
as
internet telephone (VOIP) using a headset with microphone or the built
in
microphone and speaker of the computer. The use of internet phone has
an
additional financial advantage in that many service providers offer
free calls
between users of their system. Mobile phone texting, though a
possibility,
would not be recommended since it cannot be utilised in a hands-free
manner and
lends itself to a particular shorthand form of writing, which some
critics may
consider inappropriate at most levels of English language learning, Context The
task
is not to be viewed as a
stand-alone activity.
Rather, it should be regarded as one of many in the teacher’s
arsenal and
constitute a small part of a complete and more comprehensive lesson or
series
of lessons. The
following example adapted from A functionallanguage lesson on
communication strategies, an original
idea
by Lindsay
Clandfield, demonstrates
one
way in which it
might be incorporated into an English language lesson. Rationale:
This class focuses on communication strategies, which,
according to Lindsay Clandfield, fluent speakers of a foreign language
often
develop in order to help describe objects more quickly. Aim: Students practise using
all-purpose words like “stuff” and
“things”
to talk about things (and stuff?) in English. It’s
the thing that wakes me up every morning. This thing makes a noise
like BUZZZZ and then I reach over and I turn it off. I don’t
like this thing.
(ALARM CLOCK) It’s
very useful stuff. You use it to put things together. You can use
it to put two pieces of paper together, or to put wood or plastic
together. If
you want to use it with wood or plastic, you need stronger stuff, but
don’t get
it on your fingers. (GLUE) 2.
Elicit the answers to the first exercise. 3.
Ask the students to work in pairs. Tell them to sit
so that student A is facing the computer and student B is facing away
from the
computer. Present
the first picture on the screen. Student A
describes the picture and student B writes down what he thinks is being
described. When
student B is satisfied that, he has the correct
answer, he checks with the image on the screen. The students reverse
roles and
another slide is presented on the screen. Continue until all the
pictures have
been used up or until the allotted time has expired. Theoretical
basis The
project takes account of the constructivist philosophy of learning and
the
communicative approach to language teaching.
“The
tendency to explain phenomena by a unified theory … appears
to be a natural aspect of the creative
process, both for the child and
the
scientist.”(p209) The learner
constantly builds hypotheses based upon his
existing experience then seeks counter evidence that requires him to
modify the
hypothesis or even abandon it in favour of a new one. “The
occurrence of this kind of
basic language appears to be a universal of both first and second
language
acquisition.” (p21) Ellis also
observes that
second language learners develop an interlanguage
that is an
intermediate between the first language and the target language and in
using
this interlanguage, learners “…
change their grammar from
one time to another by adding rules, deleting rules and restructuring
the
whole.”(p33) This
observation would appear to accord with the
assimilation and accommodation processes of Piaget, Kolb’s
experiential
learning cycle and the building and modifying of a hypothesis described
by
Karmiloff-Smith and Inhelder. The
constructivist philosophy regards the role of the
teacher as a facilitator, encouraging students, by using real-world
problem-solving tasks, to discover new concepts and rules for
themselves and to
construct knowledge from these experiences. The communicative approach
to
teaching provides the learners with exactly the kind of situations
where they need to
communicate in the
target language and is characterised by:-
1
a focus on communicative functions
2
a focus on meaningful tasks rather than on
language per se
3
Efforts to make tasks and language relevant
to a target group of
learners
through an analysis of genuine realistic situations
4
the use of authentic, from-life materials
5
The use of group activities
6
the attempt to create a secure, non-threatening
atmosphere. Defeng
(2001) 1
We must
have something that we want to communicate. 2
We
must have someone to communicate with 3
We
must have some interest in the outcome of the communication. Hall
(2001)
(p230) (
Ellis, N. 1994 p1) And is,
“… the
human ability to derive information about the world in an unconscious,
non-reflective way.” (Winter
& Reber 1994 p115) One
particular type of
communicative task is the information gap or reasoning gap activity.
This
involves deriving some new information from given information through
processes
of inference, deduction, practical reasoning, or the perception of
patterns and
relationships.
“…
not intentional but incidental to perceiving, expressing and
organizing meaning” (p28) Prabhu
demonstrates that, there are
ways in
which students are able to manipulate
words and texts to discover other patterns of language and meaning.
“Half a Crossword” is a meaning focused,
information gap activity. In
requiring users to transmit, receive and deduce meaning, it is a means
of
facilitating the implicit learning of simple spelling rules. Although
it has already been pointed out to me, that the half a crossword task
could
easily be carried out in the classroom using no more than paper and
pen/pencil,
there are a number of distinct advantages to using a computer and
specifically
the internet. The
task satisfies
the "Premises for
'Communicative' CALL" proposed
by
Underwood (Underwood, 1984, p. 52 cited
in Warschauer, M. 1996): It provides
the
opportunity for students to interact using the target language. It
requires
participants to “communicate” information in order
to jointly fill in gaps and
can be modified to suit different levels. It is also fun to perform and
provides animation and amusement in the classroom. Transferring
information between groups or individuals encourages students to
generate
original utterances rather than just manipulate prefabricated language. The
task is flexible enough to allow a variety of student responses and the
only
indication to the student that something is wrong is if a word does not
fit in
the grid. “Half a Crossword” has the characteristics specified by Defeng (2001) in that it focuses on communicative functions, a meaningful task rather than on language per se, the task and language are relevant to the target group. The activity lends itself easily to group activity but there may be some disagreement concerning the authenticity of the material. However, even Widdowson (1983) considers it a mistaken belief that every activity must ”… bear the hallmark of authenticity.” (p30) rather that it should be possible to “…use contrived means to achieve a natural end” (p31) and that is precisely what this activity does.
References
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