Taiwan: 1. Interaction

Exploiting the Internet for Foreign Language Interaction:
Resources, Tools and Techniques for using Text, Audio and Video

Gary Cziko
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Presented at

National Tsing Hua University
Hsinchu City, Taiwan Province, Republic of China

9 November 2005

Abstract

There is today an astounding number of resources available on the Internet for interacting in foreign languages. These resources, many of them available at no cost, include many different varieties of asynchronous and synchronous text, audio and video. This presentation will describe and demonstrate a number of these resources, including internet forums, chat rooms, blogs, vlogs, wikis as well as audio and video conferencing. The dual challenges of creating interactive Internet-based activities to improve foreign-language skills and finding language exchange partners will also be discussed.

Overview

Why interaction?
Modes of interaction
Text
Audio
Video
Finding groups and partners

Moodle and eTOM
Conclusions

Notes:

*Indicates Gary's favorites.
All Internet resources mentioned here are FREE (or at least have free versions) unless otherwise indicated.

Why interaction?

Two types of experiences needed for language acquistion

Input

Everyone agrees language input (in written and/or spoken form) is needed for language acquisition
Some (e.g., Stephen Krashen) believe it is sufficient

Interaction

Allows for two-way communication, reception and production
Some believe that interaction and production are also necessary for language acquistion, particularly if one wants to be able to produce (speak and/or write) another language

I will talk about using technology for input (not output) Friday morning at ETA
I will talk about using technology for interaction with you this afternoon
Please feel free to ask questions during my presentation
These notes will be linked to my website at garycziko.net under "presentations"

Modes of interaction

Media: text; audio; video (or combinations thereof)
Time

Asynchronous (e.g., e-mail)

advantage of not having to be online at the same time (and across different time zones)
disadvantage of having to wait for an answer and not getting immediate feedback

Synchronous (e.g., instant messages)

advantage of immediate feedback via "live" interaction
disadvantage of arranging simultaneous online sessions (especially across different time zones)

Connections: person-to-person; person-to-computer; group (private or public)

Text

Asynchronous text

Person-to-person

E-mail

Google's *Gmail offers free web-based e-mail with over 2.5 GM of storage

by invitation only by current Gmail users (I can invite you if you send me an e-mail request for Gmail)

Group

Internet forums (aka discussion group, bulletin boards)

Commercial (with advertising); pre-existing or user-created

-> my groups: bentbikerbrotherhood

Private forums

phpBB
Within a course management systems (CMS) such as Blackboard, WebCT or *Moodle (see eTOM below)

Blogs (WeB_logs)

Authors can be anyone: from paid political columnist to your next-door neighbor

Type of blogs

Read-only blogs (no interaction)
Blogs with comments (with or without e-mail notification)

Lanny on Learning Technology (text only)
UIUC Problems (text with photos)
(Audio and video can also be added to blogs--see below)

Finding blogs

Use Google's Blog Search to find blogs
Most popular blogs (as measured by links to them)

Creating blogs

Use Blogger to create an unlimited number of blogs

One or more "administrators" can post articles (can be a group of students working together)
Readers can read and perhaps leave comments
Can include photos, audio and video (see below)

See Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents

Wikis and collaborative projects

Wikis permit instant web editing, usually by anyone
Wikipedias exist in about 80 languages: English, Simple English, Chinese (most links from this page are to the English Wikipedia)

Instant editing (What I Know Is . . .)
Articles are profusely linked to other Wikipedia articles and other Web resources

Compare in English Wikipedia:

National Tsing Hua University (not much info)
Tsinghua University (more info)

See "Alumni" and their links
See "Tsinhua Fight Song"

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (even more info)

Create your own free wiki

*BluWiki (uses same software as Wikipedia)

seedwiki (free and paid)
Wikispaces (free and paid)
pbwiki (fee and paid)
Schtuff.com

Wiki project possibilities for language learners

Write and others revise

L2 students can write in their L2 and have their writing corrected by their teachers and/or fellow L2 learners and/or natives speakers

Read and edit

L2 students can read and edit/correct/revise their own or others' wiki text, perhaps based on comments left by the teacher and other students

Read and discuss

L2 students can read and discuss the text with authors and other readers using the "discussion" page that is part of all MediaWiki wikis.

*Translate L1 to L2 and/or L2 to L1

L2 students can take an article in the Wikipedia or other wikis and translate from their L1 to L2 and/or from L2 to L1
for example, expand the NTHU article in the English Wikipedia; or translate the UIUC English article into Chinese

Synchronous text (text chat)

Person-to-person

Instant Messagers (IM)

AIM (AOL Instant Messenger)
Yahoo! Messenger
MSN Messenger
*Google Talk (Windows only)
iChat (Macintosh only)
*Jabber (XMPP protocol)

Group

Chat rooms

Yahoo! Chat

Can choose chat room by topic, region, culture, language, etc.
Lots of advertisements and nonsense
Cannot currnetly set up own chat rooms

Person-to-computer

Chatterbots (chatbots)

ALICE: text
DAVE ESL bot (paid); audio

Gary's subscription through 2005/11/15)

Suggested mprovements: save all text of chat; turn on and off DAVE's audio and text; have entered text spoken by another "talking head"

Audio

Asynchronous audio

Create audio files (e.g., with Audacity) and upload to an Internet forum or blog
Audioblogger: "free unlimited posts from any phone to your Blogger blog"

5-minute limit; +1.415.856.0205 in USA, plans for numbers in other countries

Can call with Skype or Gizmo Project from anywhere for about 2 cents/minute

Synchronous audio

Person-to-person

"Enhanced" Instant Messengers

Other programs

iChat AV (Macintosh only): video, audio and text chat
PalTalk (Windows only): mostly voice and text chat
Skype: also computer to telephone (paid)
Google Talk
*Gizmo Project (open source; audio recording, instant messaging, worldwide conference calls; also computer to telephone (paid)

Video (usually with text chat and audio)

Asynchronous video via Google Video

Put link to video in e-mail message
Teachers and students can upload video or find video and have students write about it in blog or Internet forum

Gary's blog with swimming video

Synchronous video: Person-to-person and group

Skype plus Festoon
*iChat AV (Macintosh only)
iVisit: (usually video plus text chat)
SightSpeed (Windows only; person-to-person; one party can have IE instead of program)
VRVS (complicated to set up and use, but best for large groups)
Flash Communication Server (see eTOM below)

Finding groups and partners

Challenge of finding groups and partners

xLingo: Online Language Exchange Network
SL-Lists: Tom Robb's student list for project for English learners
Mixxer: for individuals and teachers wanting language exchanges using Skype
MyLanguageExchange
Shared Talk
Teacher Mania
Lingo Zone
WorldFriends
Jyve: directory of Skype users

Moodle and eTOM

Moodle

Open-source electronic course management system
Includes text-based communication tools

Forums (bulletin boards)
Chats
Wikis

Can be supplemented with:

Asynchronous and synchronous audio (e.g., Skpe or Gizmo)
Synchronous video (e.g., Flash Communication Server)

eTOM

Moodle site designed for Tandem language learning (language exchange)
Has all communications tools of Moodle plus synchronous audio/video
Methods for finding a Tandem partner class

Visit eTOM

Forum for finding partner classes

A class in Taiwan can seek a class in an English-speaking country learning Chinese (bilingual, bicultural group)
A class in Taiwan can seek a class in an English-speaking country learning about Asia, China, Taiwan (monolingual, bicultural group)
A class in Taiwan can seek a class in an non-English-speaking country that is also learning English (EFL group)

Conclusions

There is today an astounding number of resources available on the Internet for interacting in foreign languages using asynchronous and synchronous text, audio and video.
Teachers and students can explore these possibilities together to find the most interesting, enjoyable and educational way to use these resources to improve foreign-language skills.
Start with just ONE idea that you find interesting, pursue it and share your experience with others (maybe on a wiki?)

References

This outline (and other presentations in Taiwan during November 2005) via http://garycziko.net > Presentations
Autonomous Technology-Assisted Language Learning (ATALL) Wikibook at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ATALL (or search via Google using "ATALL Wikibook".
- to find out about new tools, resources and language learning activities
- to share what you have discovered with other language teachers and students
- will be shown at my workshop at ETA on Saturday