Brave New Digital Classroom

Technology and Foreign Language Learning, Third Edition

Robert J. Blake, Gabriel Guillén

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781626167414
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Teaching Language Arts
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Robert Blake, now with Gabriel Guillén, updates his successful book (1st ed. 2008, 2nd ed. 2013) on how to teach foreign languages using technology. Brave New Digital Classroom touches on all of the key concepts and challenges of teaching with technology, focusing on issues specific to FLL or L2 learning and CALL. Originally referred to as computer-assisted language learning, CALL has come to encompass any kind of learning that uses digital tools for language learning.

This edition reframes the conversation to account for how technology has been integrated into our lives. Blake and Guillén address the ways technology can help with L2, how to choose the right digital tools, how to use those tools effectively, and how technology can impact literacy and identity. The book is primed for use in graduate courses: terminology is in bold and a comprehensive glossary is included; each chapter finishes with a short list of references for further reading on the topic and discussion questions. The authors provide short interview videos (free via GUP website) to enhance discussions on each chapter's topic.

CHAPTER 1

Can Technology Help with L2 Learning?

Homo Loquens: The Speaker of Tongues

Human beings were born, if not designed, to speak languages. Homo loquens, the speaker of tongues, describes one of the defining qualities of human species. Except for exceedingly rare cases of severe social deprivation, all children learn to speak a first language (L1) with no apparent effort, if not several languages, with multilingualism being the norm throughout most of the world. Nevertheless, the age when you learn a second language (L2) makes a big difference (DeKeyser 2000, 2013). Becoming bilingual from birth is not quite the same process as picking up an L2 at age fifteen, twenty-five, or fifty-five years.

Still, anyone can learn an L2 at any age, albeit with varying degrees of success that depend on a number of interwoven social and cognitive factors (Ervin-Tripp 1974). In contrast to L1 learners, however, not all L2 learners reach complete language attainment, and not all L2 learners converged at the same level of competence. In addition, though children routinely learn their L1 without receiving negative evidence (i.e., linguistic corrections) or instruction, L2 learners, especially classroom learners, profit greatly from negative evidence because it can stimulate a reanalysis of their interim linguistic knowledge (i.e., their interlanguage), which is often infused with transfers and fossilized structures patterned after their L1 grammar (Towell 2013, 133). In short, L2 learners need to notice and attend to the new forms of the L2 and suppress the familiar L1 structures (Ellis 2005, 317). It is very complicated, as we discuss in more detail at the end of this chapter.

Even defining what it means to know a language is no simple matter. Who or what is a native speaker, a near-native speaker, a heritage speaker, or a nonnative speaker (Davies 2003; Valdés 2000; Kramsch 1997)? What do these terms signal when someone says they know how to speak a particular world language? Language experts use terms like language competence, proficiency, or fluency without clarifying the nuances implied by each separate term. What is the meaning of the sempiternal “I want to be a fluent”? Do learners want to be able to maintain a conversation? Do they want to be able to work in the target language? Is the goal to become a near-native speaker?

The term competence itself has changed radically since Noam Chomsky (1957) first employed it; we now speak about communicative competence, sociolinguistic competence, pragmatic competence, and intercultural competence (see Blake and Zyzik 2016). When someone knows a language, this knowledge includes phonological, lexical, morphological, syntactic, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic information.

Learning a second (or third, fourth, etc.) language is a special case of homo loquens’ innate linguistic and cognitive abilities. In the past, researchers have argued whether this process should be called second language acquisition (SLA), second language learning, or second language development, with each term connoting different degrees of conscious effort, what psychologists would call explicit versus implicit knowledge. Others have wanted to set apart second-language learning carried out in a country where that language is spoken officially, in contrast to foreign language learning that takes place in a classroom or academic setting far away from a community of native speakers. More recently, the term heritage language learner has become commonplace in the SLA field to refer to bilingual native speakers with diverse levels of language skills in each language.

Despite these theoretical and descriptive problems in addressing the question of capturing what we know when we know a language, everyone agrees that learning another language after puberty takes a good amount of time and energy and is not always as reliable as the process of acquiring an L1 (DeKeyser 2013). Again, everyone in the homo sapiens / homo loquens tribe learns to speak a first language, and many individuals speak more than one tongue as well. This book considers the question of how we learn another language and culture after childhood and whether technology, itself an umbrella concept, can provide useful support for this end goal.

Why Is Technology in the L2 Curriculum?

Given the considerations outlined above, why should any L2 language educator or student in the process of learning an L2 have any interest in technology, given that L2 learning is such a social and ecological process mostly carried out face-to-face? The answer lies in looking closely at the facts of SLA and the resources at hand. Before any SLA considerations, keep in mind that L1 learning is far from a quick-and-easy process. Children might be “learning sponges,” but it takes them several years to acquire an L1 in complete immersion, counting the help of at least one very devoted instructor.

SLA, the process of learning another language other than your mother tongue (L1), is both an intensive and time-consuming activity. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) estimates that anywhere from 700 to 1,320 hours of full-time instruction are needed to reach a functional level of fluency (Bialystok and Hakuta 1994, 34), meaning that the learner can carry out most professional activities in that L2. More specifically, the time commitment for learning a Romance language minimally approaches 20 weeks of intensive, full-time study at 30 hours a week, for a grand total of 600 hours, whereas for other languages, such as Russian and Chinese, the ideal exposure can exceed 44 weeks at 30 hours a week, or 1,320 hours. Even though these studies are not conclusive, the fact is that learning a language takes a significant amount a time.

In stark contrast to these calculations, most university students spend on average only 150 hours per academic year actively studying a second language (10 weeks at 5 hours a week for three quarters = 150 total hours). Upon graduation from college, L2 students have just barely reached the FSI’s lowest-threshold requirements for achieving functional proficiency—and even then, only if a Romance language is involved. For students studying a non-Romance language at the university level, four years of L2 study are barely sufficient to obtain functional proficiency, according to these FSI estimates.

For students who began studying an L2 in high school and continued at the university level, the picture still does not seem much brighter. Many educators and public figures have expressed dismay that so much university language work appears to consist of remedial classes because the bulk of the material taught has already been introduced in the high school curriculum. But that is not how L2 learning works. The FSI’s statistics simply confirm that functional proficiency in an L2 requires four to six years of rich input and practice. L2 learning requires much time on task, making the issue of remedial instruction completely moot.

Crucial to this L2 processing are the extent and nature of the input received, something all linguists and SLA researchers can agree on, even if their theoretical models differ radically (see the SLA models discussed later in this chapter). Children, in particular, are considered to be the proverbial learning sponges, as mentioned above. However, university students, in terms of time on task, do not compare too unfavorably with children under five years learning an L1, although their attainment of phonetic accuracy or a native-sounding accent might be one notable exception (DeKeyser 2000).

How can this sobering depiction of adult SLA be sped up—or at least made more efficient? Increasing contact with the target language is the most obvious answer—more input. Traveling to the regions where the target language is spoken and immersing oneself in the society and culture clearly remains the preferred, but most expensive, method of acquiring linguistic competence in another language. However, only 1.68 percent of US college students had the opportunity to go abroad during the 2016–17 school year (NAFSA, n.d.). In addition, shorter study abroad programs of a semester or less are becoming the norm (Hernandez 2016). What happens to the majority of the nation’s L2 students who are unable or unwilling to take advantage of study abroad? They need to find an edge, a particular learning advantage, right where they are. Throughout this book, we argue that the digital learning environment—liberally defined as the use of the computers, the Internet, mobile phones, and the like—can help provide significant affordances in service of L2 learning. These affordances will also be helpful for learners who are studying abroad or locally, exploring their own language spaces “at home” and/or while traveling to domestic communities where their target language is widely spoken.

Most SLA theorists agree, in some basic formulation of the issues, that formal L2 teaching is often unsuccessful because learners receive impoverished or insufficient input in the target language (Cummins 1998, 19) and not enough opportunities for output and negotiation of meaning. Technology, then, if used wisely, can play a major role in enhancing L2 learners’ contact with the target language, especially in the absence of study abroad, and increasing language practice opportunities. Whether technology can actually fulfill this promise depends on how it is used in the curriculum, which in turn depends on the teacher fit and student fit. Accordingly, our principal interest in this book centers on discussing how technology can best be employed in the foreign language curriculum to enhance and enrich learners’ contact with the target language so as to assist L2 and intercultural competence development.

A few words of caution, however, are in order from the outset. First, technology only provides a set of tools that are, for the most part, methodologically neutral. Selber (2004, 36) has called this attitude toward technology the tool metaphor: “From a functionalist design perspective, good tools become invisible once users understand their basic operation.” In reality, all tools mediate our experiences in certain ways, which is to say that they are not totally value free. Applied linguists working within an ecological framework would say that new technologies provide certain affordances and a particular ecology that are not neutral (Thorne 2003; Zhao et al. 2005; Levy 2006, 13–15; Kern 2015).

Despite these words of caution, how technological tools are used should largely be guided by a particular theoretical model and by recommendations from those who are charged with facilitating L2 learning. Accordingly, we affirm an approach to SLA that claims L2 learning is best accomplished through interactions (for a similar endorsement, see Long 1991; and with reference to the computer learning environment, see Chapelle 2001). Pica, Kanagy, and Falodun (1993, 11) represent well the stance of those who hold to the Interactionist Theory when they state that “language learning is assisted through social interaction of learners and their interlocutors, particularly when they negotiate toward mutual comprehension of each other’s message meaning” (emphasis added). The question examined here, then, is whether technology can offer the L2 curriculum certain benefits within this theoretical framework, and if so, how these technologically assisted activities should fit in with the foreign language curriculum.

At first blush, this theoretical approach as applied to the field of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) might appear counterintuitive, ironic, or even futile because computers are not human and cannot interact with anyone in the sense that two human beings can. How can homo loquens interact with a computer? Reeves and Nass (1996, 5) have convincingly argued that “people’s interactions with computers, television, and new media are fundamentally social and natural, just like interactions in real life.” In their research, they found that users are polite to computers and respond to the personality of both the interface and whatever computer agents or avatars are present. In other words, computers are social actors as well, at least from the students’ perspective, which is all that really matters (Reeves and Nass, 28). Reeves and Nass’s research further reinforces the notion that computers can make a significant contribution to the SLA process because the students themselves feel that they are interacting with the computer in a real social manner. In social CALL (see chapter 3), the computer’s function is to link people together so they can interact; but tutorial CALL (i.e., people interacting with a computer program or website; see chapter 4) also has an important role to play in supporting L2 development.

The book’s second disclaimer is that this is not a how-to manual. In the pages that follow we are not providing readers with instructions on how to get connected to the Internet, how to write fully functional Web pages, or how to program digital language activities. There are plenty of technical guides or workshops designed to teach these hands-on skills—but, be advised, the tools are constantly changing. Rather, this book focuses on why certain technological tools should be integrated into the L2 curriculum and what potential contribution these tools stand to make to any given language program, given their functionality. The goal is to stimulate technologically inexperienced instructors to acquire the necessary skills to begin incorporating technology into their classrooms and overall L2 curriculum, beyond the physical constraints of the classroom. For the language professional who already has some knowledge of technology, we promise to stimulate the imagination vis-à-vis what might be done with computers in the L2 classroom, now and in the near future. All language professionals need to become acquainted with the potential advantages of using technology in their programs. Without this knowledge, chairs, deans, and other decision-making bodies might fail to support the profession with new and appropriate ways of teaching L2s with technology.

Nevertheless, it would be misleading to talk about technology as if it were just a single, homogeneous phenomenon; different technologically based tools render different advantages for L2 learning. For instance, the Internet is an ideal tool to allow students to gain access to authentic L2 input and interactions with competent speakers from other regions—quite possibly the next best alternative to actually going abroad. L2 students can virtually “travel” to French-speaking Africa, Tokyo, or the Peruvian Incan ruins of Machu Picchu with just a click of the mouse. The Internet gives all people a channel to express their voices, promote their self-images, obtain information, and legitimize their goals. Not surprisingly, they want to do this in their first language, which is not English (Warschauer and De Florio-Hansen 2003). Only 25 percent of Internet users access the Web in English, with Chinese (19.3 percent), Spanish (8.1 percent), Arabic (5.3 percent), and Portuguese (4.1 percent) being the next-biggest Internet language groups (see Internet World Stats 2018). This sense of authenticity provides endless topics for cross-cultural analysis and discussions in any content-driven classroom.

The advantages for carrying out online discussions (i.e., computer-mediated communication, CMC) via computer have been well documented in the research literature (see chapter 3). Researchers frequently cite the computer’s usefulness as (1) a text-based medium that amplifies students’ attention to linguistic form (Warschauer 1997a); (2) a stimulus for increased written L2 production (Kern 1995); (3) a less stressful environment for L2 practice (Chun 1998); (4) a more equitable and nonthreatening forum for L2 discussions (Warschauer 1997a, 1997b; Sauro 2009); and (5) an expanded access channel with possibilities for creating global learning networks (Cummins and Sayers 1995; Guillén 2015). Swaffar (1998, 1) has summarized the benefits derived from CMC as compared with classroom oral exchanges: “Networked exchanges seem to help all individuals in language classes engage more frequently, with greater confidence, and with greater enthusiasm in the communicative process than is characteristic for similar students in oral classrooms.” Members of our profession need to harness this willingness to interact in the digital space in order to maintain and even increase interest in foreign language learning. As Chun, Kern, and Smith (2016) have observed, it is not possible for foreign language teachers to simply opt out of using digital tools. If anything, CALL is an opportunity to transform the field, beyond the enthusiastic endorsements of early adopters.

Similarly, as the United States slowly breaks out of its English-only delusions (i.e., the myth that everyone in the world will or should speak English), people from all walks of life will make known their interest in acquiring some type of L2 proficiency, whether to enter the global communities and marketplaces or—in the case of very ethnically diverse states and regions, such as California, the Southwest, and Florida—just to understand and get along better with their neighbors, coworkers, and clients. This new demand will be met by an aggressive response, either from the language profession or more profit-minded publishing/Internet companies, or both. Most language professionals rightly feel that they should take the lead in determining the nature of instruction for this new and potentially significant audience. But will the language profession be ready to meet this challenge? That will depend on whether the language profession starts experimenting now with ways to enhance L2 development through technology.

Many of the examples cited above deal mo...