The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning

Carol A. Chapelle, Shannon Sauro, Carol A. Chapelle, Shannon Sauro

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781119108474, 9781118914038
• eBook ISBN: 9781118914045
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning presents a comprehensive exploration of the impact of technology on the field of second language learning.

The rapidly evolving language-technology interface has propelled dramatic changes in, and increased opportunities for, second language teaching and learning. Its influence has been felt no less keenly in the approaches and methods of assessing learners' language and researching language teaching and learning.

Contributions from a team of international scholars make up the Handbook consisting of four parts: language teaching and learning through technology; the technology-pedagogy interface; technology for L2 assessment; and research and development of technology for language learning. It considers how technology assists in all areas of language development, the emergence of pedagogy at the intersection of language and technology, technology in language assessment, and major research issues in research and development of technologies for language learning. It covers all aspects of language including grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, listening, speaking, pragmatics, and intercultural learning, as well as new pedagogical and assessment approaches, and new ways of conceiving and conducting research and development.

The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning demonstrates the extensive, multifaceted implications of technology for language teachers, learners, materials-developers, and researchers.

1
Introduction to the Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning

Carol A. Chapelle and Shannon Sauro

The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning was conceived in response to the fact that technology has become integral to the ways that most language learners in the world today access materials in their second and foreign language, interact with others, learn in and out of the classroom, and take many language tests. In the title for this volume, we have used the expression “second language” as shorthand for all of the many language teaching and learning situations that include both children and adults learning additional languages beyond their mother tongue (which may be third, fourth, or more languages for them) in settings where the language being studied is the medium of daily life, education, business, or only a subject in the language classroom. We include both learning and teaching in the title to make explicit our concern with the two related but distinct areas—the pedagogy that teachers and materials designers are preoccupied with and the processes that students engage in both in an out of the classroom.

For the many diverse learners, the use of computer technology for all facets of second language learning has dramatically increased as the reach of the internet continues to spread, providing access to social media, reference materials, online instruction, and more. The implications for language teachers, learners, materials developers, and researchers are extensive. Our goal in creating the Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning was to communicate to a broad range of readers, within the field and beyond, the shape and texture of the technology‐rich environments that language learners inhabit today as well as the relevance of these environments for second language teaching and learning. The chapters in the Handbook demonstrate that technology has added multifaceted new dimensions to teaching and learning, which include new ways of teaching every aspect of language, new pedagogical and assessment approaches, as well as new ways of conceiving and conducting research and development.

Reference works are needed to gather and synthesize the scholarly treatment of these dynamic practices and research that are so central to the profession. In view of the central role it plays, technology and language learning needs to be represented among the other areas of study in applied linguistics through its appearance in major reference works such as the Wiley‐Blackwell Handbooks in Applied Linguistics. In fact another such handbook, The Routledge Handbook of Language Learning and Technology (Farr and Murray 2016) was recently published in the Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics. Technology and language learning is also well‐represented in the Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (Chapelle 2013) with its own section (edited by Thomas Cobb) as well as entries that include technology‐related issues across the entire Encyclopedia. With these major reference works now available, our goal was to provide another, different point of entry into this area of applied linguistics for the broad range of learners, teachers, materials developers, and researchers who want to learn more about this as an area of research and practice. Anyone with an interest in languages and cultures today has recognized that technology has affected their potential for access to more and more of their language interests. This recognition can evolve into professional knowledge and action when personal interests meet the history, practices, theory and research of the profession.

The Handbook was designed to create the opportunity for such meetings to take place. Its organization reflects the goal of inviting in and engaging readers with little professional knowledge of how technologies are transforming practices. The first section contains chapters that explain the ways that technology is integrated in the teaching and learning of specific aspects of language knowledge and skills, most or all of which are familiar to all readers. Each of these chapters includes how technology‐based tutors, tools, and pedagogy contribute to language development. The second section builds on discussion of methodology for teaching and learning to identify new pedagogies that have been developed by exploring the language and communication affordances of various technologies. Integral to but distinct from pedagogy, the third part contains chapters pertaining to issues of language assessment that are important in teaching and learning practice. Broadly speaking, the fourth section addresses the areas that converge in research and development of technology‐mediated pedagogy for language learning. The final chapter provides an analysis of the contribution these chapters make to the profession and a looks toward their implications for the future.

The remainder of this chapter provides a more detailed introduction of the chapters in the Handbook to situate each one within one of these four areas of language abilities, pedagogies, assessment, and research and development. As background to the four areas, the first chapter provides a historical account of the development of language learning and technology as an area of practice and research in applied linguistics. One of the pioneers, Sue E. K. Otto, who worked in research and development in computer‐assisted language learning (CALL) at the University of Iowa for over 40 years, provides a chronological view of how technologies have intersected with and served in the evolution of practices in language teaching and learning. Her broad view begins with the printed text, drawings, photos, audio, and video technologies that teachers and learners have taken for granted for years. Otto describes the gradual evolution of recording and delivery formats, for example, that have given way to today’s digital, computer‐based formats that are contributing to evolving language pedagogies. From photos passed around the classroom, to those broadcast on Twitter, this chronology sets the stage for the many technologies that come into play in the rest of the volume. New technologies seldom replace the old; instead, they create more options for technology users. The past practices therefore hold their place with the present technologies, inviting language learners and teachers to explore how to select, mix, and create new practices using them all. The new practices that appear to be most influential are included in this Handbook.

Part I: Language teaching and learning through technology

Most learners studying another language hope to be able to use the language to communicate with other speakers. Their end goals are communication, but most teachers and learners approach language teaching and learning through a multi‐strand process targeting particular areas of language knowledge and skills. The first section is divided according to these areas of language abilities that readers will recognize as forming the basis of most instructional programs: grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, listening, speaking, and pragmatics and intercultural competence. Each of these chapters reviews practices for use of technologies as well as the theoretical and research bases for these practices.

In Chapter 3, Trude Heift and Nina Vyatkina provide an overview of technologies for teaching and learning L2 grammar by focusing on four distinct CALL environments: tutorial CALL, intelligent CALL (ICALL), data‐driven learning (DDL), and computer‐mediated communication (CMC). They situate these approaches to grammar teaching and learning within discussion of pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning L2 grammar more broadly and with theoretical perspectives from second language acquisition. They provide examples of each of the four types of technologies and describe the research studies that have focused on learner feedback in Tutorial CALL, ICALL and CMC, and on learner autonomy in DDL. Throughout their examples, it is clear that grammar cannot be seen as a separate or isolated activity. In particular, readers will see the integration between grammar and vocabulary learning in this chapter and in the next one, which covers vocabulary learning.

In Chapter 4, Qing Ma describes how new technologies have expanded pedagogical options for teaching and learning second language vocabulary. She describes the affordances technology provides in view of a memory‐based model of L2 vocabulary learning. She introduces software tools for desktop and mobile learning technologies, explaining their rationales in view of the vocabulary learning model. She draws upon the theory and research of self‐regulated learning to describe how teachers can offer strategy training that helps students make the most of technology‐mediated vocabulary learning.

In Chapter 5, Meei‐Ling Liaw and Kathryn English introduce second language reading technologies that support second language reading development. The description of technologies is based on their theoretical conception technology‐assisted second language reading as a process that engages particular cognitive processes and strategies involved in second language reading. An important characteristic of second language reading is that is must extend beyond the classroom; students need to read materials that are interesting to them outside the classroom to get sufficient exposure and practice. Thus, the primary challenge for current language teachers that the authors identify is how language educators can leverage students’ intense use of social media and consumption of a vast and diverse quality of reading materials on the Web for learning second language reading. The chapter ends with suggestions for applying technologies to help second language learners to engage in independent, autonomous reading that may help promote their active global participation in the digital age.

Continuing to examine pedagogical practices for teaching the written language, Chapter 6, by Zhi Li, Ahmet Dursun, and Volker Hegelheimer explores the implications for second language teaching and learning that are based upon the reality that all writing practices today are shaped by new technologies. Li, Dursun, and Hegelheimer introduce three types of technologies for teaching and learning second language writing: Web 2.0 applications, automated writing evaluation systems, and corpus‐based tools. The authors explain that the effects of these tools have begun to be explored in research on writing, and they provide an overview of the research results for each of the three types of tools. The chapter concludes with a description of promising but not yet widely incorporated technologies for second language writing research and a discussion of the directions for future research and development of technologies and pedagogies for writing.

Chapter 7 shifts from the written to the spoken with Philip Hubbard’s discussion of CALL for L2 listening. Hubbard traces the development of technology and technology‐enhanced listening activities for second language learning, paying particular attention to the affordances and mediating characteristics of different tools as well as the potential they hold for facilitating comprehension and learning. His overview of approximately 20 years of research on technology for L2 listening draws upon a typology of four help options found in different learning and communication technologies that have been examined for affecting listening in a second language. Looking forward, Hubbard concludes with a call for the development of curated collections of listening material assembled from freely available online materials that could be organized by L2 listening experts in a manner that reflects the language proficiency needs, interests and digital skills of L2 learners.

Moving from language comprehension to production in Chapter 8, Robert J. Blake discusses CALL for support of students’ learning to speak a second language. Blake describes two types of technology‐assisted activities: tutorial exercises and CMC. Blake’s analysis of the principles for designing good CALL activities are consonant with best practices for teaching oral language in the classroom; they include providing opportunities for the negotiation of meaning, focus on form, and a heightened sense of learner autonomy and agency. CALL activities can be used to foster all aspects of second language speaking proficiency including the dimensions of accuracy, complexity, and/or fluency, depending on the type of assigned task. Blake notes that students no longer need to rely on classroom activities to engage in these speaking activities because they can use CMC tools to exchange text, sound, and video in a variety of formats, each with its own set of affordances.

In Chapter 9, Julie Sykes describes how technology has changed and expanded the teaching of pragmatics, which refers to the expression and understanding of meaning in the contexts of language use. Pragmatic abilities are important for meeting the goals of intercultural competence because they govern the selection of how and what to communicate to a particular person in specific contexts. Many contexts where interlocutors use their second languages are created and mediated by the very technologies that may help learners to develop their second language pragmatic abilities. Sykes explores ways in which technology can facilitate the multilingual online and face‐to‐face interactions, provide opportunities for meaningful teaching and learning of interlanguage pragmatics, and extend professional knowledge of pragmatic behaviors from a transnational perspective.

Together these chapters introduce the technologies that are being used to address specific areas of the big project of learning to communicate in a second language. The following section builds upon these pieces to describe pedagogical tools, configurations, and approaches that draw upon combinations of affordances of one or more of these technologies for teaching langu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction to the Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning
• 2 From Past to Present: A Hundred Years of Technology for L2 Learning
• 3 Technologies for Teaching and Learning L2 Grammar
• 4 Technologies for Teaching and Learning L2 Vocabulary
• 5 Technologies for Teaching and Learning L2 Reading
• 6 Technology and L2 Writing
• 7 Technologies for Teaching and Learning L2 Listening
• 8 Technologies for Teaching and Learning L2 Speaking1
• 9 Technologies for Teaching and Learning Intercultural Competence and Interlanguage Pragmatics
• 10 Distance Language Teaching with Technology
• 11 Blended Language Learning: Research and Practice
• 12 Telecollaboration
• 13 The Continuing Evolution of Virtual Worlds for Language Learning
• 14 Digital Gaming in L2 Teaching and Learning
• 15 Mobile Learning Revolution: Implications for Language Pedagogy
• 16 Technology for Task‐based Language Teaching
• 17 Language for Specific Purposes and Corpus‐based Pedagogy
• 18 Technology, New Literacies, and Language Learners
• 19 Language Teacher Education and Technology
• 20 Integrating Assessment with Instruction through Technology
• 21 Technology and High‐stakes Language Testing
• 22 Validation of Technology‐assisted Language Tests
• 23 Authoring Language‐Learning Courseware
• 24 Design‐based Research
• 25 Evaluation of Technology and Language Learning
• 26 Research Methods for Investigating Technology for Language and Culture Learning
• 27 CALL Meta‐analyses and Transparency Analysis
• 28 Researching Technology‐mediated Multimodal Interaction
• 29 Technology‐Enhanced SLA Research
• 30 Toward Langua‐technocultural Competence
• Index
• End User License Agreement