Last CALL

To my mind, the most useful CALL tools possess the following properties: accessibility, ease of use, a justifiable purpose, and popularity. Accessibility and ease of use as criteria should be self-evident; as instructors, our primary focus should be on language instruction, not promoting technological fluency for its own sake. In the same vein, any technology used as an instructional tool should justify its own use beyond a fascination with gadgetry or virtual settings. Popularity should never be overlooked, in considering that those tools that are already in wide use by students should, by association, already be accessible and easy to use, thereby cutting down on time wasted on acclimating them to the tool of choice.

I will certainly be using CALL in the future (if it’s available where I teach) but I will do so only following the above criteria and caveats. Still, there’s a lot to be said for using technology for what we do, and I can only imagine we will become more reliant on it with time.

This Here CALL deally

So I'm not sold on wikis just because I'm not sure what they do. I like real-time peer editing setups, like googledocs, because I've seen their uses in a professional setting. It seems to me that a good deal of learning hwo to use these applications has to do with personal preference. Obviously ease of use and access should be priorities, and I am partial to podcasts, but I haven't quite made the jump to being able to visualize using a lot of this stuff in class. Hopefully my collaborative mega-project, being assembled this weekend, will open my eyes.

Second Life is interesting, or would be if I ever saw anyone on there. Even when I go to supposedly populated areas, like the massive ESL ho-downs that show up in a search, I can't find anyone--or, if I do, they don't seem interested in talking to me. Maybe it's my avatar--I know he's a little rakish, one might even say dashing, but does that mean he can't be an effective instructor? I should think not.

Meebo, Youboo, Weallboo

So I think Meebo is a good conferencing tool and I would probably use it for suprasegmental instruction if the connection was fast enough. I'm not sure I see value in having multiple people signed in at the same time, but with some practice I believe that some practical applications would avail themselves. Video conferencing in L2, however, just sounds like a recipe for confusion.

Online Discussion

The use of online discussion tools, while practical in some settings, is a good way to exchange ideas and information, but I’m not sure a real-time discussion is the best way to facilitate an academic conversation. One of my classes uses threads on blackboard as a way to clarify the issues behind student presentations, and it’s remarkably valuable, but I don’t think a mandatory real-time discussion will necessarily elicit valuable output—I have experience in that environment too and it always felt really forced.

Project Proposal

Twitterface


Aja Gorham
Jay Grahovac
Jesse Ackles



CALL Project Proposal: Making Simple Requests



Set up:



· You are going to dinner with your boss or the father of your significant other. How would you pass them the butter?

· You are going for coffee with a friend you have not seen in a while. How would you ask the barista for your drink?

· Making a request in English can have gradations of politeness that speakers use depending on who they are talking to. Your job is to go out and collect data! Find out how native speakers use different polite markers to make a request.


CALL Activity: Using Twitter.com, record native speakers making requests in public spaces, such as:



· Starbucks - "Can I have a grande mocha no whip?"

· The cafeteria - "May I have a diet coke?"

· The movie theater - "Two tickets for Avatar, please."



Text a request you hear to twitter via a pre-established account or record the request you hear and post no less than 6 tweets; one request per tweet. The tweets will be displayed in front of the class and discussed as a group. The discussion will revolve around common usage and ask students to make guesses as to the context of the situation. With guesses regarding the context of the situations students will be assigned a situation:



· Dinner with the in-laws

· Asking for directions from a stranger

· Asking a good friend for a loan

· Etc.


The students will then be asked to write a series of requests, including in their list a tweeted request. These results will be posted on the class blog for student references and an online catalog of phrases.



CALL Activity: Podcast. In the theme of Mission: Impossible



· A daily podcast modeled after the famous TV show, Mission: Impossible will be used to inform the students of their “mission” for that day.

· "Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to go lurk around some strangers and tweet what they say but don't look like a terrorist. This message will self-destruct in 10 seconds."



Call Activity: Blog

· The class blog will be used to tie the two above activities together and report on the success of the students’ progress.

IMing in L2

I think there is a lot of value in the potential of real-time communication to facilitate language acquisition. I've always enjoyed polishing up one of my super-rusty L2s in IRC or similar media.

In the interest of accountability, I think a mechanism should be implemented to give the activity some long-term value. Editing a printout or something might be one solution, maybe peer editing on googledocs or something like that.

And, IM works well for English but a lot of other languages have diacritical marks that aren't convenient or even available in most real-time exchanges.

Everyday Expressions: Exploring Common Phrases Defying the Dictionary

http://matesol.podbean.com/

Immersed in the English language and American culture as ESL students, advanced level students are seeking to step beyond manuals to grasp a large, but difficult to teach, concept: idioms. In this ESL podcast, speakers Aja Gorham and Jesse Ackles, examine how common phrases or expressions are used in speech, as well as possible meaning for these expressions, and a helpful tip for thinking about the use of expressions. This podcast steps away from English as theory to transition into decoding the cultural puzzles that define expressions.

While students do not need a particular vocabulary set, it is important to understand phrases as a lexical unit, and not just as individual words. For classroom use it may be helpful to reacquaint students with phrases such are “ how are you” “ I’m fine” “ what’s up,” etc. Reminding students of units acquired as phrases may prove helpful in introducing expressions as a collective unit. Though the abstract nature of most idiomatic expressions make the units impossible for common translation, it is important that students be introduced to non-literal phrases as a means of gaining fluency and confidence in exchanges with native speakers.


For more information regarding the abstract nature of expressions or definition of common idioms please visit the websites below.


http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/

http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/Default.asp?dict=I (you can even follow this one on TWITTER!!!! omg!)