Conversation Partnerships: An Educational Tool for Cross-Cultural Understanding

This article describes one study of conversation partnerships between American students enrolled in teacher education programs, and international students enrolled at the same large midwestern university. Twenty-nine pairs of partners during one 15-week semester were directed to meet at least 10 times minimally 30 minutes each. Topics for initial meetings were recommended, to help partners get started. As the semester progressed, topics were based on interests and needs of the partners. Three data sources were collected and analyzed. International students were surveyed at the end of the program with demographic and open-ended question about their perceived outcomes of the experience. American students were required to keep and submit weekly logs of the meetings and their thoughts about the meeting. These students were further required to write an end-semester reflection paper, exploring their learning in areas of: better understanding the English language; learning about other cultures; and any other meaningful insights about the experience. These latter two data sources were analyzed qualitatively, using constant comparative analysis. Results of the study, overall, were positive with interesting insights from participants. International students reported improving their English. American students had their “eyes opened” repeatedly about other cultures. Many of the partners reported the forming on genuine and hopefully sustainable friendships. Often, the partnerships went beyond the course requirements spending evenings, or weekend days together

Teaching languages online: Professional vision in the making

This experimental study examined the design and effectiveness of embodied interactions for learning. The researchers designed a digital learning environment integrating body joint mapping sensors to teach novice learners Chinese characters, and examined whether the embodied interaction would lead to greater knowledge acquisition in language learning compared to the conventional mouse-based interaction. Fifty-three adult learners were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The study adopted a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest on knowledge acquisition. Although higher scores were found for the embodied interaction group in both posttests, only the delayed posttest showed a statistically significant group difference. The findings suggested that active embodied actions lead to better knowledge retention compared with the passive visual embodiment. The body-moving process works as an alternative and complementary encoding strategy for character understanding and memorization by associating the semantic meaning of a character with the construction of a body posture

A Review of Literature on Preparing Language Teachers to Teach Online: What Has Been Done and What Is Needed?

The purpose of this article is to synthesize the research on skills and competencies to prepare college language teachers to teach online since the publication of Hampel and Stickler\u27s article “New skills for new classrooms: Training tutors to teach languages online” in 2005. The researcher identified 15 studies in peer-reviewed journals to review. The findings reveal that new understandings have emerged about the necessary abilities and skills that a language teacher needs to acquire to be prepared to teach online. Important strategies to prepare teachers to gain these skills and abilities include learning by doing, by observation, and through reflection and learning from a critical friend\u27s feedback. Implications for designing programs to prepare language teachers to teach online are discussed

Learning and Teaching Languages in Technology-Mediated Environments: Why Modes and Meaning Making Matter

The developing argument presented in this thesis is based on seven articles, eight book chapters and one set of conference proceedings, some single-authored and some co-authored, on language learning and teaching in technology-mediated environments, published between 2004 and 2018. The publications chart my evolution as a researcher and practitioner at the Open University UK. There are several threads which weave themselves through my scholarly journey and which are reflected in the selected work: Thread 1: multimodal competence and language learning and teaching with technology Thread 2: task-based approaches to language learning and teaching with technology Thread 3: teacher (and learner) preparation for language learning and teaching with technology Thread 4: learner (and teacher) autonomy in language learning and teaching with technology. The narrative cloth in the presentation of the publications draws these threads together and illustrates how they interconnect across my work. They are linked by my concern for online language learners’ awareness of the opportunities and demands of the learning environment and the impact that such awareness, or lack thereof, has on the learning process. The empirical studies presented and discussed in my work use mostly qualitative research instruments. They take forward the knowledge in the field by offering original insights into the interrelationship between language learner awareness and control over the learning context understood as awareness of online modes and their potential for meaning-making, communication, interaction and collaboration. This interrelationship is not only relevant for language learning in virtual environments per se, it also has repercussions on online learners’ development of intercultural communicative competence, their digital participatory competence and social presence online, and on their autonomy. Underpinning my work is a view shared by a growing number of researchers and practitioners in online learning and teaching of languages and cultures that a radical pedagogical shift is required: it is not sufficient to see the new technology-infused learning spaces as replicates of conventional face-to-face settings. Such a shift has to be informed by new learning theories which capture the dynamic nature of the enterprise in the wake of unabating technological advancements (e.g. Guichon, 2009; Hampel & Stickler, 2005; Hubbard & Levy, 2006; Hubbard, 2009; Kern, 2015; Sun, 2011). Moreover, I argue, it will need to include the systematic raising of learner awareness of learning context. The presentation of the selected articles, book chapters and conference proceedings in Chapter 4 is divided into five parts in line with the thematic foci of the publications: (1) contextual knowledge, (2) multimodal competence (3) multiliteracies (4) digital literacies (5) participatory literacy and social presence. The publications in Chapter 4, section 4.1 – Hauck (2004), Hampel and Hauck (2004), Hauck (2005), and Hauck and Hurd (2005) – focus on the concept of contextual knowledge and are informed by two studies: one carried out with students when the former Department of Languages (DoL) at the Open University offered learners a choice between face-to-face and online tutorials via an audiographic conferencing application (Lyceum); the other one carried out with OU tutors, most of whom were at the time unfamiliar with using Internet-based conferencing for language learning and teaching purposes. The work presented in section 4.2 – Hampel and Hauck (2006), Hauck (2007), Hauck and Youngs (2008) and Hauck and Hampel (2008) – concentrates on multimodal competence as well as the interface between multimodal communicative competence and intercultural communicative competence online. While Hampel and Hauck (2006) is a theoretical contribution, the other three publications are based on a telecollaborative exchange linking participants from three different parts of the world (the Tridem project). The former helped frame the empirical study at the center of the two articles and the chapter that followed. The publications in section 4.3 – Hauck (2010a) and Hauck (2010b), and Fuchs, Hauck and Müller-Hartmann (2012) – explore multiliteracies with multimodal competence understood as a core element of multiliteracies. They draw on data from a four-way telecollaborative exchange between teacher trainees and language learners in order to illustrate why telecollaboration provides the ideal set-up for fostering such competence development and therefore also online learner and teacher autonomy. This leads to an examination of digital literacies in Kurek and Hauck (2014) and Hauck and Kurek (2017) in section 4.4. Both chapters are, again, theoretical contributions to the field of technology-mediated language learning and teaching. We conceptualise digital proficiency as mastery of modes and meaning-making – in other words multimodal competence – and as a precondition for autonomy. In Kurek and Hauck (2014) we present a task framework for instructed learner reflection to this effect, ideally in telecollaborative settings. Finally, in section 4.5 – Hauck and Warnecke (2012), Hauck, Galley and Warnecke (2016), also a theoretical contribution, and Hauck and Satar (2018) – my co-authors and I explore a subset of digital literacies, namely participatory literacy as reflected in multimodal competence, and its relevance for social presence in online language learning and teaching contexts. An example of how these themes interlink with the aforementioned threads is the task-based approach to multimodal competence development (Threads 1 and 2) in telecollaborative settings which is advocated in all three publications in section 4.3. Together, the publications make a substantial contribution to the field of language learning and teaching in technology-mediated environments, through the centrality they grant to the learning context, and increasingly also to multimodality (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Kress, 2009) as an overarching approach to conceptualising context-related challenges for both students and teachers

Research Trends in English Language Teacher Education and English Language Teaching

Research Trends in English Language Teacher Education and English Language Teaching presents a collection of articles about principled review of recent research conducted in the field of ELT and English language teacher education. This resource will be of interest to novice and experienced researchers who would like to see an overview of recent research trends in the field. The collection of research would hopefully shed light on themes and line of research along with implications and suggestions for further research. Each chapter examines studies published in prominent journals in the recent years and attempts to classify them in terms of focused topics, methodology and findings. The edited collection of research is a product of an international research group in the field of English language teacher education formed by Gazi University (Ankara, Turkey), the University of Évora (Évora, Portugal), Pomeranian University (Słupsk, Poland), and Boğaziçi University (Istanbul, Turkey). Research Trends in English Language Teacher Education and English Language Teaching is produced as part of the Erasmus+ project titled ILTERG, "International Language Teacher Education Research Group" (no. KA203-035295), funded by the Turkish National Agency and co- founded by Erasmus+. We would like to thank several other authors from different universities who have contributed to this work of international collaboration and we hope Research Trends in English Language Teacher Education and English Language Teaching could help teacher educators and novice researchers to benefit from the insightful findings of recent research trends collected in the book

Las TIC en la enseñanza: diversas formas de dar apoyo al aprendizaje

Ofrecemos a nuestros lectores un libro que recoge trabajos que aportan distintas visiones y perspectivas en cuestiones relacionadas con la integracion de las tecnologias de la informacion y de las comunicaciones (TIC) en la practica docente para que sea un punto de partida a partir del cual seguir explorando nuevas posibilidades y estas ser compartidas. La publicacion que aqui presentamos es trilingue. Comprende 3 articulos de investigacion en ingles, 8 en espa?ol y 16 en portugues, aunque todos, como hemos mencionado antes, tienen un cometido comun: abrir nuevas puertas y compartir nuevas experienciasGimeno Sanz, AM.; Siqueira Rocha, JMD. (2012). Las TIC en la enseñanza: diversas formas de dar apoyo al aprendizaje. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/1699