Social Dimensions of Telecollaborative Foreign Language Study

This item submitted to IUPUI ScholarWorks as part of the OASIS Project. Article reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Permission granted through posted policies on copyright owner’s website or through direct contact with copyright owner.Previous research on network-based foreign language study primarily has focused on: a) the pedagogy of technology in the language curriculum, or b) the linguistic characterization of networked discourse. In this paper, I explore socio-institutional dimensions of German-American telecollaboration and the ways in which they may shape foreign language learning and use. Telecollaborative partnerships represent particularly productive sites for the examination of social aspects of foreign language study since, by definition, they entail tight sociocultural and institutional interface. Within the theoretical framework of social realism (e.g., Carter & Sealey, 2000; Layder, 1993), any human activity is thought to be shaped by both macro- and micro-level sociological features. These include social context and institutional setting, situated activity and individual agency, respectively. In this analysis, I intertwine the socially and institutionally contingent features of language valuation, computer know-how, Internet access, and learning accreditation and the micro-level features of situated classroom interaction and individual psycho-biography in order to provide a rich and multi-faceted characterization of foreign language learning and use on both ends of a German-American telecollaborative partnership

The Role of Computer Mediation in the Instruction and Development of L2 Pragmatic Competence

This article submitted to IUPUI ScholarWorks as part of the OASIS Project. Article reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Permission granted through posted policies on copyright owner’s website or through direct contact with copyright owner.This article provides a selective review of the role of computer mediation in the instruction and development of second language (L2) or interlanguage pragmatic competence within foreign and second language education. Both researchers and practitioners have noted consistently that several aspects of the teaching and tutored learning of L2 pragmatics have been reported as problematic and/or underexplored in the published knowledge base to date, including the availability and authenticity of instructional materials, the provision of opportunities for the performance and practice of L2 pragmatic competence in meaningful interactions, the relative lack of developmental data documenting the precise (and varied) pathways of L2 pragmatic competence over time, and the efficacy of particular pedagogical interventions in classroom-based L2 pragmatics instruction. The role of computer mediation in each of these underexplored areas is examined with a special emphasis on the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics in Internet-mediated partnerships and on the use of (learner) corpora in L2 pragmatics instruction and research

Linguistic Perspectives on the Development of Intercultural Competence in Telecollaboration.

This item submitted to IUPUI ScholarWorks as part of the OASIS Project. Article reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Permission granted through posted policies on copyright owner’s website or through direct contact with copyright owner.It is widely reported (e.g., Belz & Müller-Hartmann, 2002; Kern, 1996; Kinginger, in press; Warschauer & Kern, 2000) that the goals of telecollaborative language study are the development of foreign language (FL) linguistic competence and the facilitation of intercultural competence (e.g., Bausch, Christ, & Krumm, 1997; Bredella & Delanoy, 1999; Byram, 1997; Harden & Witte, 2000). Whereas evaluations of the impact of telecollaboration on FL linguistic competence have been based on structural descriptions of learner discourse from the earliest days of research in this field (e.g., Beauvois, 1992; Chun, 1994; Kelm, 1992; Kern, 1995; Pelletieri, 2000; Sotillo, 2000; Warschauer, 1996), discussions of intercultural competence in the same configuration have been characterized primarily in alinguistic terms. These have included analyst-sensitive content analyses of learner interaction in telecollaboration, post-semester interviews with learners who have participated in telecollaborative projects, and attitudinal surveys of these same learners (e.g., Fischer, 1998; Furstenberg, Levet, English, & Maillet, 2001; Lomicka, 2001; Müller-Hartmann, 1999; von der Emde, Schneider, & Kötter, 2001; Warschauer, 1998; see, however, Belz, 2001; Belz & Müller-Hartmann, 2003). In general, the fields of foreign language learning and teaching (FLL&T) have neither advocated nor presented linguistically critical interpretations of the development of intercultural competence in telecollaboration. In this paper, I present a detailed case study of the development of intercultural competence (or lack thereof) in a German-American e-mail partnership by examining the electronic interaction produced in this exchange within the framework of appraisal theory (e.g., Eggins & Slade, 1997; Martin, 2000; White, 1998), a Hallidayian-inspired linguistic approach to the investigation of evaluative language

The pedagogical mediation of a developmental learner corpus for classroom-based language instruction

The authors received the 2009 Paul Pimsleur Award for Research in Foreign Language Education from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and the Modern Language Journal for this article.Although corpora have been used in language teaching for some time, few empirical studies explore their impact on learning outcomes. We provide a microgenetic account of learners’ responses to corpus-driven instructional units for German modal particles and pronominal da-compounds. The units are based on developmental corpus data produced by native speakers during interactions with the very learners for whom the units are designed. Thus, we address the issue of authentication in corpus-driven language pedagogy. Finally, we illustrate how an ethnographically supplemented developmental learner corpus may contribute to second language acquisition research via dense documentation of micro-changes in learners’ language use over time

Institutional and Individual Dimensions of Transatlantic Group Work in Network-Based Language Teaching

This article submitted to IUPUI ScholarWorks as part of the OASIS Project. Article reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Permission granted through posted policies on copyright owner’s website or through direct contact with copyright owner.Network-based language teaching (NBLT) involves the application of global or local communication networks within foreign and second language education (Warschauer and Kern, 2000). In telecollaboration, a type of NBLT, distally located language learners use internet communication tools to support dialogue, debate, collaborative research and social interaction for the purposes of language development and cultural awareness (e.g. Kinginger et al., 1999). To date, the research on NBLT has been limited, focusing primarily on pedagogical implementations of technology and linguistic features of online communication. In particular, researchers have not robustly explored social and institutional dimensions of telecollaboration (Chapelle, 2000:217) nor have they adequately investigated the pervasive assumption that telecollaborative interaction will necessarily and unproblematically afford language learning (e.g. Kramsch and Thorne, to appear). Drawing on social realism (Layder, 1993), a sociological theory which emphasizes the inter-relationship between structure, i.e. society and institution, and agency, i.e. situated activity and psycho-biography, in researching and explaining social action, I present a sociocultural account of German-American telecollaboration. In particular, I explore the meanings that the macro features of (1) language valuation (Hilgendorf, 1996); (2) membership in electronic discourse communities (Gee, 1999); and (3) culturally determined classroom scripts (Hatch, 1992) may have for the differential functionality of virtual group work in this partnership. Differences in group functionality are reflected at the micro-interactional level in terms of (1) frequency and length of correspondence; (2) patterns of discursive behavior such as question-answer pairs; and (3) opportunities for assisted L2 performance and negotiation of meaning. Ethnographic data (e.g. interviews, electronic and classroom discourse, surveys and participant observations) on individual psycho-biographies are interwoven with macro-level descriptions and statistics to paint a rich picture of learner behavior in intercultural telecollaboration. This project is funded by a United States Department of Education International Research and Studies Program Grant (CFDA No.: 84.017A). The author is a research associate for the German component

The Pedagogical Mediation of a Developmental Learner Corpus for Classroom-Based Language Instruction

Although corpora have been used in language teaching for some time, few empirical studies explore their impact on learning outcomes. We provide a microgenetic account of learners’ responses to corpus-driven instructional units for German modal particles and pronominal da-compounds. The units are based on developmental corpus data produced by native speakers during interactions with the very learners for whom the units are designed. Thus, we address the issue of authentication in corpus-driven language pedagogy. Finally, we illustrate how an ethnographically supplemented developmental learner corpus may contribute to second language acquisition research via dense documentation of micro-changes in learners’ language use over time

Modeling Effective Dosages in Hormetic Dose-Response Studies

BACKGROUND: Two hormetic modifications of a monotonically decreasing log-logistic dose-response function are most often used to model stimulatory effects of low dosages of a toxicant in plant biology. As just one of these empirical models is yet properly parameterized to allow inference about quantities of interest, this study contributes the parameterized functions for the second hormetic model and compares the estimates of effective dosages between both models based on 23 hormetic data sets. Based on this, the impact on effective dosage estimations was evaluated, especially in case of a substantially inferior fit by one of the two models. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The data sets evaluated described the hormetic responses of four different test plant species exposed to 15 different chemical stressors in two different experimental dose-response test designs. Out of the 23 data sets, one could not be described by any of the two models, 14 could be better described by one of the two models, and eight could be equally described by both models. In cases of misspecification by any of the two models, the differences between effective dosages estimates (0-1768%) greatly exceeded the differences observed when both models provided a satisfactory fit (0-26%). This suggests that the conclusions drawn depending on the model used may diverge considerably when using an improper hormetic model especially regarding effective dosages quantifying hormesis. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The study showed that hormetic dose responses can take on many shapes and that this diversity can not be captured by a single model without risking considerable misinterpretation. However, the two empirical models considered in this paper together provide a powerful means to model, prove, and now also to quantify a wide range of hormetic responses by reparameterization. Despite this, they should not be applied uncritically, but after statistical and graphical assessment of their adequacy