Review of Contemporary Computer-Assisted Language Learning

Book review published in the journal 'Language Learning and Technology'A review of the book 'Contemporary Computer-Assisted Language Learning' edited by M. Thomas, H. Reinders and M. Warschauer and published in 2013 by Bloomsbury

The role of multimodality in intercultural incomprehension episodes during webconference-supported teaching

International audienceThere is a strong case to be made for using telecollaboration in foreign language education: learners are engaged in regular, semi-authentic interaction; can develop strategies for learner independence (O'Rourke, 2007), be exposed to opportunities for negotiation of meaning (Kötter, 2003) whilst at the same time exchanging with 'real informants' of the target culture (O'Dowd, 2013). This qualitative study sets out to observe the role of multimodality in intercultural incomprehension episodes (IIEs) during webconference-supported teaching. These episodes are defined as opportunities in the online interaction (surprises, questions, miscommunications) for the participants to engage in periods of negotiation of meaning. They arise because the participant of one culture does not understand or misunderstands the member(s) of the other culture. During webconference-supported teaching, the immediacy of the visual images provided by the webcam may make a particular contribution to intercultural telecollaboration: the visual mode may mean that participants are unable to avoid or ignore awkward subjects (O'Dowd, 2006) but may also allow complementary information to be provided to help resolve IIEs. The pedagogical context for the study is the telecollaborative project ISMAEL (InteractionS and Multimodality in lAnguage LEarning) during which 12 trainee teachers of French as a foreign language met for online sessions in French with 18 undergraduate Business students from an Irish university. The participants met for seven 40-minute online sessions in 2013 via the webconferencing platform Visu (Bétrancourt, et al., 2011). Each online session was thematic and focused on Business French. A research protocol was designed around this pedagogical context. Data produced during the learning project itself were collected (webcam videos, textchat messages, audio recordings of collective feedback session with the trainee teachers, reflective reports), as well as data produced uniquely for the research project (observation notes, post-course questionnaires and interviews). Participation in the research study was voluntary-all 12 trainee teachers (ten females, two males) and 12 students (eight females, four males) gave permission to use their data. All data were structured into a LEarning and TEaching Corpus (Guichon et al., 2014)

Multimodal resources for lexical explanations during webconferencing-supported foreign language teaching: a LEarning and TEaching Corpus investigation.

International audienceWithin the computer-assisted language learning (CALL) field, multimodal research endeavours to consider the simultaneous presence and interaction between verbal communication modes (audio, text chat) present in foreign language learning situations with co-verbal and non-verbal modes (gestures, gaze, posture, other kinesic aspects). This paper explores how trainee-teachers of French as a foreign language, during webconferencing-supported teaching, orchestrate different semiotic resources that are available to them for lexical explanations

EuroCALL 2011 Courseware exhibition: the VoiceForum platform for spoken interaction.

Showcased in the courseware exhibition, at the EuroCALL 2011 conference, VoiceForum is a web-based software platform for asynchronous learner interaction in threaded discussions using voice and text. A dedicated space is provided for the tutor who can give feedback on a posted message and dialogue with the participants at a separate level from the main interactional activity. In this way, the pedagogical input is always based on the contextualized needs of the participants, can be accessed as often as required and even searched as a resource for future reference. The software features a built-in sound recorder/player, a rich text editor and management tools to enrol participants, and create forums. Although still in the development stage, this software can be downloaded freely but must be installed on a web server. VoiceForum has been used extensively with French university students of English since 2006

A study of verbal and nonverbal communication in Second Life - the ARCHI21 experience

To appear in 2013. This is not the final version.Three-dimensional synthetic worlds introduce possibilities for nonverbal communication in computer-mediated language learning. This paper presents an original methodological framework for the study of multimodal communication in such worlds. It offers a classification of verbal and nonverbal communication acts in the synthetic world Second Life and outlines relationships between the different types of acts that are built into the environment. The paper highlights some of the differences between the synthetic world's communication modes and those of face-to-face communication and exemplifies the interest of these for communication within a pedagogical context. We report on the application of the methodological framework to a course in Second Life which formed part of the European project ARCHI21. This course, for Architecture students, adopted a Content and Learning Integrated Learning approach (CLIL). The languages studied were French and English. A collaborative building activity in the students L2 is considered, using a method designed to organise the data collected in screen recordings and to code and transcribe the multimodal acts. We explore whether nonverbal communication acts are autonomous in Second Life or whether interaction between synchronous verbal and nonverbal communication exists. Our study describes how the distribution of the verbal and nonverbal modes varied depending on the pre-defined role the student undertook during the activity. We also describe the use of nonverbal communication to overcome verbal miscommunication where direction and orientation were concerned. In addition, we illustrate how nonverbal acts were used to secure the context for deictic references to objects made in the verbal mode. Finally, we discuss the importance of nonverbal and verbal communication modes in the proxemic organisation of students and the impact of proxemic organisation on the quantity of students' verbal production and the topics discussed in this mode. This paper seeks to contribute to some of the methodological reflections needed to better understand the affordances of synthetic worlds, including the verbal and nonverbal communication opportunities Second Life offers, how students use these and their impact on the interaction concerning the task given to students

Object-focused collaboration in Second Life: the use of verbal and gestural modes for the establishment of common ground and in deictic referencing.

This study focuses on a French-as-a-foreign-language course for architecture students. The course uses the virtual world Second Life for collaborative building tasks in the foreign language and adopts a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach. The study investigates participant exchanges and, more specifically, how verbal and gestural communication modes are used in establishing common ground. Given the inherently object-focused nature of building tasks, it appears crucial for learners to establish mutual understanding of objects they identify and refer to quickly and securely (Hindmarsh, 1997). Diectic referencing, thus, play an important role in the establishment of this common ground. In virtual worlds, users are represented as avatars: semi-autonomous agents represented in the digital space which can perform actions when commanded by the user (Peachey et al, 2010). Second Life users can express themselves using text chat, voice and by commanding their avatar to use gestures. The range of gestures of an avatar includes kinaesthetic gestures (e.g. orientating the avatar in a particular direction), tactile gestures (e.g. touching an object to make the avatar appear to be pointing at it) and gestures of action (e.g. moving an object or changing the textural appearance / size of an object.) One of the affordances of virtual worlds has been shown to be that they favour collaborative learning (Dalgarno and Lee, 2010, Henderson et al., 2009). Clark and Brennan (1991: 127) proffer that in collaborative tasks, "all collective actions are built on common ground and its accumulation" and that the purpose of spoken language in such collaboration is to establish this common ground. Kraut et al. (2003) and Clark and Krych (2004) add that in distance collaborative tasks participants must have shared visual access to the collaborative task space so as to help establish deictic references. In Second Life this shared access is not guaranteed for the virtual world includes a camera tool which users can manipulate independently of the position of their avatar and this is not visible to other participants. Furthermore, in virtual worlds, visual access to collaborative tasks is limited by a user's inability to transform the course of pointing gestures to take into account emerging orientations and movements of co-participants. Fraser (2000) argues that this impacts on designating referential actions for co-participants and, thus, that there is a greater reliance on talk than in everyday, real-life, collaborative work. These characteristics of virtual worlds lead us to study the new relationships between the gestural and verbal modes. Firstly, we examine how learners employ these modes when engaged in a collaborative building task, in particular to establish a common ground. Secondly, we examine how these modes are utilised to reference objects used within the building tasks. Virtual worlds are becoming of interest for distance language educators (Molka-Danielson et al., 2007, Cooke-Plagwitz, 2008). This study furthers our previous work on multimodality (Chanier and Vetter, 2006) by introducing the gestural mode. The study is also one of the first pieces of research drawing on a CLIL approach in higher education

Collaboration en langue étrangère dans une approche de type EMILE articulant modes verbaux et gestuels dans le monde virtuel Second Life.

Les environnements 3D facilitent l'apprentissage collaboratif selon Dalgarno et Lee (2010), ainsi que Henderson et al (2009). Nous présentons ici une formation en langues étrangères destinée à des étudiants d'architecture et se déroulant dans le monde virtuel Second Life, en français ou en anglais selon la langue maternelle des étudiants. Elle repose sur des tâches de construction collaboratives conçues suivant une approche didactique EMILE (Enseignement d'une Matière par Intégration d'une Langue Étrangère, CLIL en anglais). Notre étude a pour but d'analyser les échanges entre participants dans lesquels s'articulent modes de communication verbaux et gestuels pour l'établissement d'un fond commun de compréhension ("common ground"). Les participants impliqués dans les tâches de construction doivent pouvoir identifier et référencer rapidement et précisément des objets du monde virtuel (Hindmarsh, 1997). Les références déictiques jouent alors un rôle important dans l'élaboration de la compréhension mutuelle. Dans ces mondes, les utilisateurs sont représentés par des avatars. Les avatars sont des agents semi-autonomes de l'espace digital qui exécutent des actions commandées par les participants en ligne (Peachey et al, 2010). Dans Second Life, ces participants peuvent s'exprimer en utilisant le clavardage, l'audio, ainsi qu'en guidant leur avatar. La gamme gestuelle de l'avatar comprend des gestes kinésiques (par exemple l'orientation de l'avatar dans une direction particulière), des gestes tactiles (contact avec un objet en le pointant du doigt, même à distance), et des gestes actionnels (déplacement d'un objet ou changement de sa texture ou de sa taille, etc.). Clark et Brennan (1991: 127) montrent que pour que les tâches soient de nature collaborative chaque action collective doit reposer sur un fond commun de compréhension, continuellement mis à jour au travers des interactions dans lesquelles l'oral joue un rôle prépondérant. Kraut et al. (2003), ainsi que Clark et Krych (2004), ajoutent que dans des tâches collaboratives accomplies à distance, les participants doivent avoir accès, non seulement à l'information verbale, mais également à un champ visuel partagé pour que s'établissent des références déictiques. Suivant Platt et Brooks (2008) le pointage est un aspect important dans l'établissement du fond commun lorsque deux personnes essaient de résoudre ensemble un problème. Dans ce genre de situation, l'accès à un champ visuel partagé est un pré-requis. Or ce partage n'est pas toujours garanti dans Second Life. Ainsi, l'outil caméra permet à chaque utilisateur d'obtenir des perspectives rapides sur le monde environnant, perspectives détachées de l'avatar guidé par cet utilisateur. Alors que le positionnement et l'orientation d'un avatar est visible des autres participants, la vue caméra n'est elle pas discernable. Dans ce cas, l'accès visuel partagé est rompu. Par ailleurs, il est intéressant de noter que, dans ces mondes virtuels, les contraintes imposées par le système informatique sur les gestes de pointage des avatars, donc sur la désignation des actions référentielles, renforcent l'utilisation des modes verbaux (Fraser, 2000), et ce de façon plus notable que dans les communications associées à des tâches collaboratives du monde réel. Ces spécificités des mondes virtuels nous conduisent à étudier les nouveaux rapports entre modes verbaux et gestuels. Nous examinons, premièrement, comment les modes verbaux et non verbaux sont utilisés par les apprenants engagés dans une tâche de construction collaborative, en particulier lorsque s'élabore le fond commun de compréhension. Deuxièmement, nous examinons comment ces modes sont mobilisés pour référencer les objets impliqués dans la tâche de construction. La tâche de construction que les apprenants auront à faire s'inspire de l'étude de Wadley et Ducheneaut (2009), dans laquelle des locuteurs anglophones s'expriment dans leur langue maternelle pour mener à bien des tâches collaboratives au sein de Second Life. Un apprenant joue le rôle de coordinateur, ayant à sa disposition le plan de construction d'un objet. Il doit diriger les autres apprenants, endossant le rôle d'ouvriers, lors de l'assemblage de l'objet à partir des pièces fournies. Cette tâche de type "échanges d'information" (Pica et al., 1993), distribuant les rôles d'assistant et d'ouvrier suivant Kraut et al (2003), a été choisie afin d'établir un processus de communication bidirectionnelle. Le déficit d'information (gap) d'une des parties rend nécessaire l'interaction pour accomplir la tâche (Long, 1980). L'observation de l'utilisation conjointe des modes gestuels et verbaux nous aidera à saisir comment se résolvent les problèmes de compréhension / expression en L2, au sein d'une situation d'apprentissage à distance en architecture. Les expérimentations auront lieu en février 2011. Des captures d'écran, intégrant l'audio et le texte (clavardage) seront enregistrées. Les références déictiques des participants seront analysées. Des entretiens permettront de recueillir l'avis des participants sur leurs façons d'établir un fond commun de compréhension et d'expliciter les stratégies utilisées pour surmonter les difficultés afférentes. Les mondes virtuels comme Second Life suscitent un grand intérêt dans l'enseignement à distance des langues (Molka-Danielson et al., 2007, Cooke-Plagwitz, 2008). Cette étude vise à élargir les travaux antérieurs sur les interactions multimodales (Chanier et Vetter, 2006) en y introduisant la composante gestuelle. Elle s'inscrit également dans le lot des premières recherches reposant sur une approche didactique EMILE au sein l'enseignement supérieur

Architecture students' appropriation of avatars - relationships between avatar identity and L2 verbal participation and interaction

The synthetic (virtual) world Second Life can be defined as a social networking environment for it allows users to network informally by initiating relationships with other users, often strangers with whom they share no previous offline connection. Users can also connect with other users with whom they have previously established offline relationships. In the synthetic world, networking can occur by interacting, and later friending, other users whose avatars are proxemically close to a user inworld. This is facilitated by the feature of the synthetic world which allows any interaction between users in the public audio or textchat channels to be heard / read by other nearby users. Users can also initiate relationships through similar interest groups and choose to create a public profile, albeit relating this profile to that of their avatar or their physical world (first world) identity. Users who friend each other can view the newsfeed and interest groups as well as the list of connections of one another, and can navigate the latter. The development of social networking environments allows users to construct online personae / identities which may differ from their first world identities (Turkle, 2011). The environments offer new ways of communicating both verbally and nonverbally which imply new ways of being, of showing and negotiating identities (Nagy, 2010). As fully anonymous social networking environments, synthetic worlds offer specific possibilities for identity construction and new ways of interacting because users are represented in the environment by an avatar through which they communicate. In the language-learning (L2) domain, interest is emerging in this type of environment. Research suggests that synthetic worlds may reduce student apprehension concerning interacting in a second language (Schweinhorst, 2002) and increase the students' sense of presence and community (Nowak and Biocca, 2004). However, the questions of whether and how language learners use avatars to develop an identity, the impact of avatar use on participation and interaction in a L2 remain largely unexplored. In this chapter, we explore the above questions through the data analysis from an experiment designed around a course in Second Life which formed part of the European project ARCHI21 . For this course, a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach was chosen for students of Architecture whose foreign languages (L2) were French (FFL) or English (EFL). We explore how these students developed their online identities and how these identities were forged through avatar appearance and the use of nonverbal acts, including gestures. We examine how these identities impacted interaction. Firstly, how changing avatar appearance influenced how students addressed each other inworld and their level of verbal participation in L2 interaction. Secondly, whether constructing an identity partially through nonverbal communication acts in this social networking environment may have created opportunities for increased L2 verbal participation. In our study, no instructions were given to the students regarding avatar appearance. The research questions presented here were formulated after remarking upon how students changed their avatar appearance and used nonverbal communication during the course. Our study focuses on the L2 interaction during open-ended activities rather than question-answer exchanges which may be more typical of a non-CLIL learning context

Appropriation des avatars par des étudiants d'architecture et impact sur l'interaction.

L'intérêt d'utiliser des mondes synthétiques pour l'apprentissage des langues (Cooke-Plagwitz, 2008; Molka-Danielson & Deutschmann, 2009) et pour l'apprentissage de l'architecture se développe (Gu. et al., 2009; Garner et al, 2011). Cet intérêt, ainsi que le besoin croissant des architectes de développer leurs compétences en langue seconde (L2) afin de faciliter leur mobilité et leur embauche, a conduit à la mise en place de la formation "Building Fragile Spaces". Un protocole de recherche a été élaboré pour suivre et recueillir les données de cette formation. "Building Fragile Spaces" a adopté l'approche didactique Emile (Enseignement d'une Matière Intégré à une Langue Etrangère, Clil en anglais) et a été conçue par des enseignants d'architecture de l'Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture Paris-Malaquais et des tuteurs de langue de l'Université Blaise Pascal. La formation s'est étalée sur une semaine en intensif durant laquelle chaque groupe d'apprenants élaborait son projet architectural, en alternant du matin au soir présentiel et distance. Le présentiel était animé par les enseignants d'architecture ; le distanciel par les tuteurs de langue. Les séances en L2 (anglais ou français suivant les groupes) ont eu pour cadre le monde synthétique Second Life et ont incorporé des objectifs architecturaux ainsi que langagiers. Peterson (2010) suggère que les avatars renforcent les affordances des mondes synthétiques pour l'interaction. Lamy et Hampel (2007) exposent certaines interrogations soulevées par l'utilisation des avatars dans des situations d'apprentissage : i) l'utilisation ou non par les apprenants des avatars pour développer leur identité ; ii) l'impact de la personnification des avatars sur l'interaction ; et iii) l'influence des personnages incarnés par les étudiants à travers leurs avatars sur les interactions. Notre étude de la formation "Building Fragile Spaces" décrit le développement des identités au sein du monde synthétique (inworld) et des "online personae"(Turkle, 2011:11) des étudiants d'architecture à travers la dimension non verbale de leur communication et en particulier à travers l'apparence des avatars et l'utilisation de leurs gestes. La plupart de ces étudiants, de niveau A2-B2 (CECR), n'avait auparavant jamais utilisé le monde synthétique Second Life. Pour cette communication, nous nous appuyons sur des séances réflexives en L2 dans lesquelles des groupes de quatre ou cinq étudiants étaient amenés à réfléchir à l'avancement de leur projet architectural et à leurs contributions individuelles. Nous mettons en relation l'utilisation des modes de communication verbal et non verbal en montrant de quelle manière le non verbal donne des opportunités pour la prise de parole et soutient les interactions. Pour illustrer ceci, nous nous appuyons sur des données quantitatives extraites des transcriptions multimodales des séances. Dans ces transcriptions, chaque acte verbal et non verbal a été transcrit et codé. La méthodologie employée pour la transcription multimodale (Saddour, Wigham & Chanier, 2011) s'appuie sur notre recherche antérieure (Ciekanski & Chanier, 2008) et sur la méthodologie de constitution des corpus d'apprentissage LETEC (LEarning and TEaching corpora; Mulce, 2010). Les post-questionnaires et entretiens conduits après la formation nous permettent d'analyser le rôle joué par les identités inworld des étudiants dans leur mise en confiance pour s'exprimer en L2 (cf. Schweinhorst, 2002) et dans le fonctionnement de leurs groupes

Pedagogical corpora as a means to reuse research data and analyses in teacher-training

One methodological challenge faced by CALL research is how to reuse data and analyses in ways that bridge the researcher-teacher gap (Colpaert, 2013). Building on LEarning and TEaching Corpora (LETEC) methodology for structuring data from online learning situations (Reffay et al., 2012; Wigham & Chanier, 2013), this paper presents the notion of pedagogical corpora as a means to foster pre-service teachers' professional development through reflective practice. Guichon and Hauck (2011) identified four different approaches to CALL-based teacher education, including 'confrontation with research findings' and 'action research'. In the first approach, when trainers want students to gain skills in developing online learning situations based on interactive, multimodal environments, they have recourse to the reading of CALL literature disconnected from actual data. In the second approach, pre-service teachers participate in experiments and adopt either the role of learners or tutors. In the latter case, attempts to use the same methodology for both data collection and training purposes are often difficult to manage: trainers face the issue that student materials are often heterogeneous and quickly extracted from the on-going experiment and pre-service teachers may only considering their individual practice. Carefully documented and selected materials from online courses studied in their original context would be very helpful. Pedagogical corpora offer possibilities to observe, examine and explore selected parts of a LETEC with reference to a lead identified within the research analyses performed. These pedagogical leads pertain to areas for enhancing either online L2 communication or interaction management. This paper presents the methodology developed for defining their structure (i.e. ways of extracting interaction data from LETEC and linking them to training tasks). We report on ways in which a pedagogical corpus can be used in teacher-training classrooms. The corpus discussed (Wigham & Chanier, 2013b) focuses on differences in tutor and student perceptions of collaboration in an online ESP course and compares and contrasts reflections from a teaching journal (Lewis, 2006) with interaction tracks from the LETEC corpus (Chanier et al., 2009)