Welcome to the final blog of the semester, but don’t be too sad, I enjoyed this whole blogging thing and might return to it in the future. So, keep your ear to the ground for that. Anyway, this is just going to be a little reflection (as the title suggests) on my blogging experience.

Over the last three months, I have been writing blogs that centre around technology in language learning. I’ve certainly learned a lot throughout this process, and I hope you have too. From ICC, to Concordancing, to DGBLL, it’s fair to say I’ve covered a lot of topics. And in doing so, I feel I have consolidated my learning very well; writing a blog on a new topic each week essentially forced me to read up on and study a lot of material related to each topic. So, I think it’s great that it is a part of this module, and the research backs me up on that. (Ellison, Wu, 2008)

My expectations for this blog were a bit of a mixed bag, I thought that it might be a lot of fun, as someone who has always enjoyed writing. However, one blog a week seemed like a lot, and I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy writing about the course material very much. Well, the experience fulfilled my expectations, and I really did have a great time with it. I’ve had a lot of fun writing, as I was able to make this my own and use a somewhat informal tone, and it’s certainly not as stressful as writing a 2000-word essay or doing an exam. In fact, I found it to be quite therapeutic at times. I even enjoyed writing about the course material quite a lot, because I find these topics very interesting and many of them are quite broad.

In conclusion, I feel blogging has been great for my learning, as well as my stress levels and enjoyment, this semester. It allowed me to consolidate the information I was learning in lectures and tutorials, and made the whole process of learning fun and creative. I look forward to blogging again in the future. Goodbye for now.

D.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hello and welcome to my penultimate blog! This week, the topic of discussion is DGBLL which stands for “digital game-based language learning”.  Over the course of the last few weeks, I have written extensively about the ways in which technology can aid, and also harm, language learning. But what about gaming? It’s fair to say I have quite a lot of knowledge in this particular area; whether it be the Playstation, the Wii, or the Gameboy, I’ve hardly gone a week of my life without playing some sort of video game.

Since January of this year, my game of choice has been Fortnite: the most popular game in the world right now. It had earned over 1 billion dollars as of July 2018, outperforming large blockbuster films, and it has only gone from strength to strength since. (Fitzgerald, 2018) It’s clear that the game is fun, but what can it offer in terms of language learning?

Well, within the game’s settings you have the ability to change language to a wide variety of language options. As I study Spanish, I changed it to this language and I can see it being quite beneficial to me and other language learners. Every menu and phrase that appears on screen is now in Spanish and it forces the user to learn. As the game takes place entirely online, there is often communication through headsets with other players from across Europe. In the past, I have been teamed up with Spanish-speakers and had a chance to practice. However, English is much more commonly used and so for someone learning English I feel this would be much more beneficial. It has been proven that consuming entertainment (such as gaming) through a target language is beneficial for vocabulary, as well as reading comprehension and speed. (Toszu, Coady, 2010)

The game isn’t designed to help with language learning but because many players play it for hours every day, making use of these options could prove to be very beneficial. On top of that, the unfortunate inevitability for games designed for language learning is a finished product that just isn’t as fun as an authentic gaming experience. If a game’s not fun, players aren’t going to be motivated to play it and motivation is crucial for language learning. Fortnite, on the other hand, is undeniably fun. Moreover, research has shown that there is “a positive correlation between games and student motivation.” (Adair, 2017)

In conclusion, video games have a lot to offer language learners, even mainstream games such as Fortnite. It doesn’t look like the popularity of gaming will diminish any time soon, so it is up to governments and universities to implement DGBLL into classrooms as much as possible.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Adair, A. (2017). Gaming and Motivation in the L2 Classroom. Perspectives on Effective Teaching in DLI and Foreign Language Classrooms. Vol.2: pp 79-85.
2. Fitzgerald, T. (2018). Is ‘Fornite’ The Most Popular Game Ever? It’s Beating TV And Movies. [online] Forbes. Available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonifitzgerald/2018/07/24/is-fornite-the-most-popular-game-ever-its-beating-tv-and-movies/#71ac4b9c8473. [Accessed 23 Nov. 2018.
3. Tozcu, A and Coady, J. (2010) Successful Learning of Frequent Vocabulary through CALL also Benefits Reading Comprehension and Speed. Computer-Assisted Language Learning. Vol. 17: pp 473-495.

What’s up guys, it’s blog time. This week, the topic of discussion is smartphone usage; specifically my smartphone usage. I use my phone a lot and when I say ‘a lot’ I mean A LOT. Recently, Apple added an app that allows users to view data on the amount of time they spend using their phone each week, and how much time they spend on each app. This week, I activated this app and I have to say, the results surprised me.

My results were as follows: I spent an average of more than six hours a day using my phone and the apps I used the most were YouTube (three hours/day), Snapchat (two hours/day) and Instagram (one hour/day). Those are the three apps I cycle between and I rarely use any others, so other apps only accounted for some minutes each.

My immediate reaction was one of shock, I spend almost as much time on my phone as I do sleeping and I had never thought that was the case. I knew I spent a lot of time on my phone but I didn’t think it was six hours! I also didn’t know that this is only slightly above average (according to the app). Specifically, I had no idea I spent so long watching YouTube videos and it surprised me at first that this was the app I spent the most time on. However, upon considering this I thought about the kind of content I watch on YouTube and it started to make sense. I mostly watch podcasts such as The Joe Rogan Experience and old episodes of The Ricky Gervais Show. Hours can go by in an instant listening to these and I often leave them play in the background as I study or chill out. It’s basically like having the radio on in the background, something very common but perhaps becoming less so. So, I’m not actively using my phone for six full hours a day which makes me feel a little better about myself.

Now, to the important questions: is this a bad thing and what are the effects of this level of phone usage? It is clear that there are negative effects of this, notably to do with academic performance. For example, if I keep my phone by my side when studying, I inevitably end up getting a notification, replying to messages, then going into other apps and before I know it, half an hour has passed when I was supposed to be studying. This isn’t good but it can be avoided, recently I have been putting my phone in another room and this works very well. However, what if I need to use my phone to access some CALL or apps that I use to study? This idea that the social media usage of students like me is harming our academic performance is mirrored in an article written by academics from my own university. (Benini et al., 2018) They note some anecdotal evidence that student performance has been decreasing in recent years due to the rise of social media usage. The same conclusion was reached by a team of researchers from Hong Kong who found that university students who used social media or other technologies (such as gaming) a lot were more likely to have a lower grade point average than students who didn’t. (Lau, 2017)

As we head into exam season, I’m certainly going to be trying to use social media a whole lot less and I’m going to keep my phone in another room a lot more when I study. Something I used to do to reduce usage was turn notifications off and I think I’m going to return to that after seeing how much time I spend on my phone. It has become abundantly clear that social media usage can get in the way of good academic performance, so, I’m going to try to curb this distractor.

D.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Benini, S., Giralt, M. and Murray, L. (2018). Just How Much of Social Media is Enough?. [online] RTE.ie. Available at: https://www.rte.ie/eile/brainstorm/2018/0601/967562-just-how-much-of-social-media-is-enough/. [Accessed 19 Nov. 2018].

2. Wilried W.F. Lau. (2017). Effects of social media usage and social media multitasking on the academic performance of university students. Computers in Human Behaviour. Vol. 68, March 2017, Pages 286-291.

Welcome back faithful readers. Today we’re going to be discussing an area of linguistics that I find particularly enlightening; corpus linguistics. It revolves around the study of the use of language in real-life contexts. A corpus is defined by one linguist as ‘a body of written text or transcribed speech which can serve as a basis for linguistic analysis and description.’ (Kennedy, 1998) In other words, corpora are databases of words used, whether in conversation or written and they can be very useful for linguists and language learners alike. Here’s an example of one.

A corpus like this can tell us a lot. Firstly, it gives us the gift of concordancing, which means displaying all the occurrences of a word or phrase and giving some context. It can also show us which words  are frequently used in a certain language, key words, and cluster analysis. As a student of Spanish and German, I have found corpora in these languages very useful as they allow me to see what kinds of words and phrases native speakers use to fill up their sentences. Also, seeing the context certain words are used in has been enlightening to say the least. It is often common for language learners like me to fall into the trap of directly translating from English when speaking in the new language. Corpora have helped me to avoid this and more specifically, to know what verb to use where.

Frequency lists are a wonderful element of corpora because they let us see the differences between spoken and written language used. I’m going to discuss the frequency list below, analysing the differences between spoken and written English in this particular corpus.

So, the first thing to note is the prominence of the pronoun, ‘I’ in the spoken corpus. It is the second most used spoken word but only the ninth most written. We can make various assumptions based on this information, for example, when speaking we are much more self-oriented, whereas when we write we are more detached and talk about things outside of ourselves. We can also see this in the frequency of the pronouns, ‘he’ and ‘she’ in the written corpus.

Another observation I have made is the presence of discourse markers in the spoken corpus and lack thereof in the written. Last year, when studying conversational analysis, I learned how common discourse markers such as ‘mm’ and ‘er’ are in spoken English. The word, ‘like’ is another great example and has become undoubtedly common in American English and also in Irish English in recent years. As far back as 1991, linguists noted its rise in American English and sought to analyse it. They wrote about the new functions of the word and analysed it using real life examples. (Romaine, Lange, 1991) When speaking, we are never certain of what we are going to say and so our discourse often comes out all messy with lots of filler words and sentences we never finish. This makes sense to us when having a conversation, however it’s not acceptable in written English. When writing, we have time to plan and carefully choose our words and so that’s why there are no discourse markers to be found in the written section above.

All in all, corpus linguistics is a very useful area of linguistics, and one that I find particularly interesting. The differences between spoken and written language are fascinating and enlightening to study. I hope you agree and that you enjoyed this blog post. See you next week!

D.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Kennedy G. (1998) An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics (1st edition) Routledge.
2. Romaine S, Lange D. (1991) The Use of like as a Marker of Reported Speech and Thought: A Case of Grammaticalization in Progress. Duke University Press.

Today, we’re going to be talking about Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) again so sit back, relax and enjoy. ICC plays a massive role in my studies, from virtual exchanges to preparing myself for my semesters abroad. But just how important is ICC and how can we measure it?

I think ICC is incredibly important when learning a language, but being fluent in a language does not necessarily mean you have good intercultural competence. Anyone can learn the grammatical rules and learn vocab by heart and be what is considered ‘fluent’. Therefore, I do not think ICC is an essential component of learning a second language. However, I believe those who value ICC and put effort into improving their intercultural skills will have a much easier time and progress more quickly.

I have taken part in three virtual exchanges already this year; one with a Spanish student, one with a German student and one with over ten people from all over the world discussing issues like migration and attitudes towards refugees. The main aim of the first two is obviously to improve my language skills (however, I have also gained a deeper understanding of my partners’ countries and cultures). Whereas the Sharing Perspectives Foundation’s exchange has been much more beneficial in developing my ICC. I now understand from experience the importance of listening and asking questions. At first, I struggled to ask questions when someone from Syria, for example was talking; I felt distant and too focused on the differences between us. However, with the passage of time, I have learned that asking questions brings us closer together and gives me a greater cultural understanding of the other person. I also now know that we are far more similar than we may think.

So, how does one assess ICC? Tough question. I think it is incredibly difficult to assess a student’s ICC objectively because there is no clear definition of ICC and no clear method for measuring it. It is vital to have an accurate definition of ICC in order to assess it effectively because how can you assess something that is not clearly defined? There is no consistency and therefore no accuracy. (Klemp, 1979, p.41) It is difficult to define ICC because it is not a linear thing, it is ever-changing and malleable.

In conclusion, in order to judge one’s level of ICC, there must be a series of assessments conducted at intervals over time. Developing ICC is an ongoing process, not a once off thing. (Pottinger, Goldsmith, 1979)

D.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Klemp, G.O. Jr. (1979). Identifying, measuring and integrating competence. New Directions for Experiential Learning. Vol.3: pp 41-52.
2. Pottinger, P.S. and Goldsmith, J. (Eds.) (1979). Defining and Measuring Competence. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass: pp. 41-52.

In this week’s blog I am going to be discussing the Cultura Project, which first took place between Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Institut National des Télécommunications (INT) in 1999. Students from the two institutions filled out questionnaires about the other’s country and culture, as well as about their own country. The purpose was to analyse the way in which students thought about students from different backgrounds and to gain a different perspective on the world. Essentially, they were trying to improve the students’ ICC by using an online resource or CALL package. CALL or Computer-Assisted Language Learning is defined as “the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning.” (Levy, 1997)

In 2011, Brown University and the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo took part in the project.

http://cultura.mit.edu/cultura-exchanges/year/2011/semester/spring/host/brown/guest/universidad-aut-noma-del-estado-de-hidalgo

This exchange was between American and Mexican students, countries who in recent times have had a very turbulent relationship. As one scholar put it, “relations between the United States and Mexico have never been easy.” (Keller, 2016) Upon reading the students’ thoughts, I found the word association section and discussion quite interesting. Firstly, the students were asked to give three words which they associated with the other students’ country. The students from Mexico wrote in Spanish too so it was a good opportunity for me to read some español. In any case, the most common words the American students gave to describe Mexico were ‘drugs’, ‘immigration’, and ‘beautiful’. So, there was a bit of a mixture between positive and negative, but overall words I deemed as negative seemed to come out on top. The Mexican students, however, when describing their own country opted for words like ‘tequila’, ‘tacos’, and ‘tradition’.

The discussion that ensued between the students was very interesting. Many of the American students were surprised at the amount of Mexicans who had said ‘tequila’ as they thought of this as a silly stereotype. However, one Mexican student explained that tequila was very important to Mexico, not simply as a popular drink there, but rather because of its economic power as an export. I was also quite surprised to see ‘tequila’ and ‘tacos’ present in the Mexican students’ answers but one I read their explanation it made a lot of sense and I felt I had gained a better understanding of their perspective. I’m sure this is how all of the students involved must have felt too, but on a much larger scale as they went on to discuss many more words such as ‘drugs’, ‘family’, and ‘immigration’.

When the students were asked to describe the United States in three words, the words chosen were a lot more varied. Having said this, a few of the American students said ‘opportunity’, while their Mexican counterparts offered words like ‘war’ and ‘money’. None of this surprised me and in the discussion section none of the students were surprised either. There was an interesting entry given by a Mexican student saying that it is true that America offers great opportunity to most, but not to many undocumented immigrants in the country. I found this quite striking and I’m sure it made many of the American students rethink their perspectives on the issue.

The difference in the perspectives of the students became very clear in this section of the survey, as well as in the other parts. I learned that we really do stereotype an awful lot when thinking about other countries and their people. The Cultura Project is clearly a great way to develop ICC, as outlined by four teachers who used the resource in their teachings. (Furstenberg et al., 2001) I think this kind of project would be fantastic for opening people’s eyes to different perspectives and could diminish large amounts of prejudice people have.

D.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Levy, M. (1997). Computer-assisted Language Learning. 1st ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
2. Keller, R. (2018). U.S.-Mexican Relations from Independence to the Present. [online] Oxford Research Encyclopedias. Available at: http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-269. [Accessed 12 Nov. 2018].
3. Furstenberg G, Levet S, English K, Maillet K. (2001). ‘Giving a Virtual Voice to the Silent Language of Culture: The Cultura Project’. Language Learning and Technology. Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 55-102

Hi everyone and welcome back to the blog. This week, we learned about Intercultural Communicative Competence or ICC for short. I’ve found this topic very interesting so far as it relates to a lot of the work we’ve been doing as part of our Language Technology module this semester. I’ve been taking part in an intercultural online exchange through the Sharing Perspectives Foundation where I discuss topics ranging from nationalism to refugees with people from all over the world, including Syria. I find myself improving my intercultural communicative skills each week as I get to know these people from completely different backgrounds and cultures to me.

So, what is  ICC? It is defined as “appropriate and effective communication and behaviour in intercultural situations.” (Deardorff, 2009)

As part of ICC we’ve learned about the terms “intercultural speaker” and “intercultural mediator”. However, at the start of this week I didn’t have any real knowledge of their meaning. And so, in my Language Technology tutorial when we were asked to discuss these terms’ meanings and come up with definitions for them, I didn’t have much to draw on. Luckily, as an occasional five euro buy-in poker player, I’m well used to bluffing my way through situations and so my guesses were fairly accurate. I thought that an “intercultural speaker” was someone who could speak to someone from another culture effectively, speaking their language and adopting their customs. I also proposed that an “intercultural mediator” was perhaps a translator or someone in that sort of mediation ‘middle man’ role.

It turns out that my ideas weren’t half bad. An intercultural mediator is a “person who enables intercultural communication, that is helps representatives of two different cultural communities communicate and understand each other,” as defined by IGI Global. We learned a lot about this role in our next lecture, focusing on the characteristics required of a good intercultural mediator. These include having a good knowledge of one’s own culture, as well as the other cultures involved, being a flexible, empathetic listener and many more. My guess at intercultural speaker was pretty much spot on so I was happy with that.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Deardorff, D. K. (ed.) (2009). The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence. SAGE Publications, p xi.
2. IGI Global (2018) What is Intercultural Mediator. IGI Global Disseminator of Knowledge [online] available at https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/translator-intercultural-competence/45051. Accessed on 17/10/2018.

Hello and welcome back to my blog! This week in my linguistics class, we took an online questionnaire designed to test what different learning styles suit us. My results were fairly well balanced. I was placed right in the middle of ‘active’ and ‘reflective’ and ‘sequential’ and ‘global’. However, I was found to be much more ‘intuitive’ than ‘sensing’, and more ‘verbal’ than ‘visual’. What does that mean for me? Well, let’s discuss it by means of assessing how suited a language learning app is to me and my learning style. (Yamasaki, 2005)

The LL app I’m going to be doing this through is, you guessed it, Duolingo once again. I meant to use another app this week in order to spice up this post and make it more interesting for you, but I’ve been very busy and Duolingo seems to have a monopoly on my app learning time these days.

I believe Duolingo suits me very well as it is tailored to the masses and I am quite balanced in terms of my learning style. When designing the app, I don’t believe the developers wanted to personalise the experience or make it too niche or specific. I also find it useful as I am more of a verbal learner than a visual one. I don’t seek out visual representations of information, written and spoken are fine with me. And Duolingo deals mostly in text exercises which suits me down to the ground.

I don’t feel as though personalising my language learning is particularly necessary for me either. Sure, when I’m studying at home I’ll use the methods that I find useful (written work, listening to music etc.) But when it comes to online aids such as Duolingo, I think they’re doing the best they can. Maybe it could be more specifically focused on my learning styles or those of a more visual learner. But that’s where the problem lies, if you focus on one kind of learner, you neglect the other, and so I don’t believe Duolingo is doing anything wrong in this area.

D.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Yamasaki, Y. (2005). Learning styles and typologies of cultural differences: A theoretical and empirical comparison. Internationalournal Journal of Intercultural Relations. Vol. 29: pp 521-548.

Hello everyone, welcome back to the blog. This week I’m going to be evaluating a CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) package in an attempt to paint a picture of what a multi-media language learning environment is in 2018. As a language student, I use different types of CALL every day, whether it be spanishdict.com to help with my translations or the Easy German YouTube channel to help brush up on my vocabulary. This week, however, I’ve taken a special look at Duolingo, the massively popular interactive language learning website and app. I’ve used it sporadically in the past, but this week I’ve become a very active user in order to analyse its value to me as a language learner.

There is a long list of criteria used to evaluate CALL, but one crucial factor for an effective CALL package is that it “…includes mental representations and cognitive processes relating not only to the explicit structure and content of the dialogue but also to the general cognitive demands imposed by the system”. (Hammond and Barnard, 1985:56-7)

So, with that in mind, the criteria I’ve chosen to evaluate Duolingo under are as follows: practicality, error correction and feedback, positive impact, and language learning potential. I feel these are the most important elements of any CALL package and that they will give a good idea of how valuable Duolingo is. Specifically, I’m focusing on the service provided to German language learners on the site.

Firstly, over the course of my frequent usage of the German part of Duolingo, I have found it to be highly practical. This is in large part thanks to its wonderfully accessible app. The beauty of an app is you can use it at all times, you don’t need to be in a classroom or by a computer; it’s very practical indeed. The app offers a colourful and user-friendly interface which often makes it feel as though I’m playing a game, and I believe this is no coincidence. This makes the user experience fun and kept me coming back. It’s also free and you can’t get much more practical than that. The following principles are said to be crucial in evaluating an app’s design and I found Duolingo’s layout rated highly within these criteria.

1. Consistency of display
2. An uncluttered screen
3. The grouping of items according to their functions (Smith and Mosier, 1984).

Another important criteria is error correction and feedback, this is vital for language learners (and often lacking). As college students, we don’t get our work corrected nearly as often as in the past and feedback is limited and often unspecific. So, it’s comforting to a poor student like me who’s still adjusting to college when a CALL package offers feedback; Duolingo does. Answers are either correct or incorrect and the practice tests adapt to the user’s answers, so that if you get one wrong it will repeat similar questions until it’s sure you have learned from your mistake. This is a great feature.

In terms of positive impact, Duolingo is quite good, it definitely had a positive effect on my language learning over the past week and I certainly haven’t experienced any negative impacts. I’ve mostly used it to revise some basic German from last year which was great, you can forget a lot over the summer.

And now to the language learning potential. At the end of the day, it is a free service and there is no human interaction, so potential is bound to be limited, and it is. Having said that, it is entirely dependent on the user. For me personally, I know I couldn’t become fluent in a language from only an app, but I do feel it will help in consolidating my German in a fun way as we continue to move quickly through the language in college.

In summary, Duolingo is a wonderful CALL package, and I’ll definitely be using it more from now on.

D.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Hammond, N. and Barnard, P. (1985). Fundamentals of Human-Computer Interaction. Academic Press: pp 127-164.
2. Smith, Sidney L and Mosier, Jane. (1984). Design Guidelines for User-System Interface Software. The MITRE Corporation. Project No. 522A: pp 180-9.