Foreign language learning with the new media:
between the sanctuary of the classroom and the open terrain of
natural language acquisition
Dietmar Rösler
In this article I will discuss the
importance of the new media for foreign language learning in four steps.
·
Step
one will look at changes in foreign language learning brought about by the
advent of the new media.
The
second and third steps belong, today at least, to two different realms of
science fiction:
·
Step
two briefly addresses how the internet could be used in co-operative
development of teaching material - there are no technical elements of science
fiction here, the futuristic element lies in the organisation of the production
and distribution of teaching material.
·
Step
three, on the other hand, is proper science fiction: I will ask whether natural
language acquisition could be imitated in an artificial virtual world of the
target language and culture and whether this would actually be a desirable
development.
·
Step
four, finally, returns to the real world to take a look at a successful
internet reading course provided by the Goethe-Institut.
This
article will neither cover the development of CALL software
[1]
nor address the question as to whether
a new paradigm of foreign language learning has evolved as a result of the
new media and of constructivist thinking. The former won't be covered due
to lack of space – even a publication in the WWW has to set its limits not
because of lack of volume but out of consideration for the reader. The latter
simply doesn't interest me: whether a new paradigm evolves or not is something
which the history of the subject has to determine in fifty years time or more,
discussions about it now can only be regarded as another example of the growing
trend of research being replaced by academic marketing.
1. How CD-ROM, email and the WWW can compensate for
some of the shortcomings of classroom based foreign language learning
The key question for me in the debate
about the role of the new media in foreign language learning is: (How) Do
the new media contribute towards enhancing successful natural learning within
what, for want of a better alternative, I will continue to call foreign language
learning in the classroom
[2]
? Sweeping statements about how textbooks are being replaced
by 'authentic' telecommunication, assumptions about autonomous learners which
haven't taken into account the constraints of learning in educational institutions,
and declarations about the the role of the teacher being solely that of a
facilitator, all these undermine
[3]
a differentiated discussion about what the new media can
contribute to the individualization of learning processes within the classroom
and about how a productive balance can be created between the function of
the classroom as a didactic sanctuary and the exciting challenges of autonomous
and discovery learning
[4]
.
Different media play a different
role in integrating aspects of natural learning into the classroom. CD-ROM
teaching material is as producer oriented as the current printed textbooks. The
fact that a CD-ROM offers multimedia presentations of its contents and
hypertextual access makes it a good medium for conveying information on clearly
defined subjects, for example on certain Landeskunde
topics which do not require up-to-the-minute information. In these cases a
CD-ROM may be of greater value than the WWW with its inherently chaotic
searches and representations. Teaching material on CD-ROM does, however, share
the main weakness of current printed and cassette based teaching material: its
contents and - despite the seemingly interactive interface - ultimately the
study path of the learner too is predetermined by the producers of the CD-ROM.
The content is hardly ever
predetermined where electronic mail is utilized for foreign language purposes.
Emails are texts on the border between verbal and written language. Written and
read, they nonetheless display many of the characteristics of spoken language
in terms of choice of register and the high tolerance of mistakes.
The 1:1 relationship in language learning,
traditionally in the form of individual tuition in the interaction between
a teacher and a learner, calling to mind the language masters of former centuries
and which today is usually only to be found in private schools is, with the
advent of email, once again gaining ground. It has re-established itself at
the end of the twentieth century, beyond the affluent private pupil scenario,
in the form of alternative co-operative concepts, learning partnerships such
as the Tandem set-up, in which two individuals with different mother tongues
alternate the role of teacher – or to be more precise, that of the language
and culture expert – and learner
[5]
. Tandem learning has now, per email
[6]
, become a place of learning which transcends the necessarily
shared location in the original Tandem concept. In contrast to the classical
Tandem, using email Tandem means that the communication is written and asynchronic,
a bonus in a learning and teaching situation, in which the enthusiasm for
communicative language teaching often permits the pendulum to swing too far
to the side of spoken language; the functional communicative writing in emails
can enable it to be swung some way back towards the other side.
Giving a learner the possibility to
interact directly with a native speaker from the target culture is one common
use of email in foreign language learning, but it is certainly not the only
one. Email can also be used as a speedy variation of the old idea of class
correspondence and even for rather complex co-operations between groups of
learners in different cultural environments
[7]
. It can also play a part in teacher training: Tamme &
Rösler (1999) describe how a 1:1 email tuition for Chinese students of German
as a foreign language was introduced into the training of future teachers
of German at Gießen university.
Email can overcome some of the
constraints of classroom-based learning by providing a channel for real and
speedy interaction between learners and native speakers in the target language.
But, as always, the medium is not the message
because if people have nothing to say to each other then it doesn't really make
any difference in which medium they don't say it.
This difficulty persists for all
teachers and all learners, it won't go away by simply replacing conversation
classes by chat rooms and letters by emails.
While CD-ROMs are probably best
used for information retrieval of Landeskunde
activities and are less suited as material for a complete ab initio language course, and while the advantage of email and
chat rooms lies clearly in their providing swift contact between learners or
between learners and tutors, the use of the internet is more varied. It offers
different possibilities for those involved in foreign language learning:
-
up-to-the-minute
[8]
information on the target language and culture which hasn't
been produced specifically for language students and which is just there to
be listened to, read or looked at,
-
aids needed for language learning
such as grammars or dictionaries,
-
attempts to compile and adapt for
language learning purposes the data available in the internet,
-
so-called
chat rooms in which people can communicate directly with one another,
-
foreign language learning material
which has been produced specifically for the internet and
-
forums in which teachers and
learners can communicate with one another about teaching and learning.
The use of teaching material in the
internet or of sites relevant for teachers is becoming a commonplace activity.
The Goethe-Institut server for instance, which currently consists of around
23,000 WWW pages
[9]
, registered about 32,500 visits per day in January 2000,
which is slightly more than a million visits that month. Assuming that each
user calls up five pages on average, then
the Goethe-Institut site is currently being visited by about 6,500
people every day
[10]
.
2. Could the internet provide the framework for
co-operative production of learning and teaching material?
The internet supports both centralizing and
decentralizing activities at the same time and thus could facilitate the
collection and provision of good teaching and learning ideas which, taken from
the world-wide diversity of classroom experiences, could be used in adapted
form for concrete situations in specific places without a limiting, centralized
teaching model being imposed. One could even imagine the entire future
production of teaching material being altered thoroughly by this possibility of
simultaneous centralizing and decentralizing.
It would be possible, with the help of databases of
existing teaching material cut up into small units and interlinked, to exploit
all the current material on offer and, at the same time, be able to establish
exactly where the genuine deficits are, where writing new material and feeding
it into the database would be really worthwhile and not simply a case of reinventing
the wheel. This could stimulate the development of a multitude of teaching and
learning material of various national, regional and other specific adaptations
and variations, of different approaches to topics at varying stages of
progression and with references to different social, geographical and cultural
backgrounds, all linked with a variety of classroom activities. Texts which
weren't originally written for language learning could also be integrated,
together with suggestions of how to deal with them and linked with teachers'
forums supporting classroom activities.
This vision of a pool of teaching material contrasts
sharply with the real virtual world in which many search but few find what they
are looking for, in which aborted attempts and material of doubtful didactic
value can be found side by side with good ideas, and in which the question of
assessment and quality control is still in its infancy, despite hopeful
indications such as certain hompages developing a trustworthy reputation for the
links they provide to quality sites.
Despite this reality it is an open question whether
teacher training seminars will be able to pool their resources in order to
prevent the huge waste of parallel production and adaptation of material,
and whether publishers and authors of teaching material will be able to anticipate
this development and will create appropriately empty spaces which can then
be developed in a decentralized fashion
[11]
.
3. Science fiction:
natural learning in an artificial environment
Will learners who are physically outside the target
language area nonetheless one day, thanks to virtual reality, be able to learn
the language in a quasi-natural, rich linguistic environment, structured in
such a way that they experience few of the disadvantages which can be associated
with natural second language learning? Can natural foreign language learning
outside the target language area be boosted by a progression from tele-vision
and tele-hearing to tele-experience? Two different versions of tele-experience
in foreign language learning
[12]
present themselves. On the one side is a combination of chat
rooms and current virtual worlds, on the other is a purely artificial version,
the realisation of which is, from today's perspective, pure science fiction
and whose desirability might even be questionable.
The first version is a tele-experience from real
person to real person mediated by avatars who represent them. In this model,
learners as avatars in a virtual learning world can adopt any role they want,
they can change their regional origin, their social class or their gender just
as they can alter the outer appearance of 'their' artificial figure. All the
questions which make this form of communication in chat rooms or virtual worlds
so interesting for its non-language learner users apply here too: What is my
self, who is my opposite number in cyberspace? How can I communicate with
partners whose identities are constantly changing? These questions about
identity, which are as difficult to answer as they are exciting for those who
playfully enter a virtual world, become a problem when this form of
communication is functionalized for the purposes of institutionalized foreign
language learning. Will there be any elements of cultural context or
intercultural understanding left in this type of interaction or will the
arbitrariness of identities lead to the exclusion of anything which is
'difficult' and could disturb or even interrupt the flow of communication; will
anything which gets in the way of smooth communiation be eliminated? Will the
result be a kind of lowest common denominator, a McTalk?
The second version is pure science-fiction and plays
with the paradox of completely artificial natural communication. It is the most
exciting and most problematic model of foreign language learning per virtual
reality, one which won't hit the market within the near future - if indeed it
ever does – and one which avoids all the problems which can arise when native
speakers of the target language and learners of that language communicate in an
institutionalized context by providing a complete and complex cyberscript which
constantly gives the learners the feeling that they are participating in a
natural tele-experience, although they are, in fact, in the middle of a
classroom setting, the like and the scope of which has never been seen or
imagined before. In this model, all the participants communicating in the
virtual world, apart from the learners themselves, all the cultural
information, every form of behaviour, each moment of intercultural
misunderstanding, of joy etc. is completely scripted. The world that the
learners 'enter' is either populated by artificial figures in artificial spaces
or else by live actors and authentic original sounds recorded in scenes which
were shot like those in a foreign language learning film. The learners move
seemingly freely in a target language environment, which reacts appropriately
to their linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour; in it people are amused by
their lack of background knowledge or help them out with information, are
either friendly or not, and so on. The complex script reacts in a quasi natural
way to what the learners say and do, it isn't a film which is being shown, the
learners themselves are part of it.
I don't, at this juncture, wish to address the
ethical and moral questions which are automatically raised by the idea of such
total manipulation, instead I would like to position this model in the didactic
discussion. In the context of institutionalized foreign language learning
outside the target language area – and it is only this situation I am talking
about, as the target language area itself offers different possibilities for
linguistic interaction – two basic problems dominate: How can learners be
involved in meaningful interaction in the target language? And how can the
target language and culture be represented in a comprehensive and
differentiated manner? As far as involving learners in interaction in the
target language is concerned, foreign language teaching has frequently both
prematurely and inaccurately announced that a solution has been found – one
only has to remember how complex simulations or even simple role-playing in the
classroom were proclaimed to be natural communication.
As far as its material base is concerned, foreign
language learning has moved from textbooks to storing material on tapes,
cassettes and videos and linking these with the textbooks, it has moved on to
CDs and is now using material from the internet. A multitude of forms of
material has emerged which depart ever further from the notion that a textbook
could or should determine the entire learning process. Instead, the idea of the
textbook as a quarry has gained ground and, with it, the textbook itself has
retreated in the face of the movement towards learning in partnership in
situations of genuine communication. From this vantage point, the notion of
artificially creating natural communication in cyberspace would seem to be a
step backwards, didactically speaking, because it would be creating nothing
less than a giant textbook, based on the principle of simulation. But this
assessment doesn't take into account that such a cyberspace endeavour no longer
suffers, as traditional textbooks did, from the (unavoidable) reduction of
having to select elements of the target culture according to a
linguistic-communicative progression, which, due to their linear nature, books
and cassettes had and still have to do. Wouldn't the interaction between a
learner and an almost unlimited number of native speakers which, in the real
world, can only happen in the target language area, introduce a whole new
opportunity for natural learning into a classroom based learning environment?
Answers have not yet been found to these questions
but cyberspace, as a theoretical model, offers an interesting solution to the
problem of how to harness the power of natural language acquisition without
losing the positive aspects of structured classroom learning. This being pure
science fiction, I'll conclude with a look at a programme in the real virtual
world which tries to allow learners to make use of the internet while retaining
the advantages of guided learning.
4. Guided reading
on the internet: the case of jetzt-online
If the receptive skills of the learners
are built up as part of a language course from the very beginning
[13]
, it will be possible to partially release them at a fairly
early stage from the prescribed world of the textbook with its rigid progression
into the world of 'real' contact through media. The further away the place
of learning is from German-speaking areas or from centres with German tourists
and business connections, the more important the role the new media have to
play. The internet, particularly, is capable of providing up-to-the-minute
current affairs and other aspects of Landeskunde; however, coupled with this source is the problem of becoming
„lost in hyperspace“. A language learning internet version
[14]
of jetzt, the Süddeutsche Zeitung's supplement for young
readers, was developed at the Justus-Liebig-Universtität Gießen in co-operation
with the Goethe-Institut München; it attempts to combine the open world of
the internet with didactic sanctuaries of different degrees, selected according
to the needs of the users.
Reading is the main focus of this programme, even though,
as the homepage in Fig. 1 reveals, viewing comprehension (with the current
edition of the Tagesschau) is also
part of the package, and a chat-room is on offer
[15]
.
Fig. 1: Homepage of jetzt-online
The programme addresses individual learners and teachers
separately, in this article I will only give examples of its use for the individual
learner
[16]
.
The programme offers texts which are presented simply
as reading matter and are accessed via thematic selection, and texts which
are furnished with different tasks and exercises and which introduce different
reading strategies. The tasks differ in their degree of openness. At one end
of the spectrum are those which remain totally within the realm of traditional
language learning activities and which could also be found in a traditional,
'paper' textbook; at the other end are those which are specific to the internet
and introduce navigation skills while at the same time protecting the learners
from getting lost in hyperspace. Fig. 2 shows a reading text from the programme
which contains links of different degrees of openness.
www.goethe.de/z/jetzt/dejart65.htm
Blue links provide assistance in the form of brief
information on grammar, on idiomatic expressions, on the context of lexical
elements etc., an example – zog sie bei
einer neuen Freundin ein - can be seen in Fig. 3. This type of information
is always to be found in textbooks, work sheets etc. How helpful it is in any
individual case depends on the linguistic proficiency of the learner in
question. It is important for learners to know that, when calling up blue
links, they remain in a shielded area in which they aren't overtaxed. The lack
of contrastive components indicates that it is, as most commercially produced
printed teaching material, a 'germanocentric' work, produced in the German
language area. The nature of the internet does however allow (as indicated in
chapter 3) for decentralized alternatives, produced by teachers or learners in
different parts of the world, to be integrated into this central programme.
Fig. 3: Basic linguistic support as part of the
reading programme
www.goethe.de/z/jetzt/dejein65.htm
Beyond these blue ones, there are two further types
of links. The red ones lead, without any didactic preparation, straight to
internet pages – for instance to homepages of organisations – and hence
straight to up-to-the-minute information on a particular topic or institution.
The green links lead learners to tasks which couldn't be solved without the
internet. Fig. 4 illustrates this with an example of a task involving the word schmökern. Using Alta Vista, the learners
have to find, compile and discuss contexts for this verb.
Fig. 4: Making didactic use of a specific feature of
the internet: searching for contexts of a given word
www.goethe.de/z/jetzt/dejsch65.htm
These links are not limited to providing textual
assistance for comprehension. Figures 5 and 6 show examples of a more complex
task which can only be addressed by exploring the net. Picking up the story in
the text in Fig. 2 – Charlie has to leave home – the task in Fig. 5 is to help
her find a suitable hotel in Munich close to her favourite bookshop.
Fig. 5: An internet based Landeskunde task
www.goethe.de/z/jetzt/dejfra65.htm
With the help of an excerpt from a map and using the
hotel guide for Munich in the internet (cf. Fig. 6), the learners have to
develop an optimizing strategy: which hotel is reasonably priced and nonetheless
located centrally enough for Charlie's needs?
Fig. 6: Making use of a non-didactic internet page
within an internet-based Landeskunde task
http://www.deutschland-hotel.de/muc/muenchen.htm
Incorporating the internet into teaching German as a
foreign language, especially in countries which are far away from
German-speaking areas, will become increasingly important. Students will want
to work with texts which are didactically prepared on different levels as
described here, search completely independently for information or simply
establish contacts via email or chat rooms. The new media will not solve the
basic problems of learning a foreign language outside the target language area
but they do enable teachers to react to the existing limitations in an
innovative and imaginative way and permit the boundaries of classroom learning
to be pushed back further by integrating elements of natural language
acquisition.
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Biodata
Nach dem Studium der Publizistik und Germanistik an der FU Berlin arbeitete Dietmar Rösler in den Germanistikabteilungen des University College Dublin, der FU Berlin und des King's
College der University of London. Seit 1996 ist er Professor für Deutsch als Zweit- und Fremdsprache an der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. Zu seinen Forschungsschwerpunkten
gehören: das Verhältnis von gesteuertem und natürlichem Zweit- und Fremdsprachenlernen, Lehrmaterialanalyse, Interkulturelle Kommunikation, Grammatikvermittlung, Technologie und Fremdsprachenlernen. Ausführliche Informationen finden sich unter: http://www.uni-giessen.de/~g91010/roesler.htm