Humanising Language Learning: Blending Learning in SLA

D. Ravikumar and Dr. V. Anitha Devi, India

D. Ravikumar is a Freelance English Teacher, Consultant and is a Ph.D. Research Scholar, SSL, VIT University, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India. His current interests are b-learning and m-learning. E-mail: maladavidravi@yahoo.com

Dr. Anitha Devi is a Senior Assistant Professor, in VIT University (SSL), Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India. E-mail: vanithadevi@vit.ac.in

Menu

Blended Learning
Second Language Acquisition
Live chat and SLA
Radio and SLA
Television / Satellite and SLA
Mobile Learning and SLA
Conclusion
References

Blended Learning

“English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner”1 declared Bill Bryson famously in his book The Mother Tongue. Learning English as a second language is a nightmare to many school children in India. English teachers have accentuated this problem, albeit inadvertently, sticking mostly to the bland textbooks and dreadful grammar lessons. They are constantly under tremendous pressure to complete the lessons for the upcoming tests and examinations. They seem to hardly have any time for anything else.

Learning a language is a lifelong process. One can never learn a second language fully. Therefore, the learner should be taught to learn independently. Krashen and Terrell say that it is almost impossible for people to use consciously learned knowledge when they speak naturally. At most, the learning system performs the role of the ‘monitor’ or the ‘editor’, which may help plan, edit and correct speech, but only when the second language learner has sufficient time, consciously focuses on form or thinks about correctness, and knows the rule.2

Sir Winston Churchill’s teacher “Mr. Somervell had a system of his own. He took a fairly long sentence and broke it up into its components by means of black, red, blue and green inks. Subject, verb, object: Relative Clauses, Conditional Clauses, Conjunctive and Disjunctive Clauses! Each had its colour and its bracket. It was a kind of drill.”3

Thankfully, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) has once again become exciting. Blended Learning has given wings to both teachers and learners. SLA is no more a mundane and boring process. The twenty-first century has given the learners more options of methods to choose from than ever before. If choice has become difficult because too many fascinating methods are around, one can simply combine the best features of all the methods that are feasible in a given set up and come out with humanising and captivating blended learning lesson plans.

Blended Learning (b-learning) is an innovative method of language learning combining various forms of learning techniques and methods. CALL provides an excellent opportunity to combine face-to-face teaching with computer-based or web-based SLA. This has become a major trend forward in ELT over the last ten years.

A blended learning approach can combine face-to-face instruction with computer-mediated instruction. It also applies science or IT activities with the assistance of educational technologies using computer, cellular or Smart phones, satellite television channels, videoconferencing and other emerging electronic media. Learners and teachers work together to improve the quality of learning and teaching, the ultimate aim of blended learning being to provide realistic practical opportunities for learners and teachers to make learning independent, useful, sustainable and ever growing.4

These, ‘particular forms of teaching with technology’, require more research to ‘conceptualise what is being blended’, that is theoretically coherent, philosophically defensible and pragmatically informative.’ 5

Second Language Acquisition

Lightbown’s Ten Generalizations from SLA Research Patsy Lightbown stated the following ten generalisations in 1985 paper on SLA research (Lightbown 1985):

1. Adults and adolescents can ‘acquire’ a second language.
2. The learner creates a systematic interlanguage which is often characterized by the same systematic errors as the child learning the same language as the first language, as well as others which appear to be based on the learner’s own native language.
3. There are predictable sequences in L2 acquisition such that certain structures have to be acquired before others can be integrated.
4. Practice does not make perfect.
5. Knowing a language rule does not mean one will be able to use it in communicative interaction.
6. Isolated explicit error correction is usually ineffective in changing language behaviour.
7. For most adult learners, acquisition stops … before the learner has achieved native-like mastery of the target language.
8. One cannot achieve native-like (or near native-like) command of a second language in one hour a day.
9. The learner’s task is enormous because language is enormously complex.
10. A learner’s ability to understand language in a meaningful context exceeds his/her ability to comprehend decontextualized language and to produce language of comparable complexity and accuracy.

These generalisations should be borne in mind as a teacher tries to blend technology into L2 classes.

Web 2.0 and SLA

Web 2.0 has revolutionised the virtual world. Web 2.0 gives the users more freedom to interact with the websites. Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook and many macro and micro blogging websites have enabled the users to contribute and edit. This great environment provides L2 learners exciting opportunities to access interactive materials. They now can learn new lessons, revise what they have learnt at school from home, do homework and turn in the paper for marking to the teachers online by way of emails, blogging or micro-blogging.6,7

Increasingly, websites like www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/ gives many interactive tools to learn general and business English and grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. All these materials are copyright free to be used in the classrooms or for self-learning.

This is what BBC has to say about its language learning materials:

Using our downloads

‘You may not copy, reproduce, edit, adapt, alter, republish, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use audio, video or other material downloaded from BBC Learning English in any way except for your own personal or educational non-commercial use…

What this means

If you are a teacher you may copy audio, video and documents to use in your class but you may not make any charge for this material and you may not make the material available through any other website or publication.’ 8 And the best part is, all these materials are designed for self-learning and are interactive. The second language teacher can blend these resources along with the usual face-to-face session for a high impact teaching-learning experience.

Live chat and SLA

Skype, facebook chat, yahoo messenger and other such service providers have brought in a windfall of opportunities to the L2 learners. A teacher can combine these off-class sessions with the aid of webcam along with face-to-face sessions according to the need of the learners as well as the lesson requirements.

Skype: Skype provides video chatting as well text chatting. A teacher can come face to face with quite a lot of his students and teach a lesson. This kind of virtual classroom helps learners to stay away from one another and still keep in touch. They can learn without any fear or shame. A learner may choose to be seen by his fellow students or just be invisible except to his teacher.

Facebook: Facebook and other micro blogs like twitter have changed the rules of the game once and for all. Any one can disseminate knowledge from anywhere in the world and keep track of what others have to say about that. Mobility in the form of mobile micro-blogging has enabled Second Language Acquisition in this area an increasingly popular phenomenon.

Radio and SLA

BBC Radio

www.bbc.co.uk/radio offers excellent services for L2 learners. Teachers can use internet, mobile, iplayers or podcasts options provided by this webmaster to relate teaching materials to their students.

BBC Radio has a huge archive of podcasts under the following genres: Children's, Comedy, Drama, Entertainment, Entertainment & Comedy, Factual, Learning, Music, News, Religion & Ethics and Sport. These podcasts in MP3 formats can be easily downloaded and blended with various language activities by the teacher. This, surely, will catch the imagination of the learners.

Radio English (VOA)

Voice of America has designed two English courses. One for the beginners and the other for the business communities. These courses are broadcast as a series for 26 weeks and are rebroadcast every 27 weeks. These are created by DynEd International. These 25-minute programs have been broadcast daily throughout the world. They are loaded with additional information about American people and culture.

www.dyned.com/voa/

Best Internet Radio Channels

The website zozanga.com claims that ‘listening to the radio can be a good way of improving your listening skills’. And it reels out a humungous list of about 350 English Radio/TV Channels. The website also says that programmes of these channels can be recorded online and played back several times. This could be quite handy for teachers to blend technology along with their f2f classes.

www.zozanga.com/internetstuff/englishradiostations.htm

Television / Satellite and SLA

Doordharshan, the Indian State run Television Channel and University Grants Commission (UGC is the Apex body of the Government of India, Ministry of Education) have been jointly playing a commendable role in taking education to the masses in rural India.

‘With an objective to produce in-house quality programmes for CWCR telecast, the UGC set up Media Centres in various Universities of the country and one in a college at Calcutta. The aim is to spread the knowledge and expertise of academicians working in various departments of the Universities/ colleges and institutes of higher education through National Television Network.’9 UGC also give guidelines for setting up media centres.10

In the month of August 2011, Gyandharshan telecast Listenting Skill 1 and 2 programmes running for about 27 and 29 minutes.11

Also, IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University - a premier institution offering distance education in India, based at New Delhi) says: ‘Visualising that satellite communications will play a critical role in the growth of the Open and Distance Learning System in the country, the thrust of the Chair is to define national-level programmes that will tap the potential of this technology and play a critical role in improving access as well as the quality of education at all levels.’11

IGNOU also has a YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/ignousoh. This channel provides video clippings on Creative Writing and Useful Language Tests and so on.

Mobile Learning and SLA

Cell phones have flooded the Indian market like crazy. ‘There were more than 670 million cell phone connections in India by the end of August, a number that has been growing by close to 20 million a month, according to government figures.’12

SMS and MMS services can also be used as an alternative to micro-blogging. Learners can keep in touch with the teachers 24x7 through cost effective text messaging. Group SMS provision can be used even to conduct a quiz or a quick time bound test.

Conclusion

Gone are the days when the classrooms had just a blackboard and a few pieces of chalks. The 21st century teachers should equip themselves with the tsunami of technology or they will be washed away with their obsolete techniques. Blended Learning keeps the learners motivated and interested. Blended Learning will not eliminate teachers but will only make them and their subject more appealing and endearing to their students.

References

Bryson, Bill. (1990) The Mother Tongue. William Morrow, NY.

www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=232628

www.archive.org/stream/rovingcommissino001321mbp/rovingcommissino001321mbp_djvu.txt (A ROVING COMMISSION BY WINSTON S. CHURCHILL)

Bonk, C. J.; Graham, C. R. (2005) Handbook of blended learning: Global Perspectives, Local Designs. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.

Can 'Blended Learning' Be Redeemed? MARTIN OLIVER University of London, United Kingdom, KEITH TRIGWELL University of Oxford, United Kingdom. www.luispitta.com/mie/Blended_Learning_2005.pdf Buzzetto-More NA and Sweat-Guy R. 2006. ‘Incorporating the hybrid learning model into minority education at a historically black university.’ Journal of Information Technology Education. 5:153-162.

Simon Shurville, Thomas (Barry) O'Grady, Peter Mayall, (2008) "Educational and institutional flexibility of Australian educational software", Campus-Wide Information Systems, Vol. 25 Iss: 2, pp.74 – 84.

www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/081222_download.shtm

www.cec-ugc.org/webrti/PDF/Introduction.pdf

www.ugc.ac.in/financialsupport/xiplan/mediacentre200409.pdf

www.nitttrchd.ac.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=130&Itemid=117

www.ignou.ac.in/ignou/aboutignou/chair/isrochair/introduction

Please check the ICT - Using Technology in the Classroom – Level 1 course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the ICT - Using Technology in the Classroom – Level 2 course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the ICT – Social Media in Education course at Pilgrims website.