A flipped learning model in a translation course

Translation courses tend to be difficult to teach. A valid question would be: Is there anything to teach? And if there is, how much should actually be taught in terms of 'lectured' and how much should actually be done in terms of 'practised'?

A colleague of mine (teaching the same course I am - Translation techniques) once said that there is no theory in translation! Personally, I couldn't disagree and agree more. To be precise, I believe there should be both but in appropriate amounts. In numbers that would mean, 50-50 at the beginning with a tendency of downsizing on the theoretical part until it boils down to 10-90 in favour of the practical aspect.

I should probably point out that when I was a student, we did not have any lecture classes in our translation course. We only had practice classes, which were considered an integrative part of English language classes. Our teacher would give us a text, we would take it home, translate it and bring it back to class next week to discuss it with the class and the teacher. Now, this model is still in use at most departments in my country. At least, that is what I have been told.

A few years ago, I decided to break away from this model so I introduced some changes, which have been gradually reverted to the flipped learning model because it seemed ideal in the context of teaching/ learning translation techniques. My primary reason was that it provides for the perfect amount of both theory and practice at any level the course might have reached.

In order to be fully aware of the potentials of the suggested model of flipped learning, the term should be explained first.

The official web site representing the Flipped Learning Network (FLN) provides a formal definition of the term saying that

"Flipped Learning is a pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space, and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter."

The key leaders in the field of flipped learning also released the Four Pillars of F-L-I-P™ and a checklist of eleven indicators that educators must incorporate into their practice.

These four pillars are crucial when designing a flipped learning model in a translation course. What this means in practice can be presented as follows:

1. Flexible environment:

I email the text to be translated to all my students. They have to perform the background research at home and make their glossary, which I taught at the beginning of the course. They usually have up to five days to prepare their glossary. Back in class, they ask me about details they are not sure about or needs to be clarified. Then they start translating the text in class. Each student sits at their own computer. In the process, they can ask questions, consult with their peers and use all available resources found online.

2. Learning culture: 

As the students can work on their own, or collaborate with their peers both at home and in class later, the role of the teacher has been shifted from a less central to a more marginal position. To be precise, my role is to be there and provide guidance and assistance if asked and if I realize that it is needed. I am constantly in control of the situation as I keep monitoring them and encouraging them to be in charge of their own learning.

3. Intentional content:

Each time the students do the translation in class, we agree on a precise time frame. Usually, they translate for an hour and then we have about 30 minutes left to discuss their translations. I insist that they use the prepared glossaries, search online for terms, better expressions, etc. The point is that they do as much as they can on their own and ask for help. 

4. Professional educator:

When explaining something, I make use of all the resources available to me: whiteboard, projector, Internet, etc. During the whole process, I tend to be instructor, lecturer and observer. My observations are especially important during the last half hour of the class when we discuss what they have completed in the previous hour. Usually, they manage to do about half of the text. A follow-up homework is to complete the translation. Finally, I send a complete translation of the text to all of them. The final version is based on my own translation but it also includes the ideas and solutions we have come up with in the half-hour discussion.

To round up the whole process, I keep track of student performance in the form of evaluation sheets where I enter data regarding all the aspects that should be part of the assessment procedure during the semester and the final evaluation at the end of the semester. 

A flipped learning model can easily be constructed and designed for any course. In the beginning, such model can be introduced for separate segments to be taught but in time, they might be used more and more often, especially in courses where the teacher can reduce their lecturing role to a minimum and leave more space to the students to do things on their own. It certainly is worth a try.

Online grammar and spelling checkers as boosters of students' writing skills

Being one of those teachers who communicate a lot online, I am very much in favour of networks and email services. I encourage my students to contact me online via Facebook groups and wikispaces or to email me when they have questions. As of two years ago, they submit all their homeworks and writing assignments per email. 

Unfortunately, such correspondence bears some negative aspects as well. That is why, a few months ago, I decided to conduct (what I initially thought) a small-scale research with the aim to explore to which extent social media discourse brings about side effects resulting in the negative transfer of informality, familiarity and incorrect language use in academic correspondence otherwise expected to be formal. To me it seemed that this transfer is very prominent in the email correspondence students conduct with their lecturers where informality and familiarity sometimes exceed the most basic conventions. Needless to say that the idea is a result of my personal experience, if not dissatisfaction.

A complete presentation of all the analysed examples as well as the results and data I came up with in the end would by far exceed the scope of this format. Let it suffice to say that I had to ask the editor to let me submit my article considerably exceeding the word limit suggested by the style sheet!  Yet, I would like to state three conclusions I could draw from the research:

1. Students tend to transfer the conventions of more lenient and permissive social media discourse to the correspondence with their lecturers to a rather large extent.

2. Students seem to believe that otherwise respected conventions of academic correspondence are not necessarily applicable to social media discourse. 

3. The final conclusion indicates that the negative transfer of social media discourse results in poor language performance.

Now, being in favour of CALL, I would be contradicting myself if I didn't turn these conclusions into some useful booster. 

At this point I should state that I do not believe we can expect a high level of politeness and formality in our students' writing because it would take too much time to teach them, it might even be considered offensive, students might complain about teachers being rude and many other things. However, I firmly believe we could instruct them to send messages and emails that are fairly correct in terms of language and grammar. Hopefully, they will learn to pay more attention to their own writing and eventually they might submit better essays and papers. Hopefully.

The most obvious point to start at would be to encourage them to turn on the automatic spellchecker integrated in all word processing programs as well as in most email services. I believe that would be an enormous leap in the right direction. 

The second thing we could do is encourage them to read their messages, emails and posts before they hit 'enter'! There is a good chance they might see some obvious mistakes, maybe even realise that their writing lacks some formality and politeness. Eventually, they might develop a more responsible attitude to all their writing.

Regarding spelling and grammar, there are various online tools that can be used anywhere, for any type of writing and for any post. A simple copy-paste will suffice. In other words, when students use a word processing program, they should always check their writing for spelling and grammar mistakes. And when posting online, students should be instructed to copy their entire message into a spellchecker available online and at least correct the most cumbersome mistakes. Motst online checkers perform with a high degree of accuracy and speed. The final result will be at least a slight improvement of their written English. 

One of such tools is Spellchecker by Reverso. Apart from the spellchecker, Reverso provides other checking options, such as translation, conjugation and grammar. 

Grammar in individual sentences can also be checked with Grammar check for sentence. Here the user will be provided with a more detailed grammar check as the tool will underline words/ phrases/ structures in different colours suggesting different issues. Red is obviously the colour indicating an error!

Spellcheck plus offers a simple spelling and grammar check. Errors are indicated and corrections are suggested immediately. A good thing about this tool is that longer pieces of text can be pasted into the checking field.

The Spellcheck by Ginger is a bit more elaborate. Ginger corrects typos, phonetic mistakes, severe spelling mistakes and misused words based on the context of a sentence. A convenience provided by this tool is that it can be downloaded for free. Apart from the basic checking option, Ginger can translate, find synonyms, rephrase, etc. 

Yet another tool available online is Polish my writing. It is very much similar to the Grammar check for sentence indicating spelling errors, grammar suggestions, or style suggestions in different colours. By clicking an indicated word or phrase, the user will be provided with more details, such as suggestions and corrections. 

There are many other tools available online performing more or less the same thing. A general conclusion would be that the checkers should be used!

Reflections on multiple intelligences vs. the language classroom

More than twenty years ago, while I was in secondary school, we were required to take an IQ test at school. I remember that everybody was lying about their results because they were ashamed of their low IQs. A few of us did not lie but we criticized the test a lot. Either way the syndrome is obvious: we did not like our failure at all!

The main point of criticism was that almost half the tasks in the test were related to some math problems. Since I had not had any math for almost two years prior to the IQ test, I had forgotten how to solve tasks containing square roots and fractions! Shame on me, but I did not need those things any more as my majors were in languages.

Times have changed and we are now talking about different types of intelligences, learning styles and the implementation of technology servicing different styles in both teaching and learning.

In my opinion, Information Communication Technology (ICT) is the one field offering probably the largest pool of choices to be implemented in almost any environment and setting. I do not want to say that everything we find on the net can and should be used, but I strongly believe that different students, with different learning styles and habits can be motivated to try out some aspect of technology-enhanced content. Therefore, in this post, I want to draw attention to the article Technology and Multiple Intelligences as it offers a valuable selection of articles leading to specific tools each furthering a specific type of intelligence.

However, I am not in favour of clearly outlining a specific type of intelligence and using one specific tool to work with. I have learned that a healthy combination of moderately measured ingredients and spices makes a killer meal and thus a killer lesson as well. A little bit of everything, mixed appropriately, seasoned to taste, prepared and served with patience and a good dose of encouragement will melt down even the grumpiest student.

I have also learned that good teachers get to know their students and approach each of them, try to find out about their likes, preferences, etc. Unfortunately, certain environments are characterized by extremely large groups, traditional teaching/ learning styles and it might not always be easy to introduce new stuff.

As for specific technology tools to be used with certain learning styles I usually start with the following orientation classification:

1. Writing tools, word processing, listening comprehension tools, blogs, forums, online discussions, language labs with multiple tasks, etc. are more appropriate for active, sensing, verbal, global learners.

2. Reading, listening, analyzing based on reading, critical reviews, step-by-step tasks, etc. are more appropriate for reflective, intuitive, visual, sequential learners.

Nevertheless, this classification should be regarded only as a starting point and not as a clear distribution of tools per learner type.

As said above, a little bit of everything always does the trick!

Now it's your turn! Take this quiz on Multiple intelligences learning styles and you'll find out a bit more about yourself!

The one-computer classroom

Many environments that fellow teachers have to work in suffer from one and the same illness: there is only one computer in the classroom. If the classroom is exceptionally equipped, there will be a projector, and maybe even Internet!

The problem that arises immediately is how to make use of only one computer? There is not much we can do with a single computer in a group of 30 students, often even many more than that. Having students do elaborate activities on that one computer would be time consuming and rather pointless. The only thing left to do is come up with an interesting idea that can be implemented in a classroom with only one computer. 

Today's blog entry will be the description of an activity for a one-computer classroom!

The activity presented here can be planned for an individual 45/60-minute lesson as part of a speaking practice on the theme of biographies. This makes the activity interesting to literature teachers as well as they can use the biographies of famous authors and assign them to students. In other words, the students would become the author! Furthermore, since the activity is directed at developing learner autonomy, a few suggestions will be made at the end of this activity regarding a basic rationale for learner autonomy.

Title of activity: 

Wishful future

Students: 

Upper intermediate, adult, secondary or tertiary education, a class of up to 15 students

Objective (based on the ABCD model):

A: Upper intermediate adult students at the level of secondary or tertiary education
B: prepare their imaginary future biographies
C: by using sticky notes they put on a wall created with Padlet
D: and present their wishful future in front of the entire class in the form of a clearly structured 5-minute speech.

Procedure:

1. Homework prior to class: Students create their own wall using Padlet and put sticky notes on their walls referring to their own wishful future. They can be encouraged to put images, videos or documents on the wall, put them in a particular order if they want to or ignore a chronology if they believe it might be more effective.

2. The activity in the class: Each student comes to the computer in the front, opens their wall on Padlet and tells their peers about their wishful future by means of their sticky notes.

3. Each student is affiliated with another from the group and they do a quick partner/ peer assessment based on Oral presentation rubrics prepared by the teacher on a sheet and distributed at the end of the class.

The rationale for the learner autonomy:

1. Individual preparation at home in accordance with clear instructions provided by the teacher encourages the use of the particular online tool (Padlet) and an independent research of resources on the Internet to find appropriate examples of activities/ roles/ jobs to perform in their wishful future and encouraging creativity as all this is based on make-belief.

2. The partner/ peer assessment based on an outline of points provided in the form of rubrics furthers critical thinking, comparison of achievements and proper analysis of performance according to guided instructions.

3. The responsibility for and sense of control over their own performance and achievement is raised while at the same time a sense of objectivity is imposed to evaluate their peers' performance and achievement.

I hope that the idea presented here will be useful!

A few thoughts on my most recent experiences with CALL

Since summer has set in, the blog has not been that active. However, CALL has not stopped its activity. On the contrary, I have been implementing a lot of what I usually do in my daily routine and write about in the blog and some other articles. Therefore, I would like to use this intermezzo and share some thoughts.

I am spending some time abroad as part of a project. Among other things, I was invited to prepare a lecture for a group of e-learning students and it was nice and successful. The setting is brilliant and I love the high tech available to them. Yet, I couldn't help but notice that even in a really equipped classroom, in some environments, CALL is still not given the level of seriousness it should be given. It is as if in spite of all the institutional and technical background, the supporting pedagogy is still lagging behind. Here are some things that disturbed me a little bit.

The students who came to my lecture were to learn about some online tools they could use for writing. I think that there were a bit more than 20 students and more than half of them did not bring their laptops. The lecture was meant to be part of their e-learning course and I was really surprised to learn that they did not bring their gadgets because they knew that the classroom is not a computer lab but rather a normal classroom for lectures.

Next, when I asked about some very common websites usually used for writing, such as Purdue online writing lab, only two of them knew what I was talking about. Of course, I am aware of the fact that there are others who might have wanted to avoid answering questions, but still.

Third, we tested some of the tools I have been using a few times, such as Tune in to learning, Zunal webquests and Prezi. I must say I lacked the enthusiasm which normally accompanies the use of CALL in general. I could discover true and sincere interest in only a few faces. 

The class did take off at least a bit later on. They worked in groups gathered around the several laptops a few had brought with them. After some encouragement, they completed the autobiography paragraphs I had been telling them about. A silver lining was when in two groups they told me they were combining their life experiences into one autobiography. A third group was even more inventive, they created a fictitious character living in a castle in the Middle Ages!

I do not know whether it is a general thing that they show such low enthusiasm. Maybe they are just tired, or maybe they came to the class to see what it is like, or maybe my expectations are too high. I want to believe it is me who should be blamed. Maybe I am too boring!

Anyway, a general conclusion I want to draw is that despite all the effort and money that is being put in computer-assisted language learning in general, a lot more needs to be done. The way I see it, linguists need to be convinced that the computer can help them make their studies and research easier. I can't help it, but I tend to believe that most people in linguistics are still not aware of all the benefits that CALL can have. It is as though the computer is deemed more a toy than a tool, as though the application of the computer in general is more for entertainment than real study, as though available online tools and technology in general are a nice alternative one may but does not necessarily have to use.

In brief, it seems that CALL has yet a long way to go among linguists and language students. At least that is the impression I keep having. I thought that my country was lagging behind. But I could see that even in a developed country, with all the necessary technical and institutional support, in a group of language students who have chosen e-learning as a study course, CALL is still struggling to assume its rightful place. And how ironic that is! After all, it is computer-assisted LANGUAGE learning we are talking about!

Collaborative lesson planning

Today's post will be an attempt to play with several ideas presented so far - collaborative learning, lesson planning and student-centred teaching. It might seem a bit preposterous, but it may turn out to be a good idea.

Without elaborating on the separate aspects, let it suffice to say that each of them may contribute enormously to autonomous learning, self-assurance and collaboratively achieved learning outcomes. Most teachers will agree that these three aspects are more than necessary if the intended objective is to help students learn how to use what they have learnt both in spoken and written communication. What is more, they will learn how they can pass their knowledge on to other students and that certainly is a good foundation for all those students training to become teachers of English. Those students who are not going to be involved in the practice of teaching will have an opportunity to work on their presentation and communication skills, team work and collaborative achievement.

The first step in the realisation of the idea of collaborative lesson planning would be to make groups of students who are going to teach a certain segment as a team. A group of three to five students is most efficient. However, if a segment to teach is rather elaborate, more than five students may be engaged, but anything more than seven students per segment would be too many. 

The second step would be to define the online tools the teams are going to use for their collaboration. The teacher may decide to suggest a selection of obligatory tools or leave it to the team to decide on which tools they prefer to use. Either way, the tools must fulfil three criteria:

1. They have to be web-based;
2. They have to be available free of charge and
3. They have to allow sharing.

The third step is to categorise the tools and say which of them should be used for which part of the lesson planning process. 

In line with that, each student team would need a work space or wiki which they would use as a mutual space to share ideas, post material or even discuss options. That space would have to be closed and password protected. 

My first choices for a collaborative space are: PBworks workspace, PBworks wiki hub and Google sites. Each one of these is easily created, free of charge for smaller groups and the sharing options can be defined precisely.

Each student team would further need an online document tool to prepare their lesson plan in. I believe that such an efficient tool is Google docs because it is easy to use, Word documents can be imported easily and access to the document can be limited to only those members who are part of the team. If necessary, the teacher can be added to the list of members allowed to share the document in order to monitor the preparation of the lesson plan. Another option would be Microsoft online which is as close to Microsoft office as it can get; therefore, it is easy to use, share, combine, etc.

Another step would be to define a tool which will allow setting up a time line, scheduling activities and planning steps. For that purpose, an online calendar should be used, such as Google calender, 30boxes, Teamup.com, etc. Each of the mentioned calendars can be shared and edited by the team members which makes planning and scheduling tasks, activities and assignments easy to complete.

Regarding the various tasks and activities that are going to be planned by the teaching teams, the student teachers should be instructed to choose carefully. Students should be made aware of the fact that they do not necessarily have to plan computer-assisted teaching segments. They can prepare classes conducted in various traditional ways and manners. The fact that they use web-based and computer-assisted tools to prepare the lesson will be a huge step forward.

Computer-assisted collaborative writing for academic purposes

Had I proposed this idea ten years ago, most of my fellow-teachers would be standing ready with lighters in their hands waiting for some other fellow-teachers to tie me to the stakes. Nowadays this conglomerate - computer-assisted collaborative writing for academic purposes - does not seem as blasphemous as it used to be. Anyway, I think the idea of teaching academic writing in collaborative and online settings is not a bad idea at all.

It is generally accepted that teaching writing should be conducted in stages following a more or less established set of phases students have to perform in the process of writing. These phases include: pre-writing, writing, revising, editing and publishing. As I have been analysing students' writing for quite some time and from various perspectives, I have come to the conclusion that my students struggle and fail at any of these stages of writing due to two main reasons:

1. They do not now how to start and
2. Once they start, they get lost.

Now, I know that this is not a scientific conclusion. Neither do I mean to propose that this conclusion is the result of some elaborate academic research. Even if it were, such elaboration would not fit the scope and purpose of this blog and should be sought elsewhere. What I want to say is that I have tried to resolve this issue with my students by means of collaborative writing for academic purposes and lately I started implementing various solutions in a computer-assisted environment.

Before getting to the computer-assisted solutions, I would like to describe some preliminary step I undertake with my third-year Legal English students. The genre of academic writing my students have to survive in order to make it to the final exam is the essay. In fact, they have to produce an essay on a topic from the corpus of issues we cover during the third semester of our Legal English course and that turns out to be quite a challenge. In order to help them, I apply some basic steps I refer to as collaborative brainstorming and these are as follows:

1. I randomly choose an object from the classroom for each student. The objects are then defined as the titles of their practice essays, such as Chair, Desk, Mug, Board, Marker, etc. Alternatively, students can be given concepts, phenomena or issues instead of objects, such as Rain, Patriotism, Fashion, Death penalty, etc. It all depends on how advanced you believe your students are.

2. I then ask them to think about the first question that comes to their mind about the object they have been assigned. Questions they come up with usually include:

- What is a/ an (the respective object)?
- What is a/ an (the respective object) used for?
- What is a/ an (the respective object) made of?
- How is the (respective object) used?
- Why would I use the (respective object)?
- What is the purpose of the (respective object)?
- Who can benefit from the (respective object)?
- etc.

I usually open a word document on the computer on my desk and type out the questions as they mention them. Since the projector is on, they can follow my typing on the wall. 

3. Out of the pool of questions, we choose the most general one. Most of them agree that this would be:

What is a/ an (the respective object)?

I then explain that the answer to this first question would practically be their general statement/ topic sentence/ thesis statement announcing what their essay is going to be about. As I am a product of the old school, I still refer to the introductory sentence as a general statement.

4. They are then expected to write an answer to that question. I advise them to mention at least two different points in their answer because those two points will be elaborated in two separate paragraphs. In other words, the two points will be their arguments to support their general statement. For instance:

What is a chair?

A chair is a piece of furniture which is used to sit on.

5. In the next step we then put the questions in an order they believe makes sense. I tell them that some of the questions might not apply to their respective object and they might not use it at all.

6. Then they have to do some individual work as they are expected to write the answers to each of the questions in the order we have agreed on but apply them to the respective object they have been assigned to. As I type the order in my word document, they can check the order and make sure they have not made a mistake.

6. For their homework they then have to choose a topic from our Legal English coursebook and apply the same procedure. However, they have to use the Internet, search and use resources found online and try to put together a draft. After I give my OK to the draft, they can then start writing.

Unfortunately, most students do not understand that a draft version could actually be just a list of prompts or ideas. In other words, it need not be an essay right away. However, students are impatient and most of them actually submit a complete essay believing (hoping) they got it right. I can only imagine their frustration when I return their 'draft' after I have fully exhausted the 'track changes' tool!

That is why students can be encouraged to do some collaborative writing online. A nice tool I believe makes sense is TitanPad. 

It is basically like a board, everybody invited can use it, no registration is needed and all collaborating authors can add their thoughts easily and see what their peers have already come up with. As the pad can be saved by anybody at any time, each of the collaborating authors can start writing their essay as soon as they believe they are ready.

Another tool I would recommend here is Inklewriter. 
Just like the ThinkPad, Inklewriter is easy to use, it is interactive and it can easily be implemented for the purpose of collaborative writing. 

Unfortunately, getting started is not the only problem. Not getting lost can be a far greater issue. What I also teach my students when we start writing essays is the magic of key words. More importantly, I tell them that the key words referring to their respective essay topic have more than one role:

1. They will most certainly appear in the title.
2. They will most certainly have to appear in the general statement/ topic sentence/ thesis statement of their essay.
3. They will most certainly have to appear in the main body of their essay.
And last but not least,
4. They will be the search criteria for their research of resources once they start searching for them. In other words, they will type the key words into their browser.

In order to illustrate the magic of key words, I make a drawing on the board which is meant to illustrate the final lay-out of an essay of approximately 350 - 500 words. I actually draw a sheet of paper on the board and divide it into sections for them representing the title, the general statement, the two separate arguments and the conclusion. We then brainstorm the labels of the sections and try to allocate the questions we had previously brainstormed to the respective sections. Once we have completed this visual illustration, it is easy to indicate what coherence and cohesion are about as they sections follow a logical order and the content based on the questions is now related to the order.

I also advise them to underline the key words in their title and make sure they can find them in the body of their essay once they are done with their draft and then again when they are done with he final version. Of course, I also instruct them to make a list of possible synonyms so as to avoid the excessive repetition of one and the same vocabulary. 

Further, I advise them to set as an objective of the editing and rewriting phase the possibility of erasing a lot of what they have written. Students most often do not even perform the editing and rewriting at all. Once they put the final full stop they say they are done. Students should be advised to let their writing mature for at least a few hours, maybe even a day or two. Unfortunately, students never start their assignments on time and they tend to perform last-minute tasks. Yet, they should be encouraged to put their writing away for at least an hour or two and then read it again. They all admit that they perform some serious alterations in their writing when and if they allow themselves some time away from their writing.

There are so many things that can be added to this post and I feel I have by far exceeded my initial purpose. I believe I will get back to this idea in some of my future posts but for the time being I think that I have managed to defend my point that computer-assisted collaborative writing makes sense!

Flip the power! Student-centred teaching in a computer-assisted classroom!

Student-centred teaching (SCT) is not a new concept. Teachers all over the world have experimented with this ides. The aim is to challenge students and help them apply higher order thinking skills. Furthermore, by introducing students to the process of teaching, a whole new aspect of learning is being revealed to them including new strategies and techniques, which would otherwise be difficult for them to understand.

Assuming a language teacher should opt for SCT, there are some preparatory steps to be taken before letting the students take over the power in the classroom. The way I remember SCT is a teacher of mine simply distributing sets of pages to various students in my group and having us present those pages to our peers in class. Of course, this is not the right way to do it. Given the fact that the form of SCT suggested here is meant to be realised in a computer-assisted classroom, there is far more to it than just letting the student talk to their peers about a certain topic.

In any SCT scenario, the teacher who is considering temporary transfer of power to the students should make sure the students understand that they have to prepare properly. In an earlier post, a nice and easy way to plan a lesson based on the ABCD model was presented. Although proper lesson planning includes far more elements than the ABCD model does, for the purpose of having a student teach a small segment to their peers, the ABCD model is more than appropriate. Therefore, the potential student-teachers should be instructed to explore the ABCD model first. 

The next step would be to have the student-teachers think about three aspects to be realised in their SCT: communication, organisation and learning material. This post will be an attempt to suggest how to realise SCT based on these three aspects in a computer-assisted classroom.

Communication

Any teaching environment has to rely on a medium that will be used as efficiently as possible to transfer the content of teaching to the recipients. However, the aspect of communication has to be put into a broader context - that of communicating beyond the teaching environment. In other words, the facilitator of learning, i.e. the teacher or the student-teacher, should choose a medium that may be used both in and out of the classroom. In a computer-assisted teaching context, the perfect medium would obviously be the computer. However, it is not just the computer.

In the context of SCT, the computer would have to be implemented in the sense of a common platform both for the purpose of teaching and some subsequent communicative exchange.This means that the student-teacher should prepare or choose a wiki or a workspace to publish learning material and to communicate with their peers if questions and dilemmas arise about the content being taught. Furthermore, the activities that will be realised in class will have to be made available for further reference, which makes a common wiki or workspace rather useful.

Organisation

Regarding this aspect, the student-teacher should be instructed on how to plan the lesson or part of the lesson to be taught to their peers. That is when the ABCD model might come in handy. Only if the student-teacher understands each of the elements in the ABCD model, may the student-taught class be expected to be successful. The most difficult part to define in the model are the C (conditions) and the D (degree). That is where the teacher should provide some assistance to the student-teacher. However, if the student-teacher has had some formal instruction in the area of English language teaching methodology, a SCT class would be the perfect opportunity to test some of the methods, techniques or strategies that might have been covered by then. If the SCT class is to be conducted in an ESP context, the organisation of the particular teaching segment can be based on the ABCD model.

Learning material

Another rather difficult step to be undertaken by the student-teacher is the proper choice of material. It goes without saying that the particular segment the student-teacher will be teaching will be chosen and determined in mutual agreement with the teacher. Nevertheless, the student-teacher should be given some formal instruction regarding the scope and content of the particular segment. For instance, if the segment to be taught is about vocabulary, the teacher should probably provide a list of items to be covered, or if the segment is related to some grammar point, the teacher should provide some framework for the student-teacher to know how much to elaborate on the certain point. Student-teachers cannot be expected to make autonomous choices about some segment or point based on what they have learnt so far. The outcome of such imposed autonomy might be unwanted as the student-teacher will probably take a grammar book and copy everything they can find regarding a certain point. 

In addition, the student-teacher should be warned against opting for any resource they might find on the Internet. The teacher should direct the student-teacher to some reliable resources even if the teacher's knowledge might be limited. It is much better to restrict the student-teacher to a particular scope of resources than have them fail in class when presenting their segment. 

To conclude, a SCT class is supposed to help the student-teacher develop self-confidence, autonomous decisions, higher order thinking skills as well as learning and teaching strategies they might otherwise not have an opportunity to use or express. The point of a SCT class is not to escape a few hours of teaching or show the students how incapable they are! Students know they are no teachers! However, students would like to learn how to be good teachers! And isn't that what our job is all about?

Collaboration in computer-assisted languages classes

The concept of collaboration in its broadest sense refers to the action of working with someone to produce or create something. In language classes, classroom collaboration encourages communication and cooperation among students and in effect allows them to teach one another. Nevertheless, collaboration may sometimes be annoying to teachers as students end up talking about things that are not really related to the topic being discussed in class.

However, online collaboration is different because meandering from the class objective and talking about unrelated topics is not possible, or rather not considered effective by the students involved. A reason for this is that students realise they can actually work together and achieve positive results. What is more, students even tend to grab the opportunity to establish any form of online collaboration.

There are several pedagogical advantages of online collaboration, such as developing collaborative and co-operative skills, enhancing social skills and interactions, promoting critical thinking skills as well as furthering a learning environment of trust and support. In an online collaborative environment, the teacher is less involved in the instruction and presentation of the study material thus in the position to perform more objective observation, assume the role of a controller and thus even conduct assessments of student performance realised in less stressful circumstances.

In online collaborative settings, students create study groups online and learn collaboratively with others. Basically, the essence of collaboration is being established by means of a platform or service available online. There are many such services. The most basic ones would be Facebook, Hangouts or Skype. However, if the students want to post more material, create folders, or link and hyperlink material and content, use chats and forums, etc. they should be encouraged to use some available Web 2.0 tools, such as workspaces or wikis, or use collaborative platforms, such as Think binder or OpenStudy.

A rather interesting platform that could quite effectively serve the purpose of online collaboration is Think binder. The motto promoting the platform is "It's not save to study alone!" and its purpose is to enable to create and host their study groups. By means of a closed study group in Think binder students can create a closed space where they might not only share videos, pictures and links but also collaborate with their peers through text and video chat, or use the collaborative whiteboard to work on problems.

Another interesting solution for online collaboration is OpenStudy which is ideal for sharing and recording study notes and for synchronous collaboration. It provides students with a place where they can create their own study groups or join study groups created by others.

Apart from letting students organise their own online collaboration setting, the concept of collaborative language teaching and learning can be implemented in any computer-assisted language learning context. However, such implementation requires thorough planning and preparation. The teacher would have to make sure that all formal requirements of an ordinary lesson are fulfilled including objectives, outcomes, procedures, additional activities and back-up solutions. Resources are available online. Some nice ideas can be found here:

Designing an online activity for collaborative language learning

Designing tasks for online collaborative language learning

Rationalities of collaboration for language learning in a wiki

Nice&easy planning of computer-assisted lessons

Some time ago, I posted on Lesson planning suggesting that it is 'dreadful' yet extremely important. With the attempt to contribute a bit more to the idea, I would like to devote this post to an almost forgotten type of lesson planning - the ABCD model. I had the pleasure to be reintroduced to it two years ago and I was reminded of the fact how useful it is.

As has been mentioned in the post on Lesson planning, in order to ensure successful outcomes, objectives need to be defined clearly and unambiguously. That is why the ABCD model, introduced by Robert. F. Mager in 1962, is an excellent tool. The key feature of the ABCD model is that it is an acronym standing for Audience, Behaviour, Condition and Degree, which are the actual components of the model itself. The objective does not have to be written in this order (ABCD), but it should contain all of these elements.

In other words, by defining (A) the audience, that is who is to exhibit the performance, (B) the expected behaviour, that is what observable performance the learner is to exhibit, (C) the conditions under which the behaviour will be realised, that is what conditions are provided for the learner at the time of evaluation and (D) the final degree of performance that is expected, that is what constitutes a minimum acceptable response, the teacher has completed almost the entire planning process. The following step is defining activities, techniques and strategies to realise the objective.

When defining the components, the teacher should be very careful. A successfully defined ABCD model should be observable and measurable by both quantitative and qualitative criteria, unambiguous, oriented towards standardised results, clearly written, specific, communicate a successful learning process in behavioural terms and strive for specific performance. Furthermore, the ABCD model may be presented in two levels. The first level identifies the overall goal of the instruction for the program or instructional event and it is sometimes referred to as terminal objectives. The second level identifies the goals required to meet the first level objectives and it is sometimes called enabling objectives. Either way, objectives have to be planned carefully.

Thus when describing the Audience, the intended learner or end user of the instruction should be described. For example, ‘the paramedic refresher participant’, ‘the EMT-B student’, ‘the prehospital care provider attending this seminar’, ‘the 2nd-year English language students’, etc. As far as Behaviour is concerned, it should describe learner capability, it should be observable and measurable, and it can include demonstration of knowledge or skills in any of the domains of learning (cognitive, psychomotor, affective or interpersonal). For example, ‘should be able to write a report’, ‘should be able to describe the steps’, ‘should reproduce the covered material’, etc. The Condition includes the equipment or tools that may (or may not) be utilised in completion of the behaviour. Environmental conditions may also be included. For instance, ‘given a set of ten vocabulary items’, ‘based on two sonnets written by William Shakespeare’, ‘given the cartoon supplied’, etc. Finally, when describing the Degree, the standard for acceptable performance (time, accuracy, proportion, quality, etc.) should be stated clearly. For instance, ‘without error/, ‘9 out of 10 times’, ‘within 60 seconds’, etc. 

I will now supply two examples illustrating the ABCD model along with some ideas for computer-assisted language classes. 

Example 1: Practising speaking skills in computer-assisted classes 

The ABCD model:

A: EFL students at an advanced C level

B: prepare a short speech explaining a problem in which they develop proposed argument elements

C: by following and using suggested guided instruction to particular content-determined speaking

D: within a preset time frame, with accuracy and free of errors.

Possible realisation

Teachers at all levels complain that motivating students for speaking practice seems to be the hardest to achieve. Most believe that students lack motivation or self-confidence to participate in such exercises. However, more often it turns out that students do not know what to say or how to put it. In order to address and surpass this issue, the teacher could make sure to help the students feel more secure and provide them with the what and the how.

Possible steps in such a lesson plan might be as follows:

1. Instruct the students to go to the practice page eslgold.com 7 and read through the separate phrases to be used as prompts for their speech.

2. Ask the students to imagine they have to address their course teacher and ask them for an extension of a deadline/ another exam date/ a rescheduling of an important test/ etc.

3. Ask the students to prepare a bullet list in a separate Word document stating possible reasons why they need the extension.

4. Now ask them to prepare their speech by using the most appropriate phrases they found on eslgold.com and their bullet-listed reasons.

The follow-up suggested in the previous example may be used in this practice as well.

Example 2: Practising vocabulary in technology-enhanced classes

The ABCD model:

A: ESL/ EFL students at an intermediate level

B: are expected to understand the provided definition of a word

C: and type it into a window with suggested prompts

D: to achieve proper understanding of the meaning and master the correct spelling of different sets of vocabulary within a particular time frame.

Possible realisation

Vocabulary exercises on the Internet are more than abundant. However, not all of them serve the goal the teacher has set for a particular exercise. Obviously, authoring tools (see section on 'Comprehension') may be used to prepare vocabulary exercises clearly focused on what the students need in a particular context. Yet, some good vocabulary exercises available online are Many things, English vocabulary practice and Freerice. As all these tools are used online, no special instruction is needed apart from the one to direct students to the appropriate pages and ask them to complete the exercises. Of course, students may be asked to note down their answers, submit them to their teacher in handwriting. Alternatively, students may be instructed to paste their answers into a separate Word document and email it to their teacher.

I hope these ideas will be helpful! 

A virtual wall for peer-assessment

Considering the fact that the Internet provides many different tools to add to language classes, it might be difficult to choose one that is purposeful and useful. Not every tool, platform, service, program, etc. is appropriate. However, if one wants to add something new to their classes and still remain within the scope of true utility, Padlet might be a good choice. 

Padlet is a virtual wall that students can use to express their thoughts on a predefined topic. Students can literally 'pin' any content on the wall, such as images, videos, documents, text, etc. What is more, the wall can easily be shared among members of a closed group and it can be accessed from a computer, tablet or mobile phone.

The tool can be used for personal note taking, to-do lists, invitations, announcements, feedback, anything that might need input from a lot of people. It is a simple wall and content is posted on it by a simple drag-and-drop or copy-paste. The fact that everything is saved automatically makes it reliable as you will not have to remember to save stuff. The lay-out is simple, pre-defined options are available, content is embeddable, i.e. the wall can be included in a blog, wiki or other type of external online/ offline place. In one word, it is software you already know how to use.

Furthermore, you can see everyone's activity on the wall instantly which means no reload is needed. The wall can be shared among members of a closed group and changes can be controlled by allowing changes or restricting access to viewing only. In other words, if you want to, you can make a public wall for the whole world to see, or you can hide it from everyone.

Now, since any type of multimedia can be put on a Padlet wall, this tool may easily be transformed into a tool for education purposes. I see great value in using it for peer-assessment of written assignments.

Here is an Example Padlet. The purpose of the wall is to introduce peer-assessment of homework essays written as a follow-up to a lesson on writing closing arguments. The idea is based on a rather simple task explained in the description of the wall: 

Instruction: 

1. Put your own essay on the wall. 

2. Choose one essay written by another student from your class. 

3. Tell people about your choice by putting up a note on the Padlet below the respective essay. 

4. Download the rubrics assessment sheet posted for you in the upper left corner. 

5. Download your peer's essay.

6. Use the track changes option and correct your peer's essay to the best of your knowledge.

7. Evaluate your peer's essay according to the assessment sheet and type the score for each of the defined criteria below the essay.. 

8. Post the document with your peer's essay (fully checked and corrected with the score for both criteria mentioned) below the respective essay on the wall.

Due to privacy reasons, I have left only one sample essay on the wall. Yet, I think the concept is obvious. Another fact worth mentioning is that in order for the students to see the corrected essay with all the tracked changes, they will have to download it as the viewer does not identify text other than the one originally put into the document. 

As it turned out, the assessment based on the scores was more or less objective in most essays. However, due to poor language competence of some of the students, the correction part was not properly completed. Yet, the aim of having them evaluate written assignments based on clearly defined criteria was achieved. 

Use 'chats' to have them chat!

Unlike some traditional teachers, who'd probably say I am distorting all the main principles that have ever been established in English language methodology, I believe that many social networking services can and should be used for language learning. One of the most available, accessible and probably popular way would be organising chats in chat rooms or discussions via the comment and posting sections on social networks. For the sake of convenience, I refer to these forms of language exchange as 'chats'.

Now there are two forms of chats that can be used, written or text chats and voice chats. The text chat option does not necessarily have to be synchronous, i.e. participants can choose not to post their answer or comment right away as such language exchange does not necessarily have to be in real time. It will probably depend on the the student group and how willing they are to particiapte in a particular form of language exchange. Either way, the benefits are immense if the teacher uses chats appropriately.

It is my opinion that for the purpose of practising speaking skills, it is better to start with text chats because they are far more practical to realise and control. More importantly, shy students as well as those who feel less comfortable when speaking will more gladly accept to chat whereas those who like 'talking', will talk or write anyway, as long as they are allowed to have some form of conversation. In time, the teacher may slowly switch to voice chat. The gradual shift will then be less painful even for the most insecure students.

The next step would be to choose an adequate service. There are many chat rooms available online where native speakers from other countries gladly accept to chat. However, this might not be the safest way to introduce in a language group which is why I find it better to establish chat groups with students taught by a colleague of yours anywhere in the world. A closed group can be formed, via any of the available social networks, such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. For the sake of keeping it easy to manage, it would be better to invite only one colleague and their students to chat. Your colleague and you could both be the administrators, access to the group would be controlled and the exchange via the group page would be monitored by both of you. 

Setting up such a group does not take too much time and what is more, sessions can be planned ahead, topics can be pre-defined and the exchange on the various topics can be prevented from meandering by having the students stick to the point and by reminding them of the topic. Alternatively, students can be allowed to chat freely.

With older students, chats could easily be turned into strings of discussion with a predefined topic, the topic might be a direct follow-up to some unit from class, the chat could be scheduled at a particular time or dragged out over a certain period, etc. Possibilities are endless and any of the available social networks would serve such an end rather well. 

Here is what could be done in a Legal English course:

1. Create a group on Facebook together with a colleague of yours and name it appropriately. A recognisable group name should be chosen. For instance, Legal English students in [country 1] and [country 2]
2. Invite students to join. A more practical way would be to tell the students to search for the group on Facebook and ask to join.
3. Ask your colleague to do the same with their students.
4. Set up a topic. For instance: The implementation of regular addiction tests in the work place
5. Start chatting by proposing the argument you would like them start with. For instance: Regular addiction tests should be implemented in every work place regardless whether the laws in the country have statutary regulations stipulating such testing.

Below is an authentic excerpt from a string of discussion conducted online in a Facebook group created two years ago based on the above presented outline. The students' names have to be kept confidential here and the emoticons the students used have been left out. Of course, both teachers knew exactly which group the students belonged to. It should also be noted that the language errors made by the students have been preserved. Later in the follow-up class, both teachers analysed the discussion with their respective student groups and explained all the identified language issues.

Here is the excerpt:

Teacher 1: I believe that regular addiction tests should be implemented in every work place regardless whether the laws in the country have statutary regulations stipulating such testing.

Teacher 2: I agree, and I think such regulations should cover all forms of addiction. 

Student 1: I dont think alcohol addiction should be regulated as drug addiction. They are not same.

Student 2: That's not true. Addiction is addiction and consequences of mistakes provoked by intoxicated state of the mind in the work place are all dangerous. 

Student 3: But if worker comes to work after drinking previous night?

Student 2: A hangover is dangerous also.

Student 4: That is not true.

Teacher 1: All right, let me just remind you that we should not discuss addiction but whether it should be tested.

Teacher 2: Guys, try to think of the reasons why an employer would like to have employees tested in the first place!

Student 5: I can think of mistakes somebody make when high or drunk. 

Student 6: But you not think that boss will know when worker come on work high or drunk?

Student 1: Well, not always.

Student 3: I think people can be high and work. 

Teacher 1: People, you are again meandering. Please, try to give us the reasons for the testing!

Student 5: May be prevent mistakes?

Student 6: Or as a warning?

Student 7: I remember we read about possibility that statute of company be changed.

Student 3: You mean predict addiction or testing.

Student 7: Testing.

Teacher 2: Now, that is a good point. Let us now see what an employer would have to do in order to enable such change of statute. Does anybody remember?

Student 3: I remember. Company must have EGM, right?

Teacher 2: Correct! What else?

As can be seen, the discussion was rather productive. Hopefully, this will encourage fellow teachers to try out this idea.

Alternative assessment: try it and you'll love it!

When asked to decide between traditional and new, institutionalised and alternative, I would always choose a mixture of both because I see value in established ideas, methods and suggestions, but I also think that their should be some dialectic and development. In other words, I believe in expanding and enriching existing experiences so that they may fit the new environment and vice verse, adapt the new teaching environment to include existing traditions. That is why I think it is important that English language teachers should know about alternative assessment (AA) options.

The most important aspect of alternative assessment is that it is performance based as it implements activities that reveal what students can do with language, emphasising their strengths instead of their weaknesses. This means that the teacher can adapt AA to the students and that means that the teacher can actually create the kinds of situations and challenges that the learners are most probably going to encounter in real-life communication. Most important of all is that students can evaluate their own learning and learn from the evaluation process by applying the assessment criteria their teacher has defined for them either on their own performance or on a peer’s performance. Therefore, a further positive aspect of AA is that it can foster both self-assessment and peer assessment.

Prior to choosing a particular AA instrument, a rather essential characteristic about AA in general should be focused on – AA instruments are not only designed and structured differently from traditional tests, but are also marked (graded) differently. That again implies that the teacher familiarises themselves with the various marking strategies available within the area of AA. This basically means that the teacher must pre-define the criteria according to which the assessment shall be performed and the scale according to which the assessed performance shall be evaluated. Well, the scale part is easy. Yet, it has to be pre-defined as the teacher needs to have some outcomes in mind and points to be allocated to them.

Regarding criteria, teachers should start by planning authentic content based on which the criteria will be defined. For starters, here is a list of possible authentic content that might be integrated into an AA instrument:

1. Discussion topics or issues of interest to the students provoking critical thinking and individual opinions; 
2. Audio/ video material representing real-world communication contexts and situations; 
3. Real problem solutions requiring the creative use of language rather than simple repetition. 

Such content can easily be analysed in terms of assessment criteria and there are several ways to achieve it. A possible list of criteria might include:

1. Learners produce a quality product or performance (written or spoken) based on the proposed discussion topic; 
2. Students are able to reproduce real-world dialogues based on suggested situations; 
3. Students provide independent solutions to proposed problems. 

And last but not least, the scale should be defined horizontally and vertically, meaning that each criterion is assessed and evaluated separately against a certain scale. For instance, the first criterion supplied above, assuming spoken production is expected, could be marked on a scale from 1 (the lowest mark) – 5 (the highest mark) in the following way:

1	2	3	4	5
learner produces a poor quality product as they are hardly able to state their opinion and manage to supply only one argument to substantiate it.	learner produces a product of sufficient quality as they are able to state their opinion at least remotely and manage to supply two different arguments to substantiate it.	learner produces a product of satisfactory quality by stating their opinion rather clearly and by supplying at least two different arguments to substantiate it.	learner produces a solid product by stating their opinion in coherent sentences while substantiating it with more than two solid arguments.	learner produces a high quality product by stating their opinion in coherent sentences, substantiating it with several solid arguments and linking it to a real-life example.

Personally, I am a fan of Rubistar, an AA instrument based on rubrics which can easily be used for the evaluation of both written and spoken performance. Another rather useful AA instrument is the K-W-L Chart, which I have already mentioned in my post on Skills (the section on reading comprehension). This AA instrument is based on three assessment stages as it is meant to assess ‘what the student knows’, ‘what the student wants to know’ and ‘what the student has learnt’. Both rubrics and the K-W-L chart may be implemented as self-assessment tools.

A K-W-L chart sample might look as follows:

Knows	Wants to know	Has learnt
Lincoln was important.  His face is on a penny.  He's dead now.  I think Lincoln was a  President.  He was a tall person.	Why is Lincoln  famous?  Was he a good  President?  Why is he on a  penny?  Did he have a  family?  How did he die?	Lincoln was President of the U.S.  He was the 16th President.  There was a war in America when Lincoln  was President.  He let the slaves go free.  Two of his sons died while he was still  alive.

There are other AA instruments that can easily be implemented. However, these shall be presented in a new post.