Literature Review 2

Sha, Guoquan(2009) AI-based chatterbots and spoken English teaching: a critical analysis. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 22(3), 269 — 281.

This survey offers a comprehensive examination on the use of chatterbots based on artificial intelligence in spoken English teaching. Equipped with a theoretical background in interactionism, Chatterbots were designed to create a virtual environment for conversations in either voice or text form. Based on its knowledge base and methodology, the author evaluated chatterbots by several detailed examples in the process and presented the advantages and limitations of the system. In the study, the author performed a classroom survey to examine how it worked out among the language learners. As the new teaching method, chatterbots are still in the initial phase and developments are required. As it is not a methodology that cures all the problems, the knowledge base of chatterbots is significant and it should be well adapted before the operation of chatterbots. With more students’ favorite topics and natural scenarios of daily life involved, chatterbots would produce better results as expected.

Literature Review 1

Chiu, T., Liou, H., & Yeh, Y. (2007). A study of web-based oral activities enhanced by automatics speech recognition for EFL college learning. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 20(3), 209-233.

In this study, Chiu, Liou and Yeh(2007) investigate the effectiveness of CandleTalk, a simulated conversation environment, among EFL learners in Taiwan.

A group of English major students and a group of non-English major students received six-week training through CandleTalk to develop oral competence. Data collection encompasses two types of instruments: One is Discourse Completion Test (DTC) which was used to assess students’ oral proficiency in the pretest and posttest, and one was a questionnaire evaluating the system design.

The results show that both groups of learners improved their oral production and the non-English major groups had better achievement than that of the English major group. Most learners had positive perception towards CandleTalk.

A few limitations still exist in the study. First, the assessment test used in this project is not good enough to present learners’ ability of using the speech acts. Second, the implementation period should be extended to demonstrate learners’ achievements. Last, future researcher may explore more potential of system designs in different aspects of teaching.

Impression of My Words

My Words is a program to learn English vocabulary from any website. The way to use My Words could roughly say as two functions. One is to highlight the new words learners come across in the websites. From this step, learners could quickly access to the meaning of the new vocabulary and add it to the word list of learners’ own. Function 2 is that learners could systematically learn the new words in the word list and even learn more from the relevant information.

This is very good for self-study. Learners could learn new vocabulary, not only the meaning but also the correct pronunciation. Moreover, a word list could collect all the random words picked up from the website and become valuable materials for revision.

I find that this program is quite useful for it is convenient to some degree. However, I don’t think learners would fall in love with it at the very beginning. It looks complicated and sometimes it really is. Steps involved in creating the word list are sort of distracting. Thus learners would be impatient to go through all the steps needed. After all, not everyone is genius in using the computer.

Review of LIOU's

This article has given a great insight to those who will develop or use CALL multimedia in the future.
Liou demonstrates a clear picture of how to use interactive videodisc(IVD)courseware in practice. Before teachers choose or design any software assisting in teaching, the most important thing is to set a goal. The second is to instill teachers’ teaching philosophy into the software. The evaluation approaches provided by Liou are also applicable, which point out clear directions where the teachers should go. Besides the practical implications and recommendations in such kind of teaching process, Liou raises two obstacles of applying CALL. First, there are few satisfying products available on the market. More CALL materials for all levels of students are needed in order to integrate CALL into the regular EFL curriculum. Second, the software development is time consuming and labor intensive.
As for CALL, I don’t want to spend an hour or more to explain how excellent it is. What matters is how to relate it to the reality. No matter how fancy or amazing the teaching software is, as a teacher, all we should bear in mind is that whether it could facilitate our teaching and help us reach the ultimate goal.
In Liou’s study, we are told that to prepare our own CALL, we should instill our teaching philosophy into the courseware. For me, this is an extremely difficult part. To create a courseware, for lay teachers, is not practical because it needs professional supports and the cost of that is way too much to afford. However, through Liou’s project, we could learn a lot on how to choose the appropriate materials and think about whether what we choose matches our curriculum goals.

Review on Week 5 Reading

Levy’s article first introduced some theoretical sources that have been used for CALL work, such as theories of psychology, theories of language, and theories of instruction and so on. However, Levy also found that some CALL projects have not been driven by theory as such.
These two situations can be well presented by two kinds of practitioners, namely formalists and proceduralists. The former likes to solve problems by formulation theory and apply the theory to the CALL context, while the latter likes to solve problems by writing programs and test them with language learners.
We could not tell which one is better since there are drawbacks in both ways. For the formalists, they must be careful whether their theories encompass the context of CALL. For the proceduralists, the danger for them is that their practice might be limited by what the technology can do and the reason for that is probably that they have no theoretical support.
After the CALL Survey, Levy discussed the result and made conclusion that there are potential strengths and weaknesses in the approaches of the formalists and the procedualists, as I put above. Therefore, from Levy’s point of view, we should be well aware that the dynamic nature of the development process in language learning and the concept of “fit” between the theoretical framework and the computer’s capabilities, then we could make sure the theory and the application could be compatible with one another.

Reflection on Week 3' Reading

Roed’s paper demonstrates the advantages of the online language study, and most importantly, it helps us identify the hardly noticeable problems during the study. Firstly, the students’ behaviors can change when they are exposed to a virtual environment, compared to their behaviors displaying in the classroom. Secondly, a virtual environment could in part increase the participation, but it could not contribute to the communication in the real life, since it is impossible for the students to depend on the e-mail or in chat room for their whole lives.

Every coin has two sides. A virtual environment is, to some degree, effective to solve teaching limits of the classroom. However, it also creates the other problems itself. These two problems above are what may be encountered in the actual practice when using computers in language learning. As teachers, we should be objective towards any teaching strategy and do not rely on any single one. It is better to explore new pedagogic approaches when coming across particular teaching problems.

A virtual environment is still a new land for most learners and teachers. There must be a lot of advantages for us to discover and unexpected problems to be solved. All in all, let us be the explorers and make the most of every new strategy.

Sting-fragile