final paper

Paper about the use of mixxer as a tool to enhance speaking skill in students.

From: Francisco Javier Cardenas

To: Jose Aldemar Alvarez, Phd

subject: Information and Communication Technologies Applied to the Teaching and Learning of English

As a teacher I understand the necessity to include the technologies into the English teaching as a requirement to foster and improve knowledge in students while learning English, one of my biggest concerns about teaching the language has been the fact of having students being confident at the moment of speaking. For that reason, I have started my thesis project with conceptions like: Resiliency and Foreign language anxiety, thematic tackled by Nan Handersen, M.S.W (master in social work), who is the president of Resiliency in action, according to Handersen resiliency is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, classroom situations or workplace and financial stressors. It means “bouncing back” from difficult experiences. Also authors like MacIntyre (1998), (Casado & Dereshiwsky, 2001), (Spielberger, 1983), Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1991); authors who have written extensively about F.L.A.  according to those author it is possible to have students being confident and engaged to speak a second language, regarding those two conceptions mentioned above I want to emphasize and tried to give a special place to the speaking skill. I have tried to have my students being self-reliant about the speaking skill in my classes with no much success so far, or at least not in the way that I really want. Thinking on going further, I have implemented some activities involving technologies, technologies such as: internet activities, online games, smart screens soft wares, television, video beams, etc. nevertheless, I have realized that all those activities are not enough to have students be self-reliant to face speaking activities. This is the reason after reading and analyzing all the information regarding CALL, CMC, BLENDEND LEARNING and others that I have decided to intend the implementation of computer technologies in my classes in a perspective to have these technologies enhancing the development of speaking skill in my students. Before going on with what I want to do with all the new information that has come to me, I want to go in a view about terms and conceptions related to technology and teaching.

I have understood the conception of CALL as a way to search and study the effect of having students interact in a better form with the knowledge given to them by means of technology itself, as Mark Prensky stated:

-          Today´s students have mastered a large variety of tools that we will never master with the same level of skill. From computers to calculators to Mp3 players to camera phones, these tools are like extension of the brains. Educating or evaluating the students without these tools makes no more sense to them that educating or evaluating a plumber without his or her wrench.

Marc Prensky, 2005/2006, digital tools section, para. 1

Technology is a mandatory issue nowadays in teaching a language, for this reason it has to be integrated to EFL contexts in such different forms and for different purposes as vocabulary acquisition, grammar learning, phonology, writing skills etc. it is known that in Colombia, for instance the use of CALL has not reach the needed level to be implemented in all the official schools, because different issues like: lack of budget, corruption, and also because still teachers in general, above all official teachers, are reluctant to use the  technologies in their classes. We must consider here Whittaker and his mention on Sharma and Barrett’s book Blended Learning in 2007. Information related to blended learning is telling that there are terms to show the different percentages due to the difficulty of giving an accurate definition of blending learning, according to (Smith and Kurthen 2007, in Gruba and Hinkelman 2012 there are four definitions to them:

-          Web-enhanced: minimal use of online materials

-          Blended: less than 45% of use of the technologies

-           Hybrid: 45-80 % of the face to face activities are replaced

-           Fully online: the most of the information is conducted online (80%)

in Colombia the institutions are implementing blended learning in their teaching languages and in other subjects as well, all the time that teachers are asked by the directors or principals to use the institutional platforms to send activities and to grade students through gradebooks online. It can be said that the implementation in Colombia is blended because not in all the schools and official institutions the blended learning is executed in total, even if we consider that many of the teachers are still unwilling to be part of these new generation of teachers. Anyway the path to this application is on its way; the government and the ministerio de educacion are executing official courses to have teachers being updated in these new technologies to be applied in their everyday classes, but even though this is not enough.

At university level the arena is not very different, universities have implemented online platforms to have students and teachers work in hand utilizing this technology, platforms like MOODLE or BLACKBOARD among others like EDMODO  are being implemented nowadays, but nevertheless the principal interest to have teachers being permeated by these kind of tools, which is the case of the UNIVERSIDAD DE CUNDINAMARCA, the place I work for, in the headquarter of this university that is in Fusagasugá,  there is a team of computer engineers that are in charge to give courses related with MOODLE and the uses an possibilities that this platform can offer to all of the classes, nevertheless this offer is totally free for teachers, not all the  teachers show up to the course and frankly not even the 20% of them come to the course, nonetheless it is a part of our constant professional growing up and help us to prepare to meet the technology needs of the students. There is possible to find some teacher that either are reluctant to use this technological tools or the tools are underused because the lack of knowledge in ICT´s and for that matter not either CALL, nor BLENDED LEARNIG, nor CMC are part of the classes and the traditional class is the imperative one. This is of course part of us as teacher; whether we include those tools or not is totally every one´s concern but those issues frequently permeate our thoughts, beliefs, behavior, communication habits, lifestyle, interests, and makes good teachers, excellent teachers or teachers to never forget, it is not that the use of these technologies will make the teacher the best, but those tools really help to make the classes more interesting and motivate students to go further by using themselves all those tools not only for publishing messages or media files, but also for academic purposes in all the subjects.

Now I go back to the point in my mind regarding technology, as I said at the beginning of these paper in my thesis my intention is to have my students being confident to speak the language, I want to say that technologies are the tools for me to achieve this purpose. I have been using technologies to work in my classes with my students with tools like:

-          Forums: I have created a forum in which the students have to upload a 2 minutes’ entry related to the idea of business (in third semester, students of business administration have to create an idea for company or a service to offer to the community for a subject called: entrepreneurship). I took that and have my students creating that entry to the forum, not a written entry but an audio entry. Students had to use the online program VOCAROO to create that entry and send the URL of the audio to the forum, after that two students had to listen that audio and give an audio comment using the same program.

-           The use of an online program called KUBBU which is a program that allows users to create online quizzes, matching games, and crosswords puzzles and then have students practicing in the class itself or sent by a platform or even by e-mail.  

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I logged in into an account and then you create the activities you decide are relevant to students according to the thematic offers in the curriculum. With this online tool I have created a good environment inside the classroom to have my students develop the speaking skill, nevertheless this is not enough for all of them due to all of the students do not participate actively, students do not have the enough chances to participate because of the amount of the students in a single class or because of the lack of self-confident while sharing a point of view regarding a theme in class. (Pawlak et al., 2011).

then after reading Yeferson Romaña and his article called: “Skype™ Conference Calls: A Way to Promote Speaking Skills in the Teaching and Learning of English” I found a new way to try to have my students participating individually in the proposed activities in and out the class. Technology can permit instant contact with many people at the same time, then it would be good to have that contact with my students in real time to practice a specific thematic, or have a discussion regarding a topic, but then after reading the Romaña´s article I realized that Technology allows immediate and free contact among people in many other places around the world. It would be a good idea to have contact with other students abroad, so student can contact real abroad friends and have a glimpse on how is the culture in other places related to the way students or people do things here in our country” this can be very simple to do in nowadays world everything is just to a mouse click away.

There is one tool that I find very interesting to work with and that is mentioned in the Romaña´s article and is The Mixxer, language exchange for everyone, this site is “a free

educational site for language learners hosted by Dickinson College. The Mixxer is designed to connect language learners around the world so that everyone is both student and teacher” to make it easier for those who are less confident in using the language. When creating an account, the user selects which language(s) they speak fluently and which languages they desire to learn or practice. Once the account has been created and the user logs in, they will be taken to the user’s Homepage, in this page student can see the different languages that Mixxer has to offer as native and as learner, the learner can choose to send a message to other user to contact him/her in a chat room and then it is possible to have conversation using skype opening a huge window to a new context that will allow the student not just speaking but at the time to have the experience to use and learn verbal and nonverbal language to communicate, what can be done to have students enhancing their communication is having activities inside the class to present their pen pal or the person contacted by the use of mixxer, after that as part of the activity can be said to ask different questions to the other person related to the culture and the way that people behave in the place the other person lives following a portfolio and journals to show their advances as well as the things learnt about the culture of the other person.

To finish this paper, I want to say that Language teachers’ and students’ communication is not limited exclusively to live classroom interaction. On the contrary, computers and internet-based technologies offer a vast variety of options for online synchronous and asynchronous communication between language teachers and students. “Such communication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality of computers is known as computer-mediated communication—cmc” (herring, 1996, p.)

To be a technological teacher does not depend on how many tools are you using in your classes or how much interaction with internet and CMC tools you managed to interact with your students, it depends on the way you integrate all those tools with your knowledge, your needs, your students’ needs and the context you are immersed in.

References

-          "English Language Teachers' Perceptions of Computer-assisted Language Learning." English Language Teachers' Perceptions of Computer-assisted Language Learning. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2012. 3549718., n.d. Web. 2012.

-          Arnold, N. & Ducate, L. (2006) (Eds.).  CALL: Where are we and where do we go from here? In Calling on CALL: rom theory and research to new direction in foreign language (pp. 1-20). San Marcos, TX: CALICO. Monograph Series 5

-          Whittaker , C. (2013). Introduction. In B. Tomlinson & C. Whittaker (eds.), Blended Learning in English language teaching: Course design and implementation.  London: British Council.

-          Nan, H., Bonnie, B. & Sharp-Light, N. (2000). Mentoring for resiliency. Rio Rancho, NM: Resiliency in Action, Inc.

-          Romana Correa, Y. (2015). Skype™ conference calls: A way to promote speaking skills in the teaching and learning of English. PROFILE Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 17(1), 143-156. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile. v17n1.41856.

-          Pawlak, M., Waniek-Klimczak, E., & Majer, J. (2011). Speaking and instructed foreign language acquisition. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

-          The Mixxer. (n.d.) The Mixxer – a free educational website for language exchanges via Skype. Retrieved from <www.language-exchanges.org>