COLLOQUE LINGUA: l’IUFM de Bourgogne

7 au 9 Αvril 2003 à DIJON

PROMOUVOIR L’APPRENTISSAGE DES LANGUES VIVANTES DE L’EUROPE : POLITIQUES ET METHODOLOGIES

hellonet.teithe.gr

By: Ms. Afrodite Bousoulenga, BA. MA.

HelloNET project

http://hellonet.teithe.gr

The paper was read by Stavroula Kartali

The project HELLONET- Hellenic Enjoyable Language Learning on the Net- http://hellonet.teithe.gr is a three-year research project co-ordinated by the Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki, Greece and developed with the support of the Commission of the European Union within the framework of the Lingua programme.

The aim of the project is a two-fold one. The project is building the HELLO Net website in order to provide:

a) on-line distance learning educational material for the teaching of Greek to university students; a multimedia intensive course (with text, audio, video), video conferencing and other materials supported by web-based services in a user-friendly environment.

b) web-based extensive services with information about Greek institutions and various useful links.

The target population for this project is European university mobility students who plan to take part of their studies in a Greek institution. The number of Erasmus students in Greek institutions is small, one of the drawbacks being language barriers. The project’s outputs aim to facilitate those incoming students to smoothly integrate in the Greek academic and social life and raise awareness of the Greek culture. It will also help staff who is involved in monitoring mobility programs.

The institutions involved in HelloNet project are:

Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki, GR (the co-ordinating institution), Technological Educational Institute of Athens, GR, Universiteit Gent, BE, Universite de Liege, BE, Leader, Lingua Formazione Comunicazione Interculturale, IT, Sociedade da Lingua Portugesa, PT, Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres de Bourgogne, FR, Institut des Sciences et Techniques des Aliments de Bordeaux, FR, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, ES and A. Amanatidou O.E. Grafikes Tehnes, GR.

1. Introduction

Education traditionally involves a teacher delivering information to students in the same room at the same time. However, as we move into the new millennium, enabled by recent technological developments in communications technologies, new forms of learning are currently emerging and have become part of the educational landscape (Harasim 1993). More specifically, there exists an education form where teachers and learners can choose the method of teaching that suits them best and where the same location is not as important to the learning process; this is the interactive classroom for distance education, a place tailored to specific needs which makes extensive use of information and communications technologies. The case of distance education lacks the physical presence of the teacher whose absence is what distinguishes, as mentioned above, this form of learning from the traditional one. However, the physical absence does not imply that there exists no contact between tutors and students. Technological developments have enabled tutors to communicate with each other in other ways, i.e. electronic mail and computer conferencing. Another distinguishing point about distance education is that learning materials are specially designed and developed for use by distance learners. Those materials have features as clearly stated objectives, advice about how to study and make use of the reference materials, meaningful input and helpful examples (Hegarty, M., Phelan, A. & Kilbride L. eds.1998).

In the present case, HelloNet is developing Greek language teaching materials based on principles for language teaching and on proposals for developing multimedia, grounded in SLA research (Chapelle, 1998). The material is aimed at developing language skills of listening comprehension, reading and writing and the level targeted can be estimated as beginners.

2. Presentation

The course will consist of 21 units; one introductory, 16 basic and 4 revision ones. There is support in five different languages, which are: English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French. Before moving on to the lessons, the user has the possibility to select his/her language by clicking on the icon with the flag of his/her country. This means that all units have the English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French version.

The introductory unit presents students with the Greek alphabet. The user can navigate through it simply by clicking on the links on the left side menu. This unit includes information about the vowels and consonants of the Greek language and also practice exercises on them.

As for the 16 basic units, each one of them is divided in five parts; Presentation, Glossary, Practice, Grammar and the story of a student called Carmelo.

· The first part, Presentation, includes ‘Texts’ presenting a specific communicative situation. It also includes ‘Useful expressions’ of the same situation. It is important that the vocabulary and expressions of the ‘Texts’ are used in this part. The input of ‘Useful expressions’ should be studied but not necessarily used.

· The second part is the Glossary. It includes every single word and expression of the ‘Texts’ translated in each respective language.

· The third is the part of Practice. It includes a ‘Main Text’ followed by ‘Reading Comprehension Exercises’ where the user practices comprehension of the ‘Main Text’.

The fourth part is the presentation of the Grammar. It is divided in the part of the Theory and that of Practice exercises. The Theory part presents meaningful input and not just grammatical rules. In this part Athena- the Goddess of wisdom is introduced. She makes things easier to understand when it comes to grammar of the Greek language.

· The last part of the units gives the user the opportunity to follow the story of our hero, Carmelo, a young student from Spain who comes to Greece as a mobility student just like our user! Carmelo has to deal with difficult situations and problems but finally he pulls through and has a wonderful time.

The course also provides reference materials, a lexicon and grammar reference. The lexicon will contain all lexical units with their definitions in all five languages. The grammar reference will include all grammatical phenomena that the user will meet in the different units.

3. Pedagogical and didactic approaches

The employment of computers in education and research has become a reality and numerous investigations have been conducted examining the educational potential of CALL and how much students gain linguistically from working on it. Previous research suggests that information and communication technologies in language teaching can facilitate communication (Cooper & Selfe 1990), reduce anxiety (Kern, 1995; Sullivan 1993), increase oral discussion (Pratt & Sullivan, 1994), develop the writing/thinking connection (Warschauer, Turbee, & Roberts 1996), facilitate social learning (Barker & Kemp, 1990), promote egalitarian class structures (Cooper & Selfe 1990; Sproull & Kiesler 1991), enhance student motivation (Warschauer 1996a), improve writing skills (Cohen & Riel 1989; Cononelos & Oliva 1993; Warschauer 1996b) and finally result in higher productivity (Warschauer & Meskill 2000).

The major learning theories that have influenced so far the production of the present software material are the Communicative Approach and the most recent of Constructivism. Those methodologies fall into the categories of Cognitive and Socio-cognitive Approaches both of which have implications in the integration of technologies in the language classroom (Warschauer 1996b).

Contemporary educators who view learning as interactive, discursive, and situated have argued that well-designed online environments may be particularly suited to provide the socio-cognitive support for learning seen as fundamental to constructivist pedagogies (Lapadat 2002). In the past, programs accommodating the Behaviourist Approach followed the grammar-translation method- in which teachers explained grammatical rules and students performed translations- and focused on error correction without taking into account the mental processes that occurred in learning (Warschauer & Meskill 2000). Exercises based on these programs worked on a ‘Wrong - Try again’ model and did not aim at encouraging the student to communicate. In contrast, in the case of programs influenced by the Communicative Approach we have examples of communicative tasks that focus on the communicative aspects of the L2, rather than its linguistic ones, and emphasise student engagement in authentic meaningful interaction. Also, the Constructivism approach is associated with learning and teaching that involves multiple perspectives, authentic activities and real-world environments. Constructivism calls for the elimination of grades and standardised testing. Instead, assessment becomes part of the learning process so that the students start judging their own progress (Jonassen 1995).

According to Lebow (1993), one of the 7 values of the constructivist framework is personal autonomy, a basic element of the Student-Centred Learning approach which argues that more effective learning is generated when students take responsibility of their own learning as they have different learning needs and styles and make use of various learning strategies (Papert 1993).

We have tried to transfer the principles mentioned above into the design of the HelloNet corpus. One way was by means of materials which are put in the context of authentic and semi-authentic real-world based situations supported by authentic tasks. Also, it incorporates flexible feedback mechanisms and we wish in the future it would include a database system for tracking user performance.

In addition to the methodological principles for language learning and teaching, Chapelle’s (1998) ‘Seven hypotheses relevant for developing multimedia CALL’ were seriously considered:

The linguistic characteristics of target language input need to be made salient for input enhancement.
Learners should receive help in comprehending semantic and syntactic aspects of linguistic input.
Learners need to have opportunities to produce language output.
Learners need to notice errors in their own output.
Learners need to correct their linguistic output.
Learners need to engage in target interaction whose structure can be modified fro negotiation of meaning.
Learners should engage in L2 tasks designed to maximise opportunities for good interaction.

4. Design Principles

Design, preparation and programming of the present computer-based platform entailed more time in the development than the people involved ever estimated.

There has been a clear attempt to bring together a variety of multimedia functions in a pedagogically effective way. In order for the material to be appropriate for language learning over distance, the importance of interaction was primarily taken into consideration. Thus, the core for interactive communication is a strong message and a clear presentation (Kristof & Satran 1995).

HelloNet presents learners with a user-friendly interface. The program is easy to navigate and provides the essential elements of on screen help and exit features. Also, a further feature is the presence of reference materials of grammar and a glossary. Moreover, it provides learners with audio input recorded by native speakers in an attempt to expose them to a variety of accents. Another positive element is the presentation of paralinguistic features supported by appropriate cultural information. However, we should accept the fact that being used as a material over distance it would not be valuable for the development of oral communication fluency.

A variety of task types are used; true/false, multiple choice, gap filling etc. Feedback is instantaneous and in the form of green ticks and red crosses. The learner may take a look at the answers of each task simply by clicking on the key icon and then move on to performing the tasks for as many times as he/she pleases.

Last, the material in an attempt to be more appealing to the target group, will include some computer games that during the learning activities the learner can stop, play at any time and then go back to his tasks. The theme of those games is influenced by the Greek mythology.

5. Aims and objectives

As already mentioned, the objective of the proposed project is to cover the needs of European University students to learn basic Greek language communication skills before taking part in a mobility exchange program, and to have a systematic source of information about Greek educational institutions and the Greek academic life and culture.

The course is provided free of charge to students of European universities as the aim of the project is mainly educational and not commercial.

The project is developing a model with a two-fold use: tailor-made courses to teach a European language to mobility students and a website unique in its form whose information meets the needs of the target group. This model when finished could be adapted to all European languages and serve as a pattern for the production of educational material as well as the building of similar websites.

With the integration of computer tools and the Internet, the project promotes the acquisition of language skills, the understanding of different cultures and strengthens the European dimension in education. It helps to encourage educational exchanges, promotes distance learning and the diffusion of information and uses information and communication technologies and innovative language learning teaching tools in the educational environment. It encourages the sharing of best practices, as it is developed in cooperation with other partners. It produces teaching materials for clearly defined target groups and will produce language tools that are underrepresented in the market. The material produced helps the target group to meet the requirements of particular situations and contexts and is generic and not ESP. It improves the distribution and availability of products because being available on the net, it is accessible from any computer, any time 24hrs/day.

Last but not least, the project is innovative because:

· it develops teaching materials for a specific target population

· it uses new technologies

· it fills a commercial gap as there is no such material available in the market

· it is available and accessible 24/hrs a day from anywhere

· it uses a variety of teaching means

· it promotes one of the less taught European languages

· it defines new roles for teachers and students

· it raises cultural awareness.

6. Conclusion

In conclusion, given the fact that appropriate use of new technologies provides students with opportunities for autonomous learning and allows for a more integration of language, content and culture (Warschauer 2000), the HelloNet project is making an attempt to promote the Greek language. Greek, being one of the less spoken and taught European languages is considered an obstacle to Erasmus students who might have chosen a Greek institution for an exchange program. For this purpose, we at HelloNet are building this site offering lessons of the Greek language supported by information about Greece.

We are very well aware of the fact that using and implementing information and communication technologies in language learning demands substantial commitments of time and money and brings no guaranteed results. However, it is our hope that the present project will meet its aims and objectives and that we will soon welcome more European students at our institutions.

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Author

Ms. Afrodite Bousoulenga, BA. MA.

HELLONET Project

http://hellonet.teithe.gr

e-mail: afrobous@hotmail.com