No abstract

This article argues that when using Internet-based computer-mediated communication technologies for language teaching and learning (e.g. email, internet relay chat, or, more recently, instant messaging and audio-conferencing), it is not sufficient to see the new learning spaces as replicates of conventional face-to-face settings. We suggest that it may be useful to consider how meaning is made using the modes and media available in electronic environments. This approach offers a new framework for the investigation of both the limitations and the possibilities of the new information and communication media and the modes they afford. It incorporates notions of design, authorship and dissemination, and the increasing importance of modes other than writing in virtual language learning spaces and can thus also contribute to an enhanced understanding of the phenomenon of new literacies. In this article we seek to demonstrate how this framework can inform the development of language learning and teaching in Internet-based environments, using an audio-graphic conferencing application as an example. We examine some of the demands made on tutors and learners and consider ways of meeting the arising pedagogical challenges.

With the development of new digital technologies and their gradual introduction into the language classroom, the Internet enables students to reach out beyond the confines of traditional teaching and learning settings, allowing previously non-existent access to foreign languages and cultures. In telecollaborative exchanges, for example, language students use online tools to establish contact with other learners of the target language and native speakers. The learning environments for such encounters are becoming increasingly more powerful, often combining different modes of communication in one single medium, the learners' PC. In 2005, students of French at Carnegie Mellon University, US and French learners at the Open University, UK worked synchronously and asynchronously in online environments with native francophone students enrolled on a masters program in distance education at the Université de Franche Comté, France. Completing a set of three collaborative tasks, synchronous meetings took place over 10 weeks in the Open University's Internet-based audio-graphic tuition environment Lyceum, which provides multiple synchronous audio channels as well as synchronous text chat and several shared graphical interfaces. The project output, a shared reflection on cultural similarities and differences, took the form of several collaborative, asynchronous blogs. This contribution draws on data from pre-and post-treatment questionnaires, recordings of the online interactions, work published by the students in the blogs and discussions among learner and tutor participants exploring aspects of online partnership learning such as learning environment-specific affordances and their impact on task design as well as learner interaction .

No abstract

No abstract