Cooperative autonomy in online lingua franca exchanges: Case studies

from secondary foreign language education

Steinbeis-Transferzentrum Sprachlernmedien

Petra Hoffstaedter & Kurt Kohn

STC Sprachlernmedien (DE) petra.hoffstaedter@gmail.com www.sprachlernmedien.de

University of Tübingen (DE) kurt.kohn@uni-tuebingen.de http://projects.ael.uni-tuebingen.de

The Second International Conference on Telecollaboration in Higher Education Trinity College, Dublin, 21-23 April 2016

http://de.slideshare.net/kurtkohn

Our case studies Research context ■ The EU project TILA (Jan 2013 – June 2015) with a wide range of studies on the pedagogical

potential of TC for intercultural FL learning in secondary schools (www.tilaproject.eu)

Case study objectives ■ Authentic intercultural communication and foreign language learning outside and

complementary to regular classroom settings ■ Autonomy and cooperativity as complementary requirements of successful intercultural

communication and learning

Approach ■ Pairs of pupils in spoken and/or written intercultural TC encounters from home ■ ‘Soft’ intercultural topics with a main focus on communicative interaction ■ Pupils’ non-native target language serves as a pedagogical lingua franca

Data ■ Performance data (conversations in English or German as lingua franca):

o recordings of 8 oral conversations ( ∅ 36 min/ ∅ 4025 no. of words ) o protocols of 3 written/chat conversations (∅ 53 min. / ∅ 670 no. of words)

■ Feedback interviews with pupils

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Telecollaboration conditions in our case studies

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Intercultural communication

exchanges

Video communication (Skype, BigBlueButton)

Virtual Worlds (OpenSim), Chat and Forum

‘soft’ intercultural topics

TC access from home

lingua franca constellation

pairs or small groups of pupils

blended learning flipped classroom

multimodal TC arrangements

Lingua franca constellation ■ Pupils feel in the same boat with their peers, lower their communication apprehension and develop non-

native speaker confidence

■ They communicate spontaneously, collaborate in negotiating meaning and solving communication problems, and learn from each other

‘Soft’ intercultural topics ■ They favour authentic conversations based on everyday knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes;

pupils continue with their own topics (in particular in video conversations)

■ Focus is on the ‘ordinary communication‘ roots of intercultural communicative competence (> autonomous cooperation, empathy and rapport)

■ They provide a safe ground for developing communicative attitudes and skills needed for intercultural topics that require special expertise or are emotionally loaded

Multimodal home access ■ Shortcomings of the PC lab (> lack of communicative privacy, weak network) can be avoided

■ Authentic range of spoken and written telecollaboration (> social media requirements)

■ Pupils feel on their own turf and tend to act more naturally than in school

■ TC options are used according to preference or availability (> pedagogical scaffolding)

General evaluation

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Cooperative autonomy

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Pupils from Spain and Germany Age: 15

Target language: English Level: A2/B1

Third space development

Communication problems

Expression of empathy

Topic: „New technologies and

social media“

Third space development

■ Emphasis on creating common ground

■ Negotiating a shared line of argumentation

■ Ensuring a supportive and consensual atmosphere

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➢ “Yes, I think so too”

➢ “Yeah. Well, that’s pretty much my opinion as well”

➢ “Well, I agree with you”

➢ “Yeah, but I don’t think …”

➢ “Yeah, but scientists have found … ”

The pupils‘ interactional strategies are predominantly facilitating and enabling, rather than confrontational

Which is a key quality of their intercultural competence

Cooperative argument development

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A: Do you think new technologies and social media are a blessing or a curse? Raises the issue

B: In my opinion it's blessing because you can communicate with the people all over the world but it's also a curse because you can be addict

Offers a balanced opinion on the issue

B: What do you think? Asks for opinion

A: Yes, I have exactly the same opinion. It's very useful but you can use it too often and became addicted. And on the internet and with these media, there's sometimes no privacy.

Agrees and adds a negative aspect (threatened privacy)

B: Yes and if you post a picture of something it belongs to the internet and you're not the owner of this picture anymore

Agrees and elaborates on the privacy issue

A: Yes Agrees

B: Yes there is no more privacy because there are other person like the owners of social media who can see all the things you are writing that's why I think that if you write something on the internet it's not really private

Elaborates further on the privacy issue

A: Yes and so many information about the people are safed on the internet and are sometimes sold to companies.

Agrees and elaborates

A: I meant saved Corrects herself

Empathy and face management

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A: … I can´t talk about it in English because I don’t know the words (laughs)

A explicitly states the difficulty of closing a lexical gap

B: Just don’t care about it. (laughs) Sympathy and rapport (face management)

A: Little bit <break> yeah (pause) yeah it need a lot of power from the <break> yeah <break> (pause) no I can´t talk about it in English.

Attempts to reformulate and overcome the problem, but he gives up and emphasizes his struggle

B: Doesn’t matter. (laughs) Sympathy and rapport (face management)

A: (unclear) I can´t <break> it is a little bit stupid, erm.

Reflects on his struggle to express himself in English

B: I know like we are beginners (laughs) of English, we haven’t got such a level to speak about everything we want.

Protect his interlocutor image by making a generalizing comment about learners’ limitations

Empathy and encouragement

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A: I mean, I haven’t idea for this but the only thing I can say is <break> I wish you a luck <break> to be lucky (laughs). I hope you win.

[ . . . ] B : But I don’t I don’t think so because the robot works since week so. A: Well, don´t don’t think that you are going to lose. It is a bad way

to win to lose sorry. B : (unclear). A: Just think maybe we are not the best but trying to do our best.

This is what you must be thinking. B: *Yeah.*ca

Communication problems . . .

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Acoustic comprehension

problems

Lexical comprehension problems

Lexical production problems

Propositional comprehension

problems

. . . are addressed cooperatively and efficiently

Focus on form plays a role but serves the communicative purpose

Example 1: Lexical comprehension problem

A: Are the new technologies, smartphones or iPads and social media communication tools such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Skype, Email are a blessing or a curse? (...)

B: Blessing or? A: A curse, like if it is good for us, or if it is bad? B: Ok. Erm, I think it is good for us because we could communicate

better and so this wouldn’t be able without it so, yeah.

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B signals his problem: repeats the part of the utterance immediately before the unknown word with a raising intonation (“Blessing or?”).

In his response, A repeats the word “curse” along with a description of its conceptual meaning: “like if it is good for us, or if it is bad”.

B confirms understanding (“Ok.”) and replies to the original question.

Example 2: Lexical production problem

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A explicitly states the lexical gap B offers a lexical option, requesting confirmation of

his suggestion by using a rising intonation A does not understand B’s lexical suggestion B repeats the word in a full sentence (“they are

annoying”) and also offers a descriptive clarification

A: Sometimes my sister wants to play with me and free evening: “Would you like to play Minecraft with me” (in a high pitch). “No!” But (unclear) always do something like *(unclear).* […] and sometimes she is a little <break> I don’t know how you call it in English you know. How little sisters of ours are most of the time, yeah. She is <break>.

B: Annoying? (Laughs) A: What? B: … they are annoying *you mean like* erh they are always everywhere

you want to like play in your corner and no <break> nobody who is here.

A: Yeah, annoying Of cour <break> ja, genau <break>.

Example 3: Propositional comprehension problem

A: yes and like then when you want to work for exemple in the big companie there are people who are payed to search different information which is comprimise on you if you know what i mean

B: What do you want to say? I don't understand it A: In the big companies there are people who are payed to dig some dirt up on

you like some old photos which you posted on facebook or whatever when you were 8

B: Yes, now I understand. This isn't right because it shouldn't be important for your job what you posted when you were a teenager.

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A is not sure whether her lexical choice “compromise on you” is appropriate and she checks comprehension (“if you know what i mean”)

B confirms comprehension problem (“What do you want to say? I don't understand it.”). A rephrases and elaborates her message. B signals understanding and agrees with A’s opinion on the subject they are discussing

Propositional comprehension problem caused by a production problem:

An intercultural telecollaboration approach combining a lingua franca constellation a multimodal home access ‘soft’ intercultural topics

is highly suitable for enabling pupils

to practice and develop their intercultural foreign language competence through authentic communication outside classroom constraints

to focus on attitudes (> empathy, openness) and strategic skills (> third space, communication problems) that help them develop their sense and ability for cooperative autonomy

to firmly anchor their intercultural communicative competence in ‘ordinary communication’

Conclusion

Hoffstaedter , P. K. Kohn (2014). Task design for intercultural telecollaboration in secondary schools. Insights from the EU project TILA. In S. Jager, L. Bradley, E. J. Meima, & S. Thouësny (Eds.), CALL Design: Principles and Practice; Proceedings of the 2014 EUROCALL Conference, Groningen, The Netherlands. Dublin: Research-publishing.net, 146-150.

Hoffstaedter, P., & Kohn, K. (2015a). Telecollaboration for intercultural foreign language conversations in secondary school contexts: Task design and pedagogic implementation. Research report of the EU project TILA: Telecollaboration for Intercultural Language Acquisition.

Hoffstaedter, P., & Kohn, K. (2015b). Cooperative lingua franca conversations in intercultural telecollaboration exchanges between pupils in secondary foreign language education. Research report of the EU project TILA: Telecollaboration for Intercultural Language Acquisition.

Kohn, K. (2016). Teaching towards ELF competence in the English classroom. In N. Tsantila, J. Mandalios & M. Ilkos (Eds.) (2016), 7th international conference of English as a lingua franca (ELF). Conference proceedings. Athens: American College of Greece.

Kohn, K. (2015). A pedagogical space for ELF in the English classroom. In Y. Bayyurt and S. Akcan (Eds.). Current perspectives on pedagogy for ELF. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 51-67.

Kohn, K. & P. Hoffstaedter (2015). Flipping intercultural communication practice: opportunities and challenges for the foreign language classroom. In J. Colpaert, A. Aerts, M. Oberhofer & M. Gutiérez-Colón Plana (Eds.), Task design & CALL. Proceedings of the CALL 2015 Conference, 6-8 July 2015. Universiteit Antwerpen, 338-354.

Downloads available on https://uni-tuebingen.academia.edu/KurtKohn/

References