By Jonathan A. Lieberman and Nadine O'Connor DiVito.
The University of Chicago
In an effort to help students to acquire this intuition we have developed a World Wide Web (WWW) based Interactive Language Teaching Tool (WILT), and web classroom environment. Students and teachers can utilize WILT to dynamically generate exercises based on the type or types of grammatical structures that they are interested in studying. Currently, our implementation is limited to present-tense French verbs taken from a collection of 1880 classic French texts (circa 120 million words).
When conjugating verbs, for example, native speakers make guesses, about how to conjugate verbs they have never seen before. A native speaker's guesses are usually correct, because they have learned to guess using the most productive patterns. French speakers know that a parler-type verb's conjugation (programmer, commercialiser, boycotter, etc.) is the most productive guesses for an unrecognized infinitive ending in "er".
Native speakers can also take hints about the meaning of verbs based on the relationship between the word's stem and its ending. In French, the most productive conjugation pattern for infinitives ending in "ir" is that of the verb finir. Almost all the verbs meaning "to become something" belong to this pattern (e.g. jaunir meaning to become yellow, pâlir meaning to become pale, grossir meaning to become fat). An understanding of this of this helps native French speakers to guess about the meanings of words that they do not know.
Such expectations regarding the meaning and structure of language are part of a normal native speaker competence. However, for non-native speakers this type of intuition can normally only be learned through prolonged exposure to real use of a language, with constant feedback. Typically this has meant extended stays in an environment where the language is spoken. The constraints of artificial text book examples, the costs of printing thousands upon thousands of exercises, and a teacher's time and willingness to grade those exercises, combine to deprive students of the opportunity to get the needed exposure.
In an effort to help students to acquire this intuition, and free class time for other activities we have developed a World Wide Web (WWW) based Interactive Language Teaching Tool (WILT), and web classroom environment. Students and teachers can utilize WILT to dynamically generate exercises based on the type or types of grammatical structures that they are interested in studying.
The limitations of textbooks, their static nature, the linear design principle, and limited size, and presentational rather than interactive style make them poor tools for acquisition of these native-like linguistic and semantic expectations.
In most current language textbooks, each conjugation pattern presented receives equal treatment. All of the conjugations are listed in individual tables, without regard to the tremendous differences in frequency between them. Differences in use across the patterns is either ignored or limited to distinguishing between simply the "regular" forms (the two or three of the most productive patterns) and all the "irregular" forms (all of the other patterns). Such terminology does little to help students develop any expectations about the productivity of these different conjugation patterns. It also fails to help them develop a sense of the types of lexical items which typically belong to particular patterns, and the relationships among patterns.
As a result, when students encounter verbs outside of the ones found in their textbooks, they often have no idea to which conjugation pattern the verbs might belong, nor do they realize that specific semantic categories of verbs belong to specific conjugation patterns.
It was in view of these pedagogical needs that we initiated the development of an interactive language teaching tool. It was always clear that computers could be an invaluable aid to students learning a foreign language. It was clear that they would play a role in the teaching students the type of intuition that native speakers have, but the specific implementation, was less clear. We wanted something that met several criteria.
The WWW was the obvious choice. So we have developed WILT a web based interactive language teaching tool for the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago in cooperation with the Project for American and French Research of the Treasury of the French Language (ARTFL). It allows teachers and students to choose a particular set of grammatical patterns and to generate exercises from ARTFL's 120 million word database of French literature focusing on these grammatical patterns.
For example, if one chose to study verbs conjugated like finir, one could receive a huge number of examples of authentic discourse in which the many verbs belonging to the finir pattern were showcased. While this idea of conjugation exercises might initially appear to be similar to existing pattern drill exercises, this contextualized, interactive tool differs from traditional pattern drill exercises in several significant ways.
The use is authentic rather than contrived, and given it is in context. It is given in context because unlike textbook examples students often need to understand the overall meaning of the sentence in order to ascertain in which person to conjugate the verb. (And as we expand the scope of the grammatical structures that we offer context will be important to assist in discerning the tense, etc.)
Another difference from traditional exercises is immediate individualized feedback. Students can do exercises from as few as a single question to as many as 100 at a time, when they are done the exercise will be corrected immediately. When students answer the questions incorrectly their answers are evaluated in light of typical errors. Whenever possible an explanation of the cause error is provided along with a links to suggestions about how to avoid the error and the varying productivity of different conjugation patterns. Consequently, incorrect notions about the productivity of various grammatical patterns in the language can be dealt with on an individual basis as the need arises.
Students frequently acquire new vocabulary without a complete understanding how to use it appropriately. These general uses as well as more subtle functions and meanings can be transmitted to students through this type of repeated exposure to authentic, contextualized language. The interaction with a variety of authentic patterns helps students gain familiarity with the contexts of common lexical items and grammatical patterns.
WILT also offers teachers an easy way to quickly and powerfully review individual student performance and provide individual help where necessary. It also allows a teacher to see what types of things an entire class of students are having problems with.
WILT is also flexible in many other ways. Students can use the system for general practice, as well as specific assignments. An assignments can either be identical for all students, or each student can have a different set of questions focusing on the same topics. These exercises can be configured to provide a vary degree of help during the exercise, so that they can be used for exercises of differing degrees of difficulty or as free practice. An exercise may be focused on one particular pattern or may require the student to work with several patterns at the same time. Every word in each exercise may be linked to a French-English dictionary, and links to a variety of other supplemental information related to the task can be enabled, as well. Such attention to the individual needs and learning styles of students is, of course, much more difficult to incorporate into traditional classroom settings.
No knowledge of HTML, text editors, or the underlying document structure or organization is required for teachers to add or remove exercises form their home pages and update other information. All the document editing is forms based, but unlike some existing methods WILT does not pretend to be a complete HTML authoring environment, it simply provides a facility for modify the information in existing template documents. As a result it is easy to use and documents are uniformly formatted.
Assignments are stored as individual list items. Each list item contains a description, or comment about the assignment and a form. All of the form items that supply the parameters to the CGI which actually creates the exercise are of the type HIDDEN. The only visible item from the form is a submit button. While not stored as list items a similar preformatted approach is taken with other information, like class times and phone numbers in the template documents.
Teachers fill out a form similar to the one used to generate an individual practice exercises to create an assignment to embed in their home page.
Figure 1. WILT's exercise creation form
All test are dynamically generated on from a random seed, the seed can either be supplied by the form that supplies the exercise parameters or it can be generated by the script that creates the exercise. This allows you to create an assignment that is either identical or unique for every student and saves one from having to store entire tests.
One can also store the parameters and seed to a given exercise, with a students results, so that a teacher can recall the exact exercise that a student has completed.
The HTTP authentication protocol is used to insure that only teachers or administrators may modify assignments, and that individual student materials remain confidential. To minimize the administrative headaches involved account creation, all of the accounts are created the first time a user accesses them making use of our campus wide ph system for the initial authentication.
WILT provides new possibilities for foreign language teaching outside of the traditional classroom setting. It offers significant exposure to the productivity and discourse-related functions of particular grammatical patterns. By using WILT students can go beyond the limitations of their textbook's grammar presentation, explanations, and exercises. WILT's flexibility of the with respect to information access, exercise breadth, and feedback options permits a degree of individualization to the learning process which is generally limited by the constraints of group instruction in traditional foreign language classrooms. WILT not only takes pattern drilling out of the classroom, but re-configures these drills in ways which require students to be cognitively and personally engaged in language learning. It also allows for easy data collection for research on student learning styles and acquisition paths.
We are continuing development of WILT to include a greater variety of grammatical patterns in French and to incorporate of audio-based tools to highlight relationships between the spoken and written language. We also plan to provide support for other languages.
Nadine O'Connor DiVito, is the Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of Language Studies, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, and the College of the University of Chicago.