教育技术的前景与困境

PROMISES AND PERILS OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE CURRICULUM AND MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT Cornelius C. Kubler Department of Asian Studies Williams College Williamstown, MA 01267, USA ckubler@williams.edu Abstract Educational technology brings with it both promises and perils. On the one hand, things can now be done that were impossible before. Video and satellite reception allow us to bring culture into the classroom and provide learners with almost unlimited access to cultural materials. Technology can enable both learners and teachers to make more efficient use of time by moving certain kinds of language learning out of the classroom and freeing up valuable classroom time for those interactive learning activities that require a “live” instructor. With the present generation of students, use of technology can also increase motivation and stimulate interest in learning. On the other hand, it is essential to design and implement a pedagogically valid curriculum. Unfortunately, applications of new technologies to foreign language learning and teaching have in the past not infrequently been governed more by what the technology can do than by a concern with what it should do. We must always keep our pedagogical goals foremost in mind. After those goals have been set, one can consider how technology may facilitate attaining them; but it should always be the pedagogical goals that drive the technology, and not the other way around. 1 Introduction As I have discussed elsewhere, this is a time of momentous change in the field of foreign language education. First, the number of people in different countries who are involved in cross-cultural communication has grown rapidly and is bound to increase further in the years to come. Second, students enrolling in foreign language courses have become much more diverse in terms of motivation, age, ethnicity, and prior language background. Third, there have been many recent advances in our knowledge of language acquisition, intercultural communication, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. Fourth, the past two decades have seen a new emphasis on learner-centered pedagogy and self-managed language learning. And fifth, we are now in the midst of a technological revolution in language teaching and learning that promises increased efficiency in the use of instructor and learner time (Kubler, 2006, p. xv-xvi). In the mid 1990s, I began development of a multi-media basic Chinese language course designed for native English speakers of American cultural background that included digital audio and video, a CD-ROM, a DVD, and a website. This represented my first extensive experience with some of the newer types of educational technology. I was astounded at the many things technology can do for us, as language professionals, and for our students; at the same time, I also gradually became aware of some of the downsides and potential pitfalls of educational technology. Now, it is important to keep in mind that media have always played a role in foreign language education; one need only think of traditional or so-called “legacy” media such as the blackboard, books, newspapers, and films. Media can range from relatively low-tech activities such as television and long-distance telephone tutoring to higher-tech activities such as satellite reception of foreign television programs and use of the Internet and World Wide Web. With the rapid advances in technology in recent decades, the range and quantity of media available to foreign language instructors and learners have expanded greatly, with more choices available today than ever before. This situation would seem to bring with it great promise and many new opportunities; but it also, in my opinion, calls for a certain amount of caution, since there do exist a number of possible perils. 2 Promises According to a well-known Chinese proverb, 百闻不如一见 Băi wén bùrú yí jiàn ‘Hearing about something one hundred times is not so good as seeing it once’ or, to cite a similar English proverb, “Seeing is believing.” By taking advantage of what modern educational technology has to offer, many things can now be done that were impossible before. When I began learning Chinese in the late 1960s, American teachers of Chinese who wished to teach their students extended lessons on Chinese culture would have had to take them to Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore (since American citizens could not yet visit China at that time). However, nowadays new technologies such as video and satellite reception allow us to bring culture into the classroom and provide learners with almost unlimited access to cultural materials from the target language countries. Video can make language and culture learning more vivid, strengthening students’ impressions and improving their memory. As the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages has noted in its Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (American Council 1999, p. 35), “Access to a variety of technologies ranging from computer-assisted instruction to interactive video, CD-ROM, the Internet, electronic mail, and the World Wide Web will help students strengthen linguistic skills, establish interactions with peers, and learn about contemporary culture and everyday life in the target country.” We are all aware of the existence of different learning styles among our students, and of the importance of employing a combination of methods in our teaching in the hope that if one type of activity does not reach a particular learner, another type will. Language is so complex and the personalities of learners are so different that no single approach or method can possibly meet the needs of all learners at all times. As the American saying has it, “Different strokes for different folks.” For example, some students learn most effectively through a combination of explanation and practice, whereas other students learn best through extended practice alone. Sensory preferences may also be different, some students being quite satisfied to learn from traditional printed materials while others prefer the multimedia capabilities of the computer, and still other students may prefer to write out or even act out new information. One distinct advantage of educational technology is that it can appeal to different learning styles and abilities. Technology can allow for people with different preferred learning styles to take advantage of their strengths and “strut their stuff.” Yet one more advantage of educational technology is that it facilitates our goal of student-centered instruction, by putting the learners—not just the instructor—at the center of the enterprise. Thus, many types of educational technology involve student-initiated, self- managed interactive learning by students at their own pace. Educational technology can allow learners to learn by doing and, in some cases, even to receive feedback without the presence of a human instructor. Educational technology provides both instructor and students with rapid and convenient access to course materials, allowing learners to learn at a time and location of their preference. It can help learners maximize both their access to relevant input and their production of output. Moreover, it offers much greater control over the materials; one need only consider the power of Internet search engines or recall the frustrations in the past of rewinding or fast forwarding videotapes and cassette tapes to find a given passage. And then, if digital audio and video materials are used, the quality is also usually much better than analog. Two challenges in foreign language teaching and learning have always been selection and sequencing; that is, what material to present, how much of it to present at one time, and at what point in the curriculum to present it. While I, as a linguist, am fascinated by everything about languages, including relatively minor phonological, grammatical, and lexical details, presenting so much information to beginning students can create a severe learning overload and intimidate them. It is, therefore, essential to select the information to be presented to students with great care. On the one hand, one wants to avoid dumbing- down and oversimplifications of the “speak-fluent-Chinese-in-30-days-or-your-money- back” type; on the other hand, sufficient information must be provided for adult learners to attain an understanding of fairly complex linguistic and cultural phenomena. One great advantage of computers over, say, books is that the former offer the possibility of hypertext links, where those students desiring additional information can conveniently access the information they need elsewhere in a database or on-line, without the need to overwhelm other students who only desire to know the basics. Another great advantage of educational technology is that it enables us to make more efficient use of limited and expensive instructor time by moving certain kinds of language learning activities, such as drill, out of the classroom, to be done by students in self-study mode on the computer in the language learning laboratory or even in their own dormitory room. This frees up valuable classroom time with the instructor for those kinds of interactive learning activities—such as conversation practice, discussion, debate, or speech- making—that require a “live” instructor. Unlike human instructors, computers can repeat ad infinitum. As Bai (2003, p. 3) has pointed out, “another advantage of using computer technology is that computers never get tired of providing ‘mechanical’ drills;’ they are, in a word, ‘patient.’” In this regard, I would hasten to point out that we must not underestimate the value of drills as enabling mechanisms to help our students attain their ultimate goal of communicative competency. Some of the drills we use will be fairly mechanical—for example, repetition drills, substitution drills, and transformation drills—but others should and can be quite communicative and natural, even incorporating a good deal of cultural material. For example, a drill can be devised with the use of audio and even video where a learner is asked on which day of the week he or she will do something; the learner is instructed always to reply with a day two days later than the day mentioned in the question. For example: Question from computer program: “Are you leaving Wednesday?” Student response: “No, I’m leaving Friday.” Confirmation from computer program (in a different voice): “No, I’m leaving Friday.” Another example of a communicative drill amenable to educational technology that practices numbers and times, the use of confirmations, and even incorporates a bit of cultural content would be the following. Here, the learner is instructed to convert the times given according to the 24-hour clock, as used in most countries, to times according to the 12-hour clock, as used in the U.S.: Question from computer program: “The train for Berlin departs at thirteen o’clock.” Student response: “Oh, you mean one o’clock in the afternoon.” Confirmation from computer program (in a different voice): “Oh, you mean one o’clock in the afternoon.” In the sorts of communicative drills exemplified above, students really must listen closely to the meaning of what is said; such drills cannot simply be repeated mechanically.1 Yet these drills can easily be done by students out of class in self-study mode through the use of educational technology, thus avoiding the need for the instructor to spend valuable class time on them. 1One excellent example of a course including many such communicative drills that students can do on their own outside the classroom through the use of technology is Japanese: The Spoken Language by Eleanor H. Jorden with Mari Noda. How quickly should students be able to process written language? In the classroom situation and on tests, we language instructors are typically quite generous, often wishing to give students the opportunity to demonstrate their best work. Yet in the “real world” of international business or diplomacy, time is of the essence, quantity often trumping quality. Accomplishing a large amount of useful work—even if it is incomplete or approximate or contains minor omissions or even errors—is often considered preferable to accomplishing a smaller amount of high-quality work. If your boss needs to know in preparation for a 9:30 AM staff meeting what the morning newspapers have to say about a given topic, he or she cannot wait six hours for a polished translation of one article; there is a need for someone to be able to identify and skim and scan relevant articles in several newspapers within 20 minutes or so and then present a succint and coherent oral summary of the main points. Especially at very advanced levels of proficiency, there are high expectations of learners in terms of the quantity of language they can process in a given period of time. Learners should be able to read fluently and still maintain a high degree of accuracy. Therefore, I believe that in language training and testing, learners’ reading of passages and texts should sometimes be timed. Computers come in very handy for accomplishing these tasks. For example, in training high-level students in rapid reading of Chinese, I have found that one useful application of technology is to strengthen learners’ reading fluency by scrolling lines of text on computer screens at ever increasing rates of speed.2 One other major advantage of educational technology is its so-called “coolness factor.” There is no question that, in the case of the current so-called “digital generation” of students who grew up with computers, the appropriate use of educational technology can increase their motivation and stimulate their interest in learning. Educational technology certainly helps attract and retain our students’ attention. The Internet is engrossing and inherently interesting, incorporating, as it does, multi-sensory uses of media. There are many other advantages or “promises” of educational technology that we will not discuss here in detail. For example, writing on the computer rather than by hand allows students working in languages that employ complex scripts to compose and edit easily, enabling them to focus on the content of the message rather than having to spend the majority of their time in “dictionary-grubbing” or looking up how the various symbols of the writing system are written. The use of educational technology also allows us, as a by-product, to strengthen students’ general computer and multimedia literacy, even if this is not a primary goal of foreign language teaching. As for the instructor, educational technology also offers him or her many advantages, including research and information retrieval, keeping up-to-date on news in the target language countries, promoting the language program, preparing students for study abroad, writing lesson materials, typing and revising lesson plans, placement testing, preparation of quizzes and tests, faculty or course evaluation, communication with students and fellow instructors, maintenance of class rosters, and keeping and computing student grades. 2One good example of how this may be done is through the “timed reading” function of the multimedia interactive Chinese language software program KEY 2008 designed by Dr. Peter Leimbigler and his colleagues at Asia Communications Québec Inc. 3 Perils Though educational technology brings with it many clear advantages, there are also disadvantages, limitations, and potential perils. In our teaching of foreign languages, it is crucially important to design and implement a pedagogically valid curriculum. Unfortunately, application of new technologies to foreign language teaching has in the past sometimes been governed more by what the technology can do than by a concern with what the technology should do. Jianhua Bai (2003, p. 4) laments “the many multimedia products in the market- place that are pedagogically unsound.” One need only think of some of the computer software programs for foreign languages which essentially put the text of printed books onto the monitor screen (traditional books do this better and at less expense); or pronunciation software that allows students to record their own voices to “compare” them with the voices of native speakers (if students can’t pronounce correctly, how are they to distinguish their own mispronunciations when heard?); or programs with stroke-by-stroke build-ups for teaching how to write Chinese characters (traditional paper and print character practice sheets can do this just as well or better). We must always keep our pedagogical goals foremost in mind and realize that technology is only the medium; instructional content and teaching methods are ultimately more important and must be given the majority of resources and time. Once the pedagogical goals have been set, one may consider how technology may facilitate attaining those goals; but it should always be the pedagogical goals that drive the technology, and not the other way around. While making appropriate use of the new technologies, we must not lose sight of the basics—that is, our existing classes and students. In recent years, I have frequently witnessed situations where younger instructors spend far too much time on the development of multimedia materials to the detriment of class preparation for existing classes and individual tutoring of students who are having problems. There is a real danger that some instructors will spend too much time on “hi tech” and too little on “class prep!” Also, it is important not to “reinvent the wheel”—we must do everything possible to avoid unnecessary duplication of efforts. Before beginning a new multimedia project, we should take pains to become aware of what is already available; is there an existing program we could adapt to our needs rather than starting a new one from scratch? As is well known, developing a worthwhile software program requires huge amounts of resources, in both time and money. To make the expenditure of those resources worthwhile, the materials produced must be usable—and used—for a number of years. But frequently, I have seen projects terminated in an incomplete state, or else cast aside after only a year or two of use. While essay writing and other composition on the computer has advantages in terms of speed, it has the great disadvantage that the written symbols of the language are then not produced manually. Especially in the case of the more difficult writing systems, lack of practice will result in forgetting how to write the symbols. As many have pointed out, improvements in Chinese word processing software have resulted in many Chinese people forgetting how to write characters, since many of them now do the majority of their writing on computer. Consider this quote from Zhou Ming, a computer researcher in Beijing: “If people use this system, they will forget how to write even faster. What we are chasing is speed. When culture and speed come into conflict, speed wins” (Lee 2001, p. E8). If use of the computer for writing Chinese characters results in native speakers’ forgetting how to write characters, the situation must be even worse for non-natives. Therefore, it is important that we not allow students to do all their writing via computer; some of their writing must continue to be done by hand. At my institution, for example, we require that every other essay be hand-