Hayo Reinders

Talk to Me! Games and Students’ Willingness to Communicate

In recent years there has been a lot of interest in the potential role of computer games in language education. Playing games is said to be motivating to students and to benefit the development of social skills, such as collaboration, and metacognitive skill, such as planning and organization. An important potential benefit is also that games encourage the use of the target language in a non-threatening environment. Willingness to communicate has been shown to affect L2 acquisition in a number of ways and it is therefore important to investigate if there is a connection between playing games and learners’ interaction in the target language. In this chapter we report on the results of a pilot study that investigated the effects of playing an online multiplayer game on the quantity and quality of L2 interaction in the game and on participants’ willingness to communicate in the target language. We will show that computer games can indeed affect L2 interaction patterns and contribute to L2 acquisition, but that this depends, as in all other teaching and learning environments, on careful pedagogic planning of the activity.

Learner uptake and acquisition in three grammar-oriented production activities

This study investigates the effects of three types of production activities on uptake (operationalized as correct suppliance of the target structure during the treatment) and acquisition of negative adverbs in English. It also investigates the relationship between uptake and acquisition. The three production activities included a dictation, an individual reconstruction and a collaborative reconstruction activity. Each of these asked participants to produce the target structure but differed in (1) whether the activity was completed individually or collaboratively; (2) the amount of text participants had to produce; and (3) their degree of complexity and cognitive demand. It was found that all three activities resulted in uptake with the collaborative reconstruction, the dictation activities resulting in greater uptake than the individual reconstruction activity. There was also an effect for the activities on acquisition (of grammatical items only), but no differential effect for any of the three types of activities. It was concluded that a production activity can lead to increased uptake, but not to increased acquisition, and vice versa. The results may help language teachers look beyond immediate performance on an activity as a measure of success, and make better-informed decisions about when to use what type of activities.

Affect and Willingness to Communicate in Digital Game-Based Learning.

The possible benefits of digital games for language learning and teaching have received increasing interest in recent years. Games are said, amongst others, to be motivating, to lower affective barriers in learning, and to encourage foreign or second language (L2) interaction. But how do learners actually experience the use of games? What impact does gameplay have on students’ perceptions of themselves as learners, and how does this affect their learning practice? These questions are important as they are likely to influence the success of digital game-based language learning, and as a result the way teachers might integrate games into the curriculum. In this study we investigated the experiences of five students who had participated in a fifteen-week game-based learning program at a university in Thailand. We conducted six interviews with each of them (for a total of 30 interviews) to identify what impact gameplay had in particular on their willingness to communicate in English (MacIntyre, Dornyei, Clement & Noels, 1998). The results showed that gameplay had a number of benefits for the participants in this study, in particular in terms of lowering their affective barriers to learning and increasing their willingness to communicate. We discuss the implications of these results in terms of further research and classroom practice.

Innovation in Language Support: The provision of technology in self-access

Self-access centres are sometimes portrayed as being at the forefront of pedagogical innovation. They are also said to be technology-rich language learning environments. In practice, however, the application of technology in a self-access environment has proven to be a challenge. This article focuses on 10 self-access centres that were found to be the most intensive users of technology out of a total of 45 centres investigated worldwide. The article describes the range of technologies used by these centres and the types of administrative procedures and student learning supported. It also compares these centres with the other 35 in the study to identify how they differ in the way they make use of technology.

A teacher's perspective on autonomy and self-access: from theory to perception to practice

ABSTRACT Considerable resources are expended on the development of learner autonomy (LA), and in particular on the provision of self-access facilities as one of the most common ways in which institutions have tried to foster autonomy. Whether the intended outcomes are achieved depends in large part on teachers’ agreement with and understanding of the rationale behind these efforts. A mismatch between an institutional objective and a classroom implementation may, for example, negatively impact the student experience. This project looks at teachers’ perspectives on LA and self-access language learning in a university setting where a self-access component was introduced as a compulsory element of students’ first-year courses. How do teachers conceptualise autonomous learning, what importance do they assign to it, and how do they attempt to foster autonomy in practice? What role do they see for self-access learning in this? In this project, we used a mixed-methods approach and obtained questionnaire data from 47 teachers on an English as a Foreign Language programme at a university in Thailand, as well as qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 5 teachers, on their beliefs about autonomy and self-access. The results show a complex interplay between teachers’ beliefs, institutional constraints, and classroom implementation.

Making Asian Learners Talk: Encouraging Willingness to Communicate:

Developing English for communicative purposes is a key objective of language classes in many parts of the world. As a logical prerequisite to communication practice, learners need to have Willingness to Communicate (WTC) before they will engage in L2 interaction (Macintyre et al., 1998). Teachers can play an important role in helping learners to develop WTC (Dörnyei, 2007), however, since research into this topic is relatively recent, not much is known about how teachers go about this process. For this reason, the present study investigated teachers’ perceptions of their role in fostering WTC through interviews and questionnaires and compared these with observations of their classroom practices. The research was conducted in New Zealand ESOL class that focused predominantly on communicative skills, catering mostly to Asian learners. The results showed that teachers believed they play a key role in helping learners to develop WTC and identified a range of strategies they used in class. Classroom observations confirmed the use of some strategies although no explicit encouragement of language practice outside the classroom was made. This paper identifies some possible reasons for this mismatch and concludes with practical recommendations for ESOL teachers who wish to support learners’ WTC.

Research agenda : language learning beyond the classroom

Most language learning research is carried out either in classrooms or among classroom learners. As Richards (2015) points out, however, there are two dimensions to successful learning: what happens inside classrooms and what happens outside them. Rapid development of online media, communications technologies and opportunities for travel has also expanded the world beyond the classroom for language learners. Language learning and teaching beyond the classroom (LBC) is, thus, emerging as a field ripe for the development of new research agendas (Benson & Reinders 2011; Nunan & Richards 2015). We propose potentially fruitful avenues for research here under the headings of settings for learning, learning processes and teaching.

The assessment of self-access language learning : practical challenges

Self-access centres are a popular type of language support offered by an increasing number of schools and universities around the world. Assessment of the learning that takes place in such centres is seen as both crucial and problematic. Many barriers to successful assessment appear to exist, but these have not been comprehensively documented, making it difficult to develop systematic solutions. This article presents the results of a study of 46 self-access centres in five countries (Germany, Hong Kong, Spain, Switzerland and New Zealand), investigating current assessment practice. In-depth strength-weakness analyses were conducted with the managers of each of the participating centres. These revealed a complex interaction between pedagogical and practical challenges to assessment. They also showed an emphasis on the developmental role of assessment for learner autonomy and the importance of assessing both language gains and learning skills.

Assessing Learner Autonomy: Development and Validation of a Localized Scale

With the inclusion of learner autonomy as an educational objective in many educational programs around the world, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to measure to what extent different interventions are successful. Although some general tests exist, we argue in this chapter for the need to develop localized instruments that are culturally appropriate, educationally relevant, and that are based on pedagogical principles shared by the staff and students in the particular context. Specifically, we describe the creation of a scale for measuring learner autonomy at a university in China. We detail the process of its development, from initial conception through to rigorous psychometric validation. In doing so, we will share some of the lessons learned and discuss some of the implications for scale developers and educational practitioners in other contexts.

Using Corpora to Investigate Chinese University EFL Learners

The language teaching profession in China faces a number of significant challenges in providing university students with high-quality instruction, as many studies have shown there is considerable room for improvement. A recent move towards EAP teaching appears to have a number of benefits for learners, but significantly more research is needed to make definitive claims about its impact. A gap in the research derives from the fact that relatively little is known about Chinese learners’ inter-language development, especially at more advanced levels. In this article we describe how learner corpora can be used to find out more about the needs of Chinese learners of English. We argue for the development of an EAP corpus specific to advanced level learners.