Second Graded Assignment: Summary

Salam readers, below is the summary for our second graded assignment. Have fun in reading it!

Introduction.  

             A research has been conducted between students of Doshisha Women’s College (DWC) in Japan and the University of Alberta (UA) in Canada in 2004. This study investigates the effect of a cross-cultural bilingual communication project on students’ second language learning and it is a collaborative key-pal project that was conducted between Japanese university students learning English and Canadian university students learning Japanese. This study focused on students’ language learning in a tandem communication project and examined whether learners actually improve language skills, and how they deal with bilingual message exchanges. Tandem learning is a form of open learning in which two people or group with different mother tongues work together in order to learn one another’s language and this second language learning occur through the usage of language discussion board known as Cyber-Vine.


DWC students’ topics concerned with communication and language use, such as ‘‘differences in men and women’s communication,’’ ‘‘how people communicate when they meet the first time,’’ or ‘‘what people think of silence in discussion’’. Meanwhile, UA students choose various topics ranging from Japanese food and festivals, to high school and university student life, to women’s role in the family and society.


Methodology

      Data collected from a tandem learning project conducted between 24 of fourth-year English communication students from Doshisha Women’s College (DWC) in Japan and 30 of third-year Japanese language students from University of Alberta (UA) in Canada. They were divided into 11 groups of 5 or 6, consisting of 2 or 3 DWC students and a similar number of UA students. The students were divided into 11 groups of 5 or 6, consisting of 2 or 3 DWC students and a similar number of UA students. The data was collected in fall of 2004 which took 8 weeks. The message texts were downloaded from the discussion board and there will be two researchers separately examine the seven aspects of communication, 1) language learning, 2) error corrections, 3) language use, 4) communication strategies, 5) attitude towards communication, 6) shared interests, and 7) understanding of the partner’s language level.


Findings
           The result of this research, as shown in table 1, shows the total number of message posting that they have collected from the discussion board. The three groups shown in the table are group 1, 2 and 8. The seven aspects of communication that they looked at are, 1) language learning, 2) error corrections, 3) language use, 4) communication strategies, 5) attitude towards communication, 6) shared interests, and 7) understanding of the partner’s language level.


For language learning, the messages showed that they had gained a considerable knowledge from this project in terms of vocabulary and also syntactic. The language learning is represented by table 2. They found a strong indication that they learned through correspondences and are categorized by Students (i) asking openly how to say things in English or Japanese, (ii) copy what their partners had expressed, or (iii) responding to their partner’s correction as a sign of acknowledgement.


In error corrections, they have found out that students in the DWC–UA project were not profound on correcting the language errors they found. From 687 messages, only 4 cases where errors were corrected openly: two cases is where DWC students corrected UA students’ Japanese, and another two where UA students corrected DWC students’ English.


Both DWC and UA students seemed to prefer to signal their partners’ errors indirectly rather than directly. Twenty-eight cases were found where students combined the correct usage in their responses or answers, probably because the meaning of the question was clear despite the errors. Four other instances of indirect error corrections were found when students rephrase what they thought the partner had meant to say.


In other cases showed if the meaning was clear, errors, either grammatical or spelling, were not corrected and pointed out. The more important thing for them is to safely convey the message, and as long as the message was understandable, the need to correct grammatical mistakes is unnecessary.


The students communicate using both languages, Japanese and English. They wrote messages in the language they were learning, some with translations in the native language. Students began to ask each other to attach translations when they had trouble understanding the meaning of the questions. They will simply give up when they do not understand the messages from the other side and they will stop asking questions. Although this project provides a lot of opportunities to learn the target language, the groups did not have an equal amount of interaction.


From the analyses of the ethnographic data, three factors were identified as influencing the project outcome. They are individuals’ attitude towards communication, shared interests, and understanding of the partner’s language level. Even within the same group, students would exhibit different communication patterns in terms of the frequency of message exchanges and the amount of information they received. Some replied to the questions fast and some just left unanswered. This situation seems to deter partners from pursuing communication further, resulting in a short-lived topic thread.


Students who shared and discussed common general interests, such as music and movies with partners, were also found to have better results than those who only discussed the research topics.The researcher found that some of the messages in Japanese by DWC students were possibly beyond the UA students’Japanese level, causing difficulty in understanding when they use specific terms and difficult concepts. A good understanding of one’s partners’ weaknesses is essential in conducting a bilingual key-pal project, and teachers could, and should, provide such information for the students at the beginning of the communication project.


Conclusion

           To end with, a language-learning project like this provides invaluable experiences for students who would otherwise have little chance to communicate with native speakers and exchange ideas. Data discussed in this paper indicated that students were given ample opportunity to improve their language skills, either by directly asking their partners questions or by learning new expressions or vocabulary used in their partners’ messages and it takes a while before partners feel comfortable enough to correct each other’s language use. Some of the key factors that influenced the project outcome, namely, attitudes towards communication, shared interests, and an understanding of their partner’s language level. Moreover, students should be informed of their group member’s language level and their needs in language learning. This underscores the importance of the instructors’ role in this kind of project, since the degree of their involvement in and preparation for the project will determine its success. Apart from that, students should also consider the differences inacademic setting, including the school calendar and various course (or academic) deadlines in planning project timelines. Students should also be made aware of such differences so that they will be prepared to respond promptly when necessary, and understand when their partners cannot respond quickly for some reason.


Reflection:

Upon this task,we have learned from the research article how Computer Mediated Communication is being practiced in learning session which is through the usage of e-mail. We also learnt that the usage of e-mail in learning help students to improve their proficiency in Second Language Learning as the errors are being corrected immediately by the native speakers.