Designing for authenticity: a framework and guidelines for conversation simulation courseware

Prof. dr. Jozef ColpaertFrederik CornillieLINGUAPOLIS research & development

Language Teaching Symposium 2009, Gent

Statement

• There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

Statement

• There’s probably no learning effect in TECHNOLOGY. Now stop worrying and enjoy your research.

Research you say ?

• NSDS: No Significant Difference Syndrome ecological shift: design the entire learning

environment

• SES: Sunday Evening Syndrome– 95 % work, 5 % research – Sunday evening = research moment? how to transform your daily work into research

Research you say ?

• Attitude A:• I am involved in developing and using technology for learning and

teaching, and my perception is that I am rather good at it. I should publish more but I have the feeling that my work is not being valued academically nor recognized as research …

• Attitude B:• I have just developed this tool (which already existed in the early

eighties, but who cares?). Dancing Bearware really, but I present it as coconstruction of knowledge, negotiation of meaning, or empirical validation of theory. It’s fake, but I add Vygotsky and it really works. I get grants and awards, my presentations are accepted at conferences and I even get published. You should try it …

DLL

• Distributed Language Learning– conceptual and methodological framework for

designing learning environments– educational engineering model– based on hypothetical compromise between

pedagogical and personal goals– role of technology and choice of learning/teaching

method are logical consequences

DLL

• Distributed Language Learning– in phase of further theoretical / empirical

validation– contribute to collaborative research

Educational engineering

Analysis

Development

Implementation

Evaluation

conceptualization

specification

prototyping

Design

TheoryTechnology

Architecture

teacher

learner

content

colearner

teacher

learner

content

colearner

Classrm

w

all

Technology & authenticity

Mediated Non-mediated

Information

Interaction

Communication

… … …

IIC model applied to learners:

Mediated = with human or technological intervention

Information

• Non-mediated– use of authentic materials on the Web– examples: WebQuests, www.deredactie.be, …

• Mediated– use of adapted materials (simplified texts, hyperhelp …)– examples: Internet actuel, hyperlinks, http://

podcasts.ox.ac.uk/, http://www.radiolingua.com/, http://mitworld.mit.edu/, …

• Advantages / disadvantages ?

Communication

• Non-mediated– With natives not aware of LL process– Examples: chat, mail, twitter, fora, text, blog, virtual

worlds …

• Mediated– With co-learners, teacher or natives aware of the LL

process– Examples: Tandem learning, http://www.patati.be/

• Advantages, disadvantages ?

Interaction

• Non-mediated– Use of systems not developed for LL purposes– Examples: reservation sites, Second Life, (non-dedicated)

chatterbots, point of sales systems …

• Mediated– Use of systems developed for LL purposes– Examples: language courseware, tests, http://

www.slanguages.net/ …

• Advantages, disadvantages ?

So ?Mediated Non-mediated

Information +: more adapted-: less authenticity, labour-

intensive, logging possibilities

beginner level

+: authenticity, TBL- : errors, quality, appropriateness,

durability … more advanced levels, linguistic

awareness, mature readership, preparation and control

Interaction +: strong didactic functionalities

-: D&P ?? all levels

+: authentic interaction, TBL-: lack of tracking & feedback more advanced levels

Communication +: role of coach, logging possibilities

-: more artificial beginner/intermediate

levels

+: authenticity, TBL-: errors, quality, privacy, no

coaching intermediate to advanced levels

Authenticity

• Different roles of technology tackle authenticity differently

• Different moments/situations/levels require different forms of authenticity

DISCO project

• conversation simulation courseware for language learning

• degrees of authenticity in ...– task type– feedback– content– assessment & progress tracking

DISCO project

• Development and Integrationof Speech technology into Courseware for language learning

• Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Polderland Language and Speech Technology, Linguapolis (Universiteit Antwerpen)

• STEVIN research project, Nederlandse Taalunie

DISCO requirements

• to develop and test a prototype of an ASR-based CALL application for training oral proficiency for Dutch as a second language (DL2) at A2 level

• to optimize learning through interaction in realistic communication situations

• to provide intelligent feedback on various aspects of DL2 speaking, viz. pronunciation, morphology and syntax

Degrees of authenticity

• task type• feedback• content• assessment & progress tracking

Degrees of authenticity

• task type• feedback• content• assessment & progress tracking

Task type

• conversation simulation with animated agents• “interactive participatory drama” (Hubbard

2002)• conversation branching (item-based system)• afterwards remediation on specific topics,

coached by pronunciation agent

Conversation environment

Conversation environment

Remediation environment

Degrees of authenticity

• task type• feedback• content• assessment & progress tracking

Feedback in ASR-based CALL

• waveforms and spectograms

• talking heads• feedback based on

pronunciation score• corrective feedback

Feedback in ASR-based CALL

• waveforms and spectograms

• talking heads• feedback based on

pronunciation score• corrective feedback

Feedback in CAPT

Results of 2007 doctoral study, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen:– The key to successful CAPT is detailed corrective

feedback ...– ... but applied with moderation.

Dutch-CAPT project

Corrective feedback types

feedback type classroom language learning CALL

explicit correction

Neen, ‘gekoopt’ is fout, ‘gekocht’ is juist.

Ik heb een trui gekoopt.

repetition of the error

Gekoopt? Gekoopt?XX SEE HEIFT

recast w(/o) stress

Oh, je hebt een trui gek[ó/o]cht.

Oh, je hebt een trui gekocht.

clarification request

Ik begrijp het niet. Wat bedoel je precies?

Ik begrijp je niet. Kan je herhalen?

metalinguistic clue

Let eens op je voltooid deelwoord.

Het werkwoord is niet juist.XX SEE HEIFT

elicitation Dat is niet juist. Hoe zeggen we dat in het Nederlands?

XX SEE HEIFT

* Ik heb een trui gekoopt.

Ambiguity of recast

• ambiguous function– corrective & mediated (focus on form)

• “Ah, je hebt een trui gekocht.” – communicative & authentic (focus on meaning)

• “Ah, je hebt een trui gekocht. Hoe ziet die eruit?”

• use in classroom teaching– frequently used for treating morphosyntactic errors– less frequently used for treating pronunciation and lexicon

• effect on learning outcome (!!)– higher effect on pronunciation and lexicon– lower effect on morphosyntax

Feedback in DISCO

• two types of corrective feedback, varying with respect to learner preference– explicit correction

• “I want lots of feedback in the conversation,in order to correct my mistakes and achieve perfect pronunciation.”

– recast• “Even when I make mistakes,

I want to go on with the conversation, in order to practice fluency. ”

• non-verbal feedback

Explicit correction

Recast

Degrees of authenticity

• task type• feedback• content• assessment & progress tracking

Content• Seemingly authentic conversations ...

– realistic situations– speech acts

• ... however, very artificial and intricate content authoring– technological constraints: length of sentences, interjections,

disfluencies– phonetic constraints: frequent mistakes at A2 level– grammatical constraints: frequent morphosyntactic mistakes at A2

level– lexical constraints: frequency of vocabulary at A2 level– cultural constraints: Dutch-Flemish bias– didactic constraints: validity of assessment (see further)

=> delicate balance between requirements/constraints and authentic feel of the conversations

Content authoring plan1. studying the cultural context (a.o. Nieuwe Buren videos); 2. devising the narrative plan, with detours and alternative endings;3. writing separate blocks of conversations for each alternative path in the dialogue;4. feeding the conversation trees into the content database;5. double-checking the logic of the narrative in the prototype software;6. checking vocabulary and cultural elements for socio-linguistic consistency (Dutch-Flemish

contexts);7. checking the length of the sentences from the point of view of ASR and NLP requirements;8. checking vocabulary and grammar from a linguistic-didactic point of view (typical A2

vocabulary, possible hyperonyms/hyponyms, ...);9. checking vocabulary and grammar for consistency with Nieuwe Buren vocabulary and

grammar;10. adding grammatical codes to each turn in the branched conversation, so that all linguistic

aspects are more or less equally distributed over the complete conversation tree;11. elaborating prompts for morphology and syntax exercises (which are in fact semantically

identical to the prompts for pronunciation, but differ only in grammatical form); 12. adding contextual information to each pair of turns in the conversation, so that the

graphical artist and photographer know which content to create;13. debugging the complete conversation in the prototype after the insertion of multimedia

content (sounds, graphics).

Content authoring in database

Content authoring in database

Degrees of authenticity

• task type• feedback• content• assessment & progress tracking

Assessment & progress tracking• formative assessment > “How am I doing?”• system keeps scores for each topic on which learner

is tested– phoneme– grammatical topic (e.g. subject-verb concord, verb

position, ...)• scores increase or decrease according to learner

performance

=> topics have to be (more or less) equally distributed in the conversation tree

Topic distribution

Report

Summing up

XX

• kort herhalen wat gezegd geweest is• IIC schema• DISCO als vb van• authenticiteit op 4 vlakken

You’re invited …

• Antwerp CALL 2010 “Beyond motivation”– August 2010– http://www.antwerpcall.be

• Summer School “A Toolbox for Design-Based Research”– Qualitative and quantitative research methods in language

learning and teaching, University of Antwerp, 16 to 20 August 2009

– http://summerschool.linguapolis.be

An authentic thank you

• Credits to– Koen De Maesschalck, illustrations

(www.koendm.be)– STEVIN research funds, Nederlandse Taalunie

• Contact us– jozef.colpaert@ua.ac.be– frederik.cornillie@ua.ac.be

Questions for discussion

• Q1• Q2