System, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 269-273, 1986 Printed in Great Britain.

0346-251X/86 $3.00+0.00 Pergamon Journals Ltd.

THE COMPUTER AS ELECTRONIC BLACKBOARD

MIKE FRIEL

University of Sana’a Yemen

The article describes a series of experimental EFL classes held at Sana’a University, Yemen. Six computer programs were used to stimulate whole-class activities, instead of the small-group or individualized activities more commonly associated with the use of computers in teaching. A description is given of how some of the programs were later merged into more complex packages. In conclusion, matters concerning the organization and management of the classroom when using such an approach are discussed.

From February to April 1985, the first computerized language classes in a Yemeni institution were held at Sana’a University. A group of 25 students in their second year of English study worked on 12 English-teaching programs for a total period of about 3 hr. The equipment consisted of a ZX Spectrum (48 K) microcomputer, loaded by cassette recorder and displaying initially on a portable black and white television, later on a large colour television. This equipment was transported to and from each lesson by the teacher. The class coursebook, which provided most of the input to the exercises, was English Right from the Start by N. and M. Hore (Penguin).

Owing to the constraints of restricted time, fairly large numbers, unsophisticated hardware and the lower intermediate level of the students’ English, the main guideline for these experimental lessons was that “the computer should be integrated into the teaching process (and) not become a separate and unrelated activity” (Last, 1984). Such an approach was also prompted by the fact that most reports on the use of computers in language teaching so far have dealt with self-access procedures (one or two students per computer working autonomously) or with network learning (several small groups working with computers linked to a control operated by the teacher). Little had been written about the third application of computers to language learning, the whole class activity, in which Higgins and Johns (1984) term the use of the computer as “electronic blackboard”.

Of the 12 programs run, six have been omitted from this description as they were either too “data-dependent” (i.e. they could not operate on a wide variety of language items) or they proved more suitable for one of the other approaches mentioned above, or else they were simply less popular with the students. The six remaining programs will be described with remarks on their presentation in the classroom and their relation to the language course, which had already been running with the same book for 1% years.*

*Apart from the two programs accredited to John Higgins of the British Council, these programs started out as computer magazine listings, written without EFL use in mind. They were subsequently adapted by the author, from whom full details are available.

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1. SPELL This elementary program flashes a word on the screen for about one second and the same word, no longer visible, must then be typed into the computer. A suitable classroom procedure proved to be as follows: The class was divided into two teams, A and B. The exercise was briefly explained. Then different members of both teams suggested alternately 10 words to be entered into the computer’s memory. These had to be words from a recent coursebook unit. Not surprisingly, students provided the hardest (or at least the longest) words. The program was then run. Students, alternating between teams A and B, gave the spelling orally for each word seen, the teacher typing the letters at the keyboard. If correct, a mark was awarded to the relevant team. If incorrect, a member of the opposing team (which had provided the word) was asked. Altogether about 10 min were spent on this exercise.

2. REPETITION The teams remained the same here, and scores were added to those of the previous exercise. Again, a word was flashed on the screen. This time, however, it was a coursebook word previously entered into computer memory by the teacher. A student from team A repeated it aloud. Then a second word was flashed and a different student from team A had to recall and repeat the first word followed by the second. A third student repeated the first two words plus a third, and so it continued until the tenth member of team A was repeating 10 words (in this instance 10 members of a lexical set). If anyone failed at any point, then that student’s team received the number of marks reached at that stage, and a new set of 10 words commenced for the opposing team. This activity could also be carried out with letters accumulating into long words, with words or phrases forming long sentences, with proverbs, etc. The items could even be jumbled sentences, with the teams unscrambling the words if all 10 had been repeated successfully. In the format described here, this exercise also lasted 10 min.

3. DIALOGUE SHUFFLER This exercise dealt with the still higher level of spoken discourse. The program-devised by John Higgins-presented a dialogue of 16 utterances from the coursebook. With each change of speaker a multiple choice of three subsequent utterances (first line only) was presented to the competing student. As with SPELL, students from the two teams alternated in attempts to choose the correct option, by saying one of the numbers I,2 or 3. An incorrect answer meant passing the choice to the opposing team for half marks, and this continued until the dialogue was complete. This program ran for about 15 min on a different day from 1 and 2 above.

After the first classroom presentation, the similarity in approach, as well as the popularity, of these three programs suggested a useful principle for this form of computer exploitation:

What at first seem to be autonomous exercises may, if successful, be combined to form parts of a more complex classroom activity.

This was put into practice with the three exercises described above in the following way: the three programs were merged into one; the content of all three programs was related to a single theme; and, 6 weeks after initial presentation, the revised and enlarged program ran as follows:

THE COMPUTER AS ELECTRONIC BLACKBOARD 271

1, 2 and 3 combined: DIALOGUE CHAINING A dialogue which had just been reached in the coursebook was chosen for this session. Ten of the more difficult words from the dialogue were entered by the teacher before the class began. Then SPELL was run. This was to acquaint the students with words difficult to pronounce; so they not only had to spell the words, but also pronounce them correctly. In other respects SPELL ran as on the previous occasion.

For REPETITION greater changes were made. The same dialogue from the coursebook as used with SPELL was dissected so that members of team A had to repeat the first utterance accumulatively, with the words linking to form sentences. This was followed by team B members building up the second dialogue utterance word by word and so on. If a team member correctly repeated a whole utterance, this was then passed to a member of the other team for an extra point. After this, the dialogue tape was played as feedback. This proved a simple enough activity for a four-word utterance but very challenging for one of 10 words. The dialogue was shortened for this exercise to allow time for the third part of the merged program.

In DIALOGUE SHUFFLER, each student in turn was aked not only to choose the correct succeeding utterance but also to come and press the chosen number on the keyboard. This prevented other students from influencing the final decision. As the options were often incomplete utterances, a second run-through of this activity was possible, with students not only selecting an option but trying to complete it orally for an extra mark. The tape recording of that utterance was then played to the class.

The final score for teams A and B was calculated. This composite program occupied some 40 min of class time. It later led to pair work and role play based on the same dialogue, activities for which the computer had laid a substantial linguistic base.

The remaining three activities, while still quite elementary in programming terms, aimed at adding some degree of colour, graphics and animation to the proceedings.

4. FL YING Another program written by John Higgins, this is a simple arcade-type game where the student must decide whether an animated plane is flying to A from B, to B from A, from A to B or from B to A. Marks were awarded for pressing the correct key (“Y” for “yes”, “N” for “no”, in response to a sentence describing the flight path) and also for speed of response. Flights between Yemeni and English cities were used and students themselves pressed the response keys. One student would run through 10 flights, followed by a student from the opposing team. Vocal help was allowed here from fellow team-members. On the second run-through there was a quick change-over of team-members after five flights. This activity, although the most data-dependent, was very popular and lasted for 15 min.

5. MAP WORK

This required pre-teaching of the locations of British towns. This was done to coincide with an exercise in the coursebook on Britain which included a map showing many of the towns also featured in the program. The locations of those towns in the program but not in the coursebook were illustrated using a large map attached to the blackboard. Then

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the program was run. A map of Britain appeared on the television screen and a point on it was encircled. Students had to name the town in question. They also had to spell it aloud. The teacher then typed in the student’s spelling. Teams A and B alternated for one mark per town. Then a second stage involved the moving of a flashing arrow over the map in order to locate a town named by the computer. Here a whole team would instruct the teacher to move North, West, North-East, etc. until they were satisfied that the arrow had reached an accurate location. Marks were awarded out of 10 by the computer for accuracy. This revised the directions taught earlier in the coursebook. The exercise ran for 15 min.

6. CLOCK This program, originally designed to teach clock-face recognition, is, like MAP WORK, an example of how EFL teachers can adapt programs from other disciplines to serve their own ends. A clock-face was drawn on the screen and the arms rotated, stopping at a 5-min time interval. A student was asked to provide the minutes and then the hour numerically. Next the question “What time is it?” appeared. At this point one student asked another from the same team this question, and the spoken answer, with minutes first as taught recently in the coursebook, was given. If all the information was correctly provided a mark was awarded to the relevant team. CLOCK took up 10 min of class time.

4, 5 and 6 combined: FLIGHTPATH The use of these three exercises also suggested a composite program. Once familiar with the moving plane, the map of England and the clock face, students could be taught a table of distances between British (or Yemeni) towns. A number of permutations then become possible:

Students could move a plane from town A to town C. Given two clock times and the distance table they could work out how fast they were travelling when passing over town B or their average speed for the journey. Given time of departure and speed figures they could calculate the time of arrival and move the clock arms to indicate this. Given times, speed and the distance table they could work out which town they should be heading for, moving the plane to this destination, and so on.

The introduction of further factors like direction, weather, wind-speed, a second plane, engine trouble, a hijacking or international routes could help turn the composite program into a complex simulation. However, at this point the programming abilities of most EFL teachers would be found wanting. This indicates the need for commercially-produced authoring packages where both text and graphics may be determined substantially by class teachers. This could lead not simply to drills or elementary games but to what Jones (1985) describes as a computer environment. This would ideally be divisible into its subroutines so that the class, if it wished, could work from the macro to the micro level as easily as it could follow the reverse procedure which has been outlined here.

CONCLUSION

The positive effects of these experimental class sessions more than justified their introduction into a regular university course. Once the novelty of the computer had begun to wear off, other more lasting advantages of the use of the “electronic blackboard” as an aid became

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apparent. Complex events could be pre-packaged for neat, fast and clean presentation in the classroom. The speed and accuracy of input and feedback (including timing, helping, scoring and correction facilities) were a substantial improvement on what a teacher could provide, while the continuous presence of the teacher maintained the essential human element in the interaction. The random variations of stimuli and cues provided an exciting surprise factor. Both the words and the pictures could move, often as dictated by the students. And the programs are not only instantly re-usable, in perfect condition, but can also be adapted in a few minutes to suit different settings and language items.

From this brief experience with a class of “computerized learners” it was possible to draw up a tentative list of “Do’s” and “Don%” for electronic blackboard use. These are given in the hope that they will encourage other teachers to experiment further along these lines:

Don’t - be overawed by the technology. Setting-up time for television, computer and tape recorder is about 1 L/2 min.

- use a television with a screen smaller than 20”. - spend more than 15 min per exercise, 40 min in all with the computer. - use programs where a lot of screen reading or keyboard input is required of

either teacher or students. - use programs which are too data-dependent.

Do - choose programs which allow for plenty of teacher/student and student/student interaction, in addition to interaction with the computer.

- try out all programs on a “guinea-pig” two or three times before running them in class.

- seat students as centrally as possible (in a V-shape if the group is small enough) and vary their positions on different days.

- seat yourself at the keyboard slightly forward of and facing sideways on to the screen, thus ensuring optimal visibility for both you and the students.

- introduce the program in a lively way, pre-teaching where necessary. - provide data from your course materials, allowing students to do this for you

wherever possible. - encourage competition between teams (co-operation within teams) over several

activities. - involve all the students orally during computer use, including the inevitable

sceptics.

When using the computer in this way the teacher will adopt new approaches to materials preparation and presentation, and may also gain fresh insights into the techniques of class organization and management. What students stand to gain is not so easy to determine. However, this particular group of Yemenis, without any previous acquaintance with the micro, adapted very quickly to the new procedures. They also seemed to enjoy the experience. It remains to be seen whether their learning was facilitated, but at least we saw that occasional use of the “electronic blackboard” can do no harm. I even suspect that it could do a lot of good.

REFERENCES

HIGGINS, J. and JOHNS, T. (1984) Computers in Language Learning. London: Collins.

JONES, B. (1985) ‘CALL for help’. . . Computer-assisted language learning. Modern Languages 66, 45-49.

LAST, R. (1984) Language Teaching and the Microcomputer. Oxford: Blackwell.