scaffolding second language communicative discourse with teacher-controlled multimedia

Scaffolding Second Language Communicative Discourse with Teacher-Controlled Multimedia

Jerome Johnston Lynda Milne

University of Michigan

ABSTRACT Providing examples o f authentic target-language discourse is a challenge for teachers of first- and second-level foreign language courses. The Teacher’s Partner is a multimedia tool that assists the teacher by presenting communicative exchanges among native speakers. Compared to videotape, this computer-mediated videodisc permits more precise control over video segmentation-essential for the limited language decoding skills of novice leam- ers. The computer also provides contextualized textual and graphical resources, including a hypertext transcript that will reveal word and phrase definitions and selective grammatical explanations in the target language.

The use of the Teacher’s Partner influenced the nature of classroom discourse in a French I and French 2 class. Year-long research analyzing classroom interaction patterns showed increased use of communicative discourse by a teacher and students in those class periods when the Teacher’s Partner was used by the teacher (an increase of 39 percent in French I and 55 percent in French 2.) Reflections by the teacher provide a rationale for how this tool scaffolded teacher-student discourse. The challenge of integrating advanced technology into classroom settings is discussed.

An important ingredient in foreign language instruction is exposure to authentic examples of the target language (TL). A teacher with good TL skills can provide appropriate models, but a single voice is not sufficient to provide the range of speech and idiom found in any language community. To compensate, most teachers use various media to bring additional examples to the classroom. But many traditional technologies are ill-suited to the needs of classroom instruction-especially for novices. At the lower levels of language training in particular, it is difficult to provide language samples that are authentic and di-

Jerome Johnston (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is Associate Research Scientist at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan a n d Adjunct Professor of Communication a n d Education at the University of Michigan. Lynda Milne (Ph.D. Candidate) is completing her degree in Higher Education at the University of Michigan.

verse, yet of appropriate complexity and length to match the limited decoding skills of the novice learner. Diversity and authenticity can be found in some audiotape and videotape recordings, but the traditional playback technology (an audiotape or videotape player) does not allow a teacher to control precisely the length of a speech act or to play a speech segment repeatedly until students can decode the meaning.

“Multimedia” technology offers more promise. Videotape can be digitized and transferred to videodisc, and the visuals and audio controlled precisely by a computer that has been appropriately programmed. An a p propriately designed computer interface can give the teacher easy control over the resources. Additionally, computer technology permits supplementing the video with materials such as an electronic dictionary that can be used by a teacher to “scaffold” student comprehension and production of the TL.

Project FLAME (Foreign Language Applica-

Foreign Language Annals, 28, No. 3, 1995

FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS-FALL 1995

tions in a Multimedia Environment)’ created a multimedia instructional tool for wholeclass instruction called the Teacher’s Partner. This paper describes its use by a n experienced French teacher during one year of instruction in French 1 and French 2 and assesses its impact on TL communicative discourse of the teacher and her students.

Background: Communicative Discourse and

Language Proficiency Over the past 15 years an important area of

research on classroom pedagogy in the foreign languages has been the teachers’ use of communicative discourse vs. metalinguistic talk. By metalinguistic talk is meant language whose function is the analysis of the TL, its syntax, lexicon, and functions. Metalinguistic talk, almost always conducted in English, can add to students’ cognitive understanding of the TL (Cummins 1979; O’Malley et al. 1987), but it provides them with no practice with, or contextualized experience in, the language. Communicative talk reflects a less conscious, more contextualized practice in or exposure to the language; it is about “real-world’’ subjects and uses the TL (Cummins 1979; Fanselow 1977; Masny 1984; Snow 1984). A number of studies have found that greater use of communicative discourse in the classroom is associated with postinstruction language proficiency (Nelson et al. 1984; Ramirez & Stromquist 1979).

Communicative Discou- The Challenge in the Classroom

It can be fairly said that communicative activities are a common goal of most school- based foreign language programs. But many teachers, for good reason, find the classroom a challenging context in which to further their students’ communicative skills. There are two key issues: management of verbal interaction and appropriateness of TL language samples. Orchestrating sufficient TL listening and speech production opportunities for 25 students in a 50-minute class period is difficult. The time is simply too short if each student is

to listen and respond to a single language ex- pert-the teacher. Configuring the class for student-to-student interchanges is not a reli- able solution because of the limited listening and speaking skills of novice language students. In the absence of a feasible alternative, language teachers tend to dominate the verbal exchange in the classroom. Chaudron re- views several studies of bilingual and even immersion classes and finds that, as in first language classrooms, about two-thirds of classroom speech is attributable to the teacher (Chaudron 1991). Practitioners as well as researchers are discouraged by the high proportion of teacher talk to student talk. In a classroom where the objective is to have students acquire a new language, one might expect that students’ opportunities to speak would be greater than those afforded in each one’s share of one-third of a 5O.minute period.

In addition, it is challenging for teachers to provide diverse samples of the TL. Many teachers have limited oral skills in the TL, especially if they themselves were educated in a more traditional training program that empha- sized grammar-translation approaches, the study of literature, and written communication. In one survey, two-thirds of the nation’s high schools were found to have foreign language teachers who are not themselves native speakers (Oxford & Rhodes 1988).

Even if a teacher is highly skilled in the TL, his or her speech constitutes only one voice, situated in the socially and linguistically limited context of the classroom. True communication requires students to attune their ears and eyes to the diversity of language and nonverbal cues that are found in authentically situated speech.

To compensate, teachers routinely bring to the classroom TL movies and audiotapes. These media have great potential to enrich opportunities for advanced students who are able to decode a complex mix of both verbal and nonverbal messages. At the lower levels of language training, these materials are more problematic because of the limited skills novice students bring to the task of decoding aural and visual cues. Assuming a video con-

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tains dialog appropriate to the students’ vocabulary and grammatical knowledge, the problem still remains that it is very difficult for the teacher (1) to control the size of the language segment played for the students, (2) to repeat a selected segment (rewind the tape to a precise point where the segment begins), and (3) to scaffold the decoding process with appropriate dictionaly and grammar support for the dialog and context represented in the mediated presentation. As a result, the mediated presentations remain peripheral to nor- mal textbookdriven classroom instruction.

In foreign language instruction more than in other content areas the notion of scaffolding is central. Scaffolding is a “process that enables a child or novice to solve a problem, carry out a task, or achieve a goal which would be beyond his unassisted efforts” (Wood, Bruner, & Ross 1976, 90). Scaffolding begins when a teacher selects a task appropriate to teaching a skill that is emerging in the learner’s repertoire but is not yet mature. The task is chosen because it represents a mix of skills the learner already has and skills that he or she is close to being able to exhibit. Scaffolding assumes a great deal of dialog between teacher and student, with the teacher adjusting the task and the amount of support (scaffolding) to fit the observed level of performance. The ultimate goal is to remove the scaffolding as soon as the student displays sufficient skill to perform without it. In foreign language instruction adjusting the scaffolding is challenging because there are so many potential components in the scaffold: models of speech for emulation, descrip tions of context that cue appropriate choice of words and phrases, and contextspecific grammatical explanations. (For additional discussion of scaffolding, see Applebee & Langer 1983; Palincsar 1986.)

The Teacher’s Partner: A Scaffold for the Communicative Approach

As one solution to this problem, a team of language teachers, linguists, and computing engineers at the University of Michigan devel- oped a set of multimedia instructional tools that take advantage of the technical charac-

teristics of videodisc to put the video control and scaffolding in the hands of the classroom teacher (Coffin 1991, September). The developers created two different types of instructional tools: one called the “Teacher’s Partner,” to assist teachers in the conduct of whole group instruction and another called the “Learner’s Partner,” to assist students in individual and small-group work.

The theories of language acquisition and instruction that motivated the developers’ d e sign and development demanded an emphasis on the entire interrelated family of communication skills, including reading and writing. However, the Teacher’s Partner was specifically structured to stimulate and s u p port oral communication between teacher and students and among students (see Figure 1). The Learner’s Partner, which was not stud- ied in the present research, is a student multimedia workstation intended to strengthen literacy as well as oral skills.

The Teacher’s Partner takes existing videodisc material (in the case of French, Quinze Minutes from Brittanica) and, using computer software, ”chunks” the video into segments short enough for the comprehension span of the novice language student. It supplements the video with on-demand resources including a transcript, visual dictio nary, contextualized grammatical explanations, and suggestions for student exercises that utilize the vocabulary and structures of

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FIGURE 2 The ‘A Table’ Unit

Figure 2a Figure 2b Menu Screen for Seven Lessons in the

“A Table” Unit Video with Transcript Mode for

“Au march6 de Rouen”

Figure 2c Brioche Appears When

The Text is Selected

the lesson. The support material appears onscreen at the discretion of the teacher and is readily replayed as needed.

The videos include interviews, dialogs, and descriptive narratives of adolescents and adults interacting in their native cultural context. From a menu of on-screen buttons (Fig- ure 2a), a teacher accesses different theme- based lessons, choosing from several modes of managing video and audio. Each video seg ment can be played with or without a transcript displayed below the video window. Videos without text offer a brief immersion in authentic (although not always spontaneous) cultural and linguistic contexts.

When a teacher elects to display the video

Fisure 2d Activity Section of “Au march6

de Rouen” Lesson

with transcript (in the target language only), difficult vocabulary and language structures are highlighted by an underscore (Figure 2b and 2c). Using a computer mouse, the teacher can point and click on these highlighted se- lections and additional information will ap- pear on the screen, ranging from video and graphics that illustrate a concept to textual models of the grammatical structure.

At the end of each lesson is a student activity section (Figure 2d). Typically, an activity is suggested in which the students must communicate with other students using the structures and vocabulary of the lesson. Words and phrases that students can use in their dialogs are displayed on the TP screen in print large

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enough for all the students to see. (For further information, see note one.)

The Teacher’s Task As noted earlier, increasing the amount of

oral discourse in the classroom is a complex cognitive task for the classroom teacher. The teacher really has two tasks: generating appropriate authentic target language and at- tending to process-directing and evaluating students as they attempt to either decode or reply to the teacher’s target language state- ments. The role of the Teacher’s Partner is to reduce the complexity by “off-loading” some of the language production task. Because the teacher can interact with parts of the TP dialog and not be responsible for the entire d i s course, the researchers hypothesized that a teacher using the TP should find it easier to bring authentic TL to classroom discourse. This in tum would make it more likely that he or she would select this type of task for the students, and that the students would spend more time engaged in TL communicative discourse than in grammatical and textbookdriven activities.

The research reported below was designed to evaluate this hypothesis. Specifically, we asked, does the Teacher’s Partner increase the amount of TL communicative discourse in the classroom? And does this increase come through the reduction of time spent on metalinguistic activity-talk about grammar and structural knowledge of the target language?

Methods: The Experiment During the 1992-1993 school year, an expe

rienced teacher agreed to incorporate the TP into regular instruction in two courses-first and second level high-school French. She used the TP, on average, onetetwo times per week over the course of the school year. R e searchers videotaped 20 class sessions in French 1 and 14 in French 2, sampling classes from various times during the year. At each level, half were classes in which the Teacher’s Partner was not used, and half were classes in which it was used. By analyzing the discourse and comparing the classes with and without

the Teacher’s Partner, it is possible to measure its effect on communicative discourse. The teacher was not informed of the hypotheses of the study. While it is apparent that the TP materials consist largely of communicative inter- actions, she could utilize them however she wished: she could analyze the discourse for its metalingistic attributes or she could use it to model and support TL communication among her students.

Subjects The study was conducted in a high school

in the midwestem United States that offered foreign language instruction in French and Spanish. Instruction was conducted in 50- minute class periods, five days a week for the entire school year. Language classes followed the district curriculum statement, which r e flects a heavy emphasis on reading and writing in preparation for college.

Over the course of the 1992-1993 school year, 43 students took part in the study: 15 were enrolled in first-year French (French 1) and 28 in second-year French (French 2). The students were of average to high academic ability; most will go on to four-year colleges. Most of the French 2 students had some famil- iarity with the Teacher’s Partner. During the previous year the teacher had pilot-tested several units while they were under development.

The teacher had 15 years’ experience teaching French to junior high and senior high students. An ethnographic study of this teacher‘s classes in the year prior to the experiment (when she did not use the Teacher‘s Partner) showed clearly that her basic instructional a p proach was communicative (Johnston & Milne 1992). Typical classroom activities included talking in the TL to students about real- world topics and assigning role-play and small-group exercises in which the students were expected to speak in French. Although the syllabus relied on a textbook for the se quencing of topics and structures, the book was referred to only occasionally in class. The teacher was already a frequent user of media (realia, audiotapes, videotapes, games, and

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magazines). For almost every class session she deployed a mix of activities that permitted her to use these materials to engage students and to provide them with authentic TL input as well as information about Francophone culture.

Although she used a textbook to guide her curriculum, the teacher followed closely (and deliberately, she told us in interviews) the guidelines of the communicative approach. She encouraged student production of the TL, attempted to establish a comfortable environment, and constructed her lessons to motivate students with communicative contexts. For in- stance, in a lesson about foods and behavior in the marketplace, she asked students to create small-group skits to be acted out in front of the class. Students were encouraged to emu- late behavior they had read about and seen in videos; they would shake hands and kiss cheeks upon greeting, use idiomatic phrases (Test sensass!”), and demonstrate use of new vocabulary and grammatical structures. The teacher seemed to speak French almost exclusively, especially in the second-level class, where she even presented much of the metalinguistic information in the TL. She rarely lectured. When introducing new topics, she briefly discussed the new language structures and demonstrated them herself or used examples from audio, video, or some other media. She then practiced the structure with the students using teacherstudent or student- student interchange. The researchers judged that if the TP could increase the amount of communicative discourse in this classroom, then it was very likely providing something unique, something that even a teacher dis- posed to teach in a communicative fashion has difficulty supplying.

Use of the Teacher’s Partner The Teacher’s Partner was stored in a closet

in the classroom so that it was available on demand. The teacher was given total flexibility as to when and how to use it during the 50- minute class periods. She chose to use it frequently (several times a week) for brief periods of time, much as she used other

media. It was her feeling, she told us, that the TP was most helpful if it was available for 10- 15 minutes a day. She preferred to use a brief segment to illustrate language usage previ- ously discussed in class, or to bring some cultural point to life in the classroom, or to provide practice in listening comprehension. (By way of contrast, in another pilot site, teachers tended to use the Teacher’s Partner every few weeks for entire class periods that were dedicated to communicative instruction. For security reasons, the TP was stored at some distance from the classroom, making more frequent use quite difficult.)

Recording and Coding Classroom Interaction

Classroom interaction was captured by videotaping selected class sessions with a camcorder. Using the videotapes, the classroom talk for every class session was coded using an interaction analysis scheme devel- oped especially for this project. The general approach to analyzing classroom verbal behavior was derived from the work of Flanders (Flanders 1970). It involves selecting the dominant activity occurring in a time period and assigning it a code that fits a particular conceptual scheme of classroom interaction. For Flanders, the scheme derived from a concep tion of classroom verbal interaction that viewed student verbal behavior as being shaped by the verbal behaviors of the teacher. He hypothesized that when teachers lectured and asked short comprehension questions with predictable responses, students had little opportunity to develop their own ideas and engage the material. On the other hand, when teachers asked broad questions that called for divergent responses, and when they gave both verbal and nonverbal reinforcement to such responses, students would engage the topic more deeply and respond at higher levels of cognitive reasoning. His interaction analysis system allowed him to test this hypothesis. By coding all the verbal interaction in a class p e riod and entering it into a transition matrix, Flanders could demonstrate which types of student verbal responses followed particular

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types of teacher verbal behaviors. For this study the conceptual scheme is

only a little different. The hypothesis in this study is that the TP will support the use of more communicative behaviors by the teacher, and this in turn will shape the verbal behavior of students, inducing them to produce more communicative verbal behavior.* The codes for the communicative discourse system are shown in Table 1 (see next page). There are three groups of codes: those for verbal acts of the teacher (a-h), those for students (i-n), and a third group of codes (0-r) to cover other types of behaviors that typically occur in a classroom.

Within the two groups of verbal behaviors a distinction is made regarding the function of the talk. The primary distinction is between talk that is metalinguistic and talk that is communicative, based upon definitions of communicative language teaching techniques cited earlier in this paper and on descriptions of communicative and metalinguistic behavior in the wider applied linguistics literature. Three types of metalinguistic activity are dis- tinguished. For teachers, lecturing about language structure (code g) and asking students questions about structure (code f). The related category for students is an answer to a metalinguistic question (code i).

There are several communicative categories. The primary categories are code “c” for teachers and code “I” for students. These are used for communicative exchanges in the TL. But for students just learning a language, the intent can be to communicate in the TL, although English may be used somewhat as a “crutch.” The teacher may ask a question in English (code d) but with the expectation that students will reply in French. The English is used in the question to simplify the cognitive task for students. Similarly, students may try to reply in French, but fall back into English for words or phrases that they cannot produce automatically (code m).

Another group of verbal behaviors might be categorized as “communicative enabling.” They are not true TL exchanges, but they are intended to help students achieve automatic-

ity by means of repetition and practice. They include a teacher giving encouragement to a student who is attempting a communicative response (code a) and a drill in the TL (code e). For students, there are two communicative enabling categories representing response to a teacher-directed mimic exercise (codes j and k).

A last verbal category for students is small group interaction (code n). This covers times when the teacher turns over the verbal interaction task to students and asks them to work in pairs or trios practicing a TL exchange.

Note that there is a code for every classroom activity, including several activities that are not the focus of attention in this research project, but that are included to permit characterizing all activity during a class period. These include the code “h” for times when the teacher is giving directions (e.g., “Take out your book;” or “Practice ordering off the menu in pairs-take turns being the customer and the waiter.”); the codes “0” and “p” for the times when the Teacher’s Partner or other audiovisual material is the center of attention in the class; code “q” for the time when students are writing and there is no oral activity; and code “r” for all other activity in the classroom, including transitions between activities, silence, or confusion.

Summarizing the Data The purpose of the coding scheme is to per-

mit characterizing classroom interaction in quantitative terms. A number of formulas d e fine the variables of interest in thisstudy. These are shown in Table 2 (see page 323). The key formulas are those that summarize the percent of time the teacher is talking (%Talk), the percent of teacher talk that is communicative in character (%TComm), the percent of student talk that is communicative in character (%SComm), and the percent of all classroom talk that is metalinguistic (%Meta). Since the research question asks what impact the TP has on the amount of time that teachers and students engage in communicative activity, the formulas exclude time when the TP itself is the focus of attention in the classroom (i.e., when

32 1


TABLE 1 FLAME Classroom Discourn Coding Scheme

Category Description / Examples Law Spoken Fctn

Teacher Verbal Behaviors

a. Encouragement

b. Cultural Talk

c. Communicative Talk in TL

d. Communicative Talk in English

e. Drill in TL

f. Metalinguistic Questions

g. Metalinguistic Lecture

h. Classroom Management

T responds to TL attempts by Ss, trying to elicit more S production. Praises, encourages, or scaffolds (guides, shapes S response by providing a missing word or phrase)

T talks about TL culture. No S response required. “Here is a menu from a cafe.”

T talks, asks questions, or models communicative phrases in TL; Ss are to listen or make communicative response in TL. “Comment $a va?” “DTtes-moi, avez-vous des fr6res ou des soeurs?”

T speaks/asks in English; communicative response in TL expected. How do we say? Tell me your feeling about.. . T models phrases in TL with a mimetic response expected from Ss

T asks about vocabulaly or structure. What’s the word for? What’s the ending for 1st person singular?

T lectures on vocabulary or structure; Ss expected to listen, perhaps take notes

T manages the class related to an ass’t or general control. Gives directions for ass’t, takes attendance. T still in control; not total silence

Eng or TL Corn Enab

EngorTL Com

TL Com

E->TL Com

TL Corn Enab

EngorTL Meta

EngorTL Meta

EngorTL -

Student Verbal Behaviors i. Metalinguistic S explains a structure in Eng; asks a question about vocab/ Eng Meta

j. Drill Response Mimic of teacher’s model phrase by an individual S TL Corn Enab

k. Choral Response Mimic of teacher’s model phrase by a group of Ss TL Corn Enab

Answer or query structure. “What’s the word for?” “What ending is used for...?”

1. Communicative Response-generates a TL word or phrase Talk in TL

TL Corn

m. Communicative Ask a question of the T or other S requiring a TL response Com Talk in English

n. Small group Ss are working on TL oral assignments in small groups TL Corn

Eng

Other Classroom Behaviors 0. TP Teacher’s Partner has attention of most Ss TWE MetdCom

p. Audiovisual Audio, video, or movie has attention of most Ss

q. Writing Ss are working on a written class assignment - - r. Other All other activity; silence, confusion, transitions to a new - -

activity, talking unrelated to the assigned task

KEY T=teacher; Sstudent; E t a r g e t language; E or Eng=English; Com=cornmunicative; Cult=cultural; Enahnabling; Fctn=function; Meta=metalinguistic.

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FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS-FU 1995

TABLE 2 Formulas Defining Variables of Interest

Variable Formula

TTT: Total Teacher Talk S u m a - h TST: Total Student Talk S u m i - n TCT: Total Classroom Talk %lTalk: Pct of time teacher is talking %TComm: Pct teacher talk that is communicative %SComm: Pct student talk that is communicative %Meta: Pct of classroom talk that is metalinguistic

NOTE: Language input from the Teacher’s Partner itself is excluded from all calculations.

TTT + TST T I T / T C T x 100 ( c + d ) / T I T x 100 ( l + r n + n ) / T S T x I 0 0 (e+f+g+i+j+k) / TCT x 100

the TP is the “speaker”). The formulas also exclude other classroom behaviors (codes “0”

-“r”) for a similar reason.

Coding Procedures A trained coder viewed each video and as-

signed a code to the dominant behavior occurring at that time. Using software designed especially for this purpose, a computer kept track of the duration of each coded behavior (Berger & Walton 1993): Videotapes were analyzed separately by two coders. Disagree- ments were discussed and differences resolved. When a 90 percent agreement rate was achieved, the remaining videos were analyzed by a single coder.

Results: The Character of Classroom Talk

Consider first the character of time use in this teacher’s classroom (see Table 3 on next page). Whether the TP was in use or not, the “Subtotal Class Talk figures indicate that two thirds to threequarters of class time was spent in verbal exchange between the teacher and her students (codes a-m) or in verbal exchange just among students (code n). The teacher spent about 13 percent of all class time in management activity-giving directions for various activities (code h). When the TP was not in use (columns 2 and 4), about 15 percent of the teacher’s verbal behaviors were communicative (codes c and d) and 15 percent metalinguistic (codes e, f , and 9). Stu- dent responses were about five percent

metalinguistic in both French 1 and 2 (codes i, j, and k). But the time spent in communicative talk (codes I, m, and n) was higher for the more advanced students-17 percent in French 1 vs. 25 percent in French 2.

The teacher used ordinary audiovisual materials more often with French 1 (12 percent) than French 2 (3 percent). But when she used the TP, it was for approximately the same amount of time for both classes-15 percent of the period, or about eight minutes.

Impact of Teacher’s Partner on Classroom Talk

To answer the question of what impact the TP had on classroom talk we examined not total classroom time but only the amounts of classroom talk. The data displayed in Figure 3 (see page 3251, thus represent percentages of classroom talk (from the “Subtotal Classroom Talk in Table 3). For French 1, the TP had no effect on the proportion of time the teacher controlled the discourse. The teacher talked 66 percent of the time when she was not using the TP and 67 percent in classes where the TP was part of the instructional mode. But the nature of the discourse was quite different when the TP was present. In classes without the TP, 36 percent of the teacher’s talk was communicative; in classes with the TP, 50 percent was communicative-a difference of 14 percent, and an increase of 39 percent (14/36 = 39). Not surprisingly, the character of student talk was also affected by these dynamics. In classes without the TP, 31 percent of student

323


French 1 Without Tp With TP

Category (1 0 classes) (10 classes)

French 2 Without TP With TP (7 classes) (7 classes)

a. Encouragement b. Cultural Talk c. Communicative

Talk in TL d. Communicative

Talk in English e. Drill in TL f . Metalinguistic

Questions g. Metalinguistic

Lecture h. Classroom

Management Subtotal T Talk

0% 2

9

7

0

4

10

13

45

0%

2 14

11

1

3

5

14

50

0% 0

12

2

0 4

12

14

44

0%

0 19

5

1

2

6

12

45

Student Verbal Behaviors ~~ ~

i. Metalinguistic

j. Drill Response k. Choral Response 1. Communicative

Answer or query

Talk in TL m. Communicative

Talk in English n. Small group Subtotal S Talk Subtotal Class Talk

2

4

10

22

67

2

7

8

24

74

4 2

2 3

15 31

75

6

24

69

Other Classroom Behaviors

0. Teacher’s Partner p. Audiovisual q. Writing r. Other Subtotal Other Beh.

Total Class Time

0 14

12 2

18 9

2 2

32 27

100% 100%

0 3

14

7 24

100%

11

4

11

5 31

100% NOTE: Cell entries are percent of total class time. KEY: Tdeacher; Sstudent ; *target language; E or EncpEnglish; Com=communicative; Cult=cultural; Enab=enabling; Fctn=function.

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FOREIGN LANGUAGE A"ALS--FALL 1995

FIGURE 3

Analysis of Teacher-Centered Classroom Talk With and Without Teacher's Partner

French 1

French 2

NOTE Figures are percent of total classroom talk, excluding TP, audiovisual, writing, and "other." KEY T=teacher; Sstudent ; Commun=communicative; Meta=metalinguistic.

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talk was communicative; in classes with the TP, 43 percent was communicative-also an increase of 39 percent (12/31=39). Impor- tantly, the percent of metalinguistic talk in the classroom was reduced from 29 percent to 20 percent.

For French 2 the results were similar, but the contrast was greater between classes with and without the TP. The percent of teacher talk that was communicative increased by 58 percent-from 33 percent in classes without the TP to 52 percent in classes with TP. There was a corresponding increase in student communicative talk of 55 percent-31 percent in classes without the TP and 48 percent in classes with TP.

Although only one of these differences is sta- tistically significant by conventional standards, they are based on a pattern of teaching with the same teacher and students, alternating use of the TP over the course of a whole year:

Discussion: Increase in Communicative Talk

The presence of the TP with its focus on communicative exchanges among native speakers influenced the nature of classroom discourse in both French 1 and French 2. The discourse of teacher and students was charac- terized less by talk about language or by drill and repetition, and more by direct interaction: either talk about the culture or talk in the TL about nonlanguage topics. At the end of the research we shared these findings with the teacher and asked for her insights about how and why she conducted class differently when the TP was present. Her comments are excerpted below.

Here is an example of how I used the TP recently in my French 2 class. The students have been learning about ‘foods in a market.’ This is new material for them. My goal was to get small groups to create short skits in which they would place themselves in a market setting and “shop” using appropriate French language and gestures. They de- cided on a type of store, made a pur-

chase, and paid for it with fake French money.

First, I showed them the Au Marche‘ segment in the TP. I used the video-only version just to get the feeling of the marketplace-people shaking hands, and so on. Then the students used the video supplemented with text to select and practice certain phrases-there was speech in Au Marche‘ that they didn’t have in their textbooks. The text has a list of certain foods which they were supposed to have learned at the end of last year, so it’s presented this year as r e view. But of course, it’s really not; they are learning much of this for the first time. So I used the TP to expand the lesson as presented in the textbook-the book has very, very little to support the kind of practice they need.

If I didn’t have the market scenes from the TP, I would probably bring in more realia. By showing the scene, I didn’t have to go to the grocery store and bring in realia like tomatoes, baguettes, and apples. The video brings reality to the classroom. If they can see [in the TP video] people in a French market eating a croque monsieur or a brioche, it’s more effective than if I bring one in and say, “I made this at home last night.” If they see Franck [a character in the video] actu- ally cutting into a brioche for his break- fast, or eating chocolul for his snack, it adds something. In a motivational sense it captures their attention; it’s not just their teacher standing up there saying, ‘French kids really have a chocolate bar and a roll for a snack after school; they don’t have chocolate chip cookies like we do.’ I think that it validates what I tell them.

Another point: there’s something about video-and computers too-with kids. It’s so much a part of their lives now that they focus on it better than if I

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just stand there with something. I can say over and over that it’s a French cus- tom to shake hands whenever you en- counter a friend, that people will shake hands with someone they see every week at the market. But when they actu- ally see that [as in Au Marchel, I think it’s even more real than looking in a book and seeing a picture of it.

Two dimensions stand out in her comments. The notion of the power of video in general and the scaffolding provided by the segmentation and control features in the multimedia design. The visuals of the marketplace were key to motivating students and giving them authentic models of the behaviors they were trying to reproduce in their skits, both language and gesture. The segmentation with computer control permitted students to review short segments of conversation and write down phrases and note gestures they wished to use in their skits. A point that is im- plicit in the teacher’s comments is the broader notion that the availability of the TP made it easier for the teacher to select a communicative exercise as the learning task for students instead of one more tied to the textbook.

One of our hypotheses had been that the video, by virtue of the authenticity of the language samples, provides particularly memo rable language for students. The teacher shared this view, although we do not have sys- tematic evidence to support her belief.

One of my weaker level 2 students, a senior who hardly ever does homework, was using phrases like “Ceci et cela ...” or “Celuici ...” I asked him, “Where did you learn this?” This is really interesting, because we haven’t learned these phrases; they’re not presented in the book. He said, “I don’t know, they just kind of popped out of my head.” Well, it was in the FLAME stuff, in the TP market scene. Things are coming up like that.

We were particularly interested in the difference between linear video and the TP’s form

of computer-mediated video with supplemen- tary resources such as the optional onscreen transcript. The teacher offered these insights.

As with many textbooks today, mine comes with a videotape. The publisher tried to use material that was very authentic. So, for example, the scenes take place on the street. But they are very hard to hear and hard to use: it’s hard to rewind a videotape, get to just the right part, and play just the segment you want. Another difference: the textbook videos don’t have transcriptions of the dialog, and I think that’s such an advantage for someone who learns by seeing and reading along with hearing. The TP is so easy to use in comparison that I don’t use the videos anymore.

Amount of Teacher Talk Although only one teacher was involved in

this study, it is interesting to note that use of the TP did not change the proportion of time during which the teacher controlled speech in the classroom. With or without the TP, the teacher was the speaker about two-thirds of the time in these classes. This rate is consistent with other results shown in the literature for both first and second language classrooms. But the findings in this study may be an arti- fact of the coding conventions used. In this teacher’s classroom, when students were given the task of conversing with one another in the TL, the teacher was frequently speaking at the same time as her students, scaffolding students’ efforts as she moved around the room. The coding convention for this study al- lows for coding the dominant speech activity, and frequently the coders chose to code the teacher when multiple people were speaking in the room. If this is the case, the teacher talk is not dominating the classroom verbal activity, rather it is supporting the students’ attempts to become more independent speakers.

Reduced Task Complexity? After using the TP regularly for one-and-a-


half years, the teacher in the present study has added the TP to her standard collection of teaching tools. But she notes that use of it is not without its challenges, especially in a classroom context that is not perfectly designed to support her style of teaching. Al- though she has the benefit of having a multimedia workstation available for her ex- clusive use in her own classroom, the room is too small to permit her to carry on all the activities she would like. In addition, while the point-andclick interface is easy to use by most standards, it is not without its challenges for a teacher who is trying to manage the technology and interact with students at the same time.

As a teacher, my style is to spend a lot of time walking among the students en- couraging and supporting them in their efforts to speak French. A concern I have is that when I use the TP I’m up in front of the room talking at them. Some- times I feel that if I’m using the mouse, I’m concentrating so much on getting the cursor in the right spot that I’m 10s- ing complete eye contact with students. I’ve experimented with having the students operate the mouse, and they love to d o that and I love to have them d o it because it means that I can move around the classroom. But my room is so crowded [with the addition of the TP and other computer equipment], that I can’t even move between the desks.

Earlier in this paper we argued that multimedia could reduce the complexity of the teacher‘s task when she is trying to conduct communicative discussions with students. This research provides evidence that appropriate, computercontrolled video can indeed d o this, but the technology adds its own task demands that are challenging to a teacher. Multimedia holds considerable promise to increase the communicative character of foreign language classrooms. Still it may be some time before the most teacher-friendly imple- mentations are available.

NOTES ’ For further information on Project FLAME and

the Teacher’s Partner, contact Professor Edna Cof- fin, Project FLAME, University of Michigan, 188 Frieze Bldg., Ann Arbor, MI 481091285.

Other adaptations of Flanders’ approach to foreign language research can be seen in Moskowitz’ FLint system (Moskowitz 1971) and Fanselow’s FOCUS system (Fanselow 1977).

Flanders’ system codes the dominant behavior during each three-second time period. This convention was used because it permits easy calculation of the time spent in each type of coded activity without applying a stopwatch to each behavior. However, using a computer for coding entry permits tracking of actual time, per one second, spent on each activity.

Statistical significance. The appropriateness of typical strategies for calculating statistical significance-e.g., ANOVA-is questionable when the data being analyzed are proportions of variable to tals, as in this case, where “total classroom talk figures vary from class to class. Compensating calculation techniques, such as weighting, inflate the number of observations to unjustifiable levels. Nevertheless, using ANOVA, we found that the most conservative estimates indicated only one sta- tistically significant difference (p< 05) in the data presented here: between Teacher Communicative Behavior with, and without, the Teacher’s Partner. However, the fact that the reported differences were obtained repeatedly by the same teacher alternating use of the TP over the course of the year urges the application of less stringent criteria for r e jecting the null hypothesis.

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