Using Technology To Foster Authentic Communication for Second Language Students

Abstract

Higher literacy needs and global communication technologies such as the Internet require that students worldwide develop academic level mastery of international languages. However, while school and university second language programs are frequently able to help students achieve mastery of the basic interpersonal communications skill level of a language, few university second-language programs produce a high level of mastery of the cognitive-academic language processing level. Preliminary studies using WebCT Internet technology have shown how student-initiated interactive second language communication may be used to supplement more traditional approaches, and, in particular, the effectiveness of university-level immersion English as a Second Language (ESL) courses in which students learn academic course content through ESL. In these studies, students actively negotiated the meaning of extensive resources and readings in a second language on asynchronous electronic bulletin boards whenever they were interested. This student-centered approach appears promising, based on results from a detailed discourse analysis of the students' communications on the bulletin boards, as well as from reading comprehension and writing production tests. In addition, extensive formative and summative interviews of the students' attitudes towards reading and discussing course content on the electronic bulletin boards for second-language acquisition yielded positive results. Ongoing research with real-audio and visual modalities is promising. (Contains 18 references.) (KC)