Languages from a Distance

Ok, I guess I should know these things already: For some time now I’ve been considering ways of providing students writing practice in a dl environment. I have thought about blogs and about wikis too…but it wasn’t until last weekend when I happened upon an excellent piece by Kato and Rosen in the November 2007 edition of The Language Educator that I finally felt I could proceed with confidence and begin drawing up a game plan.Their article is called: Improving Proficiency: Building Community: A Wiki Case Study. (For basic information on wikis go here or here. )

Writing has always been one of the most difficult and frustrating areas of language to “teach” because it involves getting students to understand and buy in to the idea that putting thoughts to paper is actually a process. In the traditional classroom that journey can be an uphill battle to say the least. Add some distance to the equation (as in distance learning) and things get even more challenging.

Most assignments attempt to deliberately instill an awareness for the writing process, say, by requiring students to submit a number of drafts before turning in a final composition. But imposing a contrived process will rarely push students to work hard on improving their writing and come to important insights on their own. For that, two important ingredients, audience and purpose, must first be present. The wiki platform can help to ensure that they are.

And then some.

How do wikis do it? Simply by providing a collaborative space where students can get to know each other, become involved in classwork, and exchange (and edit!) ideas. In their article, Kato and Rosen describe their approach to incorporating wikis in Japanese distance-learning courses administered by the Collaborative Language Program (CLP) at the University of Wisconsin. As a part of each assignment, students from diverse geographical locations join learning groups. Groups are made up of about four to five members. The small-size helps keep the interaction focused so that members quickly become acquainted with one another. Assignments are organized in three stages, each of which entails a specific type of posting. They are: 1) Personal response. Students are encouraged to write from their personal lives as they reflect and respond to a set of questions on a particular theme that is being studied. 2) Commenting and questioning (and proofreading.) Students read their own group members’ postings, and post at least 3 questions. They also highlight three errors that they found after reading the postings of one other group. 3) Responding (and correcting.) Students respond to the questions from posting 2 and correct errors that have been marked.

One of the great strengths of this set up, as Kato and Rosen point out, is that students are writing regularly in the target language, as well as correcting and rewriting drafts. The writing process is built in naturally and does not feel artificial because the audience is not only the teacher but a network of fellow language learners.

In addition to these regular target-language writing assignments, students are encouraged to initiate their own wikis in which they discuss in English various aspects of the target culture ( music, food and animé were popular topics.) What an awesome means for cultivating student interest and promoting life-long learning!

By allowing students to connect with each other, and collaborate (and socialize!) wikis provide fertile ground for a community of learners to evolve naturally. The real beauty of this process is that it can occur regardless of geographic location or time-zone. (Though one wonders whether kids might connect and participate more actively because of these factors, i.e. because they are far removed from each other geographically, they are perhaps more interested in being part of a community than regular classroom learners. Distance makes the heart grow fonder! ) In any respect, the wiki platform seems practically custom made to answer to the challenges inherent in k12 distance learning.