The EuroCALL Review

The DNA of Digital Storytelling: A Case Study from a Higher Education LSP Classroom

Ornaith Rodgers — 2023-07-28

This case study is based on a digital storytelling project conducted with first year Biotechnology with French students at National University of Ireland, Galway. Working in small groups, the students created digital stories in French based on forensic cases in which DNA profiling was used. The study was conducted while they were learning about DNA forensics in their mainstream programme. This study provides a practical example of how Digital Storytelling (DST) can be integrated as a teaching and learning tool into the Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) classroom within a higher education context. It highlights the potential of DST to develop students’ language skills within this specialised context and facilitate the acquisition of the transferable skills needed to communicate effectively in an increasingly globalised society.

Google Translate for Writing in an Online English Class: Vietnamese Learners’ Perceptions and Performances

My Van Nguyen — 2023-07-28

The present study aimed to explore learners’ perceptions while using Google Translate (GT) during online English-Writing lessons and to evaluate its effectiveness on learners’ English writing skills. Online questionnaires and individual interviews were used to collect self-reported opinions from 24 Vietnamese students. Learner writing samples from the 12-week online session were also collected in order to identify possible improvements in writing. The findings revealed that the learners generally reported a positive effect on their writing from using Google Translate. In contrast, textual analysis of learners’ writing samples indicated that although there were slight improvements in their writing skills, problems still exist. According to an error analysis that was conducted, negative transfer of structures from the students’ L1 (Vietnamese) accounted for most of the lexical and syntactic errors identified. The findings demonstrate that GT is a useful support tool for teaching English writing. The contrastive analysis in the present study contributes to language interference studies and discussions on bilingual and multilingual education in the Vietnamese context.

An Analysis of Student Perceptions of Online Language Learning in Virtual Classrooms

Salma El Morabit — 2023-07-28

This study analyses the perceptions of students when learning in an online language learning (OLL) environment using virtual classrooms. The main goals were to find out if students enjoy learning in this manner, if they perceive learning benefits and if they would recommend this method to others. A total of 15 OLL students participated in this study and responded to an online questionnaire that mirrored a similar previous study which analysed the perception of online teachers using virtual classrooms (Manegre & Sabiri, 2020). The majority of the students surveyed (60.00%) indicated that they only enjoy learning online sometimes since they are taking OLL classes for professional and academic purposes and not for leisure purposes or general enjoyment. However, the participants of this study found OLL using virtual classrooms to be an effective instruction method and they do believe that this method of instruction is a suitable replacement for in-classroom learning.

The Development of Foreign Language Students’ Intercultural Communicative Competence through Telecollaboration

Sofia Di Sarno-García — 2023-07-28

Telecollaboration has proved to be an excellent means for the development of students’ intercultural skills (O’Dowd & Dooly, 2012). Based on this presumption, a telecollaborative project was carried out between B2 level (CEFR) learners of English from Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain) and B1 level (CEFR) students of Spanish as a foreign language from the University of Bath (UK). The aim of the project was to help learners from both universities, Aerospace Engineering students in particular, to develop their intercultural communicative competence. Throughout a six-week period, students carried out asynchronous discussions focusing on two cultural topics in groups of four and participated in synchronous Zoom sessions in pairs. The topics at the core of the discussions were a) Catalan Independence b) Digital Education. Topic a) was conducted entirely in Spanish and topic b), in English. The social network used for students’ written interaction was MeWe (www.mewe.com). To conclude the project, the participants completed a collaborative task with their overseas partners that was assessed by the instructor. Qualitative data was gathered through the students’ posts on MeWe (which was then analysed following Byram’s (1997) proposed objectives for the assessment of Intercultural Communicative Competence), analysis of transcripts from the Zoom sessions as well as a final project survey. The results from the qualitative analysis show traces and instances of all the objectives proposed by Byram (1997), while the findings from the final project questionnaire reveal that at the end of the course all participants felt they had learnt something about their partners’ culture. The quantitative analysis further demonstrates a correlation between the number of videoconference sessions and spontaneous conversation about cultural topics, which suggests that, in order for a telecollaborative project to be successful, students should attend the scheduled sessions.

Giving Students the Tools: Looking at Teaching and Learning using Corpora

Aidan Carter — 2023-07-28

This article discusses a pilot project aimed at giving tertiary students a wider repertoire of resources to use in language learning, with a particular focus on Italian. This project responds to the exponential increase in and access to online data and the potential value such data represent for students studying additional languages at tertiary level. By examining whether current language students are aware of online resources, such as linguistic corpora and other potential applications of big data, we aim to provide an insight into the possible uses of corpus-assisted learning in the language classroom. In this paper, we detail a project undertaken in 2017 with undergraduate students of Italian in a major metropolitan university. Our project directed students to complete a translation task using corpora-based resources and assessed their experience through a post-assessment survey. Subsequently, we present our initial findings in relation to the possibilities of a corpus-based approach to language teaching and learning. While today’s students are already predisposed to relying on online resources as part of their language studies, our results suggest students are not aware of emerging online resources such as corpora. Moreover, even when these resources are presented to students, the complex nature of the software programs used to interrogate corpora often results in their underutilisation.

Book Review: Telecollaboration Applications in Foreign Language Classrooms

Timothy Ashe Jr — 2023-07-28

Telecollaboration Applications in Foreign Language Classrooms

Edited by Sofia Di Sarno-García, Salvador Montaner-Villalba, and Ana Mª Gimeno-Sanz

Published in 2023 by IGI Global

Pages: 374

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-7080-

ISBN13: 9781668470800

Website https://www.igi-global.com/book/telecollaboration-applications-foreign-language-classrooms/306185

Editorial

Ana Gimeno Sanz — 2023-07-28

Editorial The EuroCALL Review Vol. 30, No.1