ENGL 4740
COMPUTER APPLICATIONS
IN LANGUAGE LEARNING
SEM II 2010/2011
ASSIGNMENT 1
LECTURER:
DR. ROZINA ABDUL GHANI
GROUP MEMBERS:
KHAIRUL AMIN ABD RASHID (0726731)
AINAA MURNI ABU BAKAR (0729442)
SITI FATIMAH MD YUSOF (0714658)
LIYANA HARUN (0622196)
SECTION 1
A: SUMMARY OF THE RESEARCH
The purpose of the research “Producing Multimedia Stories with ESL Children: A Partnership Approach” by Hsinyi Peng, Gail Fitzgerald and Meeang Ko Park is to help ESL children communicate and express their cultures with others from different cultures with the assistance of technology through multimedia story writing in multilingual version.
The research was based on qualitative research methods in gathering the information to understand and document the partnership process as well as the story-writing outcomes for both children and developers. The methods included observation of children, note-taking, shared design artifacts, interviews with the subjects during the entire process and reflections of the graduate students.
The research that was done in 2006 used partnership approach where ten foreign-born international children from six countries working as design partners with nine educational technology graduate students from the USA and three other countries like Korea, Taiwan and Turkey. They studied in a hypermedia-authoring course at a large Midwestern University. The timeline for the research was one semester study, which was five months. The class that assigned to the children was divided into two parts, content discussion which dealt with the theory and lab where the components in media production process were described. The ESL teachers and the graduate students will assist the children throughout the project.
The findings of the project were students tend to use folktales, strength of the family, dangers and separation and being new, making friends, acceptance. The performance of the ESL learners was limited due to the lack of experience with interactive multimedia stories and did not know their role as a partner. The ESL students also reflected that they enjoyed the process although it was hard and they disliked their drawings but it was cool and the partner help “neating” their stories. Hence, they had a positives impression on the project.
The University students learnt to appreciate the children’s perspectives although they encountered frustration in the beginning of the research that developed comfort after some period of times and they also learnt to respect the younger ones that made them aware and acknowledged the difference in designing for children and designing for adult. Moreover, it was found that the encouragement of multicultural understanding was interwoven within the context of working with children as authors and the feeling of caring develop from time to time.
This kind of project helped students a lot in improving language learning process as it prompted the students to be multilingual. The students had to present the story in different languages; English, Chinese and their native language. Thus, the students were not limited to the English language, but extended to their native and other languages were also valued. Furthermore, the activities held not only improving writing performance, but also reading performance as the students found it interesting to read the stories in the new multimedia technology.
B: ASPECTS RELATED TO THE HISTORY OF CALL
The research illustrates that the computer acts as a tutor, tool and pupil. The computer treats as a mechanical tutor when it encourages the ESL children to improve their performance. The project of literature-based activities provide the platform for them to improve reading and writing performance as the computer make available for various of books and websites. Some websites offer students to write their own narratives. It drives the students to explore and experiment with the language. To some extent, it improves the students in second language learning.
Besides that, computer acts as a tool where students can involve in interactive communication. While reading the story on the screen with text, the children can interact with the story by clicking on objects on the screen to animate the story, hear music, sound effects and dialog. With the use of new technologies, the students who write in multi-lingual which they posted on the website will provide discussion boards to facilitate intercultural communication. Readers can give comments, suggestions and ask question pertaining to their works.
To some extent, it can be a medium for students to showcase talent of cerativity in designing interactive and interesting multimedia presentation and at the same time they can upgrading their skill.
Regarding to the research, the computer is also can be considered as one of the students since they work with them as a group member in finishing the multimedia-writing project. It shares the information when the students go through websites to discover the information needed.
Finally, the aspect of authentic use of language also found in that research since the students are not left to work independently in finishing their job. Regarding to the resource instruction, the ESL teachers and their parents assist the children on writing stories. The teachers edit their work and match the text to the illustration. The graduate students are also ready to be the developers to assist them to create interesting and interactive multimedia features like pictures, graphics and animation. Thus in helping the students work, the teachers, graduate students and the technology are integrated in producing multimedia stories project.
