PDF file

CALL Review
July 1997
Features
From the Nets
Language Net
6
Authoring and ESL
9
Using CD-ROMs on a computer network
11
Email and Language Learning
plus Reviews
20
Issues in English ... Business Territory
CALL Review: The Journal of the Computer SIG
ISSN: 1026-4280
From the Editor
This is my first issue of CALL Review as Editor,
although I did do one issue of MUESLI News back in
the 1989. I remember that issue well. I was trying to
learn how to do DTP with Ventura Publisher and a
non-postscript printer. I could not get the software, or
the hardware for that matter, to do my bidding. It was
not a happy experience. Since than I have learned a
great deal about these things and the technology has
moved on so that the composition
process is relatively painless. Text
comes in all sorts of formats
(although I'd rather it didn't!). It
comes on paper (mostly), on disk
(occasionally) and increasingly by
email attachment. Pictures are also
easier. We can have drawn or
printed pictures which are then
scanned, screen shots, clip art,
pictures from the World Wide
Web. As a result of all this CALL
Review is now, thanks to other
previous editors, but particularly,
David Eastment, a much improved
publication and I hope that I can
live up to this tradition.
Improvement is also due to the
continued quality of the material
submitted for inclusion into the Review. Without
regular contributors the Review could not exist and I
thank all the people who have taken the time to provide
copy for this issue. Please keep the articles coming,
they can be short, or long, reports on classroom
practice, my favourite piece of software, the latest
information about technologies, something academic, a
review of software, a letter. Included in this issue is a
set of notes for contributors, it is added loose leaf, so
that it can be photocopied and passed around. Please
keep the contributions coming.
When I edited MUESLI News in 1989, all of the
information about the SIG was transmitted via the
Newsletter, but now we have three different outlets for
information. There is the Computer SIG section of the
IATEFL Web site currently being edited by Alejandro
Armellini at http://www.man.ac.uk/IATEFL/callsig/
callsig.htm and more recently there is the CALL List.
This is described by Thomas Berger on the Letters
page. Let's hope that you find time to contribute to
these as well as the Newsletter.
CALL Review - July 1997
We also need advertising to help support the
publication. The Computer SIG is now the fourth
largest of all the IATEFL SIGs with a current
worldwide mailing of nearly 600. This includes an
institutional base of nearly 150, so the actual readership
of the newsletter is considerable. Advertising rates are
on the back cover.
So now to this particular issue. As
you will see I have asked both Paul
Brett, our new Computer SIG
Coordinator and David Eastment to
make regular contributions to the
newsletter. Paul, as coordinator, has a
good overview of what is happening in
the SIG and in IATEFL in general and
will keep us up-to-date. David has also
agreed to make a regular contribution
about things new in the world of
computers in English language
education. He will also keep providing
us with technical tips to help keep us
on a trouble free computer track. Any
other such contributions from readers
would also be very welcome. We then
have two contributions from people
who spoke at IATEFL Brighton-Peter
Biddulph and Paul Cane. Peter's talk
was about learning on the World Wide Web and Peter's
about the use of CD ROMs. These articles reflect the
current state of teachers concerns about technology in
the classroom. We look forward to other contributions
from the Brighton Conference in future issues. We also
have a short piece from Margaret Kierath reporting on
developments in the Adult Migrant Education Service
in Australia. This is an article about authoring. Then we
have a collection of articles about email. Aidan Thorne
who works in Poland, Chris Copland, based in Singapore and Elizabeth Bridges who reports on a project
conducted in Italy. All of these articles take a different
angle on the role of email and together give you a good
picture of what are some of the possibilities and pitfalls.
In the letters' section we have a request for penfriends
for students and teachers of English in Latvia. This I
think is a more traditional form of penfriends, but things
change rapidly. We also have two software reviews one
by Tony Williams a regular contributor to the
Newsletter and one by Mike Nelson, an occasional
contributor.
GaryMotteram
Page 2
— From the Chair —
The major event in the IATEFL calendar the annual conference was held this year in Brighton and it was
wonderful to have a chance to meet so many Computer SIG members, from all around the, world face to face. The
Computer SIG Open Forum was also very well attended with some 50 members present and many useful ideas put
forward on the future of our SIG. With impending elections for posts on the Computer SIG committee (the first time
they have ever been held), the Brighton conference also marked a transition in the history of the SIG with our
founding fathers, namely Glyn Jones, Tony Williams and David Eastment now taking more of a background role in
the SIGs activities. I am sure that you would like to thank them for their pioneering and dedicated work on behalf of
the SIG over the last decade. Gary Motteram has also stood down as SIG coordinator and will be a very hard act to
follow but will be working tirelessly in his new position as Newsletter editor and as this issue shows he has many new
ideas to enliven it.
The Computer SIG track at Brighton presented a showcase for the range of possible applications of computers
for language learning. The uses of the World Wide Web and multimedia were well represented together with
fascinating papers on the use of word processing software, edutainment, self access applications and uses of
Computers for testing. It was also interesting to note at Brighton an increase in the number of papers on the use of
computers outside of the track. As expected all presenters on the track went through the customary pre-paper anxiety
of "will it work or won't it" but we were very happy to report no failures and many thanks also to the conference
organisers for helping us ensure everything worked.
Peter Biddulph opened the track with a look an interactive Web site for language learning including a facility
whereby teachers could put their own interactive material up. Donald Friend demonstrated his self access materials
including some innovative pronunciation software and Fionnuala O'Connell demonstrated her work on testing from
John Moores University. Aldo Higashi from Peru eloquently and powerfully put forward the many ways of using the
internet for communicative practice including MOOs. Park Kyongchol talked about the effect of using keypals on his
students writing. Diana Lindsay demonstrated some fascinating software developed for use in the school situation and
Pete Sharina, dipping into a variety of CD-ROM software outlined many ideas for using multimedia for a variety of
aspects of Business English. Valerie Bevan closed the track with one of the most innovative of papers which showed
how the colour coding facility in Word could be used in the correction of learners' written transcriptions.
You'll find that in this Newsletter there are write-ups of two of the talks given at Brighton and we hope that
future issue will contain more.
Paul Brett
New Committee and SIG Events
The Computer SIG now has a new committee following nominations for elections held earlier in the year. Paul Brett
is now Coordinator as I've mentioned, Alejandro Armellini is currently Web Wizard, although at the end of this year
there will be an election as there was a second nomination for this post. Then we have an events coordinator - Tilly
Warren and a communications officer - Dede Teeler. David Mason from the British Council also joins the committee.
Contact information for Paul and myself are on the back cover of the issue. Email addresses for other committee
members are also included.
The new committee have been working hard to put together a series of events for the rest of this year and into 1998
details as follows:-
18 October 1997 IT for All in EFL Waltham Forest College, Walthamstow. Contact Tilly Warren for
further details.
28 Feb 1998 Distance Learning and the Web Christ Church College. Canterbury. Contact Alejandro
Armellini for further details.
14 April 1998 Two parallel events: An Introduction to Computers in the Language Classroom and the
World Wide Web for Language Teaching? Pre- Conference Event, School of Education, The University
of Manchester. Contact Gary Motteram for further details.
June 1998 Madrid Details to be announced. Contact Dede Teeler for further details.
CALL Review - July 1997
Page 3
From the Nets
David Eastment
A new feature from our retired, but certainly not
forgotten, Newsletter editor. You might like to
contribute ideas to David or to myself for inclusion in
this column.
Viruses
I've been pretty lucky over the years. In spite of
downloading programs and files at least once a week,
I've rarely had problems with viruses, and all the
potential hazards have been picked up by my anti-virus
software (currently Norton).
The disturbing thing over the last few months has
been the rise of viruses embedded into Word
documents. Before Word 6, this was impossible; now, it
seems to be becoming more and more common that
documents attached to emails have something nasty in
them. At first it was just the well-known Concept virus;
more recently, I've had Jakarta, Wazzu and Nuclear.
(Nuclear is by far the worst: it drops in a second virus,
called Ph33r which infects .COM and .EXE files.)
The problem is with Word's macros. There are all
sorts of ways around the problem: one is to go to the
Microsoft site and download their macro, which works
well with Concept but doesn't detect the others. There
are other suggestions (particularly for Mac users) in a
recent thread on TESLC A-L.
My own tuppenyworth is to suggest disabling all
macros which autostart when you enter Word. The
easiest way to do this is to write your own macro (with
Tools, Macro). I can't see that any macro virus can get
past this. But of course, I have been known to be wrong
in the past.
SUB MAIN
DisableAutoMacros 1
MSG Box "Automatic Macros now off', -1
END SUB
Articles
If you haven't seen the most recent ELTJ (July 97), go
dig it out. It has a useful article by Mike Carrier on the
Internet and ELT. It covers everything one would
expect, but strikes a few cautionary notes:
"... multimedia and Internet-based computermediated learning can become so obsessed with the
richness of the information sources they provide that
they can often obscure a shallow treatment of the
language and a pedagogically passive set of activities
-click here, click there, listen, read, click."
Carrier's treatment is thorough, and well-informed.
For all his caveats, he is an Internet enthusiast.
Unfortunately, and less understandably, he also seems
to be a Microsoft fan, or at least to accept their
hegemony: "Microsoft Internet Explorer is planned to
become a free and integral part of Windows during
1997, so there seems to be no need for anyone to
CALL Review - July 1997
purchase, learn, or think about other browsers. Those
with Mosaic or Netscape should upgrade to [this] de
facto standard immediately." Thanks but no thanks: I
shall be sticking with Netscape!
Carrier, M: "A survey of ELT online". English
Language Teaching Journal, 51/3: 279-309
Books
Dave Sperling will be known to many readers for his
stunning "ESL Cafe on the Web" site. If you haven't
been there, you should. It's at http://www.eslcafe.com;
and it is probably the best ESL site on the Web.
The book disappointed me, I'm afraid. The first 50
pages are introductory, and cover the same ground as
pretty much any introduction to the Web: History of the
Internet, how to find information, using email, and lists,
and creating your own pages in HTML. The pages have
an EFL spin to them, to be sure, but they contain little
you wouldn't find in any primer. The next 50 pages are
devoted to "Dave's Guide to the Best of the Web":
addresses, sometimes with, sometimes without
comments, of useful sites for the English teacher and
learner. And then a section on finding jobs, a chapter on
Copyright Law .... and that's it, bar a few appendices.
(And who on earth wants three pages of country codes?)
No teaching ideas, no methodological perspectives, and
little in the way of suggestions for practical activities.
For the newcomer to the Internet, however, the
book is a worthwhile introduction. It has always seemed
a nonsense to me to produce a printed listing of Web
sites: this sort of resource belongs on the Web, where at
least it can be kept up to date. But if you have to have a
paper listing, Sperling's is one of the best available. And
he writes easily and fluently. The book might not
exactly be bedside reading, but it is certainly browsable.
Sperling, D: The Internet Guide for English
Teachers Prentice Hall Regents ISBN: 0-13-841073-9
Futurology
So you thought that the Internet was "the flagship of
global English"? So did I, until I read David Graddol's
compelling "Future of English". It may be true that 80%
of the information stored on the world's computers is in
English, and it is undoubtedly the case that the language
of the Internet is overwhelmingly English at the
moment. But Graddol predicts that “as computer usage
spreads, English content on the Internet may fall to 40%
of the total material.” All this and much more in what
looks to be one of the more interesting reads of 1997.
Graddol, D: The Future of English? English 2000
(due October 1977)
Page 4
Utilities
Without bookmarks, or what Internet Explorer calls
"favorites", we'd all be spending far too much time
typing in obscure URLs and creating our own databases
to record our preferred sites. But even the greatest fan
of browsers would have to admit that they can be a real
pain. Internet Explorer cannot read Netscape
bookmarks; organization is difficult; printing is
restricted.... the list is a long one.
There's a great solution to hand, though, with
Columbine Bookmark Merge. CBM will read and
manipulate files in most major formats (Netscape,
Internet Explorer, NCSA Mosaic and Opera). Once you
have read in your bookmark file (a slightly slow
process), you can break it up into parts (and sort, save
and print the parts separately); convert it into other
formats; publish it in a wide variety of HTML formats;
and much more.
CBM is unusual for being MemorialWare (written
by his son in memory of the educator Frank Cramblitt).
And the good news is that it is completely free, unless
you choose to make a donation. Highly recommended.
You can download Columbine Bookmark Merge at
http://www.clark.net/pub/garyc/. With a good
connection and a fast modem, it takes about 10 minutes.
Mailing lists
How many lists are you on? I sometimes feel that there
are far too many - at least a dozen for EFL alone, at the
last count. The problem with most is that they are far
too general: you have to sift through a good deal of
CALL Review - July 1997
irrelevance for the nuggets. The answer is to subscribe,
as far as possible, to specialist lists which cater to your
particular predilections.
If you are at all interested in South American ELT,
the latest list from Martin Eayrs (well-known for his
"News and Views" magazine) is the one for you. It is
aimed at teachers who wish to "receive periodic news
and information about events, calls for papers, new
products, etc., concerned with the ELT profession in
southern South America". And it's free.
To subscribe, send an email to
<[email protected]>. In the header (not the body of
the message) put the message: SUB N&V List.
Search engines
It seems to have been around for ages now, but I'm
surprised by how few people have heard of it. HotBot,
the Search Engine from Wired magazine.
To my mind, it's faster and more flexible than Alta
Vista (but it difficult to judge such things objectively).
It claims to index far more pages than the competition:
60 million as compared to AV's 30 million. It certainly
seems to show up far more hits than an AV search.
There are a few off-putting features. The page
background is a dreadful (but probably deeply
fashionable) lime green; and more importantly, it's not
immediately apparent how you actually execute the
query you have typed in. But it is, for the time being, a
firm favourite of mine.
You can find HotBot at http://www.hotbot.com
Page 5
Language Net
Peter Biddulph
interactive exercises in order that they may learn
and practise their English.
The first exercise demonstrated was a quiz on the arts.
This exercise focuses on the syntax of sentences
containing the past simple passive and an agent. The
exercise functions as a compositional tool highlighting
and familiarising students with the construction of such
sentences rather than merely requiring the learner to
select the right answer to a question.
The Quiz on The Arts consists of sentences each
'chunked' into 3 parts:
2.To provide teachers and students with teaching
the work of art, the verb phrase and the agent (artist).
At the IATEFL conference in Brighton this year a web
site providing interactive exercises for language
learning on the Internet was demonstrated.
The web site was created by Language Net to
achieve the following objectives:
1.To provide students with authentic texts and
materials and authoring programs in order that they
may develop their own interactive exercises.
The Internet, and in particular the World Wide Web, is
an ideal environment for the creation and dissemination
of interactive language materials since the exercises are
accessible worldwide, and the supporting programs run
on almost any computer. The programs also run offline,
i.e. on a machine without
an Internet connection.
Language Net has
developed a suite of
programs which support a
wide variety of exercise
types commonly found
in the Cambridge
Examinations and many
course books. All the
programs detailed below
enable the user to create
their own exercises using
any simple text editor such
as Notepad.
Using the familiar
medium of the World Wide Web, the exercises present
examples of language from authentic contexts, evaluate
a user's input and provide feedback. Feedback may be
given automatically by the programs or, in the case of a
free practice exercise, the learner's input is
automatically forwarded to a teacher's e-mail address
for moderation by means of a web form (see below the final picture p 6).
Students respond by selecting from a list of words
and phrases, or by entering text. Many of the exercises
accept either form of response, i.e. they may be set to
learn mode or test mode; students may try an exercise
with the words displayed in a menu before testing
themselves by entering their own text.
Examples implementing types of exercise found in
the Cambridge Examinations and in course books were
presented at the IATEFL conference to familiarise the
audience with the mechanisms involved and highlight
the underlying aims.
CALL Review - July 1997
eg. 'Psycho' [was painted by]
[was directed by]
[was written by]
[George Orwell].
[David Hockney].
[Alfred Hitchcock].
Clicking on the black horizontal menu bar at the top of
the screen will display the user's selection in the main
part of the screen below. In this example a quiz on the
arts is in progress.
The operation and
feedback mechanisms are
simple and consistent: when
the correct selection is made
the target word or phrase is
printed to the page in green
and the input device (list box,
radio button or text box) is
removed; otherwise the input
device remains and displays
the incorrect selection.
You will note that the
user has completed sentences
1 and 5 ccorrectly, while
sentences 2 and 3 are partially
correct. The correct selections: Da Vinci, Hitchcock
and Orwell have been removed from the remaining list
boxes. This process of elimination helps the student to
complete the exercise.
Programs to practise editing skills
Paper 3 of the Cambridge Certificate in Advanced
English contains questions requiring the revision or
correction of two short texts designed to test ability to
refine and proofread samples of written English.
Language Net has developed a program to provide
interactive exercises of this type. See the example on
page 5.
A series of exercises based on a text
'The Sick Lion', a fable by Aesop, formed the basis for
the next exercises.
Page 6
A lion, unable from old age and infirmities to provide
himself with food by force, resolved to do so by artifice.
He returned to his den, and lying down there,
pretended to be sick, taking care that his sickness
should be publicly known. The beasts expressed their
sorrow, and came one by one to his den, where the lion
devoured them. After many of the beasts had thus
disappeared, the fox discovered the trick and
presenting himself to the lion, stood on the outside of
the cave, at a respectful distance, and asked him how
he was. "I am very middling," replied the lion, "but
why do you stand without? Pray enter within to talk
with me. " "No, thank you, " said the fox. "I notice that
there are many prints of feet entering your cave, but I
see no trace of any returning. "
3 Four exercises on linking words and phrases
The student is presented with example sentences, and
then directed to a series of increasingly challenging
exercises in which the focus shifts from comprehension
and recognition to composition and use.
1. Match sentences halves where one half contains a
linking word or phrase.
MORAL: He is wise who is warned by the misfortunes of
others.
1
Reading comprehension
Construction of sentences paraphrasing the original
text.
eg. The lion couldn't [go into] [for the lion]
The beasts felt
[hunt]
[the lion's den]
The fox wouldn't [sorry]
[for food]
'The lion couldn't hunt for food', paraphrases the
original:
'The lion was unable to provide himself with food by
force'.
2.Select the appropriate linking word or phrase to
complete the sentences.
3.Select the appropriate linking word and sentence
'tail'.
4. Students type in their own words to complete
the sentences.
2
Word search exercise
A number of words and phrases are given (ate, decided,
etc.). The student has to type in a word similar in
meaning from the text (devoured, resolved, etc.).
CALL Review - July 1997
Page 7
Contextual cues in the first exercise help the student
to match the two halves while familiarising them with
the linking devices. The next exercises test the
learner's ability to use an appropriate linking phrase.
The last, free practice, exercise requires moderation.
In this instance the completed exercise is forwarded
to a teacher via e-mail.
Finally, an authoring program was demonstrated.
Teachers and students can create their own cloze
exercises on-line from anywhere in the world. After
entering their text, the mouse is used to select words
or phrases to gap. To gap a phrase one simply types
[square brackets] around it. The program then
automatically creates your gap-fill exercise and gives
you its Internet address so that you may access it again.
Interactive images
The web permits the creation of images containing 'hot
spots' which may have links to other images, texts or
sound. Language Net's web site utilises this function in
an interactive phonemic chart: a user clicking on a
phoneme in the chart is presented with a list of words
containing the sound in initial, medial and final
position.
There are numerous other exercises on Language
Net's web site. Try out the exercises at
http://www.point2.co.uk/lnet/
WorldCALL Update
WorldCALL
CALL to Creativity
13 - 17 July 1998
Inaugural World Conference on Computer-Assisted Language Learning
Venue: The University of Melbourne, Australia
Professor Ben Shneiderman, world expert in human-computer interface design, will be a Keynote Speaker at WorldCALL!
Call for Papers has been extended! Owing to many requests, the closing date for submission of
abstracts is now 15 October 1997. Notification of acceptance will be made by 1 December 1997.
CALL Review - July 1997
Page 8
Authoring and ESL
Margaret Kierath
Adult Migrant Education Service (AMES), Labour
Market Programs has made a grand entrance to the
world of technology and computer aided language
learning. We moved from nothing to staff producing
their own multimedia materials in six short months.
The plan was to provide training in industry
standard word processing, spreadsheeting and desktop
publishing as well as specific programs which addressed the language needs of the students. The latter
was a more difficult issue because of the wide range
of language competencies being taught - no software
exists which is accessible in terms of price and local
relevance.
We wanted an authoring program which:
 enabled teachers to produce materials in a
short
time
 was not dependent on programming skills
 was not expensive and
 allowed integration of text, graphics, sound
and
video.
Such requirements ruled out Authorware, Macromedia
Director, Toolbook and other programs currently
available.
We settled on Microvitec Creator, software
originally designed for use with touchscreens. It works
on a book metaphor - actions attach to objects which
turn to designated pages. Sound is easy to incorporate
after it has been recorded and standard graphic
formats - .pcx, .tif, .gif - are fully supported.
No royalties are payable to Microvitec should we
decide to sell some of our materials and the program
conies with a packager which "publishes" the files
created. In other words, the related Creator run-time,
text, graphic, sound and video files are compressed to
allow easy installation to other computers
Any software choice is a compromise and chief
among the shortcomings of Creator are that it does not:
 allow text input of more than one letter at a
time
 allow users to move objects around (as,
for
example, in a matching exercise)
 keep track of students' progress.
So far these characteristics have not held us back and
staff have produced materials which are colourful,
relevant and fun for the students to use. Most materials
are an adjunct to other work students are doing - they
may have to use the computer to find information that
has to be written on worksheets.
The training was structured so that teachers with
no computing skills were led through the program,
initially producing simple materials which, for
instance, taught recognition of logos of government
departments and authorities, banks and organisations.
The ingredients of the materials were prepared in
advance so that staff could focus on the particular
skills. Just as importantly, at the end of the session we
had as many sets of materials as there were people in
the class.
Six months on, staff have had training on
 Windows 3.11
 Word for Windows,
 Microsoft Publisher
 Microsoft Excel
 Gapmaster
 Microvitec Creator
They have developed
 Form filling templates
 Posters
 Signs for the classroom
 Worksheets
Authored exercises which focus on
 prepositions
 different types of containers
 fruit and vegetables
 compass directions
 homophones
 parking signs
 road signs
The achievement in such a short time has been
remarkable but can be attributed to several factors:
The organisation has been very supportive of the
efforts of teachers, to the extent that the managers of
the section have attended as many of the training
sessions as time has permitted. The project has been
allowed to evolve and no undue pressure has been
applied to teachers or the trainer.
The staff have taken a leap of faith and have been
very enthusiastic and committed. The quality of what
they have produced has been very high and they have
been able to make informed decisions about future
projects.
Sufficient time has been set aside to enable
projects to be completed within a short time frame. We
therefore avoid the problems of time stretching on and
little being achieved.
Students come into the computing centre in class
groups and have made great strides forward. Our
problem now is simply one of scheduling - how can we
accommodate all those who want to use the machines.
Our future plans include the purchase of a further
8 computers to supplement our existing network of 13.
These will be for more individual work and will have
access to the Internet.
Margaret Kierath is the computer trainer at Adult Migrant
Education Services, Labour Market Programs, Perth,
Western Australia
vvv
CALL Review - July 1997
Page 9
Using CD-ROMs on a computer network
Paul Cane
A
Hardware
With apologies to the those allergic to mild doses of
computer-speak
The Bell IT department has set up a suite of
networked computers at the Bell Language School in
Saffron Walden. Nothing special about this, you rightly
say. What is special is that this system allows for CDROMs to be networked to the computers at the speed of
a reasonable Pentium stand-alone PC. This is done by
putting a CD-ROM serving device onto the network
allowing CDs to be copied in compressed form and sent
out to each PC as requested. The net effect of this is to
allow all the computers, at good speed, to access the
same or different CDs simultaneously (faster than a
network delivering multimedia via a CD "juke box").
So a teacher could direct all the students to access a
particular part of, for example, Encarta. And there is no
physical handling of the discs or danger of the masters
getting damaged or pinched. This is a fantastic resource
that will bring a range of EFL and authentic materials
to the computer classroom, in the form of audio,
written text, pictures and video.
Setting open-ended search to research tasks that allow
students to follow own interests. E.g.: "Choose a topic
you are interested in and look it up on the CD. Prepare
to give a 2 minute talk to your partner based on what
you've found out".
B
Exploiting the software
Below are a few examples of activities that exploit nonEFL CD-ROMs. Some can be used with just a single
CD-ROM machine available (notably those involving
the teacher generating a worksheet for a lesson)
whereas others require that the whole class (perhaps in
small groups) has access to the CD-ROM. Most of
these activities were developed by Pete Simmons who
works at the Bell Saffron Walden: thanks Pete!
4
1. Activities with explicit language work
Copying text (and pictures, sounds?) from a CD into a
word-processing program and making a language task
e.g. gap fill, error correction, summary to complete,
reading comprehension etc.
Jigsaw listening/reading tasks done in pairs/
groups with a spoken information exchange e.g. using
the Unsolved Mysteries articles in Take a Tour in
Encarta.
Focusing on specific language points e.g.
comparatives for comparing population etc. of different
countries in the Dorling Kindersley Atlas.
2
Study Skills activities: search to research
Quizzes that require use of a range of search tools e.g.
Find, Categories, Media, Articles, Word, Links,
Related Articles in Encarta.
CALL Review - July 1997
3. Activities focused on content
Writing reviews of films or music using contrasting
reviews in Cinemania and Music Central.
Reading about an artist/actor/film before listening
to music or watching a film (Cinemania, Music
Central).
Finding material on a CD related to topic of
coursebook/lesson.
Writing 'newspapers' for a particular year using
Chronicle of the 20thC,
Making timelines of their own lives including
world events using Chronicle of the 20thC.
Using Guided Tour —> Arts—> Famous Movies
in Encarta to stimulate students' own choice of top 5
films: using Cinemania to research and write up their
Top 5.
Projects and presentations
Putting text and pictures (and sound?) into students'
written reports/projects.
Preparing a multimedia show with a recorded
commentary using the Editing Room in Compton's
Encyclopaedia.
Individuals prepare to give oral presentations to
class on a topic of interest e.g. their own country using
'Fact Box' in Encarta.
5
Developing in-house multimedia materials
using CD-ROMs
Copying and editing text, pictures, audio, video into
word-processing documents e.g. to build up a bank of
self-access listening materials (with tasks and feedback
sheets) for students to do on the computers. Make the
masters read-only!
Use document linking to provide easy access to
answer, feedback sheets (i.e. the students do a
worksheet on the computer and click on an icon at the
bottom of the page to go straight to the answer sheet).
Making imaginative use of pictures e.g. matching
film stills from Cinemania with film titles and extracts
of reviews.
This is a summary of a talk given at IATEFL '97 by
Paul Cane. He is a Senior Tutor at the Bell Language
School, Cambridge. He has a special responsibility
across the Bell UK Schools for CALL.
Page 10
Email and language learning
We have had a number of articles recently about email, so I have include three in here from different parts of the
world to give you an insight into what people are doing with one of the oldest and most stable internet facilities. On
the letters page you will find information about the CALL SIG's own email List.
Using IT to enhance
communications: a Polish
experience
Aidan Thorne
Introduction
Implementing new technology in educational settings
is problematic at the best of times; expense, resistance
on the part of both teachers and learners, and lack of
computer awareness being just three of the issues that
most commonly emerge as difficulties. It could be
argued that such factors have frequently led to computer technology remaining the preserve of the
'hobbyists', or those whom Tribble (1996) calls the '
techno-freaks', rather than becoming more mainstream
in its application. I would argue that this picture is
changing and that there appears to be a growing
interest amongst educators in general in the potential
roles IT in its various forms may play in the
educational arena. This makes it relevant to put some
of the issues and problems surrounding IT in the
spotlight. This brief article will trace the main
features of a pioneering initiative funded by the
British Council PRINCE project in Poland to link 10
Polish teacher training colleges by fax modem and E
mail. It will explore some of the problems and
successes so far, and provide a model for those
working in other contexts who may be interested in
treading a similar development path.
Background -why use IT in Poland
There is a network of some 50+ initial teacher
training colleges within Poland which were originally
set up to overcome the huge shortfall of foreign
language teachers for schools that existed at the end
of the 1980s. The network is divided into 8 regions,
or clusters, across the country for the purposes of
academic supervision and the Poznan cluster, which is
made up of 10 colleges, is one of these. The idea of
enhancing inter-college links within the Poznan
cluster stemmed from a clearly perceived need,
documented over a number of years, to find a solution
to the chronic communication problems which were
hampering cluster administration. In short in the past
it was not easy, or even at times possible, to make
contact with people, be certain that documents would
arrive safely or simply pass on messages. Three
underlying factors created this situation:
CALL Review - July 1997
•An inefficient surface mail system The local surface
mail system has proved to be slow and, at times,
unreliable
•Limited access to tele-communications In Poland
telephones are not as widely available as in other
European contexts and consequently access to
telephone and fax facilities may be limited
•High tele-communications costs The cost of items
such as fax machines and related running costs such
as online charges have, in the past, placed IT beyond
the budgets of many institutions
We decided therefore, to consider linking the college
network via computers linked to fax modem devices.
The main reason for considering the fax modem
option over any other potential solution to the
problems we faced was that most of the colleges in
the cluster already had access to a computer of one
sort or another (see next section for details) and it was
felt that these could be utilised to provide a fairly
cheap and flexible solution to local communication
problems. The rationale was that colleges could at
least use the fax modem + a computer to send hard
copy information or, at best, find a service provider in
their locality and set up an E Mail communications
link. A third reason for going down this road was that,
technically speaking, it was seen as the easy option;
although this was not discussed in any detail, there
was a general assumption, correct in some cases but
erroneous in others, that adequate expertise existed in
the various colleges to support the setting up process.
Progress to date
Financial support for buying the fax modems was
provided by a British Council grant in late 1995, with
equipment being purchased and sent out to the
colleges by March 1996. Currently 9 (of the 10)
colleges are able to use the fax modem for fax
purposes and 7 of them have managed to set up an E
Mail link with a service provider in their locality; 2
more will establish a link in the near future and 1 is
still exploring its options. The original initiative
involved supplying fax modems to each of the 10
colleges to facilitate administration and inter-college
communications. This has undoubtedly been
successful. Evidence for this can be seen by the ever
growing amount of cluster business that is now
conducted by E Mail. Significantly, some of the
colleges are now beginning to use the link to help
with the administration of ongoing cluster devel-
Page 12
opmental work (syllabus, assessment standardisation
etc.) by using it to disseminate documents via E Mail
attachments. The central college in Poznan is even
developing a web presence with this aim in mind.
Currently it is using its pages to display and disseminate
information about the Regional Practical English
(RPET) component of the initial teacher education
programme which was recently developed by all the
colleges within the cluster. Another, and perhaps the
most interesting feature of the initiative, is that it seems
now to be developing a momentum of its own; certain
colleges have started to explore the use of computer
technology for academic as well as administrative
purposes. At least two of the colleges have either
developed, or are currently developing, Educational
Technology courses and there is widespread interest
throughout the cluster in
exploring the various
ways in which the
technology may be put to
use; options currently
under consideration
include the use of word
processors, CD-ROMs
and concordance
packages for materials
development, EMail
writing projects, the
WWW and multimedia
authoring packages.
Feedback from the colleges indicates, not surprisingly,
that a major attraction of having such a link is speed of
communications: they do not need to wait for days or
even weeks for a response, but can receive one in a
matter of minutes or hours. However, progress to date
has not been lacking in problems and in retrospect the
path could have been made a lot smoother. As will be
discussed in the following sections, a lack of
standardisation in both hardware and software, and
differing levels of staff expertise throughout the cluster
has proved a hindrance.
have been better to follow a more organised path at an
earlier stage. This would have involved checking on
exactly what equipment and software, if any, were
available in the individual colleges, thus providing the
opportunity to work out what gaps existed and how to
go about plugging them.
2
Staff
The hardware and software related problems were
compounded by the existence of a wide diversity of
computer awareness amongst the staff of different
colleges, ranging from knowing a very great deal in
some cases to literally knowing nothing at all in
others. The result was that there has been only limited
uniformity across the cluster with the actual setting up
process (i.e. connecting fax modems, installing and
configuring software
etc.). In my opinion
the time taken to reach
the current state of
development could
have been halved if we
had been more
organised at an earlier
stage and checked on
the level and type of
expertise that was
available in the cluster
colleges. This would
have highlighted the fact that there was a need for
ongoing training in two areas:
 The development of basic microcomputer skills
(wordprocessing, keyboard skills etc.).
"The model that follows presents the
route that we would, in retrospect, have
followed if we had the opportunity to
start again. It takes the form of two
stages, a 'finding out' stage and a
'setting up and ongoing development'
stage. "
Problems
1
Hardware - Software
The main problems experienced so far stem from the
fact that there was, at best, only limited standardisation
in the software and hardware used by different
colleges. For example, while all the colleges ran IBM
PC compatible machines these came in various vintages
ranging from the old ATVXT DOS based type to 486 or
higher specification machines running Windows based
software packages. Evidently this has had serious
implications for technical support. To dale the cluster
has had to stretch its technical expertise to cover an
extremely wide area, and although we have somehow
managed to field all the problems posed so far, in some
cases this has been done at the risk of straining our
resources to breaking point. In retrospect, it would
CALL Review - July 1997

The development of a working knowledge of
fax and email software. This would include
learning how to send a fax and use an E mail
program (a handler or interface), e.g. Elm, Eudora,
Pine, to send, read, reply to, forward mail and
send attachments.
To date the solution to both of these problems has been
to provide support in the form of one-off training
sessions where needed, conducted by staff from the
main college in Poznan who have travelled to outlying
colleges to provide intensive 1 day training sessions.
However, this has proved to be costly, time consuming
and inefficient; long distances have to be covered in a
day, often leaving little time available for the actual
training. We are currently exploring two ideas: holding
weekend regional training workshops for
representatives from across the cluster to provide them
with hands-on training sessions that can be further
disseminated within their colleges, and setting up
training sessions conducted on a distance learning basis
via E Mail.
Page 13
A Proposed Model
The model that follows presents the route that we
would, in retrospect, have followed if we had the
opportunity to start again. It takes the form of two
stages, a 'finding out' stage and a 'setting up and
ongoing development' stage. The aim of the former
would be to lay the groundwork upon which to base the
ongoing development of the initiative. Each of the
stages is made up of the main issues, and related subquestions that we have had to answer as part of the
development to date, although we have not dealt with
them in such an organised fashion. It is not expected
that all of them will be relevant to all technological
initiatives or all contexts although, intuitively, I would
suggest that most of them are issues which would need
to be addressed in some guise. The model therefore
provides basic rather than detailed guidelines on which
to base other initiatives.
A. Finding out
Why introduce the technology?
Do we need it?
Is there an easier solution?
Will everyone concerned support it?
Will all the colleges be able to use it?
Is there a local service provider?
all the colleges using it?
Where to go from here?
Arc there other things that the technology can be used
for?
How can ongoing development be coordinated?
Comment
Although not entirely problem free in its early stages,
the initiative has been of enormous benefit both
academically and administratively to the Poznan cluster
as a whole. Not only has it eased many communication
problems, but it has opened up new professional
horizons. As IT starts to become a more integral part of
the work of the regional colleges it has become apparent
that there is an abundance of interest, enthusiasm and,
hitherto invisible expertise available to be tapped. The
challenge now facing the cluster is to learn from past
mistakes, to coordinate a fully organised initiative and
to consolidate what has been achieved so far.
References
Tribble.C (1996) "Corpora, Concordances and ELT"
IATEFL NEWSLETTER No130 pp 25-26
Aidan Thorne is currently working for the British
Council PRINCE project in Poland as a Regional
Teacher Trainer. He can be contacted at:
[email protected]
How much will it cost?
Is it cost effective?
E-Mail across the Classroom
How will we pay for it?
Practising writing and speaking on a computer network
What Technology should we use?
Chris Copland
What hardware\software does each college currently
have?
As electronic mail has become more widespread in
recent years, there have been a number of attempts to
investigate the potential of this new medium for
language learning. Soh and Soon (1991), for example,
relate how a secondary school English class in
Singapore created a link with one in French Quebec
over the internet. This article will describe a more
modest project, one which simply took advantage of
how e-mail can be used for communication within a
classroom or college. The results, however, proved to
be no less exciting and, of course, a lot easier to set up
than anything over the 'net. They also suggested that
this kind of activity can be an excellent training ground
for both students and teachers before they embark on
more ambitious voyages into cyberspace.
What then is e-mail and why should it concern
people who can quite adequately express their thoughts
with an old-fashioned pen and paper?
"E-mail is such an improvement on every other
form of communication", enthuses Angus Kennedy in
"The Rough Guide to the Internet." "That it will
revolutionise the way and amount you communicate."
Are there any local gaps to be filled?
How can they be filled?
What initial training\support may be required?
Do we need to prepare support documentation (accessible setting up\operating instructions)?
What expertise is available locally?
Is there someone available in each college to set it up?
What pre-i installation training is necessary?
Who will do the training? Who will get the training?
Where should the training be done? (locally or regionally)
B. Setting up-ongoing
Who has installation problems?
Is further technical support required?
Evaluation - Has it achieved its purpose?
Is the system functioning? Are
CALL Review - July 1997
Page 14
There has been so much overexcitement associated
with the Internet in recent years that it is, perhaps wise
to treat such claims with a pinch of salt. However,
there are some aspects of electronic mail that make it
unique.
"You can send an e-mail message to anyone with an email address anywhere in the world instantaneously, "
explains Kennedy, "However, it's always a local call,
however far you send it. "
E-mail is easy, quick and cheap. Data is typed
onto a computer screen and then sent via a connection
to the telephone line to the recipient's computer. The
format of an e-mail message should be familiar to
anyone who has ever written an office memo. It
involves completing boxes for "to" and "from", giving
a subject heading and then typing the message itself.
There are other interesting features such as being able
to attach a computer file to the message, but these need
not concern us here as the focus of this particular
project was on sending text messages.
The project came about when a "P-mail system
was introduced for the staff at the College in which I
was working. This system functioned like e-mail, but
had no connection to an external telephone line, its aim
being to allow staff within the same building to send
electronic messages to one another. The Network
Manager did not take much persuading to extend the Pmail facility to the user accounts of a class of my
Business English students.
The idea I had at the time was to spice up a lesson
writing memos by using the electronic medium that
had been designed to supersede them. Using e-mail
had face validity, as this was the form of
communication that the students themselves would
more than likely have to use when they entered
employment. It also had an advantage over say word
processing the memos in that it did not just involve
composing messages but also sending them. The
medium was intrinsically communicative.
I had tried before then to introduce a
communicative element into business correspondence
classes by getting groups to write letters to each other.
Littlejohn's "Company to Company", for example,
successfully adopts this interactive approach through
the use of role cards and chains of tasks. These kinds
of activities had tended to fall down, however, on
timing. Students would finish their messages at
different times. Moreover, the passing to and fro of
bits of paper did not appear authentic as sending and
replying letters usually takes place over a period of
days or weeks.
E-mail, as an instantaneous medium, however,
offered the opportunity of a real-time simulation.
Safety First - a business simulation by e-mail
Three roles were assigned in this activity about an
accident on a building site - the Managing Director of
the construction company, the Safely Officer and the
Site Manager. As the triangle shows, this thus
involved communication in the company hierarchy in
CALL Review - July 1997
three directions - upward, downward and horizontally.
The language focus of the lesson was thus on
practising the correct styles
of
language for these three
kinds
of communication.
The groups read and
discussed the role cards
(see end of the article) and
drafted their responses to
the initial situation on a
memo pad. They then copied
them onto the e-mail screen and sent them. Drafting is
a practice to be encouraged and this also helped with
the fact that different groups would complete their
messages at different times. If one group finished the
first stage quickly, drafting their response in the second
stage on paper gave time for the first e-mail messages
from the other groups to arrive. This was important
because these messages fed new information into the
simulation thus forcing a rethink of their responses.
The intention was that the messages would then begin
to snowball.
What was the reaction of the students to this
activity? None of them had ever used e-mail before
and they were all clearly interested to learn this new IT
skill. They responded to the role play in a lively way
and produced some written work of a high standard.
The funding council inspector who was sitting on the
back row was also clearly impressed.
However, the simulation only moved through its
two predictable stages, which was perhaps just as well
given the inspector's presence. This started me
thinking, however, of other ways to get a continuous
chain of messages going. The result was the following
activity which, instead of focusing on writing skills,
attempted to generate a class discussion via the
network.
Party time - computer conferencing on the cheap
This lesson took advantage of the fact that you can
send a single e-mail message to as many addresses as
you want. The simple though tedious way of doing
this is to key in each address one after the other in the
"To" box. As short cut, however, is to create an
"address list", which can be activated with a couple of
key strokes. For this activity the address list was that
of all the class members, the result being that a class
"conference" could be held over the computer network.
A comment typed in by any class member would be
received by all the others.
I decided to see what effect this kind of
'"conferencing" would have on a straightforward class
brainstorm. I sent the members of the same business
English group a message asking for suggestions for a
class social event. Each member sent their response
using the class address list and then read the messages
from of all of the other class members. I then told
them to respond to the most interesting ideas. From
this point, the number of messages began to mushroom
and the activity took on a life of its own. Some of the
Page 15
messages were long, considered contributions, others
were short wisecracks. Interestingly, a kind of subtext
started to develop where individuals would send
private messages to each other, the electronic
equivalent of passing notes in class. The teacher was,
however, able to eavesdrop and I noted that during one
of these dialogues, one student dated another. After a
while, the flurry of messages began to settle down and a
consensus was reached on a farewell party for a class
member who was leaving. An agenda for a class
meeting to hammer out the details was distributed
through the computer network.
The response of another class to this activity was
similarly dynamic indicating that this kind of electrical
brainstorm is well worth the effort of setting up the
class address lists. Statistical research at the University
of Texas appears to verify this, showing that in face to
face discussions the instructor initiates most of the
conversation while in computer conferences the
students lake control. The conclusion reached was that
"working with a computer screen and keyboard is less
threatening than speaking out loud in front of peers and
instructors". (Sullivan (1993)
In my experience, this does appear the be the case,
although I feel it would be wrong to let students hide
behind their computer screen forever. However, in an
activity like the one above, students toss ideas about
over the computer network in preparation for a real
discussion in the following session.
A spin off this activity for the teacher was that, as
with the memo lesson, I could print out a transcript of
all the messages. I could thus sit down and so what my
students are always asking me to do - correct the
mistakes in their speaking. The spin off for students,
which they soon cottoned on to, was that they could
leave messages for each other on the network outside
of class hours. I know of no educational institution
where students have been given their own pigeonholes,
but after another word with the Network Manager, I
was able to give all mine electronic mailboxes. The
pedagogic value of this was that they started to write to
each other in English, even if this was only a short
message to arrange when to meet at "The College
Arms". I also started receiving homework by e-mail.
It should be emphasised that this second activity
was not an authentic computer conference, which
would have shown all users' comments on the same
screen and for which special software would have been
needed. It simply took advantage of the particular e-mail package which happened to be on the college
network and adapted it to the purpose. Readers who
have access to similar software may like to try out
these ideas as they appear to demonstrate that e-mail
can be a real stimulus for both writing and speaking.
You may get some interesting classes out of it and, like
me, you might get invited to some great parties.
Bibliography
Kennedy (1995) The Rough Guide to the Internet
Pub. Rough Guides
Littlejohn A (1988) Company to Company CUP
CALL Review - July 1997
Soh B-L and Soon Y-P (1991) "English by e-mail"
ELTJ 45/4
Sullivan N (1993) "Teaching writing on a computer
network" TESOL Journal Vol. 3/1
Role cards for "Safety First".
Role A
You are the Safety Officer of Murphy Construction plc. An
accident occurred on your Forest Road Building site on the
afternoon of 23 February and a man has been taken to hospital
with head injuries. You know that the men on the site have all
been issued with safety equipment, but that the foreman do
not supervise the men properly.
Stage 1 Contact the Site Manager and ask him for a full
report on the incident in particular, on how many foremen
were on duty and where they were at the time of the accident.
Tell him you are asking the Managing Director to close the
site until a full inspection has taken plaee. Draft your
message on the memo pad, then send your message by e-mail.
Stage 2 While you wait for the reply, contact the
Managing Director. Give him the facts you have and request
permission to stop all work on the site pending a full safety
inspection. Draft your message on the memo pad, then send
your message by e-mail.
Role B
You are the Managing Director of Murphy Construction
plc. An accident has occurred on your Forest Road Building
site and a man has been taken to hospital. You have had a
complaint from the Trade Union that the man who was
injured did not have a safety helmet.
Stage 1 Ask your Safety Officer to give you an
immediate report on what he knows abut the incident. Draft
your message on the memo pad before you send your e-mail
message.
Stage 2 Now, while you wait for the reply, contact the
Site Manager and ask him to report what he knows. Tell him
to suggest a time for a full safety inspection. This will have
to be this week as you have to go on a business trip to Saudi
Arabia next week. Draft your message below before you send
it by e-mail.
RoleC
You are the Site Manager at Forest Road for Murphy
Construction plc. An accident occurred on the afternoon on
23 February and a man has been taken to hospital with head
injuries. He was hit by falling bricks. You also treated
another man yourself for cuts and bruises. At the time of the
accident, one of your foremen was off sick and there nobody
else to cover for him. The other foreman was in a meeting
with you.
Stage 1 Contact the Managing Director and request that
the number of foremen on the site be increased from 2 to 3.
Draft your message on the memo pad, then send it by e-mail.
Stage 2 Then contact the Safety Officer. Tell him you
think that it is important that work is not stopped for a safety
inspection this week. An important deadline must be met or
there may be legal problems for the company. Draft your
message on the memo pad, then send your message by e-mail.
Chris Copland developed these ideas while working as a
Lecturer at Waltham Forest College, London. He is now
Self-Access and CALL Coordinator at the British Council, Singapore.
Page 16
English Advanced Writing E-Mail
Support a case study of an
experiment with e-mail
Elizabeth Bridges
The aim of this article is to describe and evaluate an email experiment for advanced writing with non-native
speakers of English at an international organization in
Rome, Italy. It attempts to show how, over a period of
six months, the support system evolved to become
interactive.
Setting
It is a multicultural and multilingual organization.
There are about 3000 staff members in headquarters
while another 1000 people work in the field. English is
not only one of the official languages but practically
the lingua franca.
Genesis
The inspiration for this project came initially from the
1994 conference at the University of Science and
Technology, Hong Kong on "Autonomy in Language
Learning".
The experiment was an offshoot from an advanced
writing workshop. During these sessions we has been
diagnosing students' errors and difficulties, talking
about style and especially comparing the Anglo-Saxon
way of writing with that of the Romance languages, in
this case, French, Italian and Spanish. We thought
others in the organization who were not able to attend
these sessions might be interested in our findings.
Two factors were important in getting the project
off the ground: a) practically every staff member had
been daily using or had had access to e-mail for about
a year and b) we had a computer buff in the advanced
writing workshop who was keen to experiment with
this "democratic" media. This meant that people were
used to e-mail; they knew how to use it and treated it as
part of daily life. This we felt was important as new
technology can create a barrier for people who were
not brought up on it. Even so, we had "teething"
problems.
Technology
The software for the e-mail was Microsoft for
Windows. In the organization Word was gradually
replacing WordPerfect as the wordprocessor. E-mail
was being used for internal purposes but staff members
could also communicate through it with the outside
world. The computer buff took care of the
technological side, sending out the "issues" and acting
as a go-bctwecn for the teacher and the students.
Initial stages
We started with a grammar point which was causing
trouble in the workshop. We put out a summary of this
to the workshop group for consolidation, to a previous
workshop group to regain contact with them and then
CALL Review - July 1997
to a few more people we thought might be interested.
There were immediately "teething" troubles. The
computer buff sent out a message announcing the
grammar summary in WordPerfect and sent the actual
summary as an attachment in Word. The feedback in
one of the workshops was that some could get the
message but could not retrieve the summary as they
had only WordPerfect. We sent the attachment out
again on WordPerfect. Still a minority could not
retrieve it but this time it was probably because of lack
of familiarity with the different word processors. As a
result of this first experience and so as to remove any
potential technological barriers, we decided to send
future "issues" out solely in e-mail mode.
This of course meant limitations on presentation
mode. When we sent out an attachment we could
underline, highlight, centre, justify, make tables,
change the font, use icons among other things. Now
all these possibilities were gone but we tried to compensate by using space for clear presentation; inverted
commas to highlight the point in discussion; apostrophes when we would use inverted commas in regular
writing; brackets; upper and lower case letters for
differentiation and continuous dots or a continuous line
to separate one point from another.
Material
The following are a sample of the "issues" that went out
in the first three months: they can be grouped under
the headings, grammar, false friends, spelling and
writing tips.
Grammar
a)suggest
b)the so-called saxon genitive
c)"would" versus "should" as in "I should/would be
grateful...."
d)the uses of "the"
False friends
a)to demand
b)actually
c)eventually
Spelling
a)length, strength, width etc.
b)American versus British (draft/draught)
c)with pronunciation : drought
Writing tips
a)an analysis of a letter
b)how to do a quickwrite
c)getting started
Sometimes French, Spanish and Italian were incorporated into the text as at least one of these languages
would be known by most of the staff members either
as a mother tongue or as a language of wider communication. This would include Italian as the language of
the host country.
Page 17
The "issues" varied in length from a few lines to a
whole screen. This seems to be the ideal limit as if
there is more than one screen, the staff members
would probably not read it. The aim became to
produce short, snappy and humorous pieces.
Name
We started off with a long and cumbersome name :
English Writing E-Mail Support. The first issue we
called "summary of grammar point" but once we had
used "writing tips" as the title of an issue, the system
was named by the students as "English Tips". We
found that simplicity is the key here as when staff
members are wading through their work e-mail "intray" they will avoid opening "mail" that is not easily
recognizable. "Issues" was the term coined by the
computer buff, a publications officer.
We did in fact experience a reaction of outrage from
a native-speaking secretary who was so incensed by
what she considered the "sloppy" English in the
"English Tips" advice that she e-mailed the
computer expert telling him in a peremptory and
discourteous tone that he should take no notice of
these tips.
People on the network
We started with the workshop group, then
immediately afterwards included a group from the
previous year which amounted to about 10 people.
Then it was the case of inviting people we thought
might be interested including some directors to
publicize the project. When we concluded the
experimental stage, there wen 60 networkers we
knew of but there could have been many more. For
example on one occasion, it slipped out of our
control as one secretary just sent on the issue, that
was addressed to her boss, to everyone in that
division which amounted to about 40 staff members.
Method
As a writing exercise for the computer buff/student, I
dictated the text to him to type in. This was slightly
problematic as errors crept in and as he was used to
sending out a message as soon as it was written, on a
Feedback
few occasions we sent out an issue with some typing
There was a lot of positive feedback. One reason for
errors in it. This was a case of a computer expert
this could have been novelty but people seemed to
working with a now-expert
find it non-threatening and even
"There was a lot of positive relaxing. In a large
English teacher. I therefore
usually typed in the text leaving
of buildings as
feedback. One reason for this conglomeration
the computer expert to deal
this organization consists of, it
with the technological aspects could have been novelty but
was an advantage not to go to a
only. This type of collaboration
class to get the information.
saved a great deal of time and people seemed to find it non- Besides which they could
frustration.
threatening and even relax- access it when they had the time
or were in the mood to do so
Voice
ing. "
and if they had to go on duty
The first issues went out as
travel, it would be waiting for
formal summaries including an explanation and
them when they came back. Many said it was
examples. They were cold but slowly with the help
interesting and this could be because it was targeted
of the computer expert, I found an e-mail voice
specifically to the needs of this particular
which was more relaxed and personal. The following
organization. Some said they wanted to make a file
is a part of that process.
and read it at their own convenience. Moreover, if
one issue did not particularly interest them, they
Creation of a "persona"
could erase it immediately.
In an international organization working with
One participant gave us feedback on how he
developing countries too, the staff members can meet
personally used the issues. He read them as soon as
various standard and not-so-standard versions of
they arrived and processed each one as it came. He
English. It is often confusing for non-native speakers
kept them on his computer for about three weeks and
to differentiate between British English and
then went back to test himself to see if he could
American English for example. So I invented a
remember the point. If he did, then he deleted it.
"persona" and to introduce American English, I call
Otherwise he would keep it on his computer file
myself the "ancient Brit". There are also many older
until he had mastered it.
British people still working in the organization who
insist that only British English is valid and probably
Enlarging and activating more fully the network?
only the British English that was the norm when they
We found that approaching people about joining the
left Britain 20 or more years ago. This can cause
network had to be handled with care. People are
frustration with non-native users so the "ancient Brit"
sensitive about language skills generally and about
ploy could gently introduce an idea of linguistic
their foreign language skills in particular. When they
tolerance and catching up with the times.
realised that this was merely a support system which
could be fun, they usually responded positively and
some talked about it to colleagues who then asked to
join.
CALL Review - July 1997
Page 18
We started sending some issues to a field office but
then discovered that when an e-mail message goes to
the developing countries, the receiver has to pay half
the cost of the transmission. As this would be like
giving a present to someone and then asking him/her
to contribute half the cost, we stopped. The in-house
costs were practically nil as e-mail had already been
installed for work purposes.
As for activating more
fully the network, this
happened practically
by itself for once the
network was in place,
students found more
uses for it. For
example, the writing
workshop group
wanted to continue
with the sessions and
so had to write a
memo of
request. This they composed through e-mail,
exchanging ideas and phrases until all they had to do
was sign it. On another occasion, one of the students
had researched useful phrases to use in letters and
after adapting them to the style of the organization,
we sent them out in her name.
Later a student was leaving for maternity leave
and was not able to attend one of the workshop
sessions so her assignment essay was sent by e-mail
to the teacher who corrected it and then it was sent to
the rest of the group. This formed the embryo for a
"writing corner" where students could exchange their
pieces of writing over the e-mail and obtain feedback
among themselves. Sometimes they sent each other
humorous pieces they had found written by nativespeakers. In this way we began to split up the
network into groups.
Towards the end of the experiment, people
began to write in with queries. The advantage of email in this case is that the teacher has time to go
away and research the topic adequately the results of
which could be used by the staff members
immediately in their work writing.
As an information vehicle, we also put out a list
of dictionaries and reference books and where the
staff members could buy them.
the address list thereby avoiding the usual
bureaucratic hassle. This problem is probably
pertinent only to large old-fashioned bureaucracies.
Conclusion
We found that this e-mail support system worked
best when lined to the writing workshops as in this
way we could analyse and target more closely the
needs of this particular organization. In a
sophisticated computer environment
such as this, it was not difficult to
overcome technological hitches.
Problems of "distance" with the
medium were not a problem as long
as we kept only to e-mail and did not
attempt to send issues in an
attachment.
'... we have seen in this
English writing e-mail
support project that it has
the potential to be a
''learning conversation".
A democratic aid?
One advantage we experienced during the
experiment was that through this system we could
by-pass the bureaucracy and any favouritism in the
assignment of language learning opportunities. We
were able to break through departmental barriers
which can be like nation states and also through the
"north/south" divide in staff grades. Anyone who was
at the right linguistic level or thereabout could join if
he/she wanted to. Right from the first week, we had
someone asking to join after he had heard about it
from a colleague. Minutes after he e-mailed his
request, he was put on
CALL Review - July 1997
The main advantage we saw was that
one can reach a large number of staff
members at minimal cost and effort in an innovative,
liberal and even humorous way. For the writing
workshop group, e-mail could be used:
a)to consolidate topics arising during a session;
b)for correcting written assignments;
c)to create a "writers' corner" where they can ex
change their "creations" and
d)to stimulate motivation for writing.
For the writing workshop group and the rest of the
network it provided a vehicle:
a)for transmitting linguistic information
b)for raising awareness and updating their
knowledge
of the written language and
c)for receiving their queries and dealing with their
doubts.
In this particular setting, we found it was also a way
of breaking through obsolete bureaucratic systems to
allow for a fair and democratic access to language
learning.
Finally we have seen in this English writing email support project that it has the potential to be a
"learning conversation". (Makin, 1994)
Bibliography
Angell D and Heslop B (1994) The Elements of E-Mail
Style Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
Esch E (ed) (1994) Self-Access and the Adult
Language Learner CILT
Esch E (1995) "Exploring the concept of distance for
language learning" ReCALL, 7/1
Schiller J (1994) "Managing the Change to e-mail" in
Innotech Journal, Vol.XVIII no.2, July/December
WarschauerM (1995) E-Mail for English Teachers
VA: TESOL
For an article about speakers' reactions to current
English usage, see Jean Aitchison's article "Madam,
how dare you distort, desecrate and defile the English
Language" In Perspective, The Times Higher (March
15, 1996)
Page 19
Reviews
Issues in English IBM CD-ROM Protea textware,
Australia
Reviewed by Tony Williams, Director, Wida Software
Ltd
Issues in English is a made-in-Australia CD-ROM
aimed at adult basic learners and ESL learners at four
levels, from Beginners to Advanced and it presents
over 50 minutes of video in 32 clips. It runs on a 48666MHz and a minimum of 8MB RAM, and needs a
VGA display with 256 colours, a sound card with
speakers or headphones.
Although the publishing company, Protea
textware, is a small, essentially two-person outfit, it
commanded sufficient resources to fund the
considerable team that contributed to Issues, including
six actors and a film company. Let's hope their
investment is recouped.
Instead of the by now familiar CD-ROM
landscape of situations, business language, grammar
and functions, etc, Protea textware has decided on a
serious topic-based approach.
Although they originate in Australia the eight
topics are in no way parochial and are of worldwide
application. They are of great relevance to project
writing everywhere: Euthanasia, Environment,
Smoking, Public Transport, Discrimination, Growing
Old, Gambling and Animal Rights. The program
credits show that the topics were well researched and
that various local organisations have been called in to
lend their expertise: The Public Transport User
Association. Quit Australia (on euthanasia), the
Victorian Council on Problem Gambling, and others.
The general seriousness is echoed in the thoroughgoing
approach to exploitation of the material - no
perfunctory True-False or Multiple Choice here.
The starting point is almost always the video and
at the lower learning levels the simple texts are taken
by the actors at a slow pace; at level four the pieces
become longer and authentic and are read in natural
but measured tones by persons actually involved in the
issues.
The video sequences arc cinematically
unadventurous talking-head stuff, all with the camera
at the same angle. This would be fairly intolerable were
it not for the skilful filming and digitising which has
been done with great finesse. The actors have faces
you actually want to look at (for a while at least) and
changes in facial expression come across very well.
This is not always positive: when 25-year-old Parthena
(sic) delivers a piece on her aches and pains and
complains about getting old, I say, come off it! - she is
tired because she has just been to an all-night rave.
Also on Level One (Animal Rights) the delectable
Parthena now talks about going to the zoo with her
CALL Review - July 1997
children (how were they created'? I wonder). The six
repertory actors do pop up in various roles which are
more, or perhaps less convincing, although always with
crisp and clear enunciation.
It might be valuable at this stage to show the
progression through the Public Transport debate and
see how the various texts marry up with the actors and
their amateur-professional counterparts:
Page 20
In the screenshots showing the four levels of video for
Public Transport, the transcript can be toggled on or
off, and certain words are 'hot' and are linked to
explanations of various kinds.
The Australian-ness of the pronunciation is of
little moment. English with an Australian accent is a
good deal more comprehensible and international in
appeal than, say, Estuary (British) English, and if you
are looking for a non-Anglocentric model, the
examples offered in Issues in English certainly fit the
bill.
Navigation is very simple and intuitive, although
the spoken feedback when moving the cursor over a
topic button, for instance, can be a little obtrusive and
startling even. Plenty of help is available from the
screen, and the tasks come in Learn mode (the default)
and Test mode. In Learn mode feedback really is
instantaneous, and if you try to begin typing an
incorrect response you hear a stern LNo' and input is
refused.
At one point in the Simple Present Tense exercise
shown above, I did find it impossible to fathom out
how to see the correct answer (although I could check
my score) and, strangely, discovered that it was only
the print option that allowed me to print out my
answers and the correct answers.
Some of the writing activities allow the student's
work to be saved via the Notepad for processing by a
word processor, if required. In the Cloze exercises the
words to be deleted are different each time. The
Speaking topic makes use of recording words and
sentences with a microphone.
CALL Review - July 1997
The printed documentation is mercifully short, a 23page A5 stapled affair - but it does include a useful
student record sheet template. There is no mention of
whether the copyright allows photocopying of this, but
its inclusion would be pointless otherwise.
On other copyright matters, duplication of the
software to give copies to a friend is naturally
forbidden, and all photographic images are copyright
and may not be used in any other way than as part of
the Issues in English program (in other words you
can't nick their pictures or videos and use them in your
own document or another application).
If I might digress a little. I have recently bought
from PC World "150,000 photos, pictures and fonts",
thinking that 14 CD-ROMs for £60 must be incredibly
good value. Despite the inevitable wastage, the
publishers, IMSI, have obviously bought up the rights
to various job-lots of picture archives which are not
very much in demand, and the hefty book of printed
thumbnail photos contains about 100 pages of detailed
pictures of every US space mission, (if only I were
researching space!). But for the moment, I was only
looking for pictures of thirty items of furniture for
inclusion in an Authoring Suite exercise and I quickly
found them. This was a more cost-effective way than
taking the pictures myself or trawling the Internet and
spending hours downloading images. The most
interesting part for me, however, was the copyright
statement. You are specifically allowed to use these
photos in your own work, even a work for resale, as
long as they are made into a part of your document or
program and are not offered for resale as clipart or
photoart images, as such. This seems to me very
reasonable and increases their usability, since not
everyone wants pictures simply for their private
scrapbook.
I should not gloss over the fact that on one
computer where a full version of Toolbook was
installed Issues in English gagged, the parent
strangling its child, as it were. Issues is not alone in
suffering from this Toolbook defect, of course.
Otherwise it installed immaculately and performed
effortlessly on a number of different computers.
I would rate Issues in English very highly. I
believe that it could be quickly assimilated into a selfaccess ESL resource. It will be popular with students
and will also not exhaust the energy stores of the
learning centre supervisor.
Issues in English costs £85 for a single-user, £185
for the five-user licence, £330 for ten users, and there
is a system for buying additional CDs for £15 each. It
is available from Protea textware PO Box 49,
Hurstbridge, Victoria 3099 Australia, fax: 00 61 3
9714 8644, Email [email protected] and from Wida
Software, fax: 00 44 181 840 6534, Email
[email protected]
Page 21
Business Territory IBM CD ROM Published by
Lingonet Ltd 1997
Reviewed by Mike Nelson
For many teachers and students of Business English the
idea of CD ROMs are appealing. However, the very
nature of most CD ROMs precludes their use in a
larger classroom setting. They have largely
concentrated on a kind of self-study approach that can
cut the teacher out of the equation either partially or
altogether. Thus, teachers often see them as the half an
hour wind down activity at the end of an intensive
teaching day. Business Territory has been made with
this problem in mind and is the first Business English
CD ROM specifically designed for the classroom.
The makers of Business Territory spent time in an
electronics company in Cambridge and recorded
authentic, unscripted interviews with members of staff
representing all levels of management. This was then
edited down to the 45 minutes of video material found
on the disk. The main advantage of this approach is the
total authenticity of the dialogues - hesitations, stutters
and all - in fact "real" English, as opposed to the studio
manicured language of many other Business English
ROMs.
This language is then thoroughly exploited in a
variety of ways. The main menu has been kept very
simple - offering five choices on entry : Jobs allows
you to meet all the staff and hear about different
aspects of their work. Topics presents theme based
video clips and exercises. These included Typical
Working Day, Describing your Career, Describing
Changes in an Industry and so on. Group Work
accesses a variety of ready made work sheets that can
be either completed on screen or printed out and done
in "hard copy". "Exercises" gives further input of
teaching ideas and worksheets whilst Teacher's
Territory, that is accessed by special password, gives
all the answers for the worksheets and full transcripts of
all the videos in the ROM.
In the Job and Topic sections students and
teachers can access video clips on a variety of topics.
With each one, students are given tasks that make the
CALL Review - July 1997
viewing an active process. If there are language
difficulties an on-line dictionary can be accessed along
with TOD - Teacher on Demand. TOD not only
explains difficult words or phrases but also gives
advice on how to use them and what connotations they
have in everyday speech. In addition students have
access to tape transcripts, paraphrases and audio
comments.
The tasks are then discussed by the students and
lead directly on to group work for the classroom. It is
this aspect of the ROM that makes it different from the
rest. The input from the CD ROM is meant primarily to
give the student authentic language on which to build,
for example, their own presentations, reports,
discussions and letters.
Our school has been using Business Territory now
for three months with very positive results. Students
like the idea of "meeting" other native speakers apart
from our teachers and the fact that they are real
business people on screen and not actors pretending.
The input from the ROM has led seamlessly to group
work that has the feeling of "real" Business English.
All in all Business Territory is a valuable addition to
any language school's CD collection.
Price: £62 + VAT Single User; £150 + VAT MultiUser
Page 22
Letters
As current Newsletter editor, I think this is a jolly good idea and to be encouraged, I'm sure David would
agree. Does anyone else have a need of pen of keypal contacts? Please send me a letter, an email, or
post a message to the CALL List
Howard's address: "jarvis" <[email protected]>
Dear David Eastment
I am the editor of a new publication called School Magazine, for students and teachers of English here in Lithuania.
I wondered if I might make the suggestion of including this e-mail address in the Net News section of CALL Review
for readers and readers' students interested in having pen friends in Lithuania. We could publish their addresses in
the RSVP section of School Magazine or alternatively give them to interested SM readers personally.
Please let me know your thoughts on this matter.
Sincerely,
Howard Jarvis
Not quite, but nearly a letter...
[email protected] - a New Forum for Discussion and Information
At the IATEFL conference in April we agreed to creating an international forum for professionals in English
teaching with new technologies. The idea of the electronic discussion forum was to provide us with the opportunity to
get in contact with colleagues, discuss problems and ideas in teaching with new methods, find about new projects in
other institutions and furthermore to get the latest IATEFL Computer SIG - news.
Paul Brett suggested e.g. the following topics for discussion;
 new interesting language learning software that has / hasn't worked ideas for using computers / software with
your learners that have / haven't worked for you and your learners
 new and useful Web sites
 does CALL actually assist language learning in any demonstrable fashion - learning gains, motivation - is
CALL effective?
 ideas about the SIG and what we can and should achieve
 innovations in hardware
 shared learner experiences,
 new collective on-line projects
 new books / articles / conferences on CALL
This list started some weeks ago - now it is up to the list members to make it come alive. If you would like to share
your ideas and experiences with colleagues e.g. in Finland, USA and Germany - give it a try and subscribe to the
comp-sig - discussion list now!
This list is administrated by myself and Dr. Laurent Borgmann, Head of Languages at the Technical University
Fulda. We have installed an easy way to subscribe to the list. Just fill in the form at;
http://www.fh-fulda.de/language/comp-sig/
There you will also find additional information about the list and answers to frequently asked questions. Furthermore
you will get a welcome-letter, after subscribing to the list, which summarizes the most important facts for your
participation in this discussion forum.
Subscribe now and join the list! Subscription is free!
Thomas Berger works at the Language Centre of the Technical University Fulda
About The Computer SIG
The Computer SIG is the IATEFL Special Interest Group for Computers in language education. It produces
CALL Review, and organizes CALL and IT-related events in the UK and overseas. The SIG is entirely
dependent upon the interest and enthusiasm of its members. If you have any suggestions for events, or feel that
you can make any contribution to our activities, please contact either the Newsletter Editor or one of the
committee members listed below.
Paul Brett (Chair) School of Languages, Uni. of
Wolverhampton, Stafford Street, Wolverhampton WV1 1SB
Gary Motteram (Editor) CELSE, School of Education
Uni of Manchester, Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL
Tel: 01902 322671 Email: [email protected]
Alejandro Armellini Email: [email protected]
Dede Teeler Email: [email protected]
Tel: 0161-275 3431 Email: [email protected]
David Mason Email: [email protected]
Tilly Warren Email: [email protected]
CALL Review
CALL Review is published three times per year. Contributions
should be sent to the Editor at the above address ideally on paper,
with an accompanying 3.5" IBM-format disc with text in ASCII as
well as the original format. Email attachments are also possible
Any pictures should be sent as separate files in bmp, jpg, pcx,or tif
format. The next issue is due in Decemeber 1997. Deadline for
copy and advertisements is Oct 15th.
How to subscribe to CALL Review
Advertisement Rates:
Full Page: £120
Half Page: £70
Quarter Page: £4O
Inserts by negotiation. Reductions
available for members
CALL Review is only available to members of IATEFL who have elected to belong to the Computer Special
Interest Group. Journal only subscription is not available. Membership of IATEFL is, however,
straightforward, and brings additional benefits, including the main IATEFL Newsletter and a variety of
publications at preferential rates. If you would like to join IATEFL as an individual member, or if you arealready
a member of IATEFL, and would like to extend your membership to include The Computer SIG, please fill in the
form below. For Institutional Membership, payment by alternative methods, information on other SlGs, reduced
price subscription to journals and periodicals or other queries, please contact IATEFL directly.
To: IATEFL, 3 Kingsdown Chambers, Kingsdown Park, Tankerton, Whitstable, Kent CT5 2DJ
Family Name
……..
………………………………………………………… First Name ……………………
Address:
………
………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………
………
………………………………………………………………………………………………
………
Please enrol me as an individual member of IATEFL. I nominate The Computer SIG as my free
Special Interest Group and enclose £23.00 (Surface Mail) / £29 (Airmail).
I am already a member of IATEFL, I enclose £6 for membership of The Computer SIG.
Please make your payments by Eurocheque or a cheque drawn on a UK Bank. Cheques payable to
IATEFL.
CALL Review - July 1997
Page 24