I’m pleased to announce yet another Flash Interactive Multimedia Learning Application to add to the suite of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) software for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).

What is a C-Test?

A C-Test is a type of language test in which learners read a brief paragraph in the target language. The first two sentences are left intact. Thereafter, every other word is left intact but for each alternate word, only the first half of the word is written and the second half is represented by a blank space, e.g. every oth _ _ _ word i_ left int _ _ _. Learners’ ability to fill in the blank spaces indicates their language proficiency according to the reading difficulty of the paragraph used in the test.

How good are C-Tests at determining learners’ language proficiency?

Christine Klein-Braley published a paper titled Theory of C-Test Processing in 1996. In her introduction she wrote:

In virtually all the studies thus far reported, the C-Tests have been shown to be highly reliable, with alpha coefficients very often higher that .9, and to have high correlations with whatever other measure was used to represent language proficiency: teacher ratings or judgements, self-assessment procedures, and other language tests and language testing procedures. These validity coefficients have regularly reached .7 and higher. Such high validity coefficients are unusual for any type of test.

Esmat Babaii and Hasan Ansary published a research paper at Shiraz University in Tehran on an objective evaluation of the C-Test.

What’s different in this version?

Whereas the original version of the C-Test was paper-based and simply put an underscore for each missing letter of the words, e.g. mis _ _ _ _, this version uses a “traffic light” interactive colour coding feedback system which guides learners towards the correct answer, thereby preventing it from becoming a spelling test. It’s also particularly easy to deploy C-Tests using this application since all it needs is a paragraph of text in order to generate the test. It accepts paragraph text as XML files or as FlashVars, both of which can be written using a free text editor, through the Moodle SWF Activity Module settings wizard. The C-Test application sends the overall time taken and grade to Moodle’s grade book.

What’s next?

I am currently in the process of creating a new Moodle course for the Multimedia Interactive Learning Applications (MILAs). This course will include working examples, documentation and tutorials. Watch this blog for further announcements.

Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching

By Jeff Stanford

522 pages

Moodle is the world’s most popular and widely used open source learning management system (LMS) in the world today with over 45,000 registered sites, 32 million users, 3 million courses in over 200 countries in 75 languages. In his book, Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching, Jeff Stanford introduces Moodle as an easy to use, highly adaptable and very effective platform for teaching second languages.

What is it?

First an foremost, Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching is an instruction manual and whether you’re new to Moodle or not, in my opinion, Jeff Stanford has done an excellent job with it. It cuts right to the chase with plenty of examples, scenarios, clear, concise explanations and step by step instructions and illustrations. It’s laid out in practical mini tutorials, organised into the following chapters:

1. What does Moodle offer language teachers?
2. Getting started with Moodle
3. Vocabulary Activities
4. Speaking Activities
5. Grammar Activities
6. Reading Activities
7. Writing Activities
8. Listening Activities
9. Assessment
10. Extended Activities

Methodology

The book faithfully follows the recommendations outlined by Professor Jack C. Richards in his paper, Communicative Language Teaching Today [pdf]. Most of the activities are learner centred and designed to develop learner autonomy. It leans heavily towards collaborative and project based learning, for example, using the Glossary module for learners to create their own class dictionaries and using the Wiki module for similar formal group learning activities. He also describes techniques to encourage self and peer assessment to further increase learner independence and a stronger sense of participation, ownership and belonging. In other words, the techniques described in this manual are highly motivating. To quote Barbara Gross Davis in her book, Tools for Teaching (Jossey Bass 2009);

“Researchers report that, regardless of the subject matter, students working in small groups tend to learn more and demonstrate better retention than students taught in other instructional formats. Students who work in groups also appear more satisfied with their classes, and group work provides a sense of shared purpose that can increase morale and motivation. In addition, group work introduces students to the insights, values, and world views of their peers, and it prepares students for life after school, when many will be working in teams.”

Who is it aimed at?

If you are a DoS, Academic Director, Head of Faculty or a teacher who is interested in learning how to leverage the powerful tools for learning available in the Web 2.0 environment, this book is an excellent starting point. It gets you up and running in no time, whatever your previous experience of using web based learning tools might be. The format is open and modular so that you can adopt Moodle 1.9 as a platform for your elearning requirements in steps and at a pace that is comfortable and practical for your organisation and your learners.

About Jeff Stanford

Jeff Stanford is an Associate tutor in Applied Linguistics for the University of Leicester and a teacher trainer on Cambridge ESOL courses. He also does training consultancy work for organizations such as Anglia Assessment, Fintra, Pearson, and the British Council.

His website: http://moodleflair.com/

I’ve just completed a new Flash learning application aimed at EFL/ESL learners and teachers which I believe is a good solution to many of the problems facing those who want to use phonetics in teaching English as a foreign or second language.

What does it do?

It can display any number of phonetic symbols which appear in groups as coloured buttons (see illustration).  When users click on one of the symbol buttons, a list of example words appears with the phonetic spelling and a play button next to each one so that they can listen to audio recordings of the example words.

The example on my Moodle deploys the symbols in a typical arrangement. They’re in columns of corresponding short and long vowels, dipthongs, corresponding voiced and unvoiced consonants and finally the remaining consonants.  By editing an external XML file, you can arrange and group the set or subsets of the phonetic symbols any way you like. For example, the past simple of regular verbs ending in /-id/, /-d/ and /-t/.

Why is it an advantage to make it dynamic?

Traditional phonetic charts (also known as phonemic charts) are fixed, static items that you cannot change. In most English courses, learners are presented with a single, very general, one-size-fits-all chart for the entire course. Such charts typically have a small, fixed set of vocabulary for learners to view and listen to and, more often than not, it bears no or little relation to the vocabulary being studied at any particular moment in the course. See this example on Oxford University Press’  New English File site or this example on the British Council’s BBC Teaching English site.

Making any Flash web application dynamic gives one very important advantage. Anyone can edit it without having to buy expensive software. In fact, all you need is a text editor and a little familiarity with XML  which is human readable and relatively easy to learn. Any teacher or course content developer can create any number of vocabulary sets and deploy them in Moodle along with the related course materials, giving learners specific pronunciation support for the target language in a particular module, unit or activity. Did I mention that it’s also very easy to correct any typos that you find?

Secondly (the technical bit), the Flash learning application contains no text or audio itself, all of that is loaded externally, making it only 12Kb in size which is less than half the size of the containing Moodle web page (a similar sized photo would be around 50 – 200Kb). This means that it appears almost instantly. The application then loads the words and phonetics as an XML file (XML is the de facto file format for dynamic learning content). The audio files are loaded as and when users play them. Typically, audio files tend to be quite large and so only loading them as required means that the application starts faster and only uses the internet bandwidth that is absolutely necessary – ideal for users with slow or intermittent connections.

How is using Flash an advantage over normal web page based phonetic charts?

Phonetic symbols have always been a bit of a problem on the internet, well actually, text and fonts in general. In order for a web page to be displayed with the correct font, e.g. Times New Roman, that font must be installed on users’ computers. If it isn’t, a substitute font is found automatically. The trouble is that not all fonts contain phonetic characters, in fact very few do, so what works perfectly well on one computer may be unreadable on another if it hasn’t got the correct font installed.

Flash resolves this issue by allowing developers to embed (include) fonts within their Flash applications. This means that the application carries the required fonts with it and will work on any computer regardless of whether it has any fonts installed or not. This is especially important with phonetic characters since so few fonts contain them. Problem solved!

Try the demo:

As always, I’ve deployed a demo of the chart, with 445 example words, on my Moodle demo course (Login as a guest). (Currently not available)

Ever wanted to control the number of times a learner can listen to a recording in a listening test? Well, I’ve seen this request a number of times on Moodle.org’s forums recently and not so recently. So I’ve decided to develop and share this Flash MP3 player for tests.

What does it do?

It streams (progressive download) and plays a single MP3 (or AAC) audio file once. It has no play back controls whatsoever so there is no way for a learner to listen to the recording again except by refreshing the web page in the browser. There is an optional parameter that sets the number of times the MP3 file plays.

What is it for?

It’s for deploying in listening tests or activities where it’s necessary or desirable to limit the number of times a learner can listen to an audio recording. For example, Cambridge ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) listening tests require that the learner only listen to each recording twice so it’s particularly useful in practice exercises for learners who are preparing to take one of these exams.

How can I use it?

Detailed instructions are included in the download package as well as some example embed code. Unfortunately, I can’t provide any easy to use plugins or modules for LMSs (Learning Management Systems) – It’s too complicated to explain here and now. For now, this Flash application can only be deployed by manually inserting the necessary embed code and editing some of the parameters. I’ve included some code examples and explanations for how to embed it in Moodle from the course files directory (moodledata).  This should present no problems at all for an experienced web designer or web developer and an IT savvy teacher or course content designer could probably deploy it successfully by copying and editing the embed code examples provided.

Do I need to buy a licence to use it?

No, this project is open source and completely free. You can copy it, change it and redistribute it in any way you like. The only condition is that you must leave my name and copyright on it and distribute a copy of the GPL open source licence with it. The Flash CS4 FLA and ActionScript 3.0 source files and full details are included in the download package.

How secure is it?

It’s worth noting that this MP3 player for tests is not secure. An IT savvy learner could easily look at the source code for the web page and see the URL of the MP3 file being played and download it directly. The very popular Firefox web browser also has a number of plugins that makes it very easy to download media files from virtually any source no matter how well they are protected, even streams from media servers that are supposed to be very secure. The easiest way to make it more difficult to cheat is to put a time limit on the listening test itself. That way, there isn’t enough time to listen more than once.

Update:

I’ve moved the MP3 Player for Tests to Google Code to make it more accessible to developers and easier to find and download. You can find the project page here.

In this article, I’m going to discuss the relevance of social networking to learners of English, some of the developments in learning English as a foreign/second language on-line and how this might shape the future of e-learning and learning management systems for EFL/ESL.

So much to learn, so little time to learn it.

For learners studying English in their own country, it is often difficult or inconvenient for them to get enough exposure to and practice with English. Classroom time with small groups (i.e. twelve learners or less) with a native speaker tutor who can give guidance on what constitutes “authentic” English at schools, colleges, universities and academies in most countries is at a premium and most only provide between two and four hours per week, although in some cases this can be as high as six. In my opinion, between two and four hours of small group classes per week is not adequate for students to learn the language and develop the communication skills they need.

The majority of EFL/ESL coursebooks include workbooks that provide further written grammar, vocabulary, reading and sometimes even listening activities for learners to do outside the classroom in their own time. Also, tutors often encourage or require learners to read, listen to English radio programmes, watch English films and TV shows, keep diaries, etc. These are typically solitary activities that place the emphasis more on passive understanding or grammatical understanding of language than on active production and communication skills.

Using the Internet as a learning resource.

Growing numbers of learners are now taking the initiative for themselves and using Web 2.0 technology to practise their English. As well as passive comprehension practice such as watching videos on YouTube, listening to English language radio stations such as BBC Radio 4 and BBC Learning English.com, reading on-line magazines and news sites, learners now have an assortment of social networking sites to choose from where they can get in touch with other people with similar learning interests to their own. Currently, there is a bit of a “land grab” going on as small start-up companies such as Babbel and Live Mocha create social networking sites especially for EFL/ESL learners. Currently, learners can keep in touch with each other through instant messaging (chat), bulletin boards (forums), VoIP (Internet telephony) and, of course, video conferencing and shared on-line whiteboards.

How do social networking sites affect learning management systems?

Quite rightly, EFL/ESL learners just want to “get on with it” with what they already know. Many have already spent a considerable amount of time exploring and learning how to use the software applications on social networking sites for activities such as instant messaging, bulletin boards, VoIP calls and video conferencing. Personally, I don’t think it’s a good idea to insist that learners learn to use yet more, often poorly designed, social networking application interfaces. So why not just let them use the ones they already know?

There’s a wide variety of software and services available and often the most widely used and known ones are free. Google and Yahoo! are popular and particularly good at supporting open protocols and open source (i.e. free and adaptable) software. It’s much cheaper and easier to use 3rd party web services provided by Google, Yahoo!, AIM, MSN Messenger and Skype because they have established networks that have been developed by highly skilled and talented teams of developers over several years.  The really hard work has already been done for us so we get the benefits of reduced development time, huge, stable, well maintained and powerful networks, well documented APIs and public support forums for both developers and users. Having all this available for free has brought the cost of creating and running social networking platforms for e-learning effectively, within the reach of even small schools and academies.

So, allowing learners to stick with their favourite social networking applications and services and integrating these with learning management systems effectively kills two birds with one stone:

#1 – Learners are already well-versed in using the software and so are more likely to engage with their classmates on-line,

#2 – The most costly parts of developing, maintaining and improving the services are expertly taken care of for free.

Keep up or fall behind

I think that in the near future, LMSs will have to incorporate and integrate more 3rd party social networking services or risk becoming irrelevant to EFL/ESL learners as they migrate to social networking sites for their communicative language practice. I’m sure that many learners will welcome the opportunity to link their own personal social networking spaces within LMSs so that they can share their blogs, comments, etc. with their classmates. They’ll also have the added benefits of having all their applications available from a single website, i.e. their school’s learning management system, and developing their English communication skills with topics and ideas that are genuinely relevant to them in a safe environment with people they already know and see in class on a regular basis.