Titolo della riunione

1
A tri-blend for Lifelong LearningCertification
of Business English at the University of Siena,
Italy
Centro Linguistico di Ateneo University of
Siena, Italy
BESIG Berlin Linda Mesh

November 2007

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Business English BEC

• Business English is now considered a job skill
• ? including both communicative and intercultural
  skills
• The Language Centre is involved in two very
  different blended learning projects
• Employees of a large bank
• More than 300 participants in groups of 15-18
• Older adult learners, mature
• Experience working with streams of messages and
  social networks
• Many have had a pause/gap from study of English
• First-year students in the Faculty of Economics
• More than 150 students in groups of 25-30
• Young adults Internet culture
• Low attention span - experience surfing the net,
  messaging, gaming
• Need to learn how to learn online

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Breakdown of ability levels Italian context

• Courses for bank employees
• Maximum level offered is COE C1, Cambridge BEC
  Higher, in
• 9 progressive language levels
• More than 300 participants
• Working full-time so they have very little time
  for study
• The majority of participants complete entrance
  testing in the lower levels COE B1 and under.
• University undergraduates in Economics
• Maximum certification level required at the
  University of Siena is COE level B1, BEC
  Preliminary
• First semester 2007-08, more than 350
  undergraduate students completed the entrance
  testing with results at BEC preliminary and below.

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Blended BEC in a range of nine
language levels
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Organization of the blend

• Integrates the three elements of f2f, online
  learning and self-access lab resources
• Face-to-face lessons
• Focus on interaction through speaking and
  listening,
• presenting lexical items, language forms and
  pronunciation
• Online lessons
• Focus on interaction through writing and reading,
  forum activities, wiki, blogs and instant
  messaging which are all text types that Liam
  Brown earlier described as being almost pure
  orality
• Focus on the development of interpersonal skills,
  through task-oriented active peer learning,
• Self-access laboratory complementary resources
• Special emphasis is on the development of
  listening skills,
• speaking and pronunciation,
• exam strategies and practice.

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Flexible learning to meet a variety of learning
styles and needs
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Innovative course design using new
technologies a blended solution

• Interaction - Three types of online interaction
  for active learning and discourse construction
• Learner ? content interaction
• Learner ? instructor interaction
• Learner ? learner interaction
• Active learning and the Internet learners do
  something with the information rather than being
  passive recipients
• Individualisation the teacher provides a
  variety of learning paths for individual needs
  and approaches to the learning process

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The nature of adult learners

• What affects their success?
• While children trust the teacher to define course
  content, adults need to define it for themselves,
  or at least to be persuaded that it is relevant
  to their needs.
• While children accept a dependent relationship
  with a teacher, adults have a sense of
  self-direction and personal responsibility.
• Adults have a wide range of personal experiences
  to draw on, which they appreciate being used as a
  learning resource, and resent being ignored in
  favour of other peoples experiences.
• For adults the future is now they have a basis
  of information and see learning as necessary for
  solving problems in the present.
• Children may need external motivation to make
  them learn adults volunteer to learn because of
  their intrinsic motivation.
• Knowles theory of andragogy, 1978

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Learner attitudes and learner support

• Adults experience anxiety about learning, about
  the ability to meet expectations, both external
  and self-expectations. Otherwise known as the
  fear of failure.
• Inexperienced learners may have a high degree of
  anxiety when using new technologies, which may
  become apparent when they have to turn in the
  first written assignment or forum message.
• Support strategies
• Risk-taking should be approved
• The workload and goals of the course should be
  realistic
• Adults who learn enjoy learning
• adults who enjoy learning learn.
• Enjoyment is a sign of high motivation.

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Advantages of online interaction

• The concept of willingness to communicate was
  developed from research on individual differences
  in SLA. (MacIntyre, Clément, Dörnyei, Noels,
  1998)
• Social, psychological and situational factors
  seem to enter into willingness to communicate.
• Situation specific anxiety and lack of
  self-confidence diminishes opportunities for
  participating in beneficial interaction.
  (Compton, 2002)
• Asynchronous forum discussion activities may
  provide opportunities for discourse development
  in L2 and also increase willingness to
  communicate in normally timid students, due to
  the relatively anonymous feeling of online
  identity and the extended time available for
  expressing ideas.

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Collaborative teaching
the course team

• Learner support is provided by
• classroom teacher
• online teacher - individualized support for
  students with special needs
• Lab councellor

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Collaborative discourse production

• The classroom is integrated with online task
  based learning for increased discourse
  production
• The online teacher provides models of the target
  language presented
• dual modes provide greater opportunities for
  language production in various forms speaking /
  writing
• students use a wide variety of discourse
  structures in electronic discussions and may take
  a more active role in discourse management than
  in the classroom (Chun)
• learners have a choice as to who they seek out
  for help, matching learning styles with teaching
  styles
• socio-cultural aspects of collaborative language
  learning facilitate increased progress and
  encourage the development of autonomous learning
  habits

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• Present a clear integration between the
  face-to-face and online lessons emphasizing the
  objectives of each element.

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Structure

• Course Calendar, 60 hours per level
• 16 classroom lessons 32 hours
• Listening e speaking, lexical items, use of
  language forms and pronunciation
• 2 online modules, composed of 10 units 20 hours
• Reading comprehension e writing
• We recommend a minimum of 1 hour of study time
  per week to complete the online activities
• Focus on learner-learner, learner-teacher
  interaction
• Indirect development of an oral-based discourse
  culture through online collaborative textual
  interaction
• 4 lessons in the self-access lab 8 hours

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A lesson map with progress check
I can statements
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Seven-month calendar

• Breve esposizione dei risultati in funzione degli
  obiettivi

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Timeline

• Objectives attain BEC skill levels
• Results improved interpersonal and
  self-management skills

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Language Centre BEC webpage
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The Faculty of Economics
pre-intermediate level
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Learning environment Moodle
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Home page BEC-B, Faculty of Economics
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Forum Wiki

• Forum - focus on active learning
• interpersonal communication
• CMC forum activity designed to produce meaningful
  interaction
• authentic online reading resources in context
• Asynchronous communication allows time for
  reflection
• students are more ambitious in L2 discourse
  production
• timid students are more likely to participate
• authentic peer audience increases motivation and
  improves quality of writing
• Corrections and feedback on the final activity
  are given after all interaction and final texts
  have been completed

• Wiki focus on form through
• collaborative peer correction
• teacher collects common errors from contributions
  and lists them in a wiki
• clear instructions are given for the peer
  correction activity
• students collaborate on drawing up a list of
  corrections
• teacher monitors activity, gives final feedback
  and verifies corrections where necessary

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Forum CMC activity instructions
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Wiki for Collaborative Peer Correction the
tutor inserts a list of errors and an example
correction
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Students edit wiki by inserting corrections
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Tutor gives final feedback on students
corrections
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Tutor can monitor wiki versions
throughout the activity
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Student feedback online activities
Create an online discourse culture
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References

• Chun, D.M., (1994), Using computer networking to
  facilitate the acquisition of interactive
  competence, System, 22 (1), pp. 17-31.
• Compton, L. (2004) From Chatting to Oral
  Fluency Using chat to improve self-confidence
  and increase willingness to communicate, IATEFL
  Poland, Teaching English with Technology, ISSN
  1642-1027, Vol. 4 (1), January, 2004. Available
  from http//www.iatefl.org.pl/call/j_soft16.htmc
  ompton
• Hughes, J., (2000) The Learning Organisation,
  Part 1, CLMS Working Paper 29, University of
  Leicester. December. Available from
  http//www.clms.le.ac.uk/publications/workingpaper
  s/working_paper29.pdf
• Knowles, M., (1978) The Adult Learner, Gulf
  Publishing, Houston, TX, 1978.
• MacIntyre, P. D., Clément, R., Dörnyei, Z.,
  Noels, K. A. (1998). Conceptualizing willingness
  to communicate in a L2 a situational model of L2
  confidence and affiliation, Modern Language
  Journal, 82, pp. 545-562.
• Mesh, L., Zanca, C., (2005) WebLingu_at_ blended
  English language learning, Journal of e-Learning
  and Knowledge Society, Edizioni Erickson, Vol. 1
  (2), July, pp. 259-270.
• Pica, T., (1996) Second language learning
  through interaction Multiple perspectives.
  Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, vol.
  12 (2), pp. 1-22.
• Links
• CLA Siena Online http//moodle.lett.unisi.it/
• Moodle http//moodle.org/
• e-mail mesh_at_unisi.it