Writing a textbook involves much more than just expanding what one has created for use in a specific class.  The writer must look at a host of elements including: audience of the text, current methodological theories, and a unifying concept for the textbook.

I like this quote because this has been so true in my learning experiences.  I was usually given a textbook by the lead teacher and told to teach from it.  There was no discussion as to a strategy for covering the necessary items during the course of the year.  The only time I've seen someone discussing text usage is by a sales rep trying to sell a textbook.  The sales reps I've come across had usually never entered a classroom so they were really just "teaching" how to use the text based on author/publisher recommendation rather than experiential knowledge.

There are three issues underlying materials design which would enhance "craft knowledge" if they were addressed head-on.  They include using/considering the student's interlanguage, being more holistic in addressing reading, and thinking about the "what" -  focusing on students' actual language tasks rather than giving them a "how" based model of disconnected language chunks. 

I thought this idea is totally unrealistic.  Should Machiko's words be written in Japanese?  Why can't her ideas be thought of as an English translation of her native language, which is how I usually think of these situations.  I can't imagine even if Machiko spoke using an interlangauge version of English.  I think that students understand the purpose of characters like Machiko and don't expect to develop an empathetic relationship with them based on something like "Oh look, she speaks English just like I do,"  necessarily. Most students expect textbooks to provide them with clear example of the language they are studying, and would protest anything less.  It reminds me of my students who don't like to do partner work because they don't think its helpful to hear more non-native English. There is a place for using interlanguage in materials design but in this example it would be going overboard.

The “core” of materials writing is to provide teachers and students with materials which are easy to follow and use.  Without this one simple fact, an exquisitely designed activity will be useless.
 

A second new approach is looking at learners and how they learn, and consequently including processes to help them learn in the materials.  An example would be using exercises that incorporate learning strategies
 

The authors rightfully included this powerful quotation from Swan and Walter.  I have run into this problem time and time again, especially with adult learners.  University students still pretty much did whatever I asked them to do,  whether it was logical or not. They were still in the mode where they feel that ultimately, the teacher is the one in charge and hopefully is leading them down the right path. Somewhere into adulthood, students develop notions as to what they feel is most effective for them in terms of language learning.  They will question me if they feel an activity is silly, they will leave my class if they find themselves bored, and they will not hesitate to tell me that the only thing they really need is grammar or they only need to spend time working with the computers.  I try to take these criticisms with a grain of salt and I try to keep one ear open.  I take care to explain why we do what we do and that seems to help.  I try to respect their feelings and cultural biases (as well as realize my own) but ultimately I have to convince them that I do know something about what they need as new to country English learners.  Otherwise, there isn’t any reason to come to my lessons, is there? 
 

I was pleased to see the impact of formatting acknowledged here.  There is nothing more frustrating than a poorly designed textbook.  When the exercises don't work graphically they can cause a relatively simple exercise to become a teaching nightmare.

Sequencing grammar content in a text is not a straightforward as it seems. There are four approaches, frequency, according to the verb system, according to word order, and fitting to a notional/functional/situational organization.   None of these ways is without its weak points.

Authenticity is a huge question in textbook design. What is authentic, what isn’t?  How do we use authentic materials effectively?  These are questions the author needs to keep in mind in conjunction with the needs of the students he/she is writing for.

I totally agree with this passage. It reminds me of American students complaining about having to memorize so much stuff in Czech lanaguage classes.  It sure seems logical to me that at some point in language learning memorization must take place or you'd never be able to speak the language without a dictionary on hand.  I do think we are too oriented towards the colorful, the exciting, the new in terms of textbooks, without giving thought to what's written inside them.  I use a lovely colorful up to date text, which students like for those reasons.  In reality it is one of the most grammatically weak books I've ever used. I constantly have to add to it from my less exciting black and white grammar books.

“Attempts to develop lists of grammar items that define each proficiency level have yet to be successful and might be impossible.”
It’s interesting to take a bunch of level one books and see what each author considers appropriate for that level. It’s never the same.  And it never corresponds to  what I consider a level 1 student.  It would be wonderful to have a universal level standard though I can’t imagine how it would ever come about without ages of discussion and debate.
 

Also, corpus research links vocabulary and grammar more closesly and suggests teaching grammar in relation to vocabulary and context. It makes it easier for teachers to design effective materials which combine most common grammatical useage with most common lexical elements.

Using corpus research is a way for teachers to get very specific in terms of their students’ needs, though teachers should be cautious not to limit classes to what is found as “most frequent” on any register.  Not covering the lesser known stuff can limit the students’ potential.

Using a corpus takes the guesswork out of teaching.  The teacher doesn’t have to pick and choose when the choice is massive; he or she can just consult the research and choose the most appropriate items to focus on.

This is something I never considered before when I was teaching, but it came to light while I was doing my gerund/infinitive paper.  I never realized how ridiculous it was for me to be doing oral exercises with a form that is mostly found in writing, or vice versa. It has changed the way I approach several grammar forms.  It's just hard to get out of that "everything's got to be communicative and oral and fun" mode of teaching.  Sometimes the most effective way to learn is through written work.

“However, if the majority of grammar textbooks are an accurate indication, most grammar teaching remains unaffected o any significant extent by the advances brought about by corpus linguistics.”
This statement says it all in terms of how far we have to go to pull corpus research into the mainstream.
 

Visually, textbook writers are able to see what works and what is made more complicated by its graphic style.

Surpisingly, very few books had exercises which addressed learning strategies.  This is a virtual gold mine for materials writers in terms of little explored territory.

Surprises discovered by the researchers included the lack of exercises for learning strategies, the small number of true/false and sentence correction activities and the huge amount of fill-in-the-blank, sentence manipulation and sentence creation exercises.

This is an excellent resource for materials designers in terms of offering a variety of exercises and finding ways to get creative with the “old stand-bys.”
 

I used to love exercises like this in my lazy language student days because the pattern was so easy to figure out that I could do the whole exercise without thinking. As a materials designer I would avoid creating exercises where a student can just hit the pattern at the beginning and just cruise through.  Some red herrings ought to be thrown in there just to keep the students on their toes.

“Material writers and teachers working outside the United States should be aware that the materials analyzed for this inventory were aimed at ESL students studying in the US context.”
I would love to know if the British books are the same or different.  I feel like they often used such activities as true/false and sentence correction. I know the series I used the most, Headway, had both types throughout the levels.

Since students do not learn in a linear fashion, its important to "recycle" topics from time to time.  Review helps the students reinforce what they are struggling to learn. 

It’s important for teachers to remember that they are not there just to “fill the student’s heads” with grammar. We need to concentrate on putting grammar in context for our students and giving them ample authentic practice.

Larsen-Freeman’s model of form/structure - meaning/semantics - use/pragmatics is a handy way for teacherss to focus on grammar and the components of teaching.  They don’t all have to be covered at the same time but all three aspects of the grammar should be mentioned.

This quote doesn't really emphasize the greater points of the article but  it really struck me when I read it.  At first I thought, what are they talking about - the existing phrasal verbs seem like a reasonably stable set to me.  Then I realize that this could be part of the idea of use. There are probably plenty of slangish phrasal verbs which appear in English which could be taught but need to be taught in terms of use as well as what they are all about in terms of form and meaning.  So even though someone  may pick up a "newer" phrasal verb, its important thatstudents know how to use them depending on the situation he/she encounters.  For example, you wouldn't tell a professor that you "blew off" his/her class.

“The same pie chart that we used when identifying the learning challenge and creating practice activities can also be a useful aid in diagnosing errors.”
I like the multitude of ways Larsen-Freeman has developed this framework.  It’s exciting to look at grammar and teaching from a new angle.
 

The AWL gives us a massive list of words which can be used for both materials design and individual teachers’ vocabulary instruction. However it doesn’t solve the age-old problem of “now we have to words, how do we teach them.”  Once you have to words, how do you teach them back in context?

I was interested in what kinds of articles or publications make up a corpus.  For the corpus we examined they included academic journals, edited academic journal articles from the web, texts from four different corpora, chapters from university textbooks, and laboratory manuals.  I am curious about how the information is input and processed. It seems like work for a lifetime.  And how are the texts chosen?  Is it random?  Planned? It seems that some aspects must be planned and the authors admitted as such, but I wonder if every choice is carefully considered.

The authors seemed to promote direct teaching through vocabulary exercises and explicit word learning, among other techniques to balance what they called ‘opportunities to meet the vocabulary in speaking and writing.’  It’s good that they acknowledge the need for both implicit and explicit learning of vocabulary.  The danger of working with lists like this one lurks in teachers who are not prepared to go beyond simple memorization, and in researchers who support this misinformation.

This relates to the sensitivity issue. I never would have thought about this possibility but of course every author is going to have rhetorical idiosyncrasies which could affect analysis
 

“It is difficult to say exactly what influence the origin of the texts would have on the corpus, for even though a text was published in one country, at least some of the authors may well have come from another.”

I’m wondering what they mean by this.  What kind of effects would an author’s origin have on a corpus. I can imagine differences between British and American English.  What else though?  Are non-native English speakers’ works somehow different from native speakers’ – through choice of words?  Certainly not grammar – after all, isn’t that the point of teaching academic English – to make our students English more like that of the audience they are writing to?
 

What to teach is a great question.  Sometimes I feel silly trying to get my students to differentiate between words like job skills, work experience and job duties, when I doubt they have the first 100 of the basic 2000 learned.  They say that learners with special goals like going to university need to learn another 1000 words.  What about students with less lofty intentions – what should I teach them first?

The idea that new words should not be presented in isolation and not learned by rote memorization is new to me.  No wonder I never picked up the vocabulary I tried to memorize on trams on the way to work in Prague.  I was going about it the wrong way.  I don’t know why I never noticed I was better off listening to the people around me and reading whatever I could than staring at my flashcards everyday.

The fact that the more manipulation of a word, the better for moving it from short term memory to long term memory holds a lot of promise for materials writers.  We have to learn ways to help our students work with the same words over and over without boring them or trivializing the activities.

I think this is a situation I often overlook when I do reading with my students.  I’m not sure there’s any way I can really tell if there is enough information to help my students infer meaning because I know the meaning of all the words. It seems obvious to me because I know what to look for.  I don’t think my students know where to begin.  It’s like they slam into a wall when I ask them to figure something out.  I think I need to pre-teach it as a skill before I use it in class.

“Learners with special goals, such as university study, need to acquire a further one thousand high –frequency words beyond the initial two thousand base, plus the strategies to deal with the low-frequency words they meet.”

This may seem daunting at first but what we need to remember is that there is no set time in this description.  We imagine it as if the students have to do it in one year. The reality is that if our students have goals in sight from an early age this acquisition can be gradual. If the students are part of a several level program the words can be spread out over years.  This is a dream situation but its possible. I think of my students in Prague who had to take two years of English.  The task of learning so many words shouldn’t seem as formidable to them, or their teachers.
 
 

The fact that the process was new must have had a negative effect on the subjects. It seems too unlike anything students have used before to accurately reflect their ability to learn using such a tool. 
 
 

Groot made an important point when he criticized learning form authentic materials in that the authors intended the writing to be read by other native speakers and therefore did not imbed clues to word meaning within the text. Getting students to guess the meaning of words is something we all do and we take for granted that the writer’s message was intended for anyone, not just native speakers. The reality is otherwise and our ignorance has probably resulted in more than a couple frustrated students. 

Related to this is the fact that the sentence itself may not contain the gist of the word but rather the whole text or “wider context” must be taken into account.  This should discourage us from having students try to guess the meaning of words without letting them finish reading the whole text first.

I had to laugh at this.  After all this build up for the most efficient wonderful technologically advanced way to learn vocabulary, he still balks at denying the use of bilingual lists in the world of vocabulary  study.

“…there is general consensus that 5,000 base words is a minimal requirement…while for non-specialized, academic reading a considerable larger vocabulary is needed. It is there fore necessary that a large number of words be learned in a short period of time at the intermediate and advanced stages of language acquisition.”

Here again is that weird sense of urgency.  While I understand the need to know a certain level of vocabulary to read academic writing, unless the students are studying for a test, I don’t see why steady absorption of the vocabulary can’t happen over time, especially if a student has envisioned his goals early enough in his academic career to go about learning the vocabulary in a slower but consistent manner. 
 

The fact that words that are grammatically linked make learning easier gives teachers a good direction for working with words in a way other than in synonyms, free associates or opposites.  That gives us a lot of room to create word lists that are more easily learned than the usual mix. 

Word frequency counts can be an invaluable tool for materials designers.  Though the authors dismiss the idea as difficult, since members of a lexical set can have great frequency differences, they concede that it does help with interference.  It seems to me that if interference is such a great problem, as the authors make it out to be, then frequency should be used as a way to place vocabulary in a text in a systematic manner. 

Related to this, the authors advise two ways to avoid problems with interference.  The first is to present items at different times (based on frequency (!)  or need.  The second is to use widely different contexts.  For example don’t present hot and cold using the same frame: “It’s hot.  It’s cold.”  I’ve found this to be confusing for my students in the past and I try to vary the “frame” of my vocabulary words so they can see a distinction between them.
 

I think students will balk at the idea of not learning all the words of a set together. I can’t imagine teaching Sunday and Monday but ignoring the rest of the week for a few days.  They tend to desire the same complete feeling learning a set gives us.  Teachers would have to explain the theory behind what they are doing.

“Higa sees these words in helpful relationships, as being more indirectly associated with each other.  If this generalization is true, the it suggests that using texts and normal language use as a way of sequencing vocabulary is likely to be more favorable to learning.”

For some reason this approach seems very inefficient to me.  How are we going to capture all the vocabulary from texts and language in a timely manner?  How can you collect all the words you think your students should know? It seems more logical to start with a base of words they need to know and build around them, creating sentences which hold such wonder words as “The slimy green frog croaked and hopped into the pond,” but with some kind of  plan to discovering the words.

I love the idea of semantic mapping.  I have never tried it before and I think it can be an interesting way for students to look at vocabulary lists.  It would work well for my students and their employment oriented vocabulary.

Reading and vocabulary skills can be used reciprocally to each develop the other skill.  The more you read, the more you enhance your vocabulary. In turn, the more you enhance your vocabulary by studying it, the more you positively affect your ability to read.  It makes me want to turn all of my students into bookworms.

The authors talked about the usefulness of using morphological knowledge of a language to help you learn it.  When I taught a GRE prep course in Prague it was the one thing the other instructor and I drilled into our students’ heads. They had exactly two months to study for the GRE. Memorizing vocabulary at that point was almost a waste of time.  We though it better for them to be able to pick apart the word so they could at least make an educated guess. I’ll never know if it helped them but it certainly helped me when I took the GRE.
 

I think that part in the brackets says it all.  Children and uneducated adults pose wholly different problems for teachers in terms of teaching vocabulary.  Since children have an advantage which has become evident through acquisition research, our real challenge remains in the undereducated adult who is not proficient in his/her L1.

“Katie Took Cindy’s Homemade Spaghetti Right to Men Behind the Zoo”

I can’t believe that someone actually used this mnemonic device.  The aid seems more confusing than the actual words to remember.  I think I’d have trouble remember the mnemonic device more than a little list of words. 

I like the idea that we are creating exercises to be used by students who need a little extra help with something.  Many times I have one student who is just not in sync with the rest of the students.  It’s great to give them something to work on individually.  It’s also nice that web quizzes are self-correcting, because I think most of us have enough to grade without giving ourselves even more “homework.”

I had a chance to observe our group of IEP students for another class this week. It was really great to watch the people we’re writing the materials for interact in class. My impression of their skills was that they were good at talking about grammar and grammar rules. They seem to know their stuff. It’s clear that applying the rules is more difficult.  I think they really need to expand vocabulary.  They’re ready for more precise words to describe things. At least that’s how it seemed as I watched them discussing descriptions of pictures.  They were searching for words to describe things that they knew had a specific name but they could only think of a really simplistic word for them.

The IEP website is a really neat tool. At first I couldn’t imagine why the teachers weren’t using it. Now I think the problem is time.  They have so much to cover in a relatively short class period.  I’d say its hard to give up time spent working in a rich textbook like the one they are using to foray into unknown land on the internet.
 

I thought this was an interesting way to phrase writing development.  It’s very accurate. There are many students who can write, and write flawlessly. However, their work is basic, it doesn’t contain the depth of an experienced writer.  It must be interesting to watch students add depth and width of “maturity” to their writing through the semester.

“Make them write. Don’t just give them multiple choice.”

I think Professor Snell’s comment is one to be heeded as we start designing the Hot Potatoes exercises.  After all, the class is a writing class. It’s not a grammar knowledge class.  They need to be able to apply grammar in writing, not just understand the rules of usage. 
 

I like that the book places the grammar (GLR) in the back of the book. This gives the teacher a choice as to whether or not to cover the grammar explicitly in class.  When the grammar is presented side by side with the task at hand (academic writing), it makes it harder for the teacher to ignore it.  Even the students sometimes seem to feel they are cheated if they don’t touch everything in the book, whether they need it or not.

I like how the readings within a chapter help to weave the theme and are so closely related to each other.  It helps to tie the chapter together and give students a sense of continuity.  They seem tailored to students. It makes me wonder if I would use it for adults who were learning to write.

Those thoughts lead me to contemplate how textbooks are really much more specific to an audience than I gave them credit for. Although this book is perfect for IEP students, I wouldn’t use it with adult ESL students who want to improve their writing.  I’m wondering about using it in a collegiate EFL setting. Would it be appropriate?  What do I do about the American English/British English situation.  Do the rules of rhetoric apply across the board in English, or does BE have its own set?  And what about the cultural content? Does it make a difference to the students?

I like the fact that this book covers so many different fields.  I think that accurately mirrors the span of subjects a student will face in the first couple of years as a university student.  Though we recently learned that reading multiple topics is not the most direct way for students to learn vocabulary, it is effective for providing examples of a variety of types of writing.  As materials writers we can aid vocabulary development by finding further examples of writing from the same topics to use in our work.

“This book combines writing and grammar skills to help you communicate successfully in academic writing.”

I wonder how the authors decided what to concentrate on.  Mainly I am thinking of the small amount of vocabulary work in the book.  There is some,  but I wouldn’t say that it is a major focus, as are grammar and writing.  Is it a space issue?  Or do they believe that extended vocabulary needs its own book?  Just another in the list of decisions a materials designer must make.
 
 
 
 

When one team was discussing various ways at approaching writing together, one of the most unusual they mentioned was dividing the book into first half and second half.  I thought this was very weird. Even if they decided on things such as the syllabus, topics, texts and commented on each other’s work, it still seems like the voice of one author would come through loud and clear for the first part and the voice of the second author would come through in the second.  It seems to me that writing alternating chapters with frequent comparisons of the chapters would ensure a more cohesive voice for the book.
 

This started me thinking about the market for textbooks today. It seems to me that there are so many broadly focused series and textbooks out there now.  I feel like the future is in niche markets – specialized books such as English for secretaries, doctors, and teachers - even policemen (in an overseas market), Ennglish for refugees, English for refugee moms, and so on.  But then I wonder, when is niche to niche-y. Such texts don’t have as much broad appeal as a grammar book or a general English series. I wonder how publishing houses approach projects like this, since they seem to be quite concerned with the bottom line.
 

Reid also mentions that the basic idea for published materials must be 20 % unique and 80 % familiar. She attributes it to the approaches that the teachers take within the textbook.  It brings me back to my thoughts on the niche marketing of books, whether the focus has to be familiar for it to be published. It also made me think of a book that was designed by a former colleague of mine. She spent  at least a year devising a three level course book for her students, intending to have it published. By the time she left my program she had finished them and left them for us to use if we wanted to.  That was a laugh. I have never tried to work with such a cryptic book in my life.  Most of the pages made no sense to me – there were strange illustrations, and blurbs of text such as grammar points or vocabulary.  I’m sure it was a brilliant book but it was impossible to use without some kind of training – kind of like the Laubach series only worse.  Reid just brought it all home for me when she said that the books have to be teacher friendly and accessible.

I beg to differ!  It depends on what scale she is thinking of. Certainly ESL text writers on not on par with, say, John Grisham.  But I think there is a certain amount of celebrity in our tight little circle.  When you really admire a materials writer’s work, use their text all the time, it can be pretty awesome to actually meet them in person or listen to them speak.  I remember so well at the last Czech English teacher association conference, when Penny Ur came to speak. I got to the room 45 minutes early; just to be sure I could get a seat.  It was equally as exciting to hear Michael Swan give a keynote address.  He was exactly as I imagined.  And as for wealth, you can’t tell me that Carolyn Graham isn’t rolling in dough.  She cranks out those jazz chant books like there’s no tomorrow. (Strange thing is I still haven’t met anyone who actually uses them in class…)  And Azar’s book gets thrust at me in every teaching situation I’ve come across in the US so far.   So I think there is some bit of glory that goes along with materials writing, along with the personal enrichment and excitement of producing something that you think will really help you students.

While reading through the questions used in selecting text, I couldn’t help but dwell on the last – presentation and format.  Everyone is a sucker for a good-looking book.  Students are automatically drawn to books with color and pictures, a goodly amount of space and fresh design.    There are two things I think materials designers need who watch out for though.  First is too much white space. I recently reviewed a book that barely seemed to have one exercise on a page.  There was so much extra space that it took three pages to get through a 10-example exercise.  This is disconcerting because it seems like there is a lot more to the book than there really is. The book I use now is such an example. It looks great but some exercises only have 3 points and one of them is an example. On the other end of the spectrum is too much design. I think of the interchange series specifically. They took the car theme and really over did it graphically and metaphorically. It’s almost nauseating to use. I think the design is distracting and can be confusing for the students or even seem patronizing.

Whenever I start a new position I love to look over what the teacher before me did.  I think it’s very helpful to see how he/she paced the classes, what materials they used, favorite activities and such. When I started my position at LMG I was fortunate enough to have coffee with the outgoing teacher. He was very helpful in describing what the class was like, what worked for him and what didn’t, etc.  I didn’t end up using hardly anything he developed (and he developed a three level text series), but I at least had a base to start from.  There’s nothing worse than just being handed a class and being told to teach.
 

I don’t think I’ve ever been so put off by the textbooks I was told to use that I considered them a restraint that limits creativity.  I kind of feel the opposite. The worse the textbook, the more creative I am.  When I have a very usable, detailed, imaginative textbook, it makes me lazy. I don’t have to work too hard to come up with fun and instructive activities.  With a bad textbook it just screams for backup.  I think of the awful communist era English textbooks that were still floating around in the school where I first taught in Prague.  Dry is too kind.  But they forced me to expand and build on the cruddy activities they provided.  I tended to be more student centered in my teaching, adapting the exercises to fit the students. Later, when I chose what I thought was the perfect textbook for a class, I depended on it so much that I missed the mark with the students a lot of the time. They just weren’t all that interested because I didn’t bother to add the personal touch.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

This was news to me.  How exciting to imagine publishers being interested in creating a product that caters to the needs of the students and teachers.  It’s a far cry from having to brow beat a sales rep to send your tiny program a desk copy of a book you might buy.  However, despite the allure of being catered to so boldly, I still find it hard to believe that one text can fulfill all needs.

“Prior to implementing a textbook, a teacher needs to read the whole book – from start to finish, including any appendices.”

I am so bad about doing this its shameful.  I am that teacher who finds something wonderful about the textbook or the teachers’ book in the middle of the course.  I’m not sure where this bad habit started or why.  Perhaps some of it comes from the style of program I work in.  If I ever managed to get through a whole textbook with my current students I would be shocked.  My program has open enrollment so it’s pretty much a revolving door.  I rarely have students longer than 2 months.   But then when I worked I Prague I still didn’t actually read the whole textbook. I looked at the contents and the plan for the book and sketched out my syllabus based on that, but as for actually reading the book I didn’t do it till I started a new chapter.  I did at least read through that in detail before making solid lesson plans.  Now, I’m not proud of any of this – I think it is a bad habit.  Teachers  miss too much when they don’t know what’s in the book and take the time to visualize how to use it before they actually start using it.    Hopefully this is my turning point – I’ll let you know when I start my next job.
 

The authors mentioned using the think aloud protocol as the most common method for collecting data in a usability testing session.  This is the first example of use of this research method that I feel is appropriate. We have talked about studies in L2 writing where the researchers used think aloud protocols.  When I read about it I felt it was quite artificial and couldn’t imagine it being very genuine.  It just seems unnatural to think about how you are thinking. On the other hand, thinking about using something and how you will physically explore it is another story. IT seems much more natural to me for a student to explain the way they are completing the computer tasks.  You’re not thinking about thinking, but rather thinking about doing.  There just seems to be a body-brain connection that is easier to discuss than brain –brain.
 

I have found it very difficult to integrate the CDs I have available and the course I am teaching.  The main reason is that there’s a thematic difference – pre-employment ESL and general English CDs. I envy folks like the researchers in the study who are developing their own CD ROMs.  One thing I wish I could change in my program is the way I use CDs. Unfortunately most of the ideas I have involve at least a teacher and a tutor, which hasn’t happened thus far.

When thinking about he CALL environment, I wonder how my own students feel about their “lab environment.”  My office is about 4 m x 4 m and I have three computers with speakers set up in there. Outside, in the classroom, there are two portable computers set up. No matter where my students work, they must compete with computer noise or classroom noise or the noise of the children playing in the classroom while their parents study.  I don’t know how detrimental this cacophony is – many of them come from large families or large group living situations and I don’t know how much background noise affects their ability to concentrate.  If there were 48 hours in a day I’d love to study their responses in a noisy atmosphere and in a silent atmosphere to see if the environment affects them adversely or not.
 

And how!  There are programs out there that are so complicated even a somewhat computer savvy teacher has trouble figuring out how to navigate.  The biggest mistake I’ve seen is having too many buttons and unlabelled buttons.  Sometimes the symbols used to indicate something are totally lost on the student (and the teacher). For example, for slow speech, instead of the word “slow”, there’s a picture of a turtle. I understand that the idea is that even students with low literacy can figure out what the button is for.  I  don’t buy it. If the student is there to learn to read, give him the word “slow.”  You can keep the turtle, just give us some words.

“Most learners are very aware of what helps them learn and what does not.”

I’ve found this to be so true with CALL materials. My students will not work with a disc they feel is not helping them to learn English.  No matter how many times I point out the positive aspects of a disc, if they don’t feel they are learning, they won’t use them.  They can fixate on one disc for two or three weeks if they think it’s helping them learn.
 

Another thing Chapelle talked about was learners needing to work on self –correction. One of my most popular CDROMs is one where there is a dictation. The student has to listen to the sentence and type it.  Then they can choose to be shown their errors and try to fix it, or just see the correct sentence and compare.  They always go for trying to work out their own errors.  They can be engrossed in this activity for hours.  I just wish it had some kind of feed back that told them why something was wrong, either the spelling, or word order, or gave them a hint on how to change the sentence.  I think they don’t want to be spoon fed answers – they must feel themselves learning though making mistakes. At least that’s what I hope!
 

I think this is the best way to deal with CALL activities.  My own computer lab is not set up in a way that promotes language learner interaction.  I regret this fact but the reality is that it takes more consistency than I have in my program to do such planning.  There is so much interaction potential, even in the more linguistic form focused CD ROMs that I use.  If only I could get the same students to come to school everyday and clone myself so I could oversee the lab at all times…
 

I was glad to see several ideas for interactive pair work using the computer.  When two people sit down at a machine, it is harder than it seems to get them to work together and problem solve. One guy is always lording over the mouse while the other sits and stares, occasionally throwing in a comment or two. That’s what can happen if an activity is not planned well.  It’s just not enough to put people in front of the computer and tell them to complete an activity.  The teacher needs to see to it that the activity calls for two-way communication between the computer users as well as communication with the computer itself.  I wish I practiced what I preach. So far the best I’ve done is remind students who are sharing computers to let the other person use the mouse, if one is being a mouse hog.  I really need to put more planning into situations where my students have to share computers.

I think this statement is making a lot of assumptions about the computer skills of our students. Even academically oriented students may not have day to day or even weekly contact with computers. The computer can be a detriment for those students who aren’t’ used to using them.  It can take the focus away from the language and onto the process of working with the machine.  I say this especially after reading John Bunting’s students’ quote “In my opinion, I need to check my self and it is more difficult to follow the process on the computer because the computer becomes the focus instead of English.”
We need to remember students like her before we get too gung-ho into incorporating computers into every aspect of the classroom learning (not to mention those with NO experience at all). I’m not against using computers in the classroom – I’m mainly for using them when they will be most effective, rather than just for the sake of using a computer.
 

I had to laugh at Healey’s reporting that language learners are not good judges of their own skill by assuming they are better than they really are.  I have seen this at all levels, and with all nationalities.  I have students who are convinced they are in a group that is too low for them.  I have learned not to fight it – I tell them to join the advanced group but assure them that I will not slow down or compensate for them when they are there.  Sure enough, after a couple days of working way above their level, they usually back down and say they’d like to attend both groups and then eventually they are back where they belong.  It may seem harsh but I’ve learned it doesn’t pay to argue. It has to be something they discover for themselves. I learned the same way when I was in Prague. I tried to attend Czech classes with some friends of mine – all of us hiring a tutor together. After the first lesson it was clear I was woefully worse than the rest and I politely bowed out (to their great relief). 
 

Yikes!  I never considered such lofty ideals when addressing how to be independent learners with my students.  It’s all very nice and good but I find the real reasons much more  basic, which Healey does mention later, when she says “Certainly, few if any teachers expect to be the sole source of language learning for their students.”   His is where I’m coming from when I hope to teach my students how to learn on their own.  In the first place, many of them are not used to classroom learning, let alone finding ways to learn on their own.  Secondly, the life of a refugee is fraught with obstacles to language education. To be successful they need to figure out how to learn when they are forced to take a job on the night shift at Marshalls so they can pay rent.  So it comes down to the simple fact that if they don’t figure out how to learn on their own, and if I don’t help them achieve that, they can end up stagnating in their English development for years to come.
 

 I thought the definition of screen scanning was pretty weird.  They used the find button to locate information.  They considered this to be skimming because the button is quickly looking over the work and highlighting selected parts.  It seems to me that there is so much more to actual skimming of a text that there is no way that computers can effectively skim.  The human brain, when skimming, is making a million decisions a minute based on the input and relevance of the input.  Sometimes we limit skimming to one word and act like Find buttons. Sometimes we need to seek concepts and ideas.  That’s impossible with a Find button.  The authors admitted that the button sometimes found stuff that wasn’t relevant but had the search word. How would it deal with something less concrete? (Can you tell I’m not big on reading stuff on screen… I am sooo biased.)
 

I was very interested in the issue of learner control. I felt a little like the evil overbearing teacher when I read that the teachers preferred more restricted navigation while the students preferred more free control.  I am one of those teachers who prefer limited navigation, mainly because I’ve had to guide students through the maze of some programs so repeatedly that I can’t leave them for a minute and they’re lost. One of our most expensive programs – ELLIS – a wonderful program – is totally not navigable for my students. There are so many choices they can’t decide where to go next or how to stay on track. I was surprised that the learners preferred more open navigation, because I’ve seen how my students become frustrated when they get lost and tend to change CD’s when it becomes unbearable.  Perhaps that’s the difference between the learners though – refugees vs. Korean teenagers.  I’m glad to see that a clear advantage didn’t appear either way, so I can continue to feel comfortable with my decision to limit my students to the more controlled program.
 

I have to agree with this statement.  I’ve worked with a lot of different CD ROMs and more than once thought “what were the designers thinking?”  I use one CD Rom which my students love because it is colorful and exciting and full of pictures. But for the life of me I don’t see what they can possibly be learning from the thing.  I don’t think I could locate a pedagogical base in any of the exercises, except maybe the one where the voice gives them directions and they have to follow them with a little car to the mystery destination.  There are hardly any words, no dictionaries to help out with vocabulary. I guess the theory is if they play the game often enough they will learn the language aurally – that’s great because I can see how important being able to talk about elephants and snakes.