Virtual Misadventures: Technical Problems and Student Satisfaction When Implementing Multimedia in an Advanced French Listening Comprehension Course

2010

CALL and Literature 6

Alysse Weinberg
Second Language Institute
University of Ottawa

Abstract:
What are the advantages and problems related to using multimedia technology in an advanced French listening comprehension course? What are some of the typical vicissitudes, trials and tribulations encountered when teachers decide to introduce multimedia activities in their classes? This article illustrates the advantages and difficulties of using multimedia from the point of view of both the teacher and the learners. We first give a brief presentation of the context in which our experiment took place. We outline the difficulties encountered by the professor who had to select material, create activities, and administer the daily management of the course, touching on hardware and support issues. We then investigate the reaction of the students to the new media and the teaching approach.

KEYWORDS

Integration of Technology, JavaScript, HTML, Web-Based Instruction, French as a Second Language, Listening Comprehension

INTRODUCTION

Enthusiasm and fear: Is this how language teachers feel when they approach the integration of the Internet and multimedia technology into their courses? Teachers are enthusiastic about Internet resources which can give their students immediate access to an immense pool of authentic

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material (e.g., documents, music, and news broadcasts by native speakers). Learners may experience aspects of the target culture through the use of video and audio files, graphics, texts, and online tools without having visited the country (Garrett, 1991; Joiner, 1997; Pusack & Otto, 1997; Lafford & Lafford, 1997; Osuna & Meskill, 1998). However, while the process of integrating the Internet into the foreign language classroom curriculum stimulates learner interest and motivation (Sohonee, 1998), implementing a multimedia component in a language course involves a completely different set of skills than that of normal classroom teaching. Technologically inexperienced teachers, conscious of their technical inadequacies and their lack of control over capricious technology, often approach this task with trepidation merging into fear.

After a brief presentation of the context in which our experiment took place we address the following two questions:

1. What kind of technical difficulties are encountered by introducing Internet and multimedia activities into an advanced French listening comprehension course?

2. What are the perceptions and preferences of students presented with three different types of media—audio, video, and multimedia?

CLASSROOM AND TEACHING PROCEDURES: THE COURSE AND ITS SETTING

Between 1986 and 1994, the comprehension-based approach, as promoted by Krashen (1981), was widely used in the beginning level French courses at the Second Language Institute (SLI) of the University of Ottawa. This approach emphasized receptive skills—reading and listening— and de-emphasized productive skills—writing and speaking. In addition, the approach put greater focus on the students and their learning processes. Comprehension was perceived as the first step for language learning. This eight-year long experience required the creation of a specific curriculum, the development of listening and reading materials, and the implementation of testing procedures, along with studies of student satisfaction (Corbeil & Thérien, 1992; Cornaire & Tréville, 1992; Courchêne, 1992; LeBlanc, Duquette, & Compain, 1992; Compain, Dionne, Duquette, Rivas-Rivas, & Weinberg, 1995).

While many low-level comprehension courses have been abandoned, one advanced course in French listening comprehension was maintained. The description for this course states that "students will develop their listening strategies and skills and that they will be systematically exposed

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to a variety of accents, registers, environments, text types and delivery modes." The main objective is to prepare the student to easily understand a university course given in French.

No textbook is attached to the course, so the teacher is responsible for selecting the material at the appropriate advanced linguistic level to match the syllabus and course aims. The selection criteria for the material was based on content, authenticity, and variety as stated in the course syllabus. Content was chosen designed to enlarge students' knowledge of the contemporary manifestations and historical context of French culture. The main themes were similar to topics in introductory courses in fields of study such as sociology, history, and so on. All of the audio and video segments used in the course contained authentic French material taken directly from stations such as Radio Canada and SRC (Canada), TV5 (France), and from movies such as Le fleuve aux grandes eaux. Nothing was especially created for the course. A variety of speaking styles were selected to expose the students to various regional accents, gestures, rates of speaking, and discourse levels of the language as specified in the course syllabus. Represented were accents from Alsace, the south of France, Belgium, Switzerland, the Caribbean islands, Africa, and of course from French speaking Canada, especially Acadia, Québec, and Francophone Ontario. The media clips varied in length from 10 to 45 minutes.

The course description features listening strategies, and these strategies represent a major component of this course in order to increase the students' awareness about their learning processes. The definition of strategy here follows the commonly definition of a conscious mental operation applied by learners to help with their language acquisition (O'Malley, Chamot, Stewer-Manzanares, Küpper, & Russo, 1985; Chamot, Küpper, & Impink-Hernandez,1988; Oxford & Crookall, 1989). The typology proposed by O'Malley and Chamot (1990) classifies strategies in three large categories: (a) metacognitive strategies which assist learners in the evaluation and improvement of their own learning processes, (b) cognitive strategies which guide learner interactions with their text, and (c) social-affective strategies which help students with their foreign language interactions with others. By deliberately presenting and discussing learning strategies, the professor trains students to understand their language comprehension processes, to become more autonomous in their learning, and to use these strategies outside the classroom situation (Mendelsohn, 1994; Oxford, 1990).

All listening comprehension activities in the course included prelistening, listening, and postlistening components (Underwood, 1989; Joiner, 1997) and presented inherently interesting subject matter appropriate to the students' level. Working with previewing and prelistening activities reduce some of the difficulties inherent to the use of authentic material and thereby enables students to predict the course of a conversation based on their

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previous knowledge (Duplantie & Massey, 1984; Mendelsohn, 1995). Students were also taught viewing strategies such as segment planning, defining viewing goals, identifying problems, and evaluating the effectiveness of self-teaching methods.

The course is normally based only on the presentation of audio and video material, but, starting in January 2000, students were exposed to multimedia material as well. The class met twice a week for 90 minutes for 12 weeks. One of the two weekly classes was devoted to viewing video segments. This class was held in a small amphitheatre where the video was projected on a large screen (approximately 8 feet high and 12 feet wide). The second of the two weekly classes was devoted to listening to audio clips. Before this time, the audio portion of the course took place in a traditional language laboratory; starting in January 2000, the students went to a computer laboratory for the multimedia part. The audio and video segments presented in the same week had similar themes. The testing for the audio and video components of the course also presented material similar to the themes shown and discussed in class.

THE MULTIMEDIA ENVIRONMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA

The course was held in a brand new multimedia laboratory, opened in May 1999, equipped with 30 Windows 98 workstations each with sound cards and headsets. The laboratory is run from a Prisma Tandberg control panel, and the equipment allows the playing and recording of audiocassettes. The student workstations have limited but useful Internet connections. The firewall on the main multimedia server does not allow students to access sound and video files over the Internet, but these files may be accessed and displayed by the teacher working at the main console. This limitation was implemented to reduce the amount of bandwidth required to service the laboratory. The multimedia materials could be accessed only from the campus multimedia laboratory.

THE PARTICIPANTS

In January 2000, 11 students registered for the course and in the middle of the term another student joined the course, making at the end nine women and three men. All were strong students with marks of A or B from the prerequisite advanced listening and speaking course. The total number of 12 students represented a small number of students because there are normally about 25 students in the course. All the students had each spent at least one year at the university; they were in their second, third, or fourth year except for one, a special student over 70 years old who was just taking the course for his own benefit. Seventy-five percent

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of the students had previously taken French courses in our department. None of the students was working towards a minor degree in French or had declared French as a concentrated area of study. All students were Canadians with a rich variety of ethnic backgrounds such as South-American, African, Italian, and Turkish. Some were very familiar with the Internet and the different formats of sound and video files. Others were true beginners with the technology and required regular review of the different steps to start the program, to enlarge the screen, and to move from one screen to the next. Only half of the students had access to the Internet at home. For all students, this course was their first multimedia language course. The students were highly motivated and attended 94% of the classes. The average student mark on the midterm test was 76%, while the average mark for the final exam was 80%.

INTRODUCING MULTIMEDIA FOR LISTENING COMPREHENSION

The inclusion of a multimedia component in the course added variety, quality, and interactivity to interesting topics. The following list of features highlights the advantages of using multimedia components which were not previously available in the traditional language laboratory. (Noblitt, 1990; Furstenberg, 1997; Desmarais, 1998; Lancien, 1998):

•a multimodal presentation combining texts, sounds and videos,

• high quality sound, video, and pictures,

• glossaries, grammatical and lexical reviews, dictionaries, and hyperlinks to related material,

•a variety of interactive question types such as fill in the blank, multiple choice, drag and drop, pairing, associations, and so forth,

•a pleasant-to-use and attractive program interface that allows easy navigation,

• controls to pause and rewind the sound track,

• useful feedback analyzing students' responses,

• different program branching procedures depending on level of language skill, and

•a system to help students monitor what exercises have been completed and what tests have been passed.

The following features of multimedia materials are especially useful in a listening comprehension course:

• The learning activity provides perspectives on different aspects of the same text in order to allow students to understand more fully what is being presented.

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• The clip can be accompanied by a text script or presented without it. The script can include only keywords, the whole script, the whole script with certain keywords hyperlinked to explanations, or a translation of the script.

• The activity can include text, pictures, and diagrams to clarify the historical or cultural context.

• Finally, and most importantly, the audio track is recorded in a high fidelity format.

Implementing a multimedia component into a language course includes a variety of tasks such as courseware selection, installation, activity selection, and user support for the students. Hubbard (1988, 1992, 1996) proposed a framework for CALL courseware evaluation and development. Murphy (1995) listed the six essential characteristics of good software as good documentation, learner control, branching capabilities, portability, ease of use, and cost effectiveness. Robb and Susser (2000) made a study of how foreign language instructors choose courseware and found that, despite the availability of standardized techniques and checklists to select and evaluate courseware, a gap exists between the methodology recommended in the literature and the actual practice by the instructors.

Having decided to introduce multimedia in ones course, the language teacher then faces two options: to buy or to develop brand new material. For our advanced French comprehension course no commercial CDs were used. The ones we considered were flawed in some way that made them unsuitable. Most were aimed at the beginning level and therefore not relevant to this advanced course. Some had poor quality sound or confusing user interfaces. Some commercial CDs could not be installed on the local area network. Some emphasized only French culture from France and were not suitable for a Canadian university. While a single CD may be reasonably priced, the cost of a site license may be prohibitively expensive. We decided then to create our own activities designed specifically for the course. The next section details the challenges and the problems encountered in the development and implementation of the multimedia activities.

PROBLEMS WITH PREPARING VIDEO AND AUDIO FILES FOR USE IN THE LABORATORY

Multimedia File Formats and Student Access

The students needed to have reliable access to video or sound files used in the learning activities but were frustrated by the university Internet firewall that blocked downloading sound and video files to student computers. The professor's computer was also filtered by this firewall, but she

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finally obtained authorization to let sound and video files pass the firewall. These segments could then be displayed to all of the student terminals by mirroring the professor's workstation. Nevertheless, this solution was far from satisfactory for the students because they wanted to have complete control over the video rather than just having the professor play it for them.¹ For the first video segment, the students even had to memorize the information presented in the video in order to answer the subsequent questions on the text. After this first unsatisfactory session, a different approach was used.

Many video files on the Internet are stored as RealPlayer .ram or .ra formats. These formats, referred to as streaming files, have been engineered by the company to prevent Internet users from downloading local copies for copyright reasons. While the video portion cannot be downloaded, the audio portion can be saved while the video is playing. We saved the sound file as an independent file and stored it on the local network. The students could then view the video played by the teacher and also listen to the soundtrack that they could control as they wished.

Connections to Internet sites from the teacher's console, which one would not expect to be a problem, were also unreliable. The Internet site where the video was stored would sometimes return the infamous HTTP 404 error "Requested page not found" because the server was otherwise occupied or the location of the page had been changed. In the morning when network traffic was light, the files were usually easily accessible, but in the afternoon, when more people were using the Internet, the files would not load or would take a very long time.²

Multimedia File Quality

The inferior quality of the original video and audio tracks was another problem. Since file distributors want to minimize the amount of data being sent, they make many compromises in sound and video quality to reduce file size. The transmitted sound track might be encoded at 11 kilohertz, 8-bit mono (which should give adequate sound quality) and then highly compressed, resulting in very poor sound quality. Problems can also occur in the original recording. On one recording, for example, a verbal exchange was badly done because the microphone was held too far away from the people being recorded.

The video portion might also show signs of high compression rates which result in a very small, stamp size image (Godwin-Jones, 1997). Doubling the size of the image or enlarging it to the size of the whole screen makes the image so blurred that users cannot see any details, just colored pixels. Taken together, the video and audio problems make for a very unsatisfactory listening and viewing experience.³

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When downloading multimedia files from the Internet, users encounter frequent pauses as the RealPlayer program waits for the data stream to come down. The video and sound track can be received in drips and drabs, full of stops and pauses, often in the middle of a word. Bush (1996) had already noted that students can become quite frustrated with the poor performance of the ongoing video stream especially because of the lack of synchronization between the lips and the sound.⁴

Size of Sound Files

Seven megabytes per song or video was generally the optimum size of file to be transferred within a local area network. If the size of the file was larger than seven megabytes, conflicts begin to interfere with the transfer when students all tried to access it at the same time. The Audioview 32 program, the sound editing software that was used for the recordings, had its default sound quality set to 44 kilohertz, 16 bit, stereo. These parameters created a sound file with size four times larger than it needed to be. A more satisfactory setting would be 44 kilohertz, 8 bit, mono, which created readily manageable files. Quite audible voices may be recorded at 11 kilohertz, and music pleasant enough to listen to may be recorded at 16 kilohertz. Bush (2000) offered a good suggestion that it is better to save audio or video files under the best format available for archive purposes and then make a second copy in lower quality for immediate distribution.

Problem of Copyright

Scinicariello (1997) pointed out that everyone working with multimedia has to be concerned with copyright issues (see also Pusack and Otto, 1997). The development and pervasiveness of MP3 files has further confused the already murky issue of copyright infringement. The wildly popular Napster and Gnutella programs make music files available to anyone without distinguishing those that are legally or illegally distributed. Downloading a music file for private listening that has also been made available by the copyright holders is certainly legal. However, copying the same file without permission to a local area network to make it available to students infringes on copyright. Some artists provide freely distributable MP3 samples of one or two of their songs. Many music files are made available on the Internet so that the music company benefits from advertising when visitors to their site download them. These files may only be downloaded from the distributor's site and may not be downloaded for any secondary use including educational purposes. As a general rule, it is prudent to assume that the use of any MP3 or video file infringes on copyright unless one has explicit permission to use it for educational purposes from the

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copyright holder. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) (2000) states, "A copyright is infringed when a song is made available to the public by uploading it to an Internet site for other people to download, sending it through an e-mail or chat service, or otherwise reproducing or distributing copies without authorization from the copyright owner. In civil cases copyright infringement can occur whether or not money was exchanged for the music, and in criminal cases there only needs to be a possibility of financial loss to the copyright holder or financial gain to the infringer." (For an introduction to music copyright laws in the USA, see www.riaa.com.) As Dvorak, Charlotteaux, Gilgen, Herren, Jones, and Trometer (1995) noted the language teacher is not only faced with technology but also with the law.

DESIGNING MULTIMEDIA MATERIALS

It was necessary to find both audio and video multimedia files for use in the course. Three video segments were selected from the library of TV5 (www.funambule.com). These videos all dealt with the theme of le diable 'the devil:' L'Exorciste de Nice (an interview with an exorcist priest in the south of France), Le Violon du diable (a story about a Québecois fiddler), and the Les Sorcières de Marchiennes (about a festival of sorcery in the north of France). For the audio component, the following songs were chosen: L'Auvergnat by Brassens, Honte à qui peut chanter by Brassens but sung by Maxime Le Forestier, and Nuit et brouillard by Ferrat, all of whom are classic French folk singers.

While the activities for the songs were first being developed, an e-mail was sent to the singers' official web sites asking for permission to use their material in these activities. No response was ever received. As a result, these web pages were mostly used as proof-of-concept prototypes and only used once locally in a class to see whether students enjoyed working with them. Without the permission of the copyright holder, it is impossible to use these materials regularly or to post them to the Web. Consequently, new activities will be based on the music of less well known artists who are pleased to have the added attention. These new pages will only be developed when proper permissions are received. The web pages for TV5 and Funambule state that their videos may be downloaded and used locally for pedagogical purposes. In fact, their web pages were set up to promote learning the French language.

Outline of the Planned Materials

More activities were planned than were actually used in class. Originally, each class was to have an audio and a video activity, but time permitted only one or the other. The different activities developed around

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each audio or video segment took the students much more time than anticipated. (See the original schedule of multimedia programs prepared for the course and the changes that had to be made in the schedule in Appendix A.)

The students were introduced to the song with prelistening activities which were designed to activate their background knowledge and to give them information on the singer and the theme of the song. Students explored related links that were either stored locally or available on the Web.

The listening section had three parts. The first part was a true or false activity related to the general global comprehension of the song. The second part consisted of fill-in-the-blank questions on the lyrics. These questions were always accompanied by side notes giving historical, cultural, or literary details on the elements in the song, glossary explanations, texts and pictures, and Internet links to related topics. The third part of the section consisted of multiple choice questions focusing on detailed comprehension questions.

Developing Tools for the Server

Two different approaches were used to develop the language activities. Activities related to the video components were developed using the authoring tool Ficelle (aix1.uottawa.ca/~weinberg/ficelle.html), while all the audio activities were encoded in HTML and JavaScript.

Some authoring systems (e.g., ToolBook and Authorware) are difficult to manage without more advanced technical skills and support. Others (e.g., WinCalis from Duke University and Dasher form the University of Iowa) offer simple templates for the language teacher. The Ficelle program was developed in a partnership among Michael Davidson, Alysse Weinberg, and Hélène Knoerr to support the development of multimedia activities for second language learning. The program makes it very easy and fast to develop sophisticated fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice activities for reading, listening, and grammar practice complete with automated generic feedback or customized context-sensitive feedback. The program allows developers to insert sound files, video files, pictures, review links, glossary items, and phonetic characters in lessons. Students can record their own voice and compare it to a standard recording. The program has been used extensively for language activities and for testing at the University of Ottawa where it has been installed on a multimedia network. (For a review of Ficelle, see Saury, DiBella, & Berg, 2001.)

Figure 1 shows a sample screen developed for Le Violon du diable using Ficelle.

A Tale of Two Communities: Group Dynamics and Community Building in a Spanish-English Telecollaboration

MARK DARHOWER
North Carolina State University

Abstract:
This study provides a theory-driven account of community building in a bilingual telecollaborative chat setting. A symmetrical arrangement of 70 L1 English learners of Spanish and L1 Spanish learners of English engaged in weekly Internet chat sessions in small groups. The learning metaphors of community and participation serve as the theoretical framework to describe linguistic and social behaviors and interpersonal relationships among participants in two ongoing chat groups, while, at the same time, discourse data are used to build upon theory of (virtual) community. Based on Brown's (2001) classification of levels of online community, the findings illustrate the discursive construction of one community that reached the third, cooperation/camaraderie, level and another that struggled to maintain the second, membership, level.

KEYWORDS

Chat Communities, ESL, Participation Metaphor, Spanish, Telecollaboration

These are early days in the exploration of the concept of community … in the emerging hybrid worlds in which people live … . Conversations and relationships are, for a growing number of people, mediated through new tools enabled by computing and telecommunications. These are exciting times, akin to the first decades of the written word … (Barab, Kling, & Gray, 2004, p. xiii)

INTRODUCTION

'Telecollaboration' (known as 'tandem learning' in Europe) has been an active area of second language acquisition (SLA) research in recent years. A telecollaboration consists of groups of geographically separated learners in which half of the learners are native speakers of the language the other half are learning, and vice versa. Telecollaborations are by nature virtual learning communities (Renninger

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& Shumar, 2002). 'Community,' a metaphor oft employed in scholarship throughout the humanities and social sciences, is especially robust in SLA research as the field increasingly embraces the social, as well as cognitive factors involved in learning languages (Block, 2003; Firth & Wagner, 1997). Much of this research has been cast in the Vygotsky-inspired sociocultural theoretical framework (for an overview, see Lantolf & Appel, 1994) complemented with constructs such as 'community of practice' (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Although recent SLA studies have been carried out in the context of virtual learner communities (e.g., Belz, 2001, 2002b), research has yet to sufficiently define a role for community in L2 learning (Darhower, 2006). Studies are needed to enlighten the specific processes by which learners become full fledged members of L2 discourse communities (or not).

The current study analyzes a virtual community named the¹ Bilingual Chat Community (BCC). This collaboration between the North Carolina State University and the University of Puerto Rico unites L1 English speakers learning Spanish with L1 Spanish speakers learning English. The purpose is to initiate learners into a bilingual discourse community in which they can coconstruct meaning with native speakers in the L2 and share with each other aspects of their respective cultures. This study explores linguistic and social behaviors involved in community building in two groups of the BCC who chatted for a 10-week period. One of the groups constructed a cooperative, cohesive communicative environment in their chat room, whereas the other group established a very different type of communicative environment. Discourse analysis will illuminate the trajectory of each group as it constructs the communicative norms of its community.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Community as Language Learning Metaphor

According to Lantolf (1996), SLA research is largely metaphorical. Metaphors applied to the field range from single constructs (e.g., input/output) to theories of language and language acquisition (e.g., information processing or mind = computer). Metaphors help researchers conceptualize abstract ideas in a more concrete way. Community is a metaphor currently of great interest to academics across the humanities and social sciences. A related metaphor in learning theory is participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), which views learning as a process of becoming a participant in a community of practice (CoP). This contrasts with other common learning metaphors, such as the acquisition metaphor which equates the human mind with a container to be filled with certain materials of which the learner is then the owner (Sfard, 1998, p. 5).

The CoP is perhaps the most developed concept of community in psychology and learning theory. A CoP consists of individuals who interact on a regular basis around a common set of issues, interests, or needs. Wenger (1998) established three criteria for defining a CoP. When members of the CoP accomplish something on an ongoing basis, they have a 'joint enterprise.' Members have 'mutual engagement' when they interact with one another to clarify their work and to

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define and even change how the work is done. Through this mutual engagement, members establish their identities relative to the community. A 'shared repertoire' refers to the methods, tools, techniques, language, and behavior patterns that comprise the cultural context for the members' work.

In the participation view of SLA, learners ideally integrate themselves as full participants in some type of community that employs the L2 as its means of communication. As Sfard (1998, p. 6) puts it, "learning a subject is now conceived of as a process of becoming a member of a certain community. This entails, above all, the ability to communicate in the language of this community and act according to its particular norms." Defining whether a collection of human beings constitutes a community or not is an elusive endeavor, however. Some theorists establish specific criteria for community, such as Wenger's CoP. Riel and Polin (1994, p. 18) make the distinction that "a community differs from a mere collection of people by the strength and depth of the culture it is able to establish and which in turn supports group activity and cohesion."

The social activity that occurs in CoPs is inherently tied to group membership and identity (Riel & Polin, 1994). Norton (2001) argues the importance of understanding how learners develop identities as 'legitimate speakers,' that is, how they come to be accepted as fully functioning members of different CoPs with which they engage. The process of becoming a "fully functioning member" implies that learners evolve over time in their social roles and identities relative to the group. Rogoff (1994, p. 210) considers this process of "transformation of participation" an essential part of learning.

However, not all members of a community actively participate or necessarily enjoy participating. Some group members might not develop strong connections with each other, especially if the groupings are involuntary. As Riel and Polin (1994) point out, communities do not always entail healthy contexts of close interpersonal relationships but rather may be dysfunctional, scattered, or otherwise troubled.

As participant roles develop and are played out through discourse practices, the social history of the group is created and stored (Hall, 1993). Such history can then be brought forth for reconstruction. 'Historicity' (and futurity) can be noted in groups that have a mutual engagement as they build on their past and plan and prepare for their future.

Linguistic and Social Affordances

According to Wenger (1998, p. 72), "The negotiation of meaning is the level of discourse at which the concept of practice should be understood." In the L2 context, learners attempt to coconstruct meaning with each other or with more proficient speakers of the L2. Proficient speakers can offer linguistic resources to learners. Borrowing from psychologist James Gibson, Van Lier (2000) refers to linguistic resources available to learners as 'affordances.' Affordances can include such familiar SLA constructs as comprehensible input (Krashen, 1981, and elsewhere), negative feedback ( Aljaafreh & Lantolf, 1994), and scaffolding

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(Donato, 1994; Guerrero & Villamil, 2000; Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976). Additionally, affordances are aspects of the linguistic world which can be "demands and requirements, opportunities and limitations, rejections and invitations, enablements and constraints (Shotter & Newson, 1982, as cited in Van Lier, 2000, p. 253). These can be considered 'social affordances.' In a social view of SLA, participation in a CoP is the activity of language learners. As learners participate in CoPs, affordances are available for them to make use of--or not.

Virtual Communities and Telecollaboration

Rheingold (1993) is credited with pioneering the concept of 'virtual community,' which he describes as social aggregations that emerge on the Internet when enough people carry on discussions long enough to form personal relations in cyberspace. In her extensive research into online community-building, Brown (2001) delineates three levels in the evolution of online communities. In the 'acquaintance' level, participants get to know each other. Brown refers to the 'community conferment or membership' level as the "membership card" for the community. Learners usually feel that they are members when they are part of long, thoughtful discussions with each other. The final level is 'camaraderie,' which is achieved after "long-term and/or intense association with others involving personal communication" (Brown, 2001, p. 24). These levels are not necessarily linear. In other words, a community that reaches camaraderie level could regress to membership level, and individual community members can be on different levels at different times. Brown also pointed out that community can be present for some individuals but not for others who for whatever reasons do not engage well with their counterparts.

In observing hundreds of online communities, Kim (2000) noted that participants always fit into some type of role, ranging from 'visitor' to 'novice,' 'regular,' 'leader' and eventually to 'elder.' Many participants evolve from the visitor or novice role to regular member, and most communities have one or more individuals in a leader role at any given time. Renninger and Shumar (2002, p. 298) note that "learners play a variety of roles and may participate in various ways, from active to passive."

SLA scholars remain intensely interested in the emergent culture of electronically mediated discourse (e.g., Belz & Thorne, 2005), although studies that specifically address community as a construct are relatively few. Darhower (2006) made a case for a stronger role for community in National Standards-based L2 learning. Arnold, Ducate, Lomicka, & Lord (2005) demonstrated the unique types of learning that take place when teachers in training from geographically dispersed places unite in an online community.

Studies of telecollaborative learning communities highlight linguistic, social and cultural factors of the communities, providing information on both the benefits and potential disadvantages of telecollaborations (Belz, 2001, 2002a; Kramsch & Thorne, 2002; Schneider & von der Emde, 2005). In telecollaborations between American and German students, for example, Belz (2001) found that such factors

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as language valuation, access to technology, and matching of proficiency levels have a profound effect on the linguistic and interpersonal nature of telecollaborative learning environments. Belz's conclusion was that "telecollaboration does not unproblematically afford target language interaction in all cases" (p. 229).

The current study seeks to complement extant research on telecollaborations by illustrating the specific social discursive processes involved in participating in and acquiring membership to virtual bilingual language communities.

THE STUDY

Context and Participants: The Bilingual Chat Community (BCC)

The BCC is a web-enabled community which provides a forum for English-speaking learners of Spanish to communicate in weekly chat sessions with Spanish-speaking learners of English. The physical space of the BCC resides in the chat rooms hosted by the WebCT server at the North Carolina State University and the BCC web site containing photographs and biographical information on the participants, as well as information they need to be productive members of the community, such as weekly topic assignments (see topics list in Appendix A) and the chat schedule. The participants in the semester's BCC were approximately 35 Spanish students from North Carolina State University (NCSU) and 35 English students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). Those included in the study were 12 members of two different groups. Four of the 12 were male, and 8 were female. All 12 members were the traditional university age (19-22), and all were estimated to be somewhere in the intermediate-mid to intermediate-high ACTFL oral proficiency level.

Research Question

The general research question driving this case study is: What linguistic and social behaviors define the process of forming a community and becoming full participants in the community?

Data Collection

Weekly transcripts collected by the chat server were the principal data source. In qualitative research, it is often necessary to reduce large quantities of data. With 11 groups chatting for 10 weeks, there were a total of 110 chat episodes, each consisting of anywhere from 5 to 11 pages of text. To reduce the enormous amount of data collected, the researcher employed purposive sampling (Miles & Huberman, 1994), selecting two groups for analysis: Group E and Group D. The participants in Group E appeared to form a cohesive community throughout their ten weeks of chat, developing meaningful interpersonal relationships mediated by electronic discourse. Group D, at the other extreme, did not appear to form a tight social bond. The two groups were selected to contrast levels of community development. The researcher does not wish to give the impression that these two groups are representative of the BCC as a whole. The remainder of the 11 groups

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fell somewhere between Group E and Group D in terms of a cohesion continuum, based on the researcher's impressionistic review of the 110 chat logs.

To answer the research question, the researcher made reiterative passes through the data, viewing the chat scripts through the lens of the three-level framework established by Brown (2001) (i.e., acquaintance, membership, and camaraderie levels). Within that framework emerged several categories of analysis: experiences with the L2, historicity and futurity, integration of new members, member roles and regulatory behaviors, members versus nonmembers, and linguistic and social affordances. Discourse excerpts were selected to illustrate each category.

DATA ANALYSIS: GROUP E

Five learners were assigned to Group E: two from NCSU and three from the UPR. There were also six visitors who joined the group for one to three sessions, but the analysis focuses on members originally assigned to the group. Group E had an attendance rate of 88%, that is, a total of only six absences dispersed among the five participants over the course of 10 weeks. Table 1 shows which participants attended each weekly chat session.²

Acquaintance Phase (Weeks 1 and 2)

Experiences with the L2

In Week 1, Bob, Manuela, and Ricardo become acquainted with each other. (It is noteworthy that these three participants had excellent attendance, so they chatted with each other all 10 weeks.) In Excerpt E1, the chatters discuss the extent of their experience with their L2 (lines 1-7) and aspects of using the L2 that are most challenging for them (lines 8-20). In lines 22-24, they look favorably upon their chat experience in helping them develop their L2 skills.³

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Excerpt E1 (Week 1): Experiences with the L2

Discussing their experiences with their L2 sets the stage for the bilingual social relationships that the participants will develop throughout ten weeks of chatting together.

Historicity and Futurity

After the first moments of their initial chat, the chatters not only have a present but also a past and a future. In other words, they possess historicity and futurity. An example of this is found in Excerpt E2 in which Ricardo remembers that Bob had a birthday (line 2), then both Bob and Lisa wish Ricardo a happy birthday (line 10). (Coincidentally, three of the group members had a birthday during the semester.) Later, in Week 10 (not included in this excerpt), the other birthdays are remembered.

Excerpt E2 (Week 10): Historicity/Futurity

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The group's sense of historicity and futurity is a good indicator that by Week 2 they were already developing a sense of community.

Integration of New Members and Establishment of Roles

In Week 1, Bob, Manuela, and Ricardo are novices since they had never chatted together before. Since the BCC has preestablished rules governing chat topics and equal use of English and Spanish, somebody must take on the role of initiating and maintaining the topic, switching languages, and ending the chat session. Bob fulfills this role in the first chat. Interestingly, as shown in Excerpt E3, Manuela (the only female in the group) asks the two gentlemen to change the topic of discussion to something to which she can relate (line 1). In doing so, she asserts her rights as a full member while still a novice in the community. In lines 3, 5, and 6, Bob demonstrates that he is happy to accommodate Manuela's request.

Excerpt E3 (Week 2): Manuela's request to change topics

Later in Week 2 (not illustrated in the excerpt), Lisa and Nilsa integrate themselves into the community. Nilsa enters and greets the others, then asks to be initiated: es la primera vez que entro asi que ubiquenme 'it's the first time I'm entering, so orient me.' Lisa enters and greets the community members, then instantly integrates herself into the discussion by exchanging introductory information with her fellow chatters. Manuela is pleased that she is no longer the only female in the chat: chicas nuevas en la sala … al fin no me siento sola jejeje 'new girls in the room … at last I don't feel alone hahaha.' Bob directs the group to get to know the newcomers before continuing the conversation: Parece que tenemos que empzar a conocernos otra vez! 'It looks like we have to get to know each other again!'

All assigned participants have chatted at least once by the end of Week 2. The requirements for membership seem to be clear to them, so the community enters the community membership level.

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Community Membership Level

By the third chat session, most members of Group E become regulars of the community (except Nilsa, who is absent the third and fourth weeks), meaning that they are initiated into the norms and communicative patterns of the community.

Roles and Regulatory Behaviors

Wenger (1998, p. 74) notes that "The kind of coherence that transforms mutual engagement into a community of practice requires work. The work of 'community maintenance' is thus an intrinsic part of any practice." During the membership level, participant roles evolve. As shown in Table 2, Lisa picks up the regulatory functions soon after she enters her first chat (Week 2, to which she was 19 minutes late) and maintains these functions almost exclusively throughout the 10 weeks, except for the week she is absent (Week 6). It can be said, then, that Lisa fulfills the leader role, taking this over from Bob after Week 1.

Members and Nonmembers

After a few weeks of chatting, the group members know who is part of their community and who is not. Excerpt E4 shows what happens when a visitor (Adalia) enters.

Excerpt E4 (Week 3): Entrance of a visitor

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Ricardo simply greets Adalia (line 2), but Manuela must make it a point to find out who Adalia is and if she is male or female (lines 3-8) before she and Ricardo can integrate Adalia into their discussion.

Linguistic Affordances

Beginning the first week, the chatters provide linguistic affordances to each other, which have the potential to aid in the development of their L2. In just one example of this, Excerpt E5 shows Ricardo requesting the meaning of the expression "lift weights" (line 2). Bob explains the meaning in lines 4 and 5, and by line 6, Ricardo seems to understand and thanks Bob for the linguistic affordance.

Excerpt E5 (Week 1): Request for meaning (I)

In Excerpt E6, line2, Ricardo returns the favor, although he provides the meaning in Bob's L1 (English) instead of explaining it in Spanish. The provision of such linguistic affordances is an important function of the reciprocity of the chat community. That is, each member of the community can alternate between the language expert and language learner roles.

Excerpt E6 (Week 6): Request for meaning (II)

Throughout the 10 weeks, one of the chatters in particular (Bob) makes abundant use of affordances provided by the Spanish speakers. In Week 2, for example, Bob begins using the conditional tense verb debería 'ought,' a tense generally not yet employed by learners at this (intermediate) level, after seeing Ricardo use the verb form. In Excerpt E7, Bob repeats the conditional tense verb twice in response to Ricardo's question and then uses the form once again in a question directed back to Ricardo. Bob eliminates the preposition de from the verb form;

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presumably because he does not think it necessary, and, in fact, it is not. He may have lifted the word debería from Ricardo as a lexical item rather than analyzing it as a conjugated verb form because he did not change the verb ending to the second person familiar form (deberías).

Excerpt E7 (Week 2): Bob's use of a linguistic affordance

Bob also employs circumlocution to help the Spanish speakers provide him the linguistic affordance he needs. In Excerpt E8, Bob negotiates the word anestesiológo 'anesthesiologist.' In lines 5 and 6, Josefina and Manuela indicate that they do not understand what Bob means in line 2 by "she makes sure you don't have pain." When Bob adds "person who gives medicine" to this in line 7, the Hispanophones figure out what he means and give him the word in Spanish (line 10).

Excerpt E8 (Week 2): Negotiation of a lexical item

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This circumlocution, coupled with Bob's independent use of affordances as illustrated in Excerpt E6, demonstrates that Bob has appropriated chat room discourse as a mediator of his L2 development, a desirable accomplishment for chatters to attain.

One type of linguistic affordance widely believed to aid acquisition is negative feedback or error correction. BCC members were not specifically instructed on how and when to correct L2 errors because the instructors wanted to allow learners the autonomy to determine for themselves what the communicative norms would be in their chat rooms. As a result, a range of error correction patterns emerged from group to group. In Group E, there seemed to be an implicit norm that errors would not be corrected unless the speaker requested correction or if the error impeded comprehension. While the lack of negative feedback makes for fewer interruptions to the flow of conversation, there were a number of opportunities to provide such affordances which could have helped the learners in their L2 development. For example, Manuela says in Week 8, "lisa did u saw havanna nights?" The same week, Ricardo says, "Did every vary saw "Dance with me"?" Neither time was "saw" corrected, and, in fact, Ricardo misspells every "vary" (everybody) throughout the entire chat without anyone bringing it to his attention. This is one area, provision of negative feedback, in which instructors might want to intervene to guide chatters in providing and taking advantage of linguistic affordances in their chats.