CALL Potpourri
Issue 9, Summer 2005
TELL @ ELI Archive

There is little written on the issues related to the functionalities and features of the Computer-mediated communication (CMC) software specifically designed for a synchronous CMC (chat) of language learners. To date, very few synchronous CMC tools have been developed with consideration of the unique needs of these learners. In this TELL @ ELI publication, we would like to share our thoughts about the features that an ESL/EFL user-friendly synchronous CMC tool should have and would like to call for your input in this matter.

In his 1999 book Electronic Literacies: Language, Culture, and Power in Online Education, Warschauer stresses that electronic literacy becomes an important aspect in contemporary society, and that it is of a great importance to address this issue in second language (L2) research and educational practices. CMC is one of the dimensions of electronic litercies that has been actively applied in L2 classrooms in the past decades. The main reason is its unique nature to incorporate features of written and oral discourse, which provides a greater support to the language learners’ communication and contributes to the language acquisition process (Blake, 2000; Swaffar, 1998; Warschauer, 1999). Swaffar (1998) summarizes the benefits of CMC for L2 learners concluding that in CMC, L2 learners engage in class interaction more frequently and with greater enthusiasm, producing greater amounts of language. Further, other researchers such as Blake (2000) note the importance of considering tasks that learners are assigned while communicating via the computer.

Currently, instant messaging software applied most frequently in the classroom includes MSN Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, and AOL. While these software applications might be useful for assigning various CMC tasks, their functionalities and interface are limited when considering the context of the modern language classroom. Here are some of the limitations we indentified after a comparison analysis of the four synchronous CMC programs listed above:

• The user’s registration process is relatively long, can be cumbersome for lower proficiency level students, and is time consuming.
• In order to use these instant messengers, software needs to be downloaded and installed on the computer.
• Thus all messengers are “anchored” to a specific computer or computers. In other words, after the chat session is completed, the chat log can be saved only on the computers from which the chat session was performed. It is difficult for the teacher to access these logs in order to be informed about students’ work.
• By default, the users of these messengers communicate in dyads. While some of them (for example, Yahoo!Messenger and ICQ 5) allow the creation of private chat rooms in which more than two people can chat, these private chat rooms are unstable and disappear immediately after the chat room creator exits the chat room. This makes it difficult for a teacher to create, manage, and participate in multiple private chat rooms simultaneously.
• Since these CMC applications are created for mainstream use, there are no generated chat analysis features available.
• Last but not least, other users who are on the contact list of the student can disturb the language learning chat.

Some of the drawbacks of these chat systems are overcome by private chat rooms available on the Internet such as “Chatzy” a private web based chat service (available at: http://www.chatzy.com/); however such programs again are designed for the general Internet user without taking into account the specific needs of language instruction.

A chat program that incorporates features designed especially for language learners is Language Educational Chat System (L. E. C. S.) developed at Kanto-Gakuin University, Japan. In addition to providing a web based forum for CMC synchronous exchange that requires no downloads, this program offers the following features that are useful for both language learners and instructors:

• showing the number of turns each chat participant took;
• showing the average number of words in each sentence used in the chat
• providing an analysis of the word frequency
• showing word collocations used in the chat
• providing common mistakes analysis (for more detailed description of LECS functions, check the L.E.C.S. Intro Page)

For ESL learnersL.E.C.S. is a good chat forum that offers opportunities for chat and analysis of users’ communication exchange. However, it has some limitations that led us to believe that the design of a language learner chat program should be further researched and discussed.

We would like to share some of the design considerations that we perceive to be important based on our experience as language educators involved in the field of instructional technology. After analyzing the needs of both users-learners and users-instructors, we presume that there are certain features of the interface that would support the successful completion of the language learning tasks assigned:

• We propose that the registration process should be completed mainly by the instructor, i.e. the instructor should be the one to register the class and obtain a password for the students to log in. This simplifies the students’ log-in procedure and would allow for more time to be spent on task completion.
• The chat system should have three distinct modes: Instructor, Chat, and Chat Review, each with specific functions:
  _____a. When logged in the Instructor Mode, the user can:
  ___________i. Upload materials related to the chat such as: the task description, target vocabulary list, useful links, etc.
  ___________ii. View tips related to the design and implementation of CMC tasks
  _____b. In the Chat Mode, the users can exchange messages in real time. The design of the page on which the chat is performed should contain functional areas, namely:
  ___________i. Active participants’ area that will display the participants that are currently logged in to the chat room.<br> ___________ii. Composition area in which the users will create their messages.
  ___________iii. Actual chat area in which the communication exchange will appear.
  ___________iv. Assignment area, which displays instructions for the current chat session, the target vocabulary list (if uploaded by the instructor), and links to related material such as video, audio, text, etc.
  ___________v. An on-line dictionary search function that would allow searching for the meaning of particular words (the search could be linked to an on-line dictionary and the search results could be displayed on a separate page).
  ___________vi. Chat print option, which would send to the printer the text of the generated chat log.
  ______c. From the Chat Review Mode, the instructor and the students should have access to tools that would allow them to analyze the text of the chat session:
  ___________i. Vocabulary profiler - similar to the Web Vocabulary profiler available at: http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r21270/textools/web_vp.html. This function will provide information about the words used in the chat session: word frequency, word types and families etc. The analysis should be available at two levels:
  ________________1.Overall chat level
  ________________2. Individual chat participant level
  ___________ii. Common grammar problem analysis (similar to the one available on L.E.C.S.) that would display mistakes made by learners and their corrections and grammar rules.

We would like to call for support from our ESL community in the form of opinions on and suggestions about the most useful and important features of a language-learning chat system. We would appreciate your feedback which you can provide by taking the on-line survey we designed for you at GetFast: (http://www.getfast.ca/students/index.cfm?Randomcourse=62216335.0)
Password: chat

Blake, R. (2000). Computer-mediated communication: a window on SL Spanish interlanguage. Language Learning & Technology, 4(1), 120-136.

Swaffar, J. (1998). Networking language learning: Introduction. In J. Swaffar, S. Romano, P. Markley, & K. Arens (Eds.), Language learning online: Theory and practice in the ESL and SL computer classroom (pp. 1-15). Austin, TX: Labyrinth.

Warschauer, M. (1999). Electronic literacies: Language, culture, and power in online education. Mahwah, NJ, London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.