Roed (2003) looked at a project based on collaboration between three universities in UK on learning Danish virtually which students were given a communicative language task. The researcher examined how communicating online can affect learner behaviour as well as the perception of learner behaviour.
The results found that students behaved differently when communicating online compared to a face-to-face situation. One major finding was that students found learning via computer was like ‘a shield of being on stage’ that reduced their anxiety of using the second language in front of class. In the task students were asked to interact with students in a chat room, research findings showed that students spoke more freely and were more eager to language learning as a virtual environment created a more relaxed and stress free atmosphere.
Roed also found that students displayed a very different personality in computer learning. Students behaving shy in classroom setting would behave well in computer-based learning.
Considering virtual learning, I can’t agree more with Roed’s major finding: fewer inhibitions motivate students’ learning. Being a second language learner of English, I agree that I was scared of speaking English in class when I was young. Speaking a second language would be a real challenge to many students. They would scare to pronounce words wrongly, carry peculiar accents, even if they could say a sentence perfectly, another challenge would come when they have to respond to people’s question. Engaging in a virtual learning environment, all these worries would be gone. The lesser the anxiety, the better one would be when it comes to language learning.
Virtual learning is possible if it serves as a supplementary tool assisting learning. I probably would try out communicating with my students in online platforms, chat room for instance. Not only can students engage in self-learning and peer-communicating via using the computer, both teacher and students can also connect to each other and create a closer network via the Internet.
Would virtual learning someday replace classroom learning in primary or secondary school settings in Hong Kong? That would be a topic for me to explore a little more later!
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Great post, Alice and I appreciate your sharing of your insights into the challenges that second language learners face when they find themselves in situations where they have to speak the second language. (Being a native English speaker, sometimes I forget about this when I set English oral tasks for my students to complete.)
ReplyDeleteTo some extend, I agree with you that fewer inhibition would encourages students' learning is not applicable to authentic English learning.But virtual learning environment do facilitate language learners to reinforce their language learing. To me , it could be used as assisting tool to ordinary language classroom.
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