TakaseOnlineWriting

CONCLUSION

My findings in each of these four areas share a common feature-the need for moderation (but read on):

The chance to communicate with others about their interests and experiences was a strong motivation for the students. But where it became too strong it may have placed a drag on language learning as communicators restrict themselves to simple English or to simple themes or rely on their native language.

Technical problems can become opportunities for language learning and so are not necessarily bad things. But major technical problems are potentially disastrous in an environment that relies on the availability and smooth running of resources that are not under our own control.

The sense of an audience is very important in all writing and the blogging exercise certainly provided a bigger audience than the twos and threes that the students are used to working in. But the sense of a global audience was sometimes inhibiting to students.

The internet is a vast multimodal, hyperlinked, encyclopaedic composition environment. But in some respects it is too big and uncoordinated-how can we make distinctions between formal and informal writing, for example-and sometimes it provides too many resources, some of which, such as translation machines, may be unhelpful to language learning.

A NEW ENVIRONMENT FOR COMPOSITION?

The students made a good deal of use of the multimodal nature of the environment including on their blogs photos, other kinds of images, emoticons and hyperlinks in the same way that they use email and even mobile phones. They liked to change fonts and colours and were very selective in choosing their blog designs.

They also made use of many of the facilities on the internet to find these resources and other information that they could use on their blogs.

This was important form a motivational perspective, but it is not certain how much it contributed to language learning. There are limitations to the internet for language learning purposes. For example, it is often difficult for students to recognise the difference between formal and informal language especially because of the tendency for internet writing to be more informal than many other forms.

There is also the problem of translation machines. These were formally banned in this activity, but some students admitted to using them. These machines are readily available on the internet and on many computers nowadays. Whether advances in this kind of technology-including speech translation-will render a good deal of what we currently do in foreign language teaching and learning redundant is an open question.

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DISCUSSION

Moderation in all things is good, we are told, and so it seems here: not too much and not too little is the best way to go for language learning. And moderation is also part of the solution. The tutor needs to be closely involved in order to ensure that the right level of motivation, technical difficulty, audience, and availability oT resources is maintained.

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This places a good deal of pressure on tutor time. In this activity it would not have been possible for the tutor to have maintained an ideal level of participation as well as teaehinq all of her other classes ₀etc. Perhaps we need to make more usebt student,mgoeration in -online work. If we are to do this, then we must beginfo think of our students as not simply learners, but teachers as well and we must design our curricula accordingly. ^A ~\~pf A p f'

ILLUSTRATIONS

AUTHENTIC LEARNING ?

COMMUNICATION ENHANCES LANGAUGE

There were a lot of positive responses:

I used a dictionary often but it was OK.

A fter I wrote, I asked my close friends to correct my English.

I learned many new English words.

One of the book reviews in a blog with a photo was very interesting. After I read it, I bought the book she mentioned in her blog. It does not matter whether it is written in English or in Japanese. It is fun to read interesting blogs.

Some people wrote longer messages and learned many interesting English expressions from them.

KEY CLAIM

A SENSE OF AUDIENCE

Blogging is a public activity that can heighten the sense of audience and the idea of writing for purpose, (eg see Ward, 2004)

KEY CLAIM

A NEW ENVIRONMENT FOR COMPOSITION

The internet, still comparatively new, provides the kind of environment imagined by Var\ne>/ar Bush in his 1945 essay 'As We May Think'. Like Bush's 'memex', the internet connects us to a multimodal universe of data within which we can also write.

On the other hand, as Ward (2004) points out, 'weblog authors are not usually professional writers, weblog readers are not generally professional readers either'. This also applies to much of the rest of the internet. There is the danger that we are entering a world with little by way of quality control.

KEY CLAIM

AUTHENTIC COMMUNICATION ENHANCES LANGAUGE LEARNING

The most successful language learning takes place in authentic situations involving learners in real acts of communication (eg. See Ward, 2004; Warschauer, 2000)

KEY CLAIM

TECHNICAL PROBLEMS CAN BE OPPORTUNITIES

On the face of it, technical problems are a hindrance to language learning in CthC. However, solving these problems within the target language can be used as an opportunity for language learning and learners may also acquire important ICT skills (eg see Hauck & Haszewindt, 1999; Warschauer, 1998) On the other hand, some technical problems definitely are not friendly; websites and weblogs are vulnerable to hacking, and accidental deletion and services may be interrupted just when you want to use them, (eg see Stiler, 2003; Ward, 2004)

ILLUSTRATIONS

TECHNICAL PROBLEMS CAN BE OPPORTUNITIES?

I limited students to using a free English language blog site (all instructions are written in English). This free blog (Blogcity.com) seems to be easy to use. But they do not offer instructions on images/photos/emoticons/links, which are important for the students. Some students sent emails to the Blogcity.com helpdesk to ask how to upload photos. Their English was limited but they managed to write messages with the help of their teacher. They read the instructions carefully, and they uploaded their images successfully. This was a very positive experience of success.

Some students commented that it was a bit of nuisance to use English language blogs. Some preferred using Japanese blog sites offering instructions in Japanese and more emoticons.

In BlogCity, functions are explained in English, which is difficult to understand. I prefer using Japanese free blogs. I can include photos and pictures easily.

However there were many positive feedbacks from the students on using the computer as a medium saying that they can learn both, computer skills and English.

I had come across a similar problem in an earlier study involving the use of recorded voice attachments to emails between Japanese learners of English and native English speakers-in that study, the emails contained transcripts of the voice recordings:

Kana said she enormously enjoyed communicating and establishing friendship with Katie. Although they knew the aim of their exchanging messages was language learning or teaching, the priority was in the authenticity of friendly communication. The question is, can Kana learn English through this relationship? Kana said she was not sure about learning, but she pointed out that English had become very familiar now and that she did not feel uncomfortable or a burden to write long emails in English. Furthermore, Kana pointed out that she had become very interested in culture and news from the UK. This clearly gave Kana confidence in English and an affinity with and interest in the people and culture of the target community of practice. (Takase, 2001)

There is no doubt that the urge to communicate can be motivating. But we need to ensure that the linguistic\^tivafion]continues to be foregrounded in such activities.

DISCUSSION

TECHNICAL PROBLEMS CAN BE OPPORTUNITIES?

As we all become more familiar with ICT, the need to develop this kind of computer skills will recede. However, all new environments will have their particular characteristics and this will involve some element of skills learning. As long as the difficulties are not excessive, then the attempt to overcome them using the target language seems to be potentially productive and the experience of success can be enhanced

The experience of technical problems was an issue in my previous research as well (Takase, 2001).

In relation to technological problems, Andrews (2000) reports students' negative attitudes toward technology when things go wrong. However, I did not find this in my project. The participants did have technical problems and the Japanese participants expressed shame or their lack of computer skills and felt the need to acquire it. However, they did not report ynegative attitudes towards technology. Or\e reason may be that [ I avoided too much complexity at the initial stage. It seems reasonable to take the simplest medium for maximum effects.

DISCUSSION