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DOI: 10.4018/IJCALLT.2017070101
Volume 7 • Issue 3 • July-September 2017
Copyright © 2017, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Nikos Tsourakis, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
Claudia Baur, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
Manny Rayner, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
Modern Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) systems use speech recognition to give
students the opportunity to build up their spoken language skills through interactive practice with
a mechanical partner. Besides the obvious benefits that these systems can offer, e.g. flexible and
inexpensive learning, user interaction in this context can often be problematic. In this article, the
authors introduce a parallel layer of feedback in a CALL application, which can monitor interaction,
report errors and provide advice and suggestions to students. This mechanism combines knowledge
accumulated from four different inputs in order to decide on appropriate feedback, which can be
customized and adapted in terms of phrasing, style and language. The authors report the results from
experiments conducted at six lower secondary classrooms in German-speaking Switzerland with
and without this mechanism. After analyzing approximately 13,000 spoken interactions it can be
reasonably argued that their parallel feedback mechanism in L2 actually does help students during
interaction and contributes as a motivation factor.
CALL, Children, Feedback, German, Knowledge-Based
There is a growing interest in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) applications. A major
problem for many beginner students is the difficulty of finding conversation partners; given their
minimal skills, they feel diffident about asking native speakers to talk with them. Some researchers
in the sociolinguistic tradition, e.g. (Kubota & Lin, 2009), describe this in terms of difficulty in
establishing a valid L2 identity, an analysis which, as they argue, is particularly apt for immigrant
learners. Without conversation practice, it is impossible to “automatize” (Luu, 2016), and convert
the conscious declarative knowledge acquired from classroom or textbook work into unconscious
procedural skills. Even a simple dialogue system may however tangibly help the beginner learner
progress to a level where they are confident enough to engage native speakers in conversation.
As in typical classroom courses, CALL programs need to report upon each interaction; in
particular provide useful feedback to students. In the realm of language learning the role of feedback is
1
Volume 7 • Issue 3 • July-September 2017
2
still very controversial; a double-edged sword according to (Kluger & DeNisi), as whether to correct,
what to correct, how to correct, and when to correct. Methodologists suggest for example that teachers
need to focus their attention on a few error types rather than try to address all the errors (Ellis, 2009).
Corrective feedback has been studied extensively in typical educational settings and has been reported
to provide minimal effects in the field of First Language Acquisition (FLA). Conversely, in the field
of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers appear to agree concerning the significance of
its role in the process of SLA (El Tatawy, 2002).
Besides educational feedback, the interaction in the context of a CALL program involves a
software system that imposes several technical challenges per se. Software installation, microphone
configuration, learning how to use the interface, etc., are typical impediments. An important design
rule of a graphical user interface is visibility, so that all possible actions can be made visible and,
therefore, easily discoverable (Norman, 2010). In this way the system can often be learned through
exploration. Visual user interfaces have also significantly benefited from the introduction of the
Windows, Menus, Icons and Pointers (WIMP) widgets that offered a unified interaction scheme. A
new visual interface can rely on the knowledge accumulated over many years, so that users do not
need to learn new ways of doing things. For example, the ‘×’ in the upper right or left corner of a
window is a global signifier for closing the current window. Unfortunately, we lack such signifiers
in interfaces that combine visual interaction and speech. For example, it is not obvious what a user
can say or do to abort an ongoing speech recognition action. As pointed out in (Tsourakis, 2014)
multimodal interfaces that normally lack this type of functionality suffer.
Interaction can become even more problematic if the student is overwhelmed by the functionalities
the system offers. A typical example is the increasingly common trend in CALL applications of
incorporating gamification techniques in order to increase student motivation (Baur, 2013). The
main point of these kinds of systems is to give the student an opportunity to accelerate their language
development by accumulating more “flying hours” of active second language use. Computers are,
unfortunately, less interesting conversational partners than live human beings; if the interaction
becomes too much like a mechanical drill exercise, students will easily become bored and leave.
Turning the system into some kind of game may redress the balance. Videogames are notoriously
addictive, and there has recently been a great deal of interest in trying to exploit this fact to “gamify”
software applications (Werbach & Hunter, 2012). Gamified applications are based on elements like
scores, badges and leaderboards, but the rules that govern interaction may not always be transparent
to end-users.
For the reasons outlined above we decided to implement a feedback module and embed it in
CALL-SLT, a computer assisted language learning system (Rayner et al., 2014). The CALL-SLT
tool offers students of English the opportunity to train their receptive and productive language skills
in various conversational dialogue scenarios (Baur, 2015). The interactive element of this approach
allows the students not only to exercise their knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, but more
importantly their real-life conversational skills. The aim of creating the module is threefold: (1) expose
system functionalities during interaction, (2) help students overcome certain interaction problems and
(3) increase their motivation during the gameplay. The current interface already provides different
kind of feedback, e.g. reporting failed recognition, informing on total score, etc. The question that
immediately arises is why we need to introduce an extra feedback mechanism. Based on several user
studies with CALL-SLT (Rayner et al., 2010), (Bouillon et al., 2011), (Rayner & Tsourakis, 2013),
we identified the following obstacles when using the system:
• Users may be overwhelmed by too much feedback, leading to information overload;
• Users may not be aware of certain system functionalities;
• Users may not understand what triggered certain events;
• It is difficult to unify the feedback messages in terms of phrasing, style and language.
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