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Internet Relay Chat as a tool in the autonomous development of ESL learners' English language ability: an exploratory study
SYSTEM System 32 (2004) 321–335 www.elsevier.com/locate/system
Internet Relay Chat as a tool in the autonomous development of ESL learners’ English language ability: an exploratory study David Coniam *, Richard Wong Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sha Tin, Hong Kong Received 20 October 2003; received in revised form 3 March 2004; accepted 15 March 2004
Abstract This pilot study explores the use of Internet Relay Chat facilities such as ICQ in an independent-use mode, as a vehicle for potential English language enhancement. In a small-scale study, a number of Hong Kong secondary school students (Grades 7–10) agreed to participate in an on-line ‘chatting’ programme (in a text-only mode) for a minimum of 20 h over a onemonth period. Participants could talk to anyone and discuss any topic. They were not asked to record their conversations, but only to bear in mind whilst they ‘chatted’ a point of English grammar (previously identified as a common error) – the concept of ‘one finite verb per main clause’. Samples of written work were collected pre- and post-study, and analysed for the error specified. The same was done for a small control group. Participants completed questionnaires, detailing demographic data and computer-familiarity. In terms of motivation, the study emerged as having been stimulating to and beneficial for subjects who participated. Although the preliminary data indicated a lack of quantitative difference in error rate between the experimental and the control groups, a qualitative analysis revealed diverging patterns of environments where errors occur between the two groups, suggesting that the experimental group were more ready to use complex sentences or sentences involving auxiliaries beyond their interlanguage grammar levels. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: IRC chat; English language; Computer-mediated communication
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +852-2609-6917; fax: +852-2603-6129. E-mail address: [email protected] (D. Coniam).
0346-251X/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.system.2004.03.001
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1. Introductions 1.1. Objectives and key features of the study This pilot study examines the impact of the unmoderated use of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) facilities such as ICQ or Microsoft Messenger (MSM) (Note 1) on the formal writing skills of ESL learners. Specifically, it suggests that the use of Internet text ‘chat’ programs may be able to stimulate learners’ use of English which will then be reflected in changes in other areas, including in their formal written English. In order to encapsulate the changes, an area of English grammar, which had been identified (through an analysis of pre-study scripts) to be characteristic of the subjects’ English, was examined prior to and after the study. The area chosen was finiteness because common errors across subjects prior to the study generally pertained to an inappropriate expression of time and/or person in the main clause, as exemplified in (1) below. (The example demonstrates an improper expression of finiteness as a result of the absence of the main verb.) (1) My home just like after the war.
The study postulates that the presence of such a grammar rule in the context of a meaningful interaction between ICQ users will encourage the use of English and the internalisation of the grammatical rule in question. Secondly, the frequent use of ICQ to exchange ideas in English may eventually lead to an overall improvement in students’ readiness to use English in all contexts and to a decrease in error rate associated with the specified grammatical rule. There are two important features to this study. The first is that the actual task itself was unmoderated. Participants were not required to save any of their ICQ discussions, nor was it intended that their ‘chats’ should be monitored in any way. The students were allowed to ‘chat’ about whatever issues interested them with whoever they wished – on the condition that they should keep at the forefront of their minds the afore-mentioned grammatical feature with the aid of a large visual prompt standing beside the monitor. The intent was that students should be able to communicate in English in a relaxed, non-threatening, non-examination-oriented environment. Another key feature is that the methodology departs from other research studies on computer-mediated communication (CMC) which mostly seek to quantify different aspects of online communication, that is, ‘local’ improvements in language or the potential improvement in the English of the actual online communication. This study, however, investigates the more ‘non-local’ changes, which is improvement in the genre of formal written English brought about by the use of ICQ. Before discussing the methodology and hypothesised mechanism which leads to changes in formal written English as a result of the time spent in computer-mediated communication, we provide a review of the use of the Internet for promoting the use of English by ESL learners.
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1.2. Computer use and second language acquisition Over the past decade, researchers have, in different ways, attempted to quantify the different aspects of on-line communication (Warschauer, 1995, 1996; Chun, 1994; Kern, 1995; Sullivan and Pratt, 1996; Kitao’s, 1998; Blake et al., 1999). A shared feature among most of these research studies has been that they have tended to focus on how classroom-based computer use facilitates the learning of a foreign language or enhances linguistic competence. Warschauer’s (1996) work, for example, suggested that electronic communication should not be treated as a spoken genre, based on the observation that electronic discussion tends to be lexically and syntactically more complex than face-to-face communication. Kern (1995) and Sullivan and Pratt (1996) found more balanced participation among students in the context of computer-assisted discussion. Blake et al. (1999, p. 257), who examined the use of the chat program Remote Technical Assistance by students in a Spanish and a Japanese class, concluded that ‘‘network-based communication in conjunction with a closed-task curriculum allows L2 learners to raise their metalinguistic awareness and, consequently, promotes acquisition of the target language’’. Kitao’s (1998) observed that CALL-users enjoyed computerassisted activities and felt their English and their confidence in using English had improved as a result of the study. The flourishing of research studies on computer-assisted language learning is equally matched with a generation of inconclusive results – a possible consequence of the choice of research design (for example, the nature of activities and tasks, the presence of a control group, etc.) and the definition of ‘goal’ (i.e., what and how aspects of language learning are measured). Warschauer and Kern (2000) succinctly pointed out that the success of network-based language teaching is dependent on how the language teacher structures the way language learners communicate via the Internet because the computer in itself only serves as a medium. For electronic learning activities to be successful and effective, these must be learner-centered and based on meaningful, authentic communication in ways rhetorically appropriate for the medium. Schultz (2000) argued for a systematic comparison between CALL users and non-users and a well-defined notion of ‘improvement’ (this might, for example, be the number of revision changes in the areas of content, organization, style and grammar brought about by a particular format) in order to assess the benefits of using computers as a language teaching medium. Two interesting points emerged from Shultz’s study. First, regression analyses did not show significant differences between users and nonusers. A mixture of both electronic discussion and face-to-face communication mode turned out to generate the best results, with the post-study questionnaire revealing a preference for the ‘human touch’ in the face-to-face mode. Second, the benefits of CALL may not outweigh the cost of CALL – the face-to-face response format generally consumed less time than the computer-assisted format (20 minutes as against 50). Finally, Pellettieri (2000) – in a study of how negotiation in cyberspace (in Spanish) can foster the negotiation of meaning – observed that the choice of task may influence the type of results obtained.
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1.3. The Use of IRC and second language acquisition Technically, the use of IRC differs from email communication – the focus of many earlier studies – in that discussions happen in real time. Nevertheless, the common principle of exchanging written texts quickly and the use of text-only mode justifies the drawing of comparisons between the current and previous studies. From the previous section, it can be seen that researchers have not reached a consensus about the concrete benefits of CALL. A formalisation of theory does not appear to be in place which might address how the benefits actually accrue; i.e., the mechanisms or the ways certain components in CMC interact are uncertain. One goal of the pilot study is therefore to attempt to capture this process. Specifically, the current study has three focuses. The first of these concerns ‘lowering the affective filter’, following Krashen’s (1982) terms; i.e., that the personal interest and relevance factor engages students in using language in ways that are relevant and meaningful to them. Second, an aspect of English grammar is conditioned to be an inherent component of the activity, thereby encouraging participants to consciously focus on an element of grammar while performing the task (see Rutherford and Sharwood-Smith, 1988, on the issue of ‘grammatical consciousnessraising’). Third, the interaction among participants via the Internet in itself is hypothesised to be capable of encouraging an open-ended negotiation of ideas. This acknowledges the notion that apart from ‘comprehensible input’, which is a necessary and sufficient condition for language acquisition to occur (Krashen, 1981, 1985), interaction is also a key factor which influences second language acquisition (Kitao’s, 1998). Together, these three components serve to encourage the use of language and heighten the awareness of a pre-defined component of English grammar.
2. Methodology The study involved 26 students (experimental ¼ 15; control ¼ 11) in one Hong Kong English-medium-instruction secondary school (Note 2) in Grades 7–10. (A further 23 students who did not follow the project through were excluded.) Table 1 illustrates the composition of the 15 participants in the experimental group. The limited size of the subject pool and the reduction in sample size, in retrospect, stems from the fact that the school concerned was a girls’ Catholic school. Some parents feared that their children might meet undesirable characters or be exposed to ‘objectionable language’ through the use of ICQ (cf., Kitao’s, 1998).
Table 1 Participants Secondary form
No. of students
Grade 7 Grade 9 Grade 10
3 9 3
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Taking into account the importance of having a well-defined notion of ‘improvement’, a ‘reference point’ was established through identifying the starting frequency of a common error pertaining to the students’ pieces of writing collected prior to the study. Errors were not individualised and categorised into those relating to nouns, verbs, etc. because the study was exploratory in nature and such detailed pre-analysis was unnecessary for a study focusing on the development of one aspect of grammar. The general error commonly found in the students’ writing involved the violation of the concept that there should be only one finite verb (i.e., marking for time/person) in a main clause
Because of typological differences between English and Cantonese (subjects’ L1), the morphological marking of time in English is often problematic for a lot of Cantonese learners of English, since in Cantonese, time is marked through adverbials (Matthews and Yip, 1994). It is not uncommon for students to produce main clauses which lack a finite verb, as in (1) (repeated from above) or in the case of complex sentences involving a sequence of events (2) or in idiomatic constructions (3), fail to delineate the structural dependency relations among the elements. In (2), the absence of the finite form ‘had’ or the presence of the pronoun ‘I’ would make the sentence conform to the afore-mentioned rule of English. In (3), the existential there -construction, marking the verb ‘start’ with the –ing suffix would unambiguously show that the verb ‘was’ was the main verb. A goal of the current study was therefore to track the changes in the occurrence of this error type in both studied groups through comparing participants’ writing in scripts collected before and after the study. (1) My home just like after the war. (2) And the doctor told me had to rest more. (3) There was another war start.
Samples of students’ writing were initially collected in June 2001 in order to identify a common error type (the incorrect use of finiteness). During this time, in their regular English classes, students in the experimental group had the study’s language objective and grammar point to be worked with explained to them, and they did some error identification and sensitisation exercises. Participants also made large A3-size posters containing instructions along the lines of ‘only one verb with time and number marking per main clause’ to which they would hopefully pay attention during their ICQ sessions. At this stage, participants completed a short prestudy questionnaire concerning their computer background, with questions such as how comfortable they felt using a computer, how long they had had a computer and an Internet connection at home etc. Questions were generally posed on a four-point Likert scale, with ‘1’ indicating a very negative response, and ‘4’ a very positive response. Question (5) is presented below as an example: 5. How well can you type in English? 1 ¼ with great difficulty; 4 ¼ with no problems
1234
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In August 2001, each member of the experimental group then had to communicate on ICQ in English for a minimum of 5 hours per week on the understanding that their discussions would not be monitored (Note 3). In other words, by the end of the study, every participant should therefore have accumulated a total of at least 20 hours of unmoderated interaction. A post-study questionnaire was then administered to the same group in September to seek information on the number of hours per week being spent ‘chatting’ on ICQ, the ‘chatting’ partners, topics covered, and most importantly whether they had thought about the point of grammar to be worked on whilst they chatted. In late September, samples of writing were collected from both the experimental and control groups in order to track changes in the error rate.
3. Results and discussion The section begins with summaries of the pre-study and post-study questionnaires administered to the experimental group (N ¼ 15), followed by a contrast in performance between the experimental and control groups in terms of the error rate and an analysis of results relating to three students. 3.1. Pre-study questionnaire Of the 15 students in the experimental group, 13 had been using a computer for one year or longer. All except one student had a home connection to the Internet – those who did felt comfortable using computers (mean ¼ 3.5/4; ‘4’ indicating a very positive response) and thought that their typing ability in English was good or better (mean ¼ 3.2/4). 11 of the 15 had been using some form of IRC for a year or longer. For a computer-based study such as this to be valid, participants need to be computer-literate – with the hardware in general and with the specific program that they will be using in particular. Results from the questionnaire show that this precondition was fulfilled. 3.2. Post-study questionnaire The post-study questionnaire revealed that in practice, the amount of time being spent on ICQ communication was well above the minimum requested level of 5 hours per week; the median time spent was 10 hours per week, with four participants spending more than 20 hours per week. Regarding communication partners and time spent, Table 2 shows that participants ‘chatted’ mostly with classmates and strangers. It is not surprising that ‘friends’ ranked after ‘strangers’: the group’s ‘classmates’ and ‘friends’ were not mutually exclusive, and chat partners could well have been their classmates and friends at the same time. It can be seen, therefore, that the use of IRC may represent a completely different learning environment as opposed to classroom learning where information usually flows unidirectionally – and generally from teachers to students.
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Table 2 People talked to and duration Person chatted with
No. of respondents
Median % of time spent chatting
Classmates Strangers Friends Teachers
10 7 5 3
70 25 60 7.5
Regarding the topics of online communication, Table 3 shows that the majority of the participants spent most of their online time discussing personal matters. It is therefore reasonable to assume that participants were engaging in computer-mediated communication activities in a relaxed atmosphere, with the criterion of free and unmoderated chatting being met. In response to the extent to which they enjoyed engaging in ICQ communication during the study, 11 responded positively or very positively (mean ¼ 3.3/4) – a result which is similar to Kitao’s (1998) finding that CMC activities were perceived to be enjoyable. With regard to whether the participants had considered the point of grammar during online communication, two-third of the participants had stuck the aide memoire up beside their computer and consulted the note ‘sometimes’ or ‘very often’. It was commented that since there is only one general grammatical feature (instead of a list of individualised error types), some students simply memorized the rule. 3.3. The issue of comparability Statistical tests have not been run because of the small sample size (below the level necessary to run t-tests) and the unlikelihood for the sample to conform to a normal distribution (Ramsey, 1980). In order to provide some measure of comparability between the scripts produced by the subjects in both experimental and control groups, t-units in each script were counted. The t-unit is a major clausal unit consisting of the main clause in a sentence with any associated dependent clauses, and was argued to provide a more reliable indicator of syntactic complexity than a simple word count (see Hunt, 1970).
Table 3 Chat topics Topic
No of respondents
Median % of time spent chatting
Personal matters School work News Questions about English language Other matters
12 8 3 1 5
65 30 15 5 20
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The next sub-section first provides the overall results on the changes in assignment length (analysed in terms of the number of t-units) and error rate (number of errors number of t-units). The former reflects students’ abilities or readiness to expand or discuss a topic in a foreign language, whereas the second quantifies the relative change in error rate after exposure to ICQ use. Since it is well-established that average results may not represent the abilities of any particular individual subject, the results relating to three individual students, identified as Anna, Betty and Carol (all from Grade 7), are discussed. These students were chosen because compared to the older subjects, they had received the least exposure to the rule in question prior to the study, with reference to the English curriculum for each Grade. 3.4. Examination of finite verb errors in students’ pre- and post-study written work Through an examination of unedited spontaneous pre-study scripts, six error subtypes were identified, as laid out in Table 4. These errors all involve the violation of the grammatical rule ‘only one finite verb per main clause’. Taking the case of the passive as an example, any omission of the correct form of the auxiliary ‘be’ would result in the missing of tense and number in the sentence. Concerning script length, Table 5 shows that the mean number of t-units produced by the experimental group was similar pre-and post-study, whereas the control group produced substantially more on the post-test. Instead of reflecting inherent group differences, the disparity may well be a consequence of the fact that the writing scripts were retrieved from students’ portfolios, where inevitably word limit and genre varied from class to class. An error count (by summing the errors pertaining to the various categories identified in Table 4 above) normalised against the number of t-units in each piece of writing was performed, as Table 6 illustrates. On the face of it, since post-study error rates between the experimental and control groups were similar, it might appear that there is little link between ICQ use and writing quality and that the benefits of CMC activities are uncertain (cf., Schultz, 2000). A qualitative analysis of the type of errors committed by the two groups (instead of simply averaging out error counts), however, reveals interesting developmental aspects in the writing of the experimental group – as we will now discuss. Table 4 Error types Error type
Label
Gloss
1
Passive
2 3
Be There
4
Serial verb construction Tense Wrong inflection
Lack of the auxiliary be; wrong form of the auxiliary be; wrong inflection on the verb Lack of be in front of an adjective or a noun Use of have after ‘there’ without paying attention to the number of the grammatical subject/ wrong inflection on the verb String of verbs used together without using to-infinitive or gerund; sometimes all the verbs or the second verbs are inflected Use of wrong tense Right tense used but the inflection is wrong/the use of inflection on a verb after an auxiliary verb
5 6
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Table 5 T-units in subjects’ writing Before ICQ study
After ICQ study
Words
T-units
Words
T-units
Experimental group N ¼ 15
Mean SD
311
36.53 6.98
343
37.00 17.30
Control group N ¼ 11
Mean SD
278
26.64 4.84
305
36.09 25.34
3.5. Environments in which errors occur A qualitative analysis of the post-study writing scripts of the experimental and control groups shows that the former appeared to be more ready to convey more complex ideas by conjoining clauses or by embedding. Recall that the grammatical point in focus concerns finiteness in main clauses instead of specific complex structures. This rule may, therefore, not be delimited enough to ensure that learners would correctly inflect verbs in conjoined clauses. This would perhaps account for the increase in error rate among the experimental group who were attempting to formulate complex as opposed to simple sentences. Errors committed tended to involve the use of a wrong inflection or the lack of a tense marker on the verbs in embedded clauses or in non-initial and or but sentences, as shown by examples (4) to (6). (Bold font indicates an area of error.) (4) I asked for the reason why they fight with each other and record down their name (5) After I knew the reason why they will fight together, I tried to stop them (6) I thought that why this things will happened (7) then I asked him don’t do that again
These examples suggest that learners may have indeed grasped the control of finiteness in main clauses, as evidenced in the correct use of the main verbs in the
Table 6 Errors made pre-and post-study (finite verb errors per main clause) Before ICQ study
After ICQ study
Total no of errors
Errors per T-unit
Total no of errors
Errors per T-unit
Experimental group N ¼ 15
Mean
5.20
0.11
7.71
0.18
SD
4.46
0.09
5.23
0.13
Control group N ¼ 11
Mean SD
8.36 4.59
0.22 0.10
9.80 7.69
0.19 0.11
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examples. Nevertheless, markings on the non-main verbs were inconsistent. Example (5) is particularly interesting because of its complex structure. It consists of three clauses: the after-clause, the why-clause that is embedded in the after-clause and the main clause. Notice that all verbs except for the one in the embedded why-clause are marked correctly. The target form should be past future, i.e., ‘would fight’ instead of ‘will fight’. It might, therefore, not be unreasonable to assume that the increase in use of complex sentences has contributed to a rise in error rate, as improvement in grammatical awareness concerning finiteness may only restrict itself to the domain of main clauses. Another case worth discussing because of its bearing on the lack of change in the overall error rate concerns the persistence of errors involving existential there. The word there appears in a specific construction requiring a copula and an -ing inflection on the verb that appears after the noun. (8) There is a boy smoking.
Due to its idiosyncratic nature, the general grammatical point under focus is again not restrictive enough for users to work out the correct inflections for the verbs: the copula could agree either with ‘there’ or with the grammatical subject. There can also be a number of strategies to mark the verb ‘smoke’ in example (8): -s (third person singular), -ed (past), to (infinitive), etc. Example (9) is a further instance of errors involving the there- construction. (9) There is a girl reported to me that two boys were fighting in a classroom.
3.6. Results for three individual subjects Table 7 below presents the change of complexity in the usage of verbs among three students in the experimental group. The description in the cells of the first column represents a simplified structure of a t-unit, after excluding all non-verb elements. V stands for ‘verb’, aux for ‘auxiliary’. Note that the sequence of units in a cell is iconic to the order of items in the t-unit: ‘verb-aux-verb’, for instance, refers to the presence of one verb preceding the auxiliary and one verb following the auxiliary, as in I think tomorrow I can go out (by Betty). It appears that more auxiliaries were recruited to the t-units after the study. The post-study scripts of Anna, Betty and Carol revealed a higher concentration of tunits involving an auxiliary plus a verb. This contrasts sharply with the pre-study picture which contained a high level of simple one verb sentences (Anna ¼ 62.5%; Betty ¼ 55.3%; Carol ¼ 44.8%) and a low occurrence rate for sentences with auxiliaries (Anna ¼ 12.5%; Betty ¼ 4.2%; Carol ¼ 3.4%). After the study, the proportion of utterances with one verb dropped to 10.3%, 12.5% and 16.2% for the three subjects, whereas the proportion of t-units containing an auxiliary increased to 31%, 33.3% and 29.7%. It is therefore apparent that the complexity of language used (in terms of verb phrase expansion) is more advanced after the study. On the issue of the change in error rate per t-unit, individual findings are consistent with the group findings, in that the error rate increased after the study (see
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Table 7 Change of complexity in the usage of verbs among three subjects TU types
Examples
No V
and more IT office or company But there have some problem of teenagers I am not feel hot now When I went into the surgery, I told the doctor what I happened They think that playing computer, going on the internet is more and more interesting than studying I think I can stay I know he could have stayed In 2050, I think, they might not able to get jobs easily It’s because, in 2050, I think they would not so care of study and their future She said after eating breakfast, she will take me to see a doctor But you can’t too dependent it 2050 would not to make something by yourself In 2050 there would have more machines, and some machines that can fly The doctor let me went to the reception to get the medicine I don’t need to go to school! And the parents would let them go shopping
Anna Before
V V-V V-V-V
V-V-V-V-V
V-aux -V V-aux -V-V V-aux -aux -V
V-V-aux -V
V-V-aux -V-V
aux aux -V aux -V-aux -V
aux -V-V
aux -aux -V aux -aux -V-V
Betty After
1
Before
Carol After
Before
After
2
20
3
26
3
13
6
4
3
5 1
2
9 2
5 3
2
5 2
1
1
1 1
1 1
1
2
2
6 4
1
2
9
2
8
1
1
2
4
1
1
1
1
7
3
47
24
1 1
11
1
1
Others
1
Total
32
29
29
37
Table 8). However, such a rise should be understood in the light of students’ propensity to use more complex structures relating to the use of verbs (Note 4), as an analysis of the contexts in which errors occurred show that the mistakes in the poststudy scripts mostly involved t-units with auxiliaries. Table 9 indicates that prior to
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Table 8 Profiles of three secondary students pre- and post-study Anna
T-units Words Words per T-unit Errors Errors per T-unit
Betty
Carol
Before
After
Before
After
Before
After
32 193 6.03 7 0.22
29 241 8.31 13 0.45
47 286 6.09 7 0.15
24 225 9.38 8 0.33
29 240 8.28 9 0.31
37 357 9.65 16 0.43
Table 9 Number of errors for the different sentence types pre- and post-study TU types
Anna Before
No V V V-V V-V-V V-aux -V V-aux -V-V V-aux -aux -V V-V-aux -V V-V-aux V-V aux aux -V aux -Vaux -V aux -V-V Others
1 4 1
Total
7
Betty After 1 1
Carol
Before
After
2 2
2
1
Before 2 1 2 2
After 5 3 1 1
1 1 2 2
1
6 3 1 1 13
2
2
1 2
7
8
1 2
9
16
the study, most errors were restricted to t-units with no auxiliary (Anna ¼ 85.7%; Betty ¼ 57.1%) (The calculations are arrived at by summing the figures for types with no verb, one verb and two verbs). However, the post-study error rate pertaining to this sentence type dropped to 15.3% and 25%, respectively. At the same time, errors in t-units with auxiliaries became more prominent (Anna ¼ 84.6%; Betty ¼ 37.5%), coinciding with the increase in the use of auxiliaries in their writings. Carol was an exception to the trend: after the study, 56.2% of the errors appeared in t-units where there were no auxiliaries, possibly indicating a lack of understanding of the grammatical rule in question.
4. Conclusion This study has examined the use of IRC chat programs such as ICQ, investigating not only students’ motivation in using English on their own, in an unmoderated
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manner, but also examining whether such use is beneficial to students’ language development. From a motivational point of view, the benefits which IRC chat programs such as ICQ afford are substantial. Results obtained from pre- and post-study questionnaires indicate that on-line communication has been perceived as having been stimulating and beneficial. Members of the experimental group expressed positive attitudes towards the use of IRC as a means of practising their English: most of them spent considerably more time on the task than required and felt that their English had improved as a result. Although the analysis of the writing scripts revealed little quantitative difference in terms of post-study error rates between the two groups, qualitatively speaking, errors made by the experimental group appeared to be associated more with complex sentences. Our account for this is that the unmonitored interaction among ICQ users may have promoted the use of English to exchange complex ideas, which was then translated into a higher occurrence rate of complex sentences in participants’ use of English, including the genre of formal writing. However, since the target forms for these sentences are likely to lie beyond participants’ current interlanguage grammar levels and the grammatical rule in question concerns simple main clauses, it is perhaps not totally surprising that the error rate increased after the study – a direct consequence of the emergence of complex sentences. The decrease of errors in units with a single verb seems to confirm this and suggests a better control of the rule of one finite verb per (simple) main clause. We would conclude with some comments on the methodology, which could be improved upon in a number of ways. Firstly, the grammatical point specified for the study (one finite verb per main clause) was, in retrospect, too broad an area of error to consider; it could not be specified in sufficient detail enough – for example, where there are multiple verbs in a t-unit. Secondly, the one-month time frame may have been too short to allow any drastic changes in learners’ proficiency levels to be noted in their written work. The small size of the cohort will have also complicated the issue by masking any potential differences between the two groups. Lastly, relating to the first point raised, the cornerstone of the study has been predicated on all subjects being given the same (fairly general) rule to consider while communicating. On reflection, this has been quite a blunt approach towards getting students to consider language while they chat. The rule in the current study will have been appropriate for a number of participants. However, the approach could be profitably refined by giving individual learners language-specific rules derived from an analysis of their own particular error profiles – for example, giving each learner a specific type of error with which he or she has problems, such as omitting the third-person ‘s’ on present tense verbs, incorrectly inflecting the past participle in present perfect situations, etc. Such a tailored approach to error specification stands a greater chance of making sense to learners (from an interlanguage perspective), to be more personally motivating, and consequently to be able to be acted upon by the individual to whom the error pertains.
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5. Notes (1) ICQ and MSM are functionally equivalent. Since the form ‘ICQ’ is more widely known, for convenience sake, ‘ICQ’ will be used throughout the paper to refer to ‘ICQ/MSM’ or Internet Relay Chat programs in general. (2) There are approximately 400 secondary schools in Hong Kong. In one quarter of these, the medium of instruction is English; that is, English is used in these schools as the medium for all major content subjects and also for a lot of dayto-day-interaction within the school such as announcements, assemblies, etc. (3) As students’ ICQ chats were not saved,it has not been possible to investigate a number of potentially interesting issues, such as the grammaticality of sentences used in the communication, topic shift, etc. Although the study was investigating the influence of ICQ use on students’ formal writing, the focus was on how improvement might be brought about through a ‘relaxed’ learning atmosphere. For this to occur, students needed to know that they would not be later ‘checked up on’, and hence they were not asked to save or submit their chat logs. (4) It might be argued that students may be providing incorrect language input to one another, thereby reinforcing the language errors. Research findings suggest, however, that students may learn equally well from their peers as from their teachers (see, e.g., Long and Porter, 1985; Lightbrown and Spada, 1999).
References Blake, R., Fahy, D., Walters, R., 1999. Implementing chat software in the foreign-language curriculum: the case of RTA’’. In: Brown, David (Ed.), Computer Enhanced Learning in 50 Colleges. Anker Publishing Co., Boston, MA, pp. 254–257. Chun, D.M., 1994. Using computer networking to facilitate the acquisition of interactive competence. System 22, 17–31. Hunt, K.W., 1970. Syntactic maturity in school children and adults. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Serial No. 135, vol. 35, No. 1, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Kern, R., 1995. Restructuring classroom interaction with networked computers: effects on quantity and characteristics of language production. Modern Language Journal 79, 457–476. Kitao, S.K., 1998. Interaction and on-line synchronous communication in English language learning. CALL-EJ, vol. 3, No. 1. Available from terrefhttp://www.lerc.ritsumei.ac.jp/callej/index.htmlurlhttp:// www.lerc.ritsumei.ac.jp/callej/index.html. Krashen, S.D., 1981. Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Pergamon, Oxford. Krashen, S.D., 1982. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Pergamon, Oxford. Krashen, S.D., 1985. The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications. Longman, London. Lightbrown, P.M., Spada, N., 1999. How Languages Are Learned. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Long, M., Porter, P., 1985. Group work, interlanguage talk and classroom second language acquisition. TESOL Quarterly 19 (2), 207–228. Matthews, S., Yip, V., 1994. Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar. Routledge, London. Pellettieri, J., 2000. Negotiation in cyberspace: the role of chatting in the development of grammatical competence. In: Warschauer, M., Kern, R. (Eds.), Network-based Language Teaching: Theory and Practice. CUP, Cambridge, England. Ramsey, P., 1980. Exact type 1 error rates for robust student’s t-test with unequal variances. Journal of Educational Statistics 5, 337–349.
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Rutherford, W., Sharwood Smith, M. (Eds.), 1988. Grammar and Second Language Teaching. Newbury House, New York. Shultz, Jean Marie, 2000. Computers and collaborative writing in the foreign language curriculum. In: Warschauer, M., Kern, R. (Eds.), Network-based Language Teaching: Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Sullivan, N., Pratt, E., 1996. A comparative study of two ESL writing environments: a computer-assisted classroom and a traditional oral classroom. System 24 (4), 491–501. Warschauer, M., 1995. E-mail for English teaching: bringing the Internet and computer learning networks into the language classroom. Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Alexandria, VA. Warschauer, M., 1996. Comparing face-to-face and electronic communication in the second language classroom. CALICO Journal 13 (2-3), 7–26. Warschauer, M., Kern, R., 2000. Introduction: theory and practice of network-based language teaching. In: Warschauer, M., Kern, R. (Eds.), Network-based Language Teaching: Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Internet Relay Chat as a tool in the autonomous development of ESL learners’ English language ability: an exploratory study David Coniam *, Richard Wong Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sha Tin, Hong Kong Received 20 October 2003; received in revised form 3 March 2004; accepted 15 March 2004
Abstract This pilot study explores the use of Internet Relay Chat facilities such as ICQ in an independent-use mode, as a vehicle for potential English language enhancement. In a small-scale study, a number of Hong Kong secondary school students (Grades 7–10) agreed to participate in an on-line ‘chatting’ programme (in a text-only mode) for a minimum of 20 h over a onemonth period. Participants could talk to anyone and discuss any topic. They were not asked to record their conversations, but only to bear in mind whilst they ‘chatted’ a point of English grammar (previously identified as a common error) – the concept of ‘one finite verb per main clause’. Samples of written work were collected pre- and post-study, and analysed for the error specified. The same was done for a small control group. Participants completed questionnaires, detailing demographic data and computer-familiarity. In terms of motivation, the study emerged as having been stimulating to and beneficial for subjects who participated. Although the preliminary data indicated a lack of quantitative difference in error rate between the experimental and the control groups, a qualitative analysis revealed diverging patterns of environments where errors occur between the two groups, suggesting that the experimental group were more ready to use complex sentences or sentences involving auxiliaries beyond their interlanguage grammar levels. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: IRC chat; English language; Computer-mediated communication
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +852-2609-6917; fax: +852-2603-6129. E-mail address: [email protected] (D. Coniam).
0346-251X/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.system.2004.03.001
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1. Introductions 1.1. Objectives and key features of the study This pilot study examines the impact of the unmoderated use of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) facilities such as ICQ or Microsoft Messenger (MSM) (Note 1) on the formal writing skills of ESL learners. Specifically, it suggests that the use of Internet text ‘chat’ programs may be able to stimulate learners’ use of English which will then be reflected in changes in other areas, including in their formal written English. In order to encapsulate the changes, an area of English grammar, which had been identified (through an analysis of pre-study scripts) to be characteristic of the subjects’ English, was examined prior to and after the study. The area chosen was finiteness because common errors across subjects prior to the study generally pertained to an inappropriate expression of time and/or person in the main clause, as exemplified in (1) below. (The example demonstrates an improper expression of finiteness as a result of the absence of the main verb.) (1) My home just like after the war.
The study postulates that the presence of such a grammar rule in the context of a meaningful interaction between ICQ users will encourage the use of English and the internalisation of the grammatical rule in question. Secondly, the frequent use of ICQ to exchange ideas in English may eventually lead to an overall improvement in students’ readiness to use English in all contexts and to a decrease in error rate associated with the specified grammatical rule. There are two important features to this study. The first is that the actual task itself was unmoderated. Participants were not required to save any of their ICQ discussions, nor was it intended that their ‘chats’ should be monitored in any way. The students were allowed to ‘chat’ about whatever issues interested them with whoever they wished – on the condition that they should keep at the forefront of their minds the afore-mentioned grammatical feature with the aid of a large visual prompt standing beside the monitor. The intent was that students should be able to communicate in English in a relaxed, non-threatening, non-examination-oriented environment. Another key feature is that the methodology departs from other research studies on computer-mediated communication (CMC) which mostly seek to quantify different aspects of online communication, that is, ‘local’ improvements in language or the potential improvement in the English of the actual online communication. This study, however, investigates the more ‘non-local’ changes, which is improvement in the genre of formal written English brought about by the use of ICQ. Before discussing the methodology and hypothesised mechanism which leads to changes in formal written English as a result of the time spent in computer-mediated communication, we provide a review of the use of the Internet for promoting the use of English by ESL learners.
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1.2. Computer use and second language acquisition Over the past decade, researchers have, in different ways, attempted to quantify the different aspects of on-line communication (Warschauer, 1995, 1996; Chun, 1994; Kern, 1995; Sullivan and Pratt, 1996; Kitao’s, 1998; Blake et al., 1999). A shared feature among most of these research studies has been that they have tended to focus on how classroom-based computer use facilitates the learning of a foreign language or enhances linguistic competence. Warschauer’s (1996) work, for example, suggested that electronic communication should not be treated as a spoken genre, based on the observation that electronic discussion tends to be lexically and syntactically more complex than face-to-face communication. Kern (1995) and Sullivan and Pratt (1996) found more balanced participation among students in the context of computer-assisted discussion. Blake et al. (1999, p. 257), who examined the use of the chat program Remote Technical Assistance by students in a Spanish and a Japanese class, concluded that ‘‘network-based communication in conjunction with a closed-task curriculum allows L2 learners to raise their metalinguistic awareness and, consequently, promotes acquisition of the target language’’. Kitao’s (1998) observed that CALL-users enjoyed computerassisted activities and felt their English and their confidence in using English had improved as a result of the study. The flourishing of research studies on computer-assisted language learning is equally matched with a generation of inconclusive results – a possible consequence of the choice of research design (for example, the nature of activities and tasks, the presence of a control group, etc.) and the definition of ‘goal’ (i.e., what and how aspects of language learning are measured). Warschauer and Kern (2000) succinctly pointed out that the success of network-based language teaching is dependent on how the language teacher structures the way language learners communicate via the Internet because the computer in itself only serves as a medium. For electronic learning activities to be successful and effective, these must be learner-centered and based on meaningful, authentic communication in ways rhetorically appropriate for the medium. Schultz (2000) argued for a systematic comparison between CALL users and non-users and a well-defined notion of ‘improvement’ (this might, for example, be the number of revision changes in the areas of content, organization, style and grammar brought about by a particular format) in order to assess the benefits of using computers as a language teaching medium. Two interesting points emerged from Shultz’s study. First, regression analyses did not show significant differences between users and nonusers. A mixture of both electronic discussion and face-to-face communication mode turned out to generate the best results, with the post-study questionnaire revealing a preference for the ‘human touch’ in the face-to-face mode. Second, the benefits of CALL may not outweigh the cost of CALL – the face-to-face response format generally consumed less time than the computer-assisted format (20 minutes as against 50). Finally, Pellettieri (2000) – in a study of how negotiation in cyberspace (in Spanish) can foster the negotiation of meaning – observed that the choice of task may influence the type of results obtained.
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1.3. The Use of IRC and second language acquisition Technically, the use of IRC differs from email communication – the focus of many earlier studies – in that discussions happen in real time. Nevertheless, the common principle of exchanging written texts quickly and the use of text-only mode justifies the drawing of comparisons between the current and previous studies. From the previous section, it can be seen that researchers have not reached a consensus about the concrete benefits of CALL. A formalisation of theory does not appear to be in place which might address how the benefits actually accrue; i.e., the mechanisms or the ways certain components in CMC interact are uncertain. One goal of the pilot study is therefore to attempt to capture this process. Specifically, the current study has three focuses. The first of these concerns ‘lowering the affective filter’, following Krashen’s (1982) terms; i.e., that the personal interest and relevance factor engages students in using language in ways that are relevant and meaningful to them. Second, an aspect of English grammar is conditioned to be an inherent component of the activity, thereby encouraging participants to consciously focus on an element of grammar while performing the task (see Rutherford and Sharwood-Smith, 1988, on the issue of ‘grammatical consciousnessraising’). Third, the interaction among participants via the Internet in itself is hypothesised to be capable of encouraging an open-ended negotiation of ideas. This acknowledges the notion that apart from ‘comprehensible input’, which is a necessary and sufficient condition for language acquisition to occur (Krashen, 1981, 1985), interaction is also a key factor which influences second language acquisition (Kitao’s, 1998). Together, these three components serve to encourage the use of language and heighten the awareness of a pre-defined component of English grammar.
2. Methodology The study involved 26 students (experimental ¼ 15; control ¼ 11) in one Hong Kong English-medium-instruction secondary school (Note 2) in Grades 7–10. (A further 23 students who did not follow the project through were excluded.) Table 1 illustrates the composition of the 15 participants in the experimental group. The limited size of the subject pool and the reduction in sample size, in retrospect, stems from the fact that the school concerned was a girls’ Catholic school. Some parents feared that their children might meet undesirable characters or be exposed to ‘objectionable language’ through the use of ICQ (cf., Kitao’s, 1998).
Table 1 Participants Secondary form
No. of students
Grade 7 Grade 9 Grade 10
3 9 3
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Taking into account the importance of having a well-defined notion of ‘improvement’, a ‘reference point’ was established through identifying the starting frequency of a common error pertaining to the students’ pieces of writing collected prior to the study. Errors were not individualised and categorised into those relating to nouns, verbs, etc. because the study was exploratory in nature and such detailed pre-analysis was unnecessary for a study focusing on the development of one aspect of grammar. The general error commonly found in the students’ writing involved the violation of the concept that there should be only one finite verb (i.e., marking for time/person) in a main clause
Because of typological differences between English and Cantonese (subjects’ L1), the morphological marking of time in English is often problematic for a lot of Cantonese learners of English, since in Cantonese, time is marked through adverbials (Matthews and Yip, 1994). It is not uncommon for students to produce main clauses which lack a finite verb, as in (1) (repeated from above) or in the case of complex sentences involving a sequence of events (2) or in idiomatic constructions (3), fail to delineate the structural dependency relations among the elements. In (2), the absence of the finite form ‘had’ or the presence of the pronoun ‘I’ would make the sentence conform to the afore-mentioned rule of English. In (3), the existential there -construction, marking the verb ‘start’ with the –ing suffix would unambiguously show that the verb ‘was’ was the main verb. A goal of the current study was therefore to track the changes in the occurrence of this error type in both studied groups through comparing participants’ writing in scripts collected before and after the study. (1) My home just like after the war. (2) And the doctor told me had to rest more. (3) There was another war start.
Samples of students’ writing were initially collected in June 2001 in order to identify a common error type (the incorrect use of finiteness). During this time, in their regular English classes, students in the experimental group had the study’s language objective and grammar point to be worked with explained to them, and they did some error identification and sensitisation exercises. Participants also made large A3-size posters containing instructions along the lines of ‘only one verb with time and number marking per main clause’ to which they would hopefully pay attention during their ICQ sessions. At this stage, participants completed a short prestudy questionnaire concerning their computer background, with questions such as how comfortable they felt using a computer, how long they had had a computer and an Internet connection at home etc. Questions were generally posed on a four-point Likert scale, with ‘1’ indicating a very negative response, and ‘4’ a very positive response. Question (5) is presented below as an example: 5. How well can you type in English? 1 ¼ with great difficulty; 4 ¼ with no problems
1234
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In August 2001, each member of the experimental group then had to communicate on ICQ in English for a minimum of 5 hours per week on the understanding that their discussions would not be monitored (Note 3). In other words, by the end of the study, every participant should therefore have accumulated a total of at least 20 hours of unmoderated interaction. A post-study questionnaire was then administered to the same group in September to seek information on the number of hours per week being spent ‘chatting’ on ICQ, the ‘chatting’ partners, topics covered, and most importantly whether they had thought about the point of grammar to be worked on whilst they chatted. In late September, samples of writing were collected from both the experimental and control groups in order to track changes in the error rate.
3. Results and discussion The section begins with summaries of the pre-study and post-study questionnaires administered to the experimental group (N ¼ 15), followed by a contrast in performance between the experimental and control groups in terms of the error rate and an analysis of results relating to three students. 3.1. Pre-study questionnaire Of the 15 students in the experimental group, 13 had been using a computer for one year or longer. All except one student had a home connection to the Internet – those who did felt comfortable using computers (mean ¼ 3.5/4; ‘4’ indicating a very positive response) and thought that their typing ability in English was good or better (mean ¼ 3.2/4). 11 of the 15 had been using some form of IRC for a year or longer. For a computer-based study such as this to be valid, participants need to be computer-literate – with the hardware in general and with the specific program that they will be using in particular. Results from the questionnaire show that this precondition was fulfilled. 3.2. Post-study questionnaire The post-study questionnaire revealed that in practice, the amount of time being spent on ICQ communication was well above the minimum requested level of 5 hours per week; the median time spent was 10 hours per week, with four participants spending more than 20 hours per week. Regarding communication partners and time spent, Table 2 shows that participants ‘chatted’ mostly with classmates and strangers. It is not surprising that ‘friends’ ranked after ‘strangers’: the group’s ‘classmates’ and ‘friends’ were not mutually exclusive, and chat partners could well have been their classmates and friends at the same time. It can be seen, therefore, that the use of IRC may represent a completely different learning environment as opposed to classroom learning where information usually flows unidirectionally – and generally from teachers to students.
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Table 2 People talked to and duration Person chatted with
No. of respondents
Median % of time spent chatting
Classmates Strangers Friends Teachers
10 7 5 3
70 25 60 7.5
Regarding the topics of online communication, Table 3 shows that the majority of the participants spent most of their online time discussing personal matters. It is therefore reasonable to assume that participants were engaging in computer-mediated communication activities in a relaxed atmosphere, with the criterion of free and unmoderated chatting being met. In response to the extent to which they enjoyed engaging in ICQ communication during the study, 11 responded positively or very positively (mean ¼ 3.3/4) – a result which is similar to Kitao’s (1998) finding that CMC activities were perceived to be enjoyable. With regard to whether the participants had considered the point of grammar during online communication, two-third of the participants had stuck the aide memoire up beside their computer and consulted the note ‘sometimes’ or ‘very often’. It was commented that since there is only one general grammatical feature (instead of a list of individualised error types), some students simply memorized the rule. 3.3. The issue of comparability Statistical tests have not been run because of the small sample size (below the level necessary to run t-tests) and the unlikelihood for the sample to conform to a normal distribution (Ramsey, 1980). In order to provide some measure of comparability between the scripts produced by the subjects in both experimental and control groups, t-units in each script were counted. The t-unit is a major clausal unit consisting of the main clause in a sentence with any associated dependent clauses, and was argued to provide a more reliable indicator of syntactic complexity than a simple word count (see Hunt, 1970).
Table 3 Chat topics Topic
No of respondents
Median % of time spent chatting
Personal matters School work News Questions about English language Other matters
12 8 3 1 5
65 30 15 5 20
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The next sub-section first provides the overall results on the changes in assignment length (analysed in terms of the number of t-units) and error rate (number of errors number of t-units). The former reflects students’ abilities or readiness to expand or discuss a topic in a foreign language, whereas the second quantifies the relative change in error rate after exposure to ICQ use. Since it is well-established that average results may not represent the abilities of any particular individual subject, the results relating to three individual students, identified as Anna, Betty and Carol (all from Grade 7), are discussed. These students were chosen because compared to the older subjects, they had received the least exposure to the rule in question prior to the study, with reference to the English curriculum for each Grade. 3.4. Examination of finite verb errors in students’ pre- and post-study written work Through an examination of unedited spontaneous pre-study scripts, six error subtypes were identified, as laid out in Table 4. These errors all involve the violation of the grammatical rule ‘only one finite verb per main clause’. Taking the case of the passive as an example, any omission of the correct form of the auxiliary ‘be’ would result in the missing of tense and number in the sentence. Concerning script length, Table 5 shows that the mean number of t-units produced by the experimental group was similar pre-and post-study, whereas the control group produced substantially more on the post-test. Instead of reflecting inherent group differences, the disparity may well be a consequence of the fact that the writing scripts were retrieved from students’ portfolios, where inevitably word limit and genre varied from class to class. An error count (by summing the errors pertaining to the various categories identified in Table 4 above) normalised against the number of t-units in each piece of writing was performed, as Table 6 illustrates. On the face of it, since post-study error rates between the experimental and control groups were similar, it might appear that there is little link between ICQ use and writing quality and that the benefits of CMC activities are uncertain (cf., Schultz, 2000). A qualitative analysis of the type of errors committed by the two groups (instead of simply averaging out error counts), however, reveals interesting developmental aspects in the writing of the experimental group – as we will now discuss. Table 4 Error types Error type
Label
Gloss
1
Passive
2 3
Be There
4
Serial verb construction Tense Wrong inflection
Lack of the auxiliary be; wrong form of the auxiliary be; wrong inflection on the verb Lack of be in front of an adjective or a noun Use of have after ‘there’ without paying attention to the number of the grammatical subject/ wrong inflection on the verb String of verbs used together without using to-infinitive or gerund; sometimes all the verbs or the second verbs are inflected Use of wrong tense Right tense used but the inflection is wrong/the use of inflection on a verb after an auxiliary verb
5 6
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Table 5 T-units in subjects’ writing Before ICQ study
After ICQ study
Words
T-units
Words
T-units
Experimental group N ¼ 15
Mean SD
311
36.53 6.98
343
37.00 17.30
Control group N ¼ 11
Mean SD
278
26.64 4.84
305
36.09 25.34
3.5. Environments in which errors occur A qualitative analysis of the post-study writing scripts of the experimental and control groups shows that the former appeared to be more ready to convey more complex ideas by conjoining clauses or by embedding. Recall that the grammatical point in focus concerns finiteness in main clauses instead of specific complex structures. This rule may, therefore, not be delimited enough to ensure that learners would correctly inflect verbs in conjoined clauses. This would perhaps account for the increase in error rate among the experimental group who were attempting to formulate complex as opposed to simple sentences. Errors committed tended to involve the use of a wrong inflection or the lack of a tense marker on the verbs in embedded clauses or in non-initial and or but sentences, as shown by examples (4) to (6). (Bold font indicates an area of error.) (4) I asked for the reason why they fight with each other and record down their name (5) After I knew the reason why they will fight together, I tried to stop them (6) I thought that why this things will happened (7) then I asked him don’t do that again
These examples suggest that learners may have indeed grasped the control of finiteness in main clauses, as evidenced in the correct use of the main verbs in the
Table 6 Errors made pre-and post-study (finite verb errors per main clause) Before ICQ study
After ICQ study
Total no of errors
Errors per T-unit
Total no of errors
Errors per T-unit
Experimental group N ¼ 15
Mean
5.20
0.11
7.71
0.18
SD
4.46
0.09
5.23
0.13
Control group N ¼ 11
Mean SD
8.36 4.59
0.22 0.10
9.80 7.69
0.19 0.11
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examples. Nevertheless, markings on the non-main verbs were inconsistent. Example (5) is particularly interesting because of its complex structure. It consists of three clauses: the after-clause, the why-clause that is embedded in the after-clause and the main clause. Notice that all verbs except for the one in the embedded why-clause are marked correctly. The target form should be past future, i.e., ‘would fight’ instead of ‘will fight’. It might, therefore, not be unreasonable to assume that the increase in use of complex sentences has contributed to a rise in error rate, as improvement in grammatical awareness concerning finiteness may only restrict itself to the domain of main clauses. Another case worth discussing because of its bearing on the lack of change in the overall error rate concerns the persistence of errors involving existential there. The word there appears in a specific construction requiring a copula and an -ing inflection on the verb that appears after the noun. (8) There is a boy smoking.
Due to its idiosyncratic nature, the general grammatical point under focus is again not restrictive enough for users to work out the correct inflections for the verbs: the copula could agree either with ‘there’ or with the grammatical subject. There can also be a number of strategies to mark the verb ‘smoke’ in example (8): -s (third person singular), -ed (past), to (infinitive), etc. Example (9) is a further instance of errors involving the there- construction. (9) There is a girl reported to me that two boys were fighting in a classroom.
3.6. Results for three individual subjects Table 7 below presents the change of complexity in the usage of verbs among three students in the experimental group. The description in the cells of the first column represents a simplified structure of a t-unit, after excluding all non-verb elements. V stands for ‘verb’, aux for ‘auxiliary’. Note that the sequence of units in a cell is iconic to the order of items in the t-unit: ‘verb-aux-verb’, for instance, refers to the presence of one verb preceding the auxiliary and one verb following the auxiliary, as in I think tomorrow I can go out (by Betty). It appears that more auxiliaries were recruited to the t-units after the study. The post-study scripts of Anna, Betty and Carol revealed a higher concentration of tunits involving an auxiliary plus a verb. This contrasts sharply with the pre-study picture which contained a high level of simple one verb sentences (Anna ¼ 62.5%; Betty ¼ 55.3%; Carol ¼ 44.8%) and a low occurrence rate for sentences with auxiliaries (Anna ¼ 12.5%; Betty ¼ 4.2%; Carol ¼ 3.4%). After the study, the proportion of utterances with one verb dropped to 10.3%, 12.5% and 16.2% for the three subjects, whereas the proportion of t-units containing an auxiliary increased to 31%, 33.3% and 29.7%. It is therefore apparent that the complexity of language used (in terms of verb phrase expansion) is more advanced after the study. On the issue of the change in error rate per t-unit, individual findings are consistent with the group findings, in that the error rate increased after the study (see
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Table 7 Change of complexity in the usage of verbs among three subjects TU types
Examples
No V
and more IT office or company But there have some problem of teenagers I am not feel hot now When I went into the surgery, I told the doctor what I happened They think that playing computer, going on the internet is more and more interesting than studying I think I can stay I know he could have stayed In 2050, I think, they might not able to get jobs easily It’s because, in 2050, I think they would not so care of study and their future She said after eating breakfast, she will take me to see a doctor But you can’t too dependent it 2050 would not to make something by yourself In 2050 there would have more machines, and some machines that can fly The doctor let me went to the reception to get the medicine I don’t need to go to school! And the parents would let them go shopping
Anna Before
V V-V V-V-V
V-V-V-V-V
V-aux -V V-aux -V-V V-aux -aux -V
V-V-aux -V
V-V-aux -V-V
aux aux -V aux -V-aux -V
aux -V-V
aux -aux -V aux -aux -V-V
Betty After
1
Before
Carol After
Before
After
2
20
3
26
3
13
6
4
3
5 1
2
9 2
5 3
2
5 2
1
1
1 1
1 1
1
2
2
6 4
1
2
9
2
8
1
1
2
4
1
1
1
1
7
3
47
24
1 1
11
1
1
Others
1
Total
32
29
29
37
Table 8). However, such a rise should be understood in the light of students’ propensity to use more complex structures relating to the use of verbs (Note 4), as an analysis of the contexts in which errors occurred show that the mistakes in the poststudy scripts mostly involved t-units with auxiliaries. Table 9 indicates that prior to
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Table 8 Profiles of three secondary students pre- and post-study Anna
T-units Words Words per T-unit Errors Errors per T-unit
Betty
Carol
Before
After
Before
After
Before
After
32 193 6.03 7 0.22
29 241 8.31 13 0.45
47 286 6.09 7 0.15
24 225 9.38 8 0.33
29 240 8.28 9 0.31
37 357 9.65 16 0.43
Table 9 Number of errors for the different sentence types pre- and post-study TU types
Anna Before
No V V V-V V-V-V V-aux -V V-aux -V-V V-aux -aux -V V-V-aux -V V-V-aux V-V aux aux -V aux -Vaux -V aux -V-V Others
1 4 1
Total
7
Betty After 1 1
Carol
Before
After
2 2
2
1
Before 2 1 2 2
After 5 3 1 1
1 1 2 2
1
6 3 1 1 13
2
2
1 2
7
8
1 2
9
16
the study, most errors were restricted to t-units with no auxiliary (Anna ¼ 85.7%; Betty ¼ 57.1%) (The calculations are arrived at by summing the figures for types with no verb, one verb and two verbs). However, the post-study error rate pertaining to this sentence type dropped to 15.3% and 25%, respectively. At the same time, errors in t-units with auxiliaries became more prominent (Anna ¼ 84.6%; Betty ¼ 37.5%), coinciding with the increase in the use of auxiliaries in their writings. Carol was an exception to the trend: after the study, 56.2% of the errors appeared in t-units where there were no auxiliaries, possibly indicating a lack of understanding of the grammatical rule in question.
4. Conclusion This study has examined the use of IRC chat programs such as ICQ, investigating not only students’ motivation in using English on their own, in an unmoderated
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manner, but also examining whether such use is beneficial to students’ language development. From a motivational point of view, the benefits which IRC chat programs such as ICQ afford are substantial. Results obtained from pre- and post-study questionnaires indicate that on-line communication has been perceived as having been stimulating and beneficial. Members of the experimental group expressed positive attitudes towards the use of IRC as a means of practising their English: most of them spent considerably more time on the task than required and felt that their English had improved as a result. Although the analysis of the writing scripts revealed little quantitative difference in terms of post-study error rates between the two groups, qualitatively speaking, errors made by the experimental group appeared to be associated more with complex sentences. Our account for this is that the unmonitored interaction among ICQ users may have promoted the use of English to exchange complex ideas, which was then translated into a higher occurrence rate of complex sentences in participants’ use of English, including the genre of formal writing. However, since the target forms for these sentences are likely to lie beyond participants’ current interlanguage grammar levels and the grammatical rule in question concerns simple main clauses, it is perhaps not totally surprising that the error rate increased after the study – a direct consequence of the emergence of complex sentences. The decrease of errors in units with a single verb seems to confirm this and suggests a better control of the rule of one finite verb per (simple) main clause. We would conclude with some comments on the methodology, which could be improved upon in a number of ways. Firstly, the grammatical point specified for the study (one finite verb per main clause) was, in retrospect, too broad an area of error to consider; it could not be specified in sufficient detail enough – for example, where there are multiple verbs in a t-unit. Secondly, the one-month time frame may have been too short to allow any drastic changes in learners’ proficiency levels to be noted in their written work. The small size of the cohort will have also complicated the issue by masking any potential differences between the two groups. Lastly, relating to the first point raised, the cornerstone of the study has been predicated on all subjects being given the same (fairly general) rule to consider while communicating. On reflection, this has been quite a blunt approach towards getting students to consider language while they chat. The rule in the current study will have been appropriate for a number of participants. However, the approach could be profitably refined by giving individual learners language-specific rules derived from an analysis of their own particular error profiles – for example, giving each learner a specific type of error with which he or she has problems, such as omitting the third-person ‘s’ on present tense verbs, incorrectly inflecting the past participle in present perfect situations, etc. Such a tailored approach to error specification stands a greater chance of making sense to learners (from an interlanguage perspective), to be more personally motivating, and consequently to be able to be acted upon by the individual to whom the error pertains.
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5. Notes (1) ICQ and MSM are functionally equivalent. Since the form ‘ICQ’ is more widely known, for convenience sake, ‘ICQ’ will be used throughout the paper to refer to ‘ICQ/MSM’ or Internet Relay Chat programs in general. (2) There are approximately 400 secondary schools in Hong Kong. In one quarter of these, the medium of instruction is English; that is, English is used in these schools as the medium for all major content subjects and also for a lot of dayto-day-interaction within the school such as announcements, assemblies, etc. (3) As students’ ICQ chats were not saved,it has not been possible to investigate a number of potentially interesting issues, such as the grammaticality of sentences used in the communication, topic shift, etc. Although the study was investigating the influence of ICQ use on students’ formal writing, the focus was on how improvement might be brought about through a ‘relaxed’ learning atmosphere. For this to occur, students needed to know that they would not be later ‘checked up on’, and hence they were not asked to save or submit their chat logs. (4) It might be argued that students may be providing incorrect language input to one another, thereby reinforcing the language errors. Research findings suggest, however, that students may learn equally well from their peers as from their teachers (see, e.g., Long and Porter, 1985; Lightbrown and Spada, 1999).
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