Technology LEARN Workshop

It's no longer a secret that with the use of mobile devices learners can study anywhere and at any time. The same devices give instructors more mobility and endless possibilities of creation on the go. What sets an iPhone apart from a vast pool of the mobile technology is access to information from virtually anywhere, so no longer do creative ideas can slip by because there's no pen handy, or a laptop is still booting.

It would seem, your iPhone, an Apple TV and over 50,000 education apps available on the iOS App Store are the tools you need to transform the classroom integrating technology into your daily instruction to enhance language students' learning and provide an authentic learning experiences. We will show what endless teaching and learning possibilities iPhone provides you to complete a full lesson cycle in a fun and conducive way while teaching all language domains: reading, listing and speaking, and writing. Furthermore, we will see all the possibilities of conducting pre-assessment, post-assessment and continuos assessment for learning while providing instant feedback to learners and how it keeps them engaged and responsible for their learning.

The goal of this presentation is to illustrate the process of designing and developing a Digital Module for Teaching Foreign Language for Specific Purposes. The result is a multifunctional product available on all mobile devices as well as in a traditional book format, easily convertible to other languages.

The presenters will use the GSO Professional Seminar to demonstrate how course materials can be developed for students to use "For Here" (while in language training) or "To Go" (at post) and how they were able to integrate real-world materials, multi-media support, digital and paper format, and overcome the challenges of copyright issues.

Text analysis software is an incredibly useful set of tools and it is surprising that more language instructors don't take advantage of it. This presentation will demonstrate several practical applications of text analysis software programs in language teaching. The presenter will discuss the software programs he has used and how these programs have made his teaching much easier and more effective, and how they allow more student involvement in their own learning. The session will then run through various practical applications, including initial analysis of texts, creating vocabulary lists, creating corpora of various types for research and reference, and using corpora to explore grammar and collocation in the target language. In addition, the presenter will show how teachers can create general word frequency lists for their languages and also analyze different types of texts for the purposes of curriculum development and course planning.

The Government Catalog of Language Resources (GCLR) is an effort sponsored by the ODNI Foreign Language Program Office to encourage the sharing and reuse of language resources throughout the IC and USG. Educators are a key customer of GCLR but have thus far been underrepresented in the development of GCLR. The purpose of this presentation is to introduce GCLR and to gather feedback as to how GCLR can be most useful to instructors and course developers.

The Technology Integration Division (TI) of the Defense Language Institute, Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) develops cutting-edge, interactive online courseware for foreign language learners. Materials are specifically tailored to suit the needs of the DLIFLC resident and non-resident programs as well as other government agencies and educational institutions.

Headstart2 (HS) is an online foreign language learning tool covering some 28 languages and offering 80 to 100 hours of instruction and evaluation per language. The program features tools for learning the phonetics and script of the target language, with materials relevant to both civilian and military contexts. Building from the word level up, it caters to learners with little or no experience in foreign language learning. Melding content with context, the learner engages in interactive language games with 3D avatars illustrating simulated country-specific gestures in addition to tools for marginally comparing the accuracy of the learners' pronunciation to that of native speakers from the relevant dialects.

By introducing the culture and customs of the target language country, the Meaningful Communication approach provides the learner with authentic materials and contents stemming from country-specific subject matters, contextualized grammar and culture notes as well as meaningful extra-linguistic resources.

This presentation session will showcase the Experimental Electronic News Reader developed at the FSI School of Language Services. The Interactive reader, with intended output for anytime, anywhere, any device and with immediate feedback features, guides students through set of texts on the same topic. Students study at their own time and pace in a private environment where learners are not afraid to fail and can see their own mistakes. Designed for learning, the program doesn't emphasize failure. It also provides students with on-demand tips, strategies and crucial vocabulary categories they need to learn. The Experimental News Reader is intended to help learners get acquainted with target language news reports, locate essential elements of information within such texts, and acquire topic specific and generic vocabulary in preparation for reading authentic texts.

Most foreign language teachers agree that language and culture are inextricably linked. Teaching a foreign language, by default, is teaching culture .or, at the very least, involves teaching "linguaculture" - the understanding that language should be taught within its various cultural contexts. However, at the beginning level, this focus is sometimes limited and/or unauthentically contrived - especially in languages where linguistic aspects often demand more attention. This paper looks to technology and a relatively neglected cultural medium for a possible solution: video blogging online contemporary music videos with bilingual subtitles. Often maligned, this medium is very much involved in trend-setting, exploring cultural boundaries, and expressing images of daily life and cultural identity. Music videos also provide a "potent music/lyric/image combination" (Garza, 1994) that is relevant to students - by illustrating cultural memes and providing memorizable chunks of authentic language. They are also short enough to fit into even the busiest syllabus as a listening, reading, and cultural exercise. This paper will also discuss how to manipulate streaming video, employ subtitle creation programs, and create an online blog as an in-class and self-study tool for the language classroom and beyond. Student perceptions of this tool will also be presented.

Recent research has demonstrated that use of learning games correlates strongly to improved student outcomes (e.g. Merchant et al., 2014). Yet there are few widely-available games that are based on best practices in language teaching. This presentation reports on an exciting game development project that is based on reading theory.

The School of Language Studies at the Foreign Service Institute is creating a research-based educational game application for mobile devices to support current language training at the 1+ level of reading proficiency. The application is being developed with one target language, with plans to replicate similar task-based content in other languages in the future.

The research base, theory, structure, and practical implementation will be presented and discussed, including anticipated benefits and observed limitations.

While it is valuable for language instructors to use applications (apps) and facilities available on mobile devices in teaching foreign language, it is equally if not more valuable for instructors to understand students' experiences with mobile device-assisted language learning. This is especially so in the context of professional adult education, where students' cognitive, analytical and logical skills and high motivation to learn effectively equip them to partner with instructors in improving the language education enterprise.

This presentation addresses students' experiences in using mobile apps and facilities to advance foreign language learning, focusing on experiences with Mandarin Chinese instruction and learning. More specifically, the presentation investigates how students use mobile technology in each of the sub-language areas (listening comprehension, reading practice, vocabulary building, and speaking). The presentation also solicits students' perspectives of: (a) what roles teachers play to best advance students' language learning: and (b) recommendations students have for their colleagues.

The presentation is based upon first-hand field research. The student participants are adult language students of various language proficiency levels and of varied backgrounds and experiences. An open-ended questionnaire is designed as an interview guide. Phenomenological interview method is used to gather data.

The goal of this presentation is to further instructors' understanding of students' experiences and perspectives in mobile learning, and incorporate that knowledge into pedagogical practices.

Digital teaching and learning low-density languages carries with it complex problems. Resources suitable for today's technology-ready classrooms and technology-savvy teachers and students are hard to come by, and those available often have limited subject-matter and vocabulary, overlooking contemporary language use and ever-changing lexical innovations.

The University of Maryland-Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL) will address these limitations, using Persian and Somali as exemplars. Researchers have built and continue to improve upon electronic corpora gathered from open-source news and social media sites on the Internet. The lexical, grammatical, and semantic information gleaned from these data inform innovations to classroom HLT tools. Computational algorithms also provide insight into frequency and changes to word use across different mediums. These methods and techniques are extensible to other languages, provided they have some Internet presence.

This presentation illustrates how digital corpora for Persian and Somali enhance CASL HLT tools. These tools benefit beginning to advanced students and instructors. They include fuzzy-search dictionaries, morphological analyzers, and concordancers, as demonstrated in this presentation. These corpora may be used to better-understand language use, grammar and vocabulary in different dialects and/or regions, and language competence as it differs between first language (L1) versus second language (L2) speakers.

During the last fifty years, scientific and technological innovation has had a great impact on language learning needs and styles.

ODA (Online Diagnostic Assessment) and GLOSS (Global Language Online Support System) is a linked life long, and self-motivated online language learning system. It manages language proficiency development and maintenance.

ODA identifies various stages of proficiency and assesses what individuals can and cannot do with the target language regardless of the curriculum. It provides an individualized diagnostic profile, and suggests learning materials with targeted proficiency level, topic content and linguistic areas on GLOSS, which has hundreds of instruction lessons in 40 languages. It includes numerous types of media that deliver text audio, images, animation and streaming videos.

ODA and GLOSS learning system can be used in or out of the classroom. It can be self-paced learning or instructor-led learning. It is suited to distance learning and flexible learning.