Teachers' Reflections on Infusing the CANDLE Project into College English Classes

英語教學 English Teaching & Learning29.4 (April 2005): 39-64

Teachers’ Reflections on Infusing the CANDLE Project into College English Classes

Chih-Cheng Lin andHao Jan Chen

Meei-Ling LiawHsien-Chin Liou and

Yuli Yeh

National Taiwan NormalUniversity

Tunghai UniversityNational Tsing Hua

University

AbstractThree effective ways of teacher professional development: self-awareness, reflectiveteaching, and action research (suggested by Bailey, Curtis and Nunan, 2001) areillustrated by five English teachers who have used web-based technology in theirown classes to enhance English teaching in Taiwan. The teachers have used thematerials from a National Science & Technology Program for E-learning project onEnglish teaching CANDLE (Corpus And NLP for Digital Learning of English). Theability to teach English with technology is different from the ability to use technology,because such a process should be based onsound pedagogy or sometimes a teacher’s personal theory about English teaching. Oftentimes, issues of teacher preparation orprofessional development as related to CALL use (Computer Assisted LanguageLearning) involves how such use interacts with teachers’ current pedagogical approaches, regardless of whether the technology is advanced or not. Englishteachers of the CANDLE team, having some experience teaching with the project’s instructional units or environment, examine reflectively and critically the pedagogicalprocesses in their individual contexts. Specifically, five cases of infusing theCANDLE Project into their college-level English teaching: Reading (two cases),Writing (one case), and Culture (two cases) are presented. Tsui’s Knowledge types (2003) or teachers’ maxims (Richards, 1998) applied in their respective CALL cases are also reported.

Key Words: teachers’ professional development,reflective teaching, ComputerAssisted Language Learning, CANDLE, action research, teachers’ knowledge and beliefs

INTRODUCTION

Recently, teacher education in the area of Teaching English as a ForeignLanguage (TEFL) has attracted attention in Taiwan R. O. C. (e.g., Chao, 2004; Hsu,2004; Huang, Cheng, & Lin, 2004). With the spread of practices on using technologyto enhance language learning, it is natural that technology would be employed inEnglish teacher education and professional development when technology infusion

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meets teacher education. To highlight the close relationship between technology andteacher education”, two issues have been addressed by Zhao and Tella (2002): (a)how to prepare teachers to use technology, and (b) how to use technology to supportteacher education. How teachers try to learn technology to revitalize their Englishteaching should be investigated from these two perspectives, as it involves technologyuse as related to sense-making to teachers’ lives andthe teaching profession.

Oftentimes, issues of teacher preparation or professional development usingcomputer technology involve how such use interacts with teachers’ current pedagogical approaches: whether it matches a teacher’s original style or personal beliefs of English teaching, regardless of how the sophisticated the technology maybe. This paper discusses how five English teachers at the university level usedmaterials from an online project called CANDLE in their classes, and how the resultsof their efforts can be employed to prepare teachers to use technology in theclassroom. Three effective ways of teacher professional development: self-awareness,reflective teaching, and action research (suggested by Bailey, Curtis and Nunan, 2001)are illustrated by the five English teachers who have used the web-based technologyto enhance their teaching. The teacher in each case addresses his or her personaltheory of teaching and its theoretical underpinnings, and describes the CALLmaterials and the context of infusing online materials into his or her own course.Contextual information includes course information, learner variables, assessment ofthe effects, personal observations, and the pedagogical process. These are followed bycritical self-reflections on the technology infusion process, after the technology wasadopted in the courses. Before the five cases are presented, teachers’knowledge,action research and the CANDLE project are reviewed.

Teachers’KnowledgeTsui (2003) maintains that teachers’knowledge can be demonstrated as

reflective practice, personal practical knowledge, situated knowledge, and contentknowledge. Citing Schon’s conception of the development of professional knowledge,Tsui claims that teachers’knowledge for decision-making while teaching is‘knowing-in-action’, which is intuitive and automatic. Meanwhile, teachers also doreflect-on-action and reflect-in-action on their platforms of teaching. Personalpractical knowledge is based on action, decision, and response in teachers’actualteaching process in the classroom. It is “oriented to a particular context and socialcontext, and highly experiential and personal”(pp. 45-46). Teachers’knowledge issituated in that their knowledge is “contextually developed as practitioners whorespond to the specific context in which they operate”(p. 48). When the teachers’knowledge component is regarded as content knowledge, it may refer to subject

Lin, Chen, Liaw, Liou, Yeh: Teachers’reflections on the CANDLE project

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matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. By using the term ‘maxims’,Richards (1998) emphasizes more teachers’personal or implicit rules of teaching bydefining it as “a rule for good or sensible behavior, especially one which is in theform of a proverb or short saying”(Cobuild English Language Dictionary, cited inRichards, 1998, p. 53). He illustrates maxims with cases of involvement, planning,order, encouragement, accuracy, efficiency, conformity, and empowerment. Whatteachers believe or think is usually called teachers’cognition and such cognition hascrucial impact on their pedagogical practices. The cognition includes teachers’knowledge, beliefs and attitudes about English teaching. In principled teaching, thereis usually a good match between the beliefs and the practices. Teaching practices maychange through critical reflection or action research findings. It is also believed thatchange in teaching cycles leads to improvement of pedagogical practices. Insurveying the teacher cognition research in a second language (L2) context, Borg(2003) indicates this is a new emerging area with some initial data (such as teacherswho work on their teaching of L2 writing or reading), but some areas require futureresearch, for instance, the issues of teachers who are using technology for languageteaching.

Action ResearchAmong the ten effective ways of teacher professional development (Bailey et al.,

2001), action research has become a very powerful means for teacher learning andprofessional development (used interchangeably with ‘teacher research’ for some scholars). Defined by Burns (1999: 30):

1. Action research is contextual, small-scale, and localized—it identifies andinvestigates problems within a specific situation.

2. It is evaluative and reflective as it aims to bring about change and improvement inpractice.

3. It is participatory as it provides for collaborative investigation by teams ofcolleagues, practitioners and researchers.

4. Changes in practice are based on the collection of information or data whichprovides the impetus for change.

Action research can also increase teacher autonomy and empowerment as shown in acase of secondary school teachers in Hong Kong (Sachs, 2000).

The Online CANDLE Project and Instructional MaterialsIn May 2003, a team of computer scientists and English teachers collaborated to

construct an advanced web-based learning environment for English teaching bymeans of bilingual corpora processing, natural language processing techniques, andcomputational scaffolding (Liou et al., 2003, CANDLE, Corpus and NLP for Digital


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Learning of English, http://candle.cs.nthu.edu.tw and http://candle.fl.nthu.edu.tw).The project has four components as illustrated in Figure 1. Pilot studies in classroomshave been conducted to examine their feasibility and effectiveness of the Reading,Writing, and Culture components.

Figure 1Components in CANDLE with its Respective Modules

Note. Items marked with * indicate that the modules have already been verified viaaction research projects.

The Natural Language Processing (NLP) component has developed advancedcorpora processing computer tools that help English teaching: TOTALRecall (aChinese-English bilingual concordancer that displays example sentences/paragraphsbased on a key word/phrase inquiry, Wu, Yeh, Chuang, Shei, & Chang, 2003),TANGO (a collocation retrieval program), and a speech recognizer (that can recognizelearner English sentential input produced by Taiwanese students). The Readingcomponent develops a self-access reading center (for details, see discussions in Case 2and Chen, 2004); it also works on a module that trains students to read faster (speedreading). Textgrader has selected comprehensible texts based on four word lists andsequenced the selected articles based on the exposure amounts of target words fromthe easiest to the most difficult (Huang & Liou, 2004). In the Writing component, acollocation checker program is under development that can detect miscollocations in

CANDLEInterface

Computer AssistedManagement System

NLPTOTALrecall,TANGO,Speech recognizer

CultureCulture e-learning courses(2 cases*), CANDLEtalk*

WritingCollocation checker,Collocation practice(Basic & Advanced*),WriteBetter*,writing course*

ReadingReading site*,Textgrader*,Speedy reading


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learner input from the NLP group. Collocation practice units have been developed forsenior high school students (Basic module) and college Freshman students (Advancedmodule, Chan & Liou, in press). The WriteBetter module has practice units onsynonyms and connectors, and POWER (Peer Online Writing Editing Room). In awriting course, Yeh and Yu (2004) have assessed the effects and learner satisfaction ofthe use of TOTALrecall to help English-major students to revise. In the Culturecomponent, Liaw (2003) and Lin (2004) have developed environments to deliver theirculture courses. Candletalk is a conversation module that incorporated the speechrecognizer to train students’in the socio-cultural strategies used in speaking (Yeh, etal., 2004).

The various small components of the CANDLE project have been evaluated byMA-TEFL graduate students in their thesis projects and by college professors doingaction research. Five college teacher-researchers have used one componentrespectively to meet their instructional goals. In the process, the five instructorsregularly met with co-researchers of the CANDLE team to: discuss issues related tothe development of the main CANDLE website, address pedagogical concerns,brainstorm ideas, or obtain input from colleagues. The purpose of this paper is to usefive CALL cases to illustrate how the five English teachers attempted to promotelanguage skills using the CANDLE project via action research and discuss theirreflections can provide for other teachers who may be interested in using theCANDLE materials or other online environments. It is hoped that the presentation ofthe five cases below will help foster teachers’professional development regardingmerging technology use with English teaching or syllabi.

CALL CASES INFUSED INTO EFL CURRICULA

Five cases are drawn from the past CANDLE development and teachingexperiences that involve English reading (2 cases), writing (1 case), and culture (2cases) below. Specific features of online materials or the environment as related to thecourse context (goal, learners, process, etc.), and the teacher’s reflection are discussed.Table 1 shows the context of the five cases with course goals (or a problem inteaching), learners’backgrounds, types of technology, and methods of technologyinfusion.

Table 1Course Context of the Five CALL Cases

Course context


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Goals of the coursesCase 1 Reading: Developing better English reading skills and competenceCase 2 Reading: Four-skill course with an emphasis on extensive readingCase 3 Writing: Writing with more precise adjectivesCase 4 Culture: Reading and then writing home-culture topicsCase 5 Culture: Reading of and responding to articles on home culture

Students’ backgroundsCase 1 150 college freshmenCase 2 39 college freshmenCase 3 19 college freshmen majoring in EnglishCase 4 12 college freshmen majoring in EnglishCase 5 16 college freshmen majoring in English

CANDLE technologyCase 1 Tools for students to read online; record-keeping mechanisms for

teachers to monitor studentsCase 2 Tools to pre-process appropriate texts and to develop a web-based

reading programCase 3 Practice units employing linguistic data from TANGO to facilitate

learning of underused adjectivesCase 4 TOTALrecall in a culture platformCase 5 Online reading with TOTALrecall for text comprehension;

cross-cultural e-forum for reflective cultural learning CANDLE infusion

Case 1 Self-study homework and regular quizzes based on online readingsCase 2 Self-study homework and regular, traditional class with a small

portion of CMC and movie activitiesCase 3 Four 20-minute in-class practices followed by after-class homeworkCase 4 Self-study homework and peer sharing of online searches and

summariesCase 5 Four self-learning units for students to work at their own pace

In the following discussions, each case is presented under two sub-titles: onlinematerials/environment and course context and teacher’s reflections.

Case 1: Online Reading Center for both Teachers and LearnersOnline materials/environment and course context. Although extensive reading

is widely considered to be beneficial for vocabulary knowledge and reading abilities,difficulties are often encountered when teachers encourage students to engage in


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extensive reading. For teachers, it is difficult to find suitable reading materials forstudents at a certain proficiency level. Moreover, it is not easy for teachers to checkstudents’reading comprehension and closely monitor students’participations inreading activities. For students, it is very challenging to tackle authentic readingwithout their teachers’help and explanations.

The CANDLE reading center was designed to address both teachers’andstudents’needs (http://elearning.eng.ntnu.edu.tw/CANDLE/). The CANDLE readingcenter can help teachers to find reading materials more easily and to monitor students’outside reading more closely. In addition, the CANDLE reading center providesstudents with various useful reading tools and effective reading strategies. The twocore modules, the instructor module and the student module, are briefly introducedbelow.

The instructor module helps language teachers to (a) locate interesting readingmaterials (mainly from Voice of America News and Special English News); (b) shareinteresting readings with their classes easily; (c) develop comprehension questionsand vocabulary quizzes; and (d) keep track of individual students’ progress inextensive reading activities. The student module provides students withcomprehensible input and adequate feedback by offering six major functions.

1. Vocabulary levels tests: the tests help learners better understand theirvocabulary levels.

2. A vocabulary assessor: this tool helps students to quickly identify difficultvocabulary items in the readings.

3. Online dictionaries: these monolingual and bilingual dictionaries helpstudents better understand word meanings and usage easily.

4. Online audio version of the reading (MP3 audio file): the high-quality MP3audio files help students enhance their reading experience.

5. Comprehension questions and vocabulary quizzes: these exercises helpstudents verify their reading comprehension and review importantvocabulary items.

6. Reading strategies training: different reading strategies with concreteexamples were made available to students.

The Teacher’s reflection. So far, more than a thousand students have registeredon this site, and more than ten senior high school and college English teachers haveused the reading center. Most of them indicated that this web site was a usefulsupplement to their regular classroom teaching. Recently, we conducted a survey on agroup of 150 college freshman students who were taking Freshman English courses(non-English majors). This teacher-researcher used the CANDLE reading site for awhole semester and expected students to log into the CANDLE reading site and read


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more after classes as an extensive reading activity that, with the goal of improvingtheir English proficiency. The survey results indicated that most college students likethis web site because it can offer good learning tools and services. Most students alsobelieve that this web site can help them improve their English reading abilities.

Despite much positive feedback, students also had some complaints about thisweb site. Students indicated that it was uncomfortable to read the articles on thecomputer screen, and that they preferred to read the printed copy they haddownloaded from the web site was much more comfortable than reading on thecomputer screen. Another advantage to the printed copy was that students could readthe assigned readings any time they liked. Based on the students’feedback, the printedcopy might help students have easier access to the reading materials. This optionmight also encourage some students to read more.

In addition, some students indicated that the vocabulary quizzes were toodifficult and the online dictionaries could not always provide definitions for certainwords in the readings. Regarding the difficulties in taking vocabulary quizzes,students would need more time to consult dictionaries since the vocabulary quizzesmight contain some new vocabulary items. As for the insufficient informationprovided by the online dictionaries, teachers might need to inform students about thelimitations of any individual dictionary and ask students to consult differentreferences, including both paper-based and electronic dictionaries.

Generally speaking, this site can provide a good self-access learning environmentfor ESL/EFL students. But the success of incorporating this center into regularEnglish classes might hinge upon two important factors: teachers and students.Teachers have to constantly encourage students to read more and monitor if theyindeed read more and understand better. Moreover, teachers themselves need tobecome more familiar with new online teaching resources provided in this web site.For instance, teachers would need to learn how to select and upload suitable readingtexts and how to add in appropriate comprehension questions. When English teachersbecome more familiar with the tools and services available on this web site, they willbe able to harness the power of technology more confidently. Students’participationalso plays a crucial role. Students would need to develop an active learning attitudeand be willing to spend extra time on reading after classes. In addition, they need timeto use different reading aids and to work on the online exercises. Based on histeaching experiences in Japan, Robb (2002a; 2002b) indicated that online self-accessenvironments or materials are useful in promoting learner autonomy but most of hisJapanese EFL learners were not inherently autonomous learners. Robb maintainedthat an online environment can become an integral part of a course but that it needs toprovide record-keeping functions so that the instructor knows who has done what, and


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with what success. In the experiences with Taiwanese EFL learners described in thiscase, though the online tracking mechanism can effectively“force”students to use theweb site, teachers would also need to award extra points to students so they will bemore willing to visit this site after classes.

Case 2: Online Graded Texts on EFL College Students’ Vocabulary Learningwhile Reading

Online material and course context. Incidental vocabulary learning whilereading has been regarded as common for adults’life-long learning of a foreignlanguage. L2 learners at the intermediate level are thus often encouraged to suchactivities to promote their language proficiency. Laufer (1989) found that learnerswhose vocabulary size enabled them to cover 95% of the words in a text weresuccessful in reaching an adequate level of comprehension. Yet, the bottleneck ofpreparing texts precisely reaching 95% familiar word coverage for specific groups oflearners is often a challenge for both researchers and classroom teachers. With thehelp of word lists research and advances in quantitative corpus analyses using wordfrequency computer programs, texts with comprehensible input and control of targetword exposure were compiled in an extensive reading module of the CANDLEproject using the Textgrader.

In the M.A. thesis project (Huang & Liou, 2004), Huang reported on the designof an extensive reading program that was given for a period of 12 weeks with 16articles. Thirty-nine EFL non-English-major college freshman students participated inthe program during their winter break and the first month of the following semester.The other researcher served as the course instructor. The course context is afour-credit/semester required Freshman English course that aims to promote thelearners’four skills. A reader that includes extensive reading skills, among otheraspects of reading, was used for the in-class instruction. The course instructor did notintervene in the extensive reading program with direct instruction but studentparticipation in the extensive reading program was considered when the instructorassigned final grades. Occasional reinforcement was made through brief discussionsof the online articles in class. The online program illustrated a good example of aself-access CALL learning module. The articles were graded based on filtering textswith four word lists: the General Service Word List, a local Senior High Students’Word List, the University Word List, and an Exposed Word list out of the original5,008 articles of a parallel Chinese-English corpus, Sinorama. Easier articles weresequenced first to be read with another control of times of target word exposureenhanced with gloss, a bilingual concordancer (Totalrecall), and highlight of wordsbeing exposed in previous texts. An action research study was conducted to examine


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the effectiveness of the online reading program. A pretest, posttest, backgroundquestionnaire, and an evaluation questionnaire were used as instruments for datacollection.

The questionnaire data and pretest-posttest comparison showed there wassignificant vocabulary gain. Students were satisfied with most of the design featuresbut commented that they needed more words glossed. But the precise number of wordexposure was not found for either receptive or productive use even for some targetwords that appeared 15 times in the 16 articles such as “Secrets of Slimming” or “Searching Past Lives to Soothe the Soul”. The trendwas commonsensical: the moreword exposure, the better the learning gains—yet there was an exception among thefive word groups based on numbers of exposure. Further research is necessary topinpoint the average number of times students need to be exposed to a target word topossess receptive or productive competence of the word. It was found via the onlinetracker’s data that students tended to use intensive reading strategies to cope with theextensive reading homework. As the instructor of the first semester was not the same,whether students had acquired the extensive reading strategies was unknown thoughthe textbook did provide extensive reading instruction.

The teacher’s reflection. In this case, lack of extensive reading skills andexperiences was found as the major obstacle interfering with learners’ reading comprehension. Moreover, learners’ target word knowledgedid not reach thereceptive repertoire, albeit an exposure amount of up to 15 times after reading. In anattempt to amend insufficient extensive reading strategies and enhance vocabularylearning, a paradigm of incorporating explicit instruction and implicit learning may behelpful. To begin with, careful orientation sessions in the school lab are needed notonly to familiarize learners with the functions of the online syllabus but to explain thegoals and methodology of extensive reading. Useful strategies in extensive readingshould be made explicit and practice sessions scheduled as a guide to the extensivereading activity. After direct and explicit instruction of target words in class, thereading texts in the syllabus could provide more diverse usage and contexts. Thecomprehensive exposure to target words in extensive reading can bring learners a stepfurther along the continuum of vocabulary learning; on the other hand, the fragile andunstable word knowledge resulting exclusively from extensive reading could, in turn,be more strongly anchored to learners’ existing lexicon with explicit instruction.

Yet, learners may not be aware of the connection between these two types oflearning. The instructor, hence, is responsible for connecting the two by directinglearners’ attention to the relationship of word use and contexts, the difference between intensive and extensive reading strategies, and the initiative of utilizing such an onlineextensive reading approach to complement in-class instruction. In other words,


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learners should be taught to make use of different strategies for various readingpurposes, a skill they will need for future life-long learning. Moreover, firmlyestablished reading habits from prior experiences might not be easy to amendespecially when learners in Taiwan still have to cope with two types of readingsimultaneously in class and at home. Therefore, guidance should not end with theinitial orientation. On-going time to time reminders on goals and strategies ofextensive reading can be emphasized in class from teachers’ observation of learners reading progress and responses.

In sum, with theinstructor’s input on reading strategy training, word instruction, and evaluation, the online extensive reading syllabus will be capable of serving as abridge linking explicit teaching and implicit learning for more ideal vocabularyacquisition as a self-access CALL activity. An eclectic approach of combining bothintensive and extensive reading methods is suggested; self-access CALL thatpromotes learner autonomy is also encouraged. These are the instructor’s beliefs andthey have been mostly implemented in this CALL module of the CANDLE project.Textgrader does not have the intensive reading nor the strategy training componentsfor which other teachers may need to rely on materials provided in the first case of theReading center or classroom teaching by the teachers themselves.

Case 3: Online Units for Increasing EFL Students’Awareness of SynonymousAdjectives in Writing

Online materials/environment and course context. Related to studies conductedby Granger and Tribble (1998), the phenomenon of overusing general adjectives wasobserved, and the problem was also confirmed by actual analyses on a smallTaiwanese learner corpus and writing teachers’observations. Since such overuse tendsto weaken student writing, we have designed and developed online learning materialstargeting at increasing EFL students’awareness of underused adjectives in writing(Yeh & Li, 2005). The goal is for students to be able to use more precise adjectivesand to avoid the overused items after they complete the learning units. Important,hard, beautiful, big and deep were identified as the five most overused adjectives.Five online learning units (under WriterBetter, synonyms) were designed, eachinvolving several synonyms selected for each overused adjective. There were twotasks in each unit. The first task requires students to induce patterns from concordancelines of adjective-noun collocates from a bilingual concordance, TANGO, and to typein their findings in the notepad and summary page provided by the system. Thesecond task includes interactive substitution, gap-filling, and translation exercises forstudents to actively practice employing a stronger and more specific adjective incontext.


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An action research study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of theonline leaning units. Nineteen English majors in a freshman writing class did theonline exercises for four weeks. The writing course is a required 2-credit course; thecourse goal is for students to write clear paragraphs with a specific topic sentence.The course proceeded with both a conventional element of classroom instruction aswell as the CALL modules. In the 4-week period, students did part of each unit for 20minutes in class, after receiving brief instruction from the teacher-researcher, andcompleted the rest of the unit at home as after-class homework. An online tracker andthe individual notepad provided by the system recorded students’learning process.With the tracker data, words that were especially difficult for students to master alongthe process could be identified. For assessment of the learning gain, a pretest and aposttest were given. An evaluative questionnaire, together with student journals andthe researcher’s field notes depicted how students responded to the design of the units.

The results of the pretest-posttest comparison showed that students experiencedsignificant improvement in the learning of synonymous adjectives. Further, studentsshowed better competence in the posttest in using difficult words identified by thetracker data. From the evaluation questionnaire data and student journals, studentswere satisfied with most of the design features. Students felt they were helped inrealizing the subtle differences among the collocates of synonymous words, afterreading concordance lines. However, with the huge amount of authentic language datashown on the concordancer, most students were overwhelmed in the beginning stagewhen trying to induce rules in Task 1. “Time-consuming”, therefore, is one sharedcomment from the students. On the other hand, they also agreed that they would bemore likely to retain for a longer period what they had learned due to their efforts ininducing and recording the rules on the summary pages and their notepads, ascompared with a deduction approach where rules are offered before examples. Somestudents expressed interest in keeping their summary pages and notepads in their ownfiles so they could go back for self-instruction anytime. Finally, they also felt that thesynonym exercises could help their word use in writing.

The teacher’s reflection. Students’significant improvement on the learning ofthe synonymous adjectives is rewarding to the course instructor. Moreover, students’journals depict their positive responses towards learning with the CALL exercise units.These results indicate that there was a successful infusion of an innovative CALL unitinto a writing classroom. The achievement of recognizing the specific synonymousadjectives, as evidenced by the test results, however, was not fully transferred toactual use of the words in student writing. This implies that, after the learning of theunderused synonymous adjectives, there is still more for teachers and students to dobefore the actual production of these words in writing. Perhaps more exposure to the


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words and opportunities for students to actually practice writing with these words insemi-controlled writing assignments might help achieve the goal.

In combining the CALL module with conventional classroom instruction, theteacher would have to assume the role of a facilitator in the process. In the first class,explanation of the rationale in incorporating the exercises into instruction is essential.When students realize that the module could help with their vocabulary and laterwriting, they would be more highly motivated in spending time and overcoming thedifficulties of the learning process. Naturally, orientation to enhance familiarity withthe learning environment is important. Clear instruction in familiarizing students withthe innovative mode of inductive learning and adequate practice before students areset to do the exercises on their own could significantly decrease student sense ofinsecurity or frustration in completing the units. In addition, it is necessary to offerstudents feedback and encouragement along the process after consistently checkingtheir performance on the tracker, students’own summary pages, and notepads. Thisway, students could receive not only feedback from the CALL learning units, butteacher feedback which could provide insights into how their peers are doing and howthey could overcome difficulties. Finally, incentives and assistance in reviewing thewords are vital to student participation and learning. Incentives, extra points countedtowards the grade for the writing course, for example, would bring definitedifferences in how frequently and how long students would do the exercises. A quizon the words would certainly make students review what they had done in the units,thus, another round of leaning would be achieved. As for teacher assistance inreviewing the words, it would be best if the teacher could summarize the rules fordifficult words identified and present them for student review at the final stage. At thisstage, before the learning units are made more sophisticated for students to be able toredo the exercises, the assistance is needed and welcomed.

From the current study, it seems to me that the learning units could supplementthe learning of adjectives for writing effectively, but is yet inadequate to stand alone,for student self-instruction. For future development of self-instruction units, thedesign must consider student motivation, student orientation, consistent provision ofstudent performance data along their learning process, and review sections.

Case 4: An Online Bilingual Concordancer, TOTALrecall, for English Learning ofCulture Vocabulary and Paragraph Writing

Online materials/environment and course context. TOTALrecall, the bilingualconcordancer developed by the CANDLE Project, was first introduced in October2003 to a beginning writing class in a public university after the class had receivedone month of instruction in one of the Culture platforms.


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In the one-year two-credit writing class, twelve students practiced writingvarious types of paragraphs. Eleven students were freshman English majors and onewas a sophomore majoring in Education. After a screening test administered to allfreshman English majors, the eleven students were diagnosed as lower proficientwriters than their peers and was asked to register for the instructor’s course. Thesingle non-major received permission to enroll in the course. The objective of thecourse was to familiarize students with academic writing. Students were taught how topresent their ideas in an organized fashion, using enumeration, cause and effect, andcomparison and contrast. Because of the student writers’EFL background andintermediate-low proficiency levels, the writing course was considered anintroduction to academic writing.

After reviewing students’assignments and entries in their journals, one type ofmistake drew the instructor/researcher’s attention—L1 transfer. Many mistakes of thistype can be traced back to the linguistic structures, either in the sentential or lexicallevel, of the writers’mother tongue, Mandarin Chinese. It took much time for theinstructor to demonstrate to the student writers the sharp differences between the twolanguages and to emphasize the goal of the course—to acquire the expressions used inthe target language. Therefore, the intention of introducing the student writers to usingthe bilingual concordancer TOTALrecall was practical—students’limited knowledgeabout English vocabulary and grammar. Even though the English in the bilingualSinorama corpus (embedded in TOTALrecall) was beyond the students’level, theirappreciation of the vocabulary usage and their understanding of the grammarstructures were plausible with the help of the Chinese translation.

Although the bilingual concordancer can be accessed online, all student writerswere required to attend a demonstration session. In the two-hour session, theinstructor first demonstrated how TOTALrecall could be accessed and used to searchfor the English equivalents of Chinese words, expressions and idioms. The studentsfollowed along using the instructions in a printed operational manual. Then, thestudents were asked to perform assigned searches as well as those of their ownchoosing. Whenever particular collocational patterns were found, students wereinstructed to copy and paste the collocation data into a WORD file so that they couldrecord what they had learned. This data was later shared with classmates. In thesecond hour of the session, the hyper-links to the Sinorama articles were introduced;likewise, the students were asked to perform online assigned searches and alsoinvestigate topics they preferred. While searching, students were carefully instructedto collect articles under the same categories, for example, various wedding customs inTaiwan, Hakka cultures, and aboriginal ceremonies around the island. The searchresults, online articles, were again saved in WORD files for later personal access and


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class sharing.A 20-item end-of-semester questionnaire was distributed to the learners to

understand their perceptions about TOTALrecall as used in their course. Theyrecognized certain aspects of the usefulness of the online referencing tool such asappropriate diction, awareness-raising about word usage, and ease of use whensearching for expressions. Students also expressed a willingness to use TOTALrecallin the future. However, students also pointed out the technical failures that happenedmore often at the initial development stage of TOTALrecall, and that there wasinsufficient information in the corpus.

The teacher’s reflection. L2 learners’insufficient exposure to the target languageresults in word-by-word translation from the L1. In this case, the instructor/researcherintroduced TOTALrecall, the bilingual concordancer, to the student writers so that theycould learn via Chinese how to express their intended ideas in English.

Students expressed great satisfaction with the Chinese-English parallel corpusbecause it helped them to learn how a Chinese phrase is expressed in English; then,greater joy as they generalizing linguistic patterns both in translation and in the targetvocabulary. After two months of using the concordancer, the class exchangedcollocation tests which required filling in blanks created from collocational patterns,such as verb-noun, adjective-noun, and phrasal verbs. Students’curiosity about theways TOTALrecall could help them acquire more English drove them to explorearticles listed under the Source column of each search result. Because the only accessto the articles in Sinorama was via the search results, the student writers practiced anddeveloped their expertise in finding articles related to their interests. In their weeklyjournal entries, students expressed appreciation of the content presented. Theirsummaries of the articles showed that the bilingual corpus provided the studentwriters with both linguistic and cultural knowledge. In other words, they learned andrelearned their own culture that they previously thought they knew well. Theirlearning culminated in reporting on various aspects of Taiwanese culture: the totemsand the music of the aboriginal people, the comparison and contrast between acatholic church and a Taoist temple, to just name a few. In a post-course questionnaireabout TOTALrecall, students continued to express satisfaction with this online tool.

Using the L2 to re-discover the L1 culture has been the most meaningful aspectof this project. This researcher, when demonstrating how to collect the appropriatevocabulary related to culture and how to find model paragraphs in the articles, foundthat there were many cultural aspects that were either completely ignored or could benewly interpreted. With the student writers’help, the culture vocabulary list grew toover two hundred words, around twenty collocation tests were compiled; and, twomodel paragraphs of each type of paragraph presentations were collected. In sum, the


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whole class, students and the instructor, worked as a team to continuously identify L1cultural references in the corpus while constructing linguistic structures in the L2. Aword of warning, however, is necessary to those who are interested in making use ofthe bilingual concordancer. Because of the nature of the concordancing tool, thelanguage class must have a clear objective concerning its infusion. In the present case,for example, the tool was used when the student writers had difficulties in expressingtheir ideas in the target language; therefore, to ask an L2 learner to explore the targetlanguage on their own without a specific goal could be a total failure and the learningfrom this type of exploration might not be totally recalled. It is strongly suggested thatTOTALrecall be incorporated into the syllabus with a clear objective in mind.

Case 5: The Use of a Web-based Environment for Reflective InterculturalLearning

Online environment and course context. The conventional model ofcommunicative language teaching, with its strict adherence to native speaker normswithin the target language culture, has been criticized as inadequate in fosteringintercultural competence. However, intercultural communicative competence must bedeveloped to prepare learners to be both global and local speakers of English and tofeel at home in both international and national cultures (Kramsch & Sullivan, 1996).Instructional materials and activities therefore, may involve local and internationalcontexts that are familiar and relevant to language learners’ lives. Instructional materials and activities may also include ample discourse samples pertaining to nativeand nonnative speaker interactions, as well as nonnative and nonnative speakerinteractions. EFL educators need to consider the implications of the internationalstatus of English in terms of appropriate pedagogies and instructional materials thatcan help learners become successful bilingual and intercultural individuals who areable to function well in both local and international settings (Alptekin, 2002).

Based on the above ideal, a project was launched in one of the Cultural platformsof CANDLE. This project attempted to nativize English and provide an alternative tothe conventional view that English could be taught within the target culture. In theproject, the reading materials were reports on the students own culture so that theywere given the “home court advantage” while creating the “third space” (Kramsch, 1993), where their home culture and the target culture meet. Another importantfeature of the project was to provide students with opportunities to engage incross-cultural communication via online discussion boards. Having the chance toexpress views on their own culture to peers of a difficult culture, it was hoped that thestudents would be “compelled to better understand their own and their counterpart’s cultural views” and that this type of activity would “simultaneously challenge their


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sense of self and their cultural identity and worldview” (Hager, 2005:279). Inaddition, this project explored the efficacy of using two e-referencing tools for readingand writing English. To foster students’ English language proficiency and intercultural competence when reading and writing responses to articles on Taiwanese culture,students had at their disposal an online dictionary and a domain specific (i.e.,Taiwanese culture) concordancer.

Four articles (e.g., “The Flea Market Sociology”) in Sinorama were chosen forthe project (word counts ranging from 970 to 2426, Flesch-Kincaid grade level: 8.3 to12.0), and formed the basis of four units in the culture environment with account andpersonal record management (http://flld.thu.edu.tw/candle/). Each unit included anarticle, five comprehension questions, five vocabulary questions, a response section, aforum for cross-cultural discussions, TOTALrecall, and a dictionary. It was hoped thatthe linguistic and semantic support of the concordancer could assist learners [to]acquire new vocabulary words (Zahar, Cobb, & Spada, 2001) and to exercise theirability of using contextual clues when reading authentic texts (Cobb, 1999). As for theuse of the online dictionary, it was to provide the contextual inference for lexicalacquisition (Fraser, 1999). Online forums were provided for the 16 college freshmanstudents (majoring in foreign languages) to share their views about reading with aclass of thirty-two students at Sam Houston State University in Texas, U.S.A. Thestudents at Sam Houston were prospective ESL/bilingual education teachers and theirparticipation in the project was part of their course requirements. The words thatstudents looked up automatically form a vocabulary notebook for the student, so theycould easily review the vocabulary words. The post-reading peer interaction andshared responses on the cultural relevant questions were recorded and made availableto both students and the instructor/researcher.

The students worked on the system for one semester as homework. At the end ofsemester, the statistics stored in the management record were analyzed. The sixteenstudents logged onto the system for a total of 605 times, averaging 9.45 times per unit,per student. While all of the students read and wrote responses to the articles, onlythree of them answered all the comprehension and vocabulary questions in all fourunits. The use of e-referencing tools showed a decrease across units with studentsusing the online dictionary when reading the article most often (N=1,740). They alsoused the online concordancer when reading (N=74). Even though they could use thetools when writing, the numbers were quite small (online dictionary, N=52;concordancer, N=3). As for the use of the discussion board for interculturalcommunication, the students in the two universities posted and replied a total of 371entries, averaging two entries per student for each article.

The qualitative analysis of the EFL students’intercultural discussion entries


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revealed the development of intercultural competence as described in Byram’s (1997)model: attitudes of curiosity and openness; knowledge of social groups and theirproducts and practices in one’s own and in one’s interlocutor’s country; skills ofinterpreting and relating; skills of discovery and interaction; and critical culturalawareness/political education.The teacher’s reflection. Although positive results of the students’development

of intercultural competence were found, the project had much room for improvement.The project was intended to be a stand-alone, self-access system where students couldutilize all of its cutting-edge e-referencing tools and the instructor would play the roleof the “guide on the side,”instead of being “the sage on the stage.”However, thishighly learner-autonomous approach did not live up to its expectation: the enthusiasmof using the e-referencing tools was short-lived. After the first two readings, thestudents did not use them as much. They also ceased to answer comprehension andvocabulary quizzes to self-assess their understanding of the articles. For future uses ofthe tools, perhaps structural exercises that require students to focus on analyzinglinguistic patterns can be integrated into the online system. By doing this, students’motivation to learn either the course content itself or from the online environmentmay be enhanced.

In spite of the limited use of the e-referencing tools, the students continued toread the articles and appreciated the intercultural learning opportunity the system hadprovided. The written discussion entries with their trans-Pacific partners demonstratedclear understanding of the articles and the students were also able to communicatetheir viewpoints on the cultural issues involved in the readings. The students’development of intercultural competence was also quite evident (Byram, 1997).

Finally, the findings concluded that the students benefited from the project asthey developed intercultural competence by ways of utilizing computer technology.However, as one of the U.S. participants wrote, “I see no matter what country aperson is from, we all have computer problems.”The technological problems did existand they might have deterred the students from experimenting with the innovativeelements of the system. Either the system developer needs to revise the tools tobecome more user-friendly or the instructor needs to carefully select appropriate toolsto fit the course activities and goals.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

In this paper, five cases of using the online CANDLE project in college Englishcourses are presented. They demonstrate a variety of course contexts, pedagogical


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processes (CALL applications in particular), findings from action research or personalobservations, and implications or possible future changes to teaching practices basedon the teachers’reflections. A summary of the cases is shown in Table 2.

Table 2Teachers’ Belief-Practice-Change Chains from the Five CALL Cases

Teachers’ beliefs

BeliefsCase 1 To read extensively in order to enhance reading abilities and

vocabulary developmentCase 2 To learn vocabulary while doing extensive readingCase 3 To learn underused adjectives through inductionCase 4 To appreciate other cultures from exploring home cultureCase 5 To create the “third space” (Kramsch, 1993) for EFL learning

Teaching practiceCase 1 Reading site with various online reading toolsCase 2 Extensive reading syllabus with graded textsCase 3 Learning units linking learners to TANGOCase 4 TOTALrecall with related articlesCase 5 TOTALrecall and e-forum

FindingsCase 1 Teachers and students found the web site to be useful for developing

reading competence.Case 2 Learners improved their vocabulary but tended to use intensive ways

to tackle an extensive reading task.Case 3 Learners made significant improvements in the posttest but still

needed more time and exposure to use the learned words in writing.Case 4 Students found the explorations of their home culture not only

improved their English abilities but also broadened their minds toaccept others’ cultures.

Case 5 Students learned the language beyond lexical and textualcomprehension, and their learning was also shown in their reflectionsabout culture.

Reflections or changesCase 1 Some students might not enjoy reading on computers. Teachers would

need to constantly encourage students to read more. A printed copymight help some students read more.

Case 2 For learners unskilled in extensive reading, the combination of both


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intensive and extensive reading is suggested.Case 3 Students made significant improvements in the test but would need

more time and practice for using the learned words in actual writingtasks.

Case 4 Greater attention needs to be paid to students’ topics of exploration, and a comparison/contrast is recommended between students’ home culture and the target culture.

Case 5 Although there are advantages of reading and writing about one’s own culture in English, teachers need to select proper cultural topics andovercome technology problems.

Three effective ways of teacher professional development: self-awareness,reflective teaching, and action research, are demonstrated. The five teachersconducted action research projects in the online CANDLE environment in order tosolve instructional problems in their unique local contexts. Through self-awareness,they made reflection-in-action as the course progressed, or reflection-on-action, afterthe research data were collected or the course was finished. Our cases illustrate howteachers can foster their professional development in using CALL to enhance Englishteaching.

There is room for the CANDLE project to improve as indicated by most cases;for instance, in the first case, learners wanted to download texts to read in print athome and desired a better online dictionary. In the third case, consistent provision ofstudent performance data accompanying the word learning process, and reviewsections in the design of units are suggested by the instructor. In the fourth case,reliable technology with sufficient digital corpus data are needed; the fifth case callsfor a more friendly online environment. On the other hand, some components of theCANDLE project are extensible for more teachers and learners in other contexts. Withfull-fledged management functions, the reading center and the two cultural platformscan be adopted for use by both students and teachers from other schools. The methodused in Case 2 can be replicated with learners of other levels, for example, youngerstudents, if research findings on word lists are provided. More synonyms can be addedto the units of Case 3 in order to expand its coverage of online pedagogical materials.

Other English teachers can adopt the instructional design of blending bothclassroom teaching and the ‘CANDLE’teaching into their own classrooms if thecontexts are similar or identical to those presented in this paper. The detaileddescription of the pedagogical processes and instructional decisions, and our reflectivenotes can offer principled guidelines for other teachers to consider when their contextsare different from our cases, or they plan to use other online materials. English


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teaching is a process of decision-making and adaptation that only makes sense basedon each teacher’s philosophy and local context.

Technology adoption in the classroom with English curriculum infusion is a longprocess as it requires an array of several prerequisites to tell a successful story. Itseems that most learners already possess sufficient electronic literacy. Yet, are ourteachers ready to incorporate technology into their teaching? Professionaldevelopment groups often help. In this specific project, the five teachers obtainedfeedback from each other and other co-researchers on the CANDLE team; it seemsthat the nurturing environment has supported their action research projects as well asteaching with technology. Changes of practice may be adopted in the summativeevaluation phase of the online project.

In this paper, we did not examine the issue of digital divide; yet it does exist inTaiwan. In this situation, more in-class CALL activities may be encouraged ratherthan self-access activities because this option can provide access for those who do nothave it at home. Often, teachers are not completely ready either because thetechnology itself is indeed advanced or teachers are unsure how technology can meetpedagogical objectives. Hopefully, this paper provides some thoughts, experiences or,possibly, guidelines for infusing advanced online instructional units into other Englishcourses. The CALL cases in this paper are believed to be able to shed initial light onEFL teacher cognition research as illustrated in Taiwan (Borg, 2003; Woods, 1996) bylinking the teaching cases to what teachers are thinking and doing (or teaching),regarding the pedagogical processes in the area of using technology for languageteaching.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The paper was supported by a grant from the National Science Council (NSC93-2524-S007-001). Thanks go to the co-director, Dr. Jason S. Chang, in particular,and to colleagues, assistants, programmers, and participating students.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Chih-cheng Lin, Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, is an associate professor inthe English Department at National Taiwan Normal University, where he has beenteaching English language courses, multimedia and language teaching, and academicwriting. His current research interests include computer-assisted language learningand EFL reading and writing.

Hao-jan Chen, Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, is an associateprofessor in the English Department at National Taiwan Normal University. Hisresearch interests include second language acquisition, computer-assisted languagelearning, and corpus linguistics.

Meei-Ling Liaw, Ph.D. from Texas A & M University, is a professor in theDepartment of Foreign Languages and Literature at Tunghai University where sheteaches Freshman English in the undergraduate program and TEFL Methodology andSecond Language Acquisition in the Masters’ program. Her research focuses on usingcomputer technology to facilitate EFL teaching and learning, teaching EFL readingand writing in grade schools, and teacher education.

Hsien-chin Liou, Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, has been teaching at theForeign Languages and Literature Department of National Tsing Hua University for15 years. She has done research on computer assisted language learning and Englishteacher education.

Yuli Yeh, Ed.D. from Indiana University at Bloomington, is an associateprofessor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Tsing


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Hua University, where she teaches English skill courses, language teachingmethodology, and computer-assisted language learning. She is interested in both thedevelopment of computer courseware and research on the effectiveness of computertechnology on language learning.


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CANDLE 網路環境融入大學英語課程之教學省思

摘要

本文利用網路教學個案展現三種英文教師專業成長方式：自覺、自

省、及行動研究，其網路教材及網路環境則是研發自一項數位學習之

國家型科技 CANDLE 計畫(Corpus And NLP for Digital Learning ofEnglish)。用網路科技教英文和使用科技是兩種不同的能力，因為前

者需要植基於教學法或教師個人之教育信念。因此，教師專業成長如

需考量使用電腦科技時，必須檢驗該項科技的使用是否和教師們原有

教學理念相符，而並非一昧追求該項技術是否先進。CANDLE 計畫

團隊內五位英文老師將教材納入其個別學校內之課程，並使用行動研

究以評量成效之後，深思其過程並提出一些教學應用。本文特地報導

五項個案並分析所展現之教師知識或信念以及教學後之省思。

關鍵詞：英文教師專業成長省思教學網路科技行動研究

教師知識及信念

Teachers' Reflections on Infusing the CANDLE Project into College English Classes

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