“Building Better English”
Experimental Online Courseware for
Chinese-speaking Students of Basic English Writing
- An Interim Report by
Geoffrey Lasley, Lecturer
The Overseas Chinese Institute of Technology
(c) 2001 Geoffrey Lasley
“Building Better English”
Experimental On-line Courseware for
Chinese-speaking Students of Basic English Writing
- An Interim Report -
Abstract
Beginning students of English writing have considerable difficulty making
the transition from receptive reading activities, where a surface
understanding is sufficient, and oral activities, where “communication” is
the paramount consideration, to written expression, where successful
communication depends upon the correct use of structure and vocabulary.
The primary difficulty students at this stage face is working within their
productive competence, a competence that lags far behind their reading
ability. Because students are always reaching too far in their English
written communication, they tend to produce work of consistently
disappointing quality. In order to train students to write within their own
personal productive competence, an online writing courseware, “Building
Better English,” was designed. The courseware was used, in the Spring
semester of the 2000 academic year, in lieu of a text book. This interim
report relates the technical and pedagogical considerations and difficulties
that lie behind the first three units of the project.
Introduction
Teachers of English writing have always struggled with the burden of
marking student compositions. For those of us teaching classes of fifty to
sixty students (and often three or four sections per semester), this burden
frequently becomes overwhelming. We find ourselves spending what
seems like every waking hour going over student essays, and our teaching,
eventually, suffers for it. Regardless of our best intentions and sleepless
nights, however, it does indeed seem that “no conceivable combination of
praise, blame, commentary, diagnosis or correction” leads to any
significant improvement in students’ writing skill (Holmes, 36). Yet, we
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hang in there. We continue to carry our homework with us wherever we go,
like so many old ladies with their knitting, spending every spare moment
filling neatly written essays with red editing marks and the occasional
exclamation point. Will there ever be an end to it? Not unless our students’
writing makes a sudden, miraculous improvement, it seems, will we be
free of this burden, free to go out in the evening without a stack of papers
tucked under our arm.
But how is it possible, we ask ourselves, for students to make such progress
without going through the torture (for them as well as for us) of writing
really bad compositions that we can help them with and from which they
can learn? Students want teachers to correct all of their mistakes (even the
most minor mistakes) (Leki, cited in Holmes). On the other hand, students
get discouraged when they see so much red on their papers (Rao). If we
think about it for a moment, there is really no contradiction. Students want
help improving their English writing skills; they just don’t want to see,
every time they get their papers back, how far from their goal they seem to
be. What I would like to suggest is that there may be a way we can
increase students’ confidence in their writing and help them grow as
writers (and at the same time free ourselves from some of the burden of
marking student work). We can do this by putting limits on students’
writing - limits not on their freedom to say what they feel or think, of
course, but only on how they say it.
The Taiwan EFL environment
According to the input hypothesis (Krashen and Terrell, 1983), students
acquire language skills by being in an environment where they receive
sufficient amounts of linguistic input that is just a step beyond their level of
competence. By stretching for meaning just beyond their reach, learners
learn. In Taiwan, students begin their formal English education in middle
school. According to the input hypothesis (Krashen and Terrell, 1983),
students acquire language skills by being in an environment where they
receive sufficient amounts of linguistic input that is just a step beyond their
level of competence. By stretching for meaning just beyond their reach,
learners learn. In Taiwan, students begin their formal English education in
middle school. Their long term goal, as English learners, is to gain
command of the language sufficient to read specialized text books. That is,
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over the course of six years, students are expected to go from 0 to
university-level English reading comprehension skills. If they were to
follow the natural course of second language acquisition (following
Krashen) and grow according to their natural abilities one step at a time,
they would never reach this goal in time. Therefore, the natural acquisition
process is set aside and a learning system is instituted whereby the students
are exposed to English at an accelerated speed of not i+1 (where i is their
current level of competency and i+1 is the step just beyond that) but of
i+101. Students are given instruction focusing primarily on English
grammar and vocabulary. Thus, with a basic understanding of English
sentence structure and a collection of vocabulary, students are able to
comprehend (at least the surface meaning of) English texts that are far
beyond their true linguistic (communicative) competence. Moreover,
because the goal is university-level reading comprehension, almost no time
is spent on the productive skills of conversation or writing. The result of
this emphasis on receptive rather than productive skills is that when the
time comes for students to produce English, they have only translations
skills to fall back on and find themselves stuttering through even the
simplest of sentences (as they try to get their mouths to form the English
utterance translated from their Chinese internal dialog) or writing
sentences that map English vocabulary onto Chinese grammar. This
tendency to translate is the most intractable problem our students have.
With this tendency to translate comes a plethora of L1-induced difficulties,
from gender confusion (he/she) to verb tense mistakes, to subject-less
sentences, to direct glossing of Chinese vocabulary. Students have a great
deal of experience reading and understanding (at least on a lexical level) a
great variety of English writings. They have very little experience
expressing themselves. When they do express themselves, they try to
express themselves at the level of their reading competence, and not at the
level of their productive competence. If we can get students to write within
their productive competence, we will be able to obviate many of the errors
students make because they are reaching too far. Limiting students’ written
expression is difficult, however. Students don’t seem to have the same
affective difficulties with written expression that inhibit their oral English
performance. Perhaps students feel a certain “aesthetic distance” toward
their writing. They write it; they turn it in; they get it back in a couple of
days. They never have to face the teacher with their English because when
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the teacher reads what they have written, they are elsewhere. This gives the
students a rare feeling of freedom in their English expression and they take
advantage of it, sharing their experiences, thoughts, and innermost feelings.
Having students open up and share themselves with you is wonderful.
Unfortunately, they do it when they should be concentrating less on the
message than on the medium. If we tell them to proof read or to do a peer
correction exercise, they often seem unfocused. The activity, for them,
ended when they finished expressing themselves. To get the students to
focus on their English, a curriculum of computer-based activities, Building
Better English (BBE), was designed. The activities in this courseware
allow students to practice their writing, while limiting them to the kinds of
expression (sentence structures, vocabulary) the computer was
programmed to accept. It is hoped that by having their expression options
limited, the students will learn to work within their productive competence.
That is, the program will force them to express their internal Chinese
dialog by using the English writing tools at their immediate disposal, rather
than by reaching for an ill-remembered structure they once happened upon
in their reading, or by glossing their limited English vocabulary onto
Chinese grammatical structures in an effort to express their ideas.
The structure of the courseware
The BBE courseware was designed for use with classroom activities,
rather than as a stand-alone course. Activities completed in the learning
modules lay the foundation for opportunities for wider expression in the
classroom.
The structure of the learning modules
The curriculum of the computer-based writing course was designed to
cover the content usually covered in a year of introductory English writing.
Each module requires approximately 80-100 minutes of class time.
Students who finish the exercises more quickly are encouraged (by a
computer prompt at the end of each module) to go back and repeat the
module to ensure full understanding of the concepts introduced and
mastery of the skills required of the activities. The modules include,
1. Simple SVO sentence structure
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2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Sentences with multiple Subject, Verb, or Object
Prepositional phrases of time
Prepositional phrases of place
Compound sentences with ‘and’ and ‘or’
Complex sentences - reason (because, therefore)
Complex sentences - contrast (although, however)
Complex sentences - condition (if)
These modules are designed to move from very basic sentences to more
complex structures. Within each module, activities are designed to move
from activities requiring only receptive involvement (e.g., reading
comprehension) to semi-autonomous production (e.g., full-sentence
responses to English questions regarding the reading passage) to
autonomous production (e.g., translation of a new paragraph from Chinese
to English). All topics presented for reading, discussion or translation are
related intimately to students’ lives (e.g., “My Class,” “My New Cell
Phone”), and all content (vocabulary, grammar structures, topics) is
spiraled. Special attention is paid to student proclivity for using
Chinese-English and each activity includes “traps” which draw student
attention to their use of Chinese-English and to the differences between
Chinese and English expression.
The structure of the classroom activities
Once a BBE module is completed, the students spend the succeeding two
or three weeks with the following activities
1. Quiz on the BBE module completed last session (Chinese questions
are asked to elicit written English responses employing the target
structure and vocabulary, or Chinese sentences are given which the
students are asked to express in English employing the target structure
and vocabulary)
2. Translation (English-Chinese) of paragraph (teacher generated or from
other source) eliciting student use of current and past target structures
and vocabulary (new vocabulary may be introduced as needed)
3. Translation (Chinese-English) of the above passage (in the time
between their lab experience and the next classroom session, students
have not had time to “internalize” completely; this reinforces)
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4. Translation (Chinese-English) of student-supplied passage (of the
same type as the teacher-supplied material in step 2., coming from
either print or Internet sources).
5. Marking of student paragraphs by teacher (using editing marks only,
no corrections)
6. Rewrite of student paragraphs (students can consult classmates)
7. Marking of final drafts by teacher (corrections and comments)
8. Autonomous writing of paragraph on related topic
9. Marking of autonomous writing (using editing marks only, no
corrections)
10. Rewrite of student paragraphs (students can consult classmates)
11. Marking of final drafts (corrections and comments)
As an alternative to marking student essays with editing marks, student
errors may be directly corrected. Students can then copy onto notepaper
the sentences containing errors and the teacher’s corrected sentence, and
then below that, explain why the correction was made. Students may make
this explanation in L1 if the instructor is L1 literate, as it will make it easier
for the students to review from. If a student misinterprets the problem or
otherwise is not clear about why the mistake occurred and how to correct it,
the teacher can communicate with the student on a one-to-one basis. This
process ensures student focus on form and guarantees clear understanding
of their writing problems. The materials thus generated form a personal
study guide to which students can refer before embarking on a new
assignment or in preparing for tests.
Time permitting (some classes meet 3 hrs/week, some only 2 hrs/week),
one or more of the above steps may be repeated. Of course, teachers will
make adjustments to this procedure as their class size, class personality,
and personal teaching style require. Like the BBE activities, the classroom
activities are scaffolded, moving from reception (English-Chinese
translation) to semi-autonomous production (the first Chinese-English
translation, step 3) to autonomous production of written English (step 8).
During this entire process, from when they begin work with the BBE
activities all the way to their autonomous writing activity, the students are
focusing on (and are actually limited to) the structures already introduced
or under current scrutiny. When students have displayed mastery of the
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structures in one module, they move on to the next. At each stage, the
students are forced to work within their productive competence while
learning an additional skill. Each module in the BBE courseware consists
of game-type activities through which new concepts are introduced and
practice opportunities afforded.
Behind the BBE courseware
The BBE courseware uses the “Hot Potatoes” suite of applications
developed at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media
Centre. The software consists of a number of JavaScript applications that
educators can use to design True-False, Multiple-Choice, Text-entry,
Gap-fill, Crossword, Jumbled Sentences, and Ordering activities. The
software is very well suited to the design of interactive learning activities
as it allows the user (teacher) to manipulate the appearance and, more
importantly, the interactive components of the applications.
The Learning Modules (A chronology and discussion)
Step 1
In the design of this first unit, a number of technical and design issues came
under immediate consideration.
Technical issues
The BBE program was envisioned as being accessible to students 24 hours
a day. This way, students can use the materials for review of the didactic
material or for additional practice using the applied materials, the activities.
To achieve the goal of full accessibility, the BBE courseware was stored on
the institutions network server. This way, students could access BBE
during class sessions, during “open lab” time at the computer lab, or even
from their homes. While having the BBE stored on the school server
meant that it would be accessible beyond the confines of a given classroom
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or a give class period, it also meant that the entire system was dependent
upon the health of that server. It is unfortunate that during the “maiden
voyage” of the BBE, the institution’s server took ill. Two days later, the
server was restored to its former youthful vigor and classes using the BBE
could begin.
Once classes began, however, other technical issues surfaced. Although
the school’s server was now up and running, it was apparently not
accustomed to more than fifty students trying to access the same page at
the same time. Actually, each screen of BBE instructional materials
requires the opening, coordination, and simultaneous display (through a
windows format) of three or four files, one that serves as a template, one
that contains the screen content, one that controls the computer’s responses
to student input, and a file that can contain an optional reading passage for
the activity. The result of all this simultaneous accessing of files resulted
in frequent crashing of individual student computers. As a temporary
“quick fix,” the BBE material was loaded onto a second server so that in
each class no more than 25-30 students were accessing the same material
from the same server. In the following week, maintenance to the school’s
server was performed and the problems have, for the most part,
disappeared.
During the course of the first week, one student suggested that the BBE
files be packaged so that students could download them into their home
computer for use off-line. This would ensure student access (since access
would then no longer depend on the health of the school’s server) and
students would not have to pay (through their telephone bills) for access to
the materials. The day after I received the suggestion, I assembled the
relevant files into a zip file and made it available for download from a link
located on the Activities Index page. In succeeding weeks, I saw students
emailing the zip file to themselves during class sessions so that they would
have it at home for further practice.
Design issues
Weaknesses in the design of the BBE program interface were evident from
the moment the students accessed the first page of the unit.
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The Hot Potatoes (HP) default color scheme (designated by the designers
of the software) was difficult for the students to read. As soon as students
got to the first HP-generated activity, they began looking for ways to
increase the brightness and the contrast. The black type on dark purple
background was just too difficult for many students to read.
Content Issues
In designing the content of Step 1, a number of interface design and
pedagogical issues needed to be addressed. In this the first unit of the BBE
courseware, it was important that students did not have to bear too heavy a
cognitive load in performing the activities. They were new to this form of
study (interactive educational “game playing”) and to the content they
would encounter. They had, at the same time, to learn to use the interface
(what they saw on the screen and how it reacted to them) and to formulate
expectations of what level of English competency would be required to
perform the activities successfully. To introduce the students to the system,
the following syllabus of activities was decided upon:
Didactic preface
When students first access the BBE site, they see a “Message to My
Students,” a short message telling the students that the succeeding pages
are all in English and that they shouldn’t worry, because the pages were
designed just for them and that they would have no trouble with
understanding the English. The second page begins the didactic preface to
the Step 1 activities. In this preface, students are introduced to the basic
components of an English sentence. They are introduced to the concept of
a Subject and a Predicate as the basic constituents of an English sentence
and the punctuation required to distinguish individual sentences
(capitalization and periods). Comparison is made to the Chinese concept
of “sentence-hood” and punctuation differences are mentioned. Examples
of simple sentences are given in an example from everyday student life:
I passed the test.
The test was hard.
I studied a lot.
I didn't sleep.
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I didn't eat.
My classmates helped me.
They gave me their notes.
I read their notes.
I read my notes.
I read the book.
It wasn't easy.
I passed.
My friends passed.
We were happy.
This collection of sentences will also be used in the didactic preface to the
next unit, in which the sentences will be combined, producing sentences
with multiple subjects, verbs, and objects.
Also included in this first unit is an introduction to some of the interface
features of the BBE courseware. Students are told on the “To My
Students” page that they will be able to contact their instructor via email
from any page in the unit. Here in the didactic preface to Step 1, students
are shown the email icon
that they will click on to send their instructor
an email with their questions. Upon clicking the icon, an email screen
appears for the students to use. Students are told here in the preface that
they may communicate with the teacher in Chinese or in English. This
would hopefully remove any affective barrier to communication the
students might feel if their communications were limited to English. In the
“subject” line of the email form, “Writing Question” automatically appears.
This feature is included for the instructor’s convenience, rather than the
student’s. Using their email software options, instructors can direct all
email messages with “Writing Question” subject lines to a special folder,
simplifying the management of the writing curriculum. In the didactic
preface to Step 1, students are also introduced to the spinning
“Note”
icon that is used to draw their attention to explanatory information on the
activity screens.
Learning activities
1. Gap-fill activity.
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 Description: This simple activity, based on a familiar topic (“My
Family- We’re All Different”) served to ease the students into the
online environment, gauge student ability to follow directions, and
exercise student contextual reading skills.
 Productive autonomy scale (PAS): Low. Only receptive (reading) and
cognitive (guessing from context) skills are needed.
 Spiraled Elements:
1. Topics: This being the first unit, there were no spiraled topics.
2. Vocabulary: Although there was no spiraled vocabulary, every
effort was made to keep the language well within what was
perceived to be the students’ reading competence.
3. Structures: No structures were used that the students should not
have gotten in their jr. high school curriculum. Interchangeability
of infinitive and gerund forms is emphasized through repeated
exposure.
4. L1 distracters:
There is / to have. The problem associated with directly
translating the Chinese 有 as “have” is covered. Explanation (in
the activity instructions) and opportunity for use (in the gap-fill
activity) are provided.
Note: L1 distracters are lexical or syntax items that commonly
cause problems for students. Some distracters in the BBE occur naturally
in the course of the activity, and some are purposefully inserted to promote
student focus on structure and to heighten awareness of the perils inherent
in L1-L2 glosses and direct translation.
 Considerations/Difficulties: It was discovered that students don’t read
directions well. Many students began right away by filling in the
boxes without reading the entire story first, as instructed. This led to
student confusion, because the first two sentences, “ ________ is Bob.
_______ sixteen years old” found a majority of students writing in the
third person, “This is Bob. He is sixteen years old.” rather than the
first person. Had they read even just to the third sentence, “I have a big
family,” they would have realized that the paragraph was written in the
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first person and that the only possible option would be “My name is
Bob. I am sixteen years old.”
2. Multiple-choice activity.
 Description: This 4-question activity requires that students recall the
content of the gap-fill activity and reinforces the simple SVO structure
introduced in the unit.
 PAS: Low. Like the first activity, the multiple-choice format requires
only receptive skills.
 Spiraled Elements:
1. Topics: This series of four questions is based on the preceding
gap-fill exercise.
2. Vocabulary: Items from preceding gap-fill exercise are used
throughout.
3. Structures: Interchangeability of infinitive and gerund structures
is reinforced by alternating use of the two structures in the content
of the activity.
4. L1 distracters: No additional items are introduced.
 Considerations:
Appropriate response to Yes/No questions was reinforced (no
one-word responses; repetition of verb or co-verb.) Also reinforced
was common practice of providing addition information beyond
simple affirmative/negative response to Yes/No question. This point
was reiterated in classroom activities.
3. Punctuation activity.
 Description: In the didactic preface to Step 1, students were reminded
(they already “learned” it years ago in jr. high school) that English
sentences require a subject and a predicate and that each repetition of
the subject or the introduction of a new subject requires a new
sentence. This punctuation exercises gives the students first-hand
experience in applying what they have learned.
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 PAS: Low. The content of the material to be punctuated is the same as
the gap-fill they performed in activity 1.
 Spiraled Elements:
1. Topics: Continued focus on “My Family” text from preceding
activities.
2. Vocabulary: No new items are introduced.
3. Structures: Emphasis on sentence identification and punctuation
requirements. No capitalization was provided in the exercise text.
4. L1 distracters: This is the first experience students have in
constructing English sentences from a running narrative. While
the syntactic content posed no challenge, some student difficulty
with identifying sentences was observed. This was ascribed to the
Chinese subject-less and “run-on” sentences, which link content
together in a train of thought.
 Considerations: This activity was initially designed so that students
would have to type only the first letter of the first word and the last
letter of the last word of each sentence. During the first class session,
however, it was discovered that students have sufficient keyboarding
skills (they took English typing in their first year of study) to retype the
entire paragraph without undue difficulty.
4. Short answer activity.
 Description: This activity requires that students enter full-sentence
responses from their keyboard. There are ten questions in this activity,
all about the content of the gap-fill paragraph from activity 1.
 PAS: Medium. This activity rates higher because it requires students
to generate full-sentence English responses. It is not rated “high”
because student responses are still scaffolded by the questions, which
provide vocabulary and structure for student responses.
 Spiraled Elements:
1. Topics: Again, the focus was on the content of the “My Family”
gap-fill activity.
2. Vocabulary: All vocabulary was familiar.
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3. Structures: This was the first time students were asked to produce
the target structure (Simple SVO sentences).
4. L1 distracters: Students frequently gave single-word responses to
Yes/No questions without repeating the verb or co-verb. Students
also used complete sentences after their one-word response (e.g.,
In response to, “Does Bob’s sister like to study?” students often
responded. No. She doesn’t like to study.”)
 Considerations/Difficulties:
Pedagogical and Technical considerations came into play that were not
present with the preceding activities.
First, acceptable responses (“correct answers”) had to programmed into the
activity. That is, with the HP software, “correct” answers and “acceptable
alternatives” are designated by the teacher during the design process. The
“correct answer,” ideally, would be the response students would most
naturally enter from the keyboard. However, other grammatically correct
responses should also be accepted. This is important in that if students
employ the “Get a free letter” button, they should not be overly surprised at
the answer the computer eventually provides. This is probably the
greatest difficulty is designing interactive educational systems. A number
of issues have to be considered:
1. Form of the responses - should students be limited in the content and
structure of their responses? That is, in response to “What does Bob’s
sister like to do?” possible answers might include,
She likes to eat.
She likes eating.
She enjoys eating. (They learned “enjoy” in the gap-fill.)
If we only accept the infinitive because that is the form in which the
inquiry was made, how and when do we explain this “rule” to students? If
we don’t accept the gerund, will students be frustrated with the computer’s
rejection of their response? Will they ask why the answer was rejected or
will they just shrug their shoulders and shake their head at this crazy
English grammar (or the bad program design)?
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2. Breadth of the responses - should students be allowed to answer
questions indirectly by providing unprompted information? (e.g., “They
are not the same.” rather than, “No, they aren’t.” in response to “Are all the
children in Bob’s family the same?”)
3. Naturalness of the responses - Should it be taken into consideration that
students are reading English, translating in Chinese internally, and then
producing English responses? That is, should natural Chinese responses
be accepted if they “push” student active vocabulary or if they result in
unnatural English expressions? For example, the last question, “How does
Bob feel about is life?” is intended to prompt the response, “He enjoys his
life.” which comes directly from the gap-fill reading. In Chinese, however,
the natural response to such a question might be, “He feels very satisfied.”
or “He feels very fortunate.” This vocabulary may be beyond the reach of
most of the students. Moreover, while these responses are grammatically
acceptable, they seem rather stilted.
4. Time and resource questions also surface. All acceptable responses are
keyed in by the instructor during the design process. Therefore, how much
time instructors will wish/need to spend designing these activities must be
entered into course development costs. Also, teachers insufficiently fluent
in the students’ L1 may find it especially difficult to foresee student
responses. Finally, when the students clicks the “Check” button after
typing their response to a given question, all of the acceptable responses
appear on the screen for student perusal. Students are sometimes shocked
at and overloaded by having a full screen of English text suddenly appear
before them.
It was decided that the most economical route, both in terms of teacher
design time and student cognition time, would be to limit acceptable
responses to those that most directly reflect the student’s ability to use the
productive skills introduced in or supported by the particular unit. That is,
in-depth explanation about why a certain response is not acceptable should
be left to the classroom, where individual instructors can address the needs
of their students. This also means that curriculum developers should
develop teaching materials that include notes regarding what points of
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grammar or usage might require further classroom elucidation.
5. Translation activities.
 Description: The translation activities in Step 1 are preceded by a page
entitled, “A Word About Translation,” which explains that the goal of
the translation exercises is not for the students to translate directly
from Chinese to English, but to use simple English to express the
content of the Chinese text. There are three translation activities in
Step 1. The first, “Our Class” builds on a familiar theme, talking about
familiar people and what they do and do not like. The second,
“Friends” narrows the focus to a single relationship between two
people, and the third, “My New Cell Phone,” requires that students use
the skills they have gained in describing people to describe an
inanimate object. The “Our Class” translation serves as a bridge to
Step 2, as the activities in that unit are all based on this paragraph.
Students will also see “My New Cell Phone” again in Step 2, as it
reappears as the first of the four translation activities in that unit. By
recycling themes, students are scaffolded as they move toward greater
productive autonomy.
 PAS: High - Very High. The first translation activity, “Our Class”
mirrors the content of the “My Family” gap-fill that served as the focal
point for Step 1 activities. Although they are working with a familiar
topic employing familiar structures, students are still going from L1 to
L2 with no visible help (with the exception of a few vocabulary items,
there is no English on the screen). As students progress to the second
and third translation activities, they move further and further away
from the support their experience has provided them and closer and
closer to productive autonomy.
 Spiraled Elements:
“Our Class”
1. Topics: The topic for the translation exercises move from the both
cognitively and linguistically familiar (“Our Class” is modeled
after the “My Family” gap-fill) to the cognitively familiar, yet
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linguistically riskier (“My Cell Phone”).
2. Vocabulary: The content of “Our Class” closely mirrors the
language used in the “My Family” Gap-fill at the beginning of the
unit. Items that students might not be familiar with are glossed
below the Chinese text (“snacks,” and “to chat”).
3. Structures: Reinforcement of “there are” (“There are three
children” in the gap-fill vs. “There are 53 students.” in “Our
Class”). Also further reinforcement of gerund and infinitive
structures.
4. L1 distracters: The Chinese text was written using natural
conversational Mandarin Chinese as its model, to reflect the
students’ internal dialog. This means that the text was composed
according to Chinese punctuation conventions. This posed some
difficulty, as students wanted to translate directly from the
Chinese at the structural level. They had to be reminded that
Chinese and English punctuation differ. This reminder was placed
below the Chinese text (with the spinning blue “note”) with a
hyperlink that would take students back to the didactic preface
where they could review the guidelines for constructing English
sentences.
Numerous instances of translation mismatches were constructed
into the Chinese text. That is, the text employed common Chinese
expressions for which there was no direct English gloss. For
example:
女生喜歡來上學 = Girls like school. (Girl(s) like come on school)
讀書 = to study (the Chinese consists of verb+object, “read book”)
我們全班都一樣 = We are all the same. (We/Us whole class all
one kind)
“Friends”
1. Topics: The topic for this activity is similar to the first, although
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the focus is narrower. This topic is also a discussion of personality
traits of individual persons.
2. Vocabulary: “Friends” spirals vocabulary from the “My Family”
gap-fill that started the unit, as both texts discuss “students,” the
school they “attend,” and whether they “like school.” The topic of
school is further expanded to include “grades,” “studying hard,”
and doing things together. Again, unfamiliar items are glossed
below the Chinese text.
3. Structures: The focus is on sentence division. Natural Chinese
sentence divisions are much different than in English, and the text
is structured in a way such that students will be lured into direct
translation only to find that they have forgotten the basic
subject-predicate requirements of English sentence structure. The
Chinese run-on (multiple-subject) sentence (“I have a friend, her
name is Betty.” “Betty likes school, she has a boy friend, they
study together, they eat together, they play together.”) is much in
evidence.
4. L1 distracters: 我們學的是國際貿易 (We study international trade.)
This sentence was invariably rendered, “We study at the
International Trade department,” even though the Chinese
language is perfectly capable of expressing this additional
meaning. Furthermore, a variety of capitalization schemes were
employed in the English expression, sometimes capitalizing
“Department,” sometimes not.
Also, because the Chinese does not distinguish singular and plural
nouns, students often left the pluralizing “s” off the colloquial
expression “grades” (成績 (achievement; performance; grades)).
Students even ignored the 都 “all” after the 成績, which should have
indicated the need for the “s.”
“My New Cell Phone”
1. Topics: The topic for this activity is one familiar with young
19
people today. In this activity, students are required to describe an
object, rather than a person, as was the case with the first two
activities. The text itself is a humorous look at the new cell phone
culture and how the author of the text got caught playing
computer/phone games in class instead of paying attention to the
teacher.
Here, the students move much closer to full productive autonomy
as their writing will now require the expression of ideas and
concepts they have not experimented with before in English. It is
this step in the progression from receptive to productive activity
that is the most difficult, for it forces the students to work within
the boundaries of their own productive competence.
Students’ cognitive ability (in this case, the knowledge of cellular
phones) is far greater than their ability to communicate their
thinking in English. The beauty of using a computer-based
interactive learning system such as BBE is that it inculcates in
students the good writing habit of living within their linguistic
means. As students move through the modules, their linguistic
means, their tools of productive communication, increase. Their
confidence in their abilities improves as well, as they find they
have a more realistic idea of what communication skills they
possess and how far these skills can take them.
2. Vocabulary: As the action of the story takes place in class, much
of the classroom vocabulary is spiraled into the text. Much
familiar vocabulary is employed, and where new terms (in this
case, mostly technical terms associated with cell-phone culture)
are used, Chinese/English glosses are given.
3. Structures: Emphasis continues, of course, to be placed on the
simple Subject-Verb-Object sentence structure. The related
punctuation requirements are also reinforced.
4. L1 distracters: In addition to the Chinese/English sentence
division differences, new rhetorical differences are encountered
for the first time. For example, the sentence, 它是全新的。它很小、
20
它很時髦，我愛死它了 (It is all new. It very small, it very
fashionable, I love (to) death it.) contains what has been called
“semantically bleached” (Li and Thompson p. 143) intensifier
“very.” The word adds no intensive meaning here, but is what we
might call a “metrical” element that need not be translated. That is,
in English, we would not use the “very” in these utterances unless
it held some emphatic meaning. In the Chinese utterance, no such
emphatic meaning is intended. Rather, the character 很 (very) is
used to maintain a certain metrical pattern in the utterance; to omit
the character would render the utterance somehow strange.
In this activity the students also see for the first time the
subject-less sentence common to spoken Mandarin. The logically
related utterances, 我和媽媽通話。 很方便。 (I with mother
communicate by phone. Very convenient.), require distinct
subjects in written English. It is not sufficient that the “It” is
understood in the second sentence. While students have a passive
understanding of the necessity for a subject in each sentence,
when they produce English they often are merely glossing their
internal L1 dialog with no metacognitive reflection on their
translation process and the grammatical needs of L2. That the
computer will not accept their incomplete sentence brings this
point home very clearly, as it does the need for clear and specific
punctuation. The students are forced by the computer
environment to focus on form and to pay much closer attention to
the English they produce. They learn very quickly that computers
tire much less easily and are far less forgiving than their classroom
instructors.
 Considerations/Difficulties
Designing the translation activities is extremely difficult. Because the
units focus on a very limited mode of expression, particular care has to
be taken to arrive at a text that is colloquial in both L1 and L2. The
texts were originally conceived by the author. The texts were written
with consideration given to both the English to be elicited by the
activity and the Chinese that would elicit the desired English
expression. That is, the author needed to think in English and Chinese
21
at the same time. Thereafter, the author consulted a native speaker
informant for input on the naturalness of the Chinese expressions.
Often the final Chinese text was arrived at after a number of
“compromises” to the needs of both the Chinese and the English texts.
After the Chinese text was arrived at, the “correct answer” had to be
decided upon from among a number of acceptable, grammatically
correct alternatives. In the first text, for example, acceptable
expressions for the example given above include:
我們全班都一樣 (We whole class all one kind.)
Our whole class is alike.
Our whole class is the same.
We are all the same.
We are all alike.
All of the students in our class are the same.
All of the students in our class are alike.
Our classmates are all alike.
Our classmates are all the same.
In the second translation activity, we see the sentence, 我的成績都很好
(My grades all very good). Acceptable student expressions include:
My grades are all very good.
My grades are very good.
I get good grades.
The first listed expression is the one that appears as the “correct
answer” if the “Get a free letter” button is repeatedly depressed until
the entire answer appears. As was mentioned above, the “correct
answer” should be grammatically correct and unsurprising. This does
not necessarily mean, however, that it will be the most desirable
expression of the meaning, from the teacher’s perspective. This raises
the question, mentioned briefly above, of whether concession should
be made to “unnatural” (though correct) English expressions that may
be the first-choice expression of the student. This is a question that all
foreign language teachers face - whether or how far to press students
for native-speaker fluency in their L2 utterances. On a more technical
22
note, the program used for the translation activities is different from
the one used for the full-sentence response activities in that while the
computer will accept an answer matching one of the acceptable
answers that were programmed into it, it will not display all acceptable
answers in a separate message box after one correct answer is entered
from the keyboard. This is fortunate in that the students would
undoubtedly be surprised at the sudden appearance of so much
tightly-spaced English. On the other hand, students do not have the
opportunity to view (and, hopefully, learn) alternative expressions
with the system.
The Learning Modules (A chronology and discussion)
Step 2
Technical issues
In this unit, a new type of activity, a click-and-drag word-arranging activity,
is introduced. Students had no trouble with the interface; they knew how
to click on the words and to pull them up into the answer area. However,
there is a programming glitch that tends to confuse students. Once the
words are pulled up into the answer area and the sentence formed, students
click on the “Check” button. If the answer is incorrect, they will receive a
“Sorry. Try Again.” message. If the answer submitted is correct, they will
see their sentence at the top of the message box, and a “Correct” message
centered below that. Below this message, students see, “These answers are
also correct:” with the correct answers centered below. However, after the
first alternate correct sentence, the leftover words (words listed but left
unused as students made their sentences) are listed, centered as if they were
a sentence. Below that are other acceptable answers. Here’s an example:
The boys and girls all like school.
Correct!
23
These answers are also correct:
The girls and boys all like school.
likes they them we ?,
The girls and boys like school.
Students had no idea what “likes they them we?,” meant. Unfortunately,
there seems no way around this “bug.” Including the extra words in the
exercise is essential to breaking the students of the habit of merely glossing
their internal dialog (see L1 interference, below). The author of the HP
software was contacted in an effort to solve the difficulty, but it was
explained that solving the problem would entail altering the JavaScript
code. In future units, an informational screen will be designed to appear
after the first use of this activity to explain to students that they should
ignore this line of leftovers and continue their learning with the next line.
This is perhaps a band-aid solution, but until the JavaScript code can be
altered so that it does not display leftovers, there is little other choice.
Design issues
The most pressing problem observed during student use of Step 1 was that
students weren’t reading the didactic preface or the instructional notes
embedded in the activities (even with the spinning blue “note” trying to get
their attention). In the second unit, I experimented with background color
(in the first activity), and a constantly moving graphic, “Attention!”
Neither of these devices increased student attention to the
activity-embedded notes. It was apparent that students just wanted to get
immediately into the activities. Of even greater concern was the
observation that many students weren’t reading the instructions on how to
do the activities. They knew already that the object was to fill in the blanks,
to answer the question, or to choose the best response. If the instructions
contained any instructional or learning material, however, it went
unnoticed. In the click-and-drag exercises, for example, the note that
students would not use all of the words or punctuation was not read. Some
students were exasperated at trying to fit all of the provided vocabulary and
punctuation into just one sentence!
Content issues
24
Step 2 consists of three types of activities - one sentence combining activity,
five click-and-drag sentence construction activities, and four translation
exercises. These activities reinforce the material presented in the didactic
preface, which introduces the concept of sentences with more than one
subject, verb, or object.
Didactic preface
The didactic preface takes students step-by-step in combining their short,
SVO sentences into longer (though more economical) sentences
containing more than one subject, verb, or object. The same series of
sentences used in Step 1 to introduce simple sentence structure and
punctuation is re-introduced and serves as the content for the instructional
activity of combining the sentences. Throughout the didactic preface,
familiar English vocabulary and simple sentence structures are used.
Moreover, familiar themes (studying for a test, eating desserts) are used,
and a light, humorous tone is maintained.
Learning activities
1. Sentence combining.
 Description: In this activity, students are asked to combine two simple
SVO sentences using “and” or “or.” This is a procedure that they are
walked through in the didactic preface. The activity consists of 10 sets
of sentences to be combined (9 two-sentence sets, 1 three-sentence
set).
 PAS: Low. Because everything is provided for the students, the
activity requires little productive autonomy.
 Spiraled elements:
1. Topics: The sentences all relate to the “My Family” “Our Class” or
“Friends” translation texts from Step 1.
2. Vocabulary: Familiar vocabulary from Step 1 is spiraled, with
related items introduced. New items (e.g., “playing tennis”) are also
familiar to students, although they are seeing them for the first time in
the BBE courseware of study. Colloquial expressions from the first
unit (e.g., “going to school”) are spiraled into the activity content.
3. Structures: Infinitive and gerund structures are reinforced.
25
Moreover, students receive instructions (in a note that appears
on-screen with the activity) on the rule prohibiting the mixing of
infinitives and gerunds in the same sentence.
4. L1 distracters: Basic Chinese/English word order differences are
not pointed out, although correct English structure is repeatedly
reinforced. English words that often cause glossing problems are also
frequently used (e.g., “study,” “do homework.”) to provide constant
exposure to accurate input in areas of difficulty.
 Considerations/Difficulties: The sentence combining activity was
designed to prompt the formation of sentences with multiple subjects,
verb, or objects. Sentences had to be combined (using “and” or “or”)
to form these sentences. Students had relatively little difficulty in
distinguishing when they should use “and” (for affirmative statements)
and “or” (for negative statements). They did, however, have
considerable difficulty in deciding when to repeat the “to” when
combining multiple object sentences (e.g., “I like to read and to watch
TV.) to avoid sentences that sound as if there is but one object (two
simultaneous actions). Again, this difficulty can be largely attributed
to student lack of attention to instructional content on the activity
screens. Even with the addition of brighter background colors and
flashing “attention-getters” students plowed right into the activity
without the information necessary to its satisfactory completion.
2. Click-and-drag Sentence Construction.
 Description: In these activities students are presented with a collection
of vocabulary and punctuation items from which they choose to
construct a grammatically correct sentence. Students move the
selected items from the bottom of the screen (where they are randomly
ordered) up into the answer area by clicking on the item and dragging
it upward. Students are informed (in the on-screen instructions) that
they will not use all of the vocabulary or punctuation in the sentences
they construct.
 PAS: Medium. All of the elements the students will need to express
themselves are provided; they need only to manipulate the words and
punctuation into a correct utterance.
26
 Spiraled elements:
1. Topics: The first of the five sentence-construction activities is the
first exposure students have had to the format. Therefore, the content
is less challenging than the activities that succeed it. The first sentence
is taken verbatim from the “Our Class” translation activity the students
did at the end of the first unit, and does not require the students to form
a multiple-element sentence using “and” or “or,” the focus of the
second unit.
In the other four sentences, students are asked to form multiple subject,
verb, or object sentences. They have seen all of these sentences before,
since they were taken from the “Our Class” translation exercise. The
only additional challenge posed in this activity is that students
combine sets of sentences into single utterances. Sentence combining
is not new to the students, as the process was introduced to them very
clearly in the didactic preface.
2. Vocabulary: There are no unfamiliar vocabulary items in the
activities.
3. Structures: One new structure is introduced, the choice-type
interrogative, “Do you +V+O or O?” (e.g., “Do you like reading or
watching TV?”)
4. L1 distracters: These sentence-construction activities were
included in the unit because they can present the students with the
opportunity to directly gloss their Chinese internal dialog - and to have
reinforced the reality of how poor a communication strategy this is. In
each of the five sentences, numerous L1 distracters are available to the
student:
1.
Utterance to be elicited:
There are 53 students in our class.
Chinese expression from Step 1 activity:
我們班人數有 53 名同學。
(We/Our/Us class person/people number have/have/is/are 53
name fellow student(s) )
Chinese colloquial expression:
我們班上有 53 個同學。
(We/Our/Us class on have/has/is/are 53 each fellow student(s) )
27
Vocabulary, punctuation available in activity:
There students class 53 are in there has have our had Us , . ?
Note: The vocabulary and punctuation are randomly mixed each time
the screen is “reloaded” or the “reset” button is clicked.
2.
Utterance to be elicited:
The girls and boys all like school.
Chinese expression from Step 1 activity:
女生喜歡來上學。 男生也喜歡來上學。
(Girl(s) like(s) come school . Boy(s) also like(s) come school.)
Chinese colloquial expression:
男生女生都喜歡上學。
(Boy(s) girl(s) all/both like(s) on study/school.
Vocabulary, punctuation available in activity:
The they boys and likes all them girls like school we .,?
Note: The additional pronouns (they, we, and them) are included as
distracters because in spoken Chinese a topic-comment structure is
often used, which would result in sentences such as:
Boys and girls we all like school. or
Boys and girls they all like school.
The choice of “they” or “we” will depend on whether the speaker sees
herself as included in the topic of the sentence. Because the sentences
are all about “Our Class,” the “we” was occasionally observed as
students glossed from their internal dialog.
3.
Utterance to be elicited:
Some students don’t like to study or to do homework.
Chinese expressions from Step 1:
班上有些同學喜歡讀書， 有一些同學不喜歡。
(Class on have/has/is/are some fellow student(s) like study
book , have/has/is/are a some fellow student(s) not like)
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Note: A “new” item, “do homework” appears here. Students should
have learned this at the beginning of their English careers, in junior
high school.
Chinese colloquial expression (of the elicited utterance):
有些同學他們不喜歡讀書也不喜歡寫功課
(Have/has/is/are some fellow student(s) they/them not like
study book(s) also not like write homework )
Vocabulary, punctuation available in activity:
or like they book students to don’t to few Some study
write do homework .,?
Note: Students in this exercise almost invariable construct this
sentence:
Some students they don’t like study book or write homework.
This is an almost one-for-one gloss of their L1 internal dialog.
Because the expressions are so familiar to them, many had great
difficulty and spent a great amount of time trying to discover why their
sentences weren’t being accepted by the computer. After following
the clues provided by the computer when they clicked on the “Check”
button, they discovered their errors and could read alternative
acceptable responses.
4.
Utterance to be elicited:
We attend OCIT and study international trade.
Chinese expression from Step 1:
我們就讀於 OCIT，我們學的是國際貿易
(We/Us study at OCIT , we/us study (+passive) is international
trade )
Vocabulary, punctuation available in activity:
and or Department attend trade OCIT class We read study
international .,?
29
Note: In this activity, the only L1 distracters included are “class” and
“read.” In colloquial Mandarin, “to attend” can also be rendered, “to go to
class,” and “to study” can be rendered “to read” if there is no object present.
The verb “to attend” may yet be unavailable for production, as it was
introduced in Step 1 in the “My Class” translation activity. Students have
not been taking notes, and there is a two- to three-week period between
Step 1 and Step 2 computer-based activity.
5.
Utterance to be elicited:
Do you like reading or watching TV?
Chinese expression from Step 1:
我喜歡讀書，我也喜歡聊天
(I like study , I also like chat)
Chinese colloquial expression:
你喜歡讀書，還是喜歡看電視?
(You like study , or like watch TV)
Vocabulary, punctuation available in activity:
looking to like read reading book you watching TV
Do or .,?
Note: Distracters include 看, which can mean “read” a book, “watch”
TV, or “look at” people. Also, “book” is included because students will be
tempted to internally gloss “study” as “read book.”
This is the first time in the BBE curriculum that students have been asked
to construct an interrogative. Of course, they have been taught
interrogatives before and they are part of the students’ active repertoire,
both in oral and written forms.
 Considerations / Difficulties
The primary motivation in including this type of exercise was to tempt
students into relying on English-Chinese glossses for their reading
comprehension and, to show them that in producing English, such
dependence on lexical meaning is dangerous. There was quite a bit of
forehead slapping observed, as students discovered how easily they
fall into the English-Chinese gloss trap and produce simple utterances
30
that they know are incorrect. Construction of the activities was itself
not difficult. Moreover, students showed that they have sufficient
computer skills to understand the interface and how the activity should
proceed. Students seem to enjoy the activity, perhaps because it
requires little of them and gives them an opportunity to actively “play
with” the elements on the screen.
3. Translation activities
 Description: In Step 2, there are three texts the students are asked to
translate, “My Cell Phone,” “My Hobbies,” “My Day,” and “My Sister
and Me.” The first, “My Cell Phone,” students saw in Step 1. The text
is used as a bridge between the cognitively less challenging first unit
and the present unit, which asks the students to combine simple SVO
sentences into sentences containing more than a single occurrence of
one of the elements.
 PAS: High-Very High. The topics presented in Step 2 never move far
from familiar ground. The first text the students have seen before.
The second, “My Hobbies,” is one familiar to teenage life, and focuses
on music and computer games. Apart from the names of the musicians
and games (which reflect the author’s taste and background), this is a
text that could have been written by the students themselves. The third
essay, “My Day,” again focuses on student life, and is introduced here
in the third position because it will serve as the bridge to the next unit,
Step 3. It was thought that if this text appeared as the last translation
activity in the series, it would be “on the tip of their tongues” when the
students got to Step 3. Therefore it was placed in the penultimate
position so that students would have a memory of the content, but
would have to reach a bit deeper to come up with a clear recollection.
The final text, “My Sister and Me,” is reminiscent of “Our Class” and
“Friends” from Step 1 in both its content and structure. The content
here, however, focuses on adjectives rather than verb phrases, and is
contrastive, rather than comparative in tone.
 Spiraled elements:
31
“My Cell Phone”
1. Topics: This topic first appeared as a translation activity in Step 1.
2. Vocabulary: There are no unfamiliar vocabulary items in the
activity.
3. Structures: As Step 2 focuses on SSVO, SVVO, and SVOO
structures, students are asked to combine familiar SVO sentences
into the new more complex forms.
4. L1 distracters: As this text serves as a familiar bridge into new
territory, no additional distracters are introduced. That does not
mean, however, that students are not distracted by the differences
between Chinese and English punctuation. For example, in the
sentences describing my new cell phone, we see:
它是全新的。它很小、它 很時髦，我愛死它了。
(It is completely new.
It very small , it very fashionable , I love (to) death it .)
This second sentence, with it’s change of subject in the third phrase, poses
some difficulty for students. They had to be reminded that they should be
thinking in Chinese but expressing in English, and that the two languages
require two often very different patterns of expression.
“My Hobbies”
1. Topics: This is a new topic to BBE, but one familiar to all EFL
students in Taiwan (and, probably, to beginning EFL students
around the world).
2. Vocabulary: Spiraled vocabulary includes terms related to the
speaker’s identity as a student, “student,” “study,” “homework,”
“play.” New terms related to music and video games are glossed
at the bottom of the screen. Special attention was paid to use of
commonly misused/misglossed vocabulary. In Chinese, for
example, we say 玩電腦 , “to play computer,” which may mean
anything from playing the Solitaire game included in the
Microsoft software, to surfing the Internet, to writing a research
paper. In this text, 玩電腦遊戲 , “to play computer games” is used
32
to reinforce the correct usage.
3. Structures: Focus in Step 2 is on sentences with multiple
subjects, verbs, or objects. Punctuation of the more complex
forms is reinforced by the activities.
4. L1 distracters: In this activity, students will encounter a number of
Chinese expressions for which there is no colloquial English
equivalent. This again reinforces the notion that while they think
in Chinese, students have to learn to express themselves using the
English tools that they have readily at hand. For example, the
sentences 我課業繁重。(I/Me/My academics heavy), which might
be translated as “My academic load is heavy,” is rendered in the
colloquial “I do lots of homework.” The expression 他們太棒了。
(They are “supreme (baseball) bat.”), which finds no English
equivalent, was rendered, “They’re great!”
Structurally, students continue to have difficulty with English sentence
division. The Chinese “tun-hao,” which serves to separate elements in a
series (even a series of two) gives students trouble. The sentences 我喜歡
玩 “Frogger”、 “Mist”。我不喜歡玩 “Pokemon” 、“Super Mario”。 (I like to play
“Frogger”, “Mist..” “I don’t like to play “Pokemon,” “Super Mario.”) is
often glossed directly from the Chinese, omitting the “and” between the
two objects in the first sentence and the “or” between the objects in the
second. Because the focus of this unit is on multiple object sentences and
the need for “and” in affirmative statements and “or” in negative
statements or interrogatives, students are given many opportunities to
misstep - and to learn from the stumbling.
“My Day”
1. Topics: This is the first time students have seen this topic. Like the
preceding topic, however, this is a theme very familiar to teenage
life. Going to school, going to a part-time job, coming home, and
doing homework.
2. Vocabulary: The language of the unit is simple. Some of the
vocabulary will be familiar, “I go to school,” “I don’t call my
friends,” “I don’t watch TV,” “I do my homework.” New words or
expressions are glossed for the student. The content of the text is
kept simple because the purpose of the unit is not to introduce
33
anything new structurally, but to hint at a cognitive structure that
will come next unit - time order. This text serves as a bridge to
Step 3, as the activities in that unit will revolve around this text.
Like the Step1-2 bridge text, “My Cell Phone,” it is placed in the
next-to-last position. In the didactic content of Step 3, reference
will be made to its content and structure.
3. Structures: The structure of the essay is very simple, giving
students ample opportunity to combine simple SVO structures
into more complex multiple-element sentences.
4. L1 distracters: In this text, there are a number of sentences in
colloquial Chinese, the English equivalents of which the students
have seen before. For example, here we see 我作功課。 (I do
homework.) in a form that, while colloquial, is not as common as
the expression 我寫功課。(I write homework.) that was played
upon as an L1 distracter in the click-and-drag sentence
construction activities earlier in the unit. Similarly, we see 打電話
找朋友 (call phone look for friend), another colloquial equivalent
to the 我和朋友通話 (I with friend communicate by phone) that we
saw in the “My Cell Phone” text. Both Chinese texts prompt the
same English utterance, “call my friends.” Students should be
gradually learning that regardless of the complexity or
sophistication of their internal dialog, they should rely on English
expressions over which they have sure command rather than try to
express the subtle nuances of meaning their Chinese might carry
(and of which they, themselves, might not even be aware.)
“My Sister and Me”
1. Topics: This is a topic familiar to students, the comparison of two
people. We saw a comparison of groups - boys and girls in “Our
Class,” and of two people in “Friends,” in Step 1. Here we are
again looking at two people, sisters, and comparing and
contrasting their appearances and personalities.
2. Vocabulary: While much of the vocabulary in this text is familiar
(“like to,” “read,” “listen to music,” “do homework.”), there are
many new terms regarding personality, all of which are glossed
below the Chinese text.
3. Structure: Emphasis, again, is on sentence combining and
34
employing English sentence construction methods and correct
punctuation.
4. L1 distracters: In this text, students see a familiar Chinese structure
which uses particles to link two adjectives modifying the same
noun. For example, 我們又高又瘦。 (We/Us part. tall part. thin).
The English equivalent might be, “We are both tall and thin,”
(with “both” meaning “at the same time”). Of course, the English
expression to be elicited is “We are tall and thin.”
In previous texts, students have encountered, “to like,” 喜歡 and “to not
like” 不喜歡. Here, students find 不愛 (not love), “to be not fond of
(something)” and 不大愛 (not great love), “to be not greatly fond of
(something).” While the students may be aware of the rhetorical
differences between the terms, they don’t have sufficient productive
English skills to express them. Therefore, students are again asked to use
the tools they have at their disposal to express themselves, and the elicited
“correct” expression is “I don’t/She doesn’t like.”
 Considerations / Difficulties
The decision of how far to limit student expression is a difficult one.
Students are aware of the rhetorical differences in the expressions
given above, in their L1. Some students may even be able to give an
understandable rendering of the more precise English utterance.
However, one of the primary purposes of the BBE courseware is to
teach students that regardless of the sophistication of their internal
dialog, they have only a very few English tools available to them to
express their meaning. As the translation texts get further away from
the safe ground of simple constructions expressing familiar thoughts,
students are required to exhibit greater self control in limiting
themselves to the vocabulary and structures over which they have
confident control. For example, in “My Sister and Me,” we find the
sentences,
她不大愛出門，更不愛打球
(She not great love exit door, more not love play ball).
To express this meaning in English would require, “She is not overly
35
fond of going out, and loves playing ball even less.” Because this
sentence is beyond the students’ English production skills, the
“correct” sentence for the activity is, “She doesn’t like going out or
playing ball,” which employs the SVOO structure students are
learning this unit.
The Learning Modules (A chronology and discussion)
Step 3
Technical issues
The most pressing technical issue to this point has been how to “bend” the
HP software to suit the tasks to which it is being put. The HP programs
were written to produce fairly simple, straightforward multiple-choice,
short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and
gap-fill exercises. However, many of the BBE activities use the HP
software in ways for which it was not designed. Each of these extended
uses of the HP software comes at a cost. The HP designers do not offer an
application designed for punctuation practice, for example, so the
punctuation activity in Step 1 uses the HP gap-fill application as a template.
Because the gaps in the application cannot exceed a limited number of
spaces, the text to be punctuated cannot be entered all in one field. The
same limitations apply to the short-answer application. The space allowed
for the answer is too small. The only viable option was to use the gap-fill
application with the target sentences already broken out. The problems
posed by this solution are not terribly significant. Aesthetically, the
resulting text looks more like disjointed sentences than a paragraph
(possibly leading students to see the text as such, rather than as a
continuing expression of related ideas), and the students have to reposition
the curser at the end of each sentence, necessitating a lot of mouse work
(although some students did discover that they could use the “Tab” key to
jump to the next sentence).
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Also, as was mentioned above, the use of extra vocabulary and punctuation
in the sentence-constructing jumbled sentence application caused
problems. The left over words produced undecipherable messages on the
screen displaying the correct answer and the acceptable alternatives. In the
multiple choice activities, there has to be one “correct” answer designated,
and there can’t be more than one. This means that teachers/authors must
be very creative in the way their questions and answers are phrased. At the
same time, care must be taken to ensure students can understand the
resulting convoluted structures.
With regard to the user interface rather than content design, the activities
that have posed the greatest difficulty have been the translation activities.
To come up with the English equivalent to a Chinese utterance and then to
get the whole text to fit into just so many sentences is difficult for many
students. Students are hindered by their habit of glossing their L1 internal
dialog, and having the Chinese text before them raises an additional hurdle
to their punctuating the English expression correctly. The result of this
internal glossing/transcribing process is often a frustrating inability to
come up with acceptable English sentences presented in an acceptable
order. This frustration is exacerbated by the HP software, which
sometimes works against student understanding. If, for example, the
sentences entered by the students are not broken up just as the
teacher/author entered them into the computer, the one incorrectly ordered
sentence will throw the succeeding sentences off track. When this happens,
and the student clicks on the “Check” button, all incorrect (in this case
mis-ordered) sentences are erased. The students scroll up to see how they
did and are shocked to see the product of all their efforts has totally
disappeared. Moreover, the students have no idea where their mistake
might have been (they can’t even remember what it was that they had
written).
To solve this particular problem and to assist the students in finding where
they misstepped, the “Check” and “Get a free letter” buttons were
relabeled to read, “Your Score” and “Check and get a free letter,”
respectively. If students click on “Your Score,” the whole exercise is
checked, incorrect entries are erased, as above, and their work is scored. If
students click on “Check and get a free letter,” however, the HP application
will check the line they are working on, erase everything appearing after a
37
mistake, and give the next letter in the “correct” answer. In this way,
students can see where they went astray and are given a hint as how to
proceed. The only drawback with using the buttons this way is that the
“Check and get a free letter” function only scans the current gap
(remember, the translation exercises are using the gap-fill template); it
does not look at preceding gaps. Therefore, if students check their answers
only every three or four sentences, they might be missing the opportunity
to have all of their sentences checked and to solve their writing difficulties
as they arise. Of course, at the end of the activity, when the student clicks
on “Your Score,” the application will screen the entire activity on a
gap-by-gap basis and will erase complete gaps if an error has found
anywhere within the gap.
To overcome this difficulty, students were (in the version first presented to
them) instructed to check their answers after every gap. These instructions
were given in the area designated for instructions above the exercise itself.
Because it was found that students were not reading these instructions, a
separate “message screen” was placed between the sentence-arranging
activity and the first translation activity, advising students to check their
answers after each sentence. To ensure that students would not skip over
this message without reading it, the message screen was designed (using
web page design software) to resemble the activity screens. Thinking that
this was the next exercise in the series, the students read the message
carefully. However, some students did “forget” what the message said as
soon as they got to the activities. To ensure that they would use the
application correctly, students in following classes were given a
demonstration (in the computer classroom, the content of the teacher’s
screen can be “broadcast” to the students’ screens) of how to use the
buttons, after which the students consistently used them correctly to
monitor the quality of their writing. The only disappointment to this
“workaround” is that each time the student uses the “Check and get a free
letter” button, points are deducted from their score. Theoretically, a
student can check her work after every gap, make no mistakes, and at the
end of the process come up with a score of “0” because she used the
“Check and get a free letter” button too often. However, explaining that
this is just an artifact of the application design does little to make the
students feel better. Responding to my personal inquiry into how I might
solve this problem, the author of the HP application replied that, “If it’s a
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gapfill, they’d only be checking it once, when they’ve finished, wouldn’t
they? If they’re checking each gap, one at a time, then they’re not doing a
gapfill,” and suggested that, “the text should be recast as a series of JQuiz
(short answer) questions.” This option was explored at the design stage of
the BBE courseware development, but was rejected because it would entail
breaking up the Chinese text into pieces (the questions) that corresponded
to English punctuation required in the answers. Perhaps the coding in the
application could be rewritten to accommodate the use of the gap-fill
activity for translation purposes.
Design issues
In the description of Step 2, it was mentioned that despite the use of vibrant
background colors and animated graphics to draw attention to instructional
material, students persisted in ignoring this content and getting on with the
task at hand, “playing the games.” In designing the Step 3 instructional
content, it was decided to try presenting the instructional content in the
activities format. Also, to give students a ready reminder of where they are
in the process of completing the activities, it was decided that the activities
in Step three would be consecutively numbers (3.1, 3.2, 3.3 ...). With this
index system, students will be able to pace themselves according to the
class time remaining rather than rushing through the activities because
they don’t know when they might end or whether they would have time to
finish them. To introduce the new numbering system and to present the
instructional material, a message screen was designed (using web-page
design software) that would mimic the appearance of the activity screens.
Because students would not know whether what they were seeing was a
game or informative material, they would read the content. In the first
screen of Step 3, students were told that the unit consisted of 9 activities
(3.1, 3.2 ... 3.9), and that the unit would focus on adding “when” content to
our repertoire of basic writing skills. The instructional material was
presented using the gap-fill and multiple-choice applications. It was
observed that students did, indeed, spend as much time on the instructional
materials as they did with the activities. As a result, their progress through
the activities was much smoother and the learning experience less
frustrating.
Content issues
39
The focus of Step 3 is on the use of prepositional/adverbial phrases that
describe when something happens. In the instructional material, it was
important that issues of time preposition identity and placement were
addressed. As in the Step 1 and Step 2 didactic prefaces, the tone was kept
light and humorous, in response both to “incorrect” answers and in
explanations and example sentences. The content was carefully designed
to spiral familiar themes and vocabulary and to lead students from
exercising their receptive ability to employing their productive skills in
fully autonomous writing activities.
Didactic preface
The instructional information in Step 3 is not contained in a didactic
preface as in Steps 1 and 2, but is presented in the activity format. There
are three instructional modules, a gap-fill and two multiple-choice
activities.
Learning Activities
1. Instructional gap-fill activity:
 Description: This gap-fill activity employs the text, “My Day,” that
students saw as a translation activity in Step 2. Because in Step 2
students seem to have forgotten the content of the preceding unit
translation activities, a hyperlink to the “My Day” translation activity
was provided. Students could go back to the “My Day” text to refresh
their memory. However, some students, while they were there,
decided to re-do the translation activity, wasting valuable time that
would have been better spent on Step 3 activities. Perhaps the
hyperlink should take students to a copy of the Chinese “My Day” text
instead of back to the translation exercise; an adjustment will be made
in the next version.
 PAS: Low. The only productive skills required for this activity is the
ability to punctuate simple English sentences correctly. The content of
the activity is familiar, and so are the constructions.
 Spiraled elements: The text for the activity was taken directly from
40
Step 2, and the Chinese text is available in this activity through a
hyperlink. There are no unfamiliar vocabulary or structures. Correct
English punctuation is reinforced, as punctuation, as well as text, is
required to complete the exercise.
 Considerations / Difficulties: The “My Day” text was introduced in
Step 2 to serve as a bridge to Step 3, where time elements would be
introduced. The instructional activities that follow this gap-fill will
use this text to focus on time order.
2. Instructional multiple-choice activity:
 Description: The goal of this activity is to draw special attention to the
form of “My Day.” Unlike previous essays in the BBE courseware,
“My Day” is written with an obvious structural order, time order. The
activity consists of three questions from general to a more detailed
look at the time order of the text.
 PAS: Low. No production skills are required. Students respond by
choosing the most appropriate from the among the choices (3-5) given.
 Spiraled elements: The text on which the instruction focuses is one
with which the students are familiar, as it was taken verbatim from
Step 2.
 Considerations / Difficulties: The only correction that needed to be
made after Step 3 was used in class was the “All of the above” answer
had to be changed to “All of these are correct” because when the
answers are shuffled with each reloading of the page, “All of the
above” may appear anywhere in the list, including the topmost
position (in which case, there is nothing “above” it).
3. Instructional multiple-choice activity:
 Description: A multiple choice activity in which prepositions and
adverbs of time are introduced. The activity consists of 7 questions in
which students choose the most appropriate response from among the
3-10 they are given. Not all of the questions are purely instructional.
A couple are included to inject a little fun and humor into the learning
process and to keep the students on their toes. For example, the fifth
question asks students what punctuation they should use if they put the
prepositional phrase at the end of the sentence, a period, a comma, or
41
none at all. Of course, if it appears at the end of the sentence, you
would put a period after it. Because the preceding question asked
them what punctuation they would use if the prepositional phrase is at
the beginning of the sentence, however, they tend to put common
sense aside and over-analyze. The computerized responses to
students’ incorrect responses are suitably humorous.
 PAS: Low. No production skills are required.
 Spiraled elements: There are no spiraled elements in this activity,
although the vocabulary and structures are simple and readily
understandable.
 Considerations / Difficulties: The greatest difficulty in creating
learning activities of this kind is to find ways to have learners learn
without the lesson being too obviously didactic. One way to
accomplish this is to give them their dose of learning surreptitiously,
quizzing them on it later. For example, in the final question of this
series, students are asked which transition word does not have a
comma after it when it starts a sentence. They are also warned not to
look back, because that would be cheating. If they do look back,
which they will, they find that in the preceding activity, they are given
the series, “First, ...; Second, ...; Third, ... ; Then ...; Next, ...; After
that, ... ; Finally, ... “ and are asked what kind of words they are
(transition words, ordinal numbers, time words). When they read
more closely, they do discover that “Then” is the only one that doesn’t
have a comma after it. In this way, students learn without really being
taught. All they have to do is be more observant. This is another skill
indispensable to learning in general and focusing on form in particular.
4. Short answer activity:
 Description: In the instructional activities, students learn that the
reading passage “My Day” could be made more interesting if the
description of the events were clearer with regard to the time of their
occurrence. Further, students learn what terms and structures they
might use to describe events over time. In this activity, students are
asked to rewrite, sentence-by-sentence, the “My Day” text. In
rewriting the sentences, students are prompted to use
prepositions/adverbs of time.
42
 PAS: Low-Medium. While all of the elements needed to rewrite the
sentences are provided for the students, they must still make decisions
regarding the placement of the descriptive elements and the
punctuation that should be used.
 Spiraled elements:
1. Topics: The text is taken directly from the Step 2-Step 3 transition
text, “My Day.”
2. Vocabulary: All of the vocabulary is familiar to students. They
have seen the text many times before, and became familiar with
the time/transition/order terminology in the instructive activities
at the beginning of the unit.
3. Structures: In order to successfully complete the activity, students
are also required to combine sentences with “and” or “or,”
producing sentences with more than one subject, verb, or object, a
technique they learned in Step 2.
4. L1 distracters: There are no new L1 distracters included in this
activity.
 Considerations / Difficulties: It is made clear in the instructions that
the ten sentences in the activity tell the story "My Day," and that
students need only add some time expressions. However, some
students had difficulty in completing the activity. Particularly
problematic were sentences beginning with “Then” because it required
students to link the sentence they were currently working on with the
sentence on the preceding screen. These students apparently failed to
read the instructions to the activity, so they did not think the sentences
in the activity were linked into a story. Students with difficulty soon
solved their problem, however, by employing the “Get a free letter”
button.
5. Short answer activity:
 Description: In the preceding activity, students respond to questions
based on the reading text and are required to do only enough
43
production to add a time phrase to the base sentence. In this activity,
students are taken further from the “My Day” text and are asked
personal questions about their daily routine. Of the ten questions in
this activity, five ask about activities discussed in “My Day,” and five
ask about other daily routine activities with which the students are
familiar.
 PAS: Medium. Although responses are prompted either by the
question or by parenthetical vocabulary prompts, students must still
compose and type full English sentences. Because the answers are
case sensitive (designated by the teacher/author during the
design/composition process), close attention must also be paid to
punctuation.
 Spiraled elements:
1. Topics: All the topics and vocabulary are spiraled from preceding
activities.
2. Vocabulary: Vocabulary from preceding activities is spriraled
throughout the questions asked of students:
1. Do you wash your face before or after you brush your
teeth?
Step 1, Step 2 (topic, vocabulary and structure)
2. Do you brush your teeth before or after you eat breakfast?
Step 1, Step 2 (topic, vocabulary and structure)
3. What time do you get up in the morning? (6:30)
Step 1 (topic, vocabulary)
4. When does your last class end today? (4:00)
Step 1, Step 2 (topic)
5. When do you get off work? (9:00)
Step 2 (topic)
6. When do you watch TV? (after / homework)
Step 1, Step 2 (topic, vocabulary)
7. What will you be doing at 9:00? (work)
Step 1, Step 2 (topic, vocabulary)
8. When do you do your homework? (before / come /
home)
Step 1 (topic, vocabulary)
9. When do you take a bath? (night (or) morning)
44
Step 2 (topic)
10. When do you listen to music? (while / study)
Step 1, Step 2 (topic, vocabulary)
3. Structures: Structures are reinforced by questions/prompts for the
activity. All the questions are considered instructional input and
for this reason are varied. Question forms include “what”
questions, “when/what time” questions, and choice-type questions
(reinforcing multiple verb-phrase interrogative structures from
Step 2).
4. L1 distracters: Throughout the activity, students are exposed to
frequently troublesome vocabulary and expressions. Here,
students reencounter the often misglossed “watch” TV, and “do”
homework, and some words required by the English but omitted
in Chinese, brush “your/my” teeth, , listen “to” music.
 Considerations / Difficulties: Considerations / Difficulties: As
mentioned above, all questions in the BBE courseware are considered
instructive input. Therefore, attention is also paid to inculcating
healthy living and learning habits like getting up early, brushing after
meals, doing homework before going home, and not calling friends
until after homework is finished.
6. Gap-fill activity:
 Description: This activity is entitled, “How to Prepare for a Test,” and
is presented in order to expose students to writing that describes a
process. In this activity, the focus will be on transition words, rather
than on prepositions or adverbs. This text also appears as the second
of three translation activities in this unit, and serves as a bridge to Step
4, in which prepositions of place will be introduced.
 PAS: Low. Only single word utterances are needed, and these are
prompted by context. Students do, however, need to remember and
apply what they have learned about punctuation.
45
 Spiraled elements:
1. Topics: The topic is familiar to students, and is an extension of the
topics presented in preceding units, school life and a common
daily routine.
2. Vocabulary: This activity employs vocabulary to which the
students have not yet been exposed in the BBE courseware.
However, the theme is one common to English and English
conversation textbooks at the beginning and low-intermediate
levels. The terms used are certain to be part of the students’
passive vocabulary.
3. Structures: The sentences used in this text are limited to simple
subject-verb-object structures.
4. L1 distracters: There is nothing in the passage that will distract
student receptive understanding. There are, however, a number of
items included that students may have difficulty producing in the
coming Step 3 translation and Step 4 activities. These items are
given here as passive reinforcement of correct English
expressions in anticipation of the L1 interference the students’
may experience. Further description of these items is given in the
description of the activities in which the students are asked to
produce them, below.
 Considerations / Difficulties: The primary considerations in
composing this activity was that 1) give students exposure to transition
(as opposed to time) words, and that 2) it lay the groundwork for the
introduction of place prepositions in Step 4.
7. Translation activities:
 Description: The Step 3 translation texts include “How to Prepare for
a Test,” “My Winter Vacation,” and “Taipei Weekend.” The first text
was seen in the preceding gap-fill activity, and will serve as a bridge to
Step 4, where students will add prepositional phrases of place to their
box of English writing tools. The second text, “My Winter Vacation,”
is a topic students are all too familiar with. The essay is a brief
description of a Winter Vacation trip to northern Taiwan, to places the
students have either been to or know of. The objective is to get
46
students to go from a familiar L1 internal dialog to an English
expression of the same content. Finally, “Taipei Weekend” takes
students on a weekend trip to the capital city, a trip most students have
taken themselves. The traffic, the shopping, and the restaurants are all
things the students themselves have experienced.
 PAS: Medium-Very High. With the “How to Prepare For a Test” text,
students should still have a fairly clear memory of the preceding
activity, so their production cannot be considered autonomous. In the
other two activities, however, students are presented with new
situations in which they will employ the skills they have learned
during the unit. Each of these texts tells the story of what happened
over the course of a number of days. The topics are familiar to
students; indeed students have probably written similar essays
themselves. With the BBE activities, however, students will be
limited in their expression to those structures they have already
learned in these three lessons.
 Spiraled elements:
“How to Prepare for a Test”
1. Topics: The passage is the Chinese text of the gap-fill passage in
the preceding activity.
2. Vocabulary: The English vocabulary used in the passage was
introduced in the preceding activity. In this activity, however,
students are required to go not merely passively from L2 to L1,
but actively from L1 to L2. Since the vocabulary was recalled to
memory by the preceding receptive (gap-fill) activity, it should be
available in student active memory to aid them in the producing
the English utterances prompted by the translation activity.
3. Structures: The structure of the passage is fairly straightforward,
consisting of simple sentences with prepositions/adverbs of time.
4. L1 distracters: There are a number of Chinese expressions which
might distract the students as they express themselves in English.
47
In the first sentence, for example, students see:
準備考試並不難
(prepare test (intensifier) not difficult)
There is an intensifier placed before the “not” that in English
would be rendered, “Preparing for a test is not hard at all,” or
“Preparing for a test is not at all difficult.” Because both of these
expressions are beyond the students’ productive ability, the
“correct” translation of the sentence is “Preparing/Getting ready
for a test isn’t difficult/hard.”
There may also be some confusion surrounding the use of
transition words. The second and third sentences say:
在一開始前先要清理桌面。首先 扔掉 一些垃圾雜物。
(At start before first must clean desk) (In the first position
throw away some trash miscellaneous item(s))
This is intended to prompt, “Before you begin, you must clean
your desk.” “First throw away the trash.” However, because in
the first sentence the Chinese uses the term “first,” to begin the
second sentence also with “first” is a bit confusing. This is
because in the colloquial, when one says “Before x, y,” one often
adds the redundant “first” – “Before x, first y.”
Also, the sentence,
等考完後才懂就太遲了。
(Wait test after only then understand then too late)
is problematic because of the “wait.” The direct translation of the
text, “Waiting until after the test to understand will be too late,” is
not as colloquial as the “correct” translation, “After the test, it will
be too late.”
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“My Winter Vacation”
1. Topics: A topic written on by students everywhere, “What I did
during my summer vacation,” comes back in a shortened format.
2. Vocabulary: In this passage, many terms (e.g., “quiet,” “fresh”) are
called into productive use from the students’ passive vocabulary.
Some items may be first-time production opportunities, such as
清晨 (clear morning)
which is most accurately translated “dawn.” Because this word
may not even be in students’ passive vocabulary, the “correct”
expression of the sentiment here is “early morning,” which
consists of two words in students’ active vocabulary that might
never have been used together before.
Time expressions are emphasized in all the Step 3 translation
activities. In this text, these expressions include, “before,” “in the
evening,” “early in the morning,” “after that,” “in the afternoon,”
“after,” and “when.”
Vocabulary most students will find unfamiliar is glossed beneath
the Chinese text.
3. Structures: The focus of Step 3 is on time expressions, and in all of
the translation activities, ample opportunity is given for their
production. Occasional sentence combining is required.
4. L1 distracters: While there are no deliberate distracters used, there
is ample opportunity for the students to be trapped by their
proclivity to translate directly from the Chinese. For example, in
the sentence
等我們到 家，時間已經很晚了。
(Wait we to home , time already very late)
students will invariably try to include the “wait” and the “time” in
49
their English sentences, rather than using the simple English over
which they already have sufficient command to express, “When
we got home, it was already very late.”
“Taipei Weekend”
1. Topics: The topic of a trip reappears here, in the description of a
weekend in the capital city. Most students have taken this trip, and
the activities described in the story are familiar to the students.
2. Vocabulary: The focus continues to be on time expressions. This
last translation activity calls on students to produce a broader
range of prepositional and adverbial phrases, including, “last
weekend,” “early in the morning,” “when,” “then,” “at noon,”
“already,” “for a while,” “in the evening,” “after,” “before,” “the
next day,” and “finally.” Recurring vocabulary include 很棒 for
“really good,” and 等 for “when.” As with the other activities,
unfamiliar vocabulary is glossed beneath the Chinese text.
3. Structures: The same simple structure the students have been
employing in their translations continue to be employed.
4. L1 distracters: In this text, students see colloquial expressions,
such as,
我們就跑去 逛街 (We/Us then ran go stroll street)
meaning something akin to “We ran out for a little window
shopping,” but which the computer will accept “We went window
shopping.” Further, students see, for the first time, true
contemporary slang, in
我們打道回府 (We/Us hit road return home)
the equivalent to “We beat a path homeward.” The computer, of
course, accepts the more pedestrian, “We went home.”
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 Considerations / Difficulties: The chief consideration in composing
the translation activities is that both the Chinese and English texts be
as authentic as possible. The goal of the BBE courseware is to get
students to express their internal L1 dialog using the English tools that
they have confidence in. Often, students know that there is a
difference between “big” and “gigantic” in their L1, but they don’t
have “gigantic” in either their passive or active English vocabularies.
Hopefully, by using this computer-based learning environment,
students will learn to overcome their habit of reaching for direct
glosses and settle for clearly and correctly expressing themselves with
the English tools they have at hand (“really big”).
As was mentioned in the “Technical Issues” portion of the description
of Step 3, above, a new method of checking student translations was
introduced. Students were reminded (by a note at the top of the
Chinese text) to check their answers as they complete each sentence.
Conclusion
Each unit of the “Building Better English” courseware was designed in its
entirety before test use in the classroom. As each unit was introduced for
student use, classroom observations were made and notes taken regarding
student-application interaction. After each unit was trial tested by two
classes, corrections and adjustments to the courseware were immediately
made, and the courseware was used the succeeding day by two more
classes. Again, notes were made of student-courseware interaction and
further modifications were made. Two days later a final class used he
courseware, which, by the end of the week, had been used by more than
250 students during 10 hours of class.
With the completion of Step 3 of the “Building Better English” courseware,
a better understanding of the Hot Potatoes applications was attained, and a
clearer picture was achieved of how well suited the software is to the type
of foreign language teaching/learning to which it was put. Before it is used
with a new group of students, the first two units of the “Building Better
English” courseware will be revised to incorporate the design and
presentation lessons related in this interim report. Succeeding units will
51
follow the Step 3 model in presenting the instructional material in a gaming
format.
Despite the difficulties encountered in this attempt to get students to use
and actively learn from computer-based interactive educational materials,
the results have been well worth the investment. Student writing has
improved. That is, students have begun to learn, over the course of these
three units, not to rely on L1-L2 glosses in their English written
communication, and to work more within their personal productive
capacity. Moreover, as students learn not to reach so far beyond
themselves in their English written communication, their errors have
decreased. This has had the two-fold benefit of increasing the confidence
students feel toward their English writing and reducing the time the
instructor has had to spend marking student essays. As students progress
through the proposed seven remaining units of “Building Better English,”
their skill and confidence will undoubtedly show even more remarkable
progress.
If the minor difficulties described in this interim report can be overcome,
the “Building Better English” courseware holds great promise for enabling
classroom teachers to incorporate online learning into their foreign
language curriculums. By allowing (forcing) students to focus on form
and by breaking students of some of the bad learning habits that stand in
the way of their learning progress, this courseware can help students
construct a firm foundation for advancing their English writing
competence.
52
References
Holmes, Martin (1999) “Approaches to marking electronic texts.” The
IALL Journal of Language Learning Technologies, 31/3, 35-46.
Krashen, Stephen D. & Terrell, Tracy D. The Natural Approach:
Language acquisition in the classroom. New York: Prentice Hall,
1983.
Kroll, Barbara, ed. Second Language Writing: Research insights for
the classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Leki, Ilona (1990) “Coaching from the margins: issues in written
response.” Kroll 57-58.
Li, Charles N. & Thompson, Sandra A. Mandarin Chinese: A
functional reference grammar. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1981.
Rao, Der-hua Victoria (1999) “Validity and Reliability of Grammar
Proficiency Test and Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Freshman
English Composition Class.” Report of the “Curriculum Design and
Writing Assessment for Freshman English Grammar and Composition
Course”Project. Ministry of Education, Republic of China.
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