The Monitor Hypothesis

Feedback from Students

Last week our summer session ended, and I asked the students with whom I had been audioblogging to answer questions about their impressions of audioblogging. The first question dealt with rating audioblogging on a scale of 1(not a valuable experience) to 10 (very valuable experience). The question was "How much did you enjoy listening to idiom presentations and commenting on them on line"? Out of 10 responses 1 student rated it as 3, 1 as 6, 1 as 7, 2 as 8, 2 as 9, and 3 as 10. I was rather pleased with the ratings as most of the students had rated audioblogging above 6 (out of 10). The students who had rated it as 3 explained that because they did not have Internet access at home, it was difficult for them to access the class blog and participate in the activities on a regular basis. I was not surprised with the relatively high ratings as I had often noticed a lot of enthusiasm among my students whenever we talked about audioblogging. Also, many presenters received between 16 - 20 comments each (in a class of 14), which indicates that many students commented two or three times on one idiom presentation, or they commented once and then responded to another student's commentary making it similar to a threaded discussion.

My primarly goals of incorporating audioblogging into teaching ESL were to increase my students' awareness of their oral skills and to help them think consciously about their linguistic skills. I also wanted to create a learning environment that would be an extension of the classroom where students could interact with each other in meaningful ways. At the end of the session, with my own reflections on the extent to which these goals had been accomplished, I decided to ask my students for feedback.

In the first week of classes, when I explain to my students that they will tape and listen to their presentations, they always seem to be rather apprehensive, mostly, I think, because they have never done it before. I am never very surprised by their justified apprehension since I have often felt the same whenever I videotaped myself for teacher reflection purposes. Still, despite their initial feelings of apprehension, I impose this strategy on my students because I strongly believe that it helps to raise linguistic self-awareness. Yet, I also believe that one learns by listening to students and that's way the first question in the survey was, "How did you feel about taping your idiom presentations?" The responses were mixed:

"Good."
"Embarrassed. Panic."
"It's really good feedback."
"It was very useful! We can notice how we speak English."
"I feel good because I can know what is my problems in speaking."
"It really made me feel more nervous!"
"It was great because I could listen to my presentation after class. Then I could find my oral English was improving or not."

My other goal behind audioblogging was to create an environment where real communicative interaction would take place, an environment where students could receive valuable feedback on their linguistic skills not only from their teacher but also from their fellow classmates. I strongly believe that students should be made aware that their teacher is not the only source of valuable feedback. I also wanted my students to realize that they themselves are valuable evaluators and that they can help others with their linguistic skills by giving constructive feedback. This approach empowers students because they move away from the model of 'teacher the knower' to a model where 'others and I know.' This strategy also raises students' awareness of how much linguistic and metalinguistic knowledge they can generate. So, how did my students respond to the question, "How did you feel about commenting on other students' presentations?"

"It's a nice thing to let others know their mistakes."
"It is a useful way to learn something from others' presentations. I really enjoyed it."
"Commenting on other students' presentation is a good way for students to learn from others."
"Very convenient, and I can give my opinion directly to them."
"It was a good way to help them point out their drawbacks."
"They were very positive."

Yet, not surprising, several comments showed how difficult it is to give constructive criticism:

"I felt uncomfortable. It's hard to criticize."
"Commenting is not so good because we cannot say someone's weak points directly. We care about friendship too much."
"They are too polite to comment or correct my presentations."

This was not surprising. The class was predominantly Asian, and I have often found in the past that, because of their cultural norms and values, students from Asia often abstain from overt criticisms. I agree that many students were 'too polite', but I think that, as one of the comments shows, they mostly did not want to hurt one another. This, however, raises another issue - the need to teach ESL students how to be critical and respectful at the same time - a difficult skills for anyone.

Finally, I endorse the belief that the critical goal of second language acquisition is for learners to become autonomous, and I think the opportunity to develop that with audioblogging is extraordinary. The last question on my student survey was: "Do you think podcasting is useful in improving any of your English skills? Why or why not?" These were the answers:

"I could listen to my presentation again, so I could see what's wrong with my presentation."
"It's great especially when you listen to your presentation because this will tell you mistakes."
"I think it is useful, in particular, recording ourselves helps us very much."

Clearly, audioblogging allows students to go back and analyze their oral skills, something that is impossible while speaking as they are too stressed or nervous to be able to notice areas for improvement. They can also listen to the recording a couple of times and at their own pace.

Audioblogging also allows students to think consciously about their language skills and the commenting aspect of audioblogging increases their motivation to improve and thus makes them more autonomous as learners:

"Yes, I can see my pronunciation, so I can improve it."
"It was good to listen to my own voice so that I could realize how my English is. The comments from friends wasn't helpful so much; however, their comments gave me responsibility to prepare better presentations."

The goals that I had in mind when I decided to incorporate audioblogging into my language class aimed to increase students' linguistic self-awareness and make them think consciously about their own language skills. I didn't want to do it using the traditional model of 'teacher the knower' who gives exclusive feedback, but rather I wanted the students to become aware of the fact that there are other ways of learning, other ways that they can utilize once the session ends and they go back home. Although I cannot predict how many of them will attempt to record themselves again in the future, I can say for sure that they became active participants in their own learning and that their critical input into their own learning and that of their classmates had an extraordinary impact.

Audioblogging

I had been thinking for a long time about putting audio material of my students presentations online. I finally managed to do this last  month.

I asked my students to prepare two short presentations on idioms for the whole class. Because I have 14 students, this really works out to two presentations for each student over the period of two months. We start each morning with one of my students teaching the class an idiom. The student writes the idiom on the black board and gives two examples (how the given idiom can be used in sentences). The rest of the class needs to listen and guess the meaning of that idiom from context. This works very well because the students come up with a lot of guesses and there ensues a lot of interaction. If they have a hard time guessing the meaning from  the context I ask the presenter to give some clues. Finally, after somebody gives the right answer, the presenter writes his/her definition and examples on the blackboard. At the end, we have two or three minutes for additional questions (e.g., "Can you change the words? What part of speech is it? What is the origin of this expression?").

This activity is really valuable becasue it energizes my students first thing in the moring and it sets the mood for further language study. It also promotes a lot of communicative interaction when the presenter interacts with the audience. I also like it because it gives students  an opportunity to practice their presentation skills. 

This month I decided to take this activity a step further. In the past, I would record the students and ask them to transcribe the presentation, correct the errors, and give it to me to give them feedback. This session, I decided to use blogging to help them become aware of their presentation skills, give them the opportunity to comment on other students' speaking/presentation skills, and learn from evaluating others.

I bought a small voice recorder with a USB port and used it to record class presentations. Then, I transfered each file onto my computer. I converted each file (strange Sony proprietary format) into an MP3 file and uploaded the file into my ODEO account. That proved to be a bit time consuming as it takes the length of the file for it to upload (e.g. a 7 minute file takes 7 minutes to upload). Finally, once the MP3 files were saved on ODEO, I would post a link to my ODEO content on my class blog. Here is how it looks like on my class blog:

Then, I asked the students to comment on two out of the three recordings. The effect was more that I had expected. They all became very engaged in this activity and instead of commenting on two, they all commented on all three recordings. The students used the comment feature on my blog to laugh, chat, and exchange comments and ideas amongst themselves. They also commented thoroughly on each presentation, and, in the end, each presenter received more than fourteen thoughtful comments.

The most interesting observations that I made about this activity were how interesting their comments were, how the presenters assessed their own presentation skills, and how the presenters reacted to other students' comments.

The comments ranged from short silly comments and encouraging exclamations (that just proves their level of engagement!) to constructive assessment that included specific ideas on how to improve one's speaking and presentation skills. Here are some examples:

Dennis to Tony: "Your presentation is preety good, which should be my good example!"

Ahmad about Bo-Ah's presentation: "What a great job you did , but i hope next time will be better and better."

Ellen about Tony: "1. I think the level of idiom was very good and you explained by using easy and funny examples, so it helped us understand easily. 2. The pace of speaking was good enough to understand, as well. You made interesting example, so I think everybody enjoyed and engaged. And you made good eye contact and were confident! 3.You spoke with a good volume. You did a good job! Way to go^^!"

Hao about Louis's presentation: "It is great, but maybe you can try more different words which can explain the same meaning."

Carol about Liliana's presentation: "It was very clear to listen to Liliana's presentation and the idiom is very useful. However, If there were more interections with other students, it will be more interesting!"

Vicky about Liliana's presentation: "It was very clear to understand. But it was short and easy. I hope you will do a better job next time^^!"

Cindy about Rinae's presentation: "The next impossible mission for you in next several days will be: 1. Make sure you can pronounce the words clearly -- especially the words that are difficult to say 2.make sure you appear confident and sure of what you're saying.In this way, you should do very well in the presentation as well well done!!!this comment will self-destruct.lol"

Hao about Rinae's presentation: "You did a very good job; however, you were not confident enough when you answered us. your pronouncation was clearly when you were chatting with us, so you were just a little bit nervous when you did the presentation. I hope you could improve more next time. :) Anyway,well done!!"

What I found really interesting, however, were the presenters' reactions to their own presentations. I realized that listening to one's own presentation was really important because it gave the students a chance to assess how they sounded. The notion of how we sound is very different when it comes from within, during the presentation, as opposed to from listening to our own recorded voice. It is widely practiced in many teacher training assessments, but rarely in student assessments.

I encourage my students to tape and listen to their own voices because I believe that self-monitoring will only arise when one is aware of one's strengths and weaknesses. After this activity, I could see that students were really amazed when they realized the differences between their impressions of their own presentation during class and their impressions while listening to their recorded presentation in the comfort of their own home. Here are some comments:

Tony about his own presentation: "No,no,no, that's brilliant."

Louis about his own presentation: "It's brutal..."

Tony about his presentation after the others have commented: "Last presentation is my best version I think because of my confidence. well, I think this is an excellent expression. I promise that at the end of course, i am glad to present another wonderful expression to you.It will be better than this one.Also, I'd like to give a suggestion. REMEMBER.Don't be nervous when you give a presentation. The more nervous you are, the more mistakes you will make. Thanks. looking forward your comments. let's keep in touch."

Liliana about her presentation: "I think that my presentation was very short, but my idiom was easy to explain and to understand so that's whay I spoke so little. I think that I was clear and my volume was good."

Another interesting thing that emerged from this activity was how the presenters reacted to other students' feedback. I think that they realized that feedback from their teacher is not the only means to becoming better. Very often, they wait anxiously for the teacher to give them feedback as they perceive the instructor to be the ultimate authority. Here, with this activity, they realized that feedback from their classmates is as valuable. They also saw how their peers judged and assessed them which, as I explained to them later, would be very important knowledge because it is ultimately their peers that they spend most time interacting with, not their teachers.

Putting students' presentations on our class blog proved to be exciting for me (I became very proficient in using voice recorders and I discovered ODEO) and very exciting for my students because it showed them how taping, listening to their presentations, and receiving feedback can help in their self-monitoring process. It also showed how creative they can be in giving feedback. Many of the comments that they have made were very constructive. I also think that by having to evaluate someone else's presentations, they started to think about their own skills. And that was my aim .... to help them discover The Monitor Hypothesis on their own.