Using software in foreign vs. second language environments

Tutorial software used in a foreign language environment can benefit from the value added by a language teacher’s L1-specific instruction, while bilingual resources in software used in a second language environment may pose problems.

In a FL learning environment (learning Chinese in Boston), where your students all speak the same L1 (as NS or NNS), you can address issues in learning the target language specific to particular L1 speakers. In a SL learning environment (English in Boston), your students might come from many different first language backgrounds, making bilingual instruction or support unavailable or at least impractical (in addition to being undesirable in a direct-approach inspired intensive language immersion environment).

Consider a pronunciation program, such as Pronunciation Power, which presents activities to discriminate and produce 52 English phonemes (at right). In a FL environment, students could be knowledgeably instructed which sounds to focus on because they do not exist in their L1, and which to recognize as common with their L1. This is highly unlikely to occur, to much effect, in a heterogeneous SL environment.

American school children, compared to, say, the French, do not, by and large, get much overt grammar instruction, in the form of grammar and syntax. They might be introduced to some vocabulary expansion techniques via morphology, but otherwise not a lot of meta language instruction.

Which might explain why I didn't know much about English grammar until I started studying French. I found a slim volume titled English Grammar for Students of French, part of a series that included other undergraduate staples, like Spanish and Italian. Structural approaches to FL instruction, as French was traditionally taught (back in the day), used grammar terminology as the common language, when, as I suggest, American students don't know their present progressive from their indirect object. In a way, then, this little primer proffered information to me when it was relevant and immediately applicable (digesting French grammar instruction) rather than abstract (accompanying native language instruction). Similarly, a FL teacher can add value to pedantic material, such as tutorial CALL software, by making the same kind of contrasts and comparisons with the students’ first language and perhaps taking a focused and selective approach to using the software, as in the case with studying pronunciation.

So the same program may be more appropriate for or implemented very differently in a FL environment than a SL one. Moreover, multilingual resources in software, which not all users in a SL environment may benefit from--depending on their first language and whether it's represented in the software--may be problematic to use. In addition to some students feeling left out, software with bilingual features also presents less of a linguistic challenge to other students, whose L1 is represented, because they can lean on their L1 for instruction.

From EuroTalk's Talk More American English, multilingual help.

This all gets back to a previous discussion of evaluating software, where we saw that one must be familiar with the local environment—where the software will be used, how it will be implemented, and who will use it—in order to make the most relevant determination of its utility.