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Process
We chose the app Sonic Pics on our school iPads
because we were already familiar with it, it is simple
to use and it lends itself well to collaborative
speaking tasks. Using the app, students create a
story or presentation, write a script and source
images to complement the script. They then order
the images and voice-record their presentation while
swiping through their ordered images. The final
Rote Repetition, drilling or chanting words in Student 1: Sailing a boat [mutters in Cantonese]
order to remember them
Student 2: Sailing a boat
Recitation Repeating/recalling information in order
and to demonstrate understanding Student 2: Just sailing boat
Elicitation
Student 2: s-a-i-l-i-n-g and there ... yes is that
Instruction/ Giving/explaining facts, ideas,
Exposition descriptions or procedures Student 1: That one!
Discussion Sharing ideas/information to solve
problems Student 2: No no no ...
Talking in Cantonese
Inquiries
There were some examples of inquiry dialogue in our ... space banana ... banana ... space ... this one! This
recordings, occurring more frequently in the one! Play with the famous ... play with the famous ...
traditional written task, though our attempts to play with the famous ... play computer games with
engage students in inquiry tended to cause students aliens ...
to respond with factual information and descriptions
rather than exploration of the content and the Informal feedback, through five-minute whole-class
possible outcomes of group work. interviews immediately following the ICT-based tasks,
indicated that our students thoroughly enjoyed them
Teacher: so ... they ... what happens next? because “it was ‘new’ or ‘a different type of lesson”,
and also because “we used the iPads”. However,
Student A: Saw some pirates?
teachers need to consider whether the novelty factor
Teacher: They saw some pirates? OK, I wonder if outweighs the development of language ability. We
the pirates are friendly? also need to acknowledge that the lack of higher-
order inquiry-driven dialogue may reflect the fact
Student A: No. that this type of dialogue is not a natural feature of
young learner-spoken interactions for a number of
Teacher: They’re not friendly? So what are they
cognitive, social and educationally contextual
doing that doesn’t look friendly, I wonder.
reasons, and that this type of discourse may not be a
Teacher: So how do they know? What do they see? realistic expectation of young learners. We
What do the pirates look like? concluded that the uses of ICT we observed did not
markedly enhance the language learning experience
Student C: Ugly. for our students, but our research does suggest a
number of implications for teachers.
Teacher: They’re ugly... maybe ... how do they ... are
they angry? First, using ICT may require intensive training for
young learners. Second, teachers should focus on
Student A: Yes.
frequent exposure to a limited range of new
Teacher: Are they shooting at them? technologies to familiarise students with them and
reduce the cognitive load associated with task
Student A: No. management. In addition, we found a higher instance
of L1 when students were using ICT, implying that
Teacher: No?
teachers may need to adopt greater tolerance for the
Student A: Because they gave the pirates all their use of L1 depending on the objectives of the class
money and gold. and the need to place emphasis on the task as
opposed to the classroom language. Finally, further
Echoing teacher training on the nature and importance of the
We also found some examples of what we called quality of classroom talk would be valuable to
‘echoing’, which occurred predominantly during the influence more effective language development. As
app-based task. It is a type of discourse play, where Chappell notes:
typically weaker students repeat words, phrases or
The pedagogical implication here is that the
speech acts previously uttered by a partner or
objective of the classroom activity and the kind of
teacher. It often caused the group distraction, and
Reflections
Since technology is so prevalent in Hong Kong, we
had made assumptions about how competent the
students would be in using iPads and the internet.
These assumptions, which turned out to be incorrect,
had a big impact on the way we introduced the
ICT-based tasks, gave instruction and managed
classroom behaviour. We found the process of
making recordings of our students’ talk highly
enriching. Through this process we observed a
number of features of ICT-based lessons that we had
not expected. In particular, we found that our
assumptions that the use of ICT would automatically
enhance the language learning experience were
unsubstantiated.