Fenfang Hwu
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, United States of America
hwuf@ucmail.uc.edu
A Comic Creation Tool for Adaptive-Imitation Practice: Research
Design Considerations
Bio data
Fenfang Hwu
is an associate professor in the Department of Romance Languages and
Literatures at the University of Cincinnati, USA. Her recent research projects include the
development of instructional techniques to accommodate individual differences in second
language learning and the use of tracking technology in CALL research.
Abstract
Second language teachers would instinctively want to integrate an easy-to-use comic-
creation tool in their classrooms as it provides a fun and creative outlet for learners while
allowing them to demonstrate understanding about the language. Conversely, the
circumstance under which such tool is beneficial for learning is not as straightforward for
CALL researchers. In this study we present the considerations we took into account to
frame our research questions and the corresponding results.
Firstly, we identified the context in which such tool would be beneficial. As the tool lends
itself perfectly to having learners produce everyday conversation and there is a serious
lack of opportunity to learn the pragmatic meanings of Spanish simple past tenses with
this discourse type at the intermediate level, we chose this tool for intermediate learners,
who used it to author conversations and recorded their voices for the characters.
Additionally, they modeled their conversations from the input we provided, consisting of
soap opera clips and pedagogical grammar explanations.
We envisioned that such learning activity would benefit learners according to various
theoretical perspectives. It elicits ‘imitation’ (Tomasello, 2002), a fundamental process in
learning from the perspective of Vykotskyan sociocultural theory. It also provides
production practice, hypothesized to offer a number of benefits that input alone does not
provide. Particularly, it helps internalize and deepen learners’ linguistic knowledge
(Swain, 1995), thereby transforming declarative knowledge into procedural (De Bot,
1996). We also took individual differences into account; kinesthetic/tactile learners and
learners with poor language aptitude and proficiency might benefit more from this
learning environment. Given the abovementioned considerations, we ask the following
research questions. What evidence supports learner’s thoughtful and creative
reproduction of the input they receive while performing the output activity? Does input +
output improve learning better than input alone? What types of learners benefit most
from this learning activity?
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2014 CALL Conference
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