Designing a digital pedagogical pattern for improving foreign language learners’ oral proficiency

Carina Grobler,Tom F.H Smits

doi:10.4102/lit.v37i2.1273

Abstract

South African undergraduate foreign language students need more opportunity to practise their oral language skills. Not only do appeals to focus more on oral productive skills feature in scholarly literature (Delena-le Roux 2010), it is also one of the main conclusions from a survey among beginner students of French at the Potchefstroom Campus of North-West University (South Africa). It was therefore necessary to design a teaching and learning intervention, specifically aimed at improving beginner students’ oral communication skills in French. Laurillard’s (2012) Conversational Framework inspired the design of a digital pedagogical pattern (DPP), consisting of context and pedagogy descriptors for the development of foreign language learners’ oral communication skills. The Conversational Framework analyses formal learning and challenges the use of new technologies in learning. The implementation process of a DPP for the development of students’ (French) oral skills involved three cycles, each with specific outcomes and three groups of participants: the control group and two experimental groups. Field-testing the proposed DPP provided important insights which should be integrated in the design of subsequent digital pedagogical patterns in the specific context: limiting the participant groups to two; decreasing the number of interventions to be implemented in the limited teaching time of a semester; ensuring that each step adheres to the requirements of the Conversational Framework. Student results from the learning interventions in future studies should reveal which intervention better promotes oral communication skills.

Highlights

The present article will discuss the development process of a teaching and learning intervention with the aim of improving the oral proficiency of beginners in a foreign language by looking at the design and implementation of a series of learning activities
The students move on to the question in the series. If they are unsure about the meaning of the question to which they are supposed to respond or of the format of the answer, the model dialogue used in Step 2 can be consulted to obtain intrinsic feedback on a student’s performance
The software designed for the purpose of this study would have to be adapted to ensure that an activity such as the one proposed in Step 3 (Simulated conversation) allows the students to compare the result of their actions with the model

Summary

Introduction

The present article will discuss the development process of a teaching and learning intervention with the aim of improving the oral proficiency of beginners in a foreign language by looking at the design and implementation of a series of learning activities. The following section presents the theoretical framework for the process of developing a teaching and learning intervention that aims to improve the oral proficiency of beginners in a foreign language, the relevance of which is supported by a needs analysis. The need for sound, evidence-based practices in foreign language learning and teaching where large groups of students are involved and the importance of developing oral http://www.literator.org.za production skills were the key motivators for the ongoing research project at the North-West University’s (NWU) Potchefstroom campus (South Africa). The pattern that will be discussed is based on the criteria explained in Laurillard’s (2012) CF (see Figure 1) by ‘designing a teaching-learning environment for learners that provides design elements for each of the activities in each teacher or peer communication, practice and modeling cycle’ (Laurilllard 2012:95). Provenance or designer of the pedagogical pattern School of Languages, NWU, South Africa

Summary

Conclusion