Help Function

Students have the option of using the help function for every turn during a CALL-SLT course. This function provides an example of a correct response to a given system prompt in both the written and spoken forms (e.g. system prompt =Frag: Zimmer f¨ur 3 N¨achte; help example = I would like a room for three nights). The course designer can decide for every lesson if the help function should be available or not in order to increase or decrease the level of difficulty.

The idea behind the help function is to prevent discouragement by providing a cor-rect response, based on Skinner’s corcor-rect response principle (c.f. Chapter 3, subsection 3.2.1). Furthermore, if a student has not yet learned a specific piece of vocabulary the help function accounts for thelearningcomponent as introduced by Krashen’s Monitor

Model (c.f. Chapter 2, subsection 2.2.5) as well as for the positive effect of mimicry exercises as introduced by the behaviorist school (c.f. Chapter 2, section 2.2.1). The help option might additionally assist students in transforming the input (help) into intake (active use of help example), as brought forward by the Noticing Hypothesis (c.f. Chapter 2, subsection 2.3.1.2). As mentioned in Chapter 2, this function can also act as a provider of corrective feedback (c.f. Interaction Hypothesis 2.3.1.1).

In CALL-SLT, the help function displays one or more examples of a correct response, and the user can then pick one of these examples. Those written help examples are either extracted from the corpus, where all possibilities of correct answers are listed for every prompt; or they are generated from a subset of all possible structures as indicated in the corpus.

In addition to a written help example, the users can also listen to how the example is correctly pronounced. For this functionality, native speakers of the course’s L2 record correct examples of all system prompts. Typically, a user marked as a native speaker in the login information starts by going through all examples in order to record the help files. After this initial recording process, any successful interaction by a user who is indicated as a native speaker of the L2 can automatically be added to the help files.

This spoken help example is in line with the behavioristic approach to SLA, where an important focus lies on imitation (or mimicry) of correct language use in order to acquire L2 skills (c.f. Chapter 2, subsection 2.2.1).

The purpose and advantages of the help function are manyfold: (1) it gives infor-mation on the correct translation of the variable given in the system prompt in case the student does not know the vocabulary in the L2; (2) it gives information on cor-rect syntax; and (3) it provides examples of corcor-rect pronunciation, which the users can imitate if they are uncertain about the correct pronunciation of a given prompt.

4.5 Prompts

Another fundamental element of the CALL-SLT tool – next to the help function – is the system prompts, whose design can be customized for specific courses and target groups.

Depending on course design, various types of system prompts can be used. Currently we have a framework for classical text prompts, as well as various possibilities for text prompts combined with multimedia elements, such as images, audio files or videos.

No matter what design is chosen for the prompt, one of the main issues that must be considered is the prevention of direct transfer. We do this by presenting the learner with an abstract and an L1-independent prompt. As we discussed in Chapter 2 nega-tive transfer (c.f. subsection 2.2.1) can be a main obstacle for L2 production if a learner tries to transfer an L1 sentence word-for-word into the L2. As stated by Chomsky in his UG approach to SLA (c.f. subsection 2.2.3), L2 learners are able tocreatelanguage thanks to their innate language faculty. By favoring abstract prompt designs, we try to stimulate this creative use of the L2. Another advantage of this abstract prompt-response design is that students actively need to construct their prompt-response – following Skinner’s active response principle (c.f. Chapter 3, subsection 3.2.1) – and are hence actively involved in the learning process.

We will examine the various prompt options – text, image, audio and video – in more detail in the following subsections.

4.5.1 Text Prompts

Text prompts consist of a surface form of the interlingua representation (c.f. subsection 4.2.2) in the student’s L1, which can be more or less abstract depending on the target group and the type of course. The goal of using an interlingua representation for the text prompt – rather than a natural language L1 prompt – is that we want to prevent students from translating the prompt word-for-word into the L2, which we would risk if the text prompt was in a pure L1 form. An abstract prompt example would be DEMANDER DE_MANIERE_POLIE LIMONADE.

However, for some (especially younger) target groups (such as for example the one described in Chapter 5) we need to make the prompt easier to read. A way to do this is to map the raw interlingua representation to a more fluent surface form, such as for example Frag: Zimmer f¨ur 3 N¨achte (in English: Ask: room for 3 nights) (as seen in Figure 4.4). Although this surface form might look like it is too close to

the L1, the students still have the liberty to choose how they want to syntactically form their utterance. In order for his or her response to be accepted by the system, the student needs to transform the abstract prompt into a grammatically correct and complete sentence, such as e.g. “I would like a room for three nights.”

In general the surface form of the raw interlingua representation of the text prompt can be transformed into whichever format the course designer deems sensible for the respective target group. One possibility is to separate the speech act from the actual value (as shown above); another is to present the prompt in a fluent phrase, such as Sag, dass du ein Zimmer f¨ur 3 N¨achte m¨ochtest.

4.5.2 Multimedia Prompts

Text prompts are the most straightforward way of presenting the prompt to the user.

More elaborate prompt designs propose a combination of a text prompt with various multimedia elements that set the context of the prompt.

A few examples of such combined prompt designs are introduced below, by means of image-, audio- and video-enhanced prompts.

4.5.2.1 Image Prompts

The problem mentioned in subsection 4.5.1 – the prompt being too close to the learner’s L1 – can also be avoided by using images instead of plain text to prompt the students.

An example can be seen in Figure 4.6, where the student is shown a picture together with the (L1 or) L2 questionWhat is it?. The student then has to respond with “It is a cat” in order for his or her response to be accepted by the system. One big advantage of this type of prompt is that it is entirely L1-independent, as long as the question is easy enough to be displayed in the learner’s L2.

4.5.2.2 Audio Prompts

Similar to the image prompts described above, we can also create audio prompts, where the image is substituted by a sound (c.f. Figure 4.7). If we again take the example given

Figure 4.6: L1-independent image prompt (L1 = any, L2 = EN)

above, we would now – instead of a picture of a cat – hear a “meow” sound together with the L2 questionWhat animal?. The answer would again be “It is a cat.”

Figure 4.7: L1-independent audio prompt (L1 = any, L2 = EN)

4.5.2.3 Video Prompts

Video prompts are the last type of multimedia prompts (as seen in section 4.3, Figure 4.5). In this prompt design we typically have a combination of a multimedia element

(video clip) and a text prompt (Frag: Zimmer f¨ur 3 N¨achte). The main advantage of this approach is that the learners not only practice their productive L2 skills when responding to the prompt, but they also practice their receptive L2 skills, since they need to understand the question asked by the native speaker in the video clip.

The video voices are recorded by native L2 speakers (optionally in different di-alects), which contributes to a more realistic language learning scenario. Here we also respect the findings of the Interaction Hypothesis (c.f. Chapter 2, subsection 2.3.1.1) by using clear and brief language in the videos in order to facilitate the L2 input processing.