Activity 11: Book Review Online Communication in Language Learning and Teaching

1. Activity 11: Book Review Online Communication in Language Learning and Teaching By Marie-Noelle Lamy and RegineHampel

2. Motivation to read book...... ESL student Foreign Language student ESL and German Teacher Online Communication is becoming more important As an educator I need advice and guidance Want to know what is out there

3. About the authors.....

4. Structure of book..... Part I: Key Concepts and Issues (CMCL- computer-mediated communication for language learning and teaching) the ecology of online learning/identity search, teaching online, the teacher as reflective practitioner, teaching online through collaboration, some task-based and problem based learning) learner experience (anxiety, learner participation, learner control and autonomy, presence online whether through an avatar or comments on a blog, brief overview of assessment of CMCL – an important and interesting part as I am always struggling to assess my students, how do we assess online communication and these online skills???? Part II: Research and Practice (Blake, Thorne, Svensson, Erben, Schneider Koetter, - authors) videoconferencing, synchronous chat, virtual worlds, autographic environments, merging technologies blogs wikis, mobile devices) Part III: Practitioner Research offers advice, guidance if a teacher wants to go out there and conduct research themselves, data collection instruments and research is different when it comes to investigating online communication, research areas: online classroom management, materials and tasks, particular skill or area knowledge, student behaviour, achievements and motivation, personal and professional issues Part IV: Resources

5. The book...... • provides theoretical and practical as well as research perspectives for approaching technologies that support online communication for language learning • Examines tools such as forums, chats, audio, portals, online books, online journals and visual real-time platforms as well as virtual worlds and mobile devices • Reviews the literature that deals with these types of tools in an educational setting • Addresses various theoretical issues • Offers a summary of potential benefits (affordances) and challenges of learning and teaching a language via technologies • Authors direct teachers about research issues of relevance to them • Suggest do-able, small-scale projects • Provides and extensive annotated collection of online resources

6. Very good overview, keywords - easy to locate information Summary after every chapter Clearly lists affordances Addresses issues, anxieties, pitfalls, drawbacks very well Easy to read, provides further reading opportunities Good use of graphics, charts to visualize processes and findings Practitioner Research – especially helpful, lists some possible practticionerresearch projects, project templates

7. A lot of information, condensed, lacking a focus, lacking a leitmotif (thread), jumping a little too much from one topic into the next • Wish it was more task focused, describing tasks that could be used in the language classroom to enable good online communication, missing detailed examples and best practice • Simply lists a few websites of blogs, online books, online journals, online newsletters, information centers and portals, but offers little advice how they can be best used (I am missing the best-practice part) • list of abbreviations would have been helpful: Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), three-dimensional multiuser virtual environments (3-D MUVEs) etc. • - I get the feeling that sometimes it is assumed that the reader is very well acquainted with technology that is being addressed (that might not always be the case! What about novice teachers?) • As both authors are lectures at the Open University in Great Britain, I would have expected they would share more examples from their educational setting, their own online classroom syllabus, curriculum etc.