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Development of students’ spoken language in an online French course: Presentation of continuing doctoral research

Development of students’ spoken language in an online French course: Presentation of continuing... 1IntroductionIn recent years, digital technology has become more widely used in many activities, including language teaching. Even teaching language speaking, which until recently largely involved face-to-face methods, has shifted to online education. The doctoral research described in this contribution examines the development of speaking in one online university course of French language at the A2 level. Its aim is to find out firstly how three components of spoken performance (complexity, accuracy and fluency – in short, CAF) developed during a one-term online intervention and secondly whether this development could have been influenced by some aspects of the intervention.The literature shows that following students’ spoken performance in online courses is a topical subject, as there are several studies investigating the speaking of students in either fully online or blended courses. These studies were largely made during English lessons at an advanced level (Brudermann 2013; Grosbois 2009; Guyangying 2014; Kim 2014; Kirgöz 2011; Talaván and Lertola 2015; Yaneske and Oates 2010); fewer involved a lower level (Kim and Chang 2010), a beginner level (Sydorenko et al. 2018) or a language other than English (Sydorenko et al. 2018). The results of the present research, focusing on a French online course at beginner level, will help to fill this gap. Also, the studies are not uniform in the described measures. This research uses the triad CAF, which is particularly helpful as it accounts for “how and why language competencies develop for specific learners and target languages, in response to particular tasks, teaching and other stimuli, and mapped against the details of developmental rate, route and ultimate outcomes” (Norris and Ortega 2009: 557). CAF is widely used for assessing the performance of English as a foreign language but so far has been only sparsely used for the analysis of French. The results of the research will thus also contribute to the research of CAF in the context of French as a foreign language where the research in this field is not yet very extensive (Van Daele et al. 2008).2Theoretical background: complexity, accuracy and fluency in second language developmentMany authors nowadays agree that language proficiency is a complex and multidimensional construct which is not to be measured by a single quantity. For example, Housen et al. (2012: 1) affirm that “L2 proficiency is not a unitary construct” but is “multicomponential in nature” and “its principal components can be fruitfully captured by the notions of complexity, fluency and accuracy”. This three-dimensional model (also Ellis 2009; Kowal 2016; Michel 2017; Norris and Ortega 2009; Skehan 1996; Van Daele et al. 2008) first entered the L2 pedagogy in the mid-nineties. It was introduced by Skehan (1996, 1998), who based it on a previously used model of fluency and accuracy (Brumfit 1979) and added the aspect of complexity. Though the definitions of the three concepts may vary, in general complexity is “the ability to use a wide and varied range of sophisticated structures and vocabulary”, accuracy “the ability to produce target-like and error-free language” and fluency “the ability to produce the L2 with native-like rapidity, pausing, hesitation or reformulation” (Housen et al. 2012: 2). The three components do not have a linear development and research shows that progress in one of them may signify a regression or stagnation in the other two, and also that their development depends on many variables such as the nature of the observed task (Bygate 1996; Skehan and Foster 1997), the preparation time before the task (Skehan 1996; Yuan and Ellis 2003) and others. In more recent research, the online environment has sometimes been included as one of the variables together with, for example, planning time before the task (Fazilatfar et al. 2020), guided careful online planning (Ahmadian 2011) and e-collaborative tasks (Azodi and Lotfi 2020). In any case, it is evident that the aspects of CAF are multidimensional, reflecting thus the multidimensional nature of the language.3MethodologyThe first aim of the research is to find out how the spoken performance in terms of CAF developed during one term within a target group composed of university students of French at the A2 level. The research question connected to this aim is: How did the complexity, accuracy and fluency of participants’ spoken performance develop as a result of the intervention? Based on some studies on a similar topic and due to the nature of the intervention, it can be expected that complexity and fluency might develop faster than accuracy, especially because an important part of the intervention was speaking activities of the same type as the pre-test and post-test: therefore, the improvement in these components is expected thanks to the task-preparedness of the students. However, taking into consideration that CAF as well as language learning can be influenced by various agents, the second aim is to find out whether some aspects of the intervention, or other factors, could have influenced this development. The research questions for this aim are: 1) How do students assess the online resources they used? 2) Is a relationship observable between students’ use of the resources provided and the development of their spoken French? 3) Is it possible to observe a relationship between some other factor and the development of their spoken French?The research is designed as a multiple-case study with 11 students of the French course as participants of the research (three men and eight women), each student forming a single case of the study. It is an available sample: among the students of the course, only those who had not learned French before and who agreed to take part in the research by signing an informed consent form were chosen. These participants were students of various fields of study (such as politics, law, medicine, media, psychology and economics); four of them were in their bachelor’s studies and seven in their master’s studies. All of them were either of Czech or Slovak nationality with Czech or Slovak as their L1 (the two languages are very close to each other).The multiple case study method was chosen as it allowed a smaller group of cases to be looked at each studied in “depth and within its real-world context” (Yin 2018: 15) before relating it to the others and looking for similarities and differences which could be generalised (Stake 2006: 1–4). Relying on multiple sources of evidence, this method also allowed not only the controlled variables but also other contextual factors to be considered (Yin 2018: 15). The relationship between the independent variable (the intervention) and the dependent variables (spoken complexity, accuracy and fluency) are thus examined in the research together with other, external factors (participants’ opinion on various activities of the course, time spent on studying, and others).The data were gathered in the third term of the course, when the students should have already reached the A2 level. The course consisted of 13 synchronous two-hour sessions and weekly asynchronous tasks. Its content was composed so that all students had the same opportunity to practise speaking, both in monologue and interaction. The students had three obligations: to participate in weekly synchronous lessons via MS Teams during which they practised, among other things, spoken interaction; to do weekly online homework to revise grammar, vocabulary, writing, reading and speaking in monologue (tasks similar to the pre-test and post-test); and to submit two recordings with their speeches. These two sets of recordings with a two to three-minute monologue made by all students at the beginning of the term (pre-test) and at the end (post-test) form the primary data for the research. The pre-test, post-test design was chosen to analyse the spoken performance before and after the intervention, and thus to assess its development. In the pre-test, students were asked to describe their house, and in the post-test, to talk about a close friend. To ensure that all students had comparable conditions, they received the assignments all at the same time and had to record and upload their speech in a given time. The secondary data are semi-structured interviews in which the participants were asked especially about their motivation, the time they spent studying, their access to other French sources and their opinion on the intervention, in particular in relation to speaking.The recordings were transcribed in AS-units (an AS-unit is a unit for measuring spoken language and was defined by Foster et al. 2000), as these facilitate the analysis of all three dimensions of CAF. The transcriptions include repetitions, false starts, self-corrections, errors and incomprehensible expressions and highlight phonetic mistakes important for the analysis of accuracy. All sensitive data were anonymised. The recordings were then analysed for accuracy by counting the percentage of errors per total words, categorising each error and describing the nature of the errors in the categories. The categories used were inspired by Tagliante (2001: 152–153); they are: linguistic errors (including morphologic, lexical and syntactic errors), phonetic errors, sociocultural errors, strategic errors and discursive errors. The transcription and categorisation of the errors were done with the help of an experienced native French speaker. In the near future, the recordings will be analysed for complexity by counting the mean length of AS-unit and the number of clauses per AS-unit (these are both means of measuring grammatical complexity), and by measuring the type-token ratio and number of lexical words per function words (lexical complexity). The measures were chosen so that they are realisable at the A2 level (Bulté and Housen 2012; Michel 2017). Fluency, the last aspect of CAF, will be measured by counting the number of syllables per second and repairs per hundred words (Michel 2017). The analysis of CAF will be enriched with data from the interviews analysed by the open-coding method. Each single case of the study will be examined and evaluated separately before doing the final cross-case evaluation and looking for similarities and differences across the cases (Stake 2006: 6), trying thus to understand the possible influence of the intervention (or other factors) on the spoken performance.4The analysis of accuracyThe results of the analysis of accuracy suggest three findings which will be tested in the following stages of the research. Firstly, the percentage of errors in the pre-test and post-test is in most cases comparable. Only two students improved their accuracy significantly, but in both cases, one can judge from listening to the recording that the improvement in accuracy was at the expense of other components: one respondent speaks very slowly and imparts almost no information while the second corrects himself several times in each sentence. The resulting speeches are thus accurate, but do not seem fluent or complex. Secondly, the categorisation of errors shows that morphologic errors were less numerous in the post-test than in the pre-test, and that phonetic errors were, on the other hand, more numerous. The greater number of pronunciation errors is probably due to the online character of the course, which might not have favoured this aspect of language enough. This is confirmed by some of the interviews analysed, in which the respondents say that they had enough opportunities for practising speaking, but not for correcting their pronunciation. Thirdly, when examining the errors, one can notice the use of more grammatical structures and richer vocabulary in the post-test than in the pre-test, especially in what concerns linguistic errors. For example, the errors in determinants in the pre-test contain only wrongly used articles and the possessive mon [my] (j’aime *chats, *un table, avec *moi parents), while in the post-test one can also find other incorrectly used determinants (*son famille, avec *l’autre gens). The greater variety of errors here seems to mirror students’ progress in complexity.5ConclusionThe present paper described continuing doctoral research that is examining the development of spoken language during an online course of French in terms of CAF, and it outlined the results of an analysis of accuracy that has been completed. These indicate that language performance cannot be judged solely by one aspect of CAF: many errors identified in this research seem to be a sign of the use of more complex structures; and precise and accurate language without errors is not always complex or fluent. The number of phonetic errors and some replies in the interviews suggest that the online course did not place enough emphasis on pronunciation. These hypotheses will be tested in the next stages of the research which will focus on the analysis of complexity and fluency as well as on finishing the interview analysis. The findings will provide beneficial information for language teachers about the process of acquisition of spoken French in online courses by showing the difficulties that students might encounter in such scenarios and thus enabling the development of speaking quality in particular with regard to the CAF triad. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png European Journal of Applied Linguistics de Gruyter

Development of students’ spoken language in an online French course: Presentation of continuing doctoral research

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Abstract

1IntroductionIn recent years, digital technology has become more widely used in many activities, including language teaching. Even teaching language speaking, which until recently largely involved face-to-face methods, has shifted to online education. The doctoral research described in this contribution examines the development of speaking in one online university course of French language at the A2 level. Its aim is to find out firstly how three components of spoken performance (complexity, accuracy and fluency – in short, CAF) developed during a one-term online intervention and secondly whether this development could have been influenced by some aspects of the intervention.The literature shows that following students’ spoken performance in online courses is a topical subject, as there are several studies investigating the speaking of students in either fully online or blended courses. These studies were largely made during English lessons at an advanced level (Brudermann 2013; Grosbois 2009; Guyangying 2014; Kim 2014; Kirgöz 2011; Talaván and Lertola 2015; Yaneske and Oates 2010); fewer involved a lower level (Kim and Chang 2010), a beginner level (Sydorenko et al. 2018) or a language other than English (Sydorenko et al. 2018). The results of the present research, focusing on a French online course at beginner level, will help to fill this gap. Also, the studies are not uniform in the described measures. This research uses the triad CAF, which is particularly helpful as it accounts for “how and why language competencies develop for specific learners and target languages, in response to particular tasks, teaching and other stimuli, and mapped against the details of developmental rate, route and ultimate outcomes” (Norris and Ortega 2009: 557). CAF is widely used for assessing the performance of English as a foreign language but so far has been only sparsely used for the analysis of French. The results of the research will thus also contribute to the research of CAF in the context of French as a foreign language where the research in this field is not yet very extensive (Van Daele et al. 2008).2Theoretical background: complexity, accuracy and fluency in second language developmentMany authors nowadays agree that language proficiency is a complex and multidimensional construct which is not to be measured by a single quantity. For example, Housen et al. (2012: 1) affirm that “L2 proficiency is not a unitary construct” but is “multicomponential in nature” and “its principal components can be fruitfully captured by the notions of complexity, fluency and accuracy”. This three-dimensional model (also Ellis 2009; Kowal 2016; Michel 2017; Norris and Ortega 2009; Skehan 1996; Van Daele et al. 2008) first entered the L2 pedagogy in the mid-nineties. It was introduced by Skehan (1996, 1998), who based it on a previously used model of fluency and accuracy (Brumfit 1979) and added the aspect of complexity. Though the definitions of the three concepts may vary, in general complexity is “the ability to use a wide and varied range of sophisticated structures and vocabulary”, accuracy “the ability to produce target-like and error-free language” and fluency “the ability to produce the L2 with native-like rapidity, pausing, hesitation or reformulation” (Housen et al. 2012: 2). The three components do not have a linear development and research shows that progress in one of them may signify a regression or stagnation in the other two, and also that their development depends on many variables such as the nature of the observed task (Bygate 1996; Skehan and Foster 1997), the preparation time before the task (Skehan 1996; Yuan and Ellis 2003) and others. In more recent research, the online environment has sometimes been included as one of the variables together with, for example, planning time before the task (Fazilatfar et al. 2020), guided careful online planning (Ahmadian 2011) and e-collaborative tasks (Azodi and Lotfi 2020). In any case, it is evident that the aspects of CAF are multidimensional, reflecting thus the multidimensional nature of the language.3MethodologyThe first aim of the research is to find out how the spoken performance in terms of CAF developed during one term within a target group composed of university students of French at the A2 level. The research question connected to this aim is: How did the complexity, accuracy and fluency of participants’ spoken performance develop as a result of the intervention? Based on some studies on a similar topic and due to the nature of the intervention, it can be expected that complexity and fluency might develop faster than accuracy, especially because an important part of the intervention was speaking activities of the same type as the pre-test and post-test: therefore, the improvement in these components is expected thanks to the task-preparedness of the students. However, taking into consideration that CAF as well as language learning can be influenced by various agents, the second aim is to find out whether some aspects of the intervention, or other factors, could have influenced this development. The research questions for this aim are: 1) How do students assess the online resources they used? 2) Is a relationship observable between students’ use of the resources provided and the development of their spoken French? 3) Is it possible to observe a relationship between some other factor and the development of their spoken French?The research is designed as a multiple-case study with 11 students of the French course as participants of the research (three men and eight women), each student forming a single case of the study. It is an available sample: among the students of the course, only those who had not learned French before and who agreed to take part in the research by signing an informed consent form were chosen. These participants were students of various fields of study (such as politics, law, medicine, media, psychology and economics); four of them were in their bachelor’s studies and seven in their master’s studies. All of them were either of Czech or Slovak nationality with Czech or Slovak as their L1 (the two languages are very close to each other).The multiple case study method was chosen as it allowed a smaller group of cases to be looked at each studied in “depth and within its real-world context” (Yin 2018: 15) before relating it to the others and looking for similarities and differences which could be generalised (Stake 2006: 1–4). Relying on multiple sources of evidence, this method also allowed not only the controlled variables but also other contextual factors to be considered (Yin 2018: 15). The relationship between the independent variable (the intervention) and the dependent variables (spoken complexity, accuracy and fluency) are thus examined in the research together with other, external factors (participants’ opinion on various activities of the course, time spent on studying, and others).The data were gathered in the third term of the course, when the students should have already reached the A2 level. The course consisted of 13 synchronous two-hour sessions and weekly asynchronous tasks. Its content was composed so that all students had the same opportunity to practise speaking, both in monologue and interaction. The students had three obligations: to participate in weekly synchronous lessons via MS Teams during which they practised, among other things, spoken interaction; to do weekly online homework to revise grammar, vocabulary, writing, reading and speaking in monologue (tasks similar to the pre-test and post-test); and to submit two recordings with their speeches. These two sets of recordings with a two to three-minute monologue made by all students at the beginning of the term (pre-test) and at the end (post-test) form the primary data for the research. The pre-test, post-test design was chosen to analyse the spoken performance before and after the intervention, and thus to assess its development. In the pre-test, students were asked to describe their house, and in the post-test, to talk about a close friend. To ensure that all students had comparable conditions, they received the assignments all at the same time and had to record and upload their speech in a given time. The secondary data are semi-structured interviews in which the participants were asked especially about their motivation, the time they spent studying, their access to other French sources and their opinion on the intervention, in particular in relation to speaking.The recordings were transcribed in AS-units (an AS-unit is a unit for measuring spoken language and was defined by Foster et al. 2000), as these facilitate the analysis of all three dimensions of CAF. The transcriptions include repetitions, false starts, self-corrections, errors and incomprehensible expressions and highlight phonetic mistakes important for the analysis of accuracy. All sensitive data were anonymised. The recordings were then analysed for accuracy by counting the percentage of errors per total words, categorising each error and describing the nature of the errors in the categories. The categories used were inspired by Tagliante (2001: 152–153); they are: linguistic errors (including morphologic, lexical and syntactic errors), phonetic errors, sociocultural errors, strategic errors and discursive errors. The transcription and categorisation of the errors were done with the help of an experienced native French speaker. In the near future, the recordings will be analysed for complexity by counting the mean length of AS-unit and the number of clauses per AS-unit (these are both means of measuring grammatical complexity), and by measuring the type-token ratio and number of lexical words per function words (lexical complexity). The measures were chosen so that they are realisable at the A2 level (Bulté and Housen 2012; Michel 2017). Fluency, the last aspect of CAF, will be measured by counting the number of syllables per second and repairs per hundred words (Michel 2017). The analysis of CAF will be enriched with data from the interviews analysed by the open-coding method. Each single case of the study will be examined and evaluated separately before doing the final cross-case evaluation and looking for similarities and differences across the cases (Stake 2006: 6), trying thus to understand the possible influence of the intervention (or other factors) on the spoken performance.4The analysis of accuracyThe results of the analysis of accuracy suggest three findings which will be tested in the following stages of the research. Firstly, the percentage of errors in the pre-test and post-test is in most cases comparable. Only two students improved their accuracy significantly, but in both cases, one can judge from listening to the recording that the improvement in accuracy was at the expense of other components: one respondent speaks very slowly and imparts almost no information while the second corrects himself several times in each sentence. The resulting speeches are thus accurate, but do not seem fluent or complex. Secondly, the categorisation of errors shows that morphologic errors were less numerous in the post-test than in the pre-test, and that phonetic errors were, on the other hand, more numerous. The greater number of pronunciation errors is probably due to the online character of the course, which might not have favoured this aspect of language enough. This is confirmed by some of the interviews analysed, in which the respondents say that they had enough opportunities for practising speaking, but not for correcting their pronunciation. Thirdly, when examining the errors, one can notice the use of more grammatical structures and richer vocabulary in the post-test than in the pre-test, especially in what concerns linguistic errors. For example, the errors in determinants in the pre-test contain only wrongly used articles and the possessive mon [my] (j’aime *chats, *un table, avec *moi parents), while in the post-test one can also find other incorrectly used determinants (*son famille, avec *l’autre gens). The greater variety of errors here seems to mirror students’ progress in complexity.5ConclusionThe present paper described continuing doctoral research that is examining the development of spoken language during an online course of French in terms of CAF, and it outlined the results of an analysis of accuracy that has been completed. These indicate that language performance cannot be judged solely by one aspect of CAF: many errors identified in this research seem to be a sign of the use of more complex structures; and precise and accurate language without errors is not always complex or fluent. The number of phonetic errors and some replies in the interviews suggest that the online course did not place enough emphasis on pronunciation. These hypotheses will be tested in the next stages of the research which will focus on the analysis of complexity and fluency as well as on finishing the interview analysis. The findings will provide beneficial information for language teachers about the process of acquisition of spoken French in online courses by showing the difficulties that students might encounter in such scenarios and thus enabling the development of speaking quality in particular with regard to the CAF triad.

Journal

European Journal of Applied Linguistics – de Gruyter

Published: Sep 1, 2022

Keywords: spoken French; online teaching; complexity; accuracy; fluency; production orale en français; enseignement en ligne; complexité; précision; fluidité; mluvený projev ve francouzštině; online výuka; komplexnost; přesnost; plynulost

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