Breaking New Ground Online

Succumbing to conventional logic, pronunciation is certainly the one English skills course that must be taught person-to-person or onground. Steven Donahue presents a new model for teaching pronunciation online that links the elements of diagnostic tests, a continuum of teacher/student interaction, mastery tests, and individualized feedback.

Throwing down the gauntlet, the trainer for accrediting online facilitators recently quipped that, "Anything, including major brain surgery, can be taught online" as he pitched the virtues of a major course management software (CMS) concern.

Similarly, the boast of being able to teach pronunciation wholly online conjures up images of talking heads, mirrors, and fingers pointing to the lips and teeth. However, just as the new printed book revolutionized the traditional lectures of the Middle Ages, today's onground classes must be re-engineered for the virtual classroom.

Diagnostic Tests
Generally, nothing replaces a trained ear for determining pronunciation problems. However, at Broward Community College we have begun to prototype an online listening discrimination test for 131 features of English pronunciation. Frequently, pronunciation problems are reflected in the inability of the second language learner to discriminate the very sounds that he or she is attempting to produce. The pilot listening discrimination test is located at: http://fs.broward.cc.fl.us/~sdonahue/. Results from tests such as this can be used in conjunction with a heuristic based upon the native language group of the ESL student to key into pronunciation areas needing improvement.

Online/Onground Teaching Compared
The onground classroom is "Time Bound" and "Place Bound" (O'Banion, 1997, pp. 10-11). Researchers have found that generally, " students can only have 10 seconds of individual attention for every hour of class" or " one full week of individual instruction for the previous 13 years of school attendance." (Heuston, 1986, pp. 10-11). By extension, this ten-second-criteria would translate to 450 seconds or about eight minutes of individual treatment for an ESL college level pronunciation course. While the onground course may be augmented by a supportive language laboratory, the unforgiving time constraints of the synchronous classroom preclude lengthy teacher-student interactions. Touting the promise of computers, Bill Gates has observed, " Technology can humanize the education environment"( 1995, p.66), as a means to defeat the classroom calculus of time and place.
In some respects, the architecture of the synchronous onground pronunciation course is designed to produce the teaching of pronunciation. On the other hand, the goal of the asynchronous online pronunciation course is to produce the learning of pronunciation. Successful online courses must incorporate this shift of locus from teaching to learning. The online learning environment should provide " educational experiences for learners anyway, anyplace, anytime"(O'Banion, 1995-96, p. 22) and should be designed around the needs of the students.

Continuum of Teacher/Student Interaction
Onground pronunciation courses are frequently " based on a hierarchical model in which those who know teach those who do not know" (Cross, 1998, p. 3). Online instruction has a contrasting epistemology where knowledge is constructed through the social interaction of the teacher and students. Online pronunciation courses should have a cooperative or collaborative flavor. Cooperative Learning involves students working in groups on assigned problems under the guidance of the teacher. In contrast, Collaborative Learning is a step beyond and involves the teacher working with the students on a topic that does not have a predetermined answer.

A cooperative task involves students working on an assigned topic for which the teacher knows the general answer. Student responses are available to everyone in the group. The teacher facilitates and monitors the participation level of the group. Examples of cooperative pronunciation prompts could include:

• How many sounds are in English? What are they?
  
• Is there a consensus about the meaningful sounds present in English?
  
• Are there different opinions about the sounds present in English?
  
• What are the most challenging sounds in English to pronounce?
  

A collaborative task attempts to arrive at an answer through interaction and consensus building. While the teacher may initiate the topic for discussion, the answer to it is a unique product of the discussion group. Here, the teacher is an equal who participates with the class to discover new knowledge jointly. Examples of collaborative tasks could include:

• Not all accent idiosyncrasies for all speakers can be eliminated. By what strategies can these speakers turn an accent weakness into a strength?
  
• Non-native speakers of English now outnumber native speakers. Is there such a thing as a standard English anymore?
  
• Is there an ideal way to teach pronunciation of English?
  
• Is Global English an example of cultural imperialism, a medium for peace and prosperity, or simply the Language of the Day?
  

Mastery Tests
Concurrent with or following the treatment stage of an online pronunciation program is a mastery test that determines student progress. The posttest can mirror the initial diagnostic test or include tailored items:

• Test pronunciation principles learned during treatment
  
• Ask for metacognitive insights into producing English sounds
  
• Ask for emails of selected .wav files of student speech samples
  

Student Teacher Interaction
With currently available software and/or hardware packages, it is possible to perform sophisticated acoustic analysis of speech signals online. While this would be time-prohibitive to analyze each sound for every student, the trained teacher who is equipped with the results of the posttest can address the recalcitrant pronunciation problems of students on a sound-by-sound basis. Acoustic analysis includes the following features:

• Intonation -> analyze speech for pitch and amplitude.
  
• Stress -> analyze speech waveforms indicative of stress.
  
• Vowels -> analyze on vowel charts or through formants.
  
• Consonants -> analyze based on formant, voicing, and aspiration patterns.
  

The above has outlined a new model for teaching pronunciation online that links diagnostic tests, treatment involving a continuum of teacher involvement, mastery tests, and individual treatment via acoustic analysis. While some of the technology is just coming online, technology is not enough in itself, and it must be augmented with solid pedagogy. The locus of the online pronunciation class must be the delivery of learning, the promoting of active learning, and the construction of real-world knowledge of pronunciation that changes the participants in a meaningful way.

References:
Chickering, A.W., & Ehrmann, S.C. (1997) . "Implementing The Seven Principles: Technology as Lever". At http://www.aahe.org/technology/ehrmann.htm.
Cross, Patricia. "What Do We Know About Students' Learning and How Do We Know It." In AAHE's 1998 National Conference on Higher Education. At http://www.aahe.org/cross_lecture.htm.
Gates, Bill. "The Road Ahead," Newsweek, November 27, 1995.
Heuston, Dustin H. "The Future of Education: A Time of Hope and New Delivery Systems." Unpublished paper. [From O'Banion, Terry. A Learning College for the 21st Century. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1997.]
Kulik, Chen-Lin C. and Kulik, James, A. "Effectiveness of Computer-Based Instruction: An Updated Analysis," Computers in Human Behavior, 1991.
O'Banion, Terry. A Learning College for the 21st Century. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1997.

Steven Donahue, Professor of ESL, Broward Community College, Florida.