From: moliva@cc.utah.edu
Subject: Sono stato io, III
Organization: University of Utah Computer Center
Date: 24 Dec 92 20:07:29 MDT


Terri Cononelos (terri.cononelos@m.cc.utah.edu)
Maurizio Oliva (moliva@cc.utah.edu)


Teaching Languages with NEWS

     Although much has been written about the use of
computer software in language teaching, little emphasis
has been placed on the possibility of using computer
networks in this setting. Yet, Network Resources (NR)
such as Usenet (NEWS) and EMail do not have the
intrinsic restrictions that software does, i.e.
software is usually limited to specific systems and the
degree of interaction between the computer and the
student cannot be compared to that between human
correspondents. Because NR can connect students with
other native speakers, it is adaptable to the specific
needs and tastes of teachers and learners.
     Current theory holds that using language for the
purpose of communication, rather than focusing on the
memorization of vocabulary or grammatical rules,
facilitates language acquisition (See Krashen, 1985 and
Brinton et al., 1989). If interaction is the key to the
learning process then the learner will benefit by
communicating with the greatest possible number of
competent speakers. Learner motivation also seems to
play a part in language acquisition, and courses which
allow learners to choose their own topics of study have
been effective (see Legutke, 1991, p. 232 and Nunan,
1988, p. 22-24). We believe network use facilitates
language development by allowing communication with a
wide range of native speakers on topics of students'
choice.
     In this paper we will argue that the Internet
offers many resources which are useful in the teaching
and learning of languages. We will show how some of
these resources were used in a fourth-year Italian
class taught at the University of Utah by one of the
authors (Maurizio Oliva) in Spring 1992. In the first
section , we will briefly describe the development and
capabilities of Internet, EMail and NEWS. Then we will
discuss the network features used in Italian 401 and
the advantages they offer to the teaching of languages.


Development and capabilities of Internet

     According to Ed Krol (Krol 1989), the ARPANET was
the beginning of the international computer network. It
was an experimental network which connected hosts and
terminal servers together. In time the system operators
worked out standard procedures for the allocation of
addresses and other network operations. In time some
hosts became gateways to other machines or to local
networks: all this required the creation of a protocol,
called the Internet Protocol, to allow interoperation
among different systems. When finally the ARPA pulled
out from the ownership the networks started to be
called the Internet.(1) 
     The huge growth of the Internet (which as of July
1992 has approximately 800,000 hosts) and its division
in subsidiary nets did not harm interoperability, thus
allowing millions of scholars, researchers, scientists,
and fans to keep in touch with the world (Jones, 1989).
The people who access the net are numerous; every
machine hosts from one to several thousand people
(Jones, 1989). The services available through the net
are the most sophisticated and powerful in the world. 
It can be either the remote access to a supercomputer
to display elaborate graphics of lab results, or the
search and transfer of public domain software, or the
access to the library catalogs of most of the major
universities in the world or finally Usenet: one of the
most powerful  means of communication available to
individuals.  Three main procedures allow you to access
all those services: Electronic Mail (E-Mail), File
Transfer Protocol (FTP) and TELNET.  We will focus our
attention on E-Mail and the Usenet.   

E-Mail

     E-Mail is probably the most well known and largely
used of the Internet services. It is in fact a program
that is able to recognize standardized format
electronic addresses and transfer messages to a user on
a remote machine. 
     E-Mail on Internet, is very fast and efficient as
compared to Bitnet because it is either delivered
directly to the addressee or it  goes through only a
small number of gateways.(2)
     An analysis of an Internet address illustrates how
E-Mail works.  In the address MOLIVA@CC.UTAH.EDU,
"MOLIVA" is the userid (user identification), "CC" is
the name of the machine where the account is located,
"UTAH.EDU"  is the domain where "EDU" signals that the
organization is an educational institution, as opposed
to COM (commercial), GOV (government agencies) MIL
(military) or ORG (other organizations) in the United
States. In the rest of the world addresses end with the
code of the country (e.g. 
MOLIVA@GHOST.SM.DSI.UNIMI.IT, where "IT" stands for
Italy).  Although the most powerful computers are often
on all the major networks (Internet, Bitnet and
Decnet),  it might happen that a user on a machine
connected only to the Internet needs to send E-Mail to
another user a  connected only to the Bitnet.  In this
case it would be necessary to go through a gateway
(Jones 1989).

NEWS

      Another feature of the neworks is Usenet,
commonly referred to as NEWS.  Spafford claims that in
trying to define Usenet one must focus on the use that
people make of it: 
Usenet is the set of people who exchange articles
tagged with 
one or more universally-recognized labels, called
'newsgroups'.  Usenet encompasses government agencies,
large universities, high schools, businesses of all
sizes, home computers of all descriptions, etc.  Every
administrator controls his own site.  No one has any
real control over any site but his own. 'Upstream'
sites have some influence on their neighbors'
participation in Usenet.  But such influence is usually
easy to circumvent; and heavy-handed manipulation
typically results in a backlash of resentment.  To help
hold Usenet together, various articles are periodically
posted in newsgroups in the "news" hierarchy.  These
articles are provided as a public service by various
volunteers....

Usenet as a whole is not a democracy.  However, there
is exactly one feature of Usenet that has a form of
democracy: newsgroup creation.  A new newsgroup is
unlikely to be widely propagated unless its sponsor
follows the newsgroup creation guidelines; and the
current guidelines require a new newsgroup to pass an
open vote.  There is no higher authority on Usenet than
the people who own the machines on which Usenet traffic
is carried (1992). 
Although there is no authority in charge of enforcing
regulations on Usenet a set of widely accepted
guidelines has been worked out for topics like
"netiquette" (network etiquette),  newsgroup creation, 
or to prevent commercial advertising and other forms of 
abuse.  A violation of these guidelines would lead to a 
reaction by the other users, directed to the system 
operator who manages the account where the abuse 
originated.
       Most of the people who read NEWS use the
Internet but it is possible to receive it also by mail
on the Bitnet or to access it from some sublink with
limited capabilities. Also most of the people who read
NEWS are on a UNIX machine and probably based at an
American organization, and they use the ASCII code. 
But we know that many other people on VMS machines are
readers of NEWS or that newsgroups with area
distribution may use a special set of characters (ie,
Japanese kanji).(3)  People who communicate on NEWS in
languages other than English and want to reach the
widest audience possible for their posting would be
best off choosing to use only characters in the
fundamental ASCII set for their writing. However, in
doing so they  give up the possibility of accurately
representing all the features of the language they are
writing.(4)
     NEWS carries mostly personal articles posted by
users from many countries as well as some news
information services. The articles are organized into
many main groups including alt (alternative), comp
(computer), news (the "metagroup"), rec (recreative),
sci (science), soc (society), talk, etc.  Thousands of
newsgroups are distributed in the United States.  The
following list is a sample of some of them:

     alt.hypertext        Uses of the hypertext and
technicalities
     comp.sys.laptops         Portable PCs and related
     news.announce.newusers  Periodical digests to
explain the functioning of NEWS
     rec. cooking        Food, cooking, cookbooks and
recipes
     sci.lang            discussions related to natural
language
     soc.culture. mexican     Discussion of Mexico's
society
     talk.politics.china      Discussion of political
issues related to China

     The wide range of cultures represented in the 
soc.culture newsgroups and the fact the most of the
postings are in the corresponding language makes the
network useful for a wide variety of language teachers.
As we said the reproduction of these languages is
"approximated" using the non extended ASCII set; in the
case of European languages these degree of
approximation is quite acceptable. In the case of
Italian, the graphic representation of the stressed
vowels a, i, u, o, e, are easily replaced by a sequence
vowel plus apostrophe such as: a', i', u', o', e'.
For the purposes of the Italian course, the instructor
focused on the group called soc.culture.italian (SCI). 
SCI is a worldwide newsgroup where people, mostly
Italian, post and read articles about Italian culture
mostly in Italian.  On the average, roughly 150
articles are posted in this newsgroup each week. 


Description of the course

     "Topics in Italian Culture: Contemporary Issues", was a
fourth-year course taught at the University of Utah, Spring
quarter of 1992.  It was the last in a series of three courses
about the contemporary history, literature and society of Italy. 
Six students enrolled, all of whom had achieved advanced levels of
proficiency in reading, writing and speaking Italian.  The goals
of the course were to increase students' knowledge of Italian
society and to engage them in producing authentic text for the
purpose of communicating with native speakers about important
issues.  All aspects of the course were taught in Italian.
     Students spent the first two weeks reading background
material related to Italian society and culture, gathering the
basic tools necessary to use the Network and choosing the topic
which would be the focus of their study during the quarter.   The
teacher supplied a list of possible topics related to contemporary
Italian society about which students could communicate (via
written text sent on NEWS) with native speakers.  Those who had an
area of interest or expertise not included on the list were
encouraged to pursue it. Among the topics chosen were Italian
opera, the role of women in Italy and Italy's place in the EEC.
     Since students were to be communicating with highly educated
native speakers about contemporary issues, it was necessary that
they have solid background knowledge about their topics and be
familiar with basic information about the political and social
structures of modern Italy.  Toward this end the teacher assigned
readings concerning Italy's constitution and political parties, 
the structure of Italian government institutions, and demographic
information (including population, education level,  unemployment
and migration patterns).  Students also read newspaper and journal
articles relevant to their individual topics of study.  
        During the first two weeks, the teacher discussed the
assigned readings and helped students get ready to use the
computers.  They began by obtaining accounts on the Novell network
from the University Computer Center, which enabled them to link up
with worldwide news networks.(5)
     The instructor then reviewed basic word processing skills on
Wordperfect,  and taught students how to use the Program Editor
(PE) and how to access and use the newsreader, and IMail.(6)  The
PE program was chosen because it looks like Wordperfect but
produces ASCII files which were necessary to post in NEWS.  The
instructor selected a DOS newsreader that was menu-driven and
therefore user friendly.  IMail is a menu driven E-Mail manager
for DOS that is fast and allows students to communicate with each
other as well as with other users of NEWS.(7) 
     Beginning the third week students were required to send
three postings per week to NEWS.  These were written at home so
that class time could be spent sending text to the network,
checking mail, and discussing other students' postings.  (Students
read each others work either before or after in was sent to the
network.)  Those who wished to receive comments from the teacher
prior to posting their texts were able to do so.  The teacher
checked NEWS to make sure students were completing the required
amount of writing as well as to monitor the overall quality of the
texts.  Since a good deal of the monitoring was done during class,
the teacher spent a minimal amount of time outside class reading
students' work.  Moreover the teacher had the possibility to
perform this part of the work at home by connecting to the campus
network by modem.
     Students received an average of three responses for each
article they posted and were required to reply to everyone that
posted a follow-up comment through the NEWS network.(8)  This was
done either by writing an individual reply to each response, or by
writing one text containing replies to various respondents. 
Students also received responses to their news texts through IMail
and were encouraged to reply to those as well.  Since IMail
accounts are private, however, the teacher was only able to
monitor the frequency with which the students replied to responses
sent through the NEWS network.
     At the end of the course, students submitted a summary and
analysis  of the materials they had posted and the reactions they
had received.  They also participated in an evaluation session in
which they commented on various aspects of the course.  All the
students believed their writing had improved as a result of having
communicated through the network.  One student stated specifically
that she had overcome grammar problems, while the others reported
feeling more at ease with writing in Italian.  Students suggested
that courses using NEWS also be taught in the third year, based on
their belief that writers at a lower level of proficiency would
also be able to effectively use the resources


Conclusion

     In conclusion we would like to discuss some of the benefits
and challenges associated with using NEWS in language teaching. In
a language learning setting which is based upon interaction, NEWS
has been very effective, given the enormous number of readers (in
the order of hundreds of thousands) and the large number of
regular readers of SCI. Even when a tiny percentage of the readers
of SCI are interested in engaging in discussions following the
postings of the students, this is still a large number. Most of
the readers of SCI are native speakers or have a high degree of
knowledge of the Italian language. All this alleviates the burden
of the teacher as far as feedback to the students is concerned:
there is less need for teacher feedback since there is interaction
with readers of NEWS.
     The correspondence between students and other readers may
take place at two different levels: public with followups on NEWS
or private with EMail replies. The interaction may lead to a
relationship between students and correspondents which extends
beyond the time frame of the class.
     That the use of network resources is not tied nor limited to
a specific software or hardware requirement is also an advantage.
It can be reproduced in almost any facility which is connected to
the Internet. Using the resources on the networks allows the
teachers flexibility in adapting to the various situations of
their institutions. The decision of what operating system to work
with, what editor and mailer etc. to choose, is best met after
considering what is available on site.
     Learning languages with NEWS also presents challenges.
Sometimes it requires skills that teachers and students do not
have initially. This necessitates preliminary work by the teachers
in determining which tools are available at their institution and
are best suited for their purposes. Exploring how those tools can
be applied to classes and teaching students how to use them also
takes time. In the case of Italian 401 students learned the
necessary skills in the first two weeks of class.
     We think that some questions have been raised by this work
and would like to address the Internet community with some
considerations. Italian 401 was possibly the first language class
taught using NEWS. This condition could have contributed to its
success. What would happen if such an experience were replicated
at different institutions and the number of students in the same
newsgroup increased tenfold? What would the reaction of the
regular readers be? What consequences would this have on the
effectiveness of the means?
     We believe that any answers to the previous questions must
consider that NEWS is a "living entity" continuously growing and
evolving and that its growth is directly determined by each and
all of its users through a process called "newsgroup creation".
For example new structures dedicated to the purpose of language
teaching could be created inside NEWS if too many students posted
on any one newsgroup. Once a general interest exists. it is easy
to create newsgroups dedicated to the study of specific languages,
moderate them and find a combination of topics that makes them
attractive to native speakers who remain the primary target of
interaction.


Notes


1.  While in the United States the approach to this new reality
has been one of "deregulation", leading to the blossoming of
hundreds of thousands of machine connected to the internet as
hosts, in the rest of the world and especially in European
countries we witnessed the growth of "benign" monopolies, in the
hands of governmental agencies.

 2. The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the Internet
standard protocol for transferring electronic mail messages from
one machine to another.  SMTP specifies how two mail systems
interact and the format of control messages they exchange to
transfer mail.  

3. The ASCII set of characters is constituted by 128 characters of
whom 94 are printable: almost every operating system based on
ASCII uses an extended set, but, to be able to communicate with
any machine system is preferable to use the lowest common
denominator. 

4.  The International Standard Organization (ISO) developed a set
of caracters where some section were fixed and some smaller
sections were variable according to national standards. The United
States national set of characters was called American Standard
Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), developed by ANSII.
Since most of the Networking comes from United States this has
become by large the most widespread set f caracters in the World.
To compensate, writers of romance languages in Usenet newsgroups
have substituted existing ASCII symbols for many of the marks (ie,
the apostrophe is used after a vowel to signify that it is written
with an accent. Thus, citt is written citta' and perch becomes
perche').

5.  All of these tools run under DOS which is an environment
familiar to the many university students.  At the University of
Utah, the tools are installed on a Local Area Network (LAN)
connected with the campus NOVELL network so that they can be
accessed from many different campus locations. 

6.  In order to receive an account students registered themselves
at the University Computer Center. Obtaining accounts proved to be
a somewhat cumbersome and inefficient process.  Some students were
not able to get their accounts functioning until the end of the
second week.  In anticipation of the  Fall 1992 course, the
instructor has arranged for the students to be given an 
IMail account automatically upon registering for the course.

7.  IMail has been written by David Hoisve and installed on the
Novell campus network at the University of Utah. It is
particularly easy and fast, since almost every command is
performed by simply selecting with the arrows and pushing enter. I
found it to be very well suited to the purposes of Italian 401,
given that most of the students were familiar with the DOS
environment and IMail does require a very short training.

8.  Only one student received considerably less than the average
number of replies per posting.  When the teacher suggested he
change his topic, the student refused.  He continued to produce
the required amount of text and wait patiently for a sympathetic
interlocutor.


References


Brinton, D., M.A. Snow, M.B. Wesche. "Content Based Second
Language Instruction". New York: Newbury House, 1989.

Greenia, G.  "Computers and Teaching Composition in a Foreign
Language."
Foreign Language Annals  25(1992):33-45.

Johnson, E.  "Teaching on international computer networks." 
Dakota State University at Madison, South Dakota.  Computer
readable article.
     eric@sdnet.bitnet. 1992.
Jones, P. "What is the Internet?" Academic Computing Services,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  EMail.
(pjones@samba.acs.unc.edu). 1989.

Krashen, S.D. "The Imput Hypothesis: Issues and Implications".
London: Lomgman, 1985.

Krol, E.  "Hitchhiker's guide to the Internet."  University of
Illinois at Urbana.  Computer readable article (RFC #1118), 1992.

Krol, E.  "The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog." O'Reilly
and Associates, 1992.

Legutke, M., H. Thomas. "Process and experience in the language
classroom". New York: Longman, 1991.

Lunde, K. "Using Electronic Mail as a Medium for Foreign Language
Study and Instruction.  CALICO Journal  7(1990):68-78.

Nunan, D. "The Learner Centered Curriculum". Melbourne: Cambridge
University Press, 1988.

Spafford, G. "What is Usenet?/part one." Purdue University.  NEWS
Posting in news.announce. newusers.  Article #537, 1992.




ANNEX 



	This section is meant to propose an example of a posting and 
its followup reproducing the format they have on the newsreader (most 
of the newsreaders) screen. The first part of each posting, the header, 
contains useful information about the electronic address and name of
the author, the newsgroups of distribution, the subject (all the 
followups have a "Re:" to introduce the subject), the date andtime of
posting.
	The body of the posting carries other particularities such as: 
the electronic reference (including author, address, subject and time) 
for every quote, the sign > or similar (specified by he user) to 
introduce every line of quoting.









X-NEWS: cc.utah.edu soc.culture.italian: 2509Newsgroups: soc.culture.italian