Analyzing oral skills in voice e-mail and online interviews

This study investigated the acquisition of speaking skills in an online distance education course of 19 first semester Spanish learners.The possibility of oral development in a strictly online course was examined based on students' pronunciation production in two types of recorded speaking activities and in two real-time conversations.Students created two types of voiced audio e-mails each week during the semester: read aloud passages and grammar-drill completions.In order to determine whether students' pronunciation indeed improved over the course of the semester, their performance on these two types of audio e-mails were compared at the beginning of the semester and at the end of the semester.In addition, students participated in two Internet-mediated oral conversations with their instructor using MSN messaging at the mid-term week and final week of the semester.Three kinds of data were collected from the conversations: an articulation score (articulation = pronunciation, stress, and intonation), an accuracy score, and a proficiency score.Students' performance on these interviews provided further evidence regarding the development of their oral skills.The findings suggest that only in the area of oral proficiency were there significant gains in scores. Distance Education at CentralTexas College began in the 1970s with correspondence courses and telecourses.In 1995, conference courses were offered to different locations in real-time --called V-Tel.By 1997, the first Web-based distance education courses were developed and offered to military personnel and their dependents at Central Texas College's U.S. continental campus sites and around the world.Today, more than 150 distance education courses are offered.Fall 2003 was the first semester in Lisa M. Volle Capturing the Development of Foreign Language Oral Skills... Language Learning & Technology 147which an exclusively online foreign language course was offered.The current study investigates speaking activities and measures for this first semester online Spanish course.This article first presents the pertinent literature on Internet-based foreign language activities and computer-mediated communication (CMC) addressing the lack of literature on online foreign language classes.Next follows a review of the literature of second language speech development, after which I introduce the research questions and study's methodology.The last section presents the findings and analyses, concluding with implications for teaching and suggestions for future studies. LITERATURE REVIEW The Internet and CMC in FL LearningMost literature focuses on the Internet as an adjunct to the classroom and not as the focus of the meeting classroom itself (Swaffar, Romano, Markley, & Arens, 1998;Warschauer, 1996).Students attend laboratory sessions to complete activities independently from the regular flow of the classroom.To foster communication in authentic ways, many propose the use of e-mail as a tool for use in foreign language classes (Aitsiselmi, 1999;Gonzalez-Bueno, 1998;Leahy, 2001;Stockwell & Harrington, 2003;Van Handle & Corl, 1998).Van Handle ( 1998) used e-mail with intermediate FL German students for learnerto-learner exchanges.It was found that the quality of messages was enhanced but not the accuracy.Gonzalez-Bueno's (1998) study with third semester FL Spanish students found that there was no effect on accuracy in the e-mailed journal entries.However, the quantity of words used in the entries increased as compared to the notebook and pencil entries.Aitsiselmi (1999) used e-mail with first and second semester FL French students in a non-native speaker (NNS) to native speaker (NS) exchange.He found that the email pattern of communication resembled oral F2F chats.Students perceived the activity as similar to speech, reporting that the message was more important than grammatical accuracy.Leahy ( 2001) conducted an international e-mail exchange between German students learning English and British students learning German.They were paired based on language level abilities and alternated target language use between e-mail exchanges.The FL German students gained in "content" and "language" use and were able to transfer written e-mails to a more formalized written report as well as oral report.Stockwell and Harrington's (2003) study of a 5-week email exchange between advanced learners of Japanese and native speakers resulted in significant increases in syntax, lexicon, and proficiency.