teachers
A WebQuest for high school students in EFL setting
This WebQuest was created as a final project for L530 CALL in Indiana University, Summer 2003. The prime goal of this WebQuest is to lead students to notice how wonderful and mysterious our language is and to consider several critical issues of human language. In order to do so, I included the analyses of animal communication. The reason why I adopted this was:
(1) to motivate students effectively (in general, it is easier and painless to introduce interesting and familiar matters (animals), not to introduce difficult linguistic questions directly)
(2) comparing human language with animal language will enable students to find and understand the key issues easily and effectively.
Thus, this WebQest is composed of two parts. First part is to investigate four kinds of animal communication: Bees, Whales, Birds, and Monkeys. Second part is to use the knowledge of animal communication students found in the world-wide-web to analyze six virtual situations, and finally, make a brief chart of comparison between human language and animal communication and think about the nature of human language.
This WebQest was designed for high school students in EFL setting. I assume their TOEFL score is not more than 450. To be sure, since this WebQuest is used in a part of foreign language class, students may focus only on reading the suggested materials and writing English in order to complete the tasks. However, what I aimed at here is not only to develop language skills, but also to develop the process of learning: finding a problem and thinking about how to solve it. By using WebQuest, teachers can observe students make a considerable progress.
As stated in Introduction, this WebQuest contains two parts.
In the first part, students as four groups are asked to investigate animal communication and to make a brief presentation on it for other classmates. The important point is how they will find a necessary information in the Internet and how they will make a short and understandable presentation rather than just looking for the web and only collecting a lot of information. The process students find and create something is much more important than the correct answer. In addition, the question "What is Language?" itself is a complicated question. No researcher have found the only one, agreed answer, so I do not expect students to find a correct and sufficient answer. Rather, I would like teachers to respect the way students are doing their job. The Internet will give students overwhelming information for students, so teachers should teach them how to cope with and arrange it. In that sense, teachers are an essential part of the classroom even though students take advantage of the enhanced computer technology.
In the second part, students are asked to use the knowledge they found and apply it to the new situation. I provide six situations, which I thought will make studentsÕ research easier. I arranged each situation in order for them to get to the goal easily. Followings are expected as the difference. Some students will discover beyond the six situations. In that case teachers can use the following summary.
(1)
Animal: The signs of animal systems are inborn.
Human: The capacity to be creative with signs is inborn, but the signs (words) themselves are acquired culturally.
(2)
Animal: Communication is set responses to stimuli (indexes).
Human: Not limited to se as an index.
(3)
Animal: Each sign has one and only one function; each meaning can be expressed only in one way.
Human: Signs often have multiple functions; one meaning can be expresses in many ways
(4)
Animal: Not naturally used in novel way.
Human: Creative, can be adapted to new situations.
(5)
Animal: Closed inventory of signs; only a set number of different messages can be sent.
Human: Open ended. Grammar (rules of syntax) allows a virtually unlimited number of messages to be constructed.
(6)
Animal: Change extremely slowly, with the speed of genetic evolution.
Human: Change rapidly as a cultural phenomenon.
The following links might be helpful for teachers to guide students.
Language as animal communication (Advanced Linguistics: Biological Foundations of Language)
Human language and animal communication
Through the tasks included in this WebQuest, students will have an opportunity to think about their language. Also, they have come to know how differently species communicate and how well their systems are optimized. The age 16-18 is the most suitable period for fostering the ability to think about abstract matters. However, some teachers force students to spend their most important period just memorizing foreign words, mathematical formulae, and so forth. WebQuest will provide students with good opportunity to nurturing such an important ability.