Learning is an inner capacity of the living beings, which, due to new computing techniques, namely bio-computing ones, has transgressed ontological borders and has become a capacity of artificial intelligence systems as well. In acquiring a foreign/second language (L2), learning “can be broadly defined as the internalization of rules and formulas which are then used to communicate in the L2.” (Ellis, 1996) In this sense, language learning is considered synonymous with language acquisition. However, Krashen (Krashen, 1981) makes a clear distinction between the two terms, referring to learning as a process of developing conscious or metalingual knowledge through formal study, whereas acquisition implies spontaneous rule internalization, similar with “picking up”. New technologies should take into consideration both capacities, as natural, spontaneous acquisition and formal study alike are essential in one’s personal development of communicative skills.
When defining second language acquisition (SLA), Rod Ellis makes no distinction between learning and acquisition, in that he refers to SLA as “subconscious or conscious processes by which a language, other than the mother tongue, is learned in a natural or a tutored setting. It covers the development of phonology, lexis, grammar, and pragmatic knowledge.” (Ellis, 1996) The traditional study of foreign languages was limited mostly to the internalization of morphosyntactic rules and vocabulary in a rather decontextualised, memory-based manner. Technology development, and as a result, permanent access to up-to-date information, as well as intercultural direct contacts established in an increasingly globalized work and education market, have facilitated and changed the way a foreign language is perceived and learned. There is an astonishing number of youngsters and grown-ups in nowadays society who, according to Krashen terminology, acquire or “pick up“ rather than learn a second language, without any tutoring, textbooks or methodologies, forced by new social and workmarket conditions.
The present analysis will focus on learning English as a tutored, formal activity within the Practical Course classes of the Romanian-English Specialization (day classes and Distance Education forms), functioning within the Petroleum-Gas University of Ploieşti. Practical Course of English is an obligatory subject and it is allocated 4 hours (in the 1st year) and 3 hours per week, respectively (in the 2nd and the 3rd years) throughout the 3-year curricula of this specialization.
The authors aim at highlighting the advantages of using e-learning within foreign language classes, both in Distance Education and day classes, and the changes that the use of elearning triggers in the process of SLA. Aspects to be discussed in this respect are: the new roles of the participants in education, types of interaction, e-course generation and navigation, use of technology in ELT (namely ProLang phonetic laboratory, as interactive equipment available within University of Ploieşti).
The authors consider learning a collaborative accomplishment of an individual’s, in that he/she receives language inputs, practices and internalizes them in order to finally produce and transmit language outputs in the form of oral or written communication. The traditional emitter of the language inputs used to be the teacher, so formal study was a face-to-face collaboration of students and their teacher, supported or mediated by different types of educational material. Besides Teacher-Student and/or Student-Student interaction, in the last decades, there have manifested new types of interaction, namely Student-Machine, Teacher-Machine and Machine-Machine. The increasing implementation and use of artificial life techniques allow a shift in the perception of computers, from mere equipment to valuable partners and participants in education, language learning included.
Learning by means of electronic devices has already proven its advantages, when used in the process of SLA: endless opportunities for up-to-date information and immediate access to primary and secondary sources (books, textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopaedias etc), exploring both virtual and real linguistic contexts otherwise unavailable in the class, receiving foreign language inputs from native speakers, with different accents, rhythms or register styles, the possibility of synchronous and asynchronous communication with students’ peers or teachers, a reduced level of anxiety for less confident students, flexible and adaptive contents custom-made for students’ individual pace, needs and personal learning styles, the possibility of immediate evaluation of their performance, developing computing skills of both students and teachers, a higher level of motivation and involvement, as students make use in their education of familiar facilities: e-mail, Internet navigation, forums and other types of group works, Internet Relay Chat, learning media such as texts, graphics, stills, animated images, real-life or education-targeted film etc.
As a result, the foreign language teacher stops being the only provider of accurate language or the primary source of comprehensible linguistic items in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary, morphology, syntax or pragmatics. Students and teacher alike take new roles within e-learning based activities, different from traditional education. Although the teacher continues to be the organizer, tutor, controller and assessor of the learning process, his or her magister position is not as obvious as in the traditional, face to face education. Students feel more independent, relaxed and confident in what seems to be a learner-driven lesson, within which the teacher behaves more like a silent observer and assessor or like an equal participant in group activities. Computer techniques mediation allows varied interaction, which, according to Julien Edge, presents several advantages in foreign language teaching and learning: “a change of interaction brings a change of focus of attention, which helps keep people interested; in pairs and groups, there is opportunity for more individuals to use the language; students perform differently away from the pressure of teacher and whole-class attention; students learn to be more self-reliant”(Edge, 1993). This medium will also enable students to repeat a word, stop, go forwards and backwards in the course at an individual pace, without disturbing the rest of the class.
If advantages of using new technology and computing techniques are not to be questioned and discussed any further, these complex, adaptive and flexible systems of e-learning pose various challenges as well. Besides the financial issue and the computer literacy required, a major challenge is that of e-course generation. First, an electronic practical course of English is to meet the demands of any course, in that it should observe the syllabus of the subject, establish realistic objectives and appropriate teaching strategies, choose contents and support materials that appeal to students’ areas of interest and consider their level, establish and announce the modality and frequency of evaluation. In the case discussed, most of the 1st year university students at the Romanian-English specialization are intermediate and upper-intermediate (8 years of English, on average), their major issues being grammar and reluctance to speak in front of the class. Evaluation consists of three tests per semester, in which both receptive and productive skills are being assessed.
Considering the fact that the 1st year students form a heterogeneous group, in terms of linguistic competence and computer literacy, an e-course of English should be organized in coherent, still flexible and adaptive modules, with user-friendly layout and tools, and nodes that associate various pedagogical resources. A focus on functions (introducing oneself, inviting, asking for information, apologizing and so forth) and themes (Family, Travelling, Education, Hobbies) would be useful in organizing and ordering contents, as it provides a natural context for vocabulary acquisition and grammar rules internalization.
Each unit is to offer visual and audio support, to consider the four basic skills and to be learner-oriented, in that the student may have the possibility to choose tools and different levels of language (Phonetics, Vocabulary, Morphology and Syntax) depending on his/ her individual needs and knowledge. In terms of Swarm Intelligence technique, students become decentralized and self-organized agents that interact with one another and the teacher, respectively, and with the multimedia environment in order to solve multi-leveled problems. Still, there will be common objectives and a unique evaluation at the end of each unit.
Learning a foreign language resembles neural activity as well, in that it implies the existence of linguistic inputs and outputs. Rod Ellis defines input as “the language to which the learner is exposed to. It can be spoken or written” and it “serves as the data which the learner must use to determine the rules of the target language” (Ellis, 1996) Depending on students’ background, knowledge and communication skills, as well as on the appropriateness of the e-course organization of contents, input may be comprehensible or incomprehensible, case in which the course should be adjusted. In 1983, Krashen and Terrell formulated the input hypothesis, which states the following: “in order for acquirers to progress to the next stage in the acquisition of the target language, they need to understand input language that includes a structure that is part of the next stage.” Krashen synthesizes this with the formula “I +1”, where “I” represents the input, and “I +1” – the input that contains structure slightly above the current level of the learner. The output is the language produced by the learner, both in its spoken and written form, and, depending on the student’s actual progress and level of rules internalization, the output may be in its turn comprehensible or incomprehensible to the others. In the latter situation, he/she should return to the linguistic level or the thematic unit of the course that posed the problem, or, if there are more students in this situation, the e-course should be readjusted.
In current foreign language teaching and learning, the most common and popular technology continues to be audio devices, as they are affordable and require no particular educational environment. Video devices prove also useful in SLA, as they support the development of the receptive skills, by adding to sound images which provide natural and synaesthetic communication contexts, thus facilitating acquisition. Dictionaries and online encyclopaedias are currently available on mobile telephones that tend to become an integrated part not only of a student’s everyday life but also of his/her formal education. Multimedia computers, either as stand-alones or within networks, combine the above-mentioned advantages of technology in a compact form and at increasingly accessible price. A complex, interactive equipment is currently used within Practical Course classes at Petroleum-Gas University, namely ProLang laboratory. The model PL 28 consists of 28 students units, fixed on furniture, 28 student headsets with microphones, 1 console and 1 headset with microphone for the teacher, 1 ProLang software and 1 mounting kit. The teacher console is commanded by a microcomputer that incorporates microphone mixers and internal amplifiers, and allows students simultaneous individual activity, as well as independently working of 4 groups. Student units dispose of a “rising hand” button that may improve T-S interaction and eliminate some students’ reluctance of speaking in front of the class. The equipment allows varied, simultaneous activities: listening, conversation, repetition, group discussion and simultaneous translation, fact that keeps the learner’s interest and attention throughout the class, by making him/her an active participant in foreign language learning. ProLang provides also tools for recording and archiving, which allows self-evaluation and progress tracking. As foreign language teachers are currently making use of different materials in order to meet the 1st year students’ individual needs, the design of an adaptive, flexible, new computing techniques-based e-course would ease both teaching and learning in that it might resolve the challenge of working with extremely heterogeneous groups, in terms of communication skills, learning styles, aptitudes and background.
Simulation case: English Language Teaching
Target group: the 1st year students (a group of 28 students).
5 teaching methods:
1. Listening;
2. Conversation;
3. Repetition;
4. Group Discussion;
5. Simultaneous translation.
Instruction context:
1. students’ background (knowledge context);
2. knowledge skills (mental context);
3. communication skills (mental context);
4. teaching method (classroom context);
5. ProLang lab (technological context).
Learning units are grouped according to levels of language:
1. Phonetics;
2. Vocabulary;
3. Morphology;
4. Syntax.
The steps needed to design the e-learning system are:
i. There is built the Conceptual Map of the Practical English Course (**Figure : Conceptual Map of Practical English Course).
ii. Students attend an e-Questionnaires to establish the instruction context.
Each variable of the instruction context receives a value (numerical or Boolean).
1. Students’ background receives one of the values: intermediate (0) and upper-intermediate (1).
2. Knowledge skills receive one of the values: absence (0) and existence (1).
3. Communication skills receive one of the values: absence (0) and existence (1).
4. Teaching method receive one of the values: Listening (1), Conversation (2), Repetition (3), Group Discussion (4), Simultaneous translation (5).
5. ProLang lab one of the values: absence (0) and existence (1).
iii. There is realised an initial assignment between learners and LU using ABC algorithm.
The fitness function is established experimentally. The occupancy degree of each
learning unit is 28. The fitness function can have a mathematical form or can be as a set
of rule of form presented in 14.
(14) 
iv. Adaptation of the pedagogical path to each learner using neural network. The neural network is built according the model presented above and in paper from the reference (Moise, 2010).
The neural network resolves the problem of the association of an instruction context (each student is described according to the instruction context) to a learning unit.
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