Abstract:

As teachers' roles evolve in technology-enhanced language learning (TELL), choices of technological devices and instructional delivery and the degree of foreign language (FL) teacher facilitation within TELL activities are prominent. This investigation compared 53 beginning college French students' comprehension of FL video in a teacher-assisted viewing classroom environment (TAV) and an independent computer-based setting (IV) to examine the benefits of teacher mediation on students' comprehension of FL video and the relation to the types of questions asked, self-efficacy, and engagement. The results demonstrated that students performed equally well on comprehension measures in the TAV and IV conditions. With regard to self-efficacy, students felt significantly more confident in their ability to comprehend video in the TAV than in the IV condition. A relationship was found between self-efficacy and comprehension in the TAV, a relationship not present in the IV condition. Levels of engagement significantly predicted students' comprehension performance while working independently but were not a significant predictor of comprehension in the TAV condition. Implications of this study include (a) the need for increased exposure to self-directed learning tasks in beginning FL classrooms to improve self-efficacy toward independent TELL activities and (b) the need for student exploration during TAV tasks to improve engagement.

Author: Nicole Mills, Carol Herron, Steven P. Cole