Just a quick recap of the paper I critiqued on my presentation. The study that I reviewed is "Interactions in a Blending Environment for English Language Learning" . The purpose of this study is to identify different kinds of interaction present in a virtual learning environment and face to face settings for English learning, and also to analyze the impact of various interactions on language learning.
1. What role does gender play in this research?
In fact, gender doesn't play any role and it's not even mentioned in this research. That's why I mentioned it in my critique because I feel like that gender to some extent would affect people's interaction. In this research, we can only see that there's a disproportion of gender in the English class. There were 11 female students and only 5 male students. I mentioned in my presentation that another study conducted by Caspi, Chajut, andSaporta (2008) showed results about interaction from the gender aspect. In that study, it showed that men tended to speak up more in face-to-face settings than in the virtual learning environment; women had the tendency to be more engaged in online posting than men. Since there were more women than men in this study, I was curious whether this disproportion of gender in class would also cause any differences regarding interaction for language learning in a blended learning environment. For instance, male students are too talkative in class which makes female students intimidated or discourages female students to have more interaction in class. Or probably female students don't feel like having online interaction (e.g. respond to male students' posts) due to their bad experiences in face-to-face settings (this may be one of the causes why there was no student-student interaction in the virtual learning environment in this study). That's also why I suggested in my presentation that the authors should also look into this factor while carrying out this research.
2. Why do you think interactions in virtual environments is important for students?
In this study, it's more than just learning in a virtual environment. It's also about the connection of learning in both face-to-face settings and the virtual learning environment. According to the literature review, it is said that there should be some overlap of the lessons taught in face-to-face settings and in the virtual learning environment because it helps students reinforce the knowledge they acquire from one place (e.g. in class) in another place (online platform). So in this case, it's important for students to have interactions in the virtual environment because it will help them practice their target learning language. It provides them another platform for them to use the target language outside of the classroom as well. We know that in a EFL (English as a foreign language) country, students usually don't have many chances to use the language outside the classroom. It means that once they leave the classroom, they have little exposure to the target language and probably they also won't review what they have learned in class until they go to class next time. By offering them this virtual learning environment, students would be able to expose themselves to the target language outside of the classroom, literally anytime and anywhere. This not only enables the students to practice the target language, but also increase their interest in learning the language for they actually get a place to really use the language and put what they have learned into practice.
But in order to keep students stay in that online community to learn and practice the language, interaction is one of the key factors to keep them there. This is because people would be more engaged in that virtual learning environment if someone responds to them or ask them questions. Either it's in written form or verbal form, this kind of interaction, again, allows the students to practice the language which reaches one of the students' goals of learning the language: being able to use the target language to communicate with others. Aside from that, through the interaction, people would also feel being valued by others and contributing more to the online community. In that sense, if more people participate in that online community, more knowledge would be contributed there. So they are constructing a knowledge base on the Internet for their online community members to learn about. That is to say, learning no longer just resides in classrooms; learning can happen beyond the classroom walls. It happens in the virtual learning environment at any time and anywhere!
Still another point I want to make is that I think there's a correlation between the interaction in class and in a virtual learning environment. If people in the virtual learning environment build up this friendly online community which makes all the members want to participate in, freely express and respond to each other's post, this kind of sense of online community belongingness could possibly be transcended into face-to-face settings. People who are used to be shy or hesitant in speaking up or interacting with people in classroom would be more comfortable now in delivering a speech in front of the class or having a discussion with their classmates there. So the above reasons are why I think interaction is important for students in a virtual learning environment, particularly in a blended learning context in this study!
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