SiSAL Journal 6(3)

SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 254-256.

Volume 6, Number 3, September 2015 Edited by Jo Mynard •

Editorial by Jo Mynard (254-256)

Articles •

‘Significant Others’ in Influencing Arab EFL Learners’ Learning Strategy Use and Development: A Qualitative Inquiry by Anas Hajar (257-270)

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Self-Access Learning Centers and the importance of being curious by Brian Birdsell (271-285)

Language Learning Spaces: Self-Access in Action Edited by Katherine Thornton

Part 2: Promoting learner involvement through peer-learning initiatives •

Introduction: The Crucial Role of Peer-Learning in Language Learning Spaces by Katherine Thornton (286-287)

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Facilitating a Face-To-Face Tandem Language Exchange on a University Campus by Marie-Thérèse Batardière and Catherine Jeanneau (288-299)

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Implementing a Student Peer-Mentoring Programme for SelfAccess Language Learning by Carol Everhard (300-312)

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The SAC as a Community of Practice: A Case Study of Peer-Run Conversation Sessions at the Universidad del Caribe by Elvira del Carmen Acuña González, Magdalena Avila Pardo, and Jane Elisabeth Holmes Lewendon (313-321)

Announcements

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Upcoming Special Issue: Call for papers Special Issue on Virtual and other learning spaces,!June, 2016 (Volume 7, Issue 2)!edited by Curtis Edlin and Jo Mynard. DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: January 15th, 2016.

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 254-256.

Editorial Jo Mynard, Kanda University of International Studies, Japan Welcome to issue 6(3) of SiSAL Journal, which is a general issue. It contains two research articles followed by three papers that form the second instalment of the language learning spaces column edited by Katherine Thornton.

Research Papers The first paper by Anas Hajer based at the University of Coventry in the UK reports on the involvement of ‘significant others’ (e.g. parents and friends) as experienced by a group of learners learning English in their Arab homelands. Using a sociocultural lens, the author analyses data from written narratives and follow-up interviews and suggests that ‘significant others’ have a role to play in identity formation and attitudes to learning English.

The second paper by Brian Birdsell based at Hirosaki University in Japan looks into the challenge of attracting students to voluntarily enter and participate in self-access learning. Taking the concept of ‘curiosity’ as a starting point, the author examines associations between curiosity (as indicated on a scale) and students’ exploratory behaviour for participating in self-access activities.

Language Learning Spaces: Self-Access in Action The theme of the second instalment relates to the roles of learners themselves in supporting self-access language learning. In an introductory article, Katherine Thornton summarises the three contributions in this issue which come from MarieThérèse Batardière and Catherine Jeanneau from the University of Limerick, Ireland; Carol Everhard (formerly) of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece; and Elvira del Carmen Acuña González, Magdalena Avila Pardo and Jane Elisabeth Holmes Lewendon based at the Universidad del Caribe in Mexico.

Upcoming Issues The December 2015 issue will be a special issue on self-access and young learners edited by Annamaria Pinter, Robert J. Werner and Jo Mynard and the call for

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 254-256. papers has now closed. Further information can be found at http://sisaljournal.org/forauthors/call-younglearners/.

The March 2016 (issue 7-1) will be a general issue, and the June 2016 (issue 7-2) will be a special issue on Virtual and Other Learning Spaces to be edited by Curtis Edlin and Jo Mynard. The call for papers for this special issue is now open and we look forward to receiving your submission until January 15th. Further information can be found at http://sisaljournal.org/for-authors/call-learningspaces If you are interested in guest-editing a future general or special issue on a theme related to self-access learning, please get in touch.

Acknowledgments Many thanks to members of the review and editorial boards for their help with producing this issue and to the authors for choosing to publish with us.

Notes on the editor Jo Mynard is the founding editor of SiSAL Journal. She is an associate professor and the Director of the Self-Access Learning Centre at Kanda University of International Studies in Japan. Dr. Mynard holds an Ed.D. in TEFL from the University of Exeter, UK and an M.Phil. in applied linguistics from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. She has taught EFL in Ireland, Spain, England, the UAE and Japan, and has been involved in facilitating self-access learning since 1996. She has co-edited two books on learner autonomy and two on advising in language learning. Her most recent book ‘Reflective dialogue: Advising in language learning’ (co-authored with Satoko Kato) has just been published by Routledge New York.

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 257-270

‘Significant Others’ in Influencing Arab EFL Learners’ Learning Strategy Use and Development: A Qualitative Inquiry Anas Hajar, Coventry University, UK Abstract The paper reports on the involvement of ‘significant others’ (e.g. parents and friends) as experienced by a group of learners learning English at university in their Arab homelands.

Underpinned by a sociocultural standpoint, the data collected from a written narrative and four subsequent semi-structured interviews suggest that ‘significant others’ directly and indirectly fostered or hindered the participants’ English language development and identity formation by prompting different strategies. Further research into the cooperation between actors inside and outside the classroom is believed to generate essential findings for the language learner development programmes.

Keywords: language learning strategies (LLSs); sociocultural approaches; significant others; Arab learners; qualitative inquiry Background The ‘social turn’ in language learning research (Benson &Cooker, 2013), with new theoretical and analytical tools, has come under the sway of a sea of change in research and theory towards exploring ‘the socially, culturally, and historically situated nature of language learning’ (Morita, 2012, p. 26). Some researchers endorsing socially oriented theoretical perspectives (e.g. Gao, 2006; Mercer, 2011; Norton, 2013) have challenged the assumption that “foreign language learners’ development as language learners is largely language teachers’ responsibility” (Gao, 2006, p. 287). These researchers are also critical of the cognitive psychology perspective of language learning, which is largely based on the theory of human information processing to transform declarative knowledge into automatic knowledge. From this perspective, language learning strategies (LLSs) are often defined as learners’ efforts to enhance their own language learning and/or use (Cohen, 2011). In another vein, the purpose of deploying LLSs by some language learners is often limited to linguistic objectives, for example having good examination results. Learners’ strategy use from a cognitive psychological standpoint also tends to be exclusively associated with the learners’ exercises of their cognitive and metacognitive activities in addition to some of their personality traits such as extroversion and language aptitude (Norton & Toohey, 2001).

According to Palfreyman (2003), the ‘social turn’ in education “offers a new dimension to the study of learning strategies” (p. 245), through depicting learners’ strategy use as something emerging from the mediational processes of particular learning !

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 257-270 communities. These processes might include artefacts, practices, and relationships among people. In this sense, the LLSs used by language learners are often influenced by the availability and accessibility of material and cultural artefacts, such as borrowing some valuable references from the school’s library or watching English TV programmes. Echoing this point, Palfreyman (2011) postulates that language learners’ learning motivations and strategy uses can “develop in multiple contexts; the classroom may be one of these, but a fuller picture of learning contains other contexts: the household, the peer group, the work place or neighbourhood shops” (p. 33).

Lai (in press) argues that there has recently been a burgeoning number of research studies that investigate “the less charted terrain of language learning beyond the classroom” (p. 2). According to her, most of these studies (e.g. Chik, 2014; Murray, 2008; Wang, 2012) found that ‘good language learners’ were more likely to make use of a broad array of language learning resources available to them beyond the classroom (e.g., music, TV shows, the Internet and online chatting/forums), and that this was positively associated with their learning outcomes, confidence and enjoyment. Wang’s (2012) study, for example, explained how a group of Chinese students of English had overcome their difficulty of having poor listening and speaking skills by adopting the strategy of immersing themselves regularly and rigorously in English television drama at home in China. Based on the findings of her study, Wang (2012) suggested that the significance of watching movies rich in authentic and functional use of the target language was not limited to the advantage of pinpointing some specific linguistic facets that these students might still have needed to improve, such as pronunciation and intonation. This extended to being a mediating and enabling artefact for “an in-depth understanding of western social values, which will empower them [language learners] to become world citizens” (Wang, 2012, p. 339). By the same token, Murray (2008) recorded the language learning experiences of a few successful adult Japanese EFL learners, and found that they achieved intermediate to advanced levels of fluency through their engagement outside the classroom with technological tools related to American pop culture such as movies, TV programmes and music. Nonetheless, most of these studies paid a less central position to the potential of social agents in mediating the language learning resources to language learners. With the above in mind, this study is unique in that it is the first qualitative research study that has targeted the impacts of ‘significant others’ on a group of postgraduate Arab participants’ LLS use and development in out-of-school contexts.

‘Significant others’ stands for a group of individuals, such as family members, peers and

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 257-270 neighbours who are often as crucial to a language learner as their teachers are (Palfreyman, 2011).

The Enquiry Aims This study is grounded in a sociocultural outlook and aims to interpret some biographical episodes involving a group of Arab university students of English, taking into account the mediating effect of some social actors in either enabling or disabling the participants’ language learning activities outside the classroom. In the Arab world, language learning resources and opportunities for language exposure are often viewed to be confined to formal settings (Domerow & Bailey, 2014). Due to growing global demands, however, many Arabs, especially those from the oil-rich Arab Gulf States, recognise that “a high standard of proficiency in English is a critical requirement for effective education and for access to, and utilization of, new knowledge and new technology” (El-Ezabi, 2014, p. x). In addressing this point, the following research question needs to be answered in this qualitative study: To what extent do ‘significant others’ mediate the particular patterns of LLSs often utilised by a group of university learners from an Arabic background in their homelands?

Participants In this study, there were three males and three females. They came from four different Arab backgrounds (The United Emirates, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria), and were nonEnglish major students. Their age range was between 23 and 27 years. Moreover, all of them were unknown to the researcher before the data collection stage, and were preparing to join their postgraduate programmes in an English-medium university in the UK. The participants were given pseudonyms and their profiles are provided in Table 1.

Table 1. Demographic Data of the Participants Name

Gender

Age

Nationality

Educational background

Family background notes

Nasser

Male

23

Saudi

BA in Industrial Engineering

His father is a government clerk and his mother a housewife.

Khaled

Male

25

Saudi

BA in Industrial Engineering

His father is a maths teacher and his mother a housewife.

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 257-270 Fadi

Male

24

Syrian

BA in Dentistry

His father is a surgeon and his mother an ophthalmologist.

Rama

Female

24

Syrian

BA in Agricultural Engineering

Both parents are farmers

Zainab

Female

25

Iraqi

BA in Business and Management

Her late father was an architect and her mother a pharmacist.

Mouza

Female

27

Emirati

BA in Gynecology

Her father was a retired policeman and her mother a housewife.

Data collection and analysis The data were collected between 5 May and 10 September 2013. The participants, after being informed of their role in the research and their right to withdraw at any time, were asked first to write a short account in Arabic about themselves and some of their English learning experiences along with the LLSs that they often employed. They were given a set of questions to help them frame their essays, as shown in Appendix A. These accounts were used to construct the interview questions, given that this study espoused a second-order stance i.e. seeing the world from the participant’s standpoint. Four subsequent semistructured interviews with open questions in Arabic were conducted with each participant.

Each interview lasted for 35-45 minutes (see Appendix B for a sample interview schedule).

Given that all the interviewees were Arabs, I decided that Arabic was the best language in which to conduct my interviews. Using this shared language helped the participants express themselves freely. Despite the usefulness of adopting a qualitative approach in this study, the combined use of semi-structured interviews and an open-ended questionnaire that fits local research contexts is essential to explore language learners’ metacognitive beliefs about LLSs, along with capturing the mediating artefacts in either enabling or disabling the learners’ LLS use and identity development.

A ‘selected reading approach’ (Van Manen, 1997) was used in this paper, meaning that as I was reading the transcripts, I highlighted the statements that captured the influences of ‘significant others’ on the participants’ language learning efforts and their strategy use and development. After that, the codes that shared some unifying features were collated to generate themes. Three main themes were identified according to the significant others’ kinds of mediation: 1) ‘a positive, indirect kind of involvement’ referring to sharing confident and delicate information with the participants without taking a procedural action; 2) ‘a positive, direct kind of involvement’ suggesting that certain significant others exposed the participants !

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 257-270 intentionally to language resources, and/or practised English with them, and 3) ‘a neutral to negative kind of involvement’ indicating that a range of discouraging behaviours such as openly belittling the value of English learning or disregarding the participants’ language views were transmitted by some social agents to the participants. Following this, the transcripts were re-read with special focus on the coded extracts to ensure that the produced themes actually accounted for the data.

Research Findings A positive, indirect involvement of ‘significant others’ The data suggest that the parents of participants who were educated in the public sector often engaged indirectly in their children’s language learning in the form of emotional and/or financial support. For example, the parents of three participants (Khaled, Mouza and Nasser) financed private English tuition classes for their children at a late stage of their children’s education. For example, Mouza, the Emirati participant, mentioned that her father allowed her to arrange one-to-one tutorials at home to help her prepare for the IELTS exam. With the same objective, Mouza’s father also paid for her two-month subscription to online IELTS preparation on the British Council Website: Although my parents weren’t highly educated, I received from them unlimited financial support…my father gave me the money needed to hire a private Australian tutor to train me on IELTS test. I also subscribed in some websites to try out online some IELTS sample tests (Transcript Mouza, No. 2, 33-146).

Regarding another participant, Khaled, the Saudi participant, declared that his parents supported his idea of taking some general English courses before commencing his undergraduate degree. When asked about the usefulness of the private tutoring that he underwent, Khaled said: …the secondary school holiday was long. One of my friends told me about the importance of enrolling in an English private tutoring course to improve our English before joining the university. So, I informed my parents about this. I registered in one of the courses run by the British Council centre…In that course, I learnt how to discuss a specific point within a group and to explain how I completed a specific task in front of the class…I also learnt new vocabulary (Transcript Khaled, No. 2, 41-64).

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 257-270 Surprisingly, perhaps, the participants (apart from Fadi and Zainab) had little to say about their interactions with their counterparts inside and outside the classroom. For example, when Rama, the Syrian participant, was asked about the influence of her peers on her language learning, she said that My peers and I were quite poor in English. I didn’t ask them for help as I know we were all suffering…This was the situation of most Syrian students in the rural areas…

In out-of-the-school settings, we just check the homework given by our teachers (Transcript Rama, No. 1, 77-79).

A positive, direct involvement of ‘significant others’ The data suggest that the parents of two participants (Fadi and Zainab) exhibited in some instances their direct involvement in their children’s language learning and the use of particular LLSs by purchasing English learning materials, choosing the right school or practising English with them. The parents of Fadi and Zainab, the Syrian and Iraqi participants, attempted to instil positive attitudes and offer motivation for learning English in them from the beginning through sending them intentionally to a private international school at which English was emphasised throughout their school education: When one was sent to a remarkable international school and some of one’s teachers were English native speakers, the English level of that person would be definitely developed. This picture described my situation perfectly...the tuition fees of this school were extremely high. So, my parents gave me a spark to learn English (Transcript Fadi, No. 1, 34-44).

My school was the first private school in Iraq that taught most of its classes in English. At that time, my mother insisted that English was not very important but that none could predict what would happen after several years. She was right especially after the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein (Transcript Zainab, No. 2, 55-60).

In this regard, the parents of Fadi and Zainab seemed to buy into ‘the idea of the earlier the better’, principally when it pertained to their children’s English language learning.

One of the immediate family members of two participants (Fadi and Zainab) also purchased some of the English resources (e.g. electronic dictionaries, English movies/novels and videogames) to them to enhance the participants’ interest and confidence in learning

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 257-270 English. In Zainab’s case, she recalled that her parents used to reward her whenever she excelled at the primary and intermediate levels of her education, by bringing some animated DVD movies in English into the house: I was addicted to English language movies and my father knew that. Therefore, his gifts to my sister and me whenever we passed the exam at school were choosing ten animated movies. Most of these movies were in English (Transcript Zainab, No. 3, 66-68).

One participant, Fadi, acknowledged that he was inspired by the Western culture brought back by his uncle’s family, who had lived in the UK for twelve years. When asked about the reasons behind his admiration for the Western culture, especially the British, Fadi explained that My uncle’s children increased my love for English. They lived in the UK for many years. They told me a lot about the lifestyle of the British. I learnt from them many new words and idioms…I hung a large map of Britain on the wall of my room to get to know more about its geography (Transcript Fadi, No. 4, 81-94).

Accordingly, some of Fadi’s extended family members played a pivotal role in deepening his interest in learning English. They were also one of the main causes that encouraged him and his parents to choose the UK to complete his postgraduate studies.

As regards Zainab, the Iraqi participant, she revealed that her brother, a holder of a Diploma in English literature, fuelled her passion for the strategy of both reading and writing English poetry through purchasing some poetry books, especially those written by Shakespeare: During the summer period, I used to read some of my brother’s poetry books in his personal library. Poetry not only helped me to learn new words but also to know more about English culture...he also motivated me to read and write some poems. My family were very proud of me (Transcript Zainab, No. 4, 23-34).

Three participants (Nasser, Khaled and Zainab) also expressed their passions for listening to English music as a purposeful learning strategy to expand their exposure to English input and accumulate their repository of vocabulary items and phrases. Their brothers or sisters played a pivotal role in introducing them to this strategy: !

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 257-270 I started listening to English songs with my sister after attending university. I loved Celine Dion’s songs. With her songs lyrics found in some websites, I sometimes put new words and phrases in my notebook to lodge them in my memory. I also revise them with my sisters (Transcript Nasser, No. 3, 94-97).

Negative or lack of involvement from ‘significant others’ Unlike the other participants, Rama, the Syrian participant, experienced a noticeable lack of almost any kind of support from her family members in relation to English language study. Rama recalled that her family members did not foster an appropriate language learning environment for her language learning such as by purchasing English learning materials or creating opportunities for practising English: I was sent to under-resourced rural schools and none of my family could speak any English…my parents were farmers...we didn’t have a satellite TV or a computer in our house…I couldn’t even dare to ask any of my family to finance private English tuition classes for me at university because of our bad financial situation (Transcript Rama, No. 2, 105-128).

This extract suggests that Rama ascribed this limited family involvement in her English learning to the low income and education level of her parents.

Surprisingly, perhaps, the participants’ use of some Web 2.0 technologies (i.e., blogs, Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Twitter and wikis) to improve their English during their stay in their homelands was found to be fairly limited. For some participants (Fadi, Rama, and Zainab), the political factor might have had a prominent role to play in this finding, given that some popular social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, Skype and YouTube) were blocked in their countries. Nonetheless, Khaled, the Saudi participant, recalled the experience of improving his skills in playing guitar through watching some YouTube guitar video lessons in English in his ‘spare time’: I used to teach myself how to play guitar from free English video lessons on YouTube...I also used to upload some videos of my playing to get feedback from others. However, I gave up my guitar at university because this slowed down my achievement (Transcript Khaled, No.4, 66-69).

In effect, Khaled’s decision to stop playing guitar in order not to passively affect his academic progress might refer to the importance of integrating students’ outside-the!

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Discussion and Conclusion The findings illustrate how ‘significant others’, mainly parents, influenced the participants’ strategic language learning behaviour, including their own language beliefs and motivations, simply because these participants were not born with their existing set of values and beliefs attached to learning English. As shown in the previous section, the socioeconomic status of the participants’ parents related to their occupation, income and educational attainment seemed to play a pervasive role in identifying the amount and kind of support they offered their children while learning English (Zaragoza, 2014). Although the participants, excluding Rama, belonged to better-off families, the influence of the parents of participants who were educated in the public sector on their English learning was, in Kyriacou and Zhu’s (2008) words, “largely benign” (p. 101), and appeared at a late stage of their academic lives i.e., after entering university and realising the role that English could play in their children’s future.

On the other hand, it has been shown that the parents of two participants who were educated in tuition-charging private formal settings (Fadi and Zainab) were highly educated and financially stable, and they both directly and indirectly involved in their children’s language learning and development. Their parents enabled them to enact their future selfimage confidently as English speakers before going to university, by adopting a variety of strategies such as by sending them intentionally to outstanding private schools from the beginning of their lives, practising English with them inside the house and offering them some technology-mediated language resources. This finding seemed to be inconsistent with the claim suggested by many language researchers (e.g. Block, 2007; Ryan & Dörnyei, 2013) that pre-university students engaging in the process of foreign language learning are likely to be unable to recognise the primacy of learning the target language in their lives, or even to identify realistic language learning goals. Block (2007), for example, argues that “there is usually far too much first language-mediated baggage and interference for profound changes to occur in the individual’s conceptual system and his/her sense of self” (p. 144). However, this study showed that language learners in English as Foreign Language contexts might be able to do so if their awareness of English had been properly nurtured inside and outside the classroom. As Gao (2012) argues, parents “can be regarded as highly proactive ‘shadow’ teachers for their children, whose support was essential to their success in learning English”

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 257-270 and in conceptualising future visions that hold the flavour of actuality rather than fantasy (p.

592).

It should be noted that the reference made by some participants to the direct effects of their brothers or sisters on their language learning and strategy use could point to an increasing mindfulness of the new generation in the Arabic-speaking world as regards the significance of English in one’s life. In this sense, Gitsaki (2011) in the preface to her volume on teaching and learning in the Arab world has emphasised the rapidly rising interest in English by Arabs in the twenty-first century: “Education is undergoing significant change globally and locally. In the Arab States, globalization and economic development have had a significant effect on [English language] education” (p. xiii).

In sum, social networks in language learning beyond the classroom are a fairly new area for research, which would benefit from further investigation. In this study, for instance, the impact of family members, mostly parents, on the participants’ strategy use and learning motivations was crucial, and varied according to the family’s socio-economic status. This influence of family members on Arab students in their homelands might not be mirrored in some other modern societies, where a learner’s peer group appears to be as or more powerful than the family. Therefore, research on individuals from other places or countries with different sociocultural, economic and political conditions, in relation to the impacts of informal agents (e.g. family members, neighbours, and friends) on their strategy use and identity development would enrich the data base available.

Notes on the contributor Anas Hajar is a graduate of Warwick University holding PhD in English Language Education. He is currently working as an EAP tutor at Coventry University, UK. He is particularly interested in motivational issues in language learning and intercultural engagement. He also works in the areas of language learning strategies and materials design.

References Benson, P., & Cooker, L. (Eds.). (2013). The applied linguistic individual: Sociocultural approaches to autonomy, agency and identity. London, UK: Equinox.

Block, D. (2007). The rise of identity in SLA research, post Firth and Wagner (1997). The Modern Language Journal, 91(5), 863-876. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2007.00674.x

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 257-270 Chik, A. (2014). Digital gaming and language learning: Autonomy and community.

Language Learning and Technology, 18(2), 85-100. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/june2014/chik.pdf Cohen, A. (2011). Strategies in learning and using a second language (2nd ed.). London, UK: Longman.

Damerow, R., & Bailey, K. (2014). Research on the teaching and learning of English in the Arabic-speaking world. In K. Bailey & R. Damerow (Eds.), Teaching and learning English in the Arabic-speaking world (pp. 1-13). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

El-Ezabi, Y. (2014). Foreword. In K. Bailey & R. Damerow (Eds.), Teaching and learning English in the Arabic-speaking world (pp. viii-xi). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Gao, X. (2006). Strategies used by Chinese parents to support English language learning: Voices of ‘elite’ university students. RELC Journal, 34(3), 285-298. doi:10.1177/0033688206071302 Gao, X. (2012). Parental strategies in supporting Chinese children’s learning of English vocabulary. Research Papers in Education, 27(5), 581-595. doi:10.1080/02671522.2011.602102 Gitsaki, C. (Ed.). (2011). Teaching and learning in the Arab world. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang.

Kyriacou, C., & Zhu, D. (2008). Motivation towards learning English and the perceived influence of important others. Educational Studies, 34(2), 97-104. doi:10.1080/03055690701811099 Lai, C. (2015). Perceiving and traversing in-class and out-of-class learning: accounts from foreign language learners in Hong Kong. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 9(3), 265-284. doi:10.1080/17501229.2014.918982 Mercer, S. (2011). Towards an understanding of language learner self-concept. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

Morita, N. (2012). The situated construction of identity and positionality in multilingual classrooms. In M. Sarah, S. Ryan, & M. Williams (Eds.), Psychology for language learning: Insights from research, theory and practice (pp. 26-42). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Murray, G. (2008). Pop culture and language learning: Learners’ stories informing EFL. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 2(1), 1-17. doi:10.1080/17501220802158792 Norton, B. (2013). Identity and language learning: Extending the conversation (2nd ed.).

Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Norton, B., & Toohey, K. (2001). Changing perspectives on good language learners. TESOL Quarterly, 35(2), 307-321. doi:10.2307/3587650 Palfreyman, D. (2003). Expanding the discourse on learner development: A reply to Anita Wenden. Applied Linguistics, 24(2), 243-248. doi:10.1093/applin/24.2.243 Palfreyman, D. (2011). Family, friends, and learning beyond the classroom: Social networks and social capital in language learning. In P. Benson & H. Reinders (Eds.), Beyond the language classroom. The theory and practice of informal language learning and teaching (pp. 17-35). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 257-270 Ryan, S., & Dรถrnyei, Z. (2013). The long-term evolution of language motivation and the L2 self. In A. Berndt (Ed.), Fremdsprachen in der Perspektive lebenslangen Lernens (pp.

89-100). Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang.

Van Manen, M. (1997). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy (2nd ed.). London, UK: Althouse Press.

Wang, D. (2012). Self-directed English language learning through watching English television drama in China. Changing English, 19(3), 339-348. doi:10.1080/1358684X.2012.704584 Zaragoza, E. (2014). Social class and autonomy: Four cases studies in a Mexican SAC. In S. Mercer & M. Williams (Eds.), Multiple perspectives on the self in SLA (pp. 192210). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 257-270 Appendices Appendix A Write an Essay that Covers the Following Points !"#$%$ &$'(%$ $!) *%$+# !"),+%$ !-%%$) !%$'. )#/$ 1. Could you please write general information about your background (e.g. your parents’ job, the number of your brothers and sisters, your city/village...etc.)

1- $(% .0'# ($ (/.. %.+( !"+$.#*$%$ /#"1%2) !'%+#.%$ !.$+%$ #$.3%+.%$ 4+) (+ !5.% /"0%$3-/"0% !32$%$ 00+ -1",%$ 3$ !("0.%$ "1 6"+# #(/ %! - !"+$.#*$ !')& "$ 7%$ )2%$ ...".#(# #($ 2. When did you start learning English?

8!"9"%/($%$ !-%%$ .%+# #$0) $.0(+ /,.+ ($/ 3!$.- 2 3. What is your perspective about learning English at that time?

3- #'3%$ /%: "1 !"9"%/($%$ !-%%$ .%+# !".!$ (+ /+$)&($ 3!$.

4. What sort of problems did your usually have in learning English?

5-#) !0$+ /!*$3# #($/ "#%$ %/$6.%$ +$3($ (+ %";1#%$) .%/## ($ (/.. !-%%$ .%+ !05#.%$ !/%.%% /.30' %)' !"9"%/($%$ 5. How did you sort them out?

6-8)+$;.%$ /%# 7%+ )%-#%% $!+$)#$) #.' "#%$ !"%.+%$ #$3&2%$ "!$.

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 257-270 Appendix B A Sample Interview Schedule 1. Why do you think that you are learning English?

2. What kind of linguistic challenges did you face in your homeland? How did you deal with the difficulties?

3. Did you have enough opportunities to practise English outside the classroom? If no, why?

4. Is there any outstanding event/person that encouraged or discouraged you to learn English?

5. When did you actually recognise the importance of English in your life?

6. Have you found sufficient chances to communicate with native/competent speakers of English in your homeland? If yes, how? If no, why?

7. What about the role of your peers in facilitating your English learning?

8. Where did you used to encounter or learn new words in your native country? And what did you do in order to consolidate your memory of new words?

9. What about the role of technology in your life? Do you use it to improve your English? If yes, how? If no, why?

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 271-285

Self-Access Learning Centers and the Importance of Being Curious Brian Birdsell, Hirosaki University, Japan Abstract Self-Access Learning Centers (SALCs) have become common at many universities in Japan. They provide a learning space to actively interact with a foreign language. These centers are self-access and thus promote autonomous learning, so one of the challenges they have to overcome is the difficulty of attracting students to voluntarily enter and participate in such a learning environment. This article reports findings from a study, which examined associations between items on a curiosity scale and students’ exploratory behavior to seek out and participate in activities at the SALC. Implications for foreign language education and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Keywords: self-access learning centers, curiosity, creativity, autonomous, English Self-access language centers (SALCs) at Japanese universities continue to expand, as The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) urges universities to develop educational programs that develop “global citizens”1 (MEXT, 2012). One facet of this educational goal is to improve students’ English abilities, especially their communicative abilities, as Japan ranks near the bottom of 30 Asian countries on the TOEFL (iBT) test (TOEFL, 2007). Japan has a long history of struggling with English despite the amount of time spent studying it (a minimum of 6 years of formal education). IMD, a Swiss education research group, regularly ranks countries on world competitiveness by looking at 338 different measurements. These range from employment to social framework and from attitudes and values to education.

From the data, the group then develops an index of each country’s strengths and weaknesses. For instance of the 60 countries that IMD assessed, Japan scored highest on life expectancy and 2nd on environmental engineering, but scored 58th for foreign language skills in 2012. Though in 2014, this ranking slightly improved to 54th (MEXT, 2014).

In response to this need to improve the country’s foreign language skills as a means to become more globally competitive, many SALCs were formed through MEXT sponsored grants. These SALCs may be called by a number of different names such as 1

Direct translation of the Japanese “グローバル人材”

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 271-285 “World Plaza” at Nanzan University, “Global Hub” at Fukui University, and “English Lounge” at Hirosaki University. Their aims though are very similar, as they all seek ways to engage, motivate, and improve students’ confidence and competence with a foreign language, which typically means English. They also seek to empower learners to take control of their own learning and become more “autonomous” learners.

The SALC at Hirosaki University, where this research was conducted, was formed in the spring of 2012. The center offers an open space for students to practice their communication skills with a foreign teacher that is on duty. Recently foreign exchange students have also been hired as part-time teacher assistants to help attract and interact with the Japanese students. In addition to this space, there are a number of computers in the room. Frequent users of the SALC are rewarded with an access code to English learning software (Word Engine and English Central). The SALC also offers mini seminars in an open classroom space with topics ranging from TOEIC and TOEFL classes to learning English through music and various cross-cultural classes.

One major issue that many SALCs face, since they are in their nature “autonomous” learning centers, is attracting and retaining students because they do not receive any credit from attending any of the seminars or utilizing the space in any way.

Entering into these centers for many students can be similar to crossing over an unknown threshold. For traditional classrooms fit a certain conceptual frame. Students enter, there are desks for the students to sit, a teacher enters, the teacher is positioned in the front of the room, and the teacher commences a lesson either through a lecture or discussion.

Students listen, take notes, and may discuss a certain topic, which most likely is taken from a textbook. While many students may not even have a conceptual frame for a SALC, as many students frequently ask the staff: “what exactly can I do there?” These centers are viewed as novel and unfamiliar spaces and promote a more unconventional style of learning. Since the success of these centers comes down to the number of students who utilize the space, it is crucial to better understand what factors may drive a student to explore and continuously use the resources provided by the center. There are obviously numerous factors, but the one investigated in this paper, is the role of curiosity.

In this paper I explore the following research question:

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 271-285 1) What role does curiosity play in influencing students’ behavior to explore, seek out, and discover a self-access learning center at a university in northern Japan?

In the following sections I first look at individual differences and more narrowly at one specific difference that is often overlooked in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and that is curiosity. I then introduce an exploratory study that investigates the role curiosity plays in motivating students to enter a SALC. Finally I discuss the importance of supporting and enhancing students’ curiosity, not only with language learning, but a more general curiosity, for it is this exploratory behavior that is key to the success of these alternative learning spaces.

Individual Differences: Beyond Motivation and Aptitude In foreign language learning five individual differences traditionally stand out as the most prominent factors of research in SLA: language aptitude, motivation, learning and cognitive styles, learning strategies, and anxiety (Dörnyei, 2005). Another important individual difference that has also grown in popularity alongside motivation is selfefficacy, which Bandura (1997) defines as “beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (p. 3). Besides these widely researched constructs in SLA, Dewaele (2005) has fervently put forward the need for SLA researchers to investigate emotional issues involved in L2 acquisition. Likewise Dörnyei (2009, p. 184) more recently also proposed another set of personality facets that could arguably be included in the list of individual differences such as: emotions, interest, and general knowledge. Whether or not interest is in itself an emotion is up to debate (Silvia, 2006, 2008), but in this research I look at curiosity, as an emotional-motivation state (Kashdan, Rose, & Fincham, 2004), that propels an individual to undertake exploratory behavior.

Curiosity Curiosity has been called “the wick in the candle of learning” (Kang, et al., 2009) and essential for survival (Bruner, 1966) and this propensity towards curiosity in humans 273

SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 271-285 is a good thing (Gazzaniga, 2005), despite proverbs suggesting otherwise. Daniel Berlyne, one of the more influential researchers into exploratory behavior, distinguished between two types of curiosity; one is the desire to acquire new knowledge, which he labeled as “epistemic curiosity” (EC), and the other is the desire to acquire new sensory experience, which he labeled “perceptual curiosity” (PC), and it is these two desires that motivate exploratory behavior (Berlyne, 1960). Epistemic curiosity is that “drive to know” (Berlyne, 1954, p. 187), which involves trying to solve puzzles, filling in gaps of knowledge, seeking out new information, playing with ideas, and exploring the unfamiliar. While perceptual curiosity involves the sensory modalities like the visual, tactile, auditory, and gustatory and seeking out new and increased perceptual stimuli rather than the familiar and habitual. More recently though in a similar approach, Kashdan and Silvia (2009) defined curiosity “as the recognition, pursuit, and intense desire to explore novel, challenging, and uncertain events” (p. 368). The key factor to curiosity is having this desire to explore, so it is an active response, as opposed to a passive or indifferent response, to a situation that involves the unfamiliar and novel.

Trait and state curiosity Curiosity can be viewed as an aspect of one’s personality and in this way approached as a personality trait or on the other hand as an aspect of a specific situation where it more closely resembles a motivational state. Langevin (1971) distinguished two types of curiosity; “breadth of interest” and “depth of interest” and concluded that the former resembles a personality dimension (trait curiosity) and the latter a motivational state (state curiosity). Trait curiosity, broadly speaking, is an individual’s inclination to explore novel and unfamiliar situations while the state form of curiosity involves having curiosity for a specific situation. For example, the situation could be about learning a foreign language, coming into contact with a foreign culture, or exploring new and unfamiliar types of music. Obviously state curiosity will be highly influenced by the individual’s interest in that specific situation, like learning a foreign language, while trait curiosity is viewed as a more general personality trait. Individuals will differ in trait curiosity, which does not mean that some people are curious and others are not, but rather it is a matter of degree, as some people will display greater levels of curiosity than others.

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 271-285 Kashdan and colleagues (2004) identified two factors in trait curiosity: exploration and absorption. These two factors represent the seeking out of novel situations and becoming fully engaged in the situation. This two-factor model they call a “positive emotional-motivational system� (Kashdan, et al., 2004, p. 291). In a later article, they rename these two dimensions as stretching and embracing. Stretching is the motivation to go beyond the known and seek out new knowledge and new experiences.

Embracing is the attraction to the novel and unfamiliar (Kashdan, et al., 2009). Trait curiosity should have some predictability of exploratory behavior and in the case of this research, it is predicted that those who visit the SALC at this university, which is viewed as a challenging, novel and foreign learning environment, should be individuals with higher levels of curiosity. Orienting their attention to get involved with this center is both cognitively and behaviorally an exploratory situation.

Methods Participants To explore the influence of curiosity among Japanese university students and what relationship this individual difference may have on entering into a self-access learning center, I tried to collect as random a sample as possible from the student body.

The participants in this study were 226 university students (n=127 female) dispersed among the various faculties at the university: Humanities (n=48), Education (n=67), Agriculture and Life Sciences (n=22), Science and Technology (n=72), and the schools of Medicine (n=5) and Health Sciences2 (n=12).

Material A 2-page questionnaire was developed to measure curiosity. At the top of the questionnaire, there was a small section where informants provided some basic information about themselves such as gender, faculty, and whether or not they have visited the Self-Access Learning Center at the university. The questionnaire was anonymous. Below this section there was a 25-item curiosity scale. The items were pooled together from various sources. Some of these include the measurement scale on

2

The Medical School has a separate campus, which most likely explains why these numbers are considerably lower.

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 271-285 perceptual curiosity (Collins, Litman, & Spielberger, 2004); the Melbourne Curiosity Inventory (Naylor, 1981); Maw and Maw’s (1968) self-appraisal of curiosity scale; and the more recently developed curiosity and exploratory inventory II (Kashdan, et al., 2009). I also added some additional questions that aim to assess students’ curiosity towards learning about foreign cultures and other classroom and school related curiosity items. These 25-items were then translated into Japanese and pilot tested on a few students with an informal follow up interview asking them the comprehensibility of the items and the Japanese and subsequently minor changes were made to the items to accommodate their suggestions.

Participants responded to the statements by indicating their level of agreement on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. A 6-point scale was used in order to avoid the middle answer found in 5 and 7 point scales, as Japanese have been confirmed to more frequently choose the middle answer as compared to students in other countries (Chen, Lee, & Stevenson, 1995).

Procedure Throughout the first-term of the 2015 school year, I visited the university cafeteria on a number of occasions and asked students to fill in the questionnaire. The questionnaire was also available in the Self-Access Learning Center, so when a new student visited the center, he/she was asked to fill it in.

Results SALC visitors and the curiosity scale The data from the questionnaire was inputted into SPSS (version 22) software.

The participants were divided into two groups based on how they responded to the following question: Have you visited the SALC? From this response 83 participants answered, “yes” (female=44) while 143 participants answered, “no” (female=83). Based on these two groupings, a t-test was conducted to explore how these two groups differed in their responses to the various items on the curiosity scale. Table 1 provides a broad cumulative average score of all the items on the Curiosity Scale between the two groups.

The difference is significant and has a medium to high effect size. Table 2 then provides

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 271-285 a detailed look at each item. The items in this table are arranged from highest to lowest difference between the two groups.

Table 1. Means, Standard Deviations, T-test, and Effect Size (for Items that Showed Significance) for the Cumulative Items on the Curiosity Scale M

SD

Curiosity (YES) Have visited the SALC n= 83

4.47

0.57

(NO) Have not visited the SALC n=143

3.98

0.57

df

t

224

6.16***

Effect size a 0.38

n=226 *** p < .001 a Peasrsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s correlation r: small (0.10); medium (0.30); large (0.50) (Calculated using the following website: http://www.uccs.edu/~lbecker/)

Table 2. Means, Standard Deviations, T-test, and Effect Size (for Items that Showed Significance) for Each Individual Item on the Curiosity Scale a

1

22 12 9 14 7 25 22 10 6 2 11 3 23 8 15 20 19

Scale / Item I would like to learn more about other cultures.

I like to try new and unusual things.

I am the kind of person who embraces unfamiliar people, events, and places.

I am always looking for experiences that challenge how I think about the world and myself.

I like to discover new things on my own outside of class.

I view challenging situations as an opportunity to grow and learn.

Learning about different cultures expands oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s view of the world.

Hearing the sounds of a different language is fascinating.

I like to travel to places I have never been to before.

I am the type of person who really enjoys the uncertainty of everyday life.

I would rather go to a restaurant I have never been to than one I often visit.

I prefer classes that are excitingly unpredictable.

I frequently find myself looking for new opportunities to grow as a person.

I am not very curious. (reversed) I like exploring my surroundings.

I am reluctant to participate in new endeavors. (reversed) I enjoy exploring new ideas.

When I discover a new fabric, I like to touch and feel it.

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t-test

Effect b Size

SD 0.90 0.98

5.55*** 5.42***

0.35 0.34

3.59

1.14

4.89***

0.31

0.85

4.52

0.91

4.82***

0.31

4.87

1.00

4.20

1.02

4.80***

0.31

5.06

.85

4.52

0.91

4.43***

0.28

5.51

0.72

4.97

0.97

4.43***

0.28

4.82

1.13

4.13

1.13

4.40***

0.28

5.28

0.92

4.65

1.13

4.29***

0.28

4.18

1.24

3.54

1.19

3.85***

0.25

4.42

1.19

3.81

1.20

3.69***

0.24

4.17

1.25

3.59

1.19

3.48***

0.23

4.36

1.13

3.83

1.11

3.42***

0.22

4.69 4.92

1.18 1.07

4.20 4.51

1.10 1.05

3.11** 2.77**

0.21 0.18

3.87

1.24

3.45

1.18

2.54**

0.17

4.35 4.46

1.28 1.34

3.96 4.08

1.19 1.33

2.32 2.09

YES Mean 5.16 5.10

SD 0.92 0.92

NO Mean 4.46 4.38

4.35

1.11

5.06

SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 271-285 18

When I learn something new, I like to find out more about it.

I prefer simpler classes that are not very challenging.

In a discussion, I rarely have an opinion on the topic. (reversed) I have many questions about everyday common occurrences.

A good teacher is one who gets students to become more curious about the world.

I like visiting art galleries and art museums.

I like to listen to new and unusual kinds of music.

16 5 24 17 13 4

4.31

1.16

4.01

1.19

1.99

3.37

1.24

3.03

1.13

1.92

3.99

1.42

3.68

1.23

1.88

4.02

1.31

3.71

1.22

1.84

5.01

0.93

4.78

1.02

1.68

3.72 3.60

1.56 1.41

3.59 3.54

1.45 1.35

0.66 0.34

** p <0.01. *** p <0.001. a This number is the order it appeared in the questionnaire b Peasrson’s correlation r: small (0.10); medium (0.30); large (0.50) (Calculated using the following website: http://www.uccs.edu/~lbecker/)

Students who had visited the SALC scored higher on every item of the 25-item curiosity scale. This is surprising since many of the items had little or nothing to do with studying a foreign language or related to being interested in a foreign culture. Though for a few items the difference was marginal, 17 items did show a significant difference. Of these 17 items, the following 5 items stand out as having medium to large effect size, which simply means that the magnitude of this difference is rather large.

•

I would like to learn more about other cultures.

•

I like to try new and unusual things.

•

I am the kind of person who embraces unfamiliar people, events, and places.

•

I am always looking for experiences that challenge how I think about the world and myself.

•

I like to discover new things on my own outside of class.

As can be seen from these items, only the first one could be directly associated

with the SALC since such a learning space promotes cultural exchanges and provides cross-cultural classes. The other four items have little to do with learning a foreign language or culture, but a more general exploratory tendency by the individual. In these items there are a few key words: “new and unusual”; “unfamiliar”; “challenge”; and “discover”. These are all keywords associated with the general trait of curiosity. Such items reflect the importance of curiosity for predicting exploratory behavior such as seeking out alternative learning spaces on campus such as the SALC at the university where this research was conducted.

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 271-285 Discussion Implications for SALCs As SALCs mature and develop into a central part of the language learning curriculum at many universities in Japan, one of the fundamental questions that will determine their success or failure is the level of student activity. In this research, I show how curiosity possibly plays an important role in influencing a studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decision to visit a SALC. Curiosity provides important opportunities for personal growth and in this case, facilitating the exploratory behavior to seek out new experiences like entering into the center. Thus it seems to be crucial to seek new and innovative ways to promote and foster curiosity among the student body. Obviously and most importantly there is the need for the teacher to show signs of curiosity, for curiosity is contagious (Nickerson, 1999).

One way to encourage students to show more curiosity about the SALC is to link and integrate classroom-based learning with the self-access learning center (Gardner & Miller, 1999). Under such a model, students use the space to complete some part of a class activity such as a project-based learning activity (Thompson & Atkinson, 2010).

Problem-based learning where learners collaborate together to solve a complex, novel, and ill-structured problem (Lu, Bridges, & Hmelo-Silver, 2006) is also another possibility of integrating the classroom and the SALC with the aim of fostering both curiosity in the center but also a more general curiosity. For instance in an English for Specific Purposes class that teaches Economics, the teacher could create a strategic performance problem that deals with investing imaginary money for a client at the beginning of the term.

Resources like a financial newspaper and the Internet are made available in the SALC to research and track the investment. Each week the groups have to meet, discuss the performance, and decide whether or not to move the money. Other problem-based learning activities include diagnosing local problems and then making a decision on how to resolves such an issue. Again the teacher promotes the SALC as being available as a platform to discuss their respected problems where they can also receive additional feedback from other students and teachers.

Another way to integrate the SALC with classroom-based learning is to use the space for developing classroom presentations. One activity that has worked well at Hirosaki University is to have students interview exchange students at the center, as a

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 271-285 possible topic for the final class presentation. (Recently the university has started to hire exchange students to work part-time in the SALC, as assistants to the full-time teachers).

In addition, many English classes at the university require the students to do various styles of presentations from introductory speeches in lower-level classes to PowerPoint and Prezi presentations in their academic fields in higher-level classes. Classroom teachers recommend students to use the center in order to help them write, prepare, and practice for such speeches and presentations (such presentations may involve both individual and group styled presentations). This is similar to what Croker & Ashurova (2012) discuss as a scaffolding strategy to attract and keep students involved with the SALC utilizing a “push-pull” method. Implementing such class work activities that integrate them with the SALC “pushes” students to the center, but more importantly may actually introduce and expose the students to the place and the resources available there.

Yet keeping students interested in the center also requires a “pull” strategy. Such techniques used at Hirosaki University are: •

Asking exchange to students to do an informal presentation on their hometown or country in the SALC that is available and open for all students to attend

•

Hosting special after hour events that focus on a special theme: holidays, movies, ethnic food demonstrations, etc.

•

Partnering with the English Circle and Cross-Cultural Circle to do a joint-activity in the center As can be seen in the above examples many of these “pull” strategies are very

social activities, which follows the growing consensus that SALCs are not simply “self” guided learning centers, but rather are a place for social interaction (Hughes, Krug, & Vye, 2012) and “group autonomy” and a place to learn together with others (Kimura, 2014).

Promoting SALCs by linking them with classroom activities that “push” students to become more curious about the space and organizing special SALC activities that continue to “pull” students to maintain their interest are important steps in developing a student centered learning environment.

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 271-285 Future research Future research needs to look more closely at how students after this initial exploratory behavior of seeking out new and novel educational experiences like visiting a SALC sustain this interest over time. Of the 83 students who responded that they had visited the SALC only about half of them responded that they had visited four or more times. Getting students into such a center is a positive first step in providing them additional chances to learn the foreign language and experience interacting with foreign teachers, as well as, international exchange students. Yet on the whole, the goal of such centers is to turn this primary curiosity of recognizing and seeking out new knowledge to a more persistent emotional state of interest. Since the time of Dewey (1913) and up to the more modern emotional researches like Tomkins (1962), Kashdan and Silvia (2009), and Hidi (1990) have all noted the profound impact that interest has on learning for “there is no human competence which can be achieved in the absence of a sustaining interest” (Tomkins, 1962, p. 347). Future research could look at what factors influence and sustain students’ interest to continue participating in the self-access learning center while on the other hand what inhibitory factors deter other students from returning a second or third time.

Conclusion Fostering curiosity among the students can have a broad impact on the individual both from an educational and psychological perspective. From an educational perspective, as reported in this article, curiosity propels the individual to explore his/her environment and engage with the novel and unfamiliar. This propulsion sets up many chances for new and alternative learning experiences such as entering and becoming involved in self-access learning centers. Inhibiting students’ curiosity could have a negative impact on the success of SALCs in Japan and more generally the push for Japan to strengthen creativity amongst the young. For instance, Tasuku Honjo, an immunology and genomic medicine professor at Kyoto University, after wining the Tang Prize in Biopharmaceutical Science in 2015, emphasized that curiosity was the most important thing driving his success (Shu-Ling, 2015). Learning happens inside and outside of the

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 271-285 classroom and suppressing curiosity suppresses that urge to explore and discover outside the classroom, on one’s own volition and in a more autonomous way.

Finding ways to increase student curiosity in the classroom can have a broad impact on the learning environment for “stimulating curiosity is central to education and learning” (Schmitt & Lahroodi, 2008) and may also influence students behavior to explore outside the classroom, especially places like SALCs and other alternative learning spaces that are founded on theories of autonomy. Autonomous learning spaces will have difficulty attracting students if the students themselves are not curious to explore such places.

Notes on the Contributor Brian J. Birdsell is a lecturer at Hirosaki University, Japan. He holds an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts Boston and is a PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham. His main research interests are metaphor, creativity, and individual differences. He keeps a website at <www.tsugarupress.com>.

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Maw, W. H., & Maw, E. W. (1968). Self-appraisal of curiosity. The Journal of Educational Research, 61(10), 462-465. doi:10.1080/00220671.1967.10883734 MEXT (2012). グ ローバ ル人材の育成について [Development of global human resources]. Retrieved from MEXT: http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/chukyo/chukyo3/047/siryo/__icsFiles/afiel dfile/2012/02/14/1316067_01.pdf MEXT (2014). 科学技術イノベ ーションの動向 [Trends in technology innovation].

Retrieved from MEXT: http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/gijyutu/gijyutu22/siryo/__icsFiles/afieldfil e/2014/07/22/1350072_03.pdf Naylor, F. D. (1981). A state-trait curiosity inventory. Australian Psychologist, 16(2), 172-183. doi:10.1080/00050068108255893 Nickerson, R. S. (1999). Enhancing creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 392-430). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Schmitt, F. F., & Lahroodi, R. (2008). The epistemic value of curiosity. Educational Theory, 58(2), 125-148. doi:10.1111/j.1741-5446.2008.00281.x Shu-Ling, K. (2015, June 29). Curiosity is prizewinning researcher’s driving force.

Retrieved from The Japan Times: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/06/29/national/science-health/curiosityprizewinning-researchers-driving-force/#.VbiHV3g_707

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Silvia, P. J. (2008). Interest: The curious emotion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(1), 57-60. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00548.x Thompson, G., & Atkinson, L. (2010). Integrating self-access into the curriculum: Our experience. Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 1(1), 47-58. Retrieved from http://sisaljournal.org/archives/jun10/thompson_atkinson/ TOEFL (2007). ETS. Retrieved 8 1, 2015, from Test and Score Data Summary for TOEFLÂŽ Internet-Based Test: September 2005â&#x20AC;&#x201C;December 2006 Test Data: http://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/TOEFL-SUM-0506-iBT.pdf Tomkins, S. S. (1962). Affect, imagery, consciousness: Vol. I. The positive affects. New York, NY: Springer.

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The Crucial Role of Peer-Learning in Language Learning Spaces Katherine Thornton, Otemon Gakuin University, Japan Welcome to the second instalment of the Language Learning Spaces: SelfAccess in Action column. While the first instalment examined the process of establishing facilities, this second instalment focuses on the role learners themselves play in the ecology of a self-access centre. When the self-access movement first started, many facilities were labelled Resource Centres and centred around providing physical resources (mainly books and audiovisual materials) for self-directed learning for individuals. In recent years, the rise of the Internet, which provides easy access to learning materials and authentic audio and visual from target language countries has challenged proponents of physical self-access spaces to assert their relevance to learners (Reinders, 2012). These technological advances, in addition to the growing recognition of the social dimension of both language learning and learner autonomy (Murray, 2014), have stimulated a shift from a resource-focused approach to selfaccess language learning, to one which emphasises the social aspect of learning. In some cases, the term self-access has been rejected altogether, in favour of social learning spaces (Murray, Fujishima & Uzuka, 2014). The previous column in SiSAL documented one such reinvention of a resource-based self-access centre into a social space (Allhouse, 2014).

A successful language learning space has always been a community of learners, not only a place where individuals access materials to improve (although there is a place for this more traditional function too). Learners who come together in self-access centres fulfill a myriad of roles, and make lasting contributions which enrich the experience of those around them. They share ideas and learn from each other, act as role models and motivate others to keep learning, provide opportunities for target language interaction and intercultural communication, and may act as peeradvisors or teachers.

The three papers in this instalment focus on three different initiatives, a tandem learning exchange, a peer-mentoring scheme, and a peer-conversation service.

In the first paper, Marie-ThÊrèse Batardière and Catherine Jeanneau from the University of Limerick, Ireland, describe the tandem learning exchange at their Language Learning Hub, which brings together home students and internationals

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The next instalment in this column continues the emphasis on a community of learners, focusing on the ways in which student staff, often the centrepoint of this community, can be trained and supported.

References Allhouse, M. (2014). Room 101: The social SAC. Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 5(3), 265-276.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Murray, G. (2014). Exploring the social dimensions of autonomy in language learning. In G. Murray (Ed.), Social dimensions of autonomy in language learning (pp. 3-11). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Murray, G., Fujishima, N., & Uzuka, M. (2014). The semiotics of place: Autonomy and space. In G. Murray (Ed.), Social dimensions of autonomy in language learning (pp. 81-99). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Reinders, H. (2012). The end of self-access? English Language Teaching World Online (ELTWO), 4. Retrieved from: http://blog.nus.edu.sg/eltwo/2012/06/13/the-end-of-self-access-from-walledgarden-to-public-park/#more-2777

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Facilitating a Face-to-Face Tandem Language Exchange on a University Campus Marie-Thérèse Batardière, University of Limerick, Ireland Catherine Jeanneau, University of Limerick, Ireland Abstract As the 21st century progresses and the internationalisation of higher education is gaining momentum, encouraging students’ intercultural communication has become of paramount significance. A Tandem Language Exchange (TLE) is among a number of initiatives taken by the Language Learning Hub (LLH) at the University of Limerick (UL) to bring together foreign and home students. The TLE takes place in both semesters of the academic year, attracting over two hundred students including UL undergraduates and some postgraduates as well as international students of many nationalities. It is offered across faculties (Humanities, Business, Education, and Engineering) to students with levels of second language competence ranging from elementary to advanced. Drawing on the empirical data collected at various stages of the TLE, this study first looks at some of the organisational and pedagogical challenges encountered during 15-years of experience of pairing foreign and home students. It then presents the various means of support that the LLH has put into place to raise cultural awareness and encourage linguistic diversity among students. Finally, it puts forward some recommendations for implementing this type of peer-to-peer language exchange in university settings.

Keywords: Face-to-face language exchange, intercultural interaction, authentic communication

The Institutional Context The internationalisation of the university campus Recent years have seen a growing emphasis on the ‘internationalisation’ of student bodies in educational institutions worldwide. However, the University of Limerick (UL) has viewed internationalisation, both “as a way of thinking and in the implementation of specific actions” (The University of Limerick’s Strategic Plan, 2011-2015, p. 7) for many years, making it a central component of its strategic plans (past, present, and future). To this end, the institution boasts the following three activities: its Erasmus Exchange programme (since 1988), its Study Abroad programme (since 1991), and its Summer School programmes (since June 2002).

The most salient feature of these activities is the internationalisation of the UL campus with over a thousand international students coming to UL each year (mostly from Europe, North and South America and Asia). In parallel, Irish students (approximately one thousand, 288

SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 288-299. majoring in French, German, Spanish or Japanese) can avail themselves of study exchange programmes and participate in internship programmes abroad.

The invaluable opportunity to study a language in this international environment led Dr. Marie-Thérèse Batardière, a lecturer of French who was teaching both foreign and home students on a translation module, to consider at a very early stage the implementation of language exchanges which would bring Erasmus and international students into contact with home students. For the latter it could serve as preparation for their sojourn abroad in the target language country. For foreign students, it could facilitate their integration into the host institution and Irish society. Marie-Thérèse approached the then coordinator of the Language Learning Hub (LLH) to discuss ways to set up a language exchange. The next section will describe their joint effort to bring the project to fruition. Over the years, Marie-Thérèse has gradually stepped back and taken on an advisory role. Catherine Jeanneau, the current coordinator of the Language Learning Hub (LLH) manages the programme referred to herein.

A prime place for language learning The programme described in this paper takes place in the context of the Language Learning Hub (LLH). The unit, created over thirty years ago and formerly known as the Language Resource Area, is part of the School of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics. Five years ago, it moved to a new location in the heart of the Languages Building making it a popular place for both home and international students. Its main ‘raison d’être’ is to support and promote language learning in the Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics (MLAL) School by providing materials, equipment, guidance and language learning activities to students (at postgraduate and undergraduate levels) and staff.

At its onset, the unit was designed to provide access to varied language resources (authentic material such as films and documentaries or pedagogical material such as grammar books and class resources and access to satellite TV channels). With the advent of the Internet and its plethora of online learning and teaching materials, the centre has evolved and the emphasis has turned to developing novel ways to support language learning and enhance student engagement. It is interesting to note that, in an era when the use of digital tools for language learning is increasingly becoming the new ‘norm’ (Allhouse, 2014), offering faceto-face activities is welcomed by learners. As a result, the LLH provides a range of activities which include the Tandem Language Exchange programme (TLE), peer-facilitated discussion groups and one-to-one sessions alongside ‘pre- and post-study abroad’ online intercultural exchanges via a discussion forum on SULIS (the University of Limerick virtual learning environment) or an email exchange or Skype. These diverse activities aim to advance 289

SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 288-299. internationalisation by enabling students to develop their language and intercultural communication skills.

The Language and Cultural Learning Initiative Designing and setting up the Tandem Language Exchange programme The type of exchange which was deemed most appropriate was a face-to-face conversation also called ‘tandem learning’ (Calvert, 1992). It involves two speakers of different native languages (and different cultural backgrounds) meeting in-person “to help each other improve their language skills and learn about each other’s culture” (Calvert, 1999, p. 56). It was felt that tandem language learning would encompass aspects of both natural settings (i.e., it would closely approximate the language immersion environment by providing exposure to the L2 as spoken by native speakers and encouraging the authentic use of the L2) and formal L2 instructed learning (i.e., the communicative nature of the activity would require some focus on form and some form of corrective feedback, whether explicit or implicit (Gass, 1997). In addition, it was hoped that ‘informal conversation’ with peers would give L2 students the opportunity to negotiate meaning across cultural boundaries (Kramsch, 1993).

The Tandem Learning Exchange (TLE) was based on the principle of (i) reciprocity, whereby both learners should contribute as equally as possible to the learning process: “learners should be prepared and able to do as much for their partner as they themselves expect from their partner” (Brammerts, 1996, p. 11) and (ii) autonomy, which holds that students must take control of their own learning experience: “learners alone determine what they want to learn and when”. Setting up the programme involved: (i) defining the team members’ responsibilities for the execution of the preparatory tasks; (ii) writing an enrolment questionnaire (so as to obtain details on participants’ profiles and also in order to draw up a mailing list); (iii) finding the right meeting room venue for the introductory meeting; (iv) planning advertising (selecting communication channels and designing posters); (v) contacting the UL International Office to let them know of project.

The TLE is a free and extra-curricular initiative (i.e., there is no academic credit given for participation) that started as a small pilot project in autumn 1997. The program has grown since then and for spring semester 2015, 123 students are taking part in the program. The TLE programme runs as follows: in week 3 of a 12-week long academic semester, all UL students (home and foreign) are invited, via an institutional email, to an informal meeting where they will have an opportunity to be paired up with a tandem language partner. An average of 200 students, with a record number of 234 participants in the autumn of 2014, attend every 290

SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 288-299. semester (some would have already experienced the TLE in the previous semester or previous year). At this introductory meeting, we, the two organisers (and authors of this article), assisted by a small number of volunteering students, welcome students as they enter the meeting room and hand out a profile questionnaire as well as a coloured sticker which indicates the native language of each participant. The wearing of a colour-coded sticker plays a crucial role in the pairing of students (i.e., it facilitates the recognition of a potential L2 partner towards the end of the meeting). We then present the language exchange programme, emphasising the following ground rules: (i) allocate at least one hour per week to meetings; (ii) keep appointments; (iii) be prepared for each session; (iv) dedicate the same amount of time to each language (v) take some notes on what was learnt. Next, we explain the sticker colour coding, identifying that orange is for English, blue for French, red for German, yellow for Spanish and white for other languages (students are asked to write their ‘specific’ language). Lastly, we invite participants to follow three practical steps to find a language partner that evening: Step 1: Wear your sticker visibly; Step 2: Look for students wearing the colour of the language you study; Step 3: Go and talk to them! We also remind them to fill out and return the enrolment questionnaire before leaving the meeting. Students then start mixing and talking to each other. They usually find ‘their’ language partners quite quickly .

Newly-formed dyads and groups tend to linger a little longer after the ‘official’ meeting has ended. Some years, we have been able to prolong the evening with refreshments thanks to a sponsorship from the UL International Education Division. In the following nine weeks tandem partners are expected to make contact and meet on a weekly basis. They are fully in charge of their learning; that is to say that they negotiate between themselves how they will practise their languages. The organisers do not interfere with the dyads' activities.

Reviewing the TLE programme.

The TLE program had been running for ten years on a laissez-faire approach (as explained above) when we undertook an evaluation study in 2008 after receiving institutional funding. Our aim was merely to review the TLE programme. As well as examining participants’ profiles and expectations through the initial enrolment questionnaires, it was decided to conduct an anonymous online survey (using SurveyMonkey) which would be put to students about two-thirds of the way through the semester. It sought to investigate students’ perceptions and practices of the TLE (Please see Appendix A, for the format and content of the online survey). It was offered on a voluntary basis; one third of the TLE participants completed it. The following section reports on two main issues that were brought to light through the questionnaire and the survey and how these issues were subsequently addressed .

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First, the examination of the initial enrolment questionnaires confirmed that the majority of foreign students originated from countries which were target language countries for home students: Spain, France, Germany, and Japan. However, there was a ratio imbalance between home and foreign students´ numbers, that is to say, over 60% of the TLE participants were home/Irish students and nearly 40% were foreign. This meant that, due to the lack of native speakers of their target language, a number of home students could not be matched with a language partner while the rest (sometimes reluctantly) agreed to join other pairs. We consequently decided to take action to increase foreign students’ participation. A promotional campaign targeting foreign students took place the following academic semester using new communication channels: (i) eye-catching posters in all taught languages were displayed on bulletin boards and other strategic places where there was a lot of student traffic (e.g. the buildings where language classes are held; the Student Union Building); (ii) a digital version of these posters was sent to academic and administrative staff in the various faculties and displayed on a number of LCD screens on campus at regular intervals during the week prior to the enrolment information session; (iii) an email invitation to disseminate information on the TLE programme was sent to colleagues teaching foreign students (i.e., English as a Foreign language (EFL), French, German, Spanish, and Japanese lecturers).

The results of the promotional campaign amongst prospective foreign students were strikingly visible in the autumn 2008 enrolment numbers. The previous imbalance between home and foreign students´ numbers had noticeably decreased: almost half (45%) of the tandem participants were foreign and just over half (55%) were home students. It is worth noting the positive response from language colleagues and their influential role in advertising the TLE programme in their multicultural classes. This upward trend in the foreign participation ratio has since continued, hence reversing the pattern found in the 2008 survey.

This phenomenon will be further discussed in a later section of this paper.

Second, the feedback survey responses uncovered another issue: some participants (19%) had found the experience “quite challenging” (home student) and even “daunting” (foreign student) during the first few weeks (these were additional comments to Question 4 of the feedback questionnaire shown in Appendix A). While the laissez-faire approach suited the majority who perceived the TLE programme as “only the catalyst” (home student) and embraced the autonomous experience inherent to a tandem language exchange, others would have liked some initial support like “having a place to meet” (foreign student) and “a few game nights” (foreign student) in order to break the ice with their partners. Among suggestions to improve this type of exchange, some expressed the wish for “more structure” 292

SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 288-299. (foreign student) and “an acknowledgment of [his/her] participation in this exchange programme” (home student).

On the strength of this feedback, the organisers introduced several changes in the TLE programme. Firstly, to address the need for more structure the following adaptations were made: (i) a follow-up session was added two weeks after the introductory session to take questions and offer advice; (ii) a ‘common room’ was provided for two hours every week, to facilitate gatherings; and (iii) a ‘Tandem Language Handbook’ was created. The booklet, which was distributed to students at the enrolment session, is divided into two parts: ‘Your practical guide’ (Part One), to provide general information, and ‘Your learning diary’ (Part Two), to scaffold reflective learning (Please see Appendix B for a detailed diary page).

Secondly, to address the need for more recognition of students participation, we started to issue a certificate for taking part in the TLE programme.

These initiatives were piloted for four consecutive semesters; some were very popular and were kept on; those that were poorly received were discontinued. Accordingly, the follow-up session which was scantily attended (attendance never rose above 10 per cent) was replaced with an optional ‘one-to-one meeting’ with the LLH coordinator to iron out any issues. Often these are related to the lack of availability or commitment from the tandem partner, where the coordinator suggests simple strategies like partners sharing time-tables or drawing a list of topics of interest) to overcome these initial hurdles; however if the partner is not cooperative, the LLH coordinator intervenes by email urging him/her to call to the LLH. In the case of a partner failing to turn up for meetings or to answer emails, the LLH coordinator endeavours to find a new partner for the motivated student by either choosing a name from the list of ‘late comers’ (list of students who did not attend the initial meeting but have called to the LLH soon after for a late registration) or by posting a request on the popular LLH Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/languagesUL).

In contrast, the ‘common room’ was always buzzing on a Wednesday afternoon so the original idea has been retained, albeit in a slightly different way. Language partners can take advantage of the relaxed atmosphere in the spacious LLH main room to simply chat or to access the material at their disposal (DVDs, CD-ROMs, TV stations etc.). As for the Tandem Language Handbook which was available in a printed version for the first two years (thanks to institutional funding), it is now available electronically on the TLE website (https://sites.google.com/a/ul.ie/language-exchange-programme/) and can be downloaded or printed at very little cost. From anecdotal evidence (i.e., positive comments gleaned in conversations with students), the booklet is perceived as useful to “keep track of what has been learned”, “write down new words and phrases which came up in the conversation”, 293

SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 288-299. “remind you of grammar rules to revise” and “make a list of topics to prepare”. Lastly, the certificate of participation in the programme is nowadays seldom requested at the end of term.

It would seem to be of interest only to foreign students who are non-specialist language learners as language majors gain enough credits for the modules they take.

Recommendations and Conclusion The study indicated that a face to face TLE programme can be offered at an institutional level to a broad range of users. In addition, it has shown that we (the organisers) have an active role in the initial phase (i.e., the design and implementation) of the language exchange at the start of each semester and that this role becomes more responsive during the course of the semester. Indeed, the LLH coordinator’s unobtrusive presence (as described earlier, she is available on an as-needed basis) seems to be the preferred role in a programme that relies on a peer-to-peer, collaborative exchange.

Through reflecting on the evolution on the TLE programme at UL, we have identified the importance of targeted marketing to ensure a good balance of students and the need for support –handbook, meeting space, online repository, and, where possible, the International Bureau cooperation – for the TLE programme to take place and exchanges to flourish.

Furthermore, we have found that the key element to keep in mind when organizing a TLE is for the programme to be adaptable to changes. For instance, the expansion of UL’s global network with international universities has brought greater cultural and linguistic diversity among the student population (i.e., languages such as Portuguese, Hindi, and Mandarin, have emerged on campus). This has lead to new grouping configurations last semester in order to accommodate all foreign participants. Indeed, many home students have paired up with two or more partners and among them, a partner who is not a speaker of their target language. As a result home students have embarked with some of their foreign partners on what appears to be foremost a ‘cultural exchange’. We (the TLE organisers) will be seeking feedback this autumn from students involved in this type of partnership as we need to determine whether or not the addition of a ‘non-target language partner’ is beneficial to a ‘target language partnership’. This extended form of the TLE, the tandem language -and culture- exchange, may well grow in demand in other institutions with the widespread phenomenon of internationalisation in higher education.

And on a final note, we believe that the TLE, bringing together foreign and home students, positively contributes to advancing real internationalisation of UL campus (Green, 2005).

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Notes on the contributors Marie-Thérèse Batardière is a lecturer in French at the University of Limerick. The cofounder of an Erasmus student exchange with her former university in Angers in 1989, she is a strong advocate for an interdisciplinary and multicultural approach in the classroom. Her main research interest lies in the area of CALL and more specifically on the use of Computer Mediated Communication tools to promote intercultural collaboration and authentic dialogue.

Catherine Jeanneau is the Coordinator of the Language Learning Hub at the University of Limerick. This unit aims at implementing a learner support strategy and providing language learning services outside of formal classroom time. Her research interests include second language acquisition, technology and language learning, particularly social media and online communication as well as learner autonomy.

References Allhouse, M. (2014). Researching the new Room 101: “A safe haven for me to learn.” Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 5(4), 466-479. Retrieved from http://sisaljournal.org/archives/dec14/allhouse/ Brammerts, H. (1996). Tandem language learning via the Internet and the International EMail Tandem Network. In D. Little & H. Brammerts (Eds.), A guide to language learning in tandem via the Internet (pp. 9-22). Dublin, Ireland: Centre for Language and Communication Studies.

Calvert, M. (1992). Working in tandem: Peddling an old idea. Language Learning Journal, 6(1), 17-19. doi:10.1080/09571739285200371 Calvert, M. (1999). Tandem: A vehicle for language and intercultural learning. Language Learning Journal, 19(1), 56-60. doi:10.1080/09571739985200111 Gass, S. M. (1997). Input, interaction, and the second language learner. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Green, M. (2005). Measuring internationalization at comprehensive universities. Washington, DC: American Council on Education.

Kramsch, C. (1993). Language study as border study: Experiencing difference. European Journal of Education, 28(3), 349-358. doi:10.2307/1503764 University of Limerick Strategic Plan (2011-2015). Pioneering & connected. Retrieved from https://www2.ul.ie/pdf/521283169.pdf 295

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Appendices Appendix A Online Feedback Questionnaire.

TANDEM LANGUAGE EXCHANGE â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Feedback questionnaire (Spring 2008) 1. Your profile Nationality: Male/Female: Age: 2.Your language partnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s profile: Nationality: Male/Female: Age (if known): 3. How did you get your language partner?

At the Language Exchange Meeting in Week 3 Through the LRA office Other (please specify): ________________ 4. Would you say that this language exchange is very satisfactory, satisfactory or unsatisfactory regarding... very satisfactory satisfactory unsatisfactory improving your language skills experiencing a new culture building a new friendship with a native speaker Feel free to comment: ______________ 5. Do you think the language level is an important factor for the success of the language exchange?

Yes No Please explain: ______________

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6. During meetings: You both speak one language for a period of time and then you alternate You choose one language for each meeting You speak your second language and your partner speaks his/her second language You speak your own language and your partner speaks his/her own language 7. How easy/difficult do you find it toâ&#x20AC;Ś Easy

Difficult

understand your partnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s second language? speak to you partner in your second language?

8. How often do you meet and for how long?

Half an hour One hour More Once a week Twice a week More 9. Where do you meet with your language partner?

Canteen Library Stables bar / Java's coffee shop / Sports Bar, etc.

Other (please specify): _______________ 10. What do you do with your language partner during meetings?

Have a chat Have a drink / Go for a meal Watch TV together Read magazines, newspapers Help your partner with his/her written work Other (please specify): _____________ 11. What topics have you covered during meetings?

Food Cinema Travel

Neither easy nor difficult

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Studies Music Social life Others (please specify): ______________ 12. From a cultural point of view, how easy/difficult do you find it toâ&#x20AC;Ś Easy Difficult Neither easy nor difficult agree on a topic of discussion recognise/acknowledge your partnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s opinion(s) get your own opinion(s) recognised/appreciated discuss cultural differences 13. Do you think that a face-to-face language exchange is better than an e-mail/ on-line language exchange?

Yes No Please explain: ________________

14. Do you have any suggestions to improve the language exchange?

Thank you!

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Appendix B Learner Diary (page 1)

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Implementing a Student Peer-Mentoring Programme for Self-Access Language Learning Carol J. Everhard, (formerly) School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Abstract While language advising is nowadays considered an essential element in ensuring the effective use of self-access facilities, not all institutions have a budget which can support such a service. Student peer-mentoring partnerships can provide an alternative, with benefits to be derived by mentors, mentees, teachers and institutions alike. What will be described is an attempt to draw on the power of peer dynamics in a self-access context, out of the classroom, over a three-year period. The participating mentees were drawn from the author’s first year, second semester undergraduate Language Mastery II (LM II) course, who were teamed up with mentors from the third or fourth year, second semester, specialist undergraduate applied linguistics course on Self-Access and Foreign Language Learning.

Bringing together students from the two courses provided younger and less academically literate learners with more personalised care and attention than the teacher/author of both courses could provide in the time available, and was conducive to sharing responsibility for learning, encouraging social autonomy (Benson & Cooker, 2013; Murray, 2014). The sense of cooperation, trust and confidentiality made both sides identify more strongly with the learning community to which they belonged. Learners were encouraged to think ‘out of the box’ in terms of self-access and could flit between the limited resources provided in the ‘walled garden’ of the compact departmental resource centre and the ‘public park’, with the mix of resources and technologies they used in their everyday lives (Reinders, 2012). What was of particular interest was how learners overcame the obstacles and barriers of space, time and even geographical location and created their own unique tailor-made self-access environments and learning pathways.

Keywords: mentoring, peer dynamics, self-access language learning, resource centre, social autonomy, learning pathways The nature of self-access resources means that they are often regarded as something of a luxury. In order to justify their expense and running costs, those involved in the enterprise are often required to produce evidence of self-access resource efficiency and effectiveness (Gardner & Miller, 1999). Finding the necessary evidence can prove challenging and the focus can often centre on the material aspects rather than the human elements in the overall self-access experience (Everhard, 2012). In times of economic stringency, self-access personnel may well be the first cuts to be made and self-access managers are then forced to innovate if they wish their resource centre to succeed on a shoe-string budget (PapadimaSophocleous, 2013).

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What will be described here is how, in a Greek higher education setting involving English majors, the various limitations of a resource centre, in terms of its restricted staffing, space and opening hours, led to creative and innovative exchanges of knowledge and experience between students, through a peer-mentoring programme.

Utilising Peer Dynamics Peers have long been recognised in second language acquisition literature as a valuable resource. Socio-constructivist approaches to language learning emphasize the fact that peers can provide useful scaffolding for their sometimes younger and less-experienced peers. As reviewers and assessors of writing and oral skills, peers can provide valuable and honest feedback and suggestions for improvement (Chen, 2006, Everhard, 2015). In a selfaccess setting also, peers can provide fellow-students with help in finding materials and can also create materials which can be used by peers (Malcolm & Majed, 2013). Even more importantly, peers can be offered roles and responsibilities usually associated with teachers and self-access managers, as advisors to their peers (Kao, 2012).

The key difference between the case described here and that given by Kao is that it involves mentoring rather than advising. Hargreaves (2010) and Sengupta and Leung (2002) make clear the significant distinction between these two activities. Firstly, a mentoring relationship is one between equals and is therefore not hierarchical. Each party brings to the table expertise of a different kind. Secondly, the dialogue shared between mentors and their mentees is an activity in which they “construct or co-construct knowledge with their clients” (Hargreaves, 2010, p. 107). Thus, the relationship is one based on cooperation, trust and mutual regard and each learns and develops in different ways, so that mentees are enabled at one and the same time to realise their potential and fulfil their aspirations (Garvey & Langridge, 2006). Each gives and also takes from the relationship, making it equally beneficial to all. Miller (1986, p. 2) makes the point that this type of relationship which is “grounded in mutuality” results in “the empowerment of all the people involved”.

It was an interest in exploring the possibilities of peer-mentoring in a non-classroombased but self-access context that prompted me to experiment with two quite different groups of learners who were majoring in English philology.

The Context Students entering the School of English (SOE) at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, were generally aged between 17-19, having completed 6 years of primary and 6 years of 301

SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 300-312. secondary education. Students were obliged to have an English proficiency level of around B2 on the Common European Framework of Reference scales, a level much lower than that required to follow courses in the SOE. Second semester courses included a compulsory course called Language Mastery II, which met for four hours a week and was concerned with argumentative and persuasive discourse. Students were generally not accustomed to exercising critical thinking or taking responsibility for their learning, having come through a system of education dominated by spoon-feeding and test-taking. Prior to university entrance, learners focused on their main subjects of study, to the detriment of their English, resulting in attrition of which they were often unaware. Some of these students became mentees on the mentoring programme.

Students taking my Self-access and Foreign Language Learning course in the second semester of their third or fourth year, on the other hand, had a more realistic picture of their language abilities, and had been exposed to a wide range of courses. Their reasons for undertaking the course varied considerably, often depending on the other Applied Linguistics courses on offer, or timetabling. It would be fair to say that unless the students had already taken courses with me, they were unlikely to know what self-access was and were often oblivious to the existence of a resource centre, albeit small, within the SOE. It was from this class that the mentors were recruited.

The Mentoring Programme in Action The programme was not one which was carefully planned and executed with predetermined numbers of students involved over a specified period of time, but rather developed in makeshift fashion through the mutual desire of students to find solutions to their various problems with respect to aspects of language, language skills, use of technology, etc. The programme ran for three years, from 2007 to 2010.

The self-access course, from which the mentors came, consisted of three contact hours per week, with emphasis on both the theory and practice of autonomy and self-access. This combination was reflected in course grades, with 60% awarded to a final course exam and 40% attributed to the satisfactory completion of a self-access project. Mentoring became an option for a self-access project in the year 2007-2008. Until then, Self-access Language Learning (SALL) materials production, had been the only project option.

Mentors and mentees were introduced to each other at the end of an LM II class and through discussion managed to select each other in accordance with their academic interests,

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SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 300-312. similar availability in their class schedules, which was not always easy, and sometimes a shared hometown from which they commuted.

Before the programme commenced, I met separately with mentors and mentees and explained the principles and ideas behind the mentoring programme. Mentors initially received information about the mentoring programme through announcements in class and once formally committed to the programme were invited to a 60-minute training session.

Small groups of mentors met in the Resource Centre. The sessions were designed to boost mentorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; confidence by further defining their role, making them realize that they could draw on their own knowledge and experience as a student in the SOE and that together with their mentees, they would create a pathway (involving steps or stages) through an area of knowledge or expertise to which the mentee(s) sought access.

It was made clear that it was not the job of the mentors to teach, but rather they should act as the menteesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Sherpa guide over difficult terrain, which would enable mentees to overcome particular difficulties in their university learning careers thus-far.

Mentors were given practical information about the opening hours and staffing arrangements of the Resource Centre. They were made aware of the full range of materials available (since some were locked up and hidden from view), introduced to the departmental Computer Network for on-line access to useful sources, if they were not already users, and they were informed of my office hours, in case some further consultation should prove necessary, or some difficulty in the mentoring process were to arise. Mentors were each given a Profile Card, a Learner Contract and a Mentoring Report Sheet (see Appendices A, B and C), on which they could maintain records of meetings and materials used. Mentors were advised that they could make use of the Resource Centre and Computer Network, the SOE Departmental Library (or any other departmental library), the Main University Library, the faculty coffee bar, their homes, or anywhere else they deemed appropriate for meetings, depending on the menteeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s goals. Mentor contact with mentees could be by land-line, mobile phone, e-mail or personal pre-arranged meeting.

Mentors and mentees were allowed flexibility to select whether they would work oneto-one, or in another combination of their choosing, such as one mentor with two mentees, or a single mentee or pair of mentees could have two or more mentors (working as a team) at their disposal. The only regulation imposed was that very careful records of mentoring meetings had to be kept since the mentors on the programme would receive a grade for the work completed as the practical component of their self-access course (worth up to 40% of their total grade). During a semester which lasted between 10 and 12 weeks, mentors were 303

SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 300-312. expected to have a minimum of 7 or 8 meetings with their mentees. At the end of the semester, both mentors and mentees were invited to complete a questionnaire (with questions specific to mentoring or being mentored) in order to give their opinion of the mentoring programme, its impact on them and usefulness to them. Some mentors also submitted voluntary reports on their experiences.

Table 1 shows the total number of students in each of the courses for the years 20072010, and the total number of mentees and mentors for each particular year.

Table 1: Participants in the Mentoring Programme LM II course

Self-access (applied linguistics) course

Year

n1

Mentees

Mentors

Materials Producers

Resource Centre Organisers

n2

20062007 20072008 20082009 20092010

29

n/a

n/a

90

n/a

90

30

13

16

62

n/a

78

53

6

8

16

22

46

28

4

4

7

19

30

n/a = not applicable

n1 = total of students taking LM II n2 = total of students taking S-A course

In the first year of the mentoring programme (2007-2008), as can be seen in Table 1, of the 78 students attending the SALL course, 62 opted to be materials producers and 16 selected to become mentors. As stated previously, in most cases, mentors and mentees succeeded in matching up with each other. In a few cases, I acted as the go-between and match-maker, but it was the learners themselves who determined the number, frequency and place of meetings according to their own needs and preferences.

In the second and third years of the programme, unfortunately, the Resource Centre hours of opening were drastically reduced due to shortage of staff. This led me to offer Resource Centre Organisation (RCO) as a third project option, as a means of staffing the Resource Centre and also offering practice to students in managing a centre. While this enabled the centre to be open for many more hours, staffed by SALL course students, and there is no doubt students enjoyed this option, RCO might also have seemed to them like a much easier option than mentoring, causing a lot of students to select this option as their project.

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Outcomes Once up and running each year, the project required very little maintenance and adjustment from myself. Having a mentor, for some of the mentees, equated to having a ‘fairy god-mother/ father’, who could help, through their guidance, to make their learning wishes come true. Comments from mentees’ responses to the questionnaire, previously mentioned, are testament to how they benefitted: Mentee 1: “It helped a lot that the age of the mentor was close to mine and the pleasant conversations we had gave me more confidence in terms of finding always an alternative when you are facing a problem because nothing is unsolved (sic).”

Mentee 2: “Although it wasn’t perfect, the work we did was very helpful and I found the materials both provided by the mentor and the resource centre quite helpful to improve my weaknesses step by step.”

Mentee 3: “I think it is a wonderful idea, because one can always learn things from a person who has already gone through the same things.”

As stated previously, the benefits for mentees and mentors were mutual. The following comments from mentors, testify to their job-satisfaction: Mentor A: “Working in my hometown didn’t allow me to meet my mentee as often as we may have wished at times. However, we were both cooperative and managed to find a way to meet each other quite regularly in a mentoring process.”

Mentor B: “The importance of the project work i.e. mentoring, in this course was great. I had the opportunity to practise the theory about self-access systems I learned in the classroom.

I learned how a self-access centre works, how to use the materials and the technology available there, and also how to cooperate peacefully with others such as my mentee or the staff of the SAC.”

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Mentor C: “On the whole it was an interesting programme that made me discover the resource centre and its facilities, as before I was completely unaware of its abilities (sic). I can certainly say that I enjoyed mentoring.”

The relationships worked well because the mentees’ needs brought to the surface, depths of knowledge and experience which would otherwise have remained untapped among mentors. Comments made in the questionnaires reiterated how much the self-confidence and self-esteem of both mentors and mentees increased, since being privy to such a personal and special learning relationship engendered pedagogic dialogue which was conducive to engendering positive affect and the development of cognitive and metacognitive thinking and discussion.

There is no doubt that the mentoring programme involved a good deal of risk-taking for the stakeholders involved. All of the learners were products of an education system which is hinged on test-taking, achieving high marks and fostering the kind of competition which verges on hostility. Mentoring, on the other hand, fosters trust and cooperation and confidence is boosted for all participants, engendering positive feelings. In one particular case, one of the mentors had previously been a mentee and was therefore able to experience the mentoring programme from both sides. Her comments were among the most encouraging for me as the instructor and made all the extra effort involved in the venture worthwhile: “Keep going, have strength and people will respond”.

Older students have the opportunity to think about and reflect on their own previous learning and feel useful to their younger peers when their knowledge and experience as learners proves so valuable. It also helps them to recognise their own weaknesses and strengths and gives them a second chance to put things right. SALL mentors reach an understanding of the principles behind autonomy and self-access learning through practical experience, offering greater reinforcement than lectures or reading SALL reference material.

They could see Vygotsky’s principles of scaffolding, which we had discussed in class, unfold before their eyes and could lend a guiding hand so that their younger peers could reach their next Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1962, 1978, cited in Williams & Burden, 1997).

Mentees often developed strong friendships with their mentors. They could confess their difficulties and problems to their mentors and confide in them in a way they never could with their instructor. A slightly older peer mentor could coax, cajole, encourage them as and 306

SiSAL Journal Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2015, 300-312. when appropriate and could guide them on a path which they never thought possible. Indeed, many mentees confessed that they would like to have mentors to help them with other subjects in the syllabus. Fortunately, complaints were close to non-existent, and mainly referred to the limitations of the facilities rather than the programme itself.

It is, of course, important to have mechanisms in place, which allow for crosschecking of the information provided by mentors about the mentoring process, especially when work is graded. Particularly in the case of groups of mentors, it is important to be able to ascertain that one particular mentor has not been riding on the back(s) of others. There is also the danger that mentees may not always have been completely happy with the mentoring process and may have been coerced or ‘bullied’ into providing false statements. The records that participants were required to keep (see appendices) were designed to minimise such issues.

Conclusion Although my situation in teaching these two quite different courses was perhaps unique, I feel sure that the principles involved do lend themselves to emulation. Despite the dangers of the inexperience and naivety in peer-mentoring processes, which some might regard as “the ignorant lead the unknowing” (Sampson & Cohen, 2001, p. 25), I feel that the opportunities that such processes offer should not be side-stepped or avoided, since occasions for one peer “enabling the other to make appropriate change(s)” (Gardiner, 2008, p. 8) will be lost. The skills required for mentoring to succeed, identified by Alred, Garvey and Smith (2006) as listening, challenging, questioning and supporting, are within the range of abilities which older peers can offer their younger peers, creating a “developmental alliance” (Hay, 1995, cited in Carnell, MacDonald & Askew, 2006, p. 3) and “the ability to act”, which results from “constructive processes within relationships” (Miller, 1986, p. 2). For me, the importance of the mentoring programme was that it seemed to engender greater “access to self” through giving “access to suitably-qualified others” (Everhard, 2013, p. 229).

The argument here is not one for replacing paid professionals with what some might regard as poor or naïve amateurs, but it is an argument, based on preliminary evidence, that there is a degree of expertise and acquired knowledge within our student populations, which, if ignored, will remain forever hidden from view and untapped. A programme, such as the one described, where pedagogic misfortune and learning difficulties can be transformed into real learning opportunities for all, in self-access mode, seems like an opportunity too good to miss.

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Notes on the contributor Carol J. Everhard is an independent researcher and a former teaching fellow in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, School of English (SOE), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She taught and coordinated undergraduate courses on Language Mastery and Self-access and Foreign Language Learning and organized Self-access Language Learning (SALL) resources, first for British Council, Greece and then for SOE. Her research interests include learner autonomy, self-access, peer dynamics, learner-centred assessment and idiomaticity.

References Alred, G., Garvey, B., & Smith, R. (2006). The mentoring pocketbook (2nd ed.). Alresford, UK: Management Pocketbooks Ltd. Benson, P., & Cooker, L. (2013). The social and the individual in applied linguistics research.

In P. Benson & L. Cooker (Eds.), The applied linguistic individual: Sociocultural approaches to identity, agency and autonomy (pp. 1-16). Sheffield, UK: Equinox.

Carnell, E., MacDonald, J., & Askew, S. (2006). Coaching and mentoring in higher education: A learning-centred approach. London, UK: Institute of Education, University of London.

Chen, Y.-M. (2006). Peer and self-assessment for English oral performance: A study of reliability and learning benefits. English Teaching & Learning, 30(4), 1-22.

Everhard, C. J. (2012). Re-placing the jewel in the crown of autonomy: A revisiting of the ‘self’ or ‘selves’ in self-access. SiSAL Journal, 3(4), 377-391. Retrieved from http://sisaljournal.org/archives/dec12/everhard Everhard, C. J. (2013). Editorial of special issue on ‘Accessing and Accessorizing for SelfAccess Language Learning’. SiSAL Journal, 4(4), 228-235. Retrieved from http://sisaljournal.org/archives/dec13/everhard Everhard, C. J. (2015). Investigating peer- and self-assessment of oral skills as steppingstones to autonomy in EFL higher education. In C. J. Everhard & L. Murphy (Eds.), Assessment and autonomy in language learning (pp. 114-142). Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gardiner, C. E. (2008). Mentoring: Towards an improved professional friendship (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Birmingham, UK. Gardner, D., & Miller, L. (1999). Establishing self-access: From theory to practice.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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Garvey, B., & Langridge, K. (2006). Pupil mentoring pocketbook. Alresford, UK: Management Pocketbooks.

Hargreaves, E. (2010). Knowledge construction and personal relationship: Insights about a UK university mentoring and coaching service. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 18(2), 107-120.

Kao, S.-H. (2012). Peer advising as a means to facilitate language learning. In J. Mynard & L. Carson (Eds.), Advising in language learning: Dialogue, tools and context (pp. 87104). Harlow, UK: Pearson Education.

Malcolm. D., & Majed, M. (2013). Foundation-level Gulf Arab response to self-access learning. SiSAL Journal, 4(4), 323-338. Retrieved from http://sisaljournal.org/archives/dec13/malcolm_majed/ Miller, J. B. (1986) What do we mean by relationships? Paper presented at Stone Centre Colloquium, Wellesley College, USA. Retrieved from https://www.jbmti.org/pdf/previews/preview_22sc.pdf Murray, G. (2014). Introduction: Exploring the social dimensions of autonomy in language learning. In G. Murray (Ed.), Social dimensions of autonomy in language learning (pp.

3-13). Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Papadima-Sophocleous, S. (2013). Davids still exist among Goliaths: A story of modest selfaccess centre establishment and survival in times of economic decline. SiSAL Journal, 4(4), 281-294. Retrieved from http://sisaljournal.org/archives/dec13/papadimasophocleous Reinders, H. (2012). The end of self-access? From walled garden to public park. English Language Teaching World Online (ELTWO), 4, 1-5. Retrieved from http://blog.nus.edu.sg/eltwo/2012/06/13/the-end-of-self-access-from-walled-gardento-public-park/ Sampson, J., & Cohen, R. (2001). Designing peer learning. In D. Boud, E. Cohen, & J. Sampson (Eds.), Peer learning in higher education: Learning from and with each other (pp. 21-34). London, UK: Kogan Page.

Sengupta, S., & Leung, K. (2002). Providing English language support through collegial mentoring: How do we measure its impact? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 27(4), 365-381.

Williams, M., & Burden, R. L. (1997). Psychology for language teachers: A social constructivist approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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Appendices Appendix A Simplified Version of Profile Card MENTOR PROFILE

Pet name:

Surname: First name: Father’s name: Student number: Place / country of origin: Mobile Phone Number: __________________________________ AUTH e-mail Address: ___________________________________ General Mentor: [__] Specific Mentor: [__] Topic (s): [_________________] [_________________] [_________________] Mentor / learner contract: Yes [ ] No [ ] Mentoring Group (1): Yes [ ] No [ ] Topic: …………………………

Mentor Members: Mentee Members: …………………. ………………….. ………………… ………………….. ………………… …………………..

Mentoring Group (2): Yes [ ] No [ ] Topic: ………………………….

Mentor Members: Mentee Members: …………………. ………………….. ………………… ………………….. ………………… ………………….. st 1 Mentee/mentor Contact Comments: Means of Contact : …………………. …………………………………….. ……………………………………. ……………………………………..

Outcome / Decision: …………………. …………………………………….. …………………………………….

2nd Mentee/mentor Contact Means of Contact : …………………. …………………………………….

Outcome / Decision: ………………….

Comments: …………………………………….. …………………………………….. …………………………………….. …………………………………….

3rd Mentee/mentor Contact Means of Contact : …………………. …………………………………….

Outcome / Decision: ………………….

Comments: …………………………………….. …………………………………….. …………………………………….. …………………………………….

-

Appendix B Learner Contract Between Mentor and Mentee MENTOR / MENTEE SUPPORT CONTRACT Mentor’s name : …………………………….

Mentee(’s) (s’) name (s): …………………………….. …………………………….. …………………………….. …………………………….. …………………………….. …………………………….. …………………………….. ……………………………..

Group aims: ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………

Meetings arranged for: Work Planned Work Achieved ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………

Future Plans: ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………

Signatures: ………………………………………. ………………………………………. ………………………………………. ……………………………………….

Date: …………………………………..

Appendix C Mentor’s Weekly Support Date:

…………………………………………….

Mentor’s name: ………………………………………..

Mentee’s name: ………………………………………..

Other mentors:

Other mentees:

………………………………..

………………………………………….

………………………………..

………………………………………….

Any changes this week: ……………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………

Activities carried out in the Resource centre: …………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………

Activities carried out elsewhere: ……………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………

Mentor’s comments:……………………………………………………………………………………….. ………………………………………………………………………………………..

Mentee’s comments:……………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………

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The SAC as a Community of Practice: A Case Study of Peer-Run Conversation Sessions at the Universidad del Caribe Elvira del Carmen Acuña González, Universidad del Caribe, Mexico Magdalena Avila Pardo, Universidad del Caribe, Mexico Jane Elisabeth Holmes Lewendon, Universidad del Caribe, Mexico Abstract The present article describes how the development of the ‘conversation sessions’ in the self-access centre (SAC) fostered a Community of Practice (CoP) as theorised by Lave & Wenger (1991). Our SAC is at a government-funded university in Cancun, Mexico. The conversation sessions were implemented with the aim to offer our EFL students the opportunity to practice speaking on a regular basis to complement their English programme. These peer-run conversations, in turn, are one of the key elements that led to the creation of a CoP where SAC users and personnel share a repertoire of resources and conventions created over time in order to form, transmit and advance knowledge.

Key words: Peer-learning; communities of practice; self-access learning; legitimate peripheral participation; agency; autonomy The Context The Self-Access Centre (SAC) at the Universidad del Caribe, Mexico and the English Department are located together. They are managed by the coordinator of the English Department and nine full-time counsellors, who are also English teachers from different undergraduate programmes: International Business and Business Innovation, Sustainable Tourism, Culinary Arts, and four Engineering programmes.

Our SAC is considered to be a great success due to the number of users (around 150 per day). Visitors from other institutions to the SAC generally comment that they wish their self-access centre would be as busy and animated as ours, in which the most popular activities are the ‘conversations’. Nevertheless, it has been a gradual process, not only in relation to how this speaking practice has evolved but also in the development of the whole self-access system since it started 10 years ago.

During the 1990s, as a result of a project between the Ministry of Education and the British Council, 33 centres were opened in Mexico (Grounds, 2002) with the objective of promoting autonomous learning to complement classroom language learning. Founded in 2000, our institution came a few years later to the trend of SAC openings. It was at the insistence of one of the authors of this article, coordinator of the English programme at that

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time, that the Academic Secretary and the Dean were gradually convinced of the advantages of a SAC for a university located in the heart of a touristic area. In late 2004, all full-time and part-time teachers took courses on setting up SACs and becoming SAC tutors, instructed by the British Council, and in January 2005 our SAC opened.

The SAC started in an area of 210 m2 in a classroom adapted for the SAC. It could service 35 students simultaneously; it had reading and listening resources, televisions for films and videos, computers, a small reception and a small office for the head of the SAC. The station of a full-time teacher was within the SAC. And at that time we did not have any idea about the limitations of our SAC; we were simply delighted because this was an innovation we had fought for so hard. For the time being, that was more than enough. In 2005, the SAC was given an adjacent area, so it could service 50 students simultaneously.

In June 2008, the SAC moved to a larger area of 474 m2.

By the time we moved to our new premises we had already discovered that one of our strengths was that the full-time teacher stations were placed in the SAC so teachers/counsellors were permanently available for users. Hence, this condition was replicated in our next setting. The new area was big enough for a turnover of 150 students, which was our attendance during peak hours from 1 to 4 pm. During this time, the number of full-time teachers was increased from three to nine.

Looking back on those years, it seems that the gradual growth from a SAC for 35 students to one that could service 150 users gave us the opportunity to develop our own character in accordance with the needs of our users. One of the first decisions was to make SAC hours compulsory for students and consider them a complement to classroom instruction. This was done because of the requirement of spoken English in this touristic destination.

We were taught that establishing a SAC involved giving controlled activities not unlike homework. These included conversation sessions, originally run by teachers and a British language assistant. As a part of this method conversation sessions were initially very structured. The first British language assistant from Southampton (2004-2005) experimented with formal and academic topics such as drug addiction, holidays or English culture, but gradually found that students responded more to unstructured, more personalized conversations. Turn taking was orderly and strict, leading to what one of the

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teachers called “predictable boredom”. Initially, there used to be groups of up to twenty students; and after discussions between teachers about the benefits of just listening without participating, the groups were reduced to a maximum of eight. Thus, conversation sessions were gradually shaped by students’ needs and interests. This was very fortunate because the rationale was that the students should have these sessions on a regular basis, in small groups and in a more relaxed environment.

In 2007, part-time teachers began to be paid an extra hour for each group taught, for leading conversation sessions and a chart containing information as to when teachers and assistants were available was posted at the SAC entrance. As a result of the formal introduction of conversation sessions we also overcame a recurrent problem we had witnessed in Mexican SACs: the divorce between SAC counsellors and non-SAC teachers that undermines both SAC work and classroom instruction. Teachers with no contact with SAC work may fail to perceive the benefits of self-access learning (Gardner & Miller, 1999).

These sessions have helped part-time teachers experience what working in selfaccess conditions is both for students and teachers. As a result, we have been able to witness beneficial changes in the attitudes of teachers within the classroom. For example, a very distant and authoritative teacher, through experiencing the less hierarchical atmosphere that conversations often imply, became more accessible and even started to include humour in his teaching. In other cases, teachers who had not previously given proper follow-up to students covering their SAC hours became convinced of their benefits and devised links between SAC activities and their teaching.

Establishing the Peer-Learning Programme The conversations soon became so popular that at certain hours we could not cope with the demand. Thus, students were required to attend from 12 to 18 twenty-minute conversation sessions, as well as 28 hours of independent work in the SAC over a 16-week term. The number of conversation sessions and SAC hours depend on the students’ level and teachers’ criteria.

At the beginning, only full and part-time teachers and British language assistants ran the conversations. However, after a couple of years, as the demand grew with the

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increasing student population, the counsellors started appointing more advanced students to lead and SAC staff would monitor them. Soon, it became customary for students to volunteer. Now the conversation sessions are led either by a teacher, British language assistant or a peer-student.

The Peer-Learning Programme in Action In this scheme, the students arrive at the SAC, check the conversation chart or simply join an ongoing session. In the case that there is nobody available to facilitate a conversation, they ask for permission to have a session among themselves. Thus, either the leader, usually an ‘old timer’, decides what to do, or they negotiate what they want to do (have small talk, play a board game or use cue cards). All the material is within reach.

When the conversation session is over, the students have their records signed. Before signing, the teacher may ask some questions about what they talked about or did. This characteristic of students self-organizing and volunteering to lead conversations, termed as engagement by Wenger (1998), is one of the elements that led us to consider that a Community of Practice (CoP), “a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly”, was in the process of being formed because the SAC dynamic shows the three features that, according to Lave and Wenger (1991), define CoPs: 1) mutual engagement; doing things together, in our case, talking, playing, practicing English or helping peers 2) joint enterprise, improving the speaking skill 3) shared mutual knowledge on the procedures to do things; in our SAC, the logistics for conversations or just the sharing of knowledge on different levels.

How the students approach the counsellor and the freedom they are granted depends on each staff member’s personality and teaching style. There are some who control the activities the students do and monitor them very closely, while others let the students free to happily talk about things they would not before a teacher.

It is a gradual process to reach the point in which the students feel confident enough to approach an ongoing conversation or ask for conversation sessions. At the beginning, some new students find it hard. Sometimes they just stand near our stations with their conversation records but they do not dare ask, whereas later in the semester, they seem to

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be pretty confident to make requests, even if they see that the staff is busy. This has happened perhaps because a CoP has been formed and one of the characteristics of such communities is that they develop a shared repertoire of routines, ways of doing things, tools and actions (Wenger, 1998) and have learnt that it is their right.

Willing students from higher levels often lead conversation sessions with students from lower levels. The students arrive individually or in small groups and one from a more advanced level may address the teacher in English asking for permission to lead a conversation. Sometimes the conversation leaders are not more proficient than their peers but students who, through their sustained participation in the SAC community, have become either more fluent or confident. Thus, the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; agency may come to life spontaneously in the on-going interactions acting collectively in the social formations of our SAC (Block, 2014).

As for materials to help professionals and amateurs to lead conversations, several options have been created: there are conversation cards such as Cathyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cards (Seitchik Diaz, 2002) and the Chat Pack (two sets of cards containing each over 150 questions to stimulate conversations) (Chat pack: Fun questions to spark conversations, 2007) games produced by teachers who have generously shared them with the SAC, worksheets with conversation topics downloaded from the internet, and games produced by students working in the SAC. Most importantly, students often surprise us with imaginative ways of using material from the SAC to create conversation activities. For instance, they may use a set of cards containing occupation images to play a game of guessing the job by means of asking questions or they use headbands to take turns guessing what their card depicts.

Furthermore, the SAC has had students as helpers for the last four semesters. They are students doing their Voluntary Service, and we encourage them to offer suggestions to optimize the service. They are often extremely enthusiastic and creative. They lead conversation sessions, help with homework, and organize activities for special occasions, thus providing another source of peer-learning in the SAC. Their work greatly enhances the atmosphere, bringing to our community social energy, engagement and imagination (Wenger, 1998).

This, in turn, has led to a boost in SAC attendance and popularity. Even though the conversations sessions were compulsory, they soon became very popular and it was

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discovered that conversations with peers were often preferred and the only requirement was to have them in the proximity of a teacher station in order to ensure the interaction was kept in English. This last trait, conversation among students, has proved to be the most enriching; it has become a source of lively, informal and much sought for interaction among peers. The students enjoy meeting people; they report looking forward to visiting the SAC, which in the surveys has always been the favourite space in campus. There are also students who have completed their English courses and keep attending as conversation leaders, hence exerting their personal agency. This is only one example of how â&#x20AC;&#x153;learners actively engage in constructing the terms and conditions of their own learningâ&#x20AC;? (Lantolf & Pavlenko, 2001, p. 145).

The popularity of conversation sessions, has led to another characteristic of our SAC. Unintentionally (because we had to make do with the location we were given, which did not have private areas or small cubicles for group work) through the momentum the situation gradually gained, our SAC became very noisy. However, we have also observed that those students who want to do listening, TV viewing and work on computers use headsets to isolate themselves and there have never been complaints from students wanting to concentrate on their reading or studying. Moreover, in the SAC you can see how students promote and benefit from peer-learning, for example, it is common to see students working collaboratively: reading from the same book, doing homework, or developing projects together. This suggests that the cooperative style of engagement that has developed in the SAC extends further than the peer-conversation sessions.

Examining the Peer Conversation Sessions These benefits have been formally documented in the MA dissertation of one of the authors on the perceptions of the actors involved (Avila, 2013). The subjects of the study were the participants in conversations, students and leaders alike. The method was mixed research, based on observations, questionnaires and a focus group. The overall results showed that the conversation sessions can be considered an asset because they are perceived as successful and useful by both students and teachers. The different types of conversations and leader styles cater for the different learning styles and studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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personalities, thus providing students with the opportunity to practice their own English in a personalized atmosphere.

The research highlighted that the SAC is not only a place for practising English but it is also a place of meeting amongst students from different majors, the English teachers and the language assistants. The students repeatedly express that it is through these conversations that they gain confidence and improve their English. These conversation sessions offer users the opportunity to be constantly engaged in the pursuit of practicing speaking, interacting with each other and with the world, leading to what in the words of Wenger (1998, p. 45), is â&#x20AC;&#x153;the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterpriseâ&#x20AC;?.

On the other hand, data gathered in this research suggested a path for improvement mainly related to administrative matters, such as a change of the maximum number of students in the conversation groups and the frequency of conversations. Conversation sessions are limited to one per day in order to meet the demand of students and the availability of conversation leaders. As for mixed level groups some conversation leaders suggested that lower levels require more attention so it would be better not to mix them; however, the consensus was that mixed levels are an enriching factor of the speaking practice experience as it is closer to reality, thus mixed conversation sessions remained.

A Final Reflection In our SAC the value is that the expert and the non-expert are fully accepted and both have a meaningful role in our community that gives them a sense of belonging and engagement. This is why we consider that a Community of Practice has evolved where knowledge is formed, maintained and transmitted (Lave &Wenger, 1991). In addition, its practices have become the property of this community to the extent that it is considered normal to use English in the SAC and a domain has developed which promotes language practice among a Spanish-speaking population.

However, it is worth mentioning that neither students nor teachers were familiar with this style of working, and it has taken time to break the boundaries between teachers and students to form a community. Nor did we set our style of working drawing on Lave and Wengerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s idea of CoP; it was more like a gradual discovery of approaches leading to a better system of working that has led to developing a CoP. Accepting this idea, learning is

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fundamentally experiential and social (Wenger, 1998) and CoPs can be springboards for the learning process. In fact, we have witnessed how the students have been drawn into the environment and how legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) (Lave & Wenger, 1991) happens naturally once the correct conditions are given. That is, through LPP the newcomers integrate into our community of practitioners, adopting group language, practices and identities by virtue of their informal membership.

If there is any practical advice to be given from our experience, it is that the notion of the SAC as a social centre overrules other methodological considerations. Listening to users so as to learn what they want, granting them the freedom to bring up the topics of their interest, encouraging less structured activities and roles, encouraging mixed-level participation and, in general, emphasising less enforcement and administrative procedures and more creativity and resourcefulness. Self-access language learning has dramatically shifted, so it is up to every self-access centre to discover what works from trial and error rather than trying to follow a particular paradigm. Murray (2014) asserts that autonomy has been lately associated with interdependence. He agrees with Huang and Benson (2013), who identified ability, desire and freedom as the key components of the capacity to control learning. Thus, allowing learners the freedom to choose when, how and who they want to practice their English with can help foster the development of autonomy of language learners in the self-access centre space.

Notes on the Contributors Elvira del Carmen AcuĂąa GonzĂĄlez is founder of the SAC at Universidad del Caribe. She holds a MA in English Language Teaching from Southampton University. She is currently a full-time professor and SAC counsellor at Universidad del Caribe. Her areas of interest are reading and discourse analysis.

Magdalena Avila Pardo is a SAC counsellor and full-time professor at Universidad del Caribe. She holds a MA in English Language Teaching from Southampton University and is currently studying for a PhD in Applied Linguistics (DL). Her areas of interest include sociolinguistics, agency and autonomy.

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Jane Elisabeth Holmes Lewendon is coordinator of the English Department, a SAC counsellor and a full-time professor. She holds a MA in English Language Teaching from Southampton University. Her main area of interest is conversation as a learning tool References Avila, P. M. (2013). Assessing the effectiveness of the SAC-based speaking-practice (Unpublished master’s dissertation), University of Southampton, UK. Block, D. (2014). Structure, agency and the critical realist challenge. In P. Deters, X. Gao, E. R. Miller, & G. Vitanova (Eds.). Theorizing and analyzing agency in second language learning: Interdisciplinary approaches (pp. 15-34). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Grounds, P. (2002). Historia de los centros de auto-acceso [The history of self-access centres]. Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. Retrieved from http://idiomas.tij.uabc.mx/sacnew/sacindex.html.htm Huang, J., & Benson, P. (2013). Autonomy, agency and identity in foreign and second language education. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 36(1), 7-2. doi:10.1515/cjal-2013-0002 Lantolf, J. P., & Pavlenko, A. (2001). (S)econd (L)anguage (A)ctivity: Understanding learners as people. In M. Breen (Ed.), Learner contributions to language learning: New directions in research (pp. 141–158). London, UK: Pearson.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Murray, G., (2014). Exploring the social dimensions of autonomy in language learning. In G. Murray (Ed.), Social dimensions of autonomy in language learning (pp. 3-14).

Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Nicholaus, B., & Lowrie, P. (2007). Chat pack: Fun questions to spark conversations.

Yankton, SD: William Randall.

Seitchik Diaz, C. J. (2002). Cathy's cards: Instant conversation in the classroom. Palm Springs, CA: Alta Book Center.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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