Incorporating Digital Multimodal Composing and MOOC Courses in L2 Speaking Classes: Learners’ Attitudes in Focus
Fahime Talakoob
1
(
English Department, Isfahan (Khoradgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran
)
Hossein Heidari Tabrizi
2
(
Professor of Applied Linguistics, English Department, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran
)
Sajad Shafiee
3
(
Department of English, Shahrekord Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrekord, Iran
)
الکلمات المفتاحية: Attitude, DMC, IELTS, MOOC, Speaking,
ملخص المقالة :
In recent decades, language educators have taken advantage of technological advancements in the language classroom, and L2 learners have voiced their interests, concerns, and preferences about those technological advancements. The current investigation was designed to find out the attitudes of Iranian intermediate IELTS candidates towards using digital multimodal composing (DMC) and massive online open courses (MOOC) in their speaking classes. To achieve this aim, a sample of 60 male and female EFL learners at the intermediate level were selected based on volunteer sampling procedures. Subsequently, the participants were assigned to the two conditions of DMC and MOOC. The two groups were exposed to the same instructional materials, with the difference being that in DMC, the learners had to produce videos during the course and post them on the Flip platform for their peers and teacher to review and comment. They then could use the feedback to make corrections/revisions; in the MOOC condition, the learners signed up for an IELTS course on futurelearn.com and received video presentations, pdf articles, and quizzes, and they were asked to leave comments or react to each other's' comments during the course. Each group received a researcher-made attitude questionnaire at the end of the course and expressed their opinions about the treatment they were exposed to. Not surprisingly, both groups welcomed the use of DMC and MOOC and had positive attitudes towards incorporating such techniques into speaking courses. Based on these findings, this study presents a discussion of certain pedagogical implications.
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