Recently, I have encountered situations that make me think this trend still persists in domestic research on foreign language learning.
The idea is that “simply providing learners with tools is not enough.”
Of course, learner attributes also play a role, so this cannot be said to be true in every case. However, I believe there is a misconception among those currently considering the use of ICT in language education. That is the “misconception” that if you just provide learners with e-learning or mobile phones, they will become motivated. While students who are naturally interested in digital devices might touch them and gradually start studying, I do not think that is the case for the majority of university students.
If you give them such things, they will do it at first. There is a novelty effect. However, they will gradually stop using them. At a recent academic conference, there was a research presentation on promoting autonomous learning using mobile phones, and the results showed that, as expected, motivated students studied more, but unmotivated students did not—even when provided with teaching materials via mobile phones, they simply did not use them.
This is a perfectly reasonable story with no room for doubt. It means that just providing a tool does not lead to motivation or anything else. I believe that motivated students will study no matter what you give them, and that the majority of students are capable of learning on their own without being told anything by anyone (perhaps such students might even dislike being given tools because they have already established their own learning styles). I consider the idea that “if you provide tools, it will lead to learner motivation and they will start learning” to be a “delusion.”
However, there are many things that can only be done with ICT, things that become easier with ICT, and things where a greater effect is expected. But ICT is, after all, just a tool. It is the teachers (researchers) on the ground who must control how it is used to ensure it is effective.
As long as foreign language education research claims to be “education,” it must be able to return research results to the educational field. Research fields are often practical settings as well. However, when something new—in this case, ICT—appears, experimental verification must be conducted to verify its effects. This is the standard approach in Educational Technology, and I believe the process of (experimental evaluation → modification) × N times → practical evaluation is important. It is a similar process to developing software.
I think many of you have seen research presentations on foreign language education, but because they prioritize practice, there is often little control over variables, and even when they claim to evaluate a tool, it is not a true evaluation of the tool, often leading to contradictory conclusions. This is not to say that all foreign language education research is like this. Applied Linguistics, which is closely related to foreign language education, became a major research field after the journal Applied Linguistics was published in 1980. At that time, the academic field of cognitive psychology was just emerging, and Applied Linguistics is often studied in conjunction with research findings from cognitive psychology. As an approach, it naturally involves classroom instruction and long-term evaluation, but it also conducts laboratory experiments to verify the relationships between variables. While I agree that there are aspects that must be done practically and over the long term when looking at the level of “acquisition,” I believe that a significant portion can be examined through laboratory-style evaluation in terms of language information processing, affective evaluation, and comparative evaluation of output. Although Applied Linguistics and foreign language education are slightly different research fields, researchers and practitioners in this field, where there is overlap, are not unaware of experimental approaches.
With the advent of computers, mobile phones, and recently the use of social software such as blogs and SNS for educational purposes using these devices, there are research presentations that jump straight into practical evaluation. However, what are the effects of these tools in the first place, and what are the hypotheses used to claim those effects? There seems to be a sense that research is proceeding without this kind of examination and verification. I have felt for the past few years, while attending foreign language education conferences, that this is particularly prominent in foreign language education. I used to wonder if this was only the case in Japan, but that is not so. I think the experimental approach is being forgotten or underestimated globally. That is why people end up saying things like, “It was effective to use a multimodal tool as a foreign language communication tool,” without any discussion of what was good or bad about that tool.
In foreign language education conferences, I think practice-based research will likely remain the mainstream in the future. I am not denying practice-based research. Having had three years of experience teaching English in high schools and universities, I understand the value, importance, and difficulty of practical evaluation. In fact, educational research without practice-based research is impossible. However, I believe we should now return to laboratory-based research and thoroughly verify the effects of the tools we want to use in practice.
