Literature

Literature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" (from Latin littera letter), and therefore the academic study of literature is known as Letters (as in the phrase "Arts and Letters"). In Western culture the most basic written literary types include fiction and nonfiction.
Definitions

People may perceive a difference between "literature" and some popular forms of written work. The terms "literary fiction" and "literary merit" often serve to distinguish between individual works. Critics may exclude works from the classification "literature," for example, on the grounds of a poor standard of grammar and syntax, of an unbelievable or disjointed story-line, or of inconsistent or unconvincing characters. Genre fiction (for example: romance, crime, or science fiction) may also become excluded from consideration as "literature."
History

One of the earliest known literary works is the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem dated around 2100 B.C., which deals with themes of heroism, friendship, loss, and the quest for eternal life. Different historical periods have emphasized various characteristics of literature. Early works often had an overt or covert religious or didactic purpose. Moralizing or prescriptive literature stems from such sources. The exotic nature of romance flourished from the Middle Ages onwards, whereas the Age of Reason manufactured nationalistic epics and philosophical tracts. Romanticism emphasized the popular folk literature and emotive involvement, but gave way in the 19th-century West to a phase of realism and naturalism, investigations into what is real. The 20th century brought demands for symbolism or psychological insight in the delineation and development of character. The 20th century brought the concept of Old and Dated Published Books back into Media focus for reviews and authors coming back PaperBack, Literature dropped by Publishers and Agents as "Out-Dated" and focus moved on to New and Newer Book Authors. One such publisher originated the Literary Concept in "The Reviewer" seen at Author Free To Air a dot com Internet Website published by Worldwide Publishing Inc. This has raised an eyebrow in the Publishing Industry and easy to see why this vast reservoir of "lost to public review" as in poetry the "WayBack Paperback" Inventory has been dormant placed under a pile of catalog Index used only by librarians; Forgotten for years and as a lost resource full of new applications for the 20th century Publisher. All genre are suitable to return to this new, Media Focus as it should.
Poetry

A poem is a composition written in verse (although verse has been equally used for epic and dramatic fiction). Poems rely heavily on imagery, precise word choice, and metaphor; they may take the form of measures consisting of patterns of stresses (metric feet) or of patterns of different-length syllables (as in classical prosody); and they may or may not utilize rhyme. One cannot readily characterize poetry precisely. Typically though, poetry as a form of literature makes some significant use of the formal properties of the words it uses – the properties of the written or spoken form of the words, independent of their meaning. Meter depends on syllables and on rhythms of speech; rhyme and alliteration depend on the sounds of words.

Poetry perhaps pre-dates other forms of literature: early known examples include the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (dated from around 2700 B.C.), parts of the Bible, the surviving works of Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey), and the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. In cultures based primarily on oral traditions the formal characteristics of poetry often have a mnemonic function, and important texts: legal, genealogical or moral, for example, may appear first in verse form.

Some poetry uses specific forms: the haiku, the limerick, or the sonnet, for example. A traditional haiku written in Japanese must have something to do with nature, contain seventeen onji (syllables), distributed over three lines in groups of five, seven, and five, and should also have a kigo, a specific word indicating a season. A limerick has five lines, with a rhyme scheme of AABBA, and line lengths of 3,3,2,2,3 stressed syllables. It traditionally has a less reverent attitude towards nature. Poetry not adhering to a formal poetic structure is called "free verse"

Language and tradition dictate some poetic norms: Persian poetry always rhymes, Greek poetry rarely rhymes, Italian or French poetry often does, English and German poetry can go either way. Perhaps the most paradigmatic style of English poetry, blank verse, as exemplified in works by Shakespeare and Milton, consists of unrhymed iambic pentameters. Some languages prefer longer lines; some shorter ones. Some of these conventions result from the ease of fitting a specific language's vocabulary and grammar into certain structures, rather than into others; for example, some languages contain more rhyming words than others, or typically have longer words. Other structural conventions come about as the result of historical accidents, where many speakers of a language associate good poetry with a verse form preferred by a particular skilled or popular poet.

Works for theatre (see below) traditionally took verse form. This has now become rare outside opera and musicals, although many would argue that the language of drama remains intrinsically poetic.

In recent years, digital poetry has arisen that takes advantage of the artistic, publishing, and synthetic qualities of digital media.
Prose

Prose consists of writing that does not adhere to any particular formal structures (other than simple grammar); "non-poetic" writing, perhaps. The term sometimes appears pejoratively, but prosaic writing simply says something without necessarily trying to say it in a beautiful way, or using beautiful words. Prose writing can of course take beautiful form; but less by virtue of the formal features of words (rhymes, alliteration, metre) but rather by style, placement, or inclusion of graphics. But one need not mark the distinction precisely, and perhaps cannot do so. One area of overlap is "prose poetry", which attempts to convey using only prose, the aesthetic richness typical of poetry.
Essays

An essay consists of a discussion of a topic from an author's personal point of view, exemplified by works by Michel de Montaigne or by Charles Lamb.

'Essay' in English derives from the French 'essai', meaning 'attempt'. Thus one can find open-ended, provocative and/or inconclusive essays. The term "essays" first applied to the self-reflective musings of Michel de Montaigne, and even today he has a reputation as the father of this literary form.

Genres related to the essay may include:

* the memoir, telling the story of an author's life from the author's personal point of view
* the epistle: usually a formal, didactic, or elegant letter.

Fiction

Narrative fiction (narrative prose) generally favours prose for the writing of novels, short stories, graphic novels, and the like. Singular examples of these exist throughout history, but they did not develop into systematic and discrete literary forms until relatively recent centuries. Length often serves to categorize works of prose fiction. Although limits remain somewhat arbitrary, modern publishing conventions dictate the following:

* A mini saga is a short story of about 50 words or less.
* Flash fiction is generally defined as a piece of prose under a thousand words.
* A short story is prose of between 1000 and 20,000 words (but typically more than 5000 words), which may or may not have a narrative arc.
* A story containing between 20,000 and 50,000 words falls into the novella category. Although this definition is very fluid, with works up to 70,000 words or more being included as novelle.
* A work of fiction containing more than 50,000 words generally falls into the realm of the novel.

A novel consists simply of a long story written in prose, yet the form developed comparatively recently. Icelandic prose sagas dating from about the 11th century bridge the gap between traditional national verse epics and the modern psychological novel. In mainland Europe, the Spaniard Cervantes wrote perhaps the first influential novel: Don Quixote, the first part of which was published in 1605 and the second in 1615. Earlier collections of tales, such as the One Thousand and One Nights, Giovanni Bocaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, have comparable forms and would classify as novels if written today. Other works written in classical Asian and Arabic literature resemble even more strongly the novel as we now think of it—for example, works such as the Japanese Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki, the Arabic Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, the Arabic Theologus Autodidactus by Ibn al-Nafis, and the Chinese Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong.

Early novels in Europe did not, at the time, count as significant literature, perhaps because "mere" prose writing seemed easy and unimportant. It has become clear, however, that prose writing can provide aesthetic pleasure without adhering to poetic forms. Additionally, the freedom authors gain in not having to concern themselves with verse structure translates often into a more complex plot or into one richer in precise detail than one typically finds even in narrative poetry. This freedom also allows an author to experiment with many different literary and presentation styles—including poetry—in the scope of a single novel.
Other prose literature

Philosophy, history, journalism, and legal and scientific writings traditionally ranked as literature. They offer some of the oldest prose writings in existence; novels and prose stories earned the names "fiction" to distinguish them from factual writing or nonfiction, which writers historically have crafted in prose.

The "literary" nature of science writing has become less pronounced over the last two centuries, as advances and specialization have made new scientific research inaccessible to most audiences; science now appears mostly in journals. Scientific works of Euclid, Aristotle, Copernicus, and Newton still possess great value; but since the science in them has largely become outdated, they no longer serve for scientific instruction, yet they remain too technical to sit well in most programmes of literary study. Outside of "history of science" programmes students rarely read such works. Many books "popularizing" science might still deserve the title "literature"; history will tell.

Philosophy, too, has become an increasingly academic discipline. More of its practitioners lament this situation than occurs with the sciences; nonetheless most new philosophical work appears in academic journals. Major philosophers through history—Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Nietzsche—have become as canonical as any writers. Some recent philosophy works are argued to merit the title "literature", such as some of the works by Simon Blackburn; but much of it does not, and some areas, such as logic, have become extremely technical to a degree similar to that of mathematics.

A great deal of historical writing can still rank as literature, particularly the genre known as creative nonfiction. So can a great deal of journalism, such as literary journalism. However these areas have become extremely large, and often have a primarily utilitarian purpose: to record data or convey immediate information. As a result the writing in these fields often lacks a literary quality, although it often and in its better moments has that quality. Major "literary" historians include Herodotus, Thucydides and Procopius, all of whom count as canonical literary figures.

Law offers a less clear case. Some writings of Plato and Aristotle, or even the early parts of the Bible, might count as legal literature. The law tables of Hammurabi of Babylon might count. Roman civil law as codified in the Corpus Juris Civilis during the reign of Justinian I of the Byzantine Empire has a reputation as significant literature. The founding documents of many countries, including the United States Constitution, can count as literature; however legal writing now rarely exhibits literary merit.

Game design scripts are never seen by the player of a game and only by the developers and/or publishers to help them understand, visualize and maintain consistency while collaborating in creating a game, the audience for these pieces is usually very small. Still, many game scripts contain immersive stories and detailed worlds making them a hidden literary genre.

Most of these fields, then, through specialization or proliferation, no longer generally constitute "literature" in the sense under discussion. They may sometimes count as "literary literature"; more often they produce what one might call "technical literature" or "professional literature".
Drama

A play or drama offers another classical literary form that has continued to evolve over the years. It generally comprises chiefly dialogue between characters, and usually aims at dramatic / theatrical performance (see theatre) rather than at reading. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, opera developed as a combination of poetry, drama, and music. Nearly all drama took verse form until comparatively recently. Shakespeare could be considered drama. Romeo and Juliet, for example, is a classic romantic drama generally accepted as literature.

Greek drama exemplifies the earliest form of drama of which we have substantial knowledge. Tragedy, as a dramatic genre, developed as a performance associated with religious and civic festivals, typically enacting or developing upon well-known historical or mythological themes. Tragedies generally presented very serious themes. With the advent of newer technologies, scripts written for non-stage media have been added to this form. War of the Worlds (radio) in 1938 saw the advent of literature written for radio broadcast, and many works of Drama have been adapted for film or television. Conversely, television, film, and radio literature have been adapted to printed or electronic media.
Oral literature

The term oral literature refers not to written, but to oral traditions, which includes different types of epic, poetry and drama, folktales, ballads, legends, jokes, and other genres of folklore. It exists in every society, whether literate or not. It is generally studied by folklorists, or by scholars committed to cultural studies and ethnopoetics, including linguists, anthropologists, and even sociologists.
Other narrative forms

* Electronic literature is a literary genre consisting of works which originate in digital environments.
* Films, videos and broadcast soap operas have carved out a niche which often parallels the functionality of prose fiction.
* Graphic novels and comic books present stories told in a combination of sequential artwork, dialogue and text.

Genres of literature

A literary genre refers to the traditional divisions of literature of various kinds according to a particular criterion of writing. See the list of literary genres.

List of literary genres

* Autobiography, Memoir, Spiritual autobiography
* Biography
* Diaries and Journals
* Electronic literature
* Erotic literature
* Slave narrative
* Thoughts, Proverbs
* Fiction
o Adventure novel
o Children's literature
o Comic novel
o Crime fiction
+ Detective fiction
o Fable, Fairy tale, Folklore
o Fantasy (for more details see Fantasy subgenres; fantasy literature)
o Gothic fiction (initially synonymous with horror)
o Historical fiction
o Horror
o Medical novel
o Mystery fiction
o Philosophical novel
o Political fiction
o Romance novel
+ Historical romance
o Saga, Family Saga
o Satire
o Science fiction (for more details see Science fiction genre)
o Thriller
+ Conspiracy fiction
+ Legal thriller
+ Psychological thriller
+ Spy fiction/Political thriller
o Tragedy

Literary techniques
Main article: Literary technique

A literary technique or literary device can be used by works of literature in order to produce a specific effect on the reader. Literary technique is distinguished from literary genre as military tactics are from military strategy. Thus, though David Copperfield employs satire at certain moments, it belongs to the genre of comic novel, not that of satire. By contrast, Bleak House employs satire so consistently as to belong to the genre of satirical novel. In this way, use of a technique can lead to the development of a new genre, as was the case with one of the first modern novels, Pamela by Samuel Richardson, which by using the epistolary technique strengthened the tradition of the epistolary novel, a genre which had been practiced for some time already but without the same acclaim.

Computer Assisted Language Learning

Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) is a form of computer-based learning which carries two important features: bidirectional learning and individualized learning. It is not a method. CALL materials are tools for learning. The focus of CALL is learning, and not teaching. CALL materials are used in teaching to facilitate the language learning process. It is a student-centered accelerated learning material, which promotes self-paced accelerated learning.Definition

CALL originates from CAI (Computer-Accelerated Instruction), a term that was first viewed as an aid for teachers. The philosophy of CALL puts a strong emphasis on student-centered lessons that allow the learners to learn on their own using structured and/or unstructured interactive lessons. These lessons carry 2 important features: bidirectional (interactive) learning and individualized learning. CALL is not a method. It is a tool that helps teachers to facilitate language learning process. CALL can be used to reinforce what has been learned in the classrooms. It can also be used as remedial to help learners with limited language proficiency.

The design of CALL lessons generally takes into consideration principles of language pedagogy, which may be derived from learning theories (behaviorist, cognitive, and constructivist) and second language learning such as Krashen's Monitor Theory.

Others may call CALL an approach to teaching and learning foreign languages whereby the computer and computer-based resources such as the Internet are used to present, reinforce and assess material to be learned. CALL can be made independent of the Internet. It can stand alone for example in a CDROM format. Depending on its design and objectives, it may include a substantial interactive element especially when CALL is integrated in web-based format. It may include the search for and the investigation of applications in language teaching and learning. [1] Except for self-study software, CALL is meant to supplement face-to-face language instruction, not replace it.[2]


Computers have been used for language teaching ever since the 1960s. This 40-year period can be divided into three main stages: behaviorist CALL, communicative CALL, and integrative CALL. Each stage corresponds to a certain level of technology and certain pedagogical theories. The reasons for using Computer-assisted Language Learning include: (a) experiential learning, (b) motivation, (c) enhance student achievement, (d) authentic materials for study, (e) greater interaction, (f) individualization, (g) independence from a single source of information, and (h) global understanding. The barriers inhibiting the practice of Computer-assisted Language Learning can be classified in the following common categories: (a) financial barriers, (b) availability of computer hardware and software, (c) technical and theoretical knowledge, and (d) acceptance of the technology.

Introduction
History

CALL’s origins and development trace back to the 1960’s (Delcloque 2000). Since the early days CALL has developed into a symbiotic relationship between the development of technology and pedagogy.

Warschauer divided the development of CALL into three phases: Behavioristic CALL, Communicative CALL and Integrative CALL (Multimedia and the Internet)[1]. Bax (2003) perceived the three phases as Restricted, Open and Integrated - and there have been several other attempts to categorize the history of CALL: see the ICT4LT website (Section 3 of Module 1.4)].

Because repeated exposure to material was considered to be beneficial or even essential, computers were considered ideal for this aspect of learning as the machines did not get bored or impatient with learners and the computer could present material to the student as his/her own pace and even adapt the drills to the level of the student. Hence, CALL programs of this era presented a stimulus to which the learner provided a response. At first, both could be done only through text. The computer would analyze errors and give feedback. More sophisticated programs would react to students’ mistakes by branching to help screens and remedial activities. While such programs and their underlying pedagogy still exist today, to a large part behavioristic approaches to language learning have been rejected and the increasing sophistication of computer technology has lead CALL to other possibilities.

Communicative CALL is based on the communicative approach that became prominent in the late 1970’s and 1980’s. In the communicative approach, the focus is on using the language rather than analysis of the language, teaching grammar implicitly. It also allowed for originality and flexibility in student output of language. It also correlates with the arrival of the PC, making computing much widely available resulting in a boom in the development of software for language learning. The first CALL software in this phase still provided skill practice but not in a drill format, for example, paced reading, text reconstruction and language games but computer remained the tutor. In this phase, however, computers provided context for students to use the language, such as asking for directions to a place. It also allowed for programs not designed for language learning, such as Sim City, Sleuth and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? to be used for language learning. However, criticisms of this approach include using the computer in an ad hoc and disconnected manner for more marginal rather than the central aims of language teaching. It usually taught skills such as reading and listening in a compartmentalized way, even if not in a drill fashion.

Integrative/explorative CALL, starting from the 1990’s, tries to address these criticisms by integrating the teaching of language skills into tasks or projects to provide direction and coherence. It also coincides with the development of multimedia technology (providing text, graphics, sound and animation) as well as computer-mediated communication. CALL in this period saw a definitive shift of use of computer for drill and tutorial purposes (computer as a finite authoritative base for a specific task) to a medium for extending education beyond the classroom and reorganizing instruction. Multimedia CALL started with interactive laser videodiscs such as “Montevidisco” (Schneider & Bennion 1984) and “A la rencontre de Philippe” (Fuerstenberg 1993), all of which were simulations of situations where the learner played a key role. These programs later were transferred to CD-ROMs, and new RPGs such as Who is Oscar Lake? made their appearance in a range of different languages.

In multimedia programs, listening is combined with seeing, just like in the real world. Students also control the pace and the path of the interaction. Interaction is in the foreground but many CALL programs also provide links to explanations simultaneously. An example of this is Dustin’s simulation of a foreign student’s arrival in the USA. Programs like this led also to what is called explorative CALL.

More recent research in CALL has favored a learner-centered explorative approach, where students are encouraged to try different possible solutions to a problem, for example the use of concordance programs. This approach is also described as data-driven learning (DDL), a term coined by Tim Johns. See Module 2.4 at the ICT4LT site, Using concordance programs in the Modern Foreign Languages classroom.
[edit] CALL and computational linguistics

CALL and computational linguistics are separate but somewhat interdependent fields of study. The basic goal of computational linguistics is to “teach” computers to generate and comprehend grammatically-acceptable sentences… for purposes of translation and direct communication with computers where the computer understands and generates natural language. Computational linguistics takes the principles of

A very simple example of computers understanding natural language in relation to second language learning is vocabulary drill exercises. The computer prompts the learner with a word on either the L1 or target language and the student responds with the corresponding word.

On a superficial level, the core issue for humans and computers using language is the same; finding the best match between a given speech sound and its corresponding word string, then generating the correct and appropriate response. However, humans and machines process speech in fundamentally different ways. Humans use complex cognitive processes, taking into account variables such as social situations and rules while speech for a computer is simply a series of digital values to generate and parse language.journal=Language Learning and Technology |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=45–60 |id= |url= |accessdate= 2007-12-02 }} For this reason, those involved in CALL from a computational linguistics perspective tend to be more optimistic about a computer’s ability to do error analysis and other pedagogical tasks than those who come into CALL via language teaching. [2]

The term Human Language Technologies is often used to describe some aspects of computational linguistics, having replaced the former term Language Engineering. There has been an upsurge of work in this area in recent years, especially with regard to machine translation and speech synthesis and speech analysis. The professional associations EUROCALL (Europe) and CALICO (USA) have special interest groups (SIGs), respectively devoted to Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Intelligent CALL (ICALL). See Module 3.5 at the ICT4LT website for further information.
Theoretical basis for CALL instruction design

Computers have become so widespread in schools and homes and their uses have expanded so dramatically that the majority of language teachers now think about the implications. Technology can bring about changes in the teaching methodologies of foreign language beyond simply automating fill-in-the-gap exercises. [3] The use of the computer in and of itself does not constitute a teaching method, but rather the computer forces pedagogy to develop in new ways that exploit the computer's benefits and that work around its limitations. [1] To exploit the computers’ potential, we need language teaching specialists who can promote a complementary relationship between computer technology and appropriate pedagogic programs. [3]

A number of pedagogical approaches have developed in the computer age, including the communicative and integrative/experimentative approaches outlined above in the History of CALL. Others include constructivism, whole language theory and sociocultural theory although they are not exclusively theories of language learning. With constructivism, students are active participants in a task in which they “construct” new knowledge based on experience in order to incorporate new ideas into their already-established schema of knowledge. Whole language theory postulates that language learning (either native or second language) moves from the whole to the part; rather than building sub-skills like grammar to lead toward higher abilities like reading comprehension, whole language insists the opposite is the way we really learn to use language. Students learn grammar and other sub-skills by making intelligent guesses bases on the input they have experienced. It also promotes that the four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) are interrelated. [4] Sociocultural theory states that learning is a process of becoming part of a desired community and learning that communities rules of behavior. [5]

What most of these approaches have in common is taking the central focus away from the teacher as a conveyor of knowledge to giving students learning experiences that are as realistic as possible, and where they play a central role. Also, these approaches tend to emphasize fluency over accuracy to allow students to take risks in using more student-centered activities, and to cooperate, rather than compete. [3] The computer provides opportunity for students to be less dependent on a teacher and have more freedom to experiment on their own with natural language in natural or semi-natural settings.
Role changes for teachers and students
Teachers

Although the integration of CALL into a foreign language program can lead to great anxiety among language teachers, [6] researchers consistently claim that CALL changes, sometimes radically, the role of the teacher but does not eliminate the need for a teacher altogether. Instead of handing down knowledge to students and being the center of students’ attention, teachers become guides as they construct the activities students are to do and help them as students complete the assigned tasks. In other words, instead of being directly involved in students’ construction of the language, the teacher interacts with students primarily to facilitate difficulties in using the target language (grammar, vocabulary, etc.) that arise when interacting with the computer and/or other people. [4] [3]

Elimination of a strong teacher presence has been shown to lead to larger quantity and better quality of communication such as more fluidity, more use of complex sentences and more sharing of students’ personal selves. [4] However, teacher presence is still very important to students when doing CALL activities. Teachers should be familiar enough with the resources to be used to anticipate technical problems and limitations. [3] Students need the reassuring and motivating presence of a teacher in CALL environments. Not only are they needed during the initial learning curve, they are needed to conduct review sessions to reinforce what was learned. Encouraging students to participate and offering praise are deemed important by students. Most students report preferring to do work in a lab with a teacher’s or tutor’s presence rather than completely on their own. [4]
Students

Students, too, need to adjust their expectations, of their participation in the class in order to use CALL effectively. Rather than passively absorbing information, learners must negotiate meaning and assimilate new information through interaction and collaboration with someone other than the teacher, be that person a classmate or someone outside of the classroom entirely. Learners must also learn to interpret new information and experiences on their own terms. However, because the use of technology redistributes teachers’ and classmates’ attentions, less-able students can become more active participants in the class because class interaction is not limited to that directed by the teacher. [4] Moreover more shy students can feel free in their own students'-centered environment. This will raise their self-esteem and their knowledge will be improving. If students are performing collaborative project they will do their best to perform it within set time limits.
Use of CALL for the four skills

A number of studies have been done concerning how the use of CALL affects the development of language learners’ four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). Most report significant gains in reading and listening and most CALL programs are geared toward these receptive skills because of the current state of computer technology. However, most reading and listening software is based on drills. [3] Gains in writing skills have not been as impressive as computers cannot assess this well. [4]

However, using current CALL technology, even with its current limitations, for the development of speaking abilities has gained much attention. There has been some success in using CALL, in particular computer-mediated communication, to help speaking skills closely linked to “communicative competence” (ability to engage in meaningful conversation in the target language) and provide controlled interactive speaking practice outside the classroom. [7] Using chat has been shown to help students routinize certain often-used expressions to promote the development of automatic structure that help develop speaking skills. This is true even if the chat is purely textual. The use of videoconferencing give not only immediacy when communicating with a real person but also visual cues, such as facial expressions, making such communication more authentic. [4]

However, when it comes to using the computer not as a medium of communication (with other people) but as something to interact with verbally in a direct manner, the current computer technology’s limitations are at their clearest. Right now, there are two fairly successful applications of automatic speech recognition (ASR) (or speech processing technology) where the computer “understands” the spoken words of the learner. The first is pronunciation training. Learners read sentences on the screen and the computer gives feedback as to the accuracy of the utterance, usually in the form of visual sound waves. [7] The second is software where the learner speaks commands for the computer to do. However, speakers in these programs are limited to predetermined texts so that the computer will “understand” them. [3]
Multimedia language centers

During the 1960s, language laboratories with cassette players and headphones were introduced into educational institutions. The use of this kind of center grew rapidly in the late 1960s and 1970s, but then went rapidly out of fashion."[8] Later, “digital language labs” were introduced, still following the traditional language format, such as teacher monitoring. What made them new was that they incorporated new technologies such as video. The term multimedia was originally used to describe sets of learning materials which included a book, audiocassettes and/or videocassettes. However, with the advent of computer-based materials, such packages tend to be called multiple media or mixed media - although there is not absolute consensus on this point. Nowadays multimedia refers to computer-based materials that can perform more varied tasks then the purely-audio mixed-media. Not only can such play pre-recorded audio and video material, it can create new audio and video recordings. It also has the capability of integrating the four basic skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, as well as giving immediate, if limited, feedback to the student. However, like its predecessors, multimedia centers run the risk of being underutilized due to poor management. [9]

While multimedia computer-based materials can be used directly in the classroom, because of costs, such resources are usually found in a multimedia language center, fulfilling the role of the previous cassette-based and digital language laboratories. However, managing such a center requires knowledge of a wide range of equipment and the increasing expectations of such equipment from administrators, language teachers and students. Administrators often have the mistaken belief that buying hardware by itself will meet the needs of the center (often devoting 90% of a center’s budget to such and ignoring software and training needs) and will cut down on the number of teaching staff needed. [10]

While multimedia offers many opportunities for language learning with the availability of text, images, sound and video as well as interactive activities, the problem is that these opportunities have not been taken advantage of well. Most multimedia computer programs tend to be strong on presentation but weak as far as pedagogy and even interaction. One of the main promises of CALL is the ability to individualize learning, but like with past language laboratories, use of the facilities in many cases have devolved into rows of students all doing the same drills. The only advantage to the multimedia in these cases has been better sound and color images. Most modern language learning theories stress the importance of teacher guidance rather than control, giving students control over what they do, how fast they do it and even the ability to find and correct their own mistakes.[10]

Managing a multimedia language center properly requires not only knowledge of foreign languages and language teaching methodology, it also requires a certain amount of technical know-how and budget management ability as well as the ability to combine all these into creative ways of taking advantage of what the technology can offer. Often a center manager needs assistants for technical problems, for managing resources and even the tutoring of students. Multimedia centers lend themselves to self-study, and potentially self-directed learning, but such is often misunderstood. The simple existence of computers in a laboratory does not automatically lead to students learning independently. Significant investment of time is essential for materials development and creating an atmosphere conducive to such.

Self access language learning centers or independent learning centres have emerged partially independently, and partially in response to these issues. In self-access learning, the focus is on developing learner autonomy through varying degrees of self-directed learning, as opposed to (or as a complement to) classroom learning. In most centres, learners access materials and manage their learning independently, but have access to staff for help. Many self-access centres are heavy users of technology and an increasing number of them are now offering online self-access learning opportunities. Some centres have developed novel ways of supporting language learning outside the context of the language classroom (also called 'language support') by developing software to monitor students' self-directed learning and by offering online support from teachers (cf. [11])

Center managers and support staff need to have new roles defined for them to support students’ efforts at self-directed learning. In fact, a new job description has emerged recently, that of a “language advisor”[12].
Advantages of CALL
Motivation

Generally speaking, the use of technology inside or outside the classroom tends to make the class more interesting. However, certain design issues affect just how interesting the particular tool creates motivation. [4] One way a program or activity can promote motivation in students is by personalizing information, for example by integrating the student’s name or familiar contexts as part of the program or task. Others include having animate objects on the screen, providing practice activities that incorporate challenges and curiosity and providing a context (real-world or fantasy) that is not directly language-oriented.

For example, a study comparing students who used “CornerStone” (a language arts development program) showed a significant increase in learning (compared to students not using the program) between two classes of English-immersion middle-school students in language arts. This is because CornerStone incorporate personalized information and challenging and imaginative exercises in a fantasy context. [13] Also, using a variety of multimedia components in one program or course has been shown to increase student interest and motivation. [4]

One quantifiable benefit to increased motivation is that students tend to spend more time on tasks when on the computer. More time is frequently cited as a factor in achievement. [4]
Adapting learning to the student

Computers can give a new role to teaching materials. Without computers, students cannot really influence the linear progression of the class content but computers can adapt to the student. [3] Adapting to the student usually means that the student controls the pace of the learning but also means that students can make choices in what and how to learn, skipping unnecessary items or doing remedial work on difficult concepts. Such control makes students feel more competent in their learning. [13] Students tend to prefer exercises where they have control over content, such as branching stories, adventures, puzzles or logic problems. With these, the computer has the role of providing attractive context for the use of language rather than directly providing the language the student needs. [3]
Authenticity

“Authenticity” in language learning means the opportunity to interact in one or more of the four skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) by using or producing texts meant for an audience in the target language, not the classroom. With real communication acts, rather than teacher-contrived ones, students feel empowered and less afraid to contact others. Students believe they learn faster and better with computer-mediated communication. [3] Also, students learn more about culture in such an environment. [4] In networked computer environments, students have a conscious feeling of being members of a real community. In situations where all are learners of a foreign language, there is also a feeling of equality. In these situations students feel less stressed and more confident in a language learning situation, in part because surface errors do not matter so much. This works best with synchronous CMC (e.g. chats) as there is immediate feedback but email exchanges have been shown to provide most of the same benefits in motivation and student affect. [3]
[edit] Critical thinking skills

Use of computer technology in classrooms is generally reported to improve self-concept and mastery of basic skills, more student-centered learning and engagement in the learning process, more active processing resulting in higher-order thinking skills and better recall, gain confidence in directing their own learning. This is true for both language and non-language classrooms. [4]
Problems and criticisms of CALL instruction

The impact of CALL in foreign language education has been modest. [7] Several reasons can be attributed to this.
The first is the limitations of the technology, both in its ability and availability. First of all, there is the problem with cost[1] and the simple availability of technological resources such as the Internet (either non-existent as can be the case in many developing countries or lack of bandwidth, as can be the case just about anywhere). [3] However, the limitations that current computer technology has can be problematic as well. While computer technology has improved greatly in the last three decades, demands placed on CALL have grown even more so. One major goal is to have computers with which students can have true, human-like interaction, esp. for speaking practice; however, the technology is far from that point. Not to mention that if the computer cannot evaluate a learner’s speech exactly, it is almost no use at all. [7][1]
However, most of the problems that appear in the literature on CALL have more to do with teacher expectations and apprehensions about what computers can do for the language learner and teacher. Teachers and administrators tend to either think computers are worthless or even harmful, or can do far more than they are really capable of. [6]
Reluctance on part of teachers can come from lack of understanding and even fear of technology. Often CALL is not implemented unless it is required even if training is offered to teachers. [6] One reason for this is that from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, computer technology was limited mostly for the sciences, creating a real and psychological distance for language teaching. [14] Language teachers can be more comfortable with textbooks because it is what they are used do, and there is the idea that the use of computers threatens traditional literacy skills since such are heavily tied to books. [14] [15] These stem in part because there is a significant generation gap between teachers (many of whom did not grow up with computers) and students (who did grow up with them).
Also, teachers may resist because CALL activities can be more difficult to evaluate than more traditional exercises. For example, most Mexican teachers feel strongly that a completed fill-in textbook “proves” learning. [15] While students may be motivated by exercises like branching stories, adventures, puzzles or logic, these activities provide little in the way of systematic evaluation of progress. [3]
Even teachers who may otherwise see benefits to CALL may be put off by the time and effort needed to implement it well. However “seductive” the power of computing systems may be[3], like with the introduction of the audio language lab in the 1960’s, those who simply expect results by purchasing expensive equipment are likely to be disappointed. [1] To begin with, there are the simple matters of sorting through the numerous resources that exist and getting students ready to use computer resources. With Internet sites alone, it can be very difficult to know where to begin, and if students are unfamiliar with the resource to be used, the teacher must take time to teach it. [3] Also, there is a lack of unified theoretical framework for designing and evaluating CALL systems as well as absence of conclusive empirical evidence for the pedagogical benefits of computers in language. [7] Most teachers lack the time or training to create CALL-based assignments, leading to reliance on commercially-published sources, whether such are pedagogically sound or not. [1]
However, the most crucial factor that can lead to the failure of CALL, or the use of any technology in language education is not the failure of the technology, but rather the failure to invest adequately in teacher training and the lack of imagination to take advantage of the technology's flexibility. Graham Davies states that too often, technology is seen as a panacea, especially by administrators, and the human component necessary to make it beneficial is ignored. Under these circumstances, he argues, "it is probably better to dispense with technology altogether".[8]

Rody Klein, Clint Rogers and Zhang Yong (2006), studying the adoption of Learning Technologies in Chinese schools and colleges, have also pointed out that the spread of video games on electronic devices, including computers, dictionaries and mobile phones, is feared in most Chinese institutions. And yet every classroom is very well equipped with a desk imbedded computer, Internet connexion, microphone, video projector and remote controlled screen to be used by the teacher for multimedia presentations. Very often the 'leaders' prefer to ban completely Learning Technologies for students at the dismay of many foreign ESL teachers. Books and exercise books still prevail. In order to enhance CALL for teaching ESL and other languages in developing countries, it would be also crucial to teach students how to learn by themselves and develop the capacity to practice self evaluation and enhance intrinsic motivation. Tests and quizzes should be designed accordingly to encourage and enhance students autonomous practice. Teachers using CALL should be computer literate and trained continuously. Ideally each Foreign Language Department using CALL should hire an experienced Computer Scientist who could assist teachers. That expert should demonstrate dual expertise both in Education and Learning Technologies.
References

1. ^ a b c d e f "Computer Assisted Language Learning: an Introduction". Warschauer Mark. http://www.ict4lt.org/en/warschauer.htm. Retrieved 2008-04-11.
2. ^ "CALL (computer assisted language learning) Guide to Good Practice 3". Davies Graham. http://www.yarasystem.ir/index.html?www.llas.ac.uk&resources&goodpracticeaspx&resourceid=61. Retrieved 2007-12-01.
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o "Computer-assisted language learning: Increase of freedom of submission to machines?" (Domingo Noemi). http://www.terra.es/personal/nostat. Retrieved 2007-12-10.
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l {{cit
e journal |last=Stepp-Greany |first=Jonita |year=2002 |month=January |title=Students perceptions on language learning in a technological environment: Implications for the new millennium |journal= Language Learning and Technology |volume= |issue= |pages= |id= |url= |accessdate= 2007-12-15 }}
5. ^ Mitchell, R; F. Myles (1998). Second Language Learning Theories. London: Arnold.
6. ^ a b c Thelmadatter, Leigh (July/Sept 2007). "The Computers Are Coming … Are Here!". TESOL Greece Newsletter 95.
7. ^ a b c d e Ehsani, Farzad; Eva Knodt (July 1998). "Speech technology in computer-aided language learning: Strengths and limitations of a new CALL paradigm". Language Learning and Technology 2 (1): 45–60.
8. ^ a b "ICT4LT Module 1.1". http://www.ict4lt.org/en/index.htm. Retrieved 2008-07-11.
9. ^ "Introduction to multimedia CALL". http://www.ict4lt.org/en/index.htm. Retrieved 2008-07-11.
10. ^ a b "Managing a multimedia language centre". http://www.ict4lt.org/en/index.htm. Retrieved 2008-07-11.
11. ^ Reinders, Hayo (July 2007). "Big brother is helping you. Supporting self-access language learning with a student monitoring system". System 35 (1): 93–111. http://www.innovationinteaching.org.
12. ^ [1]
13. ^ a b Traynor, Patrick (July 2003). "Effects of computer-assisted instruction on different learners". Journal of Instructional Psychology.
14. ^ a b Ravichandran, T (2000). Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) in the perspective of the interactive approach: Advantages and apprehensions.
15. ^ a b Bollin, G.G. (Mar/Apr 2003). "The Realities of Middle School for Mexican Children". The Clearing House 76 (4): 198.

Mourning and Celebrating: Lessons Learned at Stella Maris

I'm in mourning this week: my school is closing. Not the one I work in now, but Stella Maris High School, a small (ultimately, apparently, too small) Catholic girls' school, which I've always described as "on the beach in Queens." It really is on the beach — just about 50 yards from the sand. When we had fire drills, we dispersed to the boardwalk. Stella might be the only school in New York City where students were routinely chastised for wearing bikini tops under their uniforms.

Although vibrant and bustling, Stella was on its last legs for the entire time I was there (2003-2007) and at last has been shut down due to dwindling enrollment and lack of funds. It was inevitable, but it's also quite sad. I'm sorry for the girls who are already there (most especially the Juniors, who will end up going to some other school for just one year), and for my former colleagues, who are talented and caring women facing a difficult job market.

But my sadness goes deeper than just sympathy. I began teaching there as a long-term substitute, and stayed even though I knew the paycheck was too small and commute too long. I stayed because I felt safe and loved there, and because the administration and student body allowed me to come into my own as a teacher. My four years there, mirroring the four years of high school itself, were no coincidence, I think. It takes that long to become a true Stella Girl.

I hope you'll indulge me then, as I share with you some of the practical lessons I learned at Stella. The school building, immaculately (ha) kept by Sister Kathleen, may close down in August, but these lessons will stay in my heart... and in my classrooms, wherever they may be.

Topics Not Covered by Afterschool Specials

When I began at Stella, I was put with mostly freshman classes and we were all equally flummoxed into being introverted by each other. After a few days of strained silence, broken only by my meager teacher talk ("Let's open our books... and.... um..."), I realized I was going to have to do better. So I started to talk. About me. What I was wearing. What my commute had been like. The weather. Soon, I was downright chatty. And I got responses. The girls began to express opinions about my clothes and the commute... and, as time went on, I heard about other, bigger matters too.

Last week, one of my students at my current school came in and took a seat at the beginning of the day, as she always does. She's usually quiet, so I was surprised when she mentioned, "It's getting colder out, Ms. Reed." I realized that I had said something about the weather to her nearly every day; she was unconsciously mimicking me, to form a connection between us.

Small stuff? Perhaps. But this is how our students learn to verbally communicate. Making conversation is a skill we value in others (and miss desperately when they lack it). And I think that for teenagers, especially, it's nice to have the weight-bearing load off of them, when they are so often asked only really difficult, personal questions by adults, of the "What do you want to do with you life?" and "Why did you come in so late?" variety. I'd want to talk about the weather, too.

So, that's lesson one from Stella — students are people, and people like to have small conversations about little things. They ease us through life.

And So I Came to Love the Write-On/Wipe-Off Board.

The next thing I learned from teaching at Stella is the comfort of routine and the importance of preparation. At first, I approached things in a sort of willy-nilly style. Let's say this — it was very similar to what Iggy Pop might have done had he gone into teaching English: a bit of free for all. Some days we read aloud! Some days we did vocab! Some days we... wait, did we do vocab already? Well, let's take a vocab test! I can't? Why not? Oh, you didn't know about it... Yeah, there was some of that going on.

Well, in the classroom, as in life, preparation is everything, I've learned. Homework for the night goes up on the board before school begins. We review for the test the day before a test. My syllabus is four pages long and mostly consists of protocols for how I'm going to deal with things when they go wrong.

I'm all for change and spontaneity, and I'm willing to throw a lesson plan out the window to talk about college prep if 90% of the kids are suddenly sweating bullets over college prep. But no more do I embrace nihilism as a teaching strategy. This means that I spend much more of my time than I ever thought possible thinking, planning and working ahead. But you know what? I generally work through my day of teaching without too much worry about how to get the copies made before the kids come in, or what to do if we finish up to early on the story I skimmed through on the bus. I hit a number of problems anyway (I've always felt "Problem Solver" is a closer title to what I do all day), but they're usually, at least, not of my own making.

One way I do this, which I figured out at Stella, is by having a vision of where we're going. It's so easy to lose track of this, especially in a subject like English which all of its potential paths. But when you have your eyes on your classroom's prize, both short term (we will all be able to identify and discuss theme) and long term (we will all pass the Regents exam), it's hard to get stumped about what to do next. Keep moving forward, baby (as I think even Iggy would agree).

Here's a practical tip I learned at Stella: Don't leave until you're ready for the next day. This is basic stuff, I know, but by the end of the day, I often want to run out of the school building, arms and legs akimbo, screaming. But that just leaves me pushing to get ready in too short a time (along with other colleagues who are jostling for the copier) the next morning. I try — not religiously, but with dedication — to not leave until I am set up for the next day. If you find that your mornings are out of your control, you might want to try this too. (Folks who, like me last year, have first period free, do us all a favor — save your photocopying until then.)

The Adjective "Great" is Applied Purposefully

This week, we started The Crucible at my current school. I didn't even need to look up the character list. This is my fifth time through the play — which I love, as I'm a sucker for words like "Goody" -- and I can even keep Mercy and Mary straight without a crib sheet. It's nice to go back to Salem, 1692, with a new group of kids, like a field trip of the mind that I take every year. They'll notice things I haven't and I'll point out some things they'd miss. ("Look, kids! Foreshadowing! And, yes, Abigail is talking smack!")

I first taught this play at Stella. I taught it because I had read it once before and I needed to teach a few things I knew while I read ahead in the things I didn't know (yes, the wonders of Ethan Frome were still undiscovered by me). It was a big hit with the girls (not so big as Jane Eyre, much bigger than, um, Ethan Frome), to my delight and relief. And so, I learned a most basic concept in teaching literature, but one which I rarely see mentioned: choose works you think your students will like.

This usually gets changed a bit, into "teach works your students will relate to or understand" or "teach works at your students' comprehension level." Not bad advice, but I think we so often forget that reading good literature can be joyous, can make you giddy as a visitor in a previously unknown world and can show us the universality of the human experience. I'm all for works that relate to students' lives, but I also think it's good to show them lives that aren't their own. I learned this at Stella — pick something of good quality, which I have personally been affected by, and then see if the girls are intrigued too. I've been wrong — And Then There Were None was a bomb — but when I am, I usually just move on. Life's short. Edith Wharton wrote other things; so did Agatha Christie. Great literature's considered great for a reason.

Teaching is a Craft. (See What I Did There?)

Last week, in the last period of the day, I looked at my weary looking group of teenagers. There were five of them, those who had taken the PSAT for three hours that morning and had not required extra time as mandated by their Individualize Learning Plans. I had just had them for an entire period of ELA — now we were on to Playwriting. Half of their classmates had skipped out early. Suddenly, looking at their fatigue-ridden faces, I simply could not ask them to identify the plot points of Iphigenia. Instead, I reached under my counter and got out the good stuff — scrapbooking paper, crayons, markers, scissors and glue. "Ok, guys," I said. "Let's make something."

The crafting break? Yeah, learned at Stella. At first, I was at a loss as to what to do when attendance unexpectedly plummeted, or three-quarters of the class was out on a field trip, at confession or at a sporting event. What do you do with the four kids left, all of whom, inevitably, are right on track with their studies and woebegone about being left behind? I don't like to give study halls. I think those are just mandated gossiping/bullying times. But we do all sometimes need a break. So, I learned that art supplies and either a free reign or very simple guidelines ("Draw the setting of a story you want to write") almost never go unappreciated. It's amazing how often a previously unremarkable student revealed a strong talent in visual art through this activity. My only guideline is that students can't make something for me, something I learned after being given five or six "I sweat Mssss.ReEd!!! <3" signs in one class.

Everything Old is New Again

Stella was an old-school environment. It was a school. And it was old. At first, faced with textbooks from 1981, I despaired: Not a single African-American female writer was included in that text. I supplemented, of course. But I also came to feel that the rush to the new wasn't always serving my kids well. Education seems to go through phases, each one ballyhooed and presented to teachers as the cure-all we've all been waiting for, to make students motivated, accomplished and hard-working. This seems to ignore the basic truth that a big chunk of humankind is neither motivated, accomplished or hard-working (although all VT subscribers are the exception to this, of course).

In many ways, I welcome these ideas, and have found ways to adapt them into my classroom. For example, when I was in grad school, the concept of an "Aim-driven class" (in which the teacher presents an Aim in the form of a question on the board at the beginning of each class) wasn't in vogue. Nobody asked me to write one at Stella, either.

I was extremely reluctant to convert to this format upon leaving Stella and coming into the NYCDOE school system, but I now see the value of distilling a class's goal to a specific question. "What is 'Theme' and how can I identify one in The Crucible?" is a handy goal for a student to see, and (somewhat) saves us all from hearing "I don't even know why we're doing this" later. If you haven't tried distilling your lessons into aims, I highly recommend it.

But we didn't do aims at Stella. We had vocabulary, spelling, grammar and literature lessons, and we worked through them at a brisk, but not unreasonable pace. Words were memorized and used in sentences, literature was read and analyzed in four-paragraph essays, and everyone had a shot at learning the difference between a contraction and a conjunction. We had fun, too, more fun than I have had at my new school. We had special occasions, and big class parties, and annual events, all of which allowed me to celebrate our community and the students I had come to know as part of it. I work harder at my new school, and I suspect I've become a better teacher. I also know it's less fun and less like a family, at least right now, and I would daresay my students feel the same way. (We're very new, of course, and it takes time for these things to happen, I know.)

Which education is better? Honestly, it's hard for me to say. I think each is necessary for the kind of students being taught. There's a big difference between sheltered young women on the outskirts of New York, and the urban kids I teach now. And I trust that in each situation, the students are deeply blessed to be surrounded by a caring and driven faculty and administration, determined to get them a good education.

That's my last lesson from Stella, actually — that the biggest gift of being a teacher is not, as we probably all know far too well, monetary compensation or summers off, but rather the privilege working together with our students in hopes of helping them become the best versions of themselves they can possibly be. I first realized this at Stella Maris High School, and I hope I carry into my work today. In the end, that optimism and belief in the power of education is probably what most makes me, as I hope is clear to all who meet me, a Stella Girl.

source: http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/teachersatwork/2057/

On the Road To (and With) Iphigenia: Adapting Greek Drama in the Classroom

By Shannon Reed

Shannon Reed, a regular contributor to our Teachers at Work column, teaches at the Brooklyn Theatre Arts High School, where she has discovered that adapting the Euripides play Iphigenia has lit an unexpected spark for her students.

I often wish I had some psychic ability, or at least a better understanding of how astrology works. I wouldn't peer into my best friend's eyes and try to figure out what he's thinking, or probe my boss's brain to find out if I've been called into his office for good or bad reasons. No, I'd use my powers to figure out auspicious times to introduce new units to my classroom. The ability to predict the changeable moods of high schoolers is a kind of talent akin to divining powers.

How else can I explain why on one day my students happily settle down to period-long writing assignments while on other days they can't get it together enough to jot down one sentence? Assuming that assignments are of relatively equal interest to them, what is the X factor that leads to focus and concentration? The temperature in the room? The quality of light outside? The amount of sleep the night before (averaged out)? What the cafeteria served for lunch? I wish I knew. I'd bottle that knowledge and create a surefire formula that would allow all teachers to hit it out of the park with the classes every day.

Alas, no such formula exists. Each class has its own predilections and pandemonium, its own silver bullets and last straws. One class I had would buy into anything if I introduced it while speaking in an accent. Visual art projects was the way in for another group. And then there was the 10th grade class in which homemade cookies were the only surefire hit — the year I gained 5 pounds.

What's my trick this year? Oh, easy. Iphigenia, the ancient Greek drama by Euripides, in which the King of Greece, Agamemnon, is forced to decide whether sacrificing his only daughter (Iphigenia) is worth the reward for doing so: the gods will then allow wind to fill the sails of the ships of the Greek armies, and off they then can go to "rescue" Helen, the wayward wife of Agamemnon's brother, Menelaus. No, by the way — this isn't a heretofore unknown teen-friendly ancient Greek drama. It's a standard-edition ancient Greek drama, what with soliloquies, a chorus, really angry ladyfolk and what I like to call excursions on the S.S. Moral Quandary.

Yet my students look forward to, and almost uniformly participate in, our work on Iphigenia. This is good because adapting the play is our main work in Playwriting class this semester. Here's how — and a little bit of why — I think the unit works, and why they like it — ideas you may be able to use in your classroom, too.

Gotta Have a Gimmick (Or a Field Trip)

To kick off adapting Iphigenia, I took the entire class to see a staged reading of the play in Manhattan. The kids got to leave school early, eat out and then spend the early afternoon watching a reading staged just for them. As we entered the theatre, the cast, attired in black and red, struck fighting poses on an all-white set. During the show, the actors talked to the kids, had them read parts and otherwise involved them. After it was over, there was a talkback between the students, the director, me and the cast. Frankly, I didn't even need to point out to the class how awesomely cool this was. I had my buy-in at "We're going to take a trip..." Everything else was just gravy.

It's impractical to take your class out of the school every time you want to kick off a unit, but even doing it once in a while means that it sure registers with them, big time. I'm glad I went to the effort of setting this all up (and even more thankful that it wasn't even all that difficult for me, thanks to the resources of the performing arts school where I work and our partners there), because it's paid off time and time again. While writing, the students refer back to what they saw. When we discuss or read aloud what they've written, we can picture it on a specific stage and wonder aloud how such and such an actor might play the part. We even have a class dream, based on this field trip: that the actors we liked so much might visit our school at the end of the semester to act out some of the words we wrote. (Spoiler alert: I'm working on making this happen!)

Your resources may not be my resources, but there's no reason why you can't create a special atmosphere around a work you're reading or using in class too. Get some volunteers and set up a reading at the school auditorium. Haul in some parents to read a chapter aloud. Go outside and stage the main points of the plot. Something immersive, different and cool. Sometimes we pile on the gimmicks ("Let's take the kids sled-riding before we read Ethan Frome!") or wander off from our purpose ("I love 'The Story of an Hour'! Let's feed the kids foie gras!"), and then, when these ideas don't stay with the kids the way we want, we wonder why we wasted all that time and effort. But hewing closely to our ultimate goals as teachers of literature, reading and writing (by, say, taking the kids to hear/see/experience literature), it's hard to go wrong.

Greece: It's the Word

I do love me some Greek drama, I gotta say. They did not hold back, those guys. These were writers who made incest a given, and then ratcheted up from there. And they didn't just dangle war, sex, murder, faith and love in front of their audiences — they truly took the opportunities to sift through various positions and stances on these important issues. And rarely provided an easy answer.

I like giving the kids something meaty to grapple with, too. There is no easy answer as to why Agamemnon doesn't say "Heck, no!" when asked to kill his only daughter. We played Agree/Disagree/Unsure, in which signs reading the same are posted in the room, and each student moves to stand next to one in response to a statement, such as "If God told me to do something, I would do it, no matter what." This lead to a vigorous debate, touching on issues of faith, certainty, doubt, the story of Jacob in the Bible, and stirring quotations of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." (Ok, I quoted Dylan. And it was stirring! For everyone over 30 in the room!)

I'm all for accommodating various learning abilities and reading levels, but it's also good to remember that if a text isn't engaging, kids won't be engaged. There's a reason we do not hang out with our friends and talk about the great microwave manual we just read. Kids like what we like, and we do well to show them how much fascinating literature is available to them that is full of such things.

Journeys of One Semester Begin with a Single Step

Once everyone had seen Iphigenia and we had discussed a few basic themes, we began to work our way through it. We had short one-day workshops on concepts from the play, most of which came from Epic Theatre's amazing Citizen Artist curriculum. (See September's column here.) We also did quite a bit of exploratory writing, and that's when I started to notice something: I was rarely, very, very rarely, having to ask my students to write ("ask" here meaning "cajole," "bribe," "threaten," "plead with," etc.). This was creative writing at its purest, and they were totally into it, even looking to add to their vocabulary. The day I had a child ask me if he could look up what the word "ritual" meant "on VT" (i.e., the Visual Thesaurus) in the computer in the back of the room, I knew something was different about this class.

Here are some of the things I asked them to write: a Nine Word Play (again, see September's column). A scene based on what they had done that morning. A scene about a superhero. The inner and outer life map of a made-up character (based on one of the main characters in Iphigenia). A scene in which said character has a confrontation with a police officer. A scene with no conflict at all. A scene with only conflict. A scene that consisted of no stage directions, only dialogue.

In nearly every case, I saw students who don't like to write, who don't like school, who, frankly, don't like me, sharpen a pencil and willingly move it across the paper to form words. Why? Well, creative expression is a human desire, I believe, as is self-expression, and here was an opportunity to express oneself, creatively.

I also genuinely think the kids felt that they were pulling one over on me. Time after time, they would ask, "Can we curse?" or "Do we have to spell things right?" (Answers: You can, but don't expect a play with cursing to be put up on a bulletin board or presented at a school function. And, no, but even if your character speaks in a dialect, your actors need to understand what they are supposed to say.) Assured that so long as they were meeting the minimum — dialogue and stage directions, and a clear tie-in to my assignment — all was well, I believe they felt unusually free. Some of them didn't like this at first. But most, by now, do.

The Plotting Thickens

Having explored writing scenes and creating characters, we kicked it up a notch, now exploring plot and story. Epic's curriculum again provided the basics, and within a short period of time my students were figuring out the main story points of Iphigenia and adapting it to their own play. To my repeated cries of "Only choose plot points you're interested in, because you will be stuck writing this for a long time!", my students set adaptations on basketball courts, in beauty salons and on the mean streets of the Lower East Side. Iphigenia became a princess, Agamemnon President Obama, and Achilles Dwyane Wade. The year was 2030. 1910. 1850.

The great thing about adapting a play, in short, is that it gives you a framework on which you can hang just about anything you want to, so long as you're willing to live with — and write around — the results. And this, in turn, creates opportunities for student research projects that are truly done in the spirit in inquiry: What was it like to be a princess in 1850? What are the basic requirements to get a cosmetologist license? Who is Dwyane Wade?

We haven't gotten to this stage yet (we're still at the initial drafting stage, in which one fully realized, typed scene is due at the end of the week!), but it's coming. I, for one, am really excited about it. I have no idea who Dwyane Wade is.

Free Their Minds and the Regents Will Follow

One final thought about this unit, so far, and why I'll continue to be a fan of this class for high school students, whether they be Arthur Miller's heirs or not.

Keep in mind that I teach the same kids in English, marching them through the rigors of essays and American Literature. I've begun to see a cool Yin/Yang-y effect from the counterbalance between Playwriting and English. The Playwriting is so free and (supposedly) easy, that the very act of writing becomes less intimidating to my students. Kids who found all sorts of excuses about why they couldn't write in English ("My hand hurts/was frozen/got caught in a meat grinder") can't use those excuses if they want to write later in the day during Playwriting.

Besides, the playscript is actually a quite precise and rigorous medium, requiring a great deal of organization and an editor's mind as well as creative ideas and expression. I don't point this out, of course, until after these skills have been deployed. Of course, these same skills feed into the writing we do in English too.

It works the other way, too. The grammar and spelling so prized in English become tools for communicating clearly in Playwriting (remember, unless the actors know what they're supposed to say...). The literature we read opens up possibilities for new settings, people, ideas and plot twists. The sheer rigor of preparing for the Regents test makes a special need for personal expression. And the vocabulary, still so obscure even when understood "enough" for a test, suddenly becomes useful. After all, if you're writing in the voice of a college professor, or President of the United States, you better up the syllable count to make your characters convincing.

And having found writing and reading fun once, it's quite possible to find it so again.

Merry, Happy, Everything

I'll keep you up to date on how our Iphigenia-ing goes over the next month as we wrap up this unit. And may I take these last few lines of my column to wish you and yours the happiest of whatever winter holidays you celebrate? I love this time of year — the sights, the smells, the sounds, the excuse to use words like "antiphon" and "cherubim" and "Maccabee" and "Solstice" and "Behold!" Get out there and use 'em. The opportunity comes but once a year!

source: http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/teachersatwork/2088/

A Troop of One

Today is Veterans Day in the United States, and linguist Neal Whitman has been thinking about a question of military usage: if "50,000 troops" refers to 50,000 people, then does "one troop" refer to one person?

The horrifying events at Fort Hood last week have shown us that even in friendly territory, members of the armed forces may lose their lives in service to the rest of us. Whether overseas in active war zones, or within the relative safety of our own borders, our troops willingly accept that doing their job may require the ultimate sacrifice, and their acceptance humbles and amazes me. Regardless of our views on where the United States should send our troops or for what purposes, we can agree that the men and women who serve have undertaken a dangerous but necessary job that would scare most of us, and for that we owe them our thanks. If you see a troop today, or if you know one, please express your appreciation to him or her. If you are a troop, thank you.

Many speakers might have had a problem with those last two sentences — not for the sentiment (I hope), but for the way I used the word troop. How can one person be a troop? Shouldn't I have said soldier, or some suitable word, perhaps servicemember, that would cover members of any branch of the armed forces?

To tell you the truth, I have a problem with that usage of troop myself. I remember reading in my U.S. history class in high school about how President Kennedy at some point had sent 11,300 troops to Vietnam. I wondered how many people that actually translated to. Were there 20 soldiers in a troop? Fifty? It wasn't until I was in college that I finally began to figure out that for sufficiently large values of X, X troops simply meant X people.

In his Political Dictionary published last year, William Safire had this to say on the issue:

Troops is a word in semantic trouble. In one sense, it means "soldiers"; does this exclude sailors and airmen (now grouped as "service personnel")? Troops means "a group of," but so does a troop; the extent of the number is fuzzy. ... A troop means both "one soldier" and "a group of soldiers," which is not what a word is supposed to do.

Before I go any further, I need to lay out some terminology. Troop in the sense of "a group of soldiers" is an example of a collective noun, like group, family, or collection. If you use the plural form troops to mean "more than one group of soldiers" — the meaning I insisted upon in high school — it's a plural collective noun. I will refer to the use of troops to mean "a group of soldiers" and troop to mean "one soldier" as noncollective troop(s).

Concern about noncollective troops seems to be a 21st-century phenomenon. The earliest complaint I've found is in a letter from one of columnist Barbara Wallraff's readers, quoted in her book Word Court (2000). The reader describes an experience much like mine: When history teachers mentioned statistics like 50,000 troops in Vietnam, they wondered if that translated to half a million soldiers. The reader's position is uncompromising: if 50,000 troops means 50,000 people, then one troop is one person, and that's wrong.

A similarly hard line comes from Susan Jacoby, in her book The Age of American Unreason (2008):

As every dictionary makes plain, the word "troop" is always a collective noun; the "s" is added when referring to a particularly large military force.

So for exactly how long has troops been used noncollectively? The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest citation of troop is from 1545, and Google Books turns up plenty of citations from the 1600s onward with troops following large, round numbers. A few of the hits contain enough math clues to make it clear that noncollective troops is intended. For example, in The History and Proceedings of the Second Session of the Third Parliament of King George II, 1742-1743, we find:

[I]f we take 16,000 into our Pay, fresh Troops must be raised for that Purpose, and, I hope, I may say, without any Derogation, that 16,000 Hanoverians newly raised, are not so good as 16,000 of the Veteran Troops of any other Potentate in Europe.

Clearly, the number 16,000 that keeps coming up refers to 16,000 people.

Moving down an order of magnitude, there are references to hundreds of troops from the same time period. In 1757, during the French and Indian War, the minutes of a colonial governors' meeting contain a breakdown of one army to be assembled, including "200 Provincial Troops from Pensilvania" and "200 Troops from North Carolina", which, together with other groups totaling 1600 soldiers, make a grand total of "2000 men."

So the use of noncollective troops with large, round numbers is nothing recent; it has been going on for at least 250 years, and probably longer. Wallraff's response to her reader recognizes this. After pointing out the need for a term to cover any member of the armed services, she writes:

We are to ignore the special qualities of troops when it appears in a context like "5,000 troops were sent overseas," in which it means a body of soldiers and the number is indicating the size of that body.

Patricia O'Conner, author of Woe is I, wrote something similar on her Grammarphobia blog in 2006:

"Troops" (plural), in the military sense, properly refers to a LARGE number of individuals (as in, "Five thousand troops were deployed.") When "troops" is used with a SMALL number, it properly refers not to individuals but to collections of people. "Three troops were attacked" would mean three units were attacked.

So the singular "troop" in reference to an individual soldier ("one troop was slightly injured") is considered a misuse, as is the plural "troops" to refer to a small number of individuals ("four troops were captured"). We do hear and read such irregular usages, though.

The earliest complaint I've been able to find about troops with these smaller numbers starts appears only a year after Wallraff's reader's complaint about troops with any number, but during that interval came the attacks of 9/11 and the beginning of the war on terror(ism). The news reports from Iraq and Afghanistan have told stories involving roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, suicide bombers, and frequent, small numbers of deaths, both of civilians and military personnel. The complaint appeared on the alt.usage.english online forum in December 2001, and took issue with the New York Times's phrasing "four Arab al Qaeda troops."

Complaints for various numbers of troops less than 100 have appeared in one forum or other nearly every year since. In 2005, James Kilpatrick responded to some of his readers, who were complaining about 19 and 31 troops. In 2003, northern California columnist Debra DeAngelo ranted about "twelve troops." Patricia O'Conner's blog entry from 2006 was in response to a reader's complaint about "2 or 3 troops." In fact, "two troops" attracts quite a bit of attention. In April 2004, I myself blogged about a headline mentioning "two troops," and a year later, Geoff Pullum wrote on Language Log about hearing "two troops" on NPR. In November 2007, Ralph Harrington at the Grey Cat Blog complained about a BBC story that referred to "two Danish troops." "If one individual had been reported dead," he asked, "would the headline have referred to the killing of 'one Danish troop'?"

That's the question, isn't it? What happens when we take noncollective troops to its mathematical conclusion, and find ourselves with one troop corresponding to one person, in the most overt possible ambiguity with the collective noun troop? In her blog post, O'Conner rejects such a usage for the same reason as for rejecting troops with small numbers. (Just last week, O'Conner updated the post to allow for small numbers with troops, but is still silent on the singular.) Other grammarians, while grudgingly allowing troops with small numbers, draw the line at one troop. A post from November 2001 on a grammar blog associated with Capital Community College in Hartford, Connecticut states, "It seems awfully clumsy to refer to an individual as a 'troop,' though, and I don't think that happens (even though it would seem logical enough)."

In a 2007 essay on NPR, linguist John McWhorter states, "One cannot refer to a single soldier as a troop." Bryan Garner concurs in the third edition of his Modern American Usage (2009), which finally takes on the question of noncollective troops. Even while admitting as standard phrases such as three troops (for which he provides an 1853 citation), Garner writes that "a single soldier, sailor, or pilot would never be termed a troop."

But it had to happen sometime. On June 9, 2008, Ralph Harrington returned with another post, informing us that CBS News had broken a "stupidity barrier" when they put out the headline "Afghan violence claims 100th British troop."

So the "one troop" stupidity barrier was crossed just last year. Or was it? O'Conner mentioned having read or heard "such forms" prior to August 2006, and the Corpus of Contemporary American English contains this example from 2002: "We do know that there was one troop killed over the weekend." On November 24, 1990, during the Persian Gulf crisis, President George Bush stated, "As long as I have one American troop — one man, one woman — out there, I will work closely with all those who stand up against this aggression."

When members of the American Dialect Society's listserv talked about noncollective troop in April 2003, one recalled being addressed individually as "troop" while in the Army during the late 1960s. The Oxford English Dictionary has "Can you spare a bite for a front-line troop?" from 1947. The June 20, 1874 Sydney Mail reports, "One of the troops was severely handled, being beaten with clubs, and two others received shot wounds." And finally, the OED provides the earliest citation yet, from 1823: "The monkey stowed himself away..till the same marine passed.., and laid hold of him by the calf of the leg... As the wounded 'troop' was not much hurt, a sort of truce was proclaimed."

In short, although noncollective troop(s) with small numbers (including one) has been in existence for almost 200 years, language watchers noticed it only recently. Some reject it with any number; some allow it only with large numbers; some allow it with any number greater than one. And one writer has gone so far as to allow it with any number, including one. It was none other than the curmudgeonly James Kilpatrick who wrote in his 2005 column: "In today's nomenclature, a troop is also an individual soldier."

source: http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dictionary/2062/

Linguistic Predictions

Introduction

A word of comfort to those of you who are unhappy about an important and so far unique and unprecedented linguistic development underway in the world and the present shift in English identity to a world property or world identity.

The rise of global English doesn't mean the loss of a geographical identity. People in Britain remain British, those in the US stay American. A model is Switzerland. You can be German, French or Italian but you are ultimately Swiss. Even now the term Spanish is misleading because it doesn't consider the Catalans and others.

Although I still believe the loss of a linguistic identity has far more advantages than drawbacks, other languages in the world won't be spared. A much more disastrous fate is awaiting them. It will also free us from the shackles of nationalism and arrogance. We will save time and energy which we still put into translation. A global English might overrun and replace lots of languages (compare French and la grande nation). So everybody in the world will acquire a new linguistic identity. I wonder, what's wrong with that. After all languages come and go. This is a rule of nature. Just think of what happened to Latin. It gave birth before it died to a number of daughters Like: Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese....

On the other hand a lot of people are worried that the English invasion will bring with it American and English culture. They believe it's a kind of cultural colonialism. The whole world will be Anglo-Saxonized or Americanized. Even in China people have already started eating MacDonald's hamburgers (symbolic). There is no reason to worry that Chinese (Mandarin) one day will be a more powerful language than English. Chinese sounds are more difficult to the people of the world. In addition its writing system is cumbersome and not suitable for international communication. Human beings have always lamented the demise of the present. Shelly's "West Wind" makes way for a new life.

Language is the basis for all human interactions. No thinking is possible without language. It is indeed surprising why linguistics and language have not got the attention and focus they deserve till now. After all, human knowledge and science is only possible through the medium of language. Acquiring a new language opens new perspectives on life and broadens our minds. Our identity is still based on language. However, in case of English and because of its international role the idea of identity might get lost or is in deed on its way to be lost (it is becoming a world or a human identity). Yet, English culture and literature can only be seen in English. That's why although translation is a brilliant discipline it cannot overcome its deficiencies. Just imagine translating Shakespeare or Coleridge into Dutch.In short, language is superior to all other disciplines and is always first in sequence. It is knowledge, pleasure, emotions (mind and body or body and soul in one). After all we are not only heads but bodies too.
Density and Speed

One question which doesn't leave my mind is: Can the human language we know cope with the information density and the speed we are experiencing. As you know, information is growing and coding or packing information into language is necessary. Informal language uses more verbs. It is verbal or verbose (i.e. information density is low). Academic language tries to avoid verbs as much as possible apart from some basic ones like: be, have and a couple of other high frequency ones. So nominalization is a feature of Academic English because of the problem of information density. You can do more operations on nouns than on verbs. For example you can count nouns; use adjectives with them (describe them) etc... But nominalization means using nouns and as you knows most of them, at least the academic ones, are of Romance origin i.e. very long words (multi-syllabic). What will be if this information density grows to such an extent that the present human language is no more capable of packing information. On the other hand human language is slow for communicating messages. You need more time to pronounce long Romance words. Will there be a new communication medium to cope with the problems of density and speed.
Ambiguity, Density, Identity and Speed

Now I would like to extend the ideas of density and speed which I touched upon to two additional important phenomena which are part and parcel of human language.
Ambiguity

Some people complain about the imprecise use of language. If human language won't suffice to code information in the future due to information density and speed and of course due to misunderstandings (ambiguity) then the analogue language we have now might make way for a digital language Nowadays, everything is becoming digital. Why not human language? Once human language is digitized or replaced by a digital (computer) language (whether prescribed or agreed on), not only ambiguity ends but also beauty and mysticism and culture of human heritage. This means there will definitely be advantages of density, speed and clarity but a lot of disadvantages as I already mentioned will ensue foremost among those is reduction. Digital data is compressed or zipped. Compression means losing part of the information which is beyond human perception. Thus! , Digitalization means reducing human language to two modes, there is current or no current, a duality of yes and no like vending machines or computers. It is always a win/lose situation. This is an economic principle. We have to make a decision and set priorities.
Identity

Another problem of human language is identity. Identity doesn't only help us to belong to a nation and provide a profile but also create big human conflicts. Just take nationalism which is not only based on skin colour and facial features but also on language.

There are different peoples (nations) in the world: In the Middle East there are Arabs, Turks, Kurds or Persians. In East Asia there are: Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese. In Germanic Europe there are: the English, the Germans, and the Dutch etc. In Romance Europe: the French, the Italians, the Spanish. All these People look alike in their own parts of the world and it is difficult to tell them a part like one cell twins but they have lots of conflicts mostly based on nationalism (language identity). Using a digital language might solve some national conflicts. Human relations will probably then be based on economy and not languages.
Growth

Perhaps one day we will cease to be bodies or at least some parts of our bodies will be left as remnants based on a different anatomy (giving way to big heads) in the process of human evolution. The problem is not one of technology as much as that of growth .The pace of information growth is scaring. This is in deed a gloomy picture (at least to us now). Our biggest problem and enemy is ultimately growth not only that of information. Every thing is growing: world population is growing, pollution is growing, and economy is growing. People usually think it is positive but any growth means more consumption and more damage. This means we have to set priorities. I personally find it difficult to cope with the information overload. Sometimes I develop interest in a variety of issues and I find myself lost. It has already become difficult to make a choice or a decision.

Maths or translating language into a digital or formal language can only substitute natural language by means of reduction. Reduction means parts of our analogue language (like intonation and other features) are lost because digital or mathematical language stops the language flow, creates boundaries and compresses data as I already mentioned. So because of information density, speed and the possible need for a language that doesn’t allow ambiguity. The language we know now might change or be replaced. I mean human beings have already thought of a language like Esperanto void of identity based on linguistic differences which has caused a lot of human suffering. I am not saying this is what I personally prefer. I know the price we have to pay but our present language has to cope with the big challenges it is going to face in the future.

Suppose extraterrestrials landed on our Earth I am sure they would be greatly surprised to find that people on a small planet like Earth can neither communicate freely and direct (without the help of an intermediary i.e. an interpreter or a translator) nor can get in touch easily. Their astonishment would grow further when they find out how much suffering this linguistic diversity has caused so far. People's nationalities have been defined foremost on linguistic grounds. Languages create different identities and cultures. This on the one hand makes the world more interesting but on the other hand prepares ground for tragic conflicts. The loss of a linguistic identity doesn't necessarily mean the loss of a geographic or ethnic identity but it will mean one obstacle being removed.

I would like to elaborate on this issue by drawing a comparison from economy. In Europe, we used to have different currencies and in a sense it was a nice feeling to see foreign currencies when we were on holiday but no one can deny that the introduction of a single currency has also solved a lot of problems. The advantages of a single currency certainly outweigh the disadvantages by far if any. The EURO has set an example and paved the way for a single, at least, official European language. People can go on using their languages but we need a common European or world language to make us strong in unity. People are afraid of the loss of cultures and languages. However, cultures and languages have never been static. They are destined to change. In the age of globalization, information and communication technology, satellite TV and fast travelling the gap has become narrower. In addition, we can save more time and energy when everybody can communicate without any linguistic barriers. I hope one day the present state becomes history and we can say: A long time ago people on our Earth used to have different languages and we wonder how they could cope without a single world language.

English has already become global and no more the property of a certain community. Nobody feels at a disadvantage when speaking English. It's no more Germanic in quality because it has at least incorporated vocabulary from nearly all languages in the world. This makes English indeed global. Every nation can find a bit of its linguistic heritage integrated into English. Moreover, its writing system has no diacritical points as in some languages which make them difficult to use, pronounce and communicate in writing. English has become a powerful tool and rich; it has become simple and complex at the same time. Gender is nearly non-existent because the article remains "the" whatever the gender and the position in a sentence. There are no difficult case endings and sounds as in lots of other languages which sometimes constitute insurmountable barriers. We can express any idea most powerfully and precisely. It has reached the level of maturity and deserves the label of a global language. In addition, it sounds beautiful and appealing to the ear or at least acceptable and learnable by the majority of people. Finally, global English is experiencing a simplification of its grammar and phonetics.
Density, Memory and Speed

Information is increasing on a daily basis. Our human knowledge has grown, is still growing and will continue to grow due to advances in nearly all disciplines. We are already experiencing information overload. The question is what will be in 50or so years? Even computers are facing difficulty with memory challenges and new search engines like Google are adapted to more effective ways of information storage and retrieval. Academic language takes refuge in nominalization. Our present languages are not prepared to keep pace with such density and speed not experienced before and it is not clear whether our memories and brains can accommodate and cope with these developments.
Global English

English is experiencing a development unprecedented in human history. Every day there are new speakers of English. Again what will be in 50 years or so? The impact of this new situation will be three-fold:

* First, the dominance of English will be to the "disadvantage" of other languages and cultures.
* Second, loss of linguistic identity (to the "disadvantage" of the so-called "native speakers") which might have advantages since linguistic variety despite its beauty has been a source of tragic conflicts in the world. No more BE or AmE but a global English.
* Third, English will change in its new role to accommodate other cultures and languages. People have already started mixing BE and AmE and don't care about the pedantic view not to mix the two varieties.

Of course, in every change and development lie advantages and disadvantages but perhaps the advantages outweigh the advantages. In addition to what is mentioned, we will save a lot of time and energy spent on translations and thus communications barriers are removed. This doesn't mean that a Global English in turn won't change or split but it is a fact that people in our global village and a 24-hour society are not kept apart as they used to by geographical barriers. We can communicate freely and quickly through the medium of Global English. We have already reached the age of more direct and instant contact. Future linguistic changes consequently will be of a different nature.
The principle of convention and democracy in change

This is not plea for an artificial replacement of the present world languages. On the contrary natural languages are a means of social cuddling and cannot be changed by the dictatorship of minorities. It's always the dictatorship of the majority. There will be no revolution but changes are already underway. It's a fact that a Global English is already underway to overrun many a language.
The versatile and analogue character of Natural Languages

Natural (analogue) languages are certainly superior to artificial or digital languages because they accommodate nearly all of our present needs and can be used for all disciplines. However, we have already developed mathematical and computer languages to satisfy specific needs. In addition, natural languages leave room for ambiguity which still might be very useful to satisfy certain human needs (like literature, playing on words, implications, jokes ....) but can also be a source of misunderstanding. On the other hand digitization is simple, boring and poor cannot satisfy our present social needs although it is precise, mathematical, can be reduced, stored and manipulated.

As already mentioned these are only predictions made due to a variety of changes and developments in the last 20 years or so. Perhaps the most threatening force is growth. This word might sound positive but is in fact behind a lot of evil. Just imagine everything is growing, Earth population, economy (which means more consumption and Pollution and more...). Human knowledge has grown exponentially. This is the reality and not fiction even though a lot of trash is being produced daily but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. In order to cope with this growth we need resources. For example we need food for the growing population, but producing and consuming food means in turn more pollution, more damage...

As far as human knowledge is concerned we also need resources to store and retrieve information. There are big advances in science and technology and our knowledge is growing on a daily basis. Just take the number of books, websites published everyday in comparison what was some years ago.

The computer networks worldwide, the phone, TV (satellite, cable, terrestrial), internet (email and the web), modern airlines have made it possible to contact each other just in-time, interact with each other, discuss issues online, share work, brainstorm ideas, pool resources and so on much faster and more productively. There are practically no boundaries left. All sciences are linked and have become inter-disciplinary. In Europe the EU and the single currency have also removed borders. Thus growth or density of information necessitates a tool to communicate and interact faster. Human language might not be capable of keeping pace with this growth and speed. Academic language is compact uses more nouns than verbs (nominalization: independent of tense, aspect and mood) because you can pack more information into nouns than verbs, use many of them (cram your text but still not wordy). They are quieter, more objective and do a lot of other operations on them. For example, you can count them, modify them.... Verbs in comparison are verbal or verbose (more talk than matter). They i.e. verbs are more subjective, dynamic (the majority of verbs are dynamic not stative and even among the limited number of stative verbs which exist some behave dynamically. Verbs of high frequency belong to informal register, show change and are conjugated which you don't have in nouns. Nouns are static (almost lifeless), neutral to change and emotions and more objective. Counting the number of nouns and verbs in a page of an academic paper will show this tendency. In addition, verbs are subordinate to nouns because they relate nouns to each other like prepositions and we can do only with a few of them. Some are transitive with one object or some have two open connections. So we need something beyond English either as an adapted natural language or an artificial functioning next to our natural one. It can be any tool.

However, human language is beautiful, encodes more than linguistic information, and allows room for ambiguity. There are a lot of implications and layers in human language next to the basic linguistic layer. It is analogue, has no boundaries and is far much superior to mathematical or digital languages.

source: http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/linguistic-predictions.html