Online courses and their integration into the studying process (on the example of online course “Connected Speech Processes”)

Introduction

In the last decades, educational institutions have highlighted the development of pedagogical Internet technologies among their main tasks. Universities all over the world have been restructuring their educational environment, introducing digital transformations and technological innovations in their urge to remain competitive and to provide high-quality education. One manifestation of this trend is the creation of online courses.

The advantages of online courses are well described and documented: they facilitate attraction of best tutors, help to provide global, free and mass education, enable processing and analyzing big data (Artjuševskaja, 2013, 92‑93). Online courses allow productive use of classroom time, individualization of the learning process and the formation of competencies associated with creative thinking (Novikova, 2016, 188); they activate and encourage the development of self-learning skills, provide access to high-quality content, as well as the ability to replace the linear presentation of the material with a hypertext one (Lejbin, 2015, 24).

The mentioned above is not an exhaustive list of strong points of the educational format in question. However, there are a number of disadvantages as well, among which, for instance, is a prerequisite high level of responsibility as one of the fundamental criteria for the success of online courses; compliance of the student's psycho type with the effectiveness of online learning (Lejbin, 2015, 24). Nevertheless, the introduction and development of pedagogical Internet technologies are inevitable and numerous studies aim at investigating and eliminating or reducing the possible problems (Klimova, 2021; Gandhi et al., 2023; Pikhart and Al-Obaydi, 2023; Martin et al., 2023; Khodjikulova et al., 2020; Wegener, 2022).

In the last few years, “Dubna” University has also been actively developing its virtual learning environment and its learning management system (https://lms.uni-dubna.ru/).

The article reports on the development and implementation of the online course “Connected Speech Processes” (hereinafter referred to as the CSP online course) and its integration into the syllabus of the “Theoretical phonetics of the English language” course for the second-year students (full-time intramural attendance) of the Department of Linguistics at “Dubna” University. The contents of the article include the following aspects: a brief overview of the pronunciation instruction aims, the priorities and methods at “Dubna” University, the educational context for using the CSP online course, the structure of the CSP online course, its aims and methods of assessment, the integration of the CSP online course into the syllabus of the “Theoretical phonetics of the English language” course and the options it provides.

1. Pronunciation instruction overview

The pronunciation of the English language instruction within the Bachelor programme (45.03.02 – Linguistics) at the Department of Linguistics at “Dubna” University aims to provide its students with a solid training in phonetics in order to establish good speech habits and to approximate the native speaker pronunciation norms (RP). Native-like pronunciation is the priority. However, pronunciation teaching is done within the pair of languages (English vs. Russian), where Russian is a point of reference and English is an L2 for all the participants of the educational process. All pronunciation instructors are Russian L1 speakers, so no immediate feedback from English L1 speakers is available for the students.

Teaching methods vary but are mostly based on the analytic-linguistic approach involving studying of the phonetic alphabet, articulatory descriptions, charts of the vocal apparatus and contrastive information (English vs. Russian). In pronunciation tasks and exercises, the direct method, i.e., imitation of a model (teacher or an authentic recording) to approximate the model pronunciation (RP) through imitation and repetition, is the predominant one.

In the two semesters of the first year of the 45.03.02 – Linguistics BA programme, the pronunciation is taught six academic hours per week and the emphasis is put on the structure of the speech apparatus, on the English phonemic inventory vs. the Russian one, on individual sounds, on consonant clusters, on basic intonation patterns and on the stress-timed rhythm. In the following two semesters of the second year, pronunciation instruction is reduced to four academic hours of class-room teaching per week with a focus on the weak forms, features of connected speech and intonation patterns. In the autumn-winter semester these are supported by the Theoretical Phonetics of the English language course featuring 34 academic hours of lectures and 17 academic hours of seminars. The two semesters of the third year are dedicated to phonostylistics of the English language and functional styles, involving studies in stylistic variations of pronunciations. Two academic hours of class-room teaching per week are allocated to this discipline. Under normal circumstances all the pronunciation teaching takes place off-line.

2. The “Connected Speech Processes” online course: development and structure

The online course “Connected Speech Processes” was designed and produced in 2018-2019 in response to the reduction of teaching hours allocated to seminars (from 34 to 17 hours.) in the context of maintaining the original scope of the contents of the syllabus of the “Theoretical phonetics of the English language” course for the second-year students (full-time intramural attendance) of the Department of Linguistics of “Dubna” University. Thus, the traditional off-line format of the course “Theoretical phonetics of the English language” scheduled for the Autumn-Winter semester of the second year of the BA cycle was planned to be rearranged into a blended format with a block of online mini-lectures on the processes of connected speech, accompanied by online tasks and tests, studied and completed by the students asynchronously and autonomously.

The “Theoretical phonetics of the English language” course covers such following content areas as phonetics and phonology, acoustic phonetics, articulatory phonetics, auditory phonetics, segmental and suprasegmental phonetics, the system of English vowels, the system of English consonants, syllabification and phonotactics, prosody and intonation, phonostylistics, etc. The selected phonetic phenomena for the block of mini-lectures and tasks represent the content area of articulatory phonetics and covers the most significant processes of connected speech. The choice is explained by the fact that the previous training in phonetics (first-year English phonetics course amounts to six teaching hours per week totaling 216 hours per year) provides the students with the core knowledge of the system of contrastive sounds of the English language and its basic intonation patterns and introduces them to the principles of IPA broad transcription. Thus, “Connected Speech Processes” is the content area best suitable for an autonomous learning process based on the previously acquired knowledge and skills.

The designed “Connected Speech Processes” syllabus comprises the following units: 1. Weak forms; 2. Elision (2.1 Elision: Introduction; 2.2 /h/-elision; 2.3 /t/d/-elision; 2.4 schwa-elision); 3. Assimilation (3.1 Assimilation: Introduction; 3.2 Voice assimilation; 3.3 Place assimilation; 3.4 Yod-coalescence); 4. /t/-glottaling; 5. r-liaison; 6. Vowel processes; 7 Final test. Thus, the course totals seven units including 12 mini-lessons. The lessons have an identical structure in order to establish a clear and easy-to-follow routine for students’ autonomous work and feature a mini online lecture, a PDF file with the script of the mini online lecture, a practice test and the final test for each lesson (Figure 1).

Therefore, the students first acquaint themselves with the mini-lecture, to facilitate the process they may use the PDF file with the script of the lecture if necessary. The PDF file with the script also contains a transcription task allowing the students to practice their broad transcription skills with the element of phonetic transcription showing the possible changes within the studied phenomenon, they may control their level of understanding of the studied connected speech process consulting the sample answers provided in the same file. Then, the students proceed with the practice test, which also contains brief explanations of the suggested solutions on finishing the test in order to control their performance. The closing stage of the lesson is the final test, showing the results of the students’ autonomous work within this lesson.

The online mini-lectures are based mainly on Garcia Lecumberri and Maidment (2000), Ashby and Maidment (2005) and Roach (2009), which are the textbooks included in the recommended literature of the course “Theoretical phonetics of the English language” alongside with Sokolova et al. (2001), Sokolova et al. (2004), Kodzasov and Krivnova (2001) etc. The duration of each of the 13 mini-lectures ranges from 1 min 50 sec to 5 min 16 sec, average length of a video being 3 min 21 sec, totaling 41 min 75 sec of video content of the whole series of lectures within the CSP online course.

Normally, a video-lecture starts off with a brief description of the phenomenon in question, accompanied by examples and transcriptions reflecting the ongoing changes (Figure 2a). At the end of each lecture, a number of examples from native speakers are provided to illustrate the theoretical content (Figure 2b)

a) Core part of online mini-lecture 3.1 Assimilation: Introduction	b) Illustration of examples by native speakers in 3.1 Assimilation: Introduction

The illustrations were taken from videos found in open access on www.youtube.com, the search of the videos containing the necessary words and phrases was facilitated by using www.youglish.com, an online tool designed to expand learners’ and language specialists’ knowledge of vocabulary and pronunciation of various languages, including English. The attached PDF file with the script of the lecture provides transcription tasks (see Example 1). Each new lesson adds a new process of connected speech; consequently, in each new practice task there are more changes to be found. In the task in Example 1, the students are expected to show all the phenomena studied before (weak forms, the possible cases of /h/-elision, t/d elision, schwa-elision and syllabicity) alongside with the phenomenon discussed in the given lesson, i.e., voice assimilation.

Example 1

Task 1: Please, transcribe the following sentences, marking the stressed syllables and IP boundaries, use the weak/strong forms of function words and /h/-elision, t/d-elision, schwa-elision and syllabicity and voice assimilation where necessary.

1. Do we have to go now?
2. He has to leave now.
3. Of course, he has to leave now.
4. They used to swim every morning.
5. We didn’t use to smoke that much.
6. Have you used Tom’s car today?
7. Can I read your newspaper?
8. A lot of use it’ll be then…
9. She’s a real newsmaker today!

Sample answers:

1. /ˈduː wi ˈhæf tə ˈgəʊ naʊ ‖/
2. /hi ˈhæs tə ˈliːv naʊ ‖/
3. /əf ˈkɔːs i ˈhæs tə ˈliːv naʊ ‖/
4. /ðeɪ ˈjuːs tə ˈswɪm ˈevri ˈmɔːnɪŋ ‖/
5. /wi ˈdɪdn̩ ˈjuːs tə ˈsməʊk ðæt ˈmʌtʃ ‖/
6. /ˈhæv ju ˈjuːz ˈtɒmz ˈkɑː təˈdeɪ ‖/
7. /kən aɪ ˈriːd jɔː ˈnjuːspeɪpə ‖/
8. /ə ˈlɒt əv ˈjuːs ɪtəl bi ðen ‖/
9. /ʃiz ə ˈriːl ˈnjuːzmeɪkə təˈdeɪ ‖/

The transcription principles used herein are based on those outlined by Garcia Lecumberri and Maidment (2000), and have been familiar to the students since their first year of BA cycle at the Department of Linguistics of “Dubna” University.

The next task in the students’ autonomous studying routine is the Practice Test, which mostly contains multiple choice questions, in which the course participants are to choose the most suitable option of the transcription of the given word or phrase (Example 2).

Example 2

Practice Test (3.2 Voice Assimilation)

Choose the best option for the underlined words keeping in mind what you know about voice assimilation.

A). ˈWhy did you ¹ˈleave ˈTom? |- He ²was ˈsad! ‖

1. a) liːv b) liːf c) liv d) lɪv
2. a) wɒz b) wɒs c) wəz d) wəs

Such Practice Tests are offered to the course participants in order to provide them with a possibility to conduct self-control of the level of their comprehension of the new phenomenon, that is why the solutions are provided with rather detailed explanations on why each of the options is correct or incorrect (Example 3).

Example 3

Comments for Question A1 for Practice Test (3.2 Voice Assimilation)

A1 – a) as voice assimilation of /v/ in the sequence <leave Tom> is not possible because it is not a close-knit structure; b) is incorrect as voice assimilation of /v/ in the sequence <leave Tom> is not possible because it is not a close-knit structure; c) is incorrect as the vowel symbol in the word <leave> is wrong; d) is incorrect as the vowel symbol in the word <leave> is wrong).

The final test for each lesson contains questions on both theory and practice featuring multiple choice questions and true-false questions (Example 4).

Example 4

Some questions for Final Test (3.2 Voice Assimilation)

Question 1: Choose the correct answer

A voiced consonant may become devoiced if it is followed or preceded by a voiceless consonant.

a. True

b. False

Question 6: Choose the phrase, where voice assimilation of /z/ is possible.

a. used two cups

b. used to play

c. used twice

The time period allocated to each test may be regulated by the administrator of the course. In the running version of the CSP online course, each Practice and Final Test within a lesson is to be completed within 30 minutes. The number of attempts can also be regulated. Currently each Practice Test can be done within two attempts, while the Final Test has to be completed within one attempt. The Moodle platform offers many a possibility for an educator to adapt the current version of the Course to meet the needs and the learning rhythm of the participants in order to achieve the necessary goals and learning outcomes for each particular group of students.

The assessment is done automatically on Moodle as each correct answer is evaluated as 10 points, while each wrong answer is equal to 0 points within the current version. The number of points for each correct/wrong answer may also be changed. The current version of the CSP online course contains 22 tests totaling 2200 points.

In 2020, the CSP online course was registered in the Integrated National Record Keeping System of Research, Development and Engineering works (https://rosrid.ru), and the Certificate of Registration of Data Base “Online Course “Connected Speech Processes”” was issued by the Russian Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Efremova, 2020).

3. The “Connected Speech Processes” online course: trial runs and their results

The pilot version of the CSP online course was first offered to the second-year students of the Department of Linguistics of “Dubna” University between September and December 2019. In order to identify the expedience and advisability of the use of this course in Linguistics BA correspondence programme and Linguistics MA (45.04.02) programme, the CSP online course was also offered to the students enrolled on these courses. Thus, 19 second-year BA students (full-time intramural attendance), 15 first-year MA students (full-time intramural attendance) and 9 BA students (correspondence, part-time intramural attendance) took part in the pilot running of the CSP online course.

All the cohorts of students were provided with a task schedule (each mini-lecture and the associated tasks and tests to be done within one or two weeks, depending on the contents) with the deadlines for each test. The deadlines for the tests were identical for all the groups. Moreover, the Moodle platform provides notifications on the tasks to be done. After the completion of the course, all the participants were asked to give their feedback to the CSP online course, and their involvement in it, in the form of a questionnaire.

As expected, the best performance was demonstrated by the BA students with full-time intramural attendance with scores ranging from 46% to 94%, the average score being 79%. Three out of 19 students (16%) achieved a result above 90% of correct answers. Eight students out of 19 (42%) managed to provide between 80% and 90% of correct answers, four students (21%) showed a performance between 70% and 80%, and two students (11%) less than 70%.

The CSP online course was run alongside with the “Theoretical phonetics of the English language” and the high results (above 80%) would allow the students not to have to do a practical task during their exam in the “Theoretical phonetics of the English Language”.

Despite the availability of the task schedule and notifications, in this cohort, all the tests were completed by 13 participants (68%), while the other 6 students (32%) lacked from 2 to 5 tests. These results reflect the biggest challenge mentioned in their feedback to the CSP online course by all the students in this group, i.e., self-monitoring the deadlines for completing tasks and consequent missing milestones of the course. However, the prospect of not having to do a practical exam task in the event of high performance in the CSP online course was described as a motivating factor by as many as 15 students (79%) in this group. On the whole, the majority of the participants in this cohort evaluated their involvement in the course as “very good” (32%) and “excellent” (26%).

As for the trial runs of the CSP online course for the BA (correspondence course) and MA students, the results proved to be less convincing. The cohort of Linguistics BA (correspondence course, part-time intramural attendance) had the trial run of the CSP online-course alongside with the other disciplines in the English language, however it was not integrated into the “Theoretical phonetics of the English language”, which was scheduled to take place during the following semester. Consequently the results of the CSP online-course were not taken into account during the exam for the “Theoretical phonetics of the English language”.

The results of the participants varied from 17% to 78% of correct answers, with the average being 55%. Three (33%) of the participants did not accede 40% of correct answers, while four (44%) students managed to get a score between 70 and 80% and two students (22%) had scores around 62%. There were no students who completed 100% of the offered tests. The involvement into the course was evaluated by the participants in this group as “satisfactory” (56%) and “poor” (44%) with the autonomous work described as the greatest challenge.

The trial run for MA students was not obligatory and was not integrated into or associated with other disciplines in the relevant semester. All the work on the CSP online course was conducted by the participants autonomously and asynchronously. Only 5 of the 15 first-year MA students in question had a BA in linguistics from “Dubna” University and thus, had prior extensive knowledge of the phonetics and phonology of the English language. The other participants had previously majored in pedagogy or in areas not related to teaching or foreign languages, and consequently, they had little or no professional knowledge in English phonetics or phonology.

In the group of 15 MA students, the range of successfully completed tests varied from 6% to 89% of correct answers in the whole course structure, with the average being 51.81%. Two of the 15 participants (13%) demonstrated the lowest scores in the group, as well as in all the three cohorts of participants, equal to 6% and 9% of correct answers, both students having 20 tests undone. The performance and attendance of these students was similarly poor in other disciplines, consequently, such results are hardly explained by the structure or the format of the CSP online course.The best results (two participants) were 89% and 83% of correct answers; both students were the only ones who completed 100% of the tests in the course structure. The other participants did not complete from two to five or eight or even 13 tests, so the average 52% of correct answers could be attributed rather to the missing tests than to the poor performance of the students.

In their feedback, only two students (13%) evaluated their involvement as excellent. 60% of the students found autonomous asynchronous work the biggest challenge in the course and would have preferred to have an instructor for the given contents to be studied in off-line sessions. 47% of the participants noted the lack of motivation as the course was not an obligatory part of their programme. However, 67% of the participants found the course a useful tool to revise and enhance the prior knowledge in the area. On the whole, 88% of all the participants (38 out of 43) in the three cohorts of students found the mini-lectures well-designed and easy to follow.

4. Integration

The trial runs resulted into the decision to integrate the CSP online-course into the syllabus of the “Theoretical phonetics of the English language” discipline in the Linguistics BA programme for second-year students with full time intramural attendance as well as part-time. The CSP online course may be offered to MA students as an optional discipline.

The sanitary crisis of 2020-2021, when the university had to switch to full-time online education, led to a greater students’ awareness of online learning and enhanced their skills and habits in autonomous studying. The results of the CSP online course run in 2020 and 2021 for both full-time and correspondence programmes showed that the number of missed tasks and tests reduced to 0 or 1-2 tests per participant. Similarly, the performance proved to be higher due to the fact that the lower limit of the correct answers within the course was slightly higher than 60% for both groups, while the best results attained varied within the range of 80 to 90 %.

Currently the CSP online course is integrated into the course “Theoretical Phonetics of the English language” and supplements the traditional off-line lectures (34 teaching hours) and seminars (17 teaching hours) resulting in a blended learning strategy for the full-time intramural attendance second-year students of the Department of Linguistics.

The CSP online course is also part of the phonetics course for the second-year students completing a correspondence BA programme, which has been fully conducted online since 2021. In this case, following the classification of online teaching and learning experiences suggested by Martin et al. (2023), the online course under consideration constitutes the asynchronous instructional element of the bichronous course with the blending model that can be characterized as a complement model, where the asynchronous aspects of the online course and synchronous online sessions complement each other.

Conclusion

Developed in response to the reduction in classroom hours allocated to seminars in the theoretical phonetics discipline, the online course “Connected Speech Processes” became an effective educational tool during the sanitary crisis of 2020-2021, complementing the synchronous online learning process imposed by the pandemic.

In the post-Covid 19 context, the availability of the online course “Connected Speech Processes” in the learning management system of “Dubna” University helps to ensure greater flexibility in the teaching process and allows its adaptation to various target student audiences as well as teaching and learning practices from fully online (asynchronous or bichronous modalities) to hybrid modalities.

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Pour citer cette ressource :

Ksenia Efremova, Online courses and their integration into the studying process (on the example of online course “Connected Speech Processes”), La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO (ISSN 2107-7029), décembre 2024. Consulté le 18/12/2024. URL: https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/langue/online-courses-and-their-integration-into-the-studying-process-on-the-example-of-online-course-connected-speech-processes