Newspaper Writing Projects in CALL

Team newspapers in off-line CALL writing courses

for Japanese upper-beginner-level EFL students

David Greene, Professor

Kochi University of Technology

Overview

Student-producednewspapers have been popular as task-based writing projects in variouseducational contexts for a number of years. Usually of course these projects are not 'newspapers' per se but mockups of the real thing.  Having students produce their own 'newspapers' in a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) lab marries the newspaper genre to the computer medium. It seems a compatible union. The newspaper with its everyday topic choices and here-and-now relevance, and the computer with its power to create graphically-enhanced, 'in-house' publications make a lovely couple.

Thisarticle will describe a Newspaper Unit (NU) currently being used in first-yearEFL writing courses at Kochi University of Technology (KUT).  It will:

1. Describe the NU context: participant profiles and lab specifications.

2. Outline the NU: product expectations and process considerations.

3. Discuss variations on the NU theme: alternative approaches andimplementation issues.

NU Background

The starting point for the NU is its educational setting: the students' abilities, the lab specifications, and the institutional stipulations regarding curriculum. While the NU processand product decisions are determined by the realities of the aforementionedfactors, our circumstances are broadly representative of EFL university-levelsituations across Japan; therefore this unit may be generalizable to otherJapanese universities with CALL labs where the EFL writing students are atbeginner-to-intermediate L2 ability levels. A description of some of our realities will help othersassess the feasibility of adopting a similar newspaper writing project at theirinstitutions.

Students and Instructors

Ourstudents are in first-year, and the NU ocupies the second Quarter of atwo-quarter, one-semester, English writing course which all are required totake. The course consists of 15classes of 60-to-90 minutes twice per week: a generally representative timeframe for Japanese universities. (See Figure 1 for the NU Timetable). The students are in one of five departments within thesingle engineering faculty. Because KUT is not a Tier 1 or 2 university in the hierarchical Japaneseeducational system, generally speaking, the students tend to be from the 40thto 70th percentile in terms of academic ability. As far as their English L2 abilities are concerned, most arelow as judged by their performances on the KUT entrance exams.  As is the case for most graduates ofthe Japanese school system, they have little previous practice in writingsentential strings of English text. In addition, their entry-level computer skills are weak with estimatesof the proportion of students lacking familiarity with computers at 50% to 70%.  This is not abnormal in Japan as theJapanese school system does not yet include computeracy or computer courses inthe secondary curriculum.

Becausethe university is not large, five sections of CALL English, offered in bothsemesters, enable all students to take English Writing for one semester intheir first year. In three of thesections, instructors have opted for the NU: one is a full-time professor; theother two are part-time lecturers. Of the three, two are experienced teachers who have limited computerexperience and no technical background; one is a teacher of limited experiencewho is a computer technician by profession. All of us are able to use the networking possibilities ofthe CALL lab to facilitate our instruction, but two of us possess no specialtechnical skills, nor have we had technical problems in our teaching of theNU.

CALL Lab

KUThas a 52-station networked CALL lab designated for English writing.  The computers have English operatingsystems, and there are four networked printers and one scanner.  The lab has the advantage of havingbeen designed with educational concerns in mind so that placement of computersfacilitates group work, mobility and communication. Being a Macintosh lab, the primary teaching applicationprograms on all computers are HyperCard 2.3.5 (basic hypermedia program) andClarisworks 4.0 (works-type word processing, painting, drawing, and spreadsheetprogram). Each computer has anethernet connection and Netscape Navigator 3 as a browser.  These software/browser versions arequickly becoming outdated, but this does not noticeably inhibit the range ofpossibilities for the NU since it is off-line. Suffice it to say that our lab is not as high-tech as many,but still it is adequate for the demands placed on it by the NU.

NU Course Design

Oncethe predeterminants of situational context have been accounted for, thenuts-and-bolts design of a student newspaper writing course begins.  The 'newspapers' produced in the NU are mockups and one-time-only productions. The design model hinges on two cornerstones: product andprocess. Product refers to the actual newspaper pages and thecontent of those pages; process refers to the manner in which the writing tasksare accomplished.

Product Specifications

The NU is designed as a team task: four members are teamed to complete an eight-page 'newspaper'. The eight pages have instructor-assigned topics, and these pages aredivided into two 4-page sets. (SeeFigure 2). Students are givenhardcopy notes in which Page Notes explain the topic intentand article focus for each of the eight pages. (See Figure 3 for Page Notes: Media Scene ). These notes are simply written and illuminated with examples for eachtopic.

Bothteam and individual responsibilities are included in the productspecifications. In thebrainstorming phase, several team decisions must be made.

1. First, each newspaper production team must choose page managers for eachpage. A page manager will assumeresponsibility for writing and publishing (printing) that page.  This division of responsibility isrepeated for Page Set 1 and Page Set 2 meaning each student will become a pagemanager for two pages.

2. Once page responsibilities are decided, the team collectivelybrainstorms a team name and designs its newspaper nameplate.  This usually means that they choose a nameand then each of them creates a design on

his/her computer. They discuss and build on each other’s ideas until afinal design is achieved and shared out to all members.

3. One final team decision phase in the preparatory stage pertains to pagelayout. As a group, they must makeseveral decisions about page layout that will be common to all theirpages. These include font, sizeand style of print, margins and borders, columnizing and justifying, placementof page names and newspaper nameplates.

As individuals, page managers begin their separatepages with several decisions having already been made by the production team.This means they can focus on the specific writing tasks for the articles onthat page. To mete out writingassignments which are roughly equivalent, their content is regulated.

1. Each page is to have three articles.

2. Each article is to be 100 to 125 words long.

3. Each article is to have a headline, byline, and dateline.

4. Each article is to be accompanied by one graphic.

5. Ofthe three graphics, there must be one each of:

-a copy-paste graphic from the www,

-a scanned graphic,

-a graphic created in Clarisworks Painting or Spreadsheet.

6. The general content of each article on each page is prescribed

and example directions for that contentare suggested.

Theintent of this prescriptive product assignment is to ensure fairness in termsof assignment loads. Also, within the prescriptive set, there is enoughlatitude for students to choosecontent of interest to them. Forexample, Article 1 of the Music Box page is “about a popular English song or CD”, and they must“write about the lyrics and melody as well as the emotionalcontent”. This prescriptionstill allows for a great deal of flexibility.

Process Directions

Inthe drafting phase, work is mainly individual. Page managers do three hardcopyhomework assignments for each of their two pages. (See Figure 3 for assignment schedule).  They must then transfer this hardcopyhomework to their computer page templates. All computer work is done with Clarisworks 4.0 softwarewhich allows them to use color, to paint, or to create a spreadsheet. The flexibility of this software plus students' ability to copy-and-paste top quality graphics from the www or the scanner is highly motivating.

Inorder to help them with their writing, Style Sheets are a part of their hardcopy notes.  (See Figure 4 for Headlines StyleSheet ). These deal with the following writingand production issues:

1. Nameplates

2. Page Layout

3. Headlining

4. Article Leads

5. 5W Format

6. Information Genre

7. Opinion Genre

8. Interview Genre

TheStyle Sheets are important toindividual writers, and they are strongly encouraged to use them. In fact, they become invaluablereferences for students in doing their homework. Students are also shown how to use SpellCheck inClarisworks, and they are expected to use it for all their writing.

Pagemanagers are encouraged to use one valuable resource in the CALL lab: thewww. Its value is manifested inarticles which have more accurate information and in graphics which addinterest and appeal. Instructorsdemonstrate how to search effectively with the Yahoo browser.  They encourage the use of the English Yahoo, but as our students' English reading levels are low, the Japanese Yahoo is also allowed. Admittedlythere are problems inherent in the use of the www and the Japanese browser, andthese are touched on in the last section of this paper.

Inthe drafting phase most work is individual although there is frequent, informalconferring over content and layout. In the editing phase, team work again reemerges.  Production team members mustsurface-edit each other’s pages looking for obvious errors in page layout, headlining, and graphicscrediting. They are not expectedto be proofreaders (spelling and grammar are the page manager’sresponsibilities), but they are expected to help make the newspaper as a wholebetter in appearance and content. In the final phase, publishing, team members are expected to help eachother print the pages of the newspaper and to hand in the finished newspaperproduct together. Points areassigned to the team for the work they do in the brainstorming and printingphases.

Theprinting phase starts with a demonstration of how to set printer page setup andthe various print options. Theprints are black-and-white and are the final production which the instructorassesses. Teams must ensure thatall members’ pages are printed. Once instructors have seen and evaluated all newspapers, they usuallymake color prints of some of the best ones for future reference andsampling. Then they copy theblack-and-white newspapers so that each team member gets a hardcopy teamnewspaper. The importance of thisfinal gift from instructor to students is not to be overlooked: most studentsand most teams are proud of their work and value their copies.

NU Discussion

Discussionof the NU herein described is divided into two broad categories: alternativeapproaches and implementation issues. First, a number of other ways to use the newspaper schema for teachingEFL writing are mentioned. Second,some of the practical issues which have emerged during the three-yeartrial-and-error evolution of the NU are summarized.

Alternative Approaches

ACALL newspaper writing course for EFL students can be organized in a number ofways: it is a matter of meeting the needs of the students as well as complyingto curriculum and facility limitations. The essential point is that the familiarity of the newspaper as awriting genre, and the immediacy and quality of computer writing in a CALL lab,are worth exploiting. Surprisingly, little research literature relates to newspapers as awriting focus for ESL or EFL. Nonetheless, it is easy to imagine some of the directions that could betaken with the newspaper-CALL combination in different situational contexts:following are a few possibilities for consideration.

1. Periodicals. A newspaper writing course could become an actual weekly ormonthly publication available in school or on campus. This possibility presupposes EFL students with higher-levelabilities, scheduling of writing classes throughout the year, and probably aninstitutional arrangement for defraying printing/publishing costs.

2. Search and Employ. A newspaper writing course could be set up for students towrite in newspaper style about issues or concerns researched and readonline. This possibility wouldwork best if the CALL environment had fast internet connections, the instructorcarefully selected and directed the search process, and the students had strongreading abilities.

3. L1-L2 Bridge. A newspaper writing course could be construed as an L2newspaper reading exercise leading to an L1 newspaper writing project.  Or vice versa.  Granted, such a scheme is based on adifferent assessment of course objectives especially vis a vis reading andwriting.

Implementation Issues

Certainproblems and concerns have come to light during the three years that the NU hasbeen used in the KUT EFL writing course. Some of the more salient issues bear mentioning so that others who mighttry a newspaper writing segment are forewarned.

1. Grouping: How best to group students intoproduction teams? If  instructors are familiar with theirstudents, then they may wish to assign the groups. This can be done on the basis of ability, sociability, orother parameters. If instructorsare not familiar with their students, then some random assignment is likelybetter. Students can also be askedto form their own teams. Althoughthis can lead to some embarrassment for student “loners”, generallyspeaking, Japanese students are accommodating of one another.

2. Page Topics: What set of topics lead to thebest newspaper writing? During thefirst two years using the NU, the page topics were of a much more conventionalnature: International News, Sports News, Culture Page, Society Page, ClassifiedAds, for example. These producedsatisfactory but not glowing results. After changing to topics more in keeping with students’ lifestylesand interests (as herein described), results have been excellent.  Students seem to feel more empowered intheir writing, have a more extensive experiential knowledge base from which towork, and take more pride in their productions.

3. Copy/Translate/Summarize: How to handle thecopying temptation? Students areencouraged to search for English information pertaining to their topic on thewww, but invariably, a few will simply copy-paste this information.  A few others will input what they wantto say in Japanese to an online Japanese-English software program and simplyconvert it. Obviously, neither ofthese routes leads to engagement in English writing. Both the copy-paste and translate-paste offenders are easilynoticed: “writing” of the former type is far too natural for ourstudents to create, and that of the latter is unintelligible because J-Etranslation software is as yet very poor. In our case, we found that giving a class-wide advanced warning,demonstrating the poor quality of translation software, and/or penalizingperpetrators work well as inhibitors.

4. Team/Individual Effort: What is the best balance of individual versusteam work in the writing process? This question can never be answered to everyone’ssatisfaction. We do, however,advocate a combination of the two for a number of reasons.  First, students enjoy working togetherand benefit from discussing, comparing, and building on the ideas of others,but they like to have their own voice and their own page.  Second, although group discussion isall in Japanese, what is going on is thinking, and thinking can only be good asit leads to better individual writing. Third, it has been our experience that in all but one or two cases,“loners” have been accepted in groups, and the Japanese culturalattribute of group harmony really does operate to help loners socialize.

Conclusion

Theaforementioned reality checks and approach options should be of assistance toany instructors considering the use of a newspaper writing unit in a CALL venuefor beginner-level EFL students. It can be designed a number of ways to accommodate stakeholders ofvarying interests and abilities, and institutions with different technicalinfrastructures and curricula. This NU, being an in situcourse, has its drawbacks and problems, but for the most part, it has proven tobe popular and effective. Not onlydo students enjoy doing it, they are motivated to improve their English writingskills in the process. (Figure 5shows some student sample pages). Our experience suggests that the key to creating a workable newspaper unit is to draw upon students' prior knowledge of the newspaper genre, present them with interesting writing topics, and introduce them to the possibilities of computer-generated writing.

Note:

TheNewspaper Unit in detail can be accessed at the following web address:

http://www.info.kochi-tech.ac.jp/greene/%20Classes/EngWrit4/engwriting4.htm