COMPUTER ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING TUTORIAL RELATED

GENERALITIES ABOUT THE QUESTION TAG C.A.L.L. TUTORIAL

The Question Tag C.A.L.L. Tutorial elaboration: For the teaching of question tags at the lycées, we have conceived a specific CALL program. More precisely, the program in question is a tutorial, the purpose of which is to present the language content together with exercises and feedback. A tutorial development stands for the processes required to produce working programs from an initial idea. These processes include the flowchart setting up, the programming and the debugging.

The flowchart setting up

Before programming the tutorial, we established a flowchart to map out the sequence of steps in the task the computer has to perform. The following flowchart will provide further detail about the structure of the Question Tag Tutorial: 108 DIAGRAM 1: FLOWCHART OF THE QUESTION TAG TUTORIAL, RAJAONARISOA (2013) TITLE CONTENTS OBJECTIVE SECTION LESSONS WHAT IS A QUESTION TAG? – DEFINITION – RULES – EXCEPTIONS WHAT IS INTONATION? – DEFINITION – VARIATIONS QUESTION TAGS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS – NOTION OF SHORT ANSWERS TO QUESTION TAG – QUESTION TAG FUNCTIONS QUESTION TAG INTONATION: MEANINGS – STATEMENT AND TAG BOTH ON A RISING INTONATION – STATEMENT AND TAG BOTH ON A FALLING INTONATION – STATEMENT ON A FALLING INTONATION WITH A RISING TAG – STAMENT ON A RISING INTONATION WITH A FALLING TAG EXERCISES BEGINNER – EXERCISE 1 – EXERCISE 2 – EXERCISE 3 – EXERCISE 4 INTERMEDIATE – EXERCISE 1 – EXERCISE 2 – EXERCISE 3 ADVANCED – EXERCISE 1 – EXERCISE 2 – EXERCISE 3 – EXERCISE 4 HELP 109 

The Question Tag Tutorial programming

Once the contents of the Question Tag Tutorial have been drafted, time has now come to feed them into the computer. Indeed, the act of feeding into a computer a set of instructions, which tells the computer what to do, how to do it and when to do it, is called: “programming”. To program the Question Tag Tutorial, we have resorted to Flash Macromedia 8 which is an authoring tool. Flash Macromedia 8, which uses Actionscript and HTML programming languages, is targeted at users who want to create contents such as basic drawings, web pages and interactivity. 

The Question Tag Tutorial debugging

As soon as the tutorial has been programmed, it has to be tested on a computer in order to determine potential errors, also called “bugs”.84 In fact, in case there is an error related to the instructions given to the program, the latter will not work correctly. As a result, the instructions must be changed so as to get rid of these bugs; hence the term “debugging85” the program. Therefore, we have corrected a certain number of errors which are almost related to buttons that do not work properly. When the debugging process is over, the newly designed tutorial is ready for use. 3.1.2 How does the Question Tag Tutorial work? This section specifies some information about the tutorial’s abilities, functions and methods. This leads us to outline the Question Tag Tutorial features and the main directives related to it.

The Question Tag Tutorial features

The Question Tag Tutorial includes: – A home page which contains the title, the “Help” and the “Click here to start” buttons; – A content page which shows the three contents of the tutorial that are the objective section, the lessons and the exercises. 84 Bugs are mistakes in programs. 85 Debugging is used to denote the process of finding and removing « bugs » or errors in a new computer program. 110 The help section gives some instructions about how to use the Question tag tutorial. As for the objective section, it shows the main objective of using the tutorial. The lessons comprise four main parts that are related to question tags and intonation; whereas the exercises include three different levels according to their degree of difficulty. Apart from lessons and exercises, the tutorial contains feedbacks, corrections and most of all some recordings of the sentences, done by a native speaker, to provide the learner with a piece of listening for pronunciation practice. Besides, while doing the exercises, the learner can always refer to the lessons in case of hesitation or doubt. In addition, models are always available with the instructions to inform the learner about the way to answer the questions. For these reasons, the question tag tutorial can promote individualised learning since it is at the same time user-friendly and reliable. In other words, normally any learner will be able run the program with or without his/her teacher’s help and presence.

The main directives related to the Question

Tag Tutorial: This section provides a brief glimpse into details that need to be considered before using the tutorial. First, the user must make sure that the Question Tag Tutorial has been copied and then installed in the computer. Once installed, this program directly operates as an application. As such, it is not necessary to have the Flash Macromedia program86 or any other program in the computer to be able to use the Question Tag Tutorial. Then, the user can explore its contents by typing at the keyboard or by pointing and clicking the mouse or by reading or by listening to and repeating what is being said by the computer.