Videoconferencing for EFL Transformative
Learning: The Case of Soliya
Sane M Yagi1, Zahra Mustafa (Awad)2, and Ferial Abu Awwad3
Linguistics Department 1,2
Educational Psychology 3
The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan
saneyagi@yahoo.com1 , zahramustafa@hotmail.com2, f.abuawwad@ju.edu.jo3
Abstract
New trends in foreign language instruction revolve around the learner and they all attempt to
facilitate language acquisition by using one form of information technology or another. This
paper proposes that English as a Foreign Language (EFL) use videoconferencing for
transformative learning. It makes the case by illustrating how the videoconferencing facility
offered by Soliya’s Connect Program (SCP) was able to have transformative effect on English
learning students at the University of Jordan. The experiment, it reports on, used the Test of
English as a Foreign Language—Internet-Based Test (TOEFL—IBT) as a pre-test and a post-test,
transcribed video conferencing sessions, analyzed participants’ blog writing, and gave preexperiment and post-experiment attitude surveys to gauge the degree of improvement in
fluency, accuracy, and intercultural attitudes. Results have shown significant improvement in
linguistic competence. EFL learners thought their intercultural communication skills, analytical
abilities, and knowledge about current issues had improved as a result of participation in Soliya’s
videoconferencing. They also reported that they became more empathetic with the other, and
more able to understand and share the feelings of other people who might have points of view
opposite to their own. Soliya’s videoconferencing empowered the learner to perceive
themselves as having become more proactive and more capable of effecting change in their
societies. In conclusion, the biggest advantage for language learning that videoconferencing, as
practiced in SCP, offers is that learning takes place unintentionally. The authentic activities and
the cultural third space that SCP fosters make EFL learners focus more on the ideas and less on
the means of communicating them. Seeing conversation partners in videoconferencing sessions
and observing their non-verbal behavior take the foreign language learner’s mind off the
grammar of sentences they utter and focus it on the ideas that they desire to communicate. This
shift in focus and the relegation of language learning to a secondary position in the priorities of
the learner are indeed instrumental in making language learning unintentional. It frees them
from their linguistic inhibitions and thrusts them like novice swimmers in the waters of
interaction where their primary concern would be survival. Since human behavior is directed
toward goal attainment and because it comes to satisfy a hierarchy of basic needs, the language
learner in videoconferencing sessions would be primarily concerned with group belongingness,
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esteem, and self-actualization needs. Their primary attention would be directed to the
satisfaction of these needs by advancing ideas that would gain them friendship and affinity,
would give them recognition, and would enable them to have self-actualization. In this pursuit,
language learners would ignore their linguistic inhibitions and would focus on observing how
others express their ideas so that they can imitate them. It is through this shift in focus that
videoconferencing becomes such a useful resource for unintentional transformative language
learning.
Introduction
Active learning, student-centered learning, collaborative learning, experiential learning, and
problem-solving learning are all attempts at transforming the learner and maximizing their
development, increasing their language competence and improving how they learn and
eventually how they lead their lives.
Current guiding principles to language instruction are active learning and student-centered
learning. Active learning stresses the importance of involving learners in all activities and
engaging their higher-order cognitive strategies. Assignment of tasks would require the learner
to articulate ideas and communicate them, explore attitudes, and utilize analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation. Student-centered learning, on the other hand, places emphasis on designing course
content around what learners need, what is within their capacity, and what interests them; it is
focused on giving the learner autonomy and control over course content and teaching
methodology and pace. Its ultimate goal is the development of learner ownership and personal
responsibility for the learning experience.
To achieve active learning and student-centered learning, teachers focus on collaborative
learning techniques in the belief that working with others is motivating; it helps the learner
identify gaps in their knowledge, organize their own knowledge differently, observe others,
imitate their behavior, and model it, and learn to synthesize information, communicate it to
others, and discuss ideas. Teachers also engage learners in in-class and out-of-class activities
that would get them to have personal experience, reflection, conceptualization, and
experimentation, all of this experiential learning would culminate in growth of knowledge, skill
development, and value clarification. Teachers facilitate problem-solving by offering
opportunities that would get learners to make determined effort to deal with complex problems
in small groups, and by providing scaffolding and opportunities for self-directed learning that
would enhance their knowledge, self-efficacy, and problem-solving skills.
In other words, the principles of language learning and these teaching approaches aim at
transforming learners and offering them life-changing experiences. For Rosebrough and Leverett
(2011), transformative teaching is an act of teaching that is designed to change the learner on
academic, social, and spiritual levels.
This paper is a case study of the contribution that Soliya’s Connect Program (SCP) made to the
transformation of Jordanian students of English. Teachers claim that students who participate
in this program change profoundly to the better. This is an attempt at explaining to what
extent these claims are true. At first, the paper will discuss the concept of transformative
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learning, and then it will introduce Soliya, describe its Connect Program, and outline some of the
virtues of computer-mediated communication. Afterwards, the research experiment will be
described, the results explained, and the gains in terms of fluency, accuracy, and attitude will be
delineated and demonstrated.
Transformative Learning
In the paradigm posited by Piaget and Vygotsky, among others, learning is an active and
contextualized process in which knowledge is constructed on the basis of personal experiences
of the environment and hypotheses about it. Piaget (1952) theorized that knowledge is
internalized by adaptation and organization, by assimilating new experiences into the learner’s
existing understanding and by accommodating new experiences that do not fit with existing
knowledge by reframing and reorganizing their mental framework.
Through social negotiation and practical experience, learners test their own hypotheses and
see how new information conflicts with their own old information. For them, new knowledge
is at first constructed with a group and then adopted by the individual. According to Vygotsky
(1978), learners must be challenged slightly above their current level of development. When
they experience success in completing a challenging task, they develop self-confidence and
derive motivation to take on more difficult tasks.
It is claimed by the Social Learning Theory that humans learn by observing the behavior of
others, their attitudes, and the outcomes of their behavior. Bandura (1977: p.22) asserts that
“Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely
on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human
behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an
idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information
serves as a guide for action”. Thus, learning involves attention to the observed events and
behaviors, retention of what was attended to, reproduction of it, and the motivation to imitate
it. The highest degree of learning takes place by first organizing and rehearsing the modeled
behavior symbolically and then enacting it. Learners acquire a behavior when they possess selfefficacy, the belief that their modeled behavior will result in the outcomes that they value.
Consequently, high self-efficacy results in positive attitude, perseverance, and success.
For learning to be complete, it has to be fundamental enough to be transformative and lifechanging. In the words of Mezirow (1997: p.5), transformative learning is “the process of
effecting change in a frame of reference”. He considers the frame of reference as a worldview,
a body of experience which includes associations, concepts, values, feelings, and assumptions
that humans use to understand the world around them. The frame of reference is “composed
of two dimensions: habits of mind and a point of view” (p.5). Habits of mind are habitual ways
of thinking, feeling, and acting that are initially shaped by society and its culture but are also
influenced by idiosyncratic factors such as an individual’s psychological makeup. Habits of mind
are usually reflected in the individual’s points of view, in their beliefs, value judgments, and
attitudes that surface in their interpretation of experiences. Mezirow explains that, “points of
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view are subject to continuing change as we reflect on either the content or process by which
we solve problems and identify the need to modify assumptions. This happens whenever we try
to understand actions that do not work the way we anticipated. We can try out another
person’s point of view and appropriate it, but we cannot do this with a habit of mind. Points of
view are more accessible to awareness and to feedback from others” (p.6); hence, frames of
reference are the target of transformative learning.
Transformative learning involves deliberate effort (Kegan, 2000) to modify these frames of
reference. Learning takes place when a human comes across an alternative way of thinking and
they start to question their own habits of mind. Frames of reference can be transformed
through critical reflection on the assumptions that are at the basis of our beliefs,
interpretations, points of view, and habits of mind. It must be made clear, though, that
transformation is voluntary. Cranton (2006) is of the view that if the process of transformation
were forced upon learners, then this would be brainwashing and indoctrination rather than
learning.
Lave & Wagner (1991) claim that learning is unintentional and that it is situated within
authentic activities, contexts, and cultures. When knowledge is presented within natural
settings, learners would normally interact with other human beings to understand it. With more
collaboration, they start to form, with these people, a community of practice that develops its
own culture: beliefs, behaviors, and values. A novice beginner who does not understand that
type of knowledge would initially be at the periphery of the community, then as time passes and
they acculturate, they become more active and more engaged with the community, and then
they would eventually move to its center and assume expert status. That is when learning takes
place.
Human behavior, according to Maslow (1943), is always directed toward goal attainment. It
comes to satisfy a hierarchy of five categories of basic needs, with lower-order needs at the
bottom and higher-order needs at the top. He posited that if the lower four categories were not
satisfied, humans would feel a sense of deficiency that motivates them to seek satisfaction.
These four are physiological needs that relate to breathing, drinking, eating, and sleeping, etc.
at the bottom of the hierarchy; followed by safety needs that include possessions, property, and
environment; then group belongingness needs such as family relations, friendship, and love;
and esteem needs such as recognition by others, respect, self-confidence, etc. At the top of the
hierarchy is self-actualization, the need for growth where human behavior is motivated more by
the desire to be all that they can be than by being deprived of what they perceive as essential to
their being. Self-actualization covers the need for problem-solving, creativity, morality, etc.
This paper investigates the claim that Jordanian EFL students’ involvement with Soliya’s Connect
Program is transformative and life-changing in the broad sense just described. Before delving
into this issue, here is a background about Soliya, its Connect Program, and the Jordanian
involvement.
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Soliya, Connect Program, and Jordanian Involvement
‘Soliya’ is a word formed by blending, on the one hand, the Middle English word sol ‘the sun
personified’ (Latin sol ‘sun’ from Proto Indo-European *sewol), and the obsolete Arabic word ‫إِيا‬
iyaa (masc.) or ‫ ِإياة‬iyaat (fem.) ‘light’, on the other. Many Arabic-speakers will not recognize this
word because it dates back to pre-Islamic times. There are several instances of it in sixth century
poetry. Tarfa ibn Al-Abd, for instance, said in his ode about Khawla,
‫دعص له ند؛‬
‫وتبسم عن ألمى كأن منورا ً تخلل حر الرمل‬
ٌ
‫سقته إياة الشمس إال لثاثه أسف ولم تكدم عليه بإثمد؛‬
“Between brown lips, her smile mirrors marigolds unfolding in white sand on a dew-wet dune;
the sun lent it its rays—black antinomy darkened her gums, never touched a tooth” (Joris,
1999).
Thus, ‘Soliya’ literally means ‘sun rays’, for it is a non-profit organization that shines the light of
first-hand knowledge on global matters and divisive cultural issues through authentic dialogue
between the West, and the Arab and Islamic World. It aims to improve intercultural
understanding in the world. It fosters constructive and respectful discourse across the divide
about important socio-political issues by connecting students to a global community of peers
and by engaging them in sustained and substantive dialogue.
Its partners in this endeavor are, among others, tertiary educational institutions, Search for
Common Ground, Partners in Humanity, Echoing Green Foundation, Compton Foundation,
Qatar Foundation, US-Islamic World Forum, United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, MIT’s
Saxelab Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, iEarn, Global Nomads Group, etc.
Since its launch in the Fall of 2004, the Connect Program has been a cross-cultural education
program that brought together, in an intimate online environment, Eastern and Western
students for the purposes of engaging them in global affairs, expanding their ability to think
critically about global issues, sensitizing them to the power of media in shaping public opinion,
developing communication skills, humanizing the other, and empowering them with skills that
they need for making a positive impact on their societies. Clearly, then, Soliya’s Connect
Program has transformative learning objectives that impact the learner’s life in fundamental
ways.
The Connect Program consists of ten two-hour synchronous videoconferencing sessions in one
semester. Eight-person groups of students from different participating universities meet online
once a week to discuss a pre-agreed topic. Each group consists of four Eastern and four Western
discussants, and is moderated by two trained facilitators who come from the two cultural
groups. The discussion takes place on computers equipped with web-cameras. On each
participant’s computer screen, there is a circle of nine windows in each of which is a real-time
5
image of a participant. During the discussion, participants can read each other’s facial
expressions and non-verbal language, can listen to their voices, and can share text messages as
they explore perspectives different from their own and uncover biases and stereotypes. In a
major course assignment, each student uses video-editing software and footage from Aljazeera
and the BBC to prepare a short news report that would make them conscious of the impact of
media bias on cross-cultural relations. Some of the topics that the program offers for discussion
are: Engaging with difference through dialogue; role of religion in students’ lives; role of media;
youth empowerment; bridging the divide; extremism; gender and politics; culture and
stereotypes; etc. Participants are expected to read, from a reading list, articles on the topic of
discussion. The resources include writings by Samuel Huntington on the clash of civilizations;
rebuttals of his theory; Gallup poll reports; and articles on the sources of conflict between Islam
and the West, bridging cultural differences, perspectives on American religiosity, religion in
Europe, extremism, women veil, etc.
Since inception, Soliya trained more than 6000 students at universities in 27 countries in North
America, Europe, the Middle East, and Central, South and South East Asia. These universities
included Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Yale, Frankfurt, Padova, Bradford, Basel, Bergen,
Lahore, Ankara, Gulf, Birzeit, Al-Azhar, American University in Beirut and in Cairo, and AlAkhawayn. The University of Jordan was one of the early partners of Soliya.
The first implementation of Soliya’s Connect Program at the University of Jordan was in the Fall
of 2007 when 11 students volunteered to join it. The majority of these students was from a
senior-level course at the Linguistics Department called ‘Language and Society’. In Spring 2008,
15 students from an elective senior-level course called ‘Computer-Assisted Language Learning’
joined the Connect Program on a voluntary basis as well. This shy participation was primarily
motivated by exploration. At first, the Connect Program was perceived as an inter-cultural
experience, then due to its significant media component, the CALL course was perceived to be
most appropriate. However, upon the completion of the second attempt, it became clear that
the Connect Program was strong on honing interactive synchronous communication skills; hence
the decision was taken in 2008 to embed the Connect Program in the sophomore-level ‘Public
Speaking’ course. As this course is designated compulsory in the Applied English B.A. study plan,
student participation in the Connect Program became obligatory with 10% of the course grade
being allocated to the evaluation report that Soliya sends at the conclusion of all
videoconferencing activity. Since the Fall of 2008, an average of 35 Jordan University students
join the Connect Program every semester and tens of students are turned away because they
cannot be accommodated. Soliya has plans to expand the experience through the new Exchange
2.0 program. If it takes off, all Applied English and possibly Faculty of Foreign Languages
students will be required to join it.
Soliya trains facilitators on conflict resolution, on engagement of participants in productive and
respectful dialogue, and on the development of group dynamics that would encourage
exploration of perspectives. The University of Jordan is currently working with Soliya on offering
an advanced online course that would be focused on the development of leadership and
6
initiative, critical thinking, cross-cultural collaboration, and teamwork. These are life-changing
skills that would help in the transformation of students.
Benefits of SCP as an Example of CMC
What drew the University of Jordan to Soliya’s Connect Program were the pedagogical benefits
inherent in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Since SCP was conducted outside the
class, weekly online sessions become an extension of foreign language learning beyond the
bounds of the classroom; therefore, SCP maximizes learning opportunities. It also makes
language learning the responsibility of the student.
SCP enhances foreign language learning by affording the learner active interaction between
participants as they discuss authentic issues that touch their lives. Such interaction enables
them to identify gaps in their information which in turn motivates them to seek new
information from their conversation partners.
SCP also offers immediacy of feedback which enables the learner to validate guesses and make
self-corrections when necessary, two essential learning strategies. Furthermore, it gives
extended opportunities for cultural awareness.
The Study
Teachers who participate in SCP claim that their students change in profound ways at the
completion of the program. As SCP only lasts 10 weeks, some faculty members were doubtful.
To verify to what extent the claim of improvement is true, the researchers decided to conduct
an experiment and invited a novice recent junior recruit to integrate SCP in her freshman-level
Pronunciation and Speech course rather than the usual sophomore-level Public Speaking. The
following experimental procedures were taken:
(1) Participants were invited to take the TOEFL IBT Speaking Test upon the start and
completion of the program (henceforth, PreTest and PostTest).
(2) They filled out the Soliya survey at the start and completion of the program
(henceforth, PreSurvey and PostSurvey).
(3) Video records of the earliest and latest SCP sessions were analyzed.
(4) Participants’ blogs were analyzed.
Below is a description of the participants, the data collection methods, and data analysis.
Participants
At the start of semester, twenty-six students enrolled in the freshman-level Pronunciation and
Speech course that integrated SCP for the first time. Only 16 students kept it; the others
withdrew postponing the course to another semester. This is quite normal for students to do as
registration in SCP often precedes the completion of the drop and add enrollment period,
7
instructor’s name and class timing often being the major determining factors. The instructor of
the course this semester was a novice junior member of staff.
Eighty-seven percent of these participants were female, a fact that is true of all departments at
the College of Foreign Languages. Their ages range between 18 and 21. Some of them spoke
reasonable English but most had problems with grammar and the majority was too hesitant and
too shy to speak English. The SCP participation gave most their first opportunity to use English
for real life communication.
Culturally, these students are all Jordanian but in terms of their sedentary status, some are
urban, some are rural, and some are of a nomadic cultural background. The majority comes
from conservative backgrounds but because the university is in the heart of the capital city, they
all have liberal aspirations. Even though more than 80% of the female students cover their
heads, they are not necessarily religious. The university subculture does not encourage political
activities; hence, students claim to dislike political discussions.
In terms of IT skills, all freshmen take computer literacy courses as part of their compulsory
university requirements. Social status being a determining factor, some students would have
computers with internet access at home but a significant minority would rely on the IT
technology on-campus; hence, SCP is allocated an open-access computer-lab that all
participants are encouraged to use during their videoconferencing sessions.
Participants were informed that they would be taking part in a piece of action research and
were told to join another section of the course which was not involved in the research project if
they had any reservation or concern. They were told of the various components of the research
and what it entailed as far as they were concerned and they all gave their consent to use their
data in this research.
Data Collection
The data used in this study come from four different sources: Test of English as a Foreign
Language—Internet-Based Test; SCP online discussion video transcripts; attitude surveys; and
participants’ blogs.
TOEFL-IBT
To check the degree of improvement SCP participants made, it is necessary to measure their
fluency and accuracy in English at the start and completion of the program. Although, it is
established fact that the development of language competence is slow and cumulative, and
despite that it is a sure bet that improvement in 10 weeks would be too slow to measure, giving
the IBT as a pre-test and a post-test could yield some indications of improvement; hence, it was
deemed necessary to establish the IBT as a benchmark.
TOEFL IBT Speaking Test was given to participating students upon the start and completion of
the SCP experience. The pre-test consisted of three questions that required spoken answers.
The first question was about choosing to study a discipline for the first time. In the second, the
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students listened to a recorded dialogue between two students on the effect of a sudden
university holiday on their life and were asked to offer an opinion. The third question required
them to summarize the information in a mini-lecture on Mount Rushmore National Memorial.
The answer time for the three questions was 44, 59, and 59 seconds, respectively.
The post-test consisted also of three questions with the same answer time allocation.
Participants were required to record their answers. The first asks for their opinion on the
importance of having a lot of money for a happy life. In the second, they have to give their point
of view on sustainability in investment after they listen to a dialogue between two brothers on
investing money. The last question requires them to listen to a mini-lecture on the importance
of assignments in school education and then to state their opinion.
Video Transcript
In order to establish to what extent each participant improved in their communication skills, it
was necessary to inspect the content of their videoconferencing sessions. Camtasia was
unobtrusively used to create a video recording of all events on a computer station in each SCP
session. These recordings were stored on external media on a daily basis. Against all precaution,
however, it was not possible to obtain video records of the same session for all participants.
Sometimes, a participant missed the session, but most often Camtasia would freeze and the
recording would be lost.
Because it was not possible to obtain consent from non-Jordanian participants, their
contributions to SCP’s discussions were edited out except for the prompt that the local student
responded to. Only University of Jordan students’ contributions would be commented on here.
Start and finish clock times were recorded for each spoken contribution made by a UJ student.
Turns were counted, and the duration of each was recorded in seconds. All turn durations were
summed for each session as well.
UJ students’ speaking turns were transcribed in verbatim and their written comments on the
chat line were also copied to the letter. Syllables, words, and propositions were counted in each
spoken and written contribution. Hesitations, false starts, filled pauses, and long silences were
marked, and so were instances of mispronunciation, misleading intonation patterns, and
grammatical and spelling errors.
Attitude Surveys
As Soliya conducts entry and exit surveys of student opinions, permission was sought to use UJ
students’ data for research purposes. The pre- and post-SCP surveys are identical in 12 Likerttype scale questions that relate to participants’ intercultural attitudes, critical thinking abilities,
knowledge of current affairs, and proactiveness. The post-SCP survey has 19 additional
questions that give feedback to Soliya about their facilitators, video-conferencing sessions,
reading assignments, pair-discussions, e-mail communication, and technical support. Only the
12 common questions are of concern to this research, so UJ students’ pre- and post-responses
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to them would be compared and then their average improvement would be compared against
overall SCP average improvement.
Blogs
Participants were instructed at the beginning of semester to write in their blogs reflections
about the weekly SCP sessions that they attended. They were told that their purpose should be
to encourage other students to join SCP.
The topic of each entry that they wrote was always related to the topics discussed in the SCP
sessions. The average number of blogs that they wrote was five, with two students writing as
few as two blogs, and three writing as many as seven blogs. Some entries were as short as 39
words in length and some as many as 612 words, with the average being 176 words per blog.
The average amount of writing that the SCP involvement entailed is higher than the amount
that some traditional writing courses at the University of Jordan require of their students.
Data Analysis
If a claim is to be made that SCP improved EFL learners’ language performance, then the
implication is that they either improved in fluency or accuracy or in both.
Foreign language fluency is viewed by Lennon (1990) as being the production of speech at the
tempo of native speakers, unimpeded by silent pauses and hesitations, filled pauses (“ers” and
“erms”), self-corrections, repetitions, false starts, etc. A number of temporal measures of
fluency have been used in the literature (e.g., Stockdale, 2009): speech rate, articulation rate,
and mean length of run (MLR); ‘run’ being a ‘speech burst without any perceivable pausing’. For
this purpose, it was necessary that the following data be obtained from all the transcripts of
speech made by UJ students in both the TOEFL-IBT and SCP videoconferencing sessions: counts
of syllables, words, and propositions; durations of speech bursts and pauses; number and
content of fragments, hesitations, false starts, filled pauses, code-mixing instances, and
pronunciation mistakes. Because it was not possible to obtain video recordings for the same SCP
sessions for all students, and because video recording failed frequently due to the crashing of
Camtasia, a decision was taken to analyze the earliest and the latest available sessions for all
students who attended five sessions or more. The rationale for the limit of five sessions was that
the student had to be genuinely involved in the program to benefit from it. Hence, these data
were collected from the earliest and the latest SCP sessions only.
Accuracy manifests itself in small numbers of pronunciation and grammar errors that learners
make; hence, all errors were identified in the transcripts of UJ students’ speech as well as in
their written production. They were classified into broad categories to give an idea about the
error types that SCP participants made prior to joining the program and upon its completion.
Furthermore, their blogs were analyzed quantitatively using the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
readability index for assessing the level of sophistication in their writing.
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To study students’ attitude improvement, their Likert scale responses to the pre- and post SCP
survey questions were coded numerically and then subjected to some descriptive statistical
analysis. Since this data is ordinal in nature, the mode was used to tell the most frequent
responses.
Results and Discussion
Below the results of this study are presented and discussed under three headings: fluency,
accuracy, and intercultural attitudes.
Fluency
Foreign language fluency is manifested in the ability to speak the language naturally and without
much inhibition. The majority of SCP participants whose video recordings were analyzed appear
to have developed enough self-confidence to speak for more than half the length of time that is
their share per session. If an assumption is made that the session time of 120 minutes (7200
seconds) is shared equally between the 10 participants and facilitators in a videoconferencing
group, then each one would be entitled to around 12 minutes (720 seconds) of speaking time.
Figure 1 below shows the total speaking time exclusive of pausing that UJ participants used in
the earliest and the latest sessions that they attended.
The average speaking time utilized by UJ students was 357 seconds in the earliest session but
477 seconds in the latest session. In other words, UJ participants took advantage of 50% of their
share of speaking time in the earliest session but 66% in the latest session.
Not only were UJ students speaking more but they also developed enough self-confidence to
take the floor more often. Figure 2 compares between the numbers of speaking turns they had
in the earliest session with those in the latest session.
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On average, a UJ participant had 23 opportunities to hold the floor in the earliest session but 37
opportunities in the latest session. Hence, it is clear that they must have developed more selfconfidence and more courage to be able to venture out and express their views on issues of
discussion.
If the content of their contribution were to be taken into account, the number of words can be
inspected. Table 1 below displays the number of words in the total speaking contribution that
each UJ student made in the earliest and in the latest sessions.
Table 1
Speech Quantity
Participants
R
A
D
N
T
H
E_Words
1229
324
282
531
345
358
L_Words
1480
451
410
698
461
548
The average number of words that they uttered in the earliest session was 512 words but 675
words in the latest session. This is an indication that they became more fluent and more able to
elaborate on their ideas. In terms of quality of contribution, however, it might be necessary to
consider their ideas. Table 2 shows the number of propositions in the total speaking
contribution that each UJ participant made in the earliest and in the latest SCP sessions that
they attended.
Table 2
Propositions in the Earliest and Latest Sessions
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Participants
R
A
D
N
T
E_Propositio
ns
87
35
26
43
40
27
L_Propositi
ons
120
45
35
75
62
44
H
Improvement in fluency is manifested here as well. The average number of propositions that UJ
participants made in the earliest session was 43 but in the latest 64. This is evidence that they
did not speak in vain but rather they contributed ideas to their videoconferencing discussions.
Obviously, some shared more ideas than others, but on the whole a student improved
substantially in relation to their own abilities at entry.
Quality-wise, UJ students’ fluency improved significantly. Fragments and incomplete sentences
became less frequent in the latest session than in the earliest as shown in Figure 3. UJ Students
had an average of 7.3 fragments in the earliest session but 2.2 in the latest session.
They also had fewer false starts in the latest than in the earliest SCP sessions, with 2.2 and 0.83
average number of false start instances respectively. They used less English-Arabic code-mixing
as well, with an average of 0.5 instances in the latest session compared with 2.0 instances in the
earliest.
What is surprising is that pause fillers increased significantly in the latest session compared to
the instances in the earliest session. Figure 4 below shows how prevalent this phenomenon was
in the speech of UJ students. On average, they each had about 62 instances of false starts in the
earliest SCP session but 97 instances in the latest session. Could it be that they were imitating
native speakers as they composed their thought online?
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It can be safely claimed that UJ students became relatively more fluent in English as a result of
their participation in SCP; they spoke more frequently, spoke for longer durations, elaborated
more on their ideas, made more thoughtful contributions to conversations, and their speech
had fewer fragments. They, however, exhibited a higher amount of pause fillers.
Will this fluency improvement materialize if an independent competence assessment
instrument is used? To answer this question, Figure 5 below displays the number of words in
pre- and post-SCP-participation IBT Speaking Tests.
Clearly, UJ students spoke in the 162 seconds of answer time more in the post-test than in the
pre-test. They spoke an average of 180.6 words in the IBT Speaking Test that they took before
the start of SCP and 295 words in the same test that they took at the completion of the SCP. In
fact, other fluency parameters show improvement in the post-test as shown in Table 3 below.
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Table 3
Fluency Parameter Averages
Words
Propositions
Fragments
Hesitation
CodeMixing
False Starts
Pause Filler
Pre-IBT
180.6
9.2
4.6
20.8
0
Post-IBT
295
19.6
5.6
24.2
0
1.8
5.4
22.8
0
SCP participants not only increased the speech volume in the post-test, but they also
communicated more ideas, had fewer fragments, and had no instances of pause fillers. What is
surprising, however, is that they had slightly more instances of hesitation and false starts, but it
is possible that this is the tax that they had to pay for coming up with more ideas as reflected in
the number of propositions. It is also possible that UJ participants learned from their SCP
experience that hesitation and false starts are natural attributes of native speaker speech as
well.
It is clear that the TOEFL IBT Speaking Test corroborates the results obtained from the
videoconferencing session analysis. They both indicate that UJ participants in SCP improved
their fluency. What is not conclusive, however, is whether it was SCP that was exclusively
responsible for this improvement. It is well-established that language acquisition is progressive
and cumulative. Equally well-established is that language learning is an active and
contextualized process; that much of it is unintentional and it comes through authentic
activities; and that its vehicle is observation and modeling. Since SCP affords all of these, it is
unequivocal that it is partly responsible for the observed improvement in UJ students’ fluency in
English.
Soliya’s videoconferencing appears to have given Jordanian learners the opportunity to practice
real world social negotiation, as they discussed topics that related to them immediately (e.g.,
why they use head scarves, whether society impinges on their freedom as women, etc.). Their
discussion group members must have challenged some of their beliefs about these issues, so
they had to clarify their positions and probably modify them to accommodate the views of their
conversation partners. At times, they succeeded in getting these partners to appreciate their
point of view, and when they did, they experienced success. This success is what motivated
them to continue to attend subsequent videoconferencing sessions and motivated them to talk
and talk. In the process, they developed self-confidence and became more fluent in spoken
communication, hence the observed increase in fluency in terms of number of words that they
spoke, number of speaking turns that they took, and number of propositions that they
communicated.
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Accuracy
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Pronunciation
Stress is generally problematic for Arab learners of English. However, nine students made errors
like these in the pre-test: /ɪ̀nstíd/ for /ɪ̀nstɛ́d/, /ɪ̀fíkt/ for /əfɛ́kt/, /gəvə́rmənt/ for /gə́vərmənt/,
and /hibrú/ for /híbru/. Only two had this type of error in the post-test.
Similarly, consonantal clusters are usually difficult, so Arab learners of English often resort to
epenthesis. There were two students who resorted to epenthesis in the pre-test, pronouncing
‘Lincoln’ as /lɪ́nəkən/ instead of /lɪ́ŋkən/ and ‘obstacles’ as /ɑ́bəstəkəlz/ instead of /ɑ́bstəkəlz/
but they did not in the post-test.
Of the most typical pronunciation errors that native speakers of Arabic make when they speak
English, voicing the voiceless bilabial stop is the most persistent. There were six out of 23 UJ
students in the pre-test who confused the /b/ and /p/ phonemes, pronouncing one as the other.
In the post-SCP TOEFL IBT, five of them continued to have problems with it.
The second most prevalent pronunciation error that Arabs make when they speak English
relates to mid vowels. They often confuse the mid front and central vowels together and the
mid and low back vowels together. This persisted in the post-test for those SCP participants who
had it in the pre-test. Thus, errors like these continued throughout SCP: pronouncing /bráðər/
for /brə́ðər/, /bót/ for /bɑ́t/, etc.
All in all, the IBT showed improvement in pronunciation but fossilized problems persisted
without much change. Interacting with native speakers of English during SCP videoconferencing
activity, however, made UJ students conscious of their pronunciation problems. These students
must have tried hard to pronounce words properly because they wanted to be understood by
their conversation partners. They probably wanted to avoid the embarrassment of having to
repeat words that were not understood, hence, the improvement observed in their post-SCP
speaking test.
Vocabulary and Grammar
If UJ students’ productive language skills were truly reflected in their blog writing, then an
analysis of each participant’s earliest and latest blogs ought to reveal any progression they made
in language learning. Hence, the earliest and latest blogs were submitted to readability
assessment as reflected in the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Index. The results are summarized in
Table 4 below.
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Table 4
Readability of Earliest and Latest Blogs
Student E_Blog
L_Blog
R
9.4
10.4
A
9.5
9.9
D
11.7
11.8
N
7.1
7.1
T
9.6
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H
6.5
9.4
It may be safe to conclude that there is about one grade level improvement in the sophistication
of UJ students’ written production. In fact, the readability statistics indicate that they used, in
their writing, vocabulary of higher complexity as shown in Table 5 below.
Table 5
Percentage of Complex Words in Earliest and Latest Blogs
Student
E_Blog L_Blog
R
6.1
8.5
A
6.6
10.3
D
8.9
5.7
N
8.1
9.8
T
8.6
15.7
H
9.3
12.8
Most students had an increase of 2% in the range of complex words that they used in their
writing. This might not be entirely due to their SCP participation, yet the authentic
communication opportunities afforded by this program must have contributed significantly to
this improvement. The fact that the participants debated ideas that did not relate directly to
language learning must have stimulated their incidental learning. As they listened to native
speakers in their discussion group express their views on current issues, UJ students paid
attention to the context where their conversation partners used new vocabulary, retained the
key features in each context, and then imitated them by reproducing the same vocabulary items
in similar contexts. If they received a positive reaction from their conversation partners, they
would retain the word for future use.
In terms of grammatical structures,
Therefore, it would not be entirely wrong to conclude that SCP did in fact contribute to UJ
students’ language development. It gave them the opportunity to observe others speaking
English and then model them in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammatical structure.
Intercultural Attitudes
As mentioned earlier, Soliya conducts, in standard procedure, a pre- and a post-SCP survey upon
the start and completion of the Connect Program. The items of concern to this research are only
those that deal with personal improvement in terms of skill, knowledge, understanding,
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empathy, and empowerment. Below are the results of a comparison between UJ students’
responses in the pre- and post-surveys.
In terms of skill, UJ students saw themselves at the start of SCP almost 60% capable of
expressing their ideas in a way that people from different backgrounds could understand, but at
the end of this program they indicated that they were 72% capable. Furthermore, they had
rated their ability to critically analyze global issues at 43% in the Pre-Survey but 63% in the PostSurvey. So, it is clear that UJ participants thought that their intercultural communication skills
and analytical abilities had improved as a result of their participation in this program.
It is well-recognized at UJ that the vast majority of students, as evident in their topics of
conversation, are not concerned with political matters. In fact, it is often claimed that they have
no knowledge of current issues either. The Pre-Survey corroborates this with the students rating
their own knowledge of the relationship between Western and predominantly Muslim societies
at 38%. It also shows that they rated their knowledge of the issues surrounding United States
and European involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at 28%. At the completion of the
Connect Program, this rating changed dramatically: 68% and 57% respectively. This implies that
SCP did not only improve their communication skills and critical abilities but also their
knowledge of current issues. They became more aware of regional and international issues that
are never discussed in their curriculum.
Students felt that they had become more empathetic with the other as a result of their
participation in SCP. They rated, in the Pre-Survey, their level of understanding of the views of
Americans, Europeans, and Middle Easterners on the relationship between Western and
predominantly Muslim societies at the 45%, 47%, and 48% levels. At the completion of SCP, they
rated their understanding of the views of the three groups at 74%, 74%, and 84% levels
respectively. In other words, they became more empathetic with the other, more able to
understand and share the feelings of other people who might have points of view opposite to their own. In
fact, they went as far as rating their feeling of having a lot in common with their counterparts in Europe at
the 70% level in the Post-Survey although they had rated that feeling at the 30% level in the Pre-Survey.
They, furthermore, empathized with Middle Easterners but at a higher level: 50% and 80% in the Pre- and
Post-Surveys respectively. Their empathy with Americans, however, was at a lower level but it definitely
improved as well, moving from a rating of 56% in the Pre-Survey to 65% in the Post-Survey. All this
points unequivocally to improved and to higher levels of empathy with people who are painted in the media
as being adversaries.
SCP did not only contribute to improved communication and analytical skills and knowledge of and
empathy with the other, but it was also instrumental in empowering UJ participants to promote awareness
about issues that pertain to the relationship between Western and predominantly Muslim societies. They
rated, in the Pre-Survey, their speech and action in the direction of this promotion at the level of 41% but in
the Post-Survey at the level of 84%. More empowerment is reflected in their rating of how much they
challenged media misrepresentation of the relationship between Western and predominantly Muslim
societies. They rated this at the levels of 38% and 84% in the pre- and post-surveys respectively; i.e., UJ
students did not only perceive themselves as having become more skilled communicators and more
knowledgeable and more empathetic individuals but they also perceived themselves as having become
more proactive and more capable of effecting change in their societies.
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Soliya’s videoconferencing has evidently effected change in the frame of reference used by UJ students. It
appears to have changed their habits of mind and their points of view. They proved to be conscious of the
transformation that took place in their attitude towards the other. As they critically reflected on the
assumptions that they held about other people and cultures during SCP sessions, they must have come to
the realization that they needed to alter their points of view and consequently modify their frames of
reference.
Conclusion
This study has shown that videoconferencing can be used for transformative language learning.
As EFL learners are deprived of authentic contexts for language use, videoconferencing affords
opportunities for real-life communication between foreign language learners and native
speakers of English as well as amongst EFL learners themselves. Soliya’s Connect Program
offered Jordanian EFL learners a setting where they could interact with English natives and with
non-native speakers who came from a variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This
interaction between Jordanians, on the one hand, and non-English speaking Europeans and
other Middle Eastern speakers of English is indeed motivating, as it reinforces a sense of
comradeship in their odyssey of English learning. When an EFL learner observes others
struggling with English, they will not be inhibited by their own limitations. They would probably
think that they were not alone in having difficulties with one aspect or the other of the
language. Videoconferencing, therefore, affords opportunities for observing the linguistic
behavior of native and non-native speakers and for reproducing some of that behavior. When
EFL learners take part in behavior modeling and obtain the communication outcome that they
desire, they will develop self-efficacy and start to improve their self-confidence, which will give
them the perseverance to continue to venture out to speak.
Language learning is indeed an active contextualized process, and videoconferencing, as
exemplified by Soliya’s Connect Program, offers a context to EFL learners that engages them in
discussions about public issues of concern. Through such discussions, Jordanian EFL learners
constructed knowledge about the topical issues on the basis of personal experience. They
organized and adapted the knowledge that they gained from their videoconferencing group
members, assimilated the new experiences that they acquired into their existing worldview and
accommodated the knowledge that they did not have a monopoly on the truth and that the
stereotypes that they had for the other were false. As those stereotypes proved not be true of
their group members, they could probably be not true of the rest of people from that culture.
This newly discovered realization must have caused the learners to reframe and reorganize their
own mental framework; it must have transformed them in fundamental ways, hence, the
realization that their intercultural communication skills and analytical abilities had improved and
that they became more able to understand and share the feelings of other people who might have points
of view opposite to their own.
Helm, Guth, and Farrah (2012) provided evidence from Padova and Hebron University
participants in SCP that it, in fact, creates a third space where “traditional dynamics of power
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and established practices can be challenged and overturned as culture is negotiated and new
forms of interaction and dialogue are found” (p. 107). Third space is viewed as an expanse
where there is a ‘fusion of horizons’ (Gadamer, 1975) that would make sensitivities towards
cultural differences become less intense. “The concept of third space symbolizes the effort to
step away from a binary understanding of who we are as cultural beings. It is not I and you, or
the self and the other, but something beyond these binary approaches to self” (Finkbeiner, p.
29). Third space can be intrapersonal when one develops an attitude that would allow them to
fuse two or more aspects of their own identity into one, or interpersonal when two or more
people co-construct a dynamic environment that would allow them to engage in dialogue and
negotiate and renegotiate their cultural identities.
The biggest advantage for language learning that videoconferencing, as practiced in Soliya’s
Connect Program, offers is that learning takes place unintentionally. The authentic activities and
the cultural third space that SCP fosters make EFL learners focus more on the ideas and less on
the means of communicating them. Seeing conversation partners in videoconferencing sessions
and observing their non-verbal behavior take the foreign language learner’s mind off the
grammar of sentences they utter and focus it on the ideas that they desire to communicate. This
shift in focus and the relegation of language learning to a secondary position in the priorities of
the learner are indeed instrumental in making language learning unintentional. It frees them
from their linguistic inhibitions and thrusts them like novice swimmers in the waters of
interaction where their primary concern would be survival. Since human behavior is directed
toward goal attainment and because it comes to satisfy a hierarchy of basic needs, the language
learner in videoconferencing sessions would be primarily concerned with group belongingness,
esteem, and self-actualization needs. Their primary attention would be directed to the
satisfaction of these needs by advancing ideas that would gain them friendship and affinity,
would give them recognition, and would enable them to have self-actualization. In this pursuit,
language learners would ignore their linguistic inhibitions and would focus on observing how
others express their ideas so that they can imitate them. It is through this shift in focus that
videoconferencing becomes such a useful resource for unintentional transformative language
learning.
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