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287
УДК 372.881.111.1 DOI: 10.18720/HUM/ISSN 2227-8591.21.8
М.Е. Мезенцева
QUEST AS A MODERN TECHNIQUE AMONG INTERACTIVE WAYS OF TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES
МЕЗЕНЦЕВА Мария Евгеньевна - ассистент кафедры «Лингвистика и Межкультурная коммуникация»; Санкт-Петербургский политехнический университет Петра Великого;
ул. Политехническая, 29, Санкт-Петербург, 195251, Россия; e-mail: mezentseva1992@mail.ru
MEZENTSEVA Maria E. - Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. Politekhnicheskaya ul., 29, St. Petersburg, 195251, Russia; e-mail: mezentseva1992@mail.ru
The article defines the notion of quest in terms of using it as an instrument for foreign language teaching and accentuates the necessity of common quest features modification in order to achieve better results in practice. The author emphasizes the benefits of using quest technology today. Two types of quests are considered: WebQuests and LifeQuests. The author introduces definitions for both terms; refers to an existing WebQuests classification; enumerates various types of tasks employed for WebQuest implementation; points out structural elements as well as pays attention to the common stages of quest process division. Moreover, another type of quest, LifeQuest, is introduced. The article considers the main differences and similar traits of both quest types. The notion of LifeQuest, its peculiarities and characteristics are estimated. Some recommendations for structuring and organization of this technology are suggested. Besides that, control and assessment of the quest results are analyzed. Using observation and comparative analysis methods the author draws a conclusion that LifeQuests need to become a wise addition to WebQuests as long as the combination of both could have a positive effect on motivation of foreign language learners.
WEBQUEST; LIFEQUEST; ACTIVE TECHNIQUES; INTERACTIVE TECHNIQUES; PROJECT TECHNOLOGIES.
Citation: Mezentseva M.E. Quest as a modern technique among interactive ways of teaching foreign languages. Teaching Methodology in Higher Education. 2017. Vol. 6. No 21. P. 75-83. DOI: 10.18720/HUM/ISSN 2227-8591.21.8
Introduction. We live in a fast changing world today and the methodology of teaching undergoes serious changes and reforms as well. One of the main factors for those changes is rapid development of modern technologies and media resources. Every single day we get more and more instruments for our life needs, which become a part of our society. Teachers need to keep up with modern world and do not have any right to stay behind.
Paper textbooks are no longer the only available instrument for teaching world. The ability to use technical devices loved so much by the generation of the XXIst century at classes has become an integral part of our life. We have faced a necessity to create new elaborate tasks, extraordinary events and unusual organization forms which would involve students into the process of education and raise their level of motivation.
Undoubtedly in recent years modern technical devices have become very effective instruments for students' involvement; however, by 2017 a curious tendency might be noticed. This tendency might be seen not only among students but among the society in general. Virtual reality has become too overwhelming and people start to prefer ordinary real life things to those which might be achieved by means of technical devices. It doesn't mean that popularity of modern technology has decreased, but it means that real life opportunities have become of greater interest for people as well.
We have conducted a survey among people from different occupation fields and prevailing number of them say that daily computer device dependence has become tiring for them. Most of the respondents would prefer a non-computer-connected activity for their leisure time. A lot of participants mentioned that they would rather do some handicraft activities instead of virtual reality ones. We observe the same situation with our students when they express less and less enthusiasm for doing exercises with the help of a Smartphone or a computer and we see a lot more excitement when asking them to participate in activities implying some real-life intercommunication. We believe it is vital to be receptive to social needs, which means that we need to work out a new strategy for making our students involved into the process of foreign language learning [1].
Teaching methods. There are two main activities teaching is based on: they are imparting knowledge and acquiring knowledge. Speaking about imparting knowledge we imply that a teacher sends information and learners receive it. The goal of innovative teaching methods is to evaluate the activities of a teacher and learners using new ways and technical means of teaching.
Generally methodological approaches in teaching foreign languages are divided into
passive, active and interactive methods [2]. Passive methods put a teacher into the center of teaching process. He plays the most active role while the learners are passive. Control is performed by the ways of questions, control papers, tests and so on. Active methods put both a teacher and students into equal collaboration and interaction. Students may ask questions and express ideas with a teacher.
Interactive methods present a modernized form of active methods. The term "Interactive" has quite ambiguous meaning, as it derives from the word "interact", where "inter" means mutual and "act" - action. Thus, the term "interactive" might be defined as ability to interact or be in the process of a dialog with either a person or a computer. Interaction is special organizational form of learning and communication process, the most significant feature of which is the person's ability to interpret situation and design his own actions. Consequently interactive education means employing in-classroom or remote teacher-student and student-student dialogs. Interactive technology education process is the process based on the scope of interaction rules for students, who communicate with each other as well with their teacher, who in his turn provides effective oral conversational students' activity [3]. Teachers attach a lot of importance to the inner activity between students during the lesson. The learners should have inner motivation which involves them into active work or active participation at the lesson. The role of the teacher in interactive method is to direct students' activity to achieving the pedagogical objective of the lesson which includes interactive tasks and exercises.
There are several types of interactive methods, and brainstorming is one of them. This technique stimulates generating new ideas on the topic and encourages students to develop their creative activity in solving problems and express ideas. The main focus
here is on quantity - not quality of the ideas. Teacher is not supposed to criticize the utterances but listen to all of them and inspire students to give as many variants of solving the problem as possible. All the expressed utterances are written down and analyzed.
Discussion is another type of interactive technique. It requires studying some lexical and grammatical material on the topic before the discussion starts. It helps the learners consistently and logically express their ideas by presenting grounds for their utterances. The work is organized in small groups which create favorable conditions for students to express their ideas actively and participate in discussion.
Role playing is another type to be discussed here. It is said to be an actively used teaching innovative method made to improve the efficiency of teaching. Role playing involves the learners into active work by positively influencing their inner activity. The atmosphere of a game increases their motivation, personal potentials of inner activity and helps to form practical skills and habits. During the role playing life situations are modeled and played out, which makes this a good activity to satisfy both social and educational goals. [4]
In recent years active technologies have become very popular as well as interactive ones. They are divided into those which require computer resources employment and those, which do not. We came to a conclusion that the most effective way of teaching would require the combination of both.
We have decided to concentrate our attention on quest as one of the interactive technologies. We believe this method has a lot of potential for the development of both virtual reality and real life activity. First we would like to look through WebQuest as one of the well-known and widely used methods of teaching foreign languages, as well as suggest a possible alternative, drawing on the same idea.
WebQuests. Web Quests were of great attention on the part of recent scholars and researchers in foreign language teaching. WebQuest is considered as a problem-oriented task or project which implies the usage of the Internet resources for finding the solution. It is said that WebQuest has become a revolutionary technology in teaching. A lot of disciplines modified their syllabi to include those types of activities in them. As soon as the Internet was invented the issue of its employment in education has become vital.
Back in the early days of the Web, Bernie Dodge began developing the webquest strategy at San Diego State University to help teachers integrate the power of the Web with student learning. That moment became a turning point in the process of spreading the web among ordinary users.
Professor Dodge [5] suggested a particular WebQuests classification based on the following criteria:
1) According to the implementation period they distinguish short and long WebQuests;
2) According to the subject involvement there are monoquests (the ones made in connection with just one subject) and intersubject (the ones made in connection with more than one subject) WebQuests;
3) According to the task types, which are supposed to be done by the participants. Here we distinguish:
- Retelling is oral demonstration of the topic understanding basing on the compiled material from various sources. It might be either a poster, a presentation or just a story. This is the simplest type of quest, however, it is important to remember that a teacher needs to pay attention to the original text so that to exclude copying.
- Planning and Projecting is work out of some plan or project drawing on particular material and conditions. A particular form and draft might be given, so that all works are done according to one and the same pattern.
- Compilation is processing the information from different sources and transforming it into a new format. Compilation might be presented as an exhibition or time capsule or cultural capsule.
- Creative task is any work implying some creative aspect, for example play writing, painting creation, poster, videogame or any other type of game, poem writing or a video creation. This type of exercise requires the idea evaluation as a main focus, whereas the quality is of secondary importance.
- Analytical task is information analysis and the system of its organization.
- Detective, puzzle or some mysterious story is conclusion creation drawing on controversial facts.
- Estimation is students' learning how to express their personal opinion supported by some arguments.
- Journalistic investigation might be a survey on a certain problem and objective presentation of the collected information.
- Conviction is making your opponents think the same way you do or take the neutral position.
- Scientific research is research work into various phenomena and discoveries using Internet resources. [5]
Bernie Dodge [5; 6] also considered quests from the point of their structure and pointed out the following six building blocks:
• The Introduction orients students and captures their interest.
• The Task describes the activity end product. The main requirement for the task is its clarity, precise formulation of the desirable result. It might be performed as a number of questions or presented problem, which students need to find a solution for, or some product, which they are supposed to create as a final result.
• The Process explains the strategies students should use to complete the task.
• The Resources are the Web sites students will use to complete the task. It is important to
remember that the web net is a huge information container, that is the reason why the students need to be directed so that the searching area would be narrowed up to the task. It might be done with the help of some key words or links.
• The Evaluation measures the results of the activity. Depending on the type of tasks for learners a teacher works out the number of criteria for the work evaluation.
• The guidance on how to organize the information acquired. This can take the form of guiding questions, or directions to complete organizational frameworks such as timelines, concept maps, or cause-and-effect diagrams as described by Marzano (1988, 1992) and Clarke (1990).
• The Conclusion sums up the activity and encourages students to reflect on its process and results. The use of this project for students in future is preferably described at this stage.
WebQuests have one characteristic feature - they are mostly universal and multipurpose. [5; 7] They might have different topics as well as can be adapted to different language levels. This might be achieved by proper selection of the information resources and tasks. However, all quests have three constant stages:
1. Command stage. Learners get acquainted with main notions according to the chosen topic. Teacher introduces main technical devices and web resources which will be necessary for a project. It is important to make sure that all students are familiar with the instruments to be employed in their work.
2. Role stage. Every student plays a certain assigned role in order to reach some general result for a team. WebQuests do not imply any competition between the participants of a team. The result and its quality are of primary importance. All participants are united with motivation to gain best results following principals of mutual help and support.
3. Final stage. Students provide a presentation of some project, jury counts the scores, and the work is evaluated and discussed.
After studying some articles on the problem of WebQuests we came to a conclusion that they are frequently attributed to project technologies and might even be distinguished as one of technology types. Quests follow same structural pattern as project technologies require, where the stage of preparation is of most importance. The technologies allow student to combine their knowledge from different fields to solve one problem and also provides a good opportunity to put these knowledge into practice, producing new ideas at the same time. The aim of the project as quest is achieved through the detailed elaboration of the problem. They are also considered to be innovative method of teaching and could be performed either actively or interactively [4].
Moreover, WebQuests also follow the same requirements, which are important for project technology [8]:
- Stated problem in a research creative plan, which will demand complex of skills and knowledge to be solved;
- Practical and theoretical value of expected results;
- Independent activity of students at lessons and extracurricular activities;
- Organizing of the project content as a precise structure;
- Research methods employment.
Nowadays it is hard to imagine any project not employing technical devices - such as a computers or Smartphones. However, we would like to suggest potentially effective "technical device-free" technology of teaching foreign languages drawing on the principle of WebQuest which we would introduce as "LifeQuests".
LifeQuests. LifeQuests have the format of ordinary theme role-playing games. To give a better idea of what we mean, we would like to explain the main features of role-playing games first. When saying role-playing games, we imply all the components of this kind of activity - role distribution, goal setting, tasks and requisite.
In terms of perception this technique is said to be the most effective. The role-playing game
helps them to overcome their stiffness and anxiety. There exist particular rules and students who are engaged in the game at English lessons present themselves as someone else in different situations. There are several types of roles which students might play - social (teacher, doctor, shop assistant, etc), interpersonal (friends, enemies, etc), psychological (neutral, positive, negative characters). Acting encourages students to learn how to communicate and discuss, understand and appreciate the feelings of others, to find solutions to some problems. The ultimate goal of any role-playing game in English learning process is to obtain knew knowledge and develop new skills.
The difference of the LifeQuest from a role-playing game [4] is that there is neither definite script, nor fixed actions for participants. The most intriguing feature of LifeQuest is its unpredictability. Everything depends here on the participants themselves. The only two fixed aspects in LifeQuest - are roles and characters' goals. None of the participants have any rigid instructions on the scenario or ways of achieving those goals. It contributes to the fact that they could feel free to improvise and dream up which makes them involved in the project at maximum. The preparation stage for LifeQuest is mastering some lexical-grammatical material, training the behavioral models, but not learning of the roles.
We believe that LifeQuests are very effective as activity determined to activate communicative skills of students who learn English language. They might be used as a supplement to every topic.
There is an important requirement for quests - they need to be organized as a detective story, so that a participant would be involved in the process of finding out the truth by solving problems and employing their communication skills. The organization of this kind of quest doesn't impose anything on participants. There is a story which serves as a starting point, but students could modify their roles as they wish -they could make themselves active, passive or mixed. Their actions, ideas and speech are controlled only by themselves. A teacher directs
and encourages students if necessary, but never interferes into the game flow.
The structure of LifeQuests is similar to the structure of WebQuests [5; 6] with only one difference: the participants don't need to search the information on the Internet because all information they need they are supposed to know already from the studied program, so that the role is realized by means of the covered lexical, grammatical material and some information given to each of the participants. Therefore, the detective story is developing spontaneously when students try to settle down the problems and find out the truth on the spot. Tasks might be classified according to the same principle as in WebQuests, but what is worth noticing is that they could be combined and mixed together. For example, one Life Quest could combine detective story with an analytical task and a creative project at the same time.
We have already touched upon the topic of requisite. This element of the life quest is vital. The more decorative items we employ, the more realistic the atmosphere will be and the more exciting will be the realization.
There is time consuming preparation work required before you could put the LifeQuest underway. The teacher has to work out the layout of a LifeQuest - its unique story - which might be attributed to the educational material covered in class. All the created roles need to be closely connected and a lot of intricate details need to be hidden inside the scenario lines. As soon as the plot is worked out some equipment has to be prepared as well - we suggest making some folders for participants with the following contents:
- A leaflet with a brief description and characteristic features of the character, goals, recommendations for the first steps and game rules.
- Name badge
- Requisite (It might be anything fitting this or that topic - money, cards, papers, toy-guns, glasses, badges etc.)
It is important that students participate in preparation work, especially in preparation of the requisite. They are supposed to get to a LifeQuest lesson dressed according to their roles. It could be something simple - such as formal or informal style or something more elaborate - such as celebrity look or a homeless person look. It automatically programs them for the upcoming lesson and they get already involved in the process in advance.
Another significant note for LifeQuests preparation aspect is that students should understand what they need to do right on the spot - at the very first second of the lesson. That is why the teacher has to prepare them and train some behavioral models with them in advance. Here are some options for this preparation work:
- The roles might be assigned to students well in advance, so that students get used to behaving in a certain way, typical for this or that character. The roles might be distributed already at the first lesson of the topic.
- Students should also have an opportunity to practice some tasks and participate in some situations which they can find themselves in during the LifeQuest.
- Participants could go through solving of some problems in groups within limited time and set conditions, when they are supposed to obtain some certain result.
- Some possible models of behavior, action strategies should be discussed and played through within preparatory lessons.
Time of the lesson for conducting a LifeQuest is limited, that is why we suggest working through the preparation activities at the lesson before the LifeQuest lesson.
The preparatory lesson plan:
1) Students listen to a brief prehistory to understand what situation they are supposed to play out.
2) Each of the participants gets a folder with materials and a leaflet for the role.
3) Students study the content of their folders - look through the requisite items, read through the role description and aims.
4) Each of the participants has to introduce himself as a character of the play by making his best to imitate the behavioral model of the character. It is important to reveal only some information about the character, concealing some important facts.
5) Teacher explains the rules of the LifeQuest and gives the students a home task -think through the strategy of reaching the goal, briefly explain it in a written form and send it to the teacher.
The Life-Quest lesson plan (90 min):
1) Dressing up - all the participants need to get dressed according to their role with the help of the requisite they brought - 5 minutes
2) Brief introduction - a reminder to let the participants understand who they are going to deal with - 10 minutes
3) The LifeQuest process - 50 minutes
4) All secrets are revealed - 9 minutes
5) The scores are counted - 5 minutes
6) The certificates are presented - 5 minutes
7) Feedback - 6 minutes.
LifeQuests cannot replace ordinary lessons within the English teaching process. LifeQuests serve mainly as a way of communicative skills activation and getting over the language barrier and all the difficulties involved. Each LifeQuest has to be adapted to the level of this or that students group. This is the reason why we suggest preparing just drafts for all the requisite and leaflets, so that to have an opportunity to fill it in with certain information depending on the language level of the group participants.
Teacher functions as a person who facilitates and directs the process. It is very important that students should not feel puzzled or confused and pauses get created, that is why the teacher needs to be highly attentive to all the participants. If somebody struggles with the next step, it is possible to give them a hint or prompt some right solution. The participants need to feel at ease while going through the quest and it is most
important that they be interested. The aim is to let the students forget about the fact that they speak a foreign language rather than their native tongue. The only thing they need to concentrate on is learning the truth in the intricate plot of the LifeQuest.
Each game is individual and unique. Even if the goal of the game is the same it could be reached out by many different ways. It is not possible to predict for sure how the students will use the content of their folder - the magical cards, weapons, prompts, and in what way the students are going to interact.
The aim of LifeQuest is to make the students get fully involved into the foreign language atmosphere. It will contribute to making the students think more about the process of the quest rather than how to use the language with its words and rules. This activity definitely implies the possibility of making some mistakes in students' speech, however the main goal is to let them feel confident while speaking, and that is how to get through language barrier which is a big problem for students.
One of the most important stages of LifeQuest is the control stage. It is an integral part of any activity in teaching process, which could provide an understanding of its effectiveness and success. As mentioned above, the teacher's interference into the LifeQuest process is not recommended, as students need to feel free and relaxed. Mistake discussion and correction is suggested doing through the taped video of the game. We suggest recording the LifeQuest and distributing it among students. A home task after this lesson will be that each student chooses one of their group mates and has to look through the video chasing their group mate's activity during the LifeQuest. They will need to watch the whole video watching the chosen character and write down all the good sides of his activity and mistakes this person made. We recommend working out a unified checklist for this work, which might look as the tab. 1 below:
Table 1
Student A LifeQuest activity checklist
Grammar New words used Acting skills Secrets revealed/ problems solved Total score
Student A Scores
Comments
General opinion
Each student needs to be judged from the point of view of four criteria - Grammar (use of complex sentences, correct word order, tenses, etc), new words used (the amount of used new words from the studied topic, their correct usage in speech), acting skills (emotional involvement), secrets
revealed/problems solved (depending on the Quest - there should be a certain amount of tasks to be done for each of the participants). Students can give 1-10 scores according to each of the criteria. Each criterion requires a comment, especially if the score is low - it should be an explanation and a reason of giving this score instead of 10. Total scores are counted in the end and a general opinion about the student's work is written at the bottom of the table. Each teacher could modify the evaluation table according to his needs, although it is important to remember that each student has to be evaluated in the same way.
Some time from the following lesson is to be dedicated to the mistakes discussion. This work has a number of strong benefits about it:
1) Students have an opportunity to look at themselves - it helps them to evaluate their work, see what needs to be worked out to a greater extent and what was really good.
2) Students study the material they worked at once again - watching the Quest will let them once again work with new lexical and grammatical material.
3) Students learn how to be fair at evaluating their group-mates.
4) The teacher might be confident that each student was evaluated.
Conclusion. We have worked through many sources [1; 2; 5; 6, etc.] dedicated to WebQuests and their usage in teaching English language. There is not much information dedicated to LifeQuests, in particular. There are obvious reasons for that, and the main one is that we need to keep up with the fast developing world. However, analyzing thoughts of different people from teaching forums, students' opinions and the way the react to different tasks within lessons we proved that people tend to get tired of modern technologies which have become an integral part of our everyday life. It has become evident that change is highly required. We need to keep up with up-to-date technical solutions as well as not to forget that real materialistic world still matters. People would always enjoy real-life communication, dressing up as well as playing roles. Being a teacher means to be always alert to the current needs of our students. We have decided to present this LifeQuest not only to give a fresh idea for our colleagues, but also to suggest combining both types - Web- and LifeQuests for achieving even better results. WebQuests could always be a perfect instrument for preparation work and LifeQuest might serve as a perfect way of using the acquired knowledge creatively, activating it in real life as well as a great means of solving one of the most serious problems in foreign language teaching, that is overcoming language barrier.
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Мезенцева М.Е. Квест как современный прием активных методов обучения иностранным языкам. Статья раскрывает понятие квест в применении к обучению иностранным языкам и акцентирует актуальность модификации устоявшегося понятия технологии квеста для достижения максимальных результатов на практике. Обозначена актуальность использования технологии квестов на сегодняшний день. В статье рассматриваются два типа квестов - веб-квесты и живые квесты. Приводится определение обоих типов, приводится существующая классификация веб-квестов, дается типология видов заданий, которые применяются для выполнения веб-квестов; выделяются структурные элементы веб-квестов, а также уделяется внимание общепринятым этапам, на которые можно подразделить веб-квест. Определяются основные различия и сходства двух типов квестов, рассматривается понятие живого квеста, его особенности и характеристики. Предлагаются рекомендации по структурированию и организации этой технологии. Кроме того, автор касается вопроса контроля результатов при проведении живого квеста. Применяя в исследовании методы анализа и наблюдения, автор говорит о том, что живые квесты становятся актуальным дополнением к веб-квестам, и их комбинирование представляется максимально эффективным средством в повышении мотивации у студентов, изучающих иностранный язык.
ВЕБ-КВЕСТ; ЖИВОЙ КВЕСТ; АКТИВНЫЕ И ИНТЕРАКТИВНЫЕ МЕТОДЫ ОБУЧЕНИЯ; МЕТОДИКА ПРЕПОДАВАНИЯ ИНОСТРАННЫХ ЯЗЫКОВ; ПРОЕКТНЫЕ ТЕХНОЛОГИИ
Ссылка при цитировании: Мезенцева М.Е. Квест как современный прием активных методов обучения иностранным языкам // Вопросы методики преподавания в вузе. 2017. Т. 6. № 21. С. 75-83. Б01: 10.18720/HUM/ISSN 2227-8591.21.8
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