Lawrie Hunter's recent presentations

Limiting writing task freedom by constraining Cmap link type
WorldCALL conference 2008, Fukuoka International Conference Center

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Let's Be Novakian: Constraining Task with Structural Mapping Software
JALTCALL annual conference 2008, NUCB Nagoya

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I. What is Critical Thinking?
The term "critical thinking" has been defined variously, and EFL teachers interested in building CT into their content are often confounded by a confused offering of materials.
This presentation outlines the major variations of the CT theme: American-style issues-based adversarial discourse, de Bono's issues-based divergent thinking, formal logic, and foundation literacy skills.

II. The task-based approach in "Critical Thinking" and "Thinking in English."
The second section of the presentation details the presenter's task-based approach to leading upper beginners and lower intermediates towards the skills required to begin the study of critical thinking, as embodied in his textbook, "Critical Thinking."

The learning process involves four steps:

INPUT (demonstration/listening/reading of vocabulary and phrases;
USAGE PRACTICE (activities and tasks using the vocab and phrases;
AUTHENTIC TASK (arranging information, solving problems); and
EXPRESSION (reporting task results as presentations, dramas, videos or written reports).

III. Information structures vs. language structures.
IV. Hands-on practice in building a lesson unit.

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Graphics for cognitive load reduction
JALT Annual Conference, Tokyo, November 2007

Second language writers of English for critical thinking are performing a number of cognitive activities simultaneously: recalling lexical units, remembering appropriate register and attending to sentence word order, and orchestrating rhetorical structure and readability. In addition to lack of confidence in decoding the wording of problems, this amounts to considerable cognitive load. This presentation outlines the author's collection of graphical tools for reducing such cognitive load: illustrations, sentence charts, readability charts and knowledge structure maps, and demonstrates the use of each tool.

Illustrations can support and/or confirm the learner's comprehension of task input language, and can motivate problem solving, thus backgrounding language concerns. Sentence charts are highly prescriptive, but do afford check-list confirmation that the writer has gotten all the necessary parts together for sentence construction. Readability charts enable the learner to keep in mind some basic principles of cohesion, and to confirm cohesion after writing. Knowledge structure maps (following Mohan, 1986) keep learner attention on the information aspect of task, even during learner composition. The use of information maps as graphical heuristics is also shown here. As well, a decision matrix is proposed which can help clarify instructor decisions about (a) degree of explicitness of scaffolding and (b) assessment criteria (e.g. selection of best lexical model; correct application of model).

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Dimensions of Media Object Comprehensibility
IWoM3C: 2nd International Workshop on Machine-Mediated Multimodal Communication
7th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies
July 18-20, 2007 Niigata, Japan

The work towards a human-communication paradigm for the guidance of machines within the frame of the new multidisciplinary approach of machine-mediated communication (e.g. Elsayed, [1]) gives rise to important subordinate questions. With the development of a pattern language in mind, this paper outlines the author's structural model of content information for second language learning materials and from that frame examines the question of what factors influence the difficulty of comprehension of a media object. This is one approach to the question of how media objects carry information. The discussion of parameters of difficulty is grounded in related issues in second language learning materials, which are germane here: the much examined notion of ‘considerate text’ has recently evolved into looking at ‘considerate multimedia,’ an even more complex matter. A tentative list of parameters of difficulty in media object comprehension is developed here, opening questions of significance and applicability for machine automation.

Graphical Anchoring of Second Language Writing Task
Symposium on Second Language Writing, Nagoya, September 2007

The emerging non-native writer (NNW) of technical English, seen here in the case of the Japanese undergraduate engineering student, is attempting a multi-level orchestration of rhetorical moves and cohesion devices, information elements and lexical units up to the sentence level.
Non-native writing, then, carries a considerable cognitive load. It requires the writer to hold in conscious mind several types of linguistic representation: information, information structure, rhetorical structure and grammar. If some of these can be represented graphically, likely cognitive load will be reduced.
This paper presents several load reducing graphical representations currently in use in the curriculum and materials designed by the author; these representations provide writing task 'anchors' for information structures (cf. Mohan, 1986), sentence patterns and rhetorical structures.

Mohan, B.A. (1986) Language and content. Addison-Wesley.

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Working memory and text-to-speech-to-text in language task
EuroCALL, September 2007, Coleraine, N. Ireland

Recent advances have made text-to-speech and speech-to-text (T2S2T) software usable in a very practical sense, and the user can now both create text by speaking naturally and listen to electronic text. This suggests that working memory as modeled by Baddeley (1986, 2000, 2001) can now be externalized to some extent, which would in turn impact on cognitive load in language task.
Olive (2003) reports findings from dual-task experimentation which link writing task and short-term storage. In a time of earlier technological capability, Ong (1998) claimed that cultures that do not have a system of writing (primary oral cultures) and those that do (chirographic cultures) think differently as a result of the writing difference. Ong said that a second orality dominated by electronic modes of communication has emerged in Western culture. This second orality has aspects of both oral and chirographic modes. Ong suggested that orality-literacy differentiation would influence our interpretation of various kinds of writing. If text-to-speech-to-text empowerment were to become broadly used, hypertext, which is just settling into a mainstream niche, would have to undergo a severe framework reconstruction.

This paper juxtaposes Ong’s second orality and Baddeley’s model of working memory, with its (since 2000) 4 components, the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, the central executive and the episodic buffer. Workable T2S2T promises to change the nature of cognitive load constraints in language learning task. It also makes Baddeley's concept of working memory look like a most promising task design tool. This presentation examines whether a new third kind of orality may emerge from the new T2S2T technological reality, and makes some tentative observations based on the exploratory hands-on experience of second language users.

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Hunter presentations at http://lawriehunter.com/cv/presns.htm

Media Object Comprehensibility
3rd Orality
Thinking in English
The uses of powerpoint
The Style Dossier
CALL paradigms
"Processing" Heuristic
Hypertext Accessibility
Thinking in English
Your own textbook
ESP graphics
Semantic mapping
Signalling text structure
CALL in a shadowing curriculum
Shadowing v. 2.0
Genres for critical thinking
IT and Education
CALL lab planning
CALL lab pics
Motivation in a CALL lab
Text nouveau
CMediated L2 Tech writing
Text Nouveau II
Push: Semiotics of CALL