Innovation in Language Learning

The question “how can students learn grammar and have fun doing so?”  prompted us to adopt a task-based approach to learning Albanian literature and language, a course which was course offered within a virtual learning environment.  Twelve Italian students who were beginner-level Albanian Language learners participated in the study whereby students used digital tools to complete tasks that mainly involved the development of comic strips and cartoons in which the characters spoke Albanian.  Every task-cycle initiated with a pre-task where the teacher exemplified the linguistic structures.  For example, a cartoon in which the teacher presented himself provided the students the necessary syntactical chunks to create their own introduction-cartoons: the teacher’s video thus provided a scaffold by modelling both the language and the expected cartoon product. During the second phase of learning when students created their artefacts, they used Pearltrees as a learning notebook to compile ideas, keep notes on their own progress and catalogue sites which contained useful learning material.  This enabled students to work autonomously yet creatively and also made it possible for students to see the work and progress of others, provide suggestions, request clarifications, collaborate when they wished to, etc. As the course progressed, each student came to occupy a branch of Peartrees which grew as the course proceeded, thus becoming an e-portfolio of each student’s learning progression. The third, post-task phase involved the use of focus on form activities to draw attention to various aspects of Albanian grammar.  In this phase, the teacher called upon students to reflect on the language forms which they had used to complete their tasks and invited them to demonstrate their understanding of various grammatical rules by creating a series of related grammar exercises.  The students worked in collaborative groups to co-construct sequences of grammatical rules which formed branches of Pearltrees. These branches were selected and gathered in an e-book of Albanian grammar using the software epubeditor.   The creation of an e-book thus made it possible to not only conserve the student’s artefacts which had been created during the course but obliged students to reflect on the grammar forming the various branches on Pearltrees.  This way of organizing grammar information offers meaningful and authentic opportunities for students to speak about and thus internalize their understanding of the grammar and the language at hand.  The final exam confirmed that all the students had successfully learnt the necessary Albanian grammar even though they were “having fun”.  We are transferring the learning processes developed from this elementary-level Albanian language course into a blended intermediate-level course of Italian as a second language.