Computer assisted English language learning in Costa Rican elementary schools: an experimental study

Abstract

This study presents first-year findings of a 25-week longitudinal project derived from a two-year longitudinal randomized trial study at the elementary school level in Costa Rica on effective computer-assisted language learning (CALL) approaches in an English as a foreign language (EFL) setting. A pre-test–post-test experimental group design was implemented to evaluate two varying types of CALL curriculum (Treatment A and Treatment B, both technology based to assist English language learning) with a difference in students’ time-on-task, as opposed to the Control/Comparison group (that received no treatment and was a typical practice within the regular English teaching time period). Four subtests from Woodcock Munoz Language Survey-Revised (WMLS-R), a norm-referenced, standardized instrument, were selected to monitor participants’ oral English development. A total of 76 urban, rural, and urban/marginal schools with 816 third graders were included in the analysis through multilevel modeling. Results suggested that (1) students held very limited oral English proficiency at the beginning of the third grade; (2) although students significantly improved their oral English proficiency during the 25-week intervention, they were still significantly below the typical native English-speaking norm at the end of the third-grade level; (3) those who were exposed to CALL modules in Treatment A developed at a faster rate than did students in Treatment B and in Control classrooms in lexical knowledge and listening skills when statistically controlling for student-level variables, including initial level and time-on-task; (4) although students in CALL intervention (especially in Treatment B) started with a lower level of oral English proficiency, their gain was numerically higher than that in the Control condition; and (5) time-on-task demonstrated to be an irrelevant variable in the study. These findings imply that it is not just exposure to English that matters for significant gains in the language; rather, it is the type of instruction a student receives, or the quality of instruction in which the software engages the students interactively in a hands-on, minds-on, scaffolded manner, that matters the most in developing steep gains. Finally, we recommend that additional research be conducted with groups that move through kindergarten, first grade, and second grade longitudinally to determine cohort effects in learning English via CALL instruction in EFL countries.

Keywords:

• experimental design
• CALL
• EFL
• Costa Rican elementary schools
• multilevel model

Acknowledgements

We thank our project coordinator, graduate assistants, teachers, parents, students, and school and district officials who made this research possible. We are grateful for the insightful suggestions provided by the anonymous reviewers who read earlier versions of this article.

Note

Notes

1 The condition is Control in that it received no treatment and was a typical practice within the regular English teaching time period in the Comparison schools.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Horacio Alvarez-Marinelli

Horacio Alvarez-Marinelli Horacio Alvarez Marinelli is an education specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank. He is currently working in the Bank's field office in Colombia, where he also works on the operations of the portfolio of the Education Division in Costa Rica. He graduated with a degree in Economics and earned a Master in Business Administration and Public Policy.

Marta Blanco

Marta Blanco, Industrial Engineer with a Master's from the University of Essex, England, and an additional specialization in Project Administration. As an author, she has written widely on environmental issues as well as education and competitivity. She has participated in diverse forums on educational policy and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Costa Rica Multilingüe Foundation.

Rafael Lara-Alecio

Rafael Lara-Alecio is a Professor and Director of Bilingual Programs in the Department of Educational Psychology at Texas A&M University. His primary areas of research are in assessment, evaluation, and bilingual content area instruction. He coauthored a pedagogical theory and model for transitional English bilingual classrooms.

Beverly J. Irby

Beverly Irby is a Professor and Associate Department Head, Department of Educational Administration and Human Resource Development at Texas A&M University. She was at College of Education, Sam Houston State University when this research was conducted. Her primary research interests center on issues of social responsibility, including bilingual and Englishas- a-second-language education, administrative structures, curriculum, and instructional strategies.

Fuhui Tong

Fuhui Tong is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at Texas A&M University. Her research interests include second language and literacy development and assessment for English learners in bilingual and English-as-a-second-language settings, as well as the quality of teachers serving these students.

Katherine Stanley

Katherine Stanley is the Academic Director of the Costa Rica Multilingüe Foundation and served as the lead field coordinator of this research project. She is a former U.S. classroom teacher with an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction; her work in Costa Rica addresses issues of quality and coverage of foreign-language instruction through project development and implementation, research, public policy development, fundraising and communications.

Yinan Fan

Yinan Fan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Educational Psychology at Texas A&M University. Her major research interests include using technology to assist and enhance language learning, program design and evaluation, and student experience. She has been working on several longitudinal randomized projects targeting English language learners.