"Language Learning using Information Technologies"

As far as the topic of our workshop is concerned our Institute for Intercultural Communication is involved in various projects of the European Community, especially in LEONARDO, SOKRATES, LINGUA and LEADER II. All of these projects deal with every form of information technology: CD-ROM, POI/ POS- systems, e-mail and the Internet (WWW- world wide web).
The general framework of our LEONARDO projects focuses on :

• the production of material for self-study (including CD-ROM's , videocassettes, text books and books of exercises) for subjects such as Business German, French, Spanish and Danish- predominately for those who work in small and medium-sized companies

• the production of a multimedia program for language acquisition (for German-Finish as well as for English-Finish) on CD-ROM, serving as an assistant for commercial programs for advertising in small and medium-sized companies

• the development of a multimedia program for Business Italian for small and medium-sized companies.

For lack of time I will concentrate on the first project, called "Commercial Languages: German, French, Spanish and Danish". This might be useful also, because some of its productions have been issued already and are available on the global market. As an example I would like to mention the CD-ROM that forms a part of the material for Business German- it can be obtained through the organisation INTER NATIONES and has been used in practice for 2 years now. We were surprised to learn that even the domestic market has shown an interest in these materials. In the main they are used within the range of further training and retraining courses. This shows that upmarket and learner-oriented multimedia programs are still in demand. Last week the French (programme d'apprentissage inter-actif FranVais commercial) and the Spanish (Languaje Comercial Espagnol) CD-ROM were issued. The Danish version (Dansk Forretningssprog) is still expected to come out this year. Our productions are based on didactic, linguistic and intercultural research some of which has been published independently in magazines or in the Internet (WWW).

A very important stage in the development of our material was the production of the monograph "Multimedia- eine neue Herausforderung für den Fremdsprachenunterricht" (Multimedia- a new Challenge for Foreign Language Teaching") which was published by Peter Lang in 1996. During the process of its production we felt bound to investigate those aspects which are relevant for foreign language multimedia programs for the self-study. These aspects include the question of content, linguistic problems, didactic-psychological theories, problems of programming and the techological know-how.

Finally, I would like to point out that theoretical findings and practical experiments from other European development programs were of great help for the production of LEONARDO. Among those I should mention the LEONARDO-project "Empowerment through Lifeskills" in which we are involved as well and which is directed by the Manchester Metropolitan University. The production of our program is also based on an opinion-poll carried out in Denmark, Germany, France and Spain. The people asked were employed in small and medium-sized companies most of which were industrial and commercial firms, service-industries, technology-oriented and innovative companies as well as firms of the catering trade. The poll is mainly based on the following aspects:

1. kind and size of the company
2. position and profession of the person in question
3. evaluation of the foreign language ability
4. situations which demand the usage of foreign languages
5. areas, in which the knowledge of foreign languages should be improved
6. place, time and method of further training courses in foreign languages.

The opinion-poll was carried out in more than a hundred companies. With the assistance of the European Community its results could be published in two brochures. The findings of the poll led us to choose topics such as "firm presentation", "promotion of new products", "office communication" and "contractual negotiations". Apart from that we were also concerned with self-learning material, with the agreement on a specific standard, on appropriate skills and abilities and finally with the question of how to develop them.

At the same time we took into account that East Germany and France have a great need for base material by which foreign language abilities in companies can be developed and improved. In Spain a similiar need can be observed for material in commercial foreign languages (German). Compared to Denmark and France, Spain especially calls for a high level of foreign language abilities in the tourist industries.

The need for practice, a general demand for communicative and correspondence-oriented material, and the top position of English as the required language of further training courses could be agreed upon. There were, however, differences between the countries and also between particular industrial sectors, too. In comparison to Spain, Germany expressed its wish for more exercises concentrating on sales strategies, on the formulation of contracts, on orders (intake, confirmation, placing) and on translation. Conversation and translation exercises for the service industries are in greater demand than for the catering trade or common trade.

Differences in age and sex seem of very little importance for the motivation of the learners to qualify. Most of the time the place of a person's further training is wished to be outside his/her firm, yet within the company opportunities for further education seem equally good. According to the opinion-poll further training out of working hours is generally considered within manageable terms. The methods used for further education have changed remarkably. People's expectations of what language courses should be like have changed as well. Nowadays the demand is for modern methods of teaching and learning. Foreign languages are predominately used in situations which are function-oriented. From this resulted the following list of needs:

• foreign language for specific purposes (company-oriented/ sectors of trade)
• foreign language in specific situations
• development of speaking skills
• development of listening skills
• improvement of oral and written use of the foreign language.

As money is short and time often very limited the people who were interviewed paid special heed to effective teaching and learning methods which offer high standards for the individual application (suggestopedia, self-learning material) and state-of-the-art techniques (computer, suggestopedia). [Hahn/Tosch: Fremdsprachenbedarf in Klein-und Mittelbetrieben in Dänemark, Deutschland, Frankreich und Spanien. Leipzig 1994, 54]

The investigations caused us to develop the self-study materials for mostly adult learners according to their specific needs. It was necessary to consider whether the materials were to be used at work, in multimedia self-study centres or at home. This variability seemed to ask for a modular-structured "media mixture". This program deals with the training of speaking, writing, listening and reading skills in a variety of exercises covering the afore-mentioned fields of study. These are based on authentic video-sequences of communicative situations taken from everyday business reality of small and medium-sized companies in Denmark, Germany, France and Spain.

Industrial sectors relevant to export such as tourism (in all its forms), food industry (Denmark), wine-growing and wine trade (France), manufacturing of china (Germany), and the shoe-production and trade (Spain) were predominately dealt with. The programs contain multilingual glossaries, transcripts of video- and sound-sequences, parts of encyclopaedia concerning grammar or specific terminology and offer the possibility to print out important passages. Those aspects of our four CD-ROM-productions that were concerned with questions of content, didactic-psychological questions, media-specific problems and (co-operative) organisational dimensions stood at the beginning of our co-operation. It is thus understandable that intercultural aspects only played a theoretical role at this early stage. We even intended to simply transfer the original German version (by a 1 to 1 translation) into the Danish, French and Spanish version, as it is common practice among other producers of multimedia.

However, already at the beginning of the production of the remaining versions it became obvious that a simple transfer would only be possible if the structural and the technical side of programming alone was considered. Yet, if the textual side and the choice of topics were taken into consideration, the practical needs would differ a great deal: France, for instance, would export other goods than Germany, Spain or Denmark. The need of a culture-specific design became even more obvious when the authentic, target-group-oriented video and listening material underwent a closer examination. It proved at once that Spanish marketing apparently differed from the German. To be precise - German strategies would not suffice on the Spanish market; a French secretary would use different ways of office communication when compared to a Danish secretary; a Spanish manager would use other means to present his company than a German manager - especially the means of non- and paraverbal communication would vary strongly.

From all these findings it can be induced that what so far had not been proved in detail and what had rather been an assumption led to the following: There are not only important intercultural differences between Europe on the one hand and Asia, Africa and America on the other hand. There are also differences between the European states in general and between the states of the European Community in particular, which may affect communication and either could be favourable or damaging to business interests. Theoretical texts published so far and the companies' own training material, but also language teaching and learning materials all seem to concentrate on the very obvious differences of behaviour between Europeans and members of the other continents (eating and drinking habits, different notions of time, attitudes towards life, humour, ways of making a present, forms of politeness, invitations, compliments, reliability, punctuality). Besides, there are differences in the way of communicating, negotiating and during conferrals (Yes/No/Maybe, ways of addressing someone, [title, academic degree], taboo topics, flow and depth of conversation, "involvement", criticism, directness/ indirectness). Yet, the (practically oriented) inner-European differences were rarely made the subject of discussion. The only place you might find them implied would be in texts and exercises rather than explicitly articulating and consciously applying them to special exercises.
The same is true for our CD-ROM productions for commercial languages.

After we had taken notice of this problem we attached great importance to the selection of typical situations, themes, and partners of business communication in base texts of video-, tone- and written documents. This becomes apparent in situations where partners of different countries face each other. In the Spanish version the meeting between a Spanish and a German partner is shown. The German version shows a conversation between a representative of a German travel agent's and a representative from Benin. The German business woman is very straight forward and up to the point when putting her questions and demands. She would not even drink the coffee offered to her. The Beninese representative patiently and with deliberation tries to produce a positive and personal atmosphere. He is careful to avoid misunderstandings, to dissipate doubts, and to elude weak spots.

Nowadays the production of intercultural and interactive media increases. In this context the CD-ROM-courses of the Learning Company of Knoxville/Tennessee "Learn to speak German, English , etc." should be mentioned. Another example are the so-called Culturgrams which are used in the Microsoft World Atlas. They include intercultural information and peculiarities of the country and people in question, as there are: language, religion, general behaviour, forms of address, gesture, facial play, paying visits, food, family life, making appointments, marriage, diet, leisure time, holidays, business and public life, education, transport, health service, tourism, international law, international family.

At present we make it our business to apply implicitly and explicitly bilateral intercultural aspects to future projects. One of these projects is concerned with the language of commercials (ads) in Germany and England on one hand and Finland on the other. Today's discussion and the list of questions by the Steering Committee will be of great help for our projects, as will be the numerous publications found in the Internet. It is our conviction that book-and CD-ROM productions should be controlled in future as to whether links to either Email or the Internet (sources or courses) can be established. It is to be expected that intercultural correspondence courses (distant learning) supported by the Internet assume even greater importance in the future.

This is the reason why we are spending a great deal of time arranging and re-arranging our website (address: http://www.iik.com). There you can obtain information about our European programs (content, partner, time) and their theoretical and practical results. Since October 1997 we have been counting more than 32,000 visitors to our website from over 30 countries. The website did not only grow with our project but also forged it ahead. We received many encouraging advises how to improve our material and later we set up a special page on which visitors could leave their evaluations. This particular section is constantly updated. A nation-wide study group "Multimedia" is permanently working to be both initiator and contact for education, economy and civil services.
The most recent evaluation of "Geschäftssprache Deutsch" (Business German) on the website of the IIK is by Heiner Dintera and contains the following passages allowing an overall view:

"The program consistently uses all possibilities of multimedia combining video, photos, graphics, sound (playing and recording) and (hyper-)texts. The magic phrase seems to be multisensory study. The learner listens, reads, writes, and speaks, so all senses contributing to communication are appealed to. What deserves special attention is the ergonomics of the program. The layout is well-structured and clear. Colours, graphic designs and sound signals correspond to their didactic functions. Gadgets and cheap showmanship are deliberately suppressed in favour of a more functional "workstation".

The program is operated by a menu at the bottom of the screen which is used throughout the program. It takes only a few minutes and you will intuitively manage the program. There is no tedious business of running through endless help-menus. You can entirely concentrate on the exercises. These come up to the modern standards of didactics of foreign languages. The exercises do not only aim at linguistic skills but also at the capacity to act accordingly. The language of specific purposes is never ignored. Only those strategies are practised which are needed in daily business routines, such as note-taking during a conversation, the working-out of memos, etc. . The exercises are cleverly linked to combine, for instance, a reading comprehension practise with a writing exercise in which you will have to write a fax yourself.

There are appropriate model answers/ texts which enable the learner not only to increase his or her knowledge but also to control his or her results. These model texts can be printed out and can thus be used in everyday life. All texts (oral or written) produced by the students can be saved on hard disk, so they can be evaluated by teachers. The program allows you to record your oral productions which are all incorporated in work-related contexts. Telephone calls can be simulated and negotiations may be practised. Yet, the program is not equipped with a voice recognition system that enables the computer to correct and evaluate your oral productions.

The student decides upon the sequence of tasks and exercises which he /she wishes to complete. The learner may at any time change to any other part of the program. Repetitions are possible too. Clearly arranged tables of content help finding your way around.
The program is divided into four major sections:

• negotiation
• office communication
• firm presentation
• promotion/ launch of new products

Every part of the program begins with a short video clip, with specific tasks for the training of vocabulary and grammar, with factual issues or with communicative-pragmatic aspects, as for instance "the logical structure of a presentation". The video recordings likewise serve as the contextual background for the remaining exercises and tasks of each unit. It is remarkable, however, that the videoclips show no actors but only authentic speakers ! Another good point about the program is that apart from High German, varieties and slang are spoken, too.

There are, however, weak spots. One particular refers to grammar exercises (passive voice)..... The dictionary offers more entries than version 1.0, but is not user-friendly. The program does not provide means to test one's achievement level. The learner is able to see which tasks he/she has fulfilled but will not be able how well or badly he/she has done. Altogether the positive points predominate. When the program was used by foreign students it was unanimously approved of. Those tasks that cover the wide range of possibilities offered by multimedia were particularly successful. Just imagine a student who is asked to prepare a presentation: He/she is now able to choose from a selection of media (film clips, texts, graphics) and apply them to his/her presentation. The results are at the same time original as they are professional.

That's how learning with the PC and creativity can be combined."