Paper presented at E-Learn 2015 - World Conference on E-learning, Oct 20 - 22, 2015, Waikoloa Beach Marriott Resort, Kona, Hawaii (The Big Island)

1. Integration of Technology into EFL Instruction:
A Case Study for Required English Classes
at a Japanese University
David L. Brooks, Associate Professor
Kitasato University, Sagamihara, Japan
d.brooks@yahoo.com
Abstract: This paper reports on the case of an individual teacher’s
experience as a native language instructor for large classes of monolingual
Japanese students studying English at a medical and health sciences
university in a Tokyo suburb. It explains how the teacher adapted both
teaching philosophy and instructional pedagogy with aid of computer
technology to meet the constraints and challenges of this opportunity.
Introduction
It is not only feasible in our increasingly globalized world, but mandatory, to start
promoting a global perspective among Japanese university students of English as a foreign
language and by helping them begin to understand and build their own intercultural
communicative competency is, but it is also a central responsibility for all educators – not only
language teachers (Canale, 1983). This insight can be taught explicitly and experienced
directly in a course where the teacher's culture is different from that of the students (Anderson,
1993). Beyond the study of the culture of the target language, we additionally focus the course
on critical world problems, which can activate students’ global awareness and engender
compassion for solutions through self-awareness, community activism, and global volunteerism
that can dramatically impact the acquisition of both the target language and also the desired
intercultural competence (Tarone, 1981).
This paper reports the case of one individual’s experience as a native language
instructor for classes of Japanese monolinguals learning English and how that teacher adapted
both teaching philosophy and instructional pedagogy to meet the constraints and the
challenges. As a case report, it describes how one individual teaches skill-focused and content-
based courses for students of English as a foreign language can accomplish these goals by

2. employing a focus on the importance of global issues and their proximity through the media
and computers (Krueger & Ryan, 1993; Halvorsen & Gettings, 1996). The intercultural
dimensions inherent in such courses can open doors for students in a monolingual and
dominantly homogenous culture to cross-cultural understanding and provide avenues for
genuine efforts for communicating beyond one's own culture (Brooks, 2000; Cortazzi, 1990). An
explanation is made of how the students are first led through a contextual and metacognitive
cross-cultural training process for the purpose of “inculturating” them into a new classroom
communicative culture (Brooks, Yashiro, Fujimoto & Cruz, 2001).
Subsequently, instruction for promoting a “globalized” classroom environment in
which students can actualize their intercultural competence by contemplating environmental
and social problems (Brooks, 2010), assessing different perspectives on the cross-cultural
communication (Kohls,1993) and evaluating moral values of such social problems and issues,
and seeking compassionate and just solutions (Meyers, 1993) are also discussed. While the
essential competencies of intercultural communication are briefly addressed, their acquisition,
facilitated through a focus on language project activities such as issue debates, poster sessions,
advocacy campaigns, and virtual activism and real-time volunteer activities, is briefly
explained (Jin & Cortazzi, 1998).
Having previously addressed some of the background and rationale for development of
the CALL classroom instruction for my classes at the Kitasato University Foreign Language
Center (Brooks, 2005a, 2005d, 2010), it would now be beneficial to share how the instructional
and communication technology (ICT) available in the our relatively new CALL labs is actually
being utilized for teaching and learning for foreign languages, the foremost being English as a
Foreign Language. Another broader purpose would be to disseminate a conceptual framework
for understanding and further expanding the scope of ICT use in a university’s instructional
process. There are three broad instructional areas of information and communication
technology (ICT) use that could have an impact on how faculty teach, on how they manage and
interact with students, an on how they deliver course content and evaluate student
achievement. Of these three areas, use of ICT as a teaching tool and as an instructional
management and communication tool will be discussed, using examples currently employed by
this writer.
ICT for Course Content
What and how students actually study, what the content is and how it is organized

3. and delivered, and how the students interact, receive feedback and demonstrate their
acquisition of skills and content can all be impacted by the use of ICT. First of all, the Internet
can serve as valuable content resource when instructional activities are adequately designed to
provide guidance in fulfilling a specific purpose through exploration and manipulation of web-
based knowledge resources. Simply letting young minds loose to browse aimlessly on the World
Wide Web rarely produces great results. Instead, setting a clearly defined Internet task with
measurable goals can elicit student thinking, provide exposure to very current and extensive
information, and assist students in learning to evaluate resources objective. It also permits
them to focus on making meaningful knowledge by sifting it out from the inundation of
information bombarding all of us in the 21st
century (Faulkner, 2001).
An instructor would not likely send the entire class to the library at once – nor would
it be physically possible. But when each student has a PC with Internet access, in effect, they
have the resources of many “libraries” of information at their fingertips. Such access brings
with it some great opportunities, but also calls for a different approach to the design of
assigned tasks and evaluative projects that students are asked to produce in a more traditional
classroom since there are some pitfalls to using the Internet that must be avoided (McVeigh,
2002). For example, to elicit greater thinking by students and to forestall the temptation to
simple imitate or copy what they find on the Internet, an instructional task can be designed
that asks to students to compare how various countries present themselves as tourist
destinations. Beyond a simple report on a foreign country, the students would need to analyze
various official websites from that nation and then synthesize what values and perceptions
these countries are manifesting through their choice of website content and design in relation
to other nations including their own country, Japan (Tsuchida & Lewis, 1998).
A second way that ICT impacts instruction is in the expanded variety format that
student achievement can be expressed and evaluated. Feedback to the instructor can be
enhanced by use of on-line interaction or other ICT technology. Using on-line polls and surveys,
computer based quizzes and tests, or through optical mark cards, instructors can get
immediate feedback from the students on both how well they are learning the course content
and also on what they perceive are effective or less effective aspects of the course and its
instruction (Brinton, Snow & Wesche, 1989). Consequently, content can be adapted or
instructional activities altered based on this immediate feedback. A specific use of an on-line
courseware authoring system in use in our CALL labs will be examined below.
Moreover, having access to networked computers and standard multimedia

4. applications, students can be required to produce new types of assignments to demonstrate
their acquisition of knowledge and their developing abilities to think, to solve problems, and to
process information. For example, students alone or in groups can be assigned to produce a
Power Point presentation or to create a series of web pages to share their research conclusions.
By asking them to present these to their peers, students gain a sense of audience as writer and
researcher. When reports and written assignments are completed on a PC and submitted on-
line, there is opportunity for interactive feedback between the instructor and students or
between the students themselves who are working cooperatively on a project. In my own
classes, since the focus in on pragmatic forms of spoken discourse, such as conversations,
informative and persuasive speeches, discussion and debate, the students can practice using
video and then record their performances so that they can assess themselves and reflect on
ways to improve (McCarthy, 1991). Speeches, discussions and role-play conversations are
recorded on digital video and made available to the students through the CALL file server
network.
Use of ICT can facilitate instructors taking a more active, guiding role in the process
of formulating a thesis or hypothesis by the students. It can assist teachers in giving students
formative evaluation and feedback on the quality of their ideas and written expression while it
is being developed instead of only after the report or project has been completed (Hauck &
Youngs, 2008). For example, as part of the work for planning and completing a written
persuasive essay for my Speech Communication Freshmen English course, students in my
classes are asked initially to send by e-mail to the instructor the complete main idea statement
of their proposed essay for feedback and critique. Later they will send an outline of the key
supporting points of their essay paper which the instructor can evaluate and help revise.
Eventually, they will submit a first complete draft of their essay as an attached document file
via e-mail so that the instructor can make editorial comments about the ideas and suggest
revisions for the English language expression and usage, and then return it to them before the
final paper is due. In such a way, CALL technology affords us the opportunity to emphasize the
life-long and rewarding process of language learning skill development and not simply on
producing a final product (Bonk, 2009).
Thirdly, the computer network in our CALL labs offers a new medium for presenting
course content and for interactive feedback to the students. Thanks to the installation of an
online courseware authoring and management system called Tsukutte Kyozai (Uchida), the
instructor can create unique on-line lessons to accompany and enhance the course textbook. An

5. authoring system is a software package that supports instructors in producing interactive
multimedia courses efficiently without extensive knowledge of computer programming. When it
is integrated with an online management system for registering users and for keeping a
database of student performance, it becomes an environment for creating and managing on-line
learning (Blyth, 2008). Designed to be fairly easy to use, the Uchida authoring system allows
the teacher to arrange the teaching content into simple but attractive screens, supports linking
materials together into course modules that include text, audio and video material as well as
other documents such as web pages, Power Point presentations and other MS Office
documents, and even Macromedia Flash presentations. It supports a range of six question
types with response analysis of the student’s answers (except short essay responses, which
must be scored by the instructor). The students’ achievement of lesson requirements and their
actual responses are maintained in a database so that the instructor can monitor the group’s
progress and also offer individual feedback (Spencer-Oatey & Franklin, 2009).
Beside its use for interactive presentation of content, the authoring system can also
be used to develop quizzes and tests, which can be graded automatically. One of the
shortcomings of this, and in fact most on-line course authoring systems, is the lack of capacity
to record student’s oral responses. Because this is a course in communicating in a foreign
language, it would be ideal if such an essential feature were a central part of the authoring
system. Admittedly, checking individually even a minimum of two or three recorded oral
responses from the over 250 students I have responsibility to teach would be a daunting task.
However, even without this capability, the students can receive valuable by feedback on
listening, reading and writing skills. In compensation, this instructor tries to give as many
opportunities as possible for my students to speak directly to the instructor and to receive oral
feedback on their utterances in real time since that is likely how actual oral communication
occurs in any case (Yamada, 1997). Because the students are engaged in intensive interaction
with the course content through computer-assisted instruction, the teacher can now afford to
spend more time with individual learner’s to answer questions, to interact in the foreign
language, and to give more specific feedback about their progress (Legutke & Thomas, 1991).
Of course, producing a 45-minute on-line lesson for each unit in the textbook is
initially a time-consuming and labor intensive task for the instructor. It can take between five
to ten hours of course development, planning and input time in order to create one hour of on-
line instructional material. However, once completed, it becomes a valuable teaching resource
that can be used for multiple classes and in succeeding years. The challenge is always in

6. producing lessons that are motivating in content, that are educationally appropriate for the
learners, and that produce meaningful progress in language acquisition (O’Malley & Chamot,
1990). The fact that multimedia and Internet resources can be utilized greatly aids in this
achieving this aim. Students appear to appreciate getting immediate feedback and being able
to work at their own pace. Limits can be set on how many minutes a student is allowed to work
on a lesson and also on how long a time period that a lesson is available so that controls are in
place for getting students to complete assigned on-line materials. When doing on-line testing,
alternative forms of the exam can be created by randomizing the order of questions or by
choosing different items for alternate forms of the test from a larger bank of separate
questions. Because we have three computer labs, it is possible to have students sit apart so
they cannot easily see other screens.
After having used this course authoring system for six years, it is clear to see that
there are other features that would be ideal to have in an improved version. In addition to the
capacity to record student’s oral responses to questions, there are other features would like to
see eventually added to this on-line course authoring system. The capacity to easily copy
individual items with a lesson, to make use of the complete variety of text fonts and color
available in Windows XP, the ability to bring HTML documents directly into the lesson screens,
and to have response analysis that takes a student’s answers to questions and makes
branching decisions to different parts of the lesson based on the response would all be features
that would enhance its utility and effectiveness.
Implications of IT integration into Kitasato University Teaching
These descriptions by one member of the Foreign Language Department of Kitasato
University are offered -- not as a model to emulate -- but as one example of how teaching and
interaction with students has been impacted by the integration of IT for computer-assisted
language learning. In considering this teacher’s experience, we might reflect about what
implications the use of IT may have for the larger organization. A question that needs to be
addressed is whether the university has established a school-wide mission and implemented
policies toward advocating and achieving more extensive integration of IT into the curriculum
and instruction of Kitasato University (Williams & Burden, 1997). Toward such an end, it
would be important that efforts be made to provide awareness workshops, and training
presentations for increased faculty development. Certainly, IT integration entails a larger
financial and human resource commitment so continual planning for improving the IT

7. infrastructure for the campus would be advantageous (Yoshida, 2003). Such infrastructure
improvements might be comprised of any and all of the following: a wider LAN network
throughout the campus, adequate external connection to allow for off-campus use of e-learning
resources, increased server space for faculty and students, school-wide universal e-mail access
for all students, adoption of a flexible LMS standard for the teaching faculty hosted by our own
servers, and sufficient network support and administration staff including those trained in e-
learning content creation and delivery.
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