WELL Case Studies: Completed Case Studies

Language(s)

French

Learner level

All levels

Institution

City University, London

Name(s)
Isabelle Marcoul

Contact details
i.Marcoul@city.ac.uk

Objectives

Students reading choices and strategies for Web material in their native language and French as a second language.
The objectives of this case study were to research the reading habits of the students surfing the World Wide Web according to the languages in which these sites were written.
The students were asked first to discuss the type of sites they visited in their native language(s) then the sites in French, as a second language.
It was hoped to find out whether there were different strategies adopted by the students according to the language in which they were surfing and whether the electronic format influenced their reading skills.

Implementation

Most of the participants to this project were undergraduates (124) and 31 were postgraduates from City University in London. 96% of them had studied French before and their range of competence varied from lower intermediate to advanced level. The remaining four percent had just started learning the target language.
All of them were users of the Internet with various degrees of expertise but none were complete beginners and had already surfed the Web and visited sites.
All the participants were handed out questionnaires to describe their surfing habits when visiting sites in English or in their native languages. As City University is a very multicultural institution, a majority of students are either foreigners or come from a background where the mother tongue is not English although they were born and educated in the UK.
A second questionnaire was distributed for them to comment on the sites they visited and which were written in French.
An extensive list of Web sites in the target language was also distributed to help them in their search.
After the completion of the questionnaires the contributors were interviewed so that they could discuss their experiences with the researcher.
They were also observed while reading material from their selected sites on the Web so that their strategies for surfing could be analysed more in depth.
This project was implemented over a period of two years as it is always difficult to find a sufficient number of participants to analyse enough data relevant to research.

Outcome

Surfing in the native language:
Students mainly use the Web to retrieve information. They don’t read for pleasure although they enjoy surfing at random, letting their intuition lead the way through the Internet.
Two tendencies were observed:

The first one indicated that the majority of the students were surfing to find material concerning their studies or with a view to getting supplementary information for their subjects at university.

The second tendency shows that they use the Web to read about personal topics and interests. These were related to sports, new technologies (some of the students are doing degrees in computer sciences and are obviously interested in these technologies), sites about movies, going out, tourism and newspapers.
Other topics were also shown interest but the main and most selected ones were those listed above.
The Web sites for newspapers were popular among the student whose English is not always their mother tongue. They like to inform themselves about their country or their parents’ homeland by surfing the national newspapers on the Web.
There is also constancy in their choice of sites and topics linked to the sex of the reader. The male students were in general more interested in sports and competition results than the female students. The female students were surfing sites in connection with travel and going out in London more than their male counterparts.
When it comes to information on movies and the movie industry, the younger students were more interested than the more mature ones.
A majority (76%) visits sites related to business and the job market with a view to finding employment or information related to companies that they wish to work for and e-commerce. This interest for electronic commerce is a recent development observed among the students.
The style of presentation of these Web sites was not a priority in the students’ selection with the exception of a few sites where graphics and illustrations were relevant to their choices. These types of examples can be found in sites with illustrations and animations such as greeting cards: http://www.freecards2000.com/ or http://www.egreetings.com/e-products/m_main/cgi/homepage In this case, the appearance, the style and the multimedia elements on offer were obviously relevant to the reader.
Surfing in the target language
In this case, the students’ attitudes changed and so did the type of sites they visited.
Although in general they are looking for sites associated with their personal interests, in the majority of the cases their choices are dictated by the ease of understanding and “decoding” the meaning of the sites in French.
The users are attracted by the presentation and the format of the sites mainly when multimedia elements such as pictures, sounds or video clips are present.
They tend to read short texts and dismissed sites with only written words or 'bare' presentation similar to the printed text.
Those who had an advanced knowledge in French selected Web pages, which had great amount of texts but whose presentation was similar to the journalistic style. For example, a very popular site was the newspaper 'Le Monde' (http://www.lemonde.fr/) which offers long texts but whose content is condensed and summarized for the reader to decide whether or not to read the entire article.
This newspaper also offers dossiers about selected topics that give more in-depth information to the readers.
In general, it is a Web site with short texts which attracts the students’ attention. Another example, such as the French Ministerial of Foreign Affairs (http://www.france.diplomatie.fr/), describes some French films illustrated with pictures. The descriptions are rather short and allow those with an intermediate level of French to read about a very popular topic.
Another observation points out that those with a basic knowledge of the target language select Web sites with many visual illustrations. A site like the one dedicated to the 17th century poet Jean de La Fontaine has proved to be very popular among the students. Its style is similar to the one found in magazines with many child-orientated illustrations. Although the students had difficulties to understand text from such a period, the site has nevertheless attracted them. During the interviews they mentioned it as one of their favourites with, in particular, interactive exercises offering feedbacks.
To summarize, the main elements, such as the visual, audio, written, attracted the students to the sites in French. The participants kept visiting the ones which linked multimedia applications and presentations to the written text.
Underneath the number of users selecting some of these elements is shown as a percentage to estimate the relevance of their impact.
Student level of the target language

Basic
Intermediate
Advanced

Visual elements
100%
100%
100%

Audio elements
60%
23%
12%

Text only
5%
31%
100%

Evaluation

When interviewed, most of the students (68%) find it difficult to locate the right or relevant information. They were concerned by the amount of information available, and the problem of tracing it. They felt they needed a clear mapping of the sites to acquire a sense of direction even if the multimedia elements may have given them the impression of adding to the understanding of the text. The students complained about an overload of information and getting lost in Cyberspace.
The fact that most of them don’t regularly surf the French sites seems to have opened up a sense of adventure more so than in the Web sites in their native languages. In fact, they have their own little habits regarding the native language sites and therefore ended up surfing the same sites again and again.
So far, this case study seems to indicate that users are more motivated to read, surf or research the text when the multimedia elements are present. When the language is not an issue then the format and the style is not that relevant although the journalistic style remains the most popular rather that a simple printed text similar to the book form.
As a whole, the readers are more interested in the information per se than reading for the sake or joy of it. By large the objectives were attained and shed some light on the selection of electronic material for future use in a teaching and learning situation.

Project url

N/A

last updated 9th May 2000

Authors:William Haworth