THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Elements of WebQuests

According to ^{Dodge (2001)}, "WebQuests are appealing because they provide structure and guidance both for students and for teachers" (p. 7). In his model, Dodge (1995) stated that a WebQuest must comply with six critical attributes: Introduction, Task, Process, Resources, Evaluation, and Conclusion.

The introduction contextualizes the problem to be sorted out and tells students what role to play in the activity (^{Sharp, 2005}, p. 271).

The Task describes "crisply and clearly what the end result of the learners' activities will be" (Creating WebQuests, 1999, Task section, para.1). In this section students are presented with an activity that is connected to their real life thereby making the task interesting and meaningful. This type of tasks develops critical thinking since students are faced to real-life problems. They are told to transform information found in the Web to create new knowledge.

The Process describes the steps that students must follow to accomplish the goal. ^{Kelly (2000)} asserted that "these steps can be broken down into as many as needed for the student to be successful" (p. 5). The purpose of this section is to present the activities (or subtasks) that students must accomplish to fulfill the task. Students are assigned their respective role for the accomplishment of the task. This section may also "provide guidance on how to organize the information gathered" (Creating WebQuests, 1999, Process section, para.3).

The Resource section provides links to the Web sites students are to use to accomplish the task. In the original WebQuest, this section stood on its own (^{Dodge, 1995}). However, in later versions Web links are included in the Process section to make it simpler for students to navigate through the WebQuest. Teachers might include Web links to videos, podcasts, online magazines, blogs or any other online material useful for the purpose of the task.

The Evaluation shows students how their performance will be graded in completion of the task; in other words, the evaluation must be coherent with the task (^{Sharp, 2005}, p. 271). In the original version of WebQuests rubrics were proposed as a way to evaluate students' performance. Rubrics are descriptive scoring schemes developed by teachers or other evaluators to guide the analysis of the products or processes of students' efforts (Brookhart, as cited in ^{Moskal, 2000}, p. 2).

The Conclusion briefly describes the achievements students have made by developing the task. The conclusion, as with the introduction, must be engaging, leading students to discuss their discoveries (^{Sharp, 2005}). Other Web links can be posted here for further reading so that students can expand their knowledge on the topic of the WebQuest or even on related topics.

Types of WebQuests

^{Norton and Wiburg (2003)} described two kinds of WebQuests: A short-term WebQuest and a longer-term WebQuest. A short-term WebQuest can last up to three class periods and its goal is to put students into contact with a modest amount of new information and encourage them to acquire and integrate that new knowledge to their prior knowledge.

A longer-term WebQuest, on the other hand, can last from one week to one month and its goal is to make students understand, analyze and transform some information given to create knowledge (^{Norton & Wiburg, 2003}).

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

This paper focuses on EFL learners in Colombia where English neither has official status nor is used by educated people to communicate. The opportunities that most English language learners in this country have to develop their communicative skills are restricted to the classroom and the input obtained from movies, TV programs and the Internet. That is why the use of WebQuests becomes relevant. With this Web-based tool, EFL teachers can organize online input, such as recorded messages, articles, conversations, etc., in a meaningful communicative task that learners will accomplish cooperatively, thus developing their reading, listening, writing and speaking skills in English.

Communicative Competence

Since the 1970s, the purpose of second and foreign language teaching has aimed at developing communicative competence. The communicative competence concept was born in opposition to the previous approaches being used which merely focused on grammar and the correctness of the language.

Hymes (as cited in ^{Brown, 2000}) defined communicative competence as "that aspect of our competence that enables us to convey and interpret messages and to negotiate meanings in-terpersonally within specific contexts" (p. 246). From this point of view, the communication process was not an individual process anymore; it turned into a process where all speakers, listeners, writers and readers played an active role. They all worked cooperatively to understand and be understood.

Based on Hyme's concept of communicative competence, Canale and Swain (as cited in ^{Brown, 2000}) proposed four different categories: grammatical, discursive, sociolinguistic and strategic competences.

^{Brown (2001)} presented an updated version of communicative competence which summarizes the concepts presented by Canale and Swain and other linguists:

In its skeletal form, CC [communicative competence] consists of some combination of the following components:

As the use of English is restricted to the classroom in EFL settings, English language teachers need to provide learners with classroom activities that allow them to develop communicative competence in all its dimensions. WebQuests can serve this purpose fully. They provide oral and written input from diverse sources that learners will have to decode; furthermore, they promote negotiation of meaning among learners through collaborative work.

Principles of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

Concerned about the development of communicative competence in EFL classes, linguists and language teachers have explored different approaches and methods that claim to achieve this goal. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) rises as one of the most important communicative approaches. ^{Richards and Rodgers (2001)} stated that

both American and British proponents now see it [CLT] as an approach (and not a method) that aims to (a) make communicative competence the goal of language teaching and (b) develop procedures for the teaching of the four language skills that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communication. (p. 155)

CLT recognizes the importance of the social part of the language aiming at helping learners to develop not only the linguistic and pragmatic competences but also the sociolinguistic and strategic ones in their second or foreign language through real-life activities. With CLT, the classroom stops being teacher and grammar-centered and transforms into learner and communication-centered.

Several advocates of CLT find it difficult to set a definition for such an approach. ^{Brown (2001)}, among them, preferred to establish some characteristics to describe CLT. Firstly, he stated that classroom goals are focused on all of the components (grammatical, discourse, functional, sociolinguistic, and strategic) of communicative competence.

^{Brown (2001)} also pointed out that "language techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic, authentic, functional use of language for meaningful purposes" (p. 43). Advocates of CLT favor the use of games, and problem-solving tasks among others. The former, according to ^{Larsen-Freeman (2000)},

are important because they have certain features in common with real communicative events - there is a purpose to the exchange. Also the speaker receives immediate feedback from the listener on whether or not he or she has successfully communicated. In this way they can negotiate meaning. (p. 126).

In this negotiation of meaning learners need to use all their competences to understand and convey messages. The latter encourages learners to cooperatively work out a solution for a problem by using the target language as a vehicle of communication.

The third characteristic of CLT mentioned by ^{Brown (2001)} supports the idea that "fluency and accuracy are seen as complementary principles underlying communicative techniques. At times fluency may have to take on more importance than accuracy in order to keep learners meaningfully engaged in language use" (p. 43). This last idea is better adopted in EFL settings where the time allotted to speak the language is restricted to the classroom. Teachers, consequently, must make the most of the instruction time to encourage communication.

In addition, ^{Brown (2001)} affirmed that "students in a communicative class ultimately have to use the language, productively and receptively, in unrehearsed contexts outside the classroom. Classroom tasks must therefore equip students with the skills necessary for communication in those contexts" (p. 43). In other words, as the purpose of any language learner is to be able to use the language to communicate outside the classroom, then in-class activities should provide students with practice of real-life situations.

^{Brown (2001)} claimed as well that CLT promotes autonomous learning. He stated that "students are given opportunities to focus on their own learning process through an understanding of their own styles of learning and through the development of the appropriate strategies for autonomous learning" (p. 43). Teachers, in search of enhancing their students' speaking, listening, reading and writing skills, consciously or unconsciously, provide activities for all types of learners, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, among others. This allows learners to find their own path in their learning process.

Finally ^{Brown (2001)} pointed out that "the role of the teacher is that of facilitator and guide, not an all-knowing bestower of knowledge. Students are therefore encouraged to construct meaning through genuine linguistic interaction with others" (p. 43). Once again, cooperative learning is highly appreciated in students' learning process. The classroom converts into a learner-centered environment where everybody participates in their own and others' learning.

Task-Based Instruction in Communicative Language Teaching

The importance of communicative tasks in CLT has inspired some language experts to develop a complete approach based on the use of tasks in ESL and EFL teaching. ^{Larsen-Freeman (2000)} stated that the goal of a task-based approach is to give learners a real-life task to be accomplished in a meaningful context where a lot of interaction is fostered; "such interaction is thought to facilitate language acquisition as learners have to work to understand each other and to express their own learning" (p. 144). This approach converges with CLT at the following principles presented by Willis (as cited in ^{Richards & Rodgers, 2001}):

Task-based instruction, then, proposes tasks as activities that boost students' communication skills in the second or foreign language learning process. Here, the importance is not only given to the comprehensible input students receive through reading and listening but also to the comprehensible output students produce either in writing or in speaking.

^{Nunan (2004)} conceptualized two different types of tasks: target and pedagogical. The former refers "to uses of language in the world beyond the classroom" (p. 1). This type of task is highly appreciated in EFL environments where opportunities to encounter English real-life situations are limited to classroom settings. This task also allows learners to experience language within a socio-cultural context.

The pedagogical task, on the other hand, is defined by ^{Nunan (2004)} as the kind of task that encourages learners to use the language in communicative situations at the same time as they become aware of the grammar structures they are using (p. 4). As in the target task, the main goal of the pedagogical task is negotiation of meaning.

Prabhu (as cited in ^{Larsen-Freeman, 2000}) referred to three different types of tasks: an information-gap, an opinion-gap and a reasoning-gap tasks. The information-gap task "involves the exchange of information among participants in order to complete a task" (p. 148); a simple example of this of type of task is students working in pairs asking and giving directions about a specific place in town to trace a route in a map. An opinion-gap task "requires that students give their personal preferences, feelings, or attitudes in order to complete a task" (p. 148); a debate on the legalization of drugs could be an example of this type of task because students are to give their opinion on the topic. Finally, a reasoning-gap task "requires students to derive some new information by inferring it from information they have been given" (p. 149); for instance, a reasoning-gap task can encourage students to analyze statistics presented in a bar graph.

Taking into account that the core of a WebQuest is a task itself, all the types of tasks described above can serve this purpose. The main task in a WebQuest is always a target task; nevertheless, the process stage in a WebQuest can involve the other tasks described above.

Besides the types of tasks, ^{Nunan (2004)} proposed five other components to take into account when working with tasks. He stated that tasks must have a clear goal and that this can be simply defined as "the answer that a teacher might give to a question from a visitor to his or her class about why learners are undertaking a particular task..." (p. 41). The goal of the task in a WebQuest is clearly described in the Task section itself. The goal can be stated as:

A problem or mystery to be solved; a position to be formulated and defended; a product to be defined; complexity to be analyzed, personal insight to be articulated; summary to be created; persuasive message or journalistic account to be crafted; a creative work; or anything that requires learners to process and transform the information they've gathered. (Creating WebQuests, 1999, WebQuest Templates Section, para. 2)

All the tasks previously mentioned aim at promoting transformation of knowledge to some degree. Specifically in EFL, learners are expected to use the target language as a vehicle to access information and use it to negotiate meaning to reach the goal. In this way, the task serves both purposes, to enhance communicative competence and to develop higher-order thinking skills.

Proficiency Levels in EFL Learning

Advocates of CLT have been concerned not only about designing strategies for the development of communicative competence among those learning ESL or EFL, but also about designing tools to measure learners' performance in the target language. In the United States, for example, TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) standards in the K-12 school system have been adopted as a way to verify what students can do with the English language through the different school levels. Standards, therefore, "indicate.what students should know and be able to do as a result of instruction. [They].list assessable, observable activities that students may perform to show progress toward meeting the designated standard" (^{Nunan, 2004}, p. 46). Educators can also use these standards to design programs that better suit their students' linguistic needs.

The Council of Europe, on the other hand, taking Europe's linguistic diversity into account, has produced The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). This document can be utilized to measure learners' proficiency in any language learned in a foreign setting. The main objective of this document is to describe: what language learners have to learn to do in order to use a language for communication and what knowledge and skills they have to develop so as to be able to act effectively. The description also covers the cultural context in which language is set. The Framework also defines levels of proficiency which allow learners' progress to be measured at each stage of learning and on a life-long basis. (Council, 2001, p. 1)

According to the CEFR (Council, 2001), users of the target language can be identified as Basic (A level), Independent (B level), or Proficient (C level). Each level, at the same time, is subdivided into two levels that provide a more specific description of learners' capabilities with the language. The Basic User level is divided into A1 or A2 levels; the Independent User level is divided into B1 or B2 levels; and the Proficient User level is divided into C1 or C2 (p. 24). The Council of Europe has provided a general description of the common reference points that educators should look at when assessing learners' performance in the target language (see Table 1).

Table 1 Common Reference Levels: global scale 

The Council of Europe (2001) has also stated a more specific description of each proficiency level in terms of communicative skills to help teachers cope with learners' linguistic needs and to help learners track their own achievements and needs in their language learning process.

The Ministry of Education of Colombia (2006) has adopted the proficiency levels of the CEFR in the EFL programs at schools and universities. All these Colombian institutions use the taxonomy presented in the CEFR. The thesis of this paper, focused on EFL learners in Colombia, makes reference to the A2 level as the proficiency level that learners must have in order to accomplish the task proposed in the WebQuest presented next.

Participants

The population taken into account in this research study was 24 students with an A2 English proficiency level from a public University who were registered in the English IV semester class. Most of them become from low income families according to the report found in the university student information system. Students were between 20 and 23 years old and had previously taken three 80-hour semester English classes at the University.

The Web links used to accomplish the task in the WebQuest match the language skills of the learners at this stage of their learning process. The Web sites show aural and written messages of "immediate personal relevance" (Council, 2001, p. 26) that allows students to get prepared to sustain short conversations in public places in London, such as a restaurant, a souvenir shop, a tourist information center and a London attraction.

OBJECTIVES

At the end of the accomplishment of the task proposed in the "Let's go to London" WebQuest, students will be able to:

Procedure

As the main purpose of the research study was to establish whether students were able to use their communicative competence in English to interact in tourist settings such as a café, a restaurant, a museum, and so on, by using as study material the links posted on the WebQuest, the chosen type of research was qualitative since, according to Gay, Mills, and Airasian (as cited in ^{Mertler & Charles, 2008}), "it involves the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, largely narrative and visual in nature, in order to gain insights into a particular phenomenon of interest" (p. 192). The qualitative research allowed the researchers to gather information through direct observation and interviews. The observations were held during the activity where the "Let's Go to London" WebQuest was implemented, and the interviews were made after the same activity. As one of the researchers was the designer of the "Let's Go to London" WebQuest, the second researcher also did some observations during the WebQuest design process.

To apply the collaborative work principles of Communicative Language Teaching and Web-Quests, the 24 students were organized in eight teams of three to accomplish the task. Collaborative work helped them not only to rehearse the roles they had to play in the activity but also negotiate meaning when finding new expressions and decoding new vocabulary. This negotiation of meaning leads to integration of new knowledge with prior knowledge, consequently promoting higher-order thinking skills, which is also one of the principles of WebQuests.

Finally, the "Let's go to London" WebQuest can be categorized as a short-term WebQuest because it only lasts five class periods and its "instructional goal...is knowledge acquisition and integration" (Dodge, 1997, Definition section, para. 2).

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

Let's Go to London": a Communicative WebQuest for an EFL Classroom

Photo 1 Students ordering food and taking orders at a café 

DESCRIPTION

The main purpose of the WebQuest presented in this paper is to provide EFL teachers with an example of how to design and use this Web-based tool to enhance communicative competence in an EFL classroom.

As WebQuests are designed under the principles of Task-based and Web-based learning, the WebQuest presented here describes a communicative task that must be accomplished using online resources. The task in the WebQuest should not be planned purely for communicative purposes at the expense of sacrificing meaningfulness and enjoyment. Therefore, the task presented in this WebQuest allows students to enhance their communicative competence while enjoying learning about English culture by simulating a trip to London; hence the title of the WebQuest: "Let's go to London".

Class One:

Materials required: A computer with Internet connection, a video-beam and the "Let's go to London" WebQuest.

Figure 1 Slide from the Power Point Presentation to introduce the task 

Class Two:

Materials required: Minimum eight computers with internet access, paper, pencil, a dictionary, and the "Let's go to London" WebQuest.

Class Three:

Materials required: Minimum eight computers and the "Let's go to London" WebQuest.

Class Four:

Photo 2 Students giving and asking for information about London attractions at an information point 

Materials required: Things for decoration, map with rotation of teams through the different places.

Students arrange places for the activity (Photos 1 and 2).

The teacher shows and explains the chart with the rotation of teams through the different places. During the first half of the class period teams 5, 6, 7 and 8 will play their roles as workers of the different places; meanwhile, teams 1, 2, 3, and 4, play their roles as tourists. During the second half of the class period, teams 5, 6, 7, and 8 will be tourists and teams 1, 2, 3, and will play their role as workers in the different places. Students need to respect this rotation in order to have a successful activity.

Figure 2 Evaluation rubric 

Class Five:

Materials required: Teacher's notes on the activity, board and marker.