Abstract:

Quick Response (QR) Codes are scannable images allowing a smart camera to link to an online resource. These codes have become a ubiquitous technology found, for example, in restaurants and other businesses to link to printed material with digital devices. In classrooms, QR codes can provide a pathway to differentiated instruction. According to research, most students find QR codes to be engaging, enjoyable, and interesting. However, some students report difficulty viewing materials on a small phone screen, slow internet connections that render QR code activities ineffective, or lack of access to a smartphone. Thus, QR codes may only be effective technologies in some learning environments. In second language learning (L2), QR codes can link students to instructional videos explaining a grammar concept or a verb ending charts. In this way, learners might access needed linguistic structures at the moment they are required.

In addition to explicit instruction of grammar in L2 learning, QR codes support deductive approaches to grammar that rely on the co-construction of comprehensible input and personally meaningful output among learners. For example, QR codes might complement the Rassias Method, which became known as the Total Physical Response (TPR) Method. More recently, this approach referred to as Total Physical Response with Storytelling (TPRS) or Teaching Proficiency with Storytelling. Regardless of the name, these methods involve leveraging the physical environment around learning to create a real-world context. The Rassias Method, involves the instructor asking the learner to complete activities in the classroom. Perhaps the learner would be asked to place an object in a box so that the learner needs comprehensible input to react appropriately. QR codes attached to objects using this method might link audio, video, images, or text to support the comprehensibility and meaningful output of the task. In this way, QR codes might support L2 learning through TPRS. Overt grammar instruction has been shown to have little impact on language growth, whereas reading has a profound positive effect on language development. In addition, contextualizing language with physical movement and space has been found to stimulate working memory and support L2 acquisition. The gap between the physical classroom and the digital classroom can be bridged using QR codes in TPRS through the use of story-asking instead of the traditional story-telling.

QR codes visually indicate the specific location where each event occurred and asks students to recall each event and detail, which in turn compels them to also recall the target language structures needed to describe each event and detail. Higher order thinking skills are developed as students learn to retell and expand stories and extend plots beyond where they finish in the class or the text. The integration of QR code technology in the classroom provides a method for linking the digital and the physical world, which can be used to enhance teaching methodologies that connect the physical environment and the acquisition of a second language structure. This paper explores how QR codes enhance implicit grammar instruction of a second language by linking digital content with the physical contextualization of that content.

Keywords:

QR codes, second language learning, differentiated instruction, implicit grammar instruction, teaching proficiency with storytelling.