To Vote or Not to Vote: That Is the Question.

Though the use of ICT in the foreign language classroom is omnipotent and a wide variety of CALL applications are implemented during class time, little research has been conducted on the use of interactive response systems to aid acquisition. In an aim to ascertain whether the use of an interactive response system, namely JustVote, would enable students to perform better when completing computer-based activities than when completing paper-based activities, an experiment was conducted in a Greek EFL classroom. Two groups of elementary students were created for the purpose of the experiment; a traditional group and a technology group. Both groups were exposed to Processing Instruction, a new genre of grammar instruction, which requires students to complete structured input activities after receiving explicit instruction, which in this case was on the English causative form. It is these structured input activities which were created on paper and on JustVote and which the two groups were exposed to. JustVote is a system that affords sophisticated software, which provides learners with the opportunity to interact with and respond to questions that appear on screen, by using their own personal handsets. During class time, there appears to be increased motivation and interest on the part of students and teachers alike and as such, it was deemed that students exposed to activities on the JustVote system would demonstrate higher results, due to the fact that the multiple choice questions were accompanied by vibrant images and students had the opportunity to ‘vote’ using their personal handsets, a factor that engages students and generates an element of fun. Further motivation for the study was provided by the fact that the JustVote questions were projected on an interactive whiteboard, a CALL application which according to Orr (2008) has brought the “wow” factor to the classroom. Despite this, however, and the fact that interactive whiteboards are ubiquitous in the contemporary EFL classroom, there is little empirical research on the positive effects the boards may have on second language acquisition. The results of the experiment were certainly interesting and will be discussed during the presentation; in brief, they demonstrated that the performance of the technology group was undoubtedly better than that of the traditional group short-term, providing an affirmative response to the question: To vote or not to vote?, and a motive to conduct further research.