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Carolyn Batstone

Profile summary

  • Central Academic Staff
  • Senior Lecturer in German
  • Faculty of Wellbeing, Education & Language Studies
  • School of Languages & Applied Linguistics
  • Languages
  • carolyn.batstone

Professional biography

I am a lecturer in German in the Department of Languages, at the Open University.

Research interests

I am currently investigating modern foreign languages in mainstream schooling.  I am particularly interested in the status of German language teaching.

Since joining the Open University I have focussed on a range of research questions investigating adult language learners. I have looked at the integration of computer-based German teaching into residential language courses. I have studied how distance language learners choose to engage with the distance learning materials they are provided with.

I was a founding member of the Interaction Study Group involved in investigating oral interaction in tutorials. We researched oral interaction in both face-to-face and online tutorials, looking at the quantity of interaction taking place in the different media. This interactionwas then analysed according to its function within the tutorial.

I am currently investigating moern foreign languages in mainstream schooling. I am particularly interested in the status of German language teaching.

Teaching interests

I have worked on all levels of Open University German courses from beginners' (L193) through to advanced (L313). I have been involved recently in re-writing the second edition of L193 Rundblick: beginners' German.

In the past I was responsible for the re-make of L130 Auftakt: get ahead in German. This is a level 1 German language course. The course is the first in the department to develop an interactive DVD-ROM designed to teach speaking and listening skills to students. The course has course books, a website, and assessment materials. Students can take part in online and face-to-face tutorials. I was a course writer on L231 Motive. I have taught on Open University residential schools for level 1 courses Kapriolen, level 2 Motive, and Variationen (L213). I was part of the University's award winning team in 2001, which produced teaching materials for the first online tutorials attached to a course.

I am interested in how cultural knowledge can be taught at all levels through authentic target language materials.

 

 

Research groups

NameTypeParent Unit
Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology (CREET)CentreFaculty of Education and Language Studies
CREET: Language and Literacies Research ClusterClusterFaculty of Education and Language Studies

Publications

‘Distant Classmates: speech and silence in online and telephone language tutorials’ (2007-09-27)
Stickler, Ursula; Batstone, Carolyn; Duensing, Annette and Heins, Barbara
European Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 2007(2)

Spoken interaction in online and face-to-face language tutorials (2007-07)
Heins, Barbara; Duensing, Annette; Stickler, Ursula and Batstone, Carolyn
Computer Assisted Language Learning, 20(3) (pp. 279-295)

Distant Classmates: Speech and silence online and telephone language tutorials (2007)
Stickler, Ursula; Batstone, Carolyn; Duensing, Annette and Heins, Barbara
European Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 2

Face-to-face and online interactions - is a task a task? (2006)
Duensing, Annette; Stickler, Ursula; Batstone, Carolyn and Heins, Barbara
Journal of Learning Design, 1(2) (pp. 35-45)

Distant Classmates: comparing online and telephone language tutorials (2006-09-27)
Stickler, Ursula; Batstone, Carolyn; Duensing, Annette and Heins, Barbara
In : ICL 2006 (27-29 Sep 2006, Villach, Austria)

Distance and virtual distance: Preliminary results of a study of interaction patterns in synchronous audio graphic CMC and face-to-face tutorials in beginners’ language tutorials (2005)
Stickler, Ursula; Batstone, Carolyn; Duensing, Annette and Heins, Barbara
In : Proceedings of the 2004 International Symposium on Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching, Beijing and Shanghai (Aug 2004, Beijing and Shanghai, China) (pp. 740-750)