Computers in the language classroom
1.What is CALL ?
Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) is closely related to many other disciplines and the computer. As a tool to aid teaching and learning, CALL is often subsumed within them. For example, CALL has become increasingly integrated into research on and the practice of the general skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening as well as into discrete fields, such as autonomy, corpus linguistics, and testing. The difficulty of defining CALL is apparent in this selection of related terms and acronyms :
• Computer-aided instruction (CAI)
• Computer assisted learning (CAL)
• Computer assisted language instruction (CALI)
• Computer – assisted language teaching (or testing) (CALT)
• Computer adaptive teaching (or testing) (CAT)
• Computer-based training (CBT)
• Computer-mediated communication (CMC)
• Computer-mediated instruction (CMI)
• Intelligent computer assisted language learning (ICALL)
Some of these terms are synonymous with CALL, while some shift focus to narrower concerns. But, given the breadth of what may go on in CALL, a general and useful working definition is : any process in which a learner uses a computer and, as a result, improves his or her language.
Under this definition, CALL covers a broad range of activities. This is reflected in the diverse topics one is likely to read in CALL journals: materials design, explanations of computer teachnologies, pedagogical theories about working at the computer, and the computer as a mode of instruction, to name a few. CALL materials include those specificallALL materials include those specifically created to teaching language (for example, English language newspaper Web sites or computer games with heavy English content).
CALL continues to grow in many directions. Understanding its scope is future complicated by constant advancement in hardware and software and an increase in computer literacy among both teachers and learners. Three decades ago, CALL would have been constrained to on-screen written exercises with simple graphics. Currently, CALL interactions are likely to include sound, animation, video and communication over local area networks (LANs), email and Internet chat lines. It would not be rash to predict that CALL will soon feature learner immersion in full vitual reality.
CALL is popular both in and out of the classroom. Classrooms may feature a single computer, a class set or even a situation in which portable laptop computers are issued to each learner who carries them from class to class along with, or instead of, books.
In the classroom, CALL activities may be used both as a reward and a remedial aid. Some classes are CALL language labs, building on the functions of traditional listening labs.But because of CALL’s difficulty in accommodatinglistening and speaking, it is almost always used as a supplement to traditional classroom teaching and learning. Outside the classroom, many commercial applications promote themselves as complete methods for learning a language or part of a language, particularly in programs aimed at business travelers. But there is no empirical evidence of anyone ever learning to speak a new language simply by using a computer.
Background to teaching with CALL
CALL in the language classroom is, in some cases, evolving as quickly as computer teachnology itself evolves. In other cases, CALL in the language classroom is relatively unchanged from the behaviorist directives of the 1950s. For example, the most traditional and still most common form of CALL programs are behaviorist computer-based gap-fill drills, in which learners answer questions or fill in information in cloze exercises, where key or random words have been replaced with spaces. This approach is closely associated with B.F. Skinner (1954, 1957, 1968), whose approach emphasized rote learning, along with the techniques of mimicry and memorization through repetitive drills. Learners are rewarded by small positive response, often including the right to move to a new level of drill.
Skiner’s behaviorist theories found practical application in programmed instruction or programmed learning. A behaviorist model suggests learners can be taught a wide variety of subject if presented with information in small steps, each step requiring appropriate responses (i.e. correct answer to questions) before offering more difficult or more advanced steps. Such an idea seems machine-like and, in fact, Thorndike put forward the idea of an automated mechanical book in 1912, and such a machine was constructed as early as 1926. It featured multiple-choice questions on a rotating drum and four keys for selecting answers. The machine collected the responses and even distributed a candy when all thr correct choices were made (Merrill, et al., 1996)
Skinner (1968) suggested the machine was ahead of its time, but supported the idea of machine instruction as a way of increasing learners autonomy to avoid an essential problem, the pace of instruction in a group of learners whose comprehension and learning rates are at different levels :
Even in a small classroom the teacher usually knows that he is going too slowly for some students and too fast for others. Those who could go faster are penalized, and those who should go slowly are poorly taught and unnecessarily punished by criticism and failure. Machine instruction would permit each student to proceed at his own rate (p.30).
The potential benefits for learners proceeding at their own rate crosses the boundaries of different models of instruction, and the arrival of the computer presented an ideal technology for programmed instruction. Programs could be linear, with all learners following the same path or branching with learners facing more difficult questions if their answers were correct or undertaking remedial training and/or questions if their answers were wrong.
Many the above features of programmed instruction are still common in CALL today, but Stevens (1992) notes it fell from popularity in language learning because it tended to focus on details and surface forms of the language at the expense of real-world communication.
Despite these criticisms, programmed instruction comtinues to be pervasive in CALL, sometimes combined with other, less behaviorist features. The reason for its enduring appeal may simply be that programmed instruction is an easy-if not ideal-thing for the computer to do. Today, a popular use of such programs is in teaching learners how to pass standardized tests.
A typical computer-based gap-fill drill lessen might look something like this.
Example
1. Learners enter the program and asked for personal information,such as a name, that personalized some of the coming content.
2. Learners select from a menu of options what they would like to learn. Choices might include presentation of language items in different formats, such as a story, a video of a conversation, a flowchart, or table.
3. A new language item or set of of items to be learned are presented, giving a connntextual demonstratiom of its meaning. This on-screen modeling may be done through associations with pictures, sounds, animation, and/or video. Further explanations may be available through pull-down menus, timed prompts, or hyperlinks (text or images which are linked, by a mouse click, to further information).
4. Learners are given a choice of repeating the presentation of information, seeing the information presented in another form, or proceeding to a test.
5. The test offers some kind of immediate feedback. The feedback may be as simple as a score or may offer detailed critiques of the correct and incorrect answers provided by the learners.
6. Based on the learners success, they are either directed back to the same presentation of information or a variation of it.
7. Steps 3 through 6 are repeated until the learners achieve success. Then they are either moved along to a parallel set of language items or to a more difficult level. Alternatively, if the learners choose to exit the program, the program may keep a record of their attempts for future (and/or teacher) reference.
Beyond behaviorism, psychologist F.C. Bartlett first proposed the idea of schema theory in 1932. Nunan (1993) defines schema theory as, “A theory of language processing which suggests that discourse is interpreted with reference to the background knowledge of the reader or listener” (p.124). Nunan also notes, “… schema theory suggests that the knowledge we carry around in our heads is organized into interrelated patterns. These are constructed from all our previous experiences and they enable us to make predictios about future experience” (p.71). Anderson (1988) helps to define a schema approach to teaching and learning by suggesting it is one in which knowledge is :
…not merely a collection of facts. Although we may be able to memorize isolated facts for a short while … meaningful learning demands that we internalize information; we break it down, digest it and locate it in our pre-existing highly complex web of interconnected knowledge and ideas, building fresh links and restructuring old ones (p.197)
Schema theory is the foundation of constructivism. In a constructivist approach, a software program draws on the expertise of the learner and builds on it, offering multiple paths of inquiry and different ways of looking at the same problem or challenge. A typical constructivist program involves the learner in