In sum, from the moment computers became financially accessible to the
ordinary mortal, a whole range of enthusiastic teachers, computer
scientists, and marketing managers have suggested that CALL might solve
many of the current problems of the educational system. However, mainly
because of software limitations resulting from an incorrect appreciation of
the computer’s power and role in the complex process of teaching and
learning, the hopes pinned on CALL have turned out to be unjustified.
If we regard the computer not as a magical box, but as a medium as
useful and as limited as other media at our disposal, a different approach to
its use in teaching emerges. Our starting point will not be the question
‘What can I do with my computer?’ (Answer: ‘Cloze exercises, drills,
simple multiple-choice questions’), but ‘Which medium should I use to
teach such and such a skill?’ The answer to this latter question might be the
blackboard, the video, printed matter or the tape recorder or whatever. It is
rarely ‘the computer’. Thomas (1986) rightly observes that:
The only justification for the wholesale introduction of computers into
the language-teaching classroom is if they can be shown to do something
which research into second-language acquisition suggests is pedagogically
well-motivated and that they can do something which either is
not being done at present, or can do it more cheaply or efficiently than is
being done at present. (Thomas 1986:129)
I claim that it is justifiable to use the computer as a teaching aid within
the framework of teaching reading comprehension, and I hope that the
material and software that I have developed fulfil such conditions.
Teaching reading At my university my colleagues and I teach French-speaking students in
comprehension skills Psychology and Social Sciences to read English for professional purposes.
These students are not taught to write, speak, or comprehend oral discourse.
In the following section, I shall briefly outline some of the sub-skills
which we attempt to develop with these students, bearing in mind that ‘a
learner will not become a proficient reader simply by attending a reading
course or working through a reading textbook’ (Williams 1986:44).
Speed and flexibility Reading speed is a major problem in this type of teaching. Among a given
class of students, reading speed may vary enormously, resulting in boredom
for faster readers waiting for classroom activity to continue, and frustration
for the slowest, who are never allowed to read a text to the end.
Furthermore, we believe that one should attempt to increase the reading
speed of all our students. This requires the apparently contradictory action
of controlling reading time and doing so for each student individually. It is
clear, that for this purpose at least, the computer is the only medium which
offers such control.
In the context of reading, flexibility expresses the need for different
modes of reading, adapted to various types of text and goals in reading
them: for example, one reads an abstract in an academic journal one way,
and an article in Reader’s Digest in another.
This is to some extent related to reading speed control, as skim-reading of
certain texts can be ‘forced’. Highlighting a text and focussing on logical
connectors will also develop this sub-skill. This can be achieved using
printed matter and, more vividly, overhead projection, but the computer
allows the combination of visual display with time control, and can do this
individually for each student.