Perspectives on Technology in Learning and Teaching Languages Gumawang Jati
What do you think? Rapid evolution of communication technologies has changed language pedagogy and language use, enabling new forms of discourse, new forms of authorship new ways to create and participate in communities.
How do these changes affect the ways we learn, use, and teach languages?
Cell phones "personal digital assistants" Web-based communication. E-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, Usenet groups, MOOs, blogs, and wikis
Should CALL Still Be Called CALL? ď śComputer-assisted language learning (CALL) may be defined as "the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning." (Levy, 1997, p. 1) ď śCALL means learners learning language in any context with, through, and around computer technologies. (Egbert, 2005, p. 4)
The History of CALL Computers have been used for language teaching since the 1960s. Thie history can be roughly divided into three main stages: Behavioristic CALL, Communicative CALL, Integrative CALL. Each stage corresponds to a certain level of technology as well as a certain pedagogical approach.
Behavioristic CALL Behavioristic CALL, conceived in the 1950s and implemented in the 1960s and 1970s. Informed by the behaviorist learning model, this mode of CALL featured repetitive language drills, referred to as drill-and-practice (or, pejoratively, as "drill-and-kill"). In this paradigm, especially popular in the United States, the computer was viewed as a mechanical tutor which never grew tired or judgmental and allowed students to work at an individual pace. The best-known tutorial system, PLATO, featured extensive drills, grammatical explanations, and translation tests at various intervals (Ahmad, Corbett, Rogers, & Sussex, 1985).
The communicative CALL The communicative CALL, emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s The behavioristic approaches to language teaching were being rejected at both the theoretical and pedagogical level At that time new personal computers were creating greater possibilities for individual work. Proponents of communicative CALL stressed that computerbased activities should focus more on using forms teach grammar implicitly rather than implicitly, allow and encourage students to generate original utterances rather than just manipulate prefabricated language, and use the target language predominantly or even exclusively (Jones & Fortescue, 1987; Phillips, 1987; Underwood, 1984).
The communicative CALL Communicative CALL corresponded to cognitive theories; which stressed that learning was a process of discovery, expression, and development.
Popular CALL software developed in this time text reconstruction programs (which allowed students working alone or in groups to rearrange words and texts to discover patterns of language and meaning) and simulations (which stimulated discussion and discovery among students working in pairs or groups). The focus was not so much on what students did with the machine, but rather what they with each other while working at the computer.
Integrative CALL. By late 1980s-1990s many teachers were moving away from a cognitive view of communicative teaching to a more social or socio-cognitive view. Placed greater emphasis on language use in authentic social contexts
Task-based, project-based, and content-based approaches all sought to integrate learners in authentic environments, and also to integrate the various skills of language learning and use. This led to a new perspective on technology and language learning, has been termed integrative CALL (Warschauer, 1996b), a perspective which seeks both to integrate various skills (e.g., listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and also integrate technology more fully into the language learning process
In integrative approaches, ď ś Many teachers were moving away from a cognitive view of communicative teaching to a more social or socio-cognitive view, which placed greater emphasis on language use in authentic social contexts.
ď ś Task-based, project-based, and content-based approaches all sought to integrate learners in authentic environments, and also to integrate the various skills of language learning and use. ď ś This led to a new perspective on technology and language learning, which has been termed integrative CALL (Warschauer, 1996b), a perspective which seeks both to integrate various skills (e.g., listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and also integrate technology more fully into the language learning process.
In integrative approaches ď śMany of the changes in CALL paradigms flow from economic and social changes. ď śThe shift to global information-based economies has meant a dramatic increase in the need to deal with large amounts of information and to communicate across languages and cultures.
Questions?
The impact of www in CALL (1) The first materials appearing in the early 90s. The impact, • CALL by being cheaper and easier to develop and often cheaper and easier to run, and by offering real possibilities for authentic interaction.
Problems at that time (but not now): (1) access to the Web is still often unreliable and slow, especially from modem access; (2) oral production skills cannot yet be supported meaningfully; (3) some students dislike/resist working with the Web (or any IT); (4) some students find the experience isolating; and (5) Web technology is still not well suited to delivery of sound and video.
The impact of www in CALL (2) Early materials The earliest materials took the form of textbooks on the Web, grammar exercises, and large and ever growing collections of materials. They have all undergone continuous change. Examples are the Bucknell Russian Program; The German Electronic Textbook and German for Beginners; English for Beginners
Virtual classrooms These tend to be fee-paying stand-alone courses that are password protected, offering free trial materials open to anyone. They range from one person operations like Cyberitalian and Interdeutsch to large organisations like GlobalEnglish that employ considerable staff and offer a 24 hour attended chat site and other extensive services.
Grammar exercises There is a multiplicity of grammar exercises on the Web, most of them using fill-ins, usually but not always in the context of a whole sentence, or multiple choice questions. Occasionally, this is a Web-based course, with exercises linked to pages that explain the structures. More often the exercises supplement an off-line course, and may be linked directly to specific textbooks.
Quizzes, games, templates There is a large variety of ready-made templates for the creation of quizzes and games online to choose from. Similarly Hot Potatoes offers six applications for the creation of interactive multiple-choice, shortanswer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the Web.
ď śWebquests ď śThis has been one of the most rapidly developing areas in Web teaching. Activities have shifted from early task-based activities
Publishers’ Web material This is another of the fastest growing areas with publishers like Heinle & Heinle and Prentice Hall among others providing a large variety of supplementary materials geared to their textbooks.
Co-operative ventures The Web lends itself perfectly to co-operative and collaborative activities between students at the same or different institutions, often with the final goal of publishing the work online. One excellent example is the Project-driven Foreign Language Learning which integrates multimedia tools into project-driven language learning and in which students share the outcomes of their work with worldwide audiences by publishing on the Web.
Questions?
Questions of Effectiveness Do computers improve language learning? The complexity of the issues involved in technology and language learning is pushing us to look beyond gross decontextualized measures of effectiveness to understand effectiveness in terms of the specifics of what people do with computers, how they do it, and what it means to them. ICT?
The context of Indonesia (research) Computers and Culture CURRENT RESEARCH COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION Electronic Literacies Telecollaboration
Future Research (??) Transversal relationships Reading and writing electronically Curricularissues Sociopolitical issues