New Perspectives on CALL for Second Language Classrooms

Sandra Fotos, Charles M. Browne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780805844047
• eBook ISBN: 9781135628475
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This practical handbook is designed to help language teachers, teacher trainers, and students learn more about their options for using computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and develop an understanding of the theory and research supporting these options.

The chapters in New Perspectives on CALL for Second Language Classrooms synthesize previous CALL theory and research and describe practical applications to both second and foreign language classrooms, including procedures for evaluating these applications. The implementation of CALL at the institutional level is also addressed, with attention to designing multimedia language laboratories and creating collaborative CALL-based projects between educational institutions. Although many chapters locate their descriptions of CALL activities and projects within the ESL/EFL setting, the principles and activities described are equally useful for other language settings.

The book does not require prior knowledge of CALL, computers, or software. To assist readers, a glossary of CALL terms and an appendix of CALL Web sites are provided. The book also has its own accompanying Web site (http://www.erlbaum.com/callforL2classrooms) presenting chapter abstracts, author contact information, and regularly updated links to pedagogical, research, and teacher development sites.

By integrating theoretical issues, research findings, and practical guidelines on different aspects of CALL, this book offers teachers multiple levels of resources for their own professional development, for needs-based creation of specific CALL activities, for curriculum design, and for implementation of institutional and inter-institutional CALL projects.

II

PERSPECTIVES ON CLASSROOM CALL

The six chapters in Part II address the use of CALL in the L2 classroom by integrating theory, research, and case studies with practical options for the teacher. Although some chapters describe the successful implementation of different forms of CALL-based instruction in the English as a foreign language (EFL) setting, the projects and activities are useful for all L2 classrooms, and are designed to increase student engagement with the target language, a goal that is particularly important in the foreign language context.

In the first chapter, “Learner Training for Effective Use of CALL,” Hubbard observes that the typical second language student has received little training in how to exploit CALL effectively for language acquisition. Noting that CALL learners are often required to take responsibility for their own learning, Hubbard introduces the concept of CALL learner training and argues that it should be a central part of the field. He reviews developments in learner training presented in the research literature, including learner control, interactivity, motivation, and authenticity of communication. He then focuses on effective use of tutorial software and meaning technologies, concluding with a discussion of the role of CALL practitioners, researchers and software publishers in developing this area further.

Pennington’s chapter, “Electronic Media in Second Language Writing: An Overview of Tools and Research Findings,” gives a detailed introduction to the use of CALL for L2 writing instruction. First presenting a review of research on the use of electronic media, she then moves to consideration of CALL-based writing. Focusing on the writing process in the contexts of word processing, networked computers, and hypermedia, Pennington examines trends in literacy and communication that suggest the use of Local Area Networks (LANs), and e-mail exchanges computer will play a key role in future models of language learning and teaching. Her chapter thus provides an important theoretical introduction to the two chapters on CALL-based writing projects that follow.

In the next chapter, “Teaching Second and Foreign Language Writing on LANs,” Braine discusses the development of LANs and presents research on their use in L2 writing classes, noting both the pros and cons of using LANs. Describing the differences between second and foreign language learning contexts, he uses findings from his research on ESL and EFL writing over LANs to suggest that LAN-based writing instruction motivates students to interact more freely, as well as helps them to share ideas and feedback from their classmates and teacher simultaneously. Braine also notes that teacher-centered classes are often transformed into classes where the students dominate interactions. Finally, he presents teachers with a range of instructional options for using LAN-based projects to improve student writing quality.

In her chapter, “Writing as Talking: E-mail Exchange for Promoting Proficiency and Motivation in the Foreign Language Classroom,” Fotos discusses the differences between writing and speech, reviewing research that suggests that e-mail is similar to speech in written form and can thus be considered a new discourse genre. She describes an e-mail exchange program between university EFL students and American student keypals, noting that the e-mail project provided authentic L2 resources, promoted overall L2 proficiency gains, and led to increased levels of intercultural awareness and motivation to study the target language. Such e-mail exchange programs are suggested to be especially useful in the foreign language context since they provide exposure to the target language outside the classroom. Suggestions for teachers on how to set up their own projects are also provided.

Taylor and Gitsaki note that the growth of information and resources on the Internet is rapidly transforming CALL into WELL (web-enhanced language learning) in their chapter “Teaching WELL and Loving IT.” They review changes in CALL that have led to WELL, finding that problems in adapting WELL to the classrooms frequently arise because of the Web’s lack of structure and overabundance of material. Noting that the challenge is to select online material when there is no underlying syllabus, the authors offer a pedagogical framework for the use of the Web for language learning, providing activities and teacher guidelines for implementing each stage of the framework. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the results of a classroom-based research project in the university EFL setting measuring student attitudes and beliefs towards the use of CALL and WELL.

In the final chapter of this section, “Creating Course-Specific CD-ROMs for Interactive Language Use,” Iwabuchi and Fotos discuss teacher creation of program-specific materials on CD-ROMs. Noting that many parts of the world lack the advanced technology and infrastructure required to support LANs or web-based L2 learning, the authors suggest that CD-ROMs are still a robust source of multimedia providing students with authentic L2 material that can be used outside the classroom, an important consideration in the foreign language setting. The results of a survey suggest that the students who used the courseware especially appreciated the provision of supplementary material such as dictionaries and translation into the students’ first language (L1) on CD ROMs. The chapter presents guidelines, checklists, and evaluative procedures for teacher development of courseware providing a communicative review of content, structure, and vocabulary taught in the L2 classroom.

4

Learner Training for Effective Use of CALL

Philip Hubbard
Stanford University

The past decade has seen remarkable developments in CALL applications on CD-ROMs and over the Internet. Unfortunately, the typical language student using these applications has received little, if any, training toward developing a foundation in how to utilize them effectively for language acquisition. A fundamental quandary in CALL is that learners are increasingly required to take a significant amount of responsibility for their own learning, whether that learning is taking place through the programmed teaching presence in tutorial software or the unstructured spaces of the World Wide Web. They are expected to do this despite the fact that they know little or nothing of how languages are learned compared to an appropriately trained teacher. And they are expected to do this within a domain—that of the computer—that is still relatively unfamiliar as a language-learning environment to most of them.

The goal of this chapter is to introduce the concept of CALL learner training and to provide guidance for making it a more central part of CALL than has thus far been the case. Although CALL learner training clearly has a much wider scope, the focus here is on the classroom teacher who is training students within the confines of his or her own class. Like any other addition to the curriculum, learner training takes both preparation time and class time, and teachers wishing to implement it need to consider the obvious costs and weigh them against the potential benefits. These considerations will have to take into account the particular classroom environment, the teacher’s own training and language teaching approach, the objectives of the course, and the proficiency level and readiness of students to take control. Before they can make these judgments appropriately, however, teachers need to understand what learner training is and how they can go about doing it.

The chapter begins by reviewing developments in some related areas of CALL and language learning in general, including computer literacy training, training for specific applications, learner control issues, learner strategy training, and learner autonomy. It then introduces a set of five general principles for CALL learner training. In the next section it discusses three areas in which learner training based on these principles can take place—computer-mediated communication, use of authentic materials from the Web, and use of tutorial programs—and emphasizes the importance of training in the effective use of meaning technologies such as captioning and hypertext dictionaries, for all three. In the following section, it presents an example of learner training for a specific course in academic listening for advanced ESL students. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the scope and limitations of learner training and the role of CALL teachers, researchers, and software developers in cultivating this area further.

LEARNER TRAINING RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

Before beginning the discussion of learner training, I would like to clarify the scope of CALL for this chapter because CALL means different things to different people. A convenient classification for CALL applications has been provided by Levy (1997) in his distinction of tutorial versus tool uses of computer technology. According to Levy, a computer functioning in a tutorial role acts as a temporary teacher, providing instruction or guided practice, whereas a computer functioning in the tool role does not have these teaching attributes (p. 181). A typical example of a tutorial application would be a grammar practice or vocabulary learning program; a typical tool application would be a web search engine, an e-mail program, or a word processor. In discussing learner training here, I include both tutorial and tool uses, as well as intermediate applications, such as online dictionaries, which arguably function as either tutors or tools depending on the task and intent of the learner.

In reviewing the research and practice literature, this section begins with training and related issues, such as control, specifically in CALL environments. It then looks at two general areas of learner training with obvious relevance to CALL: learner strategy training and learner autonomy.

General Computer Training

The majority of published studies with a training component, particularly from the early years of CALL, involve training in the technology itself. An excellent recent review of both the techniques and pitfalls in providing basic computer skills (what used to be called computer literacy) can be found in Beller-Kenner (1999). More recently, such training has focused on introducing students to the Internet and the World Wide Web, such as how to make an Internet connection and how browsers and web directories operate.

There are few examples of providing training to students that would help them explicitly link that technology to language pedagogy. This is not surprising. Before the spread of the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems, the machines were harder to learn to operate. Even the skill of keyboarding was an important one to teach to many students before they could begin using word processing efficiently. Until recently, computers have not been considered a natural part of the language education environment, and many of today’s practicing teachers did not grow up with them.

Clearly, students need to understand how to operate a computer effectively and what the more common controls of any application do. As more and more students come into language classes already computer proficient and as interfaces continue to move toward either standard or intuitive forms, we can expect training of this sort to be less critical and more often done on an individual, remedial basis.

Training for Specific Applications

A number of books and articles have emphasized the importance of training the learner in how to use specific applications, both CALL and non-CALL, so as to avoid frustration or simply to be able to complete an assigned task (e.g., Huntley, 1997; Morrison, 1997). Most recently, this has involved Internet applications such as web browsers and search engines (Ryan, 1997), e-mail (Gaer, 1999), and MOOs and MUDs (multiuser domains; Falsetti, Frizler, Schweitzer, & Younger, 1997). Jones (2001, p. 2) observes that “learners’ lack of technical competence” is a major constraint on successful CALL practice, and that technical training for some Internet projects can take hours away from other communicative activities. It is also worth noting that learner training for specific applications goes beyond the learner-computer interaction. Levy (1997, p. 200) cites a report on collaborative e-mail projects by Eck, Legenhausen, and Wolff (1994) as recognizing “the considerable demands placed on learners, who, as well as needing technical know-how, have to conduct extensive planning and long-term coordination.”

Tutorial programs often include their own operational tutorials or detailed instructions in the layout of the user interface and functions of available controls (for a quiz on how nonintuitive these controls can be, see Beller-Kenner, 1999). Unfortunately, students (and sometimes teachers) anxious to get into the main parts of the program find it easy to bypass this important orientation step.

As with general computer skills, there is no question that knowing how to use an application is a prerequisite for knowing how to use it effectively. Although much of this chapter is oriented toward pedagogical issues in learner training, it remains the case that this type of basic operational instruction is still needed for students to succeed in CALL activities. There is also another aspect of familiarizing learners with specific applications that may need to be addressed: Learner anxiety. Lewis and Atzert (2000) report on the computer-related frustration and anxiety found in students doing collaborative web projects that required them to publish over the Internet. They offer suggestions for rechanneling that anxiety in productive ways through critical reflection.

Learner Co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• I Introduction to Call
• II Perspectives on Classroom Call
• III Implementing Call in Institutional Settings
• IV Evaluating Call
• V Conclusion
• Glossary of CALL Terms
• Appendix: List of Web Sites
• Author Index
• Subject Index