Topic 2: CALL IN LANGUAGE EDUCATION

 The deployment of CALL materials 

TESOL Technologies Standards for Teachers states "Language teachers identify and evaluate technological resources and environments for suitability to their teaching context." Similarly, Goal 1, Standard 2  refers to teachers' knowledge of "a wide range" of technology options and especially their ability to use those options "in a given setting." Indeed, environments determine to a large degree what a teacher or learner can and can't do with technology. 

Environments

• Classrooms

The technology available in classrooms is currently in a state of transition across institutions and in many cases within institutions as well. For the foreseeable future, teachers should be aware of the need to be flexible and adapt to the classrooms they find themselves in.

• Computer centers

In some institutions, language teachers have access to general-purpose computer clusters. In order to make these useful for language teaching, it may be necessary to work with lab coordinators or other IT staff to ensure that items such as headsets and microphones are included, along with language-focused tools like digital recording software and multi-lingual word processors.

• Dedicated language labs

The language lab of the past with networked audio recorders and listening stations has been replaced almost universally by computer clusters specifically for language learning. 

• Homes

Obviously, there is a great deal of variety in terms of what students and teachers have in the way of technology at home. If you intend to assign technology-based homework, it is useful to know exactly what sort of devices, applications, and networks your students have.

• Cafes and similar locales

In some settings, the only access some students will have is at Internet cafes and similar venues. It is important to note the limitations of these in terms of bandwidth, security, privacy (noise), and expense to the students.

• Mobile computing

Increasingly, students and teachers are carrying computational devices that greatly exceed the power of desktop computers from a decade or so ago. Smartphones and tablets like offer convenience especially for working with materials like vocabulary that can be handled in short chunks of time. However, they are often used in environments that include other distractions, and students and teachers should take these into account.

Identifying Resources

Finding suitable resources is not an easy task despite the increasingly large amount available for English and other commonly taught languages. Dedicated resources (those designed specifically for language learning), both free and commercial, abound. To locate desired materials on the web, good searching skills are needed. Becoming familiar with Google's more advanced search techniques and trying a range of search terms rather than just the first one that comes to mind will usually yield more favorable results than a basic search using a broad category term like "ESL". Other sources include professional organizations. For example, the TESOL CALL Interest Section has a virtual library with hundreds of tagged resources.

Tools

• Student learning resources: dictionaries (see http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/links/ESL/Dictionaries_and_Reference_Materials/) and other resources. Of particular value for ESL learners are learner's dictionaries, such as the Longman's Dictionary of Contemporary English online: http://www.ldoceonline.com/.

• Automated meaning technologies: Machine translation, e.g. http://translate.google.com  and popup online dictionaries like the Chrome extension by Google https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-dictionary-by-goog/mgijmajocgfcbeboacabfgobmjgjcoja.

• Lexical tools: Tom Cobb's Compleat Lexical Tutor: www.lextutor.ca.

• Media players. Media players have a range of controls that can aid in comprehension, such as the ability to show or even automatically produce captions (see Youtube). Some, like the VLC media player, https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html, have sliders to adjust playback speed and controls allowing jumping back 2 seconds to repeat what was just heard {Shift+back arrow}

• Google Docs (https://docs.google.com) allow for online writing and multiple-author collaboration through the sharing feature.

Materials

Authentic Language Materials. There are many, many options for this--here are just a few.

• General news sites such as CNN (www.cnn.com) and the New York Times  (www.nytimes.com/)  have rich Web presences.  The News Hour (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/) from PBS and CNN Student News (www.cnn.com/cnn10) include scripts and audio or video together.

• Podcasts at http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/60-second-science/ and many news and entertainment sites

• Online video banks: www.youtube.com 

• Google news: http://news.google.com. An excellent technique for more advanced students is to have them go to Google News for their own language, find an interesting and read it, and then follow up by reading three or more versions of the same story in English from different online sources. Scripts and transcripts from SimplyScripts (http://www.simplyscripts.com/tv_all.html) for movies and TV shows--great for building a vocabulary of English in context. See also http://www.eslnotes.com/ for vocabulary support for a number of movies (up to around 2003).

The three stages of CALL 

• Behavioristic CALL: conceived in the 1950s and implemented in the 1960s and 1970s.

• Communicative CALL: 1970s to 1980s.

• Integrative CALL: embracing Multimedia and the Internet: 1990s.

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An Extra Stage, the intelligent CALL

The intelligent CALL (ICALL) suggests a new stage of CALL, which includes technologies such as speech recognition and text-to-speech systems with automatic feedback, machine learning, learning about learners’ mistakes, and using data about learners’ progress. All of this is used to optimize the learning experience of individual learners. The optimization process, which is based on many different types of information about the learners’ progress, is called granulation. Using granular systems, i.e. systems equipped with mechanisms for data collection about users’ learning behavior, are not only popular in assessment programs but also in many language-learning systems with educational purposes.

CALL Evaluation 

Some CALL evaluands would appear to be best evaluated qualitatively and others quantitatively, this too may be limiting. Rather than basing the type of approach on the nature of the evaluation, it should be based on a series of factors including the nature of the evaluation, the evaluation questions, and the evaluation criteria. For example, when considering the evaluation of a multiple-choice test, evaluators might think that using a quantitative approach would work best. 

The SLA-based approach to evaluation is best exemplified by the work of Chapelle (2001), who identifies six research-based criteria for the evaluation of CALL tasks that can be used for both judgemental and empirical evaluation.

The six criteria of the evaluation model are:

1. Language Learning Potential.

This criterion indicates in what measure a task is able to foster learning, from an exquisitely interactionist viewpoint (Chapelle, 2009). The level of this potential is given by the number of opportunities, within the task, to promote a focus on form as described by Skehan.

2. Learner fit.
The task should be designed so that learners have the opportunity, according to their level and competencies, to carry out the task utilizing their own resources and develop their linguistic system.
3. Meaning focus.
The task is meaning-oriented; that is to say, it is oriented to the usage of language to solve real problems (i.e. tasks) and, consequently, the subject’s attention is focused on meaning. When the form/meaning system goes into a crisis, that is, when there is a problem of communication due to the imperfect mastery of a form, we have to focus on form, which is one of the factors that determine linguistic appropriation from an interactionist standpoint.
4. Authenticity.
This criterion, partially related to the previous one, establishes that the more a task (thence the language used to carry it out) resembles real-life tasks, i.e. situations that may occur outside learning contexts, the greater the motivation and, therefore, the wish to communicate.
5. Positive impact.
This criterion collects all the benefits of a task that is not strictly speaking linguistic, for instance, metalinguistic competency. This criterion actually refers to some aspects, such as socialization, which, if seen from a historic-cultural perspective, are central.
6. Practicability.
The last criterion indicates the level of technical difficulty to carry out a given task in a given context, for example, which machinery is needed.