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A Definition of CALL
Computer Assisted Language Learning
(CALL) is often perceived, somewhat narrowly, as an approach to language
teaching and learning in which the computer is used as an aid to the
presentation, reinforcement and assessment of material to be learned, usually
including a substantial interactive element.
Levy (1997:1)
defines CALL more succinctly and more broadly as "the search for and study
of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning". Levy's
definition is in line with the view held by the majority of modern CALL
practitioners. For a comprehensive overview of CALL see ICT4LT Module
1.4, Introduction to Computer Assisted Language Learning(CALL): http://www.ict4lt.org/.
CALL's origins can be traced back to
the 1960s. Up until the late 1970s CALL projects were confined mainly to
universities, where computer programs were developed on large mainframe
computers. The PLATO project, initiated at the University of Illinois in 1960,
is an important landmark in the early development of CALL (Marty 1981).
In the late 1970s, the arrival of the personal computer (PC)
brought computing within the range of a wider audience, resulting in a boom in
the development of CALL programs and a flurry of publications. Early CALL
favoured an approach that drew heavily on practices associated with programmed instruction. This was reflected in the term
Computer Assisted Language Instruction (CALI), which originated in the USA and
was in common use until the early 1980s, when CALL became the dominant term.
There was initially a lack of imagination and skill on the part of programmers,
a situation that was rectified to a considerable extent by the publication of
an influential seminal work by Higgins & Johns (1984),
which contained numerous examples of alternative approaches to CALL. Throughout
the 1980s CALL widened its scope, embracing the communicative
approach and a range of new technologies. CALL has now
established itself as an important area of research in
higher education: see the joint EUROCALL/CALICO/IALLT Research Policy
Statement: http://www.eurocall-languages.org /research/research_policy.htm. See also the History of
CALL website:http://www.history-of-call.org/.
Traditional CALL programs presented
a stimulus to which the learner had to provide
a response. In early CALL programs the stimulus was in
the form of text presented on screen, and the only way in which the learner
could respond was by entering an answer at the keyboard. Some programs were
very imaginative in the way text was presented, making use of colour to
highlight grammatical features (e.g. gender in French and case endings in
German) and movement to illustrate points of syntax (e.g. position of
adjectives in French and subordinate clause word order in German).
Discrete error analysis and feedback were
a common feature of traditional CALL, and the more sophisticated programs would
attempt to analyse the learner's response, pinpoint errors, and branch to help
and remedial activities. A typical example of this approach is the CLEF package for learners of French, which was
developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s by a consortium of Canadian
universities. A Windows version of CLEF has recently been released: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/clef.htm Error analysis in
CALL is, however, a matter of controversy. Practitioners who come into CALL via
the disciplines of computational linguistics,
e.g. Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Human Language Technologies (HLT),
tend to be more optimistic about the potential of error analysis by computer
than those who come into CALL via language teaching: see ICT4LT Module
3.5, Human Language Technologies: http://www.ict4lt.org/. The approach adopted by
the authors of CLEF was to anticipate common
errors and build in appropriate feedback. An alternative approach is the use
of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to parse the learner's response - so-called
"intelligent CALL" (ICALL) - but there is a gulf between those who
favour the use of AI to develop CALL programs (Matthews 1994)
and, at the other extreme, those who perceive this approach as a threat to
humanity (Last 1989:153).
More recent approaches to CALL have
favoured a learner-centred, explorative approach
rather than a teacher-centred, drill-based approach to CALL. The explorative
approach is characterised by the use of concordance programs in
the languages classroom - an approach described as Data-Driven Learning (DLL) by Tim Johns (Johns & King 1991). There are a number of concordance programs on the market,
e.g. MonoConc, Concordance,Wordsmith and SCP - all of
which are described in ICT4LT Module 2.4, Using concordance programs in
the modern foreign languages classroom: http://www.ict4lt.org/. See also Tribble &
Jones (1990).
The explorative approach is widely used today, including the use of Web concordancers and other Web-based CALL
activities.
Early personal computers were
incapable of presenting authentic recordings of the human voice and easily
recognizable images, but this limitation was overcome by combining a personal
computer and a 12-inch videodisc player, which made it possible to combine
sound, photographic-quality still images and video recordings in imaginative
presentations - in essence the earliest manifestation of multimedia CALL. The result was the development ofinteractive videodiscs for language learners such
as Montevidisco (Schneider & Bennion 1984), Expodisc (Davies 1991),
and A la rencontre de Philippe (Fuerstenberg 1993), all of
which were designed as simulations in which the learner played a key role.
The techniques learned in the 1980s
by the developers of interactive videodiscs were adapted for the multimedia personal computers (MPCs), which
incorporated CD-ROM drives and were in widespread use by the early 1990s. The
MPC is now the standard form of personal computer. CD-ROMs were used in the
1980s initially to store large quantities of text and later to store sound,
still images and video. By the mid-1990s a wide range of multimedia CD-ROMs for
language learners was available, including imaginative simulations such as
the Who is Oscar Lake? series:http://www.languagepub.com/. The quality of video
recordings offered by CD-ROM technology, however, was slow to catch up with
that offered by the earlier interactive videodiscs. The Digital Video Disc (DVD) offers much higher
quality video recordings, e.g. the Eurotalk Advanced Level DVD-ROM
series: http://www.eurotalk.co.uk/. A feature of many multimedia CALL
programs is the role-play activity, in which the learner can record his/her own
voice and play it back as part of a continuous dialogue with a native speaker.
Other multimedia programs make use of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
software to diagnose learners' errors, e.g. Tell Me More Pro by
Auralog:http://www.auralog.com/english.html.
Most CALL programs under development today fall into the category of multimedia
CALL. See ICT4LT Module 2.2, Introduction to multimedia CALL: http://www.ict4lt.org/.
In 1992 the World Wide Web was launched, reaching the general
public in 1993. The Web offers enormous potential in language learning and
teaching, but it has some way to go before it catches up with the interactivity
and speed of access offered by CD-ROMs or DVDs, especially when accessing sound
and video files. For this reason, Felix (2001:190)
advises adopting hybrid approaches to CALL,
integrating CD-ROMs and the Web and running audio conferencing and video
conferencing in conjunction with Web activities. The Web Enhanced Language
Learning (WELL) project, which has been funded under the FDTL programme of the
HEFCE, aims to promote wider awareness and more effective use of the Web for teaching
modern languages across higher education in the UK. The WELL website provides
access to high-quality Web resources in a number of different languages,
selected and described by subject experts, plus information and examples on how
to use them for teaching and learning: http://www.well.ac.uk/.
CALL authoring programs offer a
do-it-yourself approach to CALL. They were originally developed to enable
programmers to simplify the entry of data provided by language teachers. Modern
CALL authoring programs are designed to be used by language teachers who have
no knowledge of computer programming. Typical examples are authoring packages
that automatically generate a set of pre-set activities for the learner, e.g.
Camsoft's Fun with Texts (Camsoft)
and The Authoring Suite (Wida Software). Generic
packages such as Macromedia's Director(http://www.macromedia.com/) are more sophisticated
and enable the user to create a full-blown course, but they are probably too
complex for most language teachers and are best suited to the template approach to authoring, as described in
ICT4LT Module 3.2, CALL software design and
implementation: http://www.ict4lt.org/ Web authoring packages are
also available, e.g. Hot Potatoes software: http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked. See ICT4LT Module 2.5,Introduction to CALL authoring programs. See also
Bickerton (1999)
and Bickerton, Stenton & Temmermann (2001).
An increasing number of professional
associations devoted to CALL are emerging worldwide. The older associations are
grouped together under WorldCALL, which is in the process of establishing
itself as an umbrella association of associations. WorldCALL held its first
conference at the University of Melbourne in 1998, and the second WorldCALL
conference will take place in Banff, Canada, 2003: http://www.worldcall.org/. The current
professional associations represented in WorldCALL are:
EUROCALL: The leading European
professional association for CALL. The ReCALL journal
is published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of EUROCALL: http://www.eurocall-languages.org
CERCLES: The European
Confederation of Language Centres in Higher Education. http://www.cercles.org/. CERCLES embraces a
similar constituency to IALLT in North America.
CALICO: The leading North
American professional association for CALL. Publishes the CALICO Journal:http://www.calico.org/
IALLT: International
Association for Language Learning Technology, based in North America: http://www.iallt.org/. IALLT publishes the
IALLT Journal of Language Learning Technologies and
embraces a similar constituency to CERCLES in Europe.
CCALL/ACELAO: Currently in the
process of establishing itself as a formal professional association in Canada.
No website is available at present.
LLA: The Language Laboratory
Association of Japan, also known as LET, which now embraces a wider range of
language learning technologies:. http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/lla
ATELL: The Australian
Association for Technology Enhanced Language Learning consortium:http://www.arts.uq.edu.au/ATELL. ATELL used to publish On-CALL, which has now merged with CALL-EJ (Japan).
There are two general
suppliers of CALL software in the UK:
There is a comprehensive database that list the range of software titles,
producers and suppliers:
The information related to the context in the following sites:
Regards, Tungga Pramudya Utama
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