Final task 1

RESUME OF CALL

Unit 1: Introduction to Computer-Assisted Language Learning.

CALL is the acronym for computer-assisted language learning. There are a number of ways to conceptualize field of CALL, but one useful way, especially for those just entering the field, is to divide computer use according to the functional roles of tutor and tool, concepts popularized for CALL by Levy (1997). A vocabulary flashcard program or set of online grammar exercises would represent tutor uses, where the computer in some way has a teaching function. A language learning activity involving a word processor, email program, or web search engine like Google would represent tool uses, where the computer has no overt teaching function.
CALL began in the 1960s with mainframe-based drill and practice materials, especially those based on the University of Illinois' PLATO system. It remained an insignificant alternative for language learning outside of a few universities until the spread of the microcomputer into educational settings in the early 1980s.
In previous versions of this course, I noted that teachers interested in CALL can get involved in a number of different ways, which I referred to as teacher roles.

 As researchers: into second language acquisition, human-computer interaction, what works for CALL
 As consumers of CALL software for class use or building web activities into course work
 As directors, helping students find and use supplementary CALL materials or web resources
 As managers of computer-mediated communication among learners in and out of class
 As software or web developers, either "from scratch" or adding new materials to existing templates
 As coaches to help students develop software, websites, and general computer literacy
 As CALL experts for your program, helping other teachers and administrators with CALL implementations
 As CALL professionals, consulting on external projects, doing software reviews for journals, making conference presentations, writing papers, interpreting and applying CALL research, and/or providing input to the field at large.

Mike Levy and I (Hubbard & Levy, 2006) have taken this idea of role and developed it further it to try to delineate the field for the purposes of CALL teacher education. Specifically, we distinguish two types of roles for individuals engaged in CALL: institutional and functional. Institutional roles include classroom teachers, both pre- and in-service, specialists of various kinds (language lab managers, language skill area specialists, etc.), and professionals (those whose career centers on CALL). Functional roles include practitioners, developers, researchers, and trainers.

Unit 2: Courseware Evaluation, Development, and Implementation

Development, evaluation, and implementation are part of a logical progression in any situation that has an end product. If a company produces a computer program for balancing your checkbook, for instance, they need to 1) design it with the needs of the end users in mind, 2) evaluate it in house and encourage outsiders to review it, and 3) have a mechanism to implement it, including figuring out how to make it available and training end users in its effective operation.
1. Evaluation Module
Evaluation involves three kinds of considerations. A crucial aspect is to understand what the courseware does first before attempting to judge it: this is, not surprisingly, difficult to do because as soon as we start interacting with a program we want to judge it. If an evaluator wants to approach the problem a little more objectively, the first consideration then is the operational description of the software, which essentially focuses on the procedure level elements. The design elements essentially can be subsumed under the label "learner fit." That is, based on the information from the operational description, you are looking to see how well the design elements of language difficulty, program difficulty, program content, etc.
2. Development Module
Courseware development refers to the process of going from the idea of creating a piece of tutorial software through the final product. The framework diverges from Richards and Rodgers in attempting to account for individual language programs rather than whole methods.
a. Approach. A language teaching approach is taken to include assumptions about what language is and how languages are learned.
b. Design. The design portion of the development framework draws heavily from Phillips (1985) and includes elements such as the following: language difficulty, program difficulty, program content, language focus (also called program focus), skill focus (also called learner focus), and learner styles supported.
c. Procedure. The procedure considerations are much more specific to the computing environment. They begin with the concept of "activity type", which is the general form of the exercise, e.g. text plus comprehension questions, picture identification, text reconstruction.
3. Implementation Module
Implementation considerations are relevant during the evaluation process, but they become crucial when deciding how best to use software that is available. Some of the key questions to address in implementation are the following.
• What is the setting in which the students will be using the software (classroom, lab, home, etc.?)
• What kinds of training or preparatory activities are warranted?
• What kinds of follow-up activities either in or out of class will there be?
• Given the options provided by the program, how much control will the teacher exert, and how much control will be left to the learner?

Unit 3: Computer Mediated Communication
In one category of tool uses, computer-mediated communication, or CMC, computers are means through which teachers communicate with learners, learners communicate withh one another and learners may even communicate with native speaker.
TEXT-BASED CMC
• Asynchronous text. The first use of CMC in language teaching almost certainly came through email exchanges from teachers to students and among students within classes. Email is an example of asynchronous communication, in that the interaction is not in real time: You create and send an email, and the recipient typically gets it within seconds but may not read it or respond until much later.
• Synchronous text. With synchronous text, or chat, the messages are exchanged in text form, but in real time. Some of the early research on CMC was built around a type of chat program, interchange, that was part of the Daedalus Integrated Writing environment system (www. Daedalus.com).
AUDIO/VIDEO CMC
• Asynchronous audio. Like text, audio or video interaction can be either asynchronous voice interaction would be the voicemail services offered by a number of sites for free. Using this, students with voice-enabled computers can leave messages for one another or for the teacher.
• Synchronous audio/video. Synchronous audio is possible using internet telephony (or just the telephone, for that matter) for one to one conversation.

Distance education is increasing in education generally and language learning is no exception. This research, report on study that compared team cohesiveness among virtual teams using CMC and non-CMC communication mediums. The finding suggest that CMC can help virtual terms increase team cohesiveness among their members, making CMC an effective medium for increasing productivity and team performance.
Unit 4: CALL on the Web

This unit looks into the Web in more depth. The reason is that the Web represents the largest collection of material that is accessible almost anytime and anywhere by almost anyone having a browser equipped computer and an Internet connection. The Web is also where you find the most common tool applications for CALL, in particular the browsers and online video players that give access to a seemingly endless collection of both dedicated and authentic English language material.

DISADVANTAGES OF THE WEB
• Text-based material on the Web is sometimes not as easy to read as material in paper format because of font color and background choices.
• Sound and video sometimes take a noticeable time to transfer, even on fast connections.
• Newer forms of streaming have improved this dramatically, but the Web is still not as responsive as a CD-ROM, DVD or the hard drive on a TiVo or other digital video recorder.
• Sound and video are typically compressed to speed up transfer: depending on the degree of compression and other factors they can be of noticeably lower quality than the original. This can affect their suitability for supporting language learning. Also some of he free material on sites like www.youtube.com were of poor audio or video quality even in their original state (for example, if taken with a mobile phone)
• Because of the way that HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) works, on most pages every click is a request that has to go back to the original server. The equivalent of turning a page may result in a noticeable delay if the server is busy.
• Because of this delay, interactivity is limited compared to what is possible with disks or CD-ROMs. However, increasingly Web applications (like Macromedia Flash) have interactivity without delays.
• Down servers or broken links may lead to frustration.
• The sheer amount of material can make it hard to find what you want, though developing skill with a search engine like Google (www.google.com) is certainly a great help. The Web is dynamic and often as unpredictable as the humans behind it. You may find an old site that has not been updated for years, or you may find a great source of material only to have it be gone the next time you look for it. You may still be able to locate old pages using the "cached" feature of Google (www.google.com) or the Internet archive's Wayback Machine at www.archive.org.
• Sites and applications that used to be free and only supported by text ads that could be easily ignored are increasingly charging fees requiring subscriptions (so that you don't get their ads), or requiring users to watch commercials before the desired material loads.
• As is widely known, the accuracy of Web sources is often questionable (the present one excepted of course). See, for example, http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm.

ADVANTAGES OF THE WEB

• There is anytime, anywhere access (for some people at least).
• There are enormous amounts of free material.
• Material can be found that is current
• Language reference and other learning support materials can be found.
• Student and teacher publication opportunities exist.
• A cultural window is opened through the authentic material readily available.
• Meaning technologies, such as transcripts, dictionaries, and translators, exist to aid comprehension of material.
• Increasing amounts of audio and video allow building of comprehension skills beyond reading.
• Previous disk-based activities (like tutorial exercises) and Internet-based activities (like email) can often be handled through the Web

Unit 5: CALL and Language Skills
Skills-oriented language teaching remains a common approach for classes as well as for self- learning, and computer-assisted language learning is no exception. In this unit, we look at how both tool and tutor software can be used to support specific skills.

a. ESL Portals is a websites that has a large number of links to other websites, such as www.raong-chang.com
b. Listening is potentially one of the most promising areas for CALL development. This is because multimedia computing has everything standard audio and video have with the addition of a variety of meaning technologies such as text support, hyperlinked glossaries, and even translation. Listening activities typically involve presentation followed by comperehension questions-some also include full of partial dictations.
c. Speaking is one of skill in CALL which use recent developments on the web have allowed for voice chat sites which make it possible for learners and teachers to interact through the internet in distance education courses.
d. Reading software was designed to improve skills in order to transfer them to paper material. More recently, reading in digital form becoming more and more common whisch use of meaning technologies and include dedicated application such as hypertext glossaries, translation and use generic application such as electronic dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.
e. Writing has been also common skill taught as a course through distance education using the internet. In Writing publications we can use Wikis and Blog. Wikis are webpages that can be easily modified by multiple users and are particularly good for collaboration projects for example Wikipedia : www.wikpedia.org sementara blogs (weblogs) are online journals that individual students or groups can publish and allow others to leave comment, for example www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/resources/blogging .shtml
f. Grammar practice was perhaps the earliest use of CALL. Grammar Focused on Workbook-style exercise, Grammar test prep materials, Online courses and references, etc.
g. Pronunciation is one of Skill in CALL which have the sample lesson allow us to see intonation tracking as well as get a machine score of the closseness of your pronunciation to a native norm.
The type of pronunciation work
• Listen, repeat/record, and compare. This option shows up in many multimedia programs and is analogous to the tape based language lab technique in the audio lingual method.
• Vizualization : wave form, pitch contour, spectogram. The first and last are of questionable value. Wave forms are easy for a computer to produce, but they only clearly show the bands of intensity across time. This is most helpful in teaching rhythm. Spectogram are most useful if they have high detail, which they generally don’t on software, and they require training in phonetics to interpret them. However , visualization of pitch countour has been found to be quite helpful for some students in recognizing and producing both the patterns and ranges of intonation.
• ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) scoring. Here, the computer usus speec recognition software to grade accuracy. This can be useful, but there are a lot of technical problems microphone quality, sound card quality, and background noise are all variables that can negatively affect the score, leading even native speakers to score as non-natives.

h. Vocabulary activities has been around since the early days of CALL in the form of electronic flashcard (linking L2 word to L1 or L2 word to L2 definition.
i. Culture is a huge area for foreign language teaching, where authentic cultural material is readily accesible through the web.
Unit 6: CALL Research
Two ways for teachers to approach CALL research. One is as a research consumer; the other is as a classroom or action researcher. Each of these is briefly discussed below. As with other units, the objective here is to just give a taste of what is an enormous and constantly growing area. Those with more serious research interests are encouraged to consult the reference list. It should be mentioned before continuing that not all CALL research is aimed primarily at improving language teaching and learning with technology. In some cases, researchers may simply want to observe how the technology environment influences or changes the way humans interact with one another, without necessarily judging whether or not it's "better". Although such basic research is important to social scientists and may lead to more applied hypotheses, it does not directly impact teaching and learning and so will not be explicitly addressed here.
As suggested above, most CAI (computer-assisted instruction) and early CALL research focused on comparing computer users with a control group typically using traditional methods. The results were mixed, often showing no significant difference, sometimes favoring the computer users, and occasionally favoring the traditional approaches (see Dunkel 1991).

SUBJECT CHARACTERISTICS IN CALL RESEARCH

In 2004 I carried out a study of research articles found in four CALL journals over a 2-3 year period, focusing on subject characteristics. The overall conclusion was that "CALL research as a whole is unbalanced in the direction of the study of novices working on novel tasks or using novel applications" (Hubbard 2005: 363).

DOING RESEARCH
• Observation. When your students are using software or doing a computer-based task in a lab or other venue where you can--watch them. You can look over their shoulder, check their interactions, and make brief notes of what you notice. Interact with the students as they interact with the software. This can give you feedback on the effectiveness of a given piece of software, CALL exercise, or CALL task, and it can also help you determine student training needs.
• Tracking. Some software has built-in tracking features. If you are using a discussion board, all student posts can be reviewed. Some chat programs also allow the sessions to be logged for later review.
• Student surveys. Ask specific questions about usage--note that it's best to do this as soon as possible after a CALL session sense memories fade rapidly.
• Pre- and post-testing to evaluate outcomes of the use of technology.
• Student journals. Getting students to keep a reflective journal of their experiences with software or other CALL activities is useful both for them and to the teacher.

Unit 7: CALL Learner Training
CALL has given us some amazing possibilities for improving language learning. However, these possibilities create a problem. Absent a teacher, students using computers are typically given more control over their own learning. Due to the newness of computer environments and the range of choices in many CALL applications, they are arguably unprepared to take on this responsibility. The result is that students may not use the computers in ways that are effective for achieving language learning objectives, and it is even less likely that they will use them in ways that are most effective.
One solution is to try to build software in such a way that it adapts to the learner on a number of different levels: language proficiency, computer proficiency, learning style, topical interest, motivational type and intensity, and so on. A second alternative is to take the philosophical position that learners have a right to self- discovery and that left alone they will naturally move to the strategies that work for them and that are consonant with their learning style.

TECHNICAL TRAINING
Training can be divided at least into two areas: technical and pedagogical. Technical training naturally includes general computer literacy (which can be a major issue or not depending on your setting and students), but of greater interest here is learning technical skills and knowledge of particular value to language learning.
PEDAGOGICAL TRAINING
In a 2004 paper (Hubbard, 2004), I make a case for giving training not just on technical aspects but also on pedagogical ones, that is, how to use the tutorial software or tool effectively to meet specific learning objectives. To this end, I offer a set of five principles for learner training, summarized below.
1. Experience CALL yourself. Try a piece of CALL software (like Rosetta Stone) for a language you don't know, or visit a chatroom for a language you are not fluent in. This was the recommended assignment for Unit 1. The assumption here is that by knowing what it's like from the learner's side, you'll be able to give better advice.
2. Give learners teacher training. Let them know some of what you know if they are to become more independent. Help them develop a "language learning approach" that is consistent with what you consider a valid language teaching approach. In particular, try to give them practice with linking the procedures and strategies they use with software, online tasks, and CMC activities to specific language learning objectives.
3. Use a cyclical approach. Teach a bit at a time. Don't just have a training session at the beginning and think your job is done. If anything, let learners "play" awhile with the application so that they have some familiarity with it before formal training begins. Learning (both technical and pedagogical) should be incremental but also include plenty of recycling and reviewing key concepts and strategies.
4. Use collaborative debriefings. Get learners to discuss their experiences, successes and failures with the CALL tasks and software in pairs or small groups. Don't just make the instruction one-way from you. Having learners talk about lab experiences at the end of a session helps consolidate it, and discussing their individual experiences (at home or a drop-in lab) at the following class provides a way of avoiding the sense of isolation that comes from working on the computer alone.
5. Teach general exploitation strategies. Show learners ways to use software to make it easier if it's too hard and harder if it's too easy, as well as how to mine the material for uses different from those intended by the developer.