By: Todd Long
Submitted: 2010-06-27 00:47:26 | Word Count: 612
The recent technology in the CALL gives you more comfortable in learning a language. This technology assures that the language is understood by the student correctly. CALL provides you more intense training in understanding the language. This chapter gives the complete information about the evolution of CALL equipments over the years. A language is better practiced through Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Grammar, Vocabulary and Pronunciation.
CALL comes up with the clean procedure to practice the above said skills. Listening is done through number of passages played through the headphone. Speaking is done through simulating an environment for communicating to the group of people who are well versed in the language. Other things like reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation is also done through the similar training programs.
The main part of the chapter deals with how the CALL must be utilized effectively in teaching a language. The teacher should not dependent on the CALL on all times. The dependency should be there at a certain level but not always. These training programs must be started according to the functionality of the Computers. We need to understand that the computer cannot do the job of humans in all time. The understanding of the limitations of Computers will gives you good results in training the students. Approach to each course should be varied because applying the same approach for every course may not give desired results. Some courses require minimum effort and some other courses involve more skills to teach.
This chapter also discusses the key issues in learning the CALL software’s. However the CALL needs to be supported by the humans. The human skills are very important in the learning the language through the CALL. The key issues discussed by the Hubbard reveals some facts about the CALL. If the learner is new to the CALL environments then the complexity of using CALL increases and the learner is forced to do some training on that without the help of the teacher. Many of the learners are not used to the technology of CALL. Thus Hubbard constantly argued to give some training to the learner before the start of the Course. Stockwell and Levy also suggested some training must be given to the learners to adapt to the technology. They found that the learner having some experience has produced more outputs than the Learners who are not exposed to the technology.
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There is also possibility towards the learner that they would come to the classroom having some ideas in learner’s mind. They would have some different approaches to learn the language. The teacher may interpret or enhance the ideas of the student to learn the language effectively. The learner may have some wrong assumptions from understanding the CALL. The teacher must clear those wrong assumptions and direct the student in the right way. The chat is the way of communication in the internet. However some learners may consider that this may be a language learning tool. These types of confusions must be cleared by the teacher.
The teacher should explain the importance of technology in Language learning besides the normal teaching of the language. Designing CALL materials is more important than teaching a language using the CALL material. Topics and Actions, Participants, Mode and Evaluation are the four major aspects of the CALL that needs to be considered when designing CALL materials. Some of the constraints needs to be tackled are Lack Teaching and Technical Assistance, Lack of computers, Difficulty in integrating the instruction, insufficient peripherals and some more. Implementing the CALL is a tough one, but strategic planning of these things will give the fruitful results.
