This chapter deals with literature review for this study. The first section will present theories and empirical studies on the computer in language education, specifically discussing CALL history as well as CALL environments. The second section will review studies on a reflective approach to teacher development programs. The third section will discuss teachers’
beliefs about CALL. The last section will review literature associated with teachers’
knowledge, particularly TPCK.
The Computer in Language Education
This sub-section will address CALL history and describe the roles of the computer as well as their contributions to language education from 1960s to the present. The sub-section that follows will discuss CALL environment s. With underlying theoretical frameworks presented first, this sub-section will further review studies on CALL design and CALL evaluation, two essential competencies language teachers should develop as CALL practitioners.
CALL History
CALL has a history of over 30 years. Research has documented the perspectives, the characteristics, and the possibilities of CALL in the three decades (Bax, 2003; Beatty, 2003a;
Chapelle, 2001c; Kern & Warschauer, 2000; Levy, 1997a). In general terms, historical development of CALL can roughly correspond with technological innovations (Chapelle, 2001c; Kern & Warschauer, 2000; Levy, 1997a). CALL history is usually categorized into three phases. The first stage ranges from 1960s to 1970s with the introduction of mainframe computer. The second stage refers to CALL in the 1980s when powerful multimedia
computer was used. The current stage starts in 1990s when the Internet becomes popular.
CALL development is also affected by approaches to language teaching and learning. In the 1960s and 1970s, pedagogical principles of CALL centered on behaviorist/audio-lingual paradigm as the computer provided learners with grammatical explanations and particular feedback about their responses. Drill- and-practice exercises prevailed in this period. In the 1980s, the focus was more on using forms than on learning forms. Learners were encouraged to use the language for communicative purposes rather than master linguistic knowledge. At this point, the computer was used to recognize learners’ input and ge nerate responses in return. ‘Meaningful’ conversations were created in a simulated environment between the computer and the learner. Another type of task in this period was text reconstruction, which required learners to complete a text by filling certain words that were previously deleted on a fixed-ratio basis. Through this task, learners would learn to communicate with the computer so as to construct a meaningful text. From the 1990s to the present, with the advent of the Internet, CALL activities are no longer limited to interactions with the computer or other students in class, allowing learners to negotiate meaning via the target language with their counterparts in other areas of the world. That is, they learn language via computer- mediated communication (CMC), which can occur distantly and asynchronously (Cummins & Sayers, 1995). Greater emphasis is placed on language use in authentic social contexts where teachers can adopt task-based, project-based, and content-based approaches to language teaching.
Among the previous accounts of CALL history, Chapelle (2001a) paid great attention to second language acquisition (SLA). In particular, the second stage was specified from the perspective of SLA. By the end of the 1980s, SLA researchers argued that learners need to notice and interact with linguistic input in order to acquire the target language (e.g., Doughty
& Pica, 1986; Schmidt & Frota, 1986). Moreover, they insisted that linguistic interaction and language development be empirically evaluated. The shifted perspective on SLA began to influence research on CALL. Emphasis was placed on form- focused instruction. In particular,
computer-based text reconstruction was employed to provide learners with an opportunity to notice the form and designed in a way to support evaluations of learners’ acquisition of particular linguistic items and structures. The benefits of computer-assisted form- focused instruction were supported in some studies. For example, Doughty (1991) found that learners receiving salient input performed better on a grammatical test than those who were exposed to normal input. Similarly, Lomicka (1998) conducted a study on whether multimedia reading software enhanced reading comprehension and found that computerized reading with full glossing might help learners engage in a deeper level of text comprehension. The current CALLTD program thus emphasized form- focused instruction enhanced with technologies.
Specifically, the participating teachers were made aware of the importance of form- focused instruction in language teaching as they learned to design and author CALL materials.
The distinction among the three phases is somewhat ambiguous since no pedagogies can absolutely correspond to each phase that features particular technological innovations. In fact, Bax (2003) pointed out that Warschauer ’s (1996) classification of the historical stages into behavioristic, communicative, and integrative was questionable. He firstly argued: “If they are historical phases, how is it that all three coexist together today? ” (p. 16). Besides, he challenged defining the second phase as a communicative stage because the computer as tool in this stage was used more for the manipulations and analyses of linguistic input, such as word processing, spelling and grammar checking, and concordancing, than for the
communication in the target language. Finally, he thought it misleading to call the third stage as an integrative phase, which was defined by Warschauer (1996) as developing language skills in learning environments integrated with hypermedia and the Internet. If this stage involved integrating learners in authentic language environments and integrating language skills (e.g. reading, listening, speaking, writing, etc.) in CALL projects, Bax (2003) argued,
“how can we accept the suggestion that these are not communicative but ‘integrative ’” (p.
19)?
To solve the problem of stage classification, Bax proposed his categorization of CALL history: Restricted CALL (1960s-1980s), Open CALL (1980s-the present), and Integrated CALL (in the future). He argued that this classification was less confusing and could fit into the historical progression of CALL software, approach, and practice. Restricted CALL involved learning theories, CALL software and activities, teachers’ role, and feedback in a limited and disconnected fashion. Compared with Restricted CALL, Open CALL is more open with regard to the varieties of software, feedback given to students, and teachers’ role. This is the stage where we are stand ing. Lastly, Integrated CALL is an aim that CALL researchers and practitioners are pursuing. This stage will come when the computer is taken for granted not only in everyday life but also in educational contexts and is hardly recognized as a technological artifact. CALL development has not come to this stage. However, in the future to come, when the era of Integrated CALL comes and the computer becomes an ordinary teaching aid, teachers may be more willing to incorporate it into their daily teaching practices.
CALL Environments
This section is concerned with the affordances of CALL environments for language teachers. It consists of three parts. The first part will deal with theoretical frameworks underlying CALL environments. The second part will discuss CALL design while the last part, CALL evaluation.
Underlying Frameworks
CALL environments first appeared as the title of Egbert and Hanson-Smith’s (1999) edited book on CALL research and practice in 1999. All authors of this book view CALL environments as an integrated learning environment and “conceive of technology as support for a total environment for learning rather than as a single tool or a source of information”
(Egbert & Hanson-Smith, 1999, p. ix). As the two editors suggest, CALL environments can provide eight learning conditions which are formed as main sections of the book: Interaction;
Authentic Audience; Authentic Task; Opportunities for Exposure and Production;
Time/Feedback; Intentional Cognition, Learning Styles, and Motivation; Atmosphere; and Control. It seems that the computer can generate many forms of language teaching and learning in pursuit of the development of communicative competence. Since then, many books on CALL have been published to address the potentials of computer technologies in language learning and teaching (e.g., Beatty, 2003; Butler-Pascoe & Wiburg, 2003; Chapelle, 2003; Egbert, 2005; Levy & Stockwell, 2006; Warschauer, Shetzer, & Meloni, 2000). They all try to address what the computer can provide to teachers and students as well as how and why technologies can contribute to language teaching and learning. In addition, many of the authors identify related theories as the foundation of CALL environments. Among others, comprehensible input and constructivism are particularly elaborated to support CALL environments in Beatty’s (2003b) book as well as Levy and Stockwell’s (2006) book. The two theoretical constructs were adopted to explain the process of SLA: receiving linguistic input, engaging in interactions, and producing linguistic output. Such combination of theories and practices laid the groundwork for designing the syllabus of the present CALLTD program.
The above concepts would be introduced to the participating teachers when they learned to take advantage of a variety of CALL resources to facilitate their teaching.
Comprehensible input is originally advocated by Krashen (1983), who claims that SLA takes place when learners are able to understand the target linguistic input which is just a little bit higher than their current linguistic level. Ellis (1985) points out, “access to
comprehens ible input may be a necessary condition for acquisition to take place” (p. 295).
Based on this idea, Beatty (2003b) argues that linguistic input can be made more
comprehensible with the aid of computer technology and the comprehensible input can be made readily available to learners via computer network. In the stage of receiving linguistic
input, multimedia can provide meaningful contexts to students for improving their
comprehension. That is, the target input can be made more comprehensible by extra- linguistic clues such as sound, image, animation and video. For example, a reading passage annotated by multimedia could be much better comprehended than a text-only reading article, for multimedia could stimulate learners’ conceptions of the target vocabulary items (e.g., Labrie, 2000; Plass, Chun, Mayer, & Leutner, 1998; Yoshii & Flaitz, 2002) and arouse their
background knowledge about a particular topic (Collins, Hammond, & Wellington, 1997). In particular, Chun and Plass (1997) found that multimodal instructional materia ls supported by multimedia could facilitate individual learners to acquire vocabulary words and activate prior knowledge through integrating verbal and visual information.
Due to its importance in SLA, the concept of computer-enhanced comprehensible input was introduced to the participating teachers of the present study. To ensure appropriate difficulty of the input for the learners, as noted by Beatty (2003b), the teachers were advised to offer help to their students in choosing the target linguistic input. This practice can be treated as developing learners’ autonomy (Benson, 2001).
Another theoretical construct is constructivism, which advocates a humanistic approach to learning. Central to this framework is the idea that old knowledge and experiences can facilitate the construction of new concepts. Constructivism purports that learners should go beyond the memorizations of information, developing individualized conceptions based on prior knowledge and experiences. The role of learners is underlined in the learning process.
This theory is particularly stressed in a special issue of the TESOL Journal entitled
Constructing Meaning With Computers in 2002. The authors of that issue argued that learners should play an active role in constructing linguistic knowledge through collaborative tasks by means of technologies because they are no longer passive recipients of teacher- imparted knowledge in CALL environments.
As opposed to behavioris ts adopting repetitive drills that are criticized for being boring
and demotivating for learners (Beatty, 2003b), constructivists “motiva te learning by leading students to experience the individual and subjective satisfaction inherent in solving a problem that is seen and chosen as one’s own, ” as commented by Shin and Wastell (2001, p. 519). The motivating learning process needs the teacher’s involvement in filtering overwhelming language data and designing authentic activities that entail negotiation and collaboration (Healey & Klinghammer, 2002).
Constructivism cannot be discussed without referring to social learning theory.
According to Vygotsky (1978), social learning takes place intrapsychologically and
interpsychologically. That is, human learning would happen not only inside the individuals but also between people. For example, children can develop knowledge and skills through apprenticeship and advance themselves through interactions with the teacher or peers. This kind of learning is supported by zone of proximal development (ZPD), which suggests that learners can receive scaffolding from more capable individuals while participating in
collaborative tasks. Applied to CALL, social learning theory is especially supportive of CMC tasks. Warchauer (2005) pointed out that constructivists, more specifically social learning proponents, would provide learners with opportunities to incorporate their peers’ linguistic chunks and furthermore refine their writing in CMC activities.
CALL Design
CALL design refers to the aspect of language teachers’ competency in developing computer-based materials, tasks, or projects with the purpose of promoting teaching
effectiveness. CALL design can be viewed from exercise design to course design in scope. In his article devoted to the investigation of CALL design in the literature, Levy (2002) found that more tha n half of the journal articles and book chapters published in 1999 dealt with CALL design, which was roughly categorized into five dimensions: Design as a principled approach to CALL, Design of an artifact, Design of CALL materials, Design of an online course, and Design as it relates to other aspects of CALL (p. 60). Catching the attention of
CALL researchers and practitioners, CALL design has been examined from various perspectives. The results from this line of research may provide the foundation for teacher education aimed for innovating language teaching and learning with technology.
Levy and Stockwell (2006) made a very comprehensive introduction to CALL design in their recent book entitled CALL Dimensions by describing major approaches to CALL design embodied in empirical studies as well as discussing central themes and issues emerging from the process of transforming CALL design into CALL practices. They stated that CALL
design varies with the point of departure. CALL design can be driven by particular theories or primary concepts associated with SLA. In the following, Hubbard’s (1996) and Chappell’s (2001b, 2003) views on CALL design will be presented.
Hubbard (1996) proposed a CALL methodological framework consisting of three modules: development module, implementation module, and evaluation module. The development module is concerned with CALL design at three levels, namely approach, design, and procedure. In the stage of approach, CALL designers or developers have to ensure design criteria that derive from linguistic assumptions and learning assumptions made for the target learners. In the stage of design, they need to take into account language
difficulty, program difficulty, and content, all of which would be shaped by learner profiles and syllabus as well. To produce a completed courseware, CALL designers would also consider the actual layout of the courseware and the type of activity. Such a methodological module can help designers move from theoretical constructs and pedagogical principles to practical CALL artifacts (e.g., a website, CD-ROM, or software program) (Levy & Stockwell, 2006).
Chapelle (2001b, 2003) argued that the design of CALL tasks and environments should take into account the input that learners are exposed to, the interactions that the computer provides, and the output that learners can produce. First of all, form- focused input should be stressed in developing CALL materials. As research has revealed that L2 learners might be
able to develop their grammatical competence if their attention is drawn to salient linguistic forms (Robinson, 1995; Schmidt, 1990; Skehan, 1998), language teachers should expose their students to more enhanced input achieved through input salience, input modification, and input elaboration (Chapelle, 2001b, 2003). Then, CALL design needs to take care of
interaction. The computer is argued to be able to engage learners in three levels of interaction, i.e. interpersonal interaction, learner-computer interaction, and intrapersonal interaction.
More specifically, L2 learners can engage in more interactions by negotiating meaning with others over the network, receiving linguistic help via hyperlinks, and undertaking mental processing of enhanced linguistic forms delivered from the computer. Lastly, CALL design should provide learners with opportunities to produce the target language. CALL
environments are believed to be able to afford learners a wealth of opportunities to produce comprehensible output and co-construct meaning. That is, they have more time to plan and correct their speech and writing and to receive interlocutors’ linguistic help. In a word, CALL design should focus on both form and meaning in terms of SLA. By doing so, the computer seems to be advantageous to language learners with regard to acquiring grammatical
knowledge and developing communicative competence in the end.
The two design frameworks proposed by Hubbard and Chapelle respectively are central to understanding the process and focus of CALL design in general. While Hubbard addressed the methodological aspect of design, Chapelle drew on SLA theories to design CALL tasks.
Hubbard’s model provided a very clear procedure of developing CALL software so that teachers can easily orient themselves to the methodology of creating CALL applications.
However, little has been said about SLA in Hubbard’s framework. Chapelle’s framework can complement Hubbard’s by highlighting the importance of instructed SLA in CALL design. In fact, Chapelle (1998) has suggested several conditions for ideal language learning such as input saliency, opportunities for interaction, and learner focus on communication. In the same vein, Skehan (2003) expressed his ideas on the relationship among form, tasks, and
technology. He maintained that learners should be exposed to the target language as much as possible and their attention should be drawn to its linguistic features. Mere exposure would not lead to successful language learning. At this moment, the teacher can support students with a range of software materials when they are overwhelmed by a multitude of unstructured input, i.e. authentic materials on the Internet. Also, Kazeroni (2006) noted that focus-on- form is one of the task dimensions language teachers can consider in their CALL design. Students can probably benefit from explicit explanations of grammar rules as well as subsequently from meaningful communication tasks. Such tasks can be appropriately supported by technologies like chatrooms and discussion forums.
As discussed above, Hubbard’s framework is methodology-based while Chapelle’s framework, theory-driven. The two major models can serve language teachers and
researchers with different approaches to CALL design. For example, Hubbard’s frame work was adapted by Trinder (2003), who created an Online English Mentor (OEM) project, in which multimedia materials were designed to complement and supplement the learning environment and the course materials of Business English face-to-face cla sses. He approached the project by drawing on general language learning assumptions as well as pedagogical principles such as satisfying individual learners’ learning styles. With such underlying learning assumptions, the OEM project provided language learners of different linguistic levels with flexible materials targeted at language skills and areas like reading, vocabulary, listening, and grammar. All of the materials were built on a single platform in which the Internet rather than CD-ROM was used as a vehicle for content delivery. With reference to Hubbard’s methodological framework, the project was eventually designed and conducted in actual instructional setting.
With respect to theory-driven CALL design, Gonzalez-Lloret (2003) created an Internet-based CALL activity for Spanish called En Busca de Esmeraldas based on
Chapelle's (1998) proposals for developing multimedia materials and tasks grounded in SLA
research. The network-based activities featured 3-D simulation through which learners engaged in a series of tasks that offered salient input, interaction opportunities, and outputs to promote learner autonomy. The theory-supported CALL design was to foster meaning
research. The network-based activities featured 3-D simulation through which learners engaged in a series of tasks that offered salient input, interaction opportunities, and outputs to promote learner autonomy. The theory-supported CALL design was to foster meaning