SUMMARY
CALL- past, present and future
by Stephen Bax
There are three questions that emerge in the study of CALL: where has Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) been, where is it now and where is it going? It starts from the premise that if we are to maximize the benefits of CALL in the future, we need to establish an agenda and a set of aims towards which to work.
Part 1: where has CALL been?
Delcloque (2000) refers to five main literature sources that may answer the first of the questions and they are divided into essentially two kinds:
1. The properly researched, objective historical accounts which attempt to summarize the progression and might include precise dates and a comprehensive list of sources.
2. The interpretative type which tends to draw more subjective conclusions about advances and trends in the field, thus analyzing its progression in a less objective manner (Delcloque, 2000).
It is remarkable that there is not any analysis of the history of CALL which have been analysed in a deeper way along the lines of, say Howatt’s history of ELT (1984), and it is arguable that without it we cannot properly formulate an agenda for the future use of CALL.
Of the main accounts mentioned by Delcloque, the first (Ahmad et al., 1985) focuses almost exclusively on the factual aspects of technologies.
CALL surely needs to look in far more depth at its past and present in order to develop a fully appropriate role for computers in language teaching and learning.
The three phases of CALL
Warschauer and Healey famously identifies three phases of CALL: “Behaviouristic”, “Communicative”, and “Integrative” (Warschauer and Healey, 1998).
Of the three categories, the first, Behaviouristic CALL, is perhaps the most plausible and would attract most agreement. Even though communicative CALL still operates today very much in a communicative framework in many teaching contexts it is not at all certain that the term ‘communicative’ is being used by the language teaching methodologists. Warschauer refers to Underwood (1984) for his definition, where it is suggested that communicative CALL:
-Focuses more on using forms rather than on the forms themselves;
-Teaches grammar implicitly rather than explicitly;
-Allows and encourages students to generate original utterances rather than just manipulate prefabricated language;
-Uses the target language exclusively and creates an environment in which using the target language feels natural, both on and off the screen; and
-Will never try to do anything that a book can do just as well (Underwood, 1984)
Although the list includes aspects which are certainly part of CLT, without the central features of human communication and interaction it would be difficult to term this ‘communicative CALL’ in any useful sense.
Warschauer reports that during the ‘communicative CALL phase’ there were three main uses or ‘models’ of computer use:
1. The computer as a tutor model: in this program the computer remains the “knower-of-the-right-answer”
2. Computer as stimulus: the purpose of the CALL activity is not so much to have students discover the right answer, but rather to stimulate students’ discussion, writing or critical thinking.
3. The computer as a tool or the computer as a workhorse…In this role, the programs do not necessarily provide any language material at all, but rather empower the learner to use or understand language. Examples: word processors, spelling and grammar checkers, desk-top publishing programs, and concordances.
This, though useful, is clearly not particular to CLT. The computer acts as a tool for manipulating language or analyzing it, not for communicating in it.
Integrative CALL
Warschauer suggests that in the late 1980s and early 1990s
[M]any teachers were moving away from a cognitive view of communicative teaching to a more social or socio-cognitive view, which placed greater emphasis on language use in authentical social contexts. (Warschauer and Healey, 1998)
The use of language in authentic social contexts had surely been stressed from the very beginnings of CLT, and taken on board by some if not all teachers, and it is certainly a central part of CLT today- to imply that it is somehow ‘post communicative’ is odd.
Warschauer and Healey go on to enumerate a number of approaches which he claims to be ‘integrative’:
Task-based, project-based, and content-based approaches all sought to integrate learners in authentic environments, and also to integrate the various skills of language learning and use.
The other aspect of integration which Warschauer and Healey mentions is the place of computers in the syllabus:
In integrative approaches, students learn to use a variety of technological tools as an ongoing process of language learning and use, rather than visiting the computer lab on a once a week basis for isolated exercises (whether the exercises be behaviouristic or communicative).
The need for a new analysis
Warschauer and Healey’s analysis has proved a useful way over several years of conceptualizing the development of CALL but the formulation which he has proposed needs clarification and amendment in a number of areas
In my analysis I shall not refer to ‘phases’ but to more general ‘approaches’. I call the first ‘Restricted CALL’ which refers not only to a supposed underlying theory of learning but also to the actual software and activity types at the time, to the teachers’ role, to the feedback offered to students and to other dimensions- all were relatively ‘restricted’, but not all were ‘behaviourist’.
The second approach is called ‘Open CALL’ since it is relatively open in all dimensions-from the feedback given to students, to the software types, to the role of the teacher.
The other approach is ‘Integrated CALL’. The key point about this approach is that it does not yet exist to any significant degree, but represents instead an aim towards which we should be working.
In general, my three approaches do coincide with general historical periods. Restricted CALL dominated from the 1960s until about 1980; Open CALL has lasted from the 1980s until today. Integrated CALL exists in a few places and a few dimensions only, but is far from common. It is therefore possible to use this analysis as a guide to broad historical developments in CALL.
Part 2: Where is CALL now?
Open CALL
Attitudes to using computers were more open and were certainly becoming more humanistic (cf. Stevens, 1992) but mostly owing to technological limitations related to hardware and software it was not possible to use computers for realistic communication in CLT vein until the advent of effective CMC, the web, widely available email and so on.
Nowadays it would be possible to argue for a more genuinely ‘communicative’ role for CALL from around 1995 onwards, at least in terms of software. In terms of true integration of CALL within language teaching and learning, we are still a long way from achieving it, and it is important therefore to start to reconsider how the profession can move towards that general aim.
Part 3: where is CALL going?
Integrated CALL and normalisation
Normalisation: this concept is relevant to any kind of technological innovation and refers to the stage when technology becomes invisible, embedded in everyday practice and hence “normalized”.
Normalisation is therefore the stage when a technology is invisible, hardly even recognized as a technology, taken for granted in everyday life. CALL will reach this state when computers are used every day by language students and teachers as an integral part of every lesson, like a pen or a book. They will be completely integrated into all other aspects of classroom life, alongside coursebooks, teachers and notepads.
Most importantly, CALL will be normalized when computers are treated as always secondary to learning itself, when the needs of learners will be carefully analysed first of all, and then the computer used to serve those needs.
Diffusion of innovations
How can normalization occur? We can summarize the probable progress of CALL towards normalization as follows:
1. Early adopters. A few teachers and schools adopt the technology out of curiosity.
2. Ignorance/skepticism. However, most people are skeptical, or ignorant of its existence.
3. Try once. People try it out but reject it because of early problems.
4. Try again. Someone tells them it really works. Then try again. They see it does in fact have relative advantage.
5. Fear/awe. More people start to use it, but still there is (a) fear, alternating with (b) exaggerated expectations.
6. Normalising. Gradually it is seen as something normal.
7. Normalisation. The technology is so integrated into our lives that it becomes invisible-‘normalized’.
A proposed agenda for CALL
In conclusion, we have identified a possible future agenda for CALL. Our aim can be the normalisation in which CALL finally becomes invisible, serving the needs of learners and integrated into every teachers’ everyday practice. It will require changes in technology, in attitudes, in approach and practice amongst teachers and learners.
We need action research in individual environments to identify barriers to normalisation and ways of overcoming them.
This will not be an easy process. However, if we take our aim to be normalisation, and then work for ways of achieving it efficiently, computers can finally achieve their proper place and true potential in the classroom.
