THE APPLICATION OF COMPUTER ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING IN VOCATIONAL SCHOOL.doc

THE APPLICATION OF COMPUTER ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING IN VOCATIONAL SCHOOLChapter 1: The Development of Computer Assisted Language Learning1.1 A Definition Of Computer Assisted Language LearningComputer assisted language learning (CALL) is also known as computer assisted language instruction (CALI), computer assisted instruction (CAI), computer aided language learning (CALL). Computer Assisted Language Learning 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 provides the following succinct and broad definition of CALL (Michael Levy, 1997, Computer-Assisted Language Learning-Context and Conceptualization):“Computer Assisted Language learning (CALL) may be defined as the search for and study of application of the computer in language teaching and learning.”This is a catchall definition, which is also approved by the leading international professional association, e.g. EUCALL, CALICO and IALLT. In the Joint Policy Statements of EUROCALL, CALICO and IALLT (1999), CALL is defined as “a relatively new and rapidly evolving academic field that explores the role of information and communication technologies in language learning and teaching.” These definitions are useful to break down CALL into various subdivisions.1.2 Three-phase-development of Computer Assisted Language LearningCALLs origins can be traced back to the 1960s, Warschauer & Healey (Warschauer, M. & Healey, D. 1998, Computers and Language Learning: An overview) pointed out that this 40-year-period can be divided into three main stages: behaviorist CALL, communicative CALL, and integrative CALL. Each stage corresponds to a certain level of technology and pedagogical theories.Behaviorist CALLIn the 1960s and 1970s, the first form of Computer Assisted Language Learning featured repetitive language drills is the so-called drill-and-practice method. It was based on the behaviorist-learning model and computer was viewed as little more than a mechanical tutor that never grew tired. Behaviorist CALL was first designed and implemented in the era of the mainframe and the best-known tutorial system PLATO, which ran on its own special hardware. It was mainly used for extensive drills, explicit grammar instruction and translation tests.Communicative CALLCommunicative CALL emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a reaction to the behaviorist approach to language learning. Proponents of communicative CALL rejected behaviorist approaches at both the theoretical and pedagogical level. They stressed that CALL should focus more on using forms rather than on the forms themselves. Grammar should be taught implicitly and students should be encouraged to generate original utterances instead of manipulating prefabricated forms. This form of computer-based instruction corresponded to cognitive theories that recognized that learning was a creative process of discovery, expression and development. The mainframe was replaced by personal computers that allowed greater possibilities for individual work. Popular CALL software in this era included text reconstruction programmers and simulations.Integrative CALLThe last stage of Computer Assisted Language Learning is integrative CALL. Communicative CALL was criticized for using the computer in a disconnected fashion and using the computer made “a greater contribution to marginal rather than central elements” of language learning (Kenning, M. M. & Kenning, M. J., 1990, Computers and Language Learning: Current Theory and Practice). Teachers have moved from a cognitive view of communicative language teaching to a socio-cognitive view that emphasizes real language use in a meaningful, authentic context. Integrative CALL seeks both to “integrate the various skills of language learning (listening, speaking, writing, and reading) and to integrate technology more fully into language teaching” (Warschauer, M. & Healey, D. 1998, Computers and Language Learning: An overview). To this end the multimedia-networked computer provides a rage of informational, communicative and publishing tools that are potentially available to every student.Chapter 2: Present condition and application of Computer Assisted Language Learning in Vocational school2.1 Present condition of English teaching in Vocational school and its weaknessesTwenty-first century is a time of enormous opportunities and challenges when the vocational education in China is upgrading and booming to impact the future of China. Since the 1970s, the Ministry of Education P.R.C has mandated the Foreign Language Teaching Policy in China should center on English instead of other alternative foreign languages, such as Japanese, French, German and Russian. English education has been put to such a high level that every vocational school student has to pass the exam in order to graduate. After more than two decades of application experience, many innovative pedagogical strategies have mushroomed recently, but the major pattern of English teaching and learning in China is still in traditional, synchronous classrooms. Lets take an example to explain the situation of English teaching in one vocational school. In this grammar lesson, the teacher worked hard to introduce reforms. She organized the important text-based information into beautiful writings on the blackboard. Students listened carefully and sat quietly all the time, but most of the time, the teacher just read through the whole material while the students were busy copying the writings. Maybe you think grammar lessons should be like this. But you are sure to be surprised when you find the situation doesnt change much in an oral English lesson. Whats more, as the student enrollment has been increasing since last century, every vocational school English teachers burden becomes heavier as one teacher has to deal with a large class with more than 50 students inside. However, the total number of full-time teachers has not increased at the same rate as the number of students. Consequently, after the recent years of enrollment enlargement, many vocational schools indeed have doubled, trebled, or even quadrupled in student numbers. They force themselves to admit more students despite their own limited capacity and teaching resources. Urgent answers responding to these problems are proposed correspondingly, such as increasing teachers teaching hours, enlarging the size of each class, or enhancing the technology-based classroom to meet the requirements. The ratio of taking up an occupation and the competition with other schools is also a heavy burden for teachers. Not to say paying attention to students individual interests and their different needs in teaching.2.2 Present condition and application of Computer Assisted Language Learning in Vocational schoolA questionnaire inviting comments on English teaching and learning has been circulated nearly 10 vocational schools in Jiangsu Province. Nearly all these schools have multimedia classrooms and computers in many of their teachers rooms. But the deploy of these computers are not very good. And the multimedia classrooms are only used for public lessons. Some teachers in these schools even said frankly that there was not much difference from the traditional English class except that the teachers writing onto the blackboard was shifted onto the computer. Of course, a lot of time can be saved because using the slides is really a matter of getting done once and holding good for all time. However, many other teachers who sat in on her class feel that this computer version of lesson preparation does not significantly improve the participation and involvement of the students in classroom. Students interest cannot always be maintained and when they get tired of the color, the sound and the highlighted parts, they still refuse to speak or use English in classroom actively. Teachers are getting to know that the key point in using CALL is not just putting one piece of furniture called computer in front of the students, but that the teachers themselves must coordinate and integrate technology into the students learning environment so that students can be provoked to absorb and construct their own knowledge in whatever kind of classroom.Whats more, although our country is fast moving toward the Information Age and vocational schools are more computer-enhanced, vocational school teachers in general are not prepared for this new era. The lack of technically trained English teachers is another major obstacle to integrate computer assisted language learning (CALL) into English curriculum in China. The lack of time and money to practice using CALL and the unilateral enthusiasm for perusing high rate of taking up an occupation all limit the development and application of CALL in vocational schools.Chapter 3: A Typology of CALL Programs and Applications3.1 How to Use CALL To Teach ListeningNow lets try to find some ways to use CALL to achieve some specific teaching goals. Probably, CALL is most widely used in teach Listening. Although tapes and recorders are still playing important roles in teach Listening, their weaknesses such as large in size, difficult to keep, easy to fray and hard to edit make people use other technologies. With the development of multimedia technology and computers, an individual is able to digitalize the materials. So can English teachers establish a bank of personal digital listening resources in order to meet the need of teach and test listening.In order to establish a bank of personal digital listening resources, we should store different kinds of listening materials in the hard disk of personal computers and categorize them according to the contents, teaching purposes, objects of teaching and so on. In order to collect materials, we can depend upon online resources as going online has become very convenient and we can find almost all kinds of audio materials on the Internet. Besides that, we can digitalize the sounds in the tapes into the computers as well as buy some CD-ROMs which contain listening materials such as Crazy English and so on.Despite the familiarity of using computers, English teachers should have some basic knowledge of audio frequency and media displayers in order to collect and deal with different kinds of information. We can use some software such as Hero Audio Converter and Goldwave to change the format. Some software such as Cool Edit can repeat arbitrary lengths of the material and even change the speed of the original.When we have stored the listening materials in the computer and categorized them, we can conveniently use them. We can use the materials to serve as the leading reading as well as the training and testing of listening. If the students come across any difficulties, they can copy the materials with their Flash Disks and their MP3s and listen to them whenever they want. Thus, students can improve their listening abilities easily.3.2 How to Use CALL To Teach ReadingAs one branch of CALL, multimedia reading focuses mainly on two aspects: vocabulary acquisition and overall text comprehension. And some schools experiments have shown that multimedia can indeed improve students vocabulary acquisition in particular and reading comprehension in general.In order to improve students vocabulary acquisition, we can recompose the lesson to short movies that are repurposed for language learning. Each repurposing of the movie highlights several vocabulary items in the text. Each vocabulary item is linked through hypertext to a definition of the word, its part of speech, some example sentences, its video context and usage of the word with synonyms and antonyms. These are available for all the words in the study. Students can choose to look at one or all of these options. They can first watch the movie without the text and without the linked options. Then the second viewing provides the text and the option to stop the video, so as to let the students be able to consult these vocabulary learning support options and also do exercises using the vocabulary. It is harder to improve students reading comprehension because comprehension is far more complex. At present, computers are mainly used to enlarge students knowledge about the texts background information as teachers can present pictures or video clips in introducing the background. And it proves to be very effective.3.3 How to Use CALL To Teach Spoken EnglishWith Chinas entry into the WTO and the deepening put-in-force of the opening policy, it becomes more and more important to improve students spoken English. Using CALL to teach spoken English proves to be more effective than the traditional method as the development of software can totally meet students needs in listening, recording, reading and talking in small groups and let every student has the chance to speak. Whats more, it can greatly improve the ratio of the time using in class.English teachers can use three kinds of exercises to improve students spoken English. They are answering questions, translating sentences and rehearsing paragraphs. In the first part of the lesson, teachers can ask the students to do the question answering exercise. They can design several questions about some specific topics such as students hobbies and so on. This part mainly trains students abilities to organize the language and expressing their own ideas. In the second part, teachers can design some sentences and let the students to translate them. This part can show whether the students are familiar with the usages of words and sentence types. In the third part, students are required to rehearse the paragraphs they have heard twice. They can first rehearse the paragraph to their classmates and then to the whole class. After rehearsing, teachers can also design several questions about the material and ask the students to answer them. This part can also train students listening abilities.Teachers comments are very important in this case. Besides commenting on students pronunciation, intonation and the content of their answers, teachers can also tell the students the skills of doing the exercises of each part. Thus, by comparing each others answers and listening to the teachers comments, every student is able to find out his own weaknesses and receives more training at the same time.3.4 How to Use CALL To Conduct TestsNowadays, receptive-response items including multiple-choice, true-false and matching items are fairly easy to adapt to the computer assisted testing medium. Relatively cheap authoring software like Testmaster (1988) can be used to create such tests. Even productive-response item types including fill-in and cloze can be created by using authorizing softw