Computer Assisted Language Teaching and Learning
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Language Learning. To begin with, Warschauer (1996) distinguishes the following three phases of CALL: • Behaviouristic (in Warschauer 2000, and onwards called ‘Structural’); • Communicative; • Integrative. Behaviouristic CALL was conceived in the 1950s and implemented in the 1960s and 1970s. It reflected the then-dominant behaviourist theories of learning and mainly offered learners language drills. Warschauer quotes PLATO as an example of tutoring systems available at that time and, while acknowledging their obvious pedagogical limits, he summarises the following advantages of drill-and-practice programs: • repeated exposure to the same material is beneficial or even essential to learning; • a computer is ideal for carrying out repeated drills, since the machine does not get bored with presenting the same material and since it can provide immediate nonjudgmental feedback; • a computer can present such material on an individualized basis, allowing students to proceed at their own pace and freeing up class time for other activities. (Warschauer 2000: 2)
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, behaviouristic/structural CALL lost impetus due to two important factors: firstly, behaviouristic approaches to language learning had been rejected, and secondly, the arrival of the microcomputer brought about new possibilities in CALL pedagogy (ibid.: 2). Communicative CALL was the development of the 1970s. It was inspired, just as the communicative approach to language teaching, by cognitive/ constructivist views on learning (Kern & Warschauer 2000: 4). The main goal in communicative CALL was to provide learners with opportunities for communication and learner-computer/learner-learner interaction (Warschauer 1996: 5). Other aims were ‘to teach grammar implicitly, not explicitly, encourage learners to generate original utterances rather than just manipulate prefabricated language and use the target language predominantly or even exclusively’ (Jones & Fortescue 1987; Phillips 1987; Underwood 1984 in Warschauer & Healey 1998: 57). Therefore, within communicative CALL learners worked with the following: o programs for paced reading, text reconstruction, and language games for individual or pair work (students rearranged words and texts to discover patterns of language and meaning);