Computer and Language Learning_2009

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State of the art articleCom puters and language learning: an overviewMark Warschauer University of Ha wa i'i, USADeborah Healey Oregon State University, USARecent years have shown an explosion of interest inusing computers for language teaching and learning.A decade ago, the use of computers in the languageclassroom was of concern only to a small number ofspecialists. However, with the advent of multimediacom puting and the Inte rnet, the role of computers inlanguage instruction has now become an importantissue confronting large numbers of language teachersthroughout the world.

This article will provide an overview of currentteaching practices and research related to the uses ofcomputers in the language classroom. It will bedivided into four main parts: (1) a brief history ofcomputer-assisted language learning (CALL), (2) asurvey of current practices and research, (3) aprospectus toward the 21st century, and (4) a list ofresources for further information.1. The History of CALLComputers have been used for language teachingsince the 1960s.This 30+ year history can be roughlydivided into three main stages: behaviouristic CALL,communicative CALL, and integrative CALL. Eachstage corresponds to a certain level of technology aswell as a certain pedagogical approach.Behaviouristic CALL, conceived in the 1950s andimplemen ted in the 1960s and 1970s, could be c on-

Mark Warschauer (http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/markw)is a researcher at the U niversity of Haw ai'i investigatingthe social, cultural, an d cognitive aspects of using newtechnologies in language teaching. His published booksinclude E-Mail for English Teaching, VirtualConnections, and Telecollaboration in LanguageLearning, and he is the editor of an online refereedinternational journal for second and foreign languageteachers, Language L earning & Technology.

Deborah Healey (http://osu.orst.edu/~healeyd/)is the Technology Coordinator for Oregon StateUniversity's English Language Institute. She is theauthor of Som ething to D o on Tuesday, co-editorwith Norman Johnson of the annual T E S O L C A L LInterest Section Software List, editor of the refereedquarterly CJELL (Computer-Assisted EnglishLanguage Learning) Journal, and the Macintoshcoordinator for the T E S O L / C E L I A C D - R O M oflanguage software.

sidered a sub-component of the broader field ofcomputer-assisted instruction. Informed by thebehaviourist learning model, this mode of CALLfeatured repetitive language drills, referred to as drilland-practice (or, pejoratively, as 'drill-and-k ill'). Inthis paradigm, especially popular in the UnitedStates, the computer was viewed as a mechanicaltutor w hich never grew tired or judgme ntal andallowed students to work at an individual pace.Though behaviourist CALL eventually gravitated tothe personal computer, it was first designed andimplemented in the era of the mainframe. The best-known tutorial system, PLATO, ran on its own spe-cial hardware consisting of a central computer andterminals and featured extensive drills, grammaticalexplanations, and translation tests at various intervals(Ahmad, Corbett, Roge rs, & Sussex, 1985).The next stage, communicative CALL, emerged inthe late 1970s and early 1980s, at the same time thatbehaviouristic approaches to language teaching werebeing rejected at both the theoretical and pedagogi-cal level, and when new personal computers werecreating greater possibilities for individual work.Proponents of communicative CALL stressed thatcomputer-based activities should focus more onusing forms than on the forms themselves, teachgrammar implicitly rather than explicitly, allow andencourage students to generate original utterancesrather than just manipulate prefabricated language,and use the target language predominantly or evenexclusively (Jones & Fortescue, 1987; Phillips, 1987;Underwood, 1984). Communicative CALL corre-sponded to cognitive theories which stressed thatlearning was a process of discovery, expression, anddevelopment. Popular CALL software developed inthis period included text reconstruction programs(which allowed students working alone or in groupsto rearrange words and texts to discover patterns oflanguage and meaning) and simulations (which stim-ulated discussion and discovery among studentsworking in pairs or groups). For many proponents ofcommunicative CALL, the focus was not so muchon what students did with the machine, but ratherwhat they with each other while working at thecomputer.

Though communicative CALL was seen as anadvance over behaviouristic CALL, it too began tocome under criticism. By the late 1980s and early1990s, critics pointed out that the computer was stillbeing used in an ad hoc and disconnected fashion andthus 'finds itself making a greater contribution toLang. Teach. 31,57-71. Printed in the Un ited Kingdom 1998 Camb ridge University Press 57


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State of the art: Computers and language learningmarginal rather than central elements' of the lan-guage learning process (Kenning & Kenning, 1990,p. 90). This corresponded to a broader reassessmentof communicative language teaching theory andpractice. Many teachers were moving away from acognitive view of communicative teaching to a mo resocial or socio-cognitive view, which placed greateremphasis on language use in authentic social con-texts. Task-based, project-based, and content-basedapproaches all sought to integrate learners in authen-tic environments, and also to integrate the variousskills of language learning and use. This led to a newperspective on technology and language learning,which has been termed integrative CALL(Warschauer, 1996b), a perspective which seeks bothto integrate various skills (e.g., listening, speaking,reading, and writing) and also integrate technologymore fully into the language learning process. Inintegrative approaches, students learn to use a varietyof technological tools as an ongoing process oflanguage learning and use, rather than visiting thecomputer lab on a once a week basis for isolatedexercises (whether the exercises be behaviouristic orcommunicative).If the mainframe was the technology of behav-iouristic CALL, and the PC the technology of com-municative CALL, the multimedia networkedcomputer is the technology of integrative CALL.The multimedia networked computer-with a rangeof informational, communicative, and publishingtools now potentially at the fingertips of everystudent-provides not only the possibilities for muchmore integrated uses of technology, but also theimperative for such use, as learning to read, write,and communicate via computer has become anessential feature of modern life in the developedworld.

Many of the changes in CALL paradigms flowfrom economic and social changes.The shift to glob-al information-based economies has meant a dramat-ic increase in the need to deal with large amounts ofinformation and to communicate across languagesand cultures. Memorisation is less important in thisinformation-rich time than effective search strate-gies, and students need the ability to respond andadapt to changes rather than training in a single wayto approach a task. Teacher roles have also changedwith the times. Teachers are rarely the sole source oflanguage information in these days of global inter-connectedness, and the literary corpus that may havebeen the basis of their foreign language training isnot the only body of knowledge worth learning. Th eassumption from cognitive theory is that teachers donot pour information from their store into the headsof waiting and willing students, but that studentsactively interpret and organise the information theyare given, fitting it into prior knowledge or revisingprior knowledge in the light of what they havelearned Pole et al, 1991 ;Van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983).58

As a result of all these changes, the teacher hasbecome a facilitator of learning rather than the fontof wisdom, and will find, select, and offer informa-tion in a variety of ways on the basis of what thestudents must learn in order to meet diverse needs.Having and manipulating language data in multi-ple media provides learners with the raw materialthey can use to re-create the language for them-selves, using their own organising schemes. Activitiesthat encourage students to explore and be creators oflanguage rather than passive recipients of it furtherthe idea of the learner as an active participant inlearning (Brown, 1991). Wh ile both teachers andlearners see som e utility in basic language drills, suchas of irregular verb forms, repetitive practice only fitsinto a small part of language learning when the goalis communication in the target language.As facilitators, teachers must in many ways knowmore than they would as directive givers of informa-tion. Facilitators must be aware of a variety of mater-ial available for improving students' language skill,not just one or two texts. They also need to knowhow to teach learners to use the material effectively.Teachers as facilitators have to be able to respond tothe needs that students have, not just what has beenset up ahead of time based on a curriculum develop-er's idea of who will be in the classroom. Teachertraining is a key element to success in this more flex-

ible language classroom, so that teachers can usemultimedia and other resources effectively.

2. Current Practices and ResearchThe three stages mentioned above do not fall intoneatly con tained timelines. As each new stage hasemerged, previous stages continue. Current uses ofcomputers in the language classroom correspond toall three of the paradigms m entioned above. We willbegin this examination by looking at the teachingpractices and research on the use of stand-aloneCALL software programs. We w ill then analyse pra c-tices and research on the uses of the Internet in lan-guage learning and teaching.

2.1 CALL SoftwareTeaching PracticesOne of the reasons that administrators buy softwareis with the tho ught of providing an integrated teach-ing solutionsomething that will:

1. provide realistic, native-speaker models of thelanguage in a variety of media2. offer a language learning curriculum3. do a needs assessment4. determine the best next step for the learnerand provide p ractice with that skill area5. record what the student has done, along withan evaluation


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State of the art: Com puters and language learning6. be available at any hour and require no addi-tional pay or benefits.A number of high-end packages have beendesigned to come as close as possible to meeting

those needs in terms of English language teaching.These include CALI's Ellis, DynEd's DynamicEnglish, Berlitz's English D iscoveries, Jostens' EnglishLanguage Development and STEPS, and Hartley'sProject Star. ESL 2000 from HRB Systems incorpo-rates software from some of these and other vendorsinto a comprehensive system that includes manage-me nt software. W hat distinguishes these from m anyother multimedia programs is that they include acurriculum, not just distinct elements for practice.The quality of the curriculum and its relevance tothe target learners is a matter for each institution todetermine, since each of the packages is designedwith a somewhat different group of learners in mind.Some, like the Jostens and Hartley products, aremade for a North American English as a SecondLanguage audience; others, such as the CALI andDynEd offerings, are geared more toward an Englishas a Foreign Language setting.Another similarity in these high-cost products istheir relative immutability. There is little or no provi-sion for teacher-customised content. After all, itwould be difficult to incorporate teacher-generatedlessons into a fixed curriculum. Some of the pro-grams have teacher's guides and suggest ways toincorporate the lessons into a regular classroom, butthe assumption is that students will tend to workthrough the computer-based curriculum indepen-dendy of what goes on in the classroom. The moststand-alone of these also tend to be the least open-ended in the activities they provide; a human teacheris needed to evaluate free responses, where theyoccur.A number of software programs offer practice in avariety of skills, but without extensive managementsystems or prescriptive curricula. Most expect thelearner, often with the help of a teacher, to decidewhat skills to work on and what media to use. Thesecan range from comprehensive to limited, veryexpensive to quite affordable. On the high end forEnglish language teaching are programs likeDavidson's English Express and Story Club andAmerican Language Academy's ALA Lab System.TheDavidson products in particular offer extensiveteachers' manuals to help teachers incorporate thesoftware into their classrooms. In the intermediateprice range and with more limited but still extensivecontent are MacEnglish from DynE d and MacESLfrom Hacienda La Puente Adult Education forEnglish language teaching, and The LearningCompany's Learn to Speak series and SyracuseLanguage System's Spanish/FrenchYour Way for multi-media language instruction in a variety of languages.Most of these products have some sort of record-

keeping, though not as extensive as that of the moreexpensive systems.Where the computer is not seen as a substitute fora teacher, schools may purchase smaller, more limit-ed, but more flexible software that individual teach-ers will use as an add-on to instruction or that willbe placed in libraries as language references andresources. Language teachers have been especiallyblessed in this category of software, with hundreds ofprograms available. Th e benefits of adding a com pu t-er component to language instruction are many, andinclude:

1. multimodal practice with feedback2. individualisation in a large class3. pair and small group work on projects, eithercollaboratively or competitively4. the fun factor5. variety in the resources available and learningstyles used6. exploratory learning with large amounts oflanguage data7. real-life skill-building in c omputer use.One of the great benefits of the growth of multi-media is that software vendors (and language teach-ers) no longer feel bound to grammar practice as themain goal of computer use in the language class-room . While the process has taken longer in the for-

eign language arena than in English languageteaching, the movement toward integrative use ofcomputers is clearly taking place. There are still agreat many grammar and vocabulary drill programsavailable, but at least the vocabulary ones have startedto be contextualised and to incorporate graphics,audio recording and playback, and video. Drills dohave a place in language learning, particularly in thefirst stages of vocabulary acquisition where givingthe same information in multiple modes, such asvisual plus aural plus textual, enhances recognitionand recall. More sophisticated error-checking canprovide students real help in the feedback theyreceive, directing them to further practice or movingthem to the next stage. Those wh o do need extrahelp with those aspects of language that improvewith practice can use small, focused programs to givethem additional time and assistance outside ofregular class time.Pronunciation work in particular has benefitedfrom multimedia. Most pronunciation programs no wincorporate some sort of voice recording and play-back to let students compare their recording with a

model. Many of the English pronunciation pro-grams, such as Ellis Master Pronunciationfrom CALI,American Accent Program from Ford LanguageInstitute, and American SpeechSounds from SpeechCommunication, have video clips and animations ofthe mouth making specific sounds. Some vocabularyprograms, such as Practice Makes Perfect and VocabularyBuilderfrom The Learning Company, See It , Hear It ,59


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State of the art: Computers and language learningSay It! from Courseware Publishing International,and Triple Play Plusfrom Syracuse Language Systems,use speech recognition technology to help studentssee how close they come to the target pronunciationin several languages. A few programs, such asSpeech Viewer from IBM and Video Voice fromMic ro Video, let students try to m ake the graphicalrepresentations of their speech overlap a teacher-recorded tem plate. These visual cues work in con -junction with aural cues to provide sophisticatedfeedback.Most drills now include games as well, using thepower of the compute r and compe tition for or a col-laboration toward a goal - the fun factor-to motivatelanguage learning. Notable among the drill-as-gameare BlackbeltJapanese from Educorp; English, French,Spanish, and German versions of Hangman(Hangm an, La Guillotine, La Corrida de Toros, an dApfelschuss) from Gessler; MatchmasterfromWida;andWord Attack! from Davidson. These programs providea varying amount of instruction along with thegames, but all expect the teacher to do most of thework in introducing the concepts that students willpractise.Games and the fun factor are not only for drills. Alarge panel in the tapestry of language learning soft-ware is made up of programs designed for collabora-tive work, where the language that takes place in thepair or small group of students in front of the com-puter is as, if not more, important than the languageon the computer screen. Early examples of this areChris Jones's Kingdom and Fast Food, text-based sim-ulations of staying in power and making money on afood booth, respectively. The computer served as thedice-roller, deciding whether natural disasters orscarce supplies would occur to affect the results ofthe decisions the students had made. A m ultimediaversion of the same type of program is found in theCarmen Sandiego series from Broderbund and Who IsOscar Lake?from Gessler, available in a varie ty of lan-guages. Tract Talk from Courseware PublishingInternational has added a speech recognition ele-ment to the multimedia mystery story it provides,encouraging students to speak to the computer aswell as to each other. One of the most sophisticatedsimulations is A la Rencontre de Philippe from YaleUniversity Press. This interactive video program hasthe learner help Philippe find an apartment by read-ing ads, listening to answering machines, looking atmaps, and using a wide variety of authentic resourcesin French. Th e high quality of the video in this pro-gram is in part due to its use of videodisc, so the p ic-tures can be larger and clearer than digitised videowould provide. Dunkel (1991) and Crookall et al.(1990) describe in detail some of the many advan-tages of using simulations for language lea rning.

Collaboration and competition can be built intoalmost any type of language learning activity, on andoff the com puter. Th e classic strip story, where each60

student adds a sentence to that of the immediately-preceding student without seeing anyone else's sen-tences, can take an electronic turn with anyword-processor that includes the facility for hidingtext. Text recon struction programs such as clozeactivities and sentence jumbles or crossword puzzleswill become less frustrating and more satisfyingwhen students are collaborating to find the missingwords; their partnership against the machine moti-vates them to keep trying. Even drills are more inter-esting when students can discuss their answers andtry to figure out their mistakes. As the title of an arti-cle by Chris Jones (1986) so apdy states, 'It's n ot somuch the program, more what you do with it'.While software can build in a great deal of languagedata and many possibilities for learning, the teacherhas a very important role to play in furthering lan-guage acquisition by encouraging productive strate-gies at the com puter.Although much of what is done at the computercan be done in other ways, some activities are farmore productive with the resources that the com-puter can bring to bear.Text reconstruction is a goodexample. A teacher can create a sentence jumble bycutting up pieces of paper, but programs such asNewReaderfrom Hyperbole can do it painlessly. Witha paper cloze, students who get stuck on a word haveto give up completely and look at the whole text (orask the teacher individually for a specific answer); onthe computer, they can get a letter or word as a hintand go on. Both NewReader from Hyperbole andText Tanglersfrom Research Design Associates cancreate a variety of text reconstruction activities for aplain-text word-processed document, greadyexpanding any classroom reading that the teacher hasprepared.

Crossword and word search puzzles are examplesof activities that take a great deal of time to prepareby hand, but very little time to do on the computer.The teacher types in a series of words, and themachine formats them appropriately. With a cross-word puzzle, the teacher is then prompted for eachclue, and the machine formats the whole crosswordwith clues on the page to be worked on the comput-er or printed out. Because the process is easy, studentscan create crosswords for each other. A program likeCrossword Creator from Cen tron adds a thesaurus,making it even easier for students and teachers toformulate clues.

The writing process is another area where com-puters have added a great deal of value. Some pro-grams, such as IdeaFisher from IdeaFisher Systemsand Inspiration from Inspiration Software, help stu -dents in the pre-writing stage to generate and out-line ideas. Most word-processors now come withspelling checkers, giving weak spellers some help infinding their errors and recognising the correctspelling from a list of options. Dictionaries, bothtranslating ones like the Collins On-Line Dictionaries


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State of the art: Com puters and language learningfrom Harper/Collins and monolingual ones likeSoftkey's American Heritage Dictionary, the LongmanDictionary, and the Oxford English Dictionary fo rEnglish, and Gessler's Key into French/German/Spanish for those languages, can run in the back-ground and be accessed with a keystroke. Many dic-tionaries incorporate some grammar help, and some,like the Longman Multimedia Dictionary, have soundand video clips to help learners recognise a wordwhen it's spoken and put it into context. For begin-ning literacy students, Hartley's My Words andTeacher Support Software's Language ExperienceRecorder, as well as a number of word-processors, havetext-to-speech capability. Th e quality of tex t-to -speech software has improved dramatically over tim e,but the speech is still not particularly natural-sound-ing. For accurate translation into speech, the com-puter also generally needs to be running theappropriate language-specific operating system.Computers are very good at storing, manipulat-ing, and retrieving large amounts of information,making them particularly useful in the area of'data-driven learning'. This concept, popularised by TimJohns, refers to giving students a mass of languagedata and the tools to examine it. Students can thenbuild their own explanations of how language works.Having discovered the linguistic rules themselves,students are more likely to remember and use them.W here a teacher may be able to com e up o n the spurof the moment with a few sentences showing, forexample, the use of the past perfect, a concordanceprogram such as Oxford's MicroConcord, Longman'sLongman Mini-Concordancer, and Athelstan's Monoconcfor Windows could generate hundreds from a largequantity of source text (a 'textbase'). Corcordancers,programs that scan large quantities of text for speci-fied words or phrases and present the target words orphrases with a bit of context, have moved graduallyfrom the realm of Biblical and linguistic research intothe language classroom. Intermediate and advancedstudents can use the concordancer themselves toresearch the usage of a particular word or grammati-cal structure, while teachers of beginning studentscan look through the concordancer's results to selectappropriate examples for use in class. Domain-specifictextbases can be compared to show how usage canchange, depending on the setting. Current comput-ers with the processing power to work quicklythrough thousands of words have made classroomuse of concordancers practical.

A related way of examining usage, also using alarge textbase, is in finding collocations forword s-the words most likely to occur in conjunctionwith or quite close to a target word. For example,common collocations of the word 'charge' would be'in' (in charge) and 'take' (take charge), as well as 'o f(charge of) and 'with' (charge with). Students couldalso see that 'office chair' was a possibility, but not'chair office'. Adam and Eve from Oxford University

Press finds collocations and helps teachers create dif-ferent kinds of exercises from a textbase.A somewhat serendipitous effect of using multi-media, the Internet, and collaborative tasks in lan-guage learning is the real-world benefit to studentsof becoming more sophisticated in using computersand more experienced with a group approach toprojects. Computer use is taken for granted in mod-ern companies, and more and more businesses feelthe need for an Internet presence, especially as theygrow larger. Schools of business in the United Statesnow routinely have students work in groups on casestudies and other problems to prepare them for theteam approach required of executives in many busi-nesses. Collaborative language learning with com-puters fits right into this real-world model.

Research on Software-Based LearningActivitiesResearch on the effectiveness of new technologies ineducation, including the use of computers in lan-guage teaching, has been an ongoing process. A grad-uate student who set out to show the effectiveness ofbooks in the classroom would quickly be counselledto refine the topic in order to make it meaningful,and the same advice would be given to someone try-ing to measure computer effectiveness in the class-room. ChapeUe and Jamieson have long suggestedthat research on computers incorporate the areasknown to be relevant in language acquisition (1986,1989, 1991 ; and Chapelle, 1990 and 1995), such aslearner field dependence/independence and learningstrategies. W ith the rapid changes in com puter tech-nology, too, zeroing in on whether and in what wayscomputers can be used to enhance learning has beenaiming at a moving target. Research on studentbehaviour at text-based DOS or Apple II computers,for example, may have little relevance to what stu-dents do at multimedia machines with graphicalinterfaces. As both teachers and students becomemore familiar with the technology, they respond to itin different ways.Still, research can give some insight into howtechnology can and should be used, even if there areno definitive answers. Th e changes or lack the reofover time in what teachers and students do with andthink about technology provide a perspective inviewing the role of computers in education, andmaybe even some ideas about activities that motivatestudents and encourage learning. Proof is elusive, butas more research is performed, we come closer tohaving a sense of the role that technology can andshould play.

Some of the major areas of software-relatedresearch in CALL have been the amount and types ofinteraction at the computer; effects of skill-buildingsoftware, particularly wri ting; responses to m ultimedia;and attitudes toward computers and CALL. Basena61


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State of the art: Computers and language learningand Jamieson provide an excellent overview of recentresearch (1996) and an annotated bibliography of ESLCALL research (1996/1997). Basena and Jamiesonpoint out that while the proliferation of studies is a'healthy trend for a growing field' (1996: 19), there isno clear research agenda for the field as a whole andthat the wide variations in designs and measures'do not lend themselves to reproduction or generalis-ability' (p. 19). Other excellent bibliographies areonline: a brief annotated bibliography by RidwanSedgwick (1997), Sharp and Liu's (1997) 1990-1997annota ted bibliography, John Higgins's (1997)overview of the literature, and Athelstan's (1997)1300-item bibliography.Th e question of how students interact at and withthe computer has been addressed in a number ofstudies, with Piper's (1986) one of the earliest. In herstudy, as in many others later (cf. Abraham & Liou,1991; Dudley, 1995; Dziombak, 1991; Levy &Hinckfuss, 1990; Meskffl, 1993; Murillo, 1991; Pujol,1995/96), the type of software and the tasks teachersset for students had a large effect on the type andquality of student interaction with each other whenworking in pairs or small groups. Overall, softwarethat requires a minimu m of verbal interaction gener-ates very little, while having students write a jointreport or otherwise produce something collabora-tively results in a substantial amount of interac tion.

Research on specific skills other than writing hastended to focus on student attitudes toward drills andeffectiveness of drills (Abraham, 1985; Al-Juhani,1992; Botiono, 1992; Dalgish, 1991; Evans, 1993;Kleinmann, 1987; Robinson, 1989; Schaeffer, 1981;Van der Linden, 1993; Wang, 1993). The results havebeen mixed, largely because the types of software,teacher roles, and student tasks have been quitediverse. A recent exception to the focus on drills isHsu et al. (1993), who looked at what students did inan exploratory environment. Other non-empiricalresearch has described the use of conco rdan ces (Johns& King, 1991;Tribble, 1990;Tribble & Jones, 1990) asa tool for exploration of vocabulary and grammar.One skill area where research is just beginning is lis-tening, probably because sound-capable computerswere n ot in widespread use until fairly recently.

Research on writing has traditionally exploredhow students felt about and performed with word-processors. Daiute's (1985) Writing and Comp uters,while not empirical research, set the stage for muchof what teachers did with writing in the classroom,in the language arts as well as in foreign languageteaching. Studies by Neu and Scarcella (1991) andPhinney (1991) found that students had positive atti-tudes toward writing with computers and less appre-hension about writing, respectively. Thaipakdee(1992) found better attitudes toward writing andcomputers corresponded with better writing.W riting now includes research on e-mail correspon-dence as a way of improving motivation and w riting62

skills. The broad area of writing with computers isoften referred to as 'computer mediated com munica-tion', and it has its own journals, including theComputer Mediated Communication Magazine and theonline Journal of Computer Mediated Communication(http://jcmc.huji.ac.il/), as well as the more estab-lished Computers and Composition.Chen (1997) points out an interesting result in herstudy on the use of a grammar checker specificallydesigned to help Taiwanese students with their writ-ing. She found that students who got computerisederror feedback did more editing and improved theirwriting, but those who received more detailed andpersonalised error feedback improved their writingmore than those who received only generalised feed-back. This fits with work done by Johanesen andTennyson (1983) in the general area of feedback.Interactive video research gave some of the firstresults about multimedia effectiveness in languageteaching. Verano's (1989) study of interactive videofor Spanish teaching, for example, found that themore interactive the video work, the more studentsretained. De Felix et al. (1990) also had favourableresults, showing that ESL students in a fourth gradeclass were motivated by the use of ^interactivevideodisc. Liu (1992) found that computer-basedhypermedia enhanced vocabulary learning, whileEngelsberg (1997) had mixed results from a multi-media program. In Englesberg's study, studentsenjoyed the multimedia courseware a great deal forthe first five weeks of the term but became increas-ingly dissatisfied and did not perform as well as timewent on. Here, as in other areas of effectivenessresearch, the variables are complex.

Some questions regarding student attitudes towardcomputers seem to be part of most studies, includingmany of those cited here. Students tend to like usingcomputers, even when they may not make muchprogress (Stenson et al, 1992)-and when they mayfeel that computers do not necessarily improve theirlanguage learning (Schcolnik et al., 1995/96). Giventhe number of variables associated with languagelearning and the difficulty in controlling those vari-ables, particularly in a second language learning set-ting, it is not surprising that those who design studiesprefer to research the easier area of student attitude.Teacher responses to com puter use are also mixed; forexample, Walker (1994) describes teacher attitudes tothe introduction of CALL in Saudi Arabia as general-ly positive, but with hesitation on the part of someteachers about turning over control to students.

At this point, what is most clear as a result ofresearch is that students tend to enjoy using comput-ers, and that we need much more work to identifythe factors involved in using software effectively forlanguage teaching. Teachers will continue to refinetheir techniques with CALL over time and, it ishoped, continue to contribute to research beingdone in the area.


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State of the art: Computers and language learning2.2 The InternetIt is the rise of computer-mediated comm unicationand the Internet, more than anything else, which hasreshaped the uses of computers for language learningat the end of the 20th century (Eastment, 1996).With the advent of the Internet, the computer-bothin society and in the classroom-has been trans-formed from a tool for information processing anddisplay to a tool for information processing andcomm unication. For the first time, learners of a lan-guage can now communicate inexpensively andquickly with other learners or speakers of the targetlanguage all over the world. This comm unica tion canbe either synchronous (with all users logged on andchatting at the same time) or asynchronous (with adelayed message system such as electronic mail).Finally, with the World Wide Web, learners of manylanguages have access to an unprecedented amountof authentic target-language information, as well aspossibilities to publish and distribute their own mul-timedia information for an international audience.We will examine each of these aspects in turn: syn-chronous communication, asynchronous communi-cation, and the World Wide Web.

2.2.1 Synchronous Comm unicationSynchronous or 'real-time' communication can beaccomplished either using special software programsfor local area networks, such as Daedalus Interchangeby Daedalus Inc. or CommonSpace by Sixth FloorMedia, or via the Internet, using a variety of chatmedia such as MOOs (technically, 'Multi-userdomains Object Oriented'), Internet Relay Chat, orWeb chat programs.Computer-assisted discussion over local area net-works has been especially popular in the UnitedStates, in foreign language, ESL, and English compo-sition classes. Du ring synchronous computer-assisteddiscussion, each studen t sits at an individual com put-er. With programs such as Daedalus Interchange, thescreen is divided into two parts. Students composetheir messages on the b ottom half of the screen. Afterstudents hit the send button, the message appearsalmost instantly on the top half of all the other com-puters in the class. The messages are listed in chrono-logical order, with easy scrolling for re-examiningprevious messages. Such discussion can be carried outamong the whole class or among smaller specialisedconferences.

Research on the use of computer-assisted discus-sion for language teaching has focused on the ques-tions of participation, language use, and writingimprovement. Numerous studies have found thatcomputer-assisted discussion features participationwhich is dramatically more balanced than face-to-face discussion, with far less domination either by theteacher or by particularly vocal students (Chun,

1994; Kelm, 1992; Kern, 1995; Sullivan & Pratt,1996; Warschauer, 1996a). This is likely due to thefact that everyone can 'speak' at once, without havingto seize the floor.Th e language used in computer-assisted discussionhas been shown to be more lexically and syntactical-ly complex than in face-to face discussion(Warschauer, 1996a).This is likely due to the writtennature of computer-mediated communication,which allows more planning time than oral commu-nication and adopts more written syntactical fea-tures. For whatever reasons, computer-mediateddiscussion seems to be a good vehicle for helpingstudents push their language to greater levels of co m-plexity. Printed transcripts of computer-mediateddiscussions can also be used later for grammaticalanalysis or lessons (Kelm, 1992; 1995). Finally, therehas been at least one study that claims that semester-long participation in computer-assisted discussionwas more beneficial to the development of studentwriting than was participation in oral discussion(Sullivan & Pratt, 1996).

For these reasons, many teachers of general lan-guage classes have found computer-assisted discussionadvantageous on an occasional basis as a supplementto oral discussion. W ritin g teachers have used it on amore frequent basis, even daily.Synchronous communication at a distance can becarried out via MOOs, Internet Relay Chat, or Web-based chat programs. MOOs have been the mostpopular to date, but they will likely be supplanted byweb-based chatting in the future. The particularinterfaces of these programs tend to result in shorter,simpler sentences than does Daedalus Interchange,which allows users to easily write longer sentencesor paragraphs. MOOs and chat seem most beneficialeither when there is a particular need for long-distance partners to communicate, or as an out-of-class activity to give students additional time on task(Pinto, 1996).

2.2.2 Asynchronous Comm unicationAsynchronous communication is carried out mostfrequently via e-mail; other tools include bulletinboards, newsgroups (such as on 'USENET'), andweb-based conferencing systems. E-mail is mostdirect in that messages go directly to students' indi-vidual mailboxes. Th e othe r systems, which requirestudents to log on to sites to read messages, lack theconvenience of e-mail; they do, however, allowmessages to be threaded, thus facilitating more easyaccess to particular parts of long, complex discussionsamong many people.

E-mail and other forms of asynchronous com puter-mediated communication have been used for a vari-ety of purposes in second language classes. Manyteachers in college and university writing classes have63


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State of the art: Computers and language learningused e-mail discussion groups within their classes togive students opportunities for authentic writingassignments (see, for example, a series of articles byJanda inWarschauer, 1995).Teachers at all levels, fromprimary to tertiary, have used long-distance e-mailexchanges to give students greater opportunities forauthentic communication (either with native speak-ers or with other learners of the language) and forcarrying out collaborative projects, such as compar-isons of film and literature (Soh & Soon, 1991), com-pilations of folklore (Gaer, 1995), business simulations(Feldman, 1995), and survey-based research (Kendall,1995).Researching the uses of e-mail in the languageclassroom is complicated by the fact that much of thecom munication takes place outside class hours and inuncontrolled conditions. At least two ethnographicstudies have attempted to describe the processes andresults of using e-mail over the period of a semester.Telia (1991; 1992a; 1992b) followed several Finnishhigh school classes as they carried out an exchangewith classrooms in England. He found that, com-pared to the ordinary English classes in Finland, theseclasses became much more learner-centred, withlearners' time and effort devoted to authentic readingand writing tasks related to the authentic communi-cation w ith partners in Eng land. Warschauer (1997)looked at the use of e-mail between a teacher andher students in a graduate ESL writing class; hefound that e-mail was a powerful medium forapprenticeship learning, with the teacher able to pro -vide students with detailed and rapid feedback onthe immediate problems and questions that they had.This benefit, though, seemed largely due to theteachers' willingness to put a lot of time and effortinto reading and responding to students' e-mailmessages, a luxury that many teachers migh t nothave. Finally, a study by Wang (1993) compared dia-logue journals w ritten with paper and pencil (by onegroup of ESL students) and transmitted over e-mail(by a second grou p). She found that the e-mail groupcommunicated more frequently, asked more ques-tions, responded to more questions, and used agreater variety of language functions than did thepaper-and-pencil group.

2.2.3 The World Wide WebThe most recent medium of computer-mediatedcommunication used in the second language class-room is the World Wide Web. Part library, part pub-lishing house, part telephone, part interactivetelevision, the Web represents one of the most diverseand revolutionary media in human history. It isalready starting to transform academia, business, andentertainment; there seems little doubt that it willeventually have a profound impact on education aswell.64

The World Wide Web can be used in a myriad ofways for language teaching. Published accounts havediscussed the use of the Web for providing linguisticexercises (e.g., Li, 1995), for accessing authentic read-ing materials (e.g., Lixl-Purcell, 1995), for stimulat-ing communicative exercises such as studentdiscussion of trips or vacations (Rosen, 1995), andfor a medium of student publishing (Bowers, 1995).Because of the relative newness of the Web, as well asthe difficulty in investigating use of such a broad andcomplex medium, relatively little research has beenconducted. An exception is an ethnographic study byWarschauer (1997), who examined the uses of theWeb by four language and writing classes over thecourse of two years. Students in all four classes pub-lished their writings and multimedia documents onthe World Wide W eb. Th e study found that theimpact of the Web-based work rested in large part onthe social and cultural relevance of the writingassignments. W he n students perceived they werecontributing something of value to the public arena,they put in a great deal of effort in the process andattention to the product, yielding positive results intheir learning to w rite in a second language. W henstudents did not see their work as having any partic-ular social or cultural relevance, they showed littleinterest in Web-based publishing and the m ediumitself lent litde extra legitimacy or authenticity totheir writing assignments.3. The Future of CALLWe can see that the use of computers has evolvedtremendously in the past thirty years-from havingstudents work on computer-fed drills to students'long-distance communication and collaboration inauthentic research and m ultimedia publication. Howdo we see the use of computers in the language class-room in the next 30 years? It seems to us that thereare two main directions worth exploring: (1) anincreased emphasis on electronic literacy, and (2) theincreased incorporation of Intelligent CALL into theclassroom.

3.1 Electronic LiteraciesAs the developed world moves from the industrialage to the information age, economic activity andgrowth is based less on the input of more labour andcapital and more on the exchange and interpretationof information and the development of knowledge(Castells, 1993; 1996). In such a society, it is safe toassume that the ability to read, write, and co mm uni-cate effectively over computer networks will beessential for success in almost every sphere of life.Given these circumstances, the question mightbecome less 'what is the role of informational tech-nology in the language classroom' and more 'what isthe role of the language classroom in the information


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State of the art: Computers and language learningtechnology society'. Preparing students to functionin the networked society will become a major role oflanguage instruction.This will most certainly be truefor the English language classroom, with Englishlikely to remain the lingua franca of the new globalsociety. To a lesser extent it will be true in other lan-guage classes as well, as other cultures and languagesbegin to assert their presence on the Internet.Some of our students will already have electronicliteracy skills in their own languages which they caneasily transfer to the second language classroom. But,especially in ESL and EFL classes, it will likely be thecase that many of our students will have to developnew electronic literacy skills as they begin to con-front for the first time the challenge of accessing andresponding to the immense amount of English-language material available online. The following aretwo areas that we believe will be essential for lan -guage teachers to consider:

Finding, evaluating, and critically interpretingnet-based informationW hen reading print materials, finding and evaluatingsources is largely separated from the act of reading. Inthe 'old days', students went to the library, foundsome books, and read them at homelargely trustingwhat they read because, after all, it was in the library.Reading on the Internet, however, is a completelydifferent phenomenon. Even to locate the informa-tion worthy of reading involves sophisticated skills ofsearching for material and evaluating it in mid-stream (to decide, for example, whether to continueor back-track). Students themselves create their'texts' from their own selection of materials from avariety of sources. In teaching reading, we will haveto go beyond how to decode texts, or understandthem, and pay increasing attention to how to exploreand interpret the vast range of online texts.

Effective online writingOnline writing to date has been principally viewed asa way to get students to practise their writing. It is asif the 'real' writing takes place in the printe d essay thestudents hand in to their teacher; the online writing isjust a way to get practice so that students can thenimprove their real writing. In the networked society,though, much if not most real writing will take placeon screen. Much of business and personal affairs getsconduc ted over e-mail. Teachers in many schools anduniversities are starting to have their students com-plete Web projects or other multimedia documents,rather than traditional essays. Indeed, the paper essaymay become a 'marked' form in the next 10-20 years,studied principally for its historical relevance. Inresponse to this situation, second language teacherswill need to teach students effective online writingskills. This includes both the genres of electronic

communication as well as the relationship of texts toother media. This "will represent a natural evo lution ofthe way we view the World Wide Web. At first, manyteachers saw the Web as a distribution vehicle for stu-dent writing; students were assigned to write tradi-tional print essays which were then posted on theWeb. In the future, we need to th ink abou t the Webnot only as a distribution vehicle, but as a med ium inits own right; students will want to learn how to pub-lish Web pages that are fitting for the multimediaenvironment. We will thus need to find ways to teachour students to combine a variety of mediatexts,images, sounds, videowithout diluting the attentionwe give to language.

Finally, before leaving the topic of the new net-worked society, we should mention change that therapid expansion of networked computing is likely tobring about. We can expect, and are already be gin -ning to see, increased resources devoted to Internet-based distance learning. This is especially the case in afield such as language teaching, where a high per-centage of the programs and teachers are in certain(English-speaking) countries, and a high percentageof the potential students live in other (non-English-speaking) countries. While it is impossible to deter-mine the directions that distance learning will take, itis likely that both teachers and students will have tostruggle to ensure the quality and conditions ofinstruction, as fierce competition will unfortunatelybut undoubtedly arise in the effort by educationalinstitutions to reach the largest number of new stu-dents at the lowest possible cost.

3.2 Intelligent CALLThose w ho hope for'Intelligent CALL', by and large,do not feel that a piece of software can be intelligentin the same way as a human being. Rathe r, the idea isto have software that uses the power of the computerto offer easy interaction with the material to belearned, including meaningful feedback and guid-ance; comprehensible information in multiple mediadesigned to fit the learning style of individual stu-dents; and ways for students to carry communicationbeyond an individual computer screen.

In our information-rich time, having a way tonavigate and manage all of the facts at our fingertipsis essential. In the com puter arena, 'user interfa ce'-the way software is written so that people willunderstand what to do with it-is a perennial con-cern. Wh ile m uch has been made of the graphicaluser interface of the Macintosh and Windows,replacing text with graphical objects (icons) is notenough to make software intelligible, much lessintelligent . The best new business software offersusers help at every step; good CALL software shoulddo no less.Learners need help with more than the mechanicsof operating a software p rogram. They also need to

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State of the art: Computers and language learningknow how to make the best use of it for their ownpurposes. Research has indicated that learners don'talways know how to fit new information into anappropriate framework (Dole, et al., 1991; Gay, 1987;Van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983), so intelligent software hasto give them context as well as data. CALL programsthat respond to user input with nothing more than'R ig ht ' and 'Wro ng, try again' are clearly less helpful,thus less 'intelligent' in these terms than they shouldbe. Far better is software that tracks learner answersand looks for patterns, responding not only withwhether the answer was correct but also why it wasright or wrong and offering suggestions for furtherstudy-going on to a more advanced level or doingsome extra work at the current or a previous level.Learners also often fall short in their ability toapply appropriate learning strategies to material(Healey, 1993; Oxford, 1990; Rubin, 1987), so intelli-gent software should be able to take naive learners inhand and help them along in figuring out how to usethe software effectively, as a teacher w ould. This doesnot mean that learners give up all control over theirpath and rate through material. Quite a bit ofresearch has explored the idea of learner vs. comput-er control in computer-assisted instruction (Gay,1987; Johanesen, KJ. & Tennyson, R.D., 1983;Robinson, 1989; Schaeffer, R.H., 1981; inter alia).The general view is that learners, especially adults,feel better w hen they have a sense of control over theprogram. Th e most dictatorial programs are thosethat do not let the learner quit when he or she isready to do so. The most flexible give learners thechoice of what to do, when to do it, and for howlong. Guided freedom would be a feature of intelli-gent CALL, where the program would m ake sugges-tions, but the learner would make the choices.

Another direction in current software is the inte-gration of media. As computer storage and memoryprices have dropped, software developers have beenable to add in graphics, sound, animation, and videoclips. Foreign language teachers are particularlyhelped by access to a variety of media to help makethe language come alive to students for whom it islargely a distant abstraction. This trend can onlyaccelerate, with faster and more powerful computersmaking longer video and sound clips practical.Intelligent CALL will fit the m edium to the learner,ensuring that the media work in concert to enhanceunderstanding. Developers need to restrain the urgeto add anything and everything just to make a fancy-looking product, and instead focus in on selectingmedia to fit pedagogy, not vice-versa (Kozma, 1991).

The expansion of digital media has meant moredata with which learners can create their own lan-guage hypotheses. A vast amount of informationis available electronically in text form via the Web(see http://www.sil.org/linguistics/etext.html for aplace to start in electronic collections of texts), andmore high quality collections of text for linguistic66

analysis than ever are available for sale from Cobuild,Oxford, Longman, and other vendors. Wh ile currentconcordancers work only on text, intelligent CALLwill be able to use video concordancing to help clar-ify vocabulary and gramm ar usage. Teachers or lea rn-ers can query the video concordancer with a wordor phrase, and it will cue up video clips containingthat word or phrase for playback. Prototype videoconcordancing exists now, fed by products that cap-ture the output from closed caption decoders (Price& Imbier, 1993; Spanos & S mith, 1990).Many current businesses, especially high-techcompanies, use a team approach that encourages col-laboration on projects. It could be said that business isjust catching up to language teaching in this regard.The benefit to language teachers is that softwaredeveloped to make business collaboration easier, suchas Lotus Notes for Workgroups, can also be used tohelp students with in a class share their ideas and w rit -ing more easily. W ith networked computers increas-ingly commo n, software publishers are encouraged tomarket products that take advantage of the interac-tion a network offers. For exam ple, there is no reasonsoftware on CD-ROM or on disk should not alsolink to the Web in order to add current conte nt to awriting or grammar lesson, or to let students e-mailtheir writing for others outside the class to read.Intelligent CALL will not be limited to its self-contained information or interaction with a singleuser, but will take advantage of local network andonline possibilities for information retrieval.

John Underwood's 'On the edge: IntelligentCALL in the 1990s' (1989) hoped for advances inartificial intelligence, hypermedia, and simulations tocreate new ways of approaching language teachingwith computers. Natural language processing, or thecomputer's ability to extract something approachingmeaning from text or speech, is one of the elementsUnderwood feels is essential to the intelligent tutor-ing systems, the hypermedia rich in helpful naviga-tional aids, and the realistic interactive microworldshe describes. A com puter able to parse a typed orspoken sentence and respond to it can allow learnersmuch more flexibility in the types of activities theycan do and get help with. In fact, a student using anintelligent tutoring system should be able to ask thecomputer for help in something approaching naturallanguage rather than by choosing elements from aprogrammer-created me nu. A system that could eval-uate an answer and respond with guidance would bemore teacher-like than anything currently available.

The key to CALL software that responds intelli-gently to what the learner speaks or types is high-quality natural language processing. This has beenone of the key areas within artificial intelligenceresearch for years, and much progress has been made.However, substantial challenges must be overcomebefore the computer can make sense of learnerinput. Sells et al (1991: p. 1) point out that four related


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State of the art: Computers and language learningareas of study are involved in natural languageprocessing:

1. investigating the psychological processes involvedin human language understanding;2. building computational systems for analysingnatural language input (and/or producing nat-ural language output);3. developing theories of natural language struc-ture; and4. determining the mathematical properties ofgrammar formalisms.Bates et al. (1993) are optimistic that natural lan-guage processing, at least where the topics are some-what constrained and users are careful about howthey interact with the computer, will be advanced

enough within the next ten years to make a 'revolu-tionary' impact on society. The y feel that softwaresystems will improve in three key areas: (1)'Knowledge acquisition from natural language (NL)texts of various kinds, from interaction with humanbeings, and from other sources' to create largerknowledge bases than those that currendy exist (p. 1;italics in original); (2)'Interaction with multiple underly-ing systems' to make NL systems more flexible anduser-friendly (p. 1; italics in original); and (3) 'Partialunderstanding gleaned from multi-sentence language,or from fragments of language' because human inputis typically imperfect (p. 2; italics in original).Microsoft have been working on a system calledMindNet that they hope to ship in the next coupleof years. This system wou ld w ork with MicrosoftOffice and allow users to translate documents intodifferent languages, create executive summaries ofdocuments, and do more efficient searches for infor-mation in stored documents.Whether it will do whatit claims or not, Microsoft's interest indicates thatbusinesses see the goal of natural language processingas a realistic one.

Speech recognition has also made great advances inthe last few years. Dragon System's Naturally Speakingand IBM's ViaVoice convert clear but continuousspeech to text with an 80-90% accuracy rate. Th ehigher accuracy rate comes after the programs havebeen 'trained' by listening to the user speak about 250key words. Previous programs required users to pauseafter each word, making the speech highly unnatural.Girard and Dillon (1997) estimate that 30% of busi-ness users will be taking advantage of text to speechproducts by the year 2001 as a result of curren t devel-opments in the technology. Several programs for lan-guage teaching now incorporate speech recognition,including The Learning Company's Learn to Speakseries; Triple Play Plus from Syracuse LanguageSystems; Courseware Publishing International's See It ,Hear It, Say It; English Vocabulary; an d Trad Talk; andDynamic Englishfrom DynEd.These programs are notcapable of dealing with freely generated speech, but

rather recognise a correct multiple choice answer. Bylimiting the domain, the speech recognition programcan work with a relatively broad range of accent andspeech styles. By all indications, the use of speechrecognition technology will improve and increase astime goes on and computers become faster and moreable to do the complex calculations required of nat-ural language processing.Electronic conversations with the computer, pop-ularised by Joseph Weizenbaum's Eliza program , willbecome more sophisticated with spoken as well astyped input. Current adventure games have madegreat strides in their ability to process natural lan-guage in typed form, with games like Myst leadingthe way in setting up more natural interactionsbetween the user and the co mputer. To be m ore use-ful in a language teaching context, an intelligentCALL form of these games could let the learnerchoose to have the program evaluate and commenton his or her grammar and vocabulary, as well asrespond to the content of what was said or typed.

While we're coming closer, advancing in all theareas mentioned above-user interface, learner feed-back, integrated media, communication within andoutside the classroom, and natural language process-ing-we've still got a very long way to go beforeCALL can be accurately called 'intelligent'. Whatteachers can do now, however, is to work with eachother to improve teaching with technology. Linkingvia the Web, workshops, or conferences, teachers canencourage the intelligent use of CALL. That will be avery large step forward.ConclusionThe role of computers in language teaching haschanged significantly in the last 30 years. Previously,computers used in language teaching were limited totext. Simple simulations and exercises, primarily g ap-filling and multiple-choice drills, abounded.Technological and pedagogical developments nowallow us to more fully integrate computer technolo-gy into the language learning process. Multimediaprograms incorporating speech-recognition softwarecan immerse students into rich environments forlanguage practice. Concordancing software withlarge language corpora provide students with themeans to investigate language use in authentic con-texts. And the Internet allows for a myriad of opp or-tunities to communicate in the target language,access textual and multimedia information, and pub-lish for a global audience.Future developments in networked communica-tion, multimedia, and artificial intelligence will likelyconverge, creating a potentially more central role forthe computer as a tool for authentic language explo-ration and use in the second language classroom. Asour focus of attention gradually shifts from the com-puter itself to the natural integration of computers

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State of the art: Computers and language learninginto the language learning process, we will know thatcom puter technology has taken its rightful place as animportant element of language learning and teaching.

4. Selected CALL ResourcesRecent BooksATHELSTAN (1997). Technology an d language learning yearbook, vol.

8. Houston,TX:Athelstan.BOSWOOD,T. (1997). Ne w ways of using computers in language teach-ing. Alexandria,VA:TESOL Publications.

BUSH, M. (1996). Technology enhanced language learning.Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company.DEBSKI, R., GASSINJ.,& SMITH,M. (Eds.) (1997). Language learn-ing through social computing. Melbourne: Applied LinguisticsAssociation o fAustralia.HEALEY, D. (1995). Something to do on Tuesday. Hou ston: Athelstan.HEALEY, D., & JOHNSON, N. (Eds.) (1997). 1997 TESOL CALLInterest Section software /uf.Alexandria.VA: T ESO L Publications.LEVY, M. (1997). Computer-assisted language learning: context an dconceptualization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.PENNINGTON, M. (Ed.) (1996). Th e power of CALL. Houston:Athelstan.SPERLING, D. (1997). Th e Internet guide for English languageteachers. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents.THOMPSON, J. & PARSONS, J. (1995). ReCALL software guide #4 ,1995. Hull, UK: CIT Centre for Modern Languages,University of Hull.WARSCHAUER, M. (1995). E-Mail or English teaching.Alexandria,VA:TESOL Publications.WARSCHAUER, M. (Ed.) (1995). Telecollaboration in foreign language

learning. Honolulu, Hawai'i: University of Hawai'i SecondLanguage Teaching and Curriculum Center (University ofHawai'i Press).WARSCHAUER, M. (Ed.) (1996). Virtual connections: online activities

and projects for networking language learners. Honolulu, Hawai'i:University of Hawai'i Second Language Teaching andCurriculum Center (University of Hawai'i Press).

JournalsCALICO JournalTh e C omp uter Assisted Language Instruction Conso rtiumSouthwest Texas State University317 Liberal ArtsSan Marcos.TX 78666http://calico.org/C/ELL (Computer-Assisted English Language Learning) Journal1787 Agate St.,Eugene OR 97403 [email protected]://www.iste.org/publish/caell.htmlComputer Assisted Language LearningP.O.Box 8252160SZLisseThe [email protected]://www.swets.nl/sps/journals/call.htmlInternet TESL Journalhttp://www.aitech.ac.jp/~itesljLanguage Learning & Technologyhttp://polyglot.cal.msu.edu/llt

On-CALLLanguage CentreBond UniversityGold CoastQueensland 4229Australiahttp://ww w.cltr.uq. oz.au:8000/o ncall/ochom e. htmReCALL Newsletterhttp://www.cti.hull.ac.uk/pubs.htmSReCALLNewsletterSYSTEMElsevier Science Ltd.The BoulevardLangford LaneKidlington, Oxford O X5 1GB, UKTESL-EJhttp://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/

OrganisationsATELL (Australian Technology E nhanced Language LearningConsortium)http://adhocalypse.arts.unimelb.edu.au/~atell/CALICO (Computer Assisted Language InstructionConsortium)Southwest Texas State University317 Liberal ArtsSan Marcos.TX 78666http://calico.org/EUROCALLCT I Cen tre for Modern LanguagesUniversity of HullHULL HU6 7RX , [email protected]://www.cti.hull.ac.uk/eurocall.htmJALT CALL N-SIG (Japan Association for Language TeachingCALL National Special Interest Group)JALT Central OfficeUrban Edge Building 5th Floorl-37-9TaitoTaito-ku,Tokyo 110 Japanhttp://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/

MUE SLI (Micro Users in ESL Institutions)c/o IATEFL3 Kingsdown ParkTankertonWhitstable, KentEngland CT5 2DJhttp://www.man.ac.uk/IATEFL/TESOL CALL Interest Sectionc/o TESOL1600 Cam eron St., Suite 300AlexandriaVA 22314 [email protected]://www.tesol.edu

Internet ResourcesCALL &TESOL Linkshttp://tiger.coe.missouri.edu/~cjw/call/links.htmDave's ESL Cafe on the Webhttp://eslcafe.com/

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State of the art: Computers and language learningEXCHANGEhttp://deil.lang.uiuc.edu/exchange/LLTI (Language Learning and Technology International)http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/IALL/LLTI.htmlNETEACH-L (Using the Internet for teaching ESL)http://thecity.sfiu.edu/~funweb/neteach.htmOPPortunities in Englishhttp://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~leslieobTESL-L (Teachers of English as a Second Language)TESLCA-L (Computer-Assisted sub-branch ofTESL-L)[email protected](send message subscribe tesl-l yourfirstname yourlastname)Th e World of Language (British Council):ELT and the NewMedia http://www.worldoflanguage.com/elt-directory/index.htmInternational Student E-Mail Discussion ListsNine lists for ESL/EFL college and university studentshttp://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/education/sl/sl.html

ReferencesABRAHAM, R. (1985). Field independence-dependence and the

teaching of grammar. TESOL Quarterly, 20,689-702.ABRAHAM, R. & Liou, H-C. (1991). Interaction generated by

three computer programs: analysis of functions of spoken lan-guage. In P. Dunkel (Ed.), Computer-assisted language learningand testing, 85-109. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

AHMAD, K., CORBETT, G., ROGERS, M., & SUSSEX, R. (1985).Computers, language learning and language teaching. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

AJL-JUHANI, S. O. (1992). The effectiveness of computer-assistedinstruction in teaching English as a foreign language in Saudisecondary school. Dissertation Abstracts International, A: TlteHumanities and Social Sciences, 52,2383-A.

ATHELSTAN. (1997). CALL bibliography. [Internet document]http://www.nol.net/~athel/athelbib.html.Accessed10/20/97.

BASENA, D. & JAMIESON.J. (1996). CALL research in second lan-guage learning: 1990-1994. CAzLLJoumalJ (1/2), 14-22.

BASENA, D. &JAMIESON,J. (1996/1997). Annotated bibliography ofESL CALL research: 1990-1994. CAzLLJoumalJ (3), 12-19.BATES, M . , BO RRO W , R . J . , & W E I S C H E D E L , R . M . (1993). Critical

challenges for natural language processing. In M. Bates andR.M.Weischedel (Eds.), Challenges in natural language processing(pp. 3-34). New York: Cambridge University Press.

BOT1ONO, B. D. (1992). The effect of three feedback forms onlearning through a computer-based tutorial. CALICO Journal,10,45-52.

BOWERS, R. (1995). Web publishing for students of EST. In M.Warschauer (Ed.), Virtual connections: online activities and projects

for networking language learners, 3634. Honolulu, Hawai'i:University of Hawai'i Second Language Teaching andCurriculum Center.

BROWN, H. D. (1991). TESOL at twenty-five: what are the issues?TESOL Quarterly, 25,245-60.

CASTEUS, M. (1993).The informational economy and the newinternational division of labor. In M. Carnoy, M. Castells, S. S.Cohen, & F.H . Cardoso, T7ie new global economy in the informa-tion age: Reflections on our changing world, 15-43. UniversityPark, Pennsylvania:The Pennsylvania State University Press.

CASTELLS, M . (1996). Tlie rise of the network society. Maiden, MA:Blackwell.

CHAPELLE, C. (1990). The discourse of computer-assisted lan-guage learning: toward a context for descriptive research.TESOL Quarterly,!^, 199-225.

CHAPELLE, C. (19 95). A framework for the investigation of CALLas a context for SLA. CA1.LLJournal, 6 (3), 2-8 .

CHAPELLE, C. & J A M I E S O N J . (1986). Computer assisted languagelearning as a predictor of success in acquiring English as a sec-ond language. TESOL Quarterly, 20, 27-46.

CHAPELLE, C. & JAMIESON.J. (1989). Research trends in comput-er-assisted language learning. In M. Pennington (Ed.), Teachinglanguages with computers, 45 -5 9. La Jolla, CA: Athelstan.

CHAPELLE, C. & JA M IESO N J . (1991). Internal an d external validi-ty issues in research on CALL effectiveness. In P. Dunkel (Ed.),Computer-assisted language learning and testing, 37-57. Rowley,MA : Newbury House.

CHAPELLE, C. & MIZUNO, S. (1980, December). Student strate-gies with learner-controlled CALL. CALICOJournal, 25-47.

C H E N J . F. (1997). Computer generated error feedback and writ-ing process: a link. TESL-EJ, 2 (3). [electronic document]Available at http://violet.berkeley.edu/~cwp/TESL-EJ/ej07/al.html. Accessed 10/19/97.

CHUN, D. (1994). Using computer networking to facilitate theacquisition of interactive competence. System, 22 (1), 17-31.

CROOKALL, D , COLEMAN, D. W , & VERSLUIS, E. B. (1990).Computerized language learning simulations: form andcontent. In D. Crookall & R.L. Oxford (Eds.), Simulation,gaming, and language learning, 165-82. N e w York: NewburyHouse.

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