The weekly column

Article 50, February 2001

CALL, the Internet, and the foreign language teacher

By Rolf Palmberg
Department of Teacher Education
Abo Akademi University
Vaasa, Finland

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to suggest ways in which CALL and Internet methodology can be linked in with ordinary foreign-language classroom work in order to motivate the learners to learn what the teacher wants them to learn. This is especially important in classroom situations where the language to be learned (the target language) has the status of a foreign language rather than a second language, and where the individual interests of the learners, rather than their communicative needs as such, often determine what they actually learn.

Planning a CALL/Internet-based teaching unit

The teacher's role, first of all, is to choose a CALL program or an online Internet activity (from now on collectively referred to as 'computer program' or just 'program') that can fulfil the teaching goals aimed at during the teaching unit and that is - hopefully - interesting from the learners' point of view. The selected program must also be pedagogically meaningful, whether used for purposes of oral communication, vocabulary development, or as a starting point for more ambitious learning projects.

Next, the teacher must plan the teaching unit in detail. In addition to the computer session proper (the "hands-on" phase), CALL has traditionally involved one or several pre-computer phases as well as one or several post-computer phases. The length and character of these phases can and do vary depending on the number of lessons included in the teaching unit, the general teaching goals of the teaching unit, the content of the syllabus, the proficiency level of the learners, and the time that the teacher has assigned to each of the four language skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. The same methodology applies in principle also to Internet-based teaching units.

(a) pre-computer work

During the pre-computer phase the teacher typically explains the outline and purpose of the program to be used (especially if it is new to the learners) and also introduces the topic in question in the same way that s/he would an ordinary foreign language lesson. A simple way of doing this is to write a key word (for example the name of the topic) on the blackboard and ask the learners individually to write down all content words relating to the key word that they come to think of. After a minute or two, the learners are requested to form pairs or small groups and to share their word lists with each other. The teacher can then revise and/or pre-teach relevant vocabulary items together with any necessary set phrases and/or grammar points needed by the learners for the computer and post-computer phases.

(b) computer work

Depending on the selected program and the focus of the teaching unit, the computer phase can in principle involve any kind of learner activity. There is, however, an important point to be kept in mind: even if the selected program seemingly presents the learning task, checks learner input and provides feedback, the control exercised by the learners within the boundaries set by the program must still be supervised (and occasionally restricted) by the teacher. It is always the teacher's responsible to plan the computer session to suit his or her teaching situation as it cannot be automatically assumed that a computer program knows what is expected from the learners for example in terms of language skills to be practised (in the same way that a reading passage given to learners cannot know whether they are expected to translate the text, find all adjectives or cross out every nth word). In addition to such instructions the teacher must also inform the learners about any supplementary tasks to be performed during this phase (such as note-taking or filling in worksheets).

When planning the teaching unit the teacher must also take into consideration the fact that some computer programs are obviously better suited for practising specific language skills than others. Simulations, for example, are valuable tools for oral communication in a foreign language since they generally provide the learners with something meaningful and interesting to talk about. Being excellent substitutes for a wide range of useful, real-life activities (such as booking a trip and checking in at a hotel) they increase learner motivation and at the same time offer authentic language practice involving learner decisions based on data from realistic situations.

If the learners are requested to search for specific information on the Internet, it is the teacher's responsibility to provide them with clear working instructions (such as what to find, where and how to find it, and what to do with it once they have found it). Whenever possible, the teacher should select a topic that has current relevance to events that relate to the learners' interests or environment, and also take into account the fact that finding information on the Internet often requires different types of reading skills from the learners, such as skimming (is the text worth going into?) and scanning (looking for specific facts). Moreover, s/he must remember that it is generally not enough that the selected reading tasks concentrate on the learners' understanding of the plain sense of what is said in a text (an ability which Neville Grant has termed "plain sense reading"). The tasks given should rather draw on the learners' ability to make inferences from what is said in the text ("deductive reading"), or better still, their ability to relate the reading passages to their own knowledge and experience ("projective reading").

It is also in the teacher's interest that the relevant information can be found by the learners with an appropriate level of effort and/or difficulty and that the task design will enable the information to be processed and transformed by the learners into new knowledge. To put it differently, the learners must be able to understand the information in question (using dictionaries whenever necessary), to assess what constitutes relevant information, to arrange and/or rearrange the information selected, to make comparisons with their previous knowledge or other information, and, during the post-computer phase, to present their findings in a way that is meaningful from an educational point-of-view. Otherwise there is a great risk that the "learning task" will be performed mechanically by the learners without any actual learning taking place.

For the computer phase, pairs are in most cases the preferred group size. Working in pairs, each learner has someone to talk to or negotiate with and at the same the theoretical talking time for each learner is maximal, particularly when compared to large-group interaction. While the learners are working, the teacher has ample opportunity to move around in the classroom supervising, providing help whenever needed, and, if relevant for the activity in question, reminding the learners that all conversation should be carried out in the foreign language.

(c) post-computer work

During the post-computer phase the learners practise and/or demonstrate, in one way or other, what they have learned or found during the computer phase. They may, for example, have to prepare individual, pair, or group reports based on their worksheet notes to be presented orally in class. Or, they may be requested to practise the program vocabulary and grammar points through role-play activities (with learners from different pairs or groups forming new pairs or groups) or one-to-one interviews relating to the topic of the computer session. By slightly varying his or her instructions, the teacher can in such cases easily transfer the emphasis onto specific grammar points instead, for example by asking the learners to report on what they achieved during the computer phase (practice of the past tense) or what they would do differently if they had to do whatever they did again (practice of conditional sentences).

If, on the other hand, the teacher wants to focus on vocabulary work, s/he can do so in a number of different ways. S/he can for example give the learners a piece of paper listing some of words that were used during the computer phase and ask them to translate the words into their native language (using dictionaries if necessary), to use bilingual dictionaries to look up additional meanings to the words, to group the words together, for example into semantic fields or by creating associational links between chains of words, to arrange the words in order of perceived difficulty or according to their usefulness in everyday life, or to tick the words that they have come across before and categorise them according to place or source (such as the class textbook, the teacher, friends, a film, a pop song, or a magazine).

The learners could next be asked to share their results orally in class, to write a number of sentences that contain as many of the newly learned words as possible, or to prepare vocabulary exercises for their classmates (such as filling in gaps or matching words with their definitions, synonyms, antonyms or native language equivalents).

The post-computer phase too should give the learners sufficient opportunity to process the language material in such a way that old knowledge is transformed into new knowledge. When, for example, the learners are presenting their results by reading text from a paper, there is always a risk that the learners (readers) themselves may not understand what is said, that the classmates (listeners) may not understand what is said, or that the classmates may not even listen to what is said.

Possible solutions would be to ask the learners to work with native language material but do their presentations in the foreign language, to work with foreign language material but do their presentations in the native language, to work with foreign language material but do their presentations in the foreign language while required to rephrase all "difficult" words and passages found in the original material, to comment on the material by relating to personal experience, to prepare a few questions to be answered by their classmates, or to prepare follow-up questions to be discussed in class.

Similarly, if the post-computer phase requires the learners to produce a written report to be completed at home, the teacher should bear in mind that even if the submitted foreign language text is well organised and contains a variety of grammatical structures and rich vocabulary, the learners may have copied most of it with little or no learning whatsoever taking place.

Conclusion

Regardless of the type of tasks performed by the learners, it is always profitable from an educational point-of-view to let the learners reflect upon what they feel they have learned during the various phases of the teaching unit. Furthermore, project work dealing with different countries, peoples, and cultures in particular often lead to further questions that need to be answered and which could perhaps be worth a follow-up project in its own right. The teacher could therefore ask the learners to prepare, as homework, questions to be asked using one or several of the communication options offered by the Internet, such as e-mail, electronic postcards, or a chat site. Providing ample opportunity for authentic, albeit written communication in the foreign language with other learners throughout the world, such homework generally guarantees optimal learner motivation.

ADDENDUM

A selection of online EFL activities and lesson plans organised in accordance with the methodology outlined above can be found in the ELT Newsletter (see back issues) and at http://www.vasa.abo.fi/users/rpalmber. Some of these lesson plans are accompanied by downloadable CALL programs for PC computers.

About the Author

For more information about Rolf Palmberg please click here.

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