teaching+and+researching+computer-assisted+language+learning

Byrd, P. (2004). Review: Ken Beatty:Teaching and researching computer-assisted language learning. Pearson, 2003 //Applied Linguistics//, //25//(4):549-552.

The article is a review of a book " Teaching and researching computer-assisted language learning" by Ken Beatty that deals with the issues of the applied linguistics through computer-assisted language learning. The book can be interested for those who create and use CALL materials. It has four main sections.

The first section, called 'Key Concepts', introduces the reader to a brief history of CALL. It defines the key terms such as hypertext, hypermedia and multimedia, and discusses eight CALL applications. This section also compares behaviourist and constructivist designs for learning materials. These concepts are the core of the discussion of CALL in the subsequent chapters.

The second section, 'The Place of Call in Research and Teaching', is devoted to second language acquisition. It also speculates on collaboration and negotiation of meaning, attempts to define a model of CALL, and illuminates theoretical and pedagogical concerns about using CALL in the classroom. In the first chapters the author struggles summarizing theory and research on SLA, a topic he has serious doubs about. Beatty supports his vision of CALL with two concepts:a) negotiation of meaning and b)comprehensive input/output.

Further, In chapters 5 and 6, Beatty goes back to historical roots of CALL in behaviorist and constructivist philisophies. He explains the presence of behaviorist beliefs and methods in CALL that appear from the historical interest of behaviorists in teaching 'machines' and programmed instruction'. He links the ideas of meaning negotiation and comprehensible input/output to the constructivist approach and stresses the crucial importance of collaborative work for language learning. Beatty concludes chapter 6 with a detailed set of codes for labelling discourse. Though interesting, the codes have not been tested in practice.

Chapter 7 "Defining a model of CALL", is based on the model described in Duncan and Biddle (1974). The model examines the classroom learning from the point of a) personalities and prior knowledge variables; b) context variables such as the school, the community and the particular classroom; c) the 'classroom' as the center of teahcer-student behaviours that cause d) immediate, short-term, and long-term changes in the pupild which are called 'product variables'. The system clarifies how pupils change as a result of their interaction with teachers in the classroom. Beatty changes this system by replacing 'material developers' with teachers and the 'program' with with the classroom with 'product variables'. The learners exprerience changes that are the result of their interaction with the 'program'. THe reviewer criticizes this model by saying that it is briefly presented and it is unclear what Beatty sees in it.