Computer Assisted Language Learning

The Distance Learning Context

The use of technology in language teaching clearly falls within the domain of pedagogic procedures. Whereas practical circumstances often favor -- or even dictate -- distance education for LCTLs, there is nothing inherently necessary or sufficient psycholinguistically about any use of technology, as evidenced by successful foreign language learning without it. Most successful foreign language learning takes place with no technology support at all, in fact. Moreover, it has been demonstrated empirically that it is design principles that underlie successful learning rather than any particular delivery system (Clark, 1985, 1994. Nonetheless, the current generation of network-based technology, in many cases, does offer advantages over the traditional classroom in terms of ease and range of access to materials, interlocutors, and domain experts. This is especially true in the case of the LCTLs, for which budgetary considerations may preclude the offering of regular courses for what are often small numbers of students in any one location. Still, where language teaching takes place entirely out of the classroom, this is not without difficulty. For instance, the classroom teacher -- who is, as noted above, (a) ordinarily the most reliable source on local circumstances, (b) the one who can best make decisions as a lesson unfolds, and (c) a major source of native L2 input and feedback on error – is now removed in space and time from the learners, who may, in turn, be removed from one another.

The question, then, when considering which technology options are appropriate in distance learning, is how, in accordance with the language teaching MPs, to integrate the advantages of network-based technology while compensating for the difficulties posed by the absence of real-time, face-to-face interaction. Rational decision-making in this area has the potential not only for appropriate realization of the MPs concerned, but also for making use of technology itself more principled than is often the case.

Taken from the article “Optimal psycholinguistic environments for distance foreign language learning” by Catherine Doughty and Michael Long