Article discussion

Designing Task-Based CALL to Promote Interaction:EN BUSCA ESMERALDS
by Marta Gonzalez-Lloret


Report of the article:

This article is mainly talking about nowaday all areas of education are undergoing some changes. It changes from teacher-centered to student centered, focusing more on letting students do the practice themselves. And also the increasing use of computers for learning, and net-working based teaching is a huge change. So L2 teaching is no exception in this shift. Computer-assist language learning (CALL) becomes more and more popular. CALL does not mean learning without the help of instructors, it mean that technology is one of the tool that teacher use to assist and promote language learning.

But although computers are useful and motivating for students' learning, but there are only few solid studies to support this learning method. So this article provides a research base to help confirm this argument.

It mentions about the advantages of using CALL activity for learning, such as allowing students to be immersed and actively involved in an enviornment. And students can access at any time from any computer. It is global wide. And it can integrate graphics, audio, and text together and etc.

Besides the advantages, there is another important point of CALL activity, which is to use the help of interaction to promote students in the area of L2 learning. Many scholars such as Long and Hegelheimer and Chapelle, state that learners are most likely to notice linguistic form during interaction

So by using CALL activity, student can learn L2 by interacting more with other students, and also by the help of the instructors.


YouTube videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evY4zv990z0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKx3gyQrqaA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcYyUwFLakQ



Summarize and Evaluate Classmates’ Ideas:

Question 1.Do you prefer this way of L2 learning based on multimedia, or prefer the traditional teaching method? What are the possible advantages or disadvantages of this method? Do you think the efficient of this method is good or not?

Answer: Yes I do like it. I feel it's more interesting than traditional ways of learning. I think the advantage of CALL is that it's fresh and free to students. In the past, some students might want to skip the class when facing terrible weather or the temperature is too hot or too cold. Now by using CALL, we don't have to go out to class, we can simply learn at home. I think it will help to lower the rate of skipping class. But when it comes to the efficiency, I think face to face learning is still better. Because it can save the time of typing and operating the computer.


Question 2.Do you have similar experience using this kind of device or join alike online activities? If you do, please share your experience with us, and tell us if you hold a positive attitude or not.

Answer: I've used Second Life to learn news writing before. I can teleport almost anywhere I like in this virtual world, and buy free gorgeous costumes to dress myself up. My group members and I also interviewed other players in this online-game about their attitude towards online relationship. Over all, it was an interesting experience, and I really did learn some interview and news writing technology through Second Life. So I definitely holds a positive attitude towards CALL.