Future of Call

The Future of CALL

We can see that the use of computers have evolved tremendously in the past thirty years--from having students work on computer-fed drills to students' long-distance communication and collaboration in authentic research and multimedia publication. How do we see the use of computers in the language classroom in the next 30 years? It seems to us that there are two main directions worth exploring: (1) an increased emphasis on electronic literacy, and (2) the increased incorporation of Intelligent CALL into the classroom.

Electronic Literacies
As the developed world moves from the industrial age to the information age, economic activity and growth is based less on the input of more labor and capital and more on the exchange and interpretation of information and the development of knowledge (Castells, 1993; Castells, 1996). In such a society, it is safe to assume that the ability to read, write, and communicate effectively over computer networks will be essential for success in almost every sphere of life.
Given these circumstances, the question might become less "what is the role of informational technology in the language classroom" and more "what is the role of the language classroom in the infornation technology society." Preparing students to function in the networked society will become a major role language instruction. This will most certainly be true for the English language classroom, with English likely to remain the lingua franca of the new global society. To a lesser extent it will be true in other language classes as well, as other cultures and languages begin to assert their presence on the Internet.
Some of our students will already have electronic literacy skills in their own languages which they can easily transfer to the second language classroom. But, especially in ESL and EFL classes, it will likely be the case that many of our students will have to develop new electronic literacy skills as they begin to confront for the first time the challenge of accessing and responding to the immense amount of English-language material available online. The following are two areas that we believe will be essential for language teachers to consider:

(1) Finding, evaluating, and critically interpreting net-based information. When reading print materials, finding and evaluating sources is largely separated from the act of reading. In the "old days," students went to the library, found some books, and read them at home--largely trusting what they read because, after all, it was in the library. Reading on the Internet, however, is a completely different phenomenon. Even to locate the information worthy of reading involves sophisticated skills of searching for material and evaluating it in mid-stream (to decide, for example, whether to continue or back-track). Students themselves create their "texts" from their own selection of materials from a variety of sources. In teaching reading, we will have to go beyond how to decode texts, or understand them, and pay increasing attention to how to explore and interpret the vast range of online texts.

(2) Effective online writing. Online writing to date has been principally viewed as a way to get students to practice their writing. It is as if the "real" writing takes place in the printed essay the student hands in to their teacher; the online writing is just a way to get practice so that students can then improve their real writing. In the networked society, though, much if not most real writing will take place on screen. Much of business and personal affairs get conducted over e-mail. Teachers in many schools and universities are starting to have their students complete web-projects or other multimedia documents, rather than traditional essays. Indeed, the paper essay may become a "marked" form in the next 10-20 years, studied principally for its historical relevance. In response to this situation, second language teachers will need to teach students effective online writing skills. This includes both the genres of electronic communication as well as the relationship of texts to other media. This will represent a natural evolution of the way we view the World Wide Web. At first, many teachers saw the Web as a distribution vehicle for student writing; students were assigned to write traditional print essays which were then posted on the Web. In the future, we need to think about the Web not only a distribution vehicle, but as a medium in its own right; students will want to learn how to publish Web pages that are fitting for the multimedia environment. We will thus need to find ways to teach our students to combine a variety of media--texts, images, sounds, video--without diluting the attention we give to language.

Finally, before leaving the topic of the new networked society, we should mention change that the rapid expansion of networked computing is likely to bring about. We can expect, and are already beginning to see, increased resources devoted to Internet-based distance learning. This is especially the case in a field such as language teaching, where a high percentage of the programs and teachers are in certain (English-speaking) countries, and a high percentage of the potential students live in other (non-English-speaking) countries. While it is impossible to determine the directions that distance learning will take, it is likely that both teachers and students will have to struggle to ensure the quality and conditions of instruction, as fierce competition will unfortunately but undoubtedly arise in the effort by educational institutions to reach the largest number of new students at the lowest possible cost.