CALL IN THE
YEAR 2000: STILL IN SEARCH OF RESEARCH PARADIGMS?
Carol Chapelle
Iowa State University
ABSTRACT
Advancements in the design and
use of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) activities require that
key questions about CALL be identified and effective research methods be
used to answer them. In this paper, I suggest looking to research on other
types of second language (L2) classroom learning activities for guidance in
framing CALL research questions and in discovering relevant research
methods. I begin with examples from the CALL literature demonstrating the
diverse perspectives (e.g., cognitive psychology, constructivism,
psycholinguistics) which have been suggested as ways of approaching CALL
research. I then summarize the research questions and methods of L2
classroom research with emphasis on the "interactionist" approach and
discourse analysis. Using three examples --computer-mediated communication,
a microworld, and vocabulary in reading-- I will illustrate how similar
discourse analysis methods can address essential descriptive and evaluative
questions about CALL activities. Finally, I will outline some implications
of this perspective for design and investigation of CALL
activities.
A glance through the
computer-assisted language learning (CALL) literature of the 1990s reveals the
profession's quest for principled means of designing and evaluating CALL. Like
researchers in other facets of applied linguistics, CALL researchers look to
cross-disciplinary sources for perspectives and research methods. A recent
example of the breadth of this quest is an article entitled "A theoretical
foundation for the development of pedagogical tasks in computer mediated
communication," in which the author seeks to "address the pedagogical merits
[for second language teaching] of this new medium of communication in relation
to current research in Anthropology, Cognitive Psychology, Communication
Theory, Linguistics, and Second Language Acquisition (SLA)" (Salaberry, 1996,
p. 6). Similarly, in the commentary on a recent collection of papers about
intelligent tutoring systems for foreign language learning, the authors draw
their comments from perspectives in learning theory, psycholinguistics,
human-computer interaction, psychology (MacWhinney, 1995), "a computationally
oriented theory of language use" (Bailin, 1995), psycholinguistic theory
(Garrett, 1995), theory of novice vs. expert learning, constructivism, and
individual differences theory (Oxford, 1995).
These diverse perspectives are
directed at general questions of how CALL research can increase our
understanding of CALL activities. At the same time, there is a need to specify
the particularly relevant questions about CALL and to identify ways that they
can be investigated through empirical research. In this paper, I suggest that
our understanding of CALL would benefit from addressing questions similar to
those posed about other L2 classroom learning and from applying the methods
used to study L2 learning in other types of classroom activities. I will begin
with some examples from the CALL literature which demonstrate the need to look
to empirical research methods for investigating instructed SLA. I will then
turn to a brief explanation of the research questions and methods of L2
classroom research with emphasis on discourse analysis methods for
investigating learners use of L2 tasks. Illustrations are provided of how
analogous research questions can be posed for CALL activities and how similar
discourse analysis methods can help to investigate CALL use. Finally, I note
examples of how classroom research perspectives might inform CALL
design.
THE NEED FOR EMPIRAL RESEARCH
METHODS FOR CALL
Because CALL practice draws on
cross-disciplinary work, CALL researchers and developers find themselves at
the crossroads among disciplines that appear to offer insights for work in
CALL. For example, it is evident from the following report of an intelligent
tutoring system (ITS) project that some CALL developers see computational
linguistics as a foundation for CALL:
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A rational way to begin
research and development into such an ITS would be to start from first
principles. The problem, then, lies in deciding which theories of language
and pedagogy may prove useful to us. We shall begin with a brief survey of
NLP [natural language processing] techniques/theories that form the
foundation of our system (Wilks & Farwell, 1992, p.
263).
Another project description
suggests that along with the computational linguist, the instructional
designer comes into play in CALL design:
One key to building robust
dialog and animation exercises appears to be predicting and controlling the
likely variation in what students will say. This calls for negotiation
between an instructional designer, on the one hand, and a computational
linguist on the other (Holland, 1995, p. 231).
Holland goes on to say that the
success of the predicting and controlling must be assessed "via user testing,"
which means observation of the learners' interaction with the program, but it
is not clear how "user testing" would be informed by SLA research.
SLA does come into play in
Holland's scheme insofar as it is represented by "communicative language
theory." When it comes to issues of language teaching and learning,
the instructional designers
and language teacher are concerned with effectiveness of instruction,
usability of interface, authenticity of lesson content and what we might
call 'pedagogical correctness,' such as adhering to the tenets of
communicative language theory, if that is the guiding philosophy (Holland,
1995, p. 233).
However, the author's
understanding of "communicative language theory" is not explained; nor are its
implications for investigating CALL's effectiveness.
A book published in 1995 on
intelligent tutoring systems for foreign language displays the same fragile
foundation for the many otherwise ambitious and interesting projects reported.
The editors describe the problem as follows:
This book bears out Oxford's
claim (Oxford, 1995) that few ICALL [intelligent computer-assisted language
learning] projects attend to theories of how people learn or how they might
learn best. Many systems are designed solely or partly by computational
linguists whose focus is NLP, not the psychology of the learner. How that
psychology should be addressed--and whether a priori, empirically, or
through some interaction--remains the interesting issue (Holland, Kaplan,
& Sams, 1995, p. 314).
Even in pointing to the problem,
the editors do not allude to a solution involving work in SLA.
Why is there such a dissonance
between even the most technically sophisticated work in CALL and SLA research?
One reason appears to be a lack of confidence in what SLA research can
reasonably be expected to offer. For example, several years ago the report of
a large scale CALL research project was introduced as follows:
There is no
doubt that the evaluation of what has been called 'language teaching'
necessitates a theoretical framework, a theory of foreign language learning,
which has to supply the criteria for the evaluative process. As we all know,
such a theory does not exist yet and probably neverwill. In research on
second language acquisition and foreign language learning, however, a number
of general principles have emerged which seem to be accepted by most L2
researchers (cf. 9, 13, 2 [from the
same volume]). It seems legitimate to adduce these principles for
assessing language teaching materials and the role of the microcomputer as a
focal point in classroom activities (Legenhausen & Wolff, 1992, pp.
10-11).
These researchers did in fact
develop methods for describing CALL use, arguing that such research could
either take the perspective of the learner as communicator or the learner as
manipulator. When they investigated the "learner as communicator" they adopted
discourse analysis methods similar to those of L2 classroom
researchers.
Several years later, however,
another author similarly argues in a review article that CALL research suffers
from our lack of knowledge about SLA:
The greatest obstacle to the
assessment of CALL's efficacy is that (still) 'we know rather little [about
SLA], and a great deal of what we do know derives not only from
psychologists, but also from various sub-branches of linguistics (Bailin,
1988)' (Liddell,
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1994, p.164)... In the
final analysis, therefore, achieving effective use of CALL to foster
linguistic competence or, ultimately, the development of an acceptable SLA
theory, are [sic] dependent upon the ability of researchers to understand
how the mind processes information, specifically, a second language (pp.
166-167).
Despite these implications that
informative research on CALL must wait for a completely articulated theory of
language teaching or psycholinguistic processing model of a second language,
it is clear that the need exists for perspectives and research methods that
can guide in the development and evaluation of CALL activities
today.
The editorial comments in a
recent issue of CALL Journal are among the places where one can find a
statement of the urgent need for better research methods for CALL.
Validation and evaluation are
extremely important aspects of any project and researchers should remember
that if their papers are going to carry any weight, their findings have to
be substantiated with the support of usage and validation. A number of
submissions to this journal have been brilliant in their conception but have
had to be returned because...the project had been poorly evaluated (Cameron,
1995, p. 294)
Indeed the needed methods of
evaluation might be informed to some extent by computational linguistics,
instructional design, communicative language theory, a theory of teaching, or
a psycholinguistic processing theory. And yet, each of these areas falls short
of providing the concrete principles needed to investigate CALL for instructed
SLA. The point MacWhinney made about borrowing CALL principles from
experimental psychology is equally apt for each field suggested above: "few of
[its] principles speak directly to foreign language instruction and
computational aids for language learning" (1995, p. 318). What is needed then
is a perspective on CALL which provides appropriate empirical research methods
for investigating the critical questions about how CALL can be used to improve
instructed SLA.
EMPIRICAL RESEARCH METHODS
FOR INSTRUCTED SLA
Some empirical research methods
for instructed SLA have evolved from the L2 classroom research of the 1980s
which investigated classroom processes (Long, 1980) largely through
documentation and analysis of the language used by participants in the
classroom (Allwright, 1988; Allwright & Bailey, 1991; Chaudron, 1988; Day,
1986; Gass & Madden, 1985; Van Lier, 1988). Without denying the importance
of linguistic outcomes, L2 classroom researchers placed greater emphasis on
the type and amount of target language use that learners engaged in to provide
evidence for the quality of classroom instruction. L2 classroom researchers
found the most revealing way of documenting the processes occurring in an L2
classroom to be description of the language, or discourse, of the
participants. As a result, discourse analysis has become a mainstay as a means
for teachers and researchers to investigate L2 classrooms to the point that
professional wisdom about teaching is often couched in discourse analytic
terms, as the following adages illustrate: Time spent on learner talk is
better than time spent on teacher talk; learners should have the opportunity
to comprehend a variety of functions in the target language; learners should
engage in communicative exchanges in the target language.
Research describing L2 classroom
language developed collaterally with theory hypothesizing the ideal target
language episodes for SLA. Beginning with Hatch's (1978) observation that
language appears to be learned through conversation, Krashen's (1982)
hypothesis about the value of "comprehensible input," and Long's (1985)
research demonstrating the importance of interaction, researchers have
attempted to better understand the input and conversational interaction that
learners are exposed to during L2 instruction. The goal is to identify
conditions under which ideal input and interactions take place. The
theoretical foundations and evolution of this research, which is now known as
the "interactionist" approach to SLA, is documented in a number of sources,
particularly by Pica (Pica, 1994; Pica, Kanagy, & Falodun, 1993; Pica,
Lincoln-Porter, Paninos, & Linnell, 1996). I will explain only briefly the
research methods and the assumptions they rest on in terms of their
significance for the study of CALL, but it is first necessary to justify the
relevance of this line of research to the critical questions about
CALL.
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APPLYING RESEARCH ON
INSTRUCTED SLA TO CALL
To consider research methods for
evaluating CALL activities and informing their design, it is essential first
to identify the relevant research questions. Many questions can be posed such
as those focusing on evaluation of the interface, the quality of the program's
language recognition procedures, the learners' apparent (dis)satisfaction, or
their opportunities to engage in cross-cultural exchanges. Each of these
factors may contribute to the degree of success of a CALL activity, but
because the purpose of CALL activities is L2 learning, the most critical
questions to be addressed about CALL are the following:
The first question requires
description of the language that learners hear/read and produce during the
CALL activity. It is critical because its answer provides the instructor a
means of deciding the role that the CALL activity should play relative to
other potential assignments. For example, to decide whether or not to assign a
regular e-mail pal with whom students are to correspond during the course of a
semester, the instructor needs to have an idea of the language that the
learners are likely to engage in during the activity. Do learners tend to
write a lot to each other, or just a few lines? Do they use the syntax,
vocabulary, and pragmatic functions that they need to practice to improve and
expand their L2? Do they produce language showing evidence of the planning
time they are allowed for composing and correcting, or does the language
appear to be rapidly produced with little attention to its formal correctness?
The answers to these and other questions about the language resulting from an
assigned CALL activity are important for making decisions such as how much
time should be spent on an activity.
The second
question is evaluative. Evaluating the quality of learner language in an L2
task requires that some assumptions be held concerning the types of language
use expected to be beneficial for L2 development. For hypotheses about what to
look for in learners' language, CALL researchers can turn to the work of
interactionist SLA researchers who operate under the assumption that the L2 is
acquired through learners' interaction in the target language because it
provides opportunities for learners to: (a) comprehend message meaning, which
is believed to be necessary for learners to acquire the L2 forms that encode
the message; (b) produce modified output, which requires their development of
specifics of morphology and syntax; and (c) attend to L2 form, which helps to
develop their linguistic systems (Krashen, 1982; Larsen-Freeman & Long,
1991; Nobuyoshi & Ellis, 1993; Pica, Holliday, Lewis, & Morgenthaler,
1989; Swain, 1985; Swain & Lapkin, 1995). Following from these assumptions
about L2 acquisition, one can specify the observable features of learner
language that should be ideal for acquisition. Features include signals which
focus attention on language, and which may elicit a repetition or an expansion
of previous language. These types of moves, which focus attention on language
by repeating, recasting, and expanding on prior language, are believed to be
beneficial for SLA and therefore identification of such sequences has been a
means of investigating the quality of particular L2 tasks for acquisition. Example 1 illustrates
these types of linguistic exchanges that have been identified in SLA
research.
In short, the broad perspective
of SLA classroom research holds the language of the classroom participants as
central for evaluating the quality of learning. The results of such research
in L2 classrooms and experimental settings have provided a clearer picture of
the nature of language that occurs in classroom activities, in addition to
hypotheses about the relative value for SLA of particular linguistic features.
In the study of CALL, in contrast, only a few studies have attempted to
document the nature of the linguistic exchanges that learners participate in
(Abraham & Liou, 1991; Beauvois, 1992; Bland, Noblitt, Armington, &
Gay, 1990; Chapelle, 1990; Chun, 1994; Goodfellow & Laurillard, 1994;
Kelm, 1992; Kern, 1995; Mohan, 1992; Piper, 1986) and fewer have attempted
systematic hypotheses about the value of the language of a CALL activity
(Chapelle, 1994). In order to apply L2 classroom research to the study of CALL
activities, it is useful to view
CALL through the lense of the classroom researcher who studies the discourse
constructed through the
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linguistic and
non-linguistic moves of participants. To explain how CALL can be investigated
from this perspective, I will describe three examples of CALL activities, and
then outline descriptive and evaluative approaches for investigating
them.
A Few Examples of CALL
Activities
Generally speaking, the
pedagogical goal of CALL activities is for learners to improve their ability
in the target language by participating in linguistic interactions. It is
useful to consider the types of interactions as belonging to two classes
depending on who the participants are. When participants are learners working
together through oral language or through written conversations taking place
in computer-mediated communication, these conversations among the learners
comprise the discourse intended for language learning. A different type of
interaction takes place when the computer acts as a participant while one or
more learners work interactively with a computer program. In other words,
because of the different participants associated with each, the language of
activities based on computer-mediated communication among learners would be
expected to be different than the language of activities based on
learner-computer interaction.
In addition to the participants,
a second important dimension affecting the interaction is the type of goal
that learners work toward during a task. If the learner accomplishes the goal
through constructing and interpreting linguistic meanings, it is considered a
"communicative" goal, whereas when the learner's sole focus is directed to
linguistic form, the goal is considered to be non-communicative (e.g., Ellis,
1995). A communicative task may in fact interrupt the communication to focus
on language en route to accomplishing a communicative goal, but the learners
do not lose sight of what they are attempting to accomplish through the use of
language. The participants and the goals would only be two of the activity
characteristics expected to influence the language (see Chapelle, 1995, for an
outline of a broader framework, and Chapelle, in press, for more detail). I
have selected three examples of CALL activities all of which I would analyze
as having communicative task goals. The first is conducted with learners as
participants, while in the second and third, the computer and learner are the
participants.
The first example
is a CALL activity in a university-level, fourth-semester Brazilian Portuguese
class held in the U.S. (Kelm, 1992). Students attended class three hours a
week. For one hour each Friday, class was held in the microcomputer center of
the university library. Before coming to the computer lab, students were
assigned to read a particular Brazilian short story which was to serve as the
topic for the computer-assisted classroom discussion. When the students
arrived at the computer lab, they logged in and received a message from the
instructor including three or four questions which the instructor had selected
to probe their comprehension of the story or to open discussion of topics
raised in the story. After receiving the instructor's message, students were
able to enter the electronic discussion by typing their comments at their
computers. When an individual student had completed a message and was
satisfied with it, he or she would send it to the rest of the class. Others
would be doing the same thing, each at his or her own pace. The result is a
written conversation with contributions from all or many of the members of the
class, as shown in Example 2. For more
on the development of computer-mediated communication, see Bruce, Peyton,
& Batson (1993), and for more on using this technology for L2 activities,
see Warschauer (1995a, 1995b).
In the next
example, learners work individually playing the role of an inspector,
"Kommissar," who must interrogate suspects to discover which of them must have
committed a crime (DeSmedt, 1995). Linguistic interaction is accomplished by
the learner and the computer each taking turns in a written "dialogue." The
learner, a student of German as a foreign language, composes and enters his or
her questions in German at the keyboard. Questions, such as the ones shown in
Example 3 are
about the past actions and knowledge of the suspect. The computer program
parses the learner's output and for each one returns a response representing
the suspect's answer.
In the final
example, the pedagogical goal is learning American idioms, but the learner
also focuses on and works toward the communicative goal of story
comprehension.
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The story
about an American executive who is transferred to South America has
intentionally been constructed to contain a lot of American English idioms.
The interaction is accomplished through learners non-linguistic moves (i.e.,
their mouse clicks for scrolling and for indicating requests for a
definition). In this case, achieving the goal of comprehension should be
interrupted each time the learner reaches an unfamiliar idiom and therefore
clicks to get the definition. The exchange type would look as shown in Example 4.
I will refer to these three
examples as "the Portuguese story," "the German interrogation," and "the ESL
idioms," respectively, as I outline how each could be investigated through
descriptive and evaluative research.
Descriptive Research on
Instructed SLA Applied to CALL
Researchers' description of the
language in L2 learning activities is centered around three aspects: the input
provided to the learner, the learner's output, and the interaction that is
constructed through the turns consisting of input and output. Each of these
aspects can be described in five ways.
First, we can describe the
pragmatic role of the target language in a given L2 learning task. Does the
input, for example, function to provide new information, or as a display of a
teaching point? Does the learner's output function as an expression of
agreement or disagreement, for example, in order to meet the task goal? In the
ESL idiom activity, the functions that the target language input performs are
to transmit narrative information, make salient the linguistic items to be
learned by the learner, and provide restatement for the idioms and the text
containing idioms. The learners' output in the German interrogation is to
request information, and in the Portuguese story it is to express opinions and
ideas about the instructor's question and the other students' ideas. The
interaction of the ESL idiom activity functions to provide meanings for the
idioms; in the German interrogation, it constructs a dialog revealing the
story of the suspects; and in the Portuguese story, it maintains collaborative
discussion through nomination and development of a number of
topics.
Second, the linguistic
characteristics of the language can be described in terms of what aspects of
the target language grammatical systems appear in the input to the learner,
the output from the learner, and the interaction. The input of the German
interrogation consists of short declarative sentences in past or present tense
using the lexicogrammatical forms expressing location, reason, knowledge, and
actions. The output from the learner in the German interrogation consists of
short questions, primarily in the past tense. The output in the Portuguese
story task is more varied. It is oriented around, but not completely
constrained by, the language of the story in past tense. The orientation is
not maintained as the learners move into a light-hearted discussion of the
shoes in the story and then to grammatical correctness of the language they
are working with. The linguistic characteristics of the CALL task interaction
can be described in terms of its coherence, cohesion, and structure of text.
One might describe the interaction of the Portuguese story task by tracing how
the turns are structured to contribute to--or detract from--the quality of the
learners' understanding of the story.
The third feature to describe is
the character of the non-linguistic forms and moves. Unlike face-to-face
activities, some CALL activities in which the computer acts as a participant
are intended to rely on forms of communication other than the target language
(e.g., icons and mouse clicks) to accomplish the task goal. CALL activities
often include graphic input to the learner such as that found in the ESL idiom
activity, in which input includes a picture of
Daniel's dog "Bernie," which functions as a definition of both the dog
that is the subject of the story and the term "Airedale." In the same
activity, the form of the non-linguistic output is the mouse click used to
request definitions and to move the story forward. These non-linguistic
outputs work together with the linguistic input from the computer screen to
accomplish the interaction. Other CALL activities which rely on the language
to move the interaction forward have a less substantive use for non-linguistic
characteristics. For example, in the German interrogation and Portuguese story
activities, signals of end-of-turn are accomplished through mouse clicks or by
pressing return to post or enter the learners' linguistic
messages.
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The fourth feature is the
quantity of language. How much target language input does the learner receive?
How much target language output does the learner produce? How much interaction
does the learner engage in and how long are the learner's turns within the
interaction? The German interrogation task is comprised of rather short turns
by both the computer and the learner. This length is constrained because of
the task goal of discovering whether or not the suspect is guilty in addition
to the participants, one of which is the computer. The Portuguese story
activity has neither of these constraints, but the turns in this activity are
also rather short. In the ESL idiom activity, a lot of input is provided to
the learner, but the learner's output is minimal and all
non-linguistic.
The fifth feature, the medium of
language, refers to the manner in which the language is transmitted. In all of
the examples, the target language is transmitted in written mode. In this
sense, the three examples are not representative of the many types of CALL
activities in which aural input is provided.
These five features help to
identify what is relevant for describing the input, output, and interaction of
CALL activities. Such descriptive work on the nature of the language entailed
in various CALL tasks is an essential first step toward understanding the
potential value of a CALL activity. As Loschky and Bley-Vroman (1993) point
out with reference to grammar teaching, choice of an appropriate classroom
task requires knowledge of the extent to which the language that learners need
to practice is likely to occur, given the task goal, participants, and other
task variables. The way of gaining this understanding is through description
of observed language and non-language moves in CALL tasks. A second use of
this descriptive work is to provide a means for assessing the degree of
authenticity of CALL activities in relation to the activities learners will
encounter outside class in the target language. Although there is a great need
for this type of descriptive work by itself, description needs to be augmented
by evaluative research.
Evaluative Research on
Instructed SLA Applied to CALL
On the basis of the SLA theory
and research I summarized above, suggestions have been made concerning the
empirically observable criteria for evaluating the quality of the language
that learners use while working on tasks. These suggestions provide a basis
for identifying the ideal qualities of L2 input, output, and
interaction.
The ideal qualities of input
have been hypothesized in terms of their pragmatic role, linguistic
characteristics, and quantity. With respect to quantity, more input is
probably better than less, but not just any type of input is considered
equally valuable. Good input, that is "comprehensible input" (Krashen, 1982),
needs to play a role in helping the learner accomplish the task goal. The
learner should comprehend its semantic and pragmatic function to meet a task
goal and, at the same time, the input should provide new data for the
learner's developing system. Examining the input alone, however, one cannot
know whether or not it should be considered sufficient in linguistic level or
amount for a given learner. Nevertheless, some input characteristics can be
identified as potentially comprehension enhancing--and these may help to focus
description of language in L2 tasks. The researcher might, for example, note
whether or not the input has been modified through simplification,
elaboration, added redundancy, or sequencing to make it "comprehensible"
(Chaudron, 1988; Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991). In the ESL idiom activity,
for example, the idioms are modified upon the stu dent's request through
definitional elaborations and restatements which simplify the input by
increasing the lexical transparency. A second key question is whether or not
the input is marked to help learners notice particular linguistic features
(Schmidt & Frota, 1986; Doughty, 1991). Again, the ESL idiom activity
provides an example, as the idioms are marked as hot spots.
Ideal output, sometimes referred
to as "comprehensible output" (Swain 1985), is believed to be valuable when it
plays a role in helping learners convey meaning while stretching their
linguistic resources. Swain & Lapkin (1995) explained comprehensible
output as follows:
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In producing the L2, a learner
will on occasion become aware of (i.e., notice) a linguistic problem
(brought to his/her attention either by external feedback [e.g.,
clarification requests] or internal feedback). Noticing a problem 'pushes'
the learner to modify his/her output. In doing so, the learner may sometimes
be forced into a more syntactic processing mode than might occur in
comprehension ( p. 373).
The hypothesis is that the
syntactic mode of processing helps learners to internalize new forms (Pica,
Holliday, Lewis, & Morgenthaler, 1989) and to improve in the accuracy of
their grammatical knowledge (Nobuyoshi & Ellis, 1993). Comprehensible
output, which occurs in the language that learners produce to achieve
communicative task goals, is observed in a sequence of linguistic interaction
consisting of the learner's unsuccessful attempt at expression followed by his
or her linguistic modification of the form perceived as problematic. The
trigger that causes the learner to notice the problem in the original output
may or may not appear in the text. If the learner's attention is drawn to the
problematic form by another participant in the task, the text may reflect the
interlocutor's clarification request, as the texts in Example 1
illustrate.
Of course, for a CALL activity
to offer the opportunity for comprehensible output, it must require the
learner to produce linguistic output. Activities such as ESL idioms in which
all output from the learner consists of mouse clicks provide no opportunity
for comprehensible output. In the Portuguese story activity, in contrast,
learners do produce language to achieve a communicative task goal and
therefore opportunities for correction are possible, but in order to conclude
that the Portuguese story activity promoted such sequences, we would need to
observe learners' output with corrections from their previous output.
Corrections might be prompted by other students' requests for clarification or
corrective feedback (Lightbown & Spada, 1990). Similarly, in the German
interrogation activity, the potential exists for modified output, but research
showing learners' corrections of their previous output would be needed before
the activity could be recommended as a means for getting learners to produce
comprehensible output.
The value of interaction for L2
development has been discussed in terms of the linguistic form and pragmatic
role of the interactions. The linguistic form of a good interaction is
hypothesized to occur when the normal interactional structure has been
modified because the learner has requested, for example, a repetition,
clarification, or restatement of the original input. The reason that the
modified interaction is expected to be good is that it can function to
negotiate the meaning of the input (Long, 1985). Larsen-Freeman and Long
(1991) summarize this view of interactional modifications:
Modification of the
interactional structure of conversation or of written discourse during
reading ... is a [good] candidate for a necessary (not sufficient) condition
for acquisition. The role it plays in negotiation for meaning helps to make
input comprehensible while still containing unknown linguistic elements,
and, hence, potential intake for acquisition (p. 144).
Ideally, then, we
would want to observe interaction displaying learners' moves in which the
normal structure of interaction was disrupted to request modifications of the
input they had received. In the ESL idiom activity, mouse clicks on the idioms
would constitute modification requests which interrupt the normal
interactional structure of a written text. A second type of interactional
modification believed to facilitate SLA is one that interrupts the normal
interactional structure which is working toward a communicative goal to focus
on linguistic form, that is, overt correction of linguistic errors learners
produce while they are working toward communicative goals. Althought they are
not illustrated in Example 3, such interruptions are intended as a part of the
design of activities such as the German interrogation, in which the
conversation is stopped to provide advice on grammatical errors while the
learner is working toward the communicative goal.
Table 1 summarizes
questions that may help researchers to focus investigations of the
interactions from L2 tasks on the basis of hypotheses from SLA theory. These
questions offer a starting point for addressing the relevant questions about
CALL, but they have limitations. First, these hypotheses were made on the
basis of research results from
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classroom tasks in which
oral face-to-face language was the medium of communication. Second, the
characteristics of observed interaction outlined above are those which are
hypothesized to be positive; they do not constitute direct evidence of
learning. The way of assessing the extent to which these processes impact
eventual learning outcomes is to investigate task-based language in
combination with learning outcomes. Nevertheless, it is useful to consider the
implications of this perspective for CALL.
IMPROVING CALL ACTIVITIES
THROUGH L2 CLASSROOM RESEARCH
If one accepts
the tenets of interactionist SLA research, some ideal approaches to CALL
design and evaluation are evident. Activities should be designed to create
opportunities for comprehension of linguistic input through modification of
the normal structure of interaction. We currently see some activities such as
the ESL idiom example which require application of the principle of
"interactional modification." This principle is also applied to activities
with audio and video input in which modifications consist of simplified aural
input (e.g., segmented input), textual transcription of the aural language, or
elaboration on meaning and usage of the language of the input. These
interactional modifications initiated by the learner on input from the
computer should yield similar psycholinguistic effects as those in oral
face-to-face linguistic exchanges in which they were first investigated.
However, it is necessary to investigate the effectiveness of such interactions
for acquisition of the specific linguistic items for which interactional
modifications are observed, as Hsu (1994) has
done.
Activities are also needed which
provide opportunities for production of comprehensible linguistic output.
Activities, such as the ESL idioms, in which learners' output consists solely
of mouse clicks, contain no such opportunities. Comprehensible output can
occur when learners communicate with each other or interact through language
with a computer program. It is important to note, however, that not just any
linguistic production is considered beneficial "comprehensible output" from
the interactionist perspective. Work is needed to better understand the types
of CALL activities that promote learners dual concern for communicating
linguistic meaning while attending to and correcting their linguistic form.
Based on SLA research investigating the effects of various task goals, one can
predict that activities such as the Portuguese story activity are unlikely to
result in learners' production of comprehensible output because the goal does
not require the participants to converge intellectually or to produce a
tangible outcome, and student participants may be unwilling or unable to
correct each other. Activities such as the German interrogation, on the other
hand, require production of language that is sufficiently meaningful and
correct that the computer program can interpret it. Learners run into
difficulty when the output is not comprehensible, and therefore they are
prompted to attend to form and make corrections. Although the Portuguese story
and the German interrogation appear to contrast in the likelihood for
fostering comprehensible input on the basis of the activity participants, it
is important to note that it is not the participants alone that make the
difference; the task goal also plays a role in affecting learners'
output.
Both of these suggestions rest
on the premise that activities are needed for directing learners attention to
form -- both the formal characteristics of the linguistic input and those of
the output that the learners produce. It is important to distinguish these
suggestions from those underlying CALL activities in which the focus is
grammar alone. As Underwood (1984) pointed out many years ago, CALL in which
the task goal is completion of formal grammar exercises would not be
considered within the purview of communicative teaching practices. What was
not very well understood years ago, however, is the importance of learners'
attention to form periodically while they are working toward a communicative
task goal. CALL activities can do this through, for example, displaying hot
spots with links to supporting materials, highlighting relevant forms
(Doughty, 1991), and signaling learners when they have made errors (Chanier,
Pengelly, Twidale, & Self, 1992). The effectiveness of these features
needs to be investigated empirically.
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STILL IN SEARCH OF
RESEARCH PARADIGMS?
As we approach the year 2000,
the technical realities for CALL have expanded far beyond prior expectations.
To attempt the best pedagogical applications for this technology, research on
CALL use is needed. The approaches outlined above are based on L2 classroom
research in general and interactionist research in particular, which direct us
to investigate two critical questions about CALL:
