Well, it's about time that I get this posted. Like most of my colleagues, I spent last week in Dallas at TESOL. What an interesting culmination of MA-TESL coursework!
So, week 9 CALL reflections. We had readings and a test about using CMC in the classroom and teaching reading and vocabulary. These are two things I haven't done much of. As a Writing-turned-Listening-Speaking teacher, I had a harder time really sinking my teeth into some of the applications mentioned in the articles; however, since we are all indeed vocabulary teachers, I hope to get some use from those resources in the future. Regarding CMC, asynchronous CMC has played a large role in my life this semester, as I took an online class that did not take advantage of what ACMC can do for thinking and language. In my own teaching, I try to use ACMC with a purpose. I have students recording short responses on Vocaroo that I grade similarly to the speaking tasks on larger assessments.
To me, CALL applications seem very appropriate for doing things that are too monotonous for humans, like generating word frequency lists or estimating difficulty level based on algorithmic things that I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. Maybe that's too strong. I'm really interested in the potential ability of a program to turn any online text into a learning tool. How awesome would that be? Students could pick any high-interest, authentic text, and this software would generate word lists, gloss words, and essentially make some "decisions" about what kind of information to follow up with to help the learner get through the text in a meaningful way. Clearly, major challenges of the push for authentic material are vocabulary and the mismatch in intended audience (i.e., native speakers have more shared background knowledge and cultural intuition). For students, these barriers could be decreased through advanced CALL software.
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