Levy’s article first introduced some theoretical sources that have been used for CALL work, such as theories of psychology, theories of language, and theories of instruction and so on. However, Levy also found that some CALL projects have not been driven by theory as such.
These two situations can be well presented by two kinds of practitioners, namely formalists and proceduralists. The former likes to solve problems by formulation theory and apply the theory to the CALL context, while the latter likes to solve problems by writing programs and test them with language learners.
We could not tell which one is better since there are drawbacks in both ways. For the formalists, they must be careful whether their theories encompass the context of CALL. For the proceduralists, the danger for them is that their practice might be limited by what the technology can do and the reason for that is probably that they have no theoretical support.
After the CALL Survey, Levy discussed the result and made conclusion that there are potential strengths and weaknesses in the approaches of the formalists and the procedualists, as I put above. Therefore, from Levy’s point of view, we should be well aware that the dynamic nature of the development process in language learning and the concept of “fit” between the theoretical framework and the computer’s capabilities, then we could make sure the theory and the application could be compatible with one another.
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Good job, Iris. In fact we need to keep a balance between learning theories and following traditional teaching procedures. Many of the teachers simply resume to their routines although they learned a lot about theories. What do you make of this. Could you give an example of good balance between the two aspects? Please let me know if you replied.
ReplyDeleteWell, it is so natural people do not like any change when they get used to some routines,and teachers are no exception. for the balance thing, it is beyond my ability to give you an example in practice.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Liou's article could be a good example, because it not only referred to the previous researches and theories but also evaluated the courseware. I think what he had done is more reasonable to apply CALL.