CALL Potpourri
Issue 9, Summer 2005
TELL @ ELI Archive

Since its conversion from a language lab in 1997, the computer lab at the English Language Institute (ELI) has played a vital role in the Institute’s integrated skills curriculum. This has required the Institute both to keep pace with the changing world of computer use and to teach ELI students the computer skills needed for academic success in the university. As a result, the ELI Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) curriculum has evolved over time and continues to undergo change to become a more effective instructional and learning tool.

In 1997, when teachers and students began to meet for classes in the lab, the activities teachers designed were as varied as the faculty who designed them and the students who benefited from them. Software programs such as ELLIS and Grammar 3D were the mainstay of many lab activities. The curriculum at the time consisted of general goals and objectives and focused heavily on students’ becoming familiar with software, word processing, and Internet applications.

Teachers and students alike were new to the Internet at that time, and, as the Internet itself grew and changed, so too did the number and types of activities teachers developed. They began to design their lab lessons around specific websites, including the popular Dave’s ESL Café, and activities often required students to access websites for information gathering and reporting. Even in 1999 the ELI CALL curriculum focused heavily on developing basic computer skills: accessing software, using Microsoft Word, and searching the Internet.

In 2003 the CALL curriculum was targeted specifically for further development. An ELI CALL curriculum committee was formed, and, with input from ELI teachers at faculty meetings, developed more specific goals and objectives for the computer lab component of the curriculum. Skills for each of the three applications were identified, and specific goals and objectives were assigned to specific ELI classes. Activities were suggested for incorporating each of the objectives. For example, Culture I students read short passages about US culture in NiceNet and responded to the passages in writing. Level II Listening/Speaking students used sound recorder to practice those consonants and vowels which interfered with their intelligibility and communicability. Students in Levels III, IV, and V used Microsoft Word to cut and paste sentences to form paragraphs and then add transitions and connectors.

The goals and objectives developed in 2003 remain in place today and offer a foundation upon which a Project-based CALL curriculum can be built. Project-based CALL offers more opportunities for designing lessons which integrate listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. In general, project-based learning fosters collaboration between and among students, and as they work on projects they have played a role in choosing, they learn and use English in new and different contexts outside of class. As they increase their knowledge about specific subjects, they are often motivated to discover and learn more.

Project-based CALL can offer an instructional method that not only teaches students how to use specific skills and tools but also how to apply them to real-life problems or tasks. This real-life application of what they have learned often results both in increased learning and the ability to better retain what has been learned. Offering students projects they find motivating and challenging is key to the success of project-based learning.

With this in mind, the next stage in the evolution of the ELI CALL curriculum requires designing suitable projects. A sample project might include having students listen to a lecture and take notes on how to design a survey. Using their notes, they would then develop a survey for ELI students and/or faculty to measure satisfaction with the ELI curriculum, for example. Once the survey was developed, students would put it online. They would visit ELI classes or address the faculty and make a short presentation, explaining the purpose of the survey, and then ask people to participate. Following the administration of the survey, the students would compile the results in Excel, write a narrative or summary of the results, and post it on the ELI listserv or present it at an ELI student/faculty convocation.

Implementing a Project-based CALL curriculum at the ELI is exciting to think about and challenging to plan for. As illustrated by the example project above, the potential of a Project-based CALL curriculum is far-reaching and powerful: As it simultaneously addresses both the linguistic and computer literacy skills of ELI students it, it also provides them with the academic research methods and analytical skills expected of students at the university level today. It’s a long way from 1997.

Chapelle, C. A. (1999). Investigation of "authentic" language learning tasks. In J.Egbert & E. Hanson-Smith (Eds.), Computer-enhanced language learning (pp. 101-115). Alexandria, VA: TESOL Publications

Mass, D. (1998). Project-based learning for adult English language learners. ERIC Digest, ED427556, 1-7.