“Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), which has existed in primitive form since the 1960s but has only become wide-spread in the last years, is probably the single computer application to date with the greatest impact on language teaching.” [10] For the first time, language learners can communicate directly, inexpensively, and conveniently with other learners or speakers of the target language 24 hours a day, from school, work, or home. This communication can be asynchronous (not simultaneous) through tools such as electronic mail, which allows each participant to compose messages at their time and pace, or in can be synchronous ("real time"), using programs such as ICQ, for example, which allow people all around the world to have a simultaneous conversation by typing at their keyboards. It also allows not only one-to-one communication, but also one-to-many, allowing a teacher or student to share a message with a small group, the whole class, a partner class, or an international discussion list of hundreds or thousands of people.
Computer Mediated Communication allows users to share not only brief messages, but also lengthy documents - thus facilitating collaborative writing - and also graphics, sounds, and video. Using the World Wide Web, students can search through millions of files around the world within minutes to locate and access authentic materials (e.g. newspaper and magazine articles, radio broadcasts, short videos, movie reviews, book excerpts) exactly tailored to their own personal interests. They can also use the Web to publish their texts or multimedia materials to share with partner classes or with the general public.
The history of CALL suggests that the computer can serve a variety of uses for language teaching. It can be a tutor which offers language drills or skill practice; a stimulus for discussion and interaction; or a tool for writing and research. With the advent of the Internet, it can also be a medium of global communication and a source of limitless authentic materials.
The use of technology inside or outside the classroom tends to make the class more interesting. One way a program or activity can promote motivation in students is by personalizing information, for example by integrating the student’s name or familiar contexts as part of the program or task. Others include having animate objects on the screen, providing practice activities that incorporate challenges and curiosity and providing a context (real-world or fantasy) that is not directly language-oriented. The students tend to spend more time on tasks when on the computer. More time is frequently cited as a factor in achievement. [11]
Computers can give a new role to teaching materials. Without computers, students cannot really influence the linear progression of the class content but computers can adapt to the student. Adapting to the student usually means that the student controls the pace of the learning but also means that students can make choices in what and how to learn, skipping unnecessary items or doing remedial work on difficult concepts. Such control makes students feel more competent in their learning.
With real communication acts, rather than teacher-contrived ones, students feel empowered and less afraid to contact others. Students believe they learn faster and better with computer-mediated communication. [12] In networked computer environments, students have a conscious feeling of being members of a real community. In situations where all are learners of a foreign language, there is also a feeling of equality. In these situations students feel less stressed and more confident in a language learning situation, in part because surface errors do not matter so much.
Use of computer technology in classrooms is generally reported to improve self-concept and mastery of basic skills, more student-centered learning and engagement in the learning process, more active processing resulting in higher-order thinking skills and better recall, gain confidence in directing their own learning. This is true for both language and non-language classrooms.
But we shouldn’t forget, that the effectiveness of CALL cannot reside in the medium itself but only in how it is put to use. Those who expect to get magnificent results simply from the purchase of expensive and elaborate systems will likely be disappointed. But those who put computer technology to use in the service of good pedagogy will undoubtedly find ways to enrich their educational program and the learning opportunities of their students.
We can distinguish two basic types of work with personal computers during the English language lessons in our schools, colleges and universities: the usage of ready-made teaching and developing programs and elaboration of different programs by the teacher himself, in order to use them while explaining the material or checking it.
The usage of ready-made teaching and developing programs is the most available way of work with computer during the lessons and extracurricular hours. A teacher can conduct group performance or individual work with children, using teaching programs with actable elements, such as: "Triple Play Plus", "Euro Talk. Elementary", "Euro Talk. Intermediate", "Professor Higgins." "Learn to Speak English".
Language acquisition with the help of games is one of the main principles of teaching system. Variable multimedia games facilitate enriching vocabulary, introduce the grammar of the English language, teach to understand the speech aurally and write correctly.
Multimedia programs allow listening to the speech spoken in target language and give the possibility to adapt it according to the level of perception abilities. Control of the speed of sound allows to divide the phrases into separate words, comparing at the same time the words’ spelling and pronunciation. The usage of microphone and pronunciation auto-control allows correcting phonetic skills.
Each program has different tasks. The wish to complete them creates positive motivation for learning. The digestion of educational material occurs without any exterior impulse.
For the work with the whole class the programs involving children’s participation in the process of learning are usually used. The teacher works with the keyboard and the students discuss the material, which is displayed. The students are usually divided into groups during such lessons, in order to work together and the teacher, analyzing the conclusions made by them, adds the results into computer.
Among the best multimedia programs we should mentionTriple Play Plus (Multimedia Teacher 3) issued in 1997. With the help of it we can teach the children to perceive the speech aurally, moreover they learn how to read and pronounce correctly (there are three levels). Provided that there is a microphone, the teacher will be able to compare the speech of the student with the sample, and also assimilate the voice being analyzed to the features of the speaker (the option man/woman/child is available).
One of the favorite parts of the program is the description of appearance. The students are to create photofit of the given person. With the help of mouse or microphone students can create the portrait and exercise all the words connected with the appearance. To learn the topic more profoundly you can use the other interesting variations of tasks and games. For example, students can enrich their vocabulary by building up the puzzle made up of human’s body parts. This program also contains the material for the accommodation description. With the help of this task the prepositions are exercised. The students are to find cards or household goods situated in the room. The program introduces the next topics: Food and Drink; Numbers; Home and Office; Places and Transportation; People; Activities.
Another popular English-teaching program is “Professor Higgins” (recommended by the Ministry of Education of Russian Federation). This program was elaborated for the student’s individual work on phonetics and grammar. The next types of work with this program are usually applied:
- Phonetic exercises (with microphone) on the opening phase of learning;
- Forming of good pronunciation with the help of English proverbs and tongue-twisters (again with microphone).
- Individual test on grammar with various levels of difficulty, that allows to exercise the same grammar material with the students of different classes.
For the profound exercise of vocabulary in the senior forms the program Learn to Speak English is successfully used. The program, consisting of 30 lessons, has a great set of dialogues, exercises, games on topics, and video-clips about the cities of the USA. It’s notably that the teacher can show the video with subtitles or without them. It is possible to exercise profoundly the topics available during two-three lessons by using this program.
You don’t necessarily need to have special computer courses to use such ready-made teaching programs. Any teacher who can work with Windows will manage to use them without much trouble.
Specific character of foreign language subject determines active and appropriate usage of the personal computer during the lessons. The main component of foreign language education is the teaching of all the aspects of the speech activity: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The teaching program is exerciser, which arranges the independent work of student controls it and creates facilities for students to form their skills independently. The last function is, perhaps, the mot valuable, because the knowledge got in a ready-made form is very seldom remembered. [13]
Personal elaboration of computer programs involves more serious preparation. Such programs can meet any purpose. Creating them a teacher evinces his own personality, his own view on the material. Such programs are able to become the main support in your teaching foreign languages. The teacher creates a presentation taking into account the abilities of the certain students, thus providing personal-based education.
The usage of presentations during the lessons gives the possibility to animate, emphasize the most important elements with the help of color, print, inclination, size. One or another phase can be shown several times if necessary. Moreover, we can add schemes or tables, photos, graphics and sounds. That makes the impact stronger. Such methods are mainly based on visualization, and it leads to the better understanding of the material. However, the preparation of such programs involves certain skill of the teacher, the ability to work with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Power Point to be exact. Having enough experience, you’ll have to spend from one to three hours to create Microsoft Power Point presentation. The time spent depends on the difficulty of the material. [14]
Summing up the experience of the personal computer and multimedia technologies usage during the foreign languages lessons, we can arrive to the following conclusion:
- Multimedia technologies make the process of education faster;
- They help to increase the level of interest of the students;
- They make the quality of the material digestion better;
- They allow individualizing the process of education;
- They give the possibility to avoid subjectiveness while assessment.
The programs created by the teacher are designed not for an abstract student, but for those certain students taught by him.
Thus involving computer technologies creates the background for educational process intensification. They allow us to use in practice psychological and pedagogical pilot projects, making the transition from machinal knowledge digestion to the ability to acquire new skills independently. Computer technologies facilitate the exploration and development of the students’ personal features.
However, though such computer programs allow us to teach various aspects of foreign language, we can’t unfortunately say, that there are a lot of institutions using them. More often such programs remain to be just the bright toys and at its best are used only by particular enthusiasts, but not as a mean of systematic work with students. Such situation is not the result of the bad quality of the programs or their lack of useful information. Vice versa, modern computer programs as a rule possess huge data bases and provide the highest level of training exercises. [16]
Let us consider the real retarding factor for the spreading of modern technologies in the educational process, connected with the foreign language teaching.
The first necessary condition for using computer teaching programs in educational process is the programs’ well-balanced content of the informative material (data base, speaking professionally). They should meet all the given standards. Standard is very essential for the teaching plan and for choosing of the basic textbooks. It means that all the material used in the program should be taken from the textbook, or at least should be similar to the textbook’s material and have the same structure.
The second condition is the necessity to elaborate the totally new arrangement of the educational process and creation of the administrative part that would allow using computer technologies. It means that it is necessary for computerization to embrace not the separate parts of the educational process, but to arrange the whole technological process. It is impossible to arrange the educational process with the help of few technologies. Computer technologies should embrace all the types of work: independent work of the student, practical hours, control over knowledge and so on, and so forth. With the help of automated system of the control over the students’ progress, a teacher will be able to spare much time that can be used for the teaching of the subject directly. We should admit that this part is not easier, than the elaboration of the computer teaching programs. It is even more difficult sometimes. But nobody pays attention to this part usually, because it doesn’t have any exterior effect. Teachers and students are interested the work of separate programs, but they don’t understand, that their implement without any system in real educational process is almost impossible. [1]
The third condition is the vast availability of the hardware. It is necessary we should have enough computer classrooms with more than 15-20 workplaces. We should have also more computers for the independent work in the reading halls and in sub-faculties. And this in turn involves financial barriers. The cost of hardware, software, and maintenance is rather high. There are a lot of examples of schools and Higher Education Institutions that has increased the payment for education in order to create computer laboratories of maintain them.
The fourth integral condition is the teachers’ interest in using modern technologies. They should be ready to learn to work with these new tools. We should be sure, that this problem is not the easy one.
The last, but not the least: the problem of choice of a new orderly strategy of the programs’ arrangement and development. This problem is one of the most disputable today. Every teacher considers his method to be the best one. But we’ll be able to know the advantages of the certain methods just in length of time. The cause of this problem is the system’s involving constant development in the process of using it. [15]
As we have already stated, educational computer programs have a great number of advantages over traditional methods of teaching. They allow us to exercise various kinds of the speech activity and blend them in different combinations. Also they help to realize the language phenomena, form linguistic abilities, create communicative situations, automate language and speech activities. They provide realization of the personal approach and student’s individual work intensification. [13]
With computer programs the following types of work are available:
A) Listening to the dialogue simultaneously with reading it.
B) Listening comprehension of the dialogue with the multiple choice test. Such exercises are given in TOEFL examination.
C) Dialogue with a free answer. Such task is available due to the special program, which contains all the possible variants of responses for the questions asked by the computer, in order the latter to be able to evaluate the answer or correct it.
D) Dialogue with standard answer. Such dialogues are supplied with some answers. One or two of them are correct response. If the student chose the wrong variant, the computer would correct him in a funny way. Such remarks invariably bring about positive reaction of the student and serve for a stronger memorizing.
E) Imitation of the student’s full participation in the dialogue.
Also computer programs provide the exercises for mastering vocabulary, grammar and syntax. For example: