CALL and Applied Linguistics--Sometimes the Marriage is Successful

Steve Schackne


     Computer assisted language learning has gone through three distinct phases since the early 1980s. At that time the pc was still a novelty to many people and software developers in the language field were simply adapting traditional textbook exercises to be used with the new computer technology. Next came interactive, authorable software, which gave the student several options and forced a higher level of cognitive analysis, to be replaced recently by the almost Azimov-like "virtual reality," a multi-media technology which relies on state-of-the-art graphics and sound, and an almost human interactive quality. The second phase has produced the most CALL software and it is two second phase programs, both user friendly and teacher authorable, and both rooted in sound linguistics, that I wish to introduce here.

    Storyboard, developed by Ian Trackman, and published by Eurocentres in cooperation with Wida Software in 1987, is a program which uses "cloze" passages to develop both language skill and a linguistic understanding of the language. "Cloze" refers to discourse where part of the language is masked, for example, a formatted fill-in-the-blank exercise. While looking deceptively simple, the "cloze" passages force students to use a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge to access the language--constituent ordering (the basic ordering of sentences, in the case of English, subject-verb-object), proximity (how close elements occur to each other, e.g., the article "a" abuts nouns, adjectives and, sometimes, adverbs), frequency (how often elements are likely to occur, e.g., the definite article "the" occurs more frequently in English than in Chinese), punctuation clues (e.g., the apostrophe cuing students to look for possessives and contractions), and predictability (by building up surrounding language and bringing knowledge of the passage's subject to bear, students can often predict hidden language elements). In addition, Storyboard is authorable; that is, the teacher can adapt or create any passage for the program, thereby making it easier to fit into an existing curriculum.

       Rhubarb, developed by John and Muriel Higgins, and published by Reserch Design Associates in 1989 is also a "cloze" program which relies on "script" and "schema" theory; specifically, like Storyboard, it factors the role of the student's prior knowledge--linguistic, topical, and situational--in comprehension. Rhubarb has gotten quite a bit of publicity at recent language learning conferences, and has several features which enhance its flexibility and interactive nature. It has a mode for two students to compete or for an individual to compete against the computer; it has layout flexibility which can control color, mask words, and vary screen size; it has options which can include or exclude special words; it has a disk option which directs you to the disk drive with the text; it also has record keeping facilities and a post exercise analysis of student performance. Like Storyboard, Rhubarb is authorable and easy for both students and teachers to use.

     In the world of computer technology, 1994 might bear little resemblance to 1993, such is the lightning speed of
innovation and progress. So it is with CALL programs. The sophisticated software being developed now may soon relegate programs such as Storyboard and Rhubarb to the status of historical relic. I, however, feel the breakthrough came when the first generation programs, many adopted all-of-a-piece from traditional grammar translation and audio-lingual textbooks, gave way to the second generation--simple, easy to use, unspectacular to the computer technophiles, yet grounded in solid language acquisition theory.

1994