WEEK 2: Reflection of the History of CALL

Learners, no matter what subject they are in, must always reflect what they have learned in class. In Week 1, we learned about the history of CALL and its three stages (behaviourist CALL, communicative CALL, and integrative CALL).The first time we are introduced with the history of CALL, we never expected that it has three stages. These three stages are different from each other in terms of how much does the computer helps in the learning process and what role it holds. Before this, we know that computer has assisted human in many areas. We know that computer helps language learning process and that’s it. We never think beyond that.

Why do we have to learn about the history of CALL? What benefits can we get?

First, learning something new and something that we never heard of will, of course, add our existing knowledge of this world. Second, everything in this world is related to people’s lives. By learning the history of CALL, people can relate all three stages of CALL with their own experience when learning a language before in order to get a good understanding of that subject matter.

In Behaviourist CALL, the computer is considered as a mechanical tutor. In this stage, learners are described as passive and ‘coming to class in a blank slate.’ Because of this, the behaviourists think that it is important for them to create the learning environment for the learners. They will come out with activities that emphasize on repetition and memorization such as dialogues, pattern drills, grammar translations and etc. We still can recall our teacher asking us to repeat over certain words just to get the pronunciation right.

In Communicative CALL, the computer is considered as a pupil. The learning is based on the concept of discovery learning through activities like problem solving. The learners can sit among themselves and provide their own input or idea. When a computer is said as a pupil, it means that the computer plays a role in giving input to the learning. In this case, we can relate to our experience in drawing the human vocal track diagram in Phonetics and Phonology class by referring to the diagram on the computer.

In Integrative CALL, computer is used as merely a tool for language learning. There are many examples of using a computer as a language tool based on our experience. The most common one is the use of LMS by our lecturers in posting notes and announcements related to the subjects.  

Last but not least, the benefit that we can get from learning the history of CALL is that we can think and observe which stage is more effective to be used in learning a language. Based on our interpretation of the three stages of CALL, we personally think that Integrative CALL is the best approach to learning a language. In Behaviourist CALL, we see that the learners are dependent of the computer which is their teacher. In Communicative CALL, the teacher distant himself from the students, while in Integrative CALL, the teacher is there helping the students in getting the correct understanding of what they learn. Learning is less likely to be successful if there is only one side who is working for it. It is important for the teacher to work together with the students in class.