REFLECTION 1

Reflection on experience on CALL

From our experience finishing the Bachelor of English Language courses that have been assigned to us, there are a lot of assignments which require the aids of computer. Indeed, 90% of the assignments should have been finished using a computer. For this subject, we have been given a few assignments throughout the semester and the first assignment given is related to computer-assisted language learning (CALL). The purpose of using CALL is to find ways to incorporate computer technologies that promote educational learning throughout the language learning process. This type of assignment is categorised as communicative CALL as the learners are engaged in problem-solving which we have to solve by ourselves with the help of a computer as the tool for reaching our goals which in our case is to speak confidently and fluently and to foster the interactivity between the learner and the learner, and learner and computer.

For this assignment, we have to randomly choose one approach from these five approaches (listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar) and we were lucky to be the ones doing the speaking approach in CALL. After that, as a group we will have to come together in finding the article that is suitable and related with our approach which is speaking approach. Next, we were required to find an interactive website or application or software that can assist us in language learning. Thus, we have chosen a website called English Central.

English Central is an interactive website that is the leading provider of online English conversation solutions. This website combines web’s best English videos, an adaptive vocabulary learning system and live tutors which is delivered over web and mobile. This website is suitable for all levels which includes beginner, intermediate and advanced. Besides, this website helps the learners in learning the language especially in enhancing the speaking skill where it encourages the learners to speak more by watching the videos provided and speak the selected words. The learners can also involve in a useful live chat rooms where the tutors are from different parts of the world. We could see that this method could be helpful for the learners’ speaking skill as it exposes them to the authentic discourse when they converse with native speakers. Not only that, this could also indirectly help in enhancing their listening skill.

Lastly, we had to present our findings in front of the class and had a Question and Answer session to trigger more feedbacks from the audiences. From the presentation and Q&A session in class we could see that CALL can be used in teaching and learning English Language as it could help the process of learning to be more interesting and enjoyable for the learners. Not only that, it is also suitable for helping the learners in acquiring or enhancing all LSRWG skills. Obviously, different CALL approaches would suit different skills and different level of language learners.

INTRODUCTION

Computer Applications in Language Studies is a subject that will be taken by BENL students in IIUM. This subject is taught by Dr. Rozina and for this subject, we were divided into few groups and each group have approximately four to five members. There are three assessments for this subject which are Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Corpus Linguistics (CL). 

The first assessment is CALL, where we had to find suitable websites or software or applications and we had to select one skill among these five skills; Listening, Speaking, Writing, Reading and Grammar. After that, together with the selected article that is suitable for this assessment, we did a research that would help teachers and learners in language studies. 

The second assessment is CMC where we need to analyse a particular corpus using any linguistics framework that we had been studying such as Halliday's Metafunctions and Multimodal Theory.

The third assessment is CL. For this assignment, we studied few topics such as Concordancer, Lexicography, Computational Stylistics and Forensic Linguistics. We also had to do a group test during our class regarding these topics.