2. CALL Research typically has 3 questions
1. Does it work?
2. Do students like it?
3. Can a set of tutorials be better than a
teacher?
3. *But it’s better to just not assume, since doing so makes an “ass” out of “u”
and “me”
BAD ASSUMPTION: to think that media
affects learning on its own
BETTER ASSUMPTION*: “...some particular
qualities of media affect particular
cognitions...when learning certain tasks
4. Traditional, oversimplified CALL research
Experiment:
● Two groups of classrooms: One gets CALL,
the other doesn’t.
● Study doesn’t take into account other
possible factors influencing outcomes.
5. Modern CALL research
● Acknowledge other factors that can
influence language acquisition beyond
CALL.
● Researchers are asking more cognitive
oriented questions and relating them to
specific CALL attributes.
6. Specific cognitive questions such as:
1. Learners aptitudes as they interact with
CALL
2. Mental processes activated/cultivated as a
result of CALL instruction
3. Specific aspects of L2 competence in
relation to call lesson type (my fave)
4. social effects of CALL on the quality and
quantity of language production
7. In practice this means looking at:
● Lesson types (my fave)
● Student characteristics
● The effect of “formal variables” on learning
(i.e. screen design, user experience, input
formatting, etc.)
● Educational outcomes
8. Case Study
● 25 students received listening and cultural
training through through music-based
multimedia software.
● The students listening skills and reading
comprehension and their responses within
this CALL approach were measured.
9. Some supportive research findings
● musical aptitudes -- pitch, loudness, rhythm, time, timbre, and tonal
memory -- might be important in language acquisition (contrast with an
earlier discussion we had on multiple intelligences where there was
almost no correlation between musical intelligence and L2 gains)
● music can aid learners in acquiring the rhythm, tone and stress patterns
of the target language
● the simultaneous presentation of aural/visual through multimedia can
improve student language achievement
● hypermedia language environments are effective when text is
accompanied by sound
● learners are more likely to notice language structures when they are
presented as aural input, or when text and sound are presented together
● also captioning, colorization
10. The study’s objective
H1: The simultaneous presentation of spoken
songs and written language through CALL has a
positive effect on the listening and reading
comprehension skills of students
11. What the students do:
Students listen to, type, and see the song
through the feedback feature in the hopes of
improving their listening and reading
comprehension skills.
12. Research method:
25 college level students in an introduction
Latin American literature course.
Students spent approximately four weeks of
the semester working on selected musical and
literary works related to salsa and nueva
cancion genres. CALL instruction was used and
assessed.
13. Research Method pt. 2
Differences between the pre and post
observations were used to assess the effect of
the treatment.
One group received traditional instruction.
One group received multimedia instruction.
14. Group 1 was exposed to songs/given chance to analyze song texts and
express reaction to songs.
Group 2 wass given interactive software offering cultural context of songs
plus exercises that help with reading comprehension, vocabulary and writing
skills.
At the end of each period students listening and reading comprehension skills
were tested using a cloze exercise of the transcribed songs, 3 short answer
questions.
17. My questions about the article
1. Did the research fail to compare “apples with apples”? It seems that
group 2 was simply given more learning resources, regardless of the
medium. Group 1 could have received more instruction and learning
activities through a non-digital medium, although it's just not clear what
group 1 did beyond “exposure to songs” and “discussion”.
2. Could CALL also help with reading comprehension, but the study was
unable to uncover the impact because song texts are short and require
less assistance to comprehend. Could we have seen more significant
results had the texts been longer?
3. While this study does increase my belief that multimedia is powerful, it is
unclear exactly what aspect of the software helped the students. Was it
the interactive exercises? The screen design? The additional content that
contextualized the music culturally? The study’s design seems to fail the
caveats placed by the author at the beginning (slide 7)
