1. Main results about the preferences on:
1) What to learn
2) How to learn in CALL II
By Daniela Estala Sifuentes and Alondra Edenia Morales
Herrera
In this document, we describe the main results that we found on the forum.
And according with comments of each classmate, for almost of them is
more interesting to learn about three topics; multimedia language center,
human language technologies and social software.
The computers really assist second language learning, as our classmates
said that is very important that the classes need be more dynamics.
In the English language-learning classroom, many times the teacher
provides repeated practice to achieve important objectives. And obviously
find the correct way to not do the classes boring and frustrating, as we
know that many students lose interest and motivation to learn a second
languages. So we prefer a dynamic classes.
In the following table and graph shows the results that we identified.
What to learn How to learn in CALL II
Multimedia language center. “I think that the better way to learn
is practicing, discussing and working
in team. So I would like to learn
through different activities using the
software and programs available
during the course” (Cristina Medel).
Human language technologies. “Dynamic class, making our own
material, using our own ideas and
having a teacher who is a resource
makes any class fun.” (Emanuel
Castañeda)
Social Software “I would like that this class will
provide me more programs to use in
everyday situations, also that the
teacher will make it fun but at the
same time interesting, that he can
create in us the desire to come to
class because it will be sure we will
have fun learning. I want to have as
much practice as possible in a way

2. to get to handle the programs
effectively. I am pretty sure it will be
just like that” (Anahi Arambula).
9
8
7
6
5
4 Agree
3
I do not mind
2 Disagree
1 Disagree
I do not mind
0
Agree
Managing a
multimedia Human
Social
language language
Software
center technologies
Multimedia Language Center
In this part we think the rest of our classmates choose this topic because is
an important tool and the computer offers students self-instructional tasks
that let them master prerequisite skills and course objectives.
“Association of University Language Centres (AULC) in the UK and
Ireland: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/languages/aulc/
Centre for Excellence in Multimedia Language Learning (CEMLL),
University of Ulster: CEMLL's aims are described as: (i) developing
teaching excellence and encouraging innovation in the use of
multimedia resources, (ii) integrating the use of multimedia resources
with face-to-face teaching, (iii) researching and evaluating the
effectiveness of teaching in a multimedia environment, (iv)
collaborating with colleagues within the University of Ulster and other
HE Institutions and sharing good practice: http://cemll.ulster.ac.uk/”
“The unexpected decision by Lyondell to replace the Lyondell
Centre�s 40 PCs with multimedia ones following our 1999 CILT
European Quality Award created the opportunity for students at Cox

3. Green to be centrally involved in the development of software
resources and hardware configuration. A very hastily convened
group of Year 11 and 12 students had already devised the shopping
list of PCs and peripherals to meet Lyondell 72 hour deadline for
ordering the hardware, thankfully met by the narrowest of margins.
Could a much expanded group now tackle the development
programme needed to maximize multimedia opportunities and
ensure that the stand-alone PCs were foolproof in their display and
secure from meddling? If successful, the school would then have an
MFL multimedia system devised by students for students. This also
made a virtue out of necessity as the school did not have ICT
technician resources to drive this programme forwards; the eventual
system had to be user-friendly for pupils aged from 11; and my ICT
knowledge is still rudimentary, and I most certainly had the usual time
constraints as head of department.”
Human language technology
We think that this was important because many students seem to learn
much more effectively when they are able to use a compatible learning
style than when they are forced to employ an incompatible one. Serious
conflicts may arise when a teacher employs a style that is incompatible
with a student's. And on the articles we found a information that support our
thinking.
“[...] there is no doubt that the development of tools (technology)
depends on language - it is difficult to imagine how any tool - from a
chisel to a CAT scanner - could be built without communication,
without language. What is less obvious is that the development and
the evolution of language - its effectiveness in communicating faster,
with more people, and with greater clarity - depends more and more
on sophisticated tools. (European Commission: Language and
technology 1996:1)
Language and technology lists the following examples of language
technology (using an admittedly broad understanding of the term):
typewriter (p. 2)
ballpoint pen (p. 3)
spell checker, word-processor (p. 4)
grammar / style checker (p. 6)
thesaurus (p. 7)
terminology database (p. 8)
printing (p. 9)
photocopier (p. 10)

4. laser printer (p. 11)
fax machine (p. 12)
desktop publishing (p. 13)
scanner, modem (p. 15)
electronic mail (p. 16)
machine translation (p. 17)
translator's workbench (p. 18)
tape recorder, database search engines (p. 19)
telephone (p. 25)”
“Facilitating and supporting all aspects of human communication
through machines has interested researchers for a number of
centuries. The use of mechanical devices to overcome language
barriers was proposed first in the seventeenth century. Then,
suggestions for numerical codes to be used to mediate between
languages were made by Leibnitz, Descartes and others (v. Hutchins
1986:21). The beginnings of what we describe today as Human
Language Technologies are, of course, closely connected to the
advent of computers. In a report titled Intelligent Machinery, which
was written in 1948 for the National Physical Laboratory, Alan Turing,
one of the fathers of Artificial Intelligence (AI), who led work on
cryptanalysis in World War II using the Colossus machine at Bletchley
Park, mentions a number of different ways in which these new
computers could demonstrate their "intelligence", including learning
and translating natural languages:
(i) Various games, e.g. chess, noughts and crosses, bridge, poker
(ii) The learning of languages
(iii) Translation of languages
(iv) Cryptography
(v) Mathematics”
Social Softwares
As students and teachers become more sophisticated in their use of such
CALL software, more complicated use of these packages become possible.
For instance, the ability of the computer to handledata.
“Regarding the technical equipment in the SAC, it must be pointed
out that the centre is currently (April 2000) under (re-) construction, a
process during which most of the original equipment will be replaced

5. and the number of workstations will be doubled. In addition, one of
the new rooms will be equipped with a data projector, so that the
facilities are available for use in regular university courses while at the
same time being accessible for self-directed learning.
When the SAC was being set up, it was clear that only a tailored
centre would suit our students' needs. Ready-made solutions proved
to be too expensive, and they also lacked the flexibility and openness
to allow for various paths of study. Therefore, the technical equipment
was obtained from various sources. After the reopening of the centre
(summer 2000), it will comprise
a bookshelf with printed materials: mostly reference book,
manuals and language tests, but also magazines and
newspapers;
two audio-workstations: cassette recorders and an
audiocassette archive containing dialect data, documents,
recitals of poetry and prose, coursebook supplements and
other ELT materials, etc;
five video-workstations: TV sets plus VCRs, which are
connected to both a movable satellite dish and the cable TV
network, and a video archive containing approximately 550
documentaries and movies;
a laserdisc player for interactive videodiscs, simulations and
databanks such as the 1986 Domesday videodisc [Editor's Note:
This technology has long since been superseded and the
Domesday project is now available online at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday];
a computer network consisting of 20 WindowsNT workstations
with DVD-drives, university LAN and Internet access, two
WindowsNT servers, two networked DVD-servers and two
networked printers.
The computer programs offered include:
reference materials: dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopaedias,
grammars, etc;
research tools: concordancing programs, taggers, parsers, etc;
text databases: corpora, newspapers, literary texts;
historical and socio-cultural multimedia databases;
and, of course, traditional CALL programs and related
materials: exercises for remedial language learning, ESP
tutorials, training materials for language tests such as the TOEFL
or the Cambridge Certificates.
Since neither student supervisors nor SAC users are, as a rule,
computer experts, except for maybe the notorious computer whiz,
the computer network has been organised in an as 'learner-friendly'
way as possible. Otherwise, many a student might have shied away

6. from using the computers, or would at least have given up when
faced with difficulties. After the first flush of enthusiasm, there might
have been a slackening of interest, and the place might soon have
become rarely frequented. Access to the materials, therefore, had to
be foolproof and transparent, and we had to make it impossible for
the ordinary user to manipulate configuration files. For these reasons,
a user-interface, the Guide to the SAC, was developed which
standardises both the layout of the computer screens and the paths
of access to the application programs, so that programs can only be
launched from the interface. Moreover, the Guide provides access to
the catalogue of self-study materials, offers tutorials for computer
novices and first-time users of the facilities and includes an
informative hypertext system which lines out possible paths of study
and directs the learners to topic-related materials. It also contains a
calendar with information on social events in the SAC. While the
original version of the interface was programmed with ToolBook, an
HTML-version has now been designed.”
“Software
EDITS (Edit Distance Textual Entailment Suite): an open source
software package aimed at recognizing entailment relations
between two portions of text
TextPro: a suite of modular Natural Language Processing (NLP)
tools for analysis of Italian and English texts.
Moses: a phrase-based decoder for statistical machine
translation
IRSTLM: a toolkit for statistical language modeling
jSRE: an open source Java tool for Relation Extraction
jWeb1T: an open source Java tool for efficiently searching the
Web 1T 5-gram corpus
The Tool-box for lexicographers: a web-based application for
accessing and updating lexical resources
jFex and jInFil: java tools for Feature Extraction and Instance
Filtering
jExSLI: an open source java tool for language identification
jWebS: a software tool for Web people search
jTCat: a software tool for text categorization
StringKernel: an implementation of the string kernel
jLSI - an open source Java tool for Latent Semantic Indexing”
Each topic have the possible way to learn, and how can be the classes.

7. References
(Information and communications technology for lenguage teachers)
www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod3-1.htm
(Hamilton)
(Legenhausen)
(Human Language Technologies)
(Schulze & Gupta)