Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen - Volume 49, Issue 1, 1994

In computer-aided learning (CAL) usage in higher education, five stages can be identified: (1) complete unfamiliarity, (2) orientation, (3) introductory, (4) regular, and (5) integrated usage. Many faculties now find themselves somewhere between stages 3 and 4, which is characterised by sorting out or establishing policies, creating budgets, finding a coordinator and developing an implementation scheme or protocol. For help at implementing CAL during stage 4 we use the metaphor, "hitting the bull's-eye", to identify four important impact points.The first is to clearly recognize the critical success factors that normally accompany effective CAL usage. In total we identify 11 factors that can be divided into three hierarchical levels: the strategic, the organisational, and the operational levels of an educational institute. On the basis of an investigation, those responsible can uncover in which part(s) of an organisation conditions are most favourable for successful implementation.The next step would be to place the target, e.g. project type most likely to succeed, in the most appropriate environment. An inquiry can be held among all teaching staff involved in the curriculum that has been identified as most propitious. Questions to be included in the inquiry should address themselves to a portion of a teacher's course and should be rated on six criteria: (1) the basic teaching objective(s), (2) desirability/need for improving education, (3) teaching staff cooperation, (4) stability of learning materials, (5) target group size, and (6) the cost of training. The higher a particular course component scores on these criteria, the more likely it is to become chosen for a CAL solution.The third step is to follow the experience of the master; those who have already made successful usage of CAL. Twenty-one successful applications of CAL have been collected in a book titled, 'The merits of CAL' (De kwaliteiten van computerondersteund onderwijs, Mirande, 1994). Therein it appears that in higher education, CAL is successful in five different ways: (1) removing deficiencies, (2) increasing practice opportunities, (3) substitution for group work, (4) renewal of lab work, and (5) efficient testing and test preparation.The fourth point is to continue trying until the shot has hit the bull's-eye. This can be seen as a form of quality control or fine tuning of a product with special attention to didactic and content needs in the program under development.

In the DSA-project (Analysis of Dialogue Structure in interactive problem solving) we are studying the relationship between the cognitive aspects of information processing and the communicative process of information exchange during cooperative problem solving. On the basis of analyses of task-dialogues a prototype of a 'Dialogue Monitor' for an "Intelligent" Cooperative System has been implemented. The monitor is the central part of a computer-assisted educational program that 'thinks along' with the student and cooperates in jointly solving a problem task. For the actual interaction with this prototype a menu-based 'natural language' interface has been constructed. By means of interconnected menus the student can select constituents of the utterance he/she wants to create. The interface translates the selections made by the students into 'natural language' (Dutch) sentences. The advantages of this kind of interface are obvious: no ambivalent semantic parsing and no typing skill is required. Furthermore, the interface is very flexible and relatively easy to use. With the interface a large number of different sentences can be constructed (about 3.2 million). The 'Dialogue Monitor' programme has been used experimentally with students (10-12 years old) of two elementary schools. Prerequisites and methods for constructing a menu-based 'natural language' interface are discussed in this article. The first results of students using the interface will be reported.

In this article we sketch considerations which induced us to create our CALL exercises for orthographic and phonemic dictation. The pedagogical model that we applied in designing these exercises is shown. Exercises for English and Dutch are given as illustrations.The orthographic dictation is a useful method for training listening for detail and writing correctly. The phonemic dictation is a useful method for training listening for detail, inculcating the phonemes of a language and creating an awareness of the sound-phonemic symbol relation.The pedagogical model that we applied was that of the testing of hypotheses about the correct phonemic and/or orthographic transcription in carefully controlled graded blank-filling exercises.

Computer assistance in the language learning process appears to become increasingly important. In spite of the costs institutions appear to be eager to take on board the technology. The object of this paper is to examine what motivates Dutch institutes of higher education to implement advanced computer-aided language learning environments in their foreign language courses. In this respect the social conditions for implementation and aspects of language learning theory are discussed. Next, the multimedia courseware resulting from the EU/Lingua-sponsored CAMILLE project is described. Finally conditions for a successful implementation of this courseware are analyzed with particular emphasis on the changing role of both teacher and student.

This paper discusses the possibilities of multimedia in language teaching and describes some example lessons for training listening comprehension with video. The lessons were created with WinCalis. The most important thing that was said about the teaching of listening comprehension, was that the training of listening should resemble real-life listening situations (Ur, 1984). When we listen we usually have a purpose and expectations. We listen actively to what we hear, make active use of context and use our own knowledge to understand what we hear. We usually listen to short chunks of language and are able to see the person speaking and the situation around him. If a response is needed, it is given directly after listening and this response is also reacted to immediately.Video can be used for training listening, because video allows listeners to see the person speaking and his surroundings, and because it gives an enormous amount of visual support. Two programmes were used for the lessons: a show about animals and a programme with magic and tricks.The lessons are meant to illustrate the maximum level of the Core Curriculum. Therefore the criteria mentioned in the core objectives are very important. The texts have to be authentic and use simple language. The texts used for the lessons are taken from -programmes for children and conform to these criteria. Still, the texts are relatively difficult, so the tasks that go with them should be kept fairly simple. The questions ask for information that is mentioned explicitly in the fragments or students are asked to think of their own solutions.It is shown how the pedagogical principles for training listening comprehension are incorporated in the lessons. Students get prepared as to the subject of the lessons so they know what to expect. They are told what to listen for before they see each fragment, so they have a purpose in listening. Feedback is provided immediately after each question is answered. Everything has been tried to make the lessons fun and to make the students listen actively. Trying to solve the tricks is so amusing and interesting that you cannot help but watch and listen carefully. Hopefully, students will realize that they can easily understand and enjoy an English programme on television.

The aim of the designers of PARADISE is to create a program which should become to language teachers and students what the word processor currently is to whoever writes.Language teachers can use it as a tool which enables them to prepare CALL-materials on the basis of texts of their own choosing. This the program provides for in a highly user-friendly way. The program allows language students to independently explore foreign language texts. The morphological analysis performed by the program supports this on the grammatical level and opens the way to its electronic dictionaries.Any text in ASCII format can serve as input. No prior editing or codifying is needed. The program analyses the text on the morphological level. Modules supporting English, French and Dutch are available. The analysis adds linguistic labels to each word in the text specifying its lexeme, word class and grammatical form. A huge amount of words in a text are ambiguous on the morphological level. In these cases the various possible lexemes are specified on the label. The data on the labels are used as a means to make a selection out of the words in the text. The user can ask for words of any word class, in any form, to be selected. He is given the choice between avoiding ambiguous forms or disambiguating them manually. The words selected are meant to serve as the basis for various kinds of grammatical or lexical exercises.The teacher is given a wide range of options in order to specify what a specific exercise should look like. Help may be given in various forms, feedback may be added to be displayed in specific situations.The exercises can be presented to the students on an autonomously functioning floppy disk, on paper or from within the main program. The latter allows for the integration of audio, e.g. for dictation purposes.The general idea behind PARADISE closely resembles that behind its precursor, ADAM & EVE. However, PARADISE recognises 98% of words in a newspaper article, on the basis of its internal word list containing about 50,000 lexemes and their associated word formation rules. Adam & Eve selects words on the basis of lexical frequency lists, containing about 20,000 words. PARADISE also handles ambiguity in an elegant way ADAM & EVE can not. The frequency lists in Adam & Eve can be expanded by the user, but this is not an easy task. PARADISE can easily be 'taughť new words. PARADISE allows for more kinds of exercises to be prepared and leaves the teacher full control over the process, while ADAM & EVE automatically generates a set of predefined exercises, some of which may prove to be useless. It is concluded that PARADISE is a highly useful tool for language teaching purposes.

Two CALL programs for Spanish as a second language are reviewed and their practical applications are compared and discussed. Cuanto Antes is a typical drill-and-practice program, designed and edited by an individual teacher for additional practice in the normal language classroom. It aims at training vocabulary in context. For this purpose the program is simple and effective, but possibilities for explicit feedback more than just right/wrong evaluation are very limited.La Conexión Española is a complete language course for communicative business purposes. The program on laserdisc contains video fragments with or without subtitles, vocabulary, grammatical and functional explanation, and some additional oral and written activities. But although these kind of multimedia programs can be very useful for creating a communicative learning environment, student-student and student-teacher interaction remains essential for real language acquisition.

This review discusses four CALL programs demonstrated during the ANéLA CALL workshop. The programs differ considerably in scope and technical capabilities, although three are aimed at business English and two feature multi-media capabilities.ENID is an idiom-training program offering a wide range of exercise modes to make vocabulary learning challenging and effective. The exercises focus on business English but the contents can be adapted to suit the teacher's own needs. It runs on virtually any pc.American Letterbox is geared towards facilitating the letter writing process by reinforcing the students' awareness of the situational background. Although it almost certainly covers a niche in the market, it suffers from a poor translation of the original Dutch course into English.Voicecart is a sound-enabled authoring system, which makes it possible for teachers to develop their own pronunciation and listening comprehension exercises. It is easy to use and more flexible than the traditional language lab, but teachers might prefer to wait for a version of the program using a type of soundcard which is more compatible with other multi-media applications.English Express is by far the most advanced of the products reviewed. It is a video-supported course covering business English in particular. A full course in English language learning skills offering authentic language use and fully functional, flexible training facilities, it is a great course for institutions and companies that can afford the hard- and software investments.

In this review five computer programs will be discussed: Vocabulary and Grammar (E. Franken), Dutch for Foreigners (G. Ruijl), Grammar of Dutch as a Second Language (S. de Vos), Edittraining ( . de Graauw and M. Stortelder), and a Dictionary of Dutch as a Second Language (M. Jagtman and M. Klijn). They were developed especially for Dutch as a second language. The programs are meant to be aids for different areas of language learning such as vocabulary, grammar and listening comprehension.Our general opinion about these programs is that they have not reached a mature level yet. The programs have problems concerning the functionality of the exercises and the amount and type of feedback given. Another problem is the fact that the programs do not integrate the different language skills. A positive aspect, on the other hand, is that the programs give the student and the teachers the possibilities for differentiation and self-education.The conclusion is, therefore, that these programs for Dutch as a second language need to be seriously improved, if we want the programs to be a true aid in language learning.