Computers in Language Teaching:

Using the computer for language teaching

Drills

The most commonly used computer technique in language teaching is the use of drills. The drills are of various types and are arranged in different levels. One can choose them according to the level of intelligence and speed. Drill and practice programme in the form of quiz were very popular in the past. The essence of drill-and-practice is controlled repetition with monitoring and feedback. Some of the drill and practice programmes are as follows:

1. Select task or question: The order in which one presents the questions may be fixed, possibly graded from easy to difficult, or questions may be selected at random, so that students get no clues from the ordering when they repeat a quiz. The selection may be made sensitive to the student's score, so that after, say, three consecutive right answer; subsequent questions are drawn from a more difficult block. Some of these decisions can be offered tot eh students themselves. They can be asked if they want the exercise to be easy or difficult, revision or new material, long or short.
2. Display questions: One can use the screen's versatility to display various information such as split the screen for video, help documents, panels, recorded sounds etc.
3. Accept student's answer: The students can respond to the problems with the choice of either pressing yes or no or by using the arrow keys or by clicking on the correct answers. The mechanism should be user-friendly.
4. Match answer against acceptable answers: In case there is a possibility of getting more than one answer, it is desirable to write a programme which will detect the expected answer within the student's response. For example, if the answer is Tuesday, the expected answer could be: It is Tuesday, It's Tuesday, Tuesday I think, Is it Tuesday? Not Tuesday etc.
5. Report success or failure: In the case of success one can give overt feedback – 'Right', or covert feedback – no message but continue to next question. In some programme you can find "Congratulations", "Well don Fred !" etc.
6. Adjust student's running score: Most scoring system take advantage of the computer's ability to offer the learner a second chance to answer. A clean first attempt is awarded, say, ten points, with five points for a correct answer at the second attempt and two for a third attempt. There maybe an additional score for speed of response, say a potential ten points from which one point is deducted for every two seconds delay.

Demonstration:

The learner must first of all grasp what the skill is 'as a whole' and it involves demonstration. The learner gradually learns by making several efforts to the target behaviour. Using the computer to demonstrate how a language operates is one of the most valuable functions. A programme may include a 'demonstration mode' as one of its options or be built entirely around the idea of demonstration.

The computer has a number of advantages as a medium of demonstration. Visual presentation in the form of pictures, graphs or tables can help to make clear the relationship between form and meaning. Simple animations can be used to tell a story or to show grammatical processes.

Gradual approximation:

First shown by Leon and Martin in the 1960s for the teaching of intonation by employing a visual feedback. The computer extracted an accurate trace of the fundamental frequency or an utterance from the total waveform. The trace of the target utterance was shown at the top of the VDU screen and the trace of the student's imitation underneath it. The student could repeat his or her attempt as often as he or she wanted until there was a match between the two traces.

Games:

There are two types of games, the competitive which has pints scoring and a win or lose outcome, and the collaborative in which there is a task to be achieved and in which all participants, including perhaps the computer, work together to achieve it.

Gambling

The student is given a stock of points and has to stake a certain number on the chance of getting the right answer. Odds may be offered based on the computer's estimate of the difficulty of the task. To bet successfully one has to make an objective assessment of the nature of the task set and one's linguistic resources for tackling it.

Fruit machine

One can exploit a games-playing motivation directly by using the rules and procedures of an established game. Teachers use word bingo in the classroom to develop pronunciation and attentive listening. The computer functions as a fruit machine but he contents of each window are phrases or words rather than pictures. One wins when the words on the centre line in the three window from a set, for example adjective, comparative and superlative, or the root, past tense and past participle of a verb, or three words making up a coherent sentence. Teachers can modify the subject matter to fit in with the syllabus.

Quizzes within games

Another approach is to put quiz questions into a familiar game framework, so that a successful answer is needed before the student can make the next move in the game.

Chris Harrison's Noughts and Crosses and Snakes and Ladders.

Dynamic games

To focus the learner's attention on a game-like task which introduces the repetitive training activity incidentally. Flying game.

Strategy games

Human and machine compete on equal terms. Jot, Word mastermind. Human and computer choose secret three-letter English words and score each other's guesses on the basis of the number of letters in common between the secrete word and the guess.

Arcade games

A game called Worm for example, in which an ever lengthening worm has to be manipulated round the screen so that it can gobble up the letters of a word in the right order.