CALL in Language Learning

Using CALL in enhancing listening, speaking and communication, reading and writing skills.

It may seems simple because nowadays, everything is just one click away, but, if it is not carefully picked, teachers might choose the wrong ones that will bring nothing in students development in any particular areas. So, the teachers need to focus and pick the best way or activities that can be used in teaching these skills using CALL.

Listening

According to Brett (2000), "enhancing listening skill is the most effective in a multimedia environment and internet listening program than teacher-led forum"

Divided into 3 areas;

i) Perception

ii) Analysis

iii) Synthesis

i) Perception skills are more into discriminating sounds and recognizing words.

ii) Analysis skills are identifying grammatical and pragmatics units.

iii) Synthesis skills on the other hand are skills that require students to connect linguistics and other cues and use background knowledge in identifying things.

Other than listening, call can also help in enhancing Speaking and Communication Skills.

Speaking skills will require students to have discussion and work on the activities in small groups on the internet.

There are 3 major types of application in speaking and communication skills;

i) Digital version of tape recorder

ii) Recording with speech visualization

iii) Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)

i) Tape recorder with a digital version can help students to listen and at the same time record and compare them together with their group members.

ii) Recording with speech visualization also can help students to listen and record the graphic representation of the speech such as the wave of the speech like the spectogram.

iii) ASR is used to judge the closeness to any speech and students will get the feedback in meter or numerical score form.

Reading
For reading, students can directly read from any interactive sites from the internet with games etc and according to Ridder (2000), students highlighting words in a text on a screen can enhance their amount of vocabulary.

Example of an effective site that can enhance reading is the Reading Shape-Up which has tutorials on specific reading skills with short reading selections.

Writing

CALL can help students in writing by giving them more complex sentences with larger quantity and better quality. Teachers just need to search for the right site that can help students in enhancing their writing skills.

Examples of software that they can use are;
i) Word-Processor
ii) Emails
iii) Blogging etc.