Reflection on Week 5 Reading – Theory Driven CALL and development process

In Levy’s (1997) article, he presented some theories of psychology, language learning and instruction. Among the projects he had come across, he found that some CALL projects were not driven by the theories. Thus, he carried out research in this area and come up with 2 types of practitioners of CALLS: proceduralists and formalists.

The proceduralists are practitioners who focus more on the technology that helps learning. They mainly solve problems by writing programs and testing them with learners. Through this way, they believe our understanding of CALL would be advanced. On the other hand, the formalists tend to solve problems by formulating theories and the application of the theories in the CALL context. They are very concerned about if the theories applied really encompass the CALL context.

Either way is better than the other one as they both bring advantages and bare risks. Programs written by proceduralists can surely accommodate in the CALL context, but if too much focus on the programs themselves, they might get to the point that their work would no longer be supported with any theoretical basis. Meanwhile, the formalists can always make sure the theories are applicable, but sometimes resources and learning opportunities brought by technology might have been overlooked in such cases.

I basically think that it is right that we should strike a balance between the theoretical framework and the capabilities brought by technology. In order to do so, teachers should always be well aware of the dynamic development process of CALL. We shouldn’t neither use the most advanced technology as teaching nor focus too much on theories without considering other options of using CALL.