The Hidden Benefits of a CALL Facility

Abstract

The objective of this research was to conduct a small scale 'interpretive qualitative and quantitative' project in order to investigate the unseen advantages of a CALL Facility. The principal goal was to determine how the sociocultural context of a computer mediated environment affects the learning experience of its users. By sociocultural it is meant: the prior language learning experience of students, their attitudes and motivation towards learning another language, their cultural and linguistic background, exposure to computers and how these factors interact with one another and have an effect on a computer mediated environment. More specifically, this research has centered on the backgrounds and attitudes of the learners and why they utilize this facility, and what it is that motivates and encourages them to persist in using this learning space. This research is concerned with an area, which has received little attention, one that concentrates on the attitudes towards a computer-enhanced environment by both international and domestic students studying foreign languages in the CALL Facility at the University ofVictoria.