CALL in Context: A Brief Historical and Theoretical Perspective

Abstract

Computers have been used for language teaching since the 1960s (Warschauer & Healey, 1998), and several recent studies suggest that there is still a strong need to experiment with technology and digital tools in both education and language learning (Godwin-Jones, 2012; Goertler, 2009; Levy, 2009; Reinhardt & Ryu, 2013; Zhao, 2003).  Because of the speed of technology, there have been drastic changes in every field in which technology is used as a medium. Each time that a society has developed a new medium for the transmission of knowledge, there have been profound consequences for language and language pedagogy (Wright, 2006). In fact, Rankin (2010) admits that the information shift is as drastic as the move from handwritten texts to books from the printing press (as cited in Fargo, 2012). Fargo further points out that information and knowledge are no longer held by the few in select repositories waiting to be disseminated to the masses by a master teacher. Information, both accurate and inaccurate, is free and available for use instantly over the Internet. Due to this and several other innovations and renovations in educational methods, there is a strong need to elaborate on educational technology tools grounded within a historical framework and to reflect on both constraints and affordances of new technologies. Therefore, this article is a partial response to this need; it both draws a map of the current state of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and positions this map within an existing theoretical and historical view of how technology has been used in education and language pedagogy. DOI:10.2458/azu_itet_v5i1_polat