Foreign
languages teaching practices in the U.S. has become a daunting and tough
mission (Baker, 2006; Grosjean, 2010). Since the austerity years marked by the
economic crisis, the American public education underestimates the learning of
foreign language at school (Beale, 2010): funds for this sector were cut off.
Therefore, the panorama of Foreign Language Learning got darker. Additionally,
this situation is more exacerbated by the lack of exposure to the target
foreign languages (French for example) outside the classroom (Murphy, 2005).
This
website is about CALL programs applied to teaching of foreign languages. While
browsing the website, you will find a glimpse of CALL programs using
constructivist theory. Also, through a review of the literature, the reader
will discover the reasons that lead language teaching practitioners to suggest
the use of technology as a daily mean of instruction. As a support to this
go-tech-trend, the reader will be aware of the factors that challenge this
practice. Evoking the teaching of French Foreign languages in this website helps
evaluating the use of CALL in educational or instructional settings.
The website is
divided into four principal modules. Each module is dedicated to the
aforementioned sections. This means that the first module provides the reader
with the technical definitions of the key terms. Module two is about rationale
for using CALL programs into teaching languages. Module three review the
factors that hinder language teaching through a special case of French Foreign
Language Teaching. Module four outlines some potential solutions to better the
experience of foreign language instruction under a constructivist theory frame.
Furthermore, each module is structured as followed: a title of the module; an
introduction including some literature and theoretical framework; studies
backing the topic of inquiry and linking it to other resources; module goal;
module objectives; activities related to the topic; ancillary links or
resources, glossary; and references at the end.
