Introduction Statement
Considering
the factors that hinder language teaching or learning through CALL, this module
provides its readers with some strategies that can better foreign language (FL)
teachers and learners experiences. Actually, these strategies are intrinsically
related to the experiences that other second language practitioners have
encountered in the fields.
In this
module, recommendations from other FL practitioners are placed under the
mobility of people and global technologies lenses (Kramsch, 2014). Educators are
called to confront their pedagogy since the language learning and teaching
conditions have drastically changed in the last decade. As the world is
becoming a global village, there is a need for this pedagogy to be imbibed by
cross-cultural relationships (Lee Zoreda, 1997) as a recommended frame
that can break with the lineal and
traditional process of learning a language (Garrett, 1991).
In fact,
the global contextualization of the world is destabilizing previous norms,
codes, conventions, and strategies “FL instructors relied upon to help learners
be successful users of the language once they had left their classrooms”
(Kramsch, 2014, p. 296). Globalization here is considered here not only as the
intensified interaction or flow of capital, good, peoples and images, but also
as the flow of discourses around the world (Blommaert, 2010, p. 13).
Considering the interactive function of CALL, one of the factors able to
maximize the language learning and teaching through the technology is the move
toward the practice of communicative pedagogies as Kramsch (2014) stated:
Communicative pedagogies have made the classroom more
participatory, electronic chatrooms have loosened the tongues and the writing
of even the shyest students, video and the Internet have made authentic
materials available as never before, telecollaboration and social networks have
increased students’ access to real native speakers in real cultural environments
… (p. 296).
The access to real native
speakers is one of the factors that have evidenced the hiatus between the
lesson taught and students’ needs in real life out of the classroom.
Globalization,
as defined above, is marked by a flow of discourses between people speaking
different languages, included the technological language. Yet, the teaching of
foreign language through CALL broke up with the lineal sequence language
learning and language that has been long internalized by educators. In fact
this internalized sequence suggested that students needed to learn first the
language forms and once they mastered them they can put them in practice.
Therefore, being aware that FL education in general prepares students to move
in such a globalized world, scholars have suggested to opt for “desinventing”
languages (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007, p.1), “translanguaging” (Garcia, 2009,
p. 45), and code switching (Gort & Pontier, 2013) in a non-lineal way when
using CALL (Garret, 1991) since electronically assisted media are able to
support multiple genres of communication and norms at the same time (Kern as
cited in Kramsch, 2014, p. 300). In other words, there is a need of a pedagogy
that brings together the task-based (students’ need), the content-based, and
the technology-based approaches in order to reach the 21st century
five goals of FL instruction which are communication, cultures, connections (to
other disciplines), comparisons, communities (participation in multilingual
communities) (Kramsch, 2014), student-centered based approach to foster his/her
active participation through individualized media (García Salinas, Ferreira
Cabrera, & Morales Rios, 2012). In other words, this latter implies a FL
instruction based on a cross-cultural pedagogy (Lee Zoreda, 1997) since the multiliteracy-multiculturalism
in the multimedia environment obliges (Gonglewski & DuBravac as cited in
Campana, 2007, p. 721).
Pedagogically,
even when using CALL, FL instructors are called to make use of the four strategies
of L2 learning: cognitive, metacognitive, affective, and social strategies.
Later on, as students are in the center in FL learning through the technology,
they will master these same strategies and will develop their autonomy (García
Salinas, Ferreira Cabrera, & Morales Rios, 2012)
In counterpart, the section purely technological should not be
minimized. A better experience language instruction or learning through
technology is assured when the following conditions are met: appropriateness of
hardware and software; easy access to technology; plenty technological and
pedagogical (FL methodology) support to teachers from the (school)
administration; integration of technology in the syllabus; technology literacy
training (teacher as a technological guru); personalization of technology;
involvement of teachers in decisions about technology (Ioannou-Georgiou, 2006,
p. 383-384; Kwang Hee, 2010).
