2.3 The Evolution of use of Technology in Second-Language Teaching

2.3.1 Introduction

The literature on the use of technology and, more specifically, computers in language learning, has centered largely around discussions and debates of pedagogical merits of technological devices (Stern, 1983). Approaches, typologies, phases, methods: all have served as focal points for organizing the past 50 years (1950-2000) of technology use in language learning. In her discussion of the role of the computer in language teaching, Garrett (1991) cautions against thinking of it in terms of a method. Instead she argues that it is "a medium or an environment in which a wide variety of methods, approaches or pedagogical philosophies may be implemented" (p.75). Grammar -translation activities, audio-lingual drills, or cognitive analysis of language, or a communicative syllabus: any of these, according to Garrett can comprise Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL).

Indeed, it is the way the computer is used and the context in which it is used that determines the efficacy (Chiquito, Meskill, Renjilian-Burgy, 1997). When we think about computer use, we must beware of technocentric thinking or "the tendency to give centrality to a technical object such as a computer" (Papert, 1987, p.23). For the purposes of this review therefore, it is the approach that has been taken to the use of technology in language learning that will serve as the organizing factor. What has been the teacher's role? What degree of control did the learner exert in relation to the program being used? What was the view of error-correction underlying the program? These are some of the issues that will be explored in this review of technology use from the behaviouristic language laboratory of the 1960's to the constructivist learning environments of the Internet at the end of the nineties.