Reading Response Ten

Thursday, March 25, 2010
Reading Prompt #10
*RICHARDSON Ch. 7. Fun with Flickr: Creating, Publishing, and Using Images Online
*BLACKBOARD - Kern, R. (2006). Perspectives on technology in learning and teaching languages. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 183-210.

After reading Richardson, what ideas do you have for using images and programs such as Flickr in the language learning classroom?

Kern gives a broad overview of issues in CALL, with specific examples from three areas and implications for teaching and research. Select and share your own thoughts and opinions on one or more issues that Kern raises.

I think Flickr would be a fun way to study vocabulary in the ESL classroom. Students could take pictures, and together, the students and teacher could label the pictures focusing on certain vocabulary. I also like Fliction where students pick a photo(or series of photos) and write a story about it. This would work well with using creative writing as a tool in the classroom to teach English.

Kern raises many issues in his article about the CALL classroom. I thought that Chapelle's work on CALL theories was interesting. For example, she thought that it was important to "ground CALL in instructed SLA theories" and she recommended the interactionist approach to SLA. She thought it would place CALL "on more solid grounding relative to other areas of applied linguistics." (Kern)I think Kern and Chapelle raise an important point here, and that CALL is made more useful in the classroom by pairing it with SLA theory.

I also thought it was interesting that CMC was called computer mediated colonization, and that CALL can be considered a western tool that imposes western values on other cultures. But Ess who called CMC western colonization also said that we can use CALL to find a middle ground where there is a "global connectivity" finding "local cultural identities".

I believe CALL is a very wonderful tool, really, for teaching ESL. It is always changing and growing, and it's uses are endless.