Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1654] Re: An East Asian Problem?
nickkearney@retemail.es
Date: Wed 16 May 2001 - 01:09:29 MEST
From: nickkearney@retemail.es Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1654] Re: An East Asian Problem? Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 11:09:29 +1200
Hi,
I'm not sure to what extent this is an East Asian problem. Here in Spain
our chief competition is from large companies that sell "flexible" computer
based language courses. They have taken a slice of the market, but we are
receiving a lot of their dissatisfied customers. The institutional pressure
to use the computer lab would appear to be weaker, though present.
Regarding the problems raised in the discussion paper, there are a couple
of comments I would like to make.
One is related to content; in our ESP courses we design the coursae around
the needs analysis and it undergoes continuous evolution. From our point of
view, the job of the teacher in this context is not the provision of
content. The students are usually more expert in the subject matter anyway,
and our job is to faciltate the process of learning to communicate, in the
context of their content, in another language. In many cases they provide
the raw content, for us to create the activities.
The other consideration is what you use CALL to do. Most of the better
software on the market is not in any way similiar to "game" software. Our
students are not taken in, they see books with bells and whistles. They may
or may not prefer the other more traditional medium. But the exciting part
of CALL isn't content delivery, it's communication, the potential to create
learning communities online, and this is where we are focussing. Exercises,
controlled practice, and so on can be done, and when we need them, and we
have nothing appropriate available, we use authoring software to generate
them, but we see this as a support function. Facilitating learning online
in various ways is our primary CALL focus and we are finding that teachers
_can_ do it alone.
There are few "savings" to be had though, but thats a story for the admin
list!!
All the best,
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