To CALL or not to CALL?

I attended a workshop on CALL last friday (19/09). Hmm, the presenter was not “okay” for me in terms of face validity. Hehehehe! He looked like a businessman rather than a trainer. Surprise, surprise, when the moderator introduced him, I knew that he took Business and Finance as his bachelor and master degree. However, he took TESOL for his doctoral degree. Hmm, suspicious. I smelled something fishy going on.

Well, in fact he did make some “interesting” points. First, he told us that in the traditional teaching, reading skill dominates all the skills. And that Grammar Translation Method and Audio Lingual Method has been outdated. Thus, we need CALL to create a supportive virtual environment for the language acquisition. However, seeing from his demonstration of the program, we saw that it actually is an Audio Lingual method instructed through computer. WHAT??

Next point was in the point of critical thinking. He said that CALL implemented critical thinking, in which the emphasis was on the pattern recognition, not pattern memorization. Another contradiction, all the exercises there were cloze-test. And what is the basic nature of cloze-test? Pattern practice drilling. And what is the nature of drilling? Memorization!!!! GOOD!

The listening exercises were not using any written sentence, even for the instruction. They used visual aids instead. Yes, using visual aids to explain the meaning is good, but as the semantics theory mentioned that not all things can be visualized! (Reminisce to Bu Veni's Semantics class) How can you visualize passion? How can you visualize itch? And even though all those things can be visualized, the schemata (a.k.a. background knowledge) of every people will respond differently.

Related to the previous point that everybody will respond differently, it will affect their answers. However, the form of the exercises there was close-ended question, which gave no possibilities for more than one answer. And that contradicts the principle of constructivism. Furthermore, constructivism is the hype basis of the teaching-learning activity in the post-modern era. WEW!

This 'big' guy also quoted Krashen and Pinker to strengthen his argument. However, did he really read those, or quoting it from somewhere else? Since he didn't apply Krashen's comprehensible input, i+1. (I was tempted to ask about this, but it turned out that I didn't have the heart to do it. XD) He didn't consider the difference between L1 acquisition and L2 acquisition in adult learners, since he generalize adult and young learners. OUCH! And where did the lateralization and critical period advantages go in young learners?

In the end, the fishy things were out. He was there to SELL the program. Yikes! So, he's some kind of salesman? Educated salesman?? And he took TESOL as his doctoral degree only to smoothen his way in this field?

Waow! Be patient dude, be patient. It's a fasting month. And, you did learn something too. :D