Categorization Tools

Tools can be describes as applications, which tell the learner something objective about a language or rather a certain piece of language, i.e. tools can be considered online language analyzers. These programs help the learner to discover properties of the language he is learning. Rüschoff, Bernd ; Wolff, Dieter, 1999 use the term "data-manipulating systems". The most simple form of such a tool is the search-and-replace function of a word-processor. With this tool the learner can search for certain patterns which might interest him. A different example tool is a concordancer, which shows certain word forms of a text or even a frequency analyser, which shows the frequency-distribution of a spoken piece of language to analysed by the learner.

Concordancers are programs which allow the user to search for patterns in large corpora with the help of (almost) ^↗regular expressions. This can enhance the work with texts for students because it allows them to discover properties of the language themselves. Usually the data found in the corpora is pretty printed for easy overview. Thus not only lexical items can be extracted but also grammatical structures can partly be identified and analysed. This (of course) works best if the inflectional system of the language is not too rich as all possible wordforms have to be spelled out. Learners can then work on exercises regarding the content of texts and also regarding the linguistic features of texts.

One modern form of tool is build by publishing companies of textbooks who offer wordprocessors add-ons, which include databases with the vocabulary from their main language learning text books. Foreign texts which are loaded into the wordprocessor can then be checked against the vocabulary of the course. Unknown words are marked and can be explained by the teacher. A disadvantage is of course, that it uses only the database from one publisher. Additionally these add-ons can also identify prepositions, pronouns and other 'function words' to allow the teacher to create exercises.

One might also count translation systems as tools for language learning. Even though translation should be learned by students one can imagine situations in which translation tools might help the learner to support understanding. This is the case when the task is working with a text and not e.g. learning vocabulary.

Note that for the category "tools" immediatly some techniques used in CL come to mind to integrated in CALL applications. This has not been mentioned here as it will be the topic of the corresponding subchapter » Functionality and Tools