Computers have been part of the tools to support language learning since the late 60ies of the last century.
Considering the development of computer technology of that time, most of the programs of course were simple text-based systems, which mainly allowed for some kind of simple exercise-solving, namely multiple-choice or gap-filling.
This means that listening and speaking were not trained and only little writing.
With the advent of the capabilities of multimedia, computers have become supportive to all skills in language learning:
Listening, reading, writing and speaking.
- Listening can be trained by playing sound-files, if the computer is able to produce sound.
Especially the understanding of texts can be supported.
After listening to a text being read, the learner may be asked to work on some exercises about the text.
Two major advantages can be noted over the tape-recorder.
Firstly the computer can give immediate feedback to the exercises even with reference to the text/reading-position and secondly the sound-files can be replayed with very high precision.
Also oral dialogues can be heard.
In this case transcripts can accompany the sound-output to further enhance the understanding.
In contrast to the classroom situation this lets the learner train his/her capabilities for understanding language produced at a "normal" speed, since fellow learners and/or the teacher tend to produce language on a level a lot more tuned towards the proficiency level of the hearer.
- Reading can be trained with various types of exercises following the presentation of texts.
But there are some serious, more technical difficulties with todays sreens.
Longer texts can only be presented partially which hampers the overview.
Some texts (e.g. hypertexts) do not allow adding personal notes (or only with difficulties).
Reading of longer texts may be difficult because of poor refresh-rates of some monitors.
Additionally there is still a kind of "usage-barrier", which prevents learners to use electronic equipment such as computers and e-books as a replacement for printed material.
- Writing-skills can be practiced using a computer with some advantages.
Texts produced with some kind of word-processor or editor are 'clean' and easily readable.
The understanding of texts can be enhanced with graphical presentations added to the text.
Most word-processor have build-in orthographic checking, which can be used to make the texts almost free of orthographic errors.
Albeit checking for morphosyntactic errors is unreliable and semantic errors can not yet be handled.
Most word-processors also include a thesaurus.
This could be used by language learners to change the choice of words in their text.
However this requires some knowledge about the use of words and phrases in the target-language.
So far, there is very little support for learning writing except for the field of dictation.
- Speaking into a computer is still a minor feature.
The voice of a learner can be recorded and in most cases has to be evaluated "manually" by the user himself.
Few programs include an analysis-module for evaluating the soundinput.
This evaluation usually amounts to the presentation of percentage-figures of the difference between the learner recording and the prestored sound pattern.
In newer programs, spectrograms or the like are presented to the learner. If one knows how to interpret this data, it should provide some concrete help instead of a general match/mismatch-feedback.
As in the previous page the goal of enhancing CALL-programs with the help of CL one should keep these four basic skills in mind in combination with the afore mentioned learning types.