æŒæææ==History==
inpresent a stimulus to which the learner must respond. The stimulus may be presented in any combination of text, still images, sound, and motion video. The learner responds by typing at the keyboard, pointing and clicking with the mouse, or speaking into a microphone. The computer offers feedback, indicating whether the learner’s response is right or wrong and, in the more sophisticated CALL programs, attempting to analyse the learner’s response and to pinpoint errors. Branching to help and remedial activities is a common feature of CALL programs.
Wida Software was one of the first specialist businesses to develop CALL programs for microcomputers in the early 1980s. Typical software of the first generation of CALL included Wida's "Matchmaster" (where students have to match two sentence halves or anything else that belongs together); "Choicemaster" (the classic multiple-choice test format); "Gapmaster" (for gapped texts); "Textmixer" (which jumbles lines within a poem or sentences within a paragraph); "Wordstore" (a learner's own private vocabulary database, complete with a definition and an example sentence in which the word to be learned is used in a context); or "Storyboard" (where a short text is blotted out completely and has to be restored from scratch). Wida's packages continue to be popular and are now merged into one general-purpose, multimedia authoring program, known as "The Authoring Suite". Another specialist business, Camsoft, has enjoyed similar success with its "Fun with Texts" authoring package, which was first produced in 1985 and is now available in an updated multimedia version.
Other CALL activities in the early days of computer use in schools included working with generic packages such as word-processors, which revolutionised text production assignments by enabling language learners to continually revise and have peer reviewed what they are writing before printing out the final version of their composition.
Current CALL software has enbraced CD-ROM and DVD technology, and there is growing interest in Web-based CALL.
Methodological considerations
Fascinated by the new technology, many users within the school environment focused on technological issues, neglecting pedagogical and methodological questions and not realising that innovative pedagogy and methodology were required to integrate satisfactorily the use of computers into the languages curriculum. One point of criticism which could easily be refuted was the claim that students tended to be isolated from their classmates when working in a computer lab - the "battery chicken" syndrome. It was found out, however, that using computers in language classes could promote team work among students and, if planned well, could also encourage them to use the target language to communicate in front of their PCs, thus increasing the time they spent practising their oral skills.
Whole-class teaching, which was a feature of early CALL - because scools could only afford one computer per classroom - is now making a comeback with the introduction of interactive whiteboards.
Generally speaking, however, CALL pedagogy and methodology continue to lag behind the technology.