Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1655] Re: An East Asian Problem?
From: adamson (adamson@mail.sp.myu.ac.jp)
Date: Wed 16 May 2001 - 02:50:45 MEST
From: "adamson" <adamson@mail.sp.myu.ac.jp> Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1655] Re: An East Asian Problem? Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 09:50:45 +0900
Nick Kearney's comment about his school's main competition being computer
based courses sold by large companies is interesting. As a university
teacher I have not experienced the phenomenon of teaching disappointed CALL
users. Are they different from the other students? For example, do they have
expectations that are not the same as the other students? What about
psychological states and personal preferred learning methods? Do they stand
out in any way.
In regard to Nick's comments about ESP courses, I agree that the students
are frequently more expert than the teacher and that the teacher's job is
teaching the process of communication, not the specialized knowledge from
the field. This would also be true of a CALL program, I would think. I teach
nursing English with a strong stress on reading, by the end of the first
semester the students know far more about the subject than I do. By the
fourth year the students work on individual projects, usually reading
professional papers in the field to support their senior study. My job
becomes one of giving impromptu mini-lessons on the meaning of specific
sentences.
I am currently working on a CALL program which will allow the user to bring
up a dictionary entry for any word in a reading by simply passing the cursor
over the word. This will work in a similar manner to the webbased
Japanese-to-English program that can be found at http://www.rikai.com This
authoring program combined with subprograms for developing various text
related exercises. Should satisfy many of the requirements that are implied
by Nick's comments.
Nick's idea of using CALL to facilitate communication, rather than provide
content, is an excellent solution to the problems of a single teacher
working alone. It also allows the situation where the students do not
compare the programs with game software. I suspect, however, that these same
students compare the large company CALL materials that they give up on to
the game programs. Not necessarily directly, since it is obvious the
purposes are different, but in terms of the use of graphics, animation,
sound, etc., in interesting ways that are pertinent to and expand on the
current activity.
Nick, thanks for the input. It was most interesting.
Charles
>From the Moderator
Charles Adamson, Ph.D.
Professor, Faculty of Nursing
Miyagi University
1 Gakuen, Taiwa-cho, Kurokawa-gun
Miyagi-ken 981-3298, Japan
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