WEEK 6: speaking!

So far we have seen that technology brings a lot of benefits to the learning process; either we use it to enhance listening or writing skills, but what about speaking? Considering that the main goal when learning a new language is to be able to communicate verbally, certainly there must be some interest on how the use of CALL may help to improve speaking skills as well.

In that sense, the article “The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skillsby Julia Gong” provides a lot of information on this aspect; starting from how learners value the use of CALL in the classroom to how convenient it is for teachers to use this approach when developing resources.

Among the advantages the use of CALL when teaching a foreign language speaking skills has, we can find, an interactive environment, variety of resources, spontaneous feedback and private workspace. Personally, I consider the latter as the most important benefit this approach provides to the learning process. When working privately, students show more confidence to practice, they feel free to mispronounce without fearing being judged by others.

Among the disadvantages, lack of natural interaction seems to be the main aspect, as the article mentions, “some speech synthesising software might produce a voice with a mechanical quality that can be difficult for learners to understand". It also mentions software's high costs; however, I think that by the time the article was written, getting that kind of resource was very expensive but now it must be cheaper.

Something else I like from this reading is when it says that no matter how sophisticated a software is, it is not the same as real exposure to the target language. I totally agree on that!