Week 5 Reading – Theory Driven CALL and development process

Suggested by Levy’s (1997) article, some CALL projects were not driven by theories. In view of this, he carried out research in this area and suggested two types of practitioners of CALLS. They are proceduralists and formalists.

For the proceduralists, they focus on the technology for learning. They solve problems by writing programmes and testing them with learners. In this manner, people will understand more about CALL. However, the formalists are prone to solve problems by using theories in CALL context.

In fact, both parties have their own disadvantages. For the proceduralists, their move will lack of the support from theoretical basis. On the other hand, for the formalists, sometimes, it is hard to find any theories to support the resources to cope with the problems.

To strike the balance between the two, we, teachers, should bear in mind that we have to use both ways to compensate the pitfalls of the two. Don’t too focus on theories but on the other hand, we should consider other options available of using CALL.