The Application Of Instructional Technology To Language Learning

JAMES E. ALATIS

Abstract:

Beginning with the concern of those who view “computer revolution” as a threat to the present system of education, the paper suggests that technology can be destructive only if it fails to function in response to the “humanistic” objective of educational programs. This objective is examined in relation to language instruction, and the ultimate function of language study is defined as an attempt “to achieve an understanding, as complete as possible, between people of different linguistic background.” It is then suggested that because of its great potential for improving and facilitating the earner’s progress, modern-language-teaching technology can help us fulfill our humanistic mission more efficiently. To achieve this end, it is first necessary to change the negative reaction by students and teachers which started with the introduction of language lab. For this purpose, an attempt is made to dispel some of the “myths” that arose in the course of the first wave of language-teaching-technology.

I am very pleased to have been given this opportunity to write about the “Application of Instructional Technology to Language Learning.” I am sure that you are all aware of the wide-spread myth that educators in general, and humanistically oriented teachers in particular, regard new technologies as a threat to the status quo and, therefore, an abominable intrusion to be fought at every turn. As a humanist, I especially welcome this opportunity to comment on the issue and emphasize that the myth referred to is sheer nonsense.

In a chapter called “The Decline of the Professions,” Christopher Evans claimed in his book, The Micro Millenium, that computers would make available to everyone the knowledge laboriously acquired and jealously guarded by the traditional professions such as medicine, law and teaching, which would therefore gradually wither away or lose importance.1 This prophecy was made in 1979. Now that computer terminals have found their way into people’s homes, such predictions are heard more often and with no less alarming tone. We are told that the training classroom of the year 2000 will do without textbooks and all-knowing instructors. We hear that the inevitable infusion of “high technology” devices into our educational system will “kill off” some of the educators, and that the “computer revolution” will make the classroom obsolete. We are encouraged to believe that parents may decide that buying their own equipment to provide self-instruction for their children may make more sense than sending them to school. In short, there are those who are fearful that the so called “electronics culture” has sounded the last ding-dong of doom for the entire system of traditional education which is the product of the book-oriented world of the print culture. Undoubtedly, an electronic revolution of a kind is in the making. There is ample reason to believe that computers will soon affect our lives through the labor force, the education system, our families, and society at large. This belief has become so commonplace that it may safely be characterized as a cliché. Harlan Cleveland in a talk, “information as a Resource,” given at the meeting of the Board of Directors of Global Perspectives, New York, August 30, 1982, said:

In a remarkably short span of about ten years the once prescient notion that industrial society was being transformed in a “post-industrial,” “information,” or “knowledge” society has itself become cliché. The belief that “computers are the wave of the future” has spread wide and deep. The convergence of computers and telecommunications seems to require converging cliches: “communications” or “telematics” (from the French “telematique”) are currently leading contenders for the industry that contains both IBM and A.T.&T.

We are already well past the jaw-dropping, gee-whiz stage of technological wonder, and have internalized, even if most of us do not really understand, the prospect of trillions of transactions in nanoseconds of time.

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But we have not yet gotten very far in learning how to think, to theorize about the implications of the information society’s technical wizardry for the way we live, work, and plan. The hardware can come up with the answer in seconds and communicate it around the world in minutes. But what was the question?2

The kind of changes I personally foresee in our educational system provide an occasion for rejoicing rather than cause for panic. I would like to support my view by the words of Donald L. Bitzer, inventor of the Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operation (PLATO) computer system, who believes that the application of computers will make the demand for teachers greater, not lesser. “If I were a teacher,” he says, “I would be terribly excited about the future.”3 I suggest that the concern of those who view technology as a threat to the present system of education is an expression of mental blindness to the role and the purpose of education in our highly advanced and complex society.

To begin with, such reactions against sudden cultural and technological changes as I have mentioned are not rare in the history of mankind. It has been pointed out that in Plato’s Phaedrus Socrates feared that writing would destroy memory and wisdom by enabling people to compile quantities of lifeless information.4 And Yale’s President Giamatti, as a Renaissance scholar, cited similar apprehensions that underlay denunciations of printing when it began to spread in the 16th century.5 To get back to cases of our own time, however, high-flown claims for the value of teaching machines in the 1960′s, and ideal access technology and language laboratories in the 1970′s, are good examples of false prophecy and consequent disappointment.

This is not to underestimate the impact of the new technological developments upon educational practice. Rather, I want to emphasize the well-known fact that computers have little tolerance or ambiguity of perception of metaphor. Thus as long as such human factors as insight, intuition, and imagination remain indispensable to man’s life, humanistic teaching will play a basic role in educational programs. How can it be otherwise? At best, computers will help us transmit more information to people with greater efficiency that ever before. But why do we transmit information to people at all? If I may digress for a moment, let me return to the talk by Cleveland for some definitions. He used T.S. Eliot as a starting point. In The Rock, Eliot creates a hierarchy in the following question:

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?6

Cleveland defines the terms “information,” “knowledge,” and “wisdom” this way:

…information is the core, the sum total of all the facts and ideas, accessible or not, that are available to be known by somebody at a given moment in time…now. Knowledge is the result of somebody applying the refiner’s fire to the mass of facts and ideas, selecting and organizing what is useful-to somebody. …wisdom is integrated knowledge — information made super-useful by creating theory rooted in disciplined knowledge but crossing disciplinary barriers to weave into an integrated whole something more than the sum of the parts — to “get it all together.”7

Another version of the T.S. Eliot hierarchy goes like this:

…The difference is one of order of complexity. Information is horizontal, knowledge is structured and hierarchical, wisdom is organismic and flexible. Any diligent student can, with the help of a computerized system, acquire vast amounts of information; for instance the population of every township in the United States. But the data are pretty useless because they are stretched out at one level. (Information is horizontal.) For the data to be useful — to come to life, as it were — they have to be linked to another rung or category of data. The result is knowledge. (Knowledge is structured and hierarchical.) Every teacher knows how difficult it is to pass knowledge, as distinct from information, to students; hence we give objective tests to determine how much information, rather than knowledge, they have acquired. As for imparting the wisdom, it…has to do with personal chemistry and slow osmosis.8

The minute this ultimate question “why transmit information at all” is asked, the function of instructional technology, however advanced, stops, and the crucial mission of educators begins. It is essential in the context to distinguish between “training,” which provides specific skills, from the much broader function of “education,” which is to make of people responsible and fully-integrated personalities, conscious of their unique and privileged task in society. We have to remind ourselves that learning is not merely storing a series of facts or developing specific skills. Above all, it is a responsibility for the integrity of what we are as ethical creatures. Professional ability is not just knowing how to do a job. It means demonstrating in one’s everyday work a total commitment to one’s skill. If we can ever think o a time when American society would no longer need responsible and committed individuals, but only cartoon-like figures and aborted personalities, that would be the time then computers could make humanistic teaching truly redundant.

Those who view computer technologies as an alien intrusion ignore this humanistic task of education. Confusion the means with the end, they consider job security. Indeed, technology can be destructive if it fails to function in response to a specific and clearly defined objective, or if its application is not based on genuine needs. In his address delivered before the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Annual Meeting, Mayor Charles Royer provided a glaring example of this.

I remember talking with a former Peace Corps volunteer about his experiences in Africa. I asked him if the Peace Corps and other foreign-aid programs had much impact on the economy there. He nodded. “Yes,”

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he said, “We totally ruined their agricultural economy.” I was shocked. I asked him how we had managed to do that. “By selling them tractors. They couldn’t afford them to begin with, and there was no one to service them when they broke and no spare parts. They went into debt to but those tractors when what really would have helped was a good steel plow.” My young friend had lived with the people he was talking about and spoke their language. He had a keen sense of the tools that were needed to build that country. They badly need this kind of knowledge in the idle steel mills of Youngstown and Gary.9

How many of us know of similar horror stories about language labs in developing countries? Tropical Africa and Asia are littered with the wreckage of unused and unusable give-away language labs, and administrators’ present from North to South, or West to East, giving pride to the donor, but useless to the recipient. Similar disasters are likely to occur in instructional situations in which technological applications are isolated from the mainstream of the educational program or used for irrelevant purposes. Purchasing equipment in response to a “technology push” and not on the basis of an “education pull” is a destructive practice that turns technology into a hostile intruder. If I may use an analogy. When you transplant a kidney, the body reacts. The stresses as the body tries to reject the alien organ are so critical that for a time it is life fighting against death. I would suggest that technology invites such a reaction where its application has little or no relationship to what is actually needed.

What is, then, the specific humanistic objective of language instruction and how can modern technological developments help us achieve it? To define this objective in relation to present-day American society, we have to make a quick reference to the alarming nature of the cross-cultural problems which continue to abound both inside and outside America. Let us first consider this point within the framework of our own society. You are all very well aware of the statistics and data concerning the entry of immigrants, refugees, documented and “undocumented” aliens to our shores. According to recent findings, a flood of immigrants is bringing well over one million newcomers a year into the United States – the highest level since the mass migration of Europeans at the turn of the century. By some estimates, El Salvador alone has generated as many as 500,000 U.S. bound refugees since 1980. America today is accepting twice as many immigrants as all other nations combined. “If immigration is continued at a high level,” warns Senator Alan Simpson, Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee of Immigration, “and a substantial portion do not assimilate, they may create some of the same social and economic problems that exist in the countries from which they come.”10

Nor is the international aspect of the situation any less alarming. If it is true that one out of eight manufacturing jobs is dependent on exports, and that one of every three American acres is planted for agricultural export, then it is evident that our tie with other countries is not just an adjunct but an essential condition of our survival as an affluent society. Indeed, if we want to maintain our position of leadership in the world, we must make ourselves capable of responding effectively to the need for a spirit of kinship – of a common humanity – with other peoples. The only key to the achievement of this goal lies in strengthening our ability to communicate with other nations. If we fail to do this, we must be prepared to face the kind of consequence against which the ominous words of former U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim warned us: “Many civilizations in history have collapsed at the very height of their achievement because they were unable to analyze their basic problems, to change direction and to adjust to the new situation which faced them.”11

Thus, nothing less that our survival as a great nation demands that we, as committed educators, should use our most powerful weapon — humanistic teaching — as effectively as we can to help create a sense of unity among men, which is an indispensable condition of peace and general prosperity. It is precisely in this connection that language instruction can truly fulfill its most creative role. To make this point clear, let me remind you of my position as a committed language educator. I subscribe to a philosophy of language teaching which emphasizes the humanistic basis of the language profession. It defines the ultimate function of language study as an attempt “to achieve an understanding, as complete as possible, between people of different linguistic backgrounds.”12 I strongly support the notion that learning a foreign language is a “liberalizing” experience because it serves to free one from the shackles, the restraints, and barriers imposed by such limitations as confinement to a single language. Indeed, I have always insisted that even the study of language as language is a humanistic study; that is, all the uses and manifestations of language and linguistic communication, in all their philosophic, social, geographic, and ethnic splendor, are the basis of a humanistic discipline.

Seen in this light, language study assumes a function that extends beyond academic objectives to social and international considerations. It can be charged with the task of contributing to the improvement of the human condition – indeed, even to the survival of mankind.

To achieve this end, it is clear that we might explore all possibilities that might help us do our job more efficiently. One such possibility is offered by modern language teaching technology which appears to have great potential for improving and facilitating the learner’s progress. Specialists inform us that marvelous new opportunities concerning language teaching technology are forthcoming, as a result of recent developments in audio, video and computer techniques. However, to use the new aids and equipment to best advantage, and toward the most direct realization of our educational goal, we mush first try to learn the lessons from the first wave of language teaching technology that started with the introduction of the language lab. The results of empirical research concerning language laboratories have left little doubt that many people were disappointed. Educators have a major responsibility to change this attitude which seems to be widespread among students as well as teachers – by explaining to them what exactly went wrong. It seems appropriate to refer in this regard to Peter Strevens, who in his attempt to dispel some of the “myths” that arose in the course of the first wave of language teaching technology, states:

Much of the negative reaction by

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students towards language labs is caused by the unfortunate quality of dull solemnity which most language lab tapes possess. Lack of wit and humor makes learning tedious, boring and unproductive. It is worth noting that one component of the new technology, namely computer programming, takes wit and humor for granted. Programs are very often written with humor, irony, and an awareness of the user as an intelligent human being. These are characteristics that we must bring into the new language teaching technology, so that we never again produce the reaction on the part of students learning languages through the use of technology: “This is boring; I can only stand twenty minutes of it, and anyway I’m thinking of something much more interesting.” Such a reaction reflects, in the last resort, against us, as teachers.13

Fortunately, since the time when the language lab was introduced, our understanding of what actually takes place when people learn and teach a foreign language has been enhanced considerably. We are now in a position to recognize and evaluate instantly the potentials as well as the limitations of a given teaching method or technique. This protects us against some of the possible negative impacts that modern instructional technology may have upon the language teaching process. To give but one example, it has been pointed out that “The computer offers many advantages of individualized instruction: it has infinite patience and often an attractive ‘personality’…it can diagnose, test and retest a pupil’s weaknesses; it allows branching to deal with individual errors, which the tape recorder cannot do; it gives the pupil a sense of being in control without needing to feel embarrassed at his own weaknesses.”14

Undoubtedly, these are some of the optimal conditions for second language acquisition which our era of student-centered learning values most. At the same time, we should not ignore the observation that learning by means of a computer-assisted instructional program may only favor students who have what in psychology is referred to as “sensing type” personality; that is, those who have the ability to concentrate quietly, are able to pay attention to details, have an affinity for memorizing facts, and can stay with a single task until completed.15 If this observation is correct, then for the learner who craves the presence of other people and is deeply concerned with other people, the inanimate computer will fail to satisfy his preference, or conform to his learning style.16 Thus we have to keep in mind that computer-assisted instruction cannot solve all of the problems facing language study.

To conclude: All the signs are that a new surge in language teaching technology is forthcoming. In order for us to employ the new aids and equipment in a deliberate and effective way, we have to remind ourselves of the fact that language learning embraces a very wide range of variables, and that no single method can possibly be equally appropriate in all circumstances. We must remember that modern technological advances will “revolutionize” our profession only in the sense that they will enable us to achieve our educational objective more efficiently.

Some years ago Julian Dakin left us with an injunction regarding the use of the language laboratory, which is equally applicable today with regard to the new technology. If we substitute “the new technology” for “the laboratory” throughout hi concluding passage, we get the following insightful conclusion:

The effective use of the new technology thus depends on a balance of expedients, a combination of ingenuity and a capacity for taking pains. The new technology is not likely to mean less work for the teacher but more. And he can seldom escape from the uncertainty that things might not be better done in another way or through another means. Just because the new technology is costly and time-consuming, we are forced to ask what it can do that we cannot do so well. To the extent that we can answer this question one way or the other, we are discovering something about the conditions that promote learning. To the extent that we cannot, we must admit that we are still in the dark about the nature of language learning and of the learner. Wittgenstein characterizes the learner’s task in these words: To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.

Somehow, on the basis of what we present to him, the learner has to imagine our language, its rules and irregularities, the form of life which it reflects and engenders. And if we are to understand his mistakes and difficulties, or to make the best uses of the resources at our command, we have to imagine him, a strange from of life in himself, with his own language, reflecting his own manner of becoming.17

To conclude, I find it appropriate once more to quote from Peter Strevens’ paper on this subject in which he draws the following conclusion:

The time is clearly ripe for a new surge in language teaching technology. Marvelous new opportunities exist, as a consequence of recent developments in audio, video and computer techniques…If the language teaching profession has learned the lessons from the first wave of language teaching technology and if it is aware of recent advances in the understanding of language learning and language teaching, then the new aids and equipment can be employed in a deliberate and effective way — not simply using equipment for its own sake, but seeking its place in a particular program of language teaching fitting it into a particular syllabus, selecting the most appropriate methodologies, giving teachers the necessary training. And perhaps teachers now understand enough about effective language and teaching to specify their main parameters:

i) a sufficient quantity of organized instruction;

ii) willingness to learn on the part of the student;

iii) professionally trained teachers who cherish their students;

iv) and finally,…the use of appropriate technology in the most effective, interactive and challenging ways.18

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Our single most important bulwark against unfavorable technological intrusion is our acute awareness of the humanistic task of our profession. It is not enough to know how to teach language. We must also constantly remember why we are teaching it. With this awareness, let us hope that the new wave of instructional technology will successfully take us through to the twenty-first century and beyond. Thank you for letting me share these thoughts with you.

REFERENCES

1See Norman F. Davis, “Foreign/Second Language Education and Technology in the Future,” NALLD Journal, Vol. 16, Number 4/3, p. 12.

Harlan Cleveland, “Information as a Resource,” a talk given at the meeting of the Board of Directors of Global Perspectives, New York, August 30, 1982.

3Donald L. Bitzer, in Instructional Innovator, Vol. 27, No. S, p. 15.

4See ACLS Newsletter, Vol. XXXIII, p. 11.

5Ibid.

6Quoted by Harlan Cleveland in “Information as a Resource.”

7Harland Cleveland, “Information as a Resource.”

8Ibid.

9Foreign Language Annals, 14, No. 2, 1981, p. 124.

10All this information is based on the data that appeared in U.S. News and World Report, April 12, 1982, pp. 47-50.

11Cited by Joseph Lurie in America…Globally Blind, Deaf and Dumb, a document made available at the AAC Conference on International Aspects of Undergraduate Education: Baltimore, February, 1981, p.7.

12Charles C. Fries, “American Linguistics and the Teaching of English,” Language Learning, VI: 1-2 (1955): p. 10.

13Peter Strevens, “Old Myths, New Technologies and the Better Management of Learning,” a paper delivered to the First International Conference on Foreign Language Education and Technology, Tokyo, 20 August 1981.

14Norman F. Davis, “Foreign/Second Language Education and Technology in the Future,” NALLD Journal, Vol. 16, Number 4/3, p. 11.

15Jeffrey L. Hoffman and Keith Waters, “Some Effects of Student Personality on Success with Computer-Assisted Instruction,” Educational Technology, March 1982, p. 21.

16George Hopmeier Electronic Education, Vol. 1, No.1, p. 16.

17Julian Dakin, The Language Laboratory and Language Learning, Longman, 1973, pp. 171-172.

18Peter Strevens, “Old Myths, New Technologies and the Better Management of Learning,” p. 15.

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