Theory-driven call and the development process

I support the systematic approach from Meskill and it is impossible for anyone to develop any CALL materials or fully utilize it without a solid knowledge of technology and the use of media. How can a teacher create and make effective use of CALL without a comprehensive knowledge of different software and useful resources on the website? The “fit” between the computer’s capabilities and the demands of language pedagogy is another important issue.
My school has advocated the use of CALL for many years, however, there is no practical use of CALL for language teaching. The use of CALL is just a dish on the menu, that’s meant it is just an item on the teaching schedule. Instead of using the software in MMLC for teaching English, teachers insist in teaching English in their own way. They treat the use of CALL in an ad hoc manner. Thus, teachers’ IT training about the effective use of CALL is imperative. How can we, as teachers, use and develop CALL more efficiently and effectively for the language need of the students?

Response to Language learner behaviour in a Virtual Environment

As a second language learner, there are more benefits than shortcoming about online learning to me. For a self conscious person like me, it is a torture to speak in front of people or speak publicly or even to answer a question in a second language. You may be afraid of how people react to your non-native accents and the sentences you make. Even thought you know it is a good oppotunity to practice the language, it is difficult for you overcome your fear. Therefore, I welcome the use of online learning and make it as a good learning tool. I have used a chatroom form a useful website to communicate with English learners from other countires. It was fun. They would not tease you or discrimate you if you used bad English. Most important of all, you can learn from them and have a chance to brush up your English.
Yet, a chatroom manager is needed to give technial support and prevent users from using any foul language and giving harsh personal comments to pinpoint anyone in the chatroom.
The paper mentioned about virtaul environment can work as scaffolding: giving anxious students more confidence to embark on conversation in the target language. I think helping anixious students to be confident enough to speak in public is a hard job. Could anyone give us some concrete and vivid examples or activities about how to help those students?

The Plan

The plan is from Alice, Charlotte and Shirley

Our plan for evaluating the website

Description of the website
The website we chose is from British council. It provides different kinds of learners/users with a wide range of activities. As our target groups are upper Primary school students to junior Secondary school students, we only evaluate the resources for children from the website. There are games, songs, stories, writing practice and lots of activities available for the children.

Practical criteria

The evaluation criteria we apply for evaluating the practicality of the website are language use, time and classroom management.

Pedagogical criteria

There are five pedagogical criteria which we use to evaluate the website. They are comprehensible inputs, opportunities for output, feedback, motivation and learners’ needs.

Technical criteria:

There are four technical criteria for the evaluation of the web site, including appearance, media use, structure and function and help options.

Is it necessary for us to state the operational description, learner fit and teacher fit approaches for all the criteria?