Why not Both

The dichotomy of proceduralist’s and formalist’s views of CALL evaluated in Levy’s article should be carefully applied to practice. The fact is that while many ESL/EFL classrooms in China or in Hong Kong are poorly supported by computers, and students may spend plenty of time in front of computer screens at home or elsewhere. Obviously, computer games have a special charm to the youths, but also take away a lot of their precious time. Both proceduralists and formalists should take into account the fact that no single theory or programme can cope with the needs of the diversified characteristics of the learners. Some students, for example, can be easily distracted by sounds, images and so on, because they have more interest in receiving information from the computer screens than in producing information. These students can easily get adapted to tasks that require less productive skills than receptive tactics.


I would encourage a flexible way of language learning by both productive and receptive tasks, given that the latter can be more important for the students’ future development. By assigning a task of playing second life, for example, I would like to keep a travel journal, narrating the places I visited in the virtual world. The narration, together with screen prints, can be uploaded onto my blog, or Voicethread where all students in my class share their own experiences. I can also evaluate the work of my classmates on the Voicethread, and give comments to their work. That can be a lot fun! In a word, theories are indispensible for CALL practice, while new technologies should also be tried in ESL/EFL teaching plans.