Medium, Instructor And Learner Under CALL

With modern educational technology being widely employed in foreign language teaching, Chinese colleges are through a process of replacing traditional educational media with modern ones, which is closely connected with computers and internet technology to raise their EFL (English as a foreign language) teaching quality. Currently, CALL (computer-assisted language learning) has become a familiar term and campus nets have been set up nationwide. Though a great deal of research has been done investigating the CALL implementation in the College English teaching and learning in China, few people have considered the balanced interrelationship of the medium, the instructor and the learner from a systematic point of view. The current research is meant to study the roles and the interrelationship of the three, in theories and in its reality.After a thorough review of related theories, the author began her study from the relationship of the medium, the instructor and the learner. With her attention centering on the effect of media, the author investigated into the case of the employment of modern educational media in the College English teaching of Sichuan University. The author designed questionnaires aiming at finding out the actual performance of modern educational media in the College English teaching and learning as well as the evaluation of the medium by the instructors and learners concerned. With the data collected and the analysis done, the author pointed out a few of those factors affecting the effect of CALL and discussed possibilities to help CALL function better in English teaching.This paper is composed of five chapters.Chapter one is the introduction. It gives the profile of the background, demonstrates the significance of the current study and makes clear the specific meaning of several key terms as intended in this thesis.Chapter two is the literature review. The author reviews the historical and theoretic basis of the present study, including the history of instructional media, the development of means of instructional organization and corresponding instructor -learner relationship as well as theories related to CALL.Chapter three is the presentation of the main standpoints. From a systematic point of view, the author claims that each of the three parties, namely the medium, the instructor and the learner, should assume their different roles and should keep a balanced relationship if satisfactory language learning results are to be realized.Chapter four is the description of the present survey. This part includes descriptions of research questions, subjects, procedure, methodology, questionnaire design, and major findings as well as discussions are introduced on the basis of the analysis of collected data.Chapter five is the conclusion achieved from the current study. Pedagogical implications, limitations of this study and suggestions for further research are given in this part.