REFLECTION 2

In one of the presentations on CALL, a presenter mentioned that listening skill entails content knowledge and linguistics knowledge. A song High Hope by Kodaline was played through the speaker and the audiences were asked to transcribe what they heard from the song’s lyric. By saying that content knowledge and linguistics knowledge are needed to enhance our listening skill, it means that a person should have wide vocabularies and understanding of words in order to transcribe whatever sounds that he or she listened to. Personally, if I were to transcribe a song, having enough vocabulary helps me to guess the spoken words. Some words might have same pronunciation and one of the techniques to differ them from one another is by having good content and linguistics knowledge. With content knowledge, I can differentiate between ‘hour’ and ‘our’, ‘flour’ and ‘flower’ and identify the theme of the songs. Additionally, linguistics knowledge allows me to notice inconsistencies in the vowel and consonants stress, intonation and grammatical meaning of structure. Overall, content and linguistics knowledge allow us to predict words to match up with the song speed hence helping us to enhance our listening skill.

CALL is one of the methods that has been adopted in developing and improving English learning and teaching processes nowadays. As it provides a continuous learning experience, CALL inarguably promotes self-regulated learning for the learners. As CALL offers real-time assessment, it is very well situated for learners to improve their skills, especially listening and grammar. As for listening skill and grammar, CALL promotes self-regulated learning for the learners through its collaborative and flexible activities, where the computer acts as a virtual tutor. Learners are able to take control in their learning process as it is flexible and convenient. Compared to the traditional learning processes that use pen and paper, learners might get distracted by the environment and easier to lose focus. On the other hand, CALL provides instant feedbacks which are useful for the learners because, in a classroom situation, some learners are quite shy when they were corrected by teachers, resulting in a low motivation to improve their skills. Therefore, by completing the tasks related to listening skills, learners unconsciously involve in self-regulated learning in improving their grammar.

In addition, CALL also helps in enhancing reading and writing skills as it provides interactive activities that stimulate learning and teaching processes. Reading and writing are related to one another because, for learners to be able to write something, they need to read in order to have the basic idea of what is going to be written. In other words, learners are motivated to improve their reading skill because they need it as to improve their writing skill. Hence, both skills complement each other in the sense that writing needs reading and vice versa.

            Moreover, based on the application (TalkEnglish.com) that has been demonstrated by Group 5 and the application (Duolingo) that our group has selected, both apps have their own unique features. TalkEnglish.com and Duolingo applications both incorporated the three principles of CALL in the assessments besides providing relevant activities for learners to practice. Using the applications mentioned, it can be seen as a tool for learners to improve their skills in language learning. Both applications act as a tutor that gives explanations and feedbacks to learners, provides information and input at the same time. Adopting the three principles of CALL in both applications evidently, enhances the process of language learning and promotes greater motivation for learners to get better.