Introduction

The range of uses to which computers have been put in the service of language teaching and learning is remarkable. Students can learn grammar and vocabulary from basic keyboard-input programs; they can do interactive exercises of all types on desktop machines or on the World Wide Web; they can access sound and video on CD-ROM; they can record their voices and compare their pronunciation with that of a native speaker; they can use word-processing programs such as WordPerfect to do writing and editing exercises, or presentation programs such as MS PowerPoint to create multimedia presentations; they can consult digital dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopaedias and the resources of the Web to help with their assignments; they can send and receive those assignments to instructors in distant places; they can interact by e-mail with other individuals anywhere in the world; and they can even enter 3D "virtual worlds", where they can cooperate with others to build virtual buildings and create whole environments where learning can take place. Any Web site or book which attempted to deal with all these various aspects of computers in language learning would be very large indeed.

This site, therefore, will deal with only one small area of this vast field, but will try to do so in a way that enables us to draw some useful general conclusions about what computers are good at, and what they are not good at, in the field of language teaching and learning. In the course of this "virtual session", we will examine a number of text-based interactive exercises that can be delivered through the World Wide Web. The objective is to look at materials and technology which is:

  • easy for the learner to access (on any common desktop machine, through any basic Internet connection)

  • easy for the learner to use (through simple instructions and a point-and-click interface)

  • more interactive than pencil-and-paper exercises (and therefore, presumably, more stimulating and interesting)

  • easy for the instructor to create and deploy (little or no programming skill required)

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