Abstract:
The present study investigated the university practitioners’ attitudes towards using computer assisted language learning (CALL) in teaching English language at Islamic Azad universities of Khuzestan Province. This study was also to examine the English as foreign language (EFL) MA and PhD teachers’ computer literacy and its effects on using CALL facilities in English classrooms. The participants of this study were 135 university teachers at the Islamic Azad Universities (i.e., 12 Branches). The research instrument was a questionnaire extracted from Shin and Son (2007) in 5-point Likert scale. Findings showed that that there was lack of technological equipment for using CALL.
Machine summary:
The Evaluation of Using Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) Facilities in Developing EFL Among Islamic Azad University Practitioners: The Case of Computer Literacy Bahman Gorjian Associate Professor, Abadan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Abadan Abadanb.
The relatively new and interdisciplinary CALL draws on quite an amount of diverse disciplines, theories and fields that can be grouped into five categories: psychology, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, instructional technology and human-computer interaction studies (Hubbard & Siskin, 2004; Levy, 1997).
1. Merits of Using CALL The use of CALL tutorials and tools in and out of the classroom provides new opportunities to promote language development by improving reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills together with grammar, vocabulary knowledge and pronunciation.
Through various communicative and interactive activities, computer technology can help language learners strengthen their linguistic skills, affect their learning attitude, promote motivation, and build their self- instruction strategies and self-confidence (Zamani, 2010).
This study aimed to find out the answers to the following research question which asks the condition of using CALL in academic setting and the university teachers’ attitudes toward using CALL in EFL classrooms.
Their responses can be divided in to three categories: (1) lack of CALL facilities and slow Internet, (2) the need to use technology and CALL in their classrooms, and (3) the readiness of the university teachers to use CALL in their teaching curriculum of the language instruction.
The majority of teachers’ (70%) responses indicate that CALL can enhance language learning and motivate EFL students because it offers them another environment to study English beside classroom instruction.