Intro: Week 7

In the first half of the course we covered the main components of CALL. In the second half we will look in more detail at particular strands that relate to future developments in the field. Since you are only likely to take one course on CALL, it is important to have a sense of what future developments might be. Of course, we want to keep our feet on the ground and not do too much blue-sky thinking.

This week we examine a current technology: Automatic Writing Evaluation. There are three readings related to this topic.

A couple of decades ago, I would, in the unit on writing, have been describing the advantages of word processing for L2 writing. These days we take all that for granted.  In this unit, we will take a different tack and examine automatic writing evaluation, that is, the use of computers to automatically score and give feedback on a piece of writing.

You might consider for a moment why (a) this might be very difficult and (b) why it might be possible.

Writing becomes more important as students make progress in their language learning. In teaching writing there is an emphasis on the process of writing and the use of editing software such as Word only adds to the process element and to the production of multiple drafts. Writing is also used for testing purposes. Automatic evaluation of writing can have benefits in the development of writing skills and in testing. Providing feedback on writing is an important and time consuming part of the process.