Interview

Ken Beatty

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The theme of your recent presentations in Japan was on the idea of seeing reading as a problem-solving activity rather than a narrow focus on vocabulary or grammar?
I have always been a naughty student ­ the first to ask, "Why are we learning this?" But it's a question that all students think about or should think about. Simply knowing that something is part of the curriculum or in the book is not good enough.

Too often, teachers say, "Memorize this list of words and these grammatical structures ­ they will be on the test." For the student, this is poor and short-term motivation. It also presumes that there is a set of knowledge items that everyone has to understand and communicate in the same way. But in the real world, this is not so. There are many synonyms, circumlocutions, grammatical structures and even body language to express similar ideas.

How often does someone ask you a multiple choice or true/false question? When people talk, they explain problems and ask for solutions. And when we solve problems, we tend to do so collaboratively with family, friends and co-workers. I'm suspicious of traditional teaching, which tends to focus on competition over collaboration.

Consider this task: "You and your friends are going to a restaurant in a foreign country. You don't speak the language, but you are extremely hungry! Talk together and decide what sorts of language and structures would you need to get a meal."

In this type of task, students see a real problem and a real reason for learning. The task makes the learning more natural and memorable. But there is one problem ­ many teachers fear open-endedness. "How will I mark it?" they cry. My response is that the language teacher's first purpose is to teach language ­ not just to constantly test. Be creative. Be innovative. Let the students test themselves. Try something new and different and unforgettable.

You wrote a book called, "Teaching and Researching Computer-assisted Language Learning." Have you seen any substantive evidence that teachers and students are using computers and the Web effectively as a foreign language-learning tool?
What we know so far is that computers come to the language classroom with problems as well as benefits.

Computers and the WWW are great for communication, but spelling can deteriorate as students start adopting phrases such as How R U? I m gr8. Computers are good for research, but they usually fail to help students think critically about what they read. Computers can test simple written input efficiently, but they cannot deal well with ambiguity in speech or writing. Computers can present interesting graphics and video to enliven learning, but they cannot easily adapt their presentations to different audiences.

In short, a state-of-the-art computer system generally cannot do many of the things that any reasonably qualified teacher can do. However, what computers can do better than teachers is exhibit unlimited patience. A CD-ROM will give eternal personal attention and answer the same question with the same answer incessantly, anytime, anywhere.

Computers are a good resource for teachers and students. The problem today is many administrators and businesses want computers to be replacements for teachers. It's the wrong paradigm and inhibits the development of truly useful computer applications in the classroom.

For you software experts out there, here is the type of pedagogical application I would like to see: In a program like Microsoft Word, spelling is routinely and effortlessly corrected; invent a subprogram to record and review the errors a student makes.

And for the inventors out there, I would like to see a primary school keyboard with all the letters in two long (logical) alphabetical rows, one for upper case and one for lower case.

What do think are the most exciting developments or future possibilities in computer-assisted language learning?
In Teaching and Researching Computer Assisted Language Learning, I have a very simple measure of what will constitute success in CALL: a student in Japan will use a computer to learn a language such as Swahili to a high degree of fluency without any access to a native speaker of the target language or any other target language materials.

We are a long way off from this happening and the reasons why are fascinating because they tell us a great deal about the nature of teaching and learning.

The next big thing in computing in general and CALL in particular will be near-perfect speech recognition so we can do away with the traditional computer's need for a keyboard and mouse. Once this happens, a highly powerful mobile phone will be all the computer most of us need. Imagine having the opportunity to have unobtrusive but highly interactive Italian language lessons as you stroll down a street in Rome.

During my thesis research, I spent a lot of time reading science fiction for ideas about the future of books, computers and education. Science fiction can dream of the ideal without being caught up in the limits of the possible. For example, in Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age or A Young Lady's Primer, there is a wonderful description of what an educational computer program should be. It would be nice to convince Bill Gates to spend a few billion dollars to build it, but I believe it will come anyway, incrementally, eventually.

In general, the most important thing we need to see is computer applications and peripherals which are not poor copies of real world artifacts. For example, early programs tried to replicate the look and feel of books or blackboards on screen. What we need to see are new ideas for the intuitive presentation and transmission of information that take advantage of what the computer can do ­ and that the book or teacher cannot. An innovative example is Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus.

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