Today’s world is equipped with technological products that help humans fulfilling their needs. Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) software (stand alone or network basis) is one of the technological products that can be used in teaching-learning process. In order to get benefits of this products teacher should understand features offered by the products, one of the way is through evaluation. From the evaluation, teacher may have software’s general information and then be able to choose the appropriate software for their teaching setting. There are many evaluation criteria available on books, journals, articles and the internet that can be used by teachers to evaluate their software. In this essay, the writer chooses two evaluation criteria offered by Claire Bradin and Evalutech website which can be used by high school Arabic teachers in Indonesia to evaluate their existing software.
For the last one year, I have worked in language teacher training institution in Jakarta. Bahasa Indonesia, Arabic, Japan, Dutch, Chinese (Mandarin), English and French teachers are trained in the institution annually. My department, Arabic language, conducts three trainings three in a year for high school Arabic language teachers. The trainings conducted from basic, intermediate and advanced level gradually. In intermediate and advanced level teachers are given CALL software trainings. In this session, student-teachers are introduced to several CALL software which can be used in their schools and, of course, they are trained how to use it.
Most of the time, CALL software trainers choose software which is run in Windows operating system, inexpensive, applicable to many computers, and most of them do not require internet access since most of computers in the student-teachers’ schools do not have internet connection. From the trainings that I have attended, the trainers and the student-teachers did not evaluate the content of the software whether it suits or not with pedagogical goals. The criteria purposed by Bradin (ref) and Evalutech website would help the trainers and the student-teachers to choose appropriate software that meet pedagogical goals and learner needs.
Bradin (1999) tried to offer several evaluation criteria which can help teacher before using the CALL software. For me, the criteria is easy to understand and can measure the quality of the software. The first criterion is feasibility. The feasibility criterion covers the basic principles in using the software. Specification of computer, computer network, internet connection, software prize, and its ability to be used by many computers are covered in feasibility criteria. These criteria are very important since no matter how good the software is but it can not be used in the available computers and its prize is unaffordable it is useless. The internet connection is also important to get the most recent software’s information nevertheless, not many schools in Indonesia have internet access. The second criterion is quality. In this criterion the teacher has to evaluate the content, format and operation of the software. All of these criteria help the teacher to know whether the software meet pedagogical goals, learner need, and user-friendly.
The evaluation criteria in Evalutech website are more detailed than Bradin’s. In the content criteria, Evalutech offers three categories that should be evaluate in CALL software. The categories are accuracy (deals with unbiased and up to date information, grammatical correctness, authority, author’s and website’s reputation, and available contact number or current address), appropriateness with learner ability and pedagogical goals, and scope of software’s information. The technical aspects in Evalutech are similar to operation criteria in Bradin article. In my opinion, Bradin and Evalutech criteria can help Arabic language teachers in choosing the appropriate CALL software for their learning environment.
Based on the above strengths, I use Bradin’s and Evalutech’s criteria in creating CALL software evaluation form. Beside that, I also add one criterion, i.e. scoring, that might help teacher measuring learner proficiency and also for learner to know how far he/she has understood the materials.
The development of technology brings benefits to educational environment. CALL software is one of the benefits that can be used by teachers in teaching-learning process. There are many CALL software available online and offline with different features and prizes. As far as I know, learner is more eager to learn a language by using CALL software because it provides interesting activities that learner can choose. Therefore teacher should be able to choose the CALL software that meets pedagogical goals, learner needs and, can be used in school computers. Software evaluation criteria, especially Bradin’s and Evalutech’s, may help the teacher in choosing the appropriate software for the learners.
Nothing is perfect. There is no perfect CALL software (stand alone or network basis) that can meet the above requirements. Teacher creativity still required to fill the gap. Using more than one CALL software and interactive teaching method may improve students’ language skills.
Reference:
Bradin, C. (1999). CALL Issues: Instructional Aspects of Software Evaluation (Vol. VI). Alexandria: TESOL.
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