Computer-Assisted Language Learning and the Revolution in Computational Linguistics

1 Introduction

Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is the field concerned with the use of computer tools in second language acquisition. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, this field has never been closely related to Computational Linguistics (CL). Until recently, the two fields were almost completely detached. Despite occasional attempts to apply techniques of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to the recognition of errors, NLP in CALL has long remained in a very small minority position while CALL was hardly if at all recognized as a part of CL. In this contribution, I intend to show how CL could remain largely irrelevant to CALL for such a long time and why there is a good prospect that this will change in the near future. Section 1 describes the situation of CL before the revolution. In section 2, the crisis leading to the revolution in CL is outlined. The revolution itself is the topic of section 3. The implications for the field are then sketched in section 4. Finally, section 5 summarizes the conclusions.

2 Computational Linguistics as Natural Language Understanding

CL is almost as old as the first working computer. In fact, at a time when computer science was still in its infancy, Weaver (1955 [1949]) had already proposed the use of computers for translation, thus initiating research in Machine Translation (MT). Weaver considered two approaches to MT, one based on linguistic analysis and the other on information theory. Neither of these could be implemented at the time of Weaver's proposal. Information theory had been more or less fully developed by Shannon (1948), but its application to MT required computational power of a magnitude that would not be available for several decades. Linguistic analysis appeared more promising, because it can be performed with considerably less computational power, but the theoretical elements necessary for its successful application were still missing. Thus much work in early CL was devoted to developing the basic mechanisms required for linguistic analysis.

One of the first types of knowledge to be developed concerns the computational properties of formalisms to be used in the description of languages. In response to this requirement, the theory of formal grammars was developed, mainly in the course of the 1950s. Noam Chomsky played an active role in systematizing and extending this knowledge and Chomsky (1963) provides an early, fairly comprehensive overview of the properties of grammars consisting of rewrite rules of the general type as in (1).

(1)

In this approach, a formal description of a language consists of a set of rules in which and in (1) are replaced by strings of symbols. When designed properly, such a system of rules is able to generate sentences. If we consider a language as a set of sentences, we can see the grammar as a definition of the language. Different types of grammar impose different conditions on and . Thus, if in all rules of a grammar is not shorter than , it can always be determined by a finite procedure whether a given sentence belongs to the grammar or not. For Context-Free Grammars (CFGs), in which in (1) is a single symbol in each rule, the structure can be represented as a tree diagram.

The next step on the road to linguistic analysis in CL was the development of parsers. A parser is an algorithm to determine for a given sentence x and a grammar G whether G can generate x and which structure(s) G assigns to x. Ground-breaking work in this area was done in the 1960s with the development of the chart parser (cf. Varile 1983 for an overview), Earley's (1970) efficient parser for CFGs, and the more powerful Augmented Transition Networks of Woods (1970).

With a grammar formalism and a number of parsing algorithms in place, the only missing link to successful linguistic analysis was the description of the relevant languages. As it turned out, however, this problem was more recalcitrant than the other two. Chomsky developed a theory of grammar using formal rules of the type in (1), but his theory is less congenial to CL than may appear at first sight. Chomskyan linguistics has often been considered as based on a concept of language as a set of sentences and some remarks by Chomsky (1957) can be taken to support this view. At least from the early 1960s onwards, however, Chomsky has consistently and explicitly rejected such a view in favour of language as a knowledge component in the speaker's mind. Chomsky (1988) gives an accessible explanation and justification of the assumptions underlying this general approach and the type of linguistic theory it leads to.

Given this approach to language, there is no convergence in goals between Chomskyan linguistics and CL. Whereas the former is interested in describing and explaining a human being's knowledge of language, the latter is interested in processing the products of language use on a computer. An example of this divergence is the reaction to the realization that transformational rules of the type used in Chomsky (1965) are excessively powerful. This excessive power appears both in language acquisition on the basis of input sentences and in language processing leading to the understanding of sentences and utterances. In Chomskyan linguistics it was not the processing complexity but only the learnability requirement of the grammar which drove the restriction of transformations. Chomsky's linguistic theory continued to involve movement operations defined over nodes in a tree structure. In analysis, this requires the 'undoing' of movement, which is a computationally complex operation. Processing complexity of grammars produced in the Chomskyan framework has remained a major problem for their computational implementation, but this does not and need not inconvenience Chomskyan linguists. From the perspective of Chomskyan linguistics, as language is a typically human property, it is quite plausible that the human mind is structured so as to facilitate processing of the type necessary for human language. A computer does not have this structure.

From the 1970s onwards, a number of alternative linguistic theories have been developed with the computational implementation in mind. At present, the most influential ones are Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG, cf. Bresnan 2001) and Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG, cf. Pollard/Sag 1994). They still use rewrite rules of type (1) to some extent, but their actual formal basis is the unification of feature structures. Feature structures can be seen as sets of attribute-value pairs describing individual nodes in a tree structure. The formal device of feature structures and the operations on them were developed in full only in the 1980s. An early overview is Shieber (1986). By applying operations such as unification to feature structures, movement of nodes in a tree can be dispensed with. This is important for CL, because operations of this type are much more computer-friendly than undoing movement.

Given this historical development, it is understandable why for a long time research in CL, a significant part of which was at least in name devoted to MT, largely coincided with research in natural language analysis, i.e. parsing techniques and formal linguistic description. Work on different applications (e.g. MT, dialogue systems, text summarization) did not lead to major divisions in the CL research community, because in all such applications analysis was considered as the logical first step. This attitude is reflected in Kay's (1973) proposal of a modular system of natural language understanding, the parts of which could be connected in different ways depending on the requirements of the application.

If major divisions in the CL research community could not be identified on the basis of different applications, one might wonder whether there was any other source of major divisions. Most of the discussions in CL turned on issues such as the choice of linguistic theory, formalism, and parsing strategy. Although in the perception of people working in the field, different positions on these issues led to a division into competing currents of research, they should not be confused with major divisions in the field. All of these currents were basically geared towards the same task and their success could be compared directly. This contrasts with the situation in theoretical linguistics as described in ten Hacken (1997), where Chomskyan linguistics and LFG propose different, competing research programmes, whose results are often incompatible in a way that defies an evaluative comparison.

In this context it is interesting to see that in the perception of many computational linguists, work in CL was not essentially different from work in theoretical linguistics. Thus Thompson (1983) states that theoretical linguistics aims to characterize a language and CL proper aims to do so computationally. These were especially anti-Chomskyan linguists interested in grammar and language processing. Rather than concentrating on MT for its own merits, they were working on natural-language understanding (NLU). Concrete applications, among which MT was prominent, served on the one hand as a test of whether the goal of NLU, i.e. making a computer understand human language, had been achieved and on the other hand to convince funding sources of the practical use of their enterprise.

At this stage there was little interest in CALL among CL-practitioners, which can be explained by the orientation to NLU. Whereas the translation into another language reflects the degree of understanding of a sentence achieved by the computer fairly directly, the relationship between NLU and CALL is much more complex. Conversely CALL could not readily incorporate results obtained in CL. Work in NLU starts from the assumption that the sentences to be analysed are grammatical. Much of the analysis in CALL is actually concerned with establishing whether sentences are grammatical and appropriate and, if not, how they can be corrected. Advances in NLU were thus largely irrelevant to CALL.

The use of the computer in CALL in this period, as described by Levi (1997) in his historical overview, was determined to a considerable extent by general-purpose computing and text editing. Two types of application illustrating typical techniques are the vocabulary trainer and the generator of cloze tests. A vocabulary trainer is a system for the management of a bilingual vocabulary list. It presents a word in one language and prompts the user to enter the corresponding word in the other language. It checks whether the word entered is correct, gives the appropriate feedback, and stores the result. The order of presentation can be randomized and made to take into account the user's progress in vocabulary acquisition. Nesselhauf/Tschichold (2002) give an evaluative overview of a number of commercially available products of this type. The techniques involved are restricted to general pattern matching and database management, without any specifically linguistic components.

A cloze test is a sequence of sentences with spaces for the language learner to fill in. Examples are exercises for the endings of articles and adjectives in German or the translation of ambiguous words in context. Their generation on the basis of a full text can be done by an authoring tool which prompts the teacher to import a text, indicate the words or parts of words to be deleted, and if necessary add a question or hint for the learner as to the word to be entered. The test can then be taken and corrected electronically. Interface design and pattern matching are again the basic techniques used.

Steps toward Integrative CALL: The Internet

Computer-mediated communication (CMC), which has existed in primitive formsince the 1960s but has only became wide-spread in the last five years,is probably the single computer application to date with the greatest impacton language teaching. For the first time, language learners can communicatedirectly, inexpensively, and conveniently with other learners or speakersof the target language 24 hours a day, from school, work, or home. Thiscommunication can be asynchronous (not simultaneous) through tools suchas electronic mail (e-mail), which allows each participant to compose messagesat their time and pace, or in can be synchronous (synchronous, "real time"),using programs such as MOOs, which allow people all around the world tohave a simultaneous conversation by typing at their keyboards. It alsoallows not only one-to-one communication, but also one-to-many, allowinga teacher or student to share a message with a small group, the whole class,a partner class, or an international discussion list of hundreds or thousandsof people.

Computer-mediated communication allows users to share not onlybrief messages, but also lengthy (formatted or unformatted) documents--thusfacilitating collaborative writing--and also graphics, sounds, and video.Using the World Wide Web (WWW), students can search through millions offiles around the world within minutes to locate and access authentic materials(e.g., newspaper and magazine articles, radio broadcasts, short videos,movie reviews, book excerpts) exactly tailored to their own personal interests.They can also use the Web to publish their texts or multimedia materialsto share with partner classes or with the general public.

It is not hard to see how computer-mediated communication andthe Internet can facilitate an integrative approach to using technology.The following example illustrates well how the Internet can be used tohelp create an environment where authentic and creative communication isintegrated into all aspects of the course.

Students of English for Science and Technology in La Paz Mexico don'tjust study general examples and write homework for the teacher; insteadthey use the Internet to actually become scientific writers (Bowers, 1995;Bowers, in press). First, the students search the World Wide Web to findarticles in their exact area of specialty and then carefully read and studythose specific articles. They then write their own drafts online; the teachercritiques the drafts online and creates electronic links to his own commentsand to pages of appropriate linguistic and technical explanation, so thatstudents can find additional background help at the click of a mouse. Next,using this assistance, the students prepare and publish their own articleson the World Wide Web, together with reply forms to solicit opinions fromreaders. They advertise their Web articles on appropriate Internet sites(e.g., scientific newsgroups) so that interested scientists around theworld will know about their articles and will be able to read and commenton them. When they receive their comments (by e-mail) they can take thoseinto account in editing their articles for republication on the Web orfor submission to scientific journals.

The above example illustrates an integrative approach to usingtechnology in a course based on reading and writing. This perhaps is themost common use of the Internet to date, since it is still predominantlya text-based medium. This will undoubtedly change in the future, not onlydue to the transmission of audio-visual material (video clips, sound files)World Wide Web, but also due to the growing use of the Internet to carryout real-time audio- and audio-visual chatting (this is already possiblewith tools such asNetPhone and CU-SeeME, but is not yetwidespread).

Nevertheless, it is not necessary to wait for further technologicaldevelopments in order to use the Internet in a multi-skills class. Thefollowing example shows how the Internet, combined with other technologies,was used to help create an integrated communicative environment for EFLstudents in Bulgaria--students who until recent years had little contactwith the English-speaking world and were taught through a "discrete topicand skill orientation" (Meskill & Rangelova, in press, n.p.). TheseBulgarian students now benefit from a high-tech/low-tech combination toimplement an integrated skills approach in which a variety of languageskills are practiced at the same time with the goal of fostering communicativecompetence. Their course is based on a collaborative, interpreted studyof contemporary American short stories, assisted by three technologicaltools:

* E-mail communication. The Bulgarian students correspond bye-mail with an American class of TESOL graduate students to explore indetail the nuances of American culture which are expressed in the stories,and also to ask questions about idioms, vocabulary, and grammar. The Americanstudents, who are training to be teachers, benefit from the concrete experienceof handling students' linguistic and cultural questions .

* Concordancing. The Bulgarian students further test outtheir hypotheses regarding the lexical and grammatical meanings of expressionsthey find in the stories by using concordancing software to search forother uses of these expressions in a variety of English language corporastored on CD-ROM.

* Audio tape. Selected scenes from the stories--dialogues,monologues, and descriptions--were recorded by the American students andprovide both listening practice (inside and outside of class) and alsoadditional background materials to help the Bulgarians construct theirinterpretation of the stories.

These activities are supplemented by a range of other classroomactivities, such as in-class discussions and dialogue journals, which assistthe students in developing their responses to the stories' plots, themes,and characters--responses which can be further discussed with their e-mailpartners in the U.S.

CALL authoring programs

CALL authoring programs offer a do-it-yourself approach to CALL. They were originally developed to enable programmers to simplify the entry of data provided by language teachers. Modern CALL authoring programs are designed to be used by language teachers who have no knowledge of computer programming. Typical examples are authoring packages that automatically generate a set of pre-set activities for the learner, e.g. Camsoft's Fun with Texts (Camsoft) and The Authoring Suite (Wida Software). Generic packages such as Macromedia's Director (http://www.macromedia.com/) are more sophisticated and enable the user to create a full-blown course, but they are probably too complex for most language teachers and are best suited to the template approach to authoring, as described in ICT4LT Module 3.2, CALL software design and implementation: http://www.ict4lt.org/ Web authoring packages are also available, e.g. Hot Potatoes software: http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked. See ICT4LT Module 2.5, Introduction to CALL authoring programs. See also Bickerton (1999) and Bickerton, Stenton & Temmermann (2001).

Professional associations for CALL

An increasing number of professional associations devoted to CALL are emerging worldwide. The older associations are grouped together under WorldCALL, which is in the process of establishing itself as an umbrella association of associations. WorldCALL held its first conference at the University of Melbourne in 1998, and the second WorldCALL conference will take place in Banff, Canada, 2003: http://www.worldcall.org/. The current professional associations represented in WorldCALL are:

EUROCALL: The leading European professional association for CALL. The ReCALL journal is published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of EUROCALL: http://www.eurocall-languages.org

CERCLES: The European Confederation of Language Centres in Higher Education. http://www.cercles.org/. CERCLES embraces a similar constituency to IALLT in North America.

Multimedia CALL

Early personal computers were incapable of presenting authentic recordings of the human voice and easily recognizable images, but this limitation was overcome by combining a personal computer and a 12-inch videodisc player, which made it possible to combine sound, photographic-quality still images and video recordings in imaginative presentations - in essence the earliest manifestation of multimedia CALL. The result was the development of interactive videodiscs for language learners such as Montevidisco (Schneider & Bennion 1984), Expodisc (Davies 1991), and A la rencontre de Philippe (Fuerstenberg 1993), all of which were designed as simulations in which the learner played a key role.

The techniques learned in the 1980s by the developers of interactive videodiscs were adapted for the multimedia personal computers (MPCs), which incorporated CD-ROM drives and were in widespread use by the early 1990s. The MPC is now the standard form of personal computer. CD-ROMs were used in the 1980s initially to store large quantities of text and later to store sound, still images and video. By the mid-1990s a wide range of multimedia CD-ROMs for language learners was available, including imaginative simulations such as the Who is Oscar Lake? series: http://www.languagepub.com/. The quality of video recordings offered by CD-ROM technology, however, was slow to catch up with that offered by the earlier interactive videodiscs. The Digital Video Disc (DVD) offers much higher quality video recordings, e.g. the Eurotalk Advanced Level DVD-ROM series: http://www.eurotalk.co.uk/. A feature of many multimedia CALL programs is the role-play activity, in which the learner can record his/her own voice and play it back as part of a continuous dialogue with a native speaker. Other multimedia programs make use of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) software to diagnose learners' errors, e.g. Tell Me More Pro by Auralog: http://www.auralog.com/english.html. Most CALL programs under development today fall into the category of multimedia CALL. See ICT4LT Module 2.2, Introduction to multimedia CALL: http://www.ict4lt.org/.

Computer-Assisted Language Learning: An Introduction

Until quite recently, computer-assisted language learning (CALL) wasa topic of relevance mostly to those with a special interest in that area.Recently, though, computers have become so widespread in schools and homesand their uses have expanded so dramatically that the majority of languageteachers must now begin to think about the implications of computers forlanguage learning.

This article provides brief overview of how computers have beenused and are being used for language teaching. It focuses not on a technicaldescription of hardware and software, but rather on the pedagogical questionsthat teachers have considered in using computers in the classroom. Forthose who want more detailed information on particular applications, atypology of CALL programs (Appendix A) and a list of furtherCALL resources (Appendix B) is included at the end.

Three Phases of CALL

Though CALL has developed gradually over the last 30 years, this developmentcan be categorized in terms of three somewhat distinct phases which I willrefer to as behavioristic CALL, communicative CALL, andintegrativeCALL (cf. Barson & Debski, in press). As we will see, the introductionof a new phase does not necessarily entail rejecting the programs and methodsof a previous phase; rather the old is subsumed within the new. In addition,the phases do not gain prominence one fell swoop, but, like all innovations,gain acceptance slowly and unevenly.

Behavioristic CALL

The first phase of CALL, conceived in the 1950s and implemented in the1960s and '70s, was based on the then-dominant behaviorist theories oflearning. Programs of this phase entailed repetitive language drills andcan be referred to as "drill and practice" (or, more pejoratively, as "drilland kill").

Drill and practice courseware is based on the model of computeras tutor(Taylor, 1980). In other words the computer serves as a vehiclefor delivering instructional materials to the student. The rationale behinddrill and practice was not totally spurious, which explains in part thefact that CALL drills are still used today. Briefly put, that rationaleis as follows:

* Repeated exposure to the same material is beneficial or evenessential to learning

* A computer is ideal for carrying out repeated drills, sincethe machine does not get bored with presenting the same material and sinceit can provide immediate non-judgmental feedback

* A computer can present such material on an individualized basis,allowing students to proceed at their own pace and freeing up class timefor other activities

Based on these notions, a number of CALL tutoring systems weredeveloped for the mainframe computers which were used at that time. Oneof the most sophisticated of these was the PLATO system, which ran on itsown special PLATO hardware, including central computers and terminals.The PLATO system included vocabulary drills, brief grammar explanationsand drills, and translations tests at various intervals (Ahmad, Corbett,Rogers, & Sussex, 1985).

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, behavioristic CALL was underminedby two important factors. First, behavioristic approaches to language learninghad been rejected at both the theoretical and the pedagogical level. Secondly,the introduction of the microcomputer allowed a whole new range of possibilities.The stage was set for a new phase of CALL.

Communicative CALL

The second phase of CALL was based on the communicative approach to teachingwhich became prominent in the 1970s and 80s. Proponents of this approachfelt that the drill and practice programs of the previous decade did notallow enough authentic communication to be of much value.

One of the main advocates of this new approach was John Underwood,who in 1984 proposed a series of "Premises for 'Communicative' CALL" (Underwood,1984, p. 52). According to Underwood, communicative call:

* focuses more on using forms rather than on the forms themselves;

* teaches grammar implicitly rather than explicitly;

* allows and encourages students to generate original utterancesrather than just manipulate prefabricated language;

* does not judge and evaluate everything the students nor rewardthem with congratulatory messages, lights, or bells;

* avoids telling students they are wrong and is flexible to a varietyof student responses;

* uses the target language exclusively and creates an environmentin which using the target language feels natural, both on and off the screen;and

* will never try to do anything that a book can do just as well.

Another critic of behavioristic CALL, Vance Stevens, contendsthat all CALL courseware and activities should build on intrinsic motivationand should foster interactivity--both learner-computer and learner-learner(Stevens, 1989).

Several types of CALL programs were developed and used duringthis the phase of communicative CALL. First, there were a variety of programsto provide skill practice, but in a non-drill format. Examples of thesetypes of programs include courseware for paced reading, text reconstruction,and language games (Healey & Johnson, 1995b). In these programs, likethe drill and practice programs mentioned above, the computer remains the"knower-of-the-right-answer" (Taylor & Perez, 1989, p. 3); thus thisrepresents an extension of thecomputer as tutor model. But--incontrast to the drill and practice programs--the process of finding theright answer involves a fair amount of student choice, control, and interaction.

In addition to computer as tutor, another CALL model used forcommunicative activities involves the computer as stimulus (Taylor& Perez, 1989, p. 63). In this case, the purpose of the CALL activityis not so much to have students discover the right answer, but rather tostimulate students' discussion, writing, or critical thinking. Softwareused for these purposes include a wide variety of programs which may nothave been specifically designed for language learners, programs such asSimCity,Sleuth,or Where in the World is San Diego (Healey & Johnson, 1995b).

The third model of computers in communicative CALL involves thecomputeras tool (Brierley & Kemble, 1991; Taylor, 1980), or, as sometimescalled, the computer as workhorse (Taylor & Perez, 1989). Inthis role, the programs do not necessarily provide any language materialat all, but rather empower the learner to use or understand language. Examplesof computer as tool include word processors, spelling and grammarcheckers, desk-top publishing programs, and concordancers.

Of course the distinction between these models is not absolute.A skill practice program can be used as a conversational stimulus, as cana paragraph written by a student on a word processor. Likewise, there area number of drill and practice programs which could be used in a more communicativefashion--if, for example, students were assigned to work in pairs or smallgroups and then compare and discuss their answers (or, as Higgins, 1988,students can even discuss what inadequacies they found in the computerprogram) In other words, the dividing line between behavioristic and communicativeCALL does involves not only which software is used, but also howthe software is put to use by the teacher and students.

On the face of things communicative CALL seems like a significant advanceover its predecessor. But by the end of the 1980s, many educators feltthat CALL was still failing to live up to its potential (Kenning &Kenning, 1990; Pusack & Otto, 1990; R�schoff, 1993). Critics pointedout that the computer was being used in an ad hoc and disconnected fashionand thus "finds itself making a greater contribution to marginal ratherthan to central elements" of the language teaching process (Kenning &Kenning, 1990, p. 90).

These critiques of CALL dovetailed with broader reassessmentsof the communicative approach to language teaching. No longer satisfiedwith teaching compartmentalized skills or structures (even if taught ina communicative manner), a number of educators were seeking ways to teachin a more integrative manner, for example using task- or project-basedapproaches . The challenge for advocates of CALL was to develop modelswhich could help integrate the various aspects of the language learningprocess. Fortunately, advances in computer technology were providing theopportunities to do just that.

Steps toward Integrative CALL: Multimedia

Integrative approaches to CALL are based on two important technologicaldevelopments of the last decade--multimedia computers and the Internet.Multimedia technology--exemplified today by the CD-ROM-- allows a varietyof media (text, graphics, sound, animation, and video) to be accessed ona single machine. What makes multimedia even more powerful is that it alsoentailshypermedia. That means that the multimedia resources areall linked together and that learners can navigate their own path simplyby pointing and clicking a mouse.

Hypermedia provides a number of advantages for language learning.First of all, a more authentic learning environment is created, since listeningis combined with seeing, just like in the real world. Secondly, skillsare easily integrated, since the variety of media make it natural to combinereading, writing, speaking and listening in a single activity. Third, studentshave great control over their learning, since they can not only go at theirown pace but even on their own individual path, going forward and backwardsto different parts of the program, honing in on particular aspects andskipping other aspects altogether. Finally, a major advantage of hypermediais that it facilitates a principle focus on the content, without sacrificinga secondary focus on language form or learning strategies. For example,while the main lesson is in the foreground, students can have access toa variety of background links which will allow them rapid access to grammaticalexplanations or exercises, vocabulary glosses, pronunciation information,or questions or prompts which encourage them to adopt an appropriate learningstrategy.

An example of how hypermedia can be used for language learningis the programDustin which is being developed by the Institutefor Learning Sciences at Northwestern University (Schank & Cleary,1995). The program is a simulation of a student arriving at a U.S. airport.The student must go through customs, find transportation to the city, andcheck in at a hotel. The language learner using the program assumes therole of the arriving student by interacting with simulated people who appearin video clips and responding to what they say by typing in responses.If the responses are correct, the student is sent off to do other things,such as meeting a roommate. If the responses are incorrect, the programtakes remedial action by showing examples or breaking down the task intosmaller parts. At any time the student can control the situation by askingwhat to do, asking what to say, asking to hear again what was just said,requesting for a translation, or controlling the level of difficulty ofthe lesson.

Yet in spite of the apparent advantages of hypermedia for language learning,multimedia software has so far failed to make a major impact. Several majorproblems have surfaced in regarding to exploiting multimedia for languageteaching.

First, there is the question of quality of available programs.While teachers themselves can conceivably develop their own multimediaprograms using authoring software such as Hypercard (for the Macintosh)orToolbook (for the PC), the fact is that most classroom teacherslack the training or the time to make even simple programs, let alone morecomplex and sophisticated ones such as Dustin. This has left thefield to commercial developers, who often fail to base their programs onsound pedagogical principles. In addition, the cost involved in developingquality programs can put them out of the market of most English teachingprograms.

Beyond these lies perhaps a more fundamental problem. Today'scomputer programs are not yet intelligent enough to be truly interactive.A program like Dustin should ideally be able to understand a user'sspokeninput and evaluate it not just for correctness but also orappropriateness.It should be able to diagnose a student's problems with pronunciation,syntax, or usage and then intelligently decide among a range of options(e.g., repeating, paraphrasing, slowing down, correcting, or directingthe student to background explanations).

Computer programs with that degree of intelligence do not exist,and are not expected to exist for quite a long time. Artificial intelligence(AI) of a more modest degree does exist, but few funds are available toapply AI research to the language classroom. Thus while IntelligentCALL (Underwood, 1989) may be the next and ultimate usage of computersfor language learning, that phase is clearly a long way down the road.

Multimedia technology as it currently exists thus only partiallycontributes to integrative CALL. Using multimedia may involve an integrationof skills (e.g., listening with reading), but it too seldom involves amore important type of integration--integrating meaningful and authenticcommunication into all aspects of the language learning curriculum. Fortunately,though, another technological breakthrough is helping make that possible--electroniccommunication and the Internet.

Computer Assisted Language Learning: Good Decision Making When we create materials for our ESL classes, we might use bubbl.us, comic strips or Read

When we create materials for our ESL classes, we might use bubbl.us, comic strips or Read, Write, Think (like I discussed here). And the decision is pretty simple. If we like the program and the product, we use it. The story gets quite a bit more complicated when we start having students use computer assisted language learning (CALL) products. It’s about more than fun colors and flashy end-products. The process of using the technology should be helpful to students. The use of technology should be tied to learning outcomes. But there is even more to think about than learning outcomes. Well, I have developed a nice process to help you/me decide when and how to use CALL in your/my ESL classes.

Let me explain since you can’t read the chart to the left (view a larger/readable copy here). First, you need to consider the learning objectives of the ESL lesson. Then, identify appropriate CALL materials. Determine what is feasible in your setting and fully consider the benefits of the technology. Finally, decide. There are a lot more details on the chart which will hopefully help you decide if and when to use CALL.

Tags: CALL, computers, esl, hih tech, teaching, technology, web 2.0

This entry was posted by Katie Mitchell on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 5:36 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Functionality of using CALL

In this part areas are pointed out in which computational linguistics methods could be used in a CALL scenario.
This is one of the main aspects of applying CL-technology to CALL-systems: Functionality of programs should be improved with CL.
The hypothesis is that methods of computational linguistics can support the learning of a second and even first language by using "intelligent" computerprograms.


Two main views can be taken.
On the one hand one can start thinking about methods to enhance the computational aspects and on the other hand one can start thinking about the improved processing and presentation of content.
An aspect of the first type could be advanced error recognition (see chapter » Error-Analysis).
An aspect of the second could be precise modelling of the morphosyntax of future tense or the integration of WordNet-like structures.


Probably there isn't a sharp division but a spectrum between these two views.
Corpus linguistics is a case in question.
On the one hand corpus-tools allow the learner to use large language data-bases and on the other hand specific items like collocations may be taught using corpora, see e.g. Erpenbeck, Arno ; Koch, Britta et al., 2001

If one accepts the categorization made in the previous chapter, then the question is: "Which functionality can be improved or newly integrated based on each of the categories?"


« up

Computer Assisted Language Learning

August 2003

Where are we now and where are we going?

Graham Davies, Educational Software Consultant, Camsoft

There is no question that Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) has come of age. Computers have been a feature of teaching and learning of Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) since the 1960s in higher education and since the early 1980s in secondary education. The rapid growth in the use of ICT in MFL in the 1980s led to the foundation of the two leading professional associations: CALICO (USA) in 1982 and EUROCALL (Europe) in 1986, both of which continue to thrive and now form part of the WorldCALL umbrella association. CALL's history is well documented at the History of CALL website.

Warschauer (1996) distinguishes three phases of CALL, illustrating the development of an increasing number of different ways in which the computer has been used in language learning and teaching:

• Behaviouristic: The computer as tutor, serving mainly as a vehicle for delivering instructional materials to the learner.
• Communicative: The computer is used for skill practice, but in a non-drill format and with a greater degree of student choice, control and interaction. This phase also includes (a) using the computer to stimulate discussion, writing or critical thinking (eg using programs such as Sim City), and (b) using the computer as a tool or workhorse - examples include word processors, spelling and grammar checkers, and concordancers.
• Integrative: This phase is marked by the introduction of two important innovations: (a) multimedia, (b) the internet. The main advantage of multimedia packages is that they enable reading, writing, speaking and listening to be combined in a single activity, with the learner exercising a high degree of control over the path that he/she follows through the learning materials. The internet builds on multimedia technology and in addition enables both asynchronous and synchronous communication between learners and teachers. The advent of the web has opened up a new range of tasks for MFL learners, eg web quests, web concordancing, and collaborative writing.

We are now well into the third phase. The range of different types of CALL software currently available is impressive. As well as routine drill-and-practice programs, there are vocabulary games, action mazes, adventures and simulations, exploratory programs, and text reconstruction (total Cloze) packages. See Module 1.4 at the ICT4LT website for further examples.

There has been a prolific output of publications on CALL. The EUROCALL and ICT4LT bibliographies list the most important research and academic publications, and CILT's InfoTech series offers a range of practically oriented publications for practising teachers. Many schools, especially specialist schools with Language College status, have set up extensive MFL websites, for example Ashcombe School and the Royal Grammar School High Wycombe. Electronic discussion lists form virtual communities of teachers, enabling them to exchange views, seek advice and generally let off steam. The Linguanet Forum is a good example of a lively discussion list aimed at MFL teachers.

A wealth of publications relating to online language learning and teaching has appeared in the last few years, a recent publication being Beyond Babel (Felix 2001). But the web needs to be treated with a degree of caution. As Felix points out:

"...it takes a very special person to learn and, especially, speak a language without face-to-face communication."

(Felix 2001:8)

Computer-assisted language learning

Definition

CALL originates from CAI (Computer-Accelerated Instruction), a term that was first viewed as an aid for teachers. The philosophy of CALL puts a strong emphasis on student-centered lessons that allow the learners to learn on their own using structured and/or unstructured interactive lessons. These lessons carry 2 important features: bidirectional (interactive) learning and individualized learning. CALL is not a method. It is a tool that helps teachers to facilitate language learning process. CALL can be used to reinforce what has been learned in the classrooms. It can also be used as remedial to help learners with limited language proficiency.

The design of CALL lessons generally takes into consideration principles of language pedagogy, which may be derived from learning theories (behaviorist, cognitive, and constructivist) and second language learning such as Krashen's Monitor Theory.

Others may call CALL an approach to teaching and learning foreign languages whereby the computer and computer-based resources such as the Internet are used to present, reinforce and assess material to be learned. CALL can be made independent of the Internet. It can stand alone for example in a CDROM format. Depending on its design and objectives, it may include a substantial interactive element especially when CALL is integrated in web-based format. It may include the search for and the investigation of applications in language teaching and learning. [1] Except for self-study software, CALL is meant to supplement face-to-face language instruction, not replace it.[2]

CALL has also been known by several other terms such as technology-enhanced language learning (TELL), computer-assisted language instruction (CALI) and computer-aided language learning but the field is the same. [3] For further information see the ICT4LT website, especially Section 1 of Module 1.4, headed "What is CALL?": Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) is a subset of both Mobile Learning (m-learning) and Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL).

Computers have been used for language teaching ever since the 1960s. This 40-year period can be divided into three main stages: behaviorist CALL, communicative CALL, and integrative CALL. Each stage corresponds to a certain level of technology and certain pedagogical theories. The reasons for using Computer-assisted Language Learning include: (a) experiential learning, (b) motivation, (c) enhance student achievement, (d) authentic materials for study, (e) greater interaction, (f) individualization, (g) independence from a single source of information, and (h) global understanding. The barriers inhibiting the practice of Computer-assisted Language Learning can be classified in the following common categories: (a) financial barriers, (b) availability of computer hardware and software, (c) technical and theoretical knowledge, and (d) acceptance of the technology.

Introduction

[edit] History

CALL’s origins and development trace back to the 1960’s (Delcloque 2000). Since the early days CALL has developed into a symbiotic relationship between the development of technology and pedagogy.

Warschauer (1996) divided the development of CALL into three phases: Behavioristic CALL, Communicative CALL and Integrative CALL (Multimedia and the Internet)^[1]. Bax (2003) perceived the three phases as Restricted, Open and Integrated - and there have been several other attempts to categorize the history of CALL: see the ICT4LT website (Section 3 of Module 1.4)].

Behavioristic CALL is defined by the then-dominant behavioristic theories of learning of Skinner as well as the technological limitations of computers from the 1960’s to the early 1980’s. Up to the late 1970’s, CALL was confined to universities where programs were developed on big mainframe computers, like the PLATO project, initiated at the University of Illinois in 1960. Because repeated exposure to material was considered to be beneficial or even essential, computers were considered ideal for this aspect of learning as the machines did not get bored or impatient with learners and the computer could present material to the student as his/her own pace and even adapt the drills to the level of the student. Hence, CALL programs of this era presented a stimulus to which the learner provided a response. At first, both could be done only through text. The computer would analyze errors and give feedback. More sophisticated programs would react to students’ mistakes by branching to help screens and remedial activities. While such programs and their underlying pedagogy still exist today, to a large part behavioristic approaches to language learning have been rejected and the increasing sophistication of computer technology has lead CALL to other possibilities.

Communicative CALL is based on the communicative approach that became prominent in the late 1970’s and 1980’s. In the communicative approach, the focus is on using the language rather than analysis of the language, teaching grammar implicitly. It also allowed for originality and flexibility in student output of language. It also correlates with the arrival of the PC, making computing much widely available resulting in a boom in the development of software for language learning. The first CALL software in this phase still provided skill practice but not in a drill format, for example, paced reading, text reconstruction and language games but computer remained the tutor. In this phase, however, computers provided context for students to use the language, such as asking for directions to a place. It also allowed for programs not designed for language learning, such as Sim City, Sleuth and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? to be used for language learning. However, criticisms of this approach include using the computer in an ad hoc and disconnected manner for more marginal rather than the central aims of language teaching. It usually taught skills such as reading and listening in a compartmentalized way, even if not in a drill fashion.

Integrative/explorative CALL, starting from the 1990’s, tries to address these criticisms by integrating the teaching of language skills into tasks or projects to provide direction and coherence. It also coincides with the development of multimedia technology (providing text, graphics, sound and animation) as well as computer-mediated communication. CALL in this period saw a definitive shift of use of computer for drill and tutorial purposes (computer as a finite authoritative base for a specific task) to a medium for extending education beyond the classroom and reorganizing instruction. Multimedia CALL started with interactive laser videodiscs such as “Montevidisco” (Schneider & Bennion 1984) and “A la rencontre de Philippe” (Fuerstenberg 1993, all of which were simulations of situations where the learner played a key role. These programs later were transferred to CD-ROMs, and new RPGs such as Who is Oscar Lake? made their appearance in a range of different languages.

In multimedia programs, listening is combined with seeing, just like in the real world. Students also control the pace and the path of the interaction. Interaction is in the foreground but many CALL programs also provide links to explanations simultaneously. An example of this is Dustin’s simulation of a foreign student’s arrival in the USA. Programs like this led also to what is called explorative CALL.

More recent research in CALL has favored a learner-centered explorative approach, where students are encouraged to try different possible solutions to a problem, for example the use of concordance programs. This approach is also described as data-driven learning (DDL), a term coined by Tim Johns. See Module 2.4 at the ICT4LT site, Using concordance programs in the Modern Foreign Languages classroom.

HISTORY OF LITERATURE

Twin sources, Bible and Homer: from 1000 BC
Two great reservoirs of source material for European literature (and indeed for all European art) are recorded for posterity in regions bordering the eastern Mediterranean during the centuries after 1000 BC. The holy books of Judaism are slightly the earlier of the two. Known to Christians as the Old Testament, they are written down (at first from earlier oral sources) from about 1000 BC onwards. The other comparable body of material derives entirely from an oral tradition. Somewhere around 750 BC the Odyssey and the Iliad are transformed from bardic songs into written texts - the transition from folklore to literature. They are credited to a blind poet, Homer.
The Homeric question
Who was Homer? When did he write? What did he write? These difficult matters, known collectively as the 'Homeric question', have puzzled scholars since as early as the 6th century BC. The problem is neatly avoided in Max Beerbohm's phrase 'those incomparable poets Homer'. And it is well stated in a legendary schoolboy howler: 'Homer was not written by Homer but by another poet of the same name.' The truth is that nothing is known about Homer other than what can be gleaned from the Iliad and the Odyssey (and it is not even certain that they are by the same hand). But a greater truth is that European literature begins, in Homer, with two amazing masterpieces.
Important clues to the date of Homer are provided by physical details recorded in the poems, such as the design of costume and armour, or methods of fighting. These reflect the realities of life (as known from archaeology) at two particular periods, the 13th century and the 8th century BC. The 13th century sees the final flowering of Mycenaean Greece. It is the time when the Greeks probably go to war against Troy and it is therefore the period of the events remembered, in heroic form, in the story of the Iliad. The 8th century is when the poems become fixed in approximately the versions now known to us.
In the unsettled centuries following the Trojan War, the art of writing (known in Mycenae in the form of Linear B) is lost. But the events of the war are remembered, celebrated and richly embroidered by generations of bards. At festivals, or in the houses of great men, these bards recite incidents from the story. Their narratives, made more memorable in rhythmic couplets, are the stock in trade of these men. Their livelihood depends on exciting an audience, eager to enjoy the exploits of heroes and gods. A well-told episode, honed in performance, is a valuable property, to be handed on to the next generation.
Newly added details, if found to give pleasure, are included for a while as a regular part of the story. But details added a generation a two or ago are easily recognized by the audience as anachronistic, old-fashioned. They are neither from the heroic past nor up to date. They are yesterday's material. They are dropped. So the bardic recitals at any time tend to consist of the original core of the stories with a sprinkling of contemporary detail. This is the basis for the conclusion that the poems become stabilized (or written down by the mysterious Homer) during the 8th century BC.
Written texts of Homer: 8th - 5th century BC
There is a good reason for this particular date, the 8th century BC. It is when writing returns to Greece, in a more congenial alphabetic form. But it is not a case of someone simply writing down an existing poem. The strongest argument for Homer as a single writer of genius is the accomplished literary form of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The separate incidents which make up the two stories must certainly have been in the repertoire of many performers, but no single bard is likely to have sung all the material that Homer uses. And nobody, in an age before writing, has either the incentive or the opportunity to fashion such skilfully shaped overall narratives - with beginning, middle and end.		cth
The plot of the Iliad follows one very precise thread, announced in the opening words of the poem: 'The wrath of Achilles is my theme'. Achilles is wrathful at the start of the poem because Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, has taken from him a beautiful girl, Briseis, a prize of war. Achilles, the great warrior, sulks in his tent and the Greek cause suffers. Many dramatic events follow directly from this premise, and while describing them Homer fills in the broader picture of the Trojan War. By the end there is reconciliation; order is restored; Briseis is back in the bed of Achilles. In masterly fashion, and with wonderfully vivid story-telling and characterization, a wide canvas has been sketched without loss of focus.
By contrast the Odyssey is a collection of fantastic adventures, experienced by Odysseus on his ten-year journey home to Ithaca from the Trojan War. But again they are held within a clear narrative frame. At the start of the poem Penelope, wife of the absent Odysseus, is plagued by a crowd of suitors. They abuse her servants and consume her wealth. At the end Odysseus returns home. Having by now the appearance of a beggar, he too is roundly abused. But in a contest to string the great bow of Odysseus, he is the only one with the strength to do so. He uses it to kill the suitors, in a dramatic climax reminiscent of a shoot-out in a western. Even Penelope at first fails to recognize him, but soon the pair are happily reunited.
The oral tradition of Homer: 8th - 5th century BC
The writing down of the Homeric poems in the 8th century BC does not mean that they become available to readers. The texts merely enable his followers to preserve the works and to perform them in a consistent manner. A group of such followers, the Homeridae, become associated with the island of Chios, off the coast of Ionia. Ancient tradition links Homer himself with Ionia, and the language of the poems seems to confirm an Ionic background.
It is not until about 425 BC that a book trade develops in Athens, with educated people acquiring papyrus scrolls to read in the privacy of their homes. Plato, writing in the Phaedrus in about 365 BC, expresses strong disapproval of this new-fangled fashion for reading by oneself. So the first great flowering of European literature reaches its original audience through their ears rather than their eyes, in public performance. This convention provides not only the beginning of epic poetry, in Homer. It also produces another extraordinary Greek innovation - the theatre.

What is a Sonnet?

THE SONNET

The sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem in predominantly iambic pentameter, with a formal rhyme scheme. Although there can be considerable variation in rhyme scheme, most English sonnets are written in either the Italian (Petrarchan) style or the English (Shakespearean) style. A third sonnet form, the Spenserian sonnet, is also well-known, but far less commonly used than either the Petrarchan or the Shakespearean sonnet.

THE PETRARCHAN SONNET

The Italian sonnet form is commony called the Petrarchan sonnet, because Petrarch's "Canzonieri," a sequence of poems including 317 sonnets, established the sonnet as a major form in European poetry. The Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave (an eight-line stanza), rhyming abbaabba, and a sestet (a six-line stanza), rhyming cdcdcd, or cdecde--or using some other variation of the cd or cde patterns, but without a final rhymed couplet.

The octave usually presents an idea, raises an argument, makes a proposition, or poses a problem. A turning point ("volta") occurs between the octave and the sestet, and the sestet develops out of the octave by illustrating the idea in the octave, varying it, responding to it, or solving the problem it poses.

THE SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET

Shakespeare did not invent the English sonnet form, but he is recognized as its greatest practitioner; therefore, the English sonnet is commonly called the Shakespearean sonnet.

The Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains (four-line stanzas), rhyming abab cdcd efef, and a couplet (a two-line stanza), rhyming gg. Because each new stanza introduces a new set of rhyming sounds, the Shakespearean sonnet is well-suited to English, which is less richly endowed than Italian with rhyming words.

As with the structure of the Petrarchan sonnet, that of the Shakespearean sonnet influences the kinds of ideas that will be developed in it. For example, the three quatrains may be used to present three parallel images, with the couplet used to tie them together or to interpret their significance. Or the quatrains can offer three points in an argument, with the couplet serving to drive home the conclusion.

THE SPENSERIAN SONNET

In his "Amoretti" Edmund Spenser used the sonnet form named after him. The Spenserian sonnet has three quatrains, rhyming abab bcbc cdcd, followed by a couplet, rhyming ee. The linked rhymes of his quatrains suggest the linked rhymes of such Italian forms as terza rima.

ORIGINS

The sonnet probably originated among the Sicilian court poets of the thirteenth century, who were influenced by the love peotry of the Provencal troubadours. It then spread to Tuscany, where it reached its highest expression in Petrarch's "Canzonieri," a sequence of love poems addressed to "Laura," his idealized beloved.

THE SONNET IN ENGLISH POETRY

The sonnet, along with other Italian forms, was introduced to England in the sixteenth century by Sir Thomas Wyatt and his younger contemporary Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Both poets translated several of Petrarch's sonnets--often the same ones--as well as composing their own.

The new poetic form seems to have inspired the flowering of English lyric poetry in subsequent decades, reaching its peak during the reign of Elizabeth I. During the Elizabethan period the sonnet often appeared as part of a sequence of love poems, in the manner of Petrarch's "Canzonieri." The Elizabethans were particularly attractee to the complexity of a sequence in which each sonnet was both an independent poem and part of an ongoing narrative development. Many poets employed conventional images and patterns of thought in their sonnets, but the most skilled mangaed to create tension and complexity by playing against the conventions even as they made use of them.

Among notable Elizabethan sonnet sequences (Sir Philip Sidney's "Astrophel and Stella"; Samuel Daniel's "Delia"; Edmund Spenser's Amoretti") Shakespeare's sequence of one hundred twenty sonnets addressed to a "dark lady" and a "fair young man" is considered to be the greatest.

In the seventeenth century John Donne's "Holy Sonnets" used the sonnet sequence as a vehicle for religious themes. John Milton wrote sonnets on religious and political themes, as well as on such personal subjects as his own blindness.

In the nineteenth century the love sonnet sequence was revived in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese" (1850) and in Dante Gabriel Rosetti's "The House of Life" (1876).

Even after five centuries the sonnet still attracts the attention of serious poets, partly because of the challenge provided by the rigorous constraints of its fixed form, and partly because of its long tradition of use by most of the important poets in the English language.

Blank Verse in English Poetry

Relevant Terms:

METER�a rhythmic pattern in poetry wherein stresses (accented syllables) recur at fixed intervals. The word "meter" comes from the Greek word for "measure."

FOOT�the basic unit of meter; a group of syllables forming a metrical unit; a unit of (usually) two or three syllables that contains one strong stress. Metrical feet are marked by using symbols to represent stressed (/) and unstressed (x; or a flattened out "u" shape) syllables.

IAMB (IAMBIC FOOT)�a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (x /).

PENTAMETER�a metrical pattern in which the poetic line consists of five iambic feet; thus, a ten-syllable line with the following pattern: x / x / x / x / x / .

RHYME (EXACT RHYME)�when two or more words or phrases contain an identical vowel sound, usually accented, and the subsequent consonant sounds (if any) are identical: free/see; hit/fit; prize/lies.

DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE�a poem in which a single (fictional) speaker addresses an implied audience at a critical moment in an ongoing series of events.

FREE VERSE�("vers libre"; open form poetry); poetry with no identifiable metrical pattern or rhyme scheme.

STANZA�a group of lines of verse, usually marked by a rhyme scheme (a regular pattern of end rhymes) and a predominant metrical pattern.

VERSE PARAGRAPH�a group of lines of verse (often in blank verse) which forms a unit within a poem; especially common in long narrative poems.

"Blank verse" or unrhymed iambic pentameter, is one of the best known and most widely used metrical patterns in English poetry, probably because it is so close to the natural rhythms of English speech and so easy to adapt to different levels of language�as Shakespeare does, for example, by having characters from clowns to kings speak in blank verse, but still in distinctive and appropriate voices.

Blank verse was introduced into English verse by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who along with his older friend Sir Thomas Wyatt also introduced the sonnet and other Italian poetic forms into English poetry in the sixteenth century. Surrey used blank verse (which his publisher called "this strange meter") in his translation of the fourth and second books of Virgil's "Aeneid" (1554, 1557),perhaps modeling it on the "versi sciolti" ("freed verse") of Molza's Italian translation. Blank verse must not, however, be confused with English "free verse" ("vers libre"; "open form" poetry), which lacks both a rhyme scheme and an identifiable metrical pattern, whereas blank verse has a very specific metrical pattern.

The structure of blank verse differs from that of rhymed verse, which tends to break into stanzas. Poems written in blank verse are often divided into "verse paragraphs" of varying lengths, as distinct from stanzas, which usually have regular lengths and are defined by their rhyme scheme and metrical pattern.

The natural speech rhythm of the English language is iambic, and the typical length of an utterance is usually about ten syllables, since that is approximately how long most people can speak comfortably without pausing to take a breath. Thus it might well be said that English speech rhythms tend to fall naturally into a predominantly iambic pentametrical pattern. This closeness to the natural rhythms of speech accounts for the particular popularity of blank verse in drama, dramatic monologues, epic poems, narrative poems, and long introspective or meditative poems.

One might ask why a poet would bother to write in blank verse, when it sounds so much like everyday speech. The fact is that blank verse, despite that similarity, is not quite a "normal" speech rhythm. True, English speech follows a rough iambic pentametrical pattern, but it frequently varies that pattern as well, and also interrupts it with pauses and widely varied inflections. Put simply, the rhythm of blank verse is far more formal, more intensely regular, than the looser rhythmic pattern of normal speech. The formality of such regular meter creates an incantatory effect, and like all strong rhythms it tends to capture and modify the listener's heartbeat and to induce a slightly altered state of consciousness. Formal language patterns also establish a sort of "frame" around experience, thus marking the experience of the poem as separate and somehow distinguished from mundane reality. Just as the darkened auditorium at a concert creates a state of psychological receptiveness in the audience, so too does the insistent regularity of blank verse prepare the listener for a heightened response to the effects of language and image in the poem.

Soon after Surrey introduced blank verse, it became the standard meter for Elizabethan and Jacobean poetic drama. Probably it was first used in drama in "Gorboduc" (1561), by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton. Christopher Marlowe's "Tamburlaine" and "The Tragical History of Dr, Faustus" (c. 1588-93) are written in blank verse, but his lines are predominantly end-stopped (i.e., the sense of the lines coincides with the ends of the lines), and thus they lack the suppleness and variation that we find in William Shakespeare's use of blank verse. Shakespeare is the most notable practitioner of blank verse as a dramatic form, and his plays are, in fact, written predominantly, though not entirely, in blank verse. Even in the twentieth century T. S. Eliot and Maxwell Anderson used blank verse as a vehicle for staged drama, though by that time their efforts were self-consciously anachronistic.

Blank verse has also been a favored form for reflective and narrative poems. The stately, majestic cadences of John Milton's religious epic "Paradise Lost" demonstrate the extraordinary incantatory power of that pattern maintained over long stretches of poetry. Take, for example, the single long sentence that constitutes the first sixteen lines of the "Invocation" to Book I of "Paradise Lost":

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the Heavens and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

Milton himself likened blank verse to the unrhymed verse of "Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin" and called it "English heroic verse without rhyme." He considered rhyme "no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame meter. . . ." Milton defended his choice of blank verse for his epic as no defect, "though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers," but rather an "[esteemed] example set, the first in English, of an ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome modern bondage of rhyming" (John Milton, "The Verse," preface to "Paradise Lost).

During the late seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century, blank verse, though still used, was less popular, primarily because the most prominent poets of that period favored the heroic couplet.

In the nineteenth century, blank verse was frequently used by both the Romantic and the Victorian poets. William Wordsworth's autobiographical epic "The Prelude" was written in blank verse, as was Samuel Taylor Coleridge's meditative "Frost at Midnight." The declamatory rhythms and rhetorical flourishes of Milton's blank verse were replaced in Romantic poetry by a more personal and colloquial manner.

Robert Browning used blank verse in many of his dramatic monologues (e.g., "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church"), as did Alfred, LordTennyson ("Ulysses," "Tithonus"). Although neither poet can be credited with technical innovations in the form, their use of it is highly skilled and flexible, employing both colloquial rhythms and a more declamatory style, as the occasion warrants.

Around the time of World War I, during the "modernist" period, long poems in blank verse fell out of fashion, but blank verse continued to be used by some twentieth-century poets. It was especially favored by Robert Frost ("Birches," "Mending Wall," "Out, Out�"). Frost often said that his aim in much of his poetry was to capture the "sound of sense," that rhythmic pattern we notice in spoken language even when we are unable to make out the words being spoken. His poems written in blank verse demonstrate how conversational blank verse can sound while still retaining the formal effects of good poetry. Here are the first eleven lines of his well-known poem "Mending Wall":

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.

Browning, too, writing many decades earlier, during the Victorian period, used blank verse to capture the sound of normal speech, but without its banality. In the opening lines of "Andrea del Sarto," the painter addresses his young wife in language that one might almost expect to overhear in a restaurant:

But do not let us quarrel anymore,
No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?

Yet carried over the 267 lines of this dramatic monologue, the poem's superficially colloquial rhythms produce an effect that normal speech could never produce. We are transported to another world, as it were, and mere reality fades, just as it does in a darkened theater. Skillfully handled, blank verse is not likely ever to be mistaken for prose, despite the erroneous belief of what Milton would call "vulgar readers" that unrhymed lines do not deserve the name of poetry.