Brave New Digital Classroom: Technology and Foreign Language Learning

Brave New Digital Classroom deftly interweaves results of pedagogical research and descriptions of the most successful computer-assisted language learning (CALL) projects to explore how technology can best be employed in the foreign-language curriculum to assist the second language acquisition process.

Directed to all language teachers―whether at the school or the postsecondary level, with or without prior experience―this book focuses on how to use new technologies effectively. Blake urges teachers to move beyond a simple functional competence of knowing how to use the tools toward first a critical competence―realizing what the various tools are good for―and ultimately a rhetorical competence of knowing how the tools will help transform the learning environment. This book examines the effective use of a range of technologies, from Internet sites through computer-mediated communication such as synchronous chatting and blogs, to distance learning. At the end of each chapter questions and activities demonstrate the interactionist, learner-centered pedagogy Blake espouses.

An invaluable reference for experienced researchers and CALL developers as well as those of limited experience, Brave New Digital Classroom is also ideal for graduate-level courses on second language pedagogy. It will also be of interest to department chairs and administrators seeking to develop and evaluate their own CALL programs.

Robert J. Blake is director of the UC Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching and professor of Spanish and classics, University of California, Davis.