Emerging technologies and language learning: mining the past to transform the future

Abstract

This paper is an expanded version of a keynote presentation for the 2022 ChinaCALL Conference on the theme of “emerging technologies”. Today’s emerging technologies—artificial intelligence, machine learning, conversational robots, virtual worlds, virtual reality, augmented reality, automated assessment, and so on—are full of promise and seem poised to revolutionize language teaching and learning over the next decade. However, rather than looking forward, I review lessons I have learned over a four-decade career in CALL, focusing on those lessons that have continuing relevance for accommodating these and future technologies as they emerge. In the first part, I present a simple model for technology-mediated language learning as a foundation for the remaining discussion. In the second, I review seven challenges that I worked on in CALL, starting in the 1980s. I describe how I came to be aware of the issues involved and how through a combination of reviewing research, collaborating with colleagues, and drawing on my own experience, I came to learn lessons of enduring value. The final part briefly explores the potential for converting these and other lessons learned into principles to guide current and future encounters with technologies for language teaching and learning.