Abstract
Professor Chapelle has published widely on using technology for language learning and assessment. Her most cited publications are Computer Applications in Second Language Acquisition (Cambridge, 2001) and English Language Learning and Technology: Lectures on Applied Linguistics in the Age of Information and Communication Technology (John Benjamins, 2003). Recently, she has published several books and articles. The books include Argument-Based Validation in Testing and Assessment (SAGE, 2021), The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (Wiley, 2020), and The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning (Wiley, 2017). Two of the articles are “Reflect, revisit, reimagine: language assessment in ARAL” (Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 2020) and “An introduction to language testing’s first virtual special issue: Investigating consequences of language test use” (Language Testing, 2020). Her outstanding scholarly works made her recipient of various prestigious research awards from the American Association for Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge, and the International Language Testing Association. Her extraordinary contribution in the field of TESL/Applied Linguistics also made her the Angela B Pavitt Professor in English at Iowa State University from 2015 to 2017. Professor Chapelle served as the president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in 2006–2007, editor of TESOL Quarterly from 1999 to 2004, and co-editor of Language Testing from 2016 through 2018.
I started as a language learner and a linguist when I was an undergraduate student, but to strengthen my career opportunities, I shifted to English language teaching when I went to graduate school. There I was introduced to a language lab where students could work interactively with a computer to practice the language that they were studying in class. In 1978, this seemed amazing to me, and I was particularly struck by how much each student was able to participate by typing at the keyboard and getting feedback on their responses. These interactive sessions in the lab seemed to me to offer something unique and valuable relative to what could be accomplished in the classroom or with homework to be completed on paper and submitted. That image of a big lab full of language students with their eyes on their respective screens and fingers on the keyboards really stuck with me. And since that time, I have always been interested in what can be done with technology for language education and research. As for language assessment, I became interested in that out of necessity. Language tests provide information we use in teaching and research. The question is, how do we know whether a test is appropriate for what we want to do with the scores? That is a complicated question that has kept me busy for a while. But fundamentally, my interest in language learning stems from my own experience as a foreign language learner in the US because I experienced many of the struggles that foreign language learners still face today.
The research in this area has evolved to keep pace with the changing landscape of the technologies, pedagogical practices, teachers’ and students’ access to technology, and integration of technology use into everyday lives. With respect to the technologies, the computers used in language education came first to universities where language education was among the many subject areas for which computer-assisted instruction was developed. Students used a computer terminal owned by the university at an appointed hour of the day to interact with the program that had been designed to teach particular subject matter. Many generations of technology later, students carry their computers in hand and engage in a wide range of practices. The pedagogies have evolved most importantly to include not only student–computer interaction but many types of communicative participation in tasks and virtual exchanges as well as connection to a world of content available on the internet.
I am working on several things right now. First, I am very excited to be working on a second edition of my book, Computer Applications in Second Language Acquisition. When I wrote the first edition, the Web was in its beginning stages, and many teachers had little knowledge or interest in technology. Students were not walking around with their mobile phones in hand. My book focuses on the evaluation of technology uses for language learning, applying perspectives from language education and applied linguistics. The uses and users have changed so much in 20 years and the research perspectives are grounded in technology use in local teaching contexts.
Second, I am working on projects that apply evaluation methods to development of language tests and their validation. This is really a team project because I have been working with others, many of them my doctoral students on projects ranging from certification testing to placement and classroom-based assessment. In each case we work to apply principles in applied linguistics and educational measurement to create tests and investigate the validity of their use. Research on several of the testing projects is described in an edited volume that is coming very soon: Validity Argument in Language Testing: Case Studies of Argument-Based Validation Research (2021, Cambridge University Press). Current work continues to apply these analytic processes to improve knowledge about language testing that should help to improve the quality of language testing.
Third, my research on content in language teaching has taken me into the connection between Canadian Studies (i.e. a content area) and French language teaching in the US. This opens up some very interesting areas such as standard language hegemony in language teaching—a topic that we are familiar with in English language teaching. My most recent work in this area looks historically at French Canadian immigrants and their language shift in the US. I hope this work will contribute to knowledge about how immigrants’ languages are lost in the US. This social and political dimension of languages is important for addressing current issues in language teaching and assessment such as how the standard language should be treated, how language uses and their respective cultures should be represented in teaching materials, and how language teaching can and should intersect with other subject areas.
We are really living through a revelatory time in so many ways! I think we are wise to attend to the lessons we can learn from the upset of our normal routines and expectations. The most empowering statement I hear again and again is how badly students want to be in school with their teachers. This is significant to me, because throughout the past 30 years of technology integration in education, some visionaries have imagined a decreasing need for teachers due to the capabilities and efficiencies to be gained through the use of technology for teaching. I think the COVID-19 experience will put this idea to rest. Students love and need their teachers! I hope that we all can remember that in the years to come.
I am sure that teachers throughout the world have had new technology-related experiences and have come to understand their schools, curricula, colleagues, and students in new and different ways. For those who were tasked with online teaching for the first time, I am sure they developed some new strategies for teaching. Regardless of the specific circumstances, we all saw the need to be knowledgeable about the options that technology holds for expanding learning opportunities for students by structuring tasks differently and using online resources more extensively. I hope the crisis gives birth to resilience and innovation in our field.
That question has many different answers. My general answer is that digital tools/technologies should be used in ways that help students to advance toward their learning goals. Students learn English at many stages of their education and for a variety of different reasons. We also know that our English language learners have a variety of interests and motivations, past experiences, and styles of learning. All of these factors are relevant to the types of technology-mediated pedagogies that teachers choose. So maybe the question should be, what does each of us need to learn about technology-mediated pedagogy to select and create good learning experiences for our students? In response, I would suggest three paths for exploration: (a) professional development materials such as the RELC Journal to provide information and suggestions for language learning activities, (b) professional organizations such as The Asia-Pacific Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (https://www.apacall.org/), (c) your students’ access to, use of, and interest in using technology outside your class. What you discover should provide three sets of building blocks for getting started or for evolving from current technology use to find more benefits for students.
Each of these terms denotes a wide variety of potentials, so it really depends on how they are put to use in view of the particular learning outcomes of interest. I can give examples of how each idea connects with our aims in language teaching. AI has been used in ICALL—intelligent computer-assisted language learning to analyze the language that learners produce, keep records of performance, and recommend useful paths for future instruction. Machine learning has been used to identify patterns of language in good examples of academic research articles to create learning materials that estimate for writers how well the patterns in their writing match those found in the corpus of good examples. The Internet of Things has been imagined for use in simulating a space in an EFL context where things “speak” English to create an immersive environment. Data and learning analytics fuel the AI example above. Virtual reality has been used in language education for many years to create virtual environments for language use. My view is that these technologies provide tools for exploration in language teaching and learning. They demonstrate the importance of creativity in our search for interesting and effective ways of using technology in English language teaching. This is an area with much space for discovery and innovation.
The first book, Argument-Based Validation in Testing and Assessment, is a methodology book for researchers who study testing and assessment. It explains how readers can design validation research for tests of human capacities and performance. It is intended to close the gap between theory and practice, by introducing, explaining, and demonstrating how test developers can formulate the overall design for their validation research from an argument-based perspective that has been useful in language assessment.
The second book, Validity Argument in Language Testing: Case Studies of Argument-Based Validation Research, contains language testing research and development projects that use the validation framework. In doing so, it introduces technical terms explicitly and uses them consistently in a variety of studies and it demonstrates some of the roles of technology in language assessment and the implications for validation research.
The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics has a selection of the most popular entries from the Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (Wiley, 2013). It provides readers with an informative selection of topics across the areas included in the Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics such as language learning and teaching, language assessment, corpus linguistics, technology and language, and language for specific purposes. It is useful for teachers who want to learn more about the breadth of the field of applied linguistics and get pointers into more depth in each area.
This is a very large topic, but I will just note that the current pandemic situation has created the need for more “at home” testing. This raises many new issues in testing and challenges for technology. I expect that the technical, business, ethical, and legal dimensions of online testing will occupy us for the foreseeable future.
The past five years have provided a roadmap of what is ahead. Researchers are investigating development of additional languages across many different contexts by taking into account the cognitive, social, and ideological aspects of learners and their contexts for learning. This evolution is particularly exciting for language teachers because it underscores the importance of the learning contexts where we work. The evolution is also important for the study of language learning with technology because technology helps to create contexts for learning. In short, I expect SLA research to continue to become more and more relevant to what teachers do.
As I work on the second edition of my book on technology and language learning, I hope to engage with PhD students and colleagues to conduct research on students’ use of new technologies in specific contexts. I continue to work with application of argument-based validity to language assessment projects. And I hope to continue to investigate French Canadian immigrants, particularly in one of the northern states of the Midwest, Michigan, where little has been documented about language shift. And, as always, I am ready to discover something new that I did not plan to study!
