2006 Articles

Second Language Acquisition and Synchronous Computer Mediated Communication

Kawase, Ayako

Before personal computers became popular, social scientists had discussed the potential effects of new forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on society. Hiltz and Turoff (1978) claimed that computerized conferencing would exert a dramatic psychological and sociological influence on various types of group communication in the future. They correctly predicted that computers and the Internet have become a necessity for daily life, and they have greatly changed our lives during just the last decade or so. Computers play a significant role in teaching and learning today. The use of computers in the classroom is becoming ever more popular in first language (L1) acquisition settings and in content-based classrooms. While computers are not seen as a substitute for the teacher, they are considered a new medium that has profoundly changed the ways in which we write, read, and in some cases, even the way we think (Selfe, 1989). Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) has received a great deal of attention in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), and every year an increasing number of teachers are using computers in their second language (L2) and foreign language classrooms.