Reflection: Reading and Vocabulary

I found it interesting how both of this week's readings involved Grabe's implications for reading instruction in their overviews of how CALL interacts with reading and vocabulary instruction.  Grabe's implications provide some very good guidelines for reading teachers/program administrators, and I found them to be useful for highlighting some benefits and problems CALL materials have for reading/vocabulary instruction.

First of all, CALL has a lot of potential for extensive reading.  There's a wealth of free reading material available on the web, and I think we're getting to the point where investing in computers/mobile devices for students is more cost-effective than constantly buying new books.  CALL materials also provide for captivating pre-reading activities by utilizing video, audio, interactive data/sites, and collaboration for students to activate background schemata prior to reading.  On the vocabulary side, CALL resources have a lot of potential to provide information about words, including corpus driven teaching materials and interactive/multimedia glosses for reading, which according to the Chen (2011) article, aid reading comprehension and vocabulary learning.  One thing I felt was missing from the discussion on vocab was MALL-friendly flashcard resources.  Loucky (2012) did mention some web resources for flashcards, but I am thinking more of mobile apps like Anki which allow for customizable decks of flashcards and can incorporate some multimedia.

Despite these potential benefits, I feel CALL resources do present some problems.  Grabe's implications involve creating a strong reading curriculum.  This can be hard to do with CALL because more often than not, in my experience, reading material on the web that is topically/audience appropriate for adults is of an advanced reading level.  This makes it difficult to easily find suitable passages for intermediate and lower learners if they are adults (for children, on the other hand, it's quite easy- there are numerous kindergarten and elementary aimed web reading resources).  For vocabulary, CALL obviously has some very strong tools for providing definitions and translations, but I worry about a lack of direction when students leave the classroom leading to overly depending on translation or dictionary tools.

Overall, I remain optimistic about CALL in reading and vocabulary instruction.  I look forward to more principled and varied collections of reading resources appropriate for adults and a greater focus within the field of CALL to MALL vocabulary learning resources, which really let students cash in on commutes and small waits here and there (Anki made my subway rides in Seoul a lot more productive!).