Presentation at EUROCALL 96: Conference of the European Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning

Going places: travel software as an authentic resource in school foreign language computing

Abstract: Taped and printed target-language realia are now routinely integrated into most areas and levels of foreign language classroom practice. Far rarer, particularly in lower secondary education, is foreign language learners' exposure to electronic resources originally developed for mother-tongue computer usage in countries where the target language is the medium of intercourse. Neglect persists despite on-disc and on-line availability of authentic databases and other non-CALLware, whose information-rich features, textual constraints, subject-matter, language and sophistication match the prior learning of this age-group of inexperienced linguists but seasoned users of educational and industry-standard applications. Few British Germanists or Hispanists, alas, have ever accessed Bildschirmtext or Ibertex, two of Europe's score of national public interactive videotex systems celebrating the continent's cultural diversity.

This paper considers how travel software of German provenance relating to destinations, transport and accommodation may be reviewed and didaktisiert as a contribution to school foreign language informatics. A suite of computer programs, including a railway timetable, a camp-site and leisure-park locator, a hotel guide and a tourist information viewdatabase, has been compiled to investigate compatibility with the learners' linguistic knowledge and communicative competence and to attempt a typology of authentic interactive texts in the interests of replication. The tasks devised to accompany this material should generate not only on-screen responses but also conversation and penmanship.

Beyond CALL's "New Horizons" may lie an enchanted realm of polyglot edutainment boasting the latest multimedia, multisensory, virtual-reality technology. Most teachers, and many learners, of foreign languages might settle for more pronounced cis-Atlantic cultural markers in professional software development, e.g. clipart discarding cheerleaders' pom-poms for Schultüten; fonts including continental handwriting styles; pan-European standard character sets allowing a mix of English, German and Hungarian in Microsoft Word. Perhaps authentic software will do to foreign language computing what authentic texts have done to foreign language reading.