CALL Pedagogical Training: An Analysis of Online Language Teacher Education

Introduction

This chapter analyzes the issues of online language teacher education in the developing countries in the world including Vietnam to argue in favor of the advantages of deploying the use of technology in the field of language teacher education, which used to be classified as secondary choice, but has somehow become the mainstream of language education when it comes to the discussion of language teacher education in the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the online language teacher education in this chapter deals with the issue of how to exploit the use of computer technology in the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language, which has been significantly advanced during the last decades (Pareja-Lora et al., 2016). The advantages that computer technology has brought to education are huge; thus, language teacher educators and language teachers need to possess the knowledge of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) applications to improve teaching and learning practices.

With the purpose of enabling teachers and learners to identify the benefits of relevant software applications and employ appropriate CALL teaching approaches and proposing some feasible solutions to teaching language classes, the chapter investigates teacher educators and groups of in-service teachers learning to teach English as a foreign language (EFL) in universities in Vietnam when it comes to the solutions to the issues of online teaching and learning in the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the conflation of CALL and online learning is a difficult process. Though they have similarities, they are distinct approaches. CALL is applicable for both online and offline learning with the involvement of technology, while online learning as part of using CALL, in addition to the effective uses of software programs, focuses on the interaction between teachers and learners. The methods used in this study are qualitative with semi-structured interviews and in-depth interviews to find out whether the interactions on the platform of Zoom or similar software programs in terms of learners’ attitudes, perceptions and beliefs are suitable for the teachers’ and learners’ viewpoints in the digital era. The participants consisted of teacher educators and in-service teachers learning online computer-based linguistic and language courses. The findings and the critical analysis indicated the positive and negative aspects of online language teacher education using CALL, and the employment of resources.

In addition, the chapter discusses the issues of language teacher education related to the attitudes and the perceptions and the beliefs of teacher educators and in-service teachers to CALL when they are involved in the process of meeting in online classes (Lai et al., 2016). This reflexes the nature of language education through the analysis of psychological, social and contextual aspects, as the ability of the in-service teachers to master a second or a foreign language is influenced by both their mental competence, their language skills, and their attitudes and perceptions towards the target language in the process of language acquisition. The chapter also discusses the opportunities for in-service teachers to have a critical review of research studies on educational technology regarding the development trends from 2022 onwards, and for in-service teachers to develop their own CALL materials.