Revisiting Computer-Assisted Language Teaching: What Else Do Tertiary-Level EFL Teachers Need to Know?

Computer-assisted language teaching (CALT) is widely used in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) at the tertiary level. As illustrated by existing research, the value of CALT lies in its leveraging of technological affordances (e.g., multimodal resources or interactive spaces) to motivate students' interest in learning. However, beyond the technological level, CALT tends to treat language (i.e., vocabulary and grammar) separately from content (i.e., the meaning of a discourse). This means that to further improve CALT in the EFL context, students' understanding of the relationship between language and content, which contributes to their success in literacy activities, must be fostered pedagogically. Thus, this paper introduces systemic functional linguistics and argues for its use as a complementary tool for improving students' engagement in CALT. It also offers recommended practices for teachers in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]