Interactionist SLA Theory in CALL Research

Abstract

This statement was reportedly uttered by a salesperson who had been demonstrating interactive educational software to a client. The story goes that several employees of an educational software company were pushing their product using the typical language of educational computing. When one of them admitted not knowing what the language was referring to, the others followed, saying that they did not know either what interactivity really meant. The boss assured them that it didn’t really matter because interactivity means lots of different things to different people. In other words, the quality of the software that they were highlighting and praising did not have any meaning in particular. The story sparked my interest because of the significance of interaction in second language learning and the way in which interaction and interactivity are terms used to express the positive qualities of computer-assisted language learning (CALL). But like the salespeople in the story, would CALL researchers have to admit that they really don’t know what interaction means? When pressed, would they have to say that interaction really could mean just about anything and that they have no idea why interaction is supposed to promote second language acquisition (SLA)?

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