A brief history of CALL

2.1 CALL in the 1950s and 1960s

Only available at university campus research facilities

The high cost of these early machines and demands upon them for
pure research meant that time allocated for teaching and learning
was limited

Time and funds being made available for language research

• Due to : Miltary and politic
2.1.1 PLATO
Programmed Logic/Learning for Automated Teaching Operations

Developed in 1959 by the University of Illinois working with a

business partner, Control Data Corporation (for a summary, see
Merrill et al., 1996)

Much of PLATO’s first-language learning work was done in teaching

Russian using a grammar translation approach.
 Focus on : translation of Russian documents, grammar
explanations, vocabulary drills and other drills and translation
tests.
Features :
• The system had so-called ‘intelligent’
• rudimentary spelling and grammar-checkers