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1.
Introduction
While the very names television and language laboratory sound almost quaint alongside multimedia, smartboard and broadband as tools for language teaching and learning, research and assessment, they have come through the last forty years or so surprisingly well, to the extent that in their present forms (digital, relatively cheap, relatively reliable) they look set to add value to foreign language learning and teaching for another forty years.
What makes a state-of-the-art review appropriate at this time is the fact that we have been experiencing a revolution in digital technology since the late 1990s with the steady convergence of television, language laboratory (henceforth LL) and computer technology, creating opportunities which are as exciting and as full of potential for language teachers and learners as anything seen in the 1960s for LLs in the 1980s for television and video.
The starting point for this review is around 1999 since two major changes to television and LL technology occurred in the late 1990s. Firstly, at this time, television broadcasters began to use digital technology to transmit their programmes and DVD became a viable mass medium. Secondly, the general introduction of broadband and greatly increased power of computers speeded up the development of acceptable quality sound and vision transfer via computer, making the fully networked, full-function multimedia LL a possibility. Subsequent developments have steadily increased the quality, reliability and functionality of computer-based LLs.
Inevitably, prominence has been given to some key areas of research, while a number of topics which might have seemed obvious, such as distance learning, are barely represented, as so few articles deal with broadcast or video media. Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is only included when a study is described in which video is heavily involved or is in a LL setting.
1.1
The use of technology in teaching in the 2000s
As Bush (2000) says, until DVD, interactive videodisc had not really caught on in spite of its early promise from the 1970s. DVD was commercially ready from about 1997 and from 2000 it became the standard for feature film releases, steadily replacing VHS as DVD players became cheap and widely available in Asia, Europe and America. Bush describes an authoring project which exploits DVD technology...