ABSTRACT
The proliferation of computer use in foreign and second language education over the last decade has brought with it an expansion of research into the area of computer-assisted language learning (CALL). During this time the field of CALL has witnessed the application of constructs from the interactionist approach to second language acquisition (SLA) pioneered by Susan M. Gass to explorations of the nature of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Likewise, a growing number of theoretically-driven explorations of SLA have been informed by findings from CALL and CMC. This nexus is not without its potential difficulties, however, as a wholesale application of SLA theory to CALL inquiry can be problematic (Chapelle, 1997). One extremely valuable line of SLA/CALL inquiry, however, is research that attempts to uncover which aspects of SLA theory can be most successfully applied to CALL research while simultaneously employing CALL in testing notions of current SLA theory. For example, there has been considerable attention paid recently in the CALL/CMC literature to the facility of CMC to amplify the role of negotiated interaction in focusing learners’ attention on formal aspects of the linguistic input and output. Text-based chat has been suggested as a good venue for SLA inquiry since it seems to provide an increase in processing time and opportunity for learners to focus on form (Pellettieri, 1999; Shehadeh, 2001; Smith, 2004), which may lead to a heightened potential for noticing one’s own errors. Many argue that the printed text may also add to the salience of input and output in general and the noticing of nontargetlike input and output in particular (Izumi, 2003; Salaberry, 2000; Sanz, 1997; Smith, 2004). Smith has also argued that a heightened saliency of linguistic input and output is a favorable byproduct of the CMC interface, with increased saliency due largely to the permanence of the written message.
