MALL shouldn’t just be used because it is fun. It should aid the process of language acquisition. You can ask yourself, about any use of MALL “Which of the following processes (all part of how adults acquire language) does this use of MALL accomplish”?
- enhancing forms in the input to aid noticing
- helping input become intake
- helping learners “notice the gap” (how what the learner would say differs from how more expert speakers would say it)
- helping learners “notice the hole” (what the learner realizes they cannot yet express)
- helping learners parse and process what they hear/read (make correct form-meaning mappings)
- negotiating meaning (via reformulation, circumlocution, questioning)
- negotiating form (via feedback, recasts, corrections, prompts)
- providing the learners with negative evidence (what is not possible in a language)
- making input comprehensible (to facilitate form-meaning mappings)
- deepening the encounters with new words or structures (by involving more senses, requiring more actions, providing more repetition)
- moving activities into a learner’s zone of proximal development (providing just enough assistance that the learner can accomplish a task without the help of others)
- pushing output (leading learners to produce more complicated language than they usually would)
- giving a learner a sense of progress (by recording and charting growth)
- increasing a learner’s motivation (so that they will seek out, pay attention to, and process more input in the future)
- Replacing a human expert to help learners move towards self regulation
- developing procedural knowledge
