While random-access audio is affordable and usable today, the same is not true of interactive video. Significant experimentation with optical video-discs in language learning has occurred during the 1980s, most notably at Brigham Young University where a Spanish program called Montevidisco was developed (Schneider & Bennion, 1983), but the costs remain prohibitive. Consequently, the potential of a learning system which provides random access to computer text, motion picture sequences, still frames, dual audio track, and student voice-activated cassette recorder, while ideally suited to CALL, will remain severely limited.

Until the cost of purchasing appropriate hardware and developing interactive videodisc materials drops considerably, this medium will remain experimental, without general application in different language learning environments. Unfortunately, computer-controlled videotape machines are not really a temporary solution, even if they are used in isolated cases (see Little & Davis, 1986 for an example). Unlike material on cassette recorders, material on videotape cannot be randomly accessed and hence cannot facilitate branching routines.

Computer-Managed Instruction Applications

Testing applications (cited above), which examined the possible general uses of CMI in a distance education setting, merit particular attention from educators who are engaged in second language teaching at a distance. Currently discussion is limited to summative evaluation, since formative testing ought rightfully to be classified as a CALL rather than a CMI activity.

Given the availability of adequate hardware, computer-assisted tests can be devised to evaluate skills in listening and understanding, reading and understanding, writing, and even speaking. There are of course limits to the functions that a computer and its peripherally controlled equipment can perform, but the combination of a microcomputer (text presentation, multiple choice, true/false, clozing, parsing) and a randomly controlled audio device does enable significant summative testing to occur. To date, however, references to computerized testing applications in second language instruction at a distance have been limited, as in Zetterstein's (1986) case, to computerized marking of student answer sheets. Pusack (1984) and Wyatt (1984) have, however, drawn attention to actual and possible applications of the kind that we are envisaging here in more traditional learning environments.

In summative evaluation, the emphasis is of necessity placed on assessing a student's knowledge rather than on facilitating further knowledge acquisition. It follows that testing of this kind can occur either prior to a student's enrolling in a particular course or during the enrollment period. In the first case, the assessment can serve either as a diagnostic/placement test or as a challenge examination. The one seeks to determine the level or course which it is appropriate for a student to enrol in; the other, in institutions whose academic regulations permit this, tests the student's prior knowledge and decides whether or not, on the basis of previously acquired knowledge, a student can be given credit for a particular course without enrolling in it. On the other hand, summative evaluation within a course primarily tests to determine how much of the material and how many of the concepts presented in a course have been understood and mastered by a student. Both these kinds of summative testing provide particular problems for language instruction at a distance, problems which computer applications can help to resolve.