Recent Developments in Technology and Language Learning: A Literature Review and Meta-analysis*

The purpose of this study is to assess the potential of technology for improving language education. A review of the effectiveness of past and current practices in the application of information and communication technology(ICT) in language education and the availability as well as capacities of current ICTs was conducted. The review found that existing literature on the effectiveness of technology uses in language education is very limited in four aspects: a) The number of systematic, well-designed empirical evaluative studies of the effects of technology uses in language learning is very small, b) the settings of instruction where the studies were conducted were limited to higher education and adult learners, c) the languages studied were limited to common foreign languages and English as a foreign or second language, and d) the experiments were often short-term and about one or two aspects of language learning (e.g., vocabulary or grammar). However the limited number of available studies shows a pattern of positive effects. They found technology-supported language learning is at least as effective as human teachers, if not more so.