A Review of Technology Integration in ELT: From CALL to MALL

This is an attempt to give a bird’s-eye view of ways in which ELT has been reconciled with technology. It succinctly chronicles a series of common technological tools, applications, and approaches, starting from the excitement offered by CALL which predated MALL and its associated allies. It shows how ELT has shaped up under the auspices of modern information and communication technology (ICT) which has driven a transformation from traditional teacher-centered and text-bound classrooms into student-centered and interactive paradigms. The paper argues that despite this refinement, technology per se is not a recipe for success in learning and teaching English as a foreign or second language (L2). Technology integration into L2 pedagogy relatively lacks a solid theoretical framework; it requires reconciliation between theory and practice which is an ongoing debate. The paper concludes with a contention that the onus is on pedagogues to innovatively re-appropriate accessible ICTs and make informed choices that best fit the particularity of their teaching situations