الخميس، 9 ديسمبر 2010

An introduction to the first lecture

Basically the course focuses on training future teachers to use technology in teaching English as foreign language to make it more productive.
  Before looking into the use of technology in our classrooms, it is worthy to look for theories that directly affected teaching English in EFL classes. 40 years ago teachers shifted from teaching grammatical structures to the communicative ability, since they teach language for a purpose of communication. Culture has received emphasize, negotiation of meaning takes place, comprehensible input is provided, authentic texts are taught and spoken and written forms are distinguished. These significant changes in language education led teachers to think of computer as tool in teaching language.

   CALL (computer assisted language learning) it involves the use of computer connected to one another. In my opinion these kind of technologies allow students to drill, play educational games, go for tests and so on. Simply, it allows the teacher to access to the Internet and starts communicating with students either individually or in groups. This is computer mediated communication which appears recently and can be something useful if the teacher plans careful before allowing students to go through. But at the same time those who can't access regularly to computer will not get the same chance to participate in collaborative learning.

*    Before moving the next point, it will be better to think of answers to this question "Does the use of computer in language teaching led to better language learning?? I would only provide one answer since I didn't share this blog with my colleagues till they would share answers. I think that computer is like other educational tools used in teaching since we were students, e.g. blackboard, tape recorder, markers, etc. So the usefulness of computer depends on the nature of students, their level of motivation,  the classroom setting, type of language taught, and so on. This is a personal opinion that might be right or wrong.

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