This week, we talked about terms like "digital native", "digital immigrant", and "net generation", as well as the changes coming along to second language classrooms. Besides those mentioned in class, I could still think of many more changes like roles of teachers and students, the types of collaborative assignment students could now finish more easily after class, and students' perception towards textbooks and what is in them. In retrospect, in the late twentieth century when I started to learn a foreign language, with such limited access to authentic language material, we were told to take every single word in a textbook seriously and to believe what was in it was what had been using in real life. However, now with the Internet and other new technologies as well as the development of digital corpora, students are no longer easily "fooled" by any poorly compiled textbook. Therefore, what material to be used in language classrooms might be the first decision language teachers should make before they could move ahead towards: how it could be used.
3 comments:
Hi Rong,
Before the internet existed, people used to travel long distances to experience authentic language learning. In this scenario, money, time and effort needed to be taken into consideration. For some potential language learners, the costs of travel made this option unfeasible. The internet, on the other hand, makes the sort of authentic learning that used to only exist through travel available to people from their homes. Skype, Tango, and Second Life, for example, can engage language learners from all over the world.
Hi Rong,
I agree with you about the choice of material in language classrooms. When I was learning French in grade school, the only materials that were used were those specifically created for pedagogical textbooks. With the wide range of information now available online and the ease of use, there is no reason not to include examples of natural language, spoken by native speakers, within the classroom. If the pedagogical materials lack authentic discourse, then how are language learners expected to interact with and integrate into an actual authentic language environment? I completely agree with you that teachers need to reflect on the type of language presented in the classroom before and also during discussions on incorporating technology.
Rong,
I agree with your last comment that materials and contents using technology is carefully selected with clear objective and purpose and it is teacher who make affects and navigates students learning process using technology. It is very important to have sufficient knowledge about technology and its effectiveness on specific language pedagogy. Even though we are open to vast choice of technology which is free and accessible, without clear objectives what we want our students to learn with such technology and the way it would be introduced to students’ language learning process, its original intention and usefulness will not be integrated into our class.
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