When I was
studying to be an English teacher at the University of Guadalajara, we had a
class where they taught us ways to help student develop their listening skills.
We learnt about the three stages in the tasks to that end: pre-listening,
while-listening and post-listening. However, back at that time, the internet
was not the same as it is nowadays. I remember our teachers using lots of printed
hand-outs (some of them were almost completely discolored) for almost every
activity. Copies were made for every single class and we as trainee teachers had
to make copies for every student in his or her class.
After
reading the articles provided by Sean, having looked at the websites for
pronunciation and speaking, online lesson plans and having created my delicious page, I (once again) realized how
interactive and useful the web and the Computer-Assisted Language Learning
(CALL) can be for teachers as well for learners. This is not only just a matter
of time (students accessing to the exercises at any time), or a matter of space
(students practicing everywhere), in fact, it also implies that using the
internet and CALL involves aspects of interests, reactivity, sense of personal
growth, endless repetitions, authentic material with richer language context...
among others.
Nevertheless,
I cannot go further without saying that not all the activities and resources
that one can find on a webpage are exactly the ones we need (suitable for our
specific context) or that they are methodologically correct (some of them might
even have grammatical errors). It is, therefore, imperative that we have some trustworthy
references (like the articles we are reading) which can be used to examine and
evaluate the online activities and resources. In addition, we have to take into consideration the age of the
students, their level of English, and the type of material on hand before we
use the activity in class ¾an
attractive activity for me might end up being a boring or inappropriate activity
for my students¾. Even thought the interactive web has endless
materials, sites and lesson plans, we have to be academically cautious when
trying something new.
Back in
time (when the internet was naught), the aforementioned learning resources were
not exactly easy to access. One had to go to a library, look for a book, consult
an article or talk to an expert before finally getting the information that was
sought. After going through all this process, we could almost always be sure
that the information was trustworthy. On the contrary, nowadays, information is
fairly easy to access: you just turn your computer on, log in to the internet
and voilà: you have
thousands of pages with lots of information available. What is left up to you
is make sure that the information you got in a second is trustworthy. It is the
same process, but the other way around.
We still
have lots of work to do.
