ENSINO E APRENDIZAGEM DE INGLÊS

COMO LÍNGUA ESTRANGEIRA

THE TEACHING OF THE ENGLISH

LANGUAGE AND THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES

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Olá!
Ao final desta aula, você será capaz de:

Analyze and understand the role of the new technologies in the teaching of English as a foreign language;

Understand that there is a collaborative process in the learning of a foreign language.

Introdução

There has been a great evolution of communication technologies, accompanying transformations in everyday

communicative activity, and pedagogical possibilities to support learning and teaching in second and foreign

language settings. That’s what we are going to see in this class.

1 What's the importance of the technology in second

language teaching?
It is rare to find a language class that does not use some form of technology. In recent years, technology has been

used to both assist and enhance language learning.

Teachers at K-16 levels have incorporated various forms of technology to support their teaching, engage

students in the learning process, provide authentic examples of the target culture, and connect their classrooms

in the U.S. to classrooms in other countries where the target language is spoken.

Further, some technology tools enable teachers to differentiate instruction and adapt classroom activities and

homework assignments, thus enhancing the language learning experience.

Distance learning programs can enable language educators to expand language-learning opportunities to all

students, regardless of where they live, the human and material resources available to them, or their language

background and needs.

In sum, technology continues to grow in importance as a tool to assist teachers of foreign languagesin facilitating

and mediating language learning for their students.

While technology can play an important role in supporting and enhancing language learning, the effectiveness of

any technological tool depends on the knowledge and expertise of the qualified language teacher who manages

and facilitates the language learning environment.

In some cases, however, school and university administrators have permitted technology to drive the language

curriculum and have even used it to replace certified language teachers.

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Language technology companies have made unsubstantiated claims about their products' abilities to help

students learn languages, thus confusing administrators into thinking that these technologies can be an effective

cost-cutting measure.

There is currently no definitive research to indicate that students will acquire a second language effectively

through technology without interaction with and guidance from a qualified language teacher.

2 How do teachers face the use of technology in the

classrooms?
Foreign language (FL) teachers have always been ahead of the curve in integrating technology in FL instruction

and learning, seeing the benefits of technology even without an extant research database to confirm their

judgment.

The number of computer applications, communications technologies, and sheer volume of offerings on the

Internet has grown at an amazing rate over the past 15 years, and many FL educators, heeding instinct, common

sense, and anecdotal information, have embraced these new technologies as useful instructional tools.

There is, however, a small but increasingly vocal cadre of second language acquisition (SLA) researchers who

question whether the use of new technologies in language instruction furthers second language acquisition

(Chapelle, 1997; Cubillos, 1998; Ervin, 1993; Garrett, 1991).

Researchers lament the lack of sufficient empirical evidence to support this general belief (Burston, 1996;

Salaberry, 1996) and have attempted to collect such evidence through literature reviews and calls for principled

and theoretically based studies (Chapelle, 1997; Liu, Moore, Graham, & Lee, 2002; Warschauer, 1997; Zhao,

1996).

What are the theories of SLA which support the research about technology in the second language

learning classrooms?

While there are several competing theories of SLA*, much of the research supports an interactionist position,

underscoring the concomitant effects of the external linguistic environment and internal individual learner

variables on language acquisition

(Ellis, 1994; Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991).

The tenets of comprehensible input, intake, output, negotiation of meaning, and attention to both form and

meaning are posited to have an impact on a learner’s inter-language progression.

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Socio-cultural perspectives on language learning, as influenced by the work of Vygotsky (Lantolf & Appel, 1994;

Warschauer, 1997), provide a complementary position that considers language learners in direct relation to

their social and cultural surroundings and condition.

*SLA: Second language acquisition.

This theoretical background — reflecting both interactionist and socio-cultural perspectives on second language

acquisition — will frame the discussion in this lesson.

While a broad range of technologies may support teaching, this lesson will examine those technologies involved

in computer and Internet use for purposes of FL instruction and learning and will use the term CALL (computer-

assisted language learning) to include “the search for and study of applications of the computer in language

teaching and learning” (Levy, 1997).

3 What are the problems with research about the use of

technology?
• Lack of consensus

Researchers have yet to come to agreement on just what promotes and what hinders Sta.

Much of the technology research base is centered on the investigation of computer use that facilitates or

promotes those things that we believe aid language acquisition (e.g., interaction, target language input

and output, acculturation, motivation) rather than on the measurement of outcomes.

Therefore, much of the research base deals with analysis of learner discourse, self-report data, and

qualitative surveys on affective reactions to technology use.

Whether or not a causal relationship exists between these variables and learning outcomes or even if

they are relevant influences remains a matter of speculation by researchers.

• Limited population of subjects

Most research on SLA and technology use has been carried out using subject populations at the college

level.

Very little research in this area has been done at the K 12 level, but this is where most language

instruction takes place in the United States.

• Mixed methodologies

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 Some studies are qualitative while others are quantitative. Many analyses combine an array of studies,

including some that are purely experimental and others that employ descriptive statistics.

Mixed methodologies and heavy reliance on self-report data present additional difficulties in

categorizing and generalizing across studies.

• Impact of the technology medium

Many studies fail to take into consideration or control for the potential negative effects of computer use

in terms of inexperience or aversion, such as for students with limited word processing skills.

Potential short-term "false positive" or inflationary results stemming from the sheer novelty of computer

use for normally mundane but necessary language learning tasks are often overlooked as well.

There is also some evidence that CALL represents a different mode or form of communication than that

occurring without computer technology. The resulting data from these studies should be analyzed with

that in mind.

To learn what the research indicates, click here: http://estaciodocente.webaula.com.br/cursos/gon450/docs

/a08_t06.pdf

4 How is the skill of listening conducted?

Very few studies concentrate specifically on the skill of listening. Clearly one benefit of CALL in this area is the

increased access to target language input presented in a variety of ways.

The multimedia capabilities of CALL enable learners to engage in a complex listening experience, complete with

visual cues from the interlocutor.

The greatest advantage touted in research on listening and CALL is that the multimedia nature of the activities

addresses the use of different modalities, thus appealing to a wider variety of learning styles (see Liu et al, 2002).

5 What about speaking and reading skills?

Few studies focus on speaking, though speech recognition software has been explored as a possible aid to

language learning.

The general consensus is that, while this software shows promise for future research, it is not yet sufficiently

developed or reliable to justify its use in FL studies (see Liu et al, 2002).

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As for studies on the use of CALL to improve reading skills, the primary emphases have been the use of glosses

and vocabulary acquisition.

In both areas, students using computer technologies to assist in comprehending reading passages and

identifying vocabulary outperformed control groups of students who did not have this assistance available or

chose not to use it (see Cubillos, 1998; Liu et al, 2002).

6 What’s the role of language teachers?

The role of the language teacher/technologist is changing dramatically due to the convergence of internal and

external forces that dictate how new technologies can be used for language learning in an institution.

These forces include, but are not limited to, the following:
• The fact that social software and collaborative technologies hold extraordinary potential for language
teaching and learning;
• The reality that there are specific, user-centric technologies that are now a normative means for our
students to communicate, collaborate, and play with their peers;
• The acknowledgement that there are security-oriented institutional constraints imposed upon
technologies for teaching and learning in most academic settings that may limit the scope and the range
of any technology used for teaching;
• The analysis of the way in which we teach language and promote cultural literacy in the foreign
language classroom.
To know one of the biggest problems of educators nowadays, click here:

http://estaciodocente.webaula.com.br/cursos/gon450/docs/a08_t09.pdf

7 What do social software tools challenge?

Social software tools challenge the language teacher/technologist to examine critically the current pedagogical

practices for language teaching. Social software, by its very nature, is about creating communities and

connections.

These tools require that we question how we teach and what we teach by challenging our beliefs about the value

of teacher-centric, classroom-centric learning versus student-centric out-of-class learning.

By adopting these tools and the teaching philosophies they promote, a disjunction is created within many of our

institutions between the task of maintaining a secure, closed IT network and our duty to remain current and

conversant in the tools that are being developed by others and for an open and ever-expanding community of

learners.

Click here and go deeper in the subject: http://estaciodocente.webaula.com.br/cursos/gon450/docs/a08_t10.pdf

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8 How are the students failing?
Our language students are not only falling short in language and cultural literacies, but are falling behind in other

areas as well. In a recent American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U)* report, business

professionals were polled about recent college graduates who had just entered the workforce.

The conclusion from this survey was that institutions of higher learning are producing graduates who can be

employed, and that these are very capable individuals.

* American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U): https://www.aacu.org

However, according to this study, these same individuals do not necessarily have the skills to be promoted.

Our students leave our schools unable to critically evaluate and synthesize complicated information and without

sufficient real-world experiences to prepare them for the messiness of the world after college.

9 What do students really need?

To know a language means that one has proficiency in the reading, writing, speaking, and listening

comprehension of that language. Each proficiency is a separate skill set and is something that can always be

improved.

Furthermore, affinities for each skill set vary between learners. Where one learner may excel at reading in the

target language, another learner may have an innate gift for speaking the language.

One’s ability to achieve proficiency can be affected by one’s learning style. As a result, language teachers have

developed multiple means of presenting information to accommodate different learning styles in order to enable

students to become proficient in the four skill sets.

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Learning a second language is not just a skill set that is acquired through the persistence of practice, it involves

complex social interactions, that engage the identities of the foreign language learners in ways that have always

received very little attention by second language acquisition researchers (Norton Pierce 1995).

How much time do students need to be proficient in a second language?

Alice Omaggio Hadley’s research reminds us that it takes approximately 720 contact hours to achieve a minimal

level of proficiency in a second language, provided that the language learned has a similar structure to that of our

native language (Omaggio Hadley 1993).

Add to this fact the realization that in a typical classroom of twenty students, meeting three times a week for one

hour each meeting, each student will have, on average, two minutes of direct contact time with the language.

A quick calculation reveals that achieving a minimal level of proficiency requires more time than our formal

classroom environment can provide, and that the goal of fluency via The Academy is, at best, a pipe dream.

10 Which tools can be used by educators and students?

Social software such as blogs and wikis and even Voice-over-IP tools like Skype® can help educators and

students in two ways.

Click here: http://estaciodocente.webaula.com.br/cursos/gon450/docs/a08_t13.pdf

First, they can augment needed contact time with the language and allow students a means to continue to

connect with the language outside of the classroom.

Second, these tools offer our students the possibility of authentic, dynamic contact with native speakers, and

therefore the challenge of putting that which is learned in the classroom to the test in a context that mirrors, but

does not duplicate, the real world, the real culture, the reality that awaits them outside of The Academy.

11 Can students learn a language in isolation?

Students cannot learn a language in isolation and they need opportunities for interacting, making and correcting

their mistakes, communicating within a community that is supportive, engaging, and encouraging.

If a community is created and nurtured within the face-to-face classroom, then blogs can reinforce that

community and the learning it creates outside of the classroom.

We can learn without effort if we are interested in what we are doing (or what someone else is doing), free from

confusion, and given assistance when we seek it.

[…] You learn in communities of people who do what you are expected to learn

(Smith, 1998).

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For security and privacy reasons, or because of mandates from the institutions, many teachers chose to use blogs

behind a password and only with the members of the class.

I would argue that practices such as these, while prudent, dramatically limit the teaching and learning potential

that blogs can offer the foreign language curriculum.

What follows here are examples of how students in my classes have carefully, conscientiously, and effectively

used blogs to communicate with the outside world, and in turn, have enriched not only their own learning, but

also the learning of their classmates, their teacher, and their correspondents, in the process.

Blogs can be structured in whatever way suits the content of the class being taught.

For my Spanish class, I chose to have a “mother blog” called el blog central that would serve as the opening page

for the class and off of which my students’ blogs would be linked via a “blogroll”.

Their blogs, which could be shaped and constructed to their liking, also have blogrolls that would link back to el

blog central as well as their classmates’ blogs:

The first blog post is always the most difficult to create, but soon students realized that the more they wrote (or

recorded, since audio and video could be embedded into the posts) the easier the process became but also how

quickly previous posts sank into the recesses of the blog (blog posts appear in reverse chronological order, the

most recent post appearing on top, the oldest post appearing at the bottom or on a previous page).

As a language teacher, I appreciated the longitudinal nature of the tool. The blogs became a ribbon-like portfolio

of the students’ work, one post after another, each building in length and complexity as time passed.

In fact, the amount and the quality of writing that my students produced over the course of a semester was

remarkable, especially when one considers that this wasa conversation course and their posts were not

individually graded.

Equally remarkable was the length and the quality of the comments that my students received from the outside

world.

The objective for using a blog in the conversation class is to have students write, to keep writing, to feel

encouraged to write more. I chose to use blogs for two reasons.

First, because of my belief that the more a student writes in the second language (L2), the more quickly that

student will develop proficiency in the language.

Second, research is starting to demonstrate that there is a carry-over effect from informal online writing to

speaking skills.

Researchers are now focusing on how participating in online writing activities can helps student develop oral

proficiency (Payne & Whitney 2002).

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12 What about errors?
My students were encouraged to write and self correct, or ask for guidance before posting to their blogs.

However I did not correct nor grade their writing once it was posted.

This practice may seem outrageous and even blasphemous to some language teachers.

Is that not our job as teachers? Won’t those errors fossilize if not corrected on the spot?

My response to these concerns is that I consider my students’ errors in the context of the conversation that is

evolving within the blog.

Are the errors so serious such that they obscure meaning? If so, or if a post begs clarification, what might be the

most effective and encouraging way to help the student address those errors and yet keep writing, keep creating

in the language?

Just as we might do in the classroom, asking questions that model the correct grammatical form in a comment to

a student’s post allows a less stressful means of improving language but all the while continuing the

conversation.

The language that our students create via individual posts should not be judged as discrete, staccato moments.

Blogs, when used effectively for language study, should be seen as a portfolio, a collection of thoughts, or posts,

that grow and deepen in complexity and intensity over time.

A final word about errors: we need to remind ourselves that even native speakers make errors in their own

language, as do we in our own language. Blogs allow us to see language created in all of its forms, the perfect, the

imperfect, the bold, and the weird.

Saiba mais
Read these articles:
• Using Technology to Enhance Teaching & Learning. Available at <https://www.
smu.edu/Provost/CTE/Resources/Technology>. Access at Apr. 17th, 2014.
• Teaching with technology. Available at <https://www.asha.org/FileNotFound.
aspx?aspxerrorpath=/academic/teaching-technology/>. Access at Apr. 17th,
2014.

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O que vem na próxima aula
Na próxima aula, você vai estudar:
• The sign-making processes or semiosis which poses that a learning context is constituted of physical,
social and symbolic opportunities for meaning making;
• Language and language learning are primarily concentrated in Secondness to begin with.

CONCLUSÃO
Nesta aula, você:
• Analyze and understand the role of the new technologies in the teaching of English as a foreign language;
• Understand that there is a collaborative process in the learning of a foreign language.

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