| Representing
the future of life in the information society, multimedia is a new
technology arising in recent years. Therefore it has duly become
the focus of the world computer industry. Instruction through the
assistance of computer (CAI) is a process, which applies special
functions of the computer to education through interaction between
man and machine to facilitate effective learning and teaching. CAI
research, exploration and application are an inevitable outcome
as well as demand of the development of information society. CAI
in China has undergone several stages. Since the 1990s CAI has been
attracting more attention from educational institutions, academic
circles, publishing industry and other related companies, (especially
the education administration.) Through workshops, academic meeting
and publication, the State Education commission campaigned for the
CAL, encouraging teachers to apply computer technology to their
teaching, and promoting cooperation between CAL experts and college
teachers in research, exploration and promotion of CAL. It is observed
that these different stages feature extensive government planning
and funding, broader cooperation with researchers of various disciplines,
faster development led by institutions of higher learning and research
projects of high starting point and up to date.
English
Teachers Employing the Internet in China
In China now most English teachers have their own computes in offices
or at home. They can operate them very skillfully. In order to collect
much information and make their teaching more efficiently and vividly,
they are on the Internet. They know a visit to the Internet will
show amazing technology and a fascinating storehouse of information.
They also realize the wealth of creativity and culture on the Internet,
which makes it the ultimate teaching tool for language teachers.
They search the Web for what they need and they can keep up with
their local, regional or international teachers associations because
more and more teaching organizations are joining the on-line community
every day. The “net” provides ample resources for projects
and research activities. Since e-mail is “low-tech”
in terms of the Internet and does not require vast technological
know-how or expense, it is still the favorite electronic teaching
tool of language teachers, but it is far from being the only resource
on the Internet. Joining e-mal discussion forums for teachers will
quickly point new “netters” in the direction of finding
and using the other resources, such as the World Wide Web area of
the Net. English teachers at many universities and colleges are
provided with access to the Internet by their school because the
Internet is an indispensable teaching tool for language. In fact,
the Internet is becoming essential as an educational tool in China.
This is really a great tool and the English teachers have been able
to bring their students an abundance of authentic language relevant
to their needs. For English language teachers, much of the Internet
is an opportunity for “authentic language” interaction
and learning, and it is both a window to the future and a mirror
of our present. The Chinese teachers fulfill students’ expectation
by using computers as teaching aids and that can be done even in
some rural areas, where computers are still relatively rare in the
teaching process. The computers can be a partner for the learner
to play educational games with, or it can be used to generate examples,
to illustrate certain operations, or to stimulate conversations.
The following is a portion of a teacher’s e-mail message describing
lessons she has learned using the internet Technology: We have often
underestimated the ways in which introducing the internet into the
classroom could complicate our lives, whether through ill-timed
malfunctions, steeper than anticipated learning curves, or rethinking
our roles to include internet know-how transfer. In addition, we
have often miscalculated the affective impact of the technology
on our students. Often we are so keen on using all the technology
resources we have that we plan “high-end” projects that
automatically exclude many potential partners.
Learning
in the ELT Classroom
In this area, experience has been a good teacher for those who have
paid attention. As a teacher noted recently, “ … I tend
to spend more time on learner training in class making sure students
understand the purpose of an activity, what they need to do, etc.
and afterwards eliciting what has been learned and dealing with
any problems, then summarizing individual learning so that it becomes
the collective property of the other students.” On those occasions
when we have tried to fit the Internet into existing lesson plans
without adjusting and adapting along the way, the old and the new
tend to rub and push against each other like the two sides of a
geologic fault. Isn’t it great to be able to share ideas like
that with teachers from around the world! Some of the English teachers
in China are members of TESL-L. They can participate in discussion
like this and can also be able to find all the files that are available
from the archives by sending another message to the web site.
Academic publications are another tremendous resources of the online
community. Most Chinese teachers find listing of paper publications
that they can subscribe to( in the traditional sense of the word
“subscribe”). But many professional journals and newsletters
also offer selections from their latest issue over the Web, so they
can get some materials they want from the web site. Meanwhile they
can use online publications to research a topic. For example if
someone is thinking of signing up for a course on Social-Linguistic
Programming he can turn his computer on and connect to the Web and
search for the articles on Social-Linguistics. In this way teachers
can get latest information about their research and they overcome
the difficulties that they are lacking of reference books. It is
the most important role of the Internet in teachers’ development.
The most of the Chinese teachers, whether they are old and young,
are refreshing themselves by using the internet especially the English
teachers for they understand English, they learn to control the
computers quickly, and they can understand the directions of the
programming instructions very well. Thus they have made much progress
in language teaching and they have introduced much advanced experience
from foreign countries. Recently the teachers’ and students’
ability of using English has been raised highly. And the English
teaching methodology has been greatly improved in China.
Using
Electronic Resources for Teaching
Computers and related electronic resources have come to play a central
role in education, especially in English teaching. Most of the Chinese
English teachers have had considerable experience with the Internet.
They make use of it for much of their academic work. Many of them
are accustomed to using e-mail as a normal form of communication.
They find electronic resources valuable and have benefited from
these resources as well, by employing a series of useful tools.
We stress the word “useful” because electronic resources
complement, but seldom replace, more conventional teaching techniques.
Electronic tools can make classes more efficient; lectures more
compelling, informative, and varied; reading assignments more extensive,
interesting, and accessible; discussions more free ranging and challenging
and students’ papers more original and well researched. Only
the teachers can judge if these techniques advance their own teaching
goals.
As Alan Brinkley said in his article the following are the five
promising uses of new technology in China now. All of these techniques
demand an investment of time if they are to succeed, and their willingness
to use them should be balanced carefully against other teaching
priorities. But for each technique, there are both simple and complex
ways of proceeding, teachers should try to make clear the respective
advantages and disadvantages. The five ways in which teachers consider
using electronic resources involve tasks that they usually have
to perform in any case. New technologies can help teachers perform
them better and more easily (The Chicago Handbook for Teachers
http://www.pree.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/o75125.html).
1.
Administration
The routine administration of courses including advertising a class,
providing copies of the syllabus, assigning discussion sections,
and getting out course news, can be more efficiently with a course
home page, electronic discussion groups, and e-mail lists. These
tools can also dramatically improve the continuity and the community
aspects of courses, helping students to engage with and learn from
each other and even from people outside the course.
2.
Reading/Sources
The Web and CD-ROMs provide a wider variety of secondary and primary
sources (including visual and audio sources) than has previously
been available. With teachers’ guidance, students can now
gain access to materials that were once accessible only to experts
because they were cumbersome to reproduce for classroom use or too
expensive for students to buy. By taking their own paths through
these sources, students can bring their own evidence and arguments
into lectures and discussion sections, as well as write on a wider
range of research topics.
3.
Papers and Presentations
Rather than performing assignments and taking exams from the teacher
alone, students can perform more independent exercises in publishing,
exhibit building, or assembling and presenting teaching units and
other material for their peers. A web archive of several terms’
work can make the course itself ongoing and collaborative intellectual
construction.
4.
Lectures
A computer with presentation software can provide a single tool
for augmenting lectures with outlines, slide even video clips. In
addition to printing them as handouts teachers can save in-class
presentations in a web-compatible format for later review and discussion.
5.
Discussion
Electronic discussion tools such as e-mail, conferencing software,
and on-line that services can seed discussion questions before the
class meets, draw out the shy students on the reading between classes.
For courses without face-to-face discussion sections, these tools
can bring the course to life over great distances and help overcome
scheduling difficulties.
Using
E-mail in the ELF Class
Almost as soon as we start to use the Internet, it becomes clear
that electronic mail that is e-mail is one of the greatest language
teaching materials ever created. E-mail allows all of us communicate
quickly and inexpensively over long distance without obstacles such
as time zone differences, the time lag of ordinary mail, or the
long –distance telephone charges for faxes. Therefore teachers
and students can actually use the language to communicate each other
or with real people about the issues that interest them. Electronic
mail can thus supply the ultimate “contextualized” practice.
Students and teachers can also use the speed simplicity, and low-cost
of e-mail to work in teams on joint projects with other classes.
Letter writing and reading can be a very successful and motivating
communicative activity. This is an electronic means of communication
used by people all over the world. In the last few years e-mail
has been used in education in general, and in EFL classes in particular.
It presents an alternate and innovative version to the old pen-pal
programs. The e-mail program has several advantages over regular
pen-pal program. One advantage of using e-mail is that the students
acquire the skill of word processing if they are not familiar with
it yet, and get plenty of practice if they are. Because e-mail is
quicker than regular mail, and if used properly can be motivating
simply through the technical innovativeness of the idea. On the
whole, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages, and an e-mail
pen-pal project can become a very worthwhile and rewarding activity.
The
Process of Using E-mail
If there is a multi-media computer lab in universities or in schools
teachers can have their classes in it. It is very easy for the teacher
to check the contents that the students are writing and to organize
the activity well. At the very beginning the teacher first finds
another teacher in a foreign country who is interesting in exchanging
ideas with others. This can be easily through various educational
networks available on the Internet. Once the initial contact is
made, the correspondence begins. The students in one school can
write letters to the students in the other school. The teacher collects
these letters and e-mail to the other teacher, who gives them to
his or her students to answer. Then she or he collects the letters
written by his or her students and sends back to the first teacher,
or ask his students to answer any letter he or she received. This
project can be done in one of two ways. The first one is a personal
one-on-one communication, where one student from one class corresponds
with one student from the other class. The alternative is to send
all the letters to other class, where they are read by all students,
and answers are written to a different student each time or to the
entire group. Each of these alternatives has its advantages and
disadvantages, but both are feasible methods of using e-mail in
the EFL class.
The personal communication version has the advantage of being just
that – being personal. If good rapport is established between
two students and two teachers, this can be the most exciting thing
in the world. If however, something wrong with these two students,
the whole project fails or he or she can establish another relationship.
Also there is such possibility that some students in the class will
not receive their letters while others will, which can cause disappointment
and frustration. However they can share with others’ e-mails.
The second version of e-mail letter writing attempts to overcome
these problems. As each student corresponds with a student of her
or his choice, or with the whole group, frustration is avoided and
motivation raised. Another advantage is that each student reads
many letters instead of one, which makes for a large quantity of
authentic reading practice. To date, there is no conclusive evidence
as to which alternative produces better results. It is up to the
individual teacher to choose freely according to the situations
in her or his class. Certainly she or he must choose the one that
seems most suitable to his or her class.
There are two more issues that need to be addressed regarding the
use of e-mail in the EFL classroom. The first one concerns correction
of the letters. The teacher may choose only those errors that hinder
communication, or to make the students correct all their errors
each other before sending the letters. The correction policy should
be chosen according to the class in question and to the teachers’
aims in using this technique. Whatever policy is used, the word
processor will prove to be a tremendously useful tool. By writing
and reading letters students can enlarge their knowledge and practice
their grammar and review what they learnt before. On the whole it
does them good. Of course, this kind of activity cannot be organized
more, only once a week. The other issue is the availability of computers.
Most schools do not have enough computers for all the students to
work with at one time. Being a language teacher, one must encourage
his students to practice more both at home or in class Some teachers
may ask students to write letters at home if they do not have enough
computers available in school or if they don’t have enough
time in class. Most teachers have trouble getting their students
to leave the computer lab, which means that they are really engaged
in their activities because the web not only provides content, it
provides motivation.
In conclusion, the rapid development of information technology has
made the reform on educational teaching inevitable. It will cause
structural changes in the teaching system and patterns as well as
in the teaching media and methodology. The Internet, including the
Web, is still a primitive version of our future in electronic communications.
For English language teachers, much of the Internet is an opportunity
for authentic language interaction and learning, and it both a window
to the future and a mirror of our present. It is indescribable.
Let’s enjoy using it and develop it.
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