The Importance of ICT in Language Teaching
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is one for the issues that divides the world: the digital divide. Technological progress impacts on our everyday lives with an ever-increasing frequency and effect. How advances in technology might influence teaching and learning must be of special importance to us as language teachers. We need to plan carefully how we respond to these advances, if we don’t just wish to allow ourselves to be swept along unthinkingly in the current of technological innovation. We need to adopt a proactive and informed attitude towards our teaching to make the most effective use of emerging technologies. We need to reflect carefully on our own teaching practices, preferably with the benefit of a conception of teaching and learning well informed by educational research.
In the richer countries, schools can afford, or are supplied with, infrastructure, hardware and software, that develop generations of e-literate students, highly advantaged in the new technology. In the poorer countries, school administrators may be without electricity, let alone sufficient bandwidth, or students with personally-owned laptops.
ICT has the potential to transform learning in and beyond the classroom especially in language teaching. It can also in certain circumstances transcend previous limitations of space and time. Some of the perceived benefits to learners are:
- students can access enormous amounts of information quickly;
- students can work at their own pace;
- special needs, both remedial and extension, can be offered during the same lesson;
- course material can be offered simultaneously in different languages;
- students can access quality material irrespective of their geographical location;
- academic courses can be offered asynchronously;
- students can interact with peers and experts outside the classroom, town, and/or country;
- ICT can offer simulations where the student can experiment by changing the variables;
- ICT offers a host of different tools to demonstrate learning suitable for divergent and different intelligences; and,
- young students have readily accepted the technology.
There are also benefits for teaching, too. While largely dependent on the language teaching methodology employed, these benefits include:
- ICT can, via multimedia, improve the richness of the learning experience especially when they interact with other people from other country it can improve their vocabulary and also their grammar;
- ICT can track a students progress and proficiency at certain skills;
- They allow the teacher to focus on process rather than product;
- Diagnostic tools allow the teacher to identify learning trends and problems; and
- Student work, created electronically, lends itself to Internet publishing and the creation of student portfolio work.
ICT, however, on their own, will not improve learning. Possible pitfalls to the deployment of ICT include:
- the ability of educational systems, curriculum development to keep pace with ICT innovation is problematic;
- the individualized role of the teacher can be diminished where more and more material is offered via a centralized content vendor. There could be a loss of teaching individuality;
- other resources have to be sacrificed because of the enormous monetary expense that ICT necessitates;
- a myriad of technical issues which often seem overwhelming; and,
- teachers are often ignorant of what is available and also how to use the technology they already have. There seems to be too little attention in training teachers on how to best exploit ICT for teaching.
Computer acquisition and implementation in educational institutions must be paired with visionary pedagogical insight. Action plans should be devised as to just how ICTs can enhance teaching and learning. There has been much debate as to what we can realistically expect computer technology to contribute to the learning process. ncreased information access via the Internet will present global challenges of language, commerce, context and integrity. Already, information transfer and the Internet have significant social, financial and political implications. Threats to language, traditions and cultural and value systems as the students assimilate global ways and become global citizens through contact with other cultures using the communication features associated with ICT.
reference:
- Banks, Sandy and Renwick, Lucille. (1997). “Technology Remains Promise, not Panacea Education: Schools have invested heavily, but with little academic results. More teacher training is urged,” Los Angeles Times, Sunday, June 8. (Available online at: www.realworld.org).
- Bennett, F. (1996). ICT as Tutors: Solving the Crisis in Education. (Available online at: www.cris.com).
- Cradler, J. Implementing Technology in Education: Recent Findings from Research and Evaluation Studies. (Available online at: www.wested.org).
- Cuban, Larry. (1997). “High Tech Schools and Low-Tech Teaching,” – Education Week on the Web, 5/21/97. (Available online at: www.edweek.org).
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