Over the past few years, the Internet has emerged as a prominent new technology. The influence of such a powerful technological tool has pervaded all aspects of the educational, business, and economic sectors of our world. Regardless of one's familiarity with the Internet, it is repeatedly made reference to. News broadcasters and commercials, for example, will now provide web addresses, and even the recent movie, "The Net" was sparked by the impact of this new technology (Mike, 1996). Regardless of whether one uses the Internet or not, one must be clear about the fact that the we have entered a new information age and the Internet is here to stay.Technology and foreign language education are no stranger to one another. In the sixties and seventies, language laboratories were being installed in numerous educational settings. The traditional language laboratory was comprised of a series of booths, each providing a cassette deck, and accompanying microphone and headphone. Teachers monitored their students' interactions by using a central control panel. The basic premise behind this technology was that if verbal behavior was modeled, and then reinforced, students would quickly learn the language in question. The language lab activities were therefore grounded in a stimulus-response behavior pattern. The more drill practice the students encountered, the faster they would learn the second language. While the language laboratory was a positive step in linking technology and language education, it was soon recognized that such activities were both tedious and boring for learners. Furthermore, the amount of student-teacher interaction was minimal, and individualized instruction was irrelevant. Besides the pedagogical deficiencies, the audio equipment was cumbersome and prone to breakdown, and had only one function-to disseminate auditory input. These factors put together led to a shift to the communicative approach to second language education, namely, computer assisted language learning.
No comments:
Post a Comment