Students nowadays use foreign language purposefully in their online world by themselves because they are interested to participate with foreign online friends without any requirement from a language teacher. So what we are teaching in the classroom seems to contradict to students’ real life need. We often ask them to write 5 paragraph essays or conventional business letters email to practice the language or using some CMC features-- but they don’t feel motivated to do so because asynchronous mode is regarded as formal communication. ---Are we teaching what they really want according to their real-life language need or their future career?
Young people want to develop personal relationship in the online world so they prefer chat or IM to email or web board.
Thorne has made me think about how Thai teacher would use CMC in a language classroom. As he puts that there is different cultures-of-use of computer technologies (Thorne, 2003). The contradictions of using CMC in a formal classroom and the real-life communication should be examined within the broader socio-cultural contexts. ---
Therefore, I am digging the notion of activity theory again -- hoping to gain some insight to the typical use of technology in an EFL context. I hope that this activity theory and intercultural contact mediated by technology would be the ground for the analysis of Thai teachers’ beliefs and knowledge about IT in the EFL classroom.
3 comments:
I agree with Professor Thorne in the respect that with the need in computer games and communication with online friends, students would pay more attention in learning language.
But, the language they use online purposefully is often gramatically incorrect. They barely need absoultely correct one. In contrast, in the test, the bussiness letter, the resume, or in any standard English you name it is very formal.
It seems to me that the theory would be appropriate to students at certain ages or levels (beginners, intermediate, or advanced). It might suit the begginers. However, I don't know what would happen if the teachers let students learn what they really want. Are they getting used to the language that is in fact incorrect gramatically?
And, are they still using it in the intermediate or advanced level.
Dear Anonymous,
Were you at the talk? Well- it's a very interesting talk and at the end he concluded that accuracy is still important for foreign language learners. May be we use this strategy at the beginning at the FL learning to motivate them and develop intrinsic motivation and then focus on accuracy later after they gain some confidence in using the FL.
I'm an EFl teacher based in Barcelona and I'm currently working on a wiki space (http://kylemawer.wikispaces.com/) containing a resource of games, methodology and walkthroughs I've adapted to use in the English language learning classroom. I am very keen to hear of how others are using games (and which games) in their classrooms.
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