Although I always give credit to how technology has enhanced teaching and learning activities, I still don't know the exact how to start designing a lesson from scratch-- can using technology save me from lesson planning and student assessment? How these would be enhanced by technology? I think I have found the answers in chapter 4.
The role of a teacher has shifted from a speaker to a facilitator, and accordingly teachers seem to do more job before the class than during -- to make the content well covered and intriguing, and make the learning engaging and active. Technology has enormously expended our teaching resources: simply put a keyword in the searching bar, comes out a huge web. However, we cannot just copy and paste and then throw them to students -- we learn how to re-create and re-define the already available and working resources to meet our own students' needs.
I took the assessment course last semester, in which we were asked to evaluate the reliability and validity of state second language achievement or replacement tests. Most problems discussed in our class was that standard tests are always given as one-size-fits-all solution, and not to be formative. Therefore, it is imperative for teachers to integrate multiple assessment resources and differentiated strategies to generate a complete picture of student performance. In China, the situation is much worse. As I mentioned in the previous blog, China so far has become the largest English spoken country in the world, and English has been a compulsory course over a decade;however, even now, speaking test of English is not emphasized as much as written test in school, and even to the point that speaking test doesn't matter in many cases, which has caused an embarrassing "mute English" phenomena. As technology has become more affordable and handy, I think we can make a change -- as the example I mentioned before, students practice their English skills via social media.
We are not forced to use technology, instead, we use technology where the technology is due. We are learning from our experiences and also from our students. If we keep learning new things and discovering new ways, we will be avant-garde teachers.
Questions:
1. How would you incorporate technology into teaching a language?
2. What's the downside of using Duolingo, Rosetta Stone or other equivalents?
While I love Rosetta Stone, I do think that language immersion in-person with people who can speak or are also learning a new language is ideal. When I used Rosetta Stone, I found myself sitting at my desk alone talking to the screen. Not only is that unhealthy but it's just an example of our lives in this digital/social media age. We "talk" to screens not real people that you can reach out and touch.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your second question, I don't think anything can replace the experience of interacting with another speaker of a foreign language. Sure, there may be a few laughs and episodes of embarrassment, but you can practice and continually learn from your mistakes. Also, during my experience in Korea I was able to learn customs and courtesies along with picking up Hangul.
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