TEACHING ENGLISH IN CYBERSPACE

There is much excitement surrounding the potential for using computers in ELT. The computer age has happened so quickly and use is on the increase, but how exactly do teachers deal with it? Are teachers being forced to use computers just to demonstrate to their students that they can keep up with the technology or do computers have genuine pedagogical benefits? Why are many teachers still apparently reluctant to use computers - because of unfamiliarity with the technology or because they are unsure what methodology to apply? Are computers empowering learners to such an extent that, in the future schools will have to respond dynamically to the demands of the distance learner and abandon the constraints of traditional course-book driven courses, or will computers never really challenge the social nature of classroom learning? These questions and many more need to be thought about very carefully at a time of massive technological change.

WHERE WE ARE NOW

This depends on where we are! In some places we are moving towards every classroom having at least one computer. Indeed, we are moving towards students being issued with their own personal laptops. If we are in others, we may have a vast array of computers available in the school computer laboratory. Unfortunately this might remain the protected domain of the science subjects. In some schools the head teacher may have a second hand 486 if s/he is lucky. In others we may be working towards English-specific computer suites. At the top end of the market we may have a set of 'Classroom 2000s' each containing between eight and twelve networked and internet connected computers inlaid into table tops. In such settings the teacher will also, of course, have the room wired up to a digital projector, providing an electronic alternative to the whiteboard.

WHAT'S AVAILABLE?

Floppy disk software has virtually disappeared. This has left three basic media: The CD ROM, The Internet and standard applications.

CD ROMs

· Content-Based CD ROMs aimed at a native speaker audience. By these I mean software such as Microsoft Encarta, and Cinemania.

· CD ROMs for developing English as a foreign or second language. These include:

· Reference materials: For example, The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, and The Longman Interactive Dictionary,

· Discrete item grammar, vocabulary and text building tasks such as The Longman Grammar ROM and WIDA Software.

· Young Learners CD ROMs: These tend to be the most imaginative, colourful and engaging. They tend to be based on restrict lexis, and sometimes, the case of the Hommerton College / Vektor Starter, Movers, Flyers series, limited grammar points.

· A growing number of textbooks such as the Macmillan Heinemann Reward material,

· ESP oriented material such as The University of Wolverhampton / Phillips Business English CD ROM

· Exam Practice, Many companies are now developing materials for FCE, IELTS and TOEFL.

The Internet.

· Content websites. These are similar to content-based CD ROMs but cover and infinitely wider range of topics.

· English language umbrella sites. These refer users to other sites of interest for English teaching. The most famous of these are the Dave Sperling site and TESL/L, both of which carry their own language activity web-pages. This, is in fact, the next category.

· Language games and activity sites. These provide gap fill and crossword type activities for learners to use independently. They usually provide rather minimal feedback to users.

· Teacher resource sites: Certain sites, such as the Reuters site, publish downloadable lesson plans complete with materials which teachers then use in the conventional classroom.

· Distance learning sites / Virtual language schools: These may be a hint at the future. You pay with a credit card for access to services available on their site, such as an online tutor to whom you can email work and possible even engage in real-time video conferencing. There are very few of these available in ELT currently. The Bell Educational Trust is currently engaged in a major project to provide both free language learning activities and access to more sophisticated chargeable services.

· Email projects and internet simulations: Many teachers are setting up projects with schools on the opposite side of the globe to encourage students' writing skills. Video conferencing whereby 'video-pals' are able to look at, and speak to each other may be an eventual extension of this.

Standard applications:

These include the kinds of programme we use for typing, calculating, giving presentations and making websites:

· Microsoft Office: There are now many innovative ways of using the word processor (e.g. MS Word) and presentation software (e.g. PowerPoint) in the classroom, both by teachers and by learners.

· Web editors: These have great potential for helping students to design projects and publish them in the WWW.

WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS?

For teachers …

· Teacher confidence: Many teachers lack confidence in the computer room. Students sometimes pick this up and may use it to challenge their teacher's authority.

· A lack of methodology: Many teachers continue to seem unsure how to exploit CALL and how to integrate it into the wider syllabus. There tends to be an over-emphasis on activity and an under-emphasis on language input and analysis in the computer room. Students are seen to jump through hoops finding out 'this and that' by clicking 'here and there' with little attention paid to the language encountered or the skills required. Thus, they may sometime be justified in feeling short-changed if after an hour in the computer room all they have done is browsed a few websites to find information about a hero, or clicked around on a CD ROM and filled in a few gaps. It is as important for a teacher to have clear aims in a computer lesson as it is in a conventional lesson.

· Media overload: Some authors are calling for a back-to-basics movements in ELT: organic communication. Others suggest that our teaching was more effective when we had fewer technological buttons to press.

· Reconciling computer time with teacher time: If a student has limited exposure to timetabled English lessons, say four and a half hours a week, it seems unreasonable to expect students to accept that one and half hours of the week take place in the computer room. This is particularly poignant in private schools where adult learners are acutely aware that they are paying for a teacher to be with them and not a machine.

For learners…

· Learner perceptions of computers: Learners think (often correctly) that they know more than the teacher about computers and thus may disregard the teacher’s instructions, preferring to find their own way around the computer. As a result, they sometimes end up distracted and led up an infinite number of garden paths, often to web sites of their first language. Learners need to trained to realise that knowing more than their teachers about computers does not mean they know more than their teachers about English.

For the technology …

· Technical infrastructure: Networking in many schools remains fragile. As a result systems still frequently slow and sometimes crash, leaving teachers embarrassed at a loss as to what to do next in the computer room. Many CD Roms are not networkable and are thus restricted to stand-alone machines. To take advantage of the internets' audio and video facilities, files have to be temporarily downloaded onto the school's network. Because these files are comparatively big, the network cabling soon becomes log-jammed.

· Quality of products: Many CALL based CD ROMs and websites have been driven by the technology that created them rather than by sound pedagogical principles. The result is often second rate teaching materials which are marketed in inappropriate contexts and with little accompanying methodological support.

For education administrators …

IT has arrived and developed so quickly that it has left ELT management and administration floundering for a statement of IT-based ELT principles and a strategy of implementation. This has crystallised into a number of visible difficulties:

· Co-ordination inside organisations: There are often conflicts between the academic and administrative needs of schools. This leads to misunderstandings about ownership of the facilities and frustrates pedagogical innovations in CALL.

· Management Perceptions: The internet and CD ROMs are rightly perceived as useful tools for self-access. However, when self-access is interpreted as a cheap replacement for teachers, pedagogical standards are threatened. Management needs to be educated in the place of self-access in mainstream teaching and the role of computers in self-access.

· Cost: Schools find it too expensive to keep up with developments. Furthermore, an IT development entails maintenance and co-ordination. This implies the need for extra, specialised staff.

· Speed of change: A school may introduce a brand new bank of computers. However, because the equipment goes out of date so quickly, students who were initially pleased with it quickly become frustrated. A computer facility that was once a marketable asset, quickly becomes a liability.

· Ethical issues: The ability for students to download inappropriate material onto school networks continues to be a growing problem.

WHAT THE GOOD POINTS ARE

· Computers are tools to assist independent learning and research skills: This is probably the most obvious advantage of computers in ELT. Students can take advantage of the internet for on-line language learning activities or for researching topics for projects. However, even in this area there is still a role for the teacher. This is because learners still need to be taught how to retrieve information effectively and how to organise their study time. Computers will not erode the need for learner training. Surprisingly, CALL methodology has paid little attention to this area of skills development.

· Computers are a major medium for international communication: International business increasingly uses computers to communicate in English. Teachers can also make use of the same technological tools to provide learners with language practice. Computers are thus an ideal way for approximating authentic communication, relevant to students' future work, through setting up email projects and simulations.

· Authenticity: The internet now provides ELT with an immediate source of active English which itself likely to have more credibility than coursebook texts.

· Variety: A New Teaching Tool: Despite acknowledging the cautions articulated by the 'back-to-basics' proponents, we have recognise that the technology is here, part of the real world, and part of our students' experience. We cannot turn a blind eye to it, just as we did not turn a blind eye when the video arrived in the late 1970s. In my opinion, the more media we use, the wider we spread the net and the more learning styles we 'catch'.

· The internet is 'up-to-the-minute': Coursebooks are unable to change to accommodate new issues and topics of interest. The internet can do this.

· Computers are tools for empowerment: Many of the poorest families in developing countries seem to have televisions. By extension, it is likely that computers will soon be available to them. As a result such people will have access to knowledge in a way that that have never had before.

· Computers are generating new English or new uses of old words: Here are one or two examples of now common metalanguage: download, interface, scroll, browse. In addition, the linguistic style of websites is often rather clipped and sensationalistic, similar to newspapers. As we are in the business of teaching English, it seems logical that we present this new English through the context which is producing it.

· Computers are motivating - at the moment: Most students seem to like using computers. For example, investigating famous personalities on the web seems to get a more enthusiastic reaction than doing the same through book-based project work. This may be because at the moment computers retain a novelty value. The more students work with computers, the less this will be the case. In the future students will only accept the use of computers in timetabled taught time, if teachers have clear aims and intended learning outcomes.

· Computers enable students to be creative: This is particularly apparent in project work. Website creation is soon going to become as easy as printing out a class magazine, with the added bonus of integrating design skills and skills in logical organisation of information.

· Computer provide teachers with a source of information: This may come in the form of up-to-date news articles, clipart pictures for visual aids or downloadable lesson plans.

· Computers are a gateway to 'true multimedia': In theory, a teacher could have one pair of students working on an audio extract, another pair on a downloaded video clip, and another pair reading an article on a related topic - all in the same room.

What should we be doing?

A starting point…

We firstly need to identify what we want to use computers for. If we want to use them in class time, then we have to consider how we exploit them. If we want our students to use them for independent learning, we have to consider our role in the learner training process. The most immediate need teachers have is probably how to exploit computers in class time. The solution is, paradoxically, one of 'back-to-basics'.

· Inform the learners: Teachers need to put learners in the picture. This means the first part of any computer lesson should include a pep-talk. In the talk teachers could admit that possibly their students know more than them. However, they should also make it clear that the lesson is about English and not computers and that as far as English is concerned, the teacher - and not the students - is the expert. In addition teachers should explain the aims of the lesson and specifically mention the language they want the their students to practise. It is also useful for teachers to point out what the end product will be, so the learners can see the lesson has a concrete pedagogic purpose.

· Clarify aims: Teachers should establish aims and learning outcomes for their students. In a Web lesson, teachers will firstly need to identify what kind of English language learning web site texts promote. This will, of course, vary from site to site. Here are some aims I have for one web-lesson I frequently use:

· To present and practise conjunctions for contrast

· To provide practice in scanning skills for specific information

· To provide practise in controlled web browsing

· To provide practice in writing simple comparative descriptions

· Devise a logical lesson structure: Below is a generative structure common to most lessons I have used with websites or content based CD ROMs:

· Pre tasks: These can be language based (e.g. eliciting / analysing a necessary grammar point or pre-teaching vocabulary), or prediction based (e.g. an exercise such as What you know, What you think you know, What you'd like to know, about a famous personality). Pre-tasks are not focussed on the computers. Students might even work on them in a 'low-tech' classroom. A suitable pre-task might even be found in your class's coursebook. Hence, we have a clue here as to how to integrate the subsequent computer lesson with the main syllabus.

· Directed browsing tasks: This is a 'rehearsal' around the CD ROM or the website. It's purpose is to train the students in manipulating the material you want them to work with. If you don't iron out any 'scrolling' or 'clicking difficulties' at this stage, the difficulties may undermine what you do in the next stage.

· Skill-based tasks: This is where the students begin to do the 'real work'. For example, they listen or read for gist or for detail. Although students are using the computers, the activities they do need not be sedentary. Movement through reading races or changing computers is a very useful trick - even in the computer room.

· Response: This stage (along with possibly the pre-task stage) is where the interaction occurs. It might be a role play. It might be, say, to find out which country researched on the computer has the best weather today; and then to write a set of sentences which practise superlatives. It might be a writing task.

· Manage the computer room effectively:

· Make sure your computer room is designed so that it can promote both solitary work on the computer, interaction, and solitary work away from the computer. The best way to achieve this is to have a centralised table with the computers around the edge of the room.

· Be absolutely insistent on getting students' attention. Rotating chairs are useful for this. If necessary draw students away from the computers before you give the next instruction.

· Restrict the time in front of the screen. Students are unlikely to be able to concentrate on one-screen based task for longer than fifteen minutes.

· Vary the dynamic of the computer room: At one time get students to actually use a pen and paper, at another have them working on screen, then get them to find a partner, then get them to work on the computer in pairs, then get them to run around.

· Calculate the timing of your computer lesson and try to stick to it.

And then a jump into cyberspace …

We have to recognise that as well as the potential computers have for providing on-screen / on-line text, as illustrated above, they are also likely to turn into powerful textual telephones. Now is the time for teachers to start thinking of ways to exploit computers for practising authentic international communication, through, say computer based simulations and email projects. Rubrics for such learning activities remain vague and dependent too much on the technology at present. However, as language teachers we have an obligations to come up with a methodology for such tasks.

Back to the future

Many of the above suggestions are a matter of common sense. They are things that the teacher learns do through conventional classroom teaching. I hope to have shown that they are just as applicable to high-tech teaching. But I can already sense the scepticism. And I hope I can empathise. For some contexts, it will be very difficult to acquire masses of high-tech facilities. Nevertheless, the pedagogical principles outlined above are generative to even the most basic computer room. The more significant issue is the extent to which governments and education administrators, in whichever context, is able and willing to devote time and energy to developing policies and strategies which make it easier for teachers to apply these principles.