¶ … Internet in Elementary ESL/EFL Classroom
Thanks to the technology, both teachers and students would find their learning sessions in class more enjoyable and more challenging than before. The Internet gives important experiences both for students and teachers, where they could advance their learning process very rapidly through the dynamic medium.
At the first place, Marco (2002) said, the using of Internet as a new medium with content-based approach in ESL and EFL classroom would:
Increase students' motivation and participation, give students more time to interact with language and content area, improve their reading and writing skills in meaningful contexts, and expose students to self-paced autonomous, learner controlled learning, rather than teacher controlled."
There are a lot of options to create classroom activities that include the using of web and e-mails. For elementary students in ESL and EFL classroom, it would give a breakthrough where not only they can learn English as a language, but that would be their first time visual and kinesthetic exploration about English and the subjects and cultures where the language is used.
Using E-mail and Web-based Activities in Class
Sela (1997) encouraged e-mail activities for EFL students. This method should apply to any level of students all over the world since e-mail reaches multiple community and nationalities.
E-mail offers a new way of learning, which students would mostly like. Compared to conventional mode, which takes time to apply postages and put them through post offices, e-mail would provide speedy, inexpensive, and eye-catching materials. When attempting the e-mail technique to teach EFL classroom, Sela remarked how students enjoy learning on first-hand experience, writing to other friends in other countries, which would write them back directly. They would enjoy reading about other cultures as well as telling learning about their own cultures to people from different nationalities. It is like the classical way of pen-pal activities, only e-mail goes faster; therefore students may expect the reply shortly afterwards.
Using e-mail might give a good training for students who "are not familiar with word processing." Some elementary level students enjoy learning how to type. With more time spent in front of personal computers, they would realize what they could do more than just to type. Soon after they master this activity, teacher may proceed them to use wider range of web-based activities.
With the Internet, they also get enough exposure to enjoyable channels. Many web-based e-mail providers right now offer variety in e-mail performance; therefore students can learn sending letters as well as enjoying beautiful pictures and dynamic animation.
One method that Sela (1997) had tried was having teacher-to-teacher collaboration with colleagues in other countries through the courtesy of educational web sites. Teacher can offer the students to write letters and send them to other students from other class in a different community, within the e-group they join. Even young learners would experience a lot from using e-mails. They would learn reading and writing within the topic and friends of their interest.
Ellinger (2001) explained, teacher could give students "different element of choice." In reading class, students may choose different topics of reading on their own preferences, to ensure their broader acceptability and motivation to explore the topic. They may go into different process, by group and individual exploration. As they become familiar with it, this activity "increased autonomy in choosing individual sites and reading passages," or focused learning.
The Technology Drawback
Surprisingly, although students seem very enthusiastic to find themselves before the computers, many of them literally are not ready to use the computer, yet touch the Internet. Ellinger, et. al. (2001) remarked that although many students in their researched country in Israel possessed personal computers at their homes, they did not intensively make use of them and simply exploited them for gaming and simple typing functions.
For elementary learners, this problem may advance even higher. Although people encourage young learners to use computers at home for games and other educational use, the percentage of this
This article is of value to the present research for its identification of some critical research promoting the integration of vocabulary acquisition strategies into more traditional modes of language development instruction. Laufer, B. & Rozovski-Roitblat, B. (2011). Incidental vocabulary acquisition: The effects of task type, word occurrence and their combination. Language Teaching Research, 15(4), 391-411 This article by Laufer & Rozovski-Roitblat (2011) adds to the recurrent discussion -- often featuring contributions
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