Use In Language Teaching Research Articles

Exploring the Challenges of Technology in Language Teaching in the Aftermath of the Pandemic

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been varied, and while there was a clear upsurge in the use of technology in language and learning contexts during the worst lockdown periods, the long-term impact on technology usage remains to be seen. As has been widely noted, lockdowns forced teaching into remote modes, making technology indispensable. Many teachers found themselves struggling to use technologies with little or no experience or training, and often in spite of earlier resistance to using it. The affective barriers to using technology may have decreased somewhat, but other potential problems have arisen as well. There has generally been a narrow view about the effectiveness of technology use in language teaching and learning. During the pandemic, teaching often entailed using videoconferencing tools as a means of emulating face-to-face teaching, albeit inhibited by the limitations and the affordances of the technologies. While research into mobile learning prospered prior to the pandemic, long periods of lockdown saw them being used as little more than a backup for when other technologies experienced technical difficulties. In this paper, we discuss not only the often-cited positive effects of technology usage in language learning during COVID, but also the possible negative implications for how technology has come to be used and viewed by learners, teachers, and administrators. Suggestions for a potential way forward in this ‘aftermath’ of the pandemic are discussed, along with some guidelines for making the most of what we have learned about using technology for language learning in the future.

Challenges of Using Information and Communication Technology in Teaching English in Nepal

Nepal government has initiated the policy of integrating Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at school level education with the hope of empowering quality in education by enhancing teachers’ and students’ knowledge, confidence and skills in ICT use. In this scenario, this study aimed to investigate the challenges in implementing ICTs in language education from teachers’ perspectives. For this objective, sequential explanatory mixed method research design was used. Questionnaire, interview and observation were the tools used for data collection from 40 purposively selected secondary level English teachers. Quantitative data were analyzed statistically while qualitative information was analyzed textually. Both the results were integrated and interpreted in discussion. The findings exhibited that teacher and policy-related obstacles were the significant challenges than institution/school-related ones. The findings indicate that teachers are in need of immediate training on ICT use in language teaching to enhance their professionalism in ICTs and adequate ICT policy should be implemented to achieve optimum opportunities and reduce the challenges.

Hidden impacts and stereotypes of technology in language learning

This is a short reflective piece consisting of two parts. The first relates to the connection between society, technology and language learning and the second highlights a stereotype of the language teaching profession which is hidden and somewhat problematic especially in the context of technology use in language teaching.

Self-Efficacy Perceptions of Instructors Who Teach Turkish as a Foreign Language on Web 2.0 Rapid Content Development for Educational Purposes

This study aims to examine the self-efficacy of instructors who teach Turkish as a foreign language for educational Web 2.0 rapid content development in terms of various variables. The study consists of 155 instructors who teach Turkish in various institutions. This study, which was designed according to the scanning model, is descriptive field research. The scale developed by Birişçi, Kul, Aksu, Akaslan, and Çelik (2018) was used to determine the self-efficacy of the trainers for Web 2.0 rapid content development for educational purposes. Analysis results indicated no significant differences between the variables of gender, technology use in language teaching before COVID-19, the continuation of distance Turkish teaching after COVID-19, and self-efficacy. A significant difference was detected between the education level of the study group, their experience in the field, distance education experience before Covid-19, and their self-efficacy for Web 2.0 rapid content development. The Covid-19 process raised important awareness in terms of teaching Turkish to foreigners remotely. In the information age, it is very important to increase the awareness and experience of teachers who teach Turkish to foreigners remotely about teaching a foreign language with digital tools.

Melting the Content, Pedagogy and Technology in the Same Pot: Insights into EFL Instructors’ TPACK Perceptions in Digital Era

Digital era necessitates not only knowledge of content and teaching methods but also integration of technology in language instruction. Covid-19 pandemic has constituted one of the critical reasons that accelerated the inclusion of digital tools into the teaching practice. Using the technological pedagogical and content knowledge framework, the present study dwelled upon the EFL instructors’ perceived TPACK levels and the probable changes that they experienced in their technological skills and knowledge after pandemic. The EFL instructors working at both state and private universities formed the participants of the study. Based on the mixed research method, the study gathered the data were both quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative data were collected through TPACK-Deep Scale and, open-ended question form was administrated for the qualitative data. The results indicated that EFL instructors had higher perceptions of TPACK, and they had differing levels for each factor level depending on gender, workplace, years of experience and educational status. They also mainly experienced positive changes after pandemic and had favorable attitudes towards technology use in language teaching. Finally, the study suggested pedagogical implications to benefit from technology for instructional purposes.

CALL Teacher Training—Considerations for Low-Resource Environments

The pandemic in 2020 has profoundly impacted millions of people all around the world. We have experienced intense disruption in our daily lives. We have lost loved ones, jobs, motivation, and precious time that could have been used more productively. The pandemic did not distinguish between borders, race, or gender. It affected everyone but not equally, unveiling socioeconomic differences within and across countries in access to robust health care, tolerable working environments, and other basic needs. Inevitably, the pandemic has also disrupted the normal course of the way we teach and learn, especially in English for Foreign Languages (EFL) contexts. Administrators and teachers needed to suddenly reconfigure their in-person classes for online teaching while students had to adjust to this new way of language learning. As Godwin-Jones (2020) envisaged, this widespread switch to distance learning seems likely to be the new normal rather than a one-time occurrence. Considering Hubbard and Levy’s (2006) concern that “both language teachers in training and practicing teachers will find themselves at a disadvantage if they are not adequately proficient in computer-assisted language learning,” it is now even more crucial for language teachers to develop skills, knowledge, and understanding of technology use in language teaching. As Oskoz and Smith (2020) pointed out, this new era in language teaching and learning provides a unique opportunity to investigate the affordances of technology and harmonize these affordances with learner, teacher, and curricular objectives. Thus, taking a fresh look at teacher training for computer-assisted language learning (CALL) in order to see how these affordances can be better implemented, especially in low-resource contexts, seems like a perfect place to start. In this article, we first discuss some critical issues in CALL teacher education. Then we introduce an online CALL teacher education (CTE) course by explaining how these issues have been implemented in designing the course. We conclude by providing practical guidelines on how to design online professional development courses in the language teaching field.

Vertalen in het vreemdetalenonderwijs: Wikipedia als didactisch hulpmiddel?

This article relates to the field of the didactics of foreign language teaching, and presents the results of a preliminary study carried out in order to determine the extent to which Wikipedia can be used as a didactic aid and learning tool in the translation lectures of foreign language teaching in the Master’s degree in Dutch at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (Poland). In view of the free access to this online encyclopedia, on the one hand, and the richness of texts (in Polish and Dutch) with a cultural content on the other, we investigated to what extent Wikipedia translation can be successfully used as a tool in L2 translation classes. The increasing importance of technological tools (such as electronic dictionaries, terminological databases, and machine translation software) for translation and its use in language teaching, on the one hand, and, on the other, the fact that Polish graduates in Dutch philology often work as translators, were the starting point for this research, which was conducted as a preliminary phase (case study) of a more extensive study into the practical application of Wikipedia translation activities in language acquisition classes.

Developing PowerPoint Standards for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language

As we live in a time when standards, frameworks, and benchmarks are becoming increasingly prominent, it makes sense that some sort of teacher technology standards would be desirable. Standards on the state or national levels call for the integrating of multimedia into teaching, but there are not clear guidelines illustrating how integrating a technology into the classroom should be accomplished. Nor is there an evaluation system in place to ensure that teachers possess the multimedia skills and knowledge required in teaching. It is thus important to devise a set of teacher technology standards as a resource for teachers as they attempt to integrate multimedia into their curricula. Therefore, this study provided a set of guidelines and standards for evaluating PowerPoint presentations for use in language teaching to provide more support to language teachers at the institutional level. In this article, four case studies of PowerPoint presentation in Chinese language teaching sample slides are explored to show how the devised standard guidelines and a score assessment system can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a presentation and thus to help language instructors to develop their skills in making PowerPoint Presentations and improving teaching effectiveness. A proposed teacher PowerPoint standards were developed based on the author’s personal experience teaching Chinese using multimedia in classrooms in China, Europe and America will also be shared in this case study.

A systematic analysis of a two-word concgram in Nepalese policy documents: A corpus-driven approach

Corpus linguistics can inform language teaching in various aspects from syllabus designing to creating exercises based on the real use of language. However, its use in language teaching is still rare. In the context of Nepal, though corpus linguistics forms a part of the University Curriculum in English Education, the students are rarely offered a practical experience of corpus analysis. The same is the case with teacher training courses. This paper followed an analytical procedure for identifying phraseological variation within a two-word ‘concgram’ that is a set of co-occurring words. In this paper, a two-word concgram, make/effort, is analyzed to identify concgram configurations, the most frequently used form, and its meaning by using concordance lines. Lastly, the paper presents the implications of corpus analysis in English language teaching.

Information Communication Technologies in Teaching English as a Foreign Language: Analysing EFL Teachers’ TPACK in Czech Elementary Schools

This qualitative study was carried out in five different elementary schools in the Czech Republic. It aimed to investigate how English as Foreign Language teachers developed teaching competence and practised information communication technology integration in classroom teaching. To this end, this study employed the idea of a Technology Pedagogy and Content Knowledge –TPACK -in-Action Model. It advocates a ‘learning by doing’ approach on (social) construction to better understand how teachers develop technological and/or computer-assisted language learning competency for teaching and practice in an English as a Foreign Language environment. Under this model, this study conducted qualitative analysis and found two different approaches in practice, which were categorised as Formal Practice and Functional Practice. The former involved a conservative mechanical practice of technology use in language teaching whereas the latter involved it in terms of (social) construction. According to analyses based on conservative practices, teachers expressed that mechanical TPACK in association with technology in classes limited the transmission of mechanical knowledge from English texts. In Functional Practice, however, teachers drawing upon alternative learning interactions expressed positive transformation results from TPACK, associated with the use of technologies integrated into class instructions as a collaborative tool for learning models. In these latter integrated practices, teachers’ perceptions, practices, and reflections in combining technologies in an English as a Foreign Language environment, as new literacy skills, identified an increase in the learner’s creative potential.

A Tool for Assessing Text Suitability for Greek Language Teaching

Viewing its use in language teaching mainly as a text corpus, this article examines the problem of the assessment of suitability of this material for use in the Greek language course in Cyprus schooling. The suitability of texts for use in language teaching is defined by four parameters, which are described in detail in this article: text readability, content, genre, and grammatical information. The literature review shows the research gap as to the ways of finding on the Web a suitable text for use in language teaching according to specific characteristics. The tool diaKeimenou, which is presented in this article, aims to fill this gap and help the teacher choose the most suitable texts for teaching with reasonable effort and time. The results of the usability evaluation of diaKeimenou are also presented in this article.

Own-language use in language teaching and learning: state of the art

Until recently, the assumption of the language-teaching literature has been that new languages are best taught and learned monolingually, without the use of the students’ own language(s). In recent years, however, this monolingual assumption has been increasingly questioned, and a re-evaluation of teaching that relates the language being taught to the students’ own language has begun. This article surveys the developing English language literature on the role of students’ own language(s) in the language classroom. After clarifying key terms, the paper charts the continuing widespread use of students’ own languages in classrooms around the world and the contemporary academic and societal trends which have led to a revival of support for this. It then explores key arguments which underpin this revival, and reviews a range of empirical studies which examine the extent and functions of own-language use within language classrooms. Next, the article examines the support for own-language use that a range of theoretical frameworks provide, including psycholinguistic and cognitive approaches, general learning theory and sociocultural approaches. Having explored the notion of ‘optimal’ in-class own-language use, the article then reviews research into teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards own-language use. It concludes by examining how a bilingual approach to language teaching and learning might be implemented in practice.

Are ESL/EFL Software Programs Effective for Language Learning?

This study investigated the extent to which ESL/EFL software programs on the market develop language skills. A software evaluation instrument was used to evaluate fifteen ESL/EFL software programs for the technological, pedagogical and individualization features that would account for the incorporation of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) principles and an interactive approach to computer use in language teaching. Results indicated that only three programs incorporated more than 75% of the technological features, four programs incorporated more than 70% of the pedagogical features, and only one program contained more than 70% of the features that allow for individualization of instruction. Overall, only two programs incorporated more than 70% of all analyzed features. The analysis of the programs provided evidence that the differentiating factor in ESL software programs lies not only in their pedagogical orientation, but also in how they incorporate CLT principles and an interactive approach to computer use into their design.

Standing in Dorothy’s Shoes: What Can Language Teachers Learn from Dorothy Heathcote? Part Two: Process Drama and Language Teachers

To explore language teachers’ attitudes to using drama activities, and to determine the level of use and understanding of process drama techniques in language classrooms, a survey was carried out. The results showed a high level of support for the benefits many theorists and researchers have claimed for the use of drama activities in language learning. They also showed that process drama techniques were used to a lesser extent than activities such as warm­up games and scripted role­plays. Following the survey, a workshop was planned, to explore language teachers’ responses to using process drama­based techniques. The workshop was designed to include a number of process drama activities, including Mantle of the Expert, Teacher in Role, Tableau and Improvisation. The feedback from the workshop showed enthusiasm for these techniques, and for their potential use in language teaching.

Own-language use in language teaching and learning

Until recently, the assumption of the language-teaching literature has been that new languages are best taught and learned monolingually, without the use of the students’ own language(s). In recent years, however, this monolingual assumption has been increasingly questioned, and a re-evaluation of teaching that relates the language being taught to the students’ own language has begun. This article surveys the developing English language literature on the role of students’ own language(s) in the language classroom. After clarifying key terms, the paper charts the continuing widespread use of students’ own languages in classrooms around the world and the contemporary academic and societal trends which have led to a revival of support for this. It then explores key arguments which underpin this revival, and reviews a range of empirical studies which examine the extent and functions of own-language use within language classrooms. Next, the article examines the support for own-language use that a range of theoretical frameworks provide, including psycholinguistic and cognitive approaches, general learning theory and sociocultural approaches. Having explored the notion of ‘optimal’ in-class own-language use, the article then reviews research into teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards own-language use. It concludes by examining how a bilingual approach to language teaching and learning might be implemented in practice.

Enhancing Language Teaching and Learning by Keeping Individual Differences in Perspective

Learners differ from each other in many ways particularly in cognitive abilities. These factors eventually affect their learning abilities. Thus teachers should look into learner differences in intelligence before designing a teaching and learning program for them. Gardner proposed a much broader view of the definition of intelligence than a number of other theorists with his theory of multiple intelligences. The important of the idea of multiple intelligences in education lies in the fact that learners vary in their abilities, and thus teachers need to find out the best strategies to use related to their variations, or to develop programs that instruct students in different domains. This paper attempts to provide a brief overview of the eight multiple intelligences connected with Howard Gardner’s theory. The article also suggests some ways for teachers to incorporate the intelligences into their daily lesson planning for practical use in language teaching and learning.

When They Talk About CALL: Discourse in a Required CALL Class

This study investigates preservice teachers' discourse about CALL in a required CALL class which combines theory and practice. Thirty-three students in a Linguistics MA program CALL course were observed over a 10-week quarter. For all of these students, it was their first formal exposure to CALL as a discipline. Communication in the class consisted of student-led in-class discussions, web-based wiki, chat, and discussion fora. All communication during the course was recorded for the purpose of investigating teachers' emerging perceptions of CALL and the role it plays in language teaching and learning. All the preservice teachers were new to CALL and consequently had a lack of awareness of the breadth of the topic. They were initially apprehensive about the notion of CALL. A lack of awareness of the potential for CALL and negative experiences with poorly designed technology accounted for much of this apprehension. There was also an overwhelming sense that CALL threatened the teacher in myriad ways. Competent with technology for personal purposes, these teachers did not easily transfer skills to CALL contexts. When faced with the opportunity to discuss CALL in depth they began to appreciate the potential for technology use in language teaching. However, they expressed sustained concern over a potential loss of control over the teaching environment and students. Suggestions for cultivating a student-centered CALL classroom address these concerns.

New competencies in a new era? Examining the impact of a teacher training project

AbstractThis article describes follow-up research aimed at exploring the long-term impact on participants of a teacher training course that integrated a variety of projects focusing on ICT use in language teaching. Internet in education is often promoted for its features that allow for new opportunities for constructivist approaches in the classroom. Nevertheless, this will not simply happen on its own. Teacher education must help shift students teachers’ pedagogical premise toward approaches that promote autonomous learning and collaborative problem-solving. Teacher training can highlight how this can be supported through ICT.The article chronicles the first year following the closure of a teacher-training project, paying particular attention to current practices and perspectives of the primary and secondary education teachers involved. Data were gathered through questionnaires and semi-structured e-mail interviews, along with field notes and ongoing observation of participants’ current teaching environments in order to generate material for triangulation and contextual understanding of the data. The analysis of whether the project described herein has contributed to reducing the gap between the theoretical framework of teaching competences in telecollaboration and its transferral to teaching praxis is significant for future input on other training programmes.

Using Technology in Language Teaching and Listening Comprehension

Previous arguments concerning the influence of technology onlearning have proposed that it is either the medium that influenceslearning or it is the instructional design applied to a particularmedium that enhances knowledge acquisition (Oark 1983; Kozma1991). Absent from both perspectives is the role of the teacher andhowheorshemustunderstandandmanagenotonlythetechnologyand the instructional materials used, but must also be cognizant ofother instructional components necessary for the effective use oftechnology. This paperreemphasizes the status of the teacher as thecentral decision-maker of technology use in language teaching, orin this instance, media-basedlisteningcomprehension. Previousresearch and recent results of a qualitative study on the" mismanagement"of listening comprehension technology support andreflect how a teacher's combined knowledge of students' preferencesand needs, sound pedagogical and theoretical strategies, andthe media and materials used can influence language learningthrough media-based activities.

Modern Trends in the Teaching of German

IN THE summer of 1946 I had the opportunity of working under Charles C. Fries in the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan in an experiment in which I, who know no Chinese, along with a few other teachers, undertook to teach English to an intelligent Chinese man, who had studied English grammar for six years in China but could neither speak the language nor understand it. This may seem amusing but, unfortunately, I am constantly aware that this same situation too often exists in respect to our American students studying a foreign language in our colleges and universities. After eight weeks of intensive training, my Chinese student was capable of handling almost any situation in English. Naturally, after that experience, I wondered if some similar training might be given in German, or any other foreign language, with similar results. The only feasible means of getting this information seemed to be to send out a questionnaire, although I reallized that the answers received, as well as the questions themselves, might be misleading, and the information would often be affected by the subjective nature of the replies. As the returns came in, many other questions came to mind which perhaps should have been included, and I am sure that this paper is only a beginning and that the subject could well be pursued to advantage. The results of each question asked have been tabulated, but only the figures of greatest interest will be repeated in the body of the paper.' Although my purpose in sending out the questionnaire was to try to discover the trends German teaching was taking today, the replies presented not so much the trends as the problems existing. Only a very few schools are experimenting with new methods and procedures, and later on I will quote some of the men who described their new approaches. The vast majority of schools are following the same patterns that have been in use in language teaching for decades, but most of them have come to realize that their methods are giving rise to some very pressing problems. In a few instances the difficulties seemed local or regional; but it was remarkable, on the whole, how men from all parts of the country voiced the same problems. It is these problems that I would like to present. For most of them I have no solution, except to say that if we all become