We reside in an era of 'technical immersion. Technological innovations have greatly transformed our lives. Individual communication has been designed by new solutions that permeate into every framework of our culture. Today, communication is no more an involuntary action but an essential trait for success in competitive situations. It is not merely an capability but a skill that is required to reach your goals in life. To be able to acquire the skills needed for communication, technology aided learning through progressive techniques could be used in ELT pedagogies.
We reside in an environment of HI-TECH. The technological inventions and improvements have greatly transformed social, political, inexpensive and cultural constructions of our world. Man is inseparable from the messianic gadgets and their exciting comforts. They may have liberated us from physical discomforts, administrative inabilities, intellectual inadequacies, communication spaces, economical restraints, social barriers, moral limitations etc. The machines have motivated just how we think, feel and react. Be it the internet and computer technology, or medical or space systems, our homes, office buildings and classes are filled with digital devices and digital gizmos. Indeed, our modern life is shaped by new systems.
Human communication has been subject to great change from Stone Age group to Industrial trend. With the development of new technology, it has hinged on from modernization to network communication. Today, communication is no more an involuntary take action but an important trait for success in competitive situations. It is not merely an capacity but an art that is required to be successful in life. A fantastic communication skill is the necessity of the moment. It is true a person with a competitive linguistic skill is preferred as opposed to the one with just technical skill in any organization. A prospect with good vocabulary, phrases and manifestation is viewed. A command above the language, especially English, fetches deals in career. Due to globalization, corporates have ventured into outsourcing and international trading that they might need employees with excellent professional demonstration skills. The job market requires applicants with remarkable outputs in conditions of marketing communications skills, such as being attentive, speaking, reading and writing competencies and non-verbal communicative factors. British Language Learning must focus on setting up the learners for 'performance', which requires a considerable work or dependency on the outcome-based teaching and learning. Technology does intervene at this juncture to accelerate a substantial development of communicative skills using its sensational and overpowering assistance.
Technology and British language provide an interdependent relationship as they add significantly to a successful use of one another in today's world. English language promotes the pass on of technology in every recess of the lives, as it's the topmost lingua franca of the world. Globalization has speeded in the get spread around of the terms throughout the world. Technology in the educational scenario is a conglomerate term that identifies the use of systems that depend on computer chips, digital applications, and e-networks. Quite simply, it includes desktop and laptops, electronic devices like Disc players, TV bins, interactive whiteboards, LCD projectors, Mobile devices that use computer potato chips like mobile phones, Personal Digital Assistants [PDAs] and MP3 players.
Technology needs to be incorporated into educating methodologies so that it would help the learners not only to acquire a second terminology effectively but also to develop electronic literacy skills. The 'traditional' methods of ELT are less preferred to computer and technology helped methods in effective ELL classes. Thus, "Teaching our students terms in its traditional media is no more enough. Traditional literacies, such as reading and writing, are actually only a subset of the abilities a learner must develop in order to function effectively. Increasingly, in every day and professional life, people need the skills of electric literacy, such as accessing, analyzing, and utilizing information (Warschauer, Shetzer, & Meloni, 2000).
Computer -mediated Communication (COM) has led to the process of globalization considerably impacting on the British curriculum and pedagogy. Warschauer and Healey declare that: "It's the climb of computer-mediated communication and the Internet, above all else, which includes reshaped the uses of computer systems for words learning by the end of the 20th century. Together with the advent of the web, the computer-both in contemporary society and in the classroom-has been altered from a tool for information handling and display to an instrument for information handling and communication. For the very first time, learners of any language is now able to talk inexpensively and quickly with other learners of sound system of the mark language all over the world" (63). A lot of the content in internet is within English vocabulary. And the majority of people who make use of it are non-native sound system. And so it could be aptly said that English is among the most vocabulary of technology, which pervades in to the structures of our societies.
Technology is well known for rate. Its forces are overwhelming. It is precise in diagnosing what is there and what's not, and what's right and what is wrong. It provides readymade solutions and quick fixes. It is cheap and available everywhere. It is simple to handle and difficult to disregard. Perhaps, these components of its inexorable entity inside our daily life could be an advantage to the EFL teachers to hire technology for an effective language teaching inside the category and the learners for an extended learning beyond your class. A technique that employs use of technologies in ELT is knows as CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning).
The CALL although surfaced in 1950s following the invention of computer, only past two decades the significance and relevance of its use is remarkable in ELT. CALL helps the learners to sharpen their interactive and communicative skills with ready-made solutions and demos. Chapelle on talking about the procedure of 'conversation' in cultural context demonstrates how a computer can help a terms learner in a few relevant way to acquire interactive skills (56). Further, Egbert, Hanson-Smith, and Chao opine that "the hypothetical theory of CALL looks not much totally different from a theory of language acquisition; in fact, it's the same" (1). Also, Levy and Stockwell reiterate such idea saying that "with uncommon exceptions, CALL designers and terms teachers are mainly in the role of consumers as far as theory is concerned. For those in this group who see value theoretically (and it must be said not absolutely all do), they review, select, and apply theories of words learning produced by others" (139). Also, CALL can motivate onward development of communication skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking), as well as dialect proficiency by providing learners with ample chances to practise these skills (Lightbown & Spada, n. pag).
There is a degree of apprehensions about digital devices and other 'information handling tools' of misleading or distracting the learners from acquiring the vocabulary in every its full substance or surrogating the instructor in the class room. Technology can offer learners with different learning techniques and styles, additional demonstrations, multimedia CDs illustrating the principles educated in the school, digital tutorials and the Web with innumerable images, audios, videos and animations, thus, developing a conducive atmosphere with meaningful contexts.
A thoughtfully exercised CALL exercise could create a revitalizing environment for the learners to expedite their terminology acquisition as well as linguistic competency. Computer won't replace the educator and neither will the ICT supersede one when the professor understands when and where and the way to use solutions in his/her teaching methodology. The fearful notions could be brushed away since a skilled teacher knows how to exploit the given tools to increase the huge benefits to the learners and supervise the learners' use of technologies desirably.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have greatly contributed to the acquisition of linguistic capabilities and communication skills. ICT refers to information-handling tools like pcs, satellite and cellular technology and the web. These tools havent only altered the means we connect but also the manners with which we connect. ICT plays an indispensable and significant role in the process of language coaching and learning. Especially, solutions have brought an outstanding change in the field of English Language Coaching and Learning in regards to to just how we educate and this content we deliver. Our institutions and schools have adapted CALL in the curriculum and effective pedagogies our woven around them.
Many educational institutions have started utilizing modern solutions in school and labs, in curriculum and syllabuses, in pedagogies and methodologies. A lecture is devised to be performed with the help of audio-video (AV) aids. There are AV halls, interactive whiteboards and smart classrooms. You will find terminology labs with printers, projectors and online connections marketing all the computer systems through LAN. ICT can be used in setting up handouts, to search for duties and activities online, connecting with learners beyond your category through teleconference etc. Such procedures are advocated by Chapelle and Hegelheimer stating "the resources made available from today's solutions for words learners and teachers provide valuable possibility to rethink as well as perhaps reinvent what constitutes the data bottom part for L2 professors " (314).
The teachers possess the freedom to integrate systems in their technique and choose activities and tasks from internet that are required for their students based on the need and the level of language skills. Competency of the teachers in handling solutions will greatly help in the training process. And certainly professors do need some training and practice in the use of technology, as Kessler points out "teachers need to become more proficient in their understanding of CALL methodology, methods, history, and possibility" (35).
The pursuing activities can be carried out in the class room:
1. Ask the students to list out the vocabulary they have discovered from cell phones like: drafts, outbox, call register, message counter, confirm sim service action, call divert, screening process etc.
(a) Let them categorize those words matching to elements of speech.
(b) Let them find out the other parts of conversation for what they have got listed
2. Ask the students to carefully feel the smiley's in their cell phones and identify an frame of mind and an emotion expressed by them. (Phrase framing can be done. )
Smiley
Action
Emotion
Attitude
:D
Laugh
Happy
Friendly
3. Let the students flick through the profiles on any networks, and check out through them for information as well as headings.
Let the students get into pairs. Set-up the personal computers so that every pair has one common (facilitator's) profile on the screen. Have students read the profile aloud. Then, proceed through some of the vocabulary. Practice predicting where the interesting information would be and scanning the profile for this. Have a list of questions to allow them to answer on the handout. Next, allow pairs set off and scan a new account on any social networking websites, and scan through them for information as well as headings. When everyone has completed, let them keep coming back and talk about the interesting things about the person that they have read about.
The questions on handouts could end up like the next:
Write definitions for the new vocabulary words.
profile _______________________________________________
section _______________________________________________
updates _______________________________________________
comments _____________________________________________
Read the person's account and answer the following questions.
1. So how exactly does the person appear to be? (Use 3 adjectives)
_________________________________________________________
2. What's his or her preferred food?
_________________________________________________________
3. What's the person's hobby?
__________________________________________________________
4. Does the individual have a job? Where?
__________________________________________________________
5. That which was the last comment?
__________________________________________________________
6. How many friends do they have online?
__________________________________________________________
7. List two other activities you learned about the person.
__________________________________________________________
These activities can be utilized for learning speaking and writing skills, beginning with learning words into elements of speech and stopping on paper paragraphs like profile writing.
Thus, the article explains the importance of technology assisted learning to triumph over the issues in ELT and expedite language acquisition effectively.
