I was just reading a post (from about a year ago) at: http://englishteachinglab.blogspot.com/2007/11/english-grammar-practice-on-web.html

The point of that page was to host an ESL/EFL blog carnival.  There are some good resources listed there so you should probably give the page a look.

However, what I'm writing about here is something that was at the end of the post - a section about some research on CMC and teaching grammar.  The final point made was as follows:

With regard to grammar learning in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) activities, Chapelle (2005) comments the following:

"Whereas much grammar learning might best be carried out through explicit grammar teaching, we have seen that CMC tasks offer a wealth of opportunities for learning through language practice that is not directed specifically at the teaching of any particular grammatical point… CMC provides a mechanism for valuable communication, but shaping the mechanism into valuable opportunities for learning is the pedagogical challenge. Here the research is very difficult to interpret because researchers have studied a variety of phenomena, but the overall finding is that teachers need to plan for good CMC exchanges."

The bolding/underlining is mine, because I wanted to highlight what is clearly an idiotic statement.  A 'non-finding' masked to look like a 'real finding'. 

If you actually stop and think for a minute, we can very easily see that:

• all tools teachers use 'provide a mechanism for valuable communication' (Computer based or not)
• shaping these tools (or the use of them) into valuable opportunities for learning is ALWAYS the pedagogical challenge
• no matter what the situation, teachers ALWAYS need to plan for good language learning exchanges (Computer based or otherwise).

Look folks, teaching requires the use of a wide variety of tools in a wide variety of ways.  Regardless of what tools you use (paper, photos, computers, CDs, walkabouts, discussion groups), or how you use them, you need to plan your lessons out well so that they provide as much benefit as possible to your students.  If you don't…well you shouldn't be teaching!

Teaching with computers or in a computer mediated environment is no different in that regard.  It was the same 45 years ago with the introduction of TV.  The same 25 years ago with the introduction of VHS, no different with computers, and it won't be any different in 50 years when the next technological change comes along.

Let me rephrase that highlighted point above:

"Computer technologies are tools that you can use to help your students learn language if you plan your lessons to include them."

Bet you're glad you read this blog post and not the entire research paper to figure that out.

If you'd like to learn more about how to use computers effectively in language learning classes, bookmark this site, and sign up for our notification list.  You'll be notified every time a new post is published on this site.

Till then…

Cheers,

Eric

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