Connection between Technology and Language Skills – Listening
Technology
is very much part of language learning throughout the world at all different
levels. Digital technologies are ideally placed to help teachers working with learners,
and learners working independently, to do the necessary ‘languaging’ that makes
their language development possible. The use of technology can be improved listening
skill of someone through audiovisual aids, like using technology to display
films to motivate students to learn a foreign language, for example. By using
traditional audio materials in EFL classes, teachers can teach listening, but
when visual materials accompany the audio, the students' enthusiasm in
improving their listening skills increase.
Young
people live their lives through technology: they are the web generation and
they are hungry for more. Our challenge is to channel the natural enthusiasm
our pupils have for ICT by using it in their everyday lives and embed it
purposefully into the modern foreign languages classroom. There is great value
in incorporating new technologies not as a bolt on or reward, but as an
integral part of the process. This allows learners to foster their
communication, creativity, collaboration and critical thinking. ICT lets
learners easily draw on authentic resources that promote inter-cultural
understanding and interact with virtual peers. Publishing students' multimedia
outcomes on a blog or wiki gives them a real audience for their work,
facilitates peer assessment through commenting and encourages them to raise
their standards as a result. Virtual learning environments also offer students
distance learning opportunities wherever and whenever they want. Technology lends itself very well to personalized
and independent learning where students can work at their own pace, complete
interactive exercises rigorously in class or at home and receive immediate
feedback. Gaining points for their efforts and being able to compare their
scores with their classmates is motivating for them too and adds an element of
engaging gamification to their learning.
New ICT skills learnt in the classroom (e.g.
Internet search skills) can be transferred to real life. Using a range of ICT
tools and a web-based environment can give learners exposure to practicing
listening regularly, and consequently, become a more effective listener. In the
21st century, technology has changed the ways in which we communicate and go
about our lives. By using
technology will changed the way we communicated such as we can communicate
faster and more cost-effectively, in our global economy, many of the people we
need to communicate with are in different locations. Technology allows us to
easily connect with people worldwide using our choice of forums. We don’t have
to wait for a stamped letter to make its way across the miles or rack up a big
long-distance phone bill; instead via the Internet we can instantly reach
almost anyone whether through email, instant message, social media, or
countless apps. As the speed of communicating has ramped up, costs have been
dramatically reduced.
The use of technology has changed people's abilities
to access information including receive communication and has had a great
impact on students' learning abilities. There are many technological tools that
could be used in classrooms to improve English as well as the technology skills
of the students. While listening to digital audio or watching a video clip,
learners have the opportunity to pause at will, and listen and read a
transcript. Moreover, learners can get instant feedback on what they have done
(e.g. you watch a video clip/listen to audio and check answers immediately
after watching/listening).
In this review I will take a look at a number of
online resources for developing listening skills (e.g. audio and video,
podcasts, video clip tools), and suggest some strategies for improving
listening ability:
1.
The BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/
A very useful thing about the BBC audio/video is
that it contains recordings of individual stories which are one to two minutes
long. Learners can choose which topic they would like to listen to. There is a
wide variety of different categories – Business, Technology, World News, UK
News, Technology, and so on. The BBC site is predominantly
British English.
1.
CNN News http://edition.cnn.com/video/
Similarly to the BBC
site, learners can listen to clips of individual news items or to whole
programmes. The CNN site is predominantly American English.
2.
Breaking News English http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/
This site has news
articles on different topics along with a sound recording of the article
accompanied by a resource book with ready-to-use ESL/EFL lessons and worksheets
that learners can work with on their own.
3.
Daily ESL www.dailyesl.com
Daily ESL is designed
to help learners become familiar with common vocabulary and expressions they
can use all the time in many situations. Learners choose a topic, listen and
read along with a paragraph, and then discuss the questions with a partner.
They can then compare their thoughts to the recorded interview.
4.
Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab www.esl-lab.com
It has short and long
listening activities for beginner-level as well as advanced-level students
accompanied by pre-, while and post-listening tasks, transcripts, and cultural
video clips. Randall Davis states that the main objective of the site is not to
test students listening skills; rather, by doing the variety of pre-listening,
listening, and post-listening activities, students can
discover ways to learn how to develop their listening skills. He
believes that listening and speaking skills must be developed together, and
working together with other students in groups and discussing the content of
the listening activities help learners improve their overall communication
skills by focusing on specific tasks.
5.
Video Jug http://www.videojug.com/
Video Jug is the
world’s most comprehensive library of free factual video content online. Video
Jug gives numerous opportunities for learners to practice listening skills and
to become actively engaged in the listening process. Learners can practice
their listening skills by listening to the interview with Stephen Fry. There is
a tape script to accompany the listening text.
6.
Podcasts
Podcasts are audio
recordings which a user can subscribe to and download to his/her computer or
portable listening device such as an MP3 player, while you can listen to or
watch a podcast on a topic that interests you whenever you want to. Podcasts
can be used not only for authentic listening in the classroom but for
self-study outside of the classroom as well.
7.
Learn Songs http://www.manythings.org/songs/
This site features folk
songs, campfire songs, and group-singing songs that native English speakers
sing. These podcasts are short and designed to be listened to more than once,
so learners can listen and sing along as many times as they need to in order to
learn the song.
8.
Youtube www.youtube.com
Now that a growing majority of Internet users have
broadband, YouTube has become very popular. These sites provide English
learners with a new tool to improve listening skills. This online video-sharing
social network has been enthusiastically welcomed by EFL learners and teachers
because of its potential to provide “a huge multimedia library of real language
use by real people, a potentially rich resource for language learning. By
browsing video clip sites, learners can find videos on almost any topic
(education, politics, science, technology, entertainment, and so on), spoken in
different varieties of the language (standard, foreign accented, and so on) and
at different levels of difficulty.
Listening comprehension is often the most difficult
task for learners of English as a foreign language. Listening in the real world
and listening to authentic texts is more complex than listening to
non-authentic texts in the classroom environment. Effective listening does not
just happen. Access to up-to-date materials via the Internet gives the students
opportunities to develop and improve their listening skills by using materials
in the self-access language learning center or outside the classroom. With the
appropriate use of technology, learning can be made more active, motivating,
and learner-centered, especially with such internet-based resources as
audio-video, podcasts, and video clip tools.
This is an example of media that can be used in listening in the classroom.
This is an example of media that can be used in listening in the classroom.
This is from Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab’s website. And this can help us in terms of listening.
1. http://www.esl-lab.com/ramfiles/cosmetic.wax (Listening Quizzes for Academic Purposes)2. http://www.esl-lab.com/ramfiles/b-hobbies-quiz1.wax (Basic Listening Quizzes)
3. http://www.esl-lab.com/ramfiles/hotel1.wax (General Listening Quizzes)
PS: Actually I want to show live the video directly, but I get problem when process uploading the video.
So I can only insert the links only. Click on the link and the video will be immediately downloaded.
During less than 5 months teaching and learning process that has been implemented, I have gained a lot of new knowledge previously I was not interested at all
even ignore it, and it turns out in this course TELL especially learn about
technology. From here I learn and get new things related to technology, such as
when we were learned and introduced about how using technology like Podcast and so on to helps us in improving our language skills, especially in terms of listening. Technology is
incredible, and I really want to learn more technology to give and use in the
future.
By the existence of related tasks that helped me to improve my skills in terms of technology in particular. For me if only the theories that are
taught or only the teachers who do it and we are as learners never try to use
it will be in vain. Hence, the task that has been given so much help me a
little weak with the technology that exists today. So, from what I have gained,
it will help me to use more technology in my teaching system in the future, so
students will also get new learning methods and make them not feel bored in
learning.
“Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we're too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.” - Steven Spielber
Thank you for visiting my blog and hopefully useful.
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