Job Discussion Forums

[expatben]

I was talking about this with a teacher last night, how do you think the internet has changed the business over the last few years? Has it changed it at all? Is it easier or harder to be an ESL teacher with the internet?
Expat

[dmb]

Easier, there is so much material just a click away. I hardly ever make my own worksheets anymore.

[moonraven]

I agree.

Plus some students really appreciate working in the interactive sites--this allows them to work at their own speed, too--and it adds variety to classes.

I have also found it useful for them to do a certain amount of work for classes online--whether under supervision during class hours, or as projects on their own time.

Example: Yesterday my undergraduate students first worked with an article about the new t.v. channel, Telesur, which started broadcasting on Sunday with a Latin American focus and perspective. As I am currently in the Middle East, students also wanted to talk about Al Jazeera--which meant a natural segue into which country controls most of the mass media and to information vs. propaganda and how "friends" and "enemies" are treated differently by US-dominated mass media.

Then we went to Internet where they read an article about Mass Media Terror and used the copy function to move the main ideas to a Word document, from which we could discuss the points made.

Then they did a search on the Yahoo News site for articles about certain world leaders, and deteremined whether they were "friends" or "enemies" of the US based on the adjectives applied to them in the news stories.

In the case of my graduate students, they will do the last 2 activities outside of class time and hand in essays based on what they discovered, and in the in-class time will be watching a documentary film, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and discussing what viewers can do to sort out information from propaganda and to combat the enormous political power of the mass media.

[thelmadatter]

I, too, love computers and the Internet to supplement teaching. Im what passes for the expert around here Using and adapting what I find on the Net, along with materials I create, Ive ditched textbooks entirely for 3 of the classes I teach (textbooks are a rip-off and next-to-useless for the advanced levels IMHO)

The only cons are that it takes time to find and sort through all that it out there and the fact that many teachers and even some students simply experience a sort of "culture shock" when they dont have a textbook to touch and orient them in class. I have to put a little more effort in keeping students focused, esp. the prepa (~high school) ones.

[moonraven]

Textbooks are useless and a rip-off for ALL levels, IMHO.

I have yet to see a textbook series that addresses any of my students--not Latin Americans, and certainly not Arabs.

[EnglishBrian]

I imagine most of the posters on Dave's are pretty good at using the internet - after all, they post on forums! I only recently got access to the internet at home though. Before that I had to rely on shared computers in the workplace. Little or no opportunity for browsing and building up a knowledge of useful web resources that I could quickly go to.

My experience has been a little less positive I think. I've found that when, as usually happens, students have to share a computer, some are less focused than others. Also, I've never come across a school computer room with the kind of speed that techies seem to regard as standard. Waiting 30 - 60 seconds for each page to open seems something of a waste of time, and distracts from the interest. The internet wherever I've worked seems often 'down'. And the headphones in my last job literally lasted 1 lesson with some teenage Qatari boys. As for worksheets, I'm so jealous of people who manage to find good ones. The only ones I've ever come across needed so much modifying to fit the class and the institution that it was quicker to make my own (and that wasn't quick).

I've had colleagues too who've told me their students have sometimes resisted using the internet in class time on the grounds that they spend all day at work looking at a computer screen, and are paying for a native speaker teacher to have some human interaction.

I'm gradually getting better, but haven't yet experienced any kind of 'light on the road to Damascus' with using the internet in teaching.

[Henry_Cowell]

The simple fact that there IS an Internet and that its default international language is English has provided new motivation for people (i.e., our current and potential students) to learn English. And the English that they are exposed to on the Internet is certainly more varied (and compelling) than the language found in a typical EFL/ESL text!

Of course, one might also say that the spread of English as a lingua franca for Internet use has dumbed down the language and lowered writing standards. That's not my opinion, but I do understand why certain TEFLers would think it.

[EnglishBrian]

It wasn't so long ago people were talking about how the telephone was going to kill written communciation. Now email's the thing and all those students who just wanted to be able to speak English now find they get jobs where they're expected to represent their company through writing. Seems to have given a whole new lease of life to written English.

[thelmadatter]

Lets not forget that the Internet gives students a chance to really talk to people in the language... even if that "talking" is text chat. (Im hoping to get voice chat set up in the language lab here for the really advanced/motivated students) My favorite project to give students is to have them go online, make a log of conversations (~200-300 minutes total, depending on level), then evaluate their experience in a small essay. My only restriction as to who to talk to is that the person not be a native Spanish speaker (no temptation to slip into L1). Talking to native and non-native speakers of English each have their advantages and drawbacks. Most students come out of it with a very positive experience, esp. when they talk to other learners. A couple of girls met Dutch "boyfriends" (hey, whatever gets them motivated right?) Many learn cultural stuff as well.

For our English I class, we adapted the project to entering bilingual English/Spanish chats and writing the eval in Spanish (esp noting if the percentage of English use increases over the course of the project). The idea is to get them talking as soon as possible and having contact with foreign cultures. Also its good for students to see native English speakers struggling with Spanish.

As for dumbing down the language/writing - it is true that on-line communication has its own form. Some students have commented on that as a negative (#1 negative is obscene jerks) - but to me, its like getting used to any other kind of dialect.